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The debt ceiling debate has stalled over the issue of raising taxes, and the Senate minority leader and his chief whip said Sunday they aren't going to allow that to happen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is headed to the White House on Monday to meet with President Obama after talks between Vice President Biden and congressional negotiators collapsed last week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is also meeting with the president, separately, earlier in the day.
Obama Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has warned that Congress has until Aug. 2 to raise the debt limit or the U.S. risks defaulting on its loans.
"Throwing more tax revenue into the mix is simply not going to produce a desirable result, and it won't pass. I mean, putting aside the fact that Republicans don't like to raise taxes, Democrats don't like to either," McConnell told ABC's "This Week."
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl said opposition to raising taxes doesn't mean that Republicans have refused to consider any new revenue. Kyl said Republicans have agreed to increase fees, for instance, but do not want to change the tax code.
If you use GMail, as I do, you may receive the following email from the address – dataverifying@gmail.com:
We have received several complaints from users unable to gain access to their email account, as a result of that, we are upgrading our security systems and making sure each user account is not accessed unauthorised. We do not want you to loose access to your Account since your login information are no longer valid on our database system. Now, the Gmail Account Team need to confirm your profile details below for verification purpose and to confirm that you own this Account:
*Full Name:
*Username:
*Password:
*Registered Year:
*Country:We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused but we are glad to let you know that your account security is our ultimate goal.
Thank you for using our email service.
This is obviously a scam, but we still wanted to warn our readers.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. — Winston Churchill
There is history — a chronicle of human events — and then there is perceived history. So often, the two are wildly at odds.
In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.
Yet those who write history found these facts inconvenient. They created a different history in which the "atmosphere of hate" in the southern city of Dallas, Texas, led to the terrible political violence. In other words, it was political conservatism that led to John F. Kennedy's assassination. This perceived history was recycled as recently as the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. ABC's Christiane Amanpour, interviewing Jean Kennedy Smith, noted that the Kennedy assassination was "eerily relevant" and asked Kennedy to evaluate the "political atmosphere" in the country today.
Starting just a few years after the Kennedy assassination, American liberals began to consider anti-communism a kind of mental disorder. Hostility to communism was akin to racism, sexism and other character flaws. Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" cemented liberal suspicions that Reagan was a dangerous buffoon. Yet starting in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, liberals began to find their anti-anti-communism embarrassing. And so they created a perceived history — one in which the Cold War was a time of consensus, a time when, as former Sen. Bill Bradley put it, "We knew where we stood on foreign policy."
Mona Charen writes for Creators Syndicate. – Ed.
On Friday SbyNEWS ran a post about a new North Carolina law that will require all employers with 25 or more employees to use E-Verify to check the residency / citizenship status of all applicants. A pretty straight forward post, but the comments were surprising.
“Are illegal immigrants a burden to our economy?” quickly became the overriding theme of the comment thread. If you take out the snide comments to one another, the comments were pretty thoughtful. They just weren’t as well thought out as they could be. So … I figured that I would take a shot.
WE NEED A NATIONAL SOLUTION
As you will see below, we need a NATIONAL solution to this problem. Many claims that illegal immigrants are necessary for our economy use anecdotal evidence from states which have stepped up their own immigration enforcement efforts.
The image of produce rotting in Georgia fields is the latest anecdotal example supporting the claim that we need illegal immigrants. The catch all claim is '”there are certain jobs that we can’t get Americans to do”.
The bottom line is that we need a national solution to this problem. State-by-state solutions merely serve to make one state more competitive than another because the federal government refuses to enforce its own laws. States that crack down on illegal immigration find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in some industries (primarily agribusiness and construction) while other states take advantage of a lower prevailing wage rate.
WE CAN’T GET PEOPLE TO WORK
The single biggest argument AGAINST strong enforcement of immigration laws claims that we have jobs that citizens will not do. Hogwash! We have jobs that Americans won’t do for the prevailing wage.
Why should they? If the government pays you NOT to work, why should you take a job that is difficult AND pays less or only marginally more than you can collect on the dole. Growing up in a family of small business owners it never ceased to amaze me how people of seemingly poor education could quickly calculate how many hours they could work without losing X welfare benefit. If you ever examined the welfare system and the byzantine system of benefits, you would realize that it takes someone of above average intelligence to navigate. I always wondered what many of these people could accomplish if they put their sizable talents to entrepreneurship rather than scamming the system.
If Employer X paid $20 an hour to clean toilets or $30 an hour to pick produce AND if welfare benefits were cut back to only those actually unable to work and genuinely in need, there would be an ample labor pool.
However, this would only work if NATIONAL immigration laws were enforced. It’s pretty obvious that a farmer in Georgia can’t pay a significantly higher wage rate for pickers than his neighbors in Florida do. We also have to accept the fact that prices would rise. Therein lies the problem.
Are you willing to pay higher prices for food, rent, etc. in order to assure border security?
ARE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS A BURDEN?
This brings us back to the original question. Obviously the answer isn’t simple. Opponents of enforcing our laws argue that they pay taxes and don’t receive any government benefit. Any person who has been around a hospital emergency room or stood in line at Wal-Mart knows that illegal immigrants DO receive government benefit. Marylanders also know that their state tax dollars go to fund organizations like CASA de Maryland.
Yes, illegals do USUALLY pay taxes. They primarily pay the payroll tax (FICA and Medicare), but don’t pay income taxes.
Do the benefits illegal immigrants receive outweigh what they pay in? No one can know for sure. We won’t even take the extra space to discuss the negative economic implications of large segments of our society who cannot or refuse to learn English.
Ultimately, we have to conclude that illegal immigration is an economic bag of mixed results. It results in lower prices. It’s difficult to quantify the costs of illegal immigration. However, we know that a porous border is good for neither our national security or nor our national sovereignty.
I would argue that our country would be better off if we cut back on welfare benefits (necessary to fill jobs that many illegals do now), secured our borders, AND deported every illegal immigrant. If they have anchor babies, then the child could return when he or she reached majority. However, simply having a relative who is a citizen should allow family to live here legally.
Your thoughts?
G. A. Harrison is the Managing Editor of “Salisbury News”. “Delmarva Dealings” appears each Wednesday and Sunday at SbyNEWS.com.
A retired U.S. Army chaplain is being threatened with legal action for flying the American flag in his front yard, the Daily Mail reports.
Fred Quigley, 77, of Macedonia, Ohio, a minister who served active duty during the Vietnam War, has been told by the homeowners’ association that his flag violates the property rules.
The association has offered to fly the flag at the entrance of the building development, but Quigley refused the offer.
“If they can dictate to me that I cannot fly an American flag in America, then, to me, the country is lost,” Mr. Quigley told the paper.
Quigley's lawyer Gerald Patronite said the association has no right to stop his client.
According to the Mail, Joseph Migliorini, the representative for the homeowners’ association and former mayor of Macedonia, which is between Cleveland and Akron, said he plans to take Quigley to court if the flagpole is not removed.
A new Iowa Poll shows national Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney and tea party favorite Michele Bachmann leading among the state's likely GOP caucus-goers.
The poll conducted for The Des Moines Register shows Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, with support from 23 percent in Iowa. Bachmann is right on his heels. The Minnesota representative who plans to launch her campaign in Iowa on Monday has support from 22 percent.
Romney was the No. 2 finisher in the caucuses in his bid for the 2008 GOP nomination. Bachmann is a three-term congresswoman and newer face in the 2012 White House mix.
Maryland’s junior U.S. senator, Ben Cardin, has become a regular contributor of letters to the editor of the (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail newspaper. Cardin deserves praise for this; it would be easy for the Democrat to ignore heavily Republican Western Maryland. Instead, he shows respect for his constituents by sharing with them his thoughts on policy.
He’d deserve greater praise if his letters didn’t contain the flawed thinking shown in his most recent submission, on U.S. energy policy.
By “flawed,” I don’t mean that Cardin follows a different political philosophy than I do. Rather, his letter shows ignorance of the basics of energy policy and economics.
Some lowlights from Cardin’s letter:
Our MD politicians voted to give illegals in-state tuition to our Maryland colleges and Universities.
We, the Maryland tax-payers, will be supplementing the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition rates.
100,000 signatures are needed by June 30th. Get them mailed today! Because of "dirty politics" we need more names. The ACLU has threatened to sue to remove as many signatures as they can. Lawyers for Casa de Maryland have already contacted the Board of Elections. It looks like they are planning to comb through every approved signature in an effort to throw out as many as possible. The ACLU and Casa de Maryland will play every legal trick to throw out your signature and to disenfranchise the thousands of people who have already signed. Go to www.mdpetitions.com & sign up. Forward the address to your friends and family in Maryland TODAY! Go on Facebook! Get involved! We want to be able to vote on this in 2012 Election! |
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The Fourth of July will be filled with family fun in Ocean City, Maryland with two great places to celebrate the holiday, both presenting free concerts beginning at 8 p.m. and fireworks to follow.
At Northside Park, 127th Street and the bay, the Groove Train starts the evening there off with an exciting blend of music from the days of disco. The spectacular fireworks display will be shot from the west side of the park at 9:30 p.m. You’ll hear the oohs and aahs throughout the park as the colorful displays light up the evening sky. Get there early to claim the best location to view the fireworks.
Meanwhile, on the south end of town, you can head to Ocean City’s famous Boardwalk with its bright lights, assortment of food, family fun and more fantastic fireworks. Bring your beach chair or blanket and claim a spot on the beach at North Division Street for a free concert at 8 p.m. with The United States Army Band Downrange. Fireworks will also fill the sky over the ocean beginning at 9:30 p.m.
Parking is extremely limited at both locations. It is recommended that you take the bus. Bus service is $3 ride all day or $1 per boarding.
The West Ocean City Park & Ride on Route 50 is just west of the Route 50 Bridge and offers free parking and $1 round-trip shuttle service to downtown.
For more information about July 4th activities, call the Ocean City Recreation and Parks Department
There are so many ways to express one's outrage with a retail store's policies. You can complain to the company, start a grassroots campaign, write to Consumerist, or just take your business elsewhere. But for one displeased Target shopper in Pennsylvania, the answer was clear: baseball bat.
More precisely, baseball bat and store window.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:
According to McCandless Police Chief Gary Anderson, a female customer, incensed over Target's return policy, armed herself with a baseball bat and smashed in the store's windows before security guards managed to subdue her.
Police arrived soon after and transported the woman to a holding cell, where she awaits the filing of formal charges.
Police say the woman will most likely be facing charges of criminal mischief at the very least.
Unhappy returns: Woman targets Target with baseball bat [Post-Gazette.com]
If you're nostalgic for the days when print ruled the world, but don't want to be bothered with actual newspapers, the late designer Tobias Wong's "Times of New York" candle, inspired by The New York Times, may be for you.
According to Project No. 8, "Wong proposed producing a candle with the fragrance of newsprint inspired by The New York Times, an institution he greatly admired."
We get a lot of complaints from readers about their HP computers and the company's customer service. But one person who won't be complaining is the U.S. soldier whose HP notebook took six bullets intended for him.
The soldier who sent these images to HP was stationed in Afghanistan when he came under enemy fire. Two bullets hit his shoulder but the other six bullets that hit him were stopped by the notebook in his backpack.
HP sent the soldier a new one and, at his request, let him keep the one pictured here.
