President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have outlined a series of proposals that will be in Obama's budget next month, and the proposals aim to help the middle class. The proposals are a result of the work of the middle class task force that Biden was the head of. Obama said the goal of the proposals was to help people pay bills and save for retirement. The initiatives include doubling the child care tax credit for families making less than $85,000, while those making under $115,000 would also see at least some increase in their tax credit; increasing federal funding for child care programs by $1.6 billion; expanding tax credits to match retirement savings; requiring employers to provide the option of a workplace-based retirement savings plan (the employee can opt out, the smallest firms would be exempt, and the cost to employers would be offset by new tax credits); increasing aid for families taking care of elderly relatives -- $100 million will be allocated to help with transportation, adult day care, and in-home aids; and capping student loan payments at 10% of income above "a basic living allowance", and forgiving all remaining debt after 10 years of payment for those in public service work and 20 years for all others. Obama is expected to talk more about these new proposals at his State of the Union address on Wednesday. (Full Story)
An American woman was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2007. She was accused of pirating nearly 2,000 tracks but the record companies sought damages for only 24 of them. She was found guilty and told to pay $1.92 million dollars. That is just insane. She appealed against the damages claim, and the judge reduced the fine. He said the original claim by the RIAA was "monstrous". So he reduced it to $54,000. That is a big reduction, but, still, $54,000 for 24 pirated songs?! The woman is hoping to get the fine reduced even more. (Full Story)
"US law allows recording companies to ask for damages of between $750 and $30,000 for each song illegally downloaded. This can be raised by a jury to as much as $150,000 if it believes the piracy was willful. " That just blows my mind. The music industry has changed -- people aren't buying physical albums as much (and not just because of pirating). And so record companies aren't making as much money. And it's sad that the RIAA is taking it out on individual people -- like, in this case, a mom with four kids and one income. Does that feel good to initially demand this woman to pay $1.2 million because of 24 pirated songs? Is that the strategy of the music industry? Increase profits through litigation? Record companies are out of touch. They need to learn to adapt or fail. Their business model is clearly out of date.
On top of the lady having to pay $54,000, now everyone knows she has "interesting" taste in music: "The pirated songs included tracks by Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Green Day, and Gloria Estefan." She has to pay $54,000 and not even for good music! I know, I'm terrible.
Barack Obama was recently called for jury duty in Chicago. Of course, the court was alerted weeks in advance that he wasn't going to be able to make it. Obviously. This isn't big news. Yet, somehow, I imagine Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the likes are going to twist this non-story into that he's not being a good citizen; or that he doesn't love his country enough to serve his civic duty; or that this is all fake and that he wasn't actually called for jury duty, and instead this is an orchestrated attempt to show he's a citizen -- when actually he's not. I can see it now...
News of the despicable: The Lt. Governor of South Carolina, Andre Bauer (R), who is running for governor, compared people on welfare to stray animals. He said that giving people food stamps, free school lunches, and public housing means encouraging dependence. He said, "My grandmother was hot a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
After (really deserved) criticism, Bauer said he could have chose his words more carefully, but said the problem still remains of government dependency among its poorest residents. He said he doesn't need to apologize. (Full Story)
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