$32 Billion in Budget Cuts Proposed

The Republican proposal is effectively $58 billion less than the domestic and foreign aid programs in President Obama?s budget request for 2011 ? far short of the $100 billion in cuts that Representative John A. Boehner promised before the November elections that catapulted Republicans into the House majority and made him the speaker.

Republicans said that their cuts, prorated for the balance of the fiscal year, still fulfilled their campaign pledge to reduce to 2008 levels the government?s discretionary spending on everything other than national security. They said that the Democrats? failure to approve a budget or pass any of the normal spending bills precluded further cuts.

But their unwillingness to impose steeper reductions also reflected the severe difficulty they face in slashing spending on the wide scale demanded by some Republicans, especially Tea Party-backed freshmen elected partly on a promise of fiscal restraint.

The Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc that counts a majority of House Republicans among its members, has called for more than $100 billion in cuts this fiscal year, and $2.5 trillion in reductions over the next decade. The group sent a letter to Mr. Boehner urging him to meet or exceed that because voters expected no less.

?Despite the added challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep our $100 billion pledge to the American people,? the study committee wrote.

One leading fiscal conservative, Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said that the cuts were not big enough. In a statement, he said that ?anything short of our pledge to cut $100 billion? would ?be getting off on the wrong foot.?

He added: ?We can?t ignore the fact that our budget deficit is clocking in at $1.5 trillion and our debt at more than $14 trillion. We?re going to have to do much better and cut much more.?

The Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, must also approve the overall spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Given the likelihood of disagreements, Congress may be unable to reach a spending deal by March 4, when a stopgap measure now financing the government, mostly at 2010 levels, expires. Another temporary extension would further limit the Republicans? cuts.

The planned cuts were announced Thursday by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the Budget Committee, who was empowered by the House to single-handedly set overall spending limits through September.

?Washington?s spending spree is over,? he said in a statement. ?We must chart a new course.?

But at a background briefing, Republican leadership and Budget Committee staff members struggled to explain the seeming timidity of the cuts, given the boldness of their party?s rhetoric.

?Chairman Ryan?s gavel is not a magic wand which can enact all the things he would like to do,? one aide said. ?This is restoring some sanity to a broken budget process.?

Committee aides urged reporters not to measure the $100 billion goal against the annual spending levels assumed in the current stopgap measure, but rather against Mr. Obama?s overall budget request, including security-related spending.

Compared with Mr. Obama?s request, overall spending would be reduced by $74 billion, the Republican aides said.

In the larger context of a roughly $3.8 trillion federal budget, the difference between a $32 billion reduction or a $74 billion reduction is minor.

While Mr. Ryan?s committee is responsible for setting overall spending limits, it is up to the Appropriations Committee to figure out how to meet those goals and to propose specific reductions for specific agencies and programs.

The Appropriations Committee chairman, Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, issued parameters for making cuts in the various spending bills, amounting to an average 9 percent reduction compared with 2010.

Republican aides said they expected a spending measure to be brought to the House floor for debate later this month.

Republican aides stressed repeatedly that Congressional Democrats, who controlled both the House and Senate last year, failed to approve a budget resolution or any of the normal appropriations bills, leaving Republicans to grapple with both the 2011 and 2012 budgets this winter.

Congressional Democrats criticized the Republican proposals as irresponsible and said they would endanger the still precarious economic recovery.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said in a statement, ?The immediate spending cuts proposed today by House Republicans will harm the economy and put more people out of work.?

Democrats said they had never intended to grant Mr. Obama?s full request and so the Republican claims of $74 billion in reductions compared with the president?s budget were overstated.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 3, 2011

An earlier version of this article misstated Representative Paul D. Ryan's middle initial.

 

 

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The Android that Apple's Rivals Have Been Looking For

When Apple's iPad debuted last year, it resurrected a form of computing long thought unworkable, and created entirely new markets for book and news publishers. Attempts by others to follow that lead have lacked the iPad's polish, but Google may have changed the equation by revealing its own take on the tablet experience yesterday.

Rather than offering a radical departure from the vision introduced by Apple, the company's tablet-flavored version of its Android mobile operating system?dubbed Honeycomb?brings a handful of slick new user-interface features, designed for the more powerful hardware of a tablet. It also significantly streamlines the experience of installing apps on a tablet.

Before an audience at Google's Mountain View headquarters yesterday, Hugo Barra, the company's director of mobile products, explained the user-interface tweaks designed to make tablet computing slicker and more powerful.

Some new elements of the operating system will be familiar to iPad users. But one major departure is that users can install "widgets" onto their home screen. These widgets provide cut down access to apps and at-a-glance information. For example, a Gmail widget places a small but scrollable in-box onto the desktop. YouTube and news apps such as Pulse use a "stacks" widget, which appears like a stack of cards with the latest information?like a news photo?on the top card. A user can tap on that card to enter the app and see the full content, or flick a finger over the widget to cruise through other information in the stack.

"Widgets can be used to 'bubble up' important information to the home screen," said Barra. "For the user, it's about quick and easy access to important information."

After the presentation, Akshay Kothari, cofounder of Alphonso Labs, which worked with Google to modify the Pulse News app for Honeycomb, told Technology Review that he considered widgets to be the biggest improvement over the iPad. "With these widgets, the user can interact a lot with their most-used apps without even opening them," he said.

Two elements of Honeycomb's interface are always accessible to the user, and reside in the screen's lower left and right corners. In the lower left are three buttons: a "back" button, a multitasking button that calls up a list of all running apps, and a "home" button. In the lower right, a PC-like notification area displays alerts of new instant messages, and also allows access to apps running in the background and to system settings.

Apps can feature multiple panes, or "fragments," and also support drag-and-drop actions, which makes using them closer to the experience of using a desktop application. Support for apps built using fragments is built into Honeycomb, said Barra. Fragments are self-contained and can be used to build apps for phones and tablets in a modular way, he said, which should speed the creation of apps.

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$32 Billion in Budget Cuts Proposed

The Republican proposal is effectively $58 billion less than the domestic and foreign aid programs in President Obama?s budget request for 2011 ? far short of the $100 billion in cuts that Representative John A. Boehner promised before the November elections that catapulted Republicans into the House majority and made him the speaker.

Republicans said that their cuts, prorated for the balance of the fiscal year, still fulfilled their campaign pledge to reduce to 2008 levels the government?s discretionary spending on everything other than national security. They said that the Democrats? failure to approve a budget or pass any of the normal spending bills precluded further cuts.

But their unwillingness to impose steeper reductions also reflected the severe difficulty they face in slashing spending on the wide scale demanded by some Republicans, especially Tea Party-backed freshmen elected partly on a promise of fiscal restraint.

The Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc that counts a majority of House Republicans among its members, has called for more than $100 billion in cuts this fiscal year, and $2.5 trillion in reductions over the next decade. The group sent a letter to Mr. Boehner urging him to meet or exceed that because voters expected no less.

?Despite the added challenge of being four months into the current fiscal year, we still must keep our $100 billion pledge to the American people,? the study committee wrote.

One leading fiscal conservative, Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said that the cuts were not big enough. In a statement, he said that ?anything short of our pledge to cut $100 billion? would ?be getting off on the wrong foot.?

He added: ?We can?t ignore the fact that our budget deficit is clocking in at $1.5 trillion and our debt at more than $14 trillion. We?re going to have to do much better and cut much more.?

The Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, must also approve the overall spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Given the likelihood of disagreements, Congress may be unable to reach a spending deal by March 4, when a stopgap measure now financing the government, mostly at 2010 levels, expires. Another temporary extension would further limit the Republicans? cuts.

The planned cuts were announced Thursday by Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the Budget Committee, who was empowered by the House to single-handedly set overall spending limits through September.

?Washington?s spending spree is over,? he said in a statement. ?We must chart a new course.?

But at a background briefing, Republican leadership and Budget Committee staff members struggled to explain the seeming timidity of the cuts, given the boldness of their party?s rhetoric.

?Chairman Ryan?s gavel is not a magic wand which can enact all the things he would like to do,? one aide said. ?This is restoring some sanity to a broken budget process.?

Committee aides urged reporters not to measure the $100 billion goal against the annual spending levels assumed in the current stopgap measure, but rather against Mr. Obama?s overall budget request, including security-related spending.

Compared with Mr. Obama?s request, overall spending would be reduced by $74 billion, the Republican aides said.

In the larger context of a roughly $3.8 trillion federal budget, the difference between a $32 billion reduction or a $74 billion reduction is minor.

While Mr. Ryan?s committee is responsible for setting overall spending limits, it is up to the Appropriations Committee to figure out how to meet those goals and to propose specific reductions for specific agencies and programs.

The Appropriations Committee chairman, Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, issued parameters for making cuts in the various spending bills, amounting to an average 9 percent reduction compared with 2010.

Republican aides said they expected a spending measure to be brought to the House floor for debate later this month.

Republican aides stressed repeatedly that Congressional Democrats, who controlled both the House and Senate last year, failed to approve a budget resolution or any of the normal appropriations bills, leaving Republicans to grapple with both the 2011 and 2012 budgets this winter.

Congressional Democrats criticized the Republican proposals as irresponsible and said they would endanger the still precarious economic recovery.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee, said in a statement, ?The immediate spending cuts proposed today by House Republicans will harm the economy and put more people out of work.?

Democrats said they had never intended to grant Mr. Obama?s full request and so the Republican claims of $74 billion in reductions compared with the president?s budget were overstated.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 3, 2011

An earlier version of this article misstated Representative Paul D. Ryan's middle initial.

 

 

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Bit-Gamer Competition #5

Bit-Gamer Competition #5

Posted on 28th Jan 2011 at 11:38 by Joe Martin with 3 comments

In the hustle of visiting Paradox Interactive in New York, we sadly forgot to post the winners for our last competition. On the plus side, we've now remembered and can reasonably claim that we're just being fashionably late.

Before we announce the winners of the last competition though, it's time to lay the rules for the new competition.

We've got two sets of prizes on offer this week, one for those who want to enter via Twitter and one for those who enter via Facebook. What we want you to do is tell us what you think of Sony's new NGP handheld, which was announced yesterday.

You can enter the competition via Twitter by sending a tweet to @bit_gamer or through Facebook by writing a message on the wall of Bit-Gamer's fan page. You can, of course, enter both.


We'll choose one winner for each next Friday, February 4th. If you enter through Twitter then we have a trio of PC strategy games on offer - Lionheart: The Kings Crusade, Commander: Conquest of the Americas and Great Battle Medieval. If you enter through Facebook then you can win Majesty 2, King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame and Mount and Blade: Warband.

Now, as for the winners of the previous competition...Earlier this January we asked you to use the Videogame Name Generator to come up with random video game names and send them to us. We selected three different winners, one from the forums, Facebook and Twitter respectively. The winning entries are below!

Forum Winner: Bloody Manlove Crisis - Fu Manchu
Facebook Winner: Tactical Nudist Vengence - Colin Tye
Twitter Winner: Flamboyant Bible III - @jushodge

We'll be in touch with all the winners shortly!

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Officials Consider Requiring Insurers to Offer Free Contraceptives

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women?s rights and experts on women?s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

The law says insurers must cover ?preventive health services? and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said contraceptives fit any reasonable definition of preventive health care because they averted unintended pregnancies and allowed women to control the timing, number and spacing of births. This, in turn, improves maternal and child health by reducing infant mortality, complications of pregnancy and even birth defects, said Dr. Lawrence, who is in charge of the group?s practice guidelines.

But the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and some conservative groups, including the Family Research Council, say birth control is not a preventive service in the usual sense of the term.

?Pregnancy is not a disease to be prevented, nor is fertility a pathological condition,? said Deirdre A. McQuade, a spokeswoman for the bishops? Pro-Life Secretariat. ?So birth control is not preventive care, and it should not be mandated.?

About one-half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, last month unveiled a 10-year plan to improve the nation?s health. One goal of the initiative is to ?increase the proportion of health insurance plans that cover contraceptive supplies and services.?

The Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, to help identify preventive services for women that must be covered at no cost under the health care law. The institute, a nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization, seeks to provide unbiased advice to decision makers and the public.

Using this advice, the department expects to issue ?comprehensive guidelines? for women?s preventive care by Aug. 1.

A White House spokesman, Nick Papas, said it was too early to comment. ?We will wait and see what the study returns,? he said.

Congress left it to the administration to define the preventive care benefit and adopted an amendment by Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, requiring officials to pay special attention to the ?unique health needs of women.?

Lawmakers said they also meant to require coverage of annual checkups and health assessments known as well-woman visits; screening for domestic violence, heart disease and breast and cervical cancer; and doctor visits for women intending to become pregnant.

In a report more than 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine said financial barriers to contraception ?should be reduced by increasing the proportion of all health insurance policies that cover contraceptive services and supplies, including both male and female sterilization, with no co-payments or other cost-sharing requirements.?

Brand-name versions of oral contraceptives can cost $45 to $60 a month or more, not including the cost of a doctor visit for a prescription. In recent years, many health plans have increased co-payments for prescription drugs, so even women with insurance may end up paying half the cost of birth-control pills.

Administration officials and Democrats in Congress said free preventive care was just one of the health care law?s benefits for women. It also prohibits insurers from charging women more than men of the same age for the same coverage. Such disparities have been common. As a result, premiums for women have often been 25 percent to 50 percent higher than those for men.

Advocates for women?s health, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have urged the administration to require coverage at no cost for family planning, including contraceptive drugs and devices.

Likewise, the American Academy of Pediatrics said, ?Adolescents and adult women need to have access to the full menu of contraceptive methods without cost-sharing,? along with counseling and education.

This recommendation is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, the March of Dimes, Naral Pro-Choice America, the National Partnership for Women and Families, the National Women?s Law Center and scores of Democrats in Congress.

But Ms. McQuade of the Catholic bishops? conference said any requirement for coverage of contraception could violate the ?rights of conscience? of religious employers and others who had moral or religious objections to it. This concern is amplified, she said, by the fact that some emergency contraceptives can act like abortion-inducing drugs.

Jeanne Monahan, the director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, said: ?The government should focus on services that prevent disease. Fertility and babies are not diseases. Fertility occurs in healthy women.?

The issue is also complicated by privacy concerns.

Dr. Margaret J. Blythe, a professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said some adolescents would be reluctant to use a preventive care benefit unless the government and insurers guaranteed the confidentiality of family planning services and screening for sexually transmitted infections.

When a doctor or a clinic files a claim, the insurer is often required to send an explanation of benefits to the policyholder, often a parent, describing the services provided. Parents sometimes learn from such notices that their children are sexually active.

Doctors said the need for confidentiality was even greater now because, under the new law, many young adults could stay on their parents? policies until age 26.

Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution who has studied unintended pregnancy for three decades, said: ?It?s absolutely critical that family planning be considered a preventive service. It could prevent all kinds of health problems, and it would actually save taxpayers money.?

?We have rigorous evidence that every dollar invested in family planning saves more than a dollar in welfare and social service costs for children that result from unintended births,? Ms. Sawhill said.

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Shorty Awards: It?s like the Oscars but for Twitter

Shorty Awards: It?s like the Oscars but for Twitter

Shorty AwardsIn case you?ve never heard of the Shorty Awards, it?s just like the Oscars but for Twitter and it rewards Twitter users for their entire body of work and brilliant tweets over the last year.

This March, the 3rd annual Shorty Awards will be honouring the Twitter accounts with the most votes from the community.

Twitter users can nominate their favourite Twitter accounts for their best overall 140-character micro-blog posts, it?s not for a single tweet.  As long as you have a Twitter account, you can nominate anyone you like in various categories including tech, actors, journalists and foodies.

Last years event took place at the New York Times Center and was able to gather over 100,000 viewers via Livestream and YouTube. Its winners and special celebrity guests included William Shatner, Stephen Fry and Sesame Street?s Grover.

The 2011 Shorty Award ceremony will be held in New York this March where the academy will announce the winners of each category plus the 140-character acceptance speeches from the winners. Shorty?s academy of judges, call themselves the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences and they?ll be choosing six finalists in each category this February. Alyssa Milano, MC Hammer and the c0-founder of FourSquare, Dennis Crowley, are just a few of the judges this year.

shorties

Separate from the regular Shorties, The Industry Shorty Awards allow companies and marketers enter their brands for doing a great job within the social media space. The Industry Award categories include ?best use of Twitter in a marketing campaign? and ?best brand presence of Twitter / Facebook?. The Industry Award categories unlike the regular Shorty awards, require companies an entry fee of $299 to participate.

Know of someone on Twitter that deserves some props? You have until February 11, 2011 to vote for any Twitter account by going to the site or sending a tweet like the one pasted below.

Shorties

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Microsoft Office Web Apps now supports 150 more countries

The Android that Apple's Rivals Have Been Looking For

When Apple's iPad debuted last year, it resurrected a form of computing long thought unworkable, and created entirely new markets for book and news publishers. Attempts by others to follow that lead have lacked the iPad's polish, but Google may have changed the equation by revealing its own take on the tablet experience yesterday.

Rather than offering a radical departure from the vision introduced by Apple, the company's tablet-flavored version of its Android mobile operating system?dubbed Honeycomb?brings a handful of slick new user-interface features, designed for the more powerful hardware of a tablet. It also significantly streamlines the experience of installing apps on a tablet.

Before an audience at Google's Mountain View headquarters yesterday, Hugo Barra, the company's director of mobile products, explained the user-interface tweaks designed to make tablet computing slicker and more powerful.

Some new elements of the operating system will be familiar to iPad users. But one major departure is that users can install "widgets" onto their home screen. These widgets provide cut down access to apps and at-a-glance information. For example, a Gmail widget places a small but scrollable in-box onto the desktop. YouTube and news apps such as Pulse use a "stacks" widget, which appears like a stack of cards with the latest information?like a news photo?on the top card. A user can tap on that card to enter the app and see the full content, or flick a finger over the widget to cruise through other information in the stack.

"Widgets can be used to 'bubble up' important information to the home screen," said Barra. "For the user, it's about quick and easy access to important information."

After the presentation, Akshay Kothari, cofounder of Alphonso Labs, which worked with Google to modify the Pulse News app for Honeycomb, told Technology Review that he considered widgets to be the biggest improvement over the iPad. "With these widgets, the user can interact a lot with their most-used apps without even opening them," he said.

Two elements of Honeycomb's interface are always accessible to the user, and reside in the screen's lower left and right corners. In the lower left are three buttons: a "back" button, a multitasking button that calls up a list of all running apps, and a "home" button. In the lower right, a PC-like notification area displays alerts of new instant messages, and also allows access to apps running in the background and to system settings.

Apps can feature multiple panes, or "fragments," and also support drag-and-drop actions, which makes using them closer to the experience of using a desktop application. Support for apps built using fragments is built into Honeycomb, said Barra. Fragments are self-contained and can be used to build apps for phones and tablets in a modular way, he said, which should speed the creation of apps.

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The guys who brought the XXX to the WWW

The guys who brought the XXX to the WWW

A few months ago I attend the press screening for The Social Network and I was blown away. I felt that it was the first movie to properly explain why exactly it is so cool to worj with the web, with start-ups and to be involved with the fastest growing medium in the history of the world.

Well, today I?m writing about a similar, but different, kind of movie: Middle Men

This is also a movie about online entrepreneurship, but set in a different time, and about a different subject: adult entertainment. The subtitle of the movie is ?The guys who brought the XXX to the WWW. Inspired by a true story?

I don?t think this is a movie that I?m going to recommend to my parents so they can get an idea what kind of business I?m in, but I?m sure it will be awesome. Check the trailer:

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The Caucus: Senate Republicans Lose Health Vote

WASHINGTON ? Senate Democrats on Wednesday defeated a bid by Republicans to repeal last year?s sweeping health care overhaul, as they successfully mounted a party-line defense of President Obama?s signature domestic policy achievement.

Challenges to the law, however, will continue both on Capitol Hill and in the courts, with the United States Supreme Court ultimately expected to decide if the health care law is Constitutional.

The vote was 47 to 51, with all Republicans voting unanimously for repeal but falling 13 votes short of the 60 needed to advance their proposal.

Lawmakers in both parties joined forces, however, to repeal a tax provision in the health care law that would impose a huge information-reporting requirement on small businesses. That vote was 81 to 17, with 34 Democrats and all 47 Republicans in favor.

Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, were absent.

Republicans said after the votes that they would persist in their efforts to overturn the law. Rejecting assertions that the repeal vote was a ?futile act,? Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, declared, ?These are the first steps in a long road that will culminate in 2012.?

Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and a potential presidential candidate in 2012, noted that Republicans had just 40 votes when they opposed the health care bill last year, but had 47 as a result of winning seats in November.

?Elections do have consequences,? Mr. Thune said.

The vote to eliminate the tax provision offered a brief moment of consensus on a day otherwise characterized by angry partisan disagreement. In the latest reprise of last year?s fierce debate over the health care law, senators cross rhetorical swords for hours of floor debate.

Republicans denounced the overhaul as impeding job creation and giving the government too big a role in the health care system. Democrats highlighted the law?s benefits, especially for the uninsured, and noted that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the law would reduce future federal deficits.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, who is an ophthalmologist, cited the law?s requirement that nearly all Americans obtain insurance as evidence that it was unconstitutional and overly intrusive.

?If you can regulate inactivity, basically the non-act of not buying insurance, then there is no aspect to our life that would left free from government regulation and intrusion,? Mr. Rand said. He added, ?From my perspective as a physician, I saw that we already had too much government involvement in health care.?

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