‘Sending a Message’: Russian Bear Bombers Caught Circling Guam Before Obama Delivered the State of the Union
NBC News has confirmed with U.S. military officials that two Russian Bear bombers were circling the U.S. territory of Guam last week at roughly the same time President Obama delivered his State of the Union address. The planes were capable of carrying nuclear cruise missiles, the report adds, and while they stayed in international airspace, the United States scrambled F-15 jets from the Andersen Air Force Base to intercept them.
The exchange “stayed professional,” one source said, despite the unusual encounter.
“It wasn’t provocative but it certainly got our attention,” another source elaborated.
The Washington Free Beacon, which broke the story, notes that this isn’t the first time that Russian jets have been caught poking around U.S. territories. Over the summer, they were caught simulating attacks on on “enemy” air defenses and strategic facilities near Alaska.
The U.S. has stated its hope of “pressing the reset button” with Russia, and President Obama signed a strategic arms reduction treaty with Russian President Medvedev in February 2011.
John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and former State Department international security undersecretary, said the Russian bomber flights appear to be part of an increasingly threatening strategic posture in response to Obama administration anti-nuclear policies.
“Every day brings new evidence that Obama’s ideological obsession with dismantling our nuclear deterrent is dangerous,” Bolton said. “Our national security is in danger of slipping off the national agenda even as the threats grow.”
Defense officials said the bombers tracked over Guam were likely equipped with six Kh-55 or Kh-55SM cruise missiles that can hit targets up to 1,800 miles away with either a high-explosive warhead or a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead.
[...]
Defense officials disclosed the incident to the Free Beacon and said the Russian bomber flights appeared to be a strategic message from Moscow timed to the president’s state of the union speech.
“They were sending a message to Washington during the state of the union speech,” one official said. [Emphasis added]
Former State Department security official Mark Groombridge had a similar response, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
“One could argue the Russians were poking a bit of fun at the Obama Administration, seeing how they flew these long-range bombers close to Guam on the same day as the state of the union address,” he began. “But the broader implications are more profound…The Russians are clearly sending a signal that they consider the Pacific an area of vital national strategic interest and that they still have at least some power projection capabilities to counterbalance against any possible increase in U.S. military assets in the region.”
Facebook Gets a Multibillion-Dollar Tax Break
It hasn’t drawn much attention, but Facebook’s first annual earnings report contains an accounting gem: a multibillion-dollar tax deduction for the cost of executive stock options and share awards.
Even though Facebook (FB) reported $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations in 2012, it will probably pay zero federal and state taxes—and even receive a federal tax refund of about $429 million—according to a Feb. 14 statement from Citizens for Tax Justice.
The tax-research and -lobbying organization says companies such as Facebook should treat stock options the same in their reports to shareholders as they do in their tax filings. Citizens for Tax Justice calls the tax footnotes in Facebook’s Jan. 30 financial statement “an amazing admission,” but there’s nothing illegal about the breaks the company is claiming. Companies like Facebook are allowed to treat the cost of non-cash compensation, such as stock options, as an expense that reduces profits, essentially the way they treat cash compensation such as salaries.
The difference is that Facebook—unlike, say, General Motors (GM)—relies heavily on stock options and restricted stock units as a form of compensation. It paid out a lot during its years as a private company that it must now recognize on its income statement and balance sheet.
You won’t find any $429 million tax refund in Facebook’s financial statements. Indeed, the company says it had a $559 million federal tax liability in 2012. But that liability isn’t an actual payment. In a footnote, the company also said that it had a $1.03 billion “excess tax benefit” last year related to “stock option exercises and other equity awards.” That benefit is what flips the federal tax liability into a refund. (A small portion is applied against state taxes.)
Facebook says that it anticipates reducing its tax liability in the future by an additional $2.17 billion by using further net operating loss carry-forwards that it has banked.
Facebook spokeswoman Ashley Zandy declined to discuss the tax break but pointed to the transcript of Facebook executives’ conference call with analysts. On the call, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman cited the accumulated tax benefits and noted that the company ended the fiscal year with nearly $10 billion in cash and investments, “giving us great flexibility and risk protection.”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-15/facebook-gets-a-multi-billion-dollar-tax-break
Obama admin winds down plan for 'uninsurables'
Citing financial concerns, the Obama administration has begun quietly winding down one of the earliest programs created by the president's health care overhaul, a plan that helps people with medical problems who can't get private insurance.
In an afternoon teleconference with state counterparts, administration officials said Friday the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan will stop taking new applications. People already in the plan will not lose coverage.
Designed as a stopgap solution until the law's full consumer protections are in effect next year, PCIP has served more than 135,000 people, a lifeline for patients with serious medical problems such as cancer and heart failure. But Congress allocated a limited amount of money, and the administration's technical experts want to make sure it doesn't run out.
Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said PCIP has "provided needed security to some of our nation's sickest people."
The plan covers people who have had problems getting private insurance because of a medical condition and have been uninsured for at least six months. Premiums are keyed to average rates charged in each state, which means they're not necessarily cheap, often amounting to several hundred dollars a month for middle-aged individuals.
"We're glad this program was here and able to help," said Amie Goldman, who oversees the program in Wisconsin. "I'm certainly disappointed we won't be able to serve everyone who has a need for this coverage."
Starting next January 1, insurance companies will no longer be able to turn anyone away because of poor health. At the same time, the federal government will begin subsidizing coverage for millions of individuals who have no access to employer plans. That means many of the people currently in the PCIP program may end up with lower premiums once the government's financial help is factored in.
The enrollment suspension will take effect immediately in 23 states where the federal government administers the program, Goldman said. Residents of states that run their own programs may have longer. Wisconsin residents, for example, have until March 2 to apply.
Enrollment around the country has been lower than expected, partly because some people could not afford the premiums. But individual cases have turned out to be costlier than originally projected.
In documents provided to the states, the administration said the program has spent about $2.4 billion in taxpayer money on medical claims and nearly $180 million on administrative costs, as of Dec. 31. Congress allocated $5 billion to the plan.
"From the beginning (the administration) has been committed to monitoring PCIP enrollment and spending closely and making necessary adjustments in the program to ensure responsible management of the $5 billion provided by Congress," PCIP director Richard Popper wrote in a memo. "To this end, we are implementing a nationwide suspension of enrollment."
The sole exception: program beneficiaries who move to another state will still be able to get coverage in their new home.
Georgia Teacher Suspended After Pretending to Shoot 1st Graders to Teach Them About Newtown
A Georgia teacher was suspended after he pretended to shoot first-graders to teach them about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
The teacher at Odyssey School in Newnan, Ga., identified as Mariano Pacetti, was playing a kind of hide-and-seek game where he encouraged students to hide while he pretended to be a gunman, the Newnan Times-Herald reported. He formed a gun with his fingers and pointed to one boy and said, “Bang you’re dead.”
School director Andy Geeter told the newspaper Pacetti “exercised poor judgement” in the activity, which some parents said gave their children nightmares, according to WAGA-TV. Twenty first-grade students and six adults were killed when a gunman shot his way into the school in Newtown, Conn. and opened fire before killing himself in December.
Pacetti is a middle school band instructor who was substitute teaching a first-grade physical education class. Letters went home to parents about the incident, and Pacetti, described as one of the school’s most popular teachers, was suspended and ordered to undergo professional training, WAGA reported.
“It was an administrative decision made by me after conversations with the parents, classroom teacher and Mr. Pacetti as well as consultation with our head of school. He is now back at work,” Geeter said in an email to the Huffington Post.
The school offered the students counseling, though none accepted the offer.
“There are things that you can and can’t do, and it shows, if nothing else, that you just can’t do security off the cuff. You have to train and prepare for it,” Geeter told WAGA.
Nancy Pelosi: Congressional pay cut would diminish the dignity of lawmakers’ jobs
In any real-world performance-based pay system guided by rules of efficiency, effectiveness, accuracy, competence and return on employee investment, Nancy Pelosi and many of her colleagues would not only have stopped getting paychecks long ago, but they’d probably have been accused of stealing $16 trillion worth of office supplies. Unfortunately, we’re not talking about the real world, but the ever-expanding Fantasy-Land.
From The Hill:
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she opposes a cut in congressional pay because it would diminish the dignity of lawmakers’ jobs.In other words, a pay cut is beneath their pay grade. The rest of the country, not so much.
“I don’t think we should do it; I think we should respect the work we do,” Pelosi told reporters in the Capitol. “I think it’s necessary for us to have the dignity of the job that we have rewarded.”
The comments were made in the context of the looming sequester, which would force across-the-board cuts affecting most federal offices, including Congress. With lawmakers nowhere near a deal to avert those cuts, federal agencies are bracing for ways to absorb them with minimum damage to programs and personnel.
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/15/nancy-pelosi-pay-cut-dignity/
Also Reads:
Judy Chu Exposed, Part 2: Judy Chu, and the Communist Front “Federation For Progress”
"Congressional Representative of California’s 32nd District, is a long term affiliate of the former Communist Workers Party and its still surviving networks."
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