04.28.13
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Herald News: Former officer arraigned in New Bedford court; stealing prescriptions from the elderly.

Former Somerset police officer Ricardo Pavao was arraigned Wednesday in New  Bedford District Court on allegations that he unlawfully collected expired  prescription drugs from elderly residents.

Pavao, 33, of Somerset, was previously arraigned in Fall River District  Court, but his case was transferred to New Bedford, a routine move when law  enforcement officials are charged with crimes in their own jurisdiction.

Pavao, a former 10-year veteran of the Somerset Police Department, allegedly  knocked on residents’ doors at North Farm Senior Estates in Somersest, while on  duty, on Jan. 27 and collected their prescription drugs without notifying a  supervisor about his actions.

Pavao allegedly told the residents he was checking on their emergency  information and questioned some whether they possessed firearms or had a vicious  dog on the premises.

In a taped interview, Pavao allegedly admitted to soliciting emergency  information from the residents at the housing complex and collecting three  expired prescription bottles from a resident.

Pavao said he was trying to “show some initiative” because of poor work  reviews over the past few years, but said he threw the drugs in the trash at  home to avoid writing a report.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerset/news/x1048857516/Former-officer-arraigned-in-New-Bedford-court#axzz2Qp5SsRfz

04.28.13
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Associated Press: Ex-officers get probation in Houston teen beating

Two fired Houston police officers accused of beating a black teenage burglary suspect during an arrest that was caught on video were each sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation as part of plea agreements.

Ex-officers Phil Bryan, 47, and Raad Hassan, 43, each entered pleas of no contest to a misdemeanor charge of official oppression. The two men had been set to go to trial on Monday. If convicted at trial, each ex-officer had faced up to a year in jail.

State District Judge Ruben Guerrero accepted the former officers’ pleas and sentenced them to two years of deferred adjudication, a form of probation. If the men complete their probations without getting into trouble, their convictions will be dismissed.

The beating of then-15-year-old Chad Holley prompted fierce public criticism of the Houston police department by community activists, who called it an example of police brutality against minorities.

Four officers were charged; one was acquitted last May and another officer’s case is still pending. Holley was convicted of burglary in juvenile court.

Defense attorneys and the special prosecutors appointed to handle the case all said the plea deal for Bryan and Hassan was fair.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/national/ex-officers-get-probation-in-houston-teen-beating/article_3e63dd00-7d69-5070-9c7b-07d0142d8588.html

04.28.13
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The Washington Post: National conservative group mounts new lobbying push for gay marriage in Minnesota, elsewhere

FILE - In this April 18, 2013, file photo Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton tell hundreds who turned out to rally at the State Capitol, in St. Paul, Minn. in support of a bill to legalize gay marriage that he hoped legislators will pass this year. A spokesman for American Unity PAC tells The Associated Press that the group has established a lobbying operation and already spent more than $250,000 to lobby Republican lawmakers in Minnesota, with plans to spend more. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File)

A national group of prominent GOP donors that supports gay marriage is pouring new money into lobbying efforts to get Republican lawmakers to vote to make it legal.

American Unity PAC was formed last year to lend financial support to Republicans who bucked the party’s longstanding opposition to gay marriage. Its founders are launching a new lobbying organization, American Unity Fund, and already have spent more than $250,000 in Minnesota, where the Legislature could vote on the issue as early as next week.

The group has spent $500,000 on lobbying since last month, including efforts in Rhode Island, Delaware, Indiana, West Virginia and Utah.Billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican donor Paul Singer launched American Unity PAC. The lobbying effort is the next phase as the push for gay marriage spreads to more states, spokesman Jeff Cook-McCormac told The Associated Press.

“What you have is this network of influential Republicans who really want to see the party embrace the freedom to marry, and believe it’s not only the right thing for the country but also good politics,” Cook-McCormac said.

In Minnesota, the money has gone to state groups that are lobbying Republican lawmakers and for polling on gay marriage in a handful of suburban districts held by Republicans. So far, only one Minnesota Republican lawmaker has committed to voting to legalize gay marriage: Sen. Branden Petersen, of Andover.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-conservative-group-mounts-new-lobbying-push-for-gay-marriage-in-minnesota-elsewhere/2013/04/27/bb9cff80-aef8-11e2-b59e-adb43da03a8a_story.html

04.28.13
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Reuters: Senator Paul stirs business ire over blocking of U.S. tax treaties

Senator Rand Paul is coming under pressure from some multi-national businesses to drop his opposition to tax treaties between the United States and other nations.

Citing privacy concerns about Americans’ tax data, Paul, a Republican and libertarian, has single-handedly blocked Senate action on treaties with Hungary, Switzerland and Luxembourg that have been signed by authorities on both sides, but have been awaiting Senate review since 2011.

At least six other tax treaties or treaty updates – with Chile, Spain, Poland, Japan, Norway and Britain – may soon be added to the Senate’s queue for confirmation votes.

Major U.S. businesses such as IBM Corp and Fluor Corp are lobbying for Senate action on tax treaties, according to Senate lobbying disclosure documents.

“How many treaties will be held hostage?” asked Cathy Schultz, a lobbyist for the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents companies such asCaterpillar Inc and Pfizer Inc.

Paul has said he is concerned that recent treaties would give foreign governments too much access to U.S. citizens’ tax information, a stance that has some support among like-minded conservative libertarians.

“Rand Paul is not a typical senator who may bend over to business lobbyists,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy at The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

“I am very concerned about this increasingly aggressive international exchange of information,” Edwards said.

NO APPROVALS SINCE 2010

No new tax treaties or treaty updates have been approved since 2010, when Paul was elected as the junior senator from Kentucky on a wave of support for Tea Party-aligned Republicans.

Paul recently declined to answer questions from a reporter in a Capitol hallway about the “hold” he has placed on the treaties. Under Senate rules, one senator can prevent a motion from reaching a vote on the Senate floor.

Paul’s staff did not reply to repeated requests for comment.

“There’s never really been an objection of this sort and a hold that’s gone on this long,” said Nancy McLernon, president of the Organization for International Investment, which lobbies in Washington on behalf of foreign companies.

In an effort to sway the senator, McLernon said her group would be lobbying both parties to draw attention to the tax treaties. “Let’s stop with the self-inflicted wounds,” she said.

The United States has tax treaties with more than 60 countries, ranging from China to Kyrgyzstan.

The agreements previously have routinely won Senate approval with little controversy and accomplished their main purpose of preventing double-taxation of income and profits.

In recent years, tax treaties have begun to play an increasing role in efforts by the United States and major European Union countries to crack down on tax avoidance.

The U.S. Treasury in 2012 began signing new tax pacts with countries as part of implementation of the U.S. Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a 2010 anti-tax-evasion law.

The law, known as FATCA, which takes effect in January 2014, will require foreign financial institutions to disclose to the United States information about Americans’ accounts worth more than $50,000.

SWISS A DRIVING FORCE

Switzerland, a long-time bastion of banking secrecy, is under international pressure to change its ways, and FATCA has been a driving force in that. The United States and Switzerland in February signed a FATCA implementation agreement that would make more information available to U.S. authorities about the financial interests of Americans in Switzerland.

But the taxpayer information exchange cannot go into force without Senate approval of the U.S.-Swiss tax treaty.

The Senate’s delayed action on tax treaties could convince other countries to stop negotiating with the United States on tax matters, said John Harrington, a former Treasury tax official who is now a partner at law firm SNR Denton.

Paul, seen as a possible 2016 presidential contender, has taken a position that sets up a clash of traditional Republican interest groups: big business and libertarian ideologues.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/28/usa-tax-treaties-idUSL2N0DF0CY20130428?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews&rpc=43

 

04.27.13
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Forbes: GOP’s Dave Camp: Why Not Put All Federal Employees Onto Obamacare’s Exchanges?

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 20: U.S. Rep. Dave ...

In response to this week’s brouhaha regarding attempts by members of Congress to avoid having to enroll themselves and their staff members in Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, Michigan Republican Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has offered a new proposal: Why not put all federal employees on the exchanges? It’s an attractive idea, but it has some downside: it would dismantle a popular model of market-based health reform.

“If the ObamaCare exchanges are good enough for the hardworking Americans and small businesses the law claims to help, then they should be good enough for the president, vice president, Congress, and federal employees,” said Camp’s spokeswoman in a statement.

The political principle is straightforward, but it would come at a price. Putting all federal employees on the exchanges would obliterate the most market-oriented insurance program run by the government, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP. Indeed, the FEHBP has long been considered a model for market-based reform of the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

In the FEHBP, employees get to choose amongst a wide variety of plans offered by private insurers. The employer–the government–then subsidizes about three-fourths of the cost to the employee. The employee can choose a more generous or expensive plan if he wants, but he has to pay for a portion of the difference in price, and vice versa. As a result of this approach, FEHBP plans have organically evolved to contain the benefits and financial features that consumers want. By contrast, any minor change to Medicare requires an act of Congress.

Obamacare’s exchanges are closer in concept to FEHBP than traditional Medicare, but the exchanges heavily constrain the ability of plans to alter their design as consumers’ preferences evolve.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2013/04/26/gops-dave-camp-why-not-put-all-federal-employees-onto-obamacares-exchanges/

 

04.27.13
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NBC: Marijuana tax debate stalls in Colorado

Marijuana taxation brought the Colorado Legislature to a standstill early Saturday, with the House giving up and heading home without voting after the pot debate stretched past midnight.

The standstill was not exactly caused by the bill to tax pot more than 30 percent, though Republicans were in the middle of trying to lower the tax rate when the House stopped work. Instead, the breakdown came as a result of frayed nerves after long, divisive debates on unrelated measures, from a renewable energy bill to and education funding debate.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.nbc11news.com/home/headlines/Marijuana-tax-debate-stalls-in-Colorado-205005591.html

04.27.13
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Motley Fool: These 7 States Tax Homeowners the Hardest

Paying income tax is hard enough for those struggling to make ends meet. But with property taxes, even those who have no income end up having to bear their share of the overall tax burden.

Property taxes are typically imposed and collected by local tax authorities rather than state revenue departments, but property tax revenues have a big impact on the decisions that state governments make on where to apply their financial resources. Still, you can get a sense of how much of a property tax burden state residents bear by looking at the average tax paid per person. Using figures from the most recently available data from the Tax Foundation and land and home values from the Lincoln Institute, let’s look at seven states that impose the highest average property taxes on their residents.

7. Rhode Island Property taxes in Rhode Island average $2,083 per person. With average home values of $241,000 just barely putting Rhode Island in the top third of the nation, high tax rates and a high density of urban land help push the state’s overall property tax burden higher. Moreover, with just over 1 million people, Rhode Island doesn’t have many people over which split the fixed costs of state government.

6. Vermont In Vermont, the average property tax bill is $2,166. Vermont’s land values come in just below Rhode Island’s at $239,000, and the state has a much more rural character than Rhode Island’s small size and coastal proximity. As with Rhode Island, Vermont’s small population of around 625,000 provides only a limited base on which to tax.

5. New York New York imposes an average of $2,280 in property taxes per person. Average home values come in at $316,000, putting the state in the top 10. Yet given the huge disparities in real-estate prices throughout the state, that burden is very unevenly spread. Rural tax rates in upstate New York can be relatively reasonable, but in New York City, you’ll see tax burdens that are more in line with those of neighboring states that are dominated more by the city’s metropolitan area.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/personal-finance/taxes/2013/04/27/these-7-states-tax-homeowners-the-hardest.aspx

04.27.13
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Forbes: Doctors Rush To Obamacare’s Accountable Care Approach

The number of physicians participating in the emerging medical care delivery system known as “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) has tripled as the health care industry moves further away from fee-for-service medicine.

A new study from Medscape said one in four doctors, or 24 percent, “were either in an ACO or planned to be in an ACO within a year.” By comparison, only 8 percent of physicians in Medscape’s 2012 report were in or planning to be in an ACO. The report included more than 21,000 doctor respondents across 25 specialties.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2013/04/27/doctors-rush-to-obamacares-accountable-care-approach/?partner=yahootix

04.26.13
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Michael Scheuer: The Idea That They’re Attacking Us Because Of Our Culture And Freedom Is Insane

Quote:
“We should have went to Afghanistan and won the war. We went to Afghanistan, spent 13 years and got chased out by guys with weapons from the Korean War. The Islamists started this war, they explained to us as clearly as General Giap and Ho Chi Minh explained to us why they were fighting us and we have ignored it. Mrs. Clinton has ignored it, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama. The idea that they’re attacking us because of our culture is insane. We are now waging a war against them culturally. We’re trying to impose democracy, women’s rights, parliamentary systems on a people who don’t want it. They’re going to fight that. They don’t care if we vote, why should they care about that?”

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Well said Michael.  Click below for the direct link to the youtube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieCCQNoiOaE&feature=youtu.be