California and New York Taxes

Does anybody in these two states have a grip?

I am not rich, but when the politicians attack the rich, they attack my employers, hence I left California.

How Not to Balance a Budget

Anyone who thinks the path to "fiscal discipline" is through higher taxes ought to look at the current budget spectacles in New York and California. The two liberal states have among the highest tax burdens in the country, yet both now find themselves with huge budget deficits and are debating still higher taxes to close the gap.

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California has the highest state income tax rate in the country (10.3%), while New York State also has a high income tax rate (6.85%), with the combined state and city rate rising to 10.5% in New York City. Their overall government spending totals also happen to top the national charts. And, what do you know, California is $15 billion in the red this year while New York is trying to close a $6.4 billion 2009 budget hole, which budget expert E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute expects to grow to $26 billion over three years.

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The "progressives" who dominate politics in these states target the rich on grounds that they have the ability to pay. They also have the ability to leave. From 1997-2006, New York State lost 409,000 people (not counting foreign immigrants). For every two people who move into the state, three flee. Maybe the problem for New York is merely bad weather, not high taxes.
Except that sunny California is experiencing a similar exodus. Over the past decade 1.32 million more native-born Americans left the Golden State than moved in -- despite beaches, mountains and 70-degree weather. Mostly the people who have fled are the successful, the talented and the rich.

Click here for Full Article, it is short

Gay Muslims - UK - Part 1 of 6

This just to rich.
I suspect Iranians are most likely to be homosexual.
Must get real lonely out there on the desert with but a camel for companionship.

Nazi Raccoons

Well not all news has to be serious stuff of world importance.
Where I live raccoons are just a part of life and usually of no consequence.

I usually see them as road kill, not a pretty sight, none the less I find this story of Nazi Raccoons hilarious.

From Nazi Past, a Proliferating Pest

KASSEL, Germany -- In 1934, top Nazi party official Hermann Goering received a seemingly mundane request from the Reich Forestry Service. A fur farm near here was seeking permission to release a batch of exotic bushy-tailed critters into the wild to "enrich the local fauna" and give bored hunters something new to shoot at.

Goering approved the request and unwittingly uncorked an ecological disaster that is still spreading across Europe. The imported North American species, Procyon lotor, or the common raccoon, quickly took a liking to the forests of central Germany. Encountering no natural predators -- and with hunters increasingly called away by World War II -- the woodland creatures fruitfully multiplied and have stymied all attempts to prevent them from overtaking the Continent.

FULL STORY