Month: April 2011

Coburn takes on Norquist

From POLITICO: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), arguably the most prominent fiscal conservative in the Senate, is declaring his independence from one of the country’s leading anti-tax groups, Americans for Tax Reform – and its fiery founder, Grover Norquist.

INTELLIGENCER NEW ERA

Article “Library System eyes new home” states: “Our lease is up in 2!-W years,” he said. “Either way, said acting LSLC administrator Bill Hudson, ‘we are still in that space — which is too large for us — for another 2!-W years’.” WATCHDOG: What the heck are they talking about?  How long is the lease, […]

US counts the cost of keeping elderly in jail

FINANCIAL TIMES:  From his battered wheelchair, 87-year-old Melville Atkinson can barely see over the mounds of razor wire heaped against the prison’s perimeter fence. After 21 years in jail for a sexual assault, the second world war veteran has been placed in a special prison for geriatric inmates, Deerfield Correctional Centre, located on the wooded […]

Inquirer Editorial: Drillers should pay a tax

The more natural-gas drillers burden the state’s resources, the more Gov. Corbett digs in his heels against taxing the industry… High levels of bromides in water have been linked to cancers and birth defects. Yet the Corbett administration continues to treat the industry with kid gloves. The DEP should have issued an order with legal […]

Follies Based on Invalid Theories

Theories are general concepts used by modern humans to organize various series of facts or observations into a coherent narrative. They are neither intrinsically “true” nor “false,” but probably best thought of as either valid (leading in a helpful direction) or invalid (useless at best, dangerously misleading at worst). What our recent experience with the […]

We are swimming in a cesspool of fraud

Goldman’s Sach’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mr. Lloyd C. Blankfein’s total compensation, including a cash bonus, had been raised to $19 million in 2010, according to a regulatory filing on Friday April 8th 2011. This is the same guy who testified before Congress that Goldman’s sales people had no obligation to tell their clients that the financial products they were advising them to buy were the same products that Goldman was betting against . .

Essay on sex costs a top doctor.

Essay on sex costs a top doctor. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:   ….In noting the therapeutic effects of semen, Greenfield cited research from the Archives of Sexual Behavior, which found that female college students practicing unprotected sex were less likely to suffer from depression than those whose partners used condoms or those who remained abstinent. His closing line […]

Disastrous Choice for Economy

From AOL / AP: WASHINGTON – The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don’t want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered.

Stimulus by Fed Is Disappointing, Economists Say

NEW YORK TIMES:   …But most Americans are not feeling the difference, in part because those benefits have been surprisingly small. The latest estimates from economists, in fact, suggest that the pace of recovery from the global financial crisis has flagged since November, when the Fed started buying $600 billion in Treasury securities to push private […]

SUNDAY NEWS

In his column “Abandoning the schools”, Gil Smart observes  “…budgets are moral documents reflecting priorities. Gov. Corbett simply has bigger priorities than public education. So the School District of Lancaster must lay off librarians because Corbett won’t tax Marcellus Shale gas drillers. Deans of students positions must be cut to pay for new business tax […]

Is the New York Times the stooge of the Pentagon?

SALON:  A U.S. drone attack in Pakistan killed 23 people this morning, and this is how The New York Times described that event in its headline and first paragraph: “NEW YORK TIMES:  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American drone attack killed 23 people in North Waziristan on Friday, Pakistani military officials said, in a strike against militants […]