Sunday, May 13, 2012
Interactive Calculator Shows You Exactly Where Your Taxes Go
Recently, ONE, a nonprofit group that fights global poverty, unveiled an interactive tool that enables users to see how much they pay in taxes, and where that money goes. Here it is:
According to ONE, a single taxpayer, making the average household income of $49,445, pays $8,486 in taxes before exemptions. Of that, the biggest chunk, over $1,740, goes to Social Security and $1,082 goes to Medicare. The other big expenditures are similarly unsurprising: defense spending eats up $1,601 and unemployment insurance eats up $1,295.
Click here to go to the page and use the calculator...
A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College
ADA, Ohio — Kelsey Griffith graduates on Sunday from Ohio Northern University. To start paying off her $120,000 in student debt, she is already working two restaurant jobs and will soon give up her apartment here to live with her parents. Her mother, who co-signed on the loans, is taking out a life insurance policy on her daughter.
“If anything ever happened, God forbid, that is my debt also,” said Ms. Griffith’s mother, Marlene Griffith.
Ms. Griffith, 23, wouldn’t seem a perfect financial fit for a college that costs nearly $50,000 a year. Her father, a paramedic, and mother, a preschool teacher, have modest incomes, and she has four sisters. But when she visited Ohio Northern, she was won over by faculty and admissions staff members who urge students to pursue their dreams rather than obsess on the sticker price.
Read the full story here...
Timeline: How Obama Compares to Bush on Torture, Surveillance and Detention
By: Cora Currier and Lena Groeger
As his reelection campaign ramps up, President Obama has touted his winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also kept up the tough talk about the broader war against Al Qaeda. In 2008, Obama stressed that his presidency would break from George W. Bush’s most controversial national security policies. So we took a look back at some of those policies, to see how much has changed under Obama -- and how much has stayed the same.
Click here to view the timeline...
As his reelection campaign ramps up, President Obama has touted his winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He’s also kept up the tough talk about the broader war against Al Qaeda. In 2008, Obama stressed that his presidency would break from George W. Bush’s most controversial national security policies. So we took a look back at some of those policies, to see how much has changed under Obama -- and how much has stayed the same.
Click here to view the timeline...
A MUST READ!!: Mother of 3 arrested, abused for taking pictures of tourist attraction at airport
This case is a frightening example of what can happen when a photographer encounters ignorant bullies with badges. According to the complaint filed in Federal Court, Nancy Genovese, a mother of three, was driving home on County Road 31 past Gabreski Airport in Suffolk County. Gabreski Airport displays a decorative helicopter shell by the roadway to the public, which is visible to all who pass by.
Nancy Genovese stopped her car on the side of the road across the street from the airport in an area that is open and accessible to the public, and crossed over the road to the airport entryway that is also open and accessible to the public to take a picture of the helicopter display. While still in her car, she took a picture of the decorative helicopter shell with the intention of posting it on her personal “Support Our Troops” web page.
As Nancy Genovese was preparing to drive away, she was stopped and approached by Robert Iberger, a lieutenant with the Southampton Town Police. Lieutenant Iberger demanded to know why she was taking photographs. Nancy showed the lieutenant her camera, but Lieutenant Iberger grabbed her camera and handled it “without care”. In an attempt to prevent the lieutenant from damaging the camera, Nancy removed her memory card, which Lieutenant Iberger confiscated. To date, Nancy’s memory card still has not been returned to her.
Read the full story here...
Nancy Genovese stopped her car on the side of the road across the street from the airport in an area that is open and accessible to the public, and crossed over the road to the airport entryway that is also open and accessible to the public to take a picture of the helicopter display. While still in her car, she took a picture of the decorative helicopter shell with the intention of posting it on her personal “Support Our Troops” web page.
As Nancy Genovese was preparing to drive away, she was stopped and approached by Robert Iberger, a lieutenant with the Southampton Town Police. Lieutenant Iberger demanded to know why she was taking photographs. Nancy showed the lieutenant her camera, but Lieutenant Iberger grabbed her camera and handled it “without care”. In an attempt to prevent the lieutenant from damaging the camera, Nancy removed her memory card, which Lieutenant Iberger confiscated. To date, Nancy’s memory card still has not been returned to her.
Read the full story here...
Survey: Americans Overwhelmingly Support Defense Cuts
As Congress struggles to rein in the federal deficit, a new survey finds Americans preferred to cut defense spending more than any other program.
In a new survey that not only asked for opinion, but also briefed the respondents on the federal budget, Americans came to a bipartisan conclusion: 67 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats supported cutting the defense budget.
And by quite a bit.
Occupy Cullman Text Messaging Group Chat: Powered by Cel.ly
You can now join an Occupy Cullman Alabama open text messaging group chat by texting @occupycullman to 23559.. Your standard carrier rates will apply...
Click here to visit the group page on Celly
Click here to visit the group page on Celly
Pink Slime Economics
The big bad event of last week was, of course, the Supreme Court hearing on health reform. In the course of that hearing it became clear that several of the justices, and possibly a majority, are political creatures pure and simple, willing to embrace any argument, no matter how absurd, that serves the interests of Team Republican.
But we should not allow events in the court to completely overshadow another, almost equally disturbing spectacle. For on Thursday Republicans in the House of Representatives passed what was surely the most fraudulent budget in American history.
Read the full story here...
The Radical History of Mother’s Day
There’s a good number of us who question holidays like Mother’s Day in which you spend more time feeding money into a system that exploits our love for our mothers than actually celebrating them. It’s not unlike any other holiday in America in that its complete commercialization has stripped away so much of its genuine meaning, as well its history. Mother’s Day is unique in its completely radical and totally feminist history, as much as it has been forgotten.
Read the full story here...
Read the full story here...
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney Convicted Of War Crimes
This past Friday, a five panel tribunal delivered a unanimous guilty verdict after a week long trial that, unsurprisingly, was not covered by American media. The witnesses included several ex-Guantanamo detainees that gave testimony on the conditions and human rights violations that were systematically carried out under orders of the Bush administration.
Former President Bush, Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo that crafted the legal ‘justification’ for torture that basically said, ‘we can if we want to even if it’s illegal’ were the defendants. None were present, of course, but international war crime trials do not require the presence of the accused. The trial was run according to the standards set by the Nuremberg Trials to convict war criminals after World War II.
Read the full story here...
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