President Obama’s Secretary Paid Higher Tax Rate Than He Did

President Obama today released his 2011 federal income tax, with he and his wife reporting an adjusted gross income of $789,674. The Obamas paid $162,074 in total tax – an effective federal income tax rate of 20.5%. The Obamas also reported donating approximately 22% of their income to charity — $172,130.

President Obama has been making a big political push for the “Buffett Rule,” which would require millionaires to pay a minimum of 30% of their income in taxes. To illustrate the point, the president has pointed out that billionaire investor Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than does his secretary.

President Obama’s secretary, Anita Decker Breckenridge, makes $95,000 a year. White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage tells ABC News that Breckenridge “pays a slightly higher rate this year on her substantially lower income, which is exactly why we need to reform our tax code and ask the wealthiest to pay their fair share. ”

It should be noted that president would not be impacted by the Buffett Rule, though he would see his taxes go up if the so-called Bush tax cuts on higher income wage-earners were allowed to expire, as the president says he wants.

-Jake Tapper

Source

Comments »

I see no set of factors, in combination, that would take global production of crude oil higher in 2012, or next year, or thereafter.

Comments »

Posted by Carol Rose, On Liberty  April 12, 2012 05:00 PM

No evidence was presented in court directly linking him to a terrorist group. He never hatched a plot – indeed, he objected when a friend (who went on to become a government informer and has never been charged with anything) proposed plans to stage violent attacks within the United States. He never had a weapon. He did lie to the FBI. And he has just been sentenced by US District Court Judge George O’Toole to 17.5 years in a supermax prison on various material support to terrorism charges.

Over 220 of Mehanna’s supporters in an overflow room watched on a screen as prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty in his pre-sentencing remarks stressed the “gravity” of Mehanna’s offenses. Over a decade ago, he claimed, “this defendant began to radicalize” and to radicalize others to “visit violence” on Americans. Although he failed in his efforts to find a terrorist training camp when he visited Yemen in 2004, he found his niche, the prosecutor stated, serving as the “media wing” of al Qaeda, translating documents, and sharing videos.

“The impact of the harms created through that work is huge,” Chakravarty asserted.  “We don’t know how many have been radicalized…people around the world are consuming his work…The damage he has done will linger.”

The prosecutor went on at length about Mehanna’s “reticence to assist the government”  – that is, become an informant. He maintained that nothing is wrong with soliciting cooperation if it is necessary to keep the country safe.

Defense attorney Jay Carney countered that Tarek Mehanna was being punished for activity protected by the First Amendment, for translating documents freely available in Arabic on the Internet and for his refusal to be an informant. The government, Carney said, does not want people to be able to read the views that other people hold.  “This case goes further than any other in attacking speech protected by the First Amendment,” and involved important constitutional issues at every turn.

The attorney asked the judge to focus on “what the defendant did and did not do” – he went to Yemen for one week eight years ago. He refused to go to Iraq with the friend whom the government later enlisted as an informer. He was under close FBI scrutiny for more than eight years – if he was so dangerous, why did the FBI wait so long to arrest him?

When Tarek Mehanna personally addressed the court he described the moment when he was approached by two federal agents who said he could do things the easy way or the hard way: if he chose the easy way, he would never see the inside of a cell.

Mehanna then eloquently talked about the world view he adopted during his childhood when he avidly read Batman comics and then books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and began to see the world in terms of the oppressor and the oppressed. He talked of learning about the struggles against slavery and for civil rights, and how impressed he was by Malcolm X and his transformation from a petty criminal to a devout Muslim.  It was this, he said, that made him look more deeply into Islam and become increasingly devout.

And then he began to look to what was happening to Muslims around the world. He was horrified by the suffering caused by the sanctions on Iraq and Secretary of State Albright’s comment that the death of half a million children because of the sanctions was “worth it.” Deeply angered by the “shock and awe” US invasion, he described how affected he was by atrocities committed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In his view, what the government had really put on trial was his belief that Muslims in other countries had the right to defend their own land from foreign invaders, including Americans. He thinks “one day America will change. One day people will look back with horror at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed by American soldiers.” Meanwhile, he is the one who will go to prison as a “terrorist.”

The Mehanna case ruling and sentencing suggest that Muslims do not have the right to protected speech, and that “venting” can cost them the long years in prison spared the Hutaree militia.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

The case for the Buffett tax keeps eroding. When President Obama announced the idea, he said it would help “stabilize our debt and deficits over the next decade.” Then came the inconvenient revelation that the new 30% millionaire’s tax would raise only $46.7 billion over 10 years, and would leave about 99.5% of the deficit intact in 2013. It was a far cry from “stabilizing the debt.”

Now we learn that the Buffett tax the Senate is expected to vote on early next week will make the deficit worse. That’s because both Mr. Obama and Senate Democrats have made it clear that their new “fairness” tax is to offset the revenue loss from another provision related to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

That measure would exempt more than 20 million middle class Americans with incomes as low as $80,000 a year from getting nailed by the AMT. This year’s Obama budget clearly describes their intent: “The Buffett Rule should replace the Alternative Minimum Tax, which now burdens middle-class Americans rather than stopping the richest Americans from paying too little as was originally intended.”

The Joint Tax Committee—the official scoring referee on tax bills—calculates that the combination of AMT repeal for the middle class and the Buffett tax would add $793.3 billion to the debt over the next decade. As Mr. Obama has said, “This isn’t politics, this is math.”

The Buffett Tax Loss

It turns out this Obama proposal will cost federal revenue.

The Buffett tax is losing any serious rationale by the day. Mr. Obama’s position now is that we need a new fairness tax, because the old AMT fairness tax that was targeted at millionaires and billionaires isn’t raising much money from the Warren Buffetts of the world. Instead it’s siphoning income out of more and more nonmillionaires. So they argue it’s time for a new Buffett rule, that is almost identical to the old Buffett rule, and no doubt in time will have the same unintended consequences.

The Buffett rule itself may die, but the name will live on as a metaphor for pointless public policy.

Source

Comments »

Having a tattoo has lost its original meaning. Having a tattoo now has no meaning. Having a tattoo means that you have a tattoo.

While there is no longer any compelling reason to get a tattoo, there are several reasons not to:

Comments »

Jeremy Warner

Europe can’t accept that the economics of the single currency condemn it to failure.

Comments »

If you can fight your way through the dirt storms of Madelia, Minnesota, you may be able to find the future of renewable energy

By Maggie Koerth-Baker

Smithsonian.com, April 06, 2012

In the middle of the Minnesota prairie sits Madelia, a town of a little more than 2300 people that is surrounded on all sides by miles upon miles of brown soil, tilled into neat rows. If you flew there in an airplane, Madelia would look like a button, sewn into the middle of a patchwork quilt—each farm divided into fields shaped like squares and circles, bordered by pale yellow gravel roads and by the narrow strips of bright green grass that grow alongside creeks and drainage ditches.

When the residents of a town such as Madelia think about the future of energy, the solutions they come up with are unsurprisingly centered on the land and what it can grow. In Madelia, however, those solutions look a little different from what you might expect. When Madelians imagine the future of energy, they don’t see prairie dotted with big ethanol refineries, where corn grown by hundreds of farmers is processed into fuel that will be sold all around the United States. Instead, they’re thinking about something much more local. Madelia is a small town with a big plan to produce fuel made from local materials for local markets. From the native grasses that easily grow in prairie soil to leftover beaks and pieces from a nearby chicken canning factory, anything that can grow within a 25-mile radius of town is fair game.

Why would a generally conservative town, populated by a lot of generally risk-averse farm families, want to stake a decent amount of time and money on the cutting edge of alternative energy? When I traveled to Madelia, I ran headlong into the reason before I’d even reached the town itself. My moment of enlightenment happened a few miles outside the city limits, on the narrow blacktop of Highway 60, when I came very close to driving my car into a ditch.

The wind had started the day full of bluster, and it was positively furious by the afternoon, while the open, empty fields that flanked the highway offered nothing to slow the wind down. This alone wouldn’t have been a big problem. I grew up in Kansas, and I know how to steer a car through a windstorm. The issue was what I could see ahead of me—or, rather, what I couldn’t see. Out of nowhere, a gray cloud rose up to hover over the highway, swallowing semi-trucks and digesting them into sets of disembodied tail lights. I had barely enough time to realize I wasn’t looking at fog before I plunged into the thick of it.

The sun disappeared. Gravel pinged against the car windows. I couldn’t see anything that wasn’t artificially lit. In a panic, I turned on my headlamps just as I drove out the other side of the gritty haze, back into a normal, windy spring day. The “cloud” was made of dirt, and a mile or so up the road, another gray ribbon of it stretched across the horizon. I went through three or four of these dust clouds before I reached the exit for Madelia.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

Copper prices sank to their lowest level in three months as investors shed economically sensitive assets on weaker-than-expected growth in China and concerns about Spain’s debt load.

Comments »

The graph below shows changes in Envisat Northern Hemisphere sea level made this week. Previously, sea level was decreasing -0.241 mm/year, and now it is increasing by 2.37 mm/year. The most recent data magically went from lowest on record – to highest on record.

Note that the magnitude of the seasonal swings has greatly increased, and the adjustments are clearly non-linear. There is a sharp break in slope after the year 2009.

The red image was dated November 10, 2011 and the blue image is dated today. Both were taken from the same link below. The data has been overwritten in place.

MSL_Serie_EN_North_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png (1024×680)

Individual graphs are below.

November 10, 2011 version below. No longer available on their web site. It showed the record La Nina of 2010-2011, and the transfer of seawater to soil moisture due to heavy rain.

MSL_Serie_EN_North_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png

Below is the April, 2012 version of the same graph

MSL_Serie_EN_North_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png

 

SOURCE

Comments »

“I’ve lost my a–” in wind power. This came moments after he said, “The jobs are in the oil and gas industry in the United States” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Comments »

It has been said many times in recent months that we aren’t Greece. Now it will start to be said that we aren’t Spain. Both propositions are certainly true. (For one thing, Spain elected its socialist government in 2004, thus getting a head start on us.) But if we compare America’s debt crisis to Europe’s as a whole, how do we stack up?

The Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee did the math and produced this graphic, which shows that the U.S. is now deeper in debt than the entire Eurozone, plus the United Kingdom. (The Democrats on the committee are too busy dodging their legal obligation to come up with a budget to produce anything.):

Read the rest here.

Comments »

LMFAO…Holy cow, this guy was almost President…

————————————————————————————–

On March 30th, Current TV terminated its relationship with outspoken liberal anchor Keith Olbermann. The Daily Caller has exclusively obtained many of the emails between Olbermann and network founder Al Gore in the months leading up to the split. 

They are reprinted here for the first time, in their entirety, and without comment. 

FROM: Keith Olbermann
TO: Al Gore
DATE: June 18, 2011

Dear Albert,

“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”

Those words come from Samuel Clemens, perhaps better known to you as literary colossus Mark Twain.

I need not tell you, Al, that I am that scarce man who refuses to remain silent when he sees injustice, that patriot who stands tall and strong and brave, even when hated and scorned. And I do see injustice – even here at Current TV.

I tried to remedy my current morass without coming to you, Al, but with no remedy forthcoming, I feel compelled to bring to your attention my roadblock, which you shall note is something far more severe than a mere speed bump.

In the new studio for my show, I find no golden scepter despite my explicit request to Joel Hyatt for one. This will be an indispensable part of my new show and I see no reason why I have to justify its expense.

Also, the Current proletariat seem to have no inhibitions about walking up to me and freely engaging me in conversation, as if I have time for their verbal meanderings. For all their faults, my employers at MSNBC made it explicitly clear that if someone wanted to communicate with me, they could do so — but only through letters written in calligraphy that were deposited in a receptacle outside my office between 2:30 a.m. and 3:00 a.m.

Why has this same policy not yet been communicated at Current?

In a letter written in his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama at a time of great tumult, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote prophetically: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Will you fix my injustices, Al?

Yours Truly,

Keith Theodore Olbermann
Cornell University, Class of 1979

p.s. We also have to replace stinky my car driver — pronto!!!

FROM: Al Gore
TO: Keith Olbermann
DATE: June 22, 2011

Hello Keith,

When do you think they will commodify the rain? Someday they will try and turn it to poison. You came onboard to this endeavor full of promise. Has that good tide soured?

You are a part of me. We are all one. My life force drives Current. I am its noble blood.

I intend to be the Defender of Nature. Will you join me? Gold from streams untapped is all the more sweet. Can you taste it on your tongue?

I am standing in an almond now. It stands inside me. My scepter is made from almond wood and laced with sage. It is powerful. Soon I will command the oceans. The fish listen already.

We are all one. Even Stinky.

Mahalo,

A.G.

Comments »

Back on February 12th, I blogged ‘What a Market Top Looks Like‘. I was not telling investors to sell everything. If I had told you to sell everything, I would have been wrong. The markets were awash with momentum. But, a few months later, my concerns outlined remain.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

via Bespoke

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 at 05:18PM

Comments »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.com

Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.

H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.

“These American heroes – the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there – are simply stating their concern over NASA’s extreme advocacy for an unproven theory,” said Leighton Steward. “There’s a concern that if it turns out that CO2 is not a major cause of climate change, NASA will have put the reputation of NASA, NASA’s current and former employees, and even the very reputation of science itself at risk of public ridicule and distrust.”

Select excerpts from the letter:

• “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
• “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
• “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”

The full text of the letter:

March 28, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

Proving they’ve learned nothing from lessons of the past, some House Republicans are pushing to bring back the wide-scale use of earmarks to Congress. These pigs in elephants’ clothing want to end a three-year moratorium on earmarks and start trading pork projects for votes in order to pass legislation, even though their big spending, earmarking ways during the George W. Bush era cost them dozens of elections.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

via Slashdot

Hugh Pickens writes “While Apple generates more than $575 in profit for every iOS device, and according to estimates in 2007 Apple earned more than $800 on every iPhone sold through ATT, Horace Dediu reports that Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, earning only $1.70 per year, per Android device — explaining how Apple is sucking up two thirds of the profit in the mobile phone business.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

April 5th, 2012 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

This is the first of what I hope will be monthly surface temperature updates for the contiguous U.S., based upon 280 International Surface Hourly (ISH) stations which have reasonably complete temperature records since 1973.

Following up on my previous post showing that ISH station warming trends during 1973-2011 were a function of population density, I have quantified the average temperature trend increase with population density (2000 population data) over the U.S, then applied a linear trend correction to each of the stations based upon that relationship.

A few of the findings:

1) Essentially all of the +0.20 deg. C/decade average warming trend over the U.S. in the last 40 years computed from the CRUTem3 dataset (which the IPCC relies upon for its official global warming pronouncements) evaporates after population adjustment (no claim is made for countries other than the U.S.)

2) Even without any adjustments, the ISH data have a 20% lower warming trend than the CRUTem3 data, a curious result since the CRUTem3 dataset is supposedly adjusted for urban heat island effects.

3) The only calendar month with obvious long-term warming is January, due to unusually cold U.S. winters during the 1970s.

4) Last month (March, 2012) is the second warmest monthly temperature anomaly in the 40 year record, and easily the warmest March, even after population adjustment.

For the time being, I’ve decided to post the results for comment rather than attempt to get the work published, which would be a much bigger effort. My hope is that the new dataset will stimulate debate in the climate research community over the existence of residual urban heat island (UHI) effects causing a spurious warming component in commonly used temperature datasets.

Read the rest here.

Comments »

Texas Water-Pollution Suit Dropped; Third Recent Setback on Drilling for Agency

Comments »

Comments »