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Privatize Airport Security
Commentary, by Michael Rubin
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Original Article
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Posted By:pineledger, 3/5/2013 4:50:29 AM
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| Rather than use sequestration to trim waste, the Obama administration has viewed the deadline—and the Republican desire to curtail spending—as an assault on big government. If it’s a choice between defending big government and hurting the individual, President Obama appears much more inclined to punish the individual, hoping that a backlash against government-instigated inconvenience will lead Republicans to cave.(Snip)Endless airport lines under sequestration are not about security, they are about the inability of a government agency to do its job with its available means.
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Comments:
Now that the government has this foothold, can anyone imagine them giving it up?
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
dragon, 3/5/2013 9:11:06 AM (No. 9209059)
People forget just how bad airport security was before it was federalized. Security was a joke with minimum wage screeners; people literally made more money working at McDonalds on the concourse. The problem is the policy--there is no legitimate reason for old people, the disabled, and children be subjected to the treatment they currently receive. They are not the threat. It is political correctness run amok--federal officers trained in profiling is the answer but will never happen because liberals insist we all need to be groped and fondled equally.
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Reply 2 - Posted by:
OhMy, 3/5/2013 9:28:19 AM (No. 9209094)
How about the cost of Michael Chertoff who installed the pricey machines which are now being removed. He had a conflict of interest being both the buyer ( for the govt ) and the seller ( his company made the machines) It would be far more effective and cheaper to teach dogs to alert on the odour of any chemical or explosive they are looking for and have them and their handler near the gate to point out which passengers need to be searched. We need security not security theatre!
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Reply 3 - Posted by:
lylacat, 3/5/2013 9:46:35 AM (No. 9209130)
Does anyone really feel safer going though TSA´s security? I sure don´t. I have shuffled for over an hour at each end through tiring lines only to get to the checkpoint and see two lanes open, but there are about ten agents standing around talking to one another and laughing. They are arrogant because they are in control and like to use their power, and they absolutely have no common sense. Please privatize airport security, and if they do a poor job (like they are now) then you can hire a different company. A private company would do a better job than the government, always has, always will.
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Reply 4 - Posted by:
pictish, 3/5/2013 11:23:27 AM (No. 9209319)
I know four people who worked for a private security company at Newark Airport who now work for the TSA. Their pay now is compareable to their pay before. Two of them are supervisors due to their prior experience.
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Reply 5 - Posted by:
eden202, 3/5/2013 11:54:20 AM (No. 9209400)
Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security. It was a kneejerk reaction to 9/11. Just let the FAA develop some airport security regulations. We can save billions of dollars by not buying tanks and bullets to "secure the homeland".
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Below, you will find ...
Most Recent Articles posted by "pineledger"
and
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
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Most Recent Articles posted by "pineledger"
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´My bangs are getting
a little irritating´: Michelle
Obama admits she already regrets
her high-maintenance hairdo
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Daily Mail (UK), by Margot Peppers
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/7/2013 7:43:42 AM
Post Reply
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Michelle Obama has admitted that she is already tired of the bangs she first sported in January. The First Lady said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight: ´Bangs are a day-by-day proposition. They´re starting to grow out, get a little irritating.´ Still, she hasn´t let her hairdo woes get her down. ´It´s okay,´ she said after her initial complaint. ´We´ll be good.´ The first indication that her hairstyle was becoming a burden came about last weekend, when Malia, 14, was spotted adjusting her mother´s hair during the White House Easter Egg Roll.
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U.S. Adds Only 88,000 Jobs;
Jobless Rate Falls to 7.6%
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New York Times, by Catherine Rampell
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/5/2013 9:23:27 AM
Post Reply
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For the 30th straight month, the United States economy added jobs in March, albeit still at a pace too sluggish to put a big dent in the backlog of 11.7 million idle workers. The nation’s employers increased their payrolls by 88,000 last month, compared with 268,000 in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. The unemployment rate, which comes from a different survey, ticked down to 7.6 percent from 7.7 percent. The slight decrease in the unemployment rate occurred not because more unemployed people got jobs,
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Bank of Japan launches
easing campaign
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Wall Street Journal, by Takashi Nakamichi and Tatsuo Ito
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/4/2013 8:54:41 AM
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Tokyo—The Bank of Japan [8301.JA +4.83%] is pulling out all the stops to get the economy out of deflation, its new governor said, after the central bank rolled out aggressive easing measures that surprised markets, pushing bond yields to an all-time low and boosting share prices. At his inaugural policy board meeting Thursday, Haruhiko Kuroda convinced the nine-member panel to agree to a major expansion of government bond purchases, including buying longer-term debt, which is designed to drive down longer-term rates. The BOJ also broke free from some self-imposed limits that the previous leadership under Masaaki Shirakawa adhered to.
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He Wears the Mask
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New York Times, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/4/2013 6:41:02 AM
Post Reply
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The present darling of the right wing, Dr. Benjamin Carson, is a distinguished neurosurgeon who went from the depths of Detroit poverty to the heights of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. But his current status among conservatives isn’t so much rooted in Carson’s redemptive rise from rags to respectability, as it is in the belief that he is, in the long winter of Obama, the one they’ve been waiting for. (Snip)He then cast himself as a victim of political correctness, besieged by white liberals — “the most racist people there are”
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How the I.R.S. Hurts Mothers
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New York Times, by Lilian V. Faulhaber
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/4/2013 6:06:53 AM
Post Reply
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Boston--Lost in the debate between Anne-Marie Slaughter’s chronicle of the obstacles confronting career-oriented mothers and Sheryl Sandberg’s call to “lean in” is a crucial reality: taxes. Women — no less than other humans, it turns out — can be rational economic actors. The tax code starts with a bias in favor of couples in which one partner works and one stays home. (Snip) What does is the tax code’s treatment of child care.
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Did Putin Sink Cyprus?
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New York Times, by Ben Judah
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/3/2013 5:58:03 AM
Post Reply
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Istanbul--The blue-glass skyscrapers of Moscow City — fragments of Russia’s boom-time dream — are visible from the Kremlin walls, within which there was once hope that those towers could supplant the West’s financial centers. When the sun sets behind them, you can see that many of the offices lie empty.In fact, the real hubs for Russian banking are in other countries. Moscow’s billionaires squirrel their fortunes abroad, and many businessmen register their companies as British, Dutch, Swiss or Cypriot — anything but Russian. Whistle-blowers would have us believe that even President Vladimir V. Putin stashes his money offshore.
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Lines Form as Cyprus
Banks Reopen
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Wall Street Journal, by Joe Parkinson
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/28/2013 7:17:05 AM
Post Reply
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Nicosia, Cyprus—-Lines formed outside banks in Cyprus´s capital early Thursday, but there was little sign of panic as the island´s lenders reopened after a two-week hiatus. Small groups of depositors—mainly numbering a few dozen, mostly pensioners—pressed to enter the banks as they formally reopened at noon (1000 GMT) local time. Police officers and security guards at Bank of Cyprus in Nicosia´s old town allowed eight depositors in at one time. (Snip)Some Cypriots said they would wait until the weekend to go to the bank, fearing that a rush might topple the very banks
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Europeans Planted Seeds
of Crisis in Cyprus
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New York Times, by Andrew Higgins
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/27/2013 4:52:22 AM
Post Reply
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Nicosia, Cyprus--When European finance chiefs explained their harsh terms for rescuing Cyprus this week, many blamed the tiny Mediterranean nation’s wayward banking practices for bringing ruin on itself. But the path that led to Cyprus’s current crisis — big banks bereft of money, a government in disarray and citizens filled with angry despair — leads back, at least in part, to a fateful decision made 17 months ago by the same guardians of financial discipline that now demand that Cyprus shape up.
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Hot Money Blues
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New York Times, by Paul Krugman
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/25/2013 6:55:57 AM
Post Reply
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Whatever the final outcome in the Cyprus crisis — we know it’s going to be ugly; we just don’t know exactly what form the ugliness will take — one thing seems certain: for the time being, and probably for years to come, the island nation will have to maintain fairly draconian controls on the movement of capital in and out of the country. In fact, controls may well be in place by the time you read this. And that’s not all: Depending on exactly how this plays out, Cypriot capital controls may well have the blessing
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Cyprus Postpones Debate
on Deposit-Tax Proposal
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Wall Street Journal, by Jenny Paris and Matina Stevis
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/18/2013 8:47:25 AM
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Cyprus postponed for yet another day an emergency parliamentary session to discuss a bailout plan that will see the country´s bank depositors share part of the burden, the house speaker said Monday. The Cypriot parliament is now scheduled to meet Tuesday at 1600 GMT, house speaker Yannakis Omirou told reporters. The parliament had been due to meet Monday at 1400 GMT as the government sought to push the levy through parliament before banks reopened Tuesday after a three-day bank holiday. The vote delay means that the bank holiday will likely be extended for at least another day.
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Young Adults Retreat
From Piling Up Debt
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Wall Street Journal, by Neil Shah
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/5/2013 6:40:38 AM
Post Reply
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Young people are racking up larger amounts of student debt than ever before, but fresh data suggest they are becoming warier of borrowing in general: Total debt among young adults dropped in the last decade to the lowest level in 15 years. A typical young U.S. household—defined as one led by someone under age 35—had $15,000 in total debt in 2010, down from $18,000 in 2001 and the lowest since 1995, according to a recent Pew Research Center report and government data. (Snip)In addition, fewer young adults carried credit-card balances and 22% didn´t have any debt at all in 2010
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Privatize Airport Security
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Commentary, by Michael Rubin
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 3/5/2013 4:50:29 AM
Post Reply
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Rather than use sequestration to trim waste, the Obama administration has viewed the deadline—and the Republican desire to curtail spending—as an assault on big government. If it’s a choice between defending big government and hurting the individual, President Obama appears much more inclined to punish the individual, hoping that a backlash against government-instigated inconvenience will lead Republicans to cave.(Snip)Endless airport lines under sequestration are not about security, they are about the inability of a government agency to do its job with its available means.
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Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)
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´My bangs are getting
a little irritating´: Michelle
Obama admits she already regrets
her high-maintenance hairdo
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|
Daily Mail (UK), by Margot Peppers
Original Article
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Posted By: pineledger- 4/7/2013 7:43:42 AM
Post Reply
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Michelle Obama has admitted that she is already tired of the bangs she first sported in January. The First Lady said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight: ´Bangs are a day-by-day proposition. They´re starting to grow out, get a little irritating.´ Still, she hasn´t let her hairdo woes get her down. ´It´s okay,´ she said after her initial complaint. ´We´ll be good.´ The first indication that her hairstyle was becoming a burden came about last weekend, when Malia, 14, was spotted adjusting her mother´s hair during the White House Easter Egg Roll.
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Why Obama´s ´Best-Looking Attorney
General´ Comment Was a Gaffe
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The Atlantic, by Garance Franke-Ruta
Original Article
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Posted By: Oblio- 4/6/2013 6:51:15 AM
Post Reply
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President Obama´s biggest gaffe yesterday when speaking of California Attorney General Kamala Harris was not in flirtatiously complimenting her as "the best-looking attorney general," but in introducing an observation from the system of beauty into a forum that was about the system of power.What´s that, you say? Irin Carmon does a great job in Salon in laying out the bounds of propriety for when it´s appropriate to talk about a woman´s looks as a general matter. But I´ve long felt we lack a solid theoretical underpinning for easily discussing these issues, and why precisely it is that
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McCain: ´I don´t understand´
GOP filibuster on guns
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Politico, by Jennifer Epstein
Original Article
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Posted By: JoniTx- 4/7/2013 12:18:14 PM
Post Reply
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Sen. John McCain says he doesn´t understand the threats from some of his Republican colleagues to filibuster a bill on background checks to buy guns. "I don´t understand it," the Arizona Republican said on Sunday of the threat coming from Sen. Rand Paul,Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Mike Lee and nine other Republicans. "The purpose of the United States Senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand.” "What are we afraid of? ... If this issue is as important as we all think it is, why not take ... it up and debate?"
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Hillary Clinton Would Not
´Clear the Field´ for 2016
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New Republic, by Tod Lindberg
Original Article
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Posted By: StormCnter- 4/6/2013 5:22:36 AM
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No one is more preoccupied these days with Hillary Clinton´s 2016 plans than the Beltway political class—not even the former presidential candidate herself. To hear some tell it, her decision will be dispositive for all other Democrats thinking of entering the race. And pundits and reporters aren´t the only ones positing the "The Hillary Factor": No less than the House Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer, told BuzzFeed, “I don´t know that anybody would run against Hillary…. If she runs, she clears the field.” It´s an understandable conclusion, given Clinton´s stature in the Democratic Party and her 70 percent
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Obama critic apologizes for
his ´poorly chosen words´
on gay marriage
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The Hill [Washington DC], by Alexandra Jaffe
Original Article
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Posted By: JoniTx- 4/6/2013 12:18:19 PM
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Neurosurgeon Ben Carson, considered by some to be a potential Republican contender for president, apologized to Johns Hopkins University for the "poorly chosen words" he used in expressing his opposition to gay marriage last month.“I am sorry for any embarrassment this has caused,” Carson said in the letter, reported in New York Magazine.(Snip) "Although I do believe marriage is between a man and a woman, there are much less offensive ways to make that point. I hope all will look at a lifetime of service over some poorly chosen words.” Carson will remain as commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins,
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Mother Of Slain Benghazi
Officer To Sean Hannity:
‘They Want Me To Shut Up’
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Mediaite, by A.J. Delgado
Original Article
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Posted By: StormCnter- 4/7/2013 5:00:16 AM
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On Friday, Sean Hannity brought Pat Smith, mother of the late Sean Smith, on his radio program. The 34-year-old information management officer was one of four Americans murdered in the Benghazi embassy attack on September 11, 2012. In the chilling interview, a distraught Ms. Smith, in tears, pleaded for answers and spoke of the efforts to silence her. Ms. Smith first relayed how her son, prior to the attack, requested additional security in advance and warned the State Department: He did tell them, ahead of time, he typed it into his little typewriter over there,
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Vanishing workforce
weighs on growth
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Washington Post, by Jim Tankersley
Original Article
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Posted By: Dreadnought- 4/6/2013 11:28:59 PM
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Put out an all-points bulletin: Millions of Americans have gone missing from the workforce. Every month that those would-be workers are gone raises the odds that they might never come back, dimming the prospects for future economic growth. The vanishing trend is more than a decade old, but it accelerated during the Great Recession. Throughout 2012, economists held out hope that it had stopped. But then came Friday’s jobs report, and hopes were dashed. The Labor Department reported that the U.S. labor force — everyone who has a job or is looking for one — shrank
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White House Blames Jobs
Numbers on Sequester
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Breitbart´s Big Government, by Wynton Hall
Original Article
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Posted By: Dreadnought- 4/5/2013 8:02:58 PM
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The Obama White House is scrambling to blame Friday’s abysmal March jobs numbers on the sequester’s trimming of the rate of growth in federal budgets that have yet to fully commence. After the Labor Department announced that a mass exodus of 663,000 workers left the U.S. workforce last month and that job creation fell 112,000 jobs short of projections, Obama’s top economic adviser Alan B. Krueger, took to the White House blog to blame the sequester: It is important to bear in mind that the March household and payroll surveys are the first monthly surveys to look
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The Secrets of Princeton
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New York Times, by Ross Douthat
Original Article
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Posted By: Oblio- 4/7/2013 8:08:09 AM
Post Reply
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Susan Patton, the Princeton alumna who became famous for her letter urging Ivy League women to use their college years to find a mate, has been denounced as a traitor to feminism, to coeducation, to the university ideal. But really she’s something much more interesting: a traitor to her class. Her betrayal consists of being gauche enough to acknowledge publicly a truth that everyone who’s come up through Ivy League culture knows intuitively —
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Beyonce, Jay-Z celebrate 5th
anniversary in Havana, Cuba
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Los Angeles Times, by Nardine Saad
Original Article
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Posted By: Fiesta del sol- 4/6/2013 8:20:04 AM
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Beyonce and Jay-Z celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in Cuba this week. The couple, who married on April 4, 2008, took in the sights of Old Havana, visited a school, dined on a rooftop terrace and strolled the fan-filled streets in their island best.(snip).The power couple declined to answer journalists´ questions about their visit to the island nation, but some outlets are reporting that the moguls are there as tourists, though that would be illegal because of the half-century embargo the U.S. has on the Communist country. However, the Miami Herald said Washington has issued special licenses for
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Obama Budget to Cap Retirement
Accounts at $3 Million
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Breitbart´s Big Government, by Tony Lee
Original Article
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Posted By: Desert Fox- 4/5/2013 9:40:39 PM
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The budget President Barack Obama will submit on April 10 will contain a proposal that would prohibit individuals from accumulating more than $3 million in Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and tax-preferred retirement accounts. According to a White House statement, the Obama administration believes the current rules allow some wealthy individuals "to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving." "The budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per
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