See this interactive calculator. Enter your income and get the story!

http://www.barackobama.com/buffett-rule

While 47% of the vote in Georgia in 2010 was Democratic, the recently completed redistricting restricts Democrats to election of 31% of Statehouse members. It is possible Republicans could control 10 of Georgia’s 14 Districts as well as hold a 2/3′s majority in the legislature. Republicans could pass constitutional amendments without any Democratic votes.

You can read more about “The GOP’s New Southern Strategy” by Ari Berman at The Investigative Fund.org.

Please listen to Elizabeth Warren, candidate for the Senate from Massachusetts, tell the truth about the student loan scam.

Let’s stop eating our young.

Elizabeth Warren, Kids Like Us

Shortchanging by Secret Service Draws Strong Rebuke

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – Days after Secret Service agents shortchanged a group of prostitutes in Colombia, the international trade group representing hookers downgraded the United States’ credit rating from AAA to B.

The strong rebuke from the International Alliance of Professional Escorts came after a Secret Service agent reportedly paid one of its members $30 for an $800 service, or only 4% of the stated price.

The statement from the International Alliance of Professional Escorts said that in downgrading the United States’ credit rating it was sending a clear message that its “members should be aware that doing business with the government of the United States carries with it a significant risk.”

“We are urging our members to avoid conducting transactions with the United States and to focus on more reliable customers, like the International Monetary Fund,” the statement added.

Just hours after the announcement from the escorts’ group, the U.S. Congress passed the following resolution blasting the Secret Service for its actions: “We strongly denounce the Secret Service for consorting with prostitutes, which has traditionally been Congress’s role.”

But it was not all bad news this week for the Secret Service, which today reported a 5000% jump in enlistment.

The agency said that enlistment offices across the country have been packed with prospective agents, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who abruptly dropped out of the Presidential race to join.  Get a free subscription to the Borowitz Report here.

Rolling back tax rates to the Reagan era would raise another $78 billion a year according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. That would yield $1.1 trillion over the next decade – a nice start on the deficit. The rich really could make a difference. Certainly more than reducing the food stamps of hungry families, who just need to learn to fish. Get thee to the Wal-Mart Fishing Department!

Never mind the rich have moved the fish overseas. You see it is easier to cut wages than invest in American workers and technology to be globally competitive.

The truth is you aren’t needed anymore either as an employee or consumer. Stranded, just like the sharecroppers and tenant farmers of not-so-long-ago.

But legislators don’t have to go that far. Just do NOTHING; the current tax cuts will expire and the deficit stops growing. Check out this chart from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

She looked at 9,927 prostate biopsies performed by lab-owning physicians with 26,334 done by doctors without any lab ownership.

Now, think about this. Medicare pays for prostate biopsies by the jar; jars can contain one or more specimens. Self-referring doctors charged Medicare for an average of 4.3 MORE jars per biopsy than doctors with no financial interest in the testing lab.

And, all this testing produced a much lower cancer detection rate than the physicians without a financial interest in the testing lab. That calls into question the necessity of the biopsy (which is a very uncomfortable procedure).

The way physicians are paid and the business interests they are allowed is driving the unsustainable and economically destructive rise in private medical costs. Pay the electrician who wires your house by the socket and how many sockets will you end up with?

Obamacare begins to change how Medicare purchases medical services. Paying for outcomes rather than procedures will begin to slow the increase and free money for investment in re-industrialization, transportation, and research.

You can read her story in The New York Times.

I wonder what the burden and bankruptcy of health care is doing to money available for innovation and investment in a growing economy.

The aim was to pass a constitutional amendment to address a nearly year-old ruling by the state Supreme Court that outlawed the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, which approved 16 schools before it was disbanded in May. The proposal dominated much of the legislative session, stealing the spotlight from other priorities including tax and criminal justice reform and the state budget.

Critics said lawmakers should have paid more attention to nearly $1 billion in cuts that have not been restored to K-12 schools, the 1.7 million students enrolled in Georgia’s public schools and the teachers who haven’t had a raise since 2008.