The obvious implication: most of the 2009 US fiscal deficit will need to be financed domestically. The Fed’s custodial data indicates central banks are still buying Treasuries, though at a somewhat slower pace than in late 2008. But their demand hasn’t kept up with issuance.
To replenish the weakened accounts, Gov. Phil Bredesen proposes to boost state contributions to the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System next year by $150 million. School boards and counties whose employees also participate in the state’s retirement plan must make similar increases.
Hamilton County Finance Director Louis Wright and Chattanooga Finance Director Daisy Madison said Monday that city and county budgets next year must include extra money for employee retirement programs. Both said it is still too early to calculate how much of an increase will be needed to offset recent investment losses.
Most private sector workers won’t be as fortunate, however.
According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C., a majority of workers in the private sector no longer have guaranteed benefits at retirement through defined-benefit pension plans as so most government workers. While employers contribute to individual retirement accounts through instruments such as 401(k) plans, the benefits available at retirement depend upon investment returns.
In Cuba, ration coupons allow for only about half of the needed calories, and agriculture is so inefficient that Cubans spend about 50 to 70% of their gross income supplementing the food available through the state system (MP: Compared to about 6% for Americans).More than a quarter of the Cuban work force is involved in agriculture (MP: It's less than 2% in the U.S. and hasn't been 25% here since the early 1900s). A recent article in the Cuban press, noted in a study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Global Analysis, quoted a high-level Cuban ministry of agriculture official who revealed that 84% of all food consumed in Cuba is imported.
Link
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Polling Data
Should the federal government make it illegal to pay any executive more than $1 million a year?
Yes
36%
No
54%
Not sure
10%
Should the federal government make it illegal to pay athletes and movie stars more than $1 million a year?
Yes
30%
No
59%
Not sure
11%
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Mar. 23 and Mar. 24, 2009. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
Four potential candidates for President Obama's vacant Senate seat were each to be targeted for contributions by ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich's campaign as part of an aggressive, $2.3 million race for cash late last year, an internal campaign document obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times shows.The four were among about 150 people targeted for contributions by the Friends of Blagojevich campaign organization by the end of 2008, when a new Illinois law took effect that bans taking money from state contractors and appointees, the document shows.
And some lights were STILL ON, especially the tree lights!!
"It would put us back in the posture of having to observe whether Tennessee licensed vehicles were going over there and paying their tax before bringing their wine over the border," Farr said.
[...]
Under Overbey's bill, Tennesseans could bring home wine purchased from out-of-state wineries that acquire a $450 Tennessee winery license.The proposal to allow the personal transportation of wine into Tennessee is projected to raise less than $150,000 in new revenues. That's because Tennesseans would have to volunteer to winery operators in other states that they want to pay the Tennessee levies, Farr said.
"It's very conceivable the customer wouldn't say: 'I'm transporting this into Tennessee and charge me Tennessee sales tax and excise tax,"' he said.
The trial, which begins at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday in Madison County Chancery Court, comes nearly two and a half years after the Jackson City Council approved a 12-square-mile annexation despite protests from many who live in the area.City officials and attorneys have argued that opposing homeowners in the annexation area have used and benefited from city services for years without paying the taxes that support them.
Residents have described the annexation as a money-grab, often questioning the intentions and capability of Jackson's leadership and management.
LinkHere are some possible triggers:
1. Political Trigger 1: During the confirmation process, several Obama political appointees were either dropped from consideration or had their reputation tarnished because of past tax issues. Tax problems have become common enough that the government will be compelled to make changes, if simply to avoid the routine political embarrassment. Obama could not be blamed if some future flare that sends him out of the White House becomes the catalyst for a special commission tasked to bring about change.
2. Political Trigger 2: With plans for a national health care system and funding for education reform hanging on the government’s ability to pay for them, a new tax system emerges from these massive efforts to pay for these programs.
3. Technology Trigger: A new automated tax structure is created that makes tax collection seamless and invisible to the general public.
4. Individual State Trigger: Currently seven states in the U.S. do not have state income tax. Some states like Wyoming and Alaska have huge income streams from their natural resources. Other states are supported by higher property taxes and other tax levies. A modified individual state tax system could become the model for the new national system.
5. Budget Crisis Trigger: Because of the extreme debt load created by recent stimulus packages, the government has to scrape for more money. Ultimately, government is forced to rethink the tax system to prevent national insolvency.
6. Wealthy Individual Trigger: A wealthy individual files a well-publicized lawsuit against the IRS. The plaintiff’s lawyers note that their client, who is of far-above-average intelligence and armed with extraordinary resources, is simply no match for the complexity of the tax code and cannot be reasonably expected to comply with the law by completing a 1040. The lawsuit places all concerned with the administration of the IRS in the indefensible position of having to explain the tax code. Good luck on that one, IRS. The day is won with unassailable logic: inability to determine what to pay out in taxes is persuasive and the U.S. Supreme Court hands down a decision to abolish the system.
7. Class Action Trigger: A group of some 200 of the largest tax payers file a class action lawsuit against the U.S. government for a number of competitive impairment issues. The lawsuit triggers a national debate between politicians and the wealthiest individuals in the country. The government settles out of court, agreeing to throw out the entire system and start over.
8. Federal Reserve Recommendation: Ben Bernanke issues a strong recommendation to replace the existing tax code based on what the Federal Reserve Board views as broad ranging problems inside the national monetary system. The too-big to fail argument is ushered to the fore on behalf of the monetary system. End of story.
Some 51 percent believe the state is on the wrong track. Worse, 71 percent say Massachusetts will become “Taxachusetts” once again with only 5 percent expecting an economic recovery this year.
Weber did not notify the U.S. Office of Personnel Management of her mother's death and from June 1986 to October 2007, Weber forged her mother's name on the checks. Over the years, she also sent the government a change of address so she would continue to get the checks.
After nine months of negotiations, the General Services Administration signed agreements with four video-sharing and social networking sites: Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and YouTube. GSA also is negotiating with the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace.
"We found when we reviewed standard service agreements that they were not a good enough fit for the [requirements] of the federal government," said Michael Ettner, GSA general counsel.
[...]
A number have begun to experiment with the new media to communicate with citizens and distribute information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used Twitter and Facebook to inform the public about the recent recall on peanuts, and the Library of Congress uses Flickr to share its vast collection of photographs.
As agencies increase their use of online services to share information, they'll also require enhanced capabilities for weeding through comments and questions received.
WHAT: Fayette County TN Tea Party
WHO: Hundreds of taxpayers from around the county
WHERE: Somerville TN Court House Sidewalk (South side on Hwy 64)
WHEN: Wednesday, April 15th, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
3:00 to 6:00 p.m. (NOTE we have been asked to change the time to 5:30 - 7:30 pm by the Fayette County Court House due to access issues. Since we are planning a peaceful protest and don't want to prevent access to the Court House, we will be complying with their request).For more information or to let us know you will be attending, contact Trish.Corlew@FayetteCountyTNTeaParty.com
The ACLU had threatened to sue in response to complaints it received from parents at Hankins Middle School in Theodore, which put its boys and girls in separate classrooms at the start of the school year. The school system’s lawyer told board members Thursday the system’s same-gender classes aren’t in compliance with a federal provision and they would lose the lawsuit after a lengthy and costly court battle.
Mobile has single-sex classes at three other elementary schools and Clark magnet school. Baldwin County officials said they plan to continue offering single-sex classes at Foley Intermediate.
Barbour’s veto message, which he repeated during meetings with senators, said the legislation would have kept Nissan, Toyota and other large industries from locating in Mississippi had the law been in effect at that time.Eminent domain is the power of government to take private property for a public purpose, even if the property owner objects, for public use.
Opponents of the legislation say government needs the power to condemn land that can be converted into valuable, job-producing property.
Incumbents and most challengers rejected the idea of tax incentives to lure business to the city, which covers 42 square miles.
March 25 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. failed to find enough buyers for 1.75 billion pounds ($2.55 billion) of bonds for the first time in almost seven years as debt investors repudiated Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plan to stem the worst economic crisis in three decades.
Gilts slumped after the London-based Debt Management Office, which manages bond auctions on behalf of the Treasury, said investors bid for 1.63 billion pounds of the 40-year securities. The last time the U.K. government was unable to attract enough investors was in 2002 when it tried to sell 30- year inflation-protected bonds. The yield on the 4.25 percent gilt due 2049 rose 10 basis points to 4.55 percent.
Brown’s government aims to sell a record 146.4 billion pounds of debt this fiscal year and as much as 147.9 billion pounds in 2010 as he tries to pull Europe’s second-largest economy out of its worst recession since 1980. The prime minister’s plan drew criticism yesterday when Bank of England GovernorMervyn King told lawmakers in Parliament in London the government should be “cautious” about spending and deficits.
When I woke up this morning, my phone was clogged with texts, my email inbox with messages. Overnight, the YouTube clip of my remarks had attracted over 36,000 hits. By today, it was the most watched video in Britain.
How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting. If enough of them are tickled then, bingo, you're news. (Huge thanks to all those who linked: Guido, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie, James Delingpole, Donal Blaney, Dizzy, Devil, James Forsyth, PoliticalBetting, Gerald Warner and the rest. And jumbo thanks to all the American bloggers: you chaps areway ahead of us in this regard.)
Former Congressman Pat Toomey (R) would crush Sen. Arlen Specter (R) in the 2010 GOP primary, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday.
Toomey, who is currently the president of the conservative Club for Growth, beat the senator 41 percent to 27 percent among registered Republicans in the poll. Toomey, who came within two points of defeating Specter in the 2004 GOP primary, has indicated he is likely to challenge Specter again in 2010.
Specter's problems lie in the state's conservative Republican base. Statewide, Specter performs well, with 52 percent job approval. But the same percentage of Republicans disapprove of his performance, his worst performance among the GOP since Quinnipiac began polling in Pennsylvania in 2002. Under Pennsylvania election laws, only registered Republicans may vote in the state's GOP primary.
The most shocking statistic in the poll: Nearly a quarter of Republicans don't know enough about Toomey to form an opinion and he is still beating Specter by 14 points.
BYOP, BYOT. Bring Your Own Pork, Bring Your Own Tea.
Bring your own grill and let’s have a SlaterRaider Tailgate!
Pringles Park, Jackson.
Stick around after the Tea Party as the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx take on the Tennessee Smokies at 7:00. (What could be more American than a Tea Party and some baseball?! Bring some of Grandma’s apple pie!)
Tickets are $9 for the game. Thanks to the generosity of the Diamond Jaxx, $3 of every ticket goes to the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund. This fund gives scholarships to kids who lost a parent in Iraq or Afghanistan.Tune in tomorrow for more details. This is more than a protest.
Here's a sample of what we found inside classrooms across the city:
* At Fairley high, MPD says there were 2 aggravated assaults this year. One was a gang fight. MCS records agree. But MCS never told the state.
* At Hillcrest High School - 1 aggravated assault, 1 forcible fondling. MCS records match. But the State of Tennessee has no idea, because MCS reported no crimes against students this year.
* At Georgian Hills Junior High, MPD says one student was raped. MCS refuses to show us records on this case, and they also kept the attack secret from the state.
We took our findings to School Board Commissioner Stephanie Gatewood.
"I would certainly hope there's an explanation as to why. I mean, what's being done about it?" Gatewood said.
CARSON CITY – Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, proposed a tax on prostitution today that he says could raise $2 million a year for the state.
Patrons of prostitutes — both legal and illegal — would pay an extra $5 tax per session under the bill, which Coffin said was his idea alone.
In the runup to the legislative session, a lobbyist for the state’s legal brothels volunteered to be taxed, an effort that some said would guarantee their continued survival. Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley turned down the industry, effectively killing the effort.
“I think we will support it,” George Flint, a spokesman for the state’s brothel industry, said of Coffin’s bill.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama raced to the front of the pitchfork crowd last week, feeding public furor over bonuses paid to publicly rescued companies.
But now, amid signs that rescinding the bonuses might undermine his financial-sector bailout plan, the president is waving an olive branch.
Obama's tone changed dramatically over the weekend, after the House voted for targeted taxes to take back most of the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives of the largely nationalized insurance giant American International Group. Many lawmakers felt Obama had encouraged their step, because he called the bonuses reckless, outrageous and unjustified.
In the White House, however, the situation seemed to be spinning out of control. Some fellow Democrats questioned the constitutionality and wisdom of the harsh reaction.
Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
Politicians and bureaucrats micro-managing the mortgage sector of the economy is precisely how today's economic disaster began. Why anyone would think that their micro-managing the automobile industry, or executive pay across a wide sweep of other industries, is likely to make things better in the economy is a mystery.
The team recruited 25 Mechanical Turk workers and asked them to assess pictures of potential borrowers that had been posted on Prosper.com. In particular, they were asked to rate, on a scale of one to five, how trustworthy these people looked, and to estimate the percentage probability that each individual would repay a $100 loan. They were also asked to make several other assessments, such as the individual’s sex, race, age, attractiveness and obesity. The 25 results for each photograph were then averaged and analysed.
The researchers looked at 6,821 loan applications, 733 of which were successful. Their first finding was that the assessments of trustworthiness, and of likelihood to repay a loan, that were made by Mechanical Turk workers did indeed correlate with potential borrowers’ credit ratings based on their credit history. That continued to be so when the other variables, from beauty to race to obesity, were controlled for statistically. Shifty physiognomy, it seems, is independent of these things.
That shiftiness was also recognised by those whose money was actually at stake. People flagged as untrustworthy by the Mechanical Turks were less likely than others to be offered a loan at all. To have the same chance of getting one as those deemed most trustworthy they were required to pay an interest rate that was, on average, 1.82 percentage points higher, even when the effects of historical creditworthiness were statistically eliminated.
For trustworthiness, then, physiognomy works. Unfortunately, Dr Duarte’s method was not designed to find out which features label someone as trustworthy. But credit-rating agencies are no doubt working on that question even now.
NPD's annual Digital Music Study found that there were 17 million fewer CD customers in 2008 than in past years. CD sales have been dropping for quite some time, and while 1.5 billion songs were sold digitally last year, the number of Internet users paying for digital music only increased by 8 million in 2008.
NPD saw all demographics pulling back on CD purchases, but the most significant groups were teenagers and those over 50.
The primary reason for cutting down on CD purchases was a simple slashing of entertainment budgets across all demographics. Cheaper prices for digital albums also affected consumers' thinking about physical CD prices (which suddenly seem more expensive), but the pick-and-chose nature of buying individual songs and instant delivery also provided a boost for digital downloads.
LinkTHE Nano, the car that Tata Motors hopes will make car ownership a reality for millions of Indians, was named both for its tiny size and association with revolutionary technology. But in many respects the vehicle, due to be launched officially in Mumbai on Monday March 23rd, is short on both attributes. Although small, the Nano has four doors and five seats. And although the makers have registered at least 35 patents associated with the vehicle, the price, which is genuinely miniature, has been achieved by boiling down trusted technology to its bare bones.
Ratan Tata, Tata’s chairman, was inspired to build the car after seeing families of four or more crammed onto single motorbikes to negotiate the danger-filled streets of big cities. By producing a vehicle that will supposedly cost “one lakh” (100,000 rupees or $1,970) he hopes to create a whole new class of road users. In fact that price is ex-factory—delivery and taxes will bump up the price by at least 10%. Rather than compete directly with the next cheapest car, at twice the price of the baseline Nano, he hopes to persuade drivers to trade-up from the ubiquitous scooters and small motorbikes that throng the roads.
and the market works....prices come down and buyers start buying. Wow!
WASHINGTON, March 22 (UPI) -- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Sunday the federal government should consider raising the gasoline tax to pay for public works improvements.
In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," the Republican governor said an increase in the federal 18.4 cent per gallon gasoline tax could bankroll projects that have broad public support.
"I think one has to look at it," Schwarzenegger said. "That is the next question, maybe, how do you finance all of this? But I think the important thing is that there's a willingness amongst the people to pay for it."
While ASCE is pleased that the Obama Administration cited ASCE's 2009 Report Card For America's Infrastructure in the president's proposed FY 2010 budget blueprint and that the U.S. Department of Transportation would receive a $2 billion increase over its FY 2009 level, ASCE strongly opposes a provision which would change the way contract authority is scored and which would eliminate the "firewall" around highway, transit and aviation funding. If adopted, transportation funds held in dedicated trust funds would be handled in the same manner as general revenue in the appropriations process as transportation outlays and budget authority would be treated as discretionary and not as mandatory contract authority.
Barbour said this month that Mississippi already has broad protection to protect private property rights because large projects require the approval of local government and the Legislature. Barbour said the Mississippi Development Authority and the governor also have oversight, and people who want to fight eminent domain can go to court.
Volkswagen continues it's investment in Chattanooga by announcing Friday a huge donation to schools in Tennessee.
It's a $5.28-million philanthropic commitment that VW wants to serve as a catalyst for improving programs in Hamilton County Schools along with several state colleges and universities.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 (Reuters) - Ahead of a major bond sale next week by California, Fitch Ratings on Thursday cut its "A+" rating on $47.4 billion of state general obligation debt to "A" with a stable outlook, citing falling revenues and the weak economy in the most populous U.S. state.
Fitch analysts in a report noted California's "economic performance and revenue expectations have continued to decline since the state developed its current revenue forecast in November 2008," and pointed to a state unemployment rate of 10.1 percent and a recent state legislative analyst's warning of a "sizable" revenue shortfall in the next fiscal year.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade, according to the latest congressional estimates, significantly worse than predicted by the White House just last month.The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.
Key Facts
• In 2007, the U.S. spent $2.2 trillion on health care, an average of $7,421 per person.
• The share of economic activity (gross domestic product, or GDP) devoted to health care has increased from 7.2 percent in 1970 to 16.2 percent in 2007.
• Health care costs have grown on average 2.4 percentage points faster than the GDP since 1970.
• Almost half of health care spending is used to treat just 5 percent of the population.
• Although only 10 percent of total health expenditures, spending on prescription drugs has received considerable attention because of its rapid growth (89 percent from 2000
to 2007).
• About 30 percent of the poor spent more than 10 percent of their income on health in 2004; for the total population with private nongroup insurance, the share of the poor spending more than 10 percent of income increased by more than one-third, from 39 percent in 2001 to 53 percent in 2004.
• Many policy experts believe new technologies and the spread of existing ones account for a large portion of medical spending and its growth.
French unions have claimed that up to three million people have taken part in street protests amid a national strike against France's economic policies.Police gave an estimate of 1.2 million people at rallies nationwide.
Schools have been closed and public transport disrupted, with demonstrations held in about 200 towns.
Unions are demanding more is spent to protect workers in the recession. Unemployment has reached two million and is expected to rise further.
Union members marched towards the Place de la Nation in Paris behind a banner that read: "United against the crisis, defend employment, spending power and public services."
Making the County's Proposed Budget Easily Available TO THE TAXPAYER: Mayor David Purkey won't do it.
Last month, I asked the county commission to place the proposed county budget on the Hamblen County website when the budget process begins in April. Commissioner Phillips had it put in committee for consideration on March 9.
I began pushing for this when I was on commission. As a commissioner, I had the budget documents in front of me, but the citizens and taxpayers couldn't see anything and had no way of getting the same budget information unless they wanted to make a trip to the Courthouse and pay the Mayor's office $20 or so to get copies.
When my proposal to make the proposed budget available online was considered in committee, Mayor Purkey threw out a number of (meaningless) objections and then his real objection.
We now have a new form of activist investing created in Washington, invest in companies and then work to wreck them and destroy the investment. $180B of taxpayer money has been invested so far in the 8 banks that have received more than $5B of TARP money and politicians are making sure to do their best that not only will we not see a return on the investment, we may not see a return of the investment and will destroy thousands of jobs in the process. The US Constitution has also been chopped up into pieces. I get into this because of the ramifications it has on investor confidence and the desire of the private sector to help with the programs of the Fed and Treasury to AID the credit markets.
LinkThe Chawners, haven't worked in 11 years, claim their weight is a hereditary condition and the money they receive is insufficient to live on.
Mr Chawner said: "What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It's not our fault we can't work. We deserve more."
The family claim to spend £50 a week on food and consume 3,000 calories each a day. The recommended maximum intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.
NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)-Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) is making its largest ever annual award to employees, handing out roughly $2 billion to its rank and file U.S. workers through measures including bonuses, profit sharing and discounts.The financial incentives for hourly workers include
$933.6 million in bonuses that the retailer is handing out Thursday. There is another$788.8 million in profit sharing and 401(k) contributions, and hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandise discounts and contributions to the employees' stock purchase plan, said Chief ExecutiveMike Duke in a memo to employees Thursday.
When Dell Computer opened a factory in Lebanon, it said it would create 1,000 new jobs. But fewer than 300 people work there now, and now some public officials are asking why the company is still getting a tax break.Dell used to be a humming computer factory, but it's a shadow of its former self. Last week, the company announced more layoffs. It won't say exactly how many, but a representative for Dell confirmed the Lebanon plant now has only 250 to 300 workers -- about a third of its former workforce.
WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed a measure Wednesday that supporters are calling the most sweeping reform of nationally-backed volunteer programs since AmeriCorps. But some opponents are strongly criticizing the legislation, calling it expensive indoctrination and forced advocacy.
The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act -- sponsored by Reps. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y, and George Miller, D-Calif. -- was approved by a 321-105 vote and now goes to the Senate.
The legislation, slated to cost $6 billion over five years, would create 175,000 "new service opportunities" under AmeriCorps, bringing the number of participants in the national volunteer program to 250,000. It would also create additional "corps" to expand the reach of volunteerism into new sectors, including a Clean Energy Corps, Education Corps, Healthy Futures Corps and Veterans Service Corps, and it expands the National Civilian Community Corps to focus on additional areas like disaster relief and energy conservation.
One CEO said, “Michigan and California literally need to do a 180 if they are ever to become competitive again. California has huge advantages with its size, quality of work force, particularly in high tech, as well as the quality of life and climate advantages of the state. However, it is an absolute regulatory and tax disaster, as is Michigan.”
MP: What do the top 9 states (TX, NC, FL, GA, TN, NV, VA, AZ and SC) have in common? What do the bottom 7 states (CA, NY, MI, NJ, MA, IL, and OH) have in common? Check the map here to find out.
Link
WASHINGTON — A new, more aggressive effort by airport screeners aims to halt randomly selected passengers for a security check just before they step onto their departing plane, according to a government memo obtained by USA TODAY.
Scores of passengers have already been pulled aside for searches as they waited in line at airport gates for boarding calls. Each of the passengers had already passed through security checkpoints when a uniformed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer asked them to step out of line to check their IDs or search their carry-on bags.
Passengers can be selected at random or for suspicious behavior, according to a TSA memo dated last Thursday. The program primarily targets riskier flights, according to the memo, which doesn't specify how flights are singled out.
Worrying about the AIG bonuses is sort of like complaining about the food on the Titanic. The taxpayers should NEVER have been forced to invest money in AIG.
Edward Liddy, AIG's caretaker chief executive, told the subcommittee that the company's insurance business remains strong but risks "atrophy" if problems aren't righted soon.
"It is not a failed company. It's a failing company, unless we do something about it," he said, pleading for patience.
Liddy also offered lawmakers a hard number that's long been the subject of speculation. He said the face value of the transactions made by its Financial Products division that still haven't been unwound — or paid off — is $1.6 trillion. That dwarfs the roughly $100 billion of taxpayer money that flowed back through to investment banks, hedge funds and other financial players to pay off bad bets by AIG.
LinkAnnie Kevans has painted a lovely series of oil portraits of the girlfriends of U.S. Presidents.
Shown above: Kay Summersby (Dwight D Eisenhower), Monica Lewinsky (Bill Clinton), Maria Halpin (Grover Cleveland), Pam Turnure (John F Kennedy), Jill Cowan (John F Kennedy), Blaze Starr (John F Kennedy), Marilyn Monroe (John F Kennedy), Madeleine Brown (Lyndon B Johnson).
Greetings from TRAC. The latest case-by-case data from the Justice Department show that in December 2008 the government reported 13,457 new prosecutions. This represents an increase of 14% from the previous month, but a significant 27% decrease from September’s high of 18,434 new filings. The immigration category continues to dominate the DOJ’s caseload, accounting for 59% of all new cases filed in December in U.S. Federal Court.
California's recession has not stopped lawmakers from proposing nearly two dozen bills that would dip into taxpayers' pocketbooks for causes from trauma care to domestic violence.The measures would affect millions of Californians in ways ranging from legalizing and regulating marijuana to charging for shopper carry-out bags or requiring sterilization of pet cats that roam.
Most of the Democrat-driven proposals target specific groups of people, such as millionaires, pornography buyers, teenage drivers, motorcycle owners, cigarette smokers or liquor drinkers.
The goal typically is to alter risky behavior, reduce pollution or to raise money for education, roads, shelters, emergency services or other vital services in a cash-strapped state.
"It's other people's money and they can dream up every single good cause in the world to justify the further rape of the California taxpayer," said Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
The new measures come only weeks after bitter fighting produced a new state budget with $12.5 billion in higher taxes and fees.
"These clauses of the Constitution are not of the broad, general nature of the Due Process Clause, but refer to rather precise legal terms which had a meaning under English law at the time the Constitution was adopted. A bill of attainder was a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial. Such actions were regarded as odious by the framers of the Constitution because it was the traditional role of a court, judging an individual case, to impose punishment." William H. Rehnquist, The Supreme Court, page 166.
The Service Employees International Union, considered the most influential union in the nation, has notified the union that represents about 220 of its national field staff and organizers that 75 of them are being laid off. In return, the workers' union, which goes by the somewhat postmodern name of the Union of Union Representatives, has filed unfair labor practices charges against SEIU with the National Labor Relations Board. The staff union's leaders say that SEIU is engaging in the same kind of practices that some businesses use -- laying off workers without proper notice, contracting out work to temp firms, banning union activities and reclassifying workers to reduce union numbers.
Some people in Warren County need food stamps - but not someone who has $80,000 in the bank, a paid-off $311,000 home and a Mercedes, county commissioners said Tuesday.
And if they have to fight the state and federal governments over it, they will.
County commissioners recently learned that a woman with all of those assets had qualified for $500 a month in food stamps after she lost her job.
A new rule by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services says food stamp eligibility rules are based on income and no longer take into account "resources," such as savings accounts, stocks, cars or other belongings.
But Tuesday, Commissioner Dave Young said in front of an audience of county staff, residents and media that the new rule makes no sense.
Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
“We were stunned,” said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”
Early numbers suggest that the first quarter of 2009 has seen lobbying in the nation’s capital spike by nearly 22 percent over last year, which would be the largest ever increase in lobbying activity — and a strong indication that President Barack Obama has helped usher in a Golden Era for K Street.Between Jan. 1 and March 16 this year, the Senate Office of Public Records received 1,381 new lobbying registrations, which include new lobbying firms, new clients at existing firms, and businesses hiring their first lobbyists. This is the largest batch of new registrations since 1999, the first year these records were kept, and a 21.7 percent increase over last year.
If you subtract the lobbying accounts that have been terminated, you get a net gain in active lobbying accounts this year of 1,252, which represents a surge of 13.5 percent over last year’s growth of 1,103 net lobbying accounts in the same period.
Two new polls show a majority of Michigan residents are reluctant to pay for a gas tax hike to fix the state's roads and bridges, even though many say the state needs to invest in repairs.
A poll of 600 likely voters conducted by Denno Noor for Michigan Information and Research Service (MIRS) says 59 percent of respondents would oppose a nine-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase. Thirty-six percent who were polled said they would support it, and five percent were undecided.
PAWTUCKET –– In this city burdened with one of Rhode Island’s highest home foreclosure rates and a $10-million current-year budget deficit, $550,000 in federal stimulus money is coming to build a skateboarding park and renovate tennis and basketball courts at Jenks Junior High School.
Michael Cassidy, the city planning director, said the money is for shovel-ready projects and the city is ready to go on both the skateboarding park and work on the athletic courts. A bid request has been issued seeking a contractor for the site, which takes in the three recreational projects, at Division and North Bend streets.
Clay Sneed, the Springfield City Alderman who lead the petition drive, is shown here turning his petition signatures into the Robertson County Election Commission. Once the signatures are verified the CITIZENS of Springfield will be able to vote on the $3 million in new debt. Imagine that, the taxpayers who will be paying back this debt will get to say whether they approve of borrowing the money.
Many U.S. lawmakers view cap and trade as a politically superior non-tax approach to climate policy. However, cap and trade imposes identical economic burdens on households to a similarly designed carbon tax. Using the newly-released 2002 input-output accounts we present new estimates of the distributional impact of a typical cap-and-trade system by income, age, U.S. region and family type. In total, households would face an annual burden of roughly $144.8 billion per year with costs disproportionately borne by low-income households, those under age 25 and over 75 years, those in Southern states, and single parents with dependent children. Using RIMS II multipliers we estimate the broader economic impact of cap and trade. Depending on how the system is structured, cap and trade could reduce U.S. employment by 965,000 jobs, household earnings by $37.8 billion, and economic output by $136 billion per year or roughly $1,145 per household. Lawmakers weighing the costs and benefits of climate policy should be aware that cap and trade would impose a significant and regressive annual burden on U.S. households, and would not represent a "tax free" way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two "handlers" close to Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) as it collected nearly $250 million in federal funding through the lawmaker, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and sources familiar with the funding requests. The center then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Murtha's campaign supporters
[...]
Unlike in traditional earmarks -- funding for specific projects publicly requested by members of Congress -- most of the money for the center came through a budget maneuver known as a "plus-up." The process for this kind of earmark allows lawmakers to add money to an existing program in the budget without public disclosure. The center sought $120 million in this type of money for itself and other companies in 2006 alone, according to the records.
EFF's Freedom Of Information Act project has gathered thousands of pages of material. These shed light on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives.
You can use the EFF FOIA Search Engine below to search and examine the documents' contents. If you find something you think is significant, send us an email: foia@eff.org.
The search engine is still in 'beta testing,' so results may not yet be complete or error-free.
Here's my list. What's on yours?
1. Bailing out failed banks
2. Quantitative easing
3. Government data collection
4. Myopic environmentalism (in which climate change is the focus to the exlusion of all other environmental issues)
5. Tax justice
6. Multi-culturalism
7. Xenophobia
8. European integration
9. Fair trade
10. The state pension Ponzi scheme
These days, it's routine for businesses to fail, get rescued by the government, and then continue to fail. But ethanol, which survives only because of its iron lung of subsidies and mandates, is a special case. Naturally, the industry is demanding even more government life support.
Corn ethanol producers -- led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy -- want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn't cooperate.
Now the recession is hammering demand for gas. The Energy Information Administration notes that U.S. consumption fell nearly 7% in 2008 and expects another 2.2% drop this year. That comes as great news for President Obama, who is achieving his carbon-reduction goals even without a new carbon tax, but the irony is that the ethanol industry is part of the wider collateral damage.
President Obama will kick off an all-out grass-roots effort today urging Congress to pass his $3.55 trillion budget, activating the extensive campaign apparatus he built during his successful 2008 candidacy for the first time since taking office.
The campaign, which will be run under the aegis of the Democratic National Committee, will rely heavily on the 13 million-strong e-mail list put together during the campaign and now under the control of Organizing for America (OFA), a group overseen by the DNC. Aides familiar with the plan said it is an unprecedented attempt to transfer the grass-roots energy built during the presidential campaign into an effort to sway Congress.
Polling Data
Do you favour or oppose limiting the number of terms members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, including your own senators and representatives, can serve?
Mar. 2009
Jun. 2005
Favour
70%
68%
Oppose
24%
21%
Don’t know
6%
11%
Source: Opinion Dynamics / Fox News
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 900 American registered voters, conducted on Mar. 3 and Mar. 4, 2009. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
My opponent can't make that pledge, and here's why: for the first time in American history, he (John McCain) wants to tax your health benefitsNYTimes Mar. 14, 2009
The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits,
I mentioned a few weeks ago the calamitous reality of the U.S. auto industry. General Motors has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to over a million people. They can never sell enough cars to make that math add up. In fact, selling cars doesn’t help, as they lose money on each model. GM is a welfare project masquerading as economic activity. And, after the Obama transformation, America will be, too. The young need to recognize that this is their fight. They need to stop chanting along with the hopeychangey dirges and do something more effective, like form the anti-AARP: the association of Americans who’ll never be able to retire.
Link
Cops handed out a staggering 9,000 summonses in one day to drivers who were caught yapping on their cell phones.
During a 24-hour crackdown Thursday, police zeroed in on motor-mouthed motorists, giving 9,016 of them $120 summonses.
The NYPD warned drivers through media outlets that cops would be on the lookout for drivers who talk on the hand held cell phones without a headset. The initiative began Thursday at midnight and concluded Friday.
Anyone departing the UK by land, sea or air will have their trip recorded and stored on a database for a decade.
Passengers leaving every international sea port, station or airport will have to supply detailed personal information as well as their travel plans. So-called "booze crusiers" who cross the Channel for a couple of hours to stock up on wine, beer and cigarettes will be subject to the rules.
[...]
The new checks are being introduced piecemeal by the UK Border Agency. By the end of the year 60 per cent of journeys made out of Britain will be affected with 95 per cent of people leaving the country being subject to the plans by the end 2010.
Yachtsmen, leisure boaters, trawlermen and private pilots will be given until 2014 to comply with the programme.
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus laid the fate of universal health coverage at the feet of CBO Wednesday, much to the resistance of the new head of the congressional bean-counting agency. . . . . "CBO's work will make or break this enterprise," Baucus said at a Finance Committee hearing where CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified. "We need CBO to work with us to find a pathway to health reform". . . . "In my judgment, you're not God," the chairman said….. Elmendorf turned the tables, telling Baucus, "The hard decisions will be yours."
LinkThe pole punched through his rib cage and came out the other side.
His father said Mihir "endured terrible pain".
He was rushed to hospital where he underwent three-hour surgery at the Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences to remove the rod.
He is now recovering in hospital.
The painful Brazilian wax and its intimate derivatives are in danger of being stripped from salon and spa menus if a recent proposal to ban genital waxing is passed by the state's Board of Cosmetology and Hairstyling.
Cherry Hill salon owner Linda Orsuto said that women would "go ballistic" if the proposal passed. She said that some women would resort to waxing themselves, visiting unlicensed salons or traveling to other states, including Pennsylvania, in a quest to remain bare down there.
"The clients are going to freak," said Orsuto, who owns 800 West Salon & Spa, on Route 70. "It's a hot issue, and we're going to have to do something."
What's owed:
The Chicago Tribune, citing unnamed sources, reported Friday that Quinn may propose raising the personal income tax rate to 4.5 percent, up from 3 percent. The corporate rate of 4.8 percent would jump to 7.2 percent.
The higher income taxes would generate something in the neighborhood of $4 billion more for the state.
Gov. Jan Brewer says a majority of state lawmakers will eventually realize that they have no choice but to buy into her idea of temporarily hiking taxes to balance the budget. Why? There's no other option, Brewer told the Arizona Daily Star's editorial board Friday.
State auditors are questioning the need for the Tennessee Board for Economic Growth, noting that the 18-member panel met only three times in the past four years - twice in 2006 and once in 2008.
"It is questionable whether the board is fullfilling a meaningful purpose," says an audit of the Department of Economic and Community Development released today by the state Comptroller's Office.
ECD officials are quoted by auditors as saying the lack of meetings was due to multiple vacancies on the panel - apparently since filled - and ECD Commisioner Matt Kisber's "heavy workload."
Kisber is also quoted as saying the board is "potentially useful" as a source of advice and communications with the business community. He is reported in the process of "gathering the board members opinions about the board's future and role."
Rutherford County’s economic partnership of business and government is pushing a new education initiative for the county.
The initiative is designed to promote what the group says is a top quality public schools system.
We weren't the first nor the most severe members of the Food Stamp Challenge -- in 2007, several members of Congress budgeted just $21 a person, the national average a food stamp recipient receives weekly. The focus of our challenge was different. We weren't making a statement about hunger awareness or pretending we were poor; we wanted to change our lifestyle and our budget.
The federal food stamp formula is complicated and depends on income level and number of family members. More than 31 million Americans received food stamps in December, the latest data available, believed to be the highest rate ever.
We decided on some ground rules: We wouldn't count the cost of food we already had in the pantry or freezer, and though we would accept gifts from family, we wouldn't from friends, i.e. our parents could buy us dinner but our friends couldn't pay for drinks.
It wasn't as easy as we thought. For a couple who grow their own tomatoes and have olive oils for different occasions, it was hard to find a balance between eating affordably and healthfully, much less deliciously.
Total bullshit. EVERYTHING we have printed is based in fact (in addition to offering our opinion on occasion, which is clearly discernible by any regular reader of the site) and have dozens of emails, open records requests and notes to back everything up. Funny how Miss Jill Hall Rose couldn’t bring herself to elaborate by telling us which statements are “false and misleading.”
Demanding that we “CEASE AND DESIST” writing about Jordan Palmer/Brian Day and the Kentucky Equality Federation? Not going to happen. We have something called the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press here in the United States of America. We should sue these nuts for having the audacity to threaten us with a lawsuit over our free speech rights– which are protected by law.
And, really, claiming that we’ve slandered Palmer/Day and the KEF after all the horse shit the guy has said about US in the comments on THIS VERY WEBSITE? HAHAHA! They’d be laughed out of court. What a crock.
A review of its capacity revealed a "significant risk of failure," Orzag warned. A memo sent to agencies said that Grants.gov, a site where nonprofits and local governments can search federal programs and apply for more than 1,000 competitive grants from 22 agencies, is already straining under the weight of recent growth. With an expected 60 percent increase in volume because of last month's $787 billion stimulus bill, the system could just break, Orszag said.
The expected major surge in applications will likely take a while to emerge, as agencies begin writing their instructions to applicants and settle on conditions and priorities for the grants. So far, only grant monies sent to state and local governments using formulas have been allocated.
Programs getting large boosts in grant spending under the bill include broadband Internet access, medical research and education construction. The risk was identified as part of OMB's review of major systems needed to get the stimulus money out quickly.
The president signed the $410 billion dollar omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2009 this afternoon. It includes a provision that lets funding for the city’s school voucher program to expire at the end of the 2010 school year. The program allows about 1,700 mostly low-income and minority students to attend private schools as an alterative to the struggling D.C. public school system.
“It wouldn't make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system,” Gibbs said in discussing the president’s thinking. “And I think we'll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn't take place.”
Asked if President Obama plans to restore the program’s funding in his full budget, which is currently being drafted, Gibbs said, “whether it's in the budget or in the -- the appropriations process,” the administration will work to make sure “that disruption doesn't take place.”
Like most Republicans, Wamp will call the latter revenue source "the death tax," but he refers to the state equivalent by its right name and, pointing out that the Tennessee inheritance tax nets the state some $93 million annually, wonders if it might not continue to be a useful revenue tool.
He notes, too, that the state gasoline tax has "never been indexed." That, he says, would be "a reasonable thing" — to allow a fluctuating tax rate in accordance with rising or falling prices rather than assessing a fixed per-gallon figure, as at present. And he is aware, of course, that an opponent might accuse him of the un-Republican sin of raising taxes for merely talking about such a change.
The CPUSA has also been a longtime supporter for the Employee Free Choice Act — also known as card check.
During both the 2000 and the 2004 election, the CPUSA was vehemently opposed to Bush’s reelection because of his opposition to card check.
The Democratic Socialists of America is also a strong supporter of the of card check.
Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks. Ms. Water’s husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank’s board of directors until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 in stock in the institution. Treasury officials said the session with nearly a dozen senior banking regulators had been intended to allow minority-owned banks and their trade association to discuss the losses they had incurred from the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Kevin Cohee, OneUnited’s chief executive, instead seized the opportunity to plead for special assistance for his bank, federal officials said.
“Here you had a tiny community bank that comes in and they are not proposing a broader policy — they were asking for help for themselves,” said Steve Lineberry, a former Treasury aide who attended the meeting. “I don’t remember that ever happening before.”
Google Voice is an expanded version of a service previously known as GrandCentral, a start-up that Google acquired 20 months ago. It is intended to simplify the way people handle phone calls, voice mail and text messages. The service will initially be made available only to existing GrandCentral subscribers; Google says the general public will be able to use it in the coming weeks.
Google Voice allows users to route all their calls through a single number that can ring their home, work and mobile phones simultaneously. It also gives users a single and easy-to-manage voice mail system for multiple phone lines. And it lets users make calls, routed via the Internet, free in the United States and for a small fee internationally.
The city of Rolling Hills, population 1,900, sold its $500,000 share to the city of Rancho Palos Verdes for $305,000 cash. The city of Avalon has reached an agreement to swap its $500,000 with L.A. County.
Sierra Madre was courted by Pasadena, Arcadia and El Monte, but rather than take general fund money, has tentatively agreed to swap its $500,000 in stimulus funds for an equal $500,000 in future Measure R funds with nearby La Canada Flintridge.
Temple City and Hidden Hills have also been contacted by hopeful buyers, but have not yet given notice of any kind of deal, according to MTA officials.
Now let’s say you’re one of the 300 patients who’ve so far signed up to be part of Hello Health’s practice, for a basic "enrollment" fee of $35 a month. You’ve also developed a fever and wheezing that haven’t gone away for several days. You could send Dr. Khozin an IM over the Hello Health network describing your symptoms and asking him for advice. A quick e-mail from Dr. Khozin would be free, but if a "cyber-visit" like this takes longer, that will be $50 to $100, please. If you need to come in to the office for a consultation, you’re guaranteed one within twenty-four hours. For as little as $150, a doctor will even come and see you at your home. Generic medications for acute problems, as well as lab tests that can be done in the clinic’s offices, are free.
In effect, Hello Health is operating as a kind of "concierge" practice. Health insurers typically don’t pay for "visits" over the Internet, which is just one reason the practice does not accept health insurance (although patients are free to submit bills to their insurers on their own). Opened in August 2008, Hello Health is less than a year old, so there’s no guarantee that this business model of a primary care practice will succeed. But clearly many patients and doctors alike are betting that this type of practice is the way to practice medicine. More than 300 patients have already enrolled, and demand has been so brisk that the practice opened its second office, in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, in February 2009.
Tennessee
Tennessee (#8 economic, #18 personal, #7 overall) is, along with Virginia, one of the freest states in the South. By one of our measures, Tennessee’s over-all tax burden is the lowest in the country (6.8% of corrected GSP). The government debt ratio is also extremely low. Along with West Virginia, Tennessee also has the best gun control laws in the South. However, taxes on alcohol—particularly wine—are quite high. The first offense of marijuana possession is always a misdemeanor, but otherwise the state has fairly harsh marijuana laws. The state is one of three not to require auto liability insurance (permitting self-insurance instead), but it has sobriety check-points, primary seat-belt enforcement, and helmet laws for motor- and bicyclists. Gambling is highly controlled; Tennessee is one of just three states to prohibit even charitable gaming. The state also falls somewhat short on education, with mandatory kindergarten, mandatory registration of private schools, and burdensome notification requirements for home schoolers. Labor laws are above average, but health insurance laws are mediocre. Occupational licensing has gone way too far. Eminent domain has not really been reformed. The state has low cigarette taxes and no smoking bans on private property.
Neil, I am not telling folks in my state that. they are telling me this. Thinking it was morally acceptable to be opposed to the stimulus package but still accepting money -- I opened up the telephones, and the slater audience told me otherwise.
The city of New Orleans committed a "flagrant violation of the law" and must pay nearly $7,000 in penalties for ignoring a local TV station's public records request for nearly two months, a judge ruled last week.
Mayor Ray Nagin and communications director Ceeon Quiett "avoided their responsibility to comply with the [Louisiana] Public Records Act by simply ignoring" a request for documents made by Lee Zurik of WWL-TV, said Judge Rosemary Ledet of the Parish of Orleans Civil District Court. In her March 4 judgment, Ledet imposed a maximum $100 per-day fine for the periods of Dec. 3 to Jan. 28 and Jan. 4 to Feb. 18, excluding weekends and holidays.
It is "very rare" for fines to be levied against records law violators in Louisiana, said one of Zurik's attorneys, Mary Ellen Roy.
The same can be said elsewhere in the country; a New Jersey appellate court, last November, overturned a rare fine against a public official for violating the state's open records law. But more promising for records requesters, courts in Washington state and Missouri have recently upheld such fines.
According to a report by AEG, Tennessee has the 3rd lowest Business tax rate as a share of profits.
The bill also requires civilian agencies to review current contracts and issue guidelines for considering whether new projects can be performed by federal employees, or if previously outsourced work can be brought back in-house.
Criteria for jobs subject to insourcing include: those outsourced without competition or performed by a federal employee during the past decade, jobs closely aligned with an inherently governmental function, or judged by a contracting officer to have been performed poorly "because of excessive costs or inferior quality." The provision does not apply to Defense Department contracts.
President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill.
Job competitions have been held for several decades, primarily at the Defense Department, through the Office of Management and Budget's Circular No. A-76 process. But it was only during the past eight years -- through the Bush administration's competitive sourcing initiative -- that agencies were encouraged to find federal jobs that could be competed with the private sector.
From the outset, the competitions were unpopular with government labor unions and congressional Democrats who argued the program not only threatened federal jobs, but also failed to produce results.
But openness did not actually seem to translate to substance. There were many questions about the actual terms of the laws and what sort of proposals would be approved. What is the standard for determining whether an area is “underserved” by broadband? Should a library that needs broadband submit its own application, or should all the libraries in a county gang up? Can satellite broadband companies qualify to participate?
The answer in each case seemed to be a form of bureaucratic Rogerian psychotherapy. (That’s the one where the therapist turns everything the patient says into a question) The agencies want to hear what we the people (and them the lobbyists) think the rules should be.
Mark Seifert, a senior advisor to the N.T.I.A, concluded the meeting by saying: “All these issues have come up, and we are saying, ‘You tell us.’”
What that most likely means is that after a lightning round of meetings and comment periods, the dark-suited herd will be back to find out what they really need to do in order to pull money out of the Nofas.
The figure comes from a 2005 Harvard University study saying that 54 percent of bankruptcies in 2001 were caused by health expenses. We reviewed it internally and knocked it down at the time; an academic reviewer did the same in 2006. Recalculating Harvard’s own data, he came up with a far lower figure – 17 percent.
A more recent study by another group, approaching it another way, indicates that in 2007 about eight-tenths of one percent of Americans lived in families that filed for bankruptcy as a result of medical costs. That rings a little less loudly than “one every 30 seconds.”
She’s a mostly anonymous career bureaucrat, but Mary Baker has been a major player in some the most damaging stories to hit the Obama administration.
Sources familiar with the vetting process of the Senate Finance Committee say that Baker, an Internal Revenue Service employee on loan to the committee as a “tax professional,” has been a — and maybe the — driving force behind its examination of tax problems involving three Obama nominees.
Likewise, he said some funding is far more than the state ever has spent on other projects. For instance, he said Tennessee will get $97 million for home weatherization while the state has spent, at most, $6 million in previous years to weatherize homes.
“Who’s going to administer this?” he asked.
Mr. Goetz said most of the avenues for federal money to flow through the state into local agencies already exist, which means officials at least won’t have to build new mechanisms to take it in. But he said he understands that the existing mechanisms may be overwhelmed by the windfall.
Illinois voters largely oppose raising taxes to balance the state's budget or improve roads and say they will vote out lawmakers who support tax hikes, a newly released poll finds.One quarter of those polled said they would support raising the state's 3 percent income tax to help close an estimated $9 billion budget hole. Another 13 percent favor applying the sales tax to services, such as haircuts or auto repair, that are not taxed now.
But the majority - 55 percent - were opposed to any increase in those taxes to balance the state's budget. Income and sales taxes account for more than 60 percent of state revenue.
Illinoisans also oppose a gas tax increase to pay for road improvements. Only 27 percent favored a gas tax hike, while 63 percent oppose the measure. One downstate lawmaker is pushing an 8- to 16-cent increase in the gas tax to pay for infrastructure improvements.
I don't know what will happen with this movement. It could wilt on the vine. Indeed, should the state legislature start doing what's inevitable (massive cuts in state spending are just that), this movement might end in California. My suspicion is that Proposition 1A will fail in May, and that many politicians will find that its the citizens who control government and not vice versa. It may take a couple of years, but I think some major changes are going to happen.
Prof Perry runs the numbers.
My one-week furlough from The Courier-Journal begins tomorrow.
Furlough, of course, is a polite if Orwellian way to say I've been laid off for a week.
Amusingly, it has other meanings. Wordnet says one is to "grant a leave to," as in "The prisoner was furloughed for the weekend to visit her children."
Another is "a temporary leave of absence from military duty."
Prison. Military duty. This is what journalism has come to.
It is not, however, how I envision my future, so I'm going to use the week to learn some new skills that will make me more relevant in a depression economy -- say, street corner apple selling, breadline waiting, odd jobbing and possession hocking.
Or Flex. I don't really know. I may just scrape paint on the old carriage house out back. I'm going to let my mood be my muse.
See you on the other side.
and "Socialism: trickle up poverty." My two fav signs from this insty link of the Greenbay teaparty.
For years, local elected officials have been able to park for free in Republic Parking lots, and a government watchdog group is questioning whether that creates a conflict of interest.
Members of the Chattanooga City Council and Hamilton County Commission receive free passes from Republic Parking. The company operates 66 lots or garages in the area, including public lots at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, its Web site shows.
Drew Johnson, executive director of the watchdog group Tennessee Center for Policy Research, said Republic Parking “isn’t doing this for charity.”
“They’re obviously trying to create favor with (elected officials),” he said.
Jim Berry, owner of Republic Parking, did not return calls seeking comment.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said having Rep. Davis on the House panel will help the Tennessee delegation advocate for state causes, especially with Rep. Wamp, who is running for governor, leaving Congress in 2010.
“It will strengthen Tennessee’s position when discussion of federal dollars come up,” Sen. Alexander said. “It’s a great compliment to him to be selected. Also, it will be helpful for Zach Wamp and for me. We both work easily with Lincoln.”
In landing a seat on the committee, Rep. Davis, who has served in Congress since 2003, beat out about two dozen other Democrats, many of them much more senior, who were vying for the spot.
“We really had not had a rural legislator (on the committee) for a long time,” he said. “I used that strategy by saying it’s important to have one and, much to my surprise, not only did I get on this, but so did John Salazar (D-Colo.).
“(House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi used the two seats she had (open) and gave it to the two most conservative Democrats.”
The same goes for Michigan, New York and Massachusetts. They should pay for their own mistakes. They have no right to force the people of Jackson, Tenn., to pay for their failures.The Volunteer State will get about $3.8 billion. This may help in the short run, but what happens when the money runs out in two years? Does anyone really believe that our budget will drop $3.8 billion the next year?
The budget in the past six years has already grown 36 percent, from $20 billion to $28 billion. Inflation over that time has increased by only 14 percent. Another $3.8 billion sounds great now, but in two years, we will have to pay for that with higher taxes. It won't be "free money" anymore.
We need to be cutting our budget, not growing it. Let's show some prudence now so we don't have to be cutting more jobs in 2010.
It's a shame that my final argument is so casually dismissed, but if you dust off that old, pesky thing called the Constitution, you will see nothing in there about federal stimulus packages. And more important, there is a Tenth Amendment: Powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states.
They started a business in 1987 that now employs 1,600 people. Those damned, evil rich people!!RACHEL: We had been talking about how to put our child through college and provide her with a certain standard of living, and we knew we wanted to do that by running our own business. We just didn't know what type it would be.
At the time potpies were the most popular frozen meal, so we decided to bake our own. My mother suggested that since we were launching the company to support our daughter, we should name it after her.
My mom, who's an amazing cook, came up with a vegetable and tofu potpie recipe. We spent hours in the kitchen, testing the recipe and then making about 100 pies by hand so we could debut them at a San Francisco health-food show in March 1988. The first day of the show, a handful of natural-food stores signed up for orders. But then we had to figure out how to fill them!
Sen. Arlen Specter [R, PA] is one of the Republicans most likely to vote with Democrats and help them overcome Republican filibusters on key votes. According to our voting trend analysis (scroll down half page here), he votes with his party, the Republicans, only 48 percent of the time. Not surprisingly, he is facing a very difficult primary race in 2010.Alexander Bolton for The Hill writes that Specter’s best chance for remaining a U.S. senator after this session likely involves switching parties and running as a Democrat.
Gallup says most of US oppose using Government to redistribute wealth. Now, we just need to convince the idiots in Congress.
Derek, a seventh-grader with the West Tennessee Home Education Association, competed against more than 40 other participants from the West Tennessee area in the Carl Perkins Civic Center and was declared the winner after 32 rounds.
He won the competition by spelling the word "sullenness," which means "to be in a state of gloom, repression or dismay."
It is unfortunate that the Ethics Committee, faced with an obvious violation of the Open Meetings Act, got its back up and refused to admit the violation and simply correct it. This could have been taken care of right away--at no-cost to the taxpayers--if the Ethics Committee had said 'oops, we're sorry and we're going to fix this right now with a proper meeting with adequate public notice.'
Now, the Ethics Committee and its members will ask the taxpayers of Hamblen County to pay the legal fees that the Ethics Committee has incurred for a lawsuit that they caused by their refusal to correct their Open Meetings violation at the start.
The good news, however, is that Ethics Chairman Joe Swann and the other members of the Ethics Committee have seen the light ("Sunshine") and are now aware that you really can't have a "public" meeting without letting the public know about it.
Hopefully, other local governmental bodies will also be careful to make sure that the public is informed about their meetings.
At least 10 other states — Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wyoming — are considering or recently have considered legislation to create online budget and spending databases.
They could join more than a dozen other states which have passed similar legislation or issued executive or department orders since 2007. These states include Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington.
This week, education secretary Arne Duncan referred to DC public schools as a district with “more money than God.” Perhaps he was thinking of the $24,600 total per-pupil spending figure I reported last year in the Washington Post and on this blog. If so, he’s low-balling the number. With the invaluable help of my research assistant Elizabeth Li, I’ve just calculated the figure for the current school year. It is $28,813 per pupil.
"This court does not see the existence of a valid privilege that can be asserted by Ms. Beatty or Mr. Kilpatrick at this juncture," said Kenny, in ordering the release of some 1,400 text messages held by prosecutors and previously under seal.
Kenny's ruling boils down to one thing: Kilpatrick and Beatty can't keep the messages secret because they are not their messages. They are the property of the government and only the government can seek to keep them secret. In other words, Kilpatrick and Beatty should have realized they were creating public records that the public has a right to see to help it understand how government works.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
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Corzine, who will release his budget next week, is considering a 5 percent surcharge on the taxes paid by residents with incomes of $250,000 or higher, according to four people familiar with the budget who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the governor's plans.The Democratic governor is also weighing increasing the cigarette tax by 10 cents a pack as well as hikes to wine and liquor taxes as he grapples with a $7 billion shortfall. The liquor tax increases would not affect the tax on beer.
In total, the tax hikes would produce about $400 million in revenue, those familiar with the budget said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has created this Surveillance Self-Defense site to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) exists to answer two main questions: What can the government legally do to spy on your computer data and communications? And what can you legally do to protect yourself against such spying?
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Estimates of the number of new federal government employees needed to implement the $3.6 trillion national budget range from a low 100,000 to a high of 250,000.
Lamar Alexander voted with Arlen Specter against a McCain amendment to the omnibus bill that would have frozen spending at 2008 levels and stripped the bill of $7.7 billion worth of earmarks. Bob Corker voted for the amendment which failed. Thank you Bob Corker.
Critics charge that President Obama’s plan to limit the value of itemized deductions to 28 percent would hurt charities at the time they most need financial support. Their argument: Since the maximum value of the deduction for donations to charity would fall from 39.6 percent to just 28 percent , the affluent will give less. Republican Whip, Eric Cantor, asked, “Is there any better time to have charities in full throttle than when you have tough economic times?”
How much would the proposal affect donations? A back-of-the envelope estimate suggests that the Obama plan would reduce annual giving by about two percent, or roughly $9 billion. Here’s how we got there.
The proposal would cut deductions for taxpayers in the top two tax brackets starting in 2011, when the top rates will be 36 and 39.6. About 1.2 percent of households would be affected in 2011.
Of course, higher income households donate more to charity than those with lower incomes, so the proposal affects a larger share of charitable contributions. We estimate that 18.2 percent of charitable contributions itemized on tax returns are in the top two brackets in 2011. Itemizers account for two-thirds of total charitable contributions in 2006, the latest year for which data are available. Non-itemizers, bequests, foundations, and corporations—none of which would be affected by the proposal—account for the other giving.
Alistair Darling is this week expected to give the Bank of England formal approval to effectively print more money to kick-start the British economy.The Bank will be able to spend up to £150 billion in the coming months to buy-up company and Government debts.
The policy, known as quantitative easing, will be used to inject more money into the economy. It is now deemed necessary as interest rates rapidly approach zero.
The Chancellor is expected to sanction the scheme on Thursday in a formal exchange of letters with Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England.
The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee is this week also expected to cut interest rates from one percent to a new record low of 0.5 percent. They may be cut even further to a nominal rate of 0.1 percent.
We estimate that the legislation will raise gross domestic product (GDP) and increase employment in the short run—by adding to aggregate demand and boosting the utilization of labor and capital. In contrast, we expect that the legislation will reduce output slightly in the long run because the resulting increase in government debt will tend to “crowd out” private investment and thereby reduce the stock of productive private capital. That crowding-out effect will be diminished to the extent that some of the funding in the legislation will go for activities that could add to the nation’s long-term output.
LinkLeaders of the Senate Finance Committee this afternoon revealed that another of President Obama's nominees -- U.S. Trade Representative-designate Ron Kirk -- has tax problems.
Finance staff briefed aides to committee members today on the revelations, which indicate the former Dallas mayor underpaid taxes to the tune of $9,975 during 2005-07, and that he has agreed to promptly file adjustments. The underpayments deal in part with speaking honoraria he received that he listed as charitable donations to his alma mater, Austin College.
Kirk instead should have reported the honoraria as taxable income and then deducted the donations. The panel also asked Kirk for substantiation of other charitable donations he has made, including a television set, and it has questioned Kirk's write-offs of business expenses, including those for Dallas Mavericks season tickets.
Finance Committee leaders said in a joint statement that it was important for all panel members to have the necessary information in advance of next Monday's confirmation hearing. In a separate statement, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., reiterated support for the nominee: Kirk "is the right person for this job and I will work to move his nomination quickly," he said.
My wife and I are both employed as science teachers in Westchester County, and earned a gross household income in 2007 of more than $240,000. This year, we may top the $250,000 figure with step increases and extracurricular activities. Thus, NYSUT is suggesting that union teachers who worked hard to get good-paying jobs be taxed at a higher percentage than others.
Most Westchester teachers already pay the painfully unfair Alternative Minimum Tax, which disproportionately taxes household income over $150,000 by taking itemized deductions (such as classroom supply deductions) away from high-income households.
This threshold was never corrected for inflation. A progressive state income tax will tax high-earning teachers similarly to the AMT. Remember, you represent us as well.
Ed Gruber
Eastchester Teachers Association
Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a spending bill that spells the end, after the 2009-10 school year, of the federally funded program that enables poor students to attend private schools with scholarships of up to $7,500. A statement signed by Mr. Obey as Appropriations Committee chairman that accompanied the $410 billion spending package directs D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to "promptly take steps to minimize potential disruption and ensure smooth transition" for students forced back into the public schools.
We would like Mr. Obey and his colleagues to talk about possible "disruption" with Deborah Parker, mother of two children who attend Sidwell Friends School because of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. "The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me," Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities -- such as a trip to China for her son -- made possible by the program. Tell her, as critics claim, that vouchers don't work, and she'll list her children's improved test scores, feeling of safety and improved motivation.
as one of the few Dem Senators who is brave enough to take on earmarks, it sure is nice to see her go public.
The man who is President Obama's newly minted urban czar pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign cash from city developers whose projects he approved or funded with taxpayers' money, a Daily News probe found.
Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion often received contributions just before or after he sponsored money for projects or approved important zoning changes, records show.
Most donations were organized and well-timed.
In one case, a developer became a Carrion fund-raiser two months before the borough president signed off on his project, raising more than $6,000 in campaign cash.
In another, eight Boricua College officials came up with $8,000 on the same day for Carrion three weeks before the school filed plans to build a new tower. Carrion ultimately approved the project and sponsored millions in taxpayer funds for it.
Carrion resigned as borough president effective Sunday and begins his new job as director of the White House Office on Urban Policy Monday.
The U.S. Congress: There are many many federal lawmakers who I admire and respect as individuals (for example, I am friends with and have a tremendous respect for my Congressman), but as a group — a “body” — the U.S. Congress, both the House and the Senate, are a hopeless, incompetent failure. Those who wrote and first adopted the Constitution were aware this could happen, indeed, endless deliberation and hindering the ability of lawmakers to easily legislate was part of their intent. However, today, Congress has deteriorated into a useless glob of 535 elected officials who are mired in a cynical system that has turned their jobs away from policy into a business of running 535 little marketing and strategy factories focused on building the lawmaker’s personal brand, creating and consolidating his or her political power and control of resources, raising funds and collecting personal chits for the next campaign, taking care of his or her state’s or district’s economic interests and perhaps, at the end of the day, paying a little lip service to the lofty goals he or she once said drew them to a life of “public service.”
In Memphis, the list of people to see if you need help with a worthy cause is shorter than in other cities. And, while we often are cited as a city that has above-average charitable giving, that number is somewhat deceiving. Much of our charitable giving is channeled through churches -- to support church work.
The giving that goes to larger community projects and arts still comes from the few, not the many.
The last 12 months have been brutal on those who, in the past, relied on returns from their investment portfolios to support local causes. Among Memphians who are wealthy but not super-rich, the impact of the stock market's 50 percent drop likely will send a huge ripple through this city in the coming months.
