Hissyspit
Hissyspit's Journal"The level of hatred, unfounded fear and misinformed people was astoundingly sad."
http://www.alternet.org/hot-news-views/right-wing-chick-fil-appreciation-day-round-intolerance-display?akid=9157.24869.1ZR_WI&rd=1&src=newsletter685908&t=1Right-Wing Chick-fil-A "Appreciation Day" Round-Up: Intolerance On Display
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Gay and lesbian employees of Chick-fil-A had perhaps the most disheartening reaction to the day. An Alabama gay staffer named Andrew described the day as “hater appreciation day,” calling it “very, very depressing.” A gay employee at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta heard a customer say, “I’m so glad you don’t support the queers, I can eat in peace.” Another in Colorado had customers telling him, “I support your company, because your company hates the gays.” Many report experiencing homophobia not just from customers, but from fellow employees as well.
The Media Cries Fowl
Unfortunately, much of the media coverage yesterday was simply an open display of anti-gay views without much to rebut them. Still, there were a few notable highlights. For example, Fox News’ Shep Smith, who supports marriage equality, made a quick jab at Huckabee, pointing out that it was “National Badminton Day,” so “forget National Day of Intolerance, let’s just stay with Badminton.”
Journalist Mark Krzos of The News-Press in Fort Myers, Florida, wrote on Facebook that covering Chick-fil-A yesterday was incredibly disheartening:
"I have never felt so alien in my own country as I did today while covering the restaurant’s supporters. The level of hatred, unfounded fear and misinformed people was astoundingly sad. I can’t even print some of the things people said."
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Siegelman Lawyer Asks for Leniency in New Sentence
Source: Associated Press
Siegelman lawyer asks for leniency in new sentence
BOB JOHNSON, Associated Press
Updated 04:30 p.m., Wednesday, August 1, 2012
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An attorney for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman has asked a federal judge not to send Siegelman back to prison on Friday, though Siegelman has written supporters to say he may be returning there for a lengthy stay.
U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller originally sentenced Siegelman to more than seven years in prison for his 2006 conviction for bribery and other charges in a government corruption case.
Fuller is resentencing Siegelman because a federal appeals court dropped two of the charges.
Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy were convicted of what prosecutors said was a scheme for Siegelman to appoint Scrushy to an important hospital regulatory board in exchange for Scrushy arranging $500,000 in contributions to Siegelman's campaign for a statewide lottery for education.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Siegelman-lawyer-asks-for-leniency-in-new-sentence-3755128.php
Spain's Judge Garzon Says U.S. Secretly Working to Have Wikileaks Founder Tried There
Source: Associated Press
Spain's Judge Garzon says United States secretly working to have Wikileaks founder tried there
BY CIARAN GILES, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, AUGUST 1, 2012
MADRID - A controversial Spanish judge criticized the U.S. investigation into WikiLeaks on Wednesday, saying that the grand jury process which could lead to charges being filed against the secret-spilling site's founder is undemocratic.
Baltasar Garzon, a human rights lawyer best known for indicting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, recently agreed to act as an international co-ordinator for Julian Assange, the embattled WikiLeaks founder.
"A democratic country can't operate with its back to a person who is suspected of very serious crimes that could deprive him of liberty for a long time," Garzon told reporters. "The United States should make it known what it is doing so that Mr. Assange can stand up for his rights. We don't know what we are facing."
A Virginia grand jury is studying evidence that might lead to charges being filed against Assange for WikiLeaks' mass disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents — including a quarter of a million State Department cables whose publication rocked Washington. The grand jury has been investigating the matter for more than a year and could continue for months or even years longer. Witnesses have been called, though the identities of most are unknown.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/news/story.html?id=7024384
‘Pepper Spray Cop’ Loses His Job
Source: Sacramento Bee
‘Pepper Spray Cop’ loses his job
By Arturo Garcia
Wednesday, August 1, 2012 10:11 EDT
The infamous “Pepper Spray Cop” who attracted widespread criticism toward a California college last year is off the beat permanently, The Sacramento Bee reports.
A spokesperson for the University of California-Davis, where John Pike was captured pepper-spraying a group of seated protesters last November, said Pike was no longer employed with the school as of Tuesday, but did not specify whether Pike was fired or if he resigned, citing campus privacy rules.
Pike and his supervisor, campus police chief Annette Spicuzza, had been on paid administrative leave since the Nov. 18 incident. Spicuzza resigned in April, saying she did not want it to become a “defining moment” in her career. According to The Bee, Pike’s 2010 salary was reportedly just over $110,000.
“This whole time we were paying him, and he’s just sitting on his ass?” one student asked KOVR-TV.
Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/08/01/pepper-spray-cop-loses-his-job/
Romney Tax Plan Helps Rich Most: Tax Group
Source: Reuters
Romney tax plan helps rich most: tax group
WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 1, 2012 9:05am EDT
By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to slash individual income taxes by 20 percent across-the-board would primarily boost the income of the wealthiest taxpayers, according to a nonpartisan analysis released on Wednesday.
The report by the centrist Tax Policy Center found that Romney's tax cuts would boost after-tax income by an average of 4.1 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year, while reducing by an average of 1.2 percent the after-tax income of individuals earning less than $200,000.
Tax policy and how to tame the U.S. government's budget deficit, topping $1 trillion in recent years, is a major point of contrast in the presidential race, in which Romney will face President Barack Obama on November 6.
Romney, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune at private equity firm Bain Capital, has not spelled out how he would lower marginal tax rates. But he has said broadly he would cut some tax benefits for the wealthy.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE8700PC20120801?irpc=932
Romney Tax Plan Helps Rich Most: Tax Group
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE8700PC20120801?irpc=932Romney tax plan helps rich most: tax group
WASHINGTON | Wed Aug 1, 2012 9:05am EDT
By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to slash individual income taxes by 20 percent across-the-board would primarily boost the income of the wealthiest taxpayers, according to a nonpartisan analysis released on Wednesday.
The report by the centrist Tax Policy Center found that Romney's tax cuts would boost after-tax income by an average of 4.1 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year, while reducing by an average of 1.2 percent the after-tax income of individuals earning less than $200,000.
Tax policy and how to tame the U.S. government's budget deficit, topping $1 trillion in recent years, is a major point of contrast in the presidential race, in which Romney will face President Barack Obama on November 6.
Romney, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune at private equity firm Bain Capital, has not spelled out how he would lower marginal tax rates. But he has said broadly he would cut some tax benefits for the wealthy.
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Tom Tomorrow: What We REALLY Need Is...
Daily Kos Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/30/1114189/-What-we-really-need
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NBC Olympics Coverage Omits Tribute to U.K. Terror Victims
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/28/nbc-olympic-coverage-omits-tribute-to-u-k-terror-victimsNBC Olympics coverage omits tribute to U.K. terror victims
By David Ferguson
Saturday, July 28, 2012 13:53 EDT
Broadcast giant NBC has chosen not to carry a tribute to the victims of the July 7 attacks in London that ran as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics, according to Deadspin. The 2005 attacks took the lives of 52 people and injured scores of others when bombs exploded on subway trains and one of London’s signature red double-decker buses on the day after the city was chosen to host the 2012 Olympics.
The role the tragedy played in bringing Londoners together and the message of triumph conveyed by the tribute, which featured 52 dancers and a performance of the song “Abide with Me,” by Scottish singer Emeli Sandé, makes it all the more incomprehensible that NBC would chose not to include it.
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NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London has already drawn ire from various quarters, not just for its decision to broadcast the events three hours after they occur on the east coast and six hours afterward on the west coast, but also for what some see as the banality of its commentary.
Influential liberal blogger and media critic Digby said of the omission of the 7/7 remembrance, “Apparently, American broadcasters believe there’s no purpose in showing any tribute to victims of terrorist attacks that aren’t 9/11. (We sure as hell have no problem showing those. Over and over.)”
Instead of the tribute, American audiences were treated to what Deadspin called “a lengthy and meaningless Ryan Seacrest interview with Michael Phelps.”
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"There's a reason why .... on fiscal mess: One of our two political parties has gone nuts."
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/27/blame_the_republicansFRIDAY, JUL 27, 2012 07:45 AM EDT
Blame the Republicans!
A new book is an incredibly useful primer on our budget crisis, except when it comes to assigning blame for it
BY ANDREW LEONARD
Here are some shocking facts that I learned from “Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget. Where the Trillions Come From, Where They Go, and Why Inaction Imperils Our Future.”
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- “Today, Americans pay less of their income in taxes than citizens of nearly every other developed country.”
- “In the early 1950s more than 30 percent of federal revenues came from the corporate income tax — in 2011, 7.9 percent.”
“Red Ink” is an extraordinarily useful book. It is exactly what author David Wessel, economics editor for the Wall Street Journal, claims it to be: “a collection of uncomfortable, indisputable facts showing the unsustainable fiscal course the U.S. government is on.” It is concise, readable and informative. For people unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the federal budget, it should be required reading. For those who already know their way around government finances, it is still a handy resource, but at the same time deeply depressing. Because “Red Ink” is also an extraordinarily frustrating book. Our dire circumstances are undeniable – at some point, we are going to have to pay the piper for living on borrowed money — but the way out of our predicament is much less clear. And at the end of “Red Ink,” one is left wondering: Who is to blame for this mess? Who is stopping us from fixing it?
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But while it is refreshing to see a topic as complicated — and polarizing — as the federal budget set forth in such a fair-minded, non-polemical manner, the facts as laid out by Wessel do seem to tell a story in which feckless Republicans play an oversize role. The question is, by never stating that outright, is Wessel being cowardly behind a facade of fairness? This is important, because if one side is more to blame than the other, then the obvious next step is to rally political pressure against that side. The position that everybody’s equally to blame becomes a cop-out.
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It’s very difficult to dwell on this without going apoplectic. Again: Republicans passed an expansion of healthcare without any mechanism to pay for it. That’s pretty bad, from a boosting-the-deficit standpoint. But when Democrats passed their own expansion, funded by a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes that, together, lower the deficit, Republicans just dismissed the numbers as fake.
There’s a reason why we can’t seem to make any progress on our fiscal mess: One of our two political parties has gone nuts.
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Krugman: "Simply Crazy to Be Laying Off Schoolteachers and Canceling Infrastructure Projects..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/opinion/money-for-nothing.html"Stop paying attention to the alleged wise men who hijacked our policy discussion and made the deficit the center of conversation."
Money for Nothing
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 26, 2012
For years, allegedly serious people have been issuing dire warnings about the consequences of large budget deficits — deficits that are overwhelmingly the result of our ongoing economic crisis. In May 2009, Niall Ferguson of Harvard declared that the “tidal wave of debt issuance” would cause U.S. interest rates to soar. In March 2011, Erskine Bowles, the co-chairman of President Obama’s ill-fated deficit commission, warned that unless action was taken on the deficit soon, “the markets will devastate us,” probably within two years. And so on.
Well, I guess Mr. Bowles has a few months left. But a funny thing happened on the way to the predicted fiscal crisis: instead of soaring, U.S. borrowing costs have fallen to their lowest level in the nation’s history. And it’s not just America. At this point, every advanced country that borrows in its own currency is able to borrow very cheaply.
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So what is going on? The main answer is that this is what happens when you have a “deleveraging shock,” in which everyone is trying to pay down debt at the same time.
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Obligatory caveat: yes, we have a long-run budget problem, and we should be taking steps to address that problem, mainly by reining in health care costs. But it’s simply crazy to be laying off schoolteachers and canceling infrastructure projects at a time when investors are offering zero- or negative-interest financing.
That said, you should be a Keynesian, too. The experience of the past few years — above all, the spectacular failure of austerity policies in Europe — has been a dramatic demonstration of Keynes’s basic point: slashing spending in a depressed economy depresses that economy further.
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