Blog

Posted by Ray Long and Michelle Manchir at 4:41 p.m.; updated at 5:14 p.m.

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Pat Quinn defended his proposed income tax hike today, even as Repbulican governor challenger Bill Brady launched a Web site attempting to rally political anger against the idea.

The contrast on taxes unfolded on April 15, the deadline to file income tax returns and get squared up with the government.

Brady, a state senator from Bloomington, unveiled StopThePatQuinnTax.com, his latest maneuver to highlight the
contrast between Quinn’s quest for an income tax increase to help
balance the state’s out-of-whack books and Brady’s outright
opposition to the governor’s proposal.

“The purpose of this endeavor is to help Gov. Quinn understand that the citizens of Illinois are sick and tired of politicians who continue to dip into their pockets,” Brady said.



At a separate event, Quinn defended his tax plan, saying it is “very important” to provide adequate money for education in budget year that begins July 1. Quinn has proposed a $1.3 billion cut in education if lawmakers don’t approve an income tax increase.



The Senate approved a 66 percent income tax rate increase last year, but the legislation is going nowhere in the House, where even a temporary 50 percent income tax rate hike proposal failed last year.



“It is something that I‘ve spoken to legislators individually about as well as their leaders,” Quinn said. “And we’re going to work hard on that in the next seven weeks.”



The “seven weeks” comment suggests Quinn is prepared to press the legislature for the tax hike through the end of May even though Democratic leaders, Speaker Michael Madigan and President John Cullerton, both of Chicago, have plans to leave the Capitol by May 7.

Any roll call on a tax hike after May 31 would require a three-fifths vote to pass, a level that’s virtually impossible to reach in an election year.

Brady’s appearance on the deadline day for filing state and federal taxes also put him in the awkward position of defending his decision to keep his income tax return private. Releasing tax returns is not required of governors or their challengers, but many candidates do in the interest of transparency.



A businessman and developer, Brady said he would not release his returns even though he did that in a prior bid for office.  He maintained the state’s legally required but less-detailed economic interest statements give citizens “full disclosure of all my business interests.”



Quinn’s campaign seized on Brady’s reluctance to give the public a glimpse of personal tax information, but would not release the governor’s tax returns today. Quinn spokeswoman Mica Matsoff said the governor would make his returns public and said citizens deserve to see Brady’s tax information too. Quinn did release his tax returns last year nearly a week after the April 15 filing deadline.



One thing Brady and Quinn appeared to agree on was praise for the Tea Party movement for its grass-roots appeal, though Quinn was more tepid. Rallies were held in Chicago and the suburbs today.



Brady said tea party supporters are more likely to support his views, noting they are looking for the “same clean break from the politics of the past.”



“They’re looking for a citizen democracy government,” Brady said. “That’s what I stand for. So I think we’re well aligned.”



In between the Brady-Quinn tax squabble, Cullerton called on the House to approve a dollar-a-pack hike on the state cigarette tax that the Senate already has approved.



Sen. Jeff Schoenberg, D-Evanston, said the $279 million in new revenue that could be generated by the tax hike could be turned into nearly a billion dollars for health care if Illinois took advantage of federal Medicaid reimbursement rates now in place.



Even though the state could get a great return from the federal government, Cullerton said, many lawmakers are wary of voting for any new tax in an election year.



Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Chicago, the House sponsor, said she needs to sway about 10 votes to pass the bill.

We’ve been waiting for this since the first GSM Palm Pre phones hit the market and the day is here: A true SIM unlock solution for the Palm Pre developed by maxrfon in our forums and sold by nextgenserver is now available. They have various pricing plans, but the default will run you £ 25.00 for a single unlock code. We spoke to the developers behind the unlock and they say that there are a couple of bugs to work out with the process, but that this is a ‘permanent unlock’ that should persist after webOS software updates – good news for those struggling with the post 1.4 issues the Rebel SIM solution has been facing. Check out this thread for the giddiness and joy the unlock seems to have unleashed.

Those who are super-antsy to get the Pre Plus in the US on AT&T will probably still want to wait as we’re hoping that the launch is coming soon (not to mention you’ll get the Plus version). Developers, however, should be downright giddy – it might make more sense for many of them to test on the lower-end regular Pre anyhow. Combine a 20%-off, non-contracted developer phone from Palm (go with the Telcel version from Mexico for AT&T 3G compatibility), the latest version of WebOS Meta Doctor for bypassing the first-run activation process, and this unlock and it seems to us you have a free, clear, and proper dev phone.

You’ll need a Windows XP or Vista machine to get it done and note that it’s worth a scan through the unlock forum thread starting at this post to check out some of the potential install issues.

It’s a near-weekly occurrence: HTC, or Motorola, or someone releases a brand-new Android phone. There are a ton of them! But really, there are only a few worth buying. Here are the best Android phones on each carrier. More »

Sony is going to allow third parties to design and produce laptops with the VAIO brand, according to a surprise announcement by the deputy president of Sony VAIO Business Group. Sony has long enjoyed the reputation of being the “Apple” of Windows laptops, innovative designs at a price premium. Ryosuke Akahane stated that to differentiate between laptops made solely by Sony and those by third parties, Sony will create internal designations of Division One and Division Two products. One will be Sony’s as you might expect and Division Two will be products produced outside.

Confusingly, the Division Two Sony laptops will still be branded VAIO and look to be Sony’s own products in every way. The move is to raise market share according to Sony, as third party manufacturers can make products more cheaply than Sony. It sounds to me like a way to dilute your brand reputation in the marketplace, with customers no longer associating the VAIO brand strictly with Sony products.

Related research from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

The State of the Smartbook

The Huffington Post has two stories on various politicians and policymakers warming to the idea of breaking up big banks and possibly bringing back parts of Glass-Steagall, an act that prohibited companies from mixing insurance, commercial and investment banking functions that Congress repealed in 1999, making way for today’s megabanks.

Shahien Nasiripour reports that three Fed governors — heads of three of the Federal Reserve’s regional banks — support ending too big to fail by breaking banks up. “If there was a good way to do so, if you had a clear road map about how you were going to go about it, and why you were going to break them up in this particular way,” James Bullard, the head of the St. Louis bank, said he would support it.

And Ryan Grim reports that Republican legislators mentioned they might support the “Volcker Rule,” an proposal by former Fed President Paul Volcker to restrict proprietary trading, where banks make speculative bets for themselves rather than on behalf of customers:

“Sixty percent of all the banking assets are concentrated in ten banks in the country,” said [Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)]. HuffPost asked if he’d support what’s known as the Volcker Rule, an administration plan to split off risky trading done by banks for their own gain from standard commercial banking activities.

“Yes,” he said, “I think that’s one approach.”

Without prompting, he added: “Glass-Steagall, we need to look at that.”

“We all — I say we all, but almost all of us — made the mistake of repealing Glass-Steagall in 1999,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) told HuffPost. “Some of the problems of the big banks were brought about by the blurring of the restrictions on where they could go. And they went into brokerage and they went into derivatives they went into lots of other things. Maybe we need to look back to that, but it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle.”

But the bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) solves the too big to fail problem differently — by creating a $50 billion fund, paid for by banks, to cover the cost of resolving a failing bank and wiping out its shareholders and management — meaning such statements of support are likely too little, too late, even if they might be a more effective solution.

Former Bush economist Keith Hennessey makes a lucid argument about why actually, Republicans are to blame for the 47% who don’t pay income tax.

Of course the tax day talking points are already dying down…

But the reason so many Americans don’t pay taxes is a credit — that is money back — for having children and having low wages. These credits were established by a Republican-majority congress in the late nineties, and expanded by George W.

Hennessey’s blog has the legislative timeline:

• In 1997 every “normal” married couple with two children that earned $24,000 or more (in today’s dollars) had to pay at least some income taxes.  The top nonpayer threshold for a family of this size was just under $24,000.  This means there were some four-person families with income just below $24,000 that owed no income taxes.
• In 1997 a Republican majority Congress and President Clinton enacted the Balanced Budget Act.  At the insistence of Congressional Republicans, this law created a $400-per-child tax credit which began in 1998.  This caused the top nonpayer threshold to jump more than $7,000, to about $31,300.  Millions of families with kids with incomes between $24,000 and $31,300 were “taken off the rolls” because the child tax credit wiped out the small income tax liability they owed.
• As a result of the 1997 law, in 1999 the child tax credit automatically increased to $500 per child, and the threshold for a married family with two kids grew to $32,800 in today’s dollars.
• In 2001 President Bush and the Republican Congress enacted a major tax law that increased the child tax credit to $600.  This law also introduced the 10% income tax bracket, which lowered by 5 percentage points the lowest income tax rate.  The combination of these two tax changes raised the top nonpayer threshold to $38,700.  That law further phased in over time increases in the child credit to $1,000 per child.
• The 2003 tax law enacted by President Bush and the Republican Congress accelerated the $1,000 per child amount to be effective immediately.  This increased the threshold to $47,400 in 2003.  That’s a huge jump.  It was incredibly popular, and it helped create political impetus for the 2003 law which also accelerated rate reductions and cut capital gains and dividend rates.
• The 2008 stimulus (President Bush + Democratic majority Congress) included stimulus checks of $1,200 per married couple, plus another $300 per child.  This increased the threshold to $56,700.  This was a one-time increase, however, and the non-stimulus threshold for 2008 was about $44,500.
• In 2009 President Obama and a Democratic majority Congress increased this threshold to $51,400 with the new “making-work-pay” tax credit.  This was enacted on near party-line votes.  That threshold drops slightly to about $50,300 this year.

Keep that in mind for next year’s tax day furor.

Don’t miss: 20 More Tax Facts That Will Make Your Head Explode

Join the conversation about this story »

As you are contemplating the characteristics and qualities that make a good Justice (and tweeting them with the hashtag #AGoodNom or leaving them as comments on the blog post from earlier this week), it’s worth browsing the (not-so) short list of potential nominees and learning a little bit about their backgrounds and judicial philosophies. The Washington Post has a list of candidates and some information about each of them. Slate Magazine has a longer list, with similar information–and, in the spirit of adventure, you can “Choose your own Supreme Court Justice.”

No one knows when the President will announce his nominee. However, considering that the he made clear last week that he hopes the “new Justice is seated in time for the fall term,” which begins on the First Monday in October, we can expect that he will move quickly to make a decision within the next few weeks. (If you need to brush up on what happens after the nomination–check out the RAC’s one-page flyer on the judicial nominations process and how you can have an impact!).

In the meantime, visit the RAC’s resource page on the impending vacancy to find materials that will help you to educate yourself and your community about the impact of the Supreme Court on issues of importance to the Reform Movement.

Wow, that was fast: little more than two weeks after EFF testified to a Senate subcommittee that federal electronic privacy law needs to be updated to protect against secret video surveillance just like it regulates electronic eavesdropping, Senator Arlen Specter has responded by introducing a bill to do just that.

Specter, chairman of the subcommittee that held the hearing in response to the scandal over a Pennsylvania school district’s alleged use of webcams on school-issued laptops to spy on students at home, today introduced the Surreptitious Video Surveillance Act of 2010. The bill, co-sponsored by Senators Feingold and Kaufman, would update the federal wiretapping statute to create serious criminal and civil penalties for secret, nonconsensual video surveillance inside any temporary or permanent residence, be it your house, your apartment, or your hotel room.

In last month’s hearing, EFF pushed for such an update to the law, reminding the Senate of what Judge Richard Posner of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the very first appellate court decision to recognize the video surveillance gap in the electronic privacy law:

Of course it is anomalous to have detailed statutory regulation of bugging and wiretapping but not of television surveillance, in Title III…and we would think it a very good thing if Congress responded to the issues discussed in this opinion by amending Title III to bring television surveillance within its scope.

Finally, over 25 years since that call to action, these Senators are stepping up to the plate to protect your video privacy, which is in special need of protection now that we live within a technological landscape practically littered with Internet-connected cameras that might be taken over and abused by others, be it the government, a computer criminal, a stalker, your employer or even your school.

We at EFF look forward to working with Congress as this legislation moves forward to ensure that the final product properly balances privacy rights, public safety, and the free speech rights of photographers, videographers and journalists. In the meantime, we thank Senators Specter, Feingold and Kaufman for starting a congressional conversation about video privacy that is long overdue.

Per their request, West Virginia’s lawmakers were briefed by the White House this afternoon on developments surrounding the investigation of last week’s explosion that killed 29 miners at the Upper Big Branch Mine south of Charleston. Here’s a hint: They aren’t exactly thrilled with what they’re hearing.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) just issued a statement calling the tragedy “incomprehensible” considering the number of safety measures Congress has enacted over the years to protect miners. Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that owns the mine, bears the responsibility for the accident, Byrd added.

Disasters on this scale were supposed to be relegated to history following the passage of the 1969 Coal Act.  It’s incomprehensible that 29 miners should have perished in what appears to be a methane gas explosion, exacerbated by excessive coal dust.  It is a violation of the most basic health and safety laws.  We must determine why the enforcement process broke down, and hold accountable those responsible.

The ultimate responsibility for the health and safety of the miners falls to the mine operator.

No captain of industry, regardless of power or position, is beyond the reach the law. We mean to act swiftly, deliberately, and comprehensively to protect our miners, and to hold accountable any operator who puts profits above the health and safety of his own employees.

Federal safety officials closed parts of the Upper Big Branch 48 times in 2009 alone, Byrd said. The reason? “Repeated significant and substantial violations.” That’s nearly 19 times the national rate, Byrd says, “and the highest in the country.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) just released a statement of his own. Like President Obama earlier today, Rockefeller is spreading the blame around. ”This is a shared responsibility for the companies and the government alike to keep our mines safe,” he said.

Jeremy Liew, a managing director with Lightspeed Venture Partners who focuses on consumer Internet companies in sectors like gaming and social media, is a big believer in virtual goods.

Liew recently stopped by GigaOM HQ for a quick chat about the explosive growth of that market and where it’s headed. Liew believes:

• There is still a lot of growth left in the virtual goods space as mechanisms come online that allow people to trade time for money (for more on this, see Om’s interview with CrowdFlower’s CEO).

• The iPad won’t be a game-changer in the virtual goods space at first, but could be, depending on adoption of the device.

• Buying virtual goods in games is not cheating, but rather is akin to a golfer purchasing a better putter.

• Companies looking to his firm for funding should realize that games are a hits-driven business. Creating one really expensive game is less appealing than the ability to affordably take “multiple shots on goal.”

For more in-depth analysis on MMOs, check out the report Virtual Worlds: Trends and Opportunities at our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro.

Consumer Reports have taken the unusual step of reporting on the advertising of a phone, in this case the KIN, and it is not to complain about consumers being misled, but rather at seeing the disturbing sight of  a male nipple.

This horrendous sight has put the consumer product review company in a spin, suggesting Microsoft is intent on corrupting the youth with this villainous sight.

They complain:

The video, on a promotional site for the new phones, includes a downright creepy sequence in which a young man is shown putting a Kin under his shirt and apparently snapping a picture of one of his naked breasts. The breast is then shown on the phone’s screen, just before the guy apparently sends it to someone. Next we see the face of a young woman, seemingly the recipient, with an amused expression on her face.

Thank god we have Consumer Reports thinking of the children for once.  They have already announced their next target is Spring Break.

Via CNET.com

Filed under: Motorsports

It’s been 21 years since a turbocharger found its way onto a Formula One racer. In 1989, the FIA banned forced-induction due to the ridiculous power and speed they were generating. For better or worse, things haven’t been the same since, but if a report from Pitpass is to be believed, we may see the reign of the turbo return once again.

The site is claiming that the FIA is seriously considering bringing a new turbocharged 1.5-liter engine to F1, but don’t expect to see early ’80s power from these machines. The four-cylinder engine is being considered for one reason alone – to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.

So we won’t see over 1,000 horsepower from the 2011 grid, but to make up for the dip in grunt, Pitpass says the FIA is also considering allowing KERS to return. While we’re sure the sanctioning body is keen to get the eco-minded off its back, odds are the FIA wouldn’t mind spicing up the racing a bit, either. While we were promised heart-stopping action from the 2010 season, so far the racing has been much of the same. Here’s hoping…

[Source: Pitpass]

Report: Formula One considering 1.5-liter turbo engines originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple will start selling its iPad outside the United States later this month, however, CEO Steve Jobs has yet to specify a date. Those who are anxious to get their hands on one, or want to capitalize on the uncertainty, are traveling all the way to New York to pick up a bunch of units.

Amit Jain, who owns an electronics shop in Mumbai, said he sold 5 64- gigabyte iPads for 100,000 rupees ($2,250) each as of April 7 after they reached India through unofficial distributors. That’s triple the $699 that the iPad retails for in the U.S. and just $250 less than India’s cheapest car – the Tata Nano.

“We have customers who are willing to buy,” said Jain. “So we maintain our margins.”

Apple has sold more than 450,000 iPads in less than a week after its introduction, Jobs said on April 8.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Bloomberg (via AutoObserver)

This video here is of lighting flashing on Saturn, and it’s the first ever captured of lightning not happening right here on planet Earth. More »