Cash-strapped legislators have recommended spending cuts for Missouri schools and shelters for battered women, but so far the yachting class can enjoy another season of clear sailing.Thanks to a longstanding tax exemption, Missouri's marina set can opt to pay a small fee in lieu of sales taxes and shave as much as $30,000 off the purchase of a $500,000 boat.
That tax exemption alone is depriving state and local coffers of more than $6 million a year, according to some estimates. It's just one of more than 130 untaxed transactions that are getting renewed attention in Jefferson City because of the state's continuing budget crisis.
We're really a joke of a nation, aren't we?
Texas Sate School Board
Dear Mrs. Leo,
It looks like your hard work fighting heretical scientists is finally achieving results. According to a recent poll, 30 percent of all Texans now believe that people coexisted with dinosaurs. But as good as thirty percent is, it's not a hundred percent--there is much more you can do. It's time to take another look at your biology curriculum to see if it's providing the faith-based instruction our children need.
From what I understand, the curriculum fails to even mention the most important evidence confirming human-dinosaur relations. The Bedrock Drawings are a series of pictures that when stitched together in the correct order offer an animated look at a stone-age family and its dinosaur pets and dinosaur-powered appliances and communications and lawn-care equipment.
But it's what's not there, that makes the Bedrock Drawings especially useful for education purposes. Stone-age people did not have sex. Heck, the guys didn't even have thingies. Masturbation was unknown. What a world it must have been.
Sure, the lack of an outlet made Mr. Slate angry, but that's a small price to pay if it means ending bad touching.
Heterosexually yours in a chaste, biblical, and unitless kind of way,
Gen. JC Christian, patriot
###
Clergy who live in church-owned housing do not pay taxes on that benefit. Clergy who own their own homes can write off their housing costs. The Freedom From Religion Foundation says these tax breaks violate the establishment clause of the Constitution and they have filed suit against the federal government to end the policy.
The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation says the housing exemption gives churches an unfair advantage because they can compensate their leaders with tax-free housing. Other nonprofits, such as the foundation, can't do that. So it's suing the federal government to outlaw the housing allowance. "We think the law is rotten at the core," said co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor. "It is not constitutional, it is not fair, and it is not necessary." But the exemption's supporters point to a similar court dispute in 2002 that went nowhere after Congress almost unanimously rushed to save the housing break. Dan Busby, who runs the watchdog group Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, thinks Congress would do the same today. "I don't think this lawsuit is going anywhere," he said. "Both houses of Congress don't want to touch this." Busby says that losing the housing allowance would cause significant harm to churches and ministers — particularly those with small congregations. A minister who gets a $20,000 housing allowance, for example, saves about $6,000 a year in taxes, he said.Opponents of the FFRF say that not funding a religion isn't the same as not collecting taxes and therefore does not constitute an endorsement. But critics point out that at many churches numerous employees are named as a "minister" of some degree in order to benefit from the tax break.
Almost three months to the day since Fox News instituted its "zero tolerance for on-screen errors" policy, the following on-screen graphic was displayed during the February 22 edition of America's Newsroom:
###
ACORN is dead
Way to go, Republicans! ACORN dissolved as a national structure: http://www.thepoliticalcarnival.net/2010/02/acorn-dissolved-as-national-structure.html
###
###
Conservatives turn on handsome nudist truck driver Scott Brown for his vote on the jobs bill.
Ken Layne at Wonkette, discussing the Teabaggers' Twitter-ragegasm at Scott "Cosmo" Brown's treachery in voting to move Obama's jobs bill incrementally closer to passage:
If enough of Scott Brown's girlfriends break up with him on Twitter at the same time, does Obamacare automatically pass?
That may have been the shortest political honeymoon since President Obama failed to solve every single one of America's problems by January 23, 2009. (Although it's distinctly possible that at least 28% of Brown's most foam-flecked denouncers are sekrit leftists pulling a DougJ.)
I'll give Sen. Scotty credit—he may not be quite as dumb as his previous political career had led me to believe. Or maybe Simon Cowell has finally convinced him that Ayala ain't getting no do-overs on American Idol, so Daddy had better have at least one temp job to award this summer…
###
35 years ago ...
they are killing our soldiers....slowly...painfully...horrifically.... it's time we start talking about them. it's time we stop them. it's time we start talking about the toxic hell we are leaving behind for the iraqi people to suffer through, too.And, like Vietnam, they'll deny any responsibility until most of the guys who suffer from symptoms are dead and then grudgingly give care to the remainder.
On Thursday, Virginia State Delegate Bob Marshall (R) spoke at a press conference against state funding for Planned Parenthood. He blasted the organization for supporting a women's right to choose, saying that God punishes women who have had abortions by giving them disabled children:Shorter: No. Even if she wanted to, which she probably doesn't and wouldn't if she did, Ailes wouldn't let her.
...
"In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."
Marshall is also fighting against health care reform, saying that "Obamacare" is trying to take "your soul." Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been pushing back against high-profile figures and entities who have been attacking people with disabilities. Will she speak out against someone in her own party?
Go read the comments about the despicable Repug in VA.
On the positive side, the NATO airstrike which killedThe Afghan immigrant at the center of what the authorities described as one of the most serious threats to the United States since 9/11 pleaded guilty Monday to terrorism charges in what he said was a Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb in the New York subway.As for the argument that you can't get good information from cases in criminal cases where torture is not permitted:
In recent weeks, Mr. Zazi — who was born in Afghanistan, raised in Pakistan and later attended high school in Queens — had begun providing information to prosecutors as part of the initial stages of an agreement that led to his guilty plea on Monday, according to two people with knowledge of the case.Yep. That's how it works in the real world, not in the "zOMG, 24hours, ticking time bomb" fantasy world of the torture apologists.
http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-you-are-pregnant-woman-in-utah-you.html
That's George Orwell. Here is an article on how the GOPers made Ronnie Reagan into a Saint. These things are connected.
###
Oy. It's enough to put a torture advocate in the hospital with chest pains, I tell ya.
###
"Wall Street bonuses were up 17 percent to over $20 billion in 2009, the year taxpayers bailed out the financial sector after its meltdown," according to New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. "Total compensation at the largest securities firms grew beyond that figure" and profits could exceed "an unprecedented $55 billion last year," nearly three times Wall Street's record increase.
###
Pure freaking evil
One of the most shocking revelations in the DOJ's recently-released report on its lawyers who supported Bush-era torture policy is John Yoo's admission that he believes the President of the United States could unilaterally order "a village…to be massacred."
Today, Yoo doubled-down on this statement in an interview with San Francisco radio station KQED. After the host asked him if he stands by his prior support of Presidential massacres, Yoo raised the stakes to endorse the President's unilateral authority to use nuclear weapons: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/22/yoo-nuke/
###
Republican Rep. King justifies suicide attack on IRS: sympathizes with hatred of IRS, hopes for its destruction.
