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Drivers’ views of “too high” gasoline prices appears to be changing after seeing years of steady hikes at the pump. According to a AAA survey, more than half of adults believe gasoline is too costly when it reaches $3.44 per gallon. Those adults are driving, buying and dining out less as a result of the higher prices. “It was not long ago that motorists were shocked to pay more than $3 per gallon for gasoline, but now that is standard at stations nationwide,” said Robert L. Darbelnet, president and CEO of AAA. “Expensive prices have forced many motorists to change...

Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital is sliding the chief executive of Burger King Worldwide Inc. (BKW), which it currently controls, into the same role at H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ) once 3G and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) complete their $23 billion buyout of the ketchup maker. Bernardo Hees will replace Heinz CEO William Johnson, who has led the ketchup-maker for 15 years and turned it into more of a global food company by selling ketchup and other Heinz's products all across the world. 3G and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in February teamed up to buy Heinz for $72.50 a share...

The new battle-cry to save a disappearing Republic should begin with the words: “Set our children free”. ...Millions of parents with school-age children will never know their children have been captured and led away. The name of the program set up for the kidnap of all time is so innocent sounding: Common Core. But in typical Marxist fashion, the name can be morphed into a myriad of others when it becomes expedient to keep parents in the dark.... Middlemen advocates in the progressive infrastructure are now trying to palm off the universal standards of Common Core as a “state-led” initiative....

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is dipping into the ketchup business as part of $23.3 billion deal to buy the Heinz ketchup company. H.J. Heinz Co. says it’s the largest deal ever in the food industry. The company, based in Pittsburgh, also makes Classico spaghetti sauces, Ore-Ida potatoes and Smart Ones frozen meals. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and its partner on the deal—3G Capital, the investment firm that bought Burger King in 2010—say Heinz will remain headquartered in Pittsburgh. Heinz CEO William Johnson said in a statement that the company “will have an opportunity to drive further growth” as a private enterprise....

Now, this is awkward. One agency of the federal government is suing a company for fraud while another agency continues to endorse it. On Monday in Los Angeles, the Department of Justice sued Standard & Poor's and its parent McGraw-Hill MHP -0.25% for $5 billion. The claim is that S&P committed civil fraud when it issued high credit ratings on mortgage-related securities prior to the financial crisis of 2008. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have piled on the suit. No doubt investors who relied on the opinions of S&P and the other big credit-rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch,...

GEICO Insurance Cultural Marxist Hypocrisy – Gun Manufacturer Auto Policy Cancelled Because He Is In Firearm Business…. Because he makes gun parts for a living this policy holder received a letter from GEICO cancelling his auto insurance. The letter says his auto insurance is being cancelled because he owns a company that manufactures parts for firearms:(fyi, to insure the authenticity I have submitted a copy along with a request for verification to GEICO via email – we’ll see their response)“The reason for cancellation is your vehicle [...] does not meet our underwriting guidelines because it is used in conjunction with a...

You may be sick of hearing about him again, but Warren Buffett did huge damage serving as Obama’s useful fool last year. Dupes comprise a long, dubious tradition in American history. Over 200 years ago, George Washington warned the nation about “dupes” in his historic Farewell Address. Such warnings would echo from the founding of the republic through the Cold War. During the Cold War, “dupe,” like the associated word, “useful idiot” — attributed to Vladimir Lenin — became an everyday term. Dupes were legion during the Cold War, a unique breed of (largely) left-leaning Americans who, unwittingly, allowed or...

Who needs a Mayan apocalypse when you have Obama? The Occupy Movement, as we all know, was and is a tool of the elite. Skilled in projection and deflection, they screamed that big business was the enemy of the people and Marxism was the cure. No sane American would fall for that tripe. What the lame movement, if they had been honest, would have railed against was big business in collusion with big government. A marriage made in hell and brought to you by Barack Obama and the bourgeois socialists. We now have many, many examples of these elitists who...

WASHINGTON - The Manassas News & Messenger is no more. The paper printed its final edition after 143 years of covering the news in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park Sunday. The paper's parent company, the Warren Buffett-owned World Media Enterprises, decided to close the paper and its website ... World Media Enterprises purchased the paper, as well as several others, from Media General in June. ... All employees lost their jobs, and

Gates: Software billionaire Bill Gates, who previously has advocated the reduction of the human population through the use of vaccines, and his wife Melinda marked the 100th year since the First International Eugenics Congress in London with a “family planning” summit with abortionists and the United Nations. The July 11 event, co-hosted by the United Kingdom Department for International Development, included organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes International and the U.N. Populations Fund, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Critics pointed out the summit was held 100 years after the July 1912 eugenics conference led by...

Warren Buffett says he’s optimistic the nation’s debt problems will be solved, despite the political fighting that’s threatening to put the country over the “fiscal cliff.” … “The United States is richer than it’s ever been. We have $50,000 or so of GDP per person. But we’ve overpromised and we’ve also under taxed to some extent, so we find ourselves with this great fiscal imbalance. But it was man made. We’re a rich country. It can be solved. … We’ll be able to overcome this problem. America has faced a lot tougher problems than this one. We’ll get it solved.”...

Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not "paying their fair share"? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? Neither seems to have heard the president's earlier warning that, "at a certain point you've made enough money." Could both zillionaires simply have quit making money at $10 million -- and thereby given their poorer audiences a break on ticket prices? With all the talk of raising taxes on the supposedly conservative wannabes who make $250,000 per year, why not additionally levy a $3 surcharge on discretionary tickets...

Republicans have been forced into a Hobson's choice of either letting the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone or agreeing to a tax hike on the top 2 percent of income earners (not to be confused with "the rich," who have already made, inherited or married their money). If Republicans object to the Democrats' hitting job creators with a tax hike, three things will happen: Taxes will go up for everyone; Republicans will be seen as the "party of the rich"; and the inevitable economic collapse will be blamed on Republicans. If Democrats were merely trying to raise taxes on...

WASHINGTON - Did you see the story about Costco borrowing $3.5 billion to pay a special $7 a share dividend to its stockholders before year's end to avoid being hit by President Obama's higher tax on investors? What makes this story especially juicy is that it reveals how Obama's fat cat supporters, who bankrolled his bid for a second term and embraced his proposed tax increases, have taken steps to shield themselves from the president's "tax the rich" fiscal folly. The tax avoidance maneuver, which Forbes magazine calls "a six-year advance on the company's current annual dividend of $1.10 per...

Billionaire Warren Buffett, always popular among Democratic redistributionists, says he wants a “minimum tax” on the very rich. Never mind that we already have one, and that what he proposes would hurt both the economy and the middle class. … Last year, according to the Treasury Department, the U.S. deficit was $1.1 trillion. According to a study by Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, a Buffett-style 30% tax on all millionaires would generate just $5 billion. That’s less than one-half of one percent of our budget. In short, Buffett’s proposal is a fiscal joke. …

Once again, billionaire investor Warren Buffett urges his fellow high-on-the-hoggers to pay more in taxes. "Only in Grover Norquist's imagination," says Buffett, do taxes make much of a difference in how people invest. "So let's forget about the rich and ultra-rich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if -- gasp -- capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased. The ultra-rich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities. ... "We need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and...

The days are ticking off to a January 1 fiscal implosion, and Republicans are trying to MacGyver a fiscal fix. Three days after the election, President Obama claimed the voters had given him a mandate to raise taxes on the rich. With Pew reporting that 58 percent of Americans feel the rich pay too little in taxes, it’s hard for Republicans to contradict the president. Unless Congress intervenes to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring, high earners will face significantly higher income taxes in 2013. For the top two brackets, the rate will rise to 36 percent (from 33...

In a NYT Op-Ed today, Warren Buffett argued that the rich should pay a certain minimum tax, and he explained to activist Grover Norquist that it's preposterous to think that businessmen would forgo profitable deals merely because the rate of tax on the profits would go up. But why do people listen to Buffett on taxes? Basically because he's a rich, successful guy (which is why a lot of people are listened to on a lot of subjects). To that end, economist and former Romney advisor Greg Mankiw has a short post talking about Buffett as a master of "tax...

"The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use Plain English To Rob You Blind" with Pulizer Prize-winning David Cay Johnston. Right Click, Save As

Last week, President Obama brought his re-election campaign to a cheering crowd of 4,500 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. The audience for the stump speech consisted largely of students, so the adulation came as no surprise. Hero worship tends to be a province of the young. College campuses, however, should be places where young people develop the critical thinking skills needed to succeed in life. So here’s a suggestion to those who participated in the FAU hurrahs: Put your adulation on “hold” for a while. Then employ critical thinking skills to what the president told you, especially regarding...

We agree with President Barack Obama. If any millionaires or billionaires don’t feel they are paying enough in federal taxes, they should pay more. We don’t wish to see really rich people wallowing in guilt. Warren Buffett and friends, get out your checkbooks. Nothing’s stopping you. In what had all the trappings of a reelection stunt, the president this week lined up four “patriotic” millionaires and four of their less-wealthy assistants, who we are told pay a higher tax rate than do their rich bosses. These millionaires are “patriotic,” we were told, because they feel they should pay more in...

You may not have realized it, but the current run-up in oil and gasoline prices is actually a right-wing plot to oust President Obama. Big oil companies and/or Wall Street speculators have inflated prices to foment voter unrest and help Republicans seize the White House this fall. The possibility of armed conflict between Israel and Iran has nothing to do with it, or is a contributing factor at best. This theory has been echoing across the blogosphere for weeks now. The most detailed version appeared on the widely read Daily Kos blog, which included a lengthy post on Feb. 26...

President Obama is twisting Democratic arms to stop the Keystone pipeline, which when built will end billionaire Warren Buffett’s railroad monopoly on shipping oil from the Bakken Oil Field in North Dakota. The billionaire investor is the second richest man in the nation and an ardent supporter of this regime. So obvious is President Obama’s opposition to allowing the pipeline to be built on his watch, that even CNN noticed. From CNN: A razor close vote is expected in the Senate Thursday on a Republican amendment to bypass the Obama administration’s objections and approve the Keystone XL pipeline, Senate aides...

Warren Buffett, who appreciated their shared experience as newspaper deliverers, once told her that fashion changes but the home remains far more secure. In apparel every celebrity with a Q rating above zero either had a line or was pitching one. But precious few celebrity licensors dabbled in home furnishings, even though the dynamics of buying a dresser are no different from buying a dress. "A known brand name gives people a comfort level when buying," says furniture industry analyst Wallace Epperson. In 1999 Ireland went to the biannual furniture convention in High Point, N.C. with a line of sofas,...

Berkshire Hathaway chairman and famous investor Warren Buffett has dismissed gold as a "valueless asset". Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has dismissed gold as a valueless asset saying that it has no inherent value. In an article for Fortune magazine, Buffett said that gold investors were pinning their hopes on future demand. He warned that gold was a self-inflating bubble, created by investors desperate for a viable alternative to property and shares. The infamous investor warned that investors in gold would be left with egg on their face when the price eventually crashed. "Bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop," he said....

Warren Buffett’s stake in Bank of America Corp. increased in value by $154 million after President Obama and the U.S. Justice Department announced a $25 billion foreclosure abuse settlement with the five largest U.S. banks Thursday, records show. Buffett invested $5 billion in Bank of America (B of A) on Aug. 25, 2011. As part of his investment deal, Buffett gained warrants that allow him to buy 700 million shares of Bank of America stock at a strike price of $7.14 a share. However, on Dec. 19, 2011, it was reported that Buffett was $1.5 billion underwater on his stock...

Gasparino actually said in plain English: 1. The 2008 Real Estate Bubble was caused in large part by the three ratings agencies 2. That Warren Buffet had ownership of Moody's and made millions at the time. 3. That the Lubrizol purchase was a continuation of a trend that Buffet has shown toward these sorts of ethical lapses in very large, economy moving transactions. So far, this is the very first time that anyone in the MSM has uttered such things, and the last place I thought I'd see it was on a Fox channel. Kudos to Gasparino for actually reporting...

Hypocrisy: As the great investor's secretary sat with the first lady at the State of the Union, the president spoke of economic "fairness." Is it fair to make a supporter wealthier at the expense of the American people? During the 2008 campaign, candidate Barack Obama cited billionaire Warren Buffett as one of his economic muses. In the 2012 State of the Union address Tuesday night, the president returned to his advocacy of the "Buffett rule," a proposed minimum tax on millionaires and billionaires. To highlight his theme of "fairness," there in the first lady's box sat Buffett's secretary, Debbie Bosanek,...

Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss. Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information. The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an...

The secretary for one of the world's wealthiest men and the wife of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs are among those invited by the White House to attend the State of the Union address. The State of the Union guest list has become an annual rite, with the first lady's box taking on the sort of gravitas shown at the Academy Awards' Red Carpet ceremony. The guests often have ties to a proposal or initiative the president will outline in the address. Among this year's guests are Debbie Bosanek, the longtime secretary for billionaire Warren Buffett. Obama frequently cites Buffett's...

'Whatever people bring to us, we're ready to haul' (BLOOMBERG) — Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department. “Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an...

We'll leave it to others to assess the political fallout from Mitt Romney's statement yesterday that he paid about 15% in federal income taxes. But let's at least get some facts straight. On Morning Joe today, Joe Scarborough claimed that the revelations about Mitt Romney's taxes might be his Dukakis-in-the-tank moment. Scarborough repeated the shibboleth Warren Buffett put into circulation that at 15%, the super-rich like Romney pay a lower tax rate than secretaries. But is that so? Running the numbers suggest otherwise. See video and analysis here.

So just who are those top 1 percent of Americans that we're all supposed to hate? If you listen to President Obama, the protesters at Occupy Wall Street, and much of the media, it's obvious. They're either "trust-fund babies" who inherited their money, or greedy bankers and hedge-fund managers. Certainly, they haven't worked especially hard for their money. While the recession has thrown millions of Americans out of work, they've been getting even richer. Worse, they don't even pay their fair share in taxes: Millionaires and billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. In reality, each of...

Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world's richest men get richer. North Dakota's booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president's economic guru just bought. Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off...

Crony capitalism is alive and well and occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The latest billionaire donor to cash in on his connections to President Obama is Warren Buffett, who now joins billionaire George “Solyndra” Kaiser and George “Petrobras” Soros in cashing in on Obama’s pay-to-play energy policy. Warren Buffett is about to make a pile of money off the Bakken Oil Shale in North Dakota the old-fashioned way with a monopoly worthy of Here is how it works, President Obama put the brakes on the Keystone Pipeline, which would have delivered oil from Canada. That delay means Burlington Northern Santa Fe...

In the wake of the $700 billion TARP bailout, Warren Buffett apparently shaped a plan to clean up toxic assets that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner later adopted–resulting in massive profits for Buffett.That’s the latest bombshell revelation from investigative journalist and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s sensational new book, Throw Them All Out. According to Schweizer, after the bailout bill’s passage, Warren Buffett sat down and wrote then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson a four-page private letter laying out a plan to clean up the toxic assets plaguing numerous financial institutions. Buffett proposed something he called a “public-private partnership fund.” For every $10 billion...

Listening to an interview of Peter Schwiezer talking to Steve Bannon (Director of Palin's Undefeated movie)...There's a whole chapter in Peter's new book exposing Warren Buffet. Supposedly he is involved in insider trading. This chapter of Schweizer's book shows how his company got the sweetheart deal to invest in Goldman Sachs in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. One member of Congress even bought Berkshire stock the day before the deal was even announced....It was a racket!

Up to 40 million Chinese people still live in caves. That's more than the populations of Texas and Illinois, combined. In fairness, a fraction of these caves are apparently pretty nice, complete with electricity and well-compacted dirt floors. But that's grading on a curve because, well, they're still caves. Meanwhile, 21 million Chinese live below what the Communist Party calls the "absolute poverty" line. That sounds pretty good if you have in mind our poverty line, which is just under $11,000 per year for an individual and roughly $22,000 for a family of four. The absolute poverty rate in China...

Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest man, would see his tax rate fall to 0.2 percent under Rick Perry’s “Cut, Balance, and Grow,” tax proposal, according to an analysis by a Center for American Progress economist. Buffett, worth about $39 billion, gets nearly all of his income from capital gains and dividends. Perry’s proposal would eliminate taxes on those sources of income. As such, said Seth Hanlon, director of fiscal reform for the Doing What Works Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Buffett’s tax rate based on his 2010 tax return would be “microscopic.” Hanlon’s organization is a...

President Obama’s proposed “Buffett Rule”-- which would force the wealthiest Americans to pay higher taxes to help cut the nation’s deficits -- has met its Republican match. Republican lawmakers have introduced their own “Buffett Rule” that would allow billionaire investors like Warren Buffett who say they’re not paying enough taxes to voluntarily give more money to the federal government. Under the legislation, authored by Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Rep. John Scalise of Louisiana, taxpayers can donate at least a $1 to the Treasury fund for deficit reduction when they file their federal income tax returns starting next...

Tycoon Warren Buffett, headliner of last night’s fund-raiser for President Obama at the Four Seasons, reiterated his advice for a tax on “ultra-rich people who are paying very low tax rates.” But the message appeared to have limited appeal to donors expected to pay $10,000 a plate; the turnout was “disappointing,” according to one guest.

CNBC: "Are you happy that the way it is being described. Is the program that the White House has presented a million dollars and over your program? " Warren Buffett: "Well, the precise program which will -- I don't know what their program will be. My program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low. Not just high incomes. Somebody making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won't change. But, if they make a lot of money and pay a very low...

CNBC: "Are you happy that the way it is being described. Is the program that the White House has presented a million dollars and over your program? " Warren Buffett: "Well, the precise program which will -- I don't know what their program will be. My program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low. Not just high incomes. Somebody making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won't change. But, if they make a lot of money and pay a very low...

Buffett: My plan was not the 'Buffett Rule' By Alicia M. Cohn - 09/30/11 11:01 AM ET Billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett, who has become the face of President Obama's $447 billion jobs creation legislation, said Friday that he might not agree with everything in the bill. Obama has called for higher tax rates on millionaires as part of his proposed deficit-reduction plan. Obama’s proposed tax increase, called the “Buffett Rule” in a nod to Buffett’s call for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, would apply to those earning annual incomes of $1 million or more. However, Buffett said he...

Mayor Bloomberg Sunday slammed billionaire investor Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on the super-rich, dismissing it as political theater. "The Buffett thing is just theatrics," Hizzoner said speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press." In August, Buffett - known as "The Oracle from Omaha" - said he forked over a little less than $7 million in taxes last year, which added up to roughly 17% of his income. That percentage was lower than the secretaries in his office, he pointed out. Bloomberg said Buffett's use of the figures was a bit of a smoke and mirrors game. "If Warren Buffett...

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett will help raise money for President Barack Obama's re-election effort at a $35,800-a-ticket fundraiser next month in Chicago, an Obama campaign official said on Wednesday. Buffett will attend the October 27 event at a private home on Chicago's North Shore that is expected to include major donors to Obama's 2008 presidential run. The Democratic president, who is not expected to attend, is running for re-election in 2012. Buffett, the legendary chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has landed in the center of a growing political battle over Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy by inspiring...

(Reuters) - Billionaire investor Warren Buffett will help raise money for President Barack Obama's re-election effort at a $35,800-a-ticket fundraiser next month in Chicago, an Obama campaign official said on Wednesday. Buffett will attend the October 27 event at a private home on Chicago's North Shore that is expected to include major donors to Obama's 2008 presidential run. The Democratic president, who is not expected to attend, is running for re-election in 2012. Buffett, the legendary chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has landed in the center of a growing political battle over Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy...

WASHINGTON -- Billionaire investor Warren Buffett isn’t as undertaxed as he and President Obama seem to think. *** Buffett actually was taxed twice on his investment income. First, Buffett had to make the money he invested. Those earnings were taxed as corporate income, at about a 35-percent rate. Then, Uncle Sam took another cut when Buffett invested the money and earned a profit. That’s when Buffett paid the 15 percent capital-gains tax rate. All told, after combining corporate taxes and capital gains taxes, Buffett forked over about 45 percent of his earnings.

The justification for President Obama's new proposed tax on the wealthy is wrong on the numbers. Despite the president's claims, millionaires don't pay lower tax rates than middle class workers. His proposed surcharge on capital gains and dividend taxes will raise already high tax rates on high income individuals and force even more investment outside the United States. The so-called "Buffett rule" is based on Warren Buffett's claim: "The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Well, folks, did you hear President Obama's... what was that? It was a teleprompter campaign speech in the Rose Garden. There was an audience there, but they didn't applaud until it was all over. I don't know what we're dealing with here. In terms of stability, this was bold, bald-face lying to the American people, compounded on top of lies I don't think I even saw during the Clinton years. This today was just very troublesome, worrisome. He raised more straw men in one stump speech -- and that's what this was, a campaign stump speech --...