Mom didn’t come through for the administration. Neither did the rest of the public. Despite the various efforts, the law’s poll numbers have remained stubbornly low.

But maybe a new $20 million ad campaign will succeed where previous messaging efforts have failed? Health and Human Services Director Kathleen Sebelius has her fingers crossed: According to PR Week, marketing firm Porter Novelli — the ad wizards that gave us both the USDA food pyramid and the Truth antismoking campaign — has won a $20 million contract to promote the law through a multimedia advertising blitz. The campaign will “inform the American people about the many preventive benefits now available to those with Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” an HHS official told the trade publication.

"I am all for free speech, but this is like yelling fire in a crowded theater."

stepbystepselfpublishing.net/how-to-get-an-itin.html

"pensare che l’euro sia colpevole dell’attuale crisi, o addirittura credere che si possa venirne fuori tramite una politica monetaria disperata (tipo l’uscita dall’euro) è sbagliato. È come bombardare l’Iraq in risposta all’attacco alle torri gemelle: c’entra poco o nulla. Magari si vuole fare per altre ragioni, ma con la crisi attuale l’euro proprio non c’entra. Quello che c’entra non è appunto la politica monetaria, ma bensì la politica fiscale dei paesi in maggior difficoltà."

House Minority Leader, responding to an expected acceleration of John Boehner’s timeline on the Bush tax cuts, fired off a letter to the Speaker asking for immediate consideration of an extension of just the “low end” tax cuts – which include the Bush-era marginal rates for households making up to $1 million. This represents a shift in the dividing line for the Bush tax cuts, which has traditionally been at $250,000.

The Bush tax cuts at every level up to $1 million in annual income, in other words, are now framed as “middle-income tax cuts.” She says it right here in the letter:

Without further delay, the Majority Leadership should schedule a vote on extension of the middle-income tax cuts, as early as next week, to increase certainty for millions of American taxpayers and for the economy. We should not delay passing this legislation that will help afford all Americans the opportunity to reach their goals and realize the promise of the American Dream.

We must ask the very wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share. Democrats believe that tax cuts for those earning over a million dollars a year should expire and that we should use the resulting revenues to pay down the deficit.

First of all, if you make the dividing line at $1 million a year in annual income, there simply won’t be all that many revenues generated to pay down that deficit. When the dividing line was $250,000 a year, the revenue was around $800 billion over a ten-year period. I don’t have a strong grasp of what the numbers would be at $1 million, but my guess would be half that, if not more. So from a deficit reduction standpoint, this makes pretty much no sense.

Second of all, because of our marginal tax rate system, high-income earners at the $1 million
level would still benefit from all the tax cuts on the first $1 million of their income, which are substantial. In fact, you’d be giving hundreds of billions of dollars – whatever the difference is between letting the tax cuts expire at the $250,000 level and the $1 million level – entirely to well-off people.

CA OIC

In the year since President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, tax payers are partly-funding Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigation into whether or not the president was truly born in the United States.

The Arizona Republic and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser report that two men identifying themselves as Michael Zullo and Brian Mackiewcz arrived at the Hawaii Department of Health on Monday and requested verification of Obama’s birth. They left after a Hawaii deputy attorney provided them information on the legal requirements for obtaining that documentation. Zullo is a volunteer in Arpaio’s inquiry, but Mackiewcz provided a business card identifying him as a public employee who works in the Threats Management Unit of the sheriff’s office.

Arpaio, who has previously claimed that the investigation was being funded through private donations, dismissed concerns about tax dollars funding the conspiracy quest and said “he hopes the agency will be paid back through private donations”:

If you're not pissed off yet, this article will fix that.

Neither side gets the Bain story correct. Two concepts are missing from the conversation. The first missing concept is "Cash Cow." Bain did not target "troubled companies." Cash Cows, instead, are profitable, with good cash flows, but relatively-slow growth, and paying standard tax rates with few write-offs. The second missing concept is "Tax Arbitrage," which is, very simply, this:

You take the Cash Cow, paying, say, 30% in taxes, and use various strategies to drive the tax rate to near-zero without killing the cash flow. Then you pocket the 30%, and the investors pay lower capital gains and "carried interest" tax rates on those extracted "tax savings."

For roughly half of the companies receiving this "operation" will die because of the high debt and other obligations brought on by the Tax Arbitrage strategy. But you, the equity capital firm, get your investment out early. Half of the companies will prosper under this treatment (though not for existing employees who are outsourced or downsized), and you flip those to new owners for huge profits, taxed at capital gains rates.

This is NOT "Capitalism." This is manipulation of the tax code for profit for some, at the expense of others. Millions of Americans work for years for Cash Cow companies. Slow growth is not a sin; it is a reality in many businesses, and a good Cash Cow can provide employment and community stability to generations of workers and their families.