Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party |
- Tax cuts, no raise for SC workers in gov’s budget
- Evans Says Jobless Rate May Rise as Progress ‘Transitory’
- The Navy Is Depending on Dolphins to Keep the Strait of Hormuz Open
- Ventura Girl Scout, 14, Calls For Cookie Boycott Over ‘Radical Homosexual Agenda’
- Scientists: UN Soldiers Brought Deadly Superbug to Americas
- Is Obama Trying to Out-Romney Romney–Already?
- What does Ron Paul want?
| Tax cuts, no raise for SC workers in gov’s budget Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:59 PM PST By SEANNA ADCOX, Bloomberg Business Week Corporations and people would get a break on their income taxes and public workers in South Carolina would go a fourth year without a pay raise under a budget proposal Gov. Nikki Haley released Friday. Haley’s recommendations for a $5.7 billion state budget for 2012-13 would reduce a key funding stream for public schools that primarily pays teachers’ salaries, while adding $10 million for charter schools. She wants to add about 100 law enforcement officers and several family court judges, and put money toward mental health treatment. Haley said state employees should look for a raise in 2013-14. “You can’t give everything you want to give. Do I want state employees to have more? Yes. Was this year the year to do it? No,” Haley told reporters. “I think they deserve it. We have some of the hardest-working state employees out there. What’s more important is we get these agencies in order, and we give them stronger agencies to go into every day.” Haley, a former state House member, recognized that legislators ignored former Gov. Mark Sanford’s executive budgets, but she said she wants budget-writers to use her budget as a template. To read more, visit: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9S887RO0.htm |
| Evans Says Jobless Rate May Rise as Progress ‘Transitory’ Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:56 PM PST By Joshua Zumbrun, Bloomberg.com Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans said the drop in the unemployment rate to 8.5 percent may be partially reversed in coming months. "I'm a little concerned that the most recent improvement is going to be transitory and it might move up above 8.5 percent," Evans said in response to audience questions after a speech today in Carmel, Indiana. Evans said he forecasts that "at the end of the year, we're not going to be very different from 8.5 percent unemployment." Fed policy makers will discuss at their Jan. 24-25 meeting in Washington whether more steps are needed to bolster an expanding U.S. economy. Employers last year added 1.64 million workers, the best year for the American worker since 2006. Even with the gain, little headway has been made in recovering the 8.75 million jobs lost as a result of the recession that ended in June 2009. The Labor Department said last week that the unemployment rate dropped to 8.5 percent, down from 8.7 percent in November, 8.9 percent in October and 9.4 percent in December 2010. Speaking to reporters after his speech, Evans said he "can't discount the possibility" that the "headwinds" facing the economy could cause growth to slow, as happened in the summer of 2010 and 2011. To read more, visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-13/fed-s-evans-says-policy-risks-errors-of-japan-great-depression.html |
| The Navy Is Depending on Dolphins to Keep the Strait of Hormuz Open Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:51 PM PST By: JOHN HUDSON, TheAtlanticWire.com If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. Navy has a backup plan to save one-fifth of the world’s daily oil trade: send in the dolphins. The threat of Iran closing the strait has reached a fever pitch, reports today’s New York Times, with U.S. officials warning Iran’s supreme leader that such moves would cross a “red line” provoking a U.S. response. Iran could block the strait with any assortment of mines, armed speed boats or anti-ship cruise missiles but according to Michael Connell at the Center for Naval Analysis, "The immediate issue [for the U.S. military] is to get the mines." To solve that problem, the Navy has a solution that isn’t heavily-advertised but has a time-tested success rate: mine-detecting dolphins. “We’ve got dolphins,” said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navy’s use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy: KEATING: They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects. The invasion of Iraq was the last time the minesweeping capability of dolphins was widely-touted. “Dolphins – - which possess sonar so keen they can discern a quarter from a dime when blindfolded and spot a 3-inch metal sphere from 370 feet away — are invaluable minesweepers,” reported The San Francisco Chronicle. In 2010, the Seattle Times reported that the Navy has 80 bottlenose dolphins in the San Diego Bay alone. They are taught to hunt for mines and drop acoustic transponders nearby. The photo above shows a dolphin with a tracking device attached to its fin. According to a report in 2003, the dolphins only detect the mines. Destroying them is left up to the Navy’s human divers. Still, the mammals are large enough to detonate a live mine, a prospect that doesn’t delight animal rights groups. To read more, visit: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/01/militarys-weapon-against-iranian-mines-high-tech-dolphins/47384/ |
| Ventura Girl Scout, 14, Calls For Cookie Boycott Over ‘Radical Homosexual Agenda’ Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:47 PM PST From: CBS Los Angeles A Ventura County Girl Scout is at the center of a national controversy after she released a video calling for a boycott of the group's popular cookies over what she calls a "radical homosexual agenda". The girl — who has only been identified as 14-year-old "Taylor" — cited the recent decision by Girl Scout officials to allow a 7-year-old "transgender" boy to join a Colorado-based troop last fall. In a video that first appeared Wednesday, Taylor linked proceeds from cookie sales "to push a radical homosexual agenda at the expense of the Scouts' safety." A statement on the group's website HonestGirlScouts.com called for the Girl Scouts of USA to "eliminate sex education from Girl Scout permission and curricula". The group also is calling for the organization to cut ties with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) for its "friendship" with Planned Parenthood "and its worldwide agenda of explicit sexual education for young children". A flier on the website alleged new CEO Anna Maria Chavez to be a member of a "pro-abortion feminist coalition" and suggested former CEO Kathy Cloninger never retracted her stated goal of partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide "good" and "information-based" sex education. To read more, visit: http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/01/13/ventura-girl-scout-14-calls-for-cookie-boycott-over-radical-homosexual-agenda/ |
| Scientists: UN Soldiers Brought Deadly Superbug to Americas Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:43 PM PST By MATTHEW MOSK, BRIAN ROSS and RYM MOMTAZ, Yahoo News Compelling new scientific evidence suggests United Nations peacekeepers have carried a virulent strain of cholera — a super bug — into the Western Hemisphere for the first time. The vicious form of cholera has already killed 7,000 people in Haiti, where it surfaced in a remote village in October 2010. Leading researchers from Harvard Medical School and elsewhere told ABC News that, despite UN denials, there is now a mountain of evidence suggesting the strain originated in Nepal, and was carried to Haiti by Nepalese soldiers who came to Haiti to serve as UN peacekeepers after the earthquake that ravaged the country on Jan. 12, 2010 — two years ago today. Haiti had never seen a case of cholera until the arrival of the peacekeepers, who allegedly failed to maintain sanitary conditions at their base. “What scares me is that the strain from South Asia has been recognized as more virulent, more capable of causing severe disease, and more transmissible,” said John Mekalanos, who chairs the Department of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School. “These strains are nasty. So far there has been no secondary outbreak. But Haiti now represents a foothold for a particularly dangerous variety of this deadly disease.” More than 500,000 Haitians have been infected, and Mekalanos said a handful of victims who contracted cholera in Haiti have now turned up in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and in Boston, Miami and New York, but only in isolated cases. How cholera landed in Haiti has been a politically charged topic for more than a year now, with the United Nations repeatedly refusing to acknowledge any role in the outbreak despite mounting evidence that international peacekeepers were the most likely culprits. The UN has already faced hostility from Haitians who believe peacekeeping troops have abused local residents without consequence. They now face legal action from relatives of victims who have petitioned the UN for restitution. And the cholera charge could further hamper the UN’s ability to work effectively there, two years after the country was hobbled by the earthquake. Over the summer, Assistant Secretary General Anthony Banbury told ABC News that the UN sincerely wanted to know if it played a part in the outbreak, but independent efforts to answer that question had not succeeded. He said the disease could have just as easily been carried by a backpacker or civilian aid worker. To read more, visit: http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-un-soldiers-brought-deadly-superbug-americas-194141189–abc-news.html |
| Is Obama Trying to Out-Romney Romney–Already? Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:40 PM PST By Michael Hirsh, NationalJournal.com Whatever the real reason for the timing, it’s interesting that President Obama decided that this week was the moment–when consensus is gelling that Mitt Romney is the all-but-inevitable GOP nominee–to announce a very Romney-esque cost-cutting plan. At a White House event complete with business CEOs as props and a slide presentation (the kind Bain Capital once perfected), the president urged Congress to give him the power to merge a plethora of trade and commerce functions that are now dispersed among the Commerce Department, the Small Business Administration, the U.S. Trade Representative, the Export-Import Bank; the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Trade and Development Agency. The consolidation would save some $3 billion and 1,000 to 2,000 jobs over ten years, the White House said. It was, in other words, precisely the kind of government-slashing exercise that Romney, the numbers-whiz-consultant-turned-governor-turned-candidate, has been promising we’ll get from him as president. To be fair, Obama had promised such a move in his last State of the Union address, and the next SOTU is fast approaching. But one wonders whether this will be the first in a series of moves intended to convey to voters: you don’t need Mitt Romney. You’ve already got me. To read more, visit: http://decoded.nationaljournal.com/2012/01/is-obama-trying-to-outromney-r.php |
| Posted: 14 Jan 2012 12:37 PM PST By Josh Lederman, TheHill.com Ron Paul is on track to end the GOP presidential race in second place. But his refusal to directly take on the man who’s ahead of him — Mitt Romney — has Republicans wondering: What does Ron Paul want? Paul has already ruled out a return to the House if he loses the race for the Republican nomination. And at 76, Paul can be ruled out for another presidential bid in the future. That has left some in the GOP fearful that with nothing to lose if and when he exits the race, he could lambast the party and Romney for choosing moderation over true conservative principles. The Texan has made a habit of voting against legislation supported by his party in Congress, making clear that his allegiance is to his issues — civil liberty, fiscal conservatism and limited government — and not to the Republican Party. "I'm asked this all the time and every time my answer is the same. I have no plans on running as a third party," Paul said on Saturday during a debate in Manchester, N.H. To read more, visit: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/204165-republicans-ask-what-does-ron-paul-want |
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