“The White House is “dusting off old plans” for a potential release of oil reserves to dampen rising gasoline prices and prevent high energy costs from undermining the success of Iran sanctions, a source with knowledge of the situation said on Thursday.”

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I indicated as I announced my tax plan that the key principles included the following. First, that high-income people would continue to pay the same share of the tax burden that they do today. And second, that there would be a reduction in taxes paid by middle-income taxpayers. Those are the key principles of my plan that the Tax Policy Center chose to ignore.

Read the rest here.

“FORTUNE — On the Friday after the Fourth of July, while the Romney clan was enjoying an extended midsummer break at the family manse on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee and photographers with telephoto lenses were snagging pictures of the candidate in swim trunks, real news was happening, unobserved, 100 miles away.

Nearly two dozen luminaries from the worlds of finance, government, and academe had gathered in secret behind smoked-glass windows in a three-story concrete office building on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End — Romney campaign headquarters — for a meeting of the governor’s recently assembled Economic Policy Steering Group. Some had only to cross the river from Cambridge. Others flew in from Chicago, D.C., and the West Coast. Tough duty in the middle of a holiday weekend, but as one participant says, anonymously, it was “for a good cause.” Each had been requested by e-mail to “exercise discretion in keeping the contents of the discussion and the membership of the group private.” Indeed, no one who was there will confirm for the record that the meeting even took place.”

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Here are a few little-known facts about Paul Ryan’s supposedly slash-and-burn budget plan.

Government spending increases almost every year over the next decade.
Tax and other revenue rises year after year.
The 10-year deficit is still $3 trillion.
The fact that Ryan’s spending plans grow the federal budget over the long term is one that could easily be lost in the political melee underway in the wake of his selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate.

To be sure, Ryan is proposing major changes to Medicare and taxation that Democrats see as problematic.

But claims that Ryan is slashing spending don’t quite square with the numbers. Those claims are convenient Washington shorthand for what Ryan’s plan actually proposes — which is to slow the rate of budget growth, but still allow the budget to grow.

Under the latest Ryan plan, the budget would grow from $3.6 trillion this year to $4.9 trillion in 2022. The only years in which spending would dip are 2013 and 2014.

Under President Obama’s 2013 budget, spending also increases over the 10-year period, but by a much bigger amount. The budget grows from $3.8 trillion in 2012 to $5.8 trillion in 2022. And instead of the $3.1 trillion long-term deficit under Ryan’s plan, Obama’s plan comes with a $6.7 trillion deficit.

That’s the money that would be added to the national debt over that period.

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Yessir. I said, “Yee.”

“Haw.”

Vice President Biden drew a tough retort from Mitt Romney’s campaign Tuesday after telling a Virginia audience that the Republican presidential candidate’s plan to lift financial regulation would “put y’all back in chains.”

Romney’s campaign responded by claiming the rhetoric marked a “new low” in the 2012 race.

Biden made the remarks during a stop in Danville, Va. He took a swipe at Romney’s plan to ease financial regulations, by recycling a Romney bank analogy and creating an analogy of his own.

“He said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules,” Biden said. “Unchain Wall Street! They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.”

The remark’s context is unclear. Some conservative blogs claimed Biden had just made a reference to slavery. Danville, aside from being the last capital of the Confederacy, is racially split — the city is nearly half black and half white. The crowd at Tuesday’s event reflected that makeup.

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“Paul Ryan’s budget proposals have earned him recognition from his fellow party members in Congress, and the presumed Republican vice presidential nominee’s plans could have far-reaching effects on the American people if signed into law.

In Ryan’s 2010 “Roadmap for America’s Future” and the more recent “Path to Prosperity” in 2012, the Wisconsin congressman has laid out his vision for the role of the U.S. government and the future of federal entitlement programs.

Under Ryan’s most recent proposal, the way Americans pay taxes would be markedly different. Taxpayers would fit into two tax brackets: Individuals falling in the top tax bracket would pay a rate of 25 percent, while those who fall into the lower bracket would pay 10 percent. (Ryan’s 2010 Roadmap plan went further, eliminating all taxes on capital gains, inheritance and interest. Such cuts would have permitted individuals like Mitt Romney, who derives much of his income from those sources, to get away with paying nothing in taxes.)”

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Obama/Biden or Romney/Ryan? The first two paragraphs of the article do a good job laying out the difficult choice facing Americans in November:

This much you have to give Mitt Romney: by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate he has made it impossible to avoid turning the presidential election into a genuine and long overdue debate on the nature, extent and responsibilities of American government. By doing that, whatever the outcome, he will have rendered a service to the American people, who deserve to be drawn into an all-out contest of principles rather than the usual beauty-pageant cum pratfall-watch that consume most autumn campaigns.

Because Mr Ryan (unlike the top of the ticket), is in the habit of actually attaching numbers to his budget proposals, there is a faint possibility that the debate between Americans who want to retain the institutions of the New Deal and the 1960s (such as Medicare) and those who believe that under Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson the country took a fatal step towards collectivism, will actually have to consider evidence rather than collapse into the usual exchange of uninformed abuse that gets confused with argument.

Read the rest here.

It had the makings of a scandal: Paul Ryan traded banking stocks during the financial crisis the same day as a meeting with top Treasury Department officials, a Virginia blog wrote Monday. But the rumor, which spread rapidly across the Internet, doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Read the rest here.

“As Paul Ryan hits the campaign trail as Mitt Romney‘s running mate, Democrats can hardly contain their glee at the fresh opportunity to attack the Wisconsin Congressman — and by proxy, Mitt Romney — over his signature budget proposal.

When Ryan first announced his proposals in 2011, the Democratic response was swift and vicious. Since then attacking Ryan’s budget — and specifically his proposals to overhaul Medicare — has been a remarkably successful strategy for Democrats, who argue that Ryan’s plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” or simply “end Medicare.”

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“By picking Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has managed something rare, for him: He’s made everyone feel good. Conservatives are thrilled, of course — they’ll have the “big choice” campaign they’ve been demanding from Romney. The Obama campaign is ecstatic — now they can more easily tie Romney to the unpopular Republican Congress and its determination (in last year’s debt ceiling fight and in the “Ryan Budget”) to force deep cuts to Medicare to balance the budget without raising taxes.

Read more

via Mashable.com

SEE FULL STORY HERE 

Obama’s expressions during Ryan’s speech are priceless.

Sanctions or not the world continues to devour black gold and Iran seems to be somewhat unaffected by our political will. Can anyone say airstrike coming soon ?

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So Sam Stoval of S&P Capital IQ has a S&P indicator that has consistently picked the president. It has to do with S&P performance for the 3 months leading up to the election. This period will begin in t minus 10 days.

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“Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign officially announced this morning that the candidate has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, ending months of speculation about who Romney would name as his vice president. ”

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“As American inequality rises, is the economy at risk of elite interest groups gaining political power and stifling competition?

Throughout history, this is how prosperous nations have lost their edge, according to “Why Nations Fail” byMIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson. Controlling elites block innovation to protect their own interests and growth eventually stalls.

Could that happen here?”

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Looks like the Department of Homeland Security could be renamed the Department of Hyper Sexuality.

A blistering federal discrimination suit accuses agency honcho Janet Napolitano of turning the department into a female-run “frat house” where male staffers were banished to the bathrooms and routinely humiliated.

James Hayes Jr., who now is New York’s top Homeland Security cop, claims Napolitano filled top spots in Washington, D.C., with two of her gal pals who were bent on tormenting male employees.

America used to be the land of opportunity, and in perverse a way, it still is. Obamanomics creates abundant opportunity — if you want to go on welfare.

In 2005, just $900 million in child tax credits went to families of illegals. In 2012, due to an increase in the number of illegals and growing fraud, the amount is $7.4 billion — an increase of 722% in just seven years.

Read the article here.