Querian Boogaloo? Pues toma Booogaloo!!!!

Obama ha sido reelecto a vivir en el castillo encantado de la avenida Pensylvania en la burbuja que le permite al presidente tomar decisiones en un vacio. Mientras el electorado vive con las consecuencias de sus decisiones. Este tema mirara no solo a los resultados de esta reeleccion, sino a como esto impacta a el pueblo.

Sin mas ni mas, comenzaremos con los vejetes de AARP que pensaban que una victoria democrata protegeria sus beneficios. Hoy vemos que eso no es asi. Mientras hay ruido en la prensa sobre la amnistia para los ilegales que no son masque ciudadanos de otros paises infiltrados aqui, a los vejetes se les esta empezando a acondicionar para una, o la primera de muchas, reduccion en sus beneficios... Es interesante ver como la prensale trata de colgar el impasse al Congreso, pero no toaca a la contraparte de la casa blanca ni con el petalo de una rosa...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/11/obama-social-security_n_2102389.html

Obama's Second Term and Older Americans
Next Avenue | Posted: 11/11/2012 6:40 am EST

SPECIAL FROM Next Avenue



By Bob Rosenblatt

Now that President Barack Obama has been re-elected, many older voters are wondering what the effect will be on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama faces serious challenges on potential changes to federal retirement and health programs from liberals in his own party and other supporters who had stifled their criticisms while hoping for his re-election. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters in a post-election news conference: “We are not going to mess with Social Security.”

But the reality may be different.

“There is going to be the fight of our lifetime to maintain Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” says Eric Kingson, co-chair of Social Security Works, a liberal lobbying group.


A "Grand Bargain" May Be Coming

Look for serious talk in Washington about a “Grand Bargain” in which the president and Democrats would accept changes to Social Security and Medicare while Republicans accept tax increases.


The specifics of such a deal are unknown, but Obama reportedly offered to increase the Medicare age to 67 in last year’s budget discussions with Republicans. And, according to CNBC, in 2011 he proposed a new way to calculate annual Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments that would effectively reduce yearly increases in that benefit.



A Grand Bargain is anathema to many senior advocates. It would mean “these programs are going to be in great jeopardy,” says Kingson, who is also a professor of social work at Syracuse University.


The debate in Washington for the last two years has been “about the federal budget and hasn’t been much about the impact of changes on health and retirement security,” says David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP, the politically potent lobby for people 50 and older. “What has been missing from this equation has been the focus on people.”


But Social Security, Certer says, has "its own funding source and is not part of the federal budget and should not be dragged into the budget debate.”

The Obama-Nixon Parallel

When it comes to changing Social Security and Medicare, Kingson sees Obama as a potential Democratic version of President Richard Nixon going to China. Just as only a Republican president could open relations with China without being accused of being soft on Communism, he says, only a Democratic president could cut programs that were the basis of Democratic electoral success.

Some conservatives say Congress and the president need to strike a compromise. “It’s time now to move beyond slogans and move into specific discussions about what we do about Social Security,” said David John, a retirement and Social Security expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Key Parts of Obamacare Ahead

Regardless of the negotiations, the re-election of the president means that key provisions of Obamacare affecting the health of Americans 50 and older will remain locked in place:

•Beneficiaries with Medicare Part D drug coverage will continue receiving a 50 percent discount on brand-name prescription drugs and a 14 percent discount on generics once they have reached the “donut hole,” spending between2,930 and4,700 on prescription medications.

•Medicare will continue offering its new, expanded list of preventive care services and treatments.


•The federal government will establish a basic package of health insurance benefits for policies sold through insurance exchanges beginning in 2014.


•Private insurers will not be allowed to turn away prospective policyholders due to pre-existing medical conditions.

Beginning in 2014, states will be given the opportunity to expand Medicaid coverage to millions of poor people who are currently ineligible for the federal health program. Among the beneficiaries would be large numbers of people in their 50s, working at low-wage jobs without health insurance.



“All these important things now have a chance to go forward,” says Bob Blancato, a consultant on aging issues.

He is also optimistic that Congress will provide financing for additional ombudsmen to oversee the quality of care in nursing homes.


How the Fiscal Cliff Could Hurt

The coming “fiscal cliff” -- massive federal spending cuts and tax increases that would automatically go into effect in 2013 unless Congress strikes a deficit deal -- could also weigh heavily on vital programs for elderly Americans, says Forbes columnist Howard Gleckman. “According to the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, if Congress goes over the cliff and the cuts last through 2013, the consequences would be severe,” writes Gleckman. Among the drawbacks: caregiver support would be cut by $12.6 million and social service block grants, which fund programs such as meals and transportation for people 60and older as well as and adult foster care, would be cut for 345,000 people.

Now that the election hoopla is over, the serious work begins.

Bob Rosenblatt is a writer and editor specializing in aging issues. He is a Senior Fellow at the National Academy of Social Insurance, a think tank dealing with Social Security and Medicare.

Bueno, ya los cocorocos de la economia se ponen en fila para cobrar sus recompensas por dejar que el idolo de ebano ganara las elecciones... Nada mal para subsanar un desastre con un costo total conservador de mas de 38 billones de dolares

BP guilty of criminal misconduct, negligence in gulf oil spill

By Michael Muskal

November 15, 2012, 9:53 a.m.
Oil company BP has agreed to plead guilty to misconduct and negligence charges and pay a record $4.5-billion fine in connection with the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters.

In an announcement Thursday morning from its London headquarters, BP confirmed that it had reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the company stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, the subsequent oil spill and the response.

As part of the agreement, BP said it has agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect in connection with the 11 people who died in the explosion. In all, the company agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges including one count of obstruction of Congress.

The agreement is subject to U.S. federal court approval. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder will hold a news conference in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon to announce matters concerning “a major environmental case,” according to the DOJ announcement.


“All of us at BP deeply regret the tragic loss of life caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident as well as the impact of the spill on the Gulf Coast region,” Bob Dudley, BP’s group chief executive, said in a statement. “From the outset, we stepped up by responding to the spill, paying legitimate claims and funding restoration efforts in the gulf. We apologize for our role in the accident, and as today’s resolution with the U.S. government further reflects, we have accepted responsibility for our actions.”

According to the company, the agreement means that no further federal criminal charges can be filed in connection with the incident, enabling the company to concentrate on defending itself against future civil claims. Under pressure from the government, BP established a $20-billion fund to cover claims and has been paying out billions of dollars since the accidents.

The tragedy began with a fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010. At the time, the rig was drilling into the company’s Macondo well, about 50 miles off of the coast of Louisiana and about a mile below the water’s surface.

Once the rig sank, the well ruptured and poured more than 200 million gallons of crude into the waters before it was plugged on July 15. For some 85 days, the nation watched live online video from underwater cameras showing oil gushing into the ocean.

The crude washed ashore on the beaches of five states, imperiling the environment, shutting down commercial fishing for months and dealing a blow to the key tourism industry in Gulf Coast states.

The spill set the stage for one of the nation’s largest cleanups and for months of battles over responsibility. The response to the spill also became a political problem for the Obama administration and prompted an overhaul of federal agencies that regulate offshore oil drilling.

Tony Hayward, the BP president at the time, was forced to step down, in part for commenting that "I'd like my life back" during the frenetic cleanup period when oil was washing ashore in Louisiana and many livelihoods were in ruins.

"We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP’s chairman, stated. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.”

Thirteen of the 14 criminal charges pertain to the accident itself and are based on the negligent misinterpretation of the negative pressure test conducted on board the Deepwater Horizon, the company said.

“BP acknowledged this misinterpretation more than two years ago when it released its internal investigation report,” the company noted. “As part of its resolution of criminal claims with the U.S. government, BP will pay $4 billion, including $1.256 billion in criminal fines, in installments over a period of five years. BP has also agreed to a term of five years’ probation,” the company said.

The total cost of the package will exceed $4.5 billion and includes a civil penalty of $525 million to be paid in three installments to the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged securities violation in connection with oil flow estimates in the early days after the accident. The package also includes an extra $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences to be paid over five years, the company said.

The agreement also provides for the appointment of two monitors, each to serve for four years. One will monitor safety and the other ethics issues, the company said.

Prior to the settlement, the only person facing charges so far in the case was former BP engineer Kurt Mix, who was arrested in Texas in April on obstruction of justice charges.


Y todo esto a comodos plazos... Tremendo gobierno.

Sencillamente ha comenzado el "ObaMaraton de las Promesas"....


Obama's second-term promises
AP / November 7, 2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — A look at some of President Barack Obama’s promises for his second term:

—Roll back Bush tax cuts for upper-income people, couples making over $250,000 and individuals making over $200,000, a failed 2008 promise. Ensure people making over $1 million pay at least 30 percent in taxes.(Yo creo que los Republicanos deben de darle el incremento a la tasa impositiva, mas no limitarla a tan solo el 2%, sino extenderla a toda la clase media ($40,000 + in gross income...) y colgarle el logro al partido Democrata.)

—Put government on a path to cutting deficits by $4 trillion over 10 years. First-term promise to cut deficits by half failed.

—Cut imports of foreign oil by half by 2020. (La importacion de crudo esta a la baja, pero no por nada que haya hecho la administrcacion, sino por que el barril de petroleo estatan caro que ciertos yacimientos que no rentaba antes ya son rentables.)

—End subsidies to the oil industry. ‘‘I will not let oil companies write this country’s energy plan or endanger our coastlines or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers.’’ A leftover promise.

—"As long as I'm president of the United States, Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.’’ Using sanctions and negotiation, with force if needed. ‘‘We’re going to make sure that if they do not meet the demands of the international community, then we are going to take all options necessary to make sure they don’t have a nuclear weapon.’’(News flash... Iran ya tiene material nuclear, pero no del grado necesario para fabricar armas... Pero con tiempo y los Pakistanes...)

—End tax breaks for companies shipping jobs overseas.(Lo que tiene que hacer es meterle tarifas ademas de retirarles beneficios fiscales.)

—As his second priority after a deficit-cutting deal, achieve an immigration overhaul that sets a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants under certain conditions. An unfulfilled 2008 promise. Implemented a temporary measure in June letting up to 1.7 million young illegal immigrants stay and work for up to two years. (Por que necesitamos mas obreros cuyos hogares usan mas servicios de lo que aportan en recaudacion, maxime cuando el desempleo, usando la metodologia antigua esta en 14%+...)

—Make higher education affordable for everyone, in part by halving the growth in college tuition over 10 years. Ensure by the end of the decade that the U.S. has more people with college degrees than any other country, recruit 100,000 math and science teachers in 10 years, help 2 million workers attend community college. (Educando profesionales mientras la hemorragia empleos a China continua... Que van ahacer todos esos profesionales quetanto cacarea; se convertiran en trabajadores sociales para la turba de desempleados que su partido ha ayudado a crear?)

—"Continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet.’’ Latest iteration of a broken 2008 promise to enact a climate-change law. (La reencarnacion te CAp & Trade)

—"When Obamacare is fully implemented, we’re going to be in a position to show that costs are going down.’’ Latest and much less ambitious iteration of failed 2008 pledge to cut average family premiums by $2,500 in first four years.

—Strengthen Medicare by reducing the cost of health care. Steps already taken under the health care law improve benefits while cutting payments to hospitals and other providers by more than $700 billion over a decade — cuts used to help working-age Americans get insurance. ‘‘I will never turn Medicare into a voucher.’’ (When playing Russian Roulette, Doble up on Obamacare and always bet on black...)

—Double exports and create 1 million new manufacturing jobs in four years. Manufacturing jobs have been steadily declining for nearly two decades. (Obama decides to channel Chris Angel- Mindfreeak to go into magic for his Las Vegas Magic Show... Barry Obama-Super-freak)

—Consolidate various federal agencies dealing with business issues into one new department led by a secretary of business.

—For victims of Superstorm Sandy: ‘‘We are going to be with them every step of the way in helping them to rebuild their lives.’’ (This is already as messy as Katrina, without the Levees, but stallwart Democrats refuse to complain and the press to cover it.)

—"Let's, especially, hire our veterans, because if you fought for this country and its freedom, you shouldn’t have to fight for a job when you come home.’’ (Really?????)

Este interesante articulo obvia la realidad de que aunque el costo de vida ha subido anualmente, los salarios llevan decadas a la zaga de tales incrementos y aunque no se recauda tantocomo , o mucho mas que, en los 1980's, esta cantidad como proporcion del ingreso no destinado al gasto del hogar se ha tornado en una fraccion mayor. Hay que buscar otra solucion al embeleco este, pero de que hay que corter el gasto, lo hay que cortar...

Complaints Aside, Most Face Lower Tax Burden Than in 1980
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFF
BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Alan Hicks divides long days between the insurance business he started in the late 1970s and the barbecue restaurant he opened with his sons three years ago. He earned more than $250,000 last year and said taxes took more than 40 percent. What’s worse, in his view, is that others — the wealthy, hiding in loopholes; the poor, living on government benefits — are not paying their fair share.

“It feels like the harder we work, the more they take from us,” said Mr. Hicks, 55, as he waited for a meat truck one recent afternoon. “And it seems like there’s an awful lot of people in the United States who don’t pay any taxes.”

These are common sentiments in the eastern suburbs of St. Louis, a region of fading factory towns fringed by new subdivisions. Here, as across the country, people like Mr. Hicks are pained by the conviction that they are paying ever more to finance the expansion of government.

But in fact, most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.

Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.

Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010.

The uneven decline is a result of two trends. Congress cut federal taxation at every income level over the last 30 years. State and local taxes, meanwhile, increased for most Americans. Those taxes generally take a larger share of income from those who make less, so the increases offset more and more of the federal savings at lower levels of income.

In a half-dozen states, including Connecticut, Florida and New Jersey, the increases were large enough to offset the federal savings for most households, not just the poorer ones.

Now an era of tax cuts may be reaching its end. The federal government depends increasingly on borrowed money to pay its bills, and many state and local governments are similarly confronting the reality that they are spending more money than they collect. In Washington, debates about tax cuts have yielded to debates about who should pay more.

President Obama campaigned for re-election on a promise to take a larger share of taxable income above roughly $250,000 a year. The White House is now negotiating with Congressional Republicans, who instead want to raise some money by reducing tax deductions. Federal spending cuts also are at issue.

If a deal is not struck by year’s end, a wide range of federal tax cuts passed since 2000 will expire and taxes will rise for roughly 90 percent of Americans, according to the independent Tax Policy Center. For lower-income households, taxation would spike well above 1980 levels. Upper-income households would lose some but not all of the benefits of tax cuts over the last three decades.

Public debate over taxes has typically focused on the federal income tax, but that now accounts for less than a third of the total tax revenues collected by federal, state and local governments. To analyze the total burden, The Times created a model, in consultation with experts, which estimated total tax bills for each taxpayer in each year from 1980, when the election of President Ronald Reagan opened an era of tax cutting, up to 2010, the most recent year for which relevant data is available.

The analysis shows that the overall burden of taxation declined as a share of income in the 1980s, rose to a new peak in the 1990s and fell again in the 2000s. Tax rates at most income levels were lower in 2010 than at any point during the 1980s.

Governments still collected the same share of total income in 2010 as in 1980 — 31 cents from every dollar — because people with higher incomes pay taxes at higher rates, and household incomes rose over the last three decades, particularly at the top.

There are now many more millionaires, in other words, paying more than they did in 1980, but they are paying less than they would have if tax laws had remained unchanged. And while they still pay a larger share of income in taxes than the rest of the population, the difference has narrowed significantly.

The trend can be seen by comparing three examples:

¶A household making $350,000 in 2010, roughly the cutoff for the top 1 percent, on average paid 42.1 percent of its income in taxes, compared with 49 percent for a household with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980 — a savings of about $24,100.

¶A household making $52,000 in 2010, roughly the median income, on average paid 27.7 percent of its income in taxes, compared with 30.5 percent in 1980, saving $1,500.

¶A household making $22,000 in 2010 — roughly the federal poverty line for a family of four — on average paid 19.4 percent in taxes, compared with 20.2 percent, saving $200.

Jared Bernstein, who served as chief economist to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the Times analysis highlighted the need to raise taxes on the affluent and cut taxes for the poor. He cautioned that the middle class most likely would need to pay more, too.

“When you look at these numbers, you understand why we’re not collecting the revenue we need to support the spending we want,” said Mr. Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research group. “We’ve really gutted the system.”

But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a prominent conservative economist, said the changes in taxation over the last three decades reflected a conscious and successful strategy to encourage economic growth that should be reinforced, not reversed.

Mr. Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who is the president of the American Action Forum, said government should reduce deficits primarily through spending cuts, particularly to Medicare and Medicaid, the health programs that are the largest source of projected increases in the federal debt.

“We can’t grow our way out of it, and we can’t tax our way out of it,” he said of the government’s fiscal predicament. “We have a spending problem, period.”

Mr. Hicks, like many residents of Belleville, views this debate with unhappiness. He would like the government to cut spending but not reduce services. He is certain that the government should not raise taxes on the middle class, a group in which he includes himself, but he is ambivalent about asking anyone to pay more. Higher taxes would hurt his businesses, he said, so raising taxes on those who make more money seems likely to hurt their businesses, too.

“At this point, I guess it’s inevitable in order to get us out of this hole,” Mr. Hicks said of higher taxes. “Illinois is in bad shape, along with a lot of the nation. But I don’t feel like we should tax the middle class any more than we are right now. There’s going to come a point where they take the incentive out of working hard.”

If the government cut his taxes, Mr. Hicks said, he would use the money to put a roof over the picnic tables outside the restaurant, expanding the year-round seating area. He already employs 14 people; then he could hire more.

And if taxes rose? Would Mr. Hicks, who started working when tax rates were higher, really choose to slow down?

He smiled. “No,” he said. “I like it. What else would I do with my time?”

Cutting From Both Ends

The federal income tax, which will turn 100 next year, is in decline.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats have repeatedly voted to reduce the share of income that people must pay. Over the last decade, annual revenues from federal taxation of individual and corporate income averaged just 9.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the lowest level for any 10-year period since World War II.

The recession and new rounds of tax cuts further reduced revenues, to 7.6 percent of economic output in the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. Stronger economic growth has produced a modest increase in tax collections, but the White House budget office estimates that collections for the fiscal year that ended in September will total 9 percent of economic output, still less than before the financial crisis.

Federal spending, meanwhile, grew faster than the economy over the last decade — particularly during the recession. To pay those bills, the government borrowed more money than it collected in income taxes in each of the last three fiscal years, something it had not done in even a single year since World War II, federal data show.

Congress could have eliminated those deficits by cutting spending. It might also have averted those deficits by leaving the tax code unchanged. The government on average would have collected an additional $800 billion in each year from 2006 to 2010 if the 1980 code had remained in effect and economic activity had continued at the same pace, the Times analysis found. The annual federal deficits during those years averaged $714 billion.

Leaving the tax code as it was in 1980, however, would not have solved the nation’s long-term fiscal problems. Increases in federal spending, driven primarily by the rising cost of health care, are projected to outstrip even the revenue-raising capacity of the 1980 tax code in the coming decades, necessitating some combination of spending cuts and tax increases.

The income tax stands apart from other forms of taxation. It is the reason that upper-income households pay a larger share of their income in taxes than the rest of the population. The combined burden of all other federal, state and local taxes takes roughly the same share from all taxpayers. And many Americans — even in a middle-class, Democratic stronghold like Belleville — have misgivings about imposing higher tax rates on the affluent, an important reason that income taxation has declined.

The share of Americans who said high-income households paid too little in taxes fell from 77 percent in 1992 to 62 percent in 2012, according to Gallup, even as income inequality rose to the highest levels since the Great Depression.

Some people in Belleville subscribe to the argument that higher tax rates impede economic growth by discouraging investment. For others, it is a matter of fairness.

Anita Thole, a middle-income safety supervisor for a utility contractor, is not wealthy. She does not expect that she ever will be. She is a single mother with a daughter in college, and she said she regarded the wealthy with a mixture of envy and admiration. But she does not want them to pay higher taxes.

“They work their butt off to get what they got,” she said. “I wouldn’t want them to pay more so that I can pay less.”

Do they work harder than you?

“What? No. I work my butt off,” Ms. Thole, 46, said. “But you got to believe in the American dream. You got to love them for what they did, for what they made of themselves and for being more aggressive than me.”

Ms. Thole, like many in Belleville, is also convinced that governments could avoid raising taxes by adopting more frugal habits.

“There’s some days we stay home and we eat peanut butter,” she said.

What would she like governments to cut?

“I really like it when they cut the weeds along the highway,” she said. “I like it when there’s good roads to drive on. The schools, I don’t know, I don’t want to pull back from the schools. I don’t have the answer of where to pull back.

“I want the state parks to stay open. I want, I want, I want. I want Big Bird. I think it’s beautiful. What don’t I want? I don’t know.”

To Tax or Not to Tax?

William L. Enyart is a rarity in Belleville: he wants to raise his own taxes.

Mr. Enyart and his wife are lawyers, although for the last five years he led the Illinois National Guard. The couple made $380,587 in 2011 and paid $104,864 in federal taxes. His conviction that they should have paid more may not be shared by many of the area’s higher-income residents. But as the newly elected Democratic congressman for southwestern Illinois, Mr. Enyart, 63, is also the only man in town with a direct vote on federal tax policy.

Mr. Enyart, who won the seat of a retiring Democratic congressman, campaigned in part on his support for Mr. Obama’s tax plan. He defeated a Republican candidate who opposed it, 52 percent to 43 percent. But Mr. Enyart said he heard little enthusiasm for tax increases in his district. What has changed, he said, is that people are increasingly concerned about cuts to government benefits and services.

“Nobody likes to pay taxes. Nobody wants to raise taxes on anybody,” Mr. Enyart said. “But nobody wants to cut veterans services, nobody wants to give up that Interstate highway, nobody wants — pick the service that you like. These are necessary services, and they need to be paid for.”

The tax increase proposed by Mr. Obama, on taxable income — income after deductions and other adjustments — above $250,000 a year, would pay for only a small part of those services. It would reduce the projected deficit over the next decade by a little less than 10 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Nonetheless, Mr. Enyart said that he did not support broader tax increases. The focus, he said, should be on requiring the rich to pay more.

“We have the greatest disproportion of wealth since 1928, and I don’t think that’s a healthy thing,” he said. “How much money is enough? Do hedge fund traders really need to make a billion dollars a year and pay only 15 percent in taxes when we have teachers making $50,000 and paying 20 percent?”

John Siemens, who did not vote for Mr. Enyart, said that kind of “raise taxes” talk was a crowd-pleasing distraction from the need for painful spending cuts.

Mr. Siemens and his wife, Jan, both 59, own a company with a pair of factories in southwestern Illinois where workers assemble dollar-bill scanners for vending machines, dashboard lights for automobiles, magnetic probes for hospitals and other electronic equipment. They earned about $250,000 last year, so Mr. Obama’s plan would not have increased their income taxes. But it would raise the estate taxes they would have to pay to pass the company to their children someday.

Like many opponents of the president’s plan, Mr. Siemens thinks higher taxes will discourage investment and slow economic growth.

“There’s some tax rates that probably do need to be raised,” he said. “There are some that need to be lowered. But the politicians are not having an honest discussion. Is it fair or not fair is not the question. The question is, If you want to raise revenues, does that make sense or not?”

He noted as an example that interest on municipal bonds is tax-exempt, which encourages the wealthy to lend to local governments.

“Those lower tax rates were put into place for a reason,” he said. “It’s not just, let’s give the wealthy a break.”

Mr. Siemens does have a concern about fairness. He believes that lower-income households are not paying enough in taxes.

“By any measure, the wealthy are still paying a disproportionate amount of their income in taxes,” he said. “Is that fair or not fair? I don’t know, but I have an issue with the dramatic reduction of taxes at the low end because I think everybody needs some skin in the game.”

The debate is no longer theoretical here in Illinois. Facing perhaps the deepest budget crisis of any state, the Illinois legislature last year raised the state income tax rate to 5 percent from 3 percent. Unlike the federal income tax, Illinois taxes all income at the same rate.

Mr. Enyart said that the state needed more revenue, but that it should move to a tax system that imposed a heavier burden on high-income households. Mr. Siemens said the state should have cut spending.

The higher taxes have increased his costs and given an advantage to competitors in other states. And there are broader ripples, too: he said he was planning to buy some used machines, rather than new ones, to save money.

“We feel the burden of that, but it hasn’t gotten to the threshold of pain yet where we would move,” Mr. Siemens said. “There’s a lot of expense that would be incurred in moving, including a disruption of the work force, which you are always loath to do.”

View From the Lower End

Taylor McCallister, 20, works the front window at Mr. Hicks’s barbecue restaurant, taking orders from customers. She also works a second job and attends Southwestern Illinois College. She earned about $30,000 last year and, like her boss, she wishes the government would take less of that money.

“When I see my check it’s like, damn, that’s a huge chunk that was taken out,” she said. “I could have been making $450 instead of $378.”

Mitt Romney’s remarks about the “47 percent” focused public attention on the rising share of Americans who do not pay federal income taxes, a trend that has encouraged the public perception that lower-income households are getting a sweetheart deal. The share of Americans who think lower-income households pay too little in taxes increased to 24 percent in 2012 from 8 percent in 1992, according to Gallup.

But low-wage workers like Ms. McCallister still pay federal payroll taxes, which provide financing for Social Security and Medicare. They still pay sales taxes. Even if they are renters, they still bear the cost of property taxes in the form of higher rents.

And those taxes have climbed most quickly in recent decades.

The average American in 2010 paid 30 percent more of income in payroll taxes than in 1980, even while paying 27 percent less in federal income taxes. As a result, revenue from the payroll tax almost equaled income tax revenue before a temporary payroll tax cut took effect in 2011. The cut is scheduled to expire at the end of this year.

The rise of the payroll tax reflects the general movement away from requiring upper-income households to pay a larger share of income in taxes. All workers pay the same Social Security tax on wages below a threshold, which stood at $106,800 in 2010. The Medicare tax imposes a single rate on all wages, without a threshold.

Some experts argue, however, that payroll taxes are a special case because workers are entitled to Social Security benefits based in part on the amounts that they pay in taxes — a system more akin to a pension plan than an income tax.

In Illinois, the average burden of state and local taxes rose to 10.2 percent of income in 2010 from 8.8 percent in 1980, even before the latest round of tax increases last year.

And Illinois, like most states, takes a larger share of income from those who make less. Illinois households earning less than $25,000 a year on average paid 14.3 percent of income in state and local taxes in 2010, while those earning more than $200,000 paid 9.4 percent, according to the Times analysis.

Ms. McCallister said she and her friends worry about the nation’s financial problems. Their answer is simple: Someone has to pay more, and the affluent can best afford to do so. She said it was time to reverse a trend that had been going on so long it predated her birth by a decade.

“I want to know honestly how the more wealthy feel,” she said between tending to customers. “You’d think that they would want to help. We’re working these kinds of jobs and that’s what we have to do to make it through, and there’s other people making all this money. I don’t get it, honestly.

“I feel that maybe people who don’t make as much shouldn’t have to pay as much in. But who makes the rules?

“Not me.”

Comienza la gesta impositiva del segundo termino de Obama... Preparense que viene mas pues esto no va hacia reducir la deuda, sino hacia el costo del Obamacare y no afecta un apice la expectativa de un trillon de dolares en deficits anuales durante el proximo cuatrenio.

IRS aims to clarify investment income tax under healthcare law

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:14pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service has released new rules for investment income taxes on capital gains and dividends earned by high-income individuals that passed Congress as part of the 2010 healthcare reform law.

The 3.8 percent surtax on investment income, meant to help pay for healthcare, goes into effect in 2013. It is the first surtax to be applied to capital gains and dividend income.

The tax affects only individuals with more than $200,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and married couples filing jointly with more than $250,000 of MAGI.

The tax applies to a broad range of investment securities ranging from stocks and bonds to commodity securities and specialized derivatives.

The 159 pages of rules spell out when the tax applies to trusts and annuities, as well as to individual securities traders.

Released late on Friday, the new regulations include a 0.9 percent healthcare tax on wages for high-income individuals.

Both sets of rules will be published on Wednesday in the Federal Register.

The proposed rules are effective starting January 1. Before making the rules final, the IRS will take public comments and hold hearings in April.

Together, the two taxes are estimated to raise $317.7 billion over 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis released in June.

To illustrate when the tax applies, the IRS offered an example of a taxpayer filing as a single individual who makes $180,000 in wage income plus $90,000 from investment income. The individual's modified adjusted gross income is $270,000.

The 3.8 percent tax applies to the $70,000, and the individual would pay $2,660 in surtaxes, the IRS said.

The IRS plans to release a new form for taxpayers to fill out for this tax when filing 2013 returns.

The new rules leave some questions unanswered, tax experts said. It was unclear how rental income will be treated under the new rules, said Michael Grace, managing director at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP law firm in Washington.

"The proposed regulations surely will increase tax compliance burdens for individuals," said Grace, a former IRS official. "There's clearly some drafting left to be done."

(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Howard Goller and Jan Paschal)

Los Republicanos parece que se estan sobreponiendo al sonsonete de la victoria de Obama... Pero tienen que medirse en este asunto para que la mayoria del fango le salpique a la oposicion...

Angry with Obama, GOP threatens political war next year
By Tom Cohen, CNN
updated 7:50 PM EST, Tue December 11, 2012

Washington (CNN) -- They are losing the battle over higher taxes on the wealthy, so now Republicans are threatening a political war next year when it comes time to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

With cracks appearing in their anti-tax facade and polls showing most Americans favoring President Barack Obama's stance in the fiscal cliff negotiations, GOP legislators are starting to advocate a tactical retreat to fight another day.

Conservative Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, promised the newly re-elected Obama "one hell of a fight" next year if the president forces through his plan for high-income earners to pay more taxes without agreeing to substantive steps to reduce the nation's chronic federal deficits and debt.

"But there will come a time in February and March where we have to raise the debt ceiling," Graham said Tuesday on "Piers Morgan Tonight" on CNN.

"I will not raise the debt ceiling ever again until we get significant entitlement reforms, because if we don't reform entitlements, we're going to become Greece," adding that the situation presented a chance for Obama to lead. "But if he doesn't lead, there's going to be one hell of a fight over raising the debt ceiling."

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell concurred on Tuesday, telling reporters that "we are going to insist that we have another discussion about the future of our country in connection with his request of us to raise the debt ceiling."

Meanwhile, McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday called for Obama to make public the specific spending cuts he will offer in a deficit-reduction deal.

Both complained that Obama was deliberately holding up progress in negotiations by refusing to provide the details of his cost saving plans.

"Where are the president's spending cuts?" asked Boehner, R-Ohio, the lead GOP negotiator. "The longer the White House slow walks this process, the closer our economy gets to the fiscal cliff."

In response, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Boehner and McConnell were wrong because Obama detailed his proposed spending cuts more than a year ago.

He added that Republican negotiators had yet to offer any details of their own on how to raise more revenue from taxes, "and it would be helpful if they did."

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, argued that the $1 trillion in spending cuts agreed to by Congress in the past two years should be counted toward deficit reduction in the current negotiations.

"Where are the cuts? They're in bills that you, Mr. Speaker, have voted for," Pelosi, D-California, said Tuesday.

Three weeks remain to cut a deal before the automatic tax increases and spending cuts of the fiscal cliff go into effect on January 1.

Without an agreement during the current lame-duck session of Congress, everyone's taxes will go up, and economists warn the impact of the fiscal cliff could cause another recession.

However, the administration has signaled it can delay some of the effects to allow time to work out an agreement when a new Congress convenes in January.

Obama has held a campaign-style series of public events to back his call for extending Bush-era tax cuts for 98% of Americans while allowing rates to return to higher 1990s levels on income over $250,000.

The issue was central to his re-election in November, and Obama made clear on Monday that he intended to adhere to his belief that the wealthy must contribute more.

"I'm willing to compromise a little bit," Obama said at a Michigan diesel engine plant. However, he said higher tax rates on the the top income brackets was "a principle I'm not going to compromise on."

The president's public push appears to be working as polls show that most Americans back the president's position.

A new Politico/George Washington University survey on Monday said 60% of respondents supported Obama's proposal compared with 38% who opposed it.

On Tuesday, a Gallup poll showed that 70% of adult Americans want Congress and the White House to reach a compromise that would avoid the fiscal cliff. A similar Gallup poll last week said 62% wanted compromise.

The deficit-reduction debate hinges on the tax issue, with Republicans opposing any increase in tax rates in their quest to shrink government, while Obama and Democrats want to secure more tax revenue as part of a broader package.

Both sides call for eliminating tax deductions and loopholes to raise more revenue, but Obama also demands an end to the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 for the top brackets.

Republicans oppose the return to higher rates, saying it will inhibit job growth because small business owners declare their profits as personal income and therefore would face a tax increase.

In response, Obama and Democrats note that their plan -- already approved by the Senate and needing House approval to be signed into law by the president -- affects just 2% of taxpayers and 3% of small business owners.

While Republicans argue those small business owners account for about half of all business income, Democrats say that's because they include law firms, hedge funds traders and other high-income operations.

Obama and Boehner met face to face on Sunday for the first time since November 16. It also was their first one-on-one meeting in more than a year, when deficit talks broke down.

The outline for a deal has become clear in recent weeks. Both sides agree that more revenue from taxes should be part of the equation, with Obama seeking $1.6 trillion and Republicans offering $800 billion.

A source close to the talks said Tuesday that the White House had floated the idea of dropping the revenue target to $1.2 trillion, then went up to $1.4 trillion on Monday.

Later, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said his side made a counteroffer to the White House "that would achieve tax and entitlement reform to solve our looming debt crisis and create more American jobs."

Steel also said Boehner and Obama spoke on the phone after the Republican proposal was floated. Steel provided no further details on the counteroffer or the phone conversation, and repeated Boehner's earlier assertion that Republicans were waiting for Obama to identify specific spending cuts he would be willing to make.

Boehner's side wants additional revenue to come from tax reform, such as eliminating some deductions and loopholes, while Obama demands the higher rates on income over $250,000 for families as part of the equation.

Republicans also seek savings from entitlement programs totaling another $800 billion or so, while Obama has proposed $400 billion in reduced entitlement costs. Social Security would not be included in the president's plan.

Another sticky issue -- whether the need to raise the federal debt ceiling early next year should be part of the discussion -- also remains unresolved. Obama says absolutely not, while Boehner says that any increase in government borrowing to pay its bills must be offset by spending cuts.

Graham's comments this week showed that Republicans plan to regroup around negotiations to raise the debt ceiling.

He noted that Obama proposed making permanent a process originated by McConnell that would allow the president to increase the debt ceiling and Congress to then try to block it, an unlikely scenario given Democratic control of the Senate.

"That's going nowhere," Graham told Fox News on Monday, adding: "He's not king. He's president."

However, a top House Democrat said that exploiting the debt ceiling for political gain would backfire on Republicans.

"Threatening to tank the entire economy, which is what would happen if we ever defaulted on our debt, is not a kind of negotiating strategy that is going to be popular with the American people," Rep. Chris Van Hollen told MSNBC on Monday.

It remains unclear if a deal will happen before the end of the year or if the negotiations will carry over into 2013, after the fiscal cliff takes effect.

Without action now on the fiscal cliff, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that middle-class families would pay about $2,000 a year more in taxes. Even with a deal, revisions in the tax code and other changes would mean everyone pays a bit more starting next year.

All signs point toward a two-step approach sought by Obama, with initial agreement now on some version of his tax plan with targets set for comprehensive negotiations on a broader deficit reduction deal in the new Congress next year.

Such an outcome would put off the main worry of the fiscal cliff, the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts that would result in higher rates for everyone.

Obama and Democrats say they would then be ready to negotiate significant savings from entitlement programs, while Republicans say they need to first see commitment on entitlement reforms before accepting any higher tax rates.

McConnell, R-Kentucky, warned on the Senate floor on Tuesday that "until the president gets specific about cuts, nobody should trust Democrats to put a dime in new revenue toward real deficit reduction or to stop their shakedown of the taxpayers at the top 2%."

He and Boehner want Obama to take some of the political heat for proposing cuts to entitlement programs and other government spending.

On Tuesday, congressional Democrats rejected any cuts to the Medicaid health care system for poor and disabled Americans as part of a fiscal cliff deal. The opposition by Democrats showed the pressure Obama faces from his liberal base to avoid significant changes to the entitlement program that benefits millions.

Some in Congress warn that the legislative process will need at least a week to work through potentially complex measures from any proposed deal, meaning there is a de facto deadline of Christmas Day at the very latest for negotiators.

Retiring Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, predicted Tuesday on MSNBC that a deal would get worked out in a week's time.

"It would be wise on their part not to come too quickly with a deal because that would give all the interest groups a chance to get organized and try to kill it," Conrad said. "And we know that on the right, on the left, special interest groups are just salivating at the chance to attack any agreement because, look, any agreement is going to have controversy attached to it."

Uno de los resultados de votar por un Presidente gastalon que no quiere tener que resolver la ecuacion de $1.00 de gasto publico = $1.00 de recaudacion + pago de deuda es lo que vamos a leer en los proximos dias, meses y resto del cuatrenio...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/medicare_12-13.html

Transcript
RAY SUAREZ: And that brings us to a big part of the Medicare debate. Should the eligibility age for future retirees be raised from 65 to 67?

Many Democrats have pressured the president this week to oppose any attempt to do so. But in an interview with ABC News, President Obama indicated he may be open to the idea as part of a compromise.

Neera Tanden is president of the Center for American progress. She previously worked for the Obama administration working on health care reform. And Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former deputy secretary of health and human services in the George W. Bush administration. He served as Mitt Romney's health care policy adviser during the just completed presidential campaign.

And, Tevi Troy, if we phase in a higher age for Medicare eligibility, do you really save much money?

TEVI TROY, Hudson Institute: Well, yes. Over a 10-year period, we're looking at $125 billion in savings. Over a 75-year period, we're looking at about a trillion dollars off Medicaid -- Medicare's long-term liability. So this is real money. It makes a real difference, over 20 years, a 5 percent savings.

Look, the Kohut argument is that people want cuts, but they don't want to specify the cuts. Policy-makers have to make choices about what the best cuts are.

RAY SUAREZ: Are there any countervailing costs we have to worry about? If you move the bar from 65 to 67, don't people arrive at the threshold after years of uninsurance or underinsurance sicker, and thus more expensive than they would have been had they entered the program earlier?

TEVI TROY: Well, there are certainly problems. And it's not perfect. And Neera's study talked a little bit about this. But what you have is, first of all, it's phased in over a long period of time.

Second of all, people are living a lot longer. When Social Security first came around, people were living to 62. Medicare, they were living to 70. Now people are living until 80 years old. People retiring now are spending 30 percent of their time in retirement.

So, we really need some kind of alternative, because we can't pay for these beneficiaries for such a long period.

RAY SUAREZ: Neera Tanden, it's widely agreed cuts have to come from somewhere. The government writ large has to spend less money. Why not save money this way?

NEERA TANDEN, Center for American Progress: Well, we agree. And at the Center for American Progress, we have put forward savings in the Medicare program of $385 billion. We believe there needs to be savings.

But we can do savings, we can have savings that actually don't affect beneficiaries this way. And what I would disagree with Tevi about is really this is a way that just simply shifts costs from the federal government to employers, states, and seniors themselves.

And, in fact, because Medicare is a program that is extremely efficient, it's actually cheaper for a beneficiary than private insurance, what ends up happening is that really for the amount of money you save at the federal level, people at the state level, employers, they spend more money per beneficiary.

So what will happen is, we will have 400,000 seniors, we estimate 400,000 seniors without health insurance. And for those who do have health insurance, their costs will rise an average of $2,000. So this is really a poor idea of how to save money, because what it's doing is increasing what we spend as a country on health care just to simply lower the federal budget. That makes no sense.

RAY SUAREZ: Didn't we do something similar with Social Security? By changing the eligibility date, people had to over time change their plans. They worked longer. They realized they were going to retire at 67, not at 65. Will people make similar adjustments in the face of a new Medicare eligibility age?

NEERA TANDEN: I'm so glad you asked about this, Ray, because this has been a very poor analogy that people have used on both sides, because we don't believe -- no one believes -- Democrats don't believe and Republicans don't believe -- in universal retirement.

We all recognize retirement is for a certain age. But, as Democrats and progressives -- and the president himself has believed in universal health care. We have the Affordable Care Act because we believe people should have insurance. We have systems of private insurance because we think people should have insurance.

We don't think that people should just not have insurance below a certain age. So, really, what we're saying and because of the Affordable Care Act we have a system where a lot of these seniors who were cut off Medicare will move to -- be moved to private insurance or the Affordable Care Act, but it will just cost more money when we do so.

And for us, that makes no sense. And for conservatives, who argue about competitiveness and the need to get our economy going, the idea that we're going to take seniors 65, 66, 67 years old out of the Medicare pool, where they're the cheapest group in that pool and they bring the cost of that pool down, and put the them in the pool of employers, you are going to raise the cost of insurance for everybody in the private insurance system and for employers, you make it more expensive to provide insurance.

So this is really a bad idea for companies, for states who are -- who have big costs. And that's what -- why we think it's a poor idea.

RAY SUAREZ: Tevi Troy, what about Neera Tanden's point?

TEVI TROY: Well, sure there's cost-shifting. The whole point of this is that you're reducing Medicare's cost. And somebody has to apparently.

That's why those polls earlier show that people don't want to do this. But the fact is that you will be reducing Medicare costs by $125 billion. If you're making this argument that the Affordable Care Act gives people opportunities to get insurance elsewhere, then that's what we're doing here. And, in addition, this is effectively a form of means-testing.

It's saying that the wealthiest seniors will have to pay more. They will have to either get insurance privately or work longer, and that the poorest seniors will be more likely to go on Medicaid, may work longer, or they may also go on the exchanges. So there are other options out there, but this is it. And this is the point, is we're trying to force people to make choices.

RAY SUAREZ: As we're phasing in the Affordable Care Act as a nation, many states are, as they were allowed by the Supreme Court decision, opting out of that new Medicaid plan.

Can Medicaid really pick up the slack if the poorest seniors are going to get less services in the states where they're living?

TEVI TROY: Well, sure.

First of all, we don't know how many states are going to take up the Medicaid expansion. And we don't know how many states are going to take up the exchanges. I suspect that more states will do the Medicaid expansion than will do the exchanges. And that's what we're seeing so far.

But the fact is that there will be a number of options. Medicaid is one of them. The exchange is one of them. Working longer is one of them. And, again, for the wealthier seniors, they're the ones who are going to have to bear the biggest brunt of this. The poorer seniors have more options.

RAY SUAREZ: Neera Tanden, you just heard Tevi Troy submits that there are places in the design of current health care policy to pick up some of the slack for those 65-to-67-year-olds. Why wouldn't it work?

NEERA TANDEN: Sure. Sure.

Many will be picked up in the slack, but many won't be. And, again, we put out a report this week that shows we will have 400,000 seniors that won't have health insurance. And a lot of those seniors will come from states where they're not doing Medicaid expansion, so they will be lost in the cracks, if you will.

And those are working -- those are people who would be working poor today. And so we're talking about making those seniors the most vulnerable. And when Tevi discusses the $125 billion this would save, we recognize that there's a need for savings.

But we can have savings in the Medicare program that doesn't hit beneficiaries, that doesn't break the promise of Medicare, the promise that's been made to seniors, and that really looks at things like competitive bidding, other ways that you can derive savings in the health care system by making it more effective and more efficient, and to drive down national health expenditures, because that should be all our goal.

Instead of simply making seniors pay more for their health care, we should actually reduce those expenditures.

RAY SUAREZ: Neera Tanden and Tevi Troy, thank you both.

TEVI TROY: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Our reporting partners at Kaiser Health News asked policy experts how they would control Medicare costs. Read their responses online.
Disfruten de eso mis queridos Obamanitas...

Y sigue la mata dando... Aparentemente, laadministracion de Obama esta infestada de espias y enemigos de la Nacion.

egyptian-magazine-muslim-brotherhood-infiltrates

Egyptian Magazine: Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrates Obama Administration
by John Rossomando • Jan 3, 2013 at 1:10 pm

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3869/egyptian-magazine-muslim-brotherhood-infiltrates


An Egyptian magazine claims that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.

The Dec. 22 story published in Egypt's Rose El-Youssef magazine (read an IPT translation here) suggests the six turned the White House "from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood."

The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers.

The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

Alikhan is a founder of the World Islamic Organization, which the magazine identifies as a Brotherhood "subsidiary." It suggests that Alikhan was responsible for the "file of Islamic states" in the White House and that he provides the direct link between the Obama administration and the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.

Elibiary, who has endorsed the ideas of radical Muslim Brotherhood luminary Sayyid Qutb, may have leaked secret materials contained in Department of Homeland Security databases, according to the magazine. He, however, denies having any connection with the Brotherhood.

Elibiary also played a role in defining the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy, and the magazine asserts that Elibiary wrote the speech Obama gave when he told former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave power but offers no source or evidence for the claim.

According to Rose El-Youssef, Rashad Hussain maintained close ties with people and groups that it says comprise the Muslim Brotherhood network in America. This includes his participation in the June 2002 annual conference of the American Muslim Council, formerly headed by convicted terrorist financier Abdurahman Alamoudi.

He also participated in the organizing committee of the Critical Islamic Reflection along with important figures of the American Muslim Brotherhood such as Jamal Barzinji, Hisham al-Talib and Yaqub Mirza.

Regarding al-Marayati, who has been among the most influential Muslim American leaders in recent years, the magazine draws connections between MPAC in the international Muslim Brotherhood infrastructure.

Magid heads ISNA, which was founded by Brotherhood members, was appointed by Obama in 2011 as an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security. The magazine says that has also given speeches and conferences on American Middle East policy at the State Department and offered advice to the FBI.

Rose El-Youssef says Patel maintains a close relationship with Hani Ramadan, the grandson of Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and is a member of the Muslim Students Association, which it identifies as "a large Brotherhood organization."

El relevo del evasor de contribuciones llamado Tim Geithner como secretario de la tesoreria es Jack Lew... Un grisaceo alicate partidista con un laaaargo historial que pinta muy mal para reforma alguna al casino economico que son los mercados y/o sus mas grandes beneficiados que son los bancos y corredurias de bienes...

Jack Lew's Robert Rubin Connection Is A Bad Sign For Financial Reform
Posted: 01/11/2013 4:33 pm EST | Updated: 01/11/2013 4:33 pm EST

There are some misunderstandings out there about Jack Lew, Obama's pick to run the Treasury Department, which is what you get with a relative cipher like Lew.

One thing is clear enough, from his association with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin to his stint at Citigroup to his professed lack of expertise in financial markets: His track record should not inspire any hope that he will care much about financial reform.

First, the misinformation: The Washington Post has a breathless story Friday headlined "Jack Lew Had Major Role At Citigroup When It Nearly Imploded." This comes about two years after The Huffington Post first reported on his role at Citi, where he was chief operating officer of a couple of investment units for about two years.

Lew's role at Citi was hardly "major," at least not when it came to the investment decisions of the divisions where he worked. In fact, he was likely kept far, far away from those decisions. As chief operating officer, he had an exalted title and definitely made a lot of money -- including millions in salary and a $950,000 bonus in 2009, after Citi was bailed out. But he handled back-office matters like payroll. As Bloomberg wrote earlier this week, Lew's job was "overseeing budget, finance and operations" at the unit. He made the trains run on time, in other words.

The Washington Post article claims that "More than 15,000 financial advisers and bankers worked under Lew," which is maybe true in the sense that they were lower than him in the corporate pecking order, or maybe worked on a lower floor. But none of those bankers or financial advisers answered to Lew about investment decisions.

And Lew had nothing to do with the many shady investments in Citi's alternative investments unit -- including a bet on John Paulson's hedge fund, which was at the time betting against subprime mortgage-backed securities. When he jumped to that unit 2008, the financial crisis was already in full swing and Citi was well on its way to a huge government bailout. As the Washington Post article points out:

A press release announcing his new position as chief operating officer of the group said he would “oversee coordination between the operations, technology, human resources, legal, financial and regional departments.”
He was the chief office manager, in other words, same as his other job.

What's possibly more troubling about Lew is how he got to Citigroup, along with the fact that he apparently managed to spend a couple of years on Wall Street without learning too much about markets.

His position at Citi was secured on the recommendation of Rubin, who knew him from their years working together in the Clinton administration and was on Citi's executive committee in 2006.

The connection to Rubin is particularly troubling, as Rubin was the chief architect of the financial deregulation in the 1990s that helped set the stage for the crisis. Lew was not as close to Rubin as were Tim Geithner or Larry Summers, writes Michael Hirsh in the National Journal. But he at least owes Rubin for his big Wall Street payday.

And he seems to have adopted Rubin's attitude about regulation, telling a Senate hearing in 2010 that he didn't think deregulation was the "proximate cause" of the financial crisis. That put him at odds with conventional wisdom, and squarely within the worldview of the Rubinites.

So here's what we know about Lew when it comes to financial reform: He's someone without expertise in finance, but who nevertheless collected a paycheck from a bailed-out Citigroup and shares at least one of Robert Rubin's opinions about regulation.

Lew may yet surprise us. He is consistently described as smart, thoughtful and capable. Reformers are hoping for the best. But we should prepare for something less.