BOSTON - Times are tough for workers in the U.S. where a recession has a stranglehold on much of the economy, but life is perfectly rosy for those at the top.
The riches of the wealthiest North Americans grew by double digits in 2009, primarily from interest their money earned when it was invested in the stock market and elsewhere, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.
Millionaires in the U.S. and Canada saw their wealth increase 15 percent in 2009, to a total of 4.6 trillion dollars, the report found.
Worldwide, 11 million - or less than 1 percent of all households - were millionaires in 2009. They owned about 38 percent of the world's wealth or 111 trillion dollars, up from about 36 percent in 2008, according to Boston Consulting Group. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/09-2
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Obama defines the midterms
An oversimplification? If so, not by much.
"This is a choice between the policies that led us into the mess or the policies that are leading us out of the mess," Obama said. "It's a choice between falling backward and moving forward."
It's always quicker and easier to break something than to fix it…especially when the bastards that broke it keep on messing with the tools required to get it fixed…and when some members of the fix-it team are more interested in their corporate sponsors than actually fixing anything.
And in case anyone forgot, when President Inept left office in 2008, the country was losing 800,000 jobs a month. That's quite a fall Humpty Dumpty took and it'll be quite a job to put him back together again.
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Imagine the soul-crushing horror. A foreign correspondent reacts to the news of a regional political leader's death with a message of respect on Twitter. Outrageous! Yet, that's exactly what CNN's senior editor of Mideast Affairs did earlier this week. For those with strong stomachs, I'll post the message. But sensitive readers are advised to avert their eyes.
Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah.. One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot..
Gahhh!! She said something nice about a leader of Hezbollah on the occasion of his death! Gahhh!! Flee! Flee!
Well, that was too much for CNN and Olivia Nasr is no longer the senior editor of Mideast Affairs. Nasr later explained this crime against humanity on her CNN blog -- apparently as security was dragging her out:
I used the words "respect" and "sad" because to me, as a Middle Eastern woman, Fadlallah took a contrarian and pioneering stand among Shia clerics on woman's rights. He called for the abolition of the tribal system of "honor killing." He called the practice primitive and nonproductive. He warned Muslim men that abuse of women was against Islam.
Keep reading: http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2010/07/for-media-not-being-conservative-enough.html
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Clueless secretary prompts hilarious office email thread.
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Via Crooks and Liars, yet another one of these studies:
The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.
The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest—not only in amount but also as a percentage of income—which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.
I think a capital gains tax cut and permanently getting rid of the inheritance tax should fix this problem.
In all seriousness, what I do not understand is why don't people realize this is unsustainable? How do people expect the economy to grow when 3/4 ofthe nation is too broke to buy anything?
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Self-hating rabbis
Because of the current make-up of the Israeli government and because of the TNR/Weekly Standard/AIPAC dominance of the coverage of Israel here in the United States, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of Israelis who view relations with Palestinians quite differently than Marty Peretz et al.:
"If we try to enter our land, settlers will be waiting, and we will be beaten," said Muhammad Moqbel, a 71-year-old Palestinian from the village of Qaryout who pointed to fields that he said had been stolen by settlers. Last year, he said, he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.
Rabbis for Human Rights has helped Palestinians recover some land through lawsuits in Israeli courts. And Rabbi Ascherman and other Jewish activists escort such farmers to protect them. The settlers still attack, but soldiers are more likely to intervene when it is rabbis being clubbed.
[....]
Not everyone finds Rabbi Ascherman inspiring. He gets death threats, and hard-line Israelis see him as a naïve traitor.
He responds that he is struggling to uphold his religious and moral values. But he also argues that building bridges between Jews and Palestinians helps make Israel a safer place for his children. "In the long run, we're going to live here together," he says, "or we're going to die here together."
Kristof likens these rabbis to civil rights activists, which I think is accurate. When peace is finally achieved in that part of the world, it will likely be more because of people like these rabbis than because of all the "pro-Israel" crazies.
I realize I sound like even more of a hippie than usual saying all of this, but seriously, what are the odds of any kind of peaceful agreement when Israeli settlers are stealing land from Palestinians?
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Thanks, Hopey!
Obama US Attorney expected to stand behind federal gay marriage ban
I mean, you knew it was coming, right?
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Justice Thomas' nephew suicidal and tasered
Tasers are painless they bring on many changes
Security guards punch and tase and pull out dreadlocks of Clarence Thomas' nephew
Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' nephew was allegedly tased and beat up at a New Orleans hospital yesterday after an apparent suicide attempt when he "refused to put on a hospital gown and tried to leave his examination." Derek Thomas, 25 and a student at Nicholls State University, is epileptic and went into a massive seizure when he was tased. Clarence Thomas and his family are said to be outraged at this terrible incident, though maybe that can't be true for Clarence, as he usually loves weapons and authority figures using them. Clarence Thomas is said to be flying to New Orleans, to sit there and listen to people talk about the case without interjecting, we assume. [WDSU/ABC 26 via Newell]
WI GOP congressman supporting Ron Johnson surprised that Johnson supports Great Lakes drilling.
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Town hall turns ugly for Oral Snatch.
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Get your hand out of our minority leader's wallet
Tanning salon tax is yet another example of 'reverse racism' in Obama's America
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