ET Williams

The Doctor of Common Sense

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Americans Making Over $50,000 a Year Paid 93.3 Percent of All Taxes in 2010

 

Americans making over $50,000 paid most of the federal taxes that were paid in the U.S. in 2010.

According to statistics compiled from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by the Tax Foundation, those people making above $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, and carried 93.3 percent of the total tax burden.

In contrast, Americans making less than $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 3.5 percent and their total share of the tax burden was just 6.7 percent.

Americans making more than $250,000 had an effective tax rate of 23.4 percent and their total share of the tax burden was 45.7 percent.

Out of the 143 million tax returns that were filed with the IRS in 2010, 58 million – or 41 percent – of those filers were non-payers.

In other words, only 85 million actually paid taxes.

But Tax Foundation data also shows that people who didn’t pay any income tax received $105 billion in refundable tax credits from the IRS.

Additionally, statistics from the Tax Foundation shows that the federal tax code is 3.8 million words long – 3.5 times longer than all seven books of J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series combined.

According to Scholastic.com, the total word count of all seven Harry Potter books is 1,083,594 words with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone being the shortest (76,944 words) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the longest (257,045).

In contrast, the federal tax code is 3.8 million words, almost a tripling of its size since 2001 when the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the tax code to be 1,395,000, and almost doubling its size since the Tax Foundation’s estimates in 2001.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/americans-making-over-50000-year-paid-933-percent-all-taxes-2010

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Ohio Man Shoots Family In Restaurant

 

The 10-year-old daughter who survived a shooting Thursday night inside a crowded Cracker Barrel by her father that killed her sister and mother remains in critical condition in a Cleveland hospital.

Kevin Allen came into the restaurant in suburban Brooklyn with a shotgun and, witnesses said, “selectively” fired on his family. The shooting created panic and confusion in the restaurant, and a manager helped get people out through a rear door, a witness said.

“He didn’t say not one word,” a witness told Fox8.com. “He came in and pointed, and we could just see the fire come out of the barrel and we all just ran.”

In addition to the death of Katherina Allen, 42, and Kerri Allen, 10, the couple’s other 10-year-old daughter, Kayla, was wounded and in critical condition. According to police records, Thursday was Kerri Allen’s birthday.

Three minutes before the shooting, his wife called police saying she had just told her husband she wanted to end the relationship, Fox8.com reported. He left the restaurant and was circling the parking lot, she told police. She also told police she feared he might become violent.

Police records dating back nearly 20 years painted a picture of Kevin Allen, married at least three times, as a violent man with a history of threatening wives and others. Just two days earlier, Katherina told police in their hometown of Strongsville that she had left her husband and taken their daughters after “an incident” on Easter and was afraid to go home to collect their belongings.

Katherina Allen “stated that she has not been getting along with her husband and decided to take the kids and stay with a friend,” according to the Tuesday police report.

“Initially she wanted to pick up some items from the house, but decided not to because it would make him mad if police responded,” the report said, adding that Katherina wanted to document “verbal altercations” the couple had been having.

“I’m having some spouse problems,” Katherina Allen tells the dispatcher in the 911 call.

The dispatcher then asks her if Kevin Allen owns any weapons or is armed. She says her husband had told her he’d gotten rid of a shotgun, but she had seen him with shotgun shells. She also told the dispatcher that Kevin Allen was calling one of her daughters in the restaurant.

At the end of the call, Allen says, “He’s here and the police are here, too. I have to …” She then stops speaking.

The dispatcher says: “Wait in the lobby for the officers. Do not go outside. Let them talk to him, OK? Ma’am?” The call then ends in a jumble of noise.

Officers heard gunshots when they arrived and saw Allen, 51, of Strongsville, leaving the restaurant with a gun. Police Chief Scott Mielke said officers shot him when he refused to surrender. He died at the scene.

Katherina Allen died from shotgun wounds to her head and body, and Kerri Allen died of a shotgun wound to the abdomen, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner.

David Allen, who identified himself as Kevin Allen’s brother, on Friday answered a number listed for Kevin Allen’s mother and said the family had no comment.

In February, Columbia Gas Co. requested a police escort to Kevin Allen’s house, explaining he had not paid his bill “and has stated he will shoot anyone who attempts to turn his gas off,” according to a Feb. 22 Strongsville police report. The report said the company eventually worked things out with Allen.

In June 1995, police in Kirtland — about 20 miles east of Cleveland — arrested Kevin Allen after responding to reports of a violent argument between him and his girlfriend, Janice Koerlin. The argument was the same day that Allen received a divorce from his wife, the report said.

Koerlin told police at a previous house that Allen “had violent episodes and had smashed household items.”

Three months later, Allen was arrested again after Koerlin — now his wife — said he tried to suffocate her with a pillow. The Sept. 14, 1995, report said Kevin Allen was a “manic depressive under medication.”

Police reports say Kevin Allen also was arrested for burglary and theft in 2008.

Documents filed by Kevin and Katherina Allen in federal bankruptcy court in Cleveland last year indicate they owed $60,000 to various creditors, including a $20,000 hospital bill. Other creditors included several credit card companies and two other hospitals. The filing was closed March 28.

Records also show that Kevin Allen filed for bankruptcy in 1991 and 2004, and that Katherina Allen filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

Other court records show Kevin Allen has an adult daughter from the previous marriage that ended in 1995.

Someone inside the restaurant, Robert Lovelace, told WKYC-TV that the shooting scene was chaotic.

“We all ran,” Lovelace said. He said people in the restaurant didn’t know what was happening. “We just told them, `Look, let’s get out of here,”‘ he said.

The manager helped move people to safety through a rear door, the company said.

The restaurant will remain closed until the investigation is completed, Cracker Barrel spokeswoman Julie K. Davis said in an email from corporate offices in Lebanon, Tenn.

“This appears to be the result of a domestic dispute between two guests and no Cracker Barrel employees were involved,” she said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/14/ohio-girl-in-critical-condition-after-dad-kills-family-shoots-her-inside/

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Taxpayers Pay For Cell Phones Welfare Recipients

Welfare Does Not Work

Washington D.C. (Brad Tuttle-Time) – Last year, a federal program paid out $1.6 billion to cover free cell phones and the monthly bills of 12.5 million wireless accounts. Because some idiot figured that free cell phones were a civil right.  The program, overseen by the FCC and intended to help low-income Americans, is popular for obvious reasons, with participation rising steeply since 2008, when the government paid $772 million for phones and monthly bills. But observers complain that the program suffers from poor oversight, in which phones go to people who don’t qualify, and hundreds of thousands of those who do qualify have more than one phone.  This is what ALWAYS happens when there’s a government program.  There are ALWAYS people who figure out how to game on the system, just to see what they can get.  How are phones just as necessary as food?  Can someone explain that to me?  More of that Hope and Change bullshit, right?

Last summer, a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story shed some light on a government program that relatively few Americans knew existed. And now that they do know about it, they come running with their hand out.  What can I get for nothing?  Losers…  The Lifeline program provides low-income Americans with free cell phones (basic ones such as those made by Tracfone, not smartphones) and covers up to 250 free minutes each month. Hmmm, how much dope can a drug dealer push with 250  free minutes a month?  As many as 5.5 million residents in Pennsylvania alone could qualify for the program, which is funded primarily by the Universal Service Fund fee added to the bills of land-line and wireless customers.  5.5 MILLION people in just ONE state?  As of 2009, Pennsylvania had a population of 12,604,767 – that comes to 44% of the state population.  Are you telling me that in just one state alone, we’re paying for almost HALF of the state population’s phone bills?

The program came to be after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed, and the FCC created the Universal Service Fund to help “to promote the availability of quality services at just, reasonable, and affordable rates,” among other things. Just, reasonable, and affordable rates?  Who determines what a just or reasonable rate is?  The GOVERNMENT????  All telecommunications carriers must pay into the fund, and many do so by tacking on a fee to each of their customers’ bills. And there you go, America.  You’re responsible to pay for someone, who won’t get up of their ass’s cell phone.  It’s probably added into your monthly wireless bill and your landline bill, if you still have one.  Yeah great, so now you know why your bill went up; you’re stuck paying for your phone and some other lazy piece of crap’s phone too!  Welcome to what socialism is really like, kids.  You bust your ass and achieve just so that the lazy worthless asshole next door can have all the same stuff you had to work for.

Question for you, America; who was president during in 1996?  Billy Boy – couldn’t keep it in his pants around a fat broad if he had to – Clinton.  Next question; who was Speaker of the House?  Why, none other than 2012 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE NEWT GINGRICH!  These are two of the clowns who made this happen.

http://gaslamppost.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/americans-are-footing-the-bill-for-millions-of-free-welfare-cellphones/

 

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Rep. Allen West calls Democrats Communist

Communism Is Alive and Well

 

A top official of the Communist Party USA on Wednesday ripped Rep. Allen West’s “sad ploy” for claiming that as many as 80 Democratic members of the House are communists.

“I just think it’s an absurd way to cast a shadow over his colleagues. It’s kind of a sad ploy,” Libero Della Piana, a vice-chairman of the national Communist Party, said of the Florida Republican’s charge that about 80 House Democrats were members of the radical party.

“It’s just guilt by association taken to an extreme,” he told POLITICO. He also said there are no members of Congress who are members of the Communist Party – not even avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“I think it’s just absurd,” Della Piana said.

In a video clip of the event posted Wednesday, West was responding a question from a constituent asking “What percentage of the American legislature do you think are card-carrying Marxists?”

“That’s a fair question. I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party,” West says in the video. He went on to say, “It’s called the Congressional Progressive Caucus,” according to a West spokesman, Tim Edson.

Della Piana also said that using the term “communist” as slander ran counter to democratic principles.

“We are supposed to live in a political democracy,” he said. “I didn’t know that being a Communist in Congress was off-limits or out of bounds. There aren’t any now and if there were in the future does that mean that the voters don’t have a say? Can’t choose a Communist to be in Congress?”

In fact, charges from the tea party that President Barack Obama and other Democrats were enacting “socialist” policies has led to increased interest in socialism, Della Piana said.

“I think a lot of Americans were opened up the idea of socialism because of the tea party’s attack on it,” he said. “I think they put it back on the agenda. By attacking every policy initiative of the president as socialism, they put it back in the public debate… it wasn’t exactly something the average American was talking about before that.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75037.html

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UK to extraditing 1 Eyed Hook-Handed Terrorists

The court said Britain would not violate EU human rights rules by extraditing the suspects, who could face life sentences in a maximum-security prison.

 

Al-Masri and the other suspects had argued that in the US they could face prison conditions and jail terms that would expose them to “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” in breach of the European human rights code.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, rejected those claims, saying in a ruling Tuesday that “detention conditions and length of sentences of five alleged terrorists would not amount to ill-treatment if they were extradited to the USA.”

However, the court said the five “should not be extradited” until its judgment becomes final — a move that could take months — or until a possible appeals process ends.

It also put off ruling on the case of a sixth suspect, Haroon Rashid Aswat, as it awaits further information about his schizophrenia and the conditions of his detention at a British hospital.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said he was “very pleased” with the news.

“It is quite right that we have proper legal processes, although sometimes one can get frustrated with how long they take,” he said.

The US is also pleased with the judgement, according to a statement posted on the US Embassy in London’s website.

“We look forward to the court’s decision becoming final and to the extradition of these defendants to stand trial in the United States,” the statement from the US Department of Justice said.

British Home Secretary Theresa May said the U.K. will work to see that the suspects are handed over to US authorities as quickly as possible.

Based on charges filed in the US, the suspects could get lifelong jail terms without parole in maximum security conditions, such as cells with concrete furniture, timed showers, tiny windows and no outside communications.

The various challenges against extradition rested on the suspects’ likely detention in the ADX Florence “Supermax” prison in Colorado, where they would be held in solitary confinement. In their ruling Tuesday, the judges found that conditions at ADX would not amount to ill-treatment.

Al-Masri, 53, is known for his fiery anti-Western and anti-Semitic outbursts. He claims he has lost his Egyptian nationality, but Britain considers him an Egyptian citizen. The court listed him as a British national.

Al-Masri has also been linked to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998 and to preaching jihad — holy war — in Afghanistan. He is also accused of setting up a terrorist training camp in rural Oregon.

In separate cases, Syed Talha Ahsan has been charged with conspiring to support terrorists via the Internet and 36-year-old Babar Ahmad is accused of running websites to raise money, appeal for fighters and provide equipment — like gas masks and night vision goggles — for terrorists.

Ahmad’s father, Ashfaq, said he and his family were “very disappointed” by the court’s decision, calling it “a serious abuse of process.”

Ahmad hasn’t faced charges in Britain, but has been held without trial for 8 years in a U.K. prison. In an interview that took place after the BBC won a legal battle to speak with Ahmad, he insisted he did not condone terrorism and urged authorities to put him on trial in the U.K.

Faras Baloch, a legal adviser to Ahmad’s family, said their “best chance” of fighting extradition now lies in getting a trial in Britain.

“We are going to press for him to be tried in the U.K.,” Baloch said, adding that justice should not be outsourced to the US.

Ahmad’s brother-in-law, Fahad Ansari, said the family hoped to appeal to the European Court’s grand chamber. He questioned the alleged “torture” and “inhuman and degrading treatment” in Supermax prisons.

“It is completely inhumane and no country can justify sending one of its citizens to such a scenario,” he said.

Terrorist Pirate -Hi Mate

Two other cases were also considered by the European court, which decided extradition to the US would not violate EU human rights laws.

Khalid al-Fawwaz, a Saudi citizen, and Adel Abdul Bary, who is Egyptian, are wanted over the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Al-Fawwaz, allegedly Osama bin Laden’s representative in Britain, has been charged with more than 269 counts of counts of murder.

Several politicians and political groups used the cases to highlight what they deemed failings in the U.K. legal system for taking so many years to clear up questions of extradition.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/uk_can_extradite_terror_suspects_ATX2RoRfCHTrKRfTS353tO

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Job Growth Is Looking Bad Before Election Debate Starts

I Barack Obama Did It

A weaker-than-expected jobs report became election-year fodder as Republicans seized on the numbers to criticize President Barack Obama, and Democrats warned against reading too much into one month of data.

 The Labor Department said April 6 that employers added 120,000 jobs in March, after an increase of 227,000 in February. It was the fewest jobs added in five months. Unemployment fell to 8.2 percent from 8.3 percent as discouraged workers left the labor force. The jobs growth was less than the most pessimistic estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

 The election may turn on independent voters’ views of U.S. economic policy, Ohio (BEESOH) Governor John Kasich said on NBC’s “Meet the Press today.

‘‘Whoever can tell them that they’re going to improve this economy, create jobs for families, will be the winner,’’ said Kasich, a Republican. Ohio (NFSEOH) voters backed Obama in 2008 and have supported the national winner in every presidential election since 1960.

 Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, indicated disappointment with the latest jobs numbers.

 ‘‘Like the president, we want this to move more quickly,’’ Durbin said on NBC. ‘‘We’re moving in the right direction.’’

 The comments by Durbin and Kasich echoed statements that Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made soon after the jobs report’s release.

 Employment Gains

Obama, who is seeking a second four-year term, said the new jobs are ‘‘welcome’’ and pointed to employment gains over the past two years.

 Romney, who has more than half the delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination, said Obama’s ‘‘excuses have run out.’’

 Kasich blamed the political divide between the parties in Washington for the failure to improve conditions more quickly.

 ‘‘Government clearly has a role in the area of health care, in Medicare (FFSOMED) and in Medicaid (USBOMDCA) and in Social Security,’’ he said. ‘‘But we need to modernize the program, and we need to do it together.’’

 Durbin criticized the budget passed by House Republicans, saying that the proposed changes to Medicare would force future retirees to find health care on the open market.

 As Obama has done, Durbin criticized Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, for describing the House budget plan as ‘‘marvelous.’’

 Romney’s Approach

Romney’s approach would constitute ‘‘a return to the same economic policy we had under President Bush that brought on the worst recession since the Great Depression,” Durbin said, referring to Republican President George W. Bush. “We don’t want to go back to those economic policies.”

 Republicans said that the Democratic-controlled Senate hasn’t passed a budget and that Obama hasn’t identified a clear plan for reducing the federal budget deficit and debt.

 Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday” that voters in November would encounter an “extremely stark choice” about the economy and the budget.

 “We need presidential leadership and we have none,” he said.

What’s lacking, said Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, is bipartisan cooperation. Conrad, of North Dakota, is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and has endorsed plans to reduce the deficit that rely on spending cuts and tax increases. Most Republicans say spending cuts alone should be used.

 “If we don’t get together, we can’t accomplish anything,” he said on Fox today in an appearance with Johnson.

 Post-Election Agreement

Conrad said a broad budget agreement may emerge after the election. He said that could happen either before or after Jan. 1, when income tax cuts expire and automatic spending cuts are scheduled to take effect.

 Congress returns to work on the week of April 16. The Senate is scheduled to consider the “Buffett Rule,” a tax bill backed by Democrats that would require people making over $2 million to pay at least a 30 percent effective tax rate.

 The rule is named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has called for higher taxes on investment income.

Obama is planning a speech on the Buffett Rule April 10 in Boca Raton, Florida.

 Separately, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Romney is “far and away” the most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination.

 Speaking on Fox, the former speaker of the House said today he’ll endorse Romney if he gets a majority of the delegates to the Republican nominating convention.

 ‘Very Substantial Machine’

“I have no regrets, but it’s clear that Governor Romney has done a very good job of building a very substantial machine,” Gingrich said. He added that his campaign is in debt and that he spent money in a “real brawl” in Florida, where he lost the Jan. 31 primary to Romney.

 “We’re operating on a shoestring,” said Gingrich, 68.

 After the latest round of primary voting, Romney has 658 delegates, according to an Associated Press tally. That is more than half the 1,144 needed to capture the nomination. Former Senator Rick Santorum has 281 delegates, Gingrich trails with 135 delegates and U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas has 51.

 If Romney is the nominee, Gingrich said, “I will work as hard for him as I would for myself” during the fall campaign. Republicans are all committed to defeating Obama, a “genuine radical,” he said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-08/job-growth-below-estimates-shapes-election-year-sparring