Seven years after Florida adopted its sweeping self-defense law, the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, has put that law at the center of an increasingly angry debate over how he was killed and whether law enforcement has the authority to charge the man who killed him.

The law, called Stand Your Ground, is one of 21 such laws around the country, many of them passed within the last few years. In Florida, it was pushed heavily by the National Rifle Association but opposed vigorously by law enforcement.

It gives the benefit of the doubt to a person who claims self-defense, regardless of whether the killing takes place on a street, in a car or in a bar ”” not just in one’s home, the standard cited in more restrictive laws. In Florida, if people feel they are in imminent danger from being killed or badly injured, they do not have to retreat, even if it would seem reasonable to do so. They have the right to “stand their ground” and protect themselves.

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Conventional wisdom has advanced competing theories: Wall Street types took too many risks, encouraged by lax government regulation; or pro-homeownership policies eroded mortgage-lending standards and created the housing bubble.

Actually, both theories are correct ”” and neither is….
[The real foundation was laid with Paul Volcker’s]… decisive defeat of double-digit inflation in the early 1980s.

All the good news (low inflation, high employment, rising stock and real estate prices) drove economic growth. Between 1982 and 2007, there were only two mild recessions. When prosperity was jeopardized ”” by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the tech crash in 2000, the 9/11 attacks ”” the Federal Reserve seemed to defuse the threats. The economy seemed less risky. Economists announced the Great Moderation of business cycles.

Booms become busts because justifiable confidence becomes foolish optimism. So it was. Believing the world less risky, people took more risks. Investment banks and households increased their debt. Lending standards eroded, because borrowers’ repayment prospects were thought to have improved. Regulators relaxed oversight, because markets seemed more stable and self-correcting. On the fringes, ethical standards frayed; criminality increased. The rest, as they say, is history.

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At some point, the spectacle America is now calling a presidential campaign will turn away from comedy and start focusing on things that really matter””such as the “fiscal cliff” our federal government is rapidly approaching.

The what? A cliff is something from which you don’t want to fall. But as I’ll explain shortly, a number of decisions to kick the budgetary can down the road have conspired to place a remarkably large fiscal contraction on the calendar for January 2013””unless Congress takes action to avoid it.

Well, that gives Congress plenty of time, right? Yes. But if you’re like me, the phrase “unless Congress takes action” sends a chill down your spine””especially since the cliff came about because of Congress’s past inability to agree.

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President Obama’s 2013 budget would add $3.5 trillion to annual deficits through 2022, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

It also would raise the deficit next year by $365 billion, according to the nonpartisan office.

The CBO estimate is in sharp contrast to White House claims last month that the Obama budget would reduce deficits by $3.2 trillion over the next decade.Ӭ

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[CHRIS] ARNOLD: In other words, without the rest of the economy doing better, will the recovery in the jobs market stall out?

Lawrence Katz says that idea is troubling, because even the job growth that we’re seeing right now isn’t great and we need it to get much stronger.

[LAWRENCE] KATZ: Even if we had a very rapid recovery, we have a huge distance to go still. We are still 10 million jobs behind. So it would take basically four years of strong job growth to get back to a normally functioning labor market.

ARNOLD: So slower job growth would mean an even longer period of high unemployment and economic hardship for millions of Americans.

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The CBO forecasts it will now cost $1.76 trillion over a decade, whereas before they forecast it would cost 940 billion.

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America is back. You can tell because Americans are maxing out their credit cards again.

Household debt grew at an annualized rate of 0.25% in the last quarter of 2011, according to the Federal Reserve’s flow-of-funds report released last week. That’s not a big jump, but until now there hadn’t been any uptick at all in household debt since the 2008 crash.

“Consumers have been more willing to use credit cards for shopping, signaling renewed confidence in their financial and job prospects,” explained Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics at IHS Global Insight, in a recentAssociated Press report.

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The agency says it has strengthened the electronic system used to screen returns for potentially fraudulent refund claims by thieves who often use other people’s Social Security numbers or other identifying information. When the computer detects reason to suspect fraud, it refers a tax return for investigation, holding up the refund for weeks.

This and other computer glitches have slowed refunds and led to widespread unhappiness, particularly among low- and moderate-income people, who often receive significant cash refunds thanks to a range of tax credits and often rely on that money to pay bills.

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Poverty has not been front and center in American political debate since the passage of the welfare reform act in 1996.

But a new book may have started to change that.
Conservative scholar Charles Murray, who created intense partisan conflict with “The Bell Curve,” his 1994 book on inheritance and intelligence, has now touched a nerve with “Coming Apart: the State of White America, 1960-2010.”

In it, he argues that there is a growing gap between highly educated, married, hardworking, affluent Americans and unmarried, less educated, chronically unemployed poorer Americans.

With one run of the printing presses, he has reignited the culture wars.

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The agency’s 2011 long-term budget outlook showed that federal debt would begin to hurt the economy once it reaches about 77% of GDP. CBO’s January budget and economic outlook estimated that it will hit that level in 2013 under its high-debt scenario that is based largely on current policy.

“CBO expects that the large government deficits during the recession and afterward will raise the cost of capital in the future . . . constraining investment,” the nonpartisan scorekeeper wrote in its January budget and economic outlook.

Initially, the impact would be minimal, but it would grow over time as debt levels increase.

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“What started as targeted sanctions to push back the nuclear program has in reality turned into comprehensive, broad sanctions that have hurt the Iranian people,” said Ali Vaez, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Iran Project in Washington.

If Western governments are counting on economic deprivation to bring radical change in Iran, analysts say they are likely to be disappointed.

“History shows that sanctions do not yield regime change — this is particularly true for states that emerged out of revolutions,” said Middle East analyst Arshin Adib-Moghaddam of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke threw cold water on the improving economic outlook Wednesday, saying further significant declines in unemployment are not likely without stronger economic growth.

“Continued improvement in the job market is likely to require stronger growth in final demand and production,” Bernanke told the House Financial Services Committee in his semiannual report to Congress on monetary policy.

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Corporate America’s love affair with debt is driven by a heavy subsidy, courtesy of the federal tax code. It’s an unhealthy preference that the Obama administration is now reviewing.

The problem arises because the interest that corporations pay on their debt is deductible on their federal taxes.

To understand the effect of this deduction, imagine if you could deduct the interest you pay on your debt. I am not just talking about the deduction on your home mortgage. This would be a deduction for all of the interest paid on your credit card bills, auto loans and any other loans you had, including the one from Uncle Mikey….

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Americans love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children’s lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

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The Obama administration will propose lowering the top income-tax rate for corporations to 28% from 35% but would raise overall tax revenue by eliminating dozens of popular deductions in an effort to restructure the corporate tax code.

The proposal, which will be announced Wednesday, would lower the “effective” tax rate on manufacturers to “no more than 25%,” according to a senior administration official, down from the current average rate of about 32%. It raises taxes on oil and gas companies that would lose many large deductions and subsidies.

The plan would require U.S. companies operating overseas to pay””for the first time””a minimum tax rate on their foreign earnings.

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According to the U.S.Census Bureau’s figures, Oklahoma has grown in population from 3,450,654 in 2000 to 3,751,351 in 2010. This represents a population growth of approximately 8.7% in this time frame. (Of passing interest, please note that the population of the United States as a whole went from 281,421,906 in 2000 to 308,745,538 in 2010, an overall American growth for the decade of 9.7%).

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Oklahoma went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 7,290 in 2000 to 5,585 in 2010. This represents a decline of -23.4% during this decade.

Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “Oklahoma” as the name of the diocese and then “View Diocese Chart” underneath on the left you can see in pictorial form some of the data from 2000-2010.

For the fourth year in a row, President Obama is proposing lower tax deductions for the wealthy on donations to churches and other nonprofit organizations. And for the fourth year in a row, nonprofit groups say the change would lead to a dramatic drop in charitable giving.

The reduction, included in Obama’s 2013 budget proposal, rankled the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

“We were hoping this would not come up again this year. We asked that they not renew it, but unfortunately the request was not taken,” said Nathan Diament, the group’s Washington director. “It’s a real concern.”

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A crucial thing to remember, both about the mandate and the promised adjustments-to-come, is that it is deeply un-American in its hostility to diversity and pluralism in civil society. The mandate’s religious-employer exemption is limited only to inward-looking entities that hire and engage only their own. It embodies the view that religious institutions may be distinctive only insofar as they stay in their place ”” in the pews, in the pulpit, at the altar. It reflects a troubling tendency to impose ideological sameness and conformity in the public sphere, to insist that all groups and associations act like the government, in the service of the government’s goals.

The mandate prompted an impressively united reaction by those who cherish America’s tradition of religious freedom and accommodation. On the left and on the right, among Republicans and Democrats, there was an appreciation for the fact that this was an overreach. It was, and still is.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation may soon be forced to shut down a number of key Domain Name System (DNS) servers, which would cut Internet access for millions of Web users around the world, reports BetaBeat. The DNS servers were installed by the FBI last year, in an effort to stop the spread of a piece of malware known as DNSCharger Trojan. But the court order that allowed the set up of the replacement servers expires on March 8.

In November of last year, authorities arrested six men in Estonia for the creation and spread of DNSCharger, which reconfigures infected computers’ Internet settings, and re-routes users to websites that contain malware, or other illegal sites. DNSCharger also blocks access to websites that might offer solutions for how to rid the computer of its worm, and often comes bundled with other types of malicious software.

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Seeking to avoid a politically toxic vote, Congress has failed to pass a federal budget for three years. This year’s new twist? Congress might not even try.

On Monday, President Obama presented his proposed budget for fiscal year 2013. It’s going nowhere on Capitol Hill, legislators and political analysts agree. What’s more, Senate Democratic leaders show no intention of presenting their own budget proposals ”“ or taking up any lobbed over from House Republicans.

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In place of those cuts, the president offered a mixture of real steps to reduce the deficit ”” including nearly $2 trillion in additional taxes over the coming decade, mainly at the expense of high-income Americans ”” and bogus ones, such as almost $850 billion in “savings” from the previously planned end of foreign combat operations, a chunk of which would be spent on infrastructure and jobs programs. The one bright spot: Obama didn’t ignore the rapid and unsustainable growth in healthcare entitlements, as he did in last year’s budget. Instead, he called for saving about $360 billion over 10 years on those programs, in part by paying drug companies less for medicines prescribed to low-income Medicare patients.

There’s little chance this Congress will agree to many, or even any, of those suggestions. Tax increases seem particularly unlikely. But even if lawmakers were to adopt all of Obama’s deficit-cutting measures, they wouldn’t go far enough to set the budget on a path toward balance.

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China’s defense budget will double by 2015, making it more than the rest of the Asia Pacific region’s combined, according to a report from IHS Jane’s, a global think tank specializing in security issues.

Beijing’s military spending will reach $238.2 billion in 2015, compared with $232.5 billion for rest of the region, according to the report. That would also be almost four times the expected defense budget of Japan, the next biggest in the region, in 2015, the report said.

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In Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?, Pasi Sahlberg explains how his nation’s schools became successful. A government official, researcher, and former mathematics and science teacher, Sahlberg attributes the improvement of Finnish schools to bold decisions made in the 1960s and 1970s. Finland’s story is important, he writes, because “it gives hope to those who are losing their faith in public education.”

Detractors say that Finland performs well academically because it is ethnically homogeneous, but Sahlberg responds that “the same holds true for Japan, Shanghai or Korea,” which are admired by corporate reformers for their emphasis on testing. To detractors who say that Finland, with its population of 5.5 million people, is too small to serve as a model, Sahlberg responds that “about 30 states of the United States have a population close to or less than Finland.”

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Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.

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Social Security’s disability program is a political quagmire ”” and a metaphor for why federal spending and budget deficits are so difficult to control. The numbers are too big; the details, too complicated; and the choices, when faced, too wrenching. President Obama’s new budget, estimated at $3.5 trillion or more, will raise all these problems. Experience suggests that little will be done to rein in long-term spending and deficits.

Social Security’s disability program opens a window on this larger paralysis. Created in 1956, more than two decades after Congress authorized Social Security, the program was initially seen as a natural complement to coverage for retirees. Through sickness or accident, some workers had to retire early. They, too, deserved protection. For many years, the costs were modest. But in recent decades, they have exploded….

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According to the U.S.Census Bureau’s figures, Oregon has grown in population from 3,421,399 in 2000 to 3,831,074 in 2010. This represents a population growth of approximately 12.0% in this time frame. (Of passing interest, please note that the population of the United States as a whole went from 281,421,906 in 2000 to 308,745,538 in 2010, an overall American growth for the decade of 9.7%).

According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Oregon went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 7,793 in 2000 to 6,547 in 2010. This represents a decline of 16.0% during this decade.

Please note that if you go to the link toward the end of this sentence and enter “Oregon” as the name of the diocese and then “View Diocese Chart” underneath on the left you can see in pictorial form some of the data from 2000-2010.

After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said in Washington on Thursday.

It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.

Under the plan, federal officials said, about $5 billion would be cash payments to states and federal authorities, $17 billion would be earmarked for homeowner relief, roughly $3 billion would go for refinancing and a final $1 billion would be paid to the Federal Housing Administration.

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The U6 unemployment rate tabulates not only people without work who are seeking full-time employment but also counts “marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.”

Those of you who are data hounds (like yours truly) will appreciate the table here–KSH.

US economic growth will slow dramatically if tax rises and spending cuts come into effect as planned in 2013, according to new figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

The expiry of tax cuts originally passed by president George W. Bush, the end of a 2 per cent payroll tax holiday and automatic spending cuts agreed last August will reduce growth to just 1.1 per cent in 2013 unless changes are made.

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