Veteran Suicide Rate Hits New High

After eight deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and a facing a ninth deployment back to Afghanistan, army ranger Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann kills himself. 'No way' that God would forgive him for what he'd seen, done, he told wife.

KOMO News Seattle, WA

KOMO News:A soldier's widow says a fellow Army Rangers wouldn't do anything to help him before he took his own life - after eight deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army found Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann's body at a training area of Joint Base Lewis McChord a few weeks ago.

A spokesman for the base tells KOMO News that the nature of the death is still undetermined. But Staff Sgt. Hagemann's widow says her husband took his own life - and it didn't need to happen. "It was just horrible. And he would just cry," says Ashley Hagemann.

More U.S. soldiers and veterans have died from suicide than from combat wounds over the past two years. The U.S. Army suffered a record 32 suicides in July, the most since it began releasing monthly figures in 2009. That number includes 22 active duty soldiers and 10 reservists. Over the first seven months of 2011, about 160 active-duty and reserve soldiers have committed suicide, which is about on par with the number of troops taking their own lives during the same months in 2009 and 2010.

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than 1,100 soldiers have taken their own lives, with the numbers escalating each year for the last six years. Last year alone, 301 soldiers committed suicide -- a new record.

An average of 18 veterans commits suicide every day and five of those are already getting treatment at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). 300,000 of the U.S. military veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, according to a recent study.

New statistics from the VA show that veterans make up 20 percent of the 30,000 suicides in the United States each year. In 2010, more than 134,000 people made calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Of those callers, 61 percent identified themselves as veterans.

Current TV To Become A 24-Hour Liberal News Network

Current TV president David Bohrman says Current TV owners Al Gore and Joel Hyatt wants to transform his channel into a 24-hour liberal news network.

“Al Gore and Joel Hyatt got the brilliant idea to go and try to hire Keith [Olbermann],” Bohrman told CNN’s Howard Kurtz Sunday. “They did, and discovered lightning.”

“And all of a sudden, they realized that that was going to be the destiny of what the network is,” he added. “And so they hired me to completely transform the network from a bunch of taped documentaries that have been cycling through the day, to a live news analysis, discussion television network that’s going hopefully 24 hours a day, talking about the events of the day and finding other people with something to say like Keith.”

“But with Olbermann not only as the host of Countdown, but the chief news officer of Current, is this going to be an all-liberal network?” Kurtz asked.

“I think it will provide a fair amount of time for liberal viewpoints to be made. It’s not going to be exclusively liberal viewpoints, and we’re going to try not to hide behind the word ‘progressive,’ that I think so many liberals do, and then the people on the right, the conservative world, scoff at,” Bohrman explained.

Gov. Perry's Miracle - All Hat, No Cattle?

Texas Governor Rick Perry is some sort of economic genius, according to Rick Perry, but it’s worth taking a closer examination at his record as governor.

On issues across the board, from Perry’s support for ending Social Security and Medicaid to Texas' pollution record to low tax job creation and his proposal that Texas secede from the United States, the Republican governor has amassed a record of far-right political positions.

Texas, economists note, has long been a low-tax, loose-regulation state, but it hasn’t always thrived—between 2008 and 2010, after the U.S. economy collapsed, the state’s unemployment rose faster than in high-tax Massachusetts.

The New Republic:

The Texas’s unemployment rate, remains over 8 percent, ranked twenty-fourth in the country for unemployment, slightly worse than liberal New York’s. What’s more, not all of those vaunted jobs are great jobs: Texas has the highest percentage of minimum-wage workers in the country, and its per-capita income still sits below California’s.

What is clear is that Texas’s population has been exploding, leading to disproportionate job growth. In the past decade, the state added more people than anywhere else, partly due to fast-growing Hispanic families, but due also to migration from other states. So why are people flocking to Texas?

It could be the state’s lower taxes, though that probably isn’t a big driver: As Brad DeLong of University of California, Berkeley, has noted, Texans pay, on average, 26 percent of their income in taxes, not much lower than the 28.5 percent average in California.

Krugman: The Hijacked Crisis

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: August 11, 2011 @ The NYTimes

Has market turmoil left you feeling afraid? Well, it should. Clearly, the economic crisis that began in 2008 is by no means over.

But there’s another emotion you should feel: anger. For what we’re seeing now is what happens when influential people exploit a crisis rather than try to solve it.

For more than a year and a half — ever since President Obama chose to make deficits, not jobs, the central focus of the 2010 State of the Union address — we’ve had a public conversation that has been dominated by budget concerns, while almost ignoring unemployment. The supposedly urgent need to reduce deficits has so dominated the discourse that on Monday, in the midst of a market panic, Mr. Obama devoted most of his remarks to the deficit rather than to the clear and present danger of renewed recession.

What made this so bizarre was the fact that markets were signaling, as clearly as anyone could ask, that unemployment rather than deficits is our biggest problem. Bear in mind that deficit hawks have been warning for years that interest rates on U.S. government debt would soar any day now; the threat from the bond market was supposed to be the reason that we must slash the deficit now now now. But that threat keeps not materializing. And, this week, on the heels of a downgrade that was supposed to scare bond investors, those interest rates actually plunged to record lows.

Read the rest of the Krugman's OpEd @ The NYTimes

Consequences Of Republican Priorities

Jackie Calmes offers about the closest a newspaper reporter can come to telling the truth about the consequences of congressional Republican priorities in her NYTimes article:

The boasts of Congressional Republicans about their cost-cutting victories are ringing hollow to some well-known economists, financial analysts and corporate leaders, including some Republicans, who are expressing increasing alarm over Washington’s new austerity and anti-tax orthodoxy. Their critiques have grown sharper since, President Obama signed deficit reduction legislation, in which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he got "98 percent" of what he wanted in the final deal to raise the debt ceiling, and after Standard & Poor’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States.

But even before that, macroeconomists and private sector forecasters were warning that the direction in which the new House Republican majority had pushed the White House and Congress this year — for immediate spending cuts, no further stimulus measures and no tax increases, ever — was wrong for addressing the nation’s two main ills, a weak economy now and projections of unsustainably high federal debt in coming years.

Instead, these critics say, Washington should be focusing on stimulating the economy in the near term to induce people to spend money and create jobs, while settling on a long-term plan for spending cuts and tax increases to take effect only after the economy recovers.

But Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail refuse to back down.

Read the rest of Calmes article in the the NYTimes.

History's Lessons

Government spending accounts for about 20% of GDP in a given year, so curtailing government spending will detract from GDP growth, other things being equal. This is one reason why financial markets are nervous—much of the developed world is experiencing at best modest economic growth.

And yet, the U.S. and many European countries are launching into spending cuts and austerity programs aimed at reining in their debts. While this is desirable from the point of view of long-term economic health, austerity measures that curtail government spending will, by definition, detract from short-term GDP growth. Investors worry that this hit to growth is occurring at a time when the global economy is already weak and could tip us back into recession.

Indeed, University of California Berkeley economist Christina Romer, who was the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and a co-author of the Obama stimulus plan, once famously listed six lessons of the Great Depression for policymakers. One of these was “Beware cutting back stimulus too soon.” It is this dictum that the markets fear the government is violating with its newfound focus on austerity measures and fiscal discipline.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, an expert on the Great Depression, once promised that the central bank would never repeat its 1937 mistake of rushing to tighten monetary policy too soon and prolonging an economic slump.

"Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again," Bernanke said back in 2002 at a conference honoring legendary economist Milton Friedman's 90th birthday.

He has been true to his word, keeping interest rates near zero since late 2008, but cuting government spending may end up having a 1937-type chilling effect on the economy, and there is little Bernanke can do to counter that.

Perry Announces Presidential Bid - Bachmann Wins Iowa Straw Poll

Introduced as the "jobs governor," Rick Perry threw his hat into the presidential ring with an economy-focused speech at the RedState convention in South Carolina.

"It is time to get America working again," he said. "That's why, with the support of my family, and an unwavering belief in the goodness of America, I declare to you today my candidacy for President of the United States."

Elsewhere, Michele Bachmann has prevailed in the Ames straw poll, an early though not necessarily determinative assessment of each campaign's organizational abilities. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul came in second place. Here's a breakdown of the results:

Rick Perry Says Social Security And Medicare Are Unconstitutional

Think Progress: Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) has, to say the least, a very odd understanding of the Constitution.

He thinks Texas should be able to opt out of Social Security, and he believes that everything from federal public school programs to clean air laws are unconstitutional.

Yet in an interview with the Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano, Perry makes his most outlandish claim to date — Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional:

The Texas Franchise Tax Cost-Recovery Fee Is Not A Tax

With the exception of sole proprietorship businesses, just about all types of companies doing business in Texas must pay a franchise tax. While commonly referred to as the “margin” tax, the formal name of Texas’ business tax is still the Texas Franchise Tax—a tax that Texas has levied in some form since the 1800s. The tax is typically assessed in return for the “privilege” of doing business in a state, similar to a fee (in fact, the U.S. Bureau of the Census in its recap of state finances classifies Texas’ franchise tax as a fee). As a part of its privilege, the owners of the business receive liability protections under state law—the business is a legal entity separate and apart from them.

Throughout most of the 20th Century, the franchise tax was calculated based on each corporation’s net taxable capital—total assets less debt. With the advent of modern accounting principles, the state’s definition of “debt” came under fire in the courts resulting in huge amounts of tax refunds in the 1980s. In 1991, the tax was rewritten to apply to “earned surplus”—essentially defined as corporate profits plus compensation paid to officers and directors. The taxable capital calculation was retained, but for all intents and purposes was relegated to being an alternative minimum tax.

In 2006, lawmakers enacted a sweeping overhaul of the franchise tax as part of their plan to change the way the state funds public school districts. School maintenance and operations property taxes were reduced, while the state’s franchise tax was revamped to replace those direct school property tax revenues. The state also contributed dollars from "excess" general revenues so the overall reforms appeared to be a net property tax cut, but property taxes soon returned to their upward trend. The franchise tax reform was in fact a massive tax cut for corporations doing business in Texas.

In addition to still paying higher property taxes, in the long run, businesses also pass their franchise tax cost on to their Texas customers.

Time Warner Cable is notifying its North Texas customers in monthly statements that a state Cost-Recovery Fee is being added to their monthly billing statements:

Notice on the TWC website: "Effective Friday, August 19, 2011, Time Warner Cable will begin collecting a new fee called State Cost-Recovery Fee to recover a portion of the costs imposed by the State of Texas on the company.

The State Cost-Recovery Fee is not a tax. While TWC is not required to recover these costs by law, we are allowed to recover them as a cost of doing business.

According to a State of Texas Comptroller notice, Texas businesses may charge customers a cost-recovery" fee in order to recoup the Texas franchise tax the State of Texas collects from businesses owners. While businesses who charge customers a Cost-Recovery fee must be careful to use specific "recovery fee" wording, so as to not imply the charge is a direct state tax on consumers, they are, in effect, passing along the Texas franchise tax the state collects from them.

Texas Raids Fund For The Poor To Cut Taxes For The Rich

We have a little break from the heat in north central Texas today, but over the past two months the temperature hit triple-digits 41 times in 42 days. We will likely see some more triple-digit temperature days before this Texas summer ends.

CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports Texas has a fund to help the poor pay their electricity bills. But somewhere between the fund and the people who need it, the money hit a short circuit.

In scorching Dallas, overheated seniors sought relief at an air conditioned Catholic charities center. Mary Ann Torres was also looking for financial relief. She can't afford to power the two window air conditioners that struggle to keep her house bearable.

"I don't think we've ever had it this hot before," Torres says. On a fixed monthly income of $791 her electric bill can top $200.

Texas utility customers pay a little extra on their bills that is supposed to go into a fund to help the poor cover their own utility payments. But in a year of record heat, less than half the fund is being paid out, forcing people to do without air conditioning in triple-digit temperatures.

CBS News - August 12, 2011.

CBS reports that Texas legislators, eager to avoid a tax increase, approved setting aside the Lite-Up Texas money to balance the state's checkbook during the 2011 legislative session. This isn't the first time.

The legislature has repeatedly approved raiding the fund in order to balance its budget without raising taxes.

By 2013, there will be $900 million sitting unspent, with no plans to ever pay it out.

And not only are the poor being shortchanged, but members of the middle class who pay utility bills are being charged that extra fee which does nothing but subsidize keeping taxes low on the wealthy. It's a crisis with life and death consequences. Last month an 81-year-old man was found dead in his hot home - his air conditioner turned off. Relatives say he couldn't afford his electric bill.