Most people want to wipe out deficits in both federal and state governments by making budget cuts rather than raising taxes. I want to make cuts and not raise taxes also, but is it a realistic goal? The co-chairmen of Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission offered a draft blueprint for wiping out some of the deficits last week. Among the spending cuts proposed and the savings by 2015 as reported by LA Times: 20.4 billion by freezing federal employees' salary for 3 years; 13.2 billion by cutting federal workforce by 10%; 4.6 billion by slowing the growth of foreign aid; 16 billion by eliminating all earmarks; 9.2 billion by freezing noncombat military pay for 3 years; 20 billion by cutting military procuremnt by 15%.

I would go along with all those above. But even the easiest one of them all, earmarks, have defenders in Congress. Obviously lobbysts and unions will be up at arms and people will complain that it will hurt our defense etc. Obama can help himself among independents by supporting these cuts, putting himself more toward the center. But the job cuts will not help him in the near term because unemployment is his achilles heel right now. The report also wants to eliminate all tax deductions and lower the tax rate and thus simplified the tax code. I am for that also. There is an increase in Medicare payments by the bendficiaries in the proposal. There is also a suggestion to increase the age at which retirees can start drawing social security. Again I agree with these. Again these will be met with stiff opposition and unlikely to pass Congress after all the lobbying are done.

It is the same situation in the state level. Everybody wants spending cuts but when surveyed the majority do not want cuts to schools, transportation, medicaid. These are the biggest parts of the state budget. So if you don't want to cut them, where are you going to cut enough to make a difference? In the long term we do have to decrease government workforce, salaries, and especially pensions. It used to be that you take a government job at a lower salary than in the private sector and get better pensions and benefits. But now the salaries negotiated by the unions (which contributes to campaign of politicians who vote on salary spending) have made public work much better than similar positions in private sector. So we have to change that but there is not enough political will to do so now. It will take years, if ever, to make the changes.

Last week on 60 Minutes there was a segment about a small town in Iowa where Maytag was located. When the Maytag factory shut down there was widespread unemployment and extreme financial hard times. This is played throughout the country and there isn't anything that the president can do about it. Manufacturing is going away because there is no way that we can compete with China if their wages are 0ne-tenth of those here, no matter what government polices we put in. On the other hand there was report from Silicon Valley that companies like Face Book and Google are raiding each others' intellectual talent. This raises the earnings of engineers and computer scientists dramatically. No government policies made a difference here either except maybe the freedom for entrepriuneers and venture capitalists to pursue their dreams.

This trend shows one reason why the Democrats got slaughtered in the heartland but did ok in the the coasts. Areas that depend on old industries are going to be in trouble just as people who do not have a good education. We must encourage better education especially in math and sciences if we are to compete in the future.

Obama' s trip to economic summits in Asia illustrate the weak position we are in. When we try to tell other country to change their economy from export driven to consumption driven like us, they laugh at us. They feel that we have no discipline and disapprove of the Fed's 600 billion dollar stimulus. I think in the long term we have to tighten our belt like not only China and India but Germany as well. Of course Obama can't do that because it will hurt in the short term and will doom his re-election bid for sure.

Spent most of last evening watching the CMA. This is due to the fact that it preempted Modern Family and my wife and I want to see if Gwyneth Paltrow can actually sing country. She did ok except we had to wait through almost the entire show to see her. I wonder why they want her play a country singer in a movie. Wouldn't it be easier to use Ashley Judd? This is the first time I actually watch this award show and here are the observations from a non-country music fan:

1. There are higher percentage of white people here than at hockey games, NASCAR races and Tea Party gatherings. In fact I didn't see one black person on the show or in the audience. I think they need to bring Charley Pride back, from wherever he is, to get some diversity. Charley is not only a country singer but likes baseball better than basketball. So he should be invited to many more white events even if he can't sing anymore.

2. Taylor Swift didn't win vocalist of the year. But if she won there would be zero chance that Kanye West would have interrupted her acceptance. (See #1 above)

3. After the Dixie Chicks bashed Bush a few years back, I was not surprised that they were not at the awards. But of course a group called Lady Antebellum won big. This sounds like a nod to pre-Civil War era but I don't know for sure. I also don't know why there are two men in the band since they are no lady.

4. Dolly Parton wasn't there but I am sure she kept abreast of what went on. I understand she was mad a somebody. She should have showed up and get it off her chest.

5. When I heard that Detroit was represented, I thought Eminem had changed his style. It turned out to be Kid Rock. So even in country music, Detroit rocks on.

Well, that is all I have to say about a show where I don't know most of the people and know none of the songs. I wish John Denver was still alive.

The voting must have been rigged. The Republicans must have stuffed the ballot or Sarah Palin convinced the Tea party to vote her way. How else do you explain that Rick Fox was voted out of Dancing With The Stars while Bristol Palin is still alive. Fox had the highest point total given by the judges on Monday night while Palin had the lowest so there must have been millions more votes for Palin than Fox. And those people who voted for Palin can't possibly be objective. Fox was way better in not only my opinion but the three judges. So if I am in charge of the Democrats I would protest the elections tonight given this irregularity in DWTS!

No surprise that the Republicans won big tonight although the Democrats manage to salvage the senate majority. As I predicted before there will gridlock no matter what happens tonight. I understand the majority of the people are upset by the state of the economy and they will blame the incumbents. But the idea that the Republicans or Tea Party people are going to do better is absurd. For example, one of the reason that people are unhappy with Obama is that they don't like the stimulus and the deficit increase because of it. The truth is without the stimulus the situation today would not be better and probably worse and the people would complain why he didn't do anything. If Obama had done nothing and somehow we have improvement in the economy, people would then complain that if he had done more, the recovery would have been sooner. I can guarantee you that if the republicans and McCain had won in 2008, we would be talking about a landslide for the Democrats tonight. The Republicans have absolutely no idea what to do.

On CNN tonight the Republican whip Eric Cantor was asked what big program he would cut to decrease the deficit. He was asked three times and he did not answer the question. He only said that the Republicans want the deficit to go back to the level of 2008. Gee, we still had a big deficit then and the economy was collapsing at that time under Bush. How about we go back to 2002 before we send troops to Iraq which certainly increase our deficit. Or how about we go back to before Bush when we had a surplus. Yes, the Democrats like to spend but if you think the Republicans are better, you are delusional because while the Democrats are in the pockets of the unions, the Republicans are in the pockets of corporations like Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.