Replies to post #193917 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

,,,,,,,and here is just 'one' reason ... that people have a 'bad' taste in their mouth regarding capitalism...this one reason resonates with many of these big guys that we have heard from over the past four years .... so I could use any of them .. . however, he just spoke a couple of days ago ... again.

Goldman Sachs CEO: Entitlements must be contained

Scott Pelley
November 19, 2012

(CBS News) Stocks shook off their post-election slump Monday, in part because of optimism that the president and Congress will reach a compromise on the nation's budget by the end of the year.

If they don't, there will be automatic tax increases and huge cuts in federal spending -- that so-called fiscal cliff.

It's a time bomb, according to Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, and one of the world's most influential bankers. His message to Washington? Make a deal.

BLANKFEIN: Their job is to make the country function, not to -- it's not a winning game, it's a get-along game.

PELLEY: Washington playing with fire?

BLANKFEIN: Yes.

An interview with Lloyd Blankfein is as rare as a look inside the Goldman Sachs money machine. He showed us one of seven trading floors at his Manhattan headquarters. Goldman is one of America's most successful investment banks. It had net earnings of $4.4 billion dollars last year. When we asked Blankfein how to reduce the federal budget deficit, he went straight for the subject politicians don't want to talk about.

BLANKFEIN: You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations -- the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to -- they're not going to get it.

PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?

BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. ... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.

PELLEY: Because we can't afford them going forward?

BLANKFEIN: Because we can't afford them.

We wondered whether he thinks the government needs more revenue in the form of higher taxes.

BLANKFEIN: In the long run, there has to be more revenue. And, of course, the burden of that revenue will be disproportionately taken up by wealthier people. That's just logical.

PELLEY: So higher taxes on wealthier people?

BLANKFEIN: More taxes on wealthier people, to the extent that we need to raise more revenue, and we do need to raise some more revenue.

PELLEY: Why is an increase in revenue, in tax money, necessary? Why can't you just cut your way out of the deficit?

BLANKFEIN: For sure certain people in this country wouldn't like the society you would have if you did that, and personally, I don't think I would like it either, if we went as far as to close our entire budget deficit in that way.

PELLEY: What kind of society would it be?

BLANKFEIN: I think it would be one where the safety net would be more porous and lower to the ground.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57552173/goldman-sachs-ceo-entitlements-must-be-contained/

Mr. Blankfein, did you ever think about receiving a higher tax rate .. like say 49% .. then you could give up some special tax breaks and a higher tax on investment earnings AND a higher corporate tax rate and how about a transaction tax, sound good? ... .. and then they wonder why people are not happy with banks or capitalism, sheeesh! he so casually talks about ending any safety net for the 98 percent .. that truly it just makes you wonder ... if he lives in the same world as everyone else ..

btw, F6, AGAIN, thank you for that wonderful post .. I will be sorry to see 'campaign stops' go ... they wrote a many great articles .. about just exactly what was going on .. including all the absurdities ... I will miss all of the writers .. .. ;) I also read your entire post, it's just that first one was so excellent and informative .. ;) .. thank you again .

[BOREALIS]

The radio industry is FINALLY talking about the devastating impact of Rush Limbaugh's Fluke attack


The Limbaugh advertiser boycott is real,
and the radio industry is finally beginning to talk about it

Tue Nov 20, 2012 at 10:06 AM PST
by Richard Myers

The code of silence has been swept away. Throughout the radio industry this week, there is talk of the devastating impact of Limbaugh's Fluke attack. Rush supporters are, of course, in denial. But compelling personal testimonies are suddenly out in the open, and they will prove difficult to dismiss.

For example Doug Stephan, president of Stephan MultiMedia and host of the nationally syndicated “Good Day” program, had this to offer:

[excerpt] Let’s face it, the agencies and advertisers are how we survive. So to tell them that their clients are stupid for not staying in an atmosphere in which they don’t want to be is akin to the Republicans not reading the tea leaves about changing demographics.

I’m not here to argue the point, but rather to tell you what this ONE incident has cost me as an independent in a sea of big corporate operators, who are obviously losing tens of millions of dollars due to this one event.

So far this year, my losses are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Cancellations, avoidance and decisions to just not buy across the whole format, no matter what the content...

I’m not looking for Limbaugh to send me a check (although that would be nice), but I do think we have to let it be known that his actions have been devastating to our survival. [emphasis added]

—Doug Stephan: Talk Must Expand Beyond Politics to Survive, November 19, 2012
http://www.talkers.com/2012/11/19/talk-must-expand-beyond-politics-to-survive/

I think it took Dial Global's devastating fall, [ http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/19/1163251/-The-spectacularly-damaging-Rush-Limbaugh-Effect-illustrated-in-two-stock-charts-and-a-video ] and subsequent fingering of Limbaugh as partly responsible, to break loose the conversation.

An analysis of Limbaugh audience numbers:

The business model for a public air waves radio station is matching advertising dollars with listeners. Advertising pays all the bills. It becomes obvious, then, that advertisers are the real power behind any publicly broadcast program. Advertising funds program content, and all else.

An advertiser boycott does not directly influence audience. Rather, it focuses on the funding that makes listenership possible. Thus, the best measure of the impact of an advertiser boycott (in the short term) is, what's happening to the radio conglomerates?
Three of the biggest, — Dial Global, Cumulus, and Clear Channel — all appear to be in trouble.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/19/1163251/-The-spectacularly-damaging-Rush-Limbaugh-Effect-illustrated-in-two-stock-charts-and-a-video

Until the radio networks or groups of stations actually capitulate by cutting Limbaugh programming, however, any measure of decreased audience share is merely gratuitous. If Limbaugh is on the radio in a given market, he is likely to find an audience. Thus, while we may find any decrease in listenership or audience share tantalizing, it isn't likely to prove decisive in any sense.

There are multiple reasons for this. Listener data in radio is open to interpretation, and may vary from one market area to another, and from one market segment to another.

[...]

Let us take another look at the streaming audio measurements that show a nearly fifty percent drop:

Based upon data from Talk Stream Live
[ http://talkstreamlive.wordpress.com/ ]

[...]



Flush Rush on Facebook: http://facebook.com/...
Stop Rush database: http://stoprush.net
My Stop Rush blog posts: http://dailykos.com/...
Twitter hashtag: #stoprush


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/20/1163345/-The-radio-industry-is-FINALLY-talking-about-the-devastating-impact-of-Rush-Limbaugh-s-Fluke-attack

[F6]

Return of the 47 percent: The right’s latest tax lie


Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., makes a point as Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney applauds at a campaign rally at the Marion County Fairgrounds in Marion, Ohio, on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012.
(AP Photo/Mike Munden) (Credit: AP)

Conservatives can't stop! A new Heritage study echoes Mitt's "47 percent" theme -- and gets facts and history wrong

By Michael Lind
Tuesday, Nov 20, 2012 01:31 PM CST

The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., has always had a special place in my heart. In the late 1980s, during the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, the right-wing think tank provided me with my first job as a young conservative intellectual. My first assignment was to write a policy brief about presidential war powers. I was removed from the project after I wrote a draft that began with the observation that the U.S. Constitution divides war powers between Congress and the president, and gives the most important war powers — the power to declare war and to fund it — to Congress. The higher-ups at Heritage reassigned the paper to a Wall Street Journal staffer, who provided them with what they wanted: a brief arguing that the president has absolute, uncontrollable power in foreign affairs.

One of my next assignments was to write a policy paper justifying a forthcoming bill from the late Sen. Jesse Helms, a belligerent reactionary from North Carolina. When I met with the senator’s staff, I was told to wait because Helms wasn’t sure what he was going to put in the bill. After I failed to turn in the policy brief on time, I received an official reprimand from my supervisor, which I treasured until I lost it during a move. The reprimand said, in effect, that at Heritage we write policy papers first and add the facts later.

Things went downhill. I soon left Heritage and, a few years later, the conservative movement altogether. When several colleagues and I founded the New America Foundation in the late 1990s, I held up Heritage as a model of what a genuine think tank ought not to be.

I am amused to report that my former colleagues at the Heritage Foundation have lost none of their willingness to sacrifice truth to propaganda. The Heritage Foundation has published an “Index of Dependence on Government [ http://blog.heritage.org/2012/09/18/index-of-dependence-on-government-jumps-for-the-fourth-year-in-a-row/ ]” by William W. Beach and Patrick Tyrrell that seeks to bolster Mitt Romney’s theme that at least 47 percent of Americans are parasitic, government-dependent “takers” rather than “makers” (hat tip to Thomas B. Edsall [ http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone/ (the first item in the post to which this is a reply)]):

Today, more people than ever before depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid, or other assistance once considered to be the responsibility of individuals, families, neighborhoods, churches, and other civil society institutions. The United States reached another milestone in 2010: For the first time in history, half the population pays no federal income taxes. It is the conjunction of these two trends — higher spending on dependence-creating programs, and an ever-shrinking number of taxpayers who pay for these programs — that concerns those interested in the fate of the American form of government.

What caught my eye in this latest piece of Heritage agitprop was this sentence: The United States reached a milestone in 2012 — for the first time in history, half the population pays no federal income taxes.

This is not just wrong. It is an error embarrassing enough to shame even a shameless propaganda mill like the Heritage Foundation.

Heritage implies that a majority of Americans paid federal income taxes throughout American history, presumably back to the 1790s. Nothing could be further from the truth. For much of American history, 100 percent of the population paid no federal income taxes, because there were none. And the federal income tax began to fall on the middle-class masses, not just the upper classes, only in the 1940s.

The first federal income tax in the U.S. was enacted in 1861 to help pay for the Civil War. It was abolished afterward, but re-created in 1894. After the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional, because it was not “apportioned among the states,” the Constitution was amended by the 16thAmendment to give Congress the power to levy income taxation.

But until World War II a majority of Americans did not pay any federal income tax, either because they made too little money to be required to file returns, or because exemptions like the standard deduction eliminated any federal income tax liability. According to the conservative Tax Foundation [ http://taxfoundation.org/article/tax-equity-and-growth-nonpayers ], which has a friendlier relationship with facts than does the Heritage Foundation, as recently as 1940 the percentage of those who filed (a group smaller than the working-age population) who owed federal income taxes was 49.4 percent. In that year, Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie missed the opportunity to sneer at “the 49 percent.”

It was only during World War II, with the institution of the income tax withholding system, that a majority of Americans became subject to federal income taxation. If it were accurate, the sentence in the Heritage Foundation’s “Index of Dependence on Government” would read: The United States reached a milestone in 2012 — for the first time since World War II, half the population pays no federal income taxes.

But this in itself undermines the recent right-wing talking point that the country is becoming a nation of moochers living off a dwindling number of heroic Ayn-Randian “job creators.” That is because, until recently, conservative Republicans were leading the campaign to remove low-income Americans from liability for federal income tax.

President Ronald Reagan and his successors have supported an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit as an alternative to a higher minimum wage. A “negative income tax” of the kind favored by conservative economist Milton Friedman, the EITC reduces or eliminates federal income tax liability for many of the working poor. If their incomes are too low, the tax credit is “refundable,” which means that the IRS sends them checks.

Another refundable tax credit created with the support of conservatives like Newt Gingrich is the child tax credit. Like the EITC, this tax credit reduces federal income tax liability for millions and is refundable for some.

From all of this it follows that if conservatives like the authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Dependence of Government are sincere in their outrage about the growing number of nonpayers of federal income tax, they should praise President Franklin D. Roosevelt for turning the income tax, originally a tax on the economic elite, into a tax on the majority of Americans. And they should denounce Reagan, Gingrich, the Bushes and others for supporting tax credits that have eliminated millions of low-income Americans from liability for federal income tax payments.

Thus my proposed emendation:

The United States reached another milestone in 2012: For the first time since liberal New Deal Democrats justly extended income tax liability from the rich to the middle and working classes, half the population pays no federal income taxes, thanks to the misguided efforts of conservatives to increase the number of government-dependent nonpayers.

Something tells me that Heritage won’t print this correction.

Michael Lind [ http://www.salon.com/writer/michael_lind/ ] is the author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States [ http://www.amazon.com/Land-Promise-Economic-History-United/dp/0061834807 ] and co-founder of the New America Foundation.

Copyright © 2012 Salon Media Group, Inc. (emphasis in original)

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/20/return_of_the_47_percent_the_rights_latest_tax_lie/ [with comments]


===


Jim Clyburn: Susan Rice Attacks Are Racial Code

11/20/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/jim-clyburn-susan-rice-attacks-racial_n_2164195.html [with comments]


===


The Real Reasons You Waited Hours in Line to Vote

An Obama campaign legal adviser explains the humiliating meltdown in voting we saw around the country during this year's presidential election.
Nov 20 2012
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/the-real-reasons-you-waited-hours-in-line-to-vote/265446/ [with comments]


===


College Republicans At Historically Black Colleges And Universities Struggle To Connect With Romney

11/20/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/college-republicans-hbcus-mitt-romney_n_2159260.html [with comments]


===


(linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81679952 and following

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81684410 and following

[Susie924]

Republicans confront their Rush Limbaugh problem

Aliyah Frumin
6:27 pm on 11/20/2012

Shaken by Mitt Romney’s decisive loss, Republicans are blaming everybody–even the usually sacrosanct Rush Limbaugh. Top strategists are speaking out against the conservative radio host, saying the party needs to steer clear of his far-right and factually inaccurate vision of America.

Mike Murphy, GOP strategist, said on this week’s Meet the Press that while it’s “very fashionable now to beat up Romney,” it’s important that “we’ve got to get a kind of a party view of America that’s not right out of Rush Limbaugh’s dream journal.” And former John McCain campaign strategist Steve Schmidt, at a panel at the University of Delaware last week, insisted that Limbaugh’s “white, 65-plus and rural” audience is not what the country looks like anymore and that the radio host was “driving a message of total ludicrous nonsense.”

A furious Limbaugh hit back at Murphy and Schmidt on his Monday show.

“Okay, so you people are all white, 65 and over, and you live in the sticks,” Limbaugh said. “And you are screwing up the Republican Party, because you are believing what I say. This is their explanation for having lost.”

He continued, “And so it’s quite natural to blame somebody else. Obama got away with it. Obama blamed Bush and he got away with it, people bought it. So now these guys want to blame me.”

MSNBC political analysts and radio talk show hosts and Michael Smerconish and Ron Reagan weighed in on Tuesday’s Hardball. The irony, Smerconish said, is that the same demographic problem faced by the Republicans is also faced by conservative talk radio hosts.

“Both are overly dependent on older white guys,” he said. “But they have different objectives because the Republican party exists for one purpose and that is to win elections…The talk radio industry is predicated on a very small but very loyal audience and like those consultants to whom Rush refers, he stays in a position of power regardless of who wins the election,” Smerconish added.

Reagan agreed, adding the GOP’s real problem wasn’t Limbaugh or other conservative media outlets. It’s “much bigger than demographics, ethnicity and age,” Reagan said. “It’s ignorance.”

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/20/the-gops-rush-limbaugh-problem/

[fuagf]

F6 .. Savita's Death Was Not an Isolated Incident

.. hope it's ok to repeat a whole article from yours ..

By Cecile Richards
President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Posted: 11/19/2012 5:19 pm

By now news of Savita Halappanavar's senseless death has traveled around the world, drawing attention [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/14/ireland-abortion-scrutiny-death ] to Ireland's near-total ban on abortion and the horrific consequences of such policies. This is not a stand-alone case. Every 90 seconds a woman dies from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth, totaling more than 350,000 deaths worldwide each year. Nearly all of these deaths occur in developing countries, where access to modern medical care is scarce.

What makes Savita's story so shocking is that she died in a modern hospital in a developed European country. We health advocates spend a lot of time and energy fighting for the kind of access Savita (almost) had. Hers was a planned pregnancy. She herself was a medical professional, a dentist, who recognized the warning signs of pregnancy complications. When she felt severe pains, she and her husband didn't have to travel far to reach a clean, modern hospital where her health problems were quickly diagnosed. And when she learned that she was miscarrying and that her life was in danger, she asked her doctor about her options and requested that her pregnancy be ended before it killed her.

Lack of access to medical care did not kill Savita -- politics did.

The slow and painful death Ireland's abortion ban forced Savita to endure, and forced her husband to witness, brings to mind another tragic story. Earlier this year, doctors in the Dominican Republic refused [ http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/18/world/americas/dominican-republic-abortion/index.html ] chemotherapy to a 16-year-old cancer patient because she was pregnant.

Think this couldn't happen in the United States? Think again.

In Nebraska, Danielle Deaver experienced complications in the 22nd week of her pregnancy. Her water broke and doctors informed her that there was not enough amniotic fluid for her daughter to survive. Devastated, Danielle wanted to end the pregnancy, but her state's ban on safe and legal abortion after 20 weeks gestation prevented [ http://www.womenarewatching.org/article/life-just-isnt-black-and-white-danielle-deavers-story-about-how-the-20-week-abortion-ban-became-her- ] her from doing so. Instead, Danielle was forced to continue her pregnancy and deliver a baby that died moments after birth [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NneTbcCad9k (next below, as embedded)].

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NneTbcCad9k

Danielle, the young woman in the Dominican Republic and Savita show us what happens when politicians get between women and their doctors. Right now in Ohio, legislators are considering a bill that would impose similar restrictions on women in Ohio as those currently faced by women in Ireland. It would ban safe and legal abortion very early in pregnancy -- even before some women know they are pregnant.

Savita and Danielle represent some of the most extreme outcomes of harmful policies, but by no means the full extent. Women across the country and around the world suffer in myriad ways because of politics that deny women the ability to make their own health care decisions.

They face challenges ranging from mental anguish after becoming pregnant from a sexual assault, to the judgment and shame created by bad policies, to the health consequences of complicated pregnancies, both intended and unintended.

The best way to honor the life and courage of Savita and women like her is to make sure no woman dies again in these circumstances. We need to ensure that laws and policies give women the ability to make decisions about whether to end a pregnancy, choose adoption, or raise a child.

It's time we let politicians know that we will no longer allow politics to interfere with women's health. We have enough work ensuring that women and families can access quality medical care. Let's leave the personal decisions up to them and their doctors.

Copyright © 2012 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cecile-richards/savitas-death-was-not-an_b_2161151.html [with comments]

it became too tough to leave any out .. just in case anyone missed the video ..

stark choice .. people have a stark choice in religion .. warm spiritual uplift or cold
mental straitjacket .. one choice obviously involves empathy for all human beings
.. the cold one discards the empathy as rubbish .. a rather stark choice? .. or not?

[fuagf]

Labor Unions Launch Six-Figure Ad Blitz Opposing Spending Cuts To Medicare, Medicaid, Education



Sahil Kapur November 20, 2012, 12:45 PM 2509

One running theme of deficit reduction negotiations is that both parties support domestic spending cuts in their opening bids — Republicans demand them, and Democrats champion them alongside tax increases for high income earners.

Now a coalition of three labor unions — AFSCME, SEIU and National Education Association — are launching a six-figure ad buy pressuring swing-state Senate Democrats and targeted House Republicans to oppose spending cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and education — three items that neither side has taken off the table in talks about defusing a looming austerity bomb.

The ad campaign reflects an effort to upend a Washington status quo where Democrats are pushing for spending cuts to lure Republicans into supporting tax increases. The groups are nervous that President Obama and Democrats may go along with a deal that cuts the safety net.

“We haven’t heard any assurances [from the White House or Democratic leadership] on anything at this point,” Mary Kusler, director of government relations for NEA, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “That’s why we’re continuing to remind everybody that we need to craft a deal that puts middle class families first.”

On the call, the three groups unveiled a new survey .. http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/PDF/Mellman%20Poll%20Memo.pdf .. they commissioned, conducted by the Mellman Group, which said voters would oppose a “grand bargain” that goes after programs like Social Security, Medicare, education and funding for local police and firefighters.

“None of these programs need to be cut to reduce the deficit,” said AFSCME’s director of federal government affairs Charles Loveless. “The overwhelming majority, 53 percent, want taxes increased on the wealthy, and want to see these core programs protected.”

Three 30-second TV ads titled Jobs Not Cuts airing in Colorado, Virginia and Missouri call on Democratic Sens. Michael Bennett (CO), Mark Udall (CO), Mark Warner (VA), Jim Webb (VA) and Claire McCaskill (MO) to tame the deficit “not by cutting programs that families rely on most” and work toward protecting Medicare, Medicaid and education from cuts.”

[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N23XqxkTkec ]

Peter Colavito, SEIU’s director of government relations, said “these leading Democrats are important voices within their Senate caucus” in brokering a deal.

Separate 1-minute radio ads called Can’t Wait seek to jolt members of the Republican-controlled House into extending the middle income tax cuts, which GOP leaders are refusing to do unless Democrats agree to also continue the lower top-bracket tax rates.

“There’s one thing that both parties can agree on: we should[n't] raise taxes on the middle class. But if Congress fails to act soon, that’s exactly what will happen,” says a narrator in the ad, which targets Republican Reps. Pat Meehan (PA), Mike Fitzpatrick (PA), Don Young (AK) and Jo Ann Emerson (MO) in their respective states.

[ embedded radio ad from which i added the [n't] above ]

“Congress should act quickly to preserve the middle class tax cuts,” the narrator says, “and that will take leaders willing to put people over partisan politics.”

Sahil Kapur is a congressional reporter for TPM. He previously covered politics and public policy for numerous publications including The Guardian and The Huffington Post. He can be reached at sahil [at] talkingpointsmemo.com.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/afscme-seiu-nea-six-figure-ad-buy.php?ref=fpb

[F6]

Jesus was born years earlier than thought, claims Pope


The Pope also weighs in on the debate over Christ's birthplace
Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

The entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation, the Pope has declared, as he claims in a new book that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed.

By Nick Squires, Rome
4:02PM GMT 21 Nov 2012

The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives', published on Wednesday.

"The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years," the Pope [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/ ] writes in the book, which went on sale around the world with an initial print run of a million copies.

"The actual date of Jesus's birth was several years before."

The assertion that the Christian calendar is based on a false premise is not new – many historians believe that Christ was born sometime between 7BC and 2BC.

But the fact that doubts over one of the keystones of Christian tradition have been raised by the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is striking.

Dennis the Small, who was born in Eastern Europe, is credited with being the "inventor" of the modern calendar and the concept of the Anno Domini era.

He drew up the new system in part to distance it from the calendar in use at the time, which was based on the years since the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian.

The emperor had persecuted Christians, so there was good reason to expunge him from the new dating system in favour of one inspired by the birth of Christ.

The monk's calendar became widely accepted in Europe after it was adopted by the Venerable Bede, the historian-monk, to date the events that he recounted in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in AD 731.

But exactly how Dennis calculated the year of Christ's birth is not clear and the Pope's claim that he made a mistake is a view shared by many scholars.

The Bible does not specify a date for the birth of Christ. The monk instead appears to have based his calculations on vague references to Jesus's age at the start of his ministry and the fact that he was baptised in the reign of the emperor Tiberius.

Christ's birth date is not the only controversy raised by the Pope in his new book – he also said that contrary to the traditional Nativity scene, there were no oxen, donkeys or other animals at Jesus's birth [ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9691295/Nativity-donkeys-and-cattle-are-a-myth-says-Pope.html ].

He also weighs in on the debate over Christ's birthplace, rejecting arguments by some scholars that he was born in Nazareth rather than Bethlehem.

John Barton, Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture at Oriel College, Oxford University, said most academics agreed with the Pope that the Christian calendar was wrong and that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly thought, probably between 6BC and 4BC.

"There is no reference to when he was born in the Bible - all we know is that he was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who died before 1AD," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's been surmised for a very long time that Jesus was born before 1AD - no one knows for sure."

The idea that Christ was born on Dec 25 also has no basis in historical fact. "We don't even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice."

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9693576/Jesus-was-born-years-earlier-than-thought-claims-Pope.html [with comments]

---

(linked in):

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81750440 and preceding (and any future following)

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81701865 and preceding (and any future following)

[fuagf]

Rein in the Rich: How Higher Taxes Could Lift the Economy

John B. Judis - December 12, 2012 | 12:00 am - 15 comments


Spencer Platt/Getty Images
News/Getty Images

As the negotiations over the fiscal cliff continue, President Barack Obama has insisted .. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jb85JLCAeQvSd6virK_Xs7YLkJew?docId=CNG.7c553bdf12ba7d7d1f681c11f209a379.a91 .. on retaining the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, while letting the cuts for the wealthy lapse. Republicans have insisted that raising taxes on the rich would cost jobs – as many as 700,000, according to .. http://live.wsj.com/video/boehner-raising-taxes-will-destroy-700000-jobs/7E01904C-5A22-4CD3-8656-0474FA58A6C6.html#!7E01904C-5A22-4CD3-8656-0474FA58A6C6 .. House Speaker John Boehner.

Obama, for his part, says that a tax increase would not cost jobs; that it would help the economy by reducing the deficit; and that it would be fairer than imposing new taxes on the middle class. “I’m not going to ask students and seniors and middle-class families to pay down the deficit while people like me who make more than $250,000 are not asked to pay a dime more in taxes,” he has declared .. http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/a-first-look-at-second-term-obama/ .

Obama is right that a tax increase on the rich would not cost jobs; and he is certainly right that it would be fairer to tax the wealthy whose incomes have shot up, even during the downturn. And he is also correct that taxing the rich will actually benefit the economy--but not primarily for the reasons he cites. If the government extracts income from the wealthy, and then spends it on a $50 billion infrastructure program, an extension of unemployment insurance, and a Social Security payroll tax cut, as Obama has proposed .. http://news.yahoo.com/why-obama-pushing-stimulus-fiscal-cliff-deal-video-033547060.html , that will not only boost the recovery, but will also discourage the wealthy from rerouting their savings into the kind of speculative activity that helped create the Great Recession. A closer approximation of income equality is not only better for our souls—it’s also better for the economy. The question of fairness aside, the rich have been making relatively too much money for the country’s good.

Last September, the Congressional Research Service published a report .. http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/109509/gop-crs-drop-dead .. countering Republican claims that lowering top tax rates would lead, or had led, to higher economic growth. “Changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth,” the report concluded. Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded by having the report suppressed .. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/business/questions-raised-on-withdrawal-of-congressional-research-services-report-on-tax-rates.html , but its findings were incontrovertible.

The CRS rested its findings, however, on the lack of a correlation between marginal tax on the wealthy and growth. It didn’t try to explain why higher rates might have contributed to faster growth, and lower rates to slower growth, and even recessions. This view remains highly controversial today, even among liberals, but during the 1930s many New Dealers took this position. Recently, Rutgers economic historian James Livingston has reasserted it in an excellent book, Against Thrift .. http://www.amazon.com/Against-Thrift-Consumer-Culture-Environment/dp/0465021867 . There is a weaker and a stronger version of the argument.

The weaker argument goes like this: The modern American economy is driven by consumer demand; the consumer sector, which includes services, is where new jobs emerge, and where growth is spurred. During economic downturns, purchases of consumer durables, including automobiles and new houses (which economists technically label investment), have been most likely to ignite a recovery. The lower a person’s income, the more likely he or she will use additional income to consume goods and services; the higher the income, the more likely it will be saved. In Keynesian terms, middle and lower income taxpayers have a much high marginal propensity to consume. Therefore, it makes much more sense to give them rather than the wealthy a tax break.

The weaker argument shows that it is better in a faltering economy to reduce tax rates on the less wealthy than the wealthy. The stronger argument shows that with incomes soaring in the upper brackets, it is a good idea to raise tax rates on the wealthy. This idea comes from historical evidence showing that today’s economy differs from that of the older pre-Great Depression industrial economy.

In the first period of American industrialization -- roughly from the Civil War through the mid-1920s -- the economy was driven by the production of capital goods, from steel and petroleum to machine tools and threshers. More workers became engaged in producing these goods than in manufacturing consumer goods. In countries that are rapidly industrializing in this manner – think of China today – both workers and owners have to sacrifice their consumption in order to provide consumer goods for the growing number of workers who are making capital goods that they cannot consume.

But sometime in the 1920s, these relationships were inverted. In 1890, consumer purchases accounted for about 36 percent of GDP; in 1925, 40 percent. (Similarly in China today .. http://www.economist.com/blogs/analects/2012/05/chinese-spending-public-and-private , consumption accounts for only about a third of GDP and investment for half.) But in the United States today, consumer purchases account for about 70 percent of GDP, and investment for only 15 or 20 percent. And the growth of consumption at the expense of investment hasn’t entailed any decline in output, including that of capital goods.

Due to modern technology – from electrification to the computer and the Internet – and to the increasingly sophisticated organization of work, it has become possible to produce more goods without a net increase in workers and capital. The output of capital and consumer goods has continued to grow, but most of the increase in the labor force over the last eighty years has been in government and services. From 1990 to 2008 (before the recession), the United States lost almost a million jobs in capital goods production.

As a result, the consumer sector no longer has to sacrifice its output and income in order to fund a capital goods sector that is growing more rapidly than it is. And instead of the economy being driven by the demand for capital goods, it is driven by the demand for consumer goods and services. The danger in the older economy was conspicuous consumption by capitalists and growing wage demands from workers, which threatened the funds available for investment in capital goods. The looming danger in the new economy in the failure of capitalists to consume or invest and the failure of workers, crippled by debt, unemployment or falling wages, to consume.

Government economic policy has to be, or at least should be, very different in this economy. It should not consist of giving tax breaks to the middle class and the wealthy, but of redistributing income downward--whether through tax policy, social programs, or labor regulations. [all bold mine] If it doesn’t do that, or worse still, if it acts as if it were 1925 and encourages a growing gap between the rich and everyone else, it will threaten consumer demand. During the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, the top one percent increased their share of total income by 19 percent. And that happened, too, in George W. Bush’s administration. Such policies not only slow a recovery, but spur a slowdown by putting money in the wrong hands.

Regressive policies can also lead to financial crises. When firms suffer from global overcapacity or merely from domestic overproduction – when a glut arises of automobiles, ships, textiles semiconductors or fiber optic cable -- as happened in the late 1920s and again in the earlier part of the last decade, the wealthy, joined by corporate treasurers and bankers, have tended to pour their money into speculation rather than productive investment. The financial sector has become a casino for the rich, where they have gambled away funds that could have fueled the economy. So redistributing income through tax policy isn’t just fair; it is one way to began restructuring the economy to prevent future slowdowns and crashes.

Republican pleas to retain tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations and to eviscerate social programs do suggest a Romneyesque indifference to the 99 percent; they also presume an economy that no longer exists. “These incentives,” Livingston writes, “are merely invitations to inflate speculative bubbles.” Obama’s concession to arguments about the deficit, which come from Tea Party Republicans and business groups like Fix the Debt, is understandable, but unfortunate. There will come a time -- when unemployment dips, say, below six percent, and the countries’ businesses are at full capacity – when it will be important to reduce government deficits. And raising marginal taxes on the wealthy will be one way – along with other measures – to bring the deficit down.

But bringing down the deficit should not be the principal objective right now. What’s important is to continue the recovery from the Great Recession and to take measures to prevent future crises. Supply-siders were right about one thing: the best way to reduce the government deficit is to create economic growth. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy and to transfer those revenues to workers and the unemployed isn’t just the fair thing to do; it is exactly what’s right for the economy.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/111016/rein-the-rich#