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Showing posts with label Obama administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama administration. Show all posts
THERE are so many stupid people on the net, stupidity fueled by hatred of the federal government, especially the Obama administration (racist hatred), that they will believe anything that reinforces their hate. This was put out on the net by the national report, a fake news agency but one with tea-bagger right wing views that seeks to manipulate and deceive the American electorate before the 2014 mid term elections with this post. Fanatics grabbed it and ran with it like it was gospel. Fools! From +PolitiFact .....
"2014 Federal Tax Refunds To Be Delayed Until October 2015."
— Chain email on Tuesday, September 30th, 2014 in a chain email
By Nai Issa on Thursday, October 16th, 2014 at 3:19 p.m.
A reader asked us
to check a chain email circulating the link to this article, which
turns out to be another case of satire passed off as truth.
Readers recently forwarded us a claim they had begun seeing
in their inbox -- and which their friends were believing. It was a link
to a story headlined, "2014 Federal Tax Refunds To Be Delayed Until
October 2015."
This would be a pretty big deal if true. Is it?
The short answer is: No.
It turns out that the article was published in September 2014 on a website called the National Report. Here’s a portion of the article:
"Normally when you file your taxes,
whatever money is owed back to you is quickly repaid. The process of
getting your money back has been made even quicker in recent years
through the use of E-file and direct deposit of federal tax rebates. But
starting in 2015, federal tax refunds for the 2014 fiscal year are
going to take longer for Americans to receive. A lot longer.
"The deadline to have your federal taxes
filed will remain April 15th, but under new directives issued to the
IRS, no refunds are to be issued before October 15th, 2015. This means
that early filers who normally receive their refunds around the
beginning of February will have to wait an additional 7 months longer
than normal to get the money owed to them.
"White House Press Secretary Josh
Earnest defended the upcoming changes to IRS tax refund policy. 'It’s a
minor cost saving measure initiated by the administration with
bipartisan support,' said Earnest. 'The recommendation to initiate this
new refund structure came out of the Committee On Ways And Means, under
the leadership of Republican Congressman David Camp. Absolutely zero
dollars are going to be kept that is owed to hardworking Americans. All
you are seeing here is a policy change streamlining the way in which the
IRS structures tax refund repayments. Americans who find this
objectionable can always opt to bring their tax withholding more in line
with the actual taxes they will owe in the future.' "
The article went on to quote two Republican senators critical of the move -- Rand Paul of Kentucky and John McCain of Arizona.
A lot of people appeared to believe it. The article was shared
647,000 times on Facebook since it was published. Forbes tax columnist
Kelly Phillips Erb was among those who noted its wide reach.
There is one problem with the claim: It comes from a fake-news site.
The last time we checked a bogus claim from National Report, the site
had a disclaimer that said "the views expressed by writers on this site
are theirs alone and are not reflective of the fine journalistic and
editorial integrity of National Report." This disclaimer has since been
removed by the site.
Another, clearer disclaimer -- also removed -- has been archived by urban-legend investigation site Snopes.com. The disclaimer said,
"National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which
may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious
ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction,
and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely
coincidental."
We reached out several times to the IRS to see if we could get an
official disclaimer from the agency, but we never heard back. Our Ruling
A chain email has been circulating with a link to an article
headlined, "2014 Federal Tax Refunds To Be Delayed Until October 2015."
However, the article comes from the National Report, a satire website.
It is not accurate and was never intended to be. We rate the claim Pants
On Fire.
About this statement:
Published: Thursday, October 16th, 2014 at 3:19 p.m.
Researched by: Nai Issa
Edited by: Louis Jacobson
Subjects: Taxes
ACTIVISM has it's rewards, like sharing the news of victories after months, at times years of struggle. This from the NRDC & EarthJustice....
TWO VICTORIES FOR THE ARCTIC!
Fantastic news: Shell has announced that it will NOT attempt to drill in the Arctic Ocean this summer.
The
oil giant’s stunning reversal came after a momentous court ruling two
weeks ago. The federal court agreed with NRDC and our allies that the
Bush Administration had wildly underestimated the risks of spills and
other hazards when it opened the Arctic’s Chukchi Sea to oil leasing and
exploration in 2008.
Simply put: the entire Arctic leasing program was based on a fiction -- as we have long claimed -- and all the leases, including Shell’s, have now been thrown into limbo.
The
court victory and Shell’s retreat are huge steps forward in our
campaign to close Alaska’s Polar Bear Seas -- the Beaufort and Chukchi
-- to oil development and potential catastrophe.
And we have you to thank! You have stood with us every step of the way,
lending your generous financial support to a tough battle against two
administrations and Big Oil that has raged in and out of the courtroom
for five years. We never gave up because we know just how much is at
stake.
The Beaufort and Chukchi Seas are home to more than half of America’s polar bears. Their populations are already reeling from global warming. The last thing they need is a catastrophic oil spill.
And if Shell’s Arctic venture has proven anything, it’s that this remote and rugged region is no place for drilling.
In 2012, Shell’s rig had to flee from a 30-mile-long iceberg. Its
emergency response equipment was “crushed like a beer can” during tests.
And its drill rig ran aground during relatively routine winter weather.
Other
oil giants -- including ConocoPhilips and Statoil, the Norwegian
multinational oil company -- have long since canceled or suspended their
plans. Shell was the last holdout -- until this latest announcement.
But make no mistake: While Shell has called off this summer’s operations, it is far from ruling out another attempt.
That’s
why it’s so crucially important for the Obama Administration to slam
the door shut on Arctic drilling by putting it completely off-limits to
Big Oil.
This
latest federal court decision hands President Obama a golden
opportunity to move beyond a failed Bush Administration policy and to
safeguard the Arctic for the sake of our spectacular natural heritage and our embattled climate.
You can be sure that NRDC will be tirelessly advocating for the President and his Interior Secretary to do exactly that. I know you will stand with us.
Thank you again for helping to make this historic victory possible.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council
P.S. In the weeks and months ahead we will be building on the momentum
of this victory and strongly advocating that the Obama Administration
put the Polar Bear Seas totally off-limits. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift that will help us take the fight to Big Oil and win a ban on drilling in the Polar Bear Seas.
The
mission of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is to safeguard
the Earth: its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems
on which all life depends.
Donations
to this campaign will be used to Keep Shell Out of the Arctic and
protect our environment in the most effective way possible.
We appreciate
the opportunity to communicate with you. We are committed to protecting
your privacy and will never sell, exchange or rent your email address.
If you would prefer not to receive these action alerts and updates, you can click here to remove yourself from this list. To update your contact information or manage your subscriptions, go to your profile editor.
The
CEO of Shell announced today that the oil company will forgo its plan
to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean this year. After disastrous year
attempting to drill in the Arctic Ocean for Shell in 2012—followed by
civil and criminal investigations, huge fines and overall unpreparedness
for the harsh Arctic weather and elements—a court ruling on our case last week confirmed what we all have known: Shell is not ready to drill in the Arctic Ocean.
Shell’s
decision today means America’s Arctic waters are safe from big oil for
another summer. The Department of the Interior now needs to take a hard
look at whether the Chukchi Sea should be open for oil drilling at all,
beginning with a full and public environmental impact statement process
that addresses the Ninth Circuit decision and does not minimize the
risks of oil drilling in this vibrant but vulnerable sea.
We
want to extend our sincere appreciation to the hundreds of thousands of
you whose donations and advocacy backed up our efforts in court. Together, we have done what many thought was impossible.
THE American government's, the Obama administration's hypocrisy in condemning the Russian government's conviction of opposition leader Alexei Navalny of embezzlement is amazing. Yes, Putin and the Russian government are persecuting Alexei Navalny, his human rights are being violated. But for the American government to think it has the right to condemn the verdict in this trial while attempting to extradite whistleblower Edward Snowden from Moscow and while trying whistleblower Bradley Manning in a military courts martial is total hypocrisy and self righteousness. This from the PBS NewsHour....
Prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of embezzling $500,000 worth of timber and sentenced to five years in prison. But he and his supporters say the sentence is politically motivated due to Navalny's crusade against corruption and criticism of President Vladmir Putin. Ray Suarez reports.
In 2012, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny spoke about the protests in Russia leading up to elections that President Vladimir Putin won handily.
In a Feb. 29, 2012, interview on the PBS NewsHour, Alexei Navalny, a vocal critic of the Russian government, said despite more than a decade of economic growth in Russia, President Vladimir Putin could have done more to help his country.
"Simply comparing Russia with neighboring countries, we see that other former Soviet Union countries grew even stronger. So Putin's time is a time of lost opportunities. Russia had and still has enormous oil, gas and other energy resources, and prices are very high."
On Thursday, Navalny was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison in what critics called a politically motivated trial because of his anti-government stance.
The criminal charges against Navalny included stealing $500,000 from a state-owned timber company during his time as adviser to the governor of Kirov, Russia, a city about 900 miles northeast of Moscow.
In the Kirov courtroom, Navalny was using his smartphone during the verdict reading, and sent a message to his supporters via Twitter: "Oh, well. Don't get bored without me. And, importantly, don't be idle," reported the Associated Press.
Russian news agencies reported that Navalny would stay in a detention facility in Kirov before being sent to a prison.
He had been planning to run for mayor of Moscow, but his campaign said he would withdraw his name following the verdict.
In the 2012 interview, Navalny also responded to allegations from his opponents that the protest movement in Russia and he himself were connected to the West:
"I'm quite an ordinary citizen who lives on the outskirts of Moscow. My children go to a regular Moscow school and kindergarten. My life is completely transparent, which is absolutely not the case for Putin's officials, whose children live abroad, who have accounts in Switzerland, the United States and Great Britain.
"So the question arises, who is more connected with the West, the opposition or Russian corrupt ruling class?"
BOB WOODWARD used to be a credible journalist, it is a shame he resorted to this non issue to get some attention. And now he is going on fox for a therapy session with hannity? Maybe that is just a cover for him actually exposing how low he will go on fox's casting couch. From HuffPost...
Bob Woodward may have thought that top White House economic adviser Gene Sperling was threatening him in an email exchange, but that's certainly not how Woodward responded to the email, Politico revealed Thursday.
Woodward made waves on Wednesday night when he took to CNN and Politico to accuse the White House of deploying heavy-handed tactics with him after he questioned the Obama administration's account of the negotiations over the looming budget sequester. Sperling -- who he did not name at the time -- had told him he'd "regret" moving forward with his narrative, Woodward said, making it clear that he saw this as a threat.
"It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, you're going to regret doing something that you believe in," he told Wolf Blitzer. The White House told The Huffington Post that Sperling was merely trying to tell Woodward he would regret writing something that was inaccurate.
On Thursday morning, Politico released the text of the email exchange between Woodward and Sperling. The emails look to be a far cry from the kind of thuggery that Woodward implied.
Here's an excerpt from Sperling:
I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. I do understand your problems with a couple of our statements in the fall -- but feel on the other hand that you focus on a few specific trees that gives a very wrong perception of the forest. But perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here. But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim ... My apologies again for raising my voice on the call with you. Feel bad about that and truly apologize.
Woodward, who would later profess to be unnerved by Sperling's email, replied very calmly:
Gene: You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them. This is all part of a serious discussion. I for one welcome a little heat; there should more given the importance. I also welcome your personal advice.
Woodward is reportedly slated to appear on Sean Hannity's Fox News show Thursday night to discuss the exchange. Viewers will surely wonder what he will have to say.
I have signed some We The People petitions, all having to do with political issues, and actually appreciate the access to the Obama administration it provides to all Americans. I hope future presidents will keep it going. Here is a look at the short history of the We The People website from Mother Jones....
It's not all laughs for the White House staffers who deal with petitions demanding Obama build a Death Star or create a Joe Biden reality TV show, but they don't mind.
As White House officials were busy pondering new gun violence prevention measures, preparing for the coming debt-ceiling showdown with Republicans, and meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Obama administration on January 11 also issued an official decision: the US government would not construct the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, commonly known as the Death Star from Star Wars Episode IV.
This was no joke. Well, almost no joke. "The Administration does not support blowing up planets," the official White House statement read. "Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?" The response also address the dubious claim that such a large-scale federal undertaking would be a tremendous boon for the American economy. (The Galactic Empire has since issued a press release mocking the Obama administration for its decision.)
This official declaration was compelled by the White House's own rules. Under its We the People initiative, anybody with Internet access can petition the White House on any matter, and if a petition gains 25,000 signatures, the president—or his people—have to respond. Well, that's how it worked until Tuesday. After being hit by all sorts of shall-we-say non-serious petitions, such as the Death Star one, that reached the 25,000-signature benchmark, the White House has raised the bar. From now on, a petition will require 100,000 signatures in order to win White House attention. (When WTP debuted, the threshold was a measly 5,000.) But that fix may still not block the frivolous—the Death Star request drew over 34,000 signatures, and other ludicrous posts have managed to surpass the 100,000-mark—and some White House officials connected to the We the People project say (on background, of course), what were we thinking?
"If you had told me a year and a half ago that the White House would be devoting time writing [an official statement] on how Lord Vader could fix our economic woes, I would have just laughed loudly at you," one White House staffer said.
"If you had told me a year and a half ago that the White House would be devoting time writing [an official statement] on how Lord Vader could fix our economic woes, I would have just laughed loudly at you," one White House staffer who has worked on the WTP outreach program tells Mother Jones. Another White House staffer connected with the program is more blunt: "Sometimes, I find myself thinking, 'My god, what have we done'?"
The White House response to the Death Star petition—a petition created by "John D" of Longmont, Colorado on November 14 that urged President Obama to "secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star" by his last year in office—was written by Paul Shawcross, chief of the White House Office of Management and Budget's science and space branch, and published on the We the People website, which was launched by the Obama White House in late 2011.
With WTP, it is not that hard to win—or waste—the attention of a White House official. The rules of petitioning are clear: You create a user log-in account, you log-in, you draft and post an online petition. If your petition receives enough signatures from fellow users, your entreaty will finds its way onto the curated landing page, where it will ideally garner more attention. If your petition is deemed in violation of the terms of participation, it gets deleted. If your petition does not reach at least 150 signatures within 30 days of posting, it gets axed. But if your petition passes the now 100,000-signature threshold within a month of its posting, a White House official is required to issue an official response within 30 days. In theory, the White House must respond, no matter the subject.
Regardless, others remain cheery and encouraged, even in the face of the website's excesses. "I like We the People," an official familiar with the project said. "It puts some bureaucrats out of their comfort zones and reminds everyone we are working for the people."
Shortly after President Obama won reelection,dozens upon dozens of petitions came rolling in calling for the secession of individual states. (A backlash to these included several counter-petitions, like this one titled, "Deport Everyone That Signed A Petition To Withdraw Their State From The United States Of America," and one titled, "Peacefully Grant the State ofHerp-a-Derp to Withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW Government.") Early this year, the Obama administration responded to the cries for secession (they are not in favor), a move that did little to deter certain secessionist elements in the country.
WTP was launched under the the banner of government transparency—from an administration "committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government." (Obama's is the self-proclaimed "most transparent administration ever," though its actual record on the issue is mixed at best.) "I think [We the People] is a worthwhile experiment, even with the less serious [petitions]," John Wonderlich, policy director for the Sunlight Foundation, said. "It's not fundamentally changing how power works, but that's not to say it's not important. We're seeing a lot of enthusiasm and attention. There are probably a lot of people who only heard about the petitions website because of the Death Star petition. If that makes them more aware of how the White House works...then that's a good thing."
"My favorite lighthearted one is definitely the Death Star one," Wonderlich continued.
Macon Phillips, head of the White House Office of Digital Strategy, is the big kahuna behind the operation. During the early stages of the site's development, top aide David Plouffe liked the idea enough to help Phillips sell it to skeptical senior staff. The White House saw the project as yet another avenue for digital civic engagement and as well-meaning outreach—a nice gesture, at the very least. What they did not foresee at the time of the launch was the extent to which the site would be co-opted for epic quantities of taxpayer-funded trolling.
Since its inception—and nearly 10 million signatures later—WTP has hosted a wide variety of petitions, including serious efforts that focus on subjects such as AIDS prevention, humanitarian intervention in Syria, pot legalization, and mass shootings in America. But the website has received the most attention for things less noble. The biggest traffic drivers is the constant spate of goofy, often downright freakish demands—which in turn have provoked unserious and deservedly tongue-in-cheek responses from the executive branch. Still, things could be bleaker: "For the most part, it's a good public service," a White House staffer maintains, "and, hey—isn't it nice to show people once in a while that you don't lose all sense of humor just because you start working for The Man?"
A look at the site's numbers, via the White House blog.
Interactive Writing Fellow
Asawin Suebsaeng is an interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter. Email tips, insights, and anger to asuebsaeng [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | TWITTER
A few hundred people jokingly/not-so-jokingly want Obama to "spur job creation" by beginning construction on the Death Star from "Star Wars."
How Jimmy Dushku, 25-year-old globetrotting investor and Coldplay superfan, became Pyongyang's only true Twitter friend—and the backlash that followed.
AMERICAN job growth during the Obama recession. It would be more if American rich people would invest in America instead of the prc and India and if the bank-financial cabal would release money for investment in the American economy. From HuffPost....
A tiny, routine revision in some jobs data could have a big political payoff for President Obama.
The Labor Department on Thursday morning quietly released a new benchmark for payroll employment
in the U.S. It turns out that with the revision, there has been net job
growth -- not much, but more than nothing -- during Obama's first term.
According to the revision, total non-farm payrolls stood at 133.686
million jobs in August, up from 133.561 million in January 2009, when
Obama's first term began. Before the revision, payrolls were at 133.300
million in August.
In other words, 125,000 jobs have been created, in total, during
Obama's first term, compared with a prior estimate of a loss of 261,000.
This is obviously a very small difference, but it takes away a weapon
that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for
president, has used repeatedly to hit Obama: the claim that there has been a net job loss since he took office.
That claim was arguably unfair in any event, given the state of the economy when Obama took on the worst job in America:
The economy was shedding about 750,000 jobs per month just before and
after his inauguration. With the new benchmark revisions, it added about 194,000 jobs per month in the year up to March 2012, according to Wharton economics professor Justin Wolfers.
The BLS regularly adjusts its payroll data to account for hard
unemployment insurance data from the states. The next revision is
scheduled for February 2013. In the latest revision, as of March 2012,
U.S. non-farm payrolls were 386,000 jobs higher than first estimated.
The BLS noted that these revisions are so tiny that they are not
considered statistically significant -- representing just 0.3 percent of
total non-farm payrolls.
If
not for deep cuts in government jobs, net job growth in Obama's first
term probably would have turned positive long ago. The BLS revision
raised private payrolls by 453,000 jobs, but lowered government payrolls
by 67,000. That means, in total, federal, state and local government
payrolls are 743,000 jobs lower than they were when Obama took office.
Private payrolls, in contrast, are 868,000 jobs higher than when Obama
took office, including the benchmark revision.
These numbers do not change the unemployment rate, because they are
derived from a survey of businesses that is separate from the household
survey that determines the unemployment rate. Unemployment is still too
high at 8.1 percent, and job growth has weakened noticeably in recent
months -- Thursday's benchmark revisions don't change that.
Still, by taking away one big talking point from Romney, these revisions could be politically significant. Update: A couple of points of context: Including
today's benchmark revision, about 4.4 million jobs have been created, in
total, since February 2010, when payrolls finally hit bottom after the
recession. We're still about 4.3 million jobs away from peak employment
in January 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/data-job-growth-obama_n_1919533.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=092812&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
