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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

U.S. to run first surplus since 2008

WTF--The socialist, communist Obama is a fiscal budgetary surplus president? WTF? I thought we have been hearing from the Grotesquely Oligarchy Psychopathic Party that this Obama guy was supposed to be running the country into the hands of Karl Marx and Stalin? Something is not right here. I thought Romney said that only HE could manage the economy like it was supposed to be managed--like he did it at Bain, or is it Bane Capital. 

CBO: Surplus is first of Obama’s presidency
5-7-12 By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. government recorded a budget surplus of $58 billion in April, the Congressional Budget Office estimated on Monday, breaking a streak of deficits that began in 2008.
The surplus — the first of Barack Obama’s presidency — was the result of both increased tax collection and lower government spending. Before April, the government had not run a surplus since September 2008, the month that the financial crisis struck the U.S. economy.Read CBO report.
The CBO’s estimate is released before the Treasury Department’s monthly budget report. That report is scheduled for later this week.
CBO estimated that receipts were $30 billion higher in April than the same month a year ago, due to declining refunds that month and higher corporate income tax receipts. Spending fell by $69 billion compared to April 2011, marked by lower outlays on defense, Medicaid and the Postal Service.
Government spending and deficits are shaping up to be a main issue in the presidential campaign, and the monthly surplus is a piece of good news for Obama. Read more about Election 2012.
For the first seven months of the fiscal year, the CBO estimates that the Treasury will notch a deficit of $721 billion. That’s $149 billion less than the red ink reported for the same period in fiscal 2011.
The improved budget picture will not put an end to election-year sparring about the deficit, however. The U.S. is running a debt of $15.7 trillion, a number often pointed out by Obama’s Republican critics, including White House hopeful Mitt Romney. Read more about U.S. national debt. 
Robert Schroeder is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Fukushima Is Still The Elephant In The Room


Senator: Fukushima Fuel Pool Is a National Security Issue for AMERICA

Fukushima Fuel Pools Are an American National Security Issue

After visiting Fukushima, Senator Ron Wyden warned that the situation was worse than reported … and urged Japan to accept international help to stabilize dangerous spent fuel pools.
An international coalition of nuclear scientists and non-profit groups are calling on the U.N. to coordinate a multi-national effort to stabilize the fuel pools. And see this.
Fuel pool number 4 is, indeed, the top short-term threat facing humanity.
Anti-nuclear physician Dr. Helen Caldicott says that if fuel pool 4 collapses, she will evacuate her family from Boston and move them to the Southern Hemisphere. This is an especially dramatic statement given that the West Coast is much more directly in the path of Fukushima radiation than the East Coast.
And nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen recently said (at 25:00):
There’s more cesium in that [Unit 4] fuel pool than in all 800 nuclear bombs exploded above ground…
But of course it would happen all at once.
It would certainly destroy Japan as a functioning country…
Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that’s probably the lesson there.
This week, Wyden said that the spent fuel is a national security threat to the U.S.:
AlterNet asked Sen. Wyden if he considers the spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi a national security threat.
In a statement released by his office, Wyden replied, “The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States.”
[Robert Alvarez – a nuclear expert and a former special assistant to the United States Secretary of Energy] agrees, saying, “My major concern is that this effort to get that spent fuel out of there is not something you should be doing casually and taking your time on.”
Yet Tepco’s current plans are to hold the majority of this spent fuel onsite for years in the same elevated, uncontained storage pools, only transferring some of the fuel into more secure, hardened dry casks when the common pool reaches capacity.
(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)