Monday, August 22, 2011

WTF?



How does the Republican Party continue to win elections? The Associated Press is reporting that GOP legislators are opposing the extension of a payroll tax cut that will expire on Jan. 1. The clear, unavoidable message: Americans workers should pay more taxes, while the rich should pay less.
That's not a joke, and it's not an Onion headline. The very same Republicans who have fought tooth-and-nail to keep George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy from expiring are now in favor of doing away with a tax cut that will primarily hit wage-earners -- people who actually have to work for a living, people who are struggling to pay their mortgages and wincing every time they fill up their gas tank.
There's not even any attempt to hide the hypocrisy.

"It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.
The theoretical basis for this argument, such as it is, is based on the assumption that keeping taxes low on the "job-creators" -- the rich, and corporations -- will spur investment and hiring. The empirical evidence for this theory has always been slim -- some of the strongest economic growth rates of the last century in the United States occurred when taxes on the wealthy were at their highest rates -- but it's particularly absurd right now, after two years in which corporate profits have been high, taxes have been low, and employment growth has been paltry.
On the other hand, there's little doubt that raising taxes on American workers during a slow economy will further depress consumer demand -- which is exactly the wrong way to spur economic growth. It's so wrong, in fact, that the suspicion that such tactics are being excuted on purpose is spreading beyond the usual liberal suspects.

[Source]

Wow.  Just.  Wow.  I'm having a hard time with this.  All I have to say is, if Obama doesn't fight this BS  tooth and nail...




Yall Got The Game Twisted

A man claims he was assaulted after trying to sell marijuana to former Portland Trail Blazer Zach Randolph at his home in West Linn Sunday.
James Beasley, 26, told KGW that he went to Randolph's home to sell marijuana and when there was a disagreement over price, so several men beat him up and hit him with a pool stick.
After Beasley told the same story to detectives from the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office, they searched Randolph's home around 12:30 Sunday morning. Clackamas County Sheriff's Sgt. James Rhodes said evidence taken from the home backs up the victim's allegations.
 [Source]


How you selling weed and go to the police cuz you get beat up?  What type of Hustler you 'sposed to be?  This behavior isn't any where in my edition of The Code.

 


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Bon Voyage!!!

 Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.
Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."
"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."

The Seasteading Institute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.
Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college.
Another Silicon Valley titan, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in June that he would be funding the "Clock of the Long Now." The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas.

[Source]




At This Point It's Cliche

Indiana State Rep. Phillip "Phil" Hinkle, a Republican who recently voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, had quite a Saturday evening this past weekend in the company of an 18-year-old young man named "Kameryn," to whom Hinkle allegedly showed his penis and then "grabbed in the rear." Isn't life wonderful?

[Source]


Not much to say here.  The more Anti Gay someone is, the more likely that someone has a skeleton, or three hiding in their closest.  The real question is when will the homophobes who keep voting for these schmucks figure that out.


Monday, August 15, 2011

Amen

Billionaire Warren Buffett urged U.S. lawmakers to raise taxes on the country's super-rich to help cut the budget deficit, saying such a move will not hurt investments.
"My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It's time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice," The 80-year-old "Oracle of Omaha" wrote in an opinion article in The New York Times.
Buffett, one of the world's richest men and chairman of conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway Inc , said his federal tax bill last year was $6,938,744.
"That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income - and that's actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent," he said.

[Source]

For the life of me, I cannot understand the argument against raising taxes on the wealthy.  Especially when you have guys like Buffet, guys like Bill Gates, saying, "we can afford it."  Why should they, who make so much more than everyone else, pay so much less on a percentage basis than everyone else?   That's before you get into the corporate tax rate.  For nearly a decade we've been told low taxes will make the economy roar to life, and for nearly a decade this has not happened, unless of course you were rich already. 




Friday, August 12, 2011

Really? 50 Cents?

A Bronx teen was charged Thursday with killing a college student who was trying to protect his little brother in a fight over 50 cents.
Cops said Dasheem Campbell was among a group of young men who tried to rob 16-year-old Steven Hernandez near an Allerton deli on Monday night.
Steven and Willmer Hernandez, 20, were at the store to buy food for a planned trip on Wednesday to Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla. The ring of punks demanded 50 cents from Steven and Willmer intervened.
The older brother, who worked at Red Lobster and attended Borough of Manhattan Community College, was shot three times in the midsection just after 11 p.m. Emergency workers took him from Mace Ave. to Jacobi Medical Center where he died.
Campbell, 19, lives in the Pelham Parkway Houses - just six blocks away from the Hernandez brothers. He was charged with murder.
Relatives of the victim and the suspect were grappling with the murder and the arrest.
Through the door at the suspect's apartment,
A man who wouldn't identify himself said through the door of Campbell's apartment: "No words. No words. It's too hard on his mother's heart."
A police source said Campbell has a sealed juvenile record and more recent arrests for grand larceny and robbery.
"I know his family. They all work and go to school. He's got a sister in college," said Campbell's neighbor Mildred Ramos, 60. "I've never seen him in trouble. I'm surprised he would do a bad thing."
Meanwhile, members of the victim's family were making funeral arrangements.
"I just hope he gets what he deserves," Hernandez's friend, Jasmin Garcia, 22, said of the suspect. "But nothing is going to bring Will back."


Shocking.  You can find 50 cents laying on the street.  50 cents is nothing to argue about, let alone try and steal or kill over.  For the price of 50 cents, two men lost their lives, both the victim and the killer. 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

The Wealth Gap

the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth (assets minus debts) in 2009, the typical Hispanic household had $6,325 in wealth and the typical white household had $113,149.
Moreover, about a third of black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative net worth in 2009, compared with 15% of white households. In 2005, the comparable shares had been 29% for blacks, 23% for Hispanics and 11% for whites.

[Source]

You may have noticed my output has slowed up.  The reason for this is simple enough, the things I find worthy of publishing are down right depressing.  I don't much care if Kanye and Jay Z are fighting over their tours production values or not.  I'm not interested in who is the hottest Kardashian.  What I find interesting are things like the above.