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Har.
Washington Post endorsement: Four more years for President Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Post Co. will pay its 2013 dividends before the end of this year to try to spare investors from anticipated tax increases.
The media and education company said Friday that its dividend of $9.80 per share is payable Dec. 27 to shareholders of record as of Dec. 17. The payout is instead of regular quarterly dividends next year.
Washington Post is the latest company to move up its quarterly payout or issue a special end-of-year payment to protect investors from potentially having to pay higher taxes on dividend income starting in January.
Since 2003 investors have paid a maximum 15 percent on dividend income. But that historically low rate will expire in January unless Congress and President Barack Obama reach a compromise on taxes and government spending. As it stands, dividends will be taxed as ordinary income in 2013, the same as wages, so rates will go up depending on which income bracket a taxpayer is in. For the highest earners, the dividend rate would jump to 43.4 percent.
Hmmm, it seems they are trying to avoid paying their fair share.
I KNEW we should have taken bets on when this would happen.
In a recent investigative report by the Center for Responsive Politics and Hearst newspapers, the authors expressed concern that drones were being pushed into the domestic market before safety and ethics issues had been sufficiently addressed. Such fears played out when the first police department in the country to acquire an aerial drone crashed the $300,000 aircraft into its own SWAT team.
Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of ‘informational texts’. American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace. Books such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by “informational texts” approved by the Common Core State Standards. Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California’s Invasive Plant Council.
Ha! And you thought little Johnny has a bad case of ADD now!
The new educational standards have the backing of the influential National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and are being part-funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.
Seriously, I’m holding out hope that this some kind of sick joke.
Executive Producers: Wade Ostrander -> The Two Silent Knights
Executive Producers: Sir Wade Ostrander, Craig Harms, David Goes, Chris Eisbach, Sir Andrew Lemesany, Wade Demming
Associate Executive Producers: Paul Schneider, Peter C. Norwood, Rodney E. Gravenstein
Art by MarS
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Heard someone today mention that despite being the best in the world, our health care system is the most expensive, financially wasteful, and inefficient in the world. This is one reason.
In his lunchtime keynote Tuesday at the mHealth Summit, [Gary] Shapiro, who oversees the world’s largest innovation tradeshow, the International CES, said innovation is being stifled in healthcare by an overbearing legal system, a financial framework that rewards physicians for avoiding new technology and choosing more expensive procedures, and a testing and approval process that can’t keep up with technology.
“Our healthcare system is based on a system that was (established) before the Internet,” he lamented.
[…]
His suggestions? Change the legal system to what he called “loser-pays litigation,” get rid of the stifling patent system – in particular, patent trolls – stop incentivizing doctors for choosing more expensive drugs, amend Obamacare to eliminate new taxes on healthcare innovations, speedup the FDA’s review process, and change the nation’s immigration policy from a lottery-based system to one that rewards creative minds.
No Snopes item on it that I could find. Yet.
A charity in New Zealand is teaching three dogs to drive to highlight their intelligence and encourage more people to give rescued animals a home. The campaign is part of a push by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) to find more homes for abandoned pets in New Zealand.
The three animals chosen by trainer Mark Vette are Monty, an 18 month old giant schnauzer, Ginny, a one year old whippet cross and Porter, a 10 month old beardie cross.
Their training began in September with simple movements, such as putting a paw on a mock gear stick, sitting in a driving position and holding a steering wheel. After five weeks their training progressed and movement was added by mounting training aids on a trolley. Next step for the dogs was to get in a real car, with a trainer in the passenger seat to help with the steering.
Why do I get the feeling this would be easier to get done than the Fiscal Cliff crap?
Forget the White House beer recipe — what the American people really want is a Death Star.
Well, 495 of them anyway.
A petition on the White House’s “We the People” website calls for the United States to find funding and begin construction on a Star Wars-style Death Star by 2016.
“Those who sign here petition the United States government to secure funding and resources, and begin construction on a Death Star by 2016,” the petition reads.
WASHINGTON (CBS DC) – Verizon has filed a patent for targeting ads that collect information from infrared cameras and microphones that can detect the amount of people and types of conversations happening in customers’ living rooms. The set-top box technology is not the first of its kind – Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 that recommended content to users based on people it recognized in the room. Google TV also proposed a patent that would use video and audio recorders to figure out exactly how many people in a room were watching its broadcast.
Verizon filed for the application in May 2011, but the report was published last week due to laws stating that all patent applications be published after 18 months.
FierceCable first publicized the Verizon patent that gives examples of the DVR’s acute sensitivity in customers’ living rooms: argument sounds prompt ads for marriage counseling, and sounds of “cuddling” prompt ads for contraceptives.
“If detection facility detects one or more words spoken by a user (e.g., while talking to another user within the same room or on the telephone), advertising facility may utilize the one or more words spoken by the user to search for and/or select an advertisement associated with the one or more words,” Verizon states in the patent application. Users are also given the option to link their smartphones and tablets to the detection system to directly increase its sensitivity.
As the old saying goes…you have to invite the demon in.
Many years of innovative music, solid performance, inventive talent. He will be missed.
Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything.
Click here for non-Flash version.click ► to listen:
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Click here for non-Flash version.click ► to listen:
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
A CBC News investigation has uncovered a cross-border mystery involving unexplained shipments of biodiesel tanker cars that were sent back and forth numerous times between Canada and the U.S. by CN Rail but were never unloaded.
According to leaked internal CN documents, the rail company stood to make $2.6 million for the effort…
Cadet Chapel, the landmark Gothic church that is a center for spiritual life at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, hosted its first same-sex wedding Saturday.
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