SAR #14126

How much inequality is enough?

 
Tax Planning: Michele 'Eyes' Bachmann (R-MeaN) says that as part of our “war” against “invading children” illegal immigrants should be taxed at a 100% rate to stop them from sending money home to their families. It's a plan. Not a very good one, but a plan.

Quitters: A few years ago the oil industry was enormously optimistic about the oil riches to be pumped from the seas off Alaska. By now they've walked away from 548,000 acres of drilling leases. Shell, which owns all but 7 of the 141 active oil leases in the Beaufort Sea, has canceled drilling for yet another year.

A&A: Should Economists Be Honest or Civil? Yes, but honest first.

Mind, Set: Retired Israeli Major General Giora Eiland the former head of Israel's National Security Counci claims there is no such thing as an innocent civilian in Gaza and that the women and children were to blame for 'this situation.' 
 
Combat Pay: If professionals were to be paid by the degree of skill required and the level of stress under which that skill must be routinely applied, teachers should be paid higher than an emergency room physician who is dealing with a natural disaster. Doctors generally have but one or two people they are working on, have assistance from nurses, and their patients want to be there. The teacher is usually alone, faced with 25 or 30 uncooperative students, every working day. 
 
Conditional Freedom: As Glenn Greenwald notes, it’s become “Liberty and Justice for Some”. And no, you are not part of the 'some'. 
 
First Do No Harm: In that Saddam Husein would have reacted immediately and ruthlessly against a the ISIS uprising, it is reasonable to argue that Bush's invasion of Iraq was directly responsible for the current debacle. Not a surprise, every country the US has (openly or secretly) imposed regime change on has been changed for the worse.

Fodder: Nearly half of the U.S. government's terrorist suspects have no connection to any known terrorist groups, of the 680,000 people listed on the government's widely-shared watchlist, more than 40 percent are defined as having "no recognized terrorist group affiliation." The cumulative amount of people who are in the database for no reason adds up to 280,000 — more than the total number of al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah suspects combined.

Boo And Hoo: Wall Street money managers are worried that they won't get big enough bonuses and that the American worker will get paid too much. They also feel that unemployment at 7.2% would be much better for the stock market.

Final Exam: During a tour of a British-run training center, one of the Afghan trainees opened fire with a machine gun, killing a US 2 star general and wounding 15 other US/NATO soldiers, including a German brigadier general.

Porn O'Graph: Reality check, government spending edition.