Category: Politics

Warren Buffet, in an interview with ABC:

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it. The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

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Stuff like this makes the inevitable fact that the GOP will win back the House today just plain sad.

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The Columbus Dispatch, on Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich:

It was one of 16 appearances that Kasich has made on Fox television or radio programs since he formally entered the governor’s race on June 1, 2009, according to a count by the Strickland campaign.

Going back to March 2008, when Kasich said he was seriously considering entering the race, there were 42 other appearances, including several times that Kasich was guest host for The O’Reilly Factor.

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Update: I’m donating my 25th birthday to charity: water. See the details here.

I’ve added a banner for charity: water on my sidebar, and I’d like to explain why. Here are some facts that I bet you didn’t know:

• Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80 percent of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.
• In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely to make them sick. Along their long walk, they’re subjected to a greater risk of harassment and sexual assault.
• In areas where gathering water is impossible, small-scale private water distributors charge full market prices, forcing the poorest households to spend up to 11% of their income on life’s most basic need. Even this water is most likely contaminated if it has been collected from unprotected rivers or ponds.

Charity: water is a non-profit group dedicated to bringing water to the most desperate people on the planet.

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Ben Popken for The Consumerist:

Another aspect that kicked in on Sep 23 was that health care companies can’t deny insurance to children with preexisting conditions. Major players in the health care industry responded to this one by instead of denying insurance, it would opt to stop selling child-only health insurance policies entirely. It remains to be seen what other inventive ideas the health care industry will come up with as it adjusts to the new regulations.

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The Pew Research Center:

A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows.

[…]

The view that Obama is a Muslim is more widespread among his political opponents than among his backers.

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Matt Gertz for Media Matters:

Media Matters has confirmed Bloomberg’s report using publicly available IRS filings. We also found no evidence of corresponding donations to the Democratic Governors Association in the current political cycle. News Corp. wants Republicans elected to office, and they’re willing to spend money to make it happen.

According to the article, News Corp. is actually the RGA’s “biggest corporate donor.” Bloomberg suggests that News Corp. has made these donations due to their opposition to “proposed federal rule changes that would weaken the position of its Fox network in negotiations with cable companies,” stating that “Governors may have a stake in the issue.”

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From the Google Public Policy blog:

It is imperative that we find ways to protect the future openness of the Internet and encourage the rapid deployment of broadband. Verizon and Google are pleased to discuss the principled compromise our companies have developed over the last year concerning the thorny issue of “network neutrality.”

The two companies aren’t quite ready to embrace full-blown net neutrality on the wireless side of things quite yet, however. Darren Murph at Engadget:

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MSNBC:

A little over a year after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett began hatching a plan over dinner to persuade America’s wealthiest people to give most of their fortunes to charity, more than three-dozen individuals and families have agreed to take part, campaign organizers announced Wednesday.

[…]

The pledge is a moral commitment to give, not a legal contract. It does not involve pooling money or supporting one cause or organization. It’s up to each person who signs the pledge how to divvy up their wealth.

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If you haven’t read this, you should. For parents of terminally ill children (like Merri and I), this is simply amazing.

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Rob Beschizza of BoingBoing:

Hyperspectral images of a draft of the Declaration of Independence reveal that it originally used the word ‘subjects’ instead of ‘citizens’ at a critical juncture. After writing “our fellow subjects,” author Thomas Jefferson scrubbed it out and replaced it with the familiar alternative.

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Steve Jobs, via Wired:

We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict few materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.

It sure would be nice if Apple were more public about this issue.

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