|  Just Say Know
A review by Gerry Donaghy Back in March of this year, President Barack Obama's team hit on a novel way to interact with the vox populi by holding a virtual town hall meeting over the Internet. Most of the questions dealt with issues he had addressed while on the campaign trail: health care, the mortgage crisis, education, and chronic unemployment. One question that made it past the vetting process asked if marijuana legalization couldn't be a tool for creating both jobs and tax revenue for the government. The President quickly laughed the issue off, saying that he "didn't think the strategy was good." It was a frustrating response for legalization advocates, and perfectly illustrated the disconnect between their ideals and political reality. If Obama had given even a hint of entertaining the idea, the outcry from Republicans would have been deafening and distracting. In Obama's political calculus, it's easier to deal with a bunch of disgruntled potheads then it is to deal with the minority party. Huffington Post correspondent Ryan Grim's book, This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America, explores the myriad of disconnects that inhabit our conventional wisdom when it comes to drug use and drug policy. Why is it, for example that in order to receive the mandatory minimum jail sentence for powder cocaine you must possess 500 grams, whereas for crack cocaine the amount is only 5 grams? How can a plan for addict treatment, which was effective in reducing use at the expense of only $34 million, be thrown out in favor of a plan featuring military tactics (raids and interdictions) and mandatory minimum jail sentences, with less demonstrated efficacy and a price tag of $783 million? Why is it that Drug Abuse Resistance through Education (aka D.A.R.E., founded by notorious L.A. police chief Daryl Gates) seems to elevate kids' interest in drugs instead of discouraging it? Grim, who has waded through a staggering amount of research, ranging from government statistics on drug use in America to the impact of the North America Free Trade Act on the drug trade between the U.S. and Mexico, presents his results in a way that is informative, yet neither strident nor didactic. He is equally quick to point out that in California, while some medical marijuana dispensaries can be overly generous with whom they distribute to, one shop alone contributed approximately $875,000 to the state's tax coffers. His reporter's instinct keeps the book from becoming mired in either partisan or policy arguments. Instead, he sticks to facts that show how our country's relationship with drugs is frequently adversarial, and frequently motivated by passion rather than evidence, and that it is always, in his words, a "never ending game of Whac-A-Mole." There are two aspects of Grim's research that I wish would receive more attention in the mainstream media. One is the role that large pharmaceutical companies play in shaping our drug policy. It is considerably hypocritical of government and Big Pharma to tell us that, on one hand, methamphetamine should be illegal, while another stimulant, Ritalin, should not only be legal but in fact the drug of choice for issues such as ADD. One troubling facet of this relationship is how the manufacturers and distributors of legal drugs (such as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Anheuser-Busch, GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer) help fund The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which endlessly reminds us what our brains look like on drugs — at least the illegal ones, anyway. While the Partnership has distanced itself from its alcohol and tobacco sponsors, Grim makes it clear that we won't be seeing any "This is your brain on Prozac" ads anytime soon.
Sphere: Related Content
by John Rogers But the title he may favor is one he found buried in his FBI file. "To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute," a letter in the file said in response to a favorable magazine interview with the co-founder of the Yippie Party, the group that notoriously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut." So Krassner titled his autobiography "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut." "I figured I might as well make use of it," says the author, smiling broadly as he sits in the living room of his modest tract home in this sandy, sagebrush-dotted corner of the Mojave Desert on a scorchingly hot morning. On a nearby table is a copy of "A People's History of the United States of America" by historian and social activist Howard Zinn. For someone who has lived figuratively on the edge of society for most of his life, Krassner appears to have made the move literally as well, having left Los Angeles' epicenter of counterculture, Venice Beach, several years ago to take up residence in a place where the temperature sometimes hits 120 degrees, accompanied by blast-furnace winds of 70 mph or more. But the co-founder of the group that once ran a pig for president and tried to disrupt the seat of capitalism by throwing dollar bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, says he has come to love his quiet little piece of Americana with its backyard views of the snowcapped mountains towering over Palm Springs in the distance. Krassner, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall as a violinist at age 7 (and then almost immediately gave up music because he couldn't get along with his teacher) is 77 now. That's a number he confirms with both a sheepish grin and a faux apology: "I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened." But if the years are gaining on him, the exuberant, still-youthful-looking rebel never lets on. Still an unabashed political radical, as well as a prolific writer, Krassner is the author of more than a dozen books. The most recent, "Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today," comes out in July. It takes a skewering look at American politics and morals, speaking generally in favor of such subjects as pornography and recreational drug use and dismissing the torture of prisoners of war as something that is truly obscene. But it goes about it in such a lighthearted fashion as to rarely seem preachy. "The word that comes to mind when I think of him is integrity," says Robert Scheer, former syndicated columnist and founding editor of the online magazine Truthdig.com. "The guy anguishes over what is right and wrong more than the editors of the most respectable publications. ... He doesn't get it right all the time, but he always thinks it out." It was Krassner, Scheer says, who gave him his big break as an investigative reporter, providing the money to travel to Vietnam in 1963 to report on covert U.S. involvement in that country's civil war before the United States had become inextricably involved in it. Scheer's story, first published in Krassner's small, groundbreaking satirical magazine, The Realist, was picked up by the mainstream media and gained national attention. The publisher had raised the money for Scheer's Vietnam trip by selling red, white and blue posters with the word Communism, preceded by another, much more impolite word. The posters quickly became a hit on college dorm room walls. "It really confused all these conservative types," Scheer recalled with a laugh. "They hated communism" but they also hated seeing it described with a barnyard epithet for sexual intercourse. That is just one of a seemingly endless chain of stories of practical jokes and other stunts attached to Krassner's name, some of them true, others apocryphal. One of the latter, says Krassner, is that he came up with the acronym for the Youth International Party by throwing his head back in a moment of psychedelic-inspired bliss and shouting "Yippie!" "As a journalist, I knew that we had to have a who for the who, what, where, when and why that would symbolize the radicalization of hippies for the media," he says with a mischievous smirk. "So I started going through the alphabet: Bippie, Dippie, Ippie, Sippie. I was about to give up when I came to Yippie." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090622/ap_en_ot/us_books_paul_krassner
Sphere: Related Content
The theocratic repression in Iran is a reminder that there can be no freedom without secular government By Michael Lind
 In the summer of 1968, as Soviet tanks rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to end the brief period of liberalization known as the "Prague Spring," W.H. Auden composed a poem titled "August 1968": The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips. Watching the scenes of bravery and brutality that are being played out in Iran brings Auden's poem to mind. Another line comes to mind as well: the observation by W.E.B. DuBois in 1903 that "the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line." Racism has not been extinguished, but it has been corralled, by the now-universal principle of the separation of race and state. The demise of political racism leaves political religion standing as the most widespread form of tyranny in the world. The problem of the 21st century is the problem of the creedal line. If the problem is solved, it will be solved by universalizing the principle of the separation of religion and state. Secular government is the basis of both liberty and democracy. It is important to emphasize this, because of the tendency to portray the struggle in Iran in terms of a global conflict between democracy and dictatorship. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was one of four candidates, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who were approved to run as presidential candidates last May by the clerics of Iran's Guardian Council. It does not take away from the heroism of Mousavi or his followers to point out that if Ahmadinejad stole the election he stole an election that was already rigged. The larger issue is the question of what comes first: separation of church and state, or democracy. America's Founders had no doubts on that score. Democracy requires citizens who are free from "superstition" and "priestcraft," to use 18th-century language. Americans have usually believed that religion can play a constructive role in a democratic republic by encouraging moral behavior. But in the traditional American view, theocratic democracy is nothing more than majoritarian tyranny, whether the clerics have a formal role in the state or merely tell the voters how to vote. And even secular democracy is not a goal in itself. It is merely a means to an end: the protection of natural rights. The idea of universal, basic natural human rights is incompatible with theocracy in any form. While Christians and adherents of other religions can believe in natural rights, the theory of natural rights itself, influenced by ancient Greek sophists and Epicureans, is inherently secular. Natural rights by definition are those that ordinary people, using only their reason, can agree upon -- things like life and liberty and property or happiness, meaning access to subsistence. The list of natural rights varies from thinker to thinker, but they all have one thing in common -- they are not revealed by a divine intelligence to a prophet or priests. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/06/23/religion_iran/index.html
Sphere: Related Content
 He may yet turn out to be the avatar of Iranian democracy, but three decades ago Mir-Hossein Mousavi was waging a terrorist war on the United States that included bloody attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut.
Mousavi, prime minister for most of the 1980s, personally selected his point man for the Beirut terror campaign, Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-pur, and dispatched him to Damascus as Iran's ambassador, according to former CIA and military officials.
The ambassador in turn hosted several meetings of the cell that would carry out the Beirut attacks, which were overheard by the National Security Agency.
"We had a tap on the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon," retired Navy Admiral James "Ace" Lyons related by telephone Monday. In 1983 Lyons was deputy chief of Naval Operations, and deeply involved in the events in Lebanon.
"The Iranian ambassador received instructions from the foreign minister to have various groups target U.S. personnel in Lebanon, but in particular to carry out a 'spectacular action' against the Marines," said Lyons.
"He was prime minister," Lyons said of Mousavi, "so he didn't get down to the details at the lowest levels. "But he was in a principal position and had to be aware of what was going on."
Lyons, sometimes called "the father" of the Navy SEALs' Red Cell counter-terror unit, also fingered Mousavi for the 1988 truck bombing of the U.S. Navy's Fleet Center in Naples, Italy, that killed five persons, including the first Navy woman to die in a terrorist attack.
Bob Baer agrees that Mousawi, who has been celebrated in the West for sparking street demonstrations against the Teheran regime since he lost the elections, was directing the overall 1980s terror campaign.
Sphere: Related Content
A US federal judge has ordered a Guantanamo detainee who was reportedly tortured, imprisoned and abandoned by al Qaeda and the Taliban released. The US government had argued that even though Abd Al Rahim Abdul Rassak was tortured by al Qaeda as a suspected Western spy, held by the Taliban for a year and a half and then abandoned, he was still allied with his tormentors. US District Court Judge Richard Leon, however, rejected the prosecutor's claims in his ruling, which even included punctuation marks as an extra guarantee. "I disagree… [US officials are] taking a position that defies common sense," wrote the judge in a 13-page written decision. The judge said the government initially appeared to mistake Rassak as a suicide bomber based on videos captured at an al Qaeda safe house. Later on, however, it was clear that the suspect had been tortured by al Qaeda. In his verdict, the judge harshly attacked the notion that Rassak could be part of the same organization that had abused him. "There is no evidence -- from either side -- as to why he suddenly was suspected by al Qaeda leaders of spying and was tortured for months into giving a false confession," Judge Leon wrote. "It is highly unlikely that by that point in time al-Qaida (or the Taliban) had any trust or confidence in him. Surely extreme treatment of that nature evinces a total evisceration of whatever relationship might have existed!" The Syrian detainee told US interrogators that he had stayed at a guesthouse used by Taliban and al Qaeda fighters for several days in 2000, where he had helped clean weapons. He also said that he had briefly attended a terror training camp. "[Rassak] was conscripted by the Taliban who then turned on him after three weeks and subjected him to barbaric torture. He was imprisoned by the United States when he tried to provide information to us about his torturers," one of his lawyers, Steven Wax said. "[The ruling] is yet another reminder that there are innocent men in Guantanamo," he added.
Sphere: Related Content
 By David Goldstein WASHINGTON — He probably won't show it, but Sen. Pat Roberts might be feeling a bit smug lately. He's resisted the urge to weigh in with his trademark, dry-as-a-prairie-in-a-drought sense of humor, though the situation is certainly ripe for it. Even something as simple as, "So there!" Because it wasn't too long ago that the Kansas Republican took a pretty sharp elbow from a nonprofit government-watchdog group over a scholarship program he set up to train future intelligence officers. It turns out, though, that he might have been something of a visionary. Here's what happened: Citizens Against Government Waste gave Roberts the Narcissist Award in its latest edition of the "Pig Book," a compendium of allegedly wasteful government spending. The $2 million earmark that he'd requested for the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program was included. Roberts set up the pilot program four years ago when he was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Its purpose was to train workers in the intelligence community in specialized areas where it was deficient, such as language skills, regional studies and new technology. "When we created the program, intelligence agencies were losing highly qualified recruits to the private sector," Roberts said. "We needed a tool to attract some of the best and brightest to government service." The Pig Book authors labeled his earmark one of the "oinkers" and recognized his "dogged perseverance in the mad pursuit of pork." The intelligence community, meanwhile, loved the program. "It was a tremendous idea," said Ron Sanders, an associate director of national intelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Further, the Obama administration — whose intelligence policies Roberts often finds troubling, including plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center — likes his scholarship so much that it wants to expand it, make the program permanent and provide regular funding. No more earmarks. A representative of Citizens Against Government Waste couldn't be reached for comment. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/70542.html
Sphere: Related Content
Neda Agha-Soltan's life is sketched in below, from CNN. Her life as an icon has just begun. And as we grieve for her and the tragedy of Iran, we can be forgiven to nod to the fact that Neda, living at that time and place, has in her short life, illuminated the world.
"The second of three children, Neda lived with her parents in a middle-class neighborhood east of Tehran.
She was a happy, positive person. Though she studied philosophy and religion at the Azad Islamic University, she was more spiritual than religious. She also loved music. She once studied violin but had given it up and was planning to take up piano next. She had just bought a piano, but it had not yet been delivered.
Her demeanor was typically calm, even serene, but she had a quirky, playful sense of humor. A friend recalled that once, when Neda was visiting her friend's house, she picked up a white Teddy bear, took off her big, purple-studded earrings and put them on the bear. Then she removed a necklace from around the neck of a friend and put it around the bear's neck, taking delight in the bear's transformation.
She liked to travel, having visited Turkey three months ago with a tour group. And she believed in human rights, her friend said."
http://www.drawger.com/stevebrodner/
Sphere: Related Content
• Ehud Barak approved construction in West Bank
• Scheme cuts farmers' access to land, say critics by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Israel's defence ministry has proposed legalising 60 existing homes at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, and building another 240 homes at the site, despite US calls for a halt to settlement growth. Construction at the outpost, known as Water Reservoir Hill, near the Talmon settlement, north of Ramallah, would "greatly damage" the freedom of movement of Palestinian farmers in the area, according to Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights group. It said the construction plan was put forward for public inspection shortly after the Israeli government was formed this spring and was first approved by Ehud Barak, the defence minister. It was now awaiting final approval. But Bimkom added: "In virtually all cases, plans deposited for Israeli settlements were subsequently approved." The Israeli government insisted the homes were part of old proposals. "These houses have been completed, and there has been no approval given for new houses," one official said. The plan, which follows a pattern over many years of settlement growth, appears to challenge directly Barack Obama's administration, which has issued several clear calls for an end to the practice. So far, Israel has resisted Washington's pressure for a halt to construction in settlements and the issue is fast becoming a test of wills between the two governments. In an interview yesterday Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said arguing about settlement activity was a waste of time. Last week, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, told Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, that Washington wanted "to see a stop to the settlements". http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/23/israel-palestine-construction-farmers-obama
Sphere: Related Content
by Rabbi Yonassan Gershom  (This material is excerpted from Chapter Four of Jewish Themes in Star Trek, ( by (c) 2004, 2009 by Yonassan Gershom. Posted here with the author's permission.)
...We come now to the most famous Jewish influence on Vulcan culture, the "live long and prosper" hand gesture. This "Vulcan salute, " as it has come to be called, was invented on the set by Leonard Nimoy during the filming of the second-season opener, "Amok Time." In this episode, Spock goes into something like a male estrus cycle, called pon farr in the Vulcan language. Comparing himself to a salmon swimming upstream to spawn, Spock tells Kirk that he must return to Vulcan to mate with his betrothed bride, T'Pring, or die trying. The wedding ceremony would be the first glimpse of Spock's homeworld in the series. ![[Spock giving the Vulcan Salute]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uUt2j8pIJHVwczSmXL8wBSZ-8lhA_De_X-vcuvLHXTyv1hUpCZBbmfVu0KNrcDE63U90liSKlV77I7meR0fCXYH4I0LDQiZdSqT26O_N-Vg3-1DkoS=s0-d) Nimoy felt that there should be some kind of distinctive greeting among Vulcans, analogous to a handshake or a bow. Alan Dean Foster's novelization, based on an early script, has Spock kneeling before the Vulcan matriarch, T'Pau, who places her hands on his shoulders, like royalty dubbing a knight. But Nimoy didn't care for this. Previous episodes had already established that Vulcans are touch telepaths. Therefore, a touch on the shoulders would be an invasion of privacy. Instead, Nimoy drew upon his own Jewish background to suggest the now-familiar salute. Back in the 1960s, hippies who watched "Amok Time" thought the salute was a variation of the two-fingered peace sign. But we Jews knew better. The Vulcan salute came not from protest marches, but from the pulpit of Nimoy's childhood synagogue.
The Vulcan greeting is based upon a blessing gesture used by the kohanim (koe-hah-NEEM) during the worship service. The kohanim are the genealogical descendants of the Jewish priests who served in the Jerusalem Temple. Modern Jews no longer have priests leading services as in ancient times, nor do we have animal sacrifices anymore. (Yes, people really do ask about that!) The sacrificial system ended with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in the year 70. C.E. However, a remnant of the Temple service lives on in the "kohane blessing" ritual (duchenen in Yiddish) that is performed on certain holy days. ![[Hebrew letter SHIN]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sowXLzTiRDPuAuJxt8_yxp_XuNBFio8RZQx8f9qwsMD936rCghQdNd21zK__IaACvdPHKFwnby5xRvTuNs0z1xFjbEWfD4APXOFDPoaxKtQ4i9eQ=s0-d) ![[hand and SHIN letter]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_saOu5jesn5bJSytKgUE_OWgEUDBVE-XVCNH01MIFEpjnsyPnlTaYFm98xMQrJkNM-OV1leXgGE_ylXMpZ4ZzNSkQ3a96Zwk-XjoqBaHXAbiL1894U8=s0-d) The actual blessing is done with both arms held horizontally in front, at shoulder level, with hands touching, to form the Hebrew letter "shin." This stands for the Hebrew word for "Shaddai", meaning "Almighty [God]." Nimoy modified this gesture into one hand held upright, making it more like a salute. So, technically, the Vulcan greeting is not the same thing as the ceremonial Jewish blessing. Still, the resemblance is close enough to evoke instant recognition among knowledgeable Jews.
During the synagogue service, the worshippers are not supposed to look at the kohanim while the blessing is being given. The reason for this is to focus our attention on the words of the prayer itself, rather than on the personalities of the kohanim. The kohanim are merely the channels, not the source, of the blessing, which comes from God. Unfortunately, all sorts of silly superstitions have arisen about this ritual, such as "Don't look at the kohanim, or you'll go blind!" and other nonsense. The real reason is simply to focus on receiving blessings directly from God, not from human beings. ![[position of the hands for the blessing]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ufUTJ26r0ADlMB9McZetCD81qlYSbrxkvosHYqCbJeihzZWgRWjZsEoEag834Ij96Vz72HmDZgnEQKf4KPA86OnECQc_8o7T20bbKhPOHMjR9KYd3D=s0-d) Like most Jewish children, young Leonard Nimoy could not contain his curiosity about what the kohanim were really doing up there in front of the congregation. He writes:
"The special moment when the Kohanim blessed the assembly moved me deeply, for it possessed a great sense of magic and theatricality... I had heard that this indwelling Spirit of God was too powerful, too beautiful, too awesome for any mortal to look upon and survive, and so I obediently covered my face with my hands. But of course, I had to peek." (From his autobiography, I am Spock.) Leonard survived his peeking unscathed, and saw the kohanim extending their fingers in the mystical "shin" gesture. That magical moment remained with him for life, and was there to draw upon years later, when he invented the Vulcan salute. Did Gene Roddenberry know, at the time of filming, that the Vulcan salute was based on a Jewish ritual? That question remains unanswered. My sense is that he probably didn't, or he would have objected to it, on the grounds of its being too "Judeo-Christian." More likely, he thought it was a weird variation of the peace sign. Certainly, that's how gentile Trekkers saw it for many years. Only much later did Nimoy publicly explain the source of his inspiration. http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/v-salute.html
Sphere: Related Content
 By Scott Burns  If you want to be rich, you'll need a lot of money. You didn't need to be told that, did you? But the real question is exactly how much? Try $3.1 million as the entry level for 2009. That's more than three times the amount required only 15 years ago. It's double what you needed in the crazy days of 1999. This is the amount you'll need in financial assets to be a "person of independent means," capable of living better than 75 percent of your fellow Americans without suffering the indignity or inconvenience of work. If you are hoping to get rich the old-fashioned way--- by marrying well--- you'll have to find a mate with a lot more money than just a few years ago. The $3.1 million figure comes from my Life of Riley Index, an irregular exercise I do to find out how much money we need to be independently upper middle class. Note that this isn't genuinely rich. It's just middling comfortable. It means you won't be hungry, but you won't gargle with champagne, either. It means you'll own a car, but it won't be a Ferrari. It means your home will never be photographed for Architectural Digest, and you'll never buy a watch that is advertised in The New Yorker magazine or fashions advertised in Vogue. But $3.1 million is, well, a good start. And it is way more money than most people have. Here's how I get the figure. Our friends at the Internal Revenue Service, always eager to be useful, compile lots of statistics about tax returns and income. One set is a time series that shows how the distribution of income (and taxes) has changed over time. It tells us that if you wanted to be in the top 25 percent of all households in America by income, you needed to have an income of $64,702 in 2006. (To be in the top 1 percent you needed $388,806, and to be in the top 10 percent you needed $108,904.) That's the last published data, so I take an educated guess at 2007, 2008 and 2009 by using wage increase figures from the Economic Indicators, a monthly government publication. That provides the income figure. To get the wealth figure I use the average dividend yield on the S&P 500 and the yield on a 5-year Treasury obligation. Then I assume the portfolio is invested 50/50 in stocks and 5-year Treasuries to calculate the average yield from the portfolio. Finally, I divide the needed income by the average portfolio yield to learn the required wealth (see table below). Needless to say, that $3.1 million isn't written on clay tablets. The amount can be changed by using assets with different yields such as value stocks, relatively high yield REITs or government-backed mortgage securities. That may reduce the amount you need well below $3 million, but the growth of required wealth is likely to be very similar to the figures presented here. Basically, you need a lot more financial assets these days to replace the income from working your day job. For all the attention to the growth of wealth and the number of people investing, a life of leisure based on dividends and coupon clipping is a lot more elusive than it was 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Can it be said that life is getting harder? Yes, it probably is---catching the big brass ring of luxury and leisure requires a bigger stretch than ever. The Life of Riley Index— (or, how much money you need to be independently upper middle class) This table shows how much you need in financial assets to produce an income at the 25th percentile of all American households. The actual amount could be changed by substituting investments with different yields than the S&P 500 index and 5 year Treasury note that are used in this example. | Year | S&P500 Yield | 5Yr Treasury Yield | 50/50 Portfolio Yield | Top 25% AGI Threshold | Portfolio
Required | | 1986 | 3.49% | 7.30% | 5.40% | $32,242 | $597,627 | | 1987 | 3.08% | 7.94% | 5.51% | $33,983 | $616,751 | | 1988 | 3.64% | 8.47% | 6.06% | $35,398 | $584,608 | | 1989 | 3.45% | 8.50% | 5.98% | $36,839 | $616,552 | | 1990 | 3.61% | 8.37% | 5.99% | $38,080 | $635,726 | | 1991 | 3.24% | 7.37% | 5.31% | $38,929 | $733,817 | | 1992 | 2.99% | 6.19% | 4.59% | $40,378 | $879,695 | | 1993 | 2.78% | 5.87% | 4.33% | $41,210 | $952,832 | | 1994 | 2.82% | 6.68% | 4.75% | $42,742 | $899,832 | | 1995 | 2.56% | 6.77% | 4.67% | $44,207 | $947,631 | | 1996 | 2.19% | 6.07% | 4.13% | $45,757 | $1,107,918 | | 1997 | 1.77% | 5.77% | 3.77% | $48,173 | $1,277,798 | | 1998 | 1.49% | 5.15% | 3.32% | $50,607 | $1,524,307 | | 1999 | 1.25% | 5.54% | 3.40% | $52,965 | $1,560,088 | | 2000 | 1.15% | 6.15% | 3.65% | $55,225 | $1,513,014 | | 2001 | 1.32% | 4.55% | 2.94% | $56,085 | $1,910,903 | | 2002 | 1.61% | 3.82% | 2.72% | $56,401 | $2,077,385 | | 2003 | 1.77% | 2.97% | 2.37% | $57,343 | $2,419,536 | | 2004 | 1.72% | 3.43% | 2.58% | $ 60,041 | $2,331,689 | | 2005 | 1.83% | 4.05% | 2.94% | $62,068 | $2,111,156 | | 2006 | 1.87% | 4.75% | 3.31% | $64,702 | $1,954,743 | | 2007e | 1.86% | 4.43% | 3.15% | $67,225 | $2,137,520 | | 2008e | 2.37% | 2.80% | 2.59% | $69,242 | $2,678,607 | | 2009e | 2.36% | 2.13% | 2.25% | $70,142 | $3,124,365 | | Sources: IRS, Economic Indicators, Author Calculations | http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2009/06/19/life-of-riley-index-reaches-new-record-3-1-million.aspx
Sphere: Related Content
By DEBORAH YAO Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon. What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all. The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest. It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight. "If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices. "Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and ... they have an economic motive for what they're saying, that's information a consumer should know." The guidelines also would bring uniformity to a community that has shunned that. As blogging rises in importance and sophistication, it has taken on characteristics of community journalism — but without consensus on the types of ethical practices typically found in traditional media. Journalists who work for newspapers and broadcasters are held accountable by their employers, and they generally cannot receive payments from marketers and must return free products after they finish reviewing them. The blogosphere is quite different. "Rules are set by the individuals who create the blog," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "Some people will accept payments and free gifts, and some people won't. There's no established norm yet." Bloggers complain that with FTC oversight, they'd be too worried about innocent posts getting them in trouble, and they say they might simply quit or post less frequently. Between ads on her five blogs and payments from advertisers who want her to review products, Rebecca Empey makes as much as $800 a month, paying the grocery bill for a family of six. She also has received a bird feeder, toys, books and other free goods. Now the 41-year-old mother of four in New Hartford, N.Y., worries that even a casual mention of an all-natural cold remedy she bought herself would trigger an FTC probe. "This helped us. This made us feel great. Will I be sued because I didn't hire a scientist to do research?" Empey said. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j6DZ0gpsCSwquntzof4FR4yfqYXwD98V7B880
Sphere: Related Content
| 
George W. Bush crawled out of the puckerbrush last week to deliver a speech in Erie, Pennsylvania, in which he took a poke at President Obama. "I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said, before doing exactly that. "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."
Ron Paul, the popular Republican Congressman from Texas, is ripping into the president and Congress for what he sees as their "goal" with round after round of stimulus: complete economic collapse. 
DESERT HOT SPRINGS, Calif. – He was once a child music prodigy and in the decades since, 
