Normally I boycott listening to angry political talk radio but I had to do a five hour round trip drive today to drop off my girls in Springfield, so that they can be watched by their Grandma Julie while my wife and I run the Hood to Coast this weekend.
First up on the BBC I learned that Great Britain is home to the nude activist Steven Gough, nicknamed the "Naked Rambler". He was just jailed for the 20th time after being arrested for trying to leave the prison where he was staying for being nude in public. Why was he arrested? He refused to put any clothes on when he left the prison. He has spent 657 days in jail already for public nudity. The estimated cost of the court cases and incarceration for him is in the "hundreds of thousands of pounds." Ouch!
On the Ed Schultz show I learned that Moammar Gaddafi apparently had a big time crush of former Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice. No news yet on whether or not the feelings by Ms. Rice are reciprocal.
On the Dan Patrick show a poll was taken asking which of the following three sports teams from the 1990s was the most dominate: New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboy or Chicago Bulls. I think that one is a no brainer--its the Chicago Bulls by a long shot.
On the Lars Larson show it was revealed that the government is ready to move forward on building a pipeline from the Alberta Oil Sand Pits to the United States. The process for granting permits has lasted almost three years, when typically the process takes 18-24 months. Barack Obama and the state department both support the move. Some environmentalists are opposed to the move because of the huge CO2 emissions created when oil sands are refined. The expert that appeared on the show briefly mentioned that she believed that global warming is completely overblown. Ironically enough, the U.S. is in the middle of the hottest summer on record. Yet it was revealed that if the U.S. did not build a pipeline, the Chinese were prepared to partner with the Canadians. In other words, the oil sands are going to be developed no matter what. Which demonstrates that if global warming is real, the economic incentives to create it are too high to be stopped. Hopefully the skeptics are correct. The pipeline is expected to create 20,000 new jobs in the U.S and Canada.
A few interesting articles in the news lately. Billionaire Warren Buffet pointed out that last year that he paid just over 17% in taxes. He wrote an op-ed asking taxes on millionaires to be raised. I listened to a few conservatives argue that if he wants higher taxes he should just write a check to the federal government and leave everybody else alone. Its worth pointing out that when the U.S. was governed under the Articles of Confederation that states all agreed to pay a certain level of taxes to the federal government, but the agreement was voluntary, and there was no mechanism in place for the federal government to force states to pay. None of the states hit their revenue targets and under the Articles of Confederation the federal government was pretty much broke. Oregon Democratic Congressman Kurt Schrader laid out the road map for how to tackle the deficit and his plan involves no new taxes. Its worth noting that he is in the most competitive congressional district in the state. Last year only 46.4% of households paid federal income taxes. Liberal national syndicated columnist, Ruth Markus made a strong yet unconvincing argument as to why this isn't a problem. Finally, Robert Samuelson wrote a thought provoking and insightful op-ed piece about 10 Ways to Fix the Federal Budget.
That's it for now folks. Enjoy the weather.
No comments:
Post a Comment