h/t to JP- Seen in Phoenix…
This one’s for Msgt B 🙂
Even by the standards of our government, the numbers are insane.
For instance: Americans who win bronze will pay a $2 tax on the medal itself. But the bronze comes with a modest prize—$10,000 as an honorarium for devoting your entire life to being the third best athlete on the planet in your chosen discipline. And the IRS will take $3,500 of that, thank you very much.
There are also prizes that accompany each medal: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze.
Silver medalists will owe $5,385. You win a gold? Timothy Geithner will be standing there with his hand out for $8,986.
It gets even worse. Not only do our Olympic athletes have to pay taxes on their medals and prizes – chances are their competitors on the field will face no such taxation when they get home. Because the U.S. is virtually the only developed nation that taxes “worldwide”income earned overseas by its taxpayers, our Olympic athletes face a competitive disadvantage that has nothing to do with sports.
I can only wonder if there is any way the athletes can deduct the cost of their training???
Personally, I think this is just beyond stupid!!! At least Rubio has sponsored a bill to relieve the taxes for Olympic winners!
I’m off to the range… Go read the folks on my sidebar!
Posted from my iPhone.
If Defense is only 20% of the budget, WHY is Defense taking 42-48% (depending on which set of numbers you want to believe) of the Sequestration cuts???
At our little golf tournament yesterday, this was a subject of conversation, and the fact that most of the defense contractors are already laying people off/giving early retirements, and ARE going to send out warnings of possible massive firings in either Oct or Nov, as required by the The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN).
Which is contrary to the BS now being put out by the Department of Labor-
Major defense contractors are wary of the impending cuts and debating whether they need to advise employees 60 days in advance of possible layoffs. That would be four days before the election. A law says those notices would have to go out ahead of time.
The Labor Department, however, said Monday that federal contractors do not have to warn their employees about potential layoffs from the automatic, across-the-board budget cuts due to kick in Jan. 2. The guidance letter said it would be “inappropriate” for employers to send such warnings because it is still speculative if and where the cuts might occur.
Because if they do this, it’s gonna get REAL interesting on 6 Nov! A lot of those layoffs WILL be union folks, and how are they going to like that???
The White House told agency officials Tuesday to “continue normal spending and operations” since more than five months remain for Congress to act to avert the automatic cuts.
Full article in the WAPO HERE…
And a counter point from the Washington Times HERE.
And from the WARN Act, the actual words of the requirement…
General Provisions
WARN offers protection to workers, their families and communities by requiring employers to provide notice 60 days in advance of covered plant closings and covered mass layoffs. This notice must be provided to either affected workers or their representatives (e.g., a labor union); to the State dislocated worker unit; and to the appropriate unit of local government.
Employer Coverage
In general, employers are covered by WARN if they have 100 or more employees, not counting employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months and not counting employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week. Private, for-profit employers and private, nonprofit employers are covered, as are public and quasi-public entities which operate in a commercial context and are separately organized from the regular government. Regular Federal, State, and local government entities which provide public services are not covered.
Employee Coverage
Employees entitled to notice under WARN include hourly and salaried workers, as well as managerial and supervisory employees. Business partners are not entitled to notice.
What Triggers Notice
Plant Closing: A covered employer must give notice if an employment site (or one or more facilities or operating units within an employment site) will be shut down, and the shutdown will result in an employment loss (as defined later) for 50 or more employees during any 30-day period. This does not count employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months or employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week for that employer. These latter groups, however, are entitled to notice (discussed later).
Mass Layoff: A covered employer must give notice if there is to be a mass layoff which does not result from a plant closing, but which will result in an employment loss at the employment site during any 30-day period for 500 or more employees, or for 50-499 employees if they make up at least 33% of the employer’s active workforce. Again, this does not count employees who have worked less than 6 months in the last 12 months or employees who work an average of less than 20 hours a week for that employer. These latter groups, however, are entitled to notice (discussed later).
An employer also must give notice if the number of employment losses which occur during a 30-day period fails to meet the threshold requirements of a plant closing or mass layoff, but the number of employment losses for 2 or more groups of workers, each of which is less than the minimum number needed to trigger notice, reaches the threshold level, during any 90-day period, of either a plant closing or mass layoff. Job losses within any 90-day period will count together toward WARN threshold levels, unless the employer demonstrates that the employment losses during the 90-day period are the result of separate and distinct actions and causes.
Funny, I don’t see ANY wording in there about this being ‘optional’…
At this point, about the only thing I can think of is to defeat ALL the incumbents and start over… And that is exactly what we’ll have to do; and hope that we actually have time to fix things before we become a third world country militarily!
Which reminds me, I need more duct tape… I’m down to the last roll, and using a roll a week to keep my head from exploding from all the BS coming out of DC…
We came in with a 61 on a par 72 (11 under), and I think we finished 10th out of 18 foursomes!!! The winner was a score of 54 (18 under), and 2nd and 3rd place tied at 55 (17 under).
It’s not fair when the bring in the young, limber ringers! Two on the winning team had played college golf, and were both scratch golfers; and they just killed the rest of us…LOL
We made nice though, got to see some old friends, got some decent food, and more free golf balls than I don’t use! The nicest thing was a bottle opener! 🙂
This was designed by one of the engineering interns out of scrap from production…
And I know I’m gonna hear all the jokes about little balls, but what the heck, a day on the golf course ‘working’ sure beats the hell out of a day in the office… 🙂
“The military viewpoint was that under the conditions of a high intensity close-quarter battle, group cohesion becomes of much greater significance to team performance and, in such an environment, the consequences of failure can have far-reaching and grave consequences,” the report stated. “To admit women would, therefore, involve a risk with no gains in terms of combat effectiveness to offset it.”
In 2010, the British government reviewed its policies and opted to retain the ban on women in combat.
That year, a group of U.S. Army physicians studied one brigade combat team deployed to Iraq in 2007.
Their study, published in the journal Military Medicine, examined the number of soldiers who sustained a disease or noncombat injury. Of 4,122 soldiers (325 women in support roles), 1,324 had a disease or injury that forced them to miss time or be evacuated.
“Females, compared with males, had a significantly increased incident-rate ratio for becoming a [disease or noncombat] casualty,” the doctors found.
Of 47 female soldiers evacuated from the brigade, 35 — or 74 percent — were for “pregnancy-related issues.” Women had more than triple the evacuation rate of men.
“I infer from this that women are twice as likely to suffer non-battle injuries in current specialties,” William Gregor, a professor of social sciences at the Army’s Command and Staff College, told The Times. “They will probably have a greater injury rate in heavy physical occupational specialties and the combat arms. The British experience with gender-free or neutral training standards suggests the injury rate will dramatically increase.”
UPDATE- Thanks to Tim for THIS article by a serving USMC female Captain!
Of course her ‘excuse’ was, “Well, the General says without being able to go into combat women can’t succeed.” To which I said sounds like the General did pretty well for herself…
Then I got the diatribe about how it wasn’t FAIR, and women ‘deserved’ the chance to go into combat. When I asked her if she’d go, I got the too old, family, etc (and she’s WAY overweight), so I turned it on her; and said what about your daughter, why don’t you tell HER to volunteer today (her daughter is 18), AND volunteer for combat? She should be able to pass the physical requirements, her being a cheerleader and Lacrosse player on scholarship, she should be willing to forgo that scholarship to serve the country!
She stuttered, spit, turned white and refused to answer my question…
THAT is when I realized as far as the female left is concerned, it’s all academic, BECAUSE THEY KNOW “THEY” WON’T HAVE TO GO!!!
They don’t give a shit about the women that actually DO go in the military, and ‘know’ they and their precious little ones will be safe…
Sigh…
As far as I’m concerned, if they want this crap, then re-institute the draft, put ALL kids between 18-22 in the military and train em ALL for combat. No excuses, no waivers, no outs; if that happened a lot of this social experimentation would stop!!!
Of course I know I’ll be called a male chauvinist pig, but I’m tired of them playing games with the lives of our troops (Male AND Female), just so they can make us more PC…
If you have a spare dollar or two, please consider making a donation to CJ’s Warriors.
CJ is a child with leukemia…a really sweet kid who has been one helluva trooper throughout his treatments.
I went to school with his Dad and they’re good folks.
I’ve signed up to walk, as have my kids. So my family is trying to raise at least $300 in contributions. If you get to the site & don’t know my name or my kids’ names, shoot me a message & I’ll hook you up.
I don’t ask for much, but this could mean a real difference in a child’s life.
Thanks. 
If you can spare a buck or two, I’m sure she’d appreciate the donation and knowing it’s going to a good cause is even better!
Ammo Ban Bill-
The proposal, crafted by Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg and Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy, aims to restrict the ability of Americans to buy unlimited quantities of ammunition over the Internet, or by mail order, anonymously.
…
The new legislation, dubbed the Stop Online Ammunition Sales Act, rests on four pillars, according to Lautenberg’s office:
It requires anyone selling ammunition to be a licensed dealer.
It requires ammunition buyers who are not licensed dealers to present photo identification at the time of purchase, effectively banning the online or mail order purchase of ammo by regular civilians.
It requires licensed ammunition dealers to maintain records of the sale of ammunition.
It requires licensed ammunition dealers to report the sale of more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition to an unlicensed person within any five consecutive business days.
Full article HERE
And another one…
As the brief explains, “the objective of this effort is to procure riot gear to prepare for the 2012 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, the 2013 Presidential Inauguration and other future similar activities.”
Specifically, DHS is looking to obtain:
– “147 riot helmets” with “adjustable tactical face shield with liquid seal”
– “147 sets of upper body and shoulder protection”
– “152 sets of thigh and groin protection”
– “147 hard-shell shin guards” with “substantial protection from flying debris, non-ballistic weapons, and blows to the leg” and “optimized protective design for severe riot control or tactical situations.”
– “156 forearm protectors”
– “147 pairs of tactical gloves”
The urgency of the order can be explained by the fact that there is a growing anticipation that many demonstrators will travel to the Republican National Convention (RNC), scheduled for August 27-30 in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Democratic National Convention (DNC), planned for September 3-6 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Another recent DHS move to gear up was back in March of this year, when it gave the defense contractor ATK a deal to provide the DHS with 450 million .40 caliber hollow-point ammunition over a five year period.
On top of that, the DHS has recently purchased a number of bullet-proof checkpoint booths and hired hundreds of new security guards to protect government buildings.
Full article HERE, actual solicitation HERE; and the Marines are standing up 500 man ‘police’ MP Battalions at Pendleton…
On a much more positive note-
The Confederate Air Force B-17 and B-25 over Saguaro Lake Arizona. Stunning pieces of history, and beautifully filmed in HD.
And if you have 15 minutes to kill, Apache’s working over Taliban in Afghanistan… NOT PC!