Saturday, February 25, 2012

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party

Californians willing to tax wealthy

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:49 AM PST

By: Marisa Lagos, SFGate.com

After years of austere state budgets and frustration among Democratic lawmakers who have tried unsuccessfully to increase taxes, a new poll shows the majority of voters are ready to raise the wealthiest Californians’ income taxes.

A Field Poll released today contains mostly good news for the various groups that want voters to approve tax increases this fall. The strongest support is for the so-called millionaires tax, which would increase state income taxes for people who make more than $1 million a year.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax plan also had majority support, according to the independent survey, with 58 percent of likely voters inclined to vote for the measure.

The governor’s plan would increase the state sales tax by half a cent and raise income taxes for the state’s highest earners for five years. The measure would raise about $35 billion before the taxes expire.

If the governor’s proposed tax isn’t passed, it would trigger automatic cuts to higher education and K-12 schools under Brown’s proposed 2012-13 budget.

Each of the tax measures aimed at the November ballot needs only a majority vote to pass.

To read more, visit:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/24/MNHI1NBHLN.DTL&tsp=1

S&P 500 Rises to Highest Level Since 2008

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:46 AM PST

By Rita Nazareth, Bloomberg.com

U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor's 500 Index above its highest close since 2008, as better-than-estimated consumer sentiment and home sales reports bolstered confidence in the world's largest economy.

American International Group Inc. added 2 percent after profit jumped 77 percent. Salesforce.com (CRM) Inc., the largest seller of online customer-management software, surged 8.9 percent as billings growth beat forecasts. Kroger Co. (KR) gained 2 percent as Citigroup Inc. recommended buying the largest U.S. grocery-store chain. A measure of banks in the S&P 500 decreased 0.7 percent for the biggest decline among 24 groups.

The S&P 500 increased 0.4 percent to 1,368.23 at 12:29 p.m. New York time. The benchmark gauge for American equities exceeded its April 2011 peak of 1,363.61 (SPX), which was the highest level since June 2008. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 20.32 points, or 0.2 percent, to 13,005.01 today.

"We continue to see pretty good growth and that's good for stocks," James McDonald, chief investment strategist at Northern Trust Corp. in Chicago, said in a phone interview. His firm manages about $665 billion. "The Dow is flirting with 13,000. While it makes no difference from a valuation standpoint, it can cause some people to say: we've had a pretty a big run and I'll take a bit off the table. From a valuation standpoint, the stock market is still pretty attractive."

Equities gained today as data showed that purchases of new homes in the U.S. exceeded forecasts in January after climbing a month earlier to a one-year high. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan final index of consumer sentiment for February rose to 75.3. Economists projected a reading of 73.

Earnings, Valuations

Better-than-estimated economic and earnings reports helped drive the S&P 500 up 4.3 percent in February. The index is poised for a third straight month of gains, the longest streak in a year. Of the 441 S&P 500 companies that reported results since Jan. 9, 298 posted per-share earnings that beat projections, Bloomberg data show. The index is trading for about 14 times reported earnings, compared with the average since 1954 of 16.4 times, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

To read more, visit:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/u-s-stock-futures-advance-before-house-sales-consumer-confidence-reports.html

FBI seeks developer for app to track threats on social media

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:43 AM PST

By: J. D. Heyes, NaturalNews.com

By now it should be painfully obvious that those who mean to rule us will use any method necessary in order to keep the unwashed masses under their control, regardless of whether that quaint historic document known as our Constitution permits it.

But just in case you didn’t know, the FBI sent out another little reminder recently when the agency http://www.myfoxdc.com.

Oh, the bureau says this is all on the up-and-up, and that government law enforcement officials are merely interested in identifying early “emerging threats”, whatever those are. The bureau’s 12-page document, which is titled, “FBI Social Media Application,” and posted online, seeks a developer for a program that has the ability “to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence … to quickly vet, identify and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats.”

Data mining like Google?

Frank Ciluffo, who heads up George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute, described the program as a “Google news feed” that was “specifically targeted for law enforcement, focusing on their specific needs.”

The new app would also act as a tracking system, Ciluffo believes. “We’re on our mobile phones and we’re on our various iPhones, BlackBerrys and the like that transmits data that locates individuals,” he said.

Ciluffo, who was a former advisor to George W. Bush, says he believes tracking social media trends is becoming a primary focus in national security instigations, but the app in question, he believes, has huge privacy implications – namely, whether law enforcement officials are permitted to monitor public social media posts without probable cause or a warrant.

The FBI, in a statement to Fox News, said the project was merely in the research phase. The agency says if it does go ahead, however, the app “will not focus on specific persons or protected groups, but on words that relate to ‘events’ and ‘crisis’ and activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security.”

To read more, visit:  http://www.naturalnews.com/035051_FBI_social_media_tracking.html

Obama’s Call for Web Privacy Guidelines Seen Leading to Rules With Teeth

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:40 AM PST

By Sara Forden and Eric Engleman, Bloomberg.com

An Obama administration Internet privacy initiative marks the best chance for setting U.S. standards to shield personal information in the absence of Congressional legislation, consumer groups and lawyers said.

The White House called on companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG) and Facebook Inc. (FB) yesterday to work with privacy advocates to craft voluntary codes of conduct for handling consumer data based on a bill of rights for Web users, an effort that may bring the U.S. closer to European data-protection norms.

By enlisting industry in setting privacy guidelines, the administration is taking a flexible approach that would still create rules with teeth, Chris Wolf, a lawyer with Hogan Lovells LLP in Washington, said in an interview.

"It's a huge step forward for both consumers and business," Wolf said. "Consumers are expecting companies to do better, and companies are seeing some competitive advantage in distinguishing themselves as privacy champions."

Businesses should adhere to principles for the handling of personal information, according to a White House report released yesterday. Those include providing understandable privacy policies; giving consumers control over the data collected on them; and handling that information securely.

"Consumers can't wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online," President Barack Obama said in a statement announcing the report. "As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy."

To read more, visit:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/obama-web-privacy-framework-boosts-chances-for-rules-with-teeth.html

Vaccines for everything: Researchers now on brink of developing salmonella jab

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:37 AM PST

By: Ethan A. Huff, NaturalNews.com

The vaccine industry is currently hard at work trying to churn out a vaccine for salmonella, a typically food borne pathogen that thrives on factory farms and in other unsanitary settings. CBS 13 News in Sacramento reports that researchers from the University of California, Davis, have been tasked with developing a vaccine that supposedly prevents salmonella, which these researchers say they are on the verge of completing in the very near future.

Rather than attempt to address the root causes of salmonella, which include filthy animal living conditions on industrial farms and the overuse of synthetic antibiotics in conventional livestock, just to name a few, mainstream science is busy concocting new ways to jab people with toxic chemical cocktails that could permanently injure them.

Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Stephen McSorley and his team of international researchers believe that by closely studying the immune response to infection in mice, they will be able to arrive at a solid vaccine protocol for “curing” salmonella. And their findings thus far, which were recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, seem to indicate that the project is moving forward as planned.

Not surprisingly, Big Pharma is behind this ludicrous endeavor to develop a vaccine for an illness that is largely preventable through improved hygiene, small-scale agriculture, and naturally-boosted human immunity. Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the Novartis Vaccines Institute for Global Health are both collaborators on the project, which is expected to soon move into human clinical trials (http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/02/a-vaccine-against-salmonella/).

The development of this new salmonella vaccine appears to also align directly with the vision of a group of researchers in the U.K. who last summer called for the development of 20 new vaccines in the next decade. Their paper, which was published in the journal Lancet, seeks funding for the development of vaccines “beyond classic infections,” including for things like diabetes, degenerative diseases, and even cancer (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13714224).

So by the looks of it, there could soon be vaccines for virtually everything — a headache, an upset stomach, a paper cut, you name it. Anything mainstream medicine can identify that is a consequence of a underlying condition rather than a cause of it is open game for vaccine development because there is a whole lot of money to be made utilizing this approach to so-called medicine.

To read more, visit:  http://www.naturalnews.com/035058_vaccines_salmonella_pathogens.html

No conspiracy: Ron Paul just dislikes Santorum

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 09:32 AM PST

By: Jennifer Rubin, WashingtonPost.com

When your candidate has a really rotten debate, the temptation is great to create a distraction. However, if the distraction is harebrained and unflattering to your candidate, you wind up making things worse.

That is essentially what happened yesterday when Rick Santorum and his team came out with a conspiracy theory that Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Mitt Romney were in cahoots. A source close to the Paul campaign told me last night that the Paul camp sees this as an effort by senior Santorum adviser John Brabender to distract the media from the fact that his candidate was "not ready for primetime." The Romney camp did not return a request for comment. (Romney staffers no doubt believe in the adage that you should never get in the way when your opponent is doing harm to himself.)

Indeed, on one hand, you can say it was foolish for Santorum to cook up an excuse for his dismal outing. Santorum already has a reputation for being thin-skinned and peevish. This tactic certainly made him seem like a poor sport.

To some extent, however, the gambit worked. When you can get major media figures and longtime GOP operatives tweeting away about non-existent deals (A Cabinet position! A VP slot for Rand Paul!) based on nothing but the accusations of a wounded candidate's flack, that is no small feat. But, in fact, the explanations for Ron Paul's very obvious disdain for Santorum, and, to a lesser extent, Newt Gingrich are much simpler than a Roswell-esque theory.

Both campaigns confirm that Paul and Romney are personally friendly, as are their wives. They are both of the same generation, with married kids and grandkids on whom they dote. They've both been happily married for decades. (It is widely known that Ron Paul's wife was friendly with Gingrich's second wife.)

It is human nature to show greater deference and civility to those whom you like. What the press is missing, however, is the degree to which Gingrich, Santorum and their staffs have acted in ways that the Paul camp would justifiably perceive as dismissive and rude. When I asked Brabender for reaction to the accusation that he was practicing the art of distraction, he e-mailed, "It sounds like something the Romney campaign told the Paul campaign to say." It is precisely this sort of denigration — that Paul and his staff are unable to think on their own or advance their own interests — that has fueled Paul's desire to skewer Santorum. The source close to the Paul camp responded, "Once again demonstrates the total lack of respect for Ron Paul, his supporters, and his campaign team held by Santorum and his top advisor. When you build coalitions and treat your fellow Republicans the Santorum-Brabender way you end up losing in the general by double digits in the swing states like Pennsylvania." You get the picture now?

To read more, visit:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/no-conspiracy-ron-paul-just-dislikes-santorum/2012/02/23/gIQAMbLaXR_blog.html
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