Mammoth Blog

House Democrats contemplate abolishing 401(k) tax breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation's $3 trillion 401 system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401 investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at The New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Mr. Miller's Education and Labor Committee on her proposal.

Getty Images
George Miller: Looking at redirecting tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts.
At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Under Ms. Ghilarducci's plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5% of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3% a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

"I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s," Ms. Ghilarducci said in an interview. "401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won't have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break."

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ms. Ghilarducci said.

"I want to spend our nation's dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered" if the plan were adopted, Ms. Ghilarducci said.

She has been in contact with Mr. Miller and Mr. McDermott about her plan, and they are interested in pursuing it, she said.

"This [plan] certainly is intriguing," said Mike DeCesare, press secretary for Mr. McDermott.

"That is part of the discussion," he said.

While Mr. Miller stopped short of calling for Ms. Ghilarducci's plan at the hearing last week, he was clearly against continuing tax breaks as they currently exist.

SAVINGS RATE
John Belluardo: "If the tax deferral goes away, the employers have no reason to do the matches, which primarily help people in the lower income brackets."
"The savings rate isn't going up for the investment of $80 billion," he said. "We have to start to think about ... whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should."

"From where I sit that's just crazy," said John Belluardo, president of Stewardship Financial Services Inc. in Tarrytown, N.Y. "A lot of people contribute to their 401(k)s because of the match of the em-ployer," he said.Mr. Belluardo's firm does not manage assets directly.

Higher-income employers provide matching funds to employee plans so that they can qualify for tax benefits for their own defined contribution plans, he said.

"If the tax deferral goes away, the employers have no reason to do the matches, which primarily help people in the lower income brackets," Mr. Belluardo said.

"This is a battle between liberalism and conservatism," said Christopher Van Slyke, a partner in the La Jolla, Calif., advisory firm Trovena LLC, which manages $400 million. "People are afraid because their accounts are seeing some volatility, so Democrats will seize on the opportunity to attack a program where investors control their own destiny," he said.

The Profit Sharing/ 401(k) Council of America in Chicago, which represents employers that sponsor defined contribution plans, is "staunchly committed to keeping the employee benefit system in American voluntary," said Ed Ferrigno, vice president in the Washington office.

"Some of the tenor [of the hearing last week] that the entire system should be based on the activities of the markets in the last 90 days is not the way to judge the system," he said.

No legislative proposals have been introduced and Congress is out of session until next year.

However, most political observers believe that Democrats are poised to gain seats in both the House and the Senate, so comments made by the mostly Democratic members who attended the hearing could be a harbinger of things to come.

ADVICE AT ISSUE
In addition to tax breaks for 401(k)s, the issue of allowing investment advisers to provide advice for 401(k) plans was also addressed at the hearing.

Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J., was critical of Department of Labor proposals made in August that would allow advisers to give individual advice if the advice was generated using a computer model.

Mr. Andrews characterized the proposals as "loopholes" and said that investment advice should not be given by advisers who have a direct interest in the sale of financial products.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 contains provisions making it easier for investment advisers to give individualized counseling to 401(k) holders.

"In retrospect that doesn't seem like such a good idea to me," Mr. Andrews said. "This is an issue I think we have to revisit. I frankly think that the compromise we struck in 2006 is not terribly workable or wise," he said.

Last Thursday, the Department of Labor hastily scheduled a public hearing on the issue in Washington for Oct. 21.

The agency does not frequently hold public hearings on its proposals.

Source>>>

ROAD TO REVOLUTION

We are excited to announce the title and release date of the new live DVD/CD, as decided by the LP fans on LinkinPark.com!

The winning title of the DVD/CD package, due out November 25th, is "ROAD TO REVOLUTION." Thanks to all the fans who submitted names and voted, and a special thanks to LPU member LPASIANOTTER who submitted the title.

Below is the track-listing of the CD/DVD filmed and recorded live at Milton Keynes, UK. Keep checking LinkinPark.com for more details and secret info!

-Linkin Park

LINKIN PARK: ROAD TO REVOLUTION
DVD/CD TRACK-LISTING
One Step Closer
From The Inside
No More Sorrow
Given Up
Lying From You
Hands Held High
Leave Out All the Rest
Numb
The Little Things Give You Away
Breaking the Habit
Shadow of the Day
Crawling
In the End
Pushing Me Away
What I've Done
Numb/Encore (featuring Jay-Z)
Jigga What/Faint (featuring Jay-Z)
Bleed It Out

Hear Alice Smith's rendition of "Silver Bells" as part of Epic Records and Hotel Cafe's Winter Songs release. Other artists include Sara Bareilles, Lenka, Katy Perry, Fiona Apple, Alice Smith, Brandi Carlile, and more!

The track listing is as follows:
1. Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson - "Winter Song"
2. Brandi Carlile - "The Heartache Can Wait"
3. Lenka - "All My Bells Are Ringing"
4. KT Tunstall - "Sleigh Ride"
5. Alice Smith - "Silver Bells"
6. Nicole Atkins - "Blue Christmas"
7. Fiona Apple - "Frosty The Snowman"
8. Meiko - "Maybe Next Year (X-Mas Song)"
9. Holly Conlan - "I'll Be Home For Christmas"
10. Katy Perry - "White Christmas"
11. Colbie Caillat - "Misletoe"
12. Priscilla Ahn - "Silent Night"
13. Kate Havnevik - "Winter Wonderland"
14. Catherine Feeny - "Christmas Song"
15. Hotel Cafe Medley - Auld Lang Syne (Charity Medley)

Alice Smith

FOR LOVERS, DREAMERS & ME
Has Been Remastered and is OUT NOW!

Buy it on iTunes!

Seve Ballesteros

Seve Ballesteros has been praised as a hero by Europe's leading golfers after he was taken to hospital with a brain tumour. Photograph: Glenn Campbell/AFP/Getty Images

Severiano Ballesteros was last night resting in a Madrid hospital after doctors performed a biopsy on the brain tumour detected last week. The procedure will determine whether the tumour is benign or malignant, but no result has so far been made public.

Ballesteros has spent the past 10 days having tests after being taken to hospital following a fainting fit and dizzy spells. He has had several bouts of illness since retiring from competitive golf last year but news of his condition nevertheless came as an unpleasant surprise to the golf world. The Spaniard is still just 51 years old, an age at which many golfers are still playing on the senior circuit.

Fellow golfers yesterday added their voices to the fans who have inundated Ballesteros with goodwill messages since he was first taken to hospital. "Seve we love you. We are all hoping that you will recover as soon as possible," his fellow Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jiménez said.

"Seve was such a great hero of mine," said Lee Westwood, whose 1997 Ryder Cup debut was under Ballesteros's captaincy. "I never played with a more charismatic golfer, but he was not just extraordinary in the golfing sense. If you went into a room, you knew he was there even if you couldn't see or hear him. That's how big he was in his heyday and even now."

José María Olazábal, who visited him in hospital before the brain tumour diagnosis had been confirmed, said he had looked physically well. "We chatted for a good while," he said. "He was obviously concerned but he seemed on good form."

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-- Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, an album that has been 17 years in the making, reportedly has gotten a U.S. release date at long last.

Hits Daily Double reported the group's record label, Interscope, plans to release the album November 23, however, MTV News said Interscope representatives didn't respond to its requests to confirm the report by press time.

The music news program quoted the rock band's front man Axl Rose as saying in a 2006 online posting that the band would try to get the record out that year.

"To say the making of this album has been an unbearably long and incomprehensible journey would be an understatement," Rose said in the posting.

"Overcoming the endless and (seeming) insanity of the obstacles faced by all involved, notwithstanding the emotional challenges endured by everyone -- the fans, the band, our road crew and business team -- has, at many times, seemed for all like a bad dream where one wakes up only to find they are still in the nightmare ... For much of the time some form or another of legalities have been taking place that really the best way to deal with publicly was to keep our mouths shut in an attempt to ensure the best outcome and especially one that wouldn't jeopardize the band or the album." source>>>

an Clanton, biblical studies scholar, has written an article, "Biblical Interpretation and Christian Domestic Terrorism: The Exegeses of Rev. Michael Bray and Rev. Paul Hill" (SBL Forum, n.p. [cited Aug 2008]), that analyzes Christian 'terrorism' against abortionists and suggests ways of countering such violence, and since Islamist terrorism is one of the topics that I often post on, I thought that I should at least take a look at Dr. Clanton's article.

Despite the title's reference to "Christian Domestic Terrorism," the term "terrorism" does not elsewhere appear in the article -- nor does "terrorist" or even "terror." Consequently, no definition of "terrorism" is provided by Dr. Clanton that would clarify why he applies this term to the violence advocated by Michael Bray and used by Paul Hill. Presumably, "the bombing of abortion clinics and the planned murder of abortion providers" is so obviously "terrorism" that the issue need not even be broached, but I'd like to have seen some treatment of this point.

What Dr. Clanton does talk about is violence used in religion:

Most scholars who examine the relationship between religion and violence agree that one of the most important factors in using sacred texts to justify violence against another person, community, or institution is the process of making them an "Other."[1] Religiously speaking, these others serve as the discordant example of belief and behavior over and against which the people of God are to be constructed, and thus it is easy to see why violence is often employed to remove, punish, or defend innocents from these others.[2] The emphasis on defending innocents from the "Other" is central to the most common form of scripturally justified violence in America: violence in the radical anti-abortion movement(s).

Footnotes:

[1] See, e.g., Regina Schwartz, The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 4-5 and passim. See also the comments of Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Is Religion Killing Us? Violence in the Bible and the Quran (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 112-13.

[2] See John J. Collins, "The Zeal of Phineas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence," JBL 122 (2003): 11: "Identity is defined negatively by a sharp differentiation of Israel from the other peoples of the land, and positively by the prescriptions of a covenant with a jealous sovereign god." See now Collins, Does the Bible Justify Violence? (Facets Series; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 15. See also "The Zeal of Phineas," 18; Does the Bible Justify Violence? 27: Collins sees this construction of the "Other" and the divinely guaranteed absoluteness of that category as "the root of religious violence in the Jewish and Christian traditions."

This is a commonly noted point about violence directed toward an "enemy" and has been discussed at length, as Dr. Clanton notes, but he has more specific things to say about the use of the Bible by Bray and Hill:

It should be clear that both Bray and Hill view the Bible in a specific way. For them, the text serves as what Bruce Lincoln calls a transcendent discourse upon which they base their practices, that is, "embodied material action [that] render religious discourse operational."[21] These practices affect both the way(s) in which believers encounter the world and the way(s) in which they shape their own identity. That is, given the assumptions that believers like Hill and Bray hold about the Bible, it is not surprising that they would seek answers to perceived problems in its pages, but what is not so obvious is that "prior familiarity with the text -- and the sedimented familiarity of others, which he experiences as an interpretive tradition -- provides the lens through which he [i.e., a believer such as Hill or Bray] understands and responds to the problem."[22] Lincoln calls this situation one of "mutual mediation," that is, one's devotion to a specific religious discourse and/or sacred text both colors and in turn reinforces the way in which one views the world in general, and specific issues in particular. With Hill and Bray, it is obvious that they both hold the view that the Bible is a repository of wisdom, a handbook for living due to their understanding of their particular brand of evangelical Christianity. This view allows them the exegetical freedom to turn to their sacred text with real-life issues and situations, such as the plight of the "pre-born," and find viable instructions and paradigms for action, where others may find only thematic or tangential parallels. Similarly, their investment in the Bible also allows them to view their present situation through an interpretive grid developed through years of study and an imbededness in a particular interpretive tradition. Thus, the Bible serves as the font of action, belief, and identity for them, as well as providing the matrix through they perceive their own political, social, and ideological location in the world.

Footnotes:

[21] Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 6.

[22] Ibid., 35; ee also 47.

I'm not sure how much this explains. Many evangelicals -- and perhaps other Christians as well -- consider the Bible "a transcendent discourse upon which they base their practices" and hold "the view that the Bible is a repository of wisdom, a handbook for living," yet they don't turn to violence against abortionists. The number of Christian 'terrorists' must be very tiny, though I don't know the statistics. Since the numbers are so small, we should perhaps look at the idiosyncratic motivations to explain particular Christian 'terrorists' rather than generalizations that fail to distinguish them from a larger body of Christians who share similar views of the transcendent status of the Bible but who do not commit religiously inspired 'terrorism'.

I suppose that I ought to say more on this issue, particularly on Dr. Clanton's views on preventing this sort of violence, but my day's duty calls me to my own nonreligiously inspired actions that will terrify my students. source>>>

(Reuters) - British Open champion Padraig Harrington birdied three of the last five holes to share the lead after the first round of the PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda on Tuesday.

The Irishman, beaten in a playoff for last year's title, fired a two-under-par 68 to set the pace with American Jim Furyk in breezy conditions at The Mid Ocean Club in Tucker's Town.

Harrington, who has triumphed in three of the last six majors, swept to the top of the leaderboard by picking up shots at the 14th, 16th and the par-five last.

Twice U.S. Open champion Retief Goosen opened with a 70 while fellow South African Trevor Immelman, who clinched this year's Masters, battled to a 76.

The 36-hole stroke-play event, being held in Bermuda for the second consecutive year, brings together the winners of the season's four majors.

Seven-times champion and world number one Tiger Woods is a conspicuous absentee, having ended his 2008 campaign after his U.S. Open victory in June to have reconstructive knee surgery.

With Harrington having won both the British Open and the PGA Championship this year, Goosen and Furyk were late additions to the field. source>>>

NDIANAPOLIS - NCAA president Myles Brand sees the progress.

College athletes are earning degrees at record rates, according to a NCAA report released Tuesday, and at higher percentages than the overall student body.

Brand, who has made academic reform his top priority, was encouraged by new NCAA figures that show 79 percent of all student-athletes who entered school in the fall of 2001 have graduated and 78 percent of those who entered college between 1998 and 2001 earned degrees within six years. Both are one-point increases over last year's report and all-time highs.

Still, he acknowledges challenges remain as those who played men's basketball, football and baseball continue to lag behind student-athletes in other sports.

From 1998-2001 men's basketball players graduated at 62 percent, while baseball produced a rate of 68 percent. Football Bowl Subdivision teams had a grad rate of 67 percent, and the Football Championship Subdivision came in at 65 percent. Women's bowling, at 68 percent, was the only other sport to finish below 70 percent.

"We are continuing to make progress toward the goal I established of an 80 percent graduation success rate," Brand said. "While there is still room for growth in some sports, we have seen improvements."

White men's basketball players who enrolled in 2001 graduated at 80 percent, a one-point drop from last year's report. Black men's basketball players, however, continued to improve, with 58 percent graduating, a two-point increase from last year and up 12 points over the seven years the NCAA has tracked the numbers.

To some, these are encouraging trends.

"I'm confident enough to say that we still need to work on decreasing the gap between white athletes and African-American athletes overall," said Richard Lapchick, who leads the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. "But this is really good news for college sports."

This is the fourth year the NCAA has released its own data. Schools are required to send their graduation information to the NCAA each year, and the research staff compiles the numbers.

The newest NCAA graduation statistics were significantly higher than statistics compiled by the federal government, which showed 64 percent of student-athletes who started college from 1998 to 2001 graduated in six years. That's two points higher than the overall student body.

Federal statistics do not include transfer students' performances. For example, if an athlete enrolls at one school, then transfers to another, neither school receives credit when that athlete graduates.

Brand said including transfers increases the number of student-athletes measured by 37 percent, and Lapchick said he considered the NCAA's measurement a more accurate number.

Six schools graduated 100 percent of their student-athletes for the one-year class of 2001-02, according to the report. They were Alcorn State, Campbell, Canisius, Colgate, Manhattan and Valparaiso.

More than 100 basketball programs and one football program -- Alcorn State -- graduated 100 percent of their athletes who enrolled from 1998-2001. Connecticut, Stanford and Tennessee were three of 77 women's programs, but only 27 men's programs matched that perfect mark, including Florida State, Marquette, Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Western Kentucky.

"I think increasing the initial eligibility standards means student-athletes are better prepared to succeed when they enter college," said Brand, who has made academic reform his top priority.

During that same four-year enrollment period, 75 men's basketball teams failed to graduate half their athletes, and 26 college football teams also were under 50 percent. A dozen women's basketball programs had less than 50 percent, and just two -- Kansas and West Virginia -- were from power conferences.

The numbers can be affected by players who turn pro before their senior seasons and squad size -- football has a limit of 85 scholarships compared with 13 in men's basketball.

The worst scores among the three major sports were produced by Jackson State and two schools in California. Jackson State had a zero; Fresno State graduated 7 percent and Cal State-Northridge was at 8 percent, all in men's basketball. In comparison, the lowest scoring program in football was Savannah State in Georgia (30 percent). North Carolina A&T and Florida International shared that distinction in women's basketball with 38 percent.

The poorest performer among the nation's six power conferences was Maryland, which had a 10 percent grad rate in men's basketball after posting a zero last year.

Other notable findings were:

-- More than half of the Pac-10 schools graduated fewer than 50 percent of men's basketball players. Those schools were Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, UCLA, USC and Washington State.

-- Nearly half of the Big East and Big 12 men's basketball teams failed to reach 50 percent. Cincinnati, UConn, DePaul, Louisville, South Florida and West Virginia in the Big East and Baylor, Colorado, Missouri, Texas and Texas A&M in the Big 12 all fell into that category.

-- Arizona, Georgia, Georgia Tech and Oklahoma were the only BCS schools to graduate fewer than 50 percent of football players, but only Arizona fell below 45 percent.

-- Defending national football champion LSU had a grad rate of 54 percent; defending men's basketball champ Kansas came in at 64 percent.

-- Southern University in Baton Rouge, La., was the only school to graduate less than half its athletes in all three major sports.

-- Gulf Coast schools' statistics might have been affected by the Hurricane Katrina disaster, which hit three years ago. Among those falling below the 50 percent line were men's basketball teams at LSU, Louisiana Tech, Mississippi Valley State, Southern, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, New Orleans; and football teams at Grambling and Southern. source>>>

MTV's Choose or Lose campaign and CNN have partnered to broadcast a concert supporting veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"A Night for Vets: An MTV Concert for the BRAVE" will air Oct. 24 on MTV (8 p.m. EDT) from a performance taped in New York the previous day. The show's name alludes to a petition MTV and several veterans' organizations created called the Bill of Rights for American Veterans (BRAVE).

On Oct. 25, CNN will air a special of "Anderson Cooper 360" titled "Back From Battle" that focuses on stories of young veterans.

The concert will feature performances by 50 Cent, Ludacris and Saving Abel, as well as taped performances by Kanye West, Kid Rock, Fall Out Boy, Angels and Airwaves, Nelly, Juanes and Taylor Swift. Making taped appearances will be Beyonce, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend and others.

News packages from CNN and MTV News will air throughout the special, which will be held in front of an audience of young veterans and their families.

"It doesn't matter where you stand on the war, we can all agree that young veterans serving our country must receive the benefits they've earned for their sacrifices," said Van Toffler, president of MTV Networks. "We aim to elevate these issues and ensure they're a top priority for our government officials."

Collaboration on the BRAVE petition came from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, AMVETS, Veterans for America and Wounded Warrior Project. source>>>

A story moved earlier today on ESPN.com about how disillusioned Bengals fans are unloading their tickets on StubHub by the fistful. The Bengals are 0-6. Thousands of tickets appear to available for several Cincinnati home games, including the Nov. 30 meeting with the Ravens. Tickets that have a face value of more than $60 are on sale on ticket reseller sites for $24, according to the story.

I looked at StubHub this morning and sure enough, there are quite a few tickets on sale for the game against Baltimore in the $24 to $50 range. I'm not pushing StubHub here or anyone else who sells tickets but for fans who find scoring seats at M&T Bank Stadium particularly difficult, this could be an opportunity if the travel issue isn't a problem. source>>>

The end-of-season PGA Grand Slam of Golf, which brings together the winners of the four majors, will return to the island of Bermuda for the next two years, organisers said on Tuesday.
The 36-hole stroke-play event, being held this week at The Mid Ocean Club in Tucker's Town, Bermuda will shift to Port Royal Golf Course in 2009 and 2010.
"Port Royal is undergoing a $14 million extreme makeover and we expect that that course will be upon completion one of the finest public courses in the world," Bermuda Premier Ewart Brown told a news conference.
"We think that it gives yet another opportunity for people to see that Bermuda has more than one or two or three golf courses and that Port Royal was worth the investment. Now we are ready to show it off."
Port Royal, which opened for play in 1970, has undergone a $13.7 million renovation that extends the layout to 6,842 yards.
The elite four-man tournament, billed as "the most exclusive tournament in golf", was held in Hawaii from 1991 to 2006 before moving to Bermuda last year. source>>>

"The Obama Campaign told the LA Times he wasn't a "practicing Muslim." (3/14/2007). But his official website says: "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian" (11/12/2007)

That's not what his friends and classmates have said. Classmate Rony Amiris describes young Barry as enjoying playing football and marbles and of being a very devout Muslim. Amir said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong, he looked funny," said Rony.

Amiris, now the manager of Bank Mandiri, Jakarta, recently said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children. All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"

Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."

"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion."
So Obama, according to his classmates and friends was a Muslim until the confluence of love and ambition caused him to adopt the cloak of Christianity: to marry Michelle and to run for President of the United States." Source>>>

Governor Martin O'Malley and the pro-slot forces in Maryland make it seem like voter approval of slots will spare the pain of state budget cuts or new taxes. A sucker would almost start to believe that 15,000 slots form a panacea, a way of making Maryland recession-proof. The pro-slots crusaders may not make such a claim specifically, but that's the gist of the ads and signs we're seeing now. I fully expect to see a choir of fourth-graders singing the praises of slot-machine gambling in the next TV spot.

But look around -- at least four other states with lots and lots of slots -- Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut -- are having big budget headaches, too.

Nevada -- that's the state with Las Vegas, and Las Vegas has lots and lots of slots -- one for every eight residents, in fact. And yet Nevada is among the many states facing huge budget shortfalls, something like $898 million, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. . . . Nevada has a declining economy. In fact, the Rockefeller Institute of Government reported recently that no state economy has been worse since January 2007. The measurement is based on tax revenue, the unemployment rate -- now at a 23-year high of 7.1 percent and expected to hit to 7.6 percent in January -- real wages, average weekly hours worked, the labor market and payroll data. The Nevada governor, Jim Gibbons, and the state legislature have cut state spending by $1.2 billion, and Gibbons warned that another 14 percent cut could be coming in winter, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Things are so bad that the state plans to close the rural East Ely Railroad Depot Museum, a historic link in the state's copper mining history, to save a few bucks. (Why don't they just stick a few slot machines and a black jack table in the place?)

Sounds like Nevada, with its huge gambling industry, just doesn't have a good deal with the casino operators -- or that maybe gambling revenue isn't the ever-flowing revenue stream the "gaming industry" claims it is.

Closer to Maryland, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, also blessed with lots and lots of slots, is facing a budget shortfall of about a billion bucks. Since the new fiscal year began, the Keystone State has seen its biggest first-quarter revenue drop in 20 years. At the current rate at which revenues are plunging, the budget shortfall by next summer could be about $1.3 billion, according to published reports. Pennsylvania's unemployment rate was 5.8 percent in August, the highest in five years.

In Connecticut, revenues from gambling don't seem to be able to fill the gap -- at least not at the current collection rates. Estimates on the budget shortfall there range from $300 million to $800 million.

New Jersey has lots of slots -- in Atlantic City. This state is staring at $1.7 billion budget shortfall.

Any way you look at this -- with slots or without slots -- states are facing recession, revenue shortfalls and cuts in services and programs. So, with slots or without slots, what's the diff if the "gaming industry" is keeping so much of the profit? I remain opposed to Maryland's slots referendum on account of the fact that no one listened to me. There should have been a state gambling commission established to oversee the Lottery and all forms of legal gambling. State-sanctioned gambling ought to be state-operated gambling, with no greedy fat cats in the middle -- or it shouldn't be at all.. source>>>

There's a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of "the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm", in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?

And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being "a spy behind enemy lines?" Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It's a question Obama again and again can't seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.

If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, "All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own." (p. 220) And what was that image? It was "the father of my dreams, the man in my mother's stories, full of high-blown ideals .." (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, "It was into my father's image .. that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." And also that, "I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father" in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230)

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th the market down, my 401(k) bleeding from the ears and my house in need of a federal bailout, what better way to recoup my losses than with $5 Sunday-morning blackjack hands in Las Vegas?

No, I didn't want a drink. No waitress was going to tempt me with a bloody Mary because it was barely 8 and I needed to stay sharp if I was going to win back my missing fortune the hard way.

Which is to say, going one on one - or two on one if you count the kid sitting beside me in the The Palazzo casino in a backward-facing Dodgers cap - with a dealer who didn't seem to care at all about my future happiness.

Woo-woo-wooo, tink-tink-tink went the slot machines in a vast room already filling with gamblers in oxygen masks, gamblers on motorized scooters, gamblers young and old who were there, I'm guessing, because rotten Vegas odds suddenly seem far better than real-world ones.

Meanwhile, I leaned into the curved table, a steely-eyed roller who just bought $25 worth of chips and perhaps betrayed the fact that he had never before played the game by asking the dealer, "Am I supposed to to hit 17?"

"No," replied the kid who claimed to have been awake since he left Cleveland on Friday morning and I believed him.

He won that hand. I lost.

But seriously, what's $5 in the vast sea of losses suffered by the American people?

I was quickly down with another bet. This time I won. I won, I tell you, won!

Is there any better place this side
of Monaco for making big money, for paying full retail, for riding a $5 monorail that requires a half-hour walk to find, for tiny Latino women handing out business cards featuring pictures of women offering a "$36 special in your room totally nude in 20 minutes," and for vast hotels that look like they were designed by Richie Rich and decorated by Tony Soprano?

Too bad I don't find any of this strange. I would seriously like it to be but it isn't.

To me, Vegas is like one vast airport, a place disconnected, a place located midway between where we live and where we'd prefer to be, a place we pass through and where we maybe act out under a vast umbrella of surveillance cameras.

Sure, there are stoned people and drunken people and people gambling the rent. There are old people and the usual flexing, bellowing boys looking for trouble.

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