Eideard

The U.S. national debt will swell further under tax-cut plans floated by three of the top four Republican presidential candidates, according to an independent analysis of their fiscal policy proposals released on Thursday.

Plans put forth by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum would pile up the largest increases in debt, while Mitt Romney’s initial plan, since revised with bigger proposed tax cuts, would increase it by a smaller amount over the next decade.

Only Ron Paul’s plan to drastically shrink government and cut taxes would produce a reduction in debt levels through 2021…He just destroys federal agencies.

Romney’s new tax plan, which matches the 28 percent top rate proposed by Santorum, promises to be revenue neutral, but does not offer any specifics on how to make up for lost revenues…

“Are they making proposals that risk making the debt problem worse?” said Alice Rivlin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office and Federal Reserve vice chairman who now serves on the group’s board. “On that score, all of these candidates fail. They all reduce the revenue that is available to the government over time…”

The group said the middle path for Gingrich would add $7 trillion to the national debt by 2021 versus the baseline, largely because he has proposed deep tax cuts for individuals and corporations, including an alternative 15 percent “flat tax.”

This would boost debt as a share of the overall economy to 114 percent in 2021 from the current level of about 70 percent, compared with an anticipated 2021 baseline level of 85 percent.

The middle scenario for Santorum’s plan would add $4.5 trillion to the debt, also due to tax cuts…The debt-to-gross domestic product ratio would rise to 104 percent under Santorum’s plan…

The middle scenario for Paul was the only one to reduce debt below the baseline – by $2.2 trillion – largely due to spending cuts on healthcare programs and Social Security and elimination of five federal departments and many State Department programs. This would cut debt to 76 percent of GDP by 2021. And Ron Paul doesn’t need Social Security or healthcare or foreign policy to live in his accustomed style.

In other words – besides being liars – the Republican candidates don’t know diddly-squat about economics. And hope you never learn.

Photo by Dandelion & Burdock

German police caught two thieves breaking open “lovers’ padlocks” attached to a bridge over the Rhine River in the city of Cologne.

The pair were cutting padlocks, left by amorous couples to symbolize their eternal love, off a railing on the Hohenzollern Bridge presumably to sell as scrap metal, police said.

“I spotted two men on the other side of the bridge tampering with the lovers’ padlocks, so I called for back-up straight away,” a police officer said. The men tried to escape with their loot after spotting police but were apprehended on the bridge.

Police discovered over 50 padlocks along with lock cutters in a trolley suitcase, wheeled along by the men…

Love-struck couples have been fastening padlocks to railings of bridges, engraving them with their initials or adding a few sentimental words and then tossing the keys into the rivers below to symbolize their eternal love.

My suggestion is, I fear, rather obvious. Padlock – or handcuff – these two scumbags together and throw them into the river.

An eighth-grade student in North Carolina was suspended for 55 days for showing another boy a bag of oregano and claiming it was marijuana, his family said.

“It was just a joke,” the boy’s mother told FoxNews.com. “He’s embarrassed that it’s turned into such a big issue. He’s actually said he doesn’t know why he did it. But he didn’t have an illegal substance to begin with.”

The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group best known for defending the right to religious expression, has taken up the boy’s cause. John Whitehead, the institute’s president, said the suspension may violate the boy’s constitutional rights…

Under Union County Public Schools policy, students can be suspended for 10 days for possession of a real or counterfeit drug with an additional 45 days possible if the student’s behavior was egregious. Whitehead argues that oregano is clearly not an illegal drug, and the school district does not define counterfeit drugs.

Any schools left in this nation that [a] concentrate on education instead of being nannies – and [b] have a sense of humor?

A care home has apologised and altered its policy after charging a grieving daughter more than £3,000 for “access” to her father’s room following his death.

Sue Cann branded the fee “daylight robbery” after finding her father Kenneth’s nursing home contract required four weeks notice in the event of a resident “passing away”. The 54-year-old described her treatment by Highcliffe Nursing Home in Christchurch, Dorset, where Mr Cann lived for 17 months, as “callous” and “ridiculous”.

She said she understood an additional tariff was justified to allow the care home time to arrange a new tenant, but that a month’s fee was too much. It was only after she paid the substantial figure that officials at the home agreed to reduce their notice period to seven days, in line with most other UK care homes.

Miss Cann said: “When the letter came I was so shocked about it. My father had to give 28 days notice for moving or passing away…But how on earth can you do that? Nobody knows when they are going to die. It’s ridiculous. To pay for a month which covers his food, laundry and nursing care is daylight robbery.”

Mr Cann, who spent 42 years working as a service manager for British Gas, lived with wife, Winnie, until March last year when she died aged 74 from ovarian cancer. Soon after he was admitted to Highcliffe Nursing Home, run by Suffolk-based Kingsley Healthcare, but he passed away following a long battle with dementia on January 30.

Mr Cann, who had worked hard to save for his retirement, ended up spending £63,000 for the duration of his time at the home…

“I wouldn’t mind paying for a week but I really object to a whole month. His belongings were removed from the home on the evening of his death as far as I’m aware.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Kingsley Healthcare said following a review the company’s notice period for death had been changed from 28 to seven days.

Following a review – and the stink in the press and online about their greedy, moneygrubbing policies.

At San Siro on Friday night, a lesson for all supporters with an axe to grind. The most effective way to ensure your message gets heard is neither to trail it behind a low-flying aircraft nor to enlist the aid of a celebrity on Twitter. Instead of wasting your time with protest marches through city centres or assaults on a club’s training ground, simply allow your frustrations to be expressed through the words of a child.

“Could you win?” read the polite banner held aloft by the nine-year-old boy with the Inter scarf and the mousey brown hair at the front of the Tribuna Arancio. “Otherwise at school they will make fun of me. Thanks, Filippo.”

Unfortunately they couldn’t, Inter imploding yet again as they lost 3-0 to a Bologna side who started the weekend in 17th. But unlike the supporters who waited outside the stadium at full-time to aim kicks at the car of Ernesto Paollilo, Filippo could at least be sure that his feelings had registered with the club. On Saturday the owner Massimo Moratti ordered team officials to identify the boy and invite him to attend training the following day.

There he would receive a personal apology from the players, led by the captain Javier Zanetti, as well as a new replica shirt. He would also be interviewed by just about every news organisation in the peninsula. “The manager [Claudio Ranieri] came to shake my hand and I asked him to win again soon,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport. “But I wanted to ask him why the players haven’t been shooting much lately. If you don’t shoot much then you won’t score much.”

I know the feeling, kid. Growing up in New England, I have been a Red Sox fan all my life.

 
Several sailors have been rescued from a fire on board a ship in the Persian gulf by a TV crew who happened to be filming in the area.

Iranian state television reported the ship was carrying fuel to Iran’s Bandar Abbas port when a large blaze broke out on board.

All nine crew members were able to escape onto the TV documentary makers’ small boat.

Great timing – and an exclusive.

A Swedish man was dug out alive after being snowed in to his car on a forest track for two months with no food, police and local media have reported.

The 45-year-old from southern Sweden was found on Friday, emaciated and too weak to utter more than a few words. He was found not far from the city of Umea in the north of Sweden by snowmobilers who thought they had come across a car wreck until they dug their way to a window and saw movement inside.

The man, who was laying in the back seat in a sleeping bag, said he had been in the car since December 19.

“Just incredible that he’s alive considering that he had no food, but also since it’s been really cold for some time after Christmas,” a rescue team member told regional daily Vasterbottens-Kuriren, which broke the news…

Umea University Hospital, where the man is recovering after being rescued by police and a rescue team, said in a statement he was doing well considering the circumstances.

Doctors at the hospital said humans would normally be able to survive for about four weeks without food. Besides eating snow, the man probably survived by going into a dormant-like state, physician Stefan Branth told Vasterbottens-Kuriren.

“A bit like a bear that hibernates. Humans can do that,” he said. “He probably had a body temperature of around 31 degrees (Celsius) which the body adjusted to. Due to the low temperature, not much energy was used up.”

The police hope that sooner or later he’ll be able to tell folks what he was doing out there.

Streets closed around the federal building after the shootout

A dispute between federal immigration agents that left one of them dead and another injured in southern California prompted the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to travel to the scene on Friday.

Federal officials said the incident occurred during a counseling session regarding performance…

“The situation began … as an incidence of workplace violence involving two federal agents in their office space,” said Steven Martinez, assistant director of the FBI office in Los Angeles. “When the incident escalated, one agent fired several rounds at the other agent, wounding him.”

A third colleague intervened and fired at the shooter, killing him, Martinez said.

Kevin Kozak, 51, a deputy special agent in the Los Angeles area, suffered multiple injuries and is undergoing treatment at a hospital. He is in stable condition.

Federal agent Ezequiel Garcia, 45, was killed during the incident…

Must have been a helluva counseling session. Job evaluations can be a trying time.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A pair of F-16s were scrambled to divert a Cessna aircraft after it entered the airspace of Marine One, the military helicopter ferrying the American president during a trip to California.

The small plane was forced to land at Long Beach airport, just south of Los Angeles at around 11am, where it was met by police.

A search of the aircraft uncovered 640 ounces of cannabis, the Associated Press reported, a motherlode worth around $160,000.

The unfortunate pilot and at least one passenger were handed to over to local police after being interviewed by US federal agents. The pilot has not been identified and it is not known whether they have been charged with any crime.

What do you think?

The US Secret service said Mr Obama was never in any danger during the incident.

Not even a contact high. American presidents never inhale.

The president was on the West Coast for a string of fundraising events ahead of November’s election…

…and a speech at Boeing Aircraft, today, on rebuilding America’s manufacturing business especially technology. Pretty good speech actually. Unlike Republican candidates for his job he doesn’t think this requires more tax breaks for wealthy corporations.

Similar bonds seized in arrest in 2009 at Malpensa Airport in Milan

Italian anti-mafia prosecutors said they seized a record $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that’s almost half of the U.S.’s public debt.

The bonds were found hidden in makeshift compartments of three safety deposit boxes in Zurich, the prosecutors from the southern city of Potenza said in an e-mailed statement. The Italian authorities arrested eight people in connection with the probe, dubbed “Operation Vulcanica,” the prosecutors said.

The U.S. embassy in Rome has examined the securities dated 1934, which had a nominal value of $1 billion apiece, they said in the statement…

The financial fraud uncovered by the Italian prosecutors in Potenza includes two checks issued through HSBC Holdings Plc in London for $325,000 – checks that weren’t backed by available funds, the prosecutors said.

As part of the probe, fake bonds for $2 billion were also seized in Rome. The individuals involved were planning to buy plutonium from Nigerian sources, according to phone conversations monitored by the police…

Most of the early reports this morning don’t have anymore information than this. No doubt there will be updates coming from Italian authorities. A helluva a counterfeiting plot. The cunning bit is that counterfeiting old securities reduces the requirement to meet contemporary anti-counterfeiting technology.

What I’d like to hear more about is what the frack were these gangsters planning on doing with plutonium? Is the Mafia getting ready to build their own nuclear weapons?