Daily Archives: 6 August 2012

Anti-Putin girl punk band to stay in jail

open quoteA Moscow court Friday ordered three young women on trial for staging an anti-Putin concert in a Moscow church to stay in jail until next year, a surprise move their lawyers branded “repression”.

The Khamovnichesky court ruled that the detention of the members of the Pussy Riot punk rock group should be extended for another six months, satisfying a prosecution request.

The ruling came on the first day of the womens’ trial on hooliganism charges for barging into a landmark Moscow church in February and singing a “punk prayer” calling for the ouster of President Vladimir Putin.

The trio, who face up to seven years in jail, have been held in pre-trial detention since March, and their harsh treatment has become a new rallying cause for the anti-Putin opposition.close quote (Read more)

The Welfare Cliff

Welfare Cliff

open quoteThe U.S. welfare system sure creates some crazy disincentives to working your way up the ladder. Benefits stacked upon benefits can mean it is financially better, at least in the short term, to stay at a lower-paying jobs rather than taking a higher paying job and losing those benefits. This is called the “welfare cliff.”

Let’s take the example of a single mom with two kids, 1 and 4. She has a $29,000 a year job, putting the kids in daycare during the day while she works.

As the above chart – via Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s secretary of Public Welfare — shows, the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income and benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045.

It would sure be tempting for that mom to keep the status quo rather than take the new job, even though the new position might lead to further career advancement and a higher standard of living. I guess this is something the Obama White House forgot to mention in its “Life of Julia” cartoons extolling government assistance.close quote (Read more)

Thorium

The compilation in the beginning of this video give a huge sense of Earth changing innovation taking place in the energy business. It would be an exciting time of change, as so much of government is tied up with the biofuels business which this innovation would displace.