washington post

There has been a lot of questions about Mitt Romney's income taxes and we finally got one answer:

Q: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?

ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last ten years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.

To put this in perspective most middle class Americans pay 25-28%. So for every dollar Mitt makes he pays about 15 cents. For every dollar middle America makes, they pay 25-28 cents. Doesn't seem fair at all, does it?

To answer that question we'll consult a just released Washington Post poll.

31. What do you think is the bigger problem in this country – (unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy), or (over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity)?

Unfairness: 55%
Over-regulation: 35%;

Most Americans view this system as unfair, yet the GOP goes out there and continues to push to keep it and even make it more unfair. Look at the Paul Ryan budget the House GOP approved last year. That actually increased taxes on the middle class by closing loopholes they have, yet left the loopholes in for the top 2% and even exposed new ones. It was nothing more than a middle class tax hike.

Sean Hannity decided to have disgraced former representative, Mark Foley, on his show to discuss the Anthony Weiner non-sex "scandal". Foley, who was forced to resign after sending sexually explicit messages to underage congressional pages, told Hannity that it should not be illegal to send such messages to minors (via Think Progress):

This is really amazing, especially since Foley was such a crusader on stopping child pornography.

It also shows how Fox views Weinergate. Foley was involved in extremely sexual exchanges with children under the age of 18. Not only that, these were children sent to our nation's capital to be taken care of by one of our branches of government. Foley betrayed the trust of these children and of our nation when he decided to pursue these children. And while there are reports that Weiner did engage in his naughty talk with a 17 year old, what Foley did was much worse, but not as bad as the cover-up.

Foley's activities were known about by Republicans on Capital Hill for years. Even then majority leader John Boehner and then-speaker Dennis Hassert admitted to knowing about Foley's problem at least a year before it was made public. The two most powerful members of the House of Representatives didn't want to protect the children in their charge - they wanted to protect the predator in their caucus.

The Washington Post has put together a great chart to show how the Democratic tax plans actually help those making less than $250,000 a year more than the Republicans. The Democratic tax plan also costs $36.6 billion less than the Republican one:

(Click for larger view)

So when you look at it in simple graphical form, you quickly see that the Republican plan only takes care of the top 2% of the country, while the Democratic plan takes care of the remaining 98% of the country. So why are we even debating this? My only guess is that myth called the Right Wing Noise Machine.

As a photographer stories like this really get my blood boiling:

A few weeks ago, on his way to work, Matt Urick stopped to snap a few pictures of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's headquarters. He thought the building was ugly but might make for an interesting photo. The uniformed officer who ran up to him didn't agree. He told Urick he was not allowed to photograph federal buildings.

Urick wanted to tell the guard that there are pictures of the building on HUD's Web site, that every angle of the building is visible in street views on Google Maps and that he was merely an amateur photographer, not a threat. But Urick kept all this to himself.

"A lot of these guys have guns and are enforcing laws they obviously don't understand, and they are not to be reasoned with," he said. After detaining Urick for a few minutes and conferring with a colleague on a radio, the officer let him go.

The Washington Post story has a lot more accounts of similar incidents.

What really gets me about this is that these officers are still stopping and detaining photographers, despite the courts saying it is perfectly legal:

Courts have long ruled that the First Amendment protects the right of citizens to take photographs in public places. Even after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement agencies have reiterated that right in official policies.

So why do so many police and security guards believe they are in the right? Well it boils down to that post-9/11 mentality:

The top story on Memeorandum right now is this one from The Washington Post:

A revolt among big donors on Wall Street is hurting fundraising for the Democrats' two congressional campaign committees, with contributions from the world's financial capital down 65 percent from two years ago.

The drop in support comes from many of the same bankers, hedge fund executives and financial services chief executives who are most upset about the financial regulatory reform bill that House Democrats passed last week with almost no Republican support. The Senate expects to take up the measure this month.

This fundraising free fall from the New York area has left Democrats with diminished resources to defend their House and Senate majorities in November's midterm elections. Although the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have seen just a 16 percent drop in overall donations compared with this stage of the 2008 campaign, party leaders are concerned about the loss of big-dollar donors. The two congressional committees have raised $49.5 million this election cycle from people giving $1,000 or more at a time, compared with $81.3 million at this point in the last election.

This is very common in an election year. Wall Street looks to the party looking to gain control and they put their money in that party. When Republicans were on top back in the early part of the last decade, Wall Street gave big bucks to them. Then the Democrats became the new winners and Wall Street jumped ship over there.

The moral of the story? Wall Street tries and go with the winner.

Just got this breaking news alert from the Washington Post:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, fell ill at the witness table during a Senate hearing Tuesday and had to be escorted from the room.

Petraeus was listening to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) express concern about the direction of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan when he appeared to faint. Aides immediately rushed to help him, and he was led out of the hearing room.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said, he 'appears to be doing very well.'

Hopefully he is doing well, but I would be amiss if I didn't point out the irony that he fainted while listening to John McCain speak. That is priceless.

A new ABC poll has rated the government response to the oil spill worse than the response to Katrina:

A month and a half after the spill began, 69 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll rate the federal response negatively. That compares with a 62 negative rating for the response to Katrina two weeks after the August 2005 hurricane.

That's really not a shock given the media's attempt to paint the spill as "Obama's Katrina". But unlike Katrina, there have been other roadblocks in the way of the response that the media hardly mentions.

The first of these roadblocks is a provision in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that essentially ties the hands of th government when it comes to the response. Instead the oil company is responsible for the response. Here is how Thad Allen described the law to Mike Wallace:

ALLEN: Well, this started out as a search and rescue case. We had the explosion. We had the extraordinary tragic loss of 11 lives. And for 48 hours we were involved in search and rescue when the drill sunk. We mobilized every asset as if it were a catastrophic response.

After the Exxon Valdez, Congress passed legislation called the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the way we respond by designating B.P. as a responsible party and having them have contractors available to do the response is the structure that was mandated by Congress after the Exxon Valdez.