>The Cost of Obama
8:05 AM, FEB 14, 2012 • BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
President Obama’s fourth budget has now been released, which allows for a relatively full accounting of deficit spending during his four years in office. The picture isn’t pretty, but it is revealing.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/painful-cost-obama_629745.html
>Why Electric Cars Are More Polluting than Gas Guzzlers
Electric cars are all the rage in China, but they may not be helping to clean up the environment or protect human health from pollution.
By ALICE PARK | @aliceparkny | February 14, 2012
It’s unspoken, but every driver gliding around town behind the wheel of a Prius is thinking the same thing: “I’m saving the planet. What are you doing, you dirty-fossil-fuel burner?”
What’s implied is that hybrid or electric-car drivers are also saving human lives, since the fuel-burning internal combustion engines that power conventional vehicles emit carbon dioxide and fine particulate matter including acids, organic chemicals as well as dust and soil; this pollution has been linked to respiratory and heart problems and cancer.
But, according to a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, it turns out that the use of electric vehicles may not be that clean after all, particularly in the world’s most populated country, China.
In the study, Christopher Cherry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of Tennessee, and his colleagues found that in terms of air pollution, electric vehicles were more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than gasoline-powered cars. That’s right — the electrically powered cars turned out to be dirtier than those with internal combustion engines.
>Obama’s Class-Warfare, Tax-the-Rich Budget
By Larry Kudlow, February 14, 2012
If you shake out the Obama budget in terms of bold headlines, it’s really a class-warfare, tax-the-rich budget. Layer upon layer of tax hikes are piled on successful investors, small-business owners, and corporations.
The capital-gains tax goes from 15 percent to 24 percent (including Obamacare). The dividends tax goes from 15 percent to nearly 40 percent, and that’s not including the double tax on corporate profits embodied in dividends and capital gains. The Bush tax cuts for top earners are repealed. There’s the 30 percent Buffett-rule minimum tax on millionaires. The carried-interest tax for private equity, hedge funds, and other investment partnerships goes from 15 to 39.6 percent. The estate tax jumps to 45 percent. State and local bond interest deductions are severely limited. Oil and gas companies get hit. So do banks. And there’s probably more stuff in there I haven’t read yet. (Jimmy P. lays it out nicely.) Paul Ryan’s press release calls it a $1.9 trillion tax hike, with $47 trillion in government spending over the next decade and the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. . .
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/290972/obama-s-class-warfare-tax-rich-budget-larry-kudlow
>All I know is that a family making $250k living in Bergen county is not “RICH”
All I know is that a family making $250k living in Bergen county is not “RICH”. While $250k goes much further in southern and western states, it doesn’t lead to some extravagant lifestyle living in Bergen county (or NJ for that matter).
Between Federal Taxes, State Taxes, avg county property taxes, social security and medicare taxes, the current tax rate for a family making $250k is 49.82%!!!
If the Dems want to raise taxes they need to look to change the brackets of what they consider rich, since $250k a year in Bergen county gets you a modest 3-bedroom home, some money put away for college funds and dinner out once a month. That sounds a lot more middle class to me.
>wow sounds like the phoney flog looks like Ridgewood was once again a national leader
Media Matters memo called for hiring private investigators ‘to look into the personal lives’ of Fox employees
By Tucker Carlson Updated: 10:58 PM 02/13/2012
A little after 1 p.m. on Sept. 29, 2009, Karl Frisch emailed a memo to his bosses, Media Matters for America founder David Brock and president Eric Burns. In the first few lines, Frisch explained why Media Matters should launch a “Fox Fund” whose mission would be to attack the Fox News Channel.
“Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole.”
“We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”
What Frisch proceeded to suggest, however, went well beyond what legitimate presidential campaigns attempt. “We should hire private investigators to look into the personal lives of Fox News anchors, hosts, reporters, prominent contributors, senior network and corporate staff,” he wrote.
>NJ pioneers new standard for assisted-living facilities
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>Valley refuses to give up its quest to expand at its current site. Until it does, Valley makes itself the largest and most important issue.
I think the nasty comments about Gwenn Hauck are totally unfair. Her positions have been out there, in public. She is a good person who has done a lot of good things for Ridgewood. Negative attacks against Gwenn or any other candidate have no place in our political discourse.
That said, I do disagree with Gwenn’s stated positions on Valley. For that reason, I can not vote for her for exactly the same reason that I can not vote for anyone who has supported the Valley Hospital expansion. Unfortunately, Valley refuses to give up its quest to expand at its current site. Until it does, Valley makes itself the largest and most important issue. That is unfortunate with the many things we need to address in town, but it simply the way it is. Until Valley goes in and suggests the withdraw of the amendments it sought from the planning board, we are all going to be hostage to Valley’s plans
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Valley Hospital looks to make Village Council Elections all about Valley
Why would Valley think that they are poised for approval? They were denied. What is there to approve, nothing has been submitted.Unless the Planning Board rescinds it’s decision to ammend the Village Master Plan,
Valley can take the same proposal to the council again. And if there are any new, pro-expansion people on that council, they surely will.The CRR is still fighting to nullify the Planning Board’s decision to amend the Village Master Plan. If they win that fight, this is over. Until then, it is vital to keep the continuity of the current council or Valley will drag the village through this all over again
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photo by ArtChick.biz
The Legend of St. Valentine
https://www.history.com/topics/valentines-day
The history of Valentine’s Day–and the story of its patron saint–is shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?
The Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred. One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. According to one legend, an imprisoned Valentine actually sent the first “valentine” greeting himself after he fell in love with a young girl–possibly his jailor’s daughter–who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter signed “From your Valentine,” an expression that is still in use today. Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and–most importantly–romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France.
Origins of Valentine’s Day: A Pagan Festival in February
While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial–which probably occurred around A.D. 270–others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.
To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.
Valentine’s Day: A Day of Romance
Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.
Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.
>Obama To Unleash “Truth Teams” To Counter Negative Coverage
GOP describes squads of supporters as “propaganda teams to deceive voters”
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
February 13, 2012
The Obama campaign is to “educate” and deploy what it describes as “truth teams” to ensure that any attacks on the president’s record are feverishly countered in the run up to the general election.
ABC News reports that teams of Obamanoids will be launched initially in 13 “swing states,” including Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio and Virginia.
https://www.infowars.com/obama-to-unleash-truth-teams-to-counter-negative-coverage/
>Gene Sperling, director of the White House’s national economic council, said today at an official meeting that “we need a global minimum tax”:
“He supports corporate tax reform that would reduce expenditures and loopholes, lower rates for people investing and creating jobs in the U.S., due so further for manufacturing, and that we need to, as we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens,” Sperling said.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/white-house-economic-adviser-we-need-global-minimum-tax_626749.html
>Obama rolls out $3.8 trillion budget; $1.4 trillion in new taxes
By DAVID ROGERS | 2/13/12 11:15 AM EST
The White House rolled out its new $3.8 trillion budget Monday, promising major investments to spur a manufacturing revival in the U.S. while walking a fine line between the August debt accords and President Barack Obama’s fear that too much austerity now will spell trouble for the economy—and his own reelection chances in November.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72792.html#ixzz1mIgdT3F8
>TSA: Obama budget proposes new security, airline fees
Obama budget proposes new security, airline fees(Reuters) – Airlines and their passengers would pay up to $32 billion in new air traffic and security fees over 10 years, and grants to big airports would fall sharply under White House budget proposals on Monday aimed at deficit reduction.
The Obama administration wants major carriers, their passengers, business jets and airports to pick up more of the costs of air travel and airport improvements that for years have been borne by taxpayers.
New fees are sure to trigger strong opposition from airlines and other aviation groups who argue that the industry is already over-taxed and over-regulated.
https://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-usa-budget-transport-idUSTRE81C1BP20120213
>AT&T customers surprised by ‘unlimited data’ limit
Feb 13, 8:05 AM (ET)
By PETER SVENSSON
NEW YORK (AP) – Mike Trang likes to use his iPhone 4 as a GPS device, helping him get around in his job. Now and then, his younger cousins get ahold of it, and play some YouTube videos and games.
But in the past few weeks, there has been none of that, because AT&T Inc. (T) put a virtual wheel clamp on his phone. Web pages wouldn’t load and maps wouldn’t render. Forget about YouTube videos – Trang’s data speeds were reduced to dial-up levels.
“It basically makes my phone useless,” said Trang, an Orange County, Calif. property manager.
The reason: AT&T considers Trang to be among the top 5 percent of the heaviest cellular data users in his area. Under a new policy, AT&T has started cutting their data speeds as part of an attempt to manage data usage on its network.
