A solution for replacing baseline budgeting comes from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), called "priority-based budgeting." In their State Budget Reform Toolkit they outline a system where legislators must decide what are the core functions of government, rather than simply going by last year's expenditures and then adding inflation and policy changes. Instead, it forces legislators to actually debate what government is supposed to be doing, and thus is an "output-based" budgeting system, rather than the current morass, which is simply "input-based."
Elli Pearson, one of the Occupy protesters who was pepper-sprayed by police at UC-Davis, admitted to "Democracy Now!" that the protesters locked arms and sat down to surround the police, who were actually trying to leave the campus. The protesters then told the police that if they wanted to leave, they'd have to clear a path through the protesters... read more
Didn't the BLS just come out and state that 1.2 millions quit looking for work last month? Maybe next month another 1.2 million will quit looking and we can get the unemployment rate below 8%..