When you compare them head-to-head, the Obama and Romney tax plans are nearly identical:

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, is offering a 20 percent tax cut for everyone. Given the mood of the conservatives in the United States today, that may not surprise you. But even President Barack Obama, who is routinely described as a socialist by his opponents, is peddling a plan under which 99 percent of Americans would pay less than they did under the last Democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton.

for the future?

Socialism rears its beautiful head (Article by Gar Alperovitz via Common Dreams).

The broad goal is democratized ownership of the economy for the “99 percent” in an ecologically sustainable and participatory community-building fashion.

In March 2012, the Left Forum held in New York also heard many calls for a return to nationalization.

Might as well try something new - the old way isn't working.

A range of new theorists have also increasingly given intellectual muscle to the movement. Some, like Richard Heinberg, stress the radical implications of ending economic growth. Former presidential adviser James Gustav Speth calls for restructuring the entire system as the only way to deal with ecological problems in general and growth in particular.

By Evelyn M. Rusli & Michael J. De La Merced | New York | May 23

NYT - Just days before Facebook went public, some big investors grew nervous about the company’s prospects.

After publicly warning about challenges in mobile advertising, Facebook executives held conference calls to update their banks’ analysts on the business. Analysts at Morgan Stanley and other firms soon started advising clients to dial back their expectations. One prospective buyer was told that second-quarter revenue could be 5 percent lower than the bank’s earlier estimates.

May 22

BBC - Google's $12.5bn (£7.9bn) purchase of US phone maker Motorola Mobility has been completed days after it received approval from the Chinese government.

Chinese authorities said Google must keep its mobile software, Android, free for other device makers for up to five years.

The acquisition is Google's biggest to date.

That's the pretty interesting, if simplistic, question posed by The Atlantic:

Not everyone is thrilled by the prospect of radical life extension. As funding for anti-aging research has exploded, bioethicists have expressed alarm, reasoning that extreme longevity could have disastrous social effects. Some argue that longer life spans will mean stiffer competition for resources, or a wider gap between rich and poor. Others insist that the aging process is important because it gives death a kind of time release effect, which eases us into accepting it. These concerns are well founded. Life spans of several hundred years are bound to be socially disruptive in one way or another; if we're headed in that direction, it's best to start teasing out the difficulties now.

Montpelier, VT | May 17

CNN - Vermont's governor has signed a bill making it the first U.S. state to ban fracking, the controversial practice to extract natural gas from the ground.

"This is a big deal," Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday. "This bill will ensure that we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy."

Shumlin said fracking contaminates groundwater and the science behind it is "uncertain at best." He said he hopes other states will follow Vermont's lead in banning it.

One might begin to see the seeds of its decline here:

iMore reports that Google may make four times the ad revenue off of their use in iOS than they do from their own Android platform. Apple wants to change that. Apple has already begun intermediating search queries though Siri, effectively cutting Google out of the valuable identity information associated with those searches. Next up is that other large data components on iOS, maps.

Barack Obama taking on Mitt Romney's abysmal job creation record is a little like critiquing Stalin's abysmal human rights record:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is casting Mitt Romney as a greedy, job-killing corporate titan with little concern for the working class in a new, multi-pronged effort that seeks to undermine the central rationale for his Republican rival's candidacy: his business credentials.

At the center of the push — the president's most forceful attempt yet to sully Romney before the November election — is a biting new TV ad airing Monday that recounts through interviews with former workers the restructuring, and ultimate demise, of a Kansas City, Mo., steel mill under the Republican's private equity firm.

Kate Zernike | Trenton, NJ | May 10

NYT - In a swipe at President Obama’s signature health care legislation, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey vetoed on Thursday an online marketplace that the Legislature created to help residents and small businesses buy health insurance.

The Affordable Care Act, the federal law passed in 2010, requires most Americans to have health insurance and mandates states to have health care benefits exchanges to help them buy it. With the Supreme Court debating whether the health care law is constitutional, Mr. Christie said in his veto message that the exchange, approved in March, was “premature” and could impose “unnecessary obligations upon the state’s citizens.”

“Indeed, the very constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is cloaked in uncertainty, as both the individual mandate to procure health insurance as well as the jurisdictional mandate to establish an exchange may not survive scrutiny by the Supreme Court,” he wrote.

Seth Robson | Yokota Air base, Japan | May 10

S&S - U.S. servicemembers looking at career options in this era of shrinking military budgets and force drawdowns might want to take a look Down Under.

The Australian government is recruiting experienced U.S. enlisted personnel and officers to fill a range of positions — from submariners to doctors — in its military, according to a posting on the Australian Defence Force website.

“The Australian Defence Force looks to overseas candidates to fill gaps in our Services, which can’t currently be satisfied by standard recruitment,” reads the intro for overseas applicants on the Defence Force’s recruitment website. “We recognise that these candidates can bring skills and attributes to the Navy, Army and Air Force that will strengthen their overall operation and success rate.”

The job offers could be tempting for U.S. troops as the Afghan War winds down and the Department of Defense looks to trim billions of dollars and more than 100,000 uniformed personnel from its books.

Watching the housing market and listening to the media is like watching a baseball game as you listen to basketball. The audio portion is completely disconnected with the visual. How many times have you heard that the housing market has bottomed since 2007? Here is a question: how much is that house for sale down the street really worth? Why would anyone make such a big purchase if they cannot make that determination?

We've all heard about the middle class or working class Jones overbuying and underwater in the mortgage who are about to be foreclosed on, but there is another class of buyer in much more trouble.

Via Doctor "Dave" Gonzo at American Politics Journal
http://www.americanpolitics.com/index.php

Apr 26

Latin American Herald Tribune - During a speech before military officers at Brazil’s Superior War College in Rio de Janeiro, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta committed himself to exerting every effort to facilitate the technology transfer to the giant South American nation

RIO DE JANEIRO – The United States is ready to transfer military technology to Brazil to be able to count the South American country as a strategic ally, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday.

Panetta, in a speech before military officers at Brazil’s Superior War College in Rio de Janeiro, committed himself to exerting every effort to facilitate the technology transfer to the giant South American nation.

The announcement was a response to the demand made on Tuesday by Brazilian Defense Minister Celso Amorim, who, at a joint press conference with the Pentagon chief, complained that the United States sells military equipment to Brazil but restricts access to the technology that accompanies it.

Panetta, on a South American tour that began in Colombia and will end in Chile, said that – despite the restrictions – the United States between 2010 and 2011 approved about 4,000 export licenses for controlled equipment.

The United States and Brazil have to increase the trade of high technology “flowing in both directions between our two countries,” the U.S. defense secretary said.

Panetta specifically mentioned the case of the 36 F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter jets that Washington wants Brazil to buy from Boeing.

To no one's surprise, health insurance companies will rape us for every last cent:

The agreement required the companies to finance an objective database of doctors’ fees that patients and insurers nationally could rely on. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, then the attorney general, said it would increase reimbursements by as much as 28 percent.

It has not turned out that way. Though the settlement required the companies to underwrite the new database with $95 million, it did not obligate them to use it. So by the time the database was finally up and running last year, the same companies, across the country, were rapidly shifting to another calculation method, based on Medicare rates, that usually reduces reimbursement substantially.

We've all seen how...ugly...Mitt Romney is as a Presidential candidate, so it's no surprise this same EPIC FAIL! trope is to be found in a close examination of his career as a parasite capitalist:

In the midst of that 1994 campaign, one of Romney's companies, American Pad & Paper, bought a plant in Marion, Indiana. At the time, it was prosperous enough to be running three shifts.

Bain's first move was to fire all 258 workers, then invite them to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and a 50 percent cut in health care benefits.

First, do nothing:

Obama turned his call for middle-income tax breaks into law within a month of taking office, incorporating a $400-a-person tax credit for workers into the 2009 stimulus law. In late 2010, with the economy still weak and Republicans gaining political clout, Obama agreed to an $858 billion tax cut that extended all of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for two years.

"The tax policy has been substantially in the conservative direction whereas the rhetoric has gone in the exact opposite direction," said Don Susswein, a tax aide to former Republican Senator Bob Dole who said he supported Obama in 2008.

Travis Waldron | ThinkProgress Economy Apr 12

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) told Christian Broadcast Network earlier this week that the House GOP’s budget, which he wrote, was driven by his Catholic faith. “A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan said, and Catholic principles are what led him to cut programs for the poor so as to keep people from becoming “dependent on government.”

As ThinkProgress noted Tuesday, Ryan’s budget seems to ignore Catholic social teaching that calls for protecting the poor and improving access to food, jobs, health care, housing, and the social safety net. And now religious leaders are making the same case. The founder of the PICO National Network, the largest national coalition of religious congregations, slammed Ryan’s claim of adherence to Catholic teaching as “the height of hypocrisy” in a release circulated Wednesday:

What an ass!

more at link

Apr 11

Raw Story - American International Group (AIG), the giant US insurer bailed out at the height of the 2008 global financial crisis, is looking to get back into the real estate market, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The newspaper said late Tuesday that AIG, which has been selling off trophy properties in order to pay back the US government loans which kept it afloat, now plans fresh investments in the United States from later this year.

AIG, formerly the world’s largest insurance group, received a $180 billion government bailout in 2008 to save it from catastrophic failure after the sub-prime home loan collapse threatened to bring down the whole financial system.

Last month, the US Treasury said it had successfully sold $6 billion of its shares in AIG, cutting its overall stake to 70 percent from 77 percent.

It often amuses me what rationales people come up with when a market moves in one direction or another.

To-wit: an analyst in England makes a positive comment about the banking industry, and glory be! the FTSE jumps up.

The comments specifically addressed this broker's belief...a broker, mind you, not a government official...that central banks around the world will address the lagging economy with stimulus packages.

Gee, thanks for pointing that out, Captain Obvious! A central tenet to Keynesian economics gets reitertated in the national press and markets suddenly facepalm and go "Now why didn't I think of that?"

Michael J. De La Merced | April 9

NYT Dealbook - AOL agreed on Monday to sell a portfolio of over 800 patents, and license about 300 more, to Microsoft for $1.056 billion, amid an arms race within the technology industry over intellectual property.

Under the terms of the transaction, AOL will retain a license for the patents it is selling, while Microsoft will receive a nonexclusive license for the technologies AOL is retaining.

In all the hoopla over the ACA arguments in the Supreme Court last week was lost a tactical blunder that liberals and Democrats could have...should have...been making all along: defining freedom:

Behind the challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being heard at the Supreme Court this week is the idea that Barack Obama wants to take away your freedoms (as Mitt Romney himself asserted today). I’ve long since stopped counting the number of ridiculous things said about Obama, but this might be the ridiculousest of them all. At least the Kenyan rumors have some basis in reality, however threadbare it is, since his father was indeed Kenyan and he does have a funny name, for an American president. But this "freedom" business is simply paranoid and delusional. I defy anyone to name for me a specific and precise freedom that Obama has taken away from the American people. You can’t.[...]

There's a theme in my thinking with respect to this nation that, eventually, some large-scale changes are going to occur, and that they might occur suddenly and perhaps even violently.

American culture is based on three things: democracy, faith, and capitalism.

There's a basic disconnect in there. Those three things are, jointly and separately, untenably conflicted. Somethings have got to give, because it's within the human nature that one of those things aligns.

A basic drive of humanity is self-protection: food, clothing, shelter are all manifestations of our primal drive to survive. To believe that, somehow, that urge ends just because we satisfy those basic needs flies in the face of modern marketing, Maslow's theory notwithstanding.

The US economy is on the road to recovery, right? That’s what all the economists and financial analysts say. Unemployment has dropped down to 8.3%, unemployment claims are now at a level last seen in 2008 before the economy fell off a cliff, almost all the TBTF banks have just passed the recent Fed stress tests and are now allowed to use their excess capital to pay dividends and buy back their stocks, inflation is tame if you go by official government statistics (especially core inflation that the Fed loves to look at because it removes the effects of food and oil price increases), and finally all major economic indicators are flashing green lights.

Today will be an interesting day in the battle over President Obama's healthcare reform bill. Oral arguments are scheduled to be made in front of the Supreme Court of the United States today, with a final decision on the bill not due for about three months.

The administration's argument is grounded in the Commerce Clause-- that the Federal government has the right to regulate interstate commerce, with some expansions that have occured over time:

I suspect that's Greg Smith's new nickname in some circles.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street.

The shares dropped 3.4 percent in New York trading yesterday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, after London-based Greg Smith made the accusations in a New York Times op-ed piece.