US Election 2012: The Only Candidate That Makes Sense is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Ron Paul: The American People Are Too Submissive is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

A Quango – quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation.

Depending on one’s viewpoint, and perhaps political leaning, quangos either perform a useful function to the area of local or national Government that they serve, or they are a complete waste of taxpayers money.

Human nature too, plays a part, in that people whose lives are affected by a quango are often more polarized as to its existence (or not).

Should they exist at all?

The current Government in the UK is looking at cutting or culling several of them.

Some would appear to be more useful than others.

Check out the list here, and make your own opinion…

Quangos: Good or Bad? Live or Die? is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

So, what does happen now?

As no one party has an overall majority (326 seats or more), some wheeling and dealing probably needs to go on.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron are both making overtures to Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal Democrats to come to an agreement for support, or even a full coalition.

However, the Liberal Democrats are not the centre party of yesterday; they are politically to the left of the Labour Party, and there may be little real common ground that they can agree on with the Conservatives.

If Gordon Brown cannot get such an agreement with the Liberal Democrats, then he will almost certainly concede to David Cameron in any case, who would be invited by the Queen to form the next Government.

The Conservatives could, in theory, go it alone, as a minority party. However, they are likely to find it very difficult to conduct much business in the House in the way they would wish to.

My own personal view, is that there is likely to be another General Election in the UK within the next twelve months.

Read more on the Hung Parliament at The Guardian

UK Parliament Hung – What Next? is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Today is UK Election Day.

Unlike in the US where the President is directly elected, in the UK voters simply cast their ballot for a candidate in their local constituency, not a direct vote for Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is usually the leader of the party that wins the most seats.. There are 650 of these, known as seats. The UK uses a First Past the Post system. To become an MP, a candidate simply has to win more votes than any rival in their constituency, not a majority of votes cast.

After all the ballots have been counted for each of the 650 constituencies, the leader of the party that has won the most seats is invited to Buckingham Palace to become Prime Minister and form the next Government.

To win an outright majority, one party needs more than half of the 650 seats, or at least 326. If no party has got that many seats, then the largest single party could form a minority Government. This may or may not be workable, as it would usually rely on getting support for policies from one or more of the other parties (probably in return for agreeing to supporting one of more of their policies in turn).

It could quite quickly lead to a call for another election, if this wasn’t workable. Any Government can be toppled by a vote of ‘no confidence’ and this is much more likely if no party has an overall majority.

UK Election Day is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Internet search giant Google has not paid any tax on its 1.6 billion pound advertising revenues in Britain last year, a media report says.

If Google is legally complying with UK tax laws, then Google are not at fault. The tax laws themselves are, if not enough revenue is being raised.

No one, individual or business, voluntarily pays more tax than they are legally obliged to.

Those wishing to further contribute to the public good usually give to charity, (which often brings further tax benefits) not to Government coffers.

If the UK Government wants to have more money at its disposal, how about getting rid of some of its own wasteful bureaucracy and red tape, and stop wasting so much money in Europe, squandering it on the EU monolith.

More From Zeenews

Google Tax is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Healthcare In The USA is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

It struck me as so contradictory. The wing nuts that rant on and on about the increasing national debt, are not only glad to spend more public money on war, while denying it to the sick, but are hypocritical about the whole legacy aspect too

They complain that we’re handing this huge debt down to our children and grandchildren, while at the same time they toss out as a lie that we might be polluting the world and possibly causing climate change beyond repair, that our children and grandchildren will have to live with, deal with and possibly suffer with.

Two-Faced Wing Nuts is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

I guess it’s only right and fair to listen to ‘the other side’ in this sorry debacle…

The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,
It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.
I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.
That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.
At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.
I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.
The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.
This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,
Jake DeSantis

OK AIG – I quit! is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog

Do you consider yourself on the right, or the left?

Are you a progressive or a conservative?

Democrat or Republican?

I’m none of those.

Allow me to digress a moment. I hate crowds. Ask my wife. I dislike being in a crowded mall, or in any huge crowds of people. I’m not claustrophobic, I just get impatient with not being able to make progress to where I want to get to, and often with all the noise about something I’m not enthusiastic about.

You see, I don’t care if I’m in a group of 1,000 that are all supporting Idea X. If I don’t like Idea X, I’m not going to cheer for it.

I’m not going to go see a movie that most of the world thinks is the greatest ever, if it doesn’t appeal to me.

I’m not going to eat turkey on Thanksgiving, even though I am ‘supposed’ to because I don’t like turkey.

I am not going to put myself into any one political group either. I hate partisan politics. I hate the way that some folks will trash anything and everything that the Democrats do, simply because they always side with the GOP. Oh, and vice versa too!

No one group ever has the right ideas and policies for everything. Why can’t folks take a good hard look at an issue, and then come forward with some unpartisan ideas of their own, instead of wasting all their energy simply slamming the other side, imply because the other side thought of it?

A current example is the Stimulus bills or bailouts. Heck, the previous Bush administration started it, and it all went through with barely a whimper – give money to the Wall Street Bozos that have FAILED the American people in a bug way, but then, once the administration changes, condemn any further idea of bailout as wrong.

Labels again -  now it’s Marxist, Communist, Socialist etc. All soundbytes really, as the majority of folks in the USA have never had a true experience of any of those things, and in any case, what the current administration is proposing is far from Communism, Socialism or Marxism.

It’s all down to these labels though. It’s like bumper sticker mentality, but an exclusive one. Whereas I might have a sticker that says I support a charity, that doesn’t mean I exclude other charities or causes, it simply means I want to promote this particular one, right now.

But the divisive partisan labels you see, are mostly negative. They don’t say that supporting any political view is good, but simply trash every other view except theirs.

There are whole twitter groups now, where the members twitter about politics, but not promoting their ideas, just condemming everything that their group or party hasn’t thought of.

Of course this is nothing new, but I’ve always gone through life looking at the glass being half full, not half empty.

It’s sad to see such negativity. Anyway, the last General Election was a vote for a change in the way things are done. The last eight years haven’t been any kind of spectacular success.

Why can’t people move forward together, and work in a constructive manner, instead of throwing negative junk around all the time, that benefits no-one?

Silly Partisan Labels is a post from: The Eye An Eyebeemania Blog