The threat that wealthy people will simply pull up stakes and move if their taxes are raised has often been deployed in an effort to prevent states from doing just that. However, a new paper (pdf) suggests that the threat has been greatly exaggerated.

The study, by University of Massachusetts economist Jeffrey Thompson, reviews several previous studies of state tax increases and concludes that the wealthy are not only as strongly influenced as anyone else by the pull of community ties and the costs of moving but often find it easier to stay put in the face of tax increases than lower-paid workers do. Wealthier citizens also frequently feel that it is worth paying higher taxes to obtain increased public services.

Thompson has recently emerged as a strong advocate for higher taxes on the wealthy as an alternative to slashing state budgets. An article he co-wrote with fellow economist Robert Pollin, which appeared in The Nation in March 2011, pointed out that state tax revenues fell by 13% between 2007 and 2009, far more than during other recent recessions, and that the resulting spending cutbacks had created a vicious cycle that further deepened the recession.

‘In general, raising taxes during a recession is […]

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For the past several months, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has been waging war on the Obama administration over reproductive health care, declaring it no less than a battle over religious freedom. But on Friday, a federal judge ruled against the bishops in a fight over whether the group could impose its views on contraception and abortion through its control of taxpayer dollars.

For the past six months, the bishops have complained very publicly that the administration is anti-Catholic and biased against religious groups because it refused to renew a contract with the group to provide services to victims of human trafficking. The bishops had been administering virtually all the federal money allocated for such services, about $3 million a year, doling it out to subcontractors who served victims all over the country. The USCCB had prohibited the contractors from using the federal funds to pay for staff time to counsel victims on contraception or abortion, or to refer them for such services. (Federal money can’t be used to pay for abortions except in the most extreme instances, but it can pay for contraception.)

In 2009, the ACLU sued HHS, arguing that such rules violated constitutional prohibitions on mixing church and […]

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While traveling in Japan several weeks ago, Fairewinds’ Arnie Gundersen took soil samples in Tokyo public parks, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens. All the samples would be considered nuclear waste if found here in the US. This level of contamination is currently being discovered throughout Japan. At the US NRC Regulatory Information Conference in Washington, DC March 13 to March 15, the NRC’s Chairman, Dr. Gregory Jaczko emphasized his concern that the NRC and the nuclear industry presently do not consider the costs of mass evacuations and radioactive contamination in their cost benefit analysis used to license nuclear power plants. Furthermore, Fairewinds believes that evacuation costs near a US nuclear plant could easily exceed one trillion dollars and contaminated land would be uninhabitable for generations.

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SANTA FE — Bobbie Wooten, paralyzed from the waist down for 33 years, is one of 4,300 people in New Mexico certified by the state to use medical marijuana.

But Wooten, 51, says she has taken to buying marijuana illegally from street dealers in her hometown of Silver City because she cannot find a state-authorized producer nearby.

‘It’s risky,’ she said. ‘I taught special education for seven years, and I might want to go back to that someday. I don’t want to lose my license, but I need the marijuana.’

Wooten says she is taking her chances on a criminal charge because marijuana is effective in alleviating chronic spasms in her legs a condition called intractable spasticity.

Marijuana also allows her to continue functioning normally, she says. Wooten dislikes Valium, another treatment option, because she says it makes her tired and causes her to lose focus.

For a time, Wooten grew her own marijuana, which is permitted under state law for patients who need the drug for medical reasons.

But that led to a confrontation with a landlord. Finding no licensed supplier to accommodate her, she said, she began breaking the law.

Wooten’s case illustrates a larger fight that has been under way in New Mexico for […]

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s there any truth in the allegations that informed circles made substantial profits in the financial markets in connection to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States?

Arguably, the best place to start is by examining put options, which occurred around Tuesday, September 11, 2001, to an abnormal extent, and at the beginning via software that played a key role: the Prosecutor’s Management Information System, abbreviated as PROMIS. [i]

PROMIS is a software program that seems to be fitted with almost ‘magical’ abilities. Furthermore, it is the subject of a decades-long dispute between its inventor, Bill Hamilton, and various people/institutions associated with intelligence agencies, military and security consultancy firms. [1]

One of the ‘magical’ capabilities of PROMIS, one has to assume, is that it is equipped with artificial intelligence and was apparently from the outset ‘able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of different computer programs or databases, regardless of the language in which the original programs had been written or the operating systems and platforms on which that database was then currently installed.’ [2]

And then it becomes really interesting:

What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand every major […]

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