Wake Up
According to Bloomberg News, Mitt Romney is taking advantage of a tax loophole to pass off a fortune to his children without paying taxes on it. According to administration figures, this loophole costs the government $1 billion over a ten-year budget window ….
For more on this story, visit: Tax Loophole Benefiting Romney’s Estate Costs U.S. $1 Billion Over Ten Years | ThinkProgress.
SAN FRANCISCO — The University of California has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by demonstrators who were pepper-sprayed during an Occupy protest at UC Davis last fall, according to a preliminary settlement filed Wednesday.
Under the proposed settlement, UC would pay $30,000 to each of 21 plaintiffs named in the complaint and an additional $250,000 for their attorneys to split.
“It was felt that the proposed settlement was in the best interest of the university,” said UC spokesman Steve Montiel.
For more on this story, visit: UC agrees to pay $1 million to settle UC Davis pepper-spray lawsuit – Vallejo Times Herald.
ed: I’ve often thought that there are too many products with “Made in China” stickers on them. I think one reason China’s economy is so good is that they make most of our stuff. Clothes we buy at most clothing stores, toys at most toy stores, at least the big box stores, just about everything at Michael’s craft store is made in China, as is most everthing in Walmart and Target. Is America soon going to be Made in China? Amy Goodman has her own take on this below ….
By Amy Goodman
Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.
A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.
For more on this story, visit: Amy Goodman: Romney Has a Jobs Plan … for China – Truthdig.
By Jeffrey Goldberg
… Much of the rioting could be attributed to the exploitation of religious sentiment by radicals affiliated with Salafism, the extreme, puritanical, anti-Western and anti-Semitic strain of political Islam from which al-Qaeda draws much of its ideology. Salafists are competing with secularists and more moderate Islamists for power (only Salafists could make the Muslim Brotherhood appear moderate), and so they look for any opportunity to highlight their anti- American bona fides. This video, like the Danish cartoons mocking Muhammad that set off protests in 2005, was merely an excuse.
So why won’t the administration acknowledge this fact? Because that would mean acknowledging that the killing of Osama bin Laden and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq didn’t bring to an end the unhappy U.S. entanglements in the Middle East. It would mean acknowledging that Obama hasn’t charmed radical Islam into submission, and that American counterterrorism policies, especially drone strikes, sometimes cause as many problems as they solve. It would mean acknowledging that the aftermath of the Arab Spring is messy and ambiguous, and that anti-American resentment in the Muslim world is often a byproduct of deeper dysfunctions of culture, religion and politics. We are sometimes vain enough to believe that hatred of the sort we see on the streets of Cairo, Karachi and Tunis is wholly about us. …
For more on this story, visit: ‘Muslim Rage’ Has Little To Do With Dumb Video – Bloomberg.
The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.
“The problem is that Romney doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car. … The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.”
Imagine you’re Romney, the Republican presidential nominee: For the past year you’ve been unable to grab a clear lead in the polls against an incompetent who has been unable to get unemployment below 8 percent or reach a reasonable debt- reduction deal with Congress. Which would you prefer to believe? That you’re not good enough, not smart enough and doggone it, people just don’t like you? Or that the incumbent Democrat has effectively bought off half the country with food stamps and free health care?
For more on this story, visit: What Mitt Romney Doesn’t Get About Responsibility – Bloomberg.
By LARKIN WARREN, Bethel, Conn., for The New York Times
I WAS a welfare mother, “dependent upon government,” as Mitt Romney so bluntly put it in a video that has gone viral. “My job is not to worry about those people,” he said. “I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” But for me, applying for government benefits was exactly that — a way of taking responsibility for myself and my son during a difficult time in our lives. Those resources kept us going for four years. Anyone waiting for me to apologize shouldn’t hold his breath.
….
With help, I graduated. That day, over the heads of the crowd, my 11-year-old’s voice rang out like an All Clear: “Yay, Mom!” Two weeks later, I was off welfare and in an administrative job in the English department. Part of my work included advising other nontraditional students, guiding them through the same maze I’d just completed, one course, one semester, at a time.
In the years since, the programs that helped me have changed. In the ’80s, the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant became the Pell Grant (which Paul D. Ryan’s budget would cut). In the ’90s, A.F.D.C. was replaced by block grants to the states, a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. States can and do divert that money for other programs, and to plug holes in the state budget. And a single mother applying for aid today would face time limits and eligibility requirements that I did not. Thanks to budget cuts, she would also have a smaller base of the invaluable human resources — social workers, faculty members, university facilities — that were so important to me.
For more on this story, visit: Taking Responsibility on Welfare – NYTimes.com.
Think Progress has 10 unanswered questions about Romney’s taxes, beginning with:
1. After the election, when the subject of your tax returns is outside of the public glare, will you file an amended tax return to claim your full deduction of charitable contributions? Was the tax rate you reported for other years similarly manipulated?
2. Why was your 2011 income $7 million lower than you estimated it to be in January? How does someone overestimate their income by $7 million?
3. Financial disclosures show that you have as much as $82 million in your tax-deferred Individual Retirement Account, despite the fact that tax rules limited contributions into such accounts to $30,000 per year. Did you lowball the value of the assets you put into your IRA, as tax experts suspect? And did you do the same with gifts into your sons’ trusts?
4. What was the purpose of your Swiss bank account and the myriad offshore entities shown on your return, based in countries like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, if not to avoid taxes?
5. Can you explain what one tax expert has called a “mysterious one-time infusion of foreign tax credits” in 2008?
For more on this story, visit: 10 Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes | ThinkProgress.
No. Turn off the television news (or put down your copy of Newsweek) if you think otherwise.
By Dan Murphy
For more on this story, visit: Is the Islamopocalypse really upon us? – CSMonitor.com.
Misleading media reports today are announcing the end of the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan.
It’s important to understand that the troop reductions are only part of the total troop surge that happened under Obama.
As FAIR noted last year (Media Advisory, 6/23/11) there were two major increases in the number of U.S. troops in 2009:
When Obama took office in 2009, the U.S. had about 34,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has initiated two major troop increases in Afghanistan: about 20,000 additional troops were announced in February 2009, followed by the December 2009 announcement that an another 33,000 would be deployed as well; other smaller increases have brought the total to 100,000.
For more on this story, visit: Is the Afghan Surge Really Over? | FAIR Blog.
A note from Rev. John Gage at United Church on the Green
Now@United
Week of Sept. 23, 2012
Sometimes, when you sense the presence of the Holy Spirit, it can be a feeling of elation, of joy, or more simply, of comfort. Other times, it can be a much more unsettling experience–the call of the unknown, into the unknown.
I felt the latter last Sunday as we began our worship service featuring our special guest preacher, Imam Omer Bajwa, the coordinator of Muslim life at Yale University. When we started planning the event many months ago, no one could have imagined the context of last weekend: violent unrest across the Middle East touched off by an inflammatory film disparaging the Prophet Muhammed.
Continue reading “Muslims and Christians coming together in New Haven”
by Christopher Zurcher
On attending the church service at Church of the Redeemer, Aug. 12, 2012.
What a powerful service. I began to become aware of today’s theme during the children’s message by Courtney Mason – anger and forgiveness and, of course, love. The message followed “Guide me O Thou Great Redeemer,” a hymn ultimately, I think, about God delivering or “guiding” his people to safety through the desert, or “barren land,” regardless of their sins, regardless of how they felt after having been led across the desert.
Now this country is in its own deserts, particularly, for this rant, the mineral-rich Afghanistan.
The message, delivered eloquently by Courtney, was about anger and how it is human to have it, but ungodly to have too much of it.
Following, eventually, was Interim Pastor the Rev. Kevin Ewing’s message, echoing, again, the “too much anger” message. Ephesians 4:25-5:2:
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The hymn of preparation was #503, “O Savior, Let me walk with thee,” a poem written by Washington Gladden for a devotional column published in his magazine “Sunday Afternoon” in 1879. Gladden was an outspoken minister and writer on social-justice issues, who served churches in New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. He never intended for the poem to be converted into a hymn. But what a fitting hymn and even more fitting a writer to have written the preparation hymn for Kevin’s sermon that followed.
I wish church services had titles that hinted toward their themes. I guess during times of Lent and Easter and Christmas, they inevitably have themes. Today’s theme emerged slowly, gracefully, powerfully.
A grandmother happened to come in after the service began and sat in front of me. She had prayer requests for Ron Paul and for her grandson, who just received a college scholarship. Her requests made the message more poignant than it would have been for a number of reasons.
Continue reading “I wish church services had titles: Anger, forgiveness, love, and war”
By Christopher Zurcher
Curiosity will use 10 instruments to probe areas of Mars and determine whether the chemical ingredients are favorable for life there, which I think is a good idea, particularly since if we ever want to go there, we won’t have to spend the eight years of planning and eight months of interplanetary travel that this mission did.
Who knows?
Someday maybe we’ll be able to get there in eight days. 154 million miles from Earth. Where there is no water, only frozen water that pretty much turns immediately to water vapor under certain conditions only because of atmospheric differences between our planet and that one. Water might be able to exist at the bottom of some of the largest craters on Mars because there are different atmospheric pressures there.
“Touchdown confirmed,” said Allen Chen, the leader of the rover’s descent and landing team. “We’re safe on Mars.”
Are we really safe on Mars? If we are, perhaps there are some Syrians and Palestinians and Afghanis or maybe even some Americans who would like to travel to Mars if we’re actually safe there.
“Tonight, on the planet Mars,” United States President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) tweeted, “the United States of America made history.” I guess since we’ve made history in this country
The goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether Mars might have ever supported microbial life – or could now. But there are no tools that will actually detect life, just instruments will probe for organic compounds.
Scientists have noted that the money is being spent on Earth, not Mars, and the mission is costing every American about the price of a movie. Can every American afford a $10-$15 movie? Some say the amount Americans pay for the space program is more like $50 a year. Maybe Lon Seidman can clear that up for us.
You wouldn’t want to watch a movie on Mars, though. Like the old joke, “Nice scenery but no atmosphere (or at least very little).”
But we’ll ask what scientists think are some important questions like: Did Mars support life? Billions and billions of dollars have been spent. Interesting pictures have been taken and sent back to Earth. History has been made again with the landing of another robotic vehicle on the surface of Mars.
NASA’s shuttle program cost $210 Billion. Was it worth it? We now have the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station.
I guess it depends on your priorities and whether you’re interested in space exploration. I was coming at it from an ethical point of view though. NASA does invent a lot of things that are very useful to humanity and while the organization is as large as some others that take a much greater slice of the economic pie, NASA only takes about 1 percent of it. NASA also contributes a couple of hundred billion dollars to the U.S. economy.
I guess as long as humanity is around to see the benefits of space travel and exploration and experimentation, then it will be worth it. If we blow ourselves up in the meantime, then what a waste it will have been, but then so will have a lot of other things.
If you’re a good poet, then you probably know it — and you should submit your work to win the 2012 Connecticut Poetry Award!
The Connecticut Poetry Society has announced that they will accept submissions through May 31 for the 2012 contest.
According to the society’s website, poets can submit up to three unpublished pieces. They can be in any form, but they cannot exceed 80 lines.
Winning poets will have their work printed in the Connecticut River Review and will receive prizes of $400, $100 or $50.
For more on this story, visit Connecticut Poetry Society Accepting Submissions Until May 31 – Simsbury, CT Patch.