Conservative Happenings

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Psst, taxes go up in 2013 for 163 million workers

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama isn't talking about it and neither is Mitt Romney. But come January, 163 million workers can expect to feel the pinch of a big tax increase regardless of who wins the election.

A temporary reduction in Social Security payroll taxes is due to expire at the end of the year and hardly anyone in Washington is pushing to extend it. Neither Obama nor Romney has proposed an extension, and it probably wouldn't get through Congress anyway, with lawmakers in both parties down on the idea.

Even Republicans who have sworn off tax increases have little appetite to prevent one that will cost a typical worker about $1,000 a year, and two-earner family with six-figure incomes as much as $4,500.

Why are so many politicians sour on continuing the payroll tax break?

(AP) Chart shows increase in Social Security tax in 2013 for various income levels
Full Image

Republicans question whether reducing the tax two years ago has done much to stimulate the sluggish economy. Politicians from both parties say they are concerned that it threatens the independent revenue stream that funds Social Security.

They are backed by powerful advocates for seniors, including AARP, who adamantly oppose any extension.

"The payroll tax holiday was intended to be temporary and there is strong bipartisan support to let that tax provision expire," said Sen. Orrin of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. "The continued extension of a temporary payroll tax holiday has serious long-term implications for Social Security and, frankly, it's not even clear that it has helped to boost our ailing economy."

The question of renewing the payroll tax cut has been overshadowed by the expiration of a much bigger package of tax cuts first enacted under President George W. Bush. The Bush-era tax cuts also expire at the end of the year, and Congress is expected to try to address them after the election, in a lame-duck session.

The payroll tax cut could become part of the mix in negotiations that could go in many directions. But lawmakers in both political parties say they doubt it.

Via: MyWay

NY Times Caught Editing Story On Iran Nuclear Negotiations After White House Denial

The White House scrambled late Saturday to deny a New York Times report claiming Iran has agreed to meet directly with U.S. officials to discuss its nuclear program, sending New York Times editors rushing to quietly but substantially revise their initial reporting on a key foreign policy issue for the second time in as many months.

According to the Times, which anonymously quoted senior administration officials, Iran told diplomats it wanted to wait until after the November presidential election to put plans for the meeting in motion.

“It has the potential to help Mr. Obama make the case that he is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough in the decade-long effort by the world’s major powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions,” the Times report said.

Within hours, White House officials responded the report was mostly inaccurate.

“It’s not true that the United States

and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement. ”[However, the White House has] said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally.”

“The President has made clear that he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and we will do what we must to achieve

that,” Vietor added. “It has always been our goal for sanctions to pressure Iran to come in line with its obligations. The onus is on the Iranians to do so, otherwise they will continue to face crippling sanctions and increased pressure.”

Meanwhile, a senior administration official told NBC News on background that back-channel talks with Iran were in progress, but confirmed that no definite agreement about a meeting had been reached. (RELATED OPINION: Obama, Iran in secret nuclear deal)

When the New York Times updated its story late Saturday to reflect Vietor’s statement, the paper made no mention of the update or any correction to the story, leaving readers with the impression that the White House’s denial had been in the story all along. In fact, the initial version of the story portrayed the development as a tentative victory for the Obama administration, which has recently been faced with foreign policy crises in the Middle East and Libya.

Via: Daily Caller

THE BIG FAIL: “This Is A Symbol Of Where America Is Going”

Taxpayers Are Paying Millions For Workers At An Electric Car Battery Factory That Has Yet To Produce A Single Battery

WORKERS AT A BATTERY MAKER THAT RECEIVED $151 MILLION FROM THE STIMULUS SPEND THEIR DAYS PLAYING BOARD GAMES AND WATCHING MOVIES

Watch The Story From Holland, Michigan’s WOOD-TV Here

Workers At Stimulus Funded Battery Plant “Have So Little Work To Do That They Spend Hours Playing Cards And Board Games, Reading Magazines Or Watching Movies.” “Workers at LG Chem, a $300 million lithium-ion battery plant heavily funded by taxpayers, tell Target 8 that they have so little work to do that they spend hours playing cards and board games, reading magazines or watching movies. They say it’s been going on for months.” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,” WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

“‘There’s No Work, No Work At All. Zero Work,’ Another Current Employee Said. ‘It Is What It Is. What Do You Do When There’s No Work?’” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,” WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

Taxpayers Have Spent $7 Million Paying The Idle Workers. “A Target 8 analysis of federal records shows taxpayers spent $7 million to train workers and have paid more than $700,000 for workers’ health and dental insurance.” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,” WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

40 Percent Of The $133 Million Spent By The Company So Far Has Gone To Foreign Companies. “The company has spent $133 million so far, most for construction and equipment, records show. About 40% has gone to foreign companies — mostly to Korea, a Target 8 analysis shows.” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,” WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

$533,000 From The Stimulus Award Was Spent On The Groundbreaking Ceremony. “The company also spent more than $533,000 of that federal grant for the groundbreaking, records show.” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,”WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

“[Workers] Say The Last Of The Materials Needed To Make Battery Cells, Including Chemicals, Was Shipped Back To Korea.” “They say the last of the materials needed to make battery cells, including chemicals, was shipped back to Korea. It’s not clear if that includes any of the $1.8 million in materials paid for with that federal Recovery Act money. Workers say they made test battery cells, starting late last year, perhaps 100,000 or more, and that they did a good job. They say they produced perhaps 4,000 a week. But, they say, that worked ended for the most part last December.” (Ken Kolker, “Volt No Jolt: LG Chem Employees Idle,” WOOD-TV [Holland, MI], 10/18/12)

Via: GOP.com

The 'War on Women' Backfires

One of the intriguing aspects of this election is how the Democrats' shameless and clueless appeal to women is ending with the vaporization of the historic "gender gap" among voters.

The Lady Parts Convention
From the prancing Code Pink vulvas outside the convention venue to the choice of speakers, there was no doubt that the Democrat Convention was aimed at securing the women's vote. Indeed, Balkanizing women and minority voters was then as significant a part of the Obama strategy as securing the electoral votes of Ohio is now to them.

The thinking here apparently was that by highlighting a thirty-year-old law student whining that others should pay her contraceptive costs, emphasizing an unfettered right to abortion, and equal pay for equal work (a convenient code for further feathering trial lawyers nests with dubious claims for parity) and highlighting fluffy issues beloved of the ill-informed, Obama would lock up the women's votes. The Republican "War on Women" was the theme of a convention designed around obscuring the fact that the Democratic standard-bearer had no record to run on, no plan for a second term, and shared the ticket with a crazy person afflicted with logorrhea.

Reality Bites
This week, as Susan Fields observes, it is clear that strategy failed so badly that the long running gap between male and female voters has been practically erased.

The Gallup Poll now shows Mitt Romney trailing the president by only a point among women who are likely to vote in 12 swing states. This follows a Pew Research Center poll taken after the first presidential debate showing that President Obama's 18-point lead among women had shrunk to a tie, 47 percent to 47 percent.

"In every poll, we've seen a major surge among women in favorability for Romney," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told USA Today after the first debate. These polls find women increasingly concerned with the deficit and debt, just like men. The social issues continue to be more important to women than to men, but these issues no longer dominate the discussion. [snip] In the second debate, Romney looked deeper into the dark side of Obama accounting, finding that 3.5 million more women are living in poverty than before he took charge of the economy. Women understand that an economy with 7.8 percent unemployment, when half of college graduates can't find good jobs, is not good for anyone.

I don't disagree with Fields' assessment that the terrible Obama economy and its effect on women have a lot to do with the shift, but I suggest that there's a great deal more to it.

Bad times tend to focus the mind and wise up all voters, including women. Maybe we really aren't voting for the head of a national PTA, Johnny Appleseed, or for our choice of "American Idol." Perhaps it would be a good idea to elect someone who does understand economics and business.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading...

Minnesota Schools Close So Teachers Can Play With Dolls, Learn About Teaching Islam

Each year, Minnesota government schools close for two days (just before the weekend, of course) so teachers’ union members can gather at a conference organized by their union.

It’s meant to “inspire teachers,” EAGnews.org reported, and the conference includes a session titled, “Using Persona Dolls to Promote Social Emotional Intelligence and Acceptance of Diversity.”

The union describes it this way: “Used around the world, persona dolls are lifelike dolls with personalities and stories you create. The dolls become members of your classroom community and children learn by empathizing with the dolls and giving them heartfelt advice on the same kinds of situations they struggle with daily in the classroom and on the playground.”

That’s weird. Teachers are taking time away from the classroom to learn how to play with dolls?

The conference also includes a workshop on how to teach about Islam. The union says about the session:

“An expert panel will present information on teaching about Islam in the context of social studies and world religion. They will share perspectives on how educators can help improve intercultural communication and well-being for immigrant and refugee students and families from Muslim countries.”

That sounds nice. Who’s betting they won’t hear anything about the September 11, 2001 hijackers’ jihad or suicide bombers blowing up American soldiers or Israeli children? And why the focus on only one religion?

And of course no teachers union conference would be complete without a session about the importance of the upcoming presidential election (it will become an Obama rally), and a discussion about how education reform efforts are misguided and dangerous.

Couldn’t the union hold this session during the summer, or on a weekend, when there are no classes to interrupt? They have to annually take time out of the school calendar to hold their union pep rally and play with dolls?

Is it any wonder American students are trailing behind their counterparts in South Korea, Estonia and Luxembourg? Is it too much for union teachers to remain in in the classroom and focus on the basics, instead of cancelling classes to talk about their ideas of “social justice” and promote their union’s political agenda?

Via: Townhall

US ‘too slow’ to act as drone’s cam captured Libya horror

The United States had an unmanned Predator drone over its consulate in Benghazi during the attack that slaughtered four Americans — which should have led to a quicker military response, it was revealed yesterday.

“They stood, and they watched, and our people died,” former CIA commander Gary Berntsen told CBS News.

The network reported that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft observed the final hours of the hours-long siege on Sept. 11 — obtaining information that should have spurred swift action.

But as Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues were killed by terrorists armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Defense Department officials were too slow to send in the troops, Berntsen said.

EPA

VIEW TO A KILL: As terrorists attacked the consulate in Benghazi, a US Predator drone was reportedly observing from above.

“They made zero adjustments in this. You find a way to make this happen,” he fumed.

“There isn’t a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments.”

The Pentagon said it moved a team of special operators from Central Europe to Sigonella, Italy — about an hour flight from Libya — but gave no other details.

Fighter jets and Specter AC-130 gunships — which could have been used to help disperse the bloodthirsty mob — were also stationed at three nearby bases, sources told the network.

When the attack began, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies,” a White House official told the network.

Even as the administration continues to vow that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, the man identified by witnesses as a ringleader in the attack continues to walk the streets of Libya without fear of arrest.

Via: New York Post

BENGHAZI: Documents show Stevens worried about security threats, al-Qaeda

Across 166 pages of internal State Department documents – released today by a pair of Republican congressmen pressing the Obama administration for more answers on the Benghazi terrorist attack – slain U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the security officers assigned to protect him repeatedly sounded alarms to their superiors in Washington about the intensifying lawlessness and violence in Eastern Libya, where Stevens ultimately died.

On September 11 – the day Stevens and three other Americans were killed – the ambassador signed a three-page cable, labeled “sensitive,” in which he noted “growing problems with security” in Benghazi and “growing frustration” on the part of local residents with Libyan police and security forces. These forces the ambassador characterized as “too weak to keep the country secure.”

In the document, Stevens also cited a meeting he had held two days earlier with local militia commanders. These men boasted to Stevens of exercising “control” over the Libyan Armed Forces, and threatened that if the U.S.-backed candidate for prime minister were to prevail in Libya’s internal political jockeying, “they would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi.”

Roughly a month earlier, Stevens had signed a two-page cable, also labeled “sensitive,” that he entitled “The Guns of August: Security in Eastern Libya.” Writing on August 8, the ambassador noted that in just a few months’ time, “Benghazi has moved from trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape…The individual incidents have been organized,” he added, a function of “the security vacuum that a diverse group of independent actors are exploiting for their own purposes.”

Via: The Daily Brett Blog

Continue Reading...

OBAMA CAMPAIGN GRILLED ON LACK OF SECOND TERM PLANS

While the Obama campaign continues to demand that Mitt Romney spell out every aspect of every plan on every issue, Obama has demonstrated zero interest whatsoever in laying out his plans for the future.

That’s the point of a new Republican National Committee video culled from today’s Sunday morning news shows, during which David Gregory of NBC, George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Michael Duffy of Time, and Bob Schieffer of CBS all asked Obama surrogates just what Obama would do during his second term. Not one Obama official had a good answer.

And that’s the problem for Obama. As we grow closer to the election, the American people are becoming more and more comfortable with Mitt Romney, and less and less comfortable with the president’s tacit slogan: “Trust me.” Obama simply hasn't earned our trust.

Via: Brietbart

Obama campaign accepted foreign Web donation -- and may be hiding more

The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.

Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.

Walker said he used his actual street address in England but entered Arkansas as his state with the Schenectady, NY, ZIP code of 12345.

’NET PROFIT: President Obama and Hillary Clinton are joined at a 2011 state dinner by Robert Roche (to Clinton’s right), who registered the site Obama.com, which directs visitors to a donation page.

“When I did Romney’s, the payment got rejected on the grounds that the address on the card did not match the address that I entered,” he said. “Romney’s Web site wanted the code from the back of card. Barack Obama’s didn’t.”

In September, Obama’s campaign took in more than $2 million from donors who provided no ZIP code or incomplete ZIP codes, according to data posted on the Federal Election Commission Web site.

The Obama campaign said the FEC data was the result of “a minor technical error.”

“All the ZIP codes and numbers are real and can be verified,” spokesman Michael Czin said.

Via: New York Post

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Has No Idea What This Obama Kill List Thing Is All About

WeAreChange.org, an independent journalism outfit, snagged a quick interview with Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, at last week’s presidential debate.

The National Defense Authorization Act, infinite detention, the prosecution of journalists and similar expressions of executive authority (none of which were actually brought up in the debate) are some of We Are Change’s pet issues. When they attempt to get Wasserman Schultz to talk about the NDAA she won’t bite. She’s obviously in the “spin room” to spin the debate in President Barack Obama's favor and certainly isn’t going to do something crazy like talk actual policy.

But when Luke Rudkowski brings up Obama’s “kill list” of terrorist targets he’s working to take out — due process be damned — the conversation turns amazingly, awesomely awful real fast. Wasserman Schultz purports to have no idea what this list even is. She may be playing dumb, but her facial expressions in the video lead me to believe that she thinks she’s being punked and that Rudkowski is some sort of Borat knockoff:

Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald, who has a lengthy rant over at The Guardianabout what is either an amazing amount of dumbness or an amazing amount of deliberate partisan arrogance on display.

Via: Reason

Massachusetts Congressional Race 6th District: Gambling question torches Tierney-Tisei debate

John Tierney

Richard Tisei

NEWTON — It took mere seconds of airtime for moderator Jim Braude of NECN to ask about the gambling scandal plaguing Congressman, and the gloves were tossed to the mat Thursday night in a primetime television debate.

Republican opponent Richard Tisei pounced on the question — the first asked directly about Tierney’s family in four debates to date.

“He said he had no knowledge of what was going on, but both of his brothers-in-law contradicted him and said he did know what was going on,” Tisei said, referring to the multimillion-dollar offshore gambling scheme that Tierney’s brothers-in-law were running in Antigua.

Tisei then hammered the congressman on his trip to Antigua to visit brother-in-law Robert Eremian, “in the middle of the gambling operation,” as well as the reported $220,000 in gifts the congressman’s wife, Patrice Tierney, received from her now-fugitive brother when she managed a multimillion-dollar account for him in Salem.

“I do think there should be a congressional investigation,” Tisei said when asked if Tierney did anything illegal.

The congressman, who has been hounded by the scandal since his wife was charged with filing faulty tax returns for her brother in 2010, responded sternly.

“My two brothers-in-law didn’t say that, when the (Boston) Globe went down to visit my brother-in-law down there, he had nothing to offer them in terms of that,” Tierney said. When confronted that one of his brothers in-law, Daniel Eremian, told a Salem News reporter that Tierney “knew everything” about the operation, the congressman replied, “You can take his word, or you can take mine.”

As he has throughout the campaign, Tierney noted that the judge in his wife’s case — in which she pleaded guilty to being “willfully blind” to the true nature of her brother’s operation — indicated at one point that Tierney is “‘not implicated in any way, shape or form,’ and he’s right on this,” Tierney said.

Tisei challenged that claim, saying that Judge William Young “never cleared you of anything.”

“Judge Young said the congressman has nothing to do with this, meaning the sentencing hearing,” Tisei said. “He wasn’t looking at the whole thing.” He noted several news organizations who have called Tierney’s use of the judge’s quote “misleading.”

Tierney again went on the offensive.

“Misleading? Richard, you have lied and used insinuation and innuendo on this whole thing and spent $3 million doing it,” Tierney said. “My wife paid a terrible price on that; she took responsibility for not knowing on that.

Via: Gloucester Times

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Third debate could be dated before it’s over

President Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney will meet for the third and final presidential debate Monday night to discuss foreign policy. It is a broad topic that was sidelined in the first debate on domestic issues and engendered only one question at the candidate's subsequent tete-a-tete, a town-hall meeting.

At last, we will hear the candidates' uninterrupted views on America's security. The debate's topics have already been disclosed by moderator Bob Schieffer. They include the usual cast of ominous characters: the long war in Afghanistan, the red lines of Iran and Israel, the rising power of China, and the changing Middle East. Another query, on ”America's role in the world,” could be a softball or a snoozer, but might also be quite revealing.

Nonetheless, the night may not be greeted with the rapt attention that attended the other two. The foreign policy debate is fighting an uphill battle for relevance not only because of the condition of our economy, the fight over our taxes, and the looming fiscal cliff. It is because, for those who remember other recent debates on international affairs, the gap between what was asked and what the winning candidate actually faced as president has been wide.

A candidate's policy towards Iran, Afghanistan, or China will have to share center stage with the unpredicted, the incidental, and the utterly dramatic once he becomes president or wins a second term. The stylized theatrics of a debate stand in sharp contrast to the randomness of the world.

”I am not going to make unilateral cuts in our strategic defense systems or support some freeze when they 1 / 8the Soviet Union 3 / 8 have superiority. I'm not going to do that, because I think the jury is still out on the Soviet experiment,” Vice President George H. W. Bush stated on Sep. 25, 1988, when he faced Governor Michael Dukakis. The jury would soon rule; the Berlin Wall fell just over a year later. Eastern Europeans realized they were being governed by a spent ideology and weak captor. The Soviet empire would dissolve by the end of Bush's presidency. Strategic defense debates were replaced by diplomatic challenges in a new, open Europe.

Via: Heraldonline.com

Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2012/10/20/4351191/third-debate-could-be-dated-before.html#storylink=cpy

Why Does Obama's White House Pay Women Less?

Equity: The president touts equal pay for equal work but hasn't practiced what he preaches with the women he has employed — including a well-known staffer who complained of a hostile work environment.

It remains a mystery as to why equal pay for women was one of the questions elected by unofficial Team Obama debate coach Candy Crowley of CNN during the second presidential debate.

But it let President Obama launch into breathtaking hypocrisy regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Lilly Ledbetter, which in Crowley's view ranked right up there with BenghaziGate as a pivotal issue, woke up one morning complaining that her male counterparts were getting paid more money for the same work and decided to sue for redress of this perceived grievance.

After she was told she had missed the statutory deadline, her case made it to the Supreme Court, which said too bad, but you missed the deadline.

So Congress passed the Fair Pay Act, which does more for lawyers than it does for women, merely extending the statute of limitations for pay-discrimination lawsuits from 180 days from the violation to 180 days after the last paycheck issued that was affected by that discrimination.

When Katherine Fenton asked Obama what he intended to do about "women making only 72% of what their male counterparts earn," the question was based on a false premise and a false statistic — one calculated by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, by comparing all male with all female workers, regardless of experience, productivity, number of hours put in or length of service.

When you factor these things in, Furchtgott-Roth says, women make about 95 cents to a man's dollar, which may explain why, since the Ledbetter Act was passed in January 2009, only 35 women have filed lawsuits under the new law.

Via: IBD

Continue Reading...

Every Green Energy Failure Is News

USA Today (10/17/12) ran a story about a battery manufacturer filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But the story might as well have been a press release from the Mitt Romney campaign.

"Another Blow for Green Energy" read the headline. Wendy Koch's piece led off with this:

An electric vehicle battery maker that was awarded $249 million in federal stimulus funds filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Tuesday, giving GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney potential ammunition to attack President Obama's green-energy subsidies.

It's a short article, but it's hard to avoid the central theme: This is good news for the Romney campaign. Koch writes:

Its Chapter 11 filing will likely spur further GOP criticism, which escalated once solar panel manufacturer Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2011 after receiving more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees.

In the first presidential debate October 3, Romney called four aid recipients "losers," including Solyndra, Fisker, EV car maker Tesla Motors and auto battery manufacturer Ener1.

"You don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers," Romney told Obama in a sharp exchange.

On Tuesday, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul called A123's bankruptcy "yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work."

If it's important to note the campaign ramifications of this story, then perhaps readers should know that Romney claimed that about half of the companies receiving green energy loan guarantees have gone out of business. That is, as you might expect, completely false.

Via: Fair

MSNBC Host 'Lucky' to Get Paid Half as Much as Her Male Co-Host

This morning, as MSNBC's Morning Joe came to an end, co-host Mika Brzezinski had some praise for colleagues and the company she works for. "We've been talking a lot this week about women and equal pay and all these issues," she said. "I have to say, in all seriousness, I'm very lucky to be working with you [co-host Joe Scarborough] and for a company [MSNBC] who has actually dealt with this problem transparently."

Which basically amounts to Brzezinski saying that she is "lucky" to get paid half as much as Joe Scarborough.

After all, according to the Daily Beast (whose editor, Tina Brown, is a frequent guest on the show), Scarborough makes a cool $4 million per year, while Brzezinski's salary is half as much, coming in at $2 million per year.

Brzezinski's colleague Andrea Mitchell made this point on air yesterday--that pay disparity exists at MSNBC. Politico reports:

During an interview Thursday, Mitt Romney senior adviser Barbara Comstock told Andrea Mitchell that “we know here at MSNBC the guys get paid more" — and the MSNBC host replied, “We certainly do.”

For Brzezinski's part, it's more than a bit odd that she would play down the problems at MSNBC now.

After all, her public dispute with MSNBC about pay equity has been well known. In fact, she's made it herself on her own show.

"We make less than our male counterparts," said Brzezinski last year. "I found out on this show that I made a lot less than Joe. 14 times less."

Via: Weekly Standard

Report: Medicaid And Medicare Enrollees Now Outnumber Full-Time Private Sector Workforce

(CNSNews.com) - The combined number of people enrolled in Medicaid and Medicare--the government health-care programs for the poor, disabled and elderly--now exceeds the number of full-time private sector workers in the United States.

In 2011, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), there were 70.4 million people who enrolled in Medicaid for at least one month. There were also 48.849 million people enrolled in Medicare. That gave Medicaid and Medicare a gross combined enrollment of 119.249 million in 2011.

At the same time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 112,556,000 people worked full-time in the United States in 2011. Of these 112,556,000 full-time workers, 17,806,000 worked for government (at the federal, state or local level) and 94,750,000 worked for the private sector.

The gross combined enrollment of 119.249 million in Medicaid and Medicare in 2011 outnumbered the 112.556 million full-time workers employed in both the private sector and in government in 2011.

However, there are a certain number of people each year—called “dual enrollees” by CMS—who enroll in both Medicaid and Medicare because they are eligible for both. According to CMS, however, the most recently developed data for the actual number of “dual enrollees” is for 2008--when a total of 61.9 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and 9.3 million of them were “dual enrollees” who also enrolled in Medicare.

Via: CNS News

Continue Reading...

Obama Campaign Borrows $15M from Bank of America

Warren Buffett invested $5B in BofA last year

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Taxpayers Are Paying Millions For Workers At An Electric Car Battery Factory That Has Yet To Produce A Single Battery

WORKERS AT A BATTERY MAKER THAT RECEIVED $151 MILLION FROM THE STIMULUS SPEND THEIR DAYS PLAYING BOARD GAMES AND WATCHING MOVIES

While the Obama campaign continues to demand that Mitt Romney spell out every aspect of every plan on every issue, Obama has demonstrated zero interest whatsoever in laying out his plans for the future.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Popular Posts