The NY Times released this awesome tool that allows you to go through and apply different items that will help to fix the budget and shortfall for 2015 and 2030. Check out the tool here but be warned it is super addictive!

Here are my my choices! And a couple notes:

1. Farm subsidies, Joel made a convincing argument on these, and I left them only because i want the subsidies moved towards promoting better eating. So away from corn…

2. Reduce the federal work force, this one I’m a tad split on and left it unchecked. I think we need to lower it but do it smartly. There are some offices that need more resources and some that do not. Personal need to go towards areas such as education, energy policy, SEC and bank monitoring and investigation, and other protective areas. I did however cut the 250k in government contractors.

3. On military I reduced our nuke and space spending, duh. I feel strongly we should keep troops in Asia and Europe and really push that up, its good for the country and for our ability to project force abroad. Which is also why I didn’t vote for reducing the navy and air force fleet as they enable us to do that. I cut some of the terrible programs like the osprey, we need to drop the cold war race against our self. And not cutting veterans benefits as that seems insulting. And I voted to reduce the troops to 60k by 2015, I’d love to do 30k but I don’t think that is as feasible.

4. With health care I voted to cap medicare growth as I’ve read some on that and it makes sense, and to enact medical malpractice reform. I also wanted to vote to reduce tax breaks on employer provided health insurance, but this should be done once we have a base government provided health care or at least something that you buy yourself. Then the added extra insurance through your employer should be taxed.

5. Social security… I voted to reduce social security to those with high incomes and use an alternative measure for inflation. I’m not huge on increasing the retirement age just yet.

6. Existing taxes. This is a big one for me and I would vote for the most moderate one by Lincoln, the Obama one is good too as its the same as Bushes. Investment taxes, we need to go with Obama’s proposal. And on the bush tax cuts I want to allow expiration of taxes for incomes above 250,000 a year. And allow the payroll tax for those above 106k a year.

7. New taxes… The millionaire tax needs to happen. In terms of overhaul I’m very for the Bowles Simpson plan, we need to bring corporate tax rates down while cutting loopholes and other tax deductions. Plus reducing mortgage deductoins for high income households.

This puts me at 43% savings from tax increases and 57% from spending cuts… It puts me around 42 billion over the 2015 shortfall and it puts me 185 billion in surplus over the 2030 shortfall.

Now, I am very interested in a national VAT tax of 5%… I like consumption taxes as right now Americans just consume consume consume and this might break that a bit and bring in much needed money we could focus on doubling teacher saleries and redoing our energy grid…

So here are my results to view.

Here is a nice dueling paragraph:

Health insurer WellPoint blames the Great Recession and rising medical costs for its planned 39 percent rate increase for some California customers. To President Barack Obama, however, it’s Exhibit A in his campaign to revive the health care overhaul.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who received the company’s explanation in a letter Thursday, said “it remains difficult to understand” how premium increases of that size by can be justified when WellPoint Inc. reported a $2.7 billion profit in the last quarter of 2009.

Read more here.

Of course their CA subsidiary could be loosing money but the MAIN POINT HERE should be that insurance companies are good businesses in that they are TRYING TO MAKE MONEY. I don’t blame them for that, I blame our government because they either need to slap some draconian laws down or they need to take over the health care industry. Health care is a right not a profit making industry.

Fantastic, what a strong person to go to them and call them out on their bullshit as well of some of his own parties bs. I’m so tired of the rhetoric on both sides, but especially the republicans as they seem to just want to do nothing when they don’t have the presidency. As if their job when they are in the minority is just to stop all forward progress, and to deny that the majority of Americans want universal health care!

As a lot of friends know I love someecards, they crack me up. I had to post this one when I saw it this morning.

The functionally retarded people of the USA have joined together and decided that Obama is a number of things, and as always I am amazed at how awesome Obama is to have mastered so many ideologues. Truly the man, nah the second son of Christ is a genius! I hope the liberal third reich arrives soon so that I can sacrifice small children to my new overlords.

What is wrong with these people? When did Republican start meaning Retard? When will the normal republican people start distancing themselves from these crazies? I would never want to be called a democrat, and that is like 10x better than what the republican party has become. Where are the logical people who want smaller government, to balance our budget, and who can focus on real issues? Instead we get retards who think Obama is not a citizen, disrespect him during his speeches, and think that he is a secret muslim/socialist/nazi. This shit weakens our country and makes Canada look like a good place to live (just kidding Canada).

Myself and Joel are heading out to Denver Colorado tomorrow to find a place to live and setup an office. We are 99% done with this new business deal, once we actually close I’ll post some more info :). We are going to be staying with Dmarsh while we are out there! Looking forward to cold weather, snow, and starting some work!

In other news I voted early yesterday so that is all taken care of. I really hope Obama wins, I think he is going to be way better for the global economy and the foreign perception of what America is about. Plus that Palin women is just fraking crazy and since statistically McCain should probably die of natural causes during his first term in office we would be stuck with Bush in a skirt.