AP - Mitt Romney returned to Salt Lake City on Saturday to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the 2002 Winter Games he helped lead, but the GOP presidential candidate came under attack for urging the federal government to provide big bucks for Olympic expenses.

AP - The second son of Dutch Queen Beatrix spent a stable night in the hospital after he was seriously injured in an avalanche, but his life remains in danger, the Netherlands government said Saturday.

Reuters - The Obama administration on Friday issued 2013 payment and policy guidelines for U.S. health insurers that participate in the Medicare Advantage program, saying the proposed changes would bring lower premiums and stable or improved benefits.

AP - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday applauded Afghan President Hamid Karzai for telling an interviewer that the U.S., the Afghan government and the Taliban recently held three-way talks aimed at moving toward a political settlement of the war.

AP - A government panel is considering whether a multibillion-dollar aid program for people sickened by World Trade Center dust should be expanded to include people who have cancer.

Politico - A watchdog group has named it the agency with the “worst open government performance in 2011.”

Reuters - The European Union is likely to take action against Spain's newly installed government by May for delaying austerity measures ahead of a regional election next month, sources familiar with the situation have told Reuters.

AP - If Mitt Romney is rattled by polls showing presidential rival Rick Santorum nipping at his heels, he didn't show it Monday at an outdoor rally with about 2,500 people.

AP - The U.N. human rights chief decried Syria's escalating crackdown on civilian protesters Monday and warned that the Security Council's failure to take action has emboldened the Syrian government to launch an all-out assault to crush dissent.

AP - The United Nations on Monday backed Maldives' new leader's proposal for a national unity government though the ousted leader is calling for a snap poll to resolve a political crisis.

AP - Syrian rebels repelled a push Monday by government tanks into a key central town held by forces fighting President Bashar Assad's regime as the country's 11-month-old uprising looked increasingly like a nascent civil war.

Interesting piece in the New York Times today about how many people benefit from some form of government spending on "entitlement" programs, and how they feel about it.

I'll have more to say about this next week, but for now, just a few points, since I posted on this same issue just a few days ago, reaching what might seems like an opposite conclusion.

EG, in that post-based on an important new CBPP analysis -- I stressed the finding that only 9 percent of entitlement spending goes to folks who are non-elderly, non-disabled, or not working very much (see figure below). How does this square with an article that points this out:

Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010.

The answer is that almost every example of a beneficiary of a government program in the Times article fits into to one of those benefit-receiving slices in the pie chart-they are either elderly, disabled, or working.

Also, some of the statistics need adjusting -- to truly understand how much entitlement spending has really gone up, you've got to take into account:

- The Great Recession: Both the tax system and the safety net are still countercyclical (though less than they used to be). This means we spend more on things like food stamps and unemployment benefits in recessions and we collect less in tax revenue as well. Both of these dynamics are very much in play right now and so, sure, we're spending a lot more than we're taking in. That will improve when the economy recovers, though we won't be out of the woods -- over the longer term, we need to collect more revenue and slow the growth of health care spending.

- Adjusting for Age: With more seniors, we're going to spend more on retirement and health benefits, even holding policy constant. This doesn't contradict the article, but it's important to recognize what part of increased entitlement spending is due to demographic change and what part is due to policy decisions.

- Inefficient Health Care Spending: It's not just that we spend a lot on health care for retirees and the poor through Medicare and Medicaid. It's that we do so quite inefficiently relative to other advanced economies that provide more comprehensive public coverage for a lot less per capita with at least comparable outcomes -- and the private side of the health care system generates even faster cost growth. So again, less a policy choice here than a unique problem we have to fix no matter where we end up on questions re government programs in our lives.

I'll try to make those adjustments (or find them somewhere) but the article is still an important piece of work that once again asks what I've come to think of as the 2012 question: What is the proper role of government?

With our aging demographics, middle-class wage stagnation and job losses -- which play an important role in this piece-increasing inequality, macroeconomic booms and busts, it seems axiomatic to many of us that we need an amply funded federal government. Market failures -- not just recessions, but the inability of markets in advanced economies to provide ample social insurance as effectively as the public sector, the need to provide for the disabled, the safety net, and wage subsidies like the EITC for those who need to support children but don't earn enough to do so -- clearly abound.

Yet, people like those in this piece struggle with what to them seems like a contradiction: they want to think of themselves as self-sufficient and independent, yet when pushed, most recognize that they need the help... to me, at least, it seemed like most grasped -- begrudgingly in some cases -- the logic of the role for government when markets fail.

Moreover, their ambivalence is amplified by deeply misleading politicians, like the local Congressman in there, spouting guilt-inducing nonsense about debt burdens. Yes, we face a fiscal challenge. And yes, we can solve it with known policies that are fair and reasonable -- they're just off limits due to dysfunctional politics.

I've said it before, but at the end of the day, as much as the YOYOs claim otherwise, we're all in this together.

More to come on this... it's one of the most important things for us all to be talking about.

This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's "http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/" target="_hplink">On The Economy blog.

Daily Caller - On Sunday, the White House tried to suppress the growing constitutional controversy created by its unprecedented demand that U.S. religious organizations must fund government priorities that they abhor.

AP - Britain's press must face tougher penalties for breaches of standards in the wake of the tabloid phone-hacking scandal, the government minister responsible for the media said Sunday.

AP - The government could lose nearly $3 billion on Energy Department loans for green energy programs — far less than the $10 billion Congress set aside for the high-risk program, according to an independent review.

Reuters - Syrian government artillery barrages killed dozens of civilians in Homs on Thursday, activists said, as President Bashar al-Assad, bolstered by Russian support, ignored appeals from world leaders to halt the carnage.

Daniel Henninger, WSJ
Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama administration over mandated contraception services, must be permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about the innate tensions between the state and its citizens.The Obamaites will object that it is unfair to liken their government to the Communist Party of Poland. That is not the point. What the former Karol Wojtyla knew is that any state will claim benevolence on behalf of doing whatever it thinks it needs to do in pursuit of its goals.

AP - A new passenger screening program to make check-in more convenient for certain travelers is being expanded to 28 more major U.S. airports, the government said Wednesday. There will be no cost to eligible passengers, who would no longer have to remove their shoes and belts before they board flights.

AP - Britain's security minister will fly to Jordan to discuss ways to deport extremist cleric Abu Qatada, the government said Wednesday.

If Clint Eastwood narrated “The Cat in the Hat,” the words of Dr. Seuss would instantly take on a menacing authority. He could read the latest worthless United Nations condemnation of Syria and make Bashar Assad tremble. 

So if you’re Chrysler and want to air a propagandistic advertisement implicitly touting your government bailout as what’s best about America, Eastwood is a natural frontman. The movie tough-guy and former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif., will make everyone take notice. He will dare you not to believe him. He will invest a sugarcoated narrative of Detroit’s comeback with every bit of his gravelly voiced credibility.

Keep reading this post . . .

AP - Romania's government has collapsed following weeks of protests against austerity measures, the latest debt-stricken government in Europe to fall in the face of raising public anger over biting cuts.

Reuters - President Barack Obama vowed to apply sanctions and step up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to leave power but said the Syrian crisis could be resolved without outside military intervention.

AP - Crisis talks on a debt deal for Greece among the three leaders of parties supporting the coalition government were suspended and will continue Monday.