The budget blueprint estimates a federal deficit of $1.75 trillion for 2009.
The Obama administration plans to create a task force to consider elimination of corporate loopholes and subsidies, tougher enforcement against tax avoidance, and tax simplification, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said late Tuesday.
Mr. Obama's budget proposal began the process of addressing problems such as the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes collected. "The question is whether we can be even more aggressive" in those areas, Mr. Orszag said in an interview late Tuesday. The task force will be run through a White House advisory board being headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Mr. Orszag said.
No target for a dollar figure has been set. But the effort theoretically could lead to tens of billions of dollars in additional collections. The tax gap alone is estimated at $300 billion a year, of which more than $100 billion is believed to be collectible, according to IRS statistics.
By congressional estimates, annual spending on basic government services -- programs other than defense and entitlements -- would rise by more than 10% in fiscal 2010 under the $3.6 trillion Obama plan. Sen. Kent Conrad (D., N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, presented his version of Mr. Obama's budget to his colleagues on Tuesday, including an increase in annual nondefense spending of 7% for 2010 -- a $15 billion reduction from the president's.
See the steps by which the federal budget will be finalized.
Rep. John Spratt (D., S.C.), the House Budget Committee chairman, was expected to make somewhat smaller reductions when he rolled out his plan on Wednesday.
Lawmakers also are trimming back several of the president's longer-term spending and tax plans. Mr. Conrad, for example, squeezes spending growth in part by dropping tens of billions of dollars set aside in the president's budget for more rescue funds for the financial-services industry. Lawmakers said they could add the money back if it is needed.
Lawmakers also were effectively excluding several middle-class tax-cut pledges that Mr. Obama made in his budget, including long-term relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, and even long-term extension of his Making Work Pay credit. Extending AMT relief and the Making Work Pay tax credit could run around $200 billion each over the next five years. Both are in effect now but expire soon.
The pressure on the Obama budget reflects the difficult fiscal hand that officials have been dealt, Mr. Conrad said. Despite the changes, Senate Democrats sought to depict the Conrad plan as workable.
"I think the president still can achieve health-care reform, can get a significant bill on energy and the environment, and has all his spending for education," said Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.).
But Sen. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) predicted, "We're all going to feel a little pain in this."
The annual budget debate is important because it influences many major decisions that Congress will make in coming months, including spending bills. The budget resolution also can lay out powerful fast-track procedures for major policy changes, making them far easier to pass. This year, for example, many progressive Democrats are looking to the budget resolution to put health-care and climate-change legislation on a fast track.
But many moderate and conservative Democrats fear the consequences of the White House's additional spending, on top of the big stimulus bill and fiscal 2009 appropriations, plus massive federal bailouts for financial institutions. Those Democrats -- organized in the House as the "Blue Dog Coalition" -- have been pushing congressional leaders to reduce or offset the costs of any new initiatives.
Some moderate Democrats, along with Republicans, also are pushing for slowing down some of Mr. Obama's big policy changes, climate change in particular, but also health care. As of late Tuesday it appeared that climate-change legislation wouldn't be on a fast track in either the House or Senate resolution, and health care would only be in the House version, setting up a tough negotiation with the Senate.
Progressive activists who favor Mr. Obama's budget plans are pushing back against the moderates. On Tuesday, two groups, the Campaign for America's Future and USAction, announced a publicity campaign to get Blue Dog members to support Mr. Obama's budget initiatives.
Progressives say now isn't the time for fiscal restraint, given the economy's fragile state and the need for long-term overhauls in health care and energy.
Mr. Obama will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to rally support for his budget, following Tuesday's prime-time White House news conference.
The Governor of the Bank of England stunned Downing Street yesterday by warning against a giveaway Budget next month.
Mervyn King said public finance deficits were too high for big tax cuts or bumper spending increases on April 22.
The extraordinary warning to Gordon Brown not to blow billions on a second 'fiscal stimulus' came perilously close to breaching the convention that the head of the Bank does not question Government policy.
Tories said it blew a hole in Mr Brown's plans for next week's G20 summit in London.
Mr King's intervention was especially embarrassing for the Prime Minister because it came as he was using a speech to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg to call for 'the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever seen'.
The governor's warning underlined mounting concerns - both inside and outside Government circles - about the scale of public borrowing.
Mr Brown has been talking up the prospect of a new stimulus to encourage consumers to spend more, but has met resistance from Chancellor Alistair Darling. Last night the Treasury said it was 'relaxed' about Mr King's verdict.
The Confederation of British Industry also warned this week that the UK cannot afford a second fiscal stimulus.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts that the UK will rack up the biggest deficit of any leading nation next year, while the pound has tumbled by nearly 30 per cent amid fears that the Treasury cannot afford its massive borrowings to cover bank bailouts and collapsing tax revenues.
King and Queen: The Queen greets Mervyn King at a meeting at Buckingham Palace yesterday. He had earlier warned Gordon Brown against further Budget spending
The Tories, who have repeatedly warned about the size of the national debt, called Mr King's intervention a 'defining moment in the political argument on the recession.'
Council tax bills have doubled under Labour, say Tories
Cost-cutting HSBC set to axe another 1,200 workers in Britain
Home of disgraced RBS chief Fred the Shred is vandalised
Public sector pay goes up as private workers suffer
We're proud to be at centre of Europe, says Brown in most pro-EU speech of his life
The last time we had 0% inflation was 1960 - but your family's cost of living is actually going UP
The Bank governor made his comments as he addressed the Commons Treasury Select Committee.
Mr King said: 'We are going to have to accept, over the next two to three years,very large fiscal deficits. Given how big those deficits are, I think it would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits.'
Enlarge No more stimulus: Gordon Brown sits with Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson
He said there might be room for 'targeted and selected measures' in the Budget but urged the government to be patient and allow the 'enormous' economic stimulus already implemented to take effect.
This includes cuts in official interest rates to an all-time low of 0.5 per cent and plans to print up to £150billion of extra cash.
The Mail's Peter Oborne saw it coming in June 2008
Mr King said: 'We can do more monetary easing if necessary. Monetary policy should bear the brunt of dealing with the ups and downs of the economy.'
Adding to the pressure on the government, former cabinet minister Stephen Byers called on Mr Darling to end the 12-month cut in VAT which he introduced last November.
Mr Byers said: 'I do now question whether it has run its course, both in terms of its overall benefit to the economy and in relation to the political return that comes to the government.'
He said the money saved by the move - more than £8billion - could be used to raise personal allowances for income tax, taking 1.4million low-paid people out of the system altogether.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: 'Not only has a former Labour cabinet minister attacked the ineffective VAT cut, but the governor of the Bank of England, no less, has said Britain cannot afford a further fiscal stimulus. He goes on to say that monetary policy should be the main tool to tackle the recession.
'This is hugely significant, as it completely vindicates the big decision taken by David Cameron and myself on the economy, and leaves Gordon Brown's political plans for the G20 and the Budget in tatters.
'It is the Prime Minister who is now isolated at home and abroad.'
Compounding No. 10's woes, Mr King agreed with MPs who complained that banks were failing to pass on the benefits of public bailouts to borrowers, despite signing agreements to do so.
The governor said: 'I totally share that concern', but added that we were only just reaching the point where the impact of those agreements would start to be felt.
Later the Queen held an audience with the governor of the Bank of England for the first time in her reign.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164440/The-Bank-England-No-10-war-We-afford-Budget-spending-spree-Governor-tells-Brown.html
The President i keep hearing in the news is blaming the Republicans for inheriting a1.3 trillion dollar budget, but he forgets that the Democrats controlled both houses then.
US lawmaker: Obama budget makes US worse than Cuba
President Barack Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget plan will leave the United States with a worse budget deficit than Cuba, a leading Republican critic warned Tuesday.
"This creates for us a higher deficit than Cuba's. This is not the kind of position we want to put the United States in," Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.
Other Republican critics of Obama's spending policies, including his nearly 800-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, have variously warned that he risks turning the country into Argentina, France, Germany, or Zimbabwe.
Asked for the figures underpinning the charge, a McConnell aide pointed to a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that warned the US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009, ending September 30, would swell to 13.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product.
Cuba's deficit in 2008 was 4.1 percent of GDP using the official exchange rate, or 1.57 percent using another measure of total national output, according to the CIA.
According to official Cuban government figures, Cuba's projected deficit in 2009 will run to 5.6 percent of GDP, less than the 6.7 percent it reached in 2008.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.62a148d8155607db7d3fc5217177f85f.d31&show_article=1
Council uses spy plane with thermal imaging camera to snoop on homes wasting energy By Andrew Levy Last updated at 2:40 AM on 24th March 2009Comments (55) Add to My Stories Our movements are already tracked by CCTV, speed cameras and even spies in dustbins.Now snooping on the public has reached new heights with local authorities putting spy planes in the air to snoop on homeowners who are wasting too much energy.Thermal imaging cameras are being used to create colour-coded maps which will enable council officers to identify offenders and pay them a visit to educate them about the harm to the environment and measures they can take.Enlarge A council has spent £30,000 using a spy plane carrying a thermal camera to determine which homes are wasting energy. (File photo)A scheme is already under way in Broadland District Council in Norfolk, which has spent £30,000 hiring a plane with a thermal imaging camera.It said the exercise has been so successful other local authorities are planning to follow suit.But critics have warned the crackdown was another example of local authorities extending their charter to poke their noses into every aspect of people's lives.Broadland, which covers towns including Aylsham, Reepham and Acle, hired the plane from a Leicestershire-based company for five days at the end of January.The aircraft took images of homes and businesses, with those losing the most heat showing up as red, while better insulated properties appear blue.The council's head of environmental services, Andy Jarvis, said the original plan was to target businesses but it was realised the scope could be extended to include residental properties.'The project we put together was for a plane to go up on various nights flying strips of the district and taking pictures,' he said.'Through those images, a thermal image photograph can be created in which you can pick out individual properties which are losing a lot of heat.'We do a lot on domestic energy conservation already and realised it would be useful to see if any of the homes which were particularly hot were properties where people had not insulated their lofts.'We were also able to look at very cold properties and think we might have picked up people on low incomes who are not heating their homes because they cannot afford to.'More than half the UK's carbon dioxide emissions come from the domestic sector, which includes property and transport.Almost 60 per cent of a household's heat is lost through uninsulated walls, lofts and windows, costing the average home £380 a year.Insulation is estimated to reduce each home's carbon emissions by around two tonnes annually.The first city in the UK to make a heat-loss map was Aberdeen, while the first local authority in England was Haringey Council, in London - although environmental groups at that time said they viewed the practice as a 'gimmick' of little real value.The TaxPayers' Alliance has added concerns about the issue of privacy.Chief executive Matthew Elliott said: 'People are sick and tired of being heckled and spied on by local government and this council has shown an utter disregard for the man on the street.'He added: 'We're in a recession and you would have thought this council had better ways to spend £30,000.'Taxpayers are already footing the bill for innumerable advertising campaigns at a time when families are struggling to make ends meet.'But Conservative-led Broadlands insisted the heat-loss map would allow officers to pinpoint offenders and point out how to get help and grants to improve insulation to cut carbon emissions.Council leader Simon Woodbridge said the project would 'effectively pay for itself within a few weeks in terms of the amounts of money we can help people to save'.Lib Dem group leader Stuart Beadle added: 'Cameras are in place all over today and we have to accept them. So long as the right guidelines are in place and it will bring benefits, I think the scheme is a good thing.'Britain now has more than four million CCTV cameras - a fifth of those in use around the world - and around 8,000 speed cameras.Almost 500 local authorities have been using anti-terrorism powers brought in under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to launch a string of bizarre investigations.These have included checks on dog fouling, putting bins out on the wrong day and people trying to cheat school catchment area rules.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1164091/
Want free furniture, a place to stay, or even a bike? Thanks to the Internet, it's fairly easy to find a wide variety of free products and services.
Dozens of websites are dedicated to helping you locate stuff your neighbors want to unload, opportunities to swap what you no longer need, ways to find giveaways from businesses, and more.
Obviously, seeking out free stuff is great for your budget, but it can also be good for the planet. Reusing things, for example, keeps valuable items out of the landfill and saves the resources needed to make a new product from scratch.
How to find free stuff
Here are some of the best ways to find free stuff:
Log onto Freecycle and other reuse groups to search listings of items being given away by people in your town.
Craigslist has a whole category dedicated to "free stuff" for each of its participating cities. Find everything from cardboard boxes to electric sewing machines to computer games.
Search for free reusable items with the Local Reuse application on your iPhone.
CouchSurfing connects travelers with hosts around the globe. The result: You get both a free place to stay and locals to hang out with for an inside glimpse of other cultures.
Want free accommodations while travelling, but aren't up for sleeping on a couch? Use Digsville, Home Base Holidays, HomeExchange.com, and HomeLink to find traditional home-exchange opportunities.
Favorpals is all about helping you trading skills and favors. Clean someone's house in exchange for dog walking when you're at work or for tutoring your kid in math. Or offer painting services and get help with designing a website.
You can trade anything from babysitting and calligraphy lessons to pianos and foosball tables to cars and boats at U-Exchange.
Swap books, music, DVDs, or video games via mail through Swaptree. Print a postage label right from your computer for easy mailing.
You can trade clothes, accessories, shoes, and even cosmetics at Swapstyle.
Trade kids' stuff you no longer need at Tots Swap Shop or Kizoodle.
Get free new jewelry at Silver Jewelry Club. What's the catch? This jewelry manufacturing company is looking to get the word out about its designs. Be prepared to pay modest shipping costs.
MyOpenBar.com helps people find free (or cheap) drinks in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Honolulu, and Miami.
ThefreeSite.com, StartSampling, and Free Stuff Channel are just some of the websites dedicated to helping users find giveaways, samples, trials, and other promotional items.
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/the_conscious_consumer/53/how-to-find-free-stuff.html
Australian man murdered beekeeper for his honey
March 25, 2009 - 7:43am
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) - An Australian man was convicted Wednesday of murdering a fellow beekeeper so he could steal 40,000 Australian dollars ($27,880) worth of honey and has been sentenced to life in prison.
A jury with the Brisbane Supreme Court took less than a day to convict Donald Robert Alcock, 34, of the 2007 murder of beekeeper Anthony Ross Knight in Woodford, a rural town in Queensland state.
Prosecutors told the court that Alcock was is desperate financial trouble in May 2007 when he entered the 41-year-old Knight's home, shot him in the back while he was sleeping and stole tubs of his honey to sell.
The jury was told that Alcock loaded the largest tubs of honey onto his truck and drove them to a honey distributor but was pinned under a 3,000-pound (1,400 kilogram) tub while unloading the shipment and had to be taken to the hospital.
Police photographs of the accident scene showed markings on the honey tubs that identified them as Knight's property, prosecutors said.
Knight's decomposing body was found on June 4, 2007.
Alcock _ who pleaded not guilty in court _ confessed to police that he meant to hurt Knight but not kill him, prosecutors said.
"If Tony was home I was going to have to maim him or hurt him bad if I was going to knock off the honey," Alcock said in a video confession recorded by police. "I thought (the bullet) would go straight through him actually."
Members of the beekeeping industry were in court Wednesday to hear the verdict and show support to Knight's family. They offered statements to the court describing Knight as a highly esteemed beekeeper.
Alcock will be eligible for parole in 15 years.
http://wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1632441
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