Reason Morning Links: Is It Still News When the Government Takes Over a Car Company?
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
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• GM files for bankruptcy. Washington will give the company an additional $30 billion to play with, and will take a 60 percent stake in return. The U.S. isn't the only government taking ownership: Another 12 percent goes to Canada.
• The Nevada legislature overrides a veto and legalizes domestic partnerships.
• Someone who hasn't parsed the phrase "pro-life" very carefully has killed an abortionist.
• The emergency powers behind the Fed's Wall Street bailouts.
• Irony alert: A report making the case for stronger intellectual property rights was partly plagiarized.
Reason Morning Links: Is It Still News When the Government Takes Over a Car Company?
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Reason Morning Links: Is It Still News When the Government Takes Over a Car Company?
[Source: Wb News]
Reason Morning Links: Is It Still News When the Government Takes Over a Car Company?
[Source: Cnn News]
Reason Morning Links: Is It Still News When the Government Takes Over a Car Company?
[Source: Cnn News]
posted by tgazw @ 1:16 PM, ,
Has Prop. 13 Really Robbed California of Property-Tax Revenue?
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Remember, Prop. 13 is not a hard cap of property taxes. Levies are adjusted to current market value when property changes hands. And that happens all the time.Read the whole thing for links to the source material. And make sure to read Brian Doherty's great piece on California's budget realities from earlier today.
According to the latest info from the Board of Equalization [...] total property taxes collected in 2006-07 were $43.16 billion.
The oldest property tax stats I could find were for 1980-81, from caltax.org. That year, property tax revenue was $6.36 billion.
So since shortly after Prop. 13's adoption, property tax revenue increased by 579 percent. That is not a typo. It went up 579 percent.
During the same span, population went from 24 million to 38 milion -- an increase of 58 percent.
As for inflation, as of January 1981, the rough midpoint of the 1980-81 fiscal year, the Consumer Price Index -- which gauges inflation -- was 88. As of January 2007, it was 202.4. That is a 133 percent increase.
So property tax revenue has increased by more than triple the combined rate of inflation and population growth -- 579 percent versus 191 percent. [...]
[I]n 1980-1981, the total of all general and special fund revenue for the state of California was $22.1 billion. For 2006-07, it was $120.7 billion. [...] That is an increase of 555 percent.
You follow? PROPERTY TAX REVENUE WENT UP FASTER THAN OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE!
Has Prop. 13 Really Robbed California of Property-Tax Revenue?
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Has Prop. 13 Really Robbed California of Property-Tax Revenue?
[Source: Advertising News]
Has Prop. 13 Really Robbed California of Property-Tax Revenue?
[Source: Television News]
Has Prop. 13 Really Robbed California of Property-Tax Revenue?
[Source: News Herald]
posted by tgazw @ 12:58 PM, ,
Set Your DVR
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Howard Kurtz previews a two-part prime-time series -- Inside the Obama White House -- airing on NBC tomorrow and Wednesday "that so far has produced 150 hours of tape.
Said host Brian Williams: "There's stuff we've never seen of how the White House operates. We were pretty stunned at how much we were able to record and how natural events seemed to be."
Set Your DVR
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Set Your DVR
[Source: Wb News]
Set Your DVR
[Source: News Headlines]
Set Your DVR
[Source: Chocolate News]
posted by tgazw @ 11:06 AM, ,
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
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What's the administration's specific aim in bailing out GM? I'll give you my theory later.
For now, though, some background. First and most broadly, it doesn't make sense for America to try to maintain or enlarge manufacturing as a portion of the economy. Even if the U.S. were to seal its borders and bar any manufactured goods from coming in from abroad -- something I don't recommend -- we'd still be losing manufacturing jobs. That's mainly because of technology.
When we think of manufacturing jobs, we tend to imagine old-time assembly lines populated by millions of blue-collar workers who had well-paying jobs with good benefits. But that picture no longer describes most manufacturing. I recently toured a U.S. factory containing two employees and 400 computerized robots. The two live people sat in front of computer screens and instructed the robots. In a few years this factory won't have a single employee on site, except for an occasional visiting technician who repairs and upgrades the robots.
Factory jobs are vanishing all over the world. Even China is losing them. The Chinese are doing more manufacturing than ever, but they're also becoming far more efficient at it. They've shuttered most of the old state-run factories. Their new factories are chock full of automated and computerized machines. As a result, they don't need as many manufacturing workers as before.
Economists at Alliance Capital Management took a look at employment trends in 20 large economies and found that between 1995 and 2002 -- before the asset bubble and subsequent bust -- 22 million manufacturing jobs disappeared. The U.S. wasn't even the biggest loser. We lost about 11 percent of our manufacturing jobs in that period, but the Japanese lost 16 percent of theirs. Even developing nations lost factory jobs: Brazil suffered a 20 percent decline, and China had a 15 percent drop.
What happened to manufacturing? In two words, higher productivity. As productivity rises, employment falls because fewer people are needed. In this, manufacturing is following the same trend as agriculture. A century ago, almost 30 percent of adult Americans worked on a farm. Nowadays, fewer than 5 percent do. That doesn't mean the U.S. failed at agriculture. Quite the opposite. American agriculture is a huge success story. America can generate far larger crops than a century ago with far fewer people. New technologies, more efficient machines, new methods of fertilizing, better systems of crop rotation, and efficiencies of large scale have all made farming much more productive.
Manufacturing is analogous. In America and elsewhere around the world, it's a success. Since 1995, even as manufacturing employment has dropped around the world, global industrial output has risen more than 30 percent.
More after the jump.
--Robert Reich
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: News Argus]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: Abc 7 News]
THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING AND THE AMERICAN WORKER.
[Source: News Argus]
posted by tgazw @ 10:08 AM, ,
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
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What do you make of this story? Either Robert Gibbs misspoke in raising this Queen business, or someone in the Obama White House was supposed to handle this chore and didn't get around to it. Weird.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that Obama has some kind of thing about poor Gordon Brown. He doesn't really like the guy. Maybe it's just that Brown is very unpopular, and Obama is suspicious that Brown would try to bask in Obama's refracted glow. But that wouldn't explain non-watchable DVDs.
The more chilling possibility, of course, is that it isn't really about Brown and that Obama just doesn't like England that much. Could this be possible?
When Barack and I were growing up -- we're about the same age -- Britain was the coolest thing going. The Beatles, the Stones, everything that came after -- I would have killed to have a British accent when I was young. I doubt he was immune to this. Usually these emotional impulses, the ones that get implanted into your DNA when you're very young. But maybe he was immune to it. Strange.
Hence, the contest: Since Obama gave Brown DVDs about America, what DVDs about Britain would you suggest he see in order that he get a better, fuller, more nuanced picture of your great nation? I don't necessarily mean patriotic or happy-talk movies, just great movies that are very British. My list: This Happy Breed; Brief Encounter; The Entertainer; The Four Feathers; A Hard Day's Night; Last Orders (very underappreciated); Look Back in Anger; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; something by Hitchcock, and something by Powell and Pressburger, though I'm not sure what.
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Nascar News]
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Nascar News]
Queen Elizabeth's D-Day anniversary snub, and a Tomasky blog contest
[Source: Mexico News]
posted by tgazw @ 6:47 AM, ,
Rush Limbaugh: Flying solo now
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by Mark Silva
Now that Newt Gingrich has suggested that "racist'' was too strong a word to apply to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, radio's Rush Limbaugh is standing on a lonely perch.
But Limbaugh's still standing:
"I got a little grief from people for saying that there's no such thing as reverse racism -- just call her a racist,'' Limbaugh says of President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, who is poised to become the first Hispanic on the high court and has suggested that a Latina may have a better perspective on some issues than a white male.
"So, that is a racist thing to say, and it's bigoted,'' Limbaugh tells FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity. "And she would bring, no question about it, racism and bigotry to the court if she is confirmed."
In a two-part interview on FOX's Hannity, the first part airing at 9 pm EDT this evening, Hannity discusses not only his feelings about Sotomayor, but also why he believes Colin Powell supports President Obama.
And once again, race is in play.
""I think two things were a factor in his endorsement of Obama, The first one is race, clearly,'' Limbaugh says of the former secretary of state in the second Bush White House and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the first Bush White House. " Nobody has the guts to say that, but, I mean, what else could it be?... Race is clearly a factor.''
He sees something else behind Powell's support for Obama: "
Rush Limbaugh: Flying solo now
[Source: Good Times Society - by The American Illuminati]
Rush Limbaugh: Flying solo now
[Source: Msnbc News]
posted by tgazw @ 6:40 AM, ,
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