How rich people can pay little or no taxes

Most of us think that people who have made a ton of money by various means then simply invest it and live off the resulting income. But what form does this investment income take? If you are an average person, you tend to think of investment income as the interest on certificates of deposit or savings and money market accounts, which are taxed at the same rate as ordinary income. More sophisticated investors get their investment income in the form of [Read more…]

Atheists seek recognition in the US military

Sgt. Justin Griffith is trying to get the US Army to provide to atheists the same kinds of support and services that they provide to religious groups. He is organizing on March 31, 2012 Rock Beyond Belief, that is advertised as “a day-long event on the military base Fort Bragg, North Carolina, complete with children’s activities, rock concerts and [Read more…]

“The War on Terrorism, Civil Liberties, and the Constitution”

The organization Young Americans for Liberty, in association with The Future of Freedom Foundation is organizing an interesting ‘college tour’ on the above topic covering “habeas corpus, the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary rendition, torture, regime change, and a general discussion about how the war on terrorism has infringed upon the rights of U.S. citizens in the name of making us safe.”

The four events are free and will be streamed live on [Read more…]

Gore Vidal on Ayn Rand

I made the mistake of reading Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead before her more celebrated work Atlas Shrugged that supposedly provides the clearest articulation of her philosophy of objectivism. After a promising start, The Fountainhead degenerated into a dreary polemic, with two-dimensional stereotypical characters behaving in utterly predictable ways, the whole thing written in melodramatic style. Although I completed it, it was such a bad novel that I simply could not bear the thought of reading another 1000 pages by the same writer and so never read Atlas Shrugged.

It is not that I am averse [Read more…]

Atlas Shrugged II – More trains!

Ayn Rand devotees will be delighted to hear that part two of the film made from their icon’s hit book will be released before the elections so that they can all – well actually I am not sure what the film is supposed to tell them to do, other than perhaps prepare them to go Galt if the Kenyan-Muslim-Communist-Alinskyite is re-elected in November.

The producers seem undeterred by the fact that [Read more…]

Democracy for billionaires

Guess who wrote this:

“The U.S. government should become the protector of the Palestinian people’s right to have a decent amount of land. The desire of some Israelis to use security as an excuse to grab more Palestinian land should be blocked by Washington even if that requires employing financial or other leverage to compel the Israeli government to behave reasonably on the issue of settlements. It is vital to our credibility in the entire Middle East that we insist on an end to Israeli expansionism. It is vital to our humanitarian duty to the Palestinian people that we protect the weaker party from the stronger power. It is vital that the world sees that our total support for Israeli security is not matched by a one-sided support for more extreme Israeli territorial demands.”

Noam Chomsky? No. Tony Judt? No. Norman Finkelstein? No. Give up? It was [Read more…]

ACLU sues Obama administration over assassination secrecy

In October of last year, the ACLU filed a FOIA request to have the Obama administration release the legal and factual information relating to the killing of three American citizens: Anwar al Awlaki, Samir Khan, and Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, all killed by drone attacks. The administration not only refused to release any information, it would not even admit the existence of a targeted killing program. So yesterday the ACLU sued the government for the release of documents containing the “factual and legal basis” for these actions. As the lawsuit says [Read more…]

Film: Game Change

I do not particularly care for films that re-tell real political history based on the reports of journalists who cover the campaigns. They too often deal with the second level of politics and avoid the more important third hidden level that deals with the oligarchic influence on the system itself.

But I will make an exception and likely see Game Change, the new HBO film [Read more…]