Poem: A Woman Should Have ...

by Maya Angelou

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...

one old love she can imagine going back to...and one who reminds her how far she has come...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

enough money within her control to move out and rent a place of her own even if she never wants to or needs to...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her dreams wants to see her in an hour...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a youth she's content to leave behind....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to retelling it in her old age....

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ......

a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black lace bra...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

one friend who always makes her laugh...
and one who lets her cry...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone else in her family...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....

eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....

a feeling of control over her destiny...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that she can't change the length of her calves, The width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

that her childhood may not have been perfect...but its over...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

whom she can trust, whom she can't, and why she shouldn't
take it personally...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...

what she can and can't accomplish in a day...a month...and a year...

Capital gains taxes are too low

The rightwingnuts, with the aid of the financial services industry, have been very successful at convincing Americans that the taxes on investment, such as capital gains, are too high and should be reduced. This editorial in the New York Times (below, in red) reminded me that they are, in fact, too low. Why should all this investment profit be taxed at lower levels than personal income? That's really what it is: personal income. Why should ANY investment income be taxed at a lower rate than income, for that matter? There is no legitimate rationale to do that, other than greed.

I invest to make money. I'm still going to invest, whether my gains are taxed at a capital gains tax rate of 20% or taxed at my personal income tax rate of 28%. I prefer to invest via my IRA, so that all taxes are deferred until I begin drawing funds out of it in retirement, when those funds will be taxed at a presumably lower than now income tax rate.

I invest to make money, not because my gains are taxed at a lower rate than my salary from my job. People would continue to invest.

All the lower tax rate on capital gains does is benefit the wealthy, who invest huge sums for huge returns. They're already the ones who least need the break in the first place.

If all investment income were taxed at the investors income tax rate, would investments dry up? Not likely. The capital gains tax rate should not be reduced, certainly not eliminated. Or, yeah, go ahead and eliminate it, and classify all investment income as normal income. Reducing capital gains will only further benefit the wealthy, who have already gained enormously in recent years. The rate should be increased to the same rate as the personal income tax. And of course, the multiple loopholes that exist in the tax code that allow the uber-rich to oftentimes get away with paying no taxes at all should be closed.

Or maybe not...

Taxing Private Equity The New York Times | Editorial

Monday 02 April 2007

In the world of private equity, "2 and 20" is a formula for making money. The mavens of the industry - venture capitalists and buyout specialists - generally collect a management fee of 2 percent of the assets they manage and a performance fee equal to 20 percent of any profits. With hundreds of billions of dollars flowing through the 2-and-20 structure, the megabucks pile up quickly.

High fees, however, are only one reason that private equity lives by "2 and 20." Another is low taxes.

Partners in private equity ventures treat their performance fees as capital gains - in other words, like profits on the sale of a stock - and thus pay tax on the fees at a rate of 15 percent, about the lowest in the tax code. According to federal partnership tax rules, that's legal. But the rules were developed before private equity became the force it is today, and mainly with small business and real estate partnerships in mind.

Some lawmakers - notably Senator Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee, and Senator Charles Grassley, the committee's top Republican - have begun to question whether those rules should apply to private equity.

Adding grist to lawmakers' skepticism is a recent paper by Victor Fleischer, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School. Mr. Fleischer makes several arguments against treating performance pay as capital gain, starting with the increasingly huge sums that private equity firms raise from tax-exempt investors, like pension funds and endowments.

In general, when corporate executives get performance-based pay, like stock options, they don't have to pay tax right away. That's a big tax benefit, but it leaves the government no worse off because the corporation also delays taking a deduction for the payment. There is no such offset when private equity partners are paid by tax-exempt investors. The nation in effect waits longer for its tax revenue and gets less, as private equity partners get more.

The deeper question in all this is whether capital gains - which are currently taxed at less than half the top rate of ordinary income - should continue to be so lavishly advantaged. The answer there is no. Today's preferential rate for capital gains is excessive, with no mechanism in the tax code to ensure that it is not overused. Excessively favoring one form of income over another encourages wasteful gamesmanship, creates inequity and crowds out other ways to foster risk-taking. Tackling the too-easy tax terms for private equity is a good way for Congress to begin addressing that bigger issue.

List Change - Top Scientists

Top 10 Scientists of All Time (in no particular order)

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) Developed three laws describing the orbit of planets around the Sun.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) Mathematician / astronomer / physicist - first to use telescope to gather evidence proving the earth revolves around the sun; falling bodies, magnets, floating objects, the tides, compasses, arc of a cannonball, and rolling objects; invented the mechanical pendulum clock, improved the telescope, and developed the first thermometer.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) - revolutionary advances in mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy; analyzed motion of bodies under the action of centripetal forces; invented calculus.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) - book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. Published in 1859, Darwin concluded: 1. Evolutionary change was gradual and required thousands to millions of years. 2. Primary mechanism for evolution was process called natural selection. 3. Millions of species alive today arose from single original life form through branching process called "specialization."

James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) - In 1931 Einstein described Maxwell's work as "the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton." Maxwell calculated the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field as approximately that of the speed of light. He proposed the phenomenon of light is an electromagnetic phenomenon.

Emil Fisher (1852-1919) No one made greater contributions to chemistry than Fisher; developed new dyes and identified the active ingredients in tea/coffee/cocoa; synthesized glucose, fructose and mannose starting with glycerol; synthesized proteins; identified the peptide bond holding them together in chains

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - solved three of the outstanding problems of physics: photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special theory of relativity; general theory of relativity showed that gravity and acceleration are the same.

Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) - measured the distance to the Andromeda nebula and showed it was about a hundred thousand times as far away as the nearest stars; classifed galaxies according to their content, distance, shape, and brightness patterns.

Paul Dirac (1902-1984) - pioneers of quantum mechanics; developed the first theory of the electron that took into account special relativity; work on anti-particles and wave mechanics

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) French chemist/biologist 1. Separated mirror image molecules and studied effect of polarized light. 2. Demonstrated handedness of molecules from plant mold using one isomer of racemic acid. 3. Yeast is an organism and does not require oxygen for fermentation. 4. Pasteurization (mild heating) after fermentation kills microorganisms and prevents souring. 5. Identified parasite responsible for killing silkworms and saved French silk industry. 6. Proposed germ theory of disease urging doctors to use clean instruments, wash hands, and disinfect bandages in The Germ Theory and its Application to Medicine and Surgery. 7. Developed treatment to prevent anthrax. Named technique "vaccination"' and applied it to chicken cholera and rabies.

Russ Feingold speaks on Iraq

Borrowed from Crooks and Liars...

Russ Feingold is one of the few members of Congress that votes his conscience and speaks his mind every time regardless of the political consequences. As a result, he's been ahead of the curve on every important issue of the past six years — Iraq and illegal spying especially. On Tuesday, April 3, he appeared on Countdown with Keith Olberman on MSNBC to talk about President Bush's inevitable veto and his proposed legislation co-sponsored with Senator Reid.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/Media/Download/15936/1/Countdown-Feingold-IraqBill.wmv