Welcome back, thanks for checking in. And, if this is your first time checking in, where have you been?
We start with a quote today from John F. Kennedy. It fits with all the goings on with these occupations and what you'll see in the video. It goes:
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
This will be short post today and we start with the aforementioned video clip. Occupy Wall Street marches went straight to the home of some of the richest folks on the Upper East Side. They visited Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPMorgan) Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corp, parent company of Fox News), David Koch (CEO of a HUGE private chemical company, called Koch Industries) and John Paulson (a hedge fund guy that made 5 Billion (yes with a "B", not a typo) in 2010 and 3.7 Billion in 2007. Thanks to a dodgy tax law involving something called "carried interest", Paulson gets to defer paying taxes on the (at least) 8.7 billion he made, and when he does pay, the interest rate is around 15%. But, we'll tackle "carried interest" and the Koch brothers (there is a 2nd Koch brother, each is worth about 25 Billion dollars, again no typo) in separate posts. I mentioned (or warned?) in my first post that I was an info wonk. Trust me, we will be going way into the weeds on carried interest. Anyway, here's the clip, courtesy of the Keith Olbermann show. The clip encompasses his show's intro, so just skip ahead to around the 2:45 mark for the coverage of the march.
Quick thought on these guys. I understand. I do. It's probably really great to be rich, but when 300-500 people start showing up at your door and people are sleeping outside around the world, it's probably time to get out-of-the-way of tax law changes. If the Bush/Obama tax cuts are allowed to expire, they're top tax rate will go from 35% on regular income (not the carried interest I mentioned earlier) to a job killing, forget it I won't even get out of bed, what's the point anyway?....39.6%. Come on guys, its 4%, then you don't have to worry about a mob outside your door. Seems like a pretty good deal.
I mentioned in my intro that I was a soccer fanatic as well. Well, this weekend gives us one of the best rivalries in all of England. Liverpool play Manchester United. It's on ESPN, Saturday @ 7:45. It's truly worth a watch, even if you're not a soccer fan. Great passion, the clubs are separated by about 25 miles, a history of fan issues, the list goes on. This clip is totally unrelated to the game, but its one of my favorites of all time. Robbie Fowler's (ex-Liverpool player) goal celebration, after he was accused of drug use by rival fans. Enjoy:
Last thing for today, it's my life's work to get friends off of Facebook and on to Twitter. None of my sales pitches have worked. Today I try again. Here is a list of some of my favorite tweets for someone who tweets under the name "Pimp Bill Clinton". He basically tweets as if he's early 1990's, Lewinsky's stained blue dress, ladies man Bill Clinton. If you like it, you can follow him here. Here are a few good ones. Some are raunchy, all are politically incorrect, and hilarious.
- "I'm also half black, @BarackObama. My half just happens to be from the waist down.
- "I don't care about
- "Just sent another 'it wouldn't take me years to get you off' text to Casey Anthony and Amanda Knox."
- "If I owned a baseball team I'd only sign Latin players because even if they sucked they could still work on the grounds crew."
That will do it for today, check back tomorrow for the start of my GOP Debate preview. I'm doing 2 per day, remember they're 8 candidates in all. And, I'm going in alphabetical order, that way you won't be able to tell which one I despise the most. Tomorrow brings us: Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain.
Until then,
James
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