August 2011

This could prove to be some real entertainment:

As Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan comes to a final decision about running for president, several top national conservatives are encouraging him to join the race. Ryan, who has been seriously but quietly considering a presidential bid for several months, is expected to decide on a run in the next two weeks

Indiana governor Mitch Daniels hopes he runs. “If there were a Paul Ryan fan club, I'd be a national officer,” Daniels said in a phone interview Wednesday morning.

One issue with Ryan is his age:

Daniels also dismisses concerns about Ryan’s age. “It didn’t stop the last guy,” he says, laughing. “This president would have a hard time arguing that Paul wouldn’t be a serious candidate.” When asked if that might be an object lesson, Daniels says no. “It’s a natural question but I think people would be reassured both by hearing him talk and by the people he’d put around him.”

Ryan is 9 years younger that Obama, which would make him 5 years younger at the time of a Presidential run. But I don't really view age as a big deal. The only ones who really seemed concerned about that was the Republicans in 2008, when they were talking about Obama. It does make for an interesting argument though - is a white man mature enough to run for office, when a black man, 5 years older, wasn't? 

But let's consider the real issues here, not the typical faux issues manufactured by politicians and pundits. 

Sure we can't trust politicians to do what they say, but now we also can't trust them to even say something remotely truthful. Take Rick Perry for example:

For a small-government conservative on the presidential campaign stump like Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a new federal regulation forcing farmers to get commercial drivers licenses would make a perfect example of Barack Obama’s Washington run amok.
But there is no such regulation.

During his debut in Iowa Sunday night in Waterloo, then again at on Monday at the Iowa State Fair Monday, Gov. Perry brought up the phantom “obscene, crazy” regulation in Texan terms.

“If you’re a tractor driver, if you drive your tractor across a public road, you’re gonna have to have a commercial driver’s license. Now how idiotic is that?” he thundered to the fair crowd in Des Moines, with the rejoinder, “What were they thinkin’?”

Here we go on the anti-government regulation stampede. Of course this is coming from a guy who felt it was the government's job to force woman to get vaccines. Hypocrite much Rick?

What's really interesting to note is that this article comes from the Wall Street Journal. Since Perry announced on Saturday, the Journal has been on a roll discrediting Perry. It looks like the most right publication around doesn't even like slick-Rick.

We haven't heard much from the News Corp/Murdoch hacking scandal lately. I think that is all about to change:

A former News of the World reporter has alleged that there was a massive cover-up of phone hacking at the paper.

Clive Goodman, the former royal reporter jailed for his role in phone hacking, wrote a letter in 2007 claiming that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings, and that former editor Andy Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed to say in court that he was a rogue element within the paper.

The claims are deeply damaging to Coulson, who has always maintained that he did not know about the hacking going on at his paper. They are also politically perilous for Cameron, who took Coulson on even as evidence mounted against him. Moreover, they raise fresh danger for James and Rupert Murdoch, both of whom claimed to know nothing about hacking. Before the documents were released, the select committee for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport announced that it is "likely" to recall James Murdoch when Parliament resumes in September.

The letter was one of several documents published by a parliamentary committee on Tuesday afternoon. The Guardian's Nick Davies saw the letters before they were published.

This should raise a lot of alarms, not only in the U.K., but also in the other nation's now investigating the Murdoch owned company.

Warren Buffett has a great op-ed in today's Times, in which he says it is time for Washington to extend the "shared sacrifice" we hear so much about to the rich, including himself:

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Buffett doesn't hide anything either. He breaks out the raw numbers. Last year Buffett paid 17.4% in federal taxes, while the employees in his office paid an average 36%.

Stop and think about that for a moment. The tax burden for the richest people in this country is more than 1/2 of what the bottom 99% of this country carries. Not only that, but we have a big name in the top 1% here saying that it isn't fair to the rest of us and must be changed.