Obama’s 2nd-term agenda? House Dems Propose Raising Taxes by 40%, Including on Middle Class

James Pethokoukis

The “Budget for All” contains just about every sort of tax increase imaginable. It would, of course, allow the top-end Bush tax cuts to expire, as well as create five new tax brackets — 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% — for “millionaires and billionaires.” In addition, House liberals would break new ground by slapping a European-style wealth tax of 0.5% on fortunes of $10 million or more. The plan also contains a bank tax and a financial transaction tax.

But it’s not just the wealthy and bankers who would get pinched. These Democrats would also raise income taxes on the broad middle. The CPC plan would “allow the 28% and 25% brackets to sunset once the economy is on solid footing, in 2017 and 2019, respectively.” That means higher taxes on families making over $70,000 a year — a big, fat, middle-class tax hike. And some of those families would also be paying more for energy thanks to the carbon tax that’s also in the CPC plan.

Amazing, these progressive Democrats don’t think all those tax hikes will hurt economic growth. Not one bit. Why? First, it’s now the liberal economic consensus that tax rates below 70-80% don’t hurt growth. Second, even if those tax hikes unexpectedly did trim growth a smidgen, they would be more than offset by a new $2 trillion stimulus plan full of such supposedly pro-growth measures as clean energy tax credits, advanced manufacturing tax credits, and a “Child Care Corps.”

Read the rest here.

See the chart and some commentary from Helene Meisler.

Jim Cramer recently appeared on TheStreet.com TV and was certain of one thing: now is the time to buy a house.

Lee Moran

Spain’s high-class escorts are refusing to have sex with the nation’s bankers – until they open up credit lines to cash-strapped families and firms.

Madrid’s top-end prostitutes say their indefinite strike will continue until bank employees ‘fulfil their responsibility to society’ and start offering bigger loans for struggling Spaniards, it has been claimed.

Sneaky bankers were trying to circumvent the protest by claiming to be architects or engineers, the sex-workers said.

Dennis K. Berman

This should be a moment of elation for Kentucky fans. Their team plays a ruthlessly beautiful brand of basketball. Their starting lineup is better than the New Jersey Nets.

And yet there is something lurking underneath: A sense that winning is, in its own odd way, making UK’s fans miserable. Their expectations of triumph—be it recruiting battles or tournament games—has hardened into a coarse entitlement. It’s gotten to the point where even a championship will feel like anticlimax.

My best friend, a rare species of Louisville-turned-Kentucky turncoat, admits it. “It’s not fun,” he says. “We expect it.”

Where do we find the most joy as fans? Does it come from our teams’ absolute achievements—championship or bust? Or is it all relative, when they perform beyond what we anticipate? Saturday’s Final Four matchup between Louisville and Kentucky gives us a case study.

I write as a Louisville Cardinals fan, who grew up in the heyday of Louisville hoops, and who spent his early years caught in the very real feud between fans of the two schools.

ESPN would have you believe that the Duke-North Carolina rivalry is the most intense in college basketball. ESPN is wrong. The title belongs to Kentucky-Louisville, a 99-year-old feud that cuts across cultural, racial, and even religious lines.

I won’t presume to know what life is like in, say, Northern Ireland. I can tell you that to this day, like Catholics and Protestants, I could name which of my classmates was a Louisville or Kentucky fan.

The answer meant a lot. If you were a Kentucky fan you were more likely from a family with deeper, rural roots in the state. Maybe a grandparent attended school in Lexington, just a 90-minute ride from Louisville.

Cardinal fans were, and remain, the counternote. They were the ones historically excluded from the blue blood social orbits of Lexington. They were Jews and blacks, and more likely than not Democrats—a citified minority in a sea of rural rectitude.

Back home, they’re already calling Saturday’s contest The Civil War. Red and blue car flags are flying like gang colors. They’ve begun burning couches in Lexington. Even my hoops-agnostic mother is sending me articles about Louisville point guard Peyton Siva.

It bears stating: This is the single biggest sporting event in the state’s history.

This is Kentucky’s game to lose. It already beat Louisville on New Year’s Eve 69-62, and clearly has better, NBA-ready personnel. Anthony Davis alone will make more money playing pro ball than the entire Louisville roster.

And yet when you perform a fan’s accounting, the picture changes. The Wildcats lose their edge.

Read the rest here.

Oil contracts for delivery in three to five years’ time are trading at their biggest ever ­discount to spot prices, prompting a debate about whether the era of triple-digit oil prices will be a short-term phenomenon.

Spot oil prices have rallied nearly $20 since the start of the year and traded above $125 a barrel yesterday, on the back of supply disruptions and geopolitical fears over Iran.

Over the same period, oil for delivery in December 2018 has risen $1 to about $95. This has opened a record gap of more than $30 between spot and five-year contracts. “The market has the perception that oil supply will increase in the future and that is holding back the price of forward contracts,” said Mark Thomas, head of energy futures at commodities brokerage Marex Spectron, citing expectations of higher output in Iraq, Brazil, the US and Canada.

Read the rest here.

Margo D. Beller

There are “encouraging” signs the high-end housing market is recovering in many U.S. markets, Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley told CNBC Tuesday.

It’s been the “best spring in five years,” he said. In 2012 “our orders are up significantly and continue to be up significantly. I’m optimistic right now.”

The average price of a Toll home is $575,000.

Yearley spoke the same day homebuilder Lennar reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations, a sign to some analysts that the housing market is recovering.

The Toll Brothers CEO said that’s true for some markets but not for others. He said that “25 percent of our communities have seen a price increase since Jan 1. That’s encouraging. There are places where we don’t have pricing power (but) we’re not dropping prices. We haven’t dropped prices in over a year.”

Read the rest here.

Adam Davidson

Like a lot of carless New Yorkers, I am generally confused by bursts of populist outrage over high gas prices. But I have always assumed that the anger is genuine — that hard-working Americans, who already spend a lot on gas, are thrown into turmoil when they have to spend even more. After all, 63 percent of Americans insist that these price increases have caused them some financial hardship.

But amid the recent mania over prices hitting $4 a gallon, I decided to figure out whether this fury is economically rational. So I took a look at data from the Census Bureau, which conducts a quarterly survey of American spending habits. During these last few years of historically high oil prices, Americans spent about $40 a week, or $2,000 a year, on gas. That’s around 5 percent of our overall spending. It’s less than half of what we spend on restaurants and entertainment.

High gas prices must be forcing Americans to cut back in other ways, right? That’s what the economists Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan and Paul Edelstein of the consulting firm IHS Global Insight wondered. They looked at personal spending habits during periods of high energy prices and discovered that “somewhat surprisingly, there is no significant decline in total expenditures on recreation,” which was one place they expected to find frugality. More specifically, rising gas prices had “no significant effect on the consumption of movies, bowling and billiard[s], casino gambling and only insignificant declines for recreational camps, sightseeing, spectator sports and spectator amusements.” Some people bought fewer lottery tickets, they told me.

In other words, Americans may protest loudly, but their economic behavior indicates a remarkable indifference to the price of oil.

Read the rest here.

The image of women as safer managers less likely to fritter away a bank’s finances is wrong – and politicians should take note, according to Bundesbank research.

Board changes at banks that result in a higher proportion of female executives “lead to a more risky conduct of business”, conclude the authors of an extensive study of German finance houses released by the country’s central bank.

Read the rest here.

Now is the time for the Muppets to respond to Goldman Sachs.

“John Taylor, of the Taylor-Rule, who has not been sheepish with his views towards the Fed openly questioned the Fed’s independence during a speech to the Joint Economic Committee today. During his testimony at the hearing on the ‘Sound Dollar Act of 2012’, Taylor noted: “The discretionary interventions of the Federal Reserve have been ratcheted up in such unprecedented ways in recent years that they raise fundamental questions about the future of monetary policy.” Perhaps more pointedly, especially given Bernanke’s speech today on the Fed’s extreme actions and given the hope for a constant interventionist role for the Fed to keep our economy market afloat “The fact that the Fed can, if it chooses, intervene without limit into any credit market – raises more uncertainty, and of course raises questions about why an independent agency of government should have such power.”

Former St.Louis Fed head William Poole added “The bottom line is that use of the credit resources of the U.S. government should be decided by Congress and not by an appointed body such as the Federal Reserve,”

Source

“Stuffed into a time capsule, this ancient university town’s local newspaper would give future historians a good idea of the pain that Europe’s first financial crisis of the century inflicted on Portugal.

David Dear | Photographer’s Choice | Getty Images

The Diario de Coimbra reported on its front page last Thursday how bankers had called in a loan on a local sports stadium. A piece on the back page asked whether a rise in suicide rates was linked to the deepening economic downturn.

A bank advertised the auction of 38 foreclosed properties. Other ads promoted some of the many gold and silver dealerships that have sprung up since the onset of the crisis for people forced to sell the family jewels.

Burdened with public debt that will approach 120 percent of national output this year, Portugal is suffering so badly that many in the market wonder whether, along with Greece, it can escape its debt trap without abandoning Europe’s single currency.

The economy is contracting sharply due to tax increases and spending cuts demanded last May by the International Monetary Fund  , the European Union and the European Central Bank in return for an emergency78 billion euro loan.

Output is projected to shrivel 3.3 percent this year, after a fall of 1.6 percent in 2011. With tax revenues withering, the government’s core budget deficit nearly tripled in January and February. Unemployment jumped to 14 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 as slumping domestic demand was compounded by a dearth of credit, forcing small and medium-sized enterprises to shed labour.

“The financial sector just isn’t injecting money into the economy,” said the president of Centro region’s chamber of commerce, Jose Couto. Coimbra, two hours north of Lisbon by train, is Centro’s largest city. “It’s got to the point where even viable export companies are having problems managing their cash flow.”

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” Many young people are choosing to live at home for a longer period of time instead of buying. Moreover, would-be homebuyers are settling into modern apartments and condominiums, further hindering a housing rally. Shiller says the shift toward renting and city living could mean “that we will never in our lifetime see a rebound in these prices in the suburbs.”A perpetually sluggish housing market, which Shiller believes has become “more and more political,” might push the country in a “Japan-like slump that will go on for years and years.”

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Hope he’s wrong….

“U.S. Supreme Court justices hinted they might strike down President Barack Obama’s health-care law as the court’s Republican appointees suggested Congress went too far by requiring Americans to obtain insurance.

On the second of three days of arguments in the historic case, justices’ questions indicated they might split 5-to-4, with the court’s five Republican appointees banding together to topple the law.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said the measure is unlike others the court upheld previously because it tells individuals they “must act.” Kennedy, who most often occupies the court’s ideological middle ground, said, “That changes the relationship of the government to the individual in the very fundamental way.”

The law would extend coverage to 32 million people and revamp an industry that accounts for 18 percent of the U.S. economy. The court hasn’t overturned a measure with such sweeping impact since the 1930s, when it voided parts ofFranklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the package of economic programs enacted in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression.

The court probably would rule in late June, months before the November election. A ruling against the measure would give ammunition to Obama’s Republican challengers, who have said the law should be repealed….”

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“Pfizer Inc. (PFE), the world’s largest drugmaker, gained the most in three months after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts said the company may go beyond the divestiture plans it has already announced.

Pfizer climbed 2.2 percent to $22.64 at 12:22 p.m., after earlier rising to $22.80. Through yesterday’s close, the shares had increased 6.6 percent since July 6, the day before Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Ian Read said the New York-based company was exploring strategic alternatives for its animal health and nutrition businesses.

Read, at a recent meeting with Goldman analysts, indicated he may be willing to further split up the company after selling or spinning off those two units, Jami Rubin, a Goldman analyst, wrote in a note to investors.

“We see these moves as first steps in a potential full- scale breakup,” akin to the split now taking place at Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Rubin wrote.

Abbott, based in Abbott Park, Illinois, said Oct. 19 it plans to divide into two publicly traded companies, with one focused on drug development and the other on products including medical devices, infant formula and generics.

Rubin said a further breakup would be dependent on Pfizer’s success in getting new, brand-name drugs approved by U.S. regulators. “If the pipeline is successful and drives meaningful top-line growth, management will want to separate the businesses so investors can better value the pharma business,” Rubin said in her note. She said that a breakup could happen by 2015…”

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RvqvXhXwMbw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aJHrfSjcJoY

A JetBlue captain reportedly went berserk on a flight from JFK to Las Vegas today and was kicked out of the flight deck while the plane made an emergency landing.

JetBlue Flight 191 diverted to Amarillo, Texas after the captain was ejected from the cockpit, said a Federal Aviation Administion statement.

An Amarillo TV station quoted a passenger as saying the pilot “began running up and down the aisles screaming.”

The pilot banged on the cockpit door but was not allowed to get back in, the passenger said.

The pilot’s actions prompted a panicked flight attendant to get on the intercom and urge passengers to restrain him.

Several passengers proceeded to tackle the pilot to the floor and hold him down until the plane landed, according to the station.

The FAA statement confirmed the pilot was subdued by passengers.

JetBlue said the captain had a “medical situation” and was taken to an Amarillo hospital.

He was replaced on the flight deck by another off-duty captain who happened to be on the plane, the airline said.

The flight has 135 passengers and five crew members aboard when it departed JFK, the statement said.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/jetblue_captain_goes_berserk_on_A4AFpyyOXCuUvryqgykKwI#ixzz1qLSQv8t0

The broad market made a modest move to an incrementally improved multi-year high, but listless action has left stocks to remain near the neutral line as they chop along with little direction.

Tech stocks are up a solid 0.4% today, but the largest sector by market cap has been unable to inspire meaningful interest in the rest of the market. Although Tech has helped the Nasdaq move narrowly higher, both the Dow and S&P 500 have been bouncing along the neutral line for the better part of the day.

Data has been relatively underwhelming in that the latest Consumer Confidence Index fell on the order of what had been widely expected. Germany’s latest reading on consumer confidence also turned lower from the prior month.

Energy stocks have been a drag on trade. The sector has drifted down to a 0.7% loss, although oil prices have generally oscillated along the flat line for the second straight session. Oil was last quoted with a fractional loss at $106.95 per barrel.

Despite the generally quiet tone of trade, the Volatility Index is up more than 5% today. It dropped sharply during the stock market’s rally in the prior session.

The lack of action among stocks has been mirrored by currencies, such that the dollar has spent its day mired near the neutral line. Neither the euro, sterling pound, nor the Japanese yen have attempted any sort of dramatic move. DJ30 +2.73 NASDAQ +7.47 SP500 +0.63 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 1130/825 mln/1325 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 1440/290 mln/1450

Market Update

via dailymail.co.uk 

It was the kind of crime that strikes terror into the hearts of  parents everywhere.

A bright young couple were carjacked after a Saturday night date and murdered in the most brutal way imaginable.

Christopher Newsom, 23, was tied up and raped, shot in the back of the head and then dragged to a railway track and set on fire.

His girlfriend, 21-year-old University of Tennessee student Channon Christian’s fate was even more horrific.

Her death came only after hours of torture, during which time she was raped and savaged with a broken chair leg.

She was beaten in the head and a household bleach was poured down her throat and over her bleeding and battered genital area in an attempt by her attackers to cover any evidence of rape – all while she was still alive.

Torture: Channon Christian was forced to watch the attackers rape and kill her boyfriend Christopher Newsom before she was murdered

Then she was ‘hog-tied’ with curtains and a strip of bedding and a plastic bag was wrapped over her face.

Her body was stashed inside five bigger rubbish liners and dumped in a bin, where, according to the autopsy report, she slowly suffocated to death.

On Monday, the alleged ringleader of the gang accused of the killings goes on trial in Knoxville, Tennessee.

One of the gang has already been convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

But, even though the killings happened in January, 2007, they have attracted very little national and international coverage.

That’s because they do not fit into the conventional contours of an attack in America’s Deep South, where a shameful history of racial intolerance has meant assaults by whites on blacks have historically been regarded in the context of race.

In this case, the races were reversed: the victims were white and the four men and one woman charged in connection with the murders are black.

Ironically, the case has now generated more publicity surrounding the furore over whether or not political correctness was behind the US media’s decision to largely ignore the story than it did for the murders themselves.

Lemaricus Davidson, centre, goes on trial in Tennessee over the murders this week. Letalvis Cobbins, top right, has been jailed for life. Eric Boyd, Vanessa Coleman and George Thomas will be tried after Davidson

Life: Letalvis ‘Rome’ Cobbins was found guilty of multiple counts of first degree murder. He was also convicted of rape, kidnapping and robbery

Defence lawyers were quick to say that some of the accused dated white women and even prosecutors denied any racial overtones.

‘There is absolutely no proof of a hate crime,’ said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney Randy Nichols.

‘It was a terrible crime, a horrendous crime, but race was not a motive. We know from our investigation that the people charged in this case were friends with white people, socialised with white people, dated white people.

‘So not only is there no evidence of any racial animus, there’s evidence to the contrary,’ he added.

But that hasn’t stopped conservative critics from blaming liberal bias in the US mainstream media for failing to cover the attacks.

Columnist and right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin weighed in, saying: ‘This case – an attractive white couple murdered by five black thugs –doesn’t fit any political agenda.

‘It’s not a useful crime. Reverse the races and just imagine how the national media would cover the story of a young black couple murdered by five white assailants.’

Country music singer Charlie Daniels pointed out the media frenzy that came after a black woman accused three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of raping her.

The players were later cleared after their accuser changed her story.

But Daniels said on his website: ‘If this had been white on black crime, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and their ilk would have descended on Knoxville like a swarm of angry bees.’

Victims: Channon christian, 21, and boyfriend Christopher Newsom, 23, were carjacked and murdered after a Saturday night date in Tennessee in 2007

Much of the criticism over the scant coverage of the murders has been on the internet through blogs and websites.

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds said the American media has a ‘template’ for covering white-on-black crime but not the reverse.

‘I think it would have gotten a lot of national play faster if it had been a black couple kidnapped and killed by five white people,’ he told the local paper in Knoxville.

White supremacists have jumped onto the bandwagon, seeking to twist the facts for their own racist agenda.

They spread false details about the murders, claiming the victims were sexually dismembered and that Channon was sexually tortured for days, neither of which is true.

‘The DA’s office is outraged they have tried to abuse the victims by using the death of loved ones for racist purposes,’ John Gill said.

‘The things that have been seized on by these hate groups are things that never happened.’

‘There are people out there that just want to make something even worse than what it already is,’ Channon’s father, Gary Christian, said in a recent interview.

But Chris’s father, Hugh, told a local TV station: ‘Would they have done that to a black couple? I don’t think so.’

‘With all the things they did to them, what else could you call it but hate?’ his wife, Mary, said.

‘I think any kind of crime like that’s a hate crime. Was it racial? No, I don’t think so’, Mr Christian added.

Outrage: Campaigners believe the murders haven’t received extensive media coverage because of race issues

Knox County Sheriff Jimmy Jones said: ‘I don’t believe if they’d been Mexican, Chinese or Japanese it would have mattered. I believe these  people were evil.

‘I believe it was a plan. These two kids just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

According to court testimony, Chris, a talented carpenter and former high school baseball player, and college senior Channon had gone to a friend’s home after a date at a local restaurant when they were held up at gunpoint and carjacked on January 6, 2007.

They were forced to drive to an old clapboard house in one of Knoxville’s toughest neighbourhoods, where their captors, some of them ex-convicts, subjected them to the nightmare ordeal.

Wearing glasses and dressed smartly in trousers, a collared shirt and jumper, Lemaricus Davidson, 28, looked more like a college student than an accused killer during pre-trial hearings.

The seven women and five man jury includes just one black juror. If convicted, Davidson could face the death penalty.

In a separate trial last month, Davidson’s brother, Letalvis Cobbins, 27, was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of multiple counts of first degree murder. He was also convicted of rape, kidnapping and robbery.

George Thomas, 27, and Cobbins’ former girlfriend, Vannessa Coleman, 21, will be tried after Davidson.

A fifth defendant, Eric Boyd, 37, is serving an 18-year prison sentence after being convicted of being an accessory to a fatal carjacking.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220695/Is-political-correctness-blame-lack-coverage-horrific-black-white-killings-Americas-Deep-South-Tennessee-Channon-Christian-Christopher-Newsom-carjack.html#ixzz1qKYKvvzB

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