A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another "tiny" tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets. A royalty on all undersea mineral resources extracted more than 100 miles offshore of any nation's territory.
The United Nations is at it again: finding new and "innovative" ways to create global taxes that would transfer hundreds of billions, and even trillions, of dollars from the rich nations of the world -- especially the U.S. -- to poorer ones, in line with U.N.-directed economic, social and environmental development.
These latest global tax proposals have received various forms of endorsement at U.N. meetings over the spring and summer, and will be entered into the record during the 67th U.N. General Assembly session, which began this week. The agenda for the entire session, lasting through December, is scheduled to be finalized on Friday.
How to convince developed countries wracked by economic recession and spiraling levels of government debt -- especially the U.S. -- is another issue, which the world organization may well end up trying to finesse. Let's just say it is way past time for the UN to get out of the US.
Americans must be wondering how much more of this "recovery" they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household's real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama "recovery." Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this "recovery," it has fallen to $50,678 -- a drop of $3,040 per household.
Yet it gets worse. Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the "recovery" than they did during the recession. In fact, they've dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession. From the start to the end of the recession, the real median income of American households fell $1,413, or 2.6 percent. From the end of the recession to the present day, it has dropped $3,040, or 5.7 percent. This begs the question: What kind of "recovery" compares unfavorably with the recession from which it's ostensibly recovering? Hmmmm... what is different now compared to then?
Two of the groups hit hardest have been ones that turned out in abundance for Obama in 2008: black Americans and younger Americans (those between the ages of 25 and 34). During the first three years of the Obama "recovery," the real median household income for black Americans dropped a whopping 11.1 percent. For Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 -- the group most apt, as Paul Ryan put it, to be "staring up at fading Obama posters" and looking to "get going with life" -- real median household income dropped 8.9 percent.
Moreover, we're still not headed in the right direction. Last month, American households' real median annual income fell by another $543 -- from $51,221 to $50,678. Sentier's Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the Census Bureau, says, "This latest decline in real median annual household income is indicative of a struggling economy." He adds that, while we are "technically" in a recovery, "real median annual household income is having a difficult time maintaining its present level, much less 'recovering.'"
Similarly, the percentage of Americans who are employed has dropped during the Obama "recovery" -- from 59.4 percent during the final month of the recession to just 58.3 percent last month. That's according to the Obama administration's own figures. It is almost as if it is on purpose....
So, to recap, compared to the last month of the recession (in June 2009), the percentage of Americans who are employed has dropped 1.1 points, and typical Americans' real annual household income has dropped $3,040. Who knew how good we had it back in the glory days of the Great Recession?
No wonder Obama says he's running for reelection because he wants to realize "the future we imagined in 2008." He can't very well run on the reality we're experiencing in 2012. Hope you have change in your pocket! 2012!
George Soros, the liberal billionaire investor who has largely laid low during the 2012 elections, announced $1.5 million in pledged donations Thursday to a trio of super PACs backing President Obama and congressional Democrats, PAC officials said. That's the out-in-the-open contributions. How much did he (openly) give to Kerry? Well, here's the latest version of that tale.
Soros, who became nationally prominent in 2004 when he spent more than $20 million on independent groups supporting Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), will give $1 million to Priorities USA Action -- which is supporting Obama -- and $500,000 to Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, which are running ads on behalf of Democratic candidates for Congress.
Soros's financial commitment pales in comparison with conservative donors such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has said he will give up to $100 million to groups supporting Mitt Romney and other Republicans this year. So what if a couple of progressives have a little coin? It's the evil Trunks who are the party of the rich and famous. Except for Hollywood, of course.
Democrats have been worried for months about Republican success in raising funds from wealthy conservatives, who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a network of groups aimed at toppling Obama. Many wealthy liberals, by contrast, have sat on the sidelines, in part because they say they are discomfited by the influence of big money in politics. And the press just laps it up.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/28/2012 06:05 ||
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>Many wealthy liberals, by contrast, have sat on the sidelines, in part because they say they are discomfited by the influence of big money in politics.
But last election they weren't concerned. Maybe they don't think they got their money's worth from Obama...
Or, Romney's in Trouble, Part 156
Voters in three critical swing states broadly oppose the far-reaching changes to Medicare associated with the Republican presidential ticket and, by big margins, prefer President Obama to handle the issue, according to new state polls by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation. One of those good liberal foundations that provide employment for otherwise worthless third-generation descendants of rich people...
For seniors in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, Medicare rivals the economy as a top voting issue. And by majorities topping 70 percent, seniors say they prefer to keep Medicare as a program with guaranteed benefits, rather than moving to a system in which the government gives recipients fixed payments to buy coverage from private insurers or traditional Medicare, as Romney advocates. No one asked what they thought about Obama's actual law passed, which reforms medicare?
Romney has revived a Republican line of attack from the midterm elections that year, charging that Obama "raided" Medicare "to pay for Obamacare." The criticism refers to $716 billion in cuts to Medicare in the health-care law -- cuts that Ryan previously supported but has since said he would undo. Again, a question of words versus already-done deeds, except the Obumble deeds are of no consequence to the pollsters.
The law, which the Supreme Court largely and irrelevently upheld, remains controversial and is, according to an analysis of these new poll results, a drag on Obama's reelection prospects. In Florida and Ohio, more voters have "strongly unfavorable" than "strongly favorable" impressions of the legislation. Some honesty, finally, nine paragraphs into the story.
Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the poll findings were "irrelevant" because the question on the type of Medicare overhaul that Romney advocates did not accurately describe the plan. In an e-mail, she said that respondents were not told that Romney has promised not to change Medicare for Americans older than 55. Who do you think is going to tell them, Andrea? AARP? Besides which, Romney is not a demi-god, making laws by fiat. He will have to get Congress to approve changes.
Obama hammers the Ryan plan continually, telling supporters at a campaign event in Milwaukee last Saturday that Romney and Ryan would "turn Medicare into a voucher program in order to pay for tax cuts for the very wealthy." A baldfaced lie which the media is content to leave unexamined. Yes, R&R and the radical Pubs will starve the middle class and make the wealthy even richer, all by using their Jedi powers to sucker the 535 members of Congress.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/28/2012 05:45 ||
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Well if you can't believe The Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and AARP, who can you believe?
#2
People amaze me - the current trajectory makes medicare bankrupt anyhow in a couple decades. Does are electorate not possess an ounce of rational thought or logic? Sorry, I know - that's a rhetorical question.
#6
Kaiser Foundation is the propaganda arm of Kaiser Permanente -- the giant HMO -- that's not subjected to the same $8 billion Obamacare tax as other health plans.
Posted by: regular joe ||
09/28/2012 16:13 Comments ||
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Become a Vegan, do yoga stretches; and "Thrive"..."
while your co-pays go through the roof.
What a bunch of sanctimonious, junk-health and Mumbo-Jumbo spouting, progressive AARP lifers..
Conservative activist circles are abuzz with a new conspiracy theory: Polls showing President Obama with a growing lead over Mitt Romney are deliberately being skewed by the Liberal Mainstream Media so Republicans will be disheartened and stay home on Election Day.
This is denial and self-delusion but not of the harmless kind. It's a false narrative that encourages the Republican Party to take the wrong lessons from this election, no matter the outcome. And the lesson, Eugene?
Voters blame the GOP more than they blame Obama and the Democrats for the gridlock and brinkmanship that have characterized much of the president's time in office. Yet you mock the notion of the MSM being in the Obama camp, Eugene?
The Republican Party has taken stands on issues such as abortion and immigration that big segments of the electorate find extreme and unacceptable. Moderate Republicans, as a political species, are all but extinct.
If a polling sample shows Democrats outnumbering Republicans by, say, 32 percent to 24 percent (with most of the rest calling themselves independents), GOP partisans shouldn't worry about a conspiracy. They should worry that this is a snapshot of how Americans feel about the two major parties.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/28/2012 05:40 ||
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I like when the WaPo and veteran partisan hackholes on the Donk side tell us what we think and why we're wrong
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/28/2012 7:19 Comments ||
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I don't see any rats jumping from the Champ's ship. That concerns me more than just a little.
#5
Has anybody fainted at any of teh One's campaign appearances yet? Because I haven't heard of any and in 2008 we used to hear about them all the time...just a little bit of anecdotal evidence.
Tell you what Dude. Take a snap shot of the polls today. If they don't match what happens on election day, you quit the day job and go sell shoes for the rest of your life. Put up or show us that you're just a driveling moonbat.
Today Mitt Romney announced the endorsements of 42 Medal of Honor recipients including Thomas Norris who was one of three Navy SEALs to receive the Medal of Honor for their actions during the Vietnam War and Leo Thorsness, who spent six years in captivity in North Vietnam as a prisoner of war.
In a statement released by the campaign, Thorsness said he believed Romney was the right man to lead the nation because he understands the needs of Americas soldiers and that healthcare will be easy to obtain under his leadership for those fighting for our country overseas.
In the announcement, Romney thanked all the veterans for their support but also their service to the nation.
Of all the heroes that have served in our armed forces, only a few have had the great privilege of receiving the Medal of Honor, Romney said. They are the best of us all, and their dedication to our freedoms and their fellow servicemen and women serves as a shining example to every American.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another "tiny" tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets. A royalty on all undersea mineral resources extracted more than 100 miles offshore of any nation's territory.
Americans must be wondering how much more of this "recovery" they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household's real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama "recovery." Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this "recovery," it has fallen to $50,678 -- a drop of $3,040 per household. 
George Soros, the liberal billionaire investor who has largely laid low during the 2012 elections, announced $1.5 million in pledged donations Thursday to a trio of super PACs backing President Obama and congressional Democrats, PAC officials said.
