Friday

President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality

By Peter Ferrara | Forbes

President Barack Obama's speech to the nation Monday night was highly disturbing.  Because read carefully, it reveals a president wildly divorced from the fundamental realities of the nation he is supposed to be leading.
President Obama actually told America on national television that it is a nation "with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few."  It is incomprehensible how a man serving as president of these United States could make such a fundamentally false assertion about his own country.
As I explain in my new book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, before Obama was even elected, official IRS data showed that for 2007 the top 1% of income earners paid more in federal income taxes than the bottom 95% combined.  The top 1% paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes that year, almost twice their share of income.  The middle fifth of income earners, the actual middle class, paid 4.7% of federal income taxes.  Deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few?
Moreover, the bottom 40% of income earners as a group paid no federal income taxes that year.  They instead received net payments from the IRS equal to 4% of total federal tax revenues.  As my book explains, this was actually the result of nearly 30 years of Reaganomics.  Today close to 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax.
We see the same in some states.  In California, the top 1% pay 48% of all state income taxes.  In New York, the top 1% pay 41% of all state income taxes.  In New Jersey, until recently the top 1% paid 46% of state income taxes.
Moreover, America's corporate income tax rate is virtually the highest in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates.  Even Communist China has a 25% corporate rate, with the average in the mostly socialist European Union below that.  In formerly socialist Canada, the corporate rate today is 16.5%, scheduled to fall under current law to 15% next year.  Doesn't sound like America suffers a deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few.
And already scheduled under current law for 2013 are increases in the top tax rates of every major federal tax, apart from the already too high corporate tax rate.  That is because the ObamaCare taxes become effective that year, and the Bush tax cuts expire.  So the top two income tax rates would go up nearly 20%, the capital gains tax rate would go up nearly 60%, the tax on corporate dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would go up 62% for the nation's small businesses, job creators and investors.
Obama's wildly erroneous statement Monday night indicates he is not living in the real world, which is dangerous for America.  These tax policies so heavily skewed against the nation's small businesses, job creators and investors are central reasons why there has been no recovery from the last recession, why working people can't get jobs, why their wages are falling in real terms, why unemployment is still rising 3.5 years after the last recession started, why a record number of Americans are in poverty.  As a consequence, in reality, it is Obama's anti-market economic policies that are actually in effect stacked heavily against the middle class, working people and the poor.
Obama also told the nation Monday night he wants to "ask hedge fund managers to stop paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries."  This is another false truism that is widely circulated throughout the liberal/left.  The allegation arises because capital gains income is taxed at 15%, while individual income tax rates range higher than that.  But as I explain in my book, the fundamental mistake is the failure to recognize that capital income is taxed multiple times, not just by the capital gains tax.  It is taxed at least four times, by the individual income tax, the corporate income tax, and the death tax, besides the capital gains tax.  That is why the most fair as well as most economically productive rate for the capital gains tax would be zero, as is the case in much of the industrialized world.
The president further proclaimed Monday night that "most Americans don't understand how we can ask a senior citizen to pay more for her Medicare benefits before we ask corporate jet owners and oil companies to give up tax breaks that other companies don't get."  But his ObamaCare law already more than asks seniors to pay more for their Medicare benefits.  It requires them to pay 40% to 200% more if they, in the President's infinite wisdom, earn too much, defined as over $85,000 a year this time.
Note also the tax break for corporate jet owners was adopted in the Obama stimulus to create jobs in corporate jet manufacturing.  Yet, such tax breaks for corporate jets or oil companies that other companies do not get are special interest, central economic planning loopholes that undermine the economy rather than advance it.  The only truly pro-growth tax policy is the lowest possible tax rates for all, with no special interest loopholes.  But the amount of revenue lost on Obama's corporate jet scam is so trivial it is not even worth talking about as possibly even contributing to solving the deficit and debt crisis.
Finally on Monday night, Obama threatened America's seniors with more, saying that if House Republicans don't agree to his tax increase to increase the debt limit, "we would not have enough money to pay the bills -- bills that include monthly Social Security checks."  This can only be described as calculated deception.
The Social Security trust funds include $2.7 trillion in government bonds, which are due and payable when needed to pay Social Security benefits.  As I also show in my book, those bonds do not represent any real savings and investment.  They involve only a statement of the legal authority Social Security has to draw from general revenues, on top of payroll tax revenues.  But in dealing with a crisis over the debt limit, that legal authority can be the critical factor.
While those bonds are explicitly not transferable, and so cannot be sold to the public to raise money, under prior practice they would be cashed out by selling new government bonds to the public.  Since the Social Security trust fund bonds are included in the national debt subject to the debt limit, they can be replaced by such new public bonds without the total debt going over the limit.
Moreover, those Social Security trust fund bonds are explicitly backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S.  That means Obama is constitutionally required to pay them when needed to pay Social Security benefits.  In addition, there is more than enough general revenue coming in to just cash out the trust fund bonds as necessary in any event, even without issuing any new public bonds.
As a result, Obama is constitutionally required to pay Social Security benefits, under his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.  That means failing to pay those benefits would be an impeachable offense.
Peter Ferrara is director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Heartland Institute, general counsel for the American Civil Rights Union and senior fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy.  He served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as associate deputy attorney general under the first President Bush.  He is the author of America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, now available from HarperCollins.

Thursday

Barça thrash Bayern Munich 2-0 to win the Audi Cup

By: Ade C.





Asides from Thiago -goalscorer and MotM extraordinaire-, Pep fielded a reasonably strong starting XI, including VV, JDS, Fontàs, Busquets, Maxwell, Keita, Iniesta, Pedrito, Soriano and Villa, with Jonathan Dos Santos paying for past transgressions by being stuck on RB, which… seriously, what is it with putting unexpected people in that position when Dani Alves can’t play? Have we such a wealth of talented midfielders and forwards that we can afford to re-train them as fullbacks?

In any case, the first half was reasonably competent; Barça weathered the initial Bayern pressure and then settled into their usual possession game, with Villa and Soriano very active in their attempts to score and VV in his usual unflappable form; JDS was struggling at RB, and having Busquets to keep his back didn’t help, but Bayern couldn’t exploit our weak flank, thanks to Keita’s many and crucial interventions. Thiago’s first goal, at the end of the first half, was a fitting reward for our team’s superiority.
The second half saw Pinto come in for VV, who sat on the bench with ice on his shin, and we started fearing another one of Whistling Pinto’s now-usual howlers, but the owner of the Magical Ponytial (TM) had a good night. Better than can be said for Jeffren, who not only was brought on to replace Maxwell as LB -remember what we said above abotu Pep and fullbacks?-, but also did so wearing a shirt with the number 30, instead of his usual ‘11′. Then came Ibi Afellay for Pedrito -who’s been unusually invisible lately-, young Riverola for Iniesta -reward for playing RB yesterday?-, and then Cuenca in for a Soriano who torn a ligament on his knee and had to be flown back to Barcelona instead of going on the US Tour and trying to convince Pep to bring him into the first team… what terrible timing! He’d been doing so well!
Then came Thiago’s second goal and we were all aflutter again.
PiquéCarmona and Armando came in near the end for Busquets, JDS and Villa, and then it was over and we got a nice trophy and -one would assume- a boatload of Audis.
Now, the team is in Washington to start the US Tour, beginning with a friendly against Manchester United on Sunday… if you’re going to be there, we’ll have you know we’re very jealous of you!

NELSON MANDELA AT 93

Opinion - Editorial

THE pomp with which the world recently marked the 93rd birthday of the legendary freedom fighter, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is not unexpected. It is worth every bit of it, considering the foremost stately stature that he has come to represent. The pomp, and sometimes, reflective activities have become a tradition for observing the birthday of easily one of the world’s most revered leaders.  Indeed, people the world over were asked to mark the day by giving 67 minutes of their time to community service, a symbolic re-enactment of the years Mandela spent in public service. Here in Nigeria, the South Africa High Commission made good the call by partnering with the Federal Capital Territory and Protea Hotel, Asokoro Abuja to carry some community service.  At the Local Authority Primary School, Katampe Area District, Abuja, it de-wormed students and painted classrooms, presented gift of school sandals, footballs, writing balls and balloons to the school.

Similarly, tributes came from groups and leaders across the world. The United States President, Barrack Obama, hailed the world moral icon, “as beacon for the global community, and for all who work for democracy, justice and reconciliation.”  Shadrack Gutto, Director of the Centre for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa, said, “It is hard to sum up Mandela’s achievements and contribution to the country’s struggle for freedom.” To this great icon of our time, 12 million students across South Africa sang simultaneously ‘happy birthday’ for him.

To be sure, Mandela deserves all the praises. His life epitomises the struggle for freedom and justice all over the world. Wherever forces of reaction, oppression and injustices hold sway, his example remains a trailblazer for forces of freedom. Beyond this, it can be said that Mandela’s life is more of an omnibus of virtues of resistance, and political morality for so many reasons. He was magnanimous in his release from 27 years of incarceration. In fact, he worked for the reconciliation of South Africans in their ethnic diversity—blacks, whites, Indians and the coloured. Some other persons would instead stock the fire of animosity and vengeance. He spent a term in office and paved way to a younger generation of leadership in a continent where rulers vow that only God can remove them from power and therefore mutilate constitutions for either  multiple or unlimited tenure in office. It is this point that Helen Zille of the South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance captured in her message, to the effect that the “most significant honour we can pay this great man on his birthday is to work towards his vision for all South Africans, to build on his dream, and to vigilantly and consistently protect the Constitution which he called ‘a sacred covenant''.

While out of office, Mandela became a moral voice for key social problems confronting the global community.  He spoke up on the war in Iraq, campaign for the HIV/AIDS cause, the scourge of poverty and charities for children. Innovatively, he set up The Elders, a group of respected global leaders to provide wisdom and solutions to difficult global problems. He is virtually the greatest moral icon around. Today, the world with all its multiple problems needs a moral moderating voice. It is heart-warming that Africa gave that to the world community.

African leaders who think that the only way to be recognised is by the exertion of brute force over its citizens; crude expropriation of public resources, unbridled acquisition of material things and outright indulgence in hedonism should learn from the Mandela example. Let no one put forth the plausible argument that Mandela is what he is because he is a South African. He is a civilized man and we believe that a Mandela anywhere could have benefited any country, Nigeria inclusive. It is in recognition of this that the United Nations in 2009 declared July 18 of every year as Mandela International Day to be observed in his honour by the performance of community service.

While observing the first international day, the UN Secretary General said that Mandela’s achievement was as a result of great personal expense, and denial of every comfort of life in order to make his country and the world a better place. For us, here lies the Mandela challenge, especially for the new crop of South African leadership. While there are indications of creeping corruption in the country and racial intolerance, the leadership must take up the Mandela challenge of building a nation where all people can assert their humanity without racial, religious, sex and class bars. This is the greatest honor it can do to this ‘towering figure’ of our time. We join the rest of the world to congratulate our dear Madiba and wish him many happy returns.

Wednesday

Forget 'Big Brother' as someone much closer may be snooping

By Andrew Eisner, Director of Community and Content for Retrevo.com

While the government is busy crafting legislation to protect your privacy and prevent companies like Apple and Google from tracking your online activities, this recent Retrevo Gadgetology study discovered there's a lot of snooping and tracking going on among people who know each other. If you've ever wondered what the likelihood is that someone is reading your emails or text messages or even tracking your comings and goings, you might be surprised to learn it's more common than ever especially among spouses and parents and their children.

Easy access to someone's emails, text messages and call history on cell phones, laptops and other gadgets make it easy to invade someone's personal space. Everyone's personal information is, more times than not, left sitting on the kitchen counter, readily available to curious onlookers like spouses, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, significant others, or who knows, even nosy friends and relatives. In this recent Retrevo Gadgetology study more than a third of respondents (33%) admitted to checking a boyfriend's or girlfriends email or call history on the sly. Slightly more married couples snoop on their spouses (37%) and an even larger number of parents spy on their kids (37%). The number of parents snooping is highest among parents of teenagers with 60% snooping on their kids and possibly for good reason as 14% of those parents reported finding something they were concerned about.

Suspicious Partners Snooping More Than Last Year

When we looked at the data on snooping from a study conducted a year ago we were surprised to learn that snooping had increased across the board. Overall the number of people under 25 checking their boyfriend's or girlfriend's emails or call history rose from 38% last year to 47% this year. Women continue to be a bit more suspicious than men. The number of women saying they checked their partner's email or call history without them knowing rose from 24% to 35%. It's also possible that unfaithful partners are more careful about hiding any incriminating text messages as the number of spouses reporting they discovered someone cheating rose only slightly.

Spouses and Children Might Need Their Own "Do Not Track" Law

Not only does snooping on emails, text messages and call history appear to more common today but smartphones with built-in tracking technology and portable GPS tracking devices becoming easy to use on someone without their knowledge, we wondered just how common tracking is among people who know each other. While most respondents (68%) said they would never go so low as to actually gather latitude and longitude data about their spouses or partners comings and goings, over 20% of both men and women said a suspicion of wrong doing could get them to track their spouse or partner.

Kids, Is There a GPS in Your Backpack or a Tracking App on Your iPhone?

Parents appear more willing to track their children's movements. You could argue they want the peace of mind knowing they can locate their kids which probably accounts for the high percentage of parents (59%) indicating they wouldn't have a problem with tracking their kids. Mothers "protective instincts" may also account for the higher number of moms (64%) vs. dads (53%) who would track their kids. Parents of teenagers appeared slightly more willing than parents of younger children to track their kids whereabouts.

Conclusion

With congress busily holding hearings and crafting legislation to prevent companies like Apple and Google from invading you privacy, this Retrevo Gadgetology study illustrates that consumers may have just as much to fear from people they know than big corporations.

About Retrevo's Gadgetology Report

The Retrevo Gadgetology Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals conducted exclusively for Retrevo in June of 2011, by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level.

About Retrevo

Retrevo.com is one of the largest consumer electronics review and shopping sites in the world, helping people decide what to buy, when to buy, and where to buy. Retrevo uses artificial intelligence to analyze and graphically summarize more than 100 million real-time data points from across the web to give shoppers the most comprehensive, unbiased, up-to-date product information they need to make smart, confident purchasing decisions for electronics.


Graphics URL: http://bit.ly/rm3e1V

Saturday

5 Best Cell Phones Sure to be Collectible Items

By Scott Moritz, TheStreet
There are lots of twists and turns in thesmartphone market. Occasionally, some really good phones just fall through the cracks. Let's call these The Collectibles -- a handful of phones, years in development, that arrive or are set to launch, but instead they get cut down at their prime or doomed before they reach their full potential.
In most of these cases, it's a sweeping change at the company that effectively orphans the handsets.
For Nokia and Research In Motion, blame a full-scale shift to a new operating system. At Palm, it was the HP takeover.
And, sometimes, it's failure's fault, like in the case of Garmin's exit from the market.
Yes, you may have seen the 13 ugliest phones, but these are much different. Here are five "keepers" that could have been big contenders.
More from TheStreet: 

#5 : Garminfone

Garminfone
The awesomeness of this device isn't the fact that it was a GPS phone made by navigation ace Garmin, or the fact that it was powered by Google's Android. No, the best thing about this phone is that it was the first Asus phone in the U.S.
Asus is a rising star in mobile computing. The 21-year-old Taiwanese tech shop is best known for its motherboards and netbooks, but it has recently turned its attention to tablets and phones. Asus was one of the first developers of a Microsoft Windows Phone 7, but that device never materialized.
Unfortunately, Garmin pulled the plug on the joint venture with Asus after it became clear that smartphones were just a little too far outside the GPS specialists' competency. With Garmin and T-Mobile as partners, Asus may not have had the best supporting cast for its debut.
The Garminfone was discontinued last month.


Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

#4 : Sony Ericsson Xperia Play

The "PlayStation Phone" finally arrived, despite some difficult odds.
For one, Sony Ericsson doesn't do much business in the U.S. Even worse, after the company killed its CDMA phone development in 2003, it had almost no ties to Verizon.
And third, novelty phones are a dicey business.
But after a few years of speculation, the Xperia Play arrived in May.
With its slide-out PlayStation game controls, the Xperia Play lives up to its gamer name. But it is also a touch-screen device powered by Android.
The game/phone hybrid is certainly a niche, and some users are happy to have both on one device. "I get my two interests meshed into one," said one Xperia Play user on gdgt, the technology Q&A and review site.
The Play hasn't gotten much backing in the form of marketing and advertising. Perhaps one sign that this phone may not last long at Verizon is the fact that just a month after it debuted at $200 with a two-year contract, it is now being sold on Amazon.com for $50.


Palm Pre

#3 : Palm Pre

Back before the smartphone market was narrowed down to two choices -- Apple or Android -- there was a phone company that sold a very compelling device beloved by professionals and consumers alike.
The Palm Pre matched Apple and Android in touchscreen prowess and also included a slide-out keyboard.
Sadly, Palm didn't have the financial firepower to promote the phone heavily and stoke the fires of application development like its more resource-rich rivals. Palm also didn't keep the Pre fresh. And when telcos like Verizon started cutting back on orders in favor of Droids, the Palm Pre faded from view.
Eventually, HP acquired Palm, but the integration took a long time, leaving the Pre suspended from the market.
The Palm Pre is listed as out of stock on HP's Web site, but Verizon still offers it for $100 with a two-year contract -- your last chance to start your own Palm Pre collectors' club.


Blackberry Bold

#2 : RIM BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900

BlackBerry fans proved to be a far more loyal group than one would have expected. While other phones got touchscreens and smarter application processors, Research In Motion kept cranking out aging Bolds andCurves.
The addictive BlackBerry e-mail and messenger service helped keep people interested and bought RIM some time as it put together a new generation of phones built around the QNX operating system.
But between the maturing BlackBerry 6 operating system of yesterday and QNX of next year is an awkward spot that RIM hopes to fill with the touchscreen Bold.
The Bold 9900 is a beautiful BlackBerry with a full-powered 1-gigahertz processor, a familiar keypad and a gesture reading touchscreen. The problem: Even though it won't arrive until later this summer, it's already been eclipsed by the promise of fully-functioning QNX devices next year.
The Bold 9900: destined to be a lovely end-of-the-line.
Nokia N9

#1 : Nokia N9

Soon after Nokia picked the MeeGo operating system as its next direction, MeeGo became a no go.
Well, almost.
When Nokia jumped from its burning platform to start developing phones usingMicrosoft's Windows 7 software, it didn't completely abandon the MeeGo effort. Some of Nokia's brightest minds kept working to deliver a new generation of MeeGo-powered phones to compete with Apple and Android.
Recently, Nokia introduced the N9 MeeGo phone, a finely-sculpted touchscreen device that could have kept the Finnish phone titan on top of the phone market had it arrived a couple years ago.
But as it stands, the N9 sales launch will be overshadowed by the Sea Ray and other Windows Phone 7 devices coming from Nokia later this year and next.
Collectors will probably call the N9 the best pure Nokia phone of all time. Too bad Nokia investors can't take that to the bank. 

Friday

Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales inch upwards

The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $70b.

Sales of the company's Xbox 360 video-game console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.

Net income at the world's biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15b for the year.
The figures, which beat earnings estimates, also showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $1.37b, leading to profits of $5.87b.
Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft's push into cloud computing.
Microsoft's business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company's biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8b.
The company's online services unit, which runs the Bing search engine and MSN internet portal, increased sales by 16.5% to $662m, but saw losses increase to $728m as it struggles to fight competitor Google.
One weaker spot was sales of its widely-used Windows product, which are slowing as tablet PC sales eat into demand for traditional PCs.
Earlier this week, chipmaker Intel warned that PC sales would not be as strong as it had expected this year.
Microsoft is itself expected to enter the tablet market next year with the launch of its next operating system, code-named Windows 8, which will be compatible with the low-power chips commonly used by tablet and mobile phone makers.
Microsoft is the latest technology company to exceed profit expectations.
Google, Apple and IBM all reported strong earnings recently.

Source: Silicon Valley Technology News

Thursday

Are You a Position or Pivotal Player?

NETSHARE CEO Katherine E. Simmons 
It’s baseball season, and for the record, I am not crazy about sports analogies, but I was struck by the wisdom of this recent blog post from Auren Huffman, CEO of Rapleaf, about Position Players Versus All-Around Athletes.

As Huffman writes:

“Hiring managers face a dilemma similar to coaches: Should you hire someone who's really good at one particular thing - or someone who is more of an all-around player?”

Conventional wisdom from our career coaches indicates that you need to address a prospective employer’s immediate point of pain. Their point is that to get the right attention from the hiring manager, you either have to be able to save the company money, make the company money, or address some other immediate need. That would make you a position player in Huffman’s view.

But what about the company that has multiple points of pain and has limited hiring capacity. Should you try to sell yourself on your greatest strengths, or show that you have multiple talents that can be of value as the company grows?

Huffman, who among other things is an angel investor, notes that whether you are looking to hire a position player or an all-around athlete depends on where you are in the evolution of your team. If you are in “scaling mode” and have a three-year plan, then you know where the holes are in your lineup and looking for top performers with the specific expertise you need makes sense. He uses the example of an ad agency looking for a solid player in Web marketing. Like recruiting a catcher or a place kicker, it’s a highly specialized role and an expert won’t come cheap, but it will help with the firm’s growth strategy.

However, what if your company is a startup or in transition? Then you are in “change mode” which means you need pivotal players who can roll with the changes. If you are a tech startup, for example, you may find yourself targeting different markets. What starts out as an ideal software application for financial services may find a strong role in pharmaceuticals, so hiring a sales executive with a financial services Rolodex may not help your business grow when you need to. This is when hiring all-around athletes makes more sense. As Huffman puts it:

“While hiring position players will significantly increase the chance of success for your current model, it gives you little room to pivot. Any significant change in your business model might force you to swap out your team.”

So what does this mean for you as an executive job seeker? It means you have more homework to do. You need to assess where your target company is in their own development. Are they a more mature company with a game plan that requires your specialized expertise? Or are they in transition, which means you can bring multiple skills to the table to help the company grow?

The other question you need to ask yourself is do you work better as a position player or a pivotal player? 

Can you command the job and salary you want with niche expertise that really hits the sweet spot of a company with a well-thought-out growth strategy? Or do you prefer the challenge of being more of a generalist, and adapting your skills to meet the changing needs of the company? Either way, you need to make sure that your personal brand and your executive marketing documents highlight your expertise, and you approach the right kind of company that is either building their squad from scratch or looking for the expertise to extend their long game.


Katherine E. Simmons is President and CEO of NETSHARE, Inc.