Empire Of The Sun - Half Mast

Come on now can we talk about it like we used to talk about
Hotel in the hills with a carousel
Farmhouse in the front a tractor in the lounge

Oh oh oh honey I need you round I know I know

Listen now can we talk in love and walk the town
Be easy now, go hiking through the hills in a summer gown
Raise the kids, peace within and make our sound

Hear me now, I'm down on knees and praying
Though my faith is weak
Without you so please baby please give us a chance
Make a mends and I will stand until the end
A million times a trillion more

Oh oh oh honey I need you round I know I know

Smile baby don't cry
I will only fly with you by my side
Baby I'm cornered now
Baby don't push me out
Lately I walk in doubt
Maybe it's crashing down
Baby can you save it now

Oh oh oh honey I need you round I know I know
Oh oh oh honey I need you round I know I know

Baby I'm cornered now
Baby don't push me out
Lately I walk in doubt
Maybe it's crashing down

Baby I'm cornered now
Baby don't push me out
Lately I walk in doubt
Maybe it's crashing down

Workaholism from Rework

Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We
hear about people burning the midnight oil. They pull
 all- nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a
badge of honor to kill yourself over a project. No
amount of work is too much work.
Not only is this workaholism unnecessary, it’s stupid. Working more  doesn’t mean you care more or get
more done. It just means you work more.
Workaholics wind up creating more problems than
they solve. First off, working like that just isn’t sustainable over time. When the burnout crash  comes— and it
 will— it’ll hit that much harder.
Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix
problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to
make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This
results in inelegant solutions.
They even create crises. They don’t look for ways to
be more efficient because they actually  like working
overtime. They enjoy feeling like heroes. They create
problems (often unwittingly) just so they can get off on
working more.
Workaholics make the people who don’t stay late
feel inadequate for “merely” working reasonable hours.
That leads to guilt and poor morale all around. Plus, it

Planning is guessing. From Rework.

Unless you’re a  fortune- teller,  long- term business planning is a fantasy. There are just too many factors that are
out of your hands: market conditions, competitors, customers, the economy, etc. Writing a plan makes you feel
in control of things you can’t actually control.
Why don’t we just call plans what they  really are:
guesses. Start referring to your business plans as business
guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and
your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can
stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t
worth the stress.
When you turn guesses into plans, you enter a danger zone. Plans let the past drive the future. They put
blinders on you. “This is where we’re going because,
well, that’s where we said we were going.” And that’s the
problem: Plans are inconsistent with improvisation.
And you have to be able to improvise. You have to
be able to pick up opportunities that come along. Sometimes you need to say, “We’re going in a new direction
because that’s what makes sense today.”
The timing of  long- range plans is screwed up too.
You have the most information when you’re doing
something, not before you’ve done it. Yet when do you
write a plan? Usually it’s before you’ve even begun.
That’s the worst time to make a big decision.

Stop coddling the super rich.

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.

While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.

These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.

To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.

I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.

Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.

The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.

Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

Warren E. Buffett is the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway.

Luis del Pino: Editorial, Vejaciones

''...Ahora que esta malhadada legislatura se acerca a su final, ahora que la nefasta era de Zapatero se termina, no puedo evitar sentir - cuando miro hacia atrás - el mismo tipo de extrañeza que con esa obra de Satié, "Vejaciones".

Porque a lo largo de estos siete años, los españoles hemos podido ver cómo Zapatero ha ido poniendo sobre la mesa ocurrencia tras ocurrencia, en un frenesí legislativo incomprensible.

Pero lo sorprendente, para mi, no es que Zapatero - ese Zapatero iluminado, ese Zapatero fatuo, ese Zapatero mentiroso, ese Zapatero enloquecido - haya llevado a cabo una acción de gobierno destructiva. Lo sorprendente es que cada una de sus ocurrencias - desde la negociación con ETA a la Ley de Memoria Histórica, pasando por las leyes de igualdad, la educación para la ciudadanía y la ley del aborto - ha encontrado a gente, a mucha gente, dispuesta a secundarla, a explicarla y a justificarla.

El problema no es que los locos o los malvados existan. El problema es que cualquier ocurrencia de un loco o de un malvado encuentra a gente dispuesta a asumirla con naturalidad.

Lo cual dice muy poco, qué quieren que les diga, del género humano''

Despilfarrros ZP: El Gobierno dilapida otros 650.000 euros en financiar la Alianza de Civilizaciones y mantener a los aliados Cuba, Bolivia y Venezuela

• El Gobierno dilapida otros 650.000 euros en financiar la Alianza de Civilizaciones

  13-08-2011 | 48
  Exteriores sufraga una vez más el malogrado proyecto de Zapatero en el ocaso de la legislatura. Concede también subvenciones millonarias a Cuba, Bolivia y Venezuela.
• David Martínez. Madrid
  El agonizante Gobierno de José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a sólo unos meses de abandonar el poder, volvió a destinar ayer partidas millonarias para financiar el que ha sido su proyecto estrella en política exterior, la Alianza de Civilizaciones, así como diferentes actividades de sus más fieles aliados del escenario internacional: los países iberoamericanos que presiden Raúl Castro, Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales y compañía.
  El BOE publicaba ayer una nueva relación de subvenciones concedidas por el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, a través de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo, aBolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua y otros países iberoamericanos y africanos, además de dedicar una partida especial que alcanza los 650.000 euros a la Alianza de Civilizaciones. Ni en los estertores de su mandato se resigna el Ejecutivo socialista a reconocer el fracaso de este proyecto, cuyos resultados reales todavía no han dado los frutos esperados. La excusa esgrimida esta vez para financiar la Alianza es que el dinero se dedicará a “analizar las causas de las divisiones que ponen en peligro la paz” y proponer “medidas políticas concretas” para solucionar esos desajustes. Pero esta subvención es sólo la punta del iceberg de las millonarias partidas que el Ministerio de Exteriores va a destinar a patrocinar proyectos internacionales de manera altruista, en los que España ni participa ni se beneficia. Así, por ejemplo, se dan casi dos millones de euros a la dictadura cubana de los Castro, para su “Programa de desarrollo rural en el Oriente” de la isla y otros 754.000 a la Bolivia de Evo Morales, para que financie sus “compromisos de la X Reunión de la Comisión Mixta de Cooperación Hispano-Boliviana”, entre otras actividades.
  El despilfarro gubernamental también beneficia a Hugo Chávez, a quien se destina una partida de300.000 euros para el mantenimiento de dos escuelas-taller en Venezuela. Pero la gran favorecida es, sin duda, la Nicaragua del sandinista Daniel Ortega, a cuyas manos irán a parar ocho millones de euros de nuestras maltrechas arcas públicas, con el objetivo de ayudar en el “desarrollo integral” del Barrio Acahualinca, en la capital del país, Managua.
  La generosidad del Ejecutivo socialista también alcanza para financiar proyectos de organismos internacionales, como cuatro de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo, que recibirá un total de tres millones y medio con cargo a nuestro presupuesto público. 

Intereconomia editoria: las arcas estan vacias

Las arcas están vacías y la insuficiencia de recursos ya está alcanzando a los sectores más desfavorecidos de la sociedad. Las farmacias, antaño pujantes negocios que permitían a una familia vivir acomodadamente durante varias generaciones, están acumulando impagados por parte de una Administración que, tras años de pauperizadora gestión socialista, se ha quedado sin fondos; y si las farmacias no cobran por los medicamentos que entregan con receta, terminarán interrumpiendo sus servicios, en claro perjuicio de enfermos y ancianos. Pero, ¿cómo hemos podido llegar a una situación de semejante ruina? ¿Cuándo devenimos un país tan poco serio como para no honrar nuestras obligaciones? No, desde luego, a partir del 22-M, tal como ahora quieren hacernos creer los irresponsables políticos y voceros del PSOE, sino más bien durante los últimos años en los que los socialistas coparon casi todas las instituciones.

Al cabo, Zapatero recibió en 2004 unas finanzas públicas ajustadas y en orden. En apenas dos legislaturas, el Gobierno del PP había cuadrado ingresos y gastos pese a partir del enorme déficit del 6% que le había legado el felipismo. Nada que ver, por consiguiente, la situación que se encontró Aznar con la que se encontró Zapatero: el primero recibió un edificio en ruinas que consiguió rehabilitar en un complejo de lujo y el segundo tomó esa notable hacienda para implosionarla desde dentro.

Fue la burbuja inmobiliaria, y la consecuente alza de los ingresos públicos vinculados al ladrillo, lo que deslumbró a Zapatero y le llevó a ser el más imprudente e insensato de cuantos socialistas han gobernado alguna de las Administraciones de este país. Sin ser consciente de que alrededor del 30% de todos los impuestos recaudados durante los años del boom artificial tenderían a desaparecer con la burbuja, el presidente del Gobierno comenzó a despilfarrar sin ton ni son el dinero público –ese que según una de sus ministras, la ínclita Carmen Calvo, “no era de nadie”– en gastos consolidados que seguirían comprometidos aun cuando la economía pinchara: ayudas milmillonarias a las energías renovables, subvenciones absurdas a todo tipo de grupos de presión (dudosas ONG, sindicatos, patronal, cine español, coche eléctrico, promoción de lenguas regionales…), cheques-bebé, reparto de bombillas de bajo consumo, embajadas autonómicas, ley de dependencia, etc.

Durante las legislaturas de Zapatero y de sus barones autonómicos, el Estado ha crecido desproporcionadamente, hasta el punto de que hoy ni siquiera queda dinero para que las distintas Administraciones cumplan con una de sus principales obligaciones: pagar sus deudas. Porque, en última instancia, lo que sucede en Castilla-La Mancha como consecuencia de la dispendiosa gestión de José María Barreda es lo mismo que temen los inversores internacionales que vaya a pasar con ellos: que los gastos inflados del zapaterismo continúen fagocitando la totalidad de los ingresos públicos y no haya dinero para todos.

Por eso resulta imprescindible que el Ejecutivo central y los autonómicos se tomen muy en serio el prioritario objetivo de recuperar el equilibrio presupuestario. No se ha de gastar un euro más del que se ingresa, en caso no habrá recursos ni siquiera para atender los desembolsos más básicos. Toca sacar la tijera para eliminar sin miramientos todas las partidas superfluas, así como recuperar la Ley de déficit cero que Aznar aprobó y que Zapatero se encargó de enterrar para dar rienda suelta al endeudamiento autonómico. Pero para ello, antes será necesario anticipar de nuevo las elecciones.

Michelle Featherstone - Stay (with lyrics)

The Washington Times Editorial: Obama’s downgraded America

The Obama administration has made history by presiding over the first-ever downgrade in the U.S. credit rating. President Obama has outdone all his predecessors in wrecking America’s good name. His answer to this problem: Spend even more. 

Raising the debt ceiling was sold as a way of guaranteeing the U.S. credit rating. It had the opposite effect, which makes sense to anyone who understands credit. Take a family with a median household income around $50,000. If they spend $85,000 a year and have debt at $300,000 and growing, it’d be foolish to let them borrow more because they don’t have the income to pay it back. Raising the debt ceiling ignored this reality. Then, the Obama administration immediately demonstrated its utter lack of creditworthiness by blowing 60 percent of the initial $400 billion increase in one day, the largest single-day accumulation of debt in U.S. history. 

The White House blames the George W. Bush administration for every economic woe, but the numbers speak for themselves. In 2008, the federal budget deficit was around 3 percent of gross domestic product. In 2011, it’s around 11 percent. Total federal debt was $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008 and is currently $14.3 trillion. Debt as a percentage of GDP was a painful 69 percent at the end of the Bush years, but Mr. Obama is pushing it over 100 percent, another disgraceful historic milestone. A record 45.8 million are on food stamps, and the percentage of working-aged Americans who have jobs is the lowest in three decades. According to Gallup’s daily tracking poll, in late January, 44 percent of Americans felt the economy was getting better, and 52 percent thought it was worsening. Now only 17 percent have a positive view; 77 percent understand our economy is nosediving.  

The Standard & Poor’s ratings downgrade is only the beginning. Moody’s Investors Service still lists the United States as AAA but with a “watch negative” caveat, and S&P managing director John Chambers warned that should U.S. debt go over 100 percent of GDP, America would face a second downgrade. Speaker John A. Boehner should immediately call the House into emergency session to start passing serious budget cuts to stave off this looming credit disaster. If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid chooses to block these necessary measures, Democrats can shoulder the blame.

Mr. Obama is blithely passing the buck. At a Wednesday fundraiser, he refused to own up to his responsibility for the economic calamity America is facing, saying “because we were inheriting so many challenges, we’re not even halfway there yet. When I said, ‘change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say ‘change we can believe in tomorrow.’ ” If the nation continues on this disastrous course Mr. Obama has set, there will be no tomorrow.

Pema Chodron: SEEING OURSELVES CLEARLY

When we begin to see clearly what we do, how we get hooked and swept away by old habits, our usual tendency is to use that as a reason to get discouraged, a reason to feel really bad about ourselves. Instead, we could realize how remarkable it is that we actually have the capacity to see ourselves honestly, and that doing this takes courage. It is moving in the direction of seeing our life as a teacher rather than as a burden. This involves, fundamentally, learning to stay present, but learning to stay with a sense of humor, learning to stay with loving-kindness toward ourselves and with the outer situation, learning to take joy in the magic ingredient of honest self-reflection.