The game of risk shall continue
Comments »The Skeletons in the Closet Come Out For Cain
What a timely event…Now you have crazy taste Texan and flip flop Mormon dude. That leaves Rob Paul.
Comments »RICKY PERRY HAS LOST HIS MIND
Exhibit A
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M4gz97Y9W8&feature=player_embedded#! 603 500] Comments »What Do the Top 1% Really Pay in Taxes?
What Do the Top 1% Really Pay in Taxes?
Income Declines for Top Earners, While Effective Tax Rates Creep Up
Washington, DC, October 24, 2011–The income earned by the top 1% of Americans has declined for the second year in a row while their average tax rate has increased, according to a new Tax Foundation study. The average federal tax rate for those reporting at least $343,927 in income has increased from 22.5% in 2007 to 24.0% in 2009, while the average income for the top 1% has declined from $1.4 million to $1 million over the same period.
The Tax Foundation’s analysis is based on new data from the Internal Revenue Service on individual income taxes, reporting on calendar year 2009. The amount of individual income tax paid steeply declined by $166 billion, twice the decline from 2007 to 2008. Nationally, average effective income tax rates were at their lowest levels since the IRS began tracking them in 1986. The average tax rate for returns with a positive liability went from 12.2% in 2008 to 11.1% in 2009.
“During a time of economic downturn, we expect to see significant changes in both total income reported and the share of taxes paid by those with the highest incomes,” said Logan. “Unlike middle-income wage-earners whose incomes and tax liabilities are fairly steady, high-income people tend to realize significant capital gains that fluctuate wildly with the economy, causing their income tax liabilities to fluctuate as well.”
In 2009, the top 1% of tax returns earned 16.9% of adjusted gross income and paid 36.7% of all federal individual income taxes. In 2008 those figures were 20.0% and 38.0%, respectively. Each year from 2005 to 2007, the top 1 percent’s constantly growing share of income earned and taxes paid set a record. The 2008 reversal of this trend continued in 2009.
The study also takes a look at the very highest earners, the top 0.1 percent of tax returns, which the IRS only began singling out in recent years. In 2009, those 138,000 tax returns accounted for nearly 7.8% of adjusted gross income earned (down from almost 10% in 2008), and they paid around 17% of the nation’s federal individual income taxes (down from 18.5% percent in 2008).
“The very highest income group—the top one-tenth of one percent—actually has a lower average effective income tax rate than the rest of the top 1 percent of returns because these extremely high-income returns are more likely to have income from capital gains and dividends, which are typically taxed at lower rates,” said Logan. “It’s worth pointing out that in the case of capital gains and dividends, however, income derived from these sources has already been taxed once by the corporate income tax, which is not included in the current study, meaning the average effective tax rate numbers can be somewhat misleading.”
See the research here.
Comments »Ron Paul Wins Both Tallies at GOP Straw Poll in Iowa
Ron Paul has won two separate tallies for the National Federation of Republican Assemblies Presidential Straw Poll.
Paul won both the Iowa-voters-only count at the Saturday convention in Des Moines as well as a tally of non-Iowans who participated.
In the Iowa voters result, Paul took 82%. Following him were Herman Cain with 14.7%, Rick Santorum with 1%, Newt Gingrich with 0.9%, Michele Bachmann with 0.5%, Rick Perry with 0.5%, Gary Johnson with 0.2%, with Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman 0%.
The total number of votes cast in that tally was 430.
In the tally of non-Iowans who voted, Paul won 26% followed by Cain at 25%, Perry and Santorum tied at 16%, Gingrich at 11%, Bachmann at 6%, Romney at 1%, and Huntsman and Johnson with 0%.
The total number of votes cast in that count was 101.
Though Paul won both tallies, the NFRA has not yet officially endorsed a candidate. Delegates to the convention will decide that later Saturday.
Comments »Herman Cain’s Campaign Contributions Rise with His Poll Numbers
Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s surge in the polls has been accompanied by a surge in campaign contributions.
Cain campaign spokesman JD Gordon said Friday the campaign was projecting close to $5 million in contributions for the month of October alone. That compares to $2.8 million in three months ending in September, the last quarterly period that Cain’s campaign filed fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission.
Comments »#Occupy Madison Gets Rubbed Out for Rubbing One Out
City officials temporarily denied Occupy Madison a new street use permit Wednesday after protesters violated public health and safety conditions and failed to follow the correct processes to renew or amend a permit.
The permit, which expired Wednesday at noon, required Occupy Madison protesters to relocate from their current space at 30 West Mifflin Street, also called 30 on the Square.
A neighboring hotel’s staff alleged voiced concerns about having to recently escort hotel employees to and from bus stops late at night due to inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters.
In addition, officials agreed further occupation should not be allowed to continue without restrooms on site to avoid further public health violations.
“You can’t be affecting the safety and health of other people around you,” Madison Fire Prevention Officer Jerry McMullen said. “With the public health violations and the complaints I’ve heard, I don’t believe it meets the spirit of the ordinance to a street use permit.”
Occupy Madison representative and street use permit holder Paul Streeter said he hopes to use the 30 on the Square space again as soon as possible after Freakfest.
“[The protest] is indeed a work in progress,” Streeter said. “We will continue to address issues as they come up.”
Madison’s Parks Division requested a written form stating the dates and location where members wish to occupy.
“You can tell us what your proposals are, but we have no idea what you are doing, how you are doing it or what your safety and security plan is,” McCullen said. “We have nothing in writing to back it up, and we usually require that all events have [written plans].”
Occupy Madison is relocating onto Olin Terrace until Monday when Freak Fest is over, and they can request a new permit for 30 on the Square.
Comments »Meet OWS’s “Think Tank”
HAHAHAHA
He’s a fucking anthropologist anarchist.
“I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”
Apparently you need to teach at a university to write about nothing. That’s funny, I would have figured I could have done that without formal training and experience.
Have a chuckle here:
Comments »When he’s not busy brainstorming how to tear apart and rebuild America’s democratic system, David Graeber prefers to think about simpler things, like why we still don’t have flying cars.
Graeber, a professor at the University of London and a widely respected anthropologist, has achieved a new level of fame in recent weeks for his early influence on the Occupy Wall Street protests that began in New York City and have since spread around the world. The Wall Street Journal declared Graeber to be “the single academic who has done the most to shape the nascent movement,” while Bloomberg Businessweek declared him to be the “anti-leader” of Occupy Wall Street who generally abstains from the limelight even as his writings, including a new book on the history of debt and the influence of money, serve as an “intellectual frame” for the protesters.
Indeed, when MainStreet managed to reach Graeber by phone, his focus was light-years away from the protests, as he was busy working on an article about his disappointment that the world doesn’t yet have technology like flying cars, robots and other futuristic technology that one might have hoped would exist by the 21st century. As Graeber puts it, “I have arrived at a point where I can write about whatever I want.”
Flying cars probably aren’t the future that protesters are marching for around the world, but then again few can say for sure precisely what the demands of each protester in Manhattan and Oakland and Rome actually are, not even Graeber, who is based in London and shuttles between protests on a fairly regular basis.
FLASH: JOHN CORZINE SUCKS BECAUSE HE DESTROYED MF GLOBAL
When he became CEO of MF, he started buying sovereign debt.
FAIL.
The stock is now less than $1.
Comments »Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court Halts Parliamentary ESFS Decision
Probably why European markets pared gains overnight. The decision is temporary until lawsuits by lawmakers are heard.
Comments »“A Chance to Save Capitalism” #OWS
Now For a Totally Different Take on Housing
Republicans Ask Elderly & the Poor to Pay for D.C. & Wall St Mistakes
“Dummies Guide” to New Euro Plan
Early Morning Fun: We Will Use Your Ways Against You
John Stossel Argues More Competition in School Only Way to Save Kids
Conventional wisdom says that government should run schools. This idea is intuitive. It is also wrong. The free market would do a much better job.
This week in my syndicated column, I compare the public school system to the cars produced by governments:
The Trabant was the best — the pride of the Eastern Bloc. It was produced by actual German engineers — known for their brilliance. Yet even the Trabant was a terrible car. Drivers had to put the oil and gas in separately and then shake the car to mix them. Trabants broke down and spewed pollution. When government runs things, consumers suffer.
Our school system is like the Trabant. Economist Milton Friedman understood this before the rest of us did. In 1955, he proposed school vouchers. His plan didn’t call for separating school and state — unfortunately — but instead sought a second-best fix: Give a voucher to the family, and let it choose which school — government-run or private — their child will attend. Schools would compete for that voucher money. Today, it would be worth $13,000 per child. (That’s what America spends per student today.) Competition would then improve all schools.
50 years later, school vouchers are finally becoming a reality, although the education establishment still resists them.
Ronald Holassie, a graduate of the Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, came on my Fox Business show last week to talk about the dramatic difference between a government school and his private school:
“In the public school system when I was in there, (there were) lots of fights. There were shootings, stabbings, and it was really unsafe — drugs.” … But he got the voucher and a good education, and now he’s in college.
Despite the data showing that voucher kids are ahead in reading, the biggest teachers union, the NEA claims: “The D.C. voucher program has been a failure. It’s yielded no evidence of positive impact on student achievement.”
Holassie asks: “How is it a failure when the public school system is failing students? I don’t understand that.”
I don’t either.
The rest of my column here.
Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel/blog/2011/10/26/school-competition-rescues-kids#ixzz1bwcW4Xa5
Greenspan: European Union Doomed to Fail
Cyber Nerds Have Been Attacking the U.S. Department of Energy’s Computer Systems
The U.S. Department of Energy has been hit by recent successful cyber attacks and needs to do more to protect its computer systems, the department’s internal watchdog said in a report Monday.
The report by the department’s inspector general did not disclose who launched the cyber attacks or the consequences at four affected locations.
The Department of Energy (DOE) has dozens of agencies, regional offices and laboratories. Among other tasks, it manages the U.S. nuclear weapon stockpile through its National Nuclear Security Administration.
Comments »Germans see Merkel as defender of euro
Comments »BERLIN (Reuters) – Angela Merkel’s supporters praised her for getting France to drop demands to use the European Central Bank to leverage euro crisis funds, but looked like making a meal out of the German parliament’s new right to be consulted on how these are used.
“Merkel’s Battle for our Euro,” was Monday’s headline in the mass-circulation conservative paper Bild, saying she taught France’s Nicolas Sarkozy “that the EFSF rescue fund cannot be used to print money” to solve the debt crisis.
“The chancellor must stick to her guns — in the interests of Germany and of Europe,” said the newspaper.
But while her supporters in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) welcomed the assertiveness in Sunday’s summit from a leader often accused of dithering, they also risked delaying Europe’s response to the debt crisis at a crucial juncture by insisting on a full debate before Wednesday’s second summit.
Her Christian Democrats’ (CDU) floor leader Volker Kauder was said to want a full debate rather than just a vote by the 41-member budget committee, which would be quicker and less risky while still fulfilling new rules on consulting MPs.
A government source said the lower house would vote on the issue on Wednesday.
With criticism ringing in Germany’s ears from the head of the Eurogroup of single currency members, Jean-Claude Juncker, about it being slow to make decisions, Merkel met the heads of the main parties to seek consensus.
As a result of a constitutional court decision last month, she cannot agree to changes to the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) without the agreement of the Bundestag’s budget committee, scheduled to meet on Tuesday.
She is then due to address parliament on Wednesday before returning to Brussels for what should be a more decisive summit on boosting the firepower of the EFSF, raising the contribution of private banks to Greece’s rescue, and getting European banks to increase their own capital to prevent contagion.
Her conservative bloc’s chief whip, Peter Altmaier, said Sunday’s summit “made headway” on all three issues, including “using the EFSF to avoid having to print money,” and it should now be possible to produce the “comprehensive” crisis response that Merkel and Sarkozy have promised by the end of this month.
Occupy Detroit impeded by cold, rainy weather
The 100 or so assholes camped out in the middle of a Detroit park (ironically dedicated to and adourned with the statues of business men who would be ashamed to live here nowadays) have thankfully had to suffer some of the most miserable, rainy October weather imaginable, up to now.
May the plagues against them continue…
Comments »The past week’s weather hasn’t always been conducive to their cause, with rainy days and cold temperatures, but members of the Occupy Detroit movement say they’re undeterred and will stay the course at their encampment in Grand Circus Park downtown.
“We’re still basically a work in progress, but I continue to remain wildly optimistic about what we’re accomplishing here,” Sarah Coffey, 38, one of the volunteers in charge of organizing the group’s informational meetings, said late Sunday afternoon.
“In order for us to transform society, we have to bridge the differences between the races and classes. And when you stop to think about it, is there any better spot to begin than in Detroit?”
Ann Arbor residents Marcia Mai, 59, and Bob Davis, 87, said they came downtown to observe what was happening.
“We’re here to show some solidarity with the young people, and it’s great to see they’re actually doing something about the gross inequalities that exist in the country,” said Mai, who said she did her share of protesting during the 1970s.
“I’m encouraged because people are here and they plan to remain for the long term,” Mai said. “And why not? Their future has been impacted by a loss of jobs and homes, and the fact that they’re committed to being here is very moving to see.”
