2012 Presidential Election

Jeff Burnside of Miami NBC affiliate WTVJ has a brief story accessible on MSNBC.com in which a fellow neighborhood watch volunteer defended George Zimmerman, who claims to have shot teenager Trayvon Martin in self-defense late last month. While the MSNBC network has been keenly following the Martin shooting — Politics Nation anchor Al Sharpton is even planning to host a protest rally tomorrow at a Baptist church in Sanford, Florida — it appears the network has not yet aired Burnside's minute-and-a-half long story this morning. [see video after page break] Burnside's report focused on the perspective of one Frank Taaffe, a neighbor and friend of George Zimmerman's. Taaffe noted that there had been eight burglaries in 15 months, most committed by young African-American males. “The stage was already set. It was a perfect storm,” Taaffe said, explaining that Zimmerman was suspicious of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in light of that rash of burglaries in the racially-diverse Twin Lakes neighborhood. For his part, however, Taaffe didn't fully excuse his fellow security patrol member, admitting that Zimmerman was unwise to carry a weapon on his security patrols and that he was overzealous on that fateful rainy night. “Taaffe says he splits the blame between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman,” Burnside noted, “Trayvon should have just explained who he was, he says, and Zimmerman shouldn't have had a gun.” Given how there's a rush to paint Zimmerman as motivated by racial animus, Taaffe's perspective is an important one for news consumers to hear. It's a shame if MSNBC opts to not air it in order to give its viewers a different, less judgmental perspective on Zimmerman.

“Obviously, she was not herself” I particularly enjoy reading a story like this just as I’m getting ready for a trip. But I may not go with American Airlines. Some of their flight attendants seem a bit on the unstable side. An American Airlines jet about to take off was halted after a flight attendant began “ranting” about 9/11 and Read this post

ContributorNetwork – Next week is Super Tuesday, the biggest prize on the primary calendar. Ten states and more than 400 delegates are up for grabs. Here’s a look at Massachusetts, which once elected Mitt Romney to be its chief executive, and now has another opportunity to vote for him. View original post here: Super Tuesday Preview: Massachusetts (ContributorNetwork)

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Super Tuesday Preview: Massachusetts
(ContributorNetwork)

The Ticket – Mitt Romney made a beeline for Ohio after winning the Michigan and Arizona primaries to kick off his campaign for the most populous state that votes on Super Tuesday, when 10 states will participate in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating process. With 18 electoral votes, Ohio is a big battleground in the general election, when More: Super Tuesday delegate math: Why does Georgia get more than Ohio? (The Ticket)

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Super Tuesday delegate math: Why does Georgia get more than Ohio?
(The Ticket)

Plus, why Michigan matters for Romney and Santorum. Why “competence”?  Today will be the first primary conducted in a month, and a temporary end to a series of caucuses that left figurative egg on the faces of state Republican parties.  In today’s column for The Week, I look back at the series of embarrassing stumbles in the nomination process from caucus states, and Read this post

Reuters – European Union leaders will call at a summit next week for the world’s 20 biggest economies (G20) to agree in April to substantially boost funds available to the International Monetary Fund, draft conclusions of the meeting showed.

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EU leaders to ask G20 to back higher IMF funds
(Reuters)

As a market recovery gathers pace and fears over Greece recede, the Dow hit a four-year high and European indices rallied

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Market gains point to budding recovery

Bad news: It’s for loan forgiveness. Admit it — you thought that the Obama administration had some sort of latent hostility toward religious organizations.  His new HHS mandate refused to exempt such charities, schools, and hospitals from employer mandates to cover contraception and abortifacients, ruling that they were exactly like all other employers in the eyes of the government.  Well, have Read this post

Tax cheat Tim Geithner, the only member of the Obama economic brain trust who has not yet been fired , testified to the Senate Finance Committee today in favor of the president’s proposed trillion-dollar-deficit budget.  Geithner, a Dartmouth man esteemed more for his tennis skills than for his understanding of markets or business, peddled much Keynesian voodoo before a nation whose economy he helped destroy while employed by the Federal Reserve Bank and then the Department of the Treasury. To get a sense of the mixed metaphors and confused logic that characterized the treasury secretary's testimony, ponder the Reuters headline “ Geithner: Year-end fiscal cliff to hit U.S. growth ,” and tremble to reflect that this word salad accurately describes Geithner's comments.  Mostly, Geithner pressed the need to lay heavier tax burdens on the “top 2 percent” of Americans. In proof that the second version of history is farce, the same rhetoric that characterized the birth of the modern central banking system – that the income tax would be levied only on the rich – is being used again at its death. But the Tax Foundation , citing data from Geithner’s Internal Revenue Service, suggests why the political goal of raising taxes on people who earn more than $340,000 in a year will not achieve the fiscal goal of raising more revenue:  Earners in the top 1 percent pay 37 percent of the income tax. Earners in the top 5 percent pay 59 percent. Raising tax rates for these people may feel good, but the iron judgment of history is that it will not increase the total tax haul. As you can see from the chart here , top marginal rates have varied from above 90 percent to below 30 percent over the past 70 years, but federal revenue as a percentage of GDP has remained steadily in the 19-percent neighborhood.  The chart also gives strong evidence of what brought Uncle Sam’s cut of GDP from the single-digit range to the 19-percent range. That happened in the mid-1940s, when the government and the Federal Reserve broke their original promise to soak the rich and broadened taxable income to include every penny earned by every American.  While the Geithner plan will not succeed in raising revenue, it does have the capacity to raise the volatility of revenue collections. High earners experience more severe ups and downs in their income than the rest of us. This is the particular danger in California’s own effort to service its spending addiction through higher top rates, as I explained a few weeks ago :    Geithner’s top-2-percent strategy risks putting federal revenues on the same roller coaster. Here is a look at just how contingent and temporary millionaire status is in the United States. As Geithner knows from his own experience using TurboTax to conceal income from Washington, high earners also have more opportunities to earn in ways that will not be captured by the IRS – even though in the final stages of its decadence the U.S. government is becoming far more punitive on overseas earnings, charitable donations, expatriation of wealth and people, and other hallmarks of personal freedom. This is not novel stuff. Even First Baron Keynes understood that the relationship between tax rates and revenue raised is not one-to-one. In fact, if Keynesians were truly attentive to their master, they would have a better understanding of the importance of depressive taxation in centrally planning an economy. What’s truly worrying is that Geithner doesn’t seem to grasp the concepts he’s trying to put into practice. Plenty of people want to soak the rich:    But if Warren Buffett or Hillary Clinton or even Stephen King believes in garbage, that has at most a tangential effect on me. Geithner, on the other hand: He’s the guy who takes money directly out of my pocket. 

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Top 1 Percent Pay 37 Percent of Income Taxes

***BUMPED*** Google’s Blogspot platform is home to the newest branch of al Qaeda: al Qaeda in East Africa . The group formerly known as al Shabaab — or, the Mujahideen Youth Movement — has chosen an American company to host its website. Providing business services to al Shabaab or al Qaeda violates US and international law, even if those services are provided at no cost. And how do we know that this is al Qaeda in East Africa’s website. Well, in addition to the fact that the website is posted on their Twitter account , there is also this. Stay evil Google, stay evil. PS: Also, you too Twitter !

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Google Hosting al Qeada in East Africa *Bumped*