Monday, December 9, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com



News Clips For The Day


Kim Jong Un's uncle dragged away from meeting, erased from documentary – NBC
By Henry Austin, NBC News contributor

This is the dramatic moment that the once-powerful uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was hauled away by police from a political meeting.

Long regarded as the second most powerful man in the secretive state, Jang Song Thaek was key to his nephew’s rise to power. However, North Korean state-run news agency KCNA announced Monday that he had “led a dissolute and depraved life” and said he had been dismissed for a string of criminal acts including corruption, womanizing and drug-taking.

"Jang and his followers committed criminal acts baffling imagination and they did tremendous harm to our party and revolution," the agency said in a report following a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party politburo on Sunday.

Kim Jong Un attended and "guided" the meeting which decided to dismiss Jang from all his posts and expel him from the Workers' Party, KCNA said. 
"Affected by the capitalist way of living, Jang committed irregularities and corruption and led a dissolute and depraved life," the news agency added, saying the decision to remove him was also based on his mismanagement of the country's financial system and corruption. 

"Jang pretended to uphold the party and leader but was engrossed in such factional acts (such) as dreaming different dreams and involving himself in double-dealing behind the scenes," KCNA said. 

Jang is married to Kim’s aunt Kim Kyong Hui, the daughter of the North's founding leader Kim Il Sung.  He had been prominent in many of the reports and photographs of Kim Jong Un's public activities, but his appearances have tapered off sharply this year and he has not been since in official media since early November.
He has also been edited out of a documentary called "The Great Comrade," according to South Korea’s Ministry of Unification.
  
Jang can be seen in still pictures taken from the original October broadcast of the movie but there was no trace of him when it was re-shown in December.

A South Korean official last week said Jang and his wife were likely alive and in no immediate physical danger despite South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirming the public execution of two close aides. 


“Corruption, womanizing and drug-taking” and “ dreaming different dreams” as well as being "affected by the capitalist way of living” – these are the crimes of Jang Song Thaek in the North Korean system. Womanizing is something that we have no shortage of here in the US, along with drug-taking in a few cases, but “dreaming different dreams” is completely unfair as a crime. Everybody has their own thoughts and goals in the US. Even the most extreme political views are tolerated here as long as the person doesn't commit a crime. Trying to overthrow the US government or attempts at terroristic acts are crimes, but voting for a Communist candidate isn't. This is an illustration of what the US has achieved in our Constitution and system of laws, especially after the end of Segregation which was a system that did restrict people's lives more severely. North Korea has far to go to reach the level of an enlightened society. They will be an enemy of the US for the foreseeable future, I am sure.






Wal-Mart agrees to contribute $25 million to settle gas can explosion lawsuits – NBC
By Lisa Myers and Rich Gardella, NBC News

The nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has agreed to contribute about $25 million to settle unresolved lawsuits filed on behalf of consumers allegedly injured or killed in explosions involving portable plastic gas cans, according to court documents obtained by NBC News.

The money from Wal-Mart amounts to slightly more than 15 percent of a proposed $161 million fund that would settle dozens of lawsuits against the largest manufacturer of these cans, Blitz USA, records from U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware show. A hearing on the proposed settlement is set for early next year.

The retail chain, the largest seller of plastic gas cans, sold tens of millions of Blitz gas cans. In agreeing to contribute toward the settlement, it does not acknowledge any safety defect in the Blitz cans.

Blitz, based in Miami, Okla., and formerly the nation’s largest manufacturer of plastic gas cans, is now in bankruptcy and out of business, largely because of the lawsuits and previous payouts to victims of alleged gas can explosions.
Plaintiff attorneys representing individuals burned in alleged gas can explosion incidents have filed at least 80 lawsuits against can manufacturers in the last decade or so. Some have also targeted retailers that sold the cans.

Wal-Mart tells NBC News it's been named as a defendant in 24 of the lawsuits.
Those lawsuits allege that Blitz and Wal-Mart knowingly sold a defective product that could explode and produce catastrophic and sometimes fatal injuries, and refused to add a safety device, known as a flame arrester, to make the cans safer.

Blitz and other manufacturers have argued that any alleged injuries were caused by the users’ own negligence and misuse, and that the cans were not at fault.
According to many scientific experts, a flame arrester – an inexpensive piece of mesh or a disk with holes – can reduce the likelihood of an explosion of a gas/air vapor mixture inside a gas can. They said the arrester can prevent a flame from entering the can by absorbing and dispersing its heat energy.

Parties to the lawsuits, including Blitz USA’s estate, debtors, participating insurers and Walmart, have agreed to contribute $161 million to settle with many of the plaintiffs, while denying liability for the personal injury claims or that any defect in the cans is the cause of the incidents.

In depositions, Wal-Mart officials insisted that the manufacturer -- not Wal-Mart -- was responsible for the safety of the product. A former gas can buyer for Wal-Mart, Jacques DesHommes, said when questioned in 2010 for a lawsuit that even after being sued over alleged gas can explosions, the company did not conduct any tests or investigate whether explosions were actually occurring.

"Wal-Mart does not test the can, the products. The suppliers test the products," he said.
Diane Breneman, an attorney who has represented about 30 plaintiffs in gas can cases, claims Wal-Mart should have used its power years ago to demand these cans be made safer.

"If you repeatedly are sued in cases and the allegations are people are being severely burned or burning to death, you can’t hide your head in the sand," Breneman said. "You're making money off of those cans. You have a responsibility at that point to investigate it, to do whatever is necessary, if you're going to continue to sell the product."

Wal-Mart spokesperson Brooke Buchanan said the retail chain was aware of the alleged explosion incidents through its involvement in lawsuits involving Blitz cans since 2005 (and one earlier product by another manufacturer in the early 1990s).
Buchanan acknowledged that Wal-Mart did not ask Blitz or any other can manufacturer to take any action to investigate the alleged explosion incidents, evaluate the safety of the cans or make changes to the can’s design, such as adding a flame arrester.

Buchanan noted that such explosions are “very, very rare occurences” and said it’s not proven that flame arresters will prevent them.
“We’re waiting on industry experts,” Buchanan said.

At NBC News’ request, the Consumer Product Safety Commission analyzed available incident and injury databases and counted reports of at least 11 deaths and 1,200 emergency room visits that involved gas can explosions during the pouring of gasoline since 1998.

Both Breneman and Wal-Mart declined comment on the proposed settlement, which would cover those injured by gas can explosions between July 2007 and July 2012.
Brooke Buchanan, a spokesman for Walmart, responds in a video statement to questions raised by an NBC News investigation of red plastic gas cans.  There have been at least 80 lawsuits filed on behalf of individuals severely burned after alleged explosions of gas vapor mixtures inside plastic gas cans.  Walmart said it has been named as a defendant in 24 of those lawsuits because it was the seller of the cans involved.

In a video statement provided in response to NBC News inquiries, Wal-Mart’s Buchanan said, "These types of events are tragic and we're saddened that a small number of people have suffered injuries from the misuse of gas cans."

While acknowledging Wal-Mart did not ask Blitz to make changes to reduce the likelihood of flashback explosions, company officials who gave depositions in some of the lawsuits said Blitz was asked to make a different change in the product.
DesHommes said after customers complained about gas can spout leaking, Wal-Mart asked Blitz to change the spout. The company did so.

In a deposition in 2006, then-CEO and owner of Blitz USA, John C. “Cy” Elmburg, testified he asked the retailer to support a national campaign to educate consumers about the potential dangers of misusing gas cans, and about how to use them properly.
Wal-Mart officials acknowledged that Blitz asked Wal-Mart to support such a campaign. The officials told NBC News that Wal-Mart did not agree to help with the campaign, but did not explain why.

An internal corporate video from a company meeting in 2003, posted on YouTube by a communications company, shows a Wal-Mart official making a joke about a gas can exploding.

In the video, a Wal-Mart employee wearing a helmet and sunglasses, drives what appears to be a motorized scooter down a store aisle and into a display of the red portable plastic gas cans, marked with a sign that reads “2 for $9.00.” A chorus of shouted “whoas!” can be heard in the background as some of the cans fall to the ground.

The camera cuts to three officials on a stage, one of whom asks, “Whose gas can was that?” Another chimes in, “It’s a great gas can – it didn’t explode!”
Buchanan told NBC News that the video was made two years before the first lawsuit involving a Blitz can that named Wal-Mart as a defendant. She later confirmed that a lawsuit involving an alleged gas can explosion in the 1990s had named Wal-Mart as a defendant. That lawsuit involved a different manufacturer, Rubbermaid, which no longer makes plastic gas cans, Buchanan said.

Asked why Wal-Mart did not ask Blitz USA to add flame arresters after it became aware of allegations in the lawsuits that the absence of a flame arrester had contributed to those incidents, Buchanan said, "Wal-Mart is a retailer, we rely on the experts."
Buchanan noted that when the issue was brought before the Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2011, the commission decided not to act.

But in response to an NBC News investigation published last week, the CPSC reviewed government reports about injuries from alleged gas can explosions and its own engineering data about flame arresters, then called on the industry to add the devices to portable gas cans. 


It looks like everybody dropped the ball in these gas can incidents, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Yet under the simple stimulus of an NBC News investigation they recommended adding the flame arresters, so they must have had inklings that there was a problem and a simple and inexpensive solution to it. I have carried filled gas cans on a couple of occasions when I ran out of gas on the road. It never occurred to me that they were dangerous without a fire source. People complain about the evils of “trial lawyers,” mainly meaning those who file law suits, but without them there would be no justice in many cases. The problem has to come to a crisis before anything is done. I say “Rah! Rah!” for the trial lawyers.




Who's the biggest barrier to income inequality? The '2 percent' – NBC
Hope Yen, Associated Press

It's not just the wealthiest 1 percent. 
Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives, wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality. 
The growing numbers of the U.S. poor have been well documented, but survey data provided to The Associated Press detail the flip side of the record income gap — the rise of the "new rich." 

Made up largely of older professionals, working married couples and more educated singles, the new rich are those with household income of $250,000 or more at some point during their working lives. That puts them, if sometimes temporarily, in the top 2 percent of earners. 

Even outside periods of unusual wealth, members of this group generally hover in the $100,000-plus income range, keeping them in the top 20 percent of earners. 
Companies increasingly are marketing to this rising demographic, fueling a surge of "mass luxury" products and services from premium Starbucks coffee and organic groceries to concierge medicine and VIP lanes at airports. Political parties are taking a renewed look at the up-for-grabs group, once solidly Republican. 
They're not the traditional rich. 

In a country where poverty is at a record high, today's new rich are notable for their sense of economic fragility. They've reached the top 2 percent, only to fall below it, in many cases. That makes them much more fiscally conservative than other Americans, polling suggests, and less likely to support public programs, such as food stamps or early public education, to help the disadvantaged. 

Last week, President Barack Obama asserted that growing inequality is "the defining challenge of our time," signaling that it will be a major theme for Democrats in next year's elections. 

New research suggests that affluent Americans are more numerous than government data depict, encompassing 21 percent of working-age adults for at least a year by the time they turn 60. That proportion has more than doubled since 1979. 
At the same time, an increasing polarization of low-wage work and high-skill jobs has left middle-income careers depleted. 

"For many in this group, the American dream is not dead. They have reached affluence for parts of their lives and see it as very attainable, even if the dream has become more elusive for everyone else," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who calculated numbers on the affluent for a forthcoming book, "Chasing the American Dream," to be published by the Oxford University Press. 

As the fastest-growing group based on take-home pay, the new rich tend to enjoy better schools, employment and gated communities, making it easier to pass on their privilege to their children. 

Their success has implications for politics and policy. 
The group is more liberal than lower-income groups on issues such as abortion and gay marriage, according to an analysis of General Social Survey data by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But when it comes to money, their views aren't so open. They're wary of any government role in closing the income gap. 

In Gallup polling in October, 60 percent of people making $90,000 or more said average Americans already had "plenty of opportunity" to get ahead. Among those making less than $48,000, the share was 48 percent. 

"In this country, you don't get anywhere without working hard," said James Lott, 28, a pharmacist in Renton, Wash., who adds to his six-figure salary by day-trading stocks. The son of Nigerian immigrants, Lott says he was able to get ahead by earning an advanced pharmacy degree. He makes nearly $200,000 a year. 

After growing up on food stamps, Lott now splurges occasionally on nicer restaurants, Hugo Boss shoes and extended vacations to New Orleans, Atlanta and parts of Latin America. He believes government should play a role in helping the disadvantaged. But he says the poor should be encouraged to support themselves, explaining that his single mother rose out of hardship by starting a day-care business in their home. 
"I definitely don't see myself as rich," says Lott, who is saving to purchase a downtown luxury condominium. That will be the case, he says, "the day I don't have to go to work every single day." 

'Mass affluent'
Sometimes referred to by marketers as the "mass affluent," the new rich make up roughly 25 million U.S. households and account for nearly 40 percent of total U.S. consumer spending. 

While paychecks shrank for most Americans after the 2007-2009 recession, theirs held steady or edged higher. In 2012, the top 20 percent of U.S. households took home a record 51 percent of the nation's income. The median income of this group is more than $150,000. 

Once concentrated in the old-money enclaves of the Northeast, the new rich are now spread across the U.S., mostly in bigger cities and their suburbs. They include Washington, D.C.; Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. By race, whites are three times more likely to reach affluence than nonwhites. 

Paul F. Nunes, managing director at Accenture's Institute for High Performance and Research, calls this group "the new power brokers of consumption." Because they spend just 60 percent of their before-tax income, often setting the rest aside for retirement or investing, he says their capacity to spend more will be important to a U.S. economic recovery. 

In Miami, developers are betting on a growing luxury market, building higher-end malls featuring Cartier, Armani and Louis Vuitton and hoping to expand on South Florida's Bal Harbour, a favored hideaway of the rich. 

"It's not that I don't have money. It's more like I don't have time," said Deborah Sponder, 57, walking her dog Ava recently along Miami's blossoming Design District. She was headed to one of her two art galleries — this one between the Emilio Pucci and Cartier stores and close to the Louis Vuitton and Hermes storefronts. 
But Sponder says she doesn't consider her income of $250,000 as upper class, noting that she is paying college tuition for her three children. "Between rent, schooling and everything — it comes in and goes out." 

Economists say the group's influence will only grow as middle-class families below them struggle. Corporate profits and the stock market are hitting records while the median household income of $51,000 is at its lowest since 1995. That's a boon for upper-income people who are more likely to invest in stocks. 

At the same time, some 54 percent of working-age Americans will experience near-poverty for portions of their lives, hurt by globalization and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs. 

New political realities
Both Democrats and Republicans are awakening to the political realities presented by this new demographic bubble. 
Traditionally Republican, the group makes up more than 1 in 4 voters and is now more politically divided, better educated and less white and male than in the past, according to Election Day exit polls dating to the 1970s. 

Sixty-nine percent of upper-income voters backed Republican Ronald Reagan and his supply-side economics of tax cuts in 1984. By 2008, Democrat Barack Obama had split their vote evenly, 49-49. 

In 2012, Obama lost the group, with 54 percent backing Republican Mitt Romney. Still, Obama's performance among higher-income voters exceeded nearly every Democrat before him. 

Some Democratic analysts have urged the party to tread more lightly on issues of income inequality, even after the recent election of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who made the issue his top campaign priority. 

In recent weeks, media attention has focused on growing liberal enthusiasm for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., whose push to hold banks and Wall Street accountable could stoke Occupy Wall Street-style populist anger against the rich. 

"For the Democrats' part, traditional economic populism is poorly suited for affluent professionals," says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who specializes in political polarization. 

The new rich includes Robert Kane, 39, of Colorado Springs, Colo. 
A former stock broker who once owned three houses and voted steadfastly Republican, Kane says he was humbled after the 2008 financial meltdown, which he says exposed Wall Street's excesses. Now a senior vice president for a private equity firm specializing in the marijuana business, Kane says he's concerned about upward mobility for the poor and calls wealthy politicians such as Romney "out of touch." 
But Kane, now a registered independent, draws the line when it comes to higher taxes. 
"A dollar is best in your hand rather than the government's," he says. 


Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass is the politician to watch right now about increasing the Social Security Fund by removing the earnings cap and charging the wealthy for the Social Security taxes above $113,700. With these changes in demographic wealth disparity I feel completely justified in supporting her.

We are losing our Middle Class, which tended to stabilize the US political system in the past. A Republican was not necessarily ultra-conservative in 1960 and there were few real Communists. Now as some make well over $100,000 a year, making up over 20% of wage earners according to this article, the Middle Class have lost the stability of their position in society. This imbalance will create a situation in which home ownership, college education, high medical bills and the purchase of luxury items will be totally beyond their reach.

Maybe we even need to redistribute some of that wealth again by adjusting the Federal Income Tax rates. It could be done by giving more tax write offs for home ownership and the cost of college tuition, or high medical bills.




­ In Kiev, Protesters Topple Statue Of Vladimir Lenin – NPR
by Eyder Peralta

­NPR's Corey Flintoff, who is in Kiev, told our Newscast unit earlier today that opposition groups in the country are calling for a million people to rally against government plans to forge stronger ties with Russia.

"Thousands of protestors have been camping out here in Kiev's central square, but organizers are calling on people from around the country to join them," Corey said. "The protest started as a response to President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to reject a trade and political deal with the European Union."

The EU deal would require Ukraine to make democratic reforms.
The AP reports that protesters today dragged the Lenin statue off its pedestal, decapitated it, and then took turns beating it with a sledgehammer, while the crowd chanted, "Glory to Ukraine."

Lenin, of course, is the Russian communist revolutionary whose embalmed body is still on display in Moscow's Red Square.

Sky News reports that the 11-foot statue was erected in 1946 just after the end of World War II. The network adds that the leading opposition politician said the toppling was not planned by the main demonstrators who have taken over Independence Square in Kiev.

"We can say that people organized themselves," Andriy Shevchenko told Sky.
As we've reported, Ukraine has seen daily protests for more than two weeks now.


A democratic way of life is still not the choice of most of the world, apparently. I thought that the dissolution of the old Soviet Union included democratic reforms, at least to some degree. I wonder if the Ukraine has a parliament or other representative body. A president alone is no better than a king. Street protests have only so much influence over policy, at least in this country. The Congress here is the primary source of power and path of communication with the populace.

Below is a selection from the Wikipedia article on Ukraine.

Government of Ukraine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The government of Ukraine is often associated with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. However it should be considered that Ukraine is a country under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. And like a lot of European countries with the semi-presidential system a head of state, the President of Ukraine, has a great influence on the executive branch of the government. The highest government body of the executive branch is the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine not the president.

"The administrative reforms that followed the Orange Revolution sought to give more influence of the parliament over the cabinet and in the way creating a drift within the executive branch between the president and the cabinet. Those reforms were discontinued through the cancellation of constitutional amendments in 2010. There were also some ideas to reform the parliament into bicameral, however there was not much of public support for its realization. A reform to local self-government has been suggested, but is yet to be formally approved."



U.S., U.K. intelligence agencies spied on online gamers, documents show – CBS

American and British government agencies spied on online game users, according to classified documents released by Edward Snowden. As reported jointly by the New York Times, ProPublica and the Guardian, the 2008 documents refer to online games as a “target-rich communication network” that offers terrorists and criminal networks “a way to hide in plain sight.”

There is no evidence of whether the programs are ongoing.
The agencies, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, spied on World of Warcraft, Second Life and Microsoft Xbox Live players in an effort to stop potential suspects from communicating secretly, moving money, or plotting attacks through the games' communications networks, the documents say.
Disguised behind make-believe characters, the intelligence agents attempted to recruit informants, collect user data, and intercept communication between players, according to the documents.

One NSA document detailing World of Warcraft monitoring noted that the program “continues to uncover potential Sigint [signals intelligence] value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” 

According to the Times/Guardian report, the document implied that targets of interest were playing the games, but never found that they were engaging in illegal activities on the gaming platforms.

Overall, the documents do not cite any successful counterterrorism results from the online game spying, and sources contacted by the Times did not offer any evidence that terrorist groups view the games as a useful communication platform.
“For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar,” Peter W. Singer, a cybersecurity expert at the Brookings Institution, told the Times.

The documents do not disclose if the agencies accessed gamers’ data or communications, whether non-suspect users were monitored, how many of the tens of millions of players around the world were monitored, or whether any of them were American citizens.

"We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes World of Warcraft, told the Times. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."

This report comes on the heels of several major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, announcing increased security measures to mitigate government spying.


I think the number of people playing these video games is probably larger than I had realized. I thought of the players as being unemployed twenty-somethings who live at home with their parents. I know one such video game addict, and that is his category. He is two years out of high school and has never worked at a job. He went to join the army and failed to pass through boot camp – he wasn't ejected, he just quit. I think he is chronically depressed and needs medication, but his girl friend thinks he is just lazy. Still she won't break up with him. He was her high school sweetheart and she can't strike out on her own and break the tie. She is a video game addict, too. She does have a job with Winn Dixie the grocery chain, though still living with her father. I can say that neither of them would be terrorist threats or political extremists. I just don't think most serious-minded people play video games. Maybe I'm wrong.





Slim majority support undoing sequester cuts, poll says – CBS
ByRebecca Kaplan

A new McClatchy-Marist poll found that voters approve of Congress raising certain fees to undo spending cuts mandated by the sequester by a slim margin, one potential component of a deal being brokered to set the 2014 federal budget.

Support for this approach follows party lines, with the backing of two-thirds of Democrats, 52 percent of independents and just 38 percent of Republicans. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said the sequester had a negative effect on the economy, while 15 percent said it had a positive effect and 42 percent said it had no effect at all. Two-thirds, 63 percent, said it had not affected them personally.

Budget Committee leaders Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., are working on a deal that would undo the mandatory cuts by replacing the money that would have been saved by some increases fees. News reports indicate the group negotiating the deal is considering raising revenue by asking federal workers to contribute more to their retirement.

A majority of poll respondents, 55 percent, said they would support cuts in federal pay and benefits.

Even though it appears the budget deal could have broad support among the public, 68 percent said they do not believe Congress and President Obama will reach a budget deal before funding for the federal government runs out again in mid-January.
There is far less support for reforming entitlements in a way that cuts Medicare spending – that was opposed by four out of five people – and more than 50 percent said there shouldn’t be any cuts to defense spending. Support for slashing funds to the Affordable Care Act were split on party lines.

Just 16 percent said that entitlement cuts should be made to deal with the deficit, and more than one-third said that should be done by collecting more revenue with strategies like limiting tax deductions on higher income. Thirty-eight percent said both approaches should be used.

In all, Republicans got better marks on their ability to handle the economy: 47 percent thought their approach was the best; 42 percent said Mr. Obama’s was better.
Predictions about the economy remain grim, with more than half of respondents – 56 percent – saying the worst was yet to come. More than 60 percent of Democrats think the worst has passed, but three-quarters of Republicans say conditions are worsening.
This survey interviewed 1,173 adults by line and cellular telephone between Dec. 3-5, including 988 registered voters. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percent.


I don't want to see Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps or Social Security cut, and from the other article I clipped today there are more people making over $100,000 a year now, so they can afford to pay more in taxes. Republicans have avoided tax increases for a number of years now, and the cost of living continues to rise, putting pressure on the Middle Class and the poor. The minimum wage remains at $7.25 an hour, creating more and more poor people as formerly Middle Class people have taken low-paid menial jobs due to the economy. It's time for some tax increases to help those who need it.