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Brown’s tax hike would hit anyone earning more than $250,000 a year. Brown, a liberal Democrat, has borrowed the “tax-the-rich” theme from Barack Obamato make up for overspending during a poor economy.
California Governor Jerry Brown believes he can solve the state’s spending crisis that includes a $16 billion deficit by going after high earners. However, analysts say significant tax hikesduring a period of stagnant jobs growth could do more damage to the state than good.
The governor proposed his new budget plan that includes more spending Monday and in a YouTube video. Brown proposed an increase in funding for K-12 education provided voters approve his proposal to increase the state’s sales tax on everyone along with hiking income taxes on “the rich.As Governor, Jerry Brown is blaming the state’s economic woes on poor revenues and over-spending by others while proposing new spending, massive cuts and a two-pronged tax hike for the future.
Brown’s tax hike would hit anyone earning more than $250,000 a year. Brown, a liberal Democrat, has borrowed the “tax-the-rich” theme from Barack Obamato make up for overspending during a poor economy.
California Governor Jerry Brown believes he can solve the state’s spending crisis that includes a $16 billion deficit by going after high earners. However, analysts say significant tax hikesduring a period of stagnant jobs growth could do more damage to the state than good.
The governor proposed his new budget plan that includes more spending Monday and in a YouTube video. Brown proposed an increase in funding for K-12 education provided voters approve his proposal to increase the state’s sales tax on everyone along with hiking income taxes on “the rich.”
Brown has championed tax hikes since he took office in January 2011; Republican legislators blocked his efforts last year. Democrats have controlled the California House and Senate for many years.
Brown would levy a 3 percent tax increase on those earning more than $250,000 which affects about 1% of taxpayers. Analystswarn that tax hikes will put a damper on economic growth and small business owners may need to cut back on employees to cough up more cash for state.
Brown also wants to raise California’s sales tax by a quarter of a point starting in January and lasting through 2016, however most analysts agree that once the state approves a sales tax increase it never goes away.
That would bump up the average state sales tax rate to 8.4%. Brown claims his proposal would bring in $8.5 billion. Brown warned voters that an additional $6 billion would be slashed on January 1, 2013 if they don’t approve his proposal.
California’s current budget took into account a $4 billion increase in state tax revenues that never occurred. The state is $3.5 billion below estimates; the bulk of the shortage was in personal income taxes, according to the controller’s office.
Asked at a press conference whether this week’s Facebook’s IPO would brighten the state’s fiscal outlook, Brown responded: “Who knows? That’s Wall Street.”
Mr Putin will return to the presidency after an absence of four years in which he served as prime minister. The outgoing President, Dmitry Medvedev, was widely seen as an ally of Mr Putin.
He won a third term as president in controversial elections in March.
On Sunday, thousands of protesters opposed to the inauguration clashed with police in Moscow.
Mr Putin will take the presidential oath at the Grand Kremlin Palace, in a hall that was once the throne room of the Russian tsars, the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Moscow reports.
If he completes his six-year term, Mr Putin will be the longest serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, our correspondent says.
However, Mr Putin faces many problems; the political system he created has been showing cracks, economic growth is forecast to slow, and violence in the volatile North Caucasus continues, he adds.
How he deals with the wave of opposition protests which broke out last December will also be a key test of his administration, correspondents say.
The Russian security services have previously claimed that Osmayev was ‘a graduate of a prestigious institution of higher learning in Great Britain’, and is from a prominent Chechen family opposed to Putin.
Shown on Russian state-run TV with his hands bandaged and wounds on his face, Osmayev has been on Russia’s wanted list for a number of years.
He is believed to have lived ‘for many years’ in London, which, if true, will inflame Russian concerns that Britain is a safe haven for alleged Islamic extremist terrorist suspects from Chechnya.
The arrests of two suspects was made by the Ukrainian special services anti-terrorist unit Alfa after an accidental explosion early last month in an Odessa apartment which killed a third alleged terrorist, Ruslan Madayev.
The revelation comes in the final week of campaigning for Sunday’s presidential election which Putin is virtually certain to win convincingly despite recent opposition street protests against his authoritarian rule.
Osmayev, believed to be 30, and fellow gang members were on a mission ordered by Chechnya’s most wanted rebel leader Doku Umarov, it was claimed.
In January last year, Umarov targeted passengers emerging from British flights at a Moscow airport. A total of 37 died and 180 were injured.
His goal is an Islamic state based on Chechnya and run under Sharia law in the tinderbox Caucasus region.
The alleged plotters, all ethnic Chechens, came to Ukraine from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey with ‘clear instructions from representatives of Doku Umarov’, it was claimed.
On Osmayev’s laptop was found hidden camera footage of Putin’s motorcade in Moscow, and it is believed this was to be the target of the assassination bid.
Determined: The demonstrators want to keep up the pressure on Putin as he prepares to extend his rule for six more years
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FTKIdUHTRU&feature=player_embedded
Family affair as Cardiff’s Anthony Gerrard misses his spot-kick to hand victory to the Merseysiders after cousin Steven’s penalty is saved following a 2-2 draw
For Liverpool to end a six-year title drought in the Carling Cup final, the influence of a player named Gerrard was expected to be crucial – that it came down to Cardiff defender Anthony Gerrard’s penalty miss was less predictable….
Steven Gerrard lifts the trophy as Charlie Adam celebrates after Liverpool won the Carling Cup final against Cardiff City on penalties. Gerrard and Adam both missed their spot-kicks.
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Markets have risen on hopes that Greece will finally secure a massive but long-delayed international bailout, allowing the debt-crippled country to avoid defaulting on its debts next month.
A surprise easing in monetary policy in China over the weekend also added to the buoyant mood in markets on Monday – many stock indexes are trading at multi-month highs, while the euro has recovered its poise.
The main focus of attention – on a day when Wall Street is shut for a public holiday – will be Brussels, where the finance ministers from the 17 euro zone countries are gathering to discuss the elusive Greek bailout deal.
After some euro zone countries suggested last week that they might prefer Greece to default, the latest comments indicate the ministers will approve the 130-billion-euro ($A160 billion) bailout.
Greece has struggled to convince its partners in the euro zone, particularly Germany, that it will enact the austerity and reform measures in return for the cash.
As the finance ministers arrived for the meeting, which may last until well into the night, they appeared ready to back the deal.
“I am of the opinion that today we have to deliver, because we don’t have any more time,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg who also chairs the meetings of euro zone finance ministers, said as he arrived in Brussels.
Alongside the bailout, Greece is expected to conclude debt-reduction discussions with its private creditors. That should slice off about 100 billion euros from Greece’s debt mountain. Even after that, Greece will have the highest debt burden of all the euro countries.
Anthony Shadid, a newspaper correspondent whose dispatches for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and The Associated Press covered nearly two decades of Middle East conflict and turmoil, died, apparently of an asthma attack, on Thursday while on a reporting assignment in eastern Syria.
Tyler Hicks, a Times photographer who was with Mr. Shadid, carried his body across the border to Turkey.
Mr. Shadid, 43, had been reporting inside Syria for a week, gathering information on the Free Syrian Army and other armed elements of the resistance to the government of President Bashar Assad.
The Syrian government, which tightly controls foreign journalists’ activities in the country, had not been informed of his assignment by The Times.
The exact circumstances of Mr. Shadid’s death and his precise location inside Syria when it happened were not immediately clear.
But Hicks said that Mr. Shadid, who had asthma and had carried medication with him, began to show symptoms as both were preparing to leave Syria on Thursday, and the symptoms escalated into what became a fatal attack.
Hicks said he administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation for 30 minutes but was unable to revive Mr. Shadid.
Hicks telephoned his editors at The Times, and a few hours later he was able to take Mr. Shadid’s body into Turkey.
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If you have even a passing interest in the legal world, David Boies is a name you should already know. He’s possibly the most famous litigator alive. So when he walked in with the union on Monday, you knew the news was bad enough to jeopardize the season.
The union has abandoned its right to negotiate on behalf of the players in order to sue the NBA in antitrust court for massive damages within the next 48 hours, according to its revamped legal team. The players in attendance said the decision was unanimous — that the league had backed them into a corner with ultimatum after ultimatum, even after the players gave back the equivalent of nearly $3 billion over a 10-year deal by lowering their locked-in share of the league’s revenue.
“Collective bargaining has totally failed the players,” said Jeffrey Kessler, the union’s outside counsel and commissioner David Stern’s designated villain.
“We put all our proposals out there, and they were rejected,” union vice president Maurice Evans told SI.com. “There was nothing else to evaluate.”
The move will shift the process from the bargaining room to the court system, jeopardizing the season and infuriating Stern, who said on ESPN minutes after the union’s announcement that players had “been badly misled.” Stern dismissed the union’s move as a negotiating ploy that had been in the works since at least February 2010, when Kessler, in Stern’s telling, informed the commissioner the union would go this route if talks broke down. “We were very, very close,” Stern said, “and the players decided to blow it up.”
So Stern has his public relations victory — the players did it! — and a league on the verge of suffering the most disastrous labor relations outcome (apologies to the NHL) in major professional sports history. Let’s be clear about one thing: Nobody knows what happens now. The season is not lost, despite the doomsday rhetoric, some of which agents on Monday characterized as part of Stern’s plot to scare the players into taking the deal on the table. The union and the league could settle their lawsuit in days, and that settlement would include the guts of the next collective bargaining agreement.
And the court process itself is uncertain, despite the common refrain that the NFL players failed in going down this exact path. Labor experts say the appellate ruling that reinstated the NFL’s lockout, after a lower court halted it, is a tricky opinion that did not provide the complete victory the NFL sought. Legal precedent for this kind of case is thin; the NBA believes it gave itself an advantage by filing a pre-emptive lawsuit over the summer declaring any future dissolution of the union would be a sham, but nothing is certain now.
Global stocks and the euro fell on Friday as new doubts about Europe’s bailout package and worries over the outcome of a key vote in Greece overshadowed signs of improvement in the U.S. labor market.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou faces a vote of confidence, with the fate of the nation’s deal on a euro zone debt bailout and the global economy in the balance.
Analysts declared the outcome too tight to forecast, but had a hunch Papandreou might survive the vote, which is expected as late as midnight in Athens (2200 GMT).
The bid for safe-haven assets rose, with government debt on both sides of the Atlantic gaining after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said few countries in the Group of 20 leading economies had committed to providing more resources for a euro zone rescue fund.
Merkel’s comment eclipsed relief over the decision by Greece on Thursday to ditch controversial plans to hold a referendum on its bailout, a development that initially had calmed fears of an imminent sovereign debt default.
Merkel’s comment highlighted the fragility of the deal reached to rescue Greece. At the heart of the deal is a plan to increase the euro zone’s rescue fund to give it firepower of 1.0 trillion euros.
Signs of some improvement in the U.S. labor market failed to lift the market. Labor Department data showed U.S. hiring slowed in October, but the unemployment rate hit a six-month low and job gains in the prior two months were stronger than previously thought, pointing to some improvement in the still-weak labor market.
Trading has been volatile on quickly changing news from Europe. The U.S. S&P 500 has registered daily swings of more than 1.5 percent this week. The benchmark index, which posted its best month in 20 years in October, was on track to post its first down week in five.
“There’s too much uncertainty going on. What Greece has taught us this week is that just when you think things are certain, they’re actually not,” said Camilla Sutton, chief currency strategist, at Scotia Capital in Toronto.
World stocks measured by the MSCI all-country world index pared losses to trade near break-even on strength in emerging markets. EPFR Global reported $3.5 billion flowed into emerging market equity funds in the week ended Wednesday, the second-largest inflow this year.
In Europe, the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top regional shares slid 1.0 percent to 980.01, erasing early gains. The index posted its first weekly loss in six weeks.
Italian banks UniCredit and Intesa SanPaolo, heavily exposed to Italy’s sovereign debt, fell 6.6 and 4.8 percent, respectively.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is facing pressure to step down, turned down an offer of funding from the International Monetary Fund, which has placed the country under supervision as it struggles with its debt mountain.
Gary Coleman’s exes are fighting over his estate. Coleman is best known for his role as “Arnold” on the TV sitcom Diff’rent Strokes. He died in 2010 of a brain hemorrhage. Coleman’s ex-wife Shannon Price and his jumpoff Manager Anna Gray are fighting over his estate and property. Each woman claim he left it to her. Hmmmmmmmmm!
Tracy Morgan’s health issues have his managers concerned. He recently got ill in Denver. Earlier this year, he collapsed at the Sundance Film Festival. A couple of years ago, Morgan got a kidney transplant donated by an ex-girlfriend (Tanisha Hall) shortly before they broke up.
Can Oprah Winfrey’s OWN make a turn around? So far, the cable network has lost $330 million since its debut January 2011. Can the OWN survive another year? The top bosses feel the network will make a turnaround next year with its latest programming.
The music world is mourning the loss of Adam “MCA” Yauch of the Beastie Boys. Yauch, 47, was a self taught vocalist and bassist. In the 80’s, he ruled the charts as a member of The Beastie Boys with hits like Brass Monkey, Hey Ladies, Get It Together, Sure Shot and (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party). In 1986, their album Licensed To Ill was the first hip hop album to top the albums’ chart. Yauch died after a more than three-year battle with cancer and a month after The Beastie Boys were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.
We remember famed Hair Stylist Vidal Sassoon. The 84-year old died of natural causes. He opened his first hair salon back in 1954 and became a stylist to the stars. His styling alone for Mia Farrow in the 1968 movie Rosemary’s Baby made him an icon. He later sold his name to Proctor & Gamble and launched the legendary international line of Vidal Sassoon hair care products.
In more realty show news, get ready for Basketball Wives…. the movie! Shaunie O’Neal, the force behind the VH1 reality show, is in talks with Producer Tracey Edmonds (Soul Food) to do a basketball movie. O’Neal is under pressure because of the criticism surrounding her Basketball Wives shows, so she is looking in a new direction. The reality show has come under fire because off all the negativity and fighting. There is already a petition 7,000 strong calling for a boycott of the show and star Evelyn Lozada, who is seen as the main bully on the show. Tami Roman also stars on the show, and she says it’s the producers’ fault because of how they edit the show. Roman’s exploits on the show (fighting and drinking) are well documented. Don’t be surprised if Basketball Wife Jennifer Williams is dropped from the show. Williams is suing the show’s producers regarding an incident where she was slapped on camera by Lozada’s assistant, Nia Crooks. The producers may counter sue Williams regarding her lawsuit because they feel her badmouthing the show is hurting the brand.