The billionaire investor Warren Buffett has donated $1.6bn to the charitable foundation created by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda. In all, he donated shares worth $1.93bn to five foundations.
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The only thing that isn't "socialized" are the profits. We all pony up for the losses.
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"Pray harder, Bobby! The oil's still gushing!"
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To celebrate our independence from Great Britain this year, the entire Gulf of Mexico will be set ablaze.
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If you are my age and you are not a Wall Street billionaire, you are totally and utterly screwed
You have to wonder how long it's going to take before euthanasia becomes legal in this country. Because for many Americans who are over 40 but under the age of 58, euthanasia is going to start looking like the best way to proceed in one's old age:
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Why the whopping huge tax breaks for Big Oil?
The top oil companies have a record of having profits in the billions of dollar range per quarter. But that does not stop the Federal Government from handing them huge tax breaks and subsidies. British Petroleum was writing off 75% of the cost of leasing the foreign-flagged oil rig[1] that it burned and sank, thanks to Federal tax breaks:
According to the most recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, released in 2005, capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general and lower than virtually any other industry.
And for many small and midsize oil companies, the tax on capital investments is so low that it is more than eliminated by various credits. These companies' returns on those investments are often higher after taxes than before.
Nine percent. The oil companies pay a lower tax rate than the janitors who swab the lobby floors in their office buildings.
How is this anywhere near approaching "fair"?
[1] The Deepwater Horizon oil rig was registered in the Marshall Islands. If we are going to give out whopping tax breaks for leasing oil rigs (BP was writing off $225,000 a day) we should at least make them hire US-flagged rigs in order to so rob the rest of us.
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Mario Piperni: Republican Rep. Steve King, a recent graduate of Glenn Beck University, believes that President Obama is holding back on giving aid to Lousiana because…because…Gov. Bobby Jindal is…gulp…a Republican. CALLER: You know it's absolutely despicable the way our president is acting on this oil slick. And it boils down that the governor is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat and he's not gonna help in any way to make him, to help Louisiana. … So as far as I'm concerned the blood is on his hands. [...]
KING: I appreciate Larry's statement and I agree with his analysis of it. As I watch the reluctance on the part of the White House to cooperate with Bobby Jindal. I'd like to think it's being done out of policy perspective, but there is a political component. And to delay these skimmers all this time, and to refuse to wave the Jones Act, well essentially they passed that hot potato around, and nobody asked for it.
Forget that Steve King has absolutely no qualms about lying through his teeth or that he is completely wrong on the Jones Act (a non-issue)…what astounds me is the chutzpah required to say the following about himself.
"…professional hyperventilators out there that are monitoring everything that I and others say. My approach is to just go forward, make sure that what I say is based on solid, well informed, broad, in-depth truth. I just try to give well-grounded, well-informed truth,"
Sure Steve. "Well-grounded, well-informed truth" of the Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh/Fox News variety. Got it.
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Pope feels heat during visit to Italian town
Pope Benedict, speaking to a crowd in Sulmona, Italy praised the 13th Century pontiff Celestine V, and was greeted by the faithful during "this time of harsh attacks and media provocation." The poor Pope just can't escape this unjustified persecution.
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The new game in town is blaming the unemployed for their dilemma. Krugman notes that some of those who have voted against extending the unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed is because of confusion, but that some who argue that policy are cynically trying worsen the economy for their own gain.
Fred Clark expresses my views about those Senators and Representatives who refuse to pass an extension well.
I'm not an economist, but we've got five applicants for every single job opening. If you tell me that the best response to that situation is to lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers, I will not accept that this means that you're smarter and more expert than I am. I will instead conclude -- regardless of your prestige or position or years of study -- that you're a moral imbecile. And knowing what I know about your inability to make moral judgments I will have no reason to trust you to make complicated macroeconomic ones.
Amen.
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Small Creatures and Climate Change: How Warming Can 'Shuffle the Deck' of Creatures That Thrive.
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BP looks to other companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon to help with expenses "BP has said repeatedly that it will pay for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But its actions show that it does not intend to go it alone. ... Newly released documents show that on June 2, BP sent out demands for nearly $400 million to its partners in the well, the Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and the Mitsui Oil Exploration Company of Japan, or roughly 40 percent of the $1 billion BP spent in May. ... The amounts demanded by BP - $272 million from Anadarko and $111 million from Mitsui - reflect the provisions of each company's joint operating agreement with BP, which gives a share of liability equal to each company's share of ownership. ... BP owns 65 percent of the well, Anadarko owns 25 percent, and Mitsui 10 percent."
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FDL: I'm starting to appreciate Michael Steele
Nobody could have anticipated he'd be so good at expressing things half-way correctly against his own Party's self-interest — let's hope for more — such as these.
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If it was our call, we would have held the wedge and swung the sledge and cleaved Israel off of America's body politic the day after the USS Liberty was attacked, but that's just us. Since too many in this country are unwilling to tell Israel to grow the fuck up and learn to get along with the neighbors or we are cutting off their allowance and taking their nukes, we relish the good news items like this: "It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months. ... At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty - a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons. ... Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally."
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If it walks like fascism and quacks like fascism, it's probably not a duck "A photographer taking pictures for ProPublica was detained Friday while shooting pictures in Texas City, Texas. ... The photographer, Lance Rosenfield, said that shortly after arriving in town, he was confronted by a BP security officer, local police and a man who identified himself as an agent of the Department of Homeland Security. He was released after the police reviewed the pictures he had taken on Friday and recorded his date of birth, Social Security number and other personal information. ... The police officer then turned that information over to the BP security guard under what he said was standard procedure, according to Rosenfield. ... No charges were filed."
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Competitive eating contests, sponsored by Major League Eating, had finally succeeded in promoting Gluttony from last place to first in the list of the Seven Deadly Sins. Once again, Progessivism ruled!
"Pray harder, Bobby! The oil's still gushing!"
To celebrate our independence from Great Britain this 
