One more time it's proven true: "The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV) NEW YORK -- A broad coalition of interests from oil companies, defense manufacturers and well-connected lobbying firms to neoconservative scholars and Harvard Business School professors has worked in recent years to advance a rapprochement with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and take advantage of business opportunities in the country, even in the face of the longtime international pariah's brutal repression of his people and his legendary belligerence. |
Yet Libya's opposition leaders say that such efforts have harmed the interests of the North African country by helping enrich Gaddafi's family and close allies at the expense of the majority of Libyans, serving only to prolong Gaddafi's brutal reign. They also blame U.S. policy for prioritizing national security interests over issues of reform and human rights, the lack of which helped fuel the country's ongoing violent upheaval. |
Check out this amazing and tragic mapping of known Iraqi deaths. URL: www.guardian.co.uk
A poem by Yehuda Amichai, quoted from Dan Clendennin's
"Journey With Jesus" essay of 18 October 2010
Bravo to Gov. Culver and legislature. I hope Iowans can hang onto this as the political season heats up. Iowa’s state debt: 2nd lowest in the nation |
Iowa’s state debt is the second lowest, per capita, in the nation according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Services.
State debt per person: $73.
Gov. Chet Culver has been repeatedly criticized for his $875 million I-JOBS program, which opponents have said burdens future generations with debt.
Democrats have long said that the program will enable the state to complete long-term and highly needed infrastructure — such as flood mitigation projects – at historically low interest rates. The debt is being repaid by gambling revenue.
Today’s report help substantiate that Iowa remains among the lowest in debt.
“Even after bonding for desperately needed infrastructure investments through I-JOBS, we maintain one of the lowest debts among states – a testament to our very careful and cautious budgeting and spending practices in this state,” Culver said in a statement.
Only Nebraska’s debt per person is lower than Iowa’s, at $15, according to today’s report. Connecticut has the highest debt per capita at $4,859.
Read more at blogs.desmoinesregister.com |
Why extending unemployment insurance is the right thing to do
There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.
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But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible? |
right now the economy isn’t booming — again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work — but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.
Wait: there’s more. One main reason there aren’t enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly |
| But won’t extending unemployment benefits worsen the budget deficit? Yes, slightly — but as I and others have been arguing at length, penny-pinching in the midst of a severely depressed economy is no way to deal with our long-run budget problems. And penny-pinching at the expense of the unemployed is cruel as well as misguidedRead more at www.nytimes.com |
AZ law enforcement, coroners, have no such cases. When defending her highly criticized immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) often lists the myriad problems she says undocumented immigrants bring to her state. In an interview on Fox News last week, for example, she claimed: "We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings ..." |
"Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert, either buried or just lying out there, that have been beheaded," she said. |
The Arizona Guardian followed up, asking the state's county coroners -- who would examine any body connected with a crime -- if they'd seen the headless bodies from the desert . |
"jurors are often unaware that companies are able to deduct those punitive damages in calculating their federal income taxes, saving them millions of dollars and undermining the original goal of the damages: to punish reprehensible corporate behavior."
WHEN corporations like Exxon, State Farm and Phillip Morris lose tort cases, juries occasionally award, in addition to compensation for the plaintiff’s injuries, extensive punitive damages.
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But jurors are often unaware that companies are able to deduct those punitive damages in calculating their federal income taxes, saving them millions of dollars and undermining the original goal of the damages: to punish reprehensible corporate behavior. |
CBO: middle fifth rec'd tax cuts of $760; upper fifth, $41,077. - Those in the middle fifth received tax cuts averaging $760, which raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 2.4 percent.
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- The top 1 percent of households received tax cuts averaging $41,077, which raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 5.0 percent.
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- Within the top 1 percent, those with incomes exceeding $1 million received tax cuts averaging $114,000, which raised their after-tax incomes by an average of 5.7 percent.
Read more at www.cbpp.org |
CBO: "greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928"
Income Gaps Between Very Rich and Everyone Else More Than Tripled In Last Three Decades, New Data Show
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The gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007 (the period for which these data are available), according to data the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued last week. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928. |
- In 2007, the share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit its highest level (17.1 percent) since 1979, while the share going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level during this period (14.1 percent).
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- Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth (see Figure 1).
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- If all groups’ after-tax incomes had grown at the same percentage rate over the 1979-2007 period, middle-income households would have received an additional $13,042 in 2007 and families in the bottom fifth would have received an additional $6,010.
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- In 2007, the average household in the top 1 percent had an income of $1.3 million, up $88,800 just from the prior year; this $88,800 gain is well above the total 2007 income of the average middle-income household ($55,300). [1]
Read more at www.cbpp.org |
"some counties where as many as 80% of blacks who had qualified to serve were excluded." Blacks Regularly Excluded From Southern Juries |
All-white juries in majority black counties |
(Newser)
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In the Deep South, DAs strike black college graduates from juries for "low intelligence," black 28-year-olds for being "too young," and black 43-year-olds for being "too old." A new study by the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative finds that potential black jurors are routinely excluded from juries in that region—pointing to one case in which a black defendant's "jury of his peers" was all white...in a 55% black Alabama county. The study, which looked at eight Southern states, found some counties where as many as 80% of blacks who had qualified to serve were excluded.
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While excluding people from juries on the basis of race is illegal, prosecutors can name any other reason they want for dismissing a juror—a privilege that is abused in "widespread discrimination" in the selection of Southern juries, the report claims. "It is an area of the law where there has been almost no enforcement," an Equal Justice Initiative spokesman told NPR. "The culture has tolerated this all-white jury, white prosecutor, white judge phenomenon, because that's what people have seen for decades."
Read more at www.newser.com |
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