StupidiNews!

• A US airstrike in Libya has reportedly killed Al Qaeda leader Mokhtar Belmoktar, the man behind the AQ assault on an Algerian refinery in 2013 where 37 hostages died.
• The European Space Agency's comet probe Philae is now communicating for the first time after landing on the surface of a comet last November and hibernating.
• Hillary Clinton has weighed in on the TPP trade deal, saying that US drug companies benefiting from the pact should sell their products to the US government at a discount.
• Both European Union officials and Greek politicians are pointing fingers as economic talks to prevent Greece from defaulting on loans collapsed over the weekend.
• Automaker BMW and Chinese search engine giant Baidu say they will team up for a working self-driving car "before the year is out".

Last Call For Fly By Night

Remember when airlines told us that high fuel prices and high overhead costs meant they had no choice but to start tacking on fees and jacking up fares in order to stay in business?  That was then, and in 2015 with oil prices low and airlines more efficient, you'd think they'd lower prices.

You'd be out of your mind.

Don't expect your flying experience to be pleasant, or cheap this summer.

At a meeting of top airline executives this week in Miami, the word on every airline executive's lips was "discipline."

Translation: few seats, pricey tickets, bigger profits.

Despite plummeting fuel costs, the airlines' single biggest cost, few of those savings are getting passed along to passengers.

Instead, record profits. The International Air Transport Association increased its profit outlook for the industry to $29.3 billion, a new high, up nearly 80 percent from last year.

Meanwhile, passengers only saw a $.66 reduction in average airfares last quarter. And they'll soon have more fellow passengers to rub elbows with in the security line and bump into in the aisles.

Airline for America, an industry trade group, predicts 2.4 million passengers per day will fly on US airlines from June 1-Aug 31, up from 2.29 million during the same time last year. To accommodate the 4.5 percent increase in passengers, airlines say they're increasing the number of seats by 4.6 percent.

In other words, the flying experience will remain roughly the same. Cramped, crowded, and with no price breaks in sight.

The airline industry, once in dire trouble after 9/11, is now reaping record profits with more passengers than ever. And all indications are you'll pay even more at the ticket counter as greed controls the industry.  Did you actually think the airlines would start investing in better service and more competition when treating people like cattle makes them tens of billions?

Working as intended, folks.

The Ultimate Snow Job

Yesterday I talked about how hackers most likely working for the Chinese had gotten their hands on the crown jewels of federal personnel files, damaging US intelligence operations badly.  Now the other shoe has dropped, with our British allies across the pond saying that Chinese and Russian hackers have decrypted the treasure trove of NSA files stolen by Edward Snowden two years ago and that the damage is so bad that ongoing British and US intelligence operations have been compromised and agents put in danger.

RUSSIA and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcing MI6 to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services.

Western intelligence agencies say they have been forced into the rescue operations after Moscow gained access to more than 1m classified files held by the former American security contractor, who fled to seek protection from Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, after mounting one of the largest leaks in US history.

Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified.

Indeed, the story suggests that Snowden's info compromised methods and sources as well.

The government source said the information obtained by Russia and China meant that "knowledge of how we operate" had stopped the UK getting "vital information".

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said the problem for UK authorities was not only the direct consequence that agents had been moved, but also the opportunity cost of those agents no longer being in locations where they were doing useful work.

Intelligence officials have long warned of what they see as the dangers of the information leaked by Mr Snowden and its potential impact on keeping people in the UK safe - a concern Prime Minister David Cameron has said he shares.

According to the Sunday Times, Western intelligence agencies have been forced to pull agents out of "hostile countries" after "Moscow gained access to more than one million classified files" held by Mr Snowden.

"Senior government sources confirmed that China had also cracked the encrypted documents, which contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information that could allow British and American spies to be identified," the newspaper added.

Needless to say, the pushback from privacy advocates has been immediate.

Privacy campaigners questioned the timing of the report, coming days after a 373-page report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, which was commissioned by David Cameron. Anderson was highly critical of the existing system of oversight of the surveillance agencies and set out a series of recommendations for reform.

A new surveillance bill, scheduled for the autumn, is expected to be the subject of fierce debate.

Responding to the Sunday Times, David Davis, the Conservative MP who is one of the leading campaigners for privacy, said: “We have to treat all of these things with a pinch of salt.” He said the use of an anonymous source to create scare stories was a typical tactic and the timing was comfortable for the government.

“You can see they have been made nervous by Anderson. We have not been given any facts, just assertions,” he said.

Anderson recommended that approval of surveillance warrants be shifted from the home and foreign secretaries to a new judicial body made up of serving and retired judges, which Davis supports but towards which the government appears to be lukewarm.

That British surveillance bill is a nasty piece of work from what I understand, making the Patriot Act look tame in comparison, so if this is a hair on fire scare attack by our friends across the pond, I wouldn't be surprised.

On the other hand for this kind of news to leak out, a major intelligence player to admit they have been compromised and have changed operations as a result, that's a very serious charge.

We'll see where this goes, but as I have said time and time again, if your chief goalis to damage western intelligence as badly as possible, Edward Snowden's playbook is the route you would use.

Sunday Long Read: Code Monkeys

This week's SLR is a gargantuan piece from Bloomberg Business about "code", computer programming languages and how they are used to craft the 21st century and beyond, written from the perspective of the people who have no idea what code is.

You are an educated, successful person capable of abstract thought. A VP doing an SVP’s job. Your office, appointed with decent furniture and a healthy amount of natural light filtered through vertical blinds, is commensurate with nearly two decades of service to the craft of management.

Copper plaques on the wall attest to your various leadership abilities inside and outside the organization: One, the Partner in Innovation Banquet Award 2011, is from the sales team for your support of its 18-month effort to reduce cycle friction—net sales increased 6.5 percent; another, the Civic Guidelight 2008, is for overseeing a volunteer team that repainted a troubled public school top to bottom.

You have a reputation throughout the organization as a careful person, bordering on penny-pinching. The way you’d put it is, you are loath to pay for things that can’t be explained. You expect your staff to speak in plain language. This policy has served you well in many facets of operations, but it hasn’t worked at all when it comes to overseeing software development.

For your entire working memory, some Internet thing has come along every two years and suddenly hundreds of thousands of dollars (inevitably millions) must be poured into amorphous projects with variable deadlines. Content management projects, customer relationship management integration projects, mobile apps, paperless office things, global enterprise resource planning initiatives—no matter how tightly you clutch the purse strings, software finds a way to pry open your fingers.

Here we go again. On the other side of your (well-organized) desk sits this guy in his mid-30s with a computer in his lap. He’s wearing a taupe blazer. He’s come to discuss spending large sums to create intangible abstractions on a “website re-architecture project.” He needs money, support for his team, new hires, external resources. It’s preordained that you’ll give these things to him, because the CEO signed off on the initiative—and yet should it all go pear-shaped, you will be responsible. Coders are insanely expensive, and projects that start with uncomfortably large budgets have an ugly tendency to grow from there. You need to understand where the hours will go.

It's a fascinating piece and well done, explaining the business of software development cycles, hardware upgrades, licensing, integration, and the whole nine yards.  As somebody who works in this industry it's a nice new perspective and a reminder that the people running the show where you work may not be tech geniuses, but they can be pretty smart too.

Last Call For Relaunch Sequence

Hillary Clinton took to New York's historic Roosevelt Island to give a speech about her domestic platform for 2016.  There's a lot there, but whether or not she can get Republicans to go along is anyone's guess.

As we have since our founding, Americans made a new beginning.

You worked extra shifts, took second jobs, postponed home repairs... you figured out how to make it work. And now people are beginning to think about their future again - going to college, starting a business, buying a house, finally being able to put away something for retirement.

So we're standing again. But, we all know we're not yet running the way America should.

You see corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged.

While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America's kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.

So, you have to wonder: "When does my hard work pay off? When does my family get ahead?"

"When?"

I say now. (Cheers, applause.)

Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers.

Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. (Cheers, applause.)

Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain too.

You brought our country back.

Now it's time -- your time to secure the gains and move ahead.

And, you know what?

America can't succeed unless you succeed. (Cheers, applause.)

That is why I am running for President of the United States. (Cheers, applause, chanting.)

It was a pretty good speech, actually.  Clinton laid out much of what she planned to call for as president if elected.

For decades, Americans have been buffeted by powerful currents.

Advances in technology and the rise of global trade have created whole new areas of economic activity and opened new markets for our exports, but they have also displaced jobs and undercut wages for millions of Americans.

The financial industry and many multi-national corporations have created huge wealth for a few by focusing too much on short-term profit and too little on long-term value... too much on complex trading schemes and stock buybacks, too little on investments in new businesses, jobs, and fair compensation. (Cheers, applause.)

Our political system is so paralyzed by gridlock and dysfunction that most Americans have lost confidence that anything can actually get done. And they've lost trust in the ability of both government and Big Business to change course.

Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we've made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role.

Our next President must work with Congress and every other willing partner across our entire country. And I will do just that -- (cheers, applause) to turn the tide so these currents start working for us more than against us.

At our best, that's what Americans do. We're problem solvers, not deniers. We don't hide from change, we harness it. (Cheers, applause.)

But we can't do that if we go back to the top-down economic policies that failed us before.

Americans have come too far to see our progress ripped away.

Now, there may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir, (laughter) but they're all singing the same old song...

A song called "Yesterday." (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

You know the one -- all our troubles look as though they're here to stay (laughter)... and we need a place to hide away... They believe in yesterday.

And you're lucky I didn't try singing that, too, I'll tell you! (Laughter, cheers, applause.)

We'll see what she can back that up with.

Making Off With The Crown Jewels

We're learning more and more about just what a mother lode of intelligence information hackers got from raiding the US government's personnel files, and as John Schindler points out, if the hackers are working for the Chinese or Russians, then America is in real trouble.

With each passing day the U.S. government’s big hacking scandal gets worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of Personnel Management? Having initially assured the public that the loss was not all that serious, OPM’s data breach now looks very grave. The lack of database encryption appears foolhardy, while OPM ignoring repeated warnings about its cyber vulnerabilities implies severe dysfunction in Washington.

To say nothing of the news that hackers were scouring OPM systems for over a year before they were detected. It’s alarming that intruders got hold of information about every federal worker, particularly because OPM previously conceded that “only” 4 million employees, past and present, had been compromised, including 2.1 million current ones. Each day brings worse details about what stands as the biggest data compromise since Edward Snowden stole1.7 million classified documents and fled to Russia.

Then there’s the worrisome matter of what OPM actually does. A somewhat obscure agency, it’s the federal government’s HR hub and, most important, it’s responsible for conducting 90 percent of federal background investigations, adjudicating some 2 million security clearances every year. If you’ve ever held a clearance with Uncle Sam, there’s a good chance you’re in OPM files somewhere.

And of course the problem is the hack was extensive and allowed reams of information out.

Here’s where things start to get scary. Whoever has OPM’s records knows an astonishing amount about millions of federal workers, members of the military, and security clearance holders. They can now target those Americans for recruitment or influence. After all, they know their vices, every last one—the gambling habit, the inability to pay bills on time, the spats with former spouses, the taste for something sexual on the side—since all that is recorded in security clearance paperwork. (To get an idea of how detailed this gets, you can see the form, called an SF86, here.) Speaking as a former counterintelligence officer, it really doesn’t get much worse than this.

Do you have friends in foreign countries, perhaps lovers past and present? The hackers know all about them. That embarrassing dispute with your neighbor over hedges that nearly got you arrested? They know about that, too. Your college drug habit? Yes, that too. Even what your friends and neighbors said about you to investigators, highly personal and revealing stuff, that’s in the other side’s possession now.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this is not merely that millions of people are vulnerable to compromise, through no fault of their own, but that whoever has the documents now so dominates the information battlespace that they can halt actions against them. If they get word that an American counterintelligence officer, in some agency, is on the trail of one of their agents, they can pull out the stops and create mayhem for him or her: Run up debts falsely (they have all the relevant data), perhaps plant dirty money in bank accounts (they have all the financials, too), and thereby cause any curious officials to lose their security clearances. Since that is what would happen.

So yes, this hack was bad.  We need to clean up this mess, but the reality is that between this and the Snowden documents, US intelligence is all but in complete tatters in 2015.  This is where government is most certainly not working properly, and fixing it will take years of not decades.

Trading Places

For now, fast track trade pact authority for President Obama is off the table as House Democrats folded and Republicans didn't have the votes.

Hours after President Obama made a dramatic, personal appeal for support, House Democrats on Friday thwarted his push to expand trade negotiating power — and quite likely his chance to secure a legacy-defining accord spanning the Pacific Ocean.

In a remarkable blow to a president they have backed so resolutely, House Democrats voted to end assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has supported for four decades. That move effectively scuttled legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress.

“We want a better deal for America’s workers,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House minority leader, who has guided the president’s agenda for two terms and was personally lobbied by Mr. Obama until the last minute.

The vote that prevented the president from obtaining trade promotional authority now imperils the more sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed trade agreement with 11 other nations along the Pacific Ocean that affects 40 percent of the global economy on goods ranging from running shoes to computers.

“They have taken their own child hostage,” said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, adding, “Does it hurt the president? Of course it hurts the president, but it hurts America more.”

The Democratic revolt left Republican leaders trying to summon support from their own party for trade adjustment assistance, a program they have long derided as a waste of money and a concession to organized labor. Eighty-six Republicans voted for the program, more than double the 40 Democrats who supported it. But the trade adjustment assistance bill failed when 303 voted against it.

Republican leaders then passed, in a 219-to-211 vote, a stand-alone bill that would grant the president the trade negotiating authority he sought. But that measure cannot go to the president for his signature because the Senate version of the legislative package combined both trade adjustment and trade promotion.

The House will try again to pass the worker protection part of the deal again on Tuesday,  but at this point things are looking pretty grim.  We'll see what happens, and the trade legislation is far from over, but it's going to be a long trek to the top of this.

Last Call For Mrs. Graham

Larry Wilmore is doing a pretty solid job of following Jon Stewart in Colbert's slot on The Nightly Show and Wilmore laid into the political media this week for worrying more about how Sen. Lindsey Graham's bachelor status would affect him as President than his completely awful foreign policy.

“Democracy works, just as long as we have a free press that doesn’t shy away from the important questions,” Wilmore said.

He showed a video clip Thursday on “The Nightly Show” of Fox News host Andrea Tantaros saying “one of the big questions being asked of Lindsey Graham is who would be his First Lady.”

“Why is that a question?” Wilmore said. “This is a dude who wants a war with Iran so bad he put it on his Amazon wish list. We’re asking him about his non-existent First Lady?”

Wilmore said Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator, had a creative solution to filling the role without a wife.

The GOP candidate told reporters he had a sister, so perhaps she could fill the role.

“Is Lindsey Graham trying to Duggar his way into the White House?” Wilmore said. “I’m guessing he’s got at least 19 votes and counting.”

Graham also said, chuckling, that he had lots of friends, so maybe there could be a “rotating First Lady.”

“Incest and orgies?” Wilmore said. “Bill Clinton’s probably thinking, ‘Wow, this guy’s taking it to the next level. I may not vote for Hillary at this point.’”

Wilmore is correct.  Huckleberry Graham is the GOP candidate openly pushing for a huge American ground war in the Middle East.  He's been absolutely wrong about everything remotely involved in the arena of international relations. On domestic issues, he's all about cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, deporting DREAMers, and nationwide restrictions on abortion access.

The guy is a complete disaster even by 2016 GOP candidate standards, and we're worried about his marital status?

No.

A Long Way Across Texas

The Fifth Circuit has upheld Texas's abortion clinic regulation regime, legislation that has already closed most of the clinics in the state and now will leave at least a million women a hundred miles away or more from any abortion services.

Federal judges upheld a sweeping anti-abortion law on Tuesday in a decision that will shutter most abortion clinics in Texas.

The ruling held that the law, HB 2, which requires abortion facilities to comply with hospital-like standards, does not pose an undue burden for the majority of women seeking abortion in Texas, millions of whom will now have to travel hundreds of miles for an abortion.

The law calls for clinics to follow the state's rules for ambulatory surgical centers, facilities that are very costly to operate. In 2013, Planned Parenthood opened a brand-new ASC in Forth Worth at a cost of $6.5 million. Only seven abortion clinics in Texas comply with ASC standards; 13 other clinics face imminent closure.

Whole Woman's Health, the plaintiff in the case, vowed to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court and to ask the justices to put the ruling on hold immediately. Unless the Supreme Court steps in, the clinics will be forced to close in 22 days. The case, if it goes before the high court, could result in a definitive ruling on when an abortion restriction is too restrictive and constitutes an "undue burden."

"Not since before Roe v. Wade has a law or court decision had the potential to devastate access to reproductive health care on such a sweeping scale," said Nancy Northrup, the CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Whole Woman's Health in the lawsuit.

The ruling is a broad victory for Texas on what most consider the most restrictive abortion law in the country: Other provisions of HB 2, which were not a part of Tuesday's ruling, have already closed more than 20 abortion providers across the state. Judges were drawn from the most conservative appeals court in the country, US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

A few years ago Teas had more than 40 clinics.  Now that number will be reduced to seven.  This is what happens when "small government Republicans" decide that government can indeed be used to regulate clinics out of business and trap women in pregnancies, all while screaming about "liberal fascism" and "regulatory burdens".

Expect more Republican states to take up Texas-style clinic regulations, designed specifically to put clinics out of business and to take choices away from women.

The GOP's Not Even Trying Anymore On The Obamacare Fix

If you believe the stories out of the GOP this week, Mitch the Turtle has a double secret probation plan for fixing Obamacare should the Supreme Court wreck subsidies to federal exchange states.

No, stop laughing you guys, they are totally serious!

Congressional Republican leaders say they have a fallback plan ready to go if the Supreme Court cripples a core component of Obamacare this month. 

But the details of the plan are being kept secret. 

"We'll have a plan that makes sense for the American people," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday in a radio interview with The Joe Elliott Show. 

But what's in the plan? 

"We'll let you know depending on the outcome of the decision," the Kentucky Republican said, referring to the case King v. Burwell, which is expected to be decided this month. 

Bloomberg tried to get answers Tuesday from the senior Republicans who work on health policy. Their fallback plan might interest millions of Americans who stand to lose their insurance subsidies, as well as the insurance industry, which would likely lose many customers and be compelled raise premiums. Details to come, the planners say. 

"Yeah, we are" ready to act, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in an interview. But what will the action be? "We'll let you know if we have to do it," he said.

Oh, well then.  I can't wait for your super secret plan, boys. I'm sure it'll work just as well as the last 50 billion ones.

Seriously, are Republicans this disdainful of everyone's intelligence level? Is anyone in America buying this nonsense?

StupidiNews!

• A Cleveland judge has found probable cause to charge Office Timothy Loehmann with the murder of 12-year old Tamir Rice in a fatal police shooting last November.
• A Virginia teenager has plead guilty to aiding Islamic State by supplying them information over his Twitter account, a crime that could see him get 15 years in federal prison.
• North Carolina Republicans have overridden a veto by GOP Gov. Pat McCrory to pass a law allowing government officials to refuse to perform marriages.
• Twitter CEO Dick Costolo is stepping down July 1 and ousted co-founder Jack Dorsey will take over as interim CEO, returning to the position he was booted from in 2008.
• A federal judge has denied a stay of FCC net neutrality rules requested by the broadband industry, clearing the way for the new regulations to take effect today.

Last Call For Decidedly Un-Neutral

House Republicans aren't about to allow the FCC to do its job, not when it means being mean to the corporations that make sure America has some of the most overpriced broadband internet access on Earth because of forced lack of competition.  

And Republicans are perfectly OK with Americans paying two to five times what users do in Asian and European countries for the same broadband access speed, which would explain why US broadband giants like Time Warner Cable happily make a 97% profit margin on the service.

So when the Obama administration and the FCC released net neutrality rules and agreed that in 2015, broadband internet is as vital a service as water and power and should be regulated as a public utility and made more affordable, Republicans flipped out.

Now their latest attack is to back the broadband internet industry 100% by defunding the FCC's ability to implement any net neutrality rules.

A House appropriations bill released Wednesday would block the Federal Communication Commission from implementing its net neutrality rules until the courts weigh in on the issue.

The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill for the 2016 fiscal year includes funding for the communications regulator that falls $73 million below what the agency requested. In total, the bill grants the agency $315 million. It was introduced by the House Appropriations Committee and includes $20.2 billion in total funding for a number of agencies. 

Included in the bill is a provision designed to stop implementation of the net neutrality rules until the issue has finished winding its way through the courts. It says that none of the funds in the bill can be used to “implement, administer, or enforce” the rules until three legal challenges are resolves.

The cases in question are brought by Alamo Broadband, CenturyLink and trade group U.S. Telecom.

Unless the courts rule otherwise, the net neutrality order will take effect on Friday.

The bill includes a line specifically banning rate regulation by the FCC for either standard broadband service or wireless service. Conservatives say that the net neutrality order will open the door to rate regulation by the agency.

The funding bill also includes a provision specifying that the Commission cannot use funds to implement rules unless they post the text of the regulation online within 21 days.

So not only does the FCC take a whopping $73 million cut if the GOP gets its way, but net neutrality rules that go into effect this week never will, as the FCC would be blocked from implementing the rules until years of future court battles are resolved.  Effectively, the rules would never be implemented.

Why are Republicans so scared of the FCC?  One has to wonder just how much money GOP lawmakers are taking from these internet giants in order to make sure they remain allowed to reap massive profits off American consumers.

Kansas Tornado, Meet North Carolina

Tax cuts for coporations and for the rich can never fail to magically create new revenue, they can only be failed by not cutting taxes enough.  Given all of the problems in Kansas with GOP Gov. Sam Brownback's ridiculous Laffer Curve lunacy that left that the state in a massive budget hole, you'd think other Republican states would back off.

Not North Carolina, no sir.

N.C. Senate Republicans have stuffed a House economic development bill with 46 pages of their own proposals – including lower personal income tax rates, a change in corporate taxes, a new formula for distributing sales tax revenues among counties, and a retooled jobs incentives program. 

The Senate substitute for House Bill 117 – the “N.C. Competes” bill favored by Gov. Pat McCrory – looks far different than the proposal that passed the House in March with bipartisan support. But Senate leader Phil Berger says it represents a compromise between varying proposals for growing the state’s economy. 

“I think there was a lot of give and take in putting this together,” Berger said during a rare appearance at the Senate Commerce Committee, where the new bill was rolled out. “A proposal such as this takes a great deal of compromises, a great deal of working together.” 

The new bill drew immediate praise from the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which said senators “demonstrated bold leadership today by maintaining this proven path to prosperity with a tax cut proposal.” But the liberal N.C. Justice Center criticized the plan, saying further tax cuts “will hinder the state’s progress” with “a strategy that has failed in many other states.”

So what's in this mess of a bill from the GOP-controlled NC Senate? Check the first two "features":

New sales tax on services: To help pay for new income tax cuts, the bill would broaden the sales tax base. Among the purchases that would face sales taxes: Advertising, veterinary and pet care services, and repairs and maintenance work on personal property such as cars. Large nonprofits, such as hospitals, would lose a sales tax exemption. Collectively, the changes would create $171.3 million each year in new revenue, senators said. A news release from Berger said additional sales tax would “continue the goal of moving away from unfair and burdensome taxes on property and income.” 

Personal income tax cuts: The personal income tax rate would be cut from from 5.75 percent to 5.5 percent beginning in 2016. The standard deduction would increase gradually over a four-year period, meaning a married couple filing jointly wouldn’t owe income taxes on the first $18,500 of income by 2020. A single person wouldn’t owe taxes on his or her first $9,250 in income. “People will have more disposable income in their pockets,” said Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenburg County Republican. “That is a great way to lower the tax burden on working families and small businesses.”

So a $171 million dollar tax increase on service industries, like auto repair, veterinarians, and hospital care, but a big tax cut for those who earn a lot.  It's as regressive as a tax system can be. What this happens to be?  Good old tax cuts for the rich paid for by taxing the poor, period.  It failed in Kansas and unfortunately if this passes it will fail in NC as well.

And a lot of good people back in my home state will be hurt as a result.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article23717854.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article23717854.html#storylink=cpy

From Shakespeare To Saruman

Legendary actor Christopher Lee has passed away at the age of 93 on Sunday after a nearly seventy year career.  Best known to my generation as Saruman the White from the Lord of the Rings movies, Lee started out as the heart and soul of the now famous Hammer Studios horror films.

Sir Christopher Lee has died at the age of 93 after being hospitalised for respiratory problems and heart failure.

The veteran actor, best known for a variety of films from Dracula to The Wicker Man through to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, passed away on Sunday morning at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, according to sources.

The decision to release the news days after was based on his wife’s desire to inform family members first. The couple had been married for over 50 years.

As well as his career in film, Lee also released a series of heavy metal albums, including Charlemagne: The Omens of Death. He was knighted in 2009 for services to drama and charity and was awarded the Bafta fellowship in 2011.

His film career started in 1947 with a role in gothic romance Corridor of Mirrors but it wasn’t until the late 50s, when Lee worked with Hammer, that he started gaining fame. His first role with the studio was The Curse of Frankenstein and it was the first of 20 films that he made with Peter Cushing, who also became a close friend. “Hammer was an important part of my life, and generally speaking, we all had a lot of fun,” he said in a 2001 interview.

Lee had no problem poking fun at his status as a schlock movie icon either, as his turn as wacky mad scientist Doctor Catheter in the 1990 film Gremlins 2 attests.



But prolific doesn't even begin to describe his many roles, from Dracula to Space 1999's Captain Zandor (no relation) to Bond villain Francisco Scaramanga in The Man With The Golden Gun to Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels to all kids of voice work in games like the Kingdom Hearts series and more.

And that's not counting his massive stage presence, his service in WW II or his career as an opera and heavy metal singer.

He did it all folks, and he was amazing at it.  We'll not see his like again.

StupidiNews!

And I'm back, more or less.  Thanks to Bon for filling in!

• The hunt for two convicted killers who escaped earlier this month from a maximum security prison in upstate NY now moves to Vermont as police continue the search.
• Michigan lawmakers have passed a bill allowing adoption agencies to deny adoptions to same-sex couples.
• Pope Francis is asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a "sincere effort" to broker a lasting peace in Ukraine.
• Embattled FIFA President Sepp Blatter says he will remain in his position until reform measures are passed by the soccer governing body.
• San Francisco's school board has unanimously voted to teach computer science at all levels of K-12 education.