Actually, that is not clear at all. Hence the kerfuffle.
The Boston Globe reports that Michael Meehan admits he was "too aggressive" in trying to keep John McCormack of The Weekly Standard away from Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley after a Capitol Hill fundraiser last night.
"Last evening I was a little too aggressive in trying to help the attorney general get to her car and catch a flight," Michael Meehan, a veteran Democratic political operative who was volunteering at a Washington fundraiser for Coakley, said in a statement. He said he had called the reporter, John McCormack of the Weekly Standard, this afternoon to apologize.
Unfortunately, Meehan's behavior gave Coakley the time she needed to escape McCormack's question about what Coakley meant when she said in this week's debate that there are no terrorists left in Afghanistan and U.S. troops should therefore be withdrawn immediately.
McCormack, asked just now by Neil Cavuto on whether he's going to demand a new suit (his pants were torn in the incident), said that the suit was a years-old hand-me-down and he wasn't going to be a crybaby about it. A nice answer.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 12:01 ||
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The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday rejected by a 15-14 vote a resolution of inquiry that would have forced the Justice Department to tell Congress why it dismissed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party who disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 election.
It will be interesting for all involved to see how the election in November plays out. Attorney General Holder would be well advised to keep his files squeaky clean, although it's a bit late for this lot of issues.
The party-line vote had been sought by Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, who, along with Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said they have been unable to get information from the department on the complaint's dismissal.
"I am deeply disappointed that the Judiciary Committee defeated my resolution of inquiry on a party-line vote. There has been no oversight, no accountability and certainly no transparency with regard to this attorney general and this Department of Justice," Mr. Wolf said.
"Where is the 'unprecedented transparency' that this administration promised? Where is the honesty and openness that the majority party pledged? The American people deserve better," he said.
The 15 Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, sent the resolution to the House floor with an adverse recommendation, voting it "unfavorably" out of committee. They described the Philadelphia polling disruption as an "isolated incident" that received sufficient punishment when the New Black Panther Party member who carried a nightstick was barred from carrying weapons at polling places in the future.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 11:59 ||
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#1
Keep it dems......on of these days the sh!* will hit the fan..
Financial regulators, lulled into inaction by soaring bank and Wall Street profits, failed to protect Americans from the 2008 financial crisis, senior U.S. officials told an investigative panel on Thursday. But don't worry. They can handle the health care system no sweat.
In testimony that urged stricter oversight in future while admitting past errors, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Chairman Sheila Bair headlined a second day of public hearings by Congress' Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "We're gonna do more of the same, but we're gonna do it better. Trust me."
"Not only did market discipline fail to prevent the excesses of the last few years, but the regulatory system also failed in its responsibilities," she said. "Legislation, in fact, poured gasoline on the fire. It'll never happen again, of course..."
"Record profitability within the financial services industry also served to shield it from some forms of regulatory second-guessing," Bair told the commission. "If you've got lotsa money nobody's gonna bother you, even if you're sitting on a house of cards. They assume you know what you're doing."
When financial firms are making money, even amid questions about how they are doing it, it can be difficult for regulators "to take away the punch bowl," she said. Especially when the regulators are getting their own beaks wet, or even dunked...
The 10-member panel, in its first public hearing on Wednesday, heard a tale of misjudgments and regret from top banking executives, but got no outright apology or any new explanations for the debacle that shook world markets. "We hosed it. We're real sorry the bottom fell out when it did. We can say no more!"
"But you..."
"Conversation's over!"
"But..."
"Finished! Where's my coat?"
The bankers acknowledged taking on too much risk and having choked on their own financial cooking in the subprime mortgage market, but they defended their pay packages and the huge size of their businesses in the face of proposals to break them up. "Monopolies like us are alway more efficient than smaller organizations. They tech us that in MBA school on Day 3. And if we're really, really efficient then we should have really big salaries, because even though the money's big to us, it's just a pittance compared to the cash that's flowing."
The commission, chaired by former California State Treasurer Phil Angelides, ... And who better to guide a grateful nation out of its financial crisis than a former Caliphornia state treasurer?
is beginning its work amid rising public fury over the crisis, its aftermath and what to do to prevent something like it from happening again. "What shall we do? Oh, what shall we do?"
President Barack Obama said on Thursday he was determined to impose a fee on big banks to ensure all taxpayer money used to bail them out was recovered. Right. A fee. On banks. That won't be passed on to consumers.
The banking titans set off a media circus on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, but the regulators met with a half-empty hearing room. Discussion between them and the panel was more subdued than the sometimes combative exchanges with the bankers. Attorney General Eric Holder even left the hearing early, after making a statement, because of another engagement. Racquet ball again?
In addition to Blair, the commission heard from Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, who said a program set up by the SEC in 2004 to supervise investment banks was a failure. Actually, we'd guessed that.
The program was ended in September 2008. We'd guessed it even before the program was ended.
The Consolidated Supervised Entities program, based on voluntary regulation, was inadequately staffed; over-stretched the SEC's traditional capabilities; and unwisely let firms hold lower levels of capital, she said. Put me in a room next to a very large boodle. I promise I won't have any problem adhering to voluntary regulations. Most of the time.
"We have to conclude that that program was not successful," she said of the ill-fated attempt by the SEC to oversee global giants such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns. That's what the commander of the Spanish Armada said, too. And Cleopatra, but before they passed her the snake. And Napoleon after Waterloo. And Tojo, the day of the second big kaboom...
Schapiro said the SEC is now reviewing investment bank practices in markets for subprime mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in the real estate bubble. "We are seeking to determine whether investors were provided accurate, relevant and necessary information, or misled in some manner," Schapiro said. "We're not sure how it could have been done, but we're looking into it..."
The FDIC and SEC were deeply involved in the run-up to the crisis that peaked in late 2008 after the collapse of former investment banking giant Lehman Brothers. Bair made waves this week with an FDIC proposal calling for banks with risky compensation schemes to pay higher deposit insurance premiums. I'm not a campaign fundraising kind of guy so I'll never be head of the FDIC or the SEC. Since I'm a conservative the guys who are won't be asking my advice. But I'll give it, for absolutely free. Call if Fred's Rules of Governance:
Break up the Malefactors of Great Wealth. Frederick Taylor to the contrary, "efficiency" is not the same thing as "effectiveness," and "effective" and "single point of failure" are mutually exclusive. "Rapacity" is not a desirable characteristic.
If you keep doing the same thing over and over in the hope of eventually achieving a different result you've gone nutz. If Caliphornia was the epitome of productivity and fiscal stability it would make sense to hire a former secretary of the Cal treasury to find out what went wrong with the bigger operation. Cal's not the epitome, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If I was a former Cal secretary of the treasury I'd have changed my name by now and I'd be looking for a rewarding career in the food service industry.
If there aren't that many jobs available in a shrinking field you don't have to pay big bucks to attract talent. It's that old supply-demand stuff again. If you haven't noticed it yourself ask your 6-year-old. He/she/it should be able to comprehend it.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 13:40 ||
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#2
....well, yes, they sort of shuffle between the various Feds, Washington [both the bureaucracy and lobby fronts], and the investment/banking houses. As the old saying goes, just track the money.
#3
"Regulators 'Failed' to Prevent The Financial Crisis: Bair "
Ha they loved and encouraged it. Anyone who knows about FRB will know what making a zero reserve requirement will do to credit (go exponential). Once you push risk under reserve you ensure bankruptcy, but you get loads of consumption to tax.
Long article this line of thought is amazing
Then The Times turned to abortion. Why is Ford now pro-choice, having previously declared that "Im pro-life" and "I dont run from that"? Its all a big mistake, Ford explained. By "pro-life" he meant his support for "benefits to veterans" and "equal pay treatment to National Guardsmen." Nothing about abortion at all.
Unsubstantiated rumors that Vice President Joe Biden had suddenly gone a little loopy and ordered some of his official meetings opened to at least cursory public or media attention were just that -- unsubstantiated rumors.
After a recent public sighting, fears had mounted that the one-time, long-term senator might rebel against traditional White House strictures and start acting on all the administration's oft-promised promises of government transparency and official openness running back into 2008.
But the VP's public schedule today puts all those fears to rest.
In fact, loyal Ticket readers will recall that one day last summer with no advance warning whatsoever Biden's official White House schedule changed from listing frequent "private meetings" to listing frequent meetings that are "closed press." Was this dramatic and....
...little-noticed vocabulary change a sign of internal administration turmoil? What did it really mean?
No, of course not. And, nothing.
Announcing everyone the VP meets with, including sessions with unidentified senior staff, which consume much of the vice president's listed time, and what subjects they talk about would have been a stark contrast to George W. Bush's administration, whose notoriously secretive ways drew such criticism from Democrats in Congress during eight long years of really failed policies.
Instead, in the apparent interests of bipartisanship, the Delaware Democrat has adopted much the same sort of undetailed schedule as his Republican predecessor, Dick Cheney, who was not in the Senate when Obama was only 11 years old.
In fact, today's Biden schedule highlight is a meeting with the chief of transparency for economic recovery. But, unfortunately, the transparency meeting is non-transparent, closed to the press. (See his full schedule below.) Which makes it -- what? -- secret openness? Open secrecy?
In a joint report issued early this week a league of nonprofit groups including Common Cause gave the Democratic administration high marks for its openness, although it said the work was incomplete and didn't really go into the lack of open healthcare legislative hearings televised by C-SPAN, as promised by candidate Obama.
Under the category of good but not good enough, here's another viewpoint from Tommy Christopher, including the Obama C-SPAN promise video.
Biden once described Cheney as the most dangerous VP in American history. But since Biden will only turn 68 this year, he was probably overstating in his well-known, jolly way the dangerous vice presidents that he's known whose devious backroom skills and ways earned them fame over the decades --men with household names like William King, Henry Wilson and T.A. Hendricks.
It was less than 18 months ago that the Democratic Party declared this region its new base.
Barack Obama claimed the party's presidential nomination at a football stadium here, in a state where Democrats had won the governorship, both houses of the state Legislature, and were about to pick up both U.S. Senate seats.
Now President Obama and his party's approval ratings in the West are lower than elsewhere in the country. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. abruptly announced last week that he would not seek reelection. The state's junior senator is, like Ritter, trailing badly in the polls. Analysts think Democrats could even lose their majorities in the Legislature.
"To lose this state at this moment, almost across the board, is a pretty profound statement that that party is in deep trouble," said Floyd Ciruli, a Denver-based independent pollster. No! Reeeeally?
With the Latino population growing and progressive-minded transplants from coastal states moving in, Democratic strategists had hoped that the interior West -- as distinct from the party's base on the Pacific Coast -- would eventually become reliably Democratic territory.
There are signs, however, that the independent-minded region is rejecting the party's agenda.
The party has a 53% disapproval rating in the Western U.S., excluding the longtime Democratic stronghold of California, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
When asked if they would prefer a Republican or a Democrat on a generic congressional ballot, Western voters are 11% more likely to choose Republican over Democrat, while nationwide Democrats have a 1% edge. Obama's disapproval rating in the region is 53%, compared with 46% nationally.
And Western Democrats are threatened across the region, from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who trails in the polls in his home state, Nevada, to members of Congress in Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado.
Western voters "were enticed by leaders in the Democratic Party who promised to deliver something different," said Nicole McChesney, a Republican pollster based in New Mexico. "But now they're showing their true, big-government colors, and they don't wear well in the West."
In Colorado, Democrats acknowledge that the situation is tough but contend that it has nothing to do with their policies. "Honest. They love our policies. It's us they can't stand."
"This is not unusual in tough economic times. People question everything," said Terrance Carroll, the speaker of the Colorado House. But, he added, "we're still in a very strong position."
As recently as 2004, the state was Republican country. It solidly backed George W. Bush in 2000, and the GOP had the governor's office, both U.S. Senate seats and both houses of the Legislature.
Then the Democrats took it all back, touting themselves as a can-do, pragmatic party not bound by the GOP's social conservatism. First, former state Atty. Gen. Ken Salazar won a Senate seat and Democrats captured the Legislature in 2004. In 2006, Ritter, the former district attorney of Denver, won the governor's race. In 2008, Obama won the state by 9 percentage points and a Democrat captured the other Senate seat.
The party's troubles began soon thereafter.
Obama picked Salazar to be his Interior secretary. Rather than selecting an experienced politician, Ritter chose the superintendent of Denver schools, Michael Bennet, to fill the open Senate seat. That outraged many party members, including former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, who was passed over and is challenging Bennet in the primary.
Colorado has weathered the economic downturn relatively well, but, like governors everywhere, Ritter has had to cut crucial government services and raise fees to balance the state budget. He instituted furlough days for state workers and a program to allow felons out of prison early. He has lagged in the polls behind his probable Republican challenger, former Rep. Scott McInnis, and has struggled to raise money.
When Ritter announced that he would not run for reelection, Democrats said it was unrelated to his standing in the polls.
"This allows me to focus on the things that should be the most important: taking care of my family and taking care of the state of Colorado," Ritter said.
Salazar said he was not interested in running in Ritter's place, but Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, announced Tuesday that he would run. Hickenlooper is popular, but a poll last week showed him 3 points behind McInnis.
Bob Loevy, a political science professor at Colorado College, said Democrats in the state were "victims of their own success. It's not that they've done anything wrong -- this always happens when a party wins a lot and things don't go well nationally."
David Wasserman, who tracks congressional races for the Cook Political Report in Washington, said Democrats could take heart in the long-term demographics of the region: rising number of Latinos and younger, college-educated whites, who are usually reliable votes for the party.
"But what is encouraging for Democrats in the long term is discouraging in 2010," he said. "We're going to see a big drop-off in younger voters," two-thirds of whom backed Obama in 2008, Wasserman said. That will hurt the party's ability to hold on to its Western seats.
Loevy is skeptical that demographics give Democrats any long-term edge in Colorado. "Colorado mainly follows national trends in its voting behavior," he said. "The best thing they had going for them was that they had an unpopular Republican administration in Washington."
Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, contends that the state's loyalties change constantly. Indeed, even though Democrats were largely shut out here between 1994 and 2004, the party often did well in the 1970s and '80s.
"I know that Democrats thought good times would last forever and they had built a permanent situation in Colorado," Wadhams said. "But no party can build a permanent fortress in this state."
#1
What the idiot Dems. (a redundancy I know) can't seem to understand is that when you win all the elections by running against the profligacy of the 'pubs. and THEN you tiple the profligacy the very first chance you get.....
even the most stupid voter is going to look up and say WTF???
Quinnipiac has its first numbers (1,430 RVs, 1/8-12, MoE +/- 2.6%) on the Connecticut Senate race since Chris Dodd (D) announced he would not seek re-election last week. The results show why Democrats were so eager to see Attorney General Richard Blumenthal jump in to replace the embattled incumbent.
General Election Matchups
Blumenthal 62 -- Simmons 27 -- Und 10
Blumenthal 64 -- McMahon 23 -- Und 11
Blumenthal 66 -- Schiff 19 -- Und 14
Consider that in a November poll, Dodd trailed former Rep. Rob Simmons 49-38 and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon 43-41. Suddenly that GOP primary doesn't look worth winning, but here's how that contest shapes up:
The survey also finds that President Obama has a 55 percent job approval rating; 41 percent disapprove. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I), who faces re-election in 2012, has an upside-down 39 percent approval rating, with 54 percent disapproving. Dodd's is similar, 36 percent / 58 percent.
Retiring Gov. Jodi Rell (R) has a 64 percent job approval rating.
South Carolina state representatives formally reprimanded a governor on Wednesday for the first time, admonishing Gov. Mark Sanford (R) for secret trips to see his Argentine mistress and improper use of state aircraft.
The lawmakers voted 102 to 11 to censure Sanford for bringing "ridicule, dishonor, disgrace and shame" to himself and the state. The rebuke says the two-term Republican was derelict in his duty and abused his power.
The issue came up a few hours later in the Senate but was sidelined when a legislator said the resolution needed to be reviewed in committee. Some Senate leaders have said their body might never vote on censure.
The censure has no practical effect on the final year of Sanford's tenure. State law prevents him from running again.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 12:13 ||
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It's another day, so that means it's another cringe-inducing gaffe from Martha Coakley. Buried in an otherwise innocuous Boston Globe story, the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts Senate race said this
There is a subdued, almost dispassionate quality to her public appearances, which are surprisingly few. Her voice is not hoarse from late-night rallies. Even yesterday, the day after a hard-hitting debate, she had no public campaign appearances in the state.
Coakley bristles at the suggestion that, with so little time left, in an election with such high stakes, she is being too passive.
"As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?'' she fires back, in an apparent reference to a Brown online video of him doing just that.
So in response to the accusation that her campaign is flailing because she hasn't done enough campaign events, she asserts that she's above going to Fenway Park and pressing the flesh with voters? Wow.
It's bad enough she thinks she's above shaking hands with the little people, but defiantly asserting she doesn't need to go to Fenway Park? That's hallowed ground as far as Massachusetts voters are concerned. And does she even know it's not baseball season? It was probably much warmer when Brown was out shaking hands than it is now.
It's bad enough that Coakley said this at all, but if she said this on camera it's Scott Brown's new ad.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 12:08 ||
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#1
Unless, of course, they're DC lobbyists coming out of the Cask and Flagon with thousand dollar checks in their hands.
In a lotta ways, she's like Kerry with tits...
#3
I gonna have to have a lot of drink to get that image out of my mind.
I was thinking she sounds like Leona Helmsley running for office (but not really running). She can't be bothered with getting too close to the little people.
Something about the Republican running for Ted Kennedy's open Senate seat must have rung some bells over at Cosmopolitan. Mediate reports the ladymag sifted through the archives and found Scott Brown very naked in their June 1982 issue -- the winner of that summer's "America's Sexiest Man" contest. Hello!
Brown at the time was a 22 year-old law student at Boston College, with blow-dried hair and a whiff of the JFK Jr/Scott Baio vibe, we're thinking. So far in the race, no naked photos of Democrat Martha Coakley have surfaced -- but the election is not until Jan. 19 so anything can happen.
This might be a good time to ponder a double standard. If Coakley had posed nude, it's fair to assume the race would be over for her. But for Cosmo man here -- what do you think? Will hidebound New Englanders smirk or scorn?
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 12:07 ||
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#1
Well, I guess he picks up the gay male vote....
#2
It's old news up here. He even jokes about it. It paid his tuition to BC Law. They're pretty tame and I don't think too many people have a problem with it. Some Democrats try to make an issue out of it and all it does is make them look like idiots.
On the other hand, if Coakley has posed nude most people here would appreciate it if whoever has the evidence destroys it. For the common good...
#4
So is the message the donks are trying to sell that it's O.K. for a donk to drive a car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick but it's not O.K. for a pub to pose nekkid for a women's mag?
There's a lot of talk about the possibility that Brown will become the 41st Republican senator, the lawmaker who can stop the Democrats' national health care plan. That's important, but here in Massachusetts, it's perhaps more important that Brown is seen as the solution to the problem of too much one-party government. As the Brown team sees it, the political situation in Massachusetts, dominated by the Democratic party and increasingly marked by corruption (three consecutive state Speakers of the House have been indicted and forced to resign in disgrace) is making state voters wary about the one-party domination of Washington, where Democratic leaders are rushing toward new extremes of federal spending and government intrusion. "I think I represent a breath of fresh air, where people know that I'm going to go down to Washington to be a check and balance," Brown says.
When Brown talks about what he's up against, he says it very simply: "It's me against the machine." By that, he means the Massachusetts machine -- the Democratic party, the patronage, the entrenched network -- as well as the national machine that has targeted him since word got out that he might win. "It's revving up," Brown tells reporters at Zoll. "They have MoveOn.org, SEIU just took out a major buy, potentially the president is coming this weekend." Brown has his own weapons -- talk radio and conservative Web activists have been huge helps -- but in Massachusetts at least, he's still outgunned.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/14/2010 11:59 ||
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Fine. Tax their bonuses. They'll just double them. And people won't even know that their returns have been reduced. Oh well. Stupid peasants.
Everybody's angry at banks. Federal deficits are wide and need addressing. And the president and Congress are starting to map out next year's budget.
That means they're talking taxes in Washington. The capital is awash in proposals for how to raise revenue and score political points.
There's no guarantee all of them - or even some - will pass.
But they are an indication of the direction the White House and Congress may go as they finalize decisions for how to pay for health reform, reduce debt, support other government efforts and garner votes in a mid-term election year.
President Obama on Thursday is expected to recommend that Congress recoup any federal bailout money that hasn't been repaid within five years by imposing a tax or fee on large banks, even if they themselves haven't taken bailout money or repay the bailout money they did take.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the government expects to bear losses on the bailout money given to American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500), GM and Chrysler.
"This is as much a political statement as it is a tax policy statement," said Mel Schwarz, director of tax legislative affairs at Grant Thornton LLP.
Selectively taxing banks could have some legs, but Concept Capital's Washington Research Group puts the odds of its passage at less than 50%, said director of research Anne Mathias.
The populist fury unleashed when bonuses were paid to AIG executives is back. This time it's during bonus season on Wall Street, where investment banks are expected to distribute tens of billions of dollars to reward their employees for the banks' 2009 performance.
House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., will hold a hearing on Wall Street compensation next week. On the agenda will be consideration of bonus taxation, as well as President Obama's proposal to tax banks to make up for any bailout money that isn't repaid.
Frank's committee doesn't write tax law. That's up to the House Ways and Means and the Senate Finance committees. But he is beating the drums for change.
"I think compensation has gotten excessive," Frank said in a statement. "I want to underline what we are already doing. Frankly, in the hope that maybe the Senate will be even more inclined to [act]."
So don't be surprised if talk of a banker bonus tax is revived. But it's not clear how viable it would be. "That's more politics than policy," Schwarz said.
Lawmakers may effectively raise taxes on income earned by managers of hedge funds and private-equity funds.
Typically the managers are paid a portion of the profits earned by their funds, but they only need to pay capital gains tax on those profits. A proposal before the House would instead subject the profits to ordinary income tax rates, which are higher.
Mathias thinks the proposal might pass, but not before the mid-term elections in November. Schwarz thinks the issue will be debated but not necessarily passed this year. "It's not a slam-dunk."
Bills in the House and Senate propose a new excise tax on financial firms for their securities transactions, such as in stocks, futures, swaps and options. If passed, it could be used to help fund deficit reduction and legislative efforts to create jobs.
"It's very much on the table," Schwarz said. But, he added, "I'd be surprised to see it pass this year."
Between now and early February, when the president will present his 2011 budget proposal to Congress, there will be a lot of guessing as to just what tax proposals will be included.
On Wednesday, Congress Daily reported that the administration might seek a one- to two-year extension to the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, set to expire on Dec. 31. If that's the case, it would be a switch from the administration's earlier call to permanently extend the cuts for everyone except those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples filing jointly).
Mathias doesn't think extending the tax cuts temporarily for upper income households will fly.
As for everyone else's tax cuts, a temporary extension is very likely since permanently extending them is a tough sell in a deficit-conscious environment. Over 10 years, it would cost roughly $2 trillion in forgone tax revenue.
But calling for a one- or two-year extension could make the proposition seem much less expensive than it really is. That's because lawmakers may just decide to keep extending them temporarily, Mathias and Schwarz said. As proof, they point to the many "temporary" fixes for the Alternative Minimum Tax that Congress has passed over the years.
Lawmakers are considering ways to boost how much high-income people pay in Medicare tax to help pay for health reform. In the Senate health bill, one provision would raise Medicare taxes on income over $200,000 ($250,000 for couples).
Currently, the Medicare payroll tax is 2.9% on all wages - with the worker and his employer each paying 1.45%. Under the Senate bill, these high-income workers would pay 2.35%.
In addition, they may expand the reach of the Medicare tax, which currently only applies to wages and salaries. Under consideration: subjecting unearned income such as dividends to the Medicare tax as well.
Currently, a U.S.-based company doesn't need to pay income tax on its foreign subsidiaries' profits unless and until the money is brought back to U.S. shores. One idea under consideration is to eliminate the deferral option so companies have to pay tax on their overseas profits even if the money stays offshore.
Another is to lower the corporate income tax rate for foreign earnings to entice companies to repatriate the money. That happened once before on a temporary basis. Going forward, Schwarz said, having another temporary incentive to repatriate could be tempting if lawmakers need to raise revenue over the short-term.
Mathias believes some change to the repatriation rules could pass by the end of the year but not before the mid-term elections. Schwarz expects a debate could start this year but given everything else on Congress' plate, he doesn't think anything would pass in 2010..
#2
None this article makes sense. Except for perhaps taxing US companies' foreign income. But that only works if our economy is the most attractive option.
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.
Financial regulators, lulled into inaction by soaring bank and Wall Street profits, failed to protect Americans from the 2008 financial crisis, senior U.S. officials told an investigative panel on Thursday.
Everybody should just relax and take it easy.
South Carolina state representatives formally reprimanded a governor on Wednesday for the first time, admonishing Gov. Mark Sanford (R) for secret trips to see his Argentine mistress and improper use of state aircraft.
It's another day, so that means it's another cringe-inducing gaffe from Martha Coakley. Buried in an otherwise innocuous Boston Globe story, the Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts Senate race said this
There's a lot of talk about the possibility that Brown will become the 41st Republican senator, the lawmaker who can stop the Democrats' national health care plan. That's important, but here in Massachusetts, it's perhaps more important that Brown is seen as the solution to the problem of too much one-party government. As the Brown team sees it, the political situation in Massachusetts, dominated by the Democratic party and increasingly marked by corruption (three consecutive state Speakers of the House have been indicted and forced to resign in disgrace) is making state voters wary about the one-party domination of Washington, where Democratic leaders are rushing toward new extremes of federal spending and government intrusion. "I think I represent a breath of fresh air, where people know that I'm going to go down to Washington to be a check and balance," Brown says.
