An alarm company concerned about an open door called police to the Washington home of former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but a law enforcement official says there are no signs of a burglary. (June 2)
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Kogan , the Aussie company behind such gadgets as the fist-sized Bluetooth GPS watch and gesture-controlled IPTV , is adding a Chromium OS laptop to its family of Google-powered Agora products. The 11.6-inch computer has a spec list rivaling the midrange notebooks of 2006, including a 1.3 GHz Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 30GB SSD. That’s not a lot of oomph, but with cloud-based storage and Google’s open source Chromium running the show, this thin client laptop should be in decent shape. There’s also a 3.5-hour battery, SD card reader, webcam, Bluetooth, and an HDMI output. Like all Kogan products, the Agora is only available in Australia (AUD 349, about $372) and the UK (
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GLEE’s Chris Colfer Honors Jane Lynch at Outfest 2010 Glee: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray and DVD ABDC’s We Are Heroes members Ali and Hiroka freestyle at Nike Delicious Training. hollywoodstarsh says: celebs New post: Jane Lynch Fox News http://www.hollywoodstarshoney.com/?p=5242 hollywoodstarshoney
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Manhattan’s district attorney believed to have questions about Goldman Sachs’s behaviour before and during financial crisis Manhattan’s top law enforcer is believed to have issued subpoenas to Goldman Sachs as he investigates the firm’s activity during the credit crisis. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr is pursuing claims made by an official senate investigation into Wall Street’s role in the housing market collapse. The report, published in April, singled out Goldman Sachs for particular criticism, accusing the bank of misleading buyers of mortgage-linked investments. The bank encouraged buyers to invest in mortgage-related securities even as it was betting heavily against the mortgage market, according to the report. Senator Carl Levin, a persistent critic of the bank, accused Goldman executives, including chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, of giving “misleading and inaccurate” evidence to the committee. Goldman said its executives’ testimony was “truthful and accurate”. The report was referred to the US department of justice and the financial watchdog the securities and exchange commission, which are also investigating. Vance, the son of president Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, was appointed Manhattan’s district attorney in 2009. Earlier this year he said that his office had active investigations into Wall Street “across the board” and called for the his powers to be expanded in order to tackle large-scale white-collar crime. The Manhattan DA’s office has tackled many high-profile white-collar cases, from BCCI to Tyco. A subpoena is only a request for information and does not mean the company is a target of a criminal investigation. Goldman Sachs Banking Financial crisis Regulators Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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Mitt Romney makes his official bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination at Bittersweet Farm, New Hampshire 11.35am ET: In case you think Bittersweet Farm is a strange place to announce his bid for the nomination, the farm has a long tradition of hosting Republican events thanks to its owners, who are also Romney supporters. Seacoast Online reports more background: Bittersweet Farm has been the site of many Republican rallies and events over the years. The Scammans have hosted former President George W. Bush, former New Hampshire Governor John H Sununu and his son, former US Senator John E Sununu. The aide said Romney appreciates the farm’s “rich political history” as well as the traditions of the New Hampshire primary and the state’s role in picking a presidential nominee. The formal announcement will come during a noon cookout featuring hamburgers, hot dogs and chili made using the recipe of Romney’s wife, Ann. All proceeds from the sale of food will go toward the American Legion Post 35′s global war on terror memorial fund. And anyway, Michele Bachmann is going to make her announcement in the Iowa town of her birth: Waterloo. Talk about optics – although of course the British have good memories of Waterloo. 11.30am ET: The big question of course is: can Mitt Romney win the Republican nomination? And the answer isn’t clear. Although polls regularly show Romney as the leading candidate among Republicans, polls taken this far out from the start of the primary season – which doesn’t start until February 2012 with the Iowa caucuses – are worse than useless. Polls taken at this point in 2007 confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would be battling Rudy Guiliani for the presidency in 2008. And in 2003 the polls unanimously decalred that Howard Dean would be the Democratic nominee. On Intrade, the financial-style predictions market , Romney is also the clear front-runner with a 29% rating – well ahead of his major rivals Tim Pawlenty (19%) and Jon Huntsman (16%). But below the top three sits Sarah Palin on a mere 6.5% – but the uncertainty over Palin’s plans is keeping that number low. Should Palin announce it would surely shoot up. Preamble: Can you feel the Romentum? After months of gearing up, today Mitt Romney officially throws his hat into the ring for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, with an announcement at 12 noon (5pm BST) in the crucial first primary state of New Hampshire. We’ll be following the announcement here live – but there’s no doubt that Romney is intending to run, as he has made clear by his actions ever since the 2008 election. Romney’s announcement remarks will take place at Bittersweet Farm in Stratham , about an hours drive outside of Manchester, New Hampshire. Will it be a bittersweet moment for Romney and his supporters? If you want to watch the event live on your computer, Romney’s campaign website will be offering a video stream from 12 noon ET. Mitt Romney US elections 2012 Republicans New Hampshire US politics United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk
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Matthew Morrison is greeted by hoards of UK fans and reveals his hopes of performing live with Elton John and Gwyneth Paltrow. (June 2)
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Street battles raged Thursday between the army and opposition tribesmen in the capital Sanaa and dozens of people on both sides were killed and wounded. (June 2)
Continue reading …At Ellis Island, Sarah Palin attacks the DREAM Act: It ‘usurps’ legal immigration
June 2, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Yesterday, while making a photo op of Ellis Island on her bus tour of the East Coast, Sarah Palin made plain she’s with the nativist wing of the Tea Party — which is to say, pretty much the mainstream of today’s Republican Party — in opposing the DREAM Act: PALIN: The immigrants of the past, they had to literally and figuratively stand in line and follow rules to become U.S. citizens. I’d like to see that continue. And unfortunately, the DREAM Act kind of usurps that-the system that is a legal system to make sure that immigrants who want to be here legally, working hard, producing and supplying revenue and resources for their families, that they’re able to do that right and legally. Unfortunately, the DREAM Act doesn’t accomplish that. Not that facts or reason ever matter much with Palin, but Andrea Nill at ThinkProgress does point out that, in fact, the DREAM Act perfectly fits Palin’s description: Actually, the DREAM Act aims to accomplish precisely what Palin described. Under the DREAM Act bill that Republicans killed last December, applicants would have had to go through a rigorous process of background checks, in addition to paying taxes, learning English, and either serving in the military or attending college. They would have then received a “conditional nonimmigrant” status and would be required to “stand in line” for ten years before being granted legal immigrant status. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the same bill would reduce the deficit by $1.4 billion over ten years. Today’s Republicans are so deeply in the thrall of their nativist wing that they can’t even bring themselves to endorse a common-sense piece of immigration legislation like the DREAM Act. Instead, they succumb to the pack of lies that the nativists sell . They will regret this deeply, and soon. I’m looking forward to seeing Sarah Palin trying to sell her “Latino outreach” in the 2012 election. Bet it goes over about as well as Sharron Angle’s ill-fated stab.
Continue reading …Not Only Are U.S. Corporations Not Overtaxed, Some Of The Biggest Are Paying A Negative Tax Rate
June 2, 2011 No CommentI can’t quite believe that Rick Ungar is allowed to post this stuff on the Forbes blog, but he’s been doing it for awhile, so they must have noticed by now. This is some infuriating news , don’t you think? Instead of keeping their mouths shut and counting their blessings, they’re yelling for austerity cuts for the rest of us while they’re making money hand over fist: Yesterday, I wrote about how the GOP is falsely pushing the argument that America’s corporations are overtaxed. I included some great data courtesy of conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett whose New York Times piece did an extraordinary job of putting the lie to the Republican assertions. Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%. Yes, you read that correctly. Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo. Here are the bullet points presented by the report: From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion. All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years. Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period. According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.
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Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln “are peas in the same pod,” at least in the eyes of Salon.com technology reporter Andrew Leonard . And just how exactly? Because “both [were] irredeemably stained by the hard fiscal decisions they had to make to save their nation,” Leonard argued in a June 2 “How the World Works” blog post. To do so, the Salon writer conflated loopy conspiracy theories about Lincoln having been a pawn of European Jewish bankers with complaints Obama faces from conservative and libertarian quarters regarding his spendthrift economic policies. Leonard seems to suggest there's little if any legitimate critique from the right on Obama's stewardship of federal finances (emphases mine): [I]f you dig a little deeper on the specific accusation that the Rothschild motivation for starting the Civil War was to take over the U.S. banking system, you suddenly find yourself facing a set of concerns that are surprisingly close to the surface of contemporary political discourse involving the national debt and monetary policy.
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