Sunday, November 6, 2011

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Fla. businesses to pay out more for unemployment

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 09:23 AM PDT

By GARY FINEOUT, Bloomberg Businessweek

Florida’s businesses that are already grappling with the toll of the recession and a high unemployment rate could get hit with a massive tax hike next year.

In a move that some fear could hamper a fragile recovery now under way, nearly 460,000 businesses across the state will have to pay higher unemployment taxes. The news comes as Gov. Rick Scott continues to push creating jobs in the state by lowering costs for businesses.

For two years, state lawmakers have pushed back significant hikes in the state’s unemployment compensation taxes. But preliminary figures released Thursday show the minimum tax rate for employers is expected to jump from $72.10 per employee to more than $170 per employee. The maximum rate is also expected to rise from $378 to $459 per employee.

“This is a big deal,” said David Hart, executive vice president of the Florida Chamber of Commerce. “The last thing we ought to be doing is putting additional burdens on employers.”

The tax hike is not totally unexpected since it was state legislators who have delayed previous increases.

Out-of-work Floridians collect unemployment compensation benefits. But the problem is that the trust fund used to pay those benefits has been drained as nearly a million Floridians have remained out of work. Florida’s unemployment rate is now 10.6 percent.

To read more, visit:  http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QPVRDO0.htm

The Family That Sells Gold to the Government

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 09:17 AM PDT

By Kathleen Miller, Bloomberg Businessweek

In 1973, Louis Oliari opened Coins 'N Things, a small storefront between a Dairy Queen and a hair salon in Brockton, Mass. His teenage son Mark had become obsessed with coin trading, and Louis, an engineer and a coin enthusiast himself, figured if he indulged the kid he'd eventually outgrow the hobby and go to college. "The whole idea was that I'd get bored and get this out of my system," Mark, now 54, remembers.

Today, Coins 'N Things is the largest seller of raw gold to the federal government. In the fiscal year that just ended, the U.S. Mint, which has bars made into coins for collectors and investors, bought $1.86 billion worth of the metal from the Bridgewater (Mass.) company. Not too shabby, considering that Coins 'N Things and the Mint struck their first deal less than two years ago.

The family's fondness for coins began when Louis Oliari was laid up with a knee injury and his wife gave him a book about coin collecting. Father and son began hoarding pennies from their local bank, assembling complete collections by decade. By age 13, Mark was attending trade shows. Then came the storefront. Business grew so quickly that after Mark finished high school, Louis let him trade coins full-time. It wasn't long before Louis left his job at Honeywell (HON) to join him.

Several years later, Coins 'N Things expanded into the wholesale metals market, acquiring clients such as hedge funds as well as jewelers and manufacturers that use raw gold. That was Mark's passion. His father preferred to help coin collectors and "had no conception of where this thing would go," says Mark. "He'd look in our section where I'm wheeling and dealing, making probably 400 phone calls. He'd say, 'Wow, you guys are probably doing three or four million dollars a year now.' I'd say, 'Dad, that is a good day.'"

The company developed contacts around the world, and Mark and his wife, Patty, also a partner, began thinking about the next step after their kids expressed interest in the business. Three years ago a credit line from Wells Fargo (WFC) gave the self-funded company the capital it needed to go after the ultimate customer: the U.S. Mint. In early 2010 the Oliaris won approval to sell gold to the Mint. "That relationship with the U.S. government—that's about the biggest stamp of approval you can get," says Mark.

Every weekday, Coins 'N Things faxes the Mint with the amount of gold it can furnish and the price it wants. The Oliaris compete against four other government-approved sellers, and the Mint orders from the one with enough stock on hand at the lowest price. The family says its extensive network of suppliers often means they win the day. Coins 'N Things gets roughly 40 percent of its gold from a refinery owned by the Canadian government. "You have to know everybody, everywhere," Mark says.

To read more, visit:  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-family-that-sells-gold-to-the-government-11032011.html

CIA Drones Kill Large Groups Without Knowing Who They Are

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 09:13 AM PDT

By Spencer Ackerman, Wired.com

The expansion of the CIA's undeclared drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan required a big expansion of who can be marked for death. Once the standard for targeted killing was top-level leadership in al-Qaeda or one of its allies. That's long gone, especially as the number of people targeted at once has grown.

This is the new standard, according to a blockbuster piece in the Wall Street Journal: "men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always known." The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups. The article does not define the standards are for "suspicion" and "association."

Strikes targeting those people — usually "groups" of such people — are called "signature" strikes. "The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes," the Journal's Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman and Julian E. Barnes report.

And bulk really means bulk. The Journal reports that the growth in clusters of people targeted by the CIA has required the agency to tell its Pakistani counterparts about mass attacks. When the agency expects to kill 20 or more people at once, then it's got to give the Pakistanis notice.

Determining who is a target not a question of intelligence collection. The cameras on the CIA fleet of Predators and Reapers work just fine. It's a question of intelligence analysis — interpreting the imagery collected from the drones, and from the spies and spotters below, to understand who's a terrorist and who, say, drops off the terrorists' laundry. Admittedly, in a war with a shadowy enemy, it can be difficult to distinguish between the two.

Fundamentally, though, it's a question of policy: whether it's acceptable for the CIA to kill someone without truly knowing if he's the bombsmith or the laundry guy.

To read more, visit:  http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/cia-drones-marked-for-death/

UCLA medical officials say patient information data stolen

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:54 AM PDT

From: The La Times

The UCLA Health System is warning thousands of patients that their personal information was stolen and they are at risk of possible identity theft, officials said in a statement released Friday.

Officials don't believe the information has been accessed or misused but are referring patients to a data security company if their name and credit are affected.

Altogether, 16,288 patients' information was taken from the home of a physician whose house was burglarized on Sept. 6, according to the UCLA Health System.

The physician works for UCLA Faculty Practice Group, whose doctors see patients at the outpatient clinics and the four inpatient hospitals: Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center and Orthopedic Hospital, Mattel Children's Hospital and Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital.

The stolen patient information included first and last names as well as some birth dates, medical record numbers, addresses and medical information, officials said. It did not include Social Security numbers, credit card or insurance details. The patient information was from 2007 through 2011.

The data were on the physician's external hard drive, officials said. Though the hard drive was encrypted, a piece of paper with the password was nearby and is also missing. The physician notified UCLA the next day and officials began identifying patients affected.

To read more, visit:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/11/ucla-patient-identification-stolen.html

Tea Party offers reward in NY ballot tampering

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:50 AM PDT

From: The Wall Street Journal

BUFFALO, N.Y. — With no arrests yet in a case of alleged ballot tampering in a New York county executive race, the Tea Party is offering a $5,000 reward.

The Erie County Sheriff’s office says it continues to investigate but a spokeswoman couldn’t say whether any arrests will come before Election Day next Tuesday.

The investigation began after at least 10 absentee ballots were found to have been pre-marked for Republican Chris Collins, the incumbent Erie County executive who’s in a tight re-election race against Mark Poloncarz, the county comptroller.

On Friday, western New York Tea Party coordinator Rus Thompson announced a $5,000 reward for an arrest and conviction in the alleged ballot tampering. He says the money was put up by an anonymous donor.

To read more, visit:  http://online.wsj.com/article/APb24c701a4fd94a5492bb7eee60a66b5b.html

Gary Johnson ‘the marijuana guy’ takes 2012 pitch to L.A.

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:45 AM PDT

By Kate Linthicum, LA Times

The International Drug Policy Reform Conference in downtown Los Angeles might not seem like a sensible campaign stop for a Republican presidential hopeful. There was reggae music blasting, little lapel pins shaped like marijuana leaves, and a speech by California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the uber-liberal former mayor of San Francisco who is famous for granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But on Thursday, Gary Johnson stood there before an audience of drug decriminalization activists, drawing cheers for his promise that if he wins the Republican nomination and is elected president, he will issue a full pardon for anyone serving prison time for a non-violent marijuana crime.

What Johnson's shoe-string presidential campaign lacks in resources and media attention—which is a lot — it has made up for in quirkiness. Consider last month, when the former New Mexico governor showed up to talk economics with protesters at Occupy Wall Street. Or his announcement that he had forgone campaigning in Iowa in order to focus on New Hampshire, where he hopes to make a good showing in the January primary – and surprise those who have dismissed him as a long-shot.

An advocate of small-government and tax reform that would tax consumption, instead of income, Johnson's libertarian leanings have drawn comparisons to Ron Paul, whom he endorsed for president in 2008.

But he is best-known nationally for his stance on marijuana.

Johnson has been calling for the legalization of the drug since 1999, during his second term as governor. He says he smoked marijuana recreationally when he was younger, and used it more recently to help with the pain after a paragliding accident in 2005. Wherever he goes, Johnson says, people point and say: "That's the marijuana guy."

To read more, visit:  http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/03/news/la-pn-johnson-marijuana-20111103

Ventura, miffed by court, says he’s off to Mexico

Posted: 05 Nov 2011 08:41 AM PDT

By BRIAN BAKST, YahooNews.com

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is so upset by the dismissal of his airport security lawsuit that he threatened Friday to apply for dual citizenship so he can spend more time in his beloved Mexico — or run for president of what he labeled “the Fascist States of America.”

Ventura, also a former wrestling star, sued the U.S. government in January, alleging that airport scans and pat-downs amounted to unreasonable search and seizure. A district judge threw out his lawsuit Thursday, ruling it should have been filed in a Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ventura has said a titanium hip implanted in him in 2008 sets off metal detectors and that agents previously used hand-held wands to scan his body. He said he was subjected to a body pat-down after an airport metal detector went off last November. Ventura said he hasn’t flown since and won’t fly commercially again.

Outside the federal courthouse in St. Paul, with a crew from his “Conspiracy Theory” cable TV show filming, Ventura said he hadn’t decided whether to continue pressing his lawsuit. He said he wanted to make his case before a jury, not a panel of judges.

Ventura, a political independent who served one term as governor, teased that he might have to run for president to change the policy and a court system he regards as broken.

Moments later, he vowed to apply for Mexican citizenship so he can live there more months of the year.

The former Navy SEAL said he had lost his patriotism.

“I will never stand for a national anthem again. I will turn my back and I will raise a fist,” he said.

To read more, visit:  http://news.yahoo.com/ventura-miffed-court-says-hes-off-mexico-174718110.html
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