"The top X% of wage earners pay X% of income taxes."

This is a favorite line of right-wingers (fill in your own figures, top 1% pay 58%, top 2% pay 72%, etc.). You get the point they try to make, go easy on the wealthy, they pay their fair share and then some.

Please. As usual, it's all hocus pocus word games. I'll show you.

Suppose a country had a population of 10 people. Person A, the tycoon, made $100 per year, and the other 9 people all made $10 each per year. Thus the total amount of income to be taxed = $190. Suppose 10% is the income tax rate applied to all. This means the total amount of taxes paid is $190 x 10% = $19.

Person A, the tycoon, paid $100 x 10% = $10 in taxes. $10 / $19 = 53%

So you see, Person A, 1/10 of the population, paid 53% of the total taxes paid -- wow, what a swell person, cheers, bravo.

Ahh, not so fast. Person A pays 53% of the total taxes paid because Person A makes 10 times more than each of the other 9 people. Duh. But that's not the point! The point is all 10 people pay the same tax rate, thus it's arguably very fair. Person A doesn't deserve applause or accolades as this person is doing the equivalent of all other citizens in this country.

And this is with a system of one tax rate for all. If it was a bit more progressive, where say Person A had to pay a 15% tax rate, then we're talking: $15 / $24 = 63%, or Person A now pays 63% of all taxes paid.

As you can see, right-wingers try to use deception by shifting the viewpoint quite a bit. It just takes a little bit of thinking to see what they're doing, but how many people take the time to do that thinking?

Meanwhile, the sad fact of the matter is the top 400 wealthiest households in the U.S. (worth $350+ million) pay a lower tax rate than the average citizen pays.

Yes, let's continue to cut taxes for the rich -- woe to them....

Osama bin Laden is dead

What GW failed to do for seven years, Obama achieved (read story, he was heavily involved). Great day for America, but let's see what the hyper-partisan Republicans have to say.... (Most likely "what took so long?" or "that's fine but what about the deficit??"  You know, the deficit that GW and Republicans were creating for many years without a peep from anyone at the time....)

If you've ever wondered whether or not Republican politicians actually believed the birther crap, we can thank Donald Trump for settling it.

Until Trump recently became the most famous birther, many Republicans would either look to side-step the issue by not answering questions directly or they would encourage the continuation of the conspiracy theory by mentioning the possibility Obama may not be a U.S. citizen, thus leaving the door slightly ajar to satisfy and energize the kooks in the base. It worked for the GOP politically.

However, along comes The Don, who quickly makes it his #1 issue in his maybe/maybe-not 2012 run.  I assumed all those same Republican officials would do the usual when asked what they thought of Trump's allegations about Obama's place of birth, that they'd hee and haw but ultimately do some wink-wink and deftly support the notion (leaving door slightly open....).

But I was wrong. One after another, Republicans have been firmly and clearly coming out against all this birther nonsense, stating for the record that it's not a serious issue and seemingly never was. Michele Bachmann, Karl Rove, Eric Cantor, just to name a few, are suddenly above such silliness.

Why the change of mind? I surmise two reasons. The first is they never actually believed the birther stuff and felt with the 2012 race beginning to take shape that they would need to appear like credible people and distance themselves from something that has served their political purposes up till now.

The second reason is the GOP establishment quickly figured out that they needed to put a stop to Trump's growing popularity as a presidential contender. He may not have the billions of dollars he claims to have but he certainly has enough to make a go of it. But more so The Don appears to be a loose cannon who will say anything that pops into his head. Trump is loyal to only one thing: himself. He will and has gone off script and such behavior frightens the heck out of Republicans. In other words, The Don truly "goes rogue" and by all means Republicans do not want that!  Oh yes, say you're "going rogue," that you're not just another politician, that you're a maverick, etc., but just don't mean it!

The bottom line is thanks to Trump, we've come to learn that Republicans never believed in the birther movement. Nothing has changed with regards to the existing documentation, what is known, what Obama and his administration have said, etc., and yet suddenly we observe this rising tide of GOP converts. As I've said, Trump's antics and 2012 fast approaching combined to force Republicans to admit the truth they knew to be the case all along.

And once again, the too-many nutballs in the GOP base get played by their leaders.... That never gets old.

Do you know what "fracking" is? If not, I highly encourage you to watch the Oscar-nominated "Gasland" documentary, made by Josh Fox. It's scary to say the least.

On a related note, this news from PA:

Pennsylvania has come under fire lately as pollution from drilling in the Marcellus Shale threatens water resources across the state. But instead of ratcheting up oversight, Gov. Tom Corbett wants to hand authority over some of the state’s most critical environmental decisions to C. Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania energy executive with his own track record of running up against the state’s environmental regulations.
<..>
Private water wells have been contaminated with methane gas and other pollutants across the state, and in many cases the DEP has found that hasty or insufficient gas well construction was to blame. Several drilling site accidents have led to spills where wastewater, including from hydraulic fracturing, contaminated streams.

A 2009 ProPublica investigation revealed that Pennsylvania’s sewage treatment plants were accepting millions of gallons of drilling wastewater, but lacked the technology to remove or treat many of the chemicals and pollutants the water contained. In 2008 people along one stretch of the Monongahela River were advised to drink bottled water because the level of dissolved minerals and salts in the river was almost twice as high as the DEP considers safe.
<..>
In January, the Associated Press found that about 150 million gallons of Marcellus Shale wastewater—the majority of the wastewater for the period examined—had been dumped into rivers and streams after only partial treatment. A subsequent story from the New York Times revealed that much of that wastewater was dangerously radioactive, and that drinking water facilities have not been testing their intake for this radioactivity.

On Monday the EPA leaned on Pennsylvania’s DEP to tighten its oversight of drilling waste disposal. The next day, Gov. Corbett released his budget, reducing DEP funding and stating that job creation should trump lengthy permitting delays.

It's not shocking to learn that Republican Corbett accepted more than $800,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry.

Another bought-and-paid-for politician paying back his supporters at the expense of the people -- in this case possibly their health, not to mention land value.

Every so often Fox News gets it correct. It's an extremely rare occurrence but it does happen, almost by accident.

Shep Smith is caught telling it like it truly is in Wisconsin.

Shepard Smith said the battle over union rights in Wisconsin was all about busting unions and securing Republican political power, not about the state's budget deficit....Smith said the fight was "100 percent politics."
"There is no budget crisis in Wisconsin," he said, adding that the unions "[have] given concessions." The real point of the fight, Smith said, could be found in the list of the top ten donors to political campaigns. Seven out of the ten donated to Republicans; the other three were unions donating to Democrats.
"Bust the unions, and it's over," Smith said. He then brought up the Koch brothers, the billionaires who have bankrolled much of the anti-union pushback in Wisconsin. The fight, Smith said, "started" with the Kochs, who he said were trying to get a return on the money they donated to Walker's campaign.
"I'm not taking a side on this, I'm just telling you what's going on...to pretend this is about a fiscal crisis in the state of Wisconsin is malarkey," Smith said.

Watch the video.

• Michele Bachmann gets her facts and history wrong, again. I thought Tea Party folks were all about getting this stuff right?

• Dirty air triggers more heart attacks than cocaine.

• "I just want to say, if you're a Republican, please go screw yourself."
  

• For those who haven't figured it out yet, it's fairly obvious that with the start of this year the Republicans had put together and implemented a strategy where they would try to systematically go after those who tended to vote for Democrats. It's what they're doing to unions in Wisconsin, with attempts to do similar in other states (Indiana, Ohio). Break the unions and strip them of all power and you succeed in extinguishing a primary donor to Democrats. That's the real goal in Wisconsin, ignore the trumped-up nonsense about a fiscal emergency. Next on the list: make it harder for minorities and college students to vote, two groups that generally side with Democrats. My question is are Democrats in Washington DC too naive or stupid to realize this is going on? Do they care?? WAKE UP!

• Matt Taibbi on John Boehner: "He's a five-tool insider who can lie, cheat, steal, play golf, change his mind on command and do anything else his lobbyist buddies and campaign contributors require of him to get the job done....Look back over almost every controversial episode in the recent history of the U.S. Congress and you will find Boehner's face appearing, Zelig-like, somewhere in the foreground....Boehner, in short, has for most of his career been a Bush Republican, i.e., a corporate schmoozer and a remorseless spender of taxpayer money for whom the notion of small government is just something to say when the cameras are on."
  

• Republicans Gut EPA Climate Rules

• Sums things up.

Niall Ferguson's Newsweek piece is just more proof that Obama is anything but a socialist, much less a radical progressive. I would say (as I have many times) that he's slightly left of center -- slightly. In other words, he's a fairly conventional politician.

The right has been doing to Obama what they did to Clinton for eight years: attempt to define him as more of an extreme ideologue than is truthful. They succeeded in convincing their base that Clinton was a far-left liberal -- a joke at the time and even more so looking back. And the same is true now with Obama, with their tireless effort to cast him as a pinko-socialist "community organizer." He's of course nothing of the sort -- if anything, he's been pissing off his own supporters for not being liberal enough!

But the right and Republicans control via fear-mongering and their base complies, allowing such tactics to prevail repeatedly. The base gets played over and over.... Idiots.

So Newt Gingrich is very likely going to jump in the race in 2012. This despite him being a member of the party of family values, a guy who is on his third wife, apparently cheating on his first two.

Best of luck to you Newt!

Regarding the mess in Wisconsin, it's fairly simple to understand at this point. It's all about politics and very little is about fiscal concerns. If the prank phone call was not revealing enough for you, all you have to know is Gov. Walker exempted those unions that supported him in his run for office.

If the state is in such financial trouble, requiring unions to sacrifice, going so far as to demand the abolishment of collective bargaining, than why is it some unions don't have to relinquish that right?

So Orrin Hatch is in danger of losing because he's not conservative enough...??!! Come again!! That's like saying the Devil is to be replaced in Hell for not being evil enough.

Just how far to the right is the GOP going to drift?? Reagan today would be the equivalent of Jerry Brown.

Given this latest news, isn't Glenn Beck supposed to be passing out on air at this point??

Finally saw The Social Network. I'd give it a "B" on scale of A-F. It was good, but not great. Why do I get the feeling that because Fincher and Sorkin's names were attached, it had critics extra-excited before viewing, elevating their reception from B to A....

Frankly, a better film is Mike Leigh's "Another Year," but it's British and has no big names involved.

Remember this ("Republicans Gut EPA") the next time you hear someone complain about the EPA not doing its job. Tough to do one's job when you're constantly underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed -- just as corporations and Republicans (one and same) like it.

Mind you, these cuts don't do jack sh*t to solve the deficit, just a bug bite on an elephant's ass. More meaningful cuts would come from the nearly $1 TRILLION we spend on defense each year but we can't cut there, right? Spending on defense amounts to more/less $800 billion per year, versus the EPA's meager $10 billion budget. Yes, we spend 80 times more on defense than our environment -- and that doesn't include GW's unpaid-for wars.

Attention Tea Party folk, the deficit will be the least of our kids' problems if the planet is uninhabitable. Duh.

I recently finished Wendell Potter's book, Deadly Spin. A very good read, highly recommended. Many of the horrible things he confesses to about the industry are not shocking, but I must admit even I didn't realize the extent of the rot and evil riddled throughout the for-profit health care system. What people won't do to earn an extra buck! (OK, many bucks). Beyond shameful.

Potter makes many good points in the book, too many to list, but I felt his discussion about the medical-loss ratio (MLR) was worth posting here. He writes, "The best example of the industry's secrecy is the medical-loss ratio, which, as I mentioned previously, is the measurement of the share of premium revenue spent on actual health care." When an insurer lowers its MLR, that means its spending less on health care leaving more for "overhead" (i.e. salaries, profits, etc.). Wall Street wants to see the MLR head lower; for it to rise typically means the stock price will selloff.

The graphic below depicts what Potter discusses about the MLR. Since 1993, the MLR for insurance companies has declined from 95% to 81% in 2007, an enormous drop-off in what is actually devoted to health care services. Note that the MLR for Medicare has consistently remained at the 97%-98% level, meaning "overhead" is at a scant 3% compared to about 20% for private insurers.

Yet Republicans and others backed by the insurance lobby will try to murky the waters, demonize Medicare and deflect our attention from plain facts like this.

Continue to fall for the "socialized medicine" and "government takeover of health care" line of crap. Potter divulges in the book that these exact phrases tested very well in PR focus groups when it came to effectively frightening people. The industry is by no means dumb, spending many millions to maintain the status quo and keep the public stupid. For them, it's always been money well spent.

Drought and floods, get used to it. Why? Because of man-made global warming. Warmer air can carry more water vapor, meaning the clouds can accumulate and hold on to more water (rain) for a greater duration of time. This creates extended periods of drought until the clouds become extremely "full" with water vapor, finally releasing the water as deluging rain = massive floods. To put it in terms that Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly can understand, global warming has made the clouds bigger sponges.

And this story relates with the above. Drought and floods = worse agricultural conditions = less food = higher prices = more starvation = more unrest, outrage, protests and violence. It's not just about Twitter. Climate change has far-reaching impact and effects.

Curveball lied.

Let's see if this makes it on network news at all -- you know, the liberal MSM. Bets anyone?

Incredible. Not that this "informant" lied, fabricating BS and not long after we're in a war. Many at the time said he was lying, and much (real) intel didn't confirm, so not shocking.

No, what is incredible is no one cares anymore why or how we got into a war that is expected to cost us between $2 and $3 TRILLION (with a "T") dollars when all is said and done.

But not a peep out of the "newly awakened" Tea Bag crew. They never cite anything having to do with GW/Cheney or war when it comes to deficits. Nope, they can only focus blame on a non-white man in the White House, and all that supposed wasted $$ going to welfare abusers. Oh, and the tons of $$$ going to PBS and the arts.

From Fox Geezer Syndrome:

After the Tucson shootings, Fox chief Roger Ailes said he had told his crew to “tone it down.” I’m skeptical, but I hope he succeeds. One of the great advantages of a conservative disposition is a suspicion of emotions, and emotionalism. The dumbest decisions I’ve ever made, about politics and everything else, were executed while I was worked up about something, and trusted my emotional response. (my emphasis)

Come again?! If I had to sum up the modern conservative today, I would say he/she is all about emotion, period. Specifically anger, but throw in fear and paranoia. Unlike what this author asserts, I see no evidence whatsoever of level-headed, unemotional, objective reason. Just look at the Tea Party folks! And did we observe lots of cool, detached thinking last year during those infamous town hall meetings??

The fact this person could even type this with a straight face says it all. Complete and utter delusion.

Rush, Glenn, Sean -- these guys are hilarious. If the events in Egypt were occurring with their boy GW in office, we would be hearing emphatic words of support about the encouraging opportunity for democracy to finally take root (mind you, without requiring U.S. armed forces to invade and make it happen). But because it's Obama sitting in the White House and not their guy, we hear nothing of the sort. Rather the rightwing bloviators flame cautionary warnings of socialist uprisings, radical youth, and the ever-heinous "community organizing." Be very afraid!!

Saddam was evil enough for GW to misdirect 9/11 rage and our military into a war to free Iraqis, yet in this case, when Egyptians have been protesting for weeks in the name of democracy, the wingnut pundits do not side with the oppressed people desiring liberty. No, instead these partisan sociopaths will use any excuse, any policy issue, any world event to go against whatever Obama is for. No matter what it is, they must be against Obama, period.

That's change to believe in? That's a cohesive, sophisticated, fruitful vision for our country's future? Seems pretty simple-minded to me -- but then judging by the throngs of Tea Party followers, simpletons abound.

Reagan turned 100, another occasion to debunk and myth-bust and shatter the many fictional accounts of the man. And I didn't know he was a big fan of FDR, something I assume would greatly upset most conservatives.

Gail Collins writes about Michelle Bachmann, inevitably spending some time making comparisons to Sarah Palin. How can one not compare the two -- in their own ways, they're both bat-crazy. I love this description by Gail: "If Palin and Bachmann were your co-workers, Palin would be the one sneaking out early to go bowling, while Bachmann would stay late to reorganize the office seating chart to reflect her own personal opinion of who most deserves to be near the water cooler."

Speaking of Palin, an interesting article on narcissism. Doesn't this sound like Sarah? "A narcissist is someone who has an unrealistic sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy, and a 'conviction of being different and special and entitled that is so profound that they feel it’s only natural people will admire them'."

A graphic depicting the $3 trillion (with a "T") Iraq War. Funny how the Tea Baggers never mention GW/Cheney's war when they complain about our worsening deficit. Most telling. Oh, and one reason Obama's deficit figures look worse than GW's is not just because of the Great Recession, but also because Obama decided to finally put both this war and the Afghanistan war on the books. GW made things look better thanks to accounting tricks; Obama said enough.

Top-brass business executives have had their feelings hurt and dislike liberals so much they are more than willing to punish the country by stock-piling cash, avoiding much-needed hiring. Really? Apparently this is what David Gergen would have us believe.

This is long overdue, "As the rates of learning disabilities, autism and related conditions rise, the Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release a roster of the pollutants likely to contribute to these or other neurological disorders." Theodore Slotkin, a pharmacology professor at Duke University Medical Center: "What we've been doing the past 30 years is a failure. They [industry] can produce these chemicals faster than we can test them." And a truly shocking reality: "[U]nder current law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the EPA permits companies to put many chemicals on the market without first proving they are safe. Then, if evidence mounts that a particular chemical, such as bisphenol A, or metal, such as lead, could harm people who are exposed to the substances in varying situations, the agency has to play catch-up." Incredible. The EPA acts only after the fact. And what about the many chemicals that could be doing harm but are much more subtle when inflicting their damage, thus staying under-the-radar and escaping the attention of regulators...?

A group of organic food giants surrender to Monsanto. Sadly, why does this seem like it was inevitable?

A conservation group may sink a very promising renewable energy project. Look, at some point choices have to be made -- in this case, the future of the planet versus question marks surrounding migrating birds. If we don't look to replace coal plants with cleaner burning alternatives, and fast, then the risk to turtles and cacti will be the least of our problems!