The Goat Pen

Bklyn wrote:http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/Jewish ... ?id=254842

To be an editor of a Hebrew periodical, he does not understand Iran or the situation.

eCat wrote:

Bklyn wrote:http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/Jewish ... ?id=254842

To be an editor of a Hebrew periodical, he does not understand Iran or the situation.

This is the kind of shit I've been railing about for years.

How is this man not an enemy combatant in Guantanamo? Because you know if it was a Muslim American, his ass would be black bagged in a heartbeat.

Hizzy III wrote: maybe it's even a pissed off resident who simply came up with a unique way to finally draw attention to an ongoing community horror.

Bklyn wrote:All threats against the President are investigated by the Secret Service. If you are found to be a legit threat, or clinically determined to be mentally ill, you will be arrested.

My guess is the Jewish journo will see nothing beyond the investigation.

Tax Rate of the Last 8 Presidents (and Romney)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezr ... _blog.html

The state of our union is unlikely to be substantially affected by a speech. That's what history tells us, anyway. In 2010, Gallup went back and looked at post-SOTU polling for the last five presidents. Jimmy Carter's average bump was...negative one percent. Ronald Reagan did no better. Nor did George W. Bush. George H.W. Bush, however, did worse -- he tended to lose four points in the polls when he delivered a State of the Union address. Bill Clinton gained, on average, three points.

The real importance of the State of the Union is that it lays out the White House's agenda for the next year. But that matters more in years when the White House has some chance of passing its agenda through Congress than in years when it doesn't. Last year, for instance, Obama exhorted Americans to win the future by investing in scientific research, clean energy and infrastructure. But as Glenn Kessler details, Obama's proposals languished in the divided Congress. Instead, Congress spent much of its time almost letting the government shut down, almost defaulting on the national debt, and almost letting the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance expire. Forget winning the future. In 2011, we almost lost the present.

Bklyn wrote:Wow, yeah I said it...Sarah Palin is right

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/ ... &seid=auto

Here is how the subsidy works: The Internal Revenue Service allows for the tax-deductibility of interest expense on corporate debt. Since corporate debt is the mother’s milk of a leveraged buyout, there would be no private-equity/LBO industry without this huge tax benefit. Indeed, anyone who has used an Excel spreadsheet to model a leveraged-buyout -- you know who you are! -- knows that the magic of the entire industry depends almost solely on the interest-expense provision in the tax code.

By loading up a company with debt and then deducting the resulting interest expense, tax payments are generally wiped out, allowing the remaining “free cash flow” to be used to pay down the debt taken on to buy the company in the first place. Given that tax revenue is necessary for the government to function, this means the rest of us provide a subsidy that allows the private-equity firms to thrive.

If the company a private-equity firm invests in does well, the original borrowed money is paid down, interest expense is reduced and profits slowly but surely rise, creating equity value for the private-equity investor. Over time, if the company is performing well enough to pay off its debt load and show net income, it will either be sold outright, taken public through an initial public offering or re-leveraged to allow the private- equity firm to take out a hefty dividend and begin the process of financial alchemy all over again.