Day: January 5, 2009

Was There More Palin Trickery?

As reported by the AP:

An investigator and the Alaska State Troopers’ union say political interference delayed the drug arrest of the mother of the boyfriend of Gov. Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol.

The woman, Sherry Johnston, is the mother of Levi Johnston, who is the father of Bristol Palin’s newborn son, Tripp.

The investigator, Kyle Young, sent an e-mail message to the union, the Public Safety Employees Association, writing that the warrant for Ms. Johnston had been delayed because of the November general election. Ms. Johnston was arrested Dec. 18 on charges of selling the prescription painkiller OxyContin.

But Alaska’s public safety commissioner, Joseph A. Masters, and the troopers’ director, Col. Audie Holloway, said the case had been handled fairly.

Mr. Masters said neither Ms. Palin nor anyone else in the governor’s office knew the troopers were investigating Ms. Johnston until the warrant was served.

Mr. Masters said he then called Ms. Palin’s chief of staff, Mike Nizich, to alert him of a potential frenzy in the news media.

War Comes To Gaza–Day 8

Fighting is raging into the night in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli ground forces and heavy armour have effectively cut the territory in two.

Supported by a naval, air and land bombardment, they have taken up positions on either side of Gaza City and along a major east-west road.

About 40 tanks were moving towards Khan Younis in the south, reports say.

At least 32 missiles were fired into southern Israel from Gaza on Sunday. Two people were lightly wounded in the Eshkol region, while one woman was slightly injured in Sderot.

Israeli military sources and witnesses said Israeli tanks and heavy armour had taken up positions on either side of Gaza City, in effect cutting Gaza into two parts, from the Karni crossing to the Mediterranean Sea.

It says 21 of the 70 people killed since the beginning of the ground offensive were children. Some 2,500 people have reportedly also been wounded.

The figures could not be independently verified. Israel is refusing to let international journalists into Gaza despite a ruling by its a supreme court to admit a limited number of reporters.

Hamas officials say that 10 of its fighters have so far been killed.

The Israeli military says one of its soldiers has been killed and 34 wounded in the ground offensive, three of them seriously. It believes about 80% of the Palestinians killed were Hamas members.

Taxes….Taxes….Who Gets The Taxes?

Taxes are always the answer to everything with the Washington elite.

U.S. drivers need to pay more gas taxes and new user fees to fix crumbling roads and bridges and ease congested highways, a transportation commission is set to recommend to Congress later this month.

U.S. gasoline taxes should be raised 10 cents a gallon to help fund improvements, at least until new systems are created to charge drivers for how much they use roads, according to a draft copy of recommendations from the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission.

Which is a good idea, but then in the same breath this idea emerges.

President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are crafting a plan to offer about $300 billion in tax cuts to individuals and businesses, a move aimed at attracting Republican support for an economic-stimulus package and prodding companies to create jobs.

The size of the proposed tax cuts — which would account for about 40% of a stimulus package that could reach $775 billion over two years — is greater than many on both sides of the aisle in Congress had anticipated. It may make it easier to win over Republicans who have stressed that any initiative should rely more heavily on tax cuts rather than spending.

The Obama tax-cut proposals, if enacted, could pack more punch in two years than either of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts did in their first two years. Mr. Bush’s 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut of 2001, considered the largest in history, contained $174 billion of cuts during its first two full years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. The second-largest tax cut — the 10-year, $350 billion package engineered by Mr. Bush in 2003 — contained $231 billion in 2004 and 2005.

None of this will give the middle class the relief and help that they need to survive.  There is only one answer to this dilemna–Land Value Taxation (LVT).  Read more.

Economic Crisis Invites Violence

As families confront the impact of the current economic crisis, social service agencies across the US are seeing growing numbers of cases of domestic violence and child abuse. The correlation between financial stress and the growing incidence of such cases is shown in increased calls to hotlines, visits to emergency rooms and the utilization of social services and shelters.

As the recession deepens, social workers and medical professionals expect the situation to worsen. And while more women and children—the primary targets of this violence—become victims, funding for programs to assist them is being cut back. The impact is being felt in states across the country.

Domestic violence shelters in Texas are experiencing an unprecedented jump in families seeking emergency assistance. Of the 29 shelters surveyed by the Allstate Foundation this year, 83 percent reported a dramatic increase in hotline calls, walk-ins, and/or families staying at their shelters

In Florida, the number of calls received by the state’s Department of Children and Families’ hotline is up by more than 12,000 over the 12-month period ending in October. DCF Secretary George Sheldon attributes the rise to the financial stresses of job loss and dwindling family budgets.

Child welfare experts in the Sacramento, California region are concerned about the number of children at risk for abuse as the economy worsens. Sacramento County Child Protective Services is seeing an increase in both the number and severity of child abuse cases. In October, there were 460 reported situations where a child’s safety was in such immediate risk that an investigator was required to respond immediately

Need for these services will surely rise as more families face the loss of a job, wage cuts, lose their medical coverage, or go into foreclosure. A September 2004 study released by the National Institute of Justice revealed a direct link between such stress and domestic violence:

• Women whose male partners experience two or more periods of unemployment over the five-year course of the study were three times more likely to be abused.

• Couples under “financial strain” had triple the domestic violence rate of other couples in the population.

Despite such data, as the demand for services grows under the weight of these economic strains, federal funding to a key program that serves victims of domestic violence has been cut: $2.1 million was slashed from The Family Violence Prevention and Services budget earlier this year.

2009 To Be Warmest On Record

Next year is set to be one of the top-five warmest on record, British climate

scientists said on Tuesday.

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius – well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.

Warm weather

that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns.

The strength of the prevailing trade winds that blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific is thought to be an important factor.

“Further warming to record levels is likely once a moderate El Nino develops,” said Professor Chris Folland at the Met Office Hadley Center. “Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface.

Fire Safe Cigarettes

States are circumventing more than 30 years of tobacco industry opposition to federal safe cigarette legislation by passing their own laws that require the sale of self-extinguishing cigarettes.

The list of states with such laws on the books will expand to 32 in 2009, nearly tripling the number that had such laws at the start of 2007.

After federal legislation — first proposed in 1974, and last failed in 2006 with opposition from the tobacco industry — the decision was made to change strategy and promote state requirements, said U.S. Fire Administrator Gregory Cade.

By the end of 2009, 14 states will join the 18 that already require vendors to purchase and sell only the fire-safe cigarettes, which are designed to go out if they are dropped or set aside, said Lorraine Carli, vice president of communications at the National Fire Protection Association and the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes.

Fire-safe cigarettes will be mandatory in Delaware, Iowa, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas beginning Jan. 1, she said. Laws go into effect during the year in Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Washington and Wisconsin. Six more states are set to enact laws in 2010 and seven others have proposals in the works, Carli said.

Yet Another Bush As Prez?

Former President George H.W. Bush said his son Jeb should run for president and blasted the New York Times for its “grossly unfair” criticism of another son, President George W. Bush.

During an interview on “FOX News Sunday,” the nation’s 41st president said Jeb, the former governor of Florida, is “as qualified and as able as anyone I know in the political scene” to be president.

In the meantime, Jeb could take another job, his father suggested.

“If Jeb wants to run for the Senate from Florida, he ought to do it,” Bush said. “He’d be an outstanding senator. This is a guy that really has a feel for people, the issues in Florida and nationally. And his political days ought not to be over, says his old father.”

Please…NO more talk about another Bush presidency–we have been punished enough by the last one.