RedState Morning Briefing
For August 25, 2011
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The Washington Post's in-house left-wing activist, Greg Sargent, thinks he can convince you that he has a "gotcha" moment with Rick Perry's recent book "Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from Washington":
"Rick Perry's campaign is now distancing him from another controversial claim in his book: That we should repeal the 16th Amendment and replace it with a "Fair Tax," a radical idea that's still rattling around in some precincts on the right."
Here's the problem: the book doesn't say that.
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The latest CBO budget and economic outlook is using baseline assumptions that are as realistic as flying unicorns. Although they project a decade of mediocre growth and moderate deficits, even such a dismal projection is a pretentious view of reality.
On the budget side, CBO's baseline outlook portends a $1.284 trillion deficit this year, and $3.487 worth of deficits over the ten-year budget frame, from 2012-2021. The ten-year deficit predictions assume that the annual deficit will dramatically drop to $265 billion in just two years, and remain below $300 billion for the rest of the decade! The previous baseline outlook in March foresaw a $1.4 trillion deficit in 2011 and $6.7 trillion in deficits for the subsequent ten years. Even the March outlook was a lowball figure because the report presumed an unrealistic improvement in economic output, dramatic spikes in revenue, long-term record low interest rates, while obfuscating the costs of Obamacare all along. The updated baseline outlook makes those assumptions on steroids.
The CBO gets their unrealistic budget estimates from predictions of economic growth that run counter to all of the current economic reports. In turn, the robust unicorn economy will rapidly increase revenue, while decreasing spending on anti-poverty and unemployment programs. CBO is predicting GDP growth of 2.3% this year, even though it has only grown by 0.8% for the first half of the year. We would need to enjoy a 3.8% rate of growth for the rest of the year, in order to achieve the 2.3% target.
I was fortunate not to witness Jamie Radtke's speech at the RedState Gathering.
After this incident, perhaps I was a bit too vocal I'd not actually be supporting her campaign. I assume this act of self destruction in front of 400 attendees of the RedState Gathering is why Jamie Radtke's campaign decided to orchestrate a hit job on me in the Politico after I both endorsed her campaign and allowed her to speak at the RedState Gathering.
The basic allegation is that I have not aggressively pushed her campaign because my bosses at Eagle Publishing have a relationship with George Allen and asked me not to support her.
Actually, my bosses at Eagle Publishing do in fact have a relationship with George Allen, and a very good one, and asked me — after I endorsed her — to please go slow for once instead of shooting first and asking questions later.
I love my bosses and my employer and the owner and was happy to accommodate their very first request in my five years of employment to go slow on an endorsement.
To be clear: my bosses were not telling me to stay out, but telling me to wait a while. Perhaps Cuccinelli would get in. Perhaps someone else would get in. Perhaps Radtke would implode.
There's actually more on this story and how it started as, for all intents a purposes, a blackmail threat. You can read about that right here.
I confess: on some level, I like Jerry Brown. He's one of those guys – like Pat Moynihan, Paul Tsongas or Bill Bradley – who really, truly and honestly believes in the goals of liberalism, yet is periodically honest enough to be blunt about its failures in the real world. He even studied to be a priest, way back when. One can argue, as Steven Hayward has of Moynihan, that it's a species of moral cowardice to cling to an ideology you know doesn't really work, but even as many times as Brown and his comrades disappoint me, their candor, even unintentional candor, is still refreshing and amusing.
I thought of this when reading an interview CNN's Candy Crowley did with Gov.-again Brown earlier this month, and how it dovetails with the latest reports from the CBO on the economy.
ABC News has a profile of the upcoming Palin speech and what it may or may not mean. We know for certain that she will not declare her candidacy for the Presidency that day. And despite the wishful thinking of a bunch of others, I really doubt she will endorse anyone else either.
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Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
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