Republicans will tax anyone but the rich

For years, Republicans have been telling us tax cuts pay for themselves by promoting growth. If they believe what they say, why should they worry about paying for a one-year extension of the payroll tax holiday?

Every time I try to make sense of Republican tax doctrine I get lost.

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor's professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. He has written 13 books, including 'The Work of Nations,' 'Locked in the Cabinet,' and his most recent book, 'Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future.' His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

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For example, rank-and-file House Republicans are willing to increase taxes on the middle class starting in a few weeks in order to avoid a tax increase the very rich.

Here are the details: The payroll tax will increase 2 percent starting January 1 ? costing most working Americans about $1,000 next year ? unless the employee part of the tax cut is extended for another year.

Democrats want to pay for this with a temporary ? not permanent ? surtax on any earnings over $1 million, according to their most recent proposal. The surtax would be 1.9 percent, for ten years. (Democrats would also increase the fees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge lenders.)

This means someone who earns $1,000,001 would pay just under two cents extra next year, and 19 cents over ten years.

Relatively few Americans earn more than a million dollars, to begin with. An exquisitely tiny number earn so much that a 1.9 percent surtax on their earnings in excess of a million would amount to much. Most of these people are on Wall Street. It?s hard to find a small business ?job creator? among them.

Nonetheless, Republicans say no to the surtax. ?The surtax is something that could very much hurt small businesses and job creation,? says John Kyl of Arizona, the Senate?s second-ranking Republican.

This puts Republicans in the awkward position of allowing taxes to increase on most Americans in order to avoid a small, temporary tax only on earnings in excess of a million dollars ? mostly hitting a tiny group of financiers.

Not even a resolute, doctrinaire follower of GOP president Grover Norquist has any basis for preferring millionaires over the rest of us.

To say the least, this position is also difficult to explain to average Americans flattened by an economy that?s taken away their jobs, wages, and homes but continues to confer record profits to corporations and unprecedented pay to CEOs and Wall Street?s top executives.

So Republican leaders are trying to get rank-and-file Republicans to go along with an extended payroll tax holiday ? but by paying for it without raising taxes on the very rich.

According to their latest proposal, they want to pay for it mainly by extending the pay freeze on federal workers for another four years ? in effect, cutting federal employees? pay even more deeply ? and increasing Medicare premiums on wealthy beneficiaries over time.

But even this proposal seems odd, given what Republicans say they believe about taxes.

For years, Republicans have been telling us tax cuts pay for themselves by promoting growth. That was their argument in favor of the Bush tax cuts, remember?

So if they believe what they say, why should they worry about paying for a one-year extension of the payroll tax holiday? Surely it will pay for itself.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on www.robertreich.org.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/zwFNIFdfCp0/Republicans-will-tax-anyone-but-the-rich

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Southern California braces for more extreme wind storm (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Tens of thousands of Southern California residents remained without power on Sunday as officials warned that dangerously high winds would return to the region in the evening.

Power company Southern California Edison still had 49,874 customers without power as of Sunday morning due to the "near hurricane force winds" of recent days, according to spokeswoman Mashi Nyssen.

Wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour through area mountain passes and canyons were expected to begin again late Sunday and last through early Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

The winds will create "critical" conditions that will pose an "extreme fire danger" to the area, the NWS said.

Unusually powerful winds first began striking the Los Angeles region on Wednesday in a storm that raised concern about potential wildfires igniting and spreading at lightening speed.

Wind gusts of up to 45 miles per hour were reported close to the metropolis over the weekend.

In the city of Los Angeles, power had been restored to "nearly all" customers who suffered outages in the wind storms, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The dry, seasonal gusts that have hit Southern California in recent days are known locally as the Santa Ana winds.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111204/us_nm/us_weather

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Enflick Launches Mobile Messaging App For Close Contacts, Touch

Enflick, the developer who created free text messaging app TextNow and IM application PingChat, have released a new app, called 'Touch,' which aims to make messaging your closest friends and family easier. Enflick, which was co-founded by Derek Ting and Jon Lerner, has seen success with messaging apps in the past. Over 300 million text messages are sent each month using TextNow, which is a simple, free text messaging app at absolutely no cost to the user.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/DHPqQcuNG_Y/

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Islamists seek to extend gains in Egypt run-off vote (Reuters)

CAIRO (Reuters) ? The Muslim Brotherhood's party will seek to extend a lead over hardline Islamists in run-offs in Egypt's parliamentary vote Monday, with liberal parties struggling to hold their ground in a political landscape redrawn by the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.

The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party is set to take most seats in Egypt's first democratic parliament in six decades, strengthening their hand in a struggle for influence over the Arab world's most populous country.

Banned from formal politics until a popular uprising ended Mubarak's three-decade rule in February, the movement emerged as the main winner from last week's first-round vote and called on its rivals to "accept the will of the people."

The phased election runs over six weeks, ending in January.

Opponents accuse the Brotherhood's slick campaign machine of flouting a ban on canvassing near polling stations and say it handed out food and medicine to secure votes, but monitors said polling seemed fair overall.

"You cannot have democracy and then amend or reject the results," Amr Moussa, a front-runner for Egypt's presidency, told Reuters, adding that the shape of parliament would not be clear until the voting was over.

The Brotherhood, Egypt's best-organized political group and popular with the poor for its charity work, wants to shape a new constitution to be drawn up next year.

That could be the focus of a power struggle with the ruling military council, which wants to keep a presidential system, rather than the parliamentary one favored by the Brotherhood.

Egyptians return to the polls Monday for 52 run-off votes for individual candidates, who will occupy a third of the 498 elected seats in the lower house once two more rounds of the complicated voting process end in January.

ISRAELI CONCERN

The run-offs will pit 24 members of the ultra-conservative Islamist al-Nour party against Brotherhood candidates.

Two-thirds of the seats in the assembly are allocated proportionately to party lists.

Figures released by the election commission and published by state media show a list led by the Brotherhood's FJP securing 36.6 percent of valid party-list votes, followed by the Salafi al-Nour Party with 24.4 percent, and the liberal Egyptian Bloc with 13.4 percent.

The result has unnerved Israel, concerned about the fate of its 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Egypt's future rulers to preserve the deal.

"We hope any future government in Egypt will recognize the importance of keeping the peace treaty with Israel in its own right and as a basis for regional security and economic stability," Netanyahu said Sunday.

The fate of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel is a concern for its sponsor, the United States, which has backed it with billions of dollars in military aid for both countries.

The rise of the Salafis has also sparked fear among many ordinary Egyptians because of the group's uncompromising views.

Analysts say the Brotherhood, which topped the first-stage vote, has a pragmatic streak that makes it an unlikely ally for Salafis who only recently ventured from preaching into politics and whose strict ideology suggests little scope for compromise.

The leader of Salafi party al-Nour Emad Abdel Ghaffour made it clear he would not play second fiddle to the Brotherhood.

"We hate being followers," Ghaffour told Reuters in an interview. "They always say we take positions according to the Brotherhood but we have our own vision... There might be a consensus but ... we will remain independent."

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair; writing by Tom Pfeiffer; editing Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111205/wl_nm/us_egypt_election

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Stock market closes out its best week since 2009

FILE - In this file photograph taken Nov. 30, 2011, specialist Dermot Bermingham, left, and trader Edward Radziewcz work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks rose Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, around the world as markets unnerved by the eurozone's debt crisis welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's call for changes to EU treaties to enforce fiscal discipline. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

FILE - In this file photograph taken Nov. 30, 2011, specialist Dermot Bermingham, left, and trader Edward Radziewcz work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks rose Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, around the world as markets unnerved by the eurozone's debt crisis welcomed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's call for changes to EU treaties to enforce fiscal discipline. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? An early rally fizzled on the stock market Friday but still left the Standard & Poor's 500 index up 7.4 percent for the week, its biggest gain since March 2009.

A surprise drop in the U.S. unemployment rate sent stocks higher in early trading, but the gains faded during the afternoon.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.61 of a point to close at 12,019.42. The Dow ended the week up 7 percent, the largest weekly gain since July 2009.

Bank stocks rose sharply, continuing a weeklong rally. JPMorgan Chase & Co. jumped 6.1 percent, the most among the 30 stocks in the Dow average. Morgan Stanley leapt 6.9 percent, the second-biggest gain of any stock in the S&P 500 index.

European stock indexes and the euro rose after German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a speech pushing for tighter rules on government spending. Merkel said the 17 countries that use the euro must quickly restore market confidence by making financial controls stricter.

Bond yields for Spain and Italy fell, a sign that investors are becoming more confident in the ability of those countries to pay their debt. France's CAC-40 and Britain's FT-SE each rose 1.1 percent.

Markets could be in for more volatility next week as European leaders prepare for a summit to propose new measures for containing the crisis.

The Labor Department reported before the market opened that the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent last month, the lowest level in 2? years. Economists had expected the rate to stay at 9 percent. But a key reason the unemployment rate fell so much was that more than 300,000 people gave up looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed.

The Nasdaq composite index inched up 0.73 to 2,626.93. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 0.31 of a point to 1,244.28. The S&P surged 7.4 percent over the week, the most since March 2009.

Decisive steps by world leaders to right Europe's teetering economy sent stocks soaring on Wednesday. The Dow jumped 490 points, its biggest gain since March 2009 and its seventh-largest one-day point gain in history. The weekly point gain of 787 in the Dow was the second-biggest in its history, following a 946-point gain in October 2008.

"This market has been gripped with fear for a long time," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. "And I think some of these fear factors are beginning to dissipate."

This week's strong stock performance is partially a reflection of the market's increased volatility since August, when concerns that Europe's debt was spinning out of control made dramatic stock price swings the norm. On Monday the S&P 500 broke a 7-day slide that had taken the index down 7.9 percent.

The improvements in the U.S. job market are "another illustration that the US economy is, for now at least, shrugging off the global economic downturn and fears about the collapse of the euro-zone," Capital Economics Chief U.S. Economist Paul Ashworth said in a note to clients.

Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet Monday to discuss changes to European Union treaties. The talks will culminate in a Dec. 9 summit of EU leaders, where the proposals are expected to be debated and detailed. Analysts say stricter controls on spending could encourage the European Central Bank to offer more short-term help for governments struggling with their debts.

If the European Central Bank takes a larger role in buying government debt, "it will certainly be a relief to markets," Cardillo said, "and maybe even mean Europe avoids falling into a deep recession. Not that it's going to cure all the problems of Europe."

In corporate news:

? Western Digital Corp. soared 7.5 percent, the most in the S&P. The data storage provider raised its revenue estimate for the current quarter and said that recovery efforts at its facility in Thailand following massive flooding there were proceeding faster than had been expected.

? Big Lots Inc. slumped 8.7 percent, after the retailer reported a 76 percent plunge in income because of lower margins and a loss related to a newly acquired Canadian business. The company buys overstocked items including food and housewares and sells them at a discount.

? H&R Block Inc. fell 6.4 percent. The country's largest tax-preparation company reported a wider quarterly loss late Thursday. H&R Block also said there was a jump in claims tied to bad loans made by its former subprime mortgage unit.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-02-Wall%20Street/id-5a8680086b3046668f0b11cd58845235

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Gingrich: Frontrunner Status 'Disorienting' (ABC News)

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Will Mitt Romney???s Lack of Political Experience Hinder Him? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | In the 2008 election, Republicans criticized Barack Obama for his lack of political experience. Democrats turned the tables on Republicans on the experience argument when the GOP nominated Sarah Palin for vice president.

Now Republicans are trying to decide upon their nominee for president. One of their leading candidates is Mitt Romney, who is among the many who labeled Obama as "inexperienced" in his 2010 book. Romney may have been in business for awhile (like George W. Bush), but his political resume is relatively thin.

He served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. Other candidates like Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and even Rick Santorum have many more years in office. Romney keeps touting his business credentials, but that's not the same as political experience. If Romney manages to win the nomination and get by President Obama, will that lack of political experience come back to haunt him?

To test this, I look at a recent CSPAN survey of who the best presidents were, according to a panel of historians. The best presidents include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman. This survey also rated the worst presidents, which count James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, and William Henry Harrison on that list.

Political experience is measured in years in Congress, as governor and as vice president. Using this data, the following 10 presidents (best and worst) receive the following ranking: Buchanan (20 years), A. Johnson (18 years), Truman (10 years), Pierce (nine years), F. Roosevelt (four years), Harding (six years), T. Roosevelt (three years), Washington and Lincoln (two years each) and Harrison (0 years).

As you can see, those presidents with the worst rankings for competence tended to have more political experience. Presidents who tended to score well on such rankings of effectiveness have very little political experience.

You would think this would benefit Romney. He really doesn't have to have a lot of political experience to be a good president. Yet harping on the experience issue when critiquing his opponent isn't likely to help the one-term Massachusetts governor.

It not only calls attention to his own lack of political experience, but also reminds voters of Obama's record. The president has served seven years in the Illinois legislature, three years in the U.S. Senate and four years as chief executive, dwarfing Romney's political experience. But even though Obama destroys Romney when it comes to political experience, remember that one could say the same thing about James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111203/pl_ac/10586607_will_mitt_romneys_lack_of_political_experience_hinder_him

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Lobster tag lost in 'Perfect Storm' hops Atlantic

COHASSET, Massachusetts (AP) ? A tag from a lobster pot lost two decades ago in what came to be known as "The Perfect Storm" has washed up 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) away in Ireland.

The pot that held the tag with Richard Figueiredo's name on it was one of hundreds he lost when the storm struck off Cohasset, Massachusetts.

Rosemary Hill of County Kerry found the tag on a beach last year. Last week she decided to try to contact Figueiredo and found him through his son's Facebook account.

Oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer tells The Patriot Ledger newspaper that the tag's 20-year drift is unusually long. He theorized it was buried before drifting and catching the Gulf Stream.

The storm was made famous by Sebastian Junger's book "The Perfect Storm" and was made into a Hollywood movie.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2011-12-02-Lobster%20Tag's%20Journey/id-62e7625f37834bdfb9c09534e8a38312

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Jessica Simpson Shows Off Girls, Boy

Wow. Jessica Simpson was never exactly lacking in the chestal region, but man. Pregnancy is offering even more enhancement in more departments than just the belly.

The star stepped out today with sister Ashleeeeeee and nephew Bronx Mowgli, named for a borough of New York City and a Jungle Book character. Nice work Ash.

In any case, Jess looked happy, displaying the boy and her girls for all to see.

Jess has had no problem showing off her body since she confirmed she and Eric Johnson are expecting ... or ever, for that matter. Why start now, we suppose.

This takes it to a new level, though. Is she purposely wearing tops from when she was 18? If so, nice. Avert your eyes, Bronx. Eh, it's already too late. Enjoy.

[Photos: Fame Pictures]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/jessica-simpson-shows-off-girls-boy/

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