Northwest Indiana Discussion

In an article titled, “Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves,” the Wall Street Journal reports that “The financial crisis is over and the recession ended in 2009. But one of the federal government’s biggest social welfare programs, which expanded when the economy convulsed, isn’t shrinking back alongside the recovery.”

The report continues, “Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared 70% since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012. Congressional budget analysts think participation will rise again this year and dip only slightly in coming years.”

Fisker Automotive laid off three quarters of its staff today to avoid bankruptcy while it seeks an angel with big bucks to help it become operational again.

The maker of the luxury hybrid Karma says it has “at least” $30 million in cash, and $15 million more due after settling a claim this week with its bankrupt battery maker A123 Systems, according toReuters.

But the company owes $192 million on a $193 million Department of Energy “green” loan. It was supposed to receive $529 million, but the DOE declined to pay the full amount in May 2011 after Fisker fell behind on its targets. Executives who kept their jobs are trying to renegotiate a $10 million loan payment due on April 22.

The auto maker’s public relations team was part of the layoffs, but an outside PR firm said in a statement Fisker is still seeking a “buyer or strategic partnership” but couldn’t afford to keep on the majority of its workforce, according to Fox News.

Barack Obama’s administration has cut the budget nearly in half for preventing domestic bombings, MailOnline can reveal.

Under President George W. Bush, the Department of Homeland Security had $20 million allocated for preventing the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by terrorists working inside the United States. The current White House has cut that funding down to $11 million.

That assessment comes from Robert Liscouski, a former Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15 that killed three Americans and injured at least 173 others.

He told MailOnline that the Obama-era DHS is, on the whole, about as well-positioned as it was during the Bush administration to handle the aftermath of the April 15 bombings in Boston, ‘but the Obama administration has continued to cut the budget for offices such as the Office for Bombing Prevention from $20 million started under Bush, to $11 million today.’

President Barack Obama will start the week by attending 3 Democratic fundraisers in New York City, according to the White House.

“In the afternoon, the President will travel to New York City. The departure from the South Lawn and the arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport will be open press,” the president’s schedule reads.

“While in New York City, the President will deliver remarks at two DNC events at private residences and a joint DCCC/DSCC event at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The DNC events are print pool for remarks only and the DCCC/DSCC event is pooled press.

“In the evening, the President will depart New York City en route Washington, DC. The departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport and the arrival on the South Lawn will be open press.

As the New York Post reported previously, one of the events tonight will be at the home of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. “He won a second term, but Barack Obama isn’t done fund-raising. The president will appear at a cozy reception for fewer than 65 guests with tickets priced at $32,400 per couple at the Manhattan home of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and his designer wife Georgina Chapman on May 13, Page Six has exclusively learned,” reports the Post.

“The invitation explains attendees get ‘a frank and intimate discussion with the president’ where they can ask questions, and afterward Obama will ‘say thank you to each guest and take a photo with them.’ A Weinstein-hosted fundraiser in August brought out Anne Hathaway, Aaron Sorkin and Anna Wintour.

President Obama resorted to his old “fever” analogy to complain to Democratic Party donors about ongoing Republican “hyper-partisanship.” He also admitted to failing to deliver the post-partisan era promised in 2008.

“What’s blocking us right now is a sort of hyper-partisanship in Washington that I was, frankly, hoping to overcome in 2008,” Obama said today, according to the pool report. “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet. But I am persistent. And I am staying at it. And I genuinely believe there are Republicans out there who would like to work with us but they’re fearful of their base and they’re concerned about what Rush Limbaugh might say about them.”

The president — whose administration has spent the last four days under fire for failing to send aid to Americans under attack in Benghazi; hiding what it knew about terrorists’ involvement in the attack for two weeks; employing IRS staff who targeted Tea Party groups for special audits; and having the Justice Department pull phone records of Associated Press reporters — then said that the Republican opposition is producing cynicism about government.

It’s “a cliché” to say that America “is the greatest country on Earth,” Pres.Obama told a DNC event in New York City on Monday.

“And more than anything, what I will be striving for over the next three and a half years is to see if that spirit that I saw in Boston and West, Texas, if we can institutionalize that, if we can create a framework where everybody is working together and moving this country forward.

“Now, the good news is that if we do that, we’ve got the best cards of any country on Earth — and that’s the truth. Look, there’s no American politician, much less American President, who’s not going to say that we’re not the greatest country on Earth. So that’s a cliché. On the other hand, objectively, when you look at where we are right now, we are poised for a 21st century that is as much the American century as the 20th century was.”

Democrats continue to try to dismiss the evidence that Obamacare will dramatically increase the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own. But on Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013. “We have warned of these increases,” said Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in a statement. “Consumers will have fewer choices and pay much higher premiums for their health insurance starting in 2014.”

The rates that Ohio reported are proposed rates; the Department of Insurance still has to formally approve them. “A total of 14 companies proposed rates for 214 plans to the Department. Projected costs from the companies for providing coverage for the required [by Obamacare] essential health benefits ranged from $282.51 to $577.40 for individual health insurance plans.”

With no end in sight to the partial government shutdown, the number of voters who believe the country is heading in the right direction has fallen 11 points over the past week to its lowest level in nearly two years.

Just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey for the week ending October 6. That’s down from 28% the week before and the lowest finding since early December 2011.

Confidence in the country’s direction rose steadily last fall, peaking at a high of 43% the week before Election Day. It fell steadily after that to the previous low for the year to date of 26% in mid- to late July.

After President Obama assumed office in January 2009, the number of voters who felt the country was heading in the right direction rose to 40% in early May of that year. In 2010 and 2011, confidence fell to the narrow range of 14% to 19%, levels similar to those measured in the final months of the George W. Bush administration. Optimism began easing up again in mid-December 2011.

Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a brilliant innovator whose research fills several all-but-incomprehensible paragraphs of a Wikipedia entry that spans his achievements in single-molecule physics, the slowing of atoms through the use of lasers and the invention of something called an “optical tweezer.” President Barack Obama even credits Chu with solving the 2010 Gulf oil spill, claiming that Chu strolled into BP’s office and “essentially designed the cap that ultimately worked.” With rare exception, Chu is the smartest guy in the room, and that includes the Cabinet Room, which he occupied uneasily as secretary of energy from 2009 to the spring of 2013.

But the president’s aides didn’t quite see Chu that way. He might have been the only Obama administration official with a Nobel other than the president himself, but inside the West Wing of the White House Chu was considered a smart guy who said lots of stupid things, a genius with an appallingly low political IQ—“clueless,” as deputy chief of staff Jim Messina would tell colleagues at the time.

In April 2009, Chu joined Obama’s entourage for one of the administration’s first overseas trips, to Trinidad and Tobago for a Summit of the Americas focused on economic development. Chu was not scheduled to address the media, but reporters kept bugging Josh Earnest, a young staffer, who sheepishly approached his boss, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, with the ask. “No way,” Gibbs told him.

But as the United States fell deeper into full-fledged recession, Obama diverted his attention to assembling a crisis team to deal with the crumbling economy. Soon after his team was in place, he had the management epiphany every president experiences during his first weeks in power: He was drowning in data and chicken-pecked by aides asking for input. He privately groused that Emanuel was overwhelming him with requests to make decisions, so he issued a standing order to Emanuel and all future chiefs of staff, one of them told me: “Cut down on the number of decisions I have to make.”

What if the 2012 election were held today? Mitt Romney apparently would be president, according to a new poll.

Romney would lead Obama, 49% to 45%, among registered voters in an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday. The findings are within the poll's margin of error, but pollster Gary Langer notes that Obama's support among registered voters now is actually 6 points lower than his showing in the 2012 election.

Obama's popularity has taken hits since the disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act and the website for health insurance exchanges. The president's job-approval ratings have hit new lows in several public opinion surveys, including the ABC News/Washington Post survey that shows 55% of adults disapprove of the job Obama is doing.