who is the terrorist? - blog repost

According to the Wall Street Journal, Glenn Beck’s media company The Blaze approached Current Media about a sale last year, but was told in the words of one source that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view."

Beck's representative did not immediately confirm the report, though Beck's own website has posted on the news and he has promised to address "the full story" on his radio program today.

In explaining the reasons for selling to al-Jazeera, Current co-founder and CEO Joel Hyatt told the Journal that the Qatari-based broadcaster "was founded with the same goals we had for Current," including "to give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard" and "to speak truth to power."

Those familiar with al-Jazeera English know that it is a straight-forward, hard-hitting, and thorough news-gathering channel. But critics on the right will no doubt find irony in the fact that Current, which was co-founded by climate change advocate Al Gore, agreed to be bought out by a broadcaster owned the Qatari government, and therefore funded by oil.

Those critics will also find irony in the fact that Gore and Current wanted to close the deal before Dec. 31, in order to avoide the higher tax rates that were to take effect on Jan. 1 -- a detail flagged by Brian Stelter, who broke the news about al-Jazeera's bid. (The deal was not signed until Jan. 2.)

Beck will likely have a field day with this, not least because al-Jazeera once ran an op-ed comparing him to a terrorist.

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source
Glenn Beck tried to buy Current TV - POLITICO.com by DYLAN BYERS @ Politico | 1/3/13 9:27 AM EST

truth matters

President Barack Obama had been on the job less than a week when a top economic adviser told him and Vice President Joe Biden that the country faced a trillion dollar deficit, Biden told a roomful of Florida supporters Saturday.

Vice-president Joe Biden - reported by TAMARA LUSH, Associated Press from FORT MYERS, Fla. 09/29/2012

At the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2005, the deficit was $318 billion – about a quarter of what it is now. It fell every year until 2007, when it was back down to $161 billion. Then the voters, who’d been fed a steady anti-Bush media diet, decided to give Democrats another turn at bat and handed Congress and its budget-making power over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The very next year, the deficit jumped back up to $459 billion. The year after that, Obama became President, and the deficit hit an all-time high of $1.4 trillion. True, Biden can argue that was partly Bush’s fault: he did start the TARP bailouts. But that was a one-time expenditure that’s since been paid back with interest. If there’s a good explanation for why it’s still Bush’s fault that the deficit has remained over $1.2 trillion throughout every year of Obama’s term, well… apparently, that excuse hasn’t dropped into anyone’s lap yet.

Mike Huckabee - Facebook post - 10/4/2012

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FACTS:
CBO sees 2005 deficit at $317 billion - October 06, 2005 - William L. Watts, MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal
U.S. 2007 Budget Deficit Falls to $163 Billion (Update1) - By John Brinsley, Bloomberg - October 11, 2007
U.S. deficit climbs to $402 billion - By Jeanne Sahadi, CNNMoney.com senior writer - January 7, 2009
U.S. Deficit for 2009 Totals $1.4 Trillion, Budget Office Says - By Brian Faler and Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg - October 8, 2009

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Government Spending Chart: United States 2001-2017 - Federal Data

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Revenues, Outlays, Deficits, Surpluses, and Debt Held by the Public, 1971 to 2010, in Billions of Dollars - Congressional Budget Office - January 2011

green killers

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

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source:
Robert Bryce: Windmills Are Killing Our Birds - WSJ.com

'Civility': The Denouement

'Civility': The Denouement - WSJ.com
you don't get a better title than that... Mr. Taranto, i surrender.

but your point is well made... the left routinely chastizes the right for any perceived slight or poorly chosen word... but call Republican's terrorists, and it's just another day in Washington.

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"We have negotiated with terrorists," an angry [Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.)] said, according to sources in the room.

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"Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. . . . Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that's what it took. . . . For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests." - Joe Nocera, NY Times columnist

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"If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission." - Thomas Friedman, NY Times columnist

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The Republican “Taliban wing,” as some Democrats dub the rabid Tea Party militants..." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times columnist

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And it’s because there’s a nihilist caucus which is, “Listen, we want to burn the place down." I mean, they’re not, they’ve strapped explosives to the Capitol and they think they are immune from it." Margaret Carlson - Bloomberg News

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and at what point does the media frenzy begin?... for the right; the frenzy has never stopped... for the left; it never begins.

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and Maureen Dowd just took it ten-times further down the anti-civility chasm.

They were like cannibals, eating their own party and leaders alive. They were like vampires, draining the country’s reputation, credit rating and compassion. They were like zombies, relentlessly and mindlessly coming back again and again to assault their unnerved victims, Boehner and President Obama. They were like the metallic beasts in “Alien” flashing mouths of teeth inside other mouths of teeth, bursting out of Boehner’s stomach every time he came to a bouquet of microphones.

an inconvenient truth (about taxes)

Soak the rich? You can’t.

Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation.

Although Hauser’s law sounds like a restatement of the Laffer curve (and Hauser did cite Arthur Laffer in his original article), it has independent validity. Because Laffer’s curve is a theoretical insight, theoreticians find it easy to quibble with. Test cases, in which the economy responds to a tax change, lend themselves to many alternative explanations. Conventional economists, despite immense publicity, have yet to swallow the Laffer curve. When it is mentioned at all by critics, it is often as an object of scorn.

Hauser’s Law via Hoover Institution
by W. Kurt Hauser and David Ranson

Mr. Hauser is chairman emeritus of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and chairman of Wentworth, Hauser & Violich, a San Francisco investment management firm.

David Ranson is head of research at H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc.

This essay appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 20, 2008.


See also There's No Escaping Hauser's Law in the Wall Street Journal by W. Kurt Hauser on November 26, 2010.


EDIT:
also see the following:
Millionaires Go Missing - Wall Street Journal
excerpt:

One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

drunken sailors

John B. Taylor: Obama's Permanent Spending Binge - WSJ.com
If government got by with 20% of GDP in 2007, why not in 2021, when GDP will be substantially higher?

The uppermost line shows outlays under the official budget submitted by Mr. Obama to Congress on Feb. 14. The lowest line shows the House Budget Resolution submitted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on April 5, while the third line shows year-by-year outlays I estimated from the 12-year totals in the new budget proposed by the president on April 13.

The chart clearly reveals a number of important facts that are not coming up in town hall meetings. Most obvious is the huge bulge in spending in the past few years. In 2000 spending was 18.2% of GDP. In 2007 it was 19.6%. But in the three years since 2009 it's jumped to an average of 24.4%.