Obama's Odd Sense of Fairness | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary

Obama's Odd Sense of Fairness | Richard W. Rahn | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'The actual tax rate Mitt Romney, Warren Buffet and most other wealthy people pay on dividends, when correctly calculated, is about 52 percent, as reported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which includes the federal and state corporate-level-profits tax burden, plus federal and state taxes on dividends.'

'The federal government admits that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted through fraud and mismanagement. Medicare fraud alone costs tens of billions of dollars each year. Nevertheless, somehow the president thinks it is more “fair” to enact job-destroying tax increases rather than insisting that officials in his own administration clean up the fraud and waste or lose their jobs, as would happen in any private company.'

$189,000 | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

$189,000 | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'measured as a percentage of GDP (the value of all goods and services produced in a country over a year), our budget deficit is roughly a quarter larger than France’s. In fact, among European countries, only Greece and Ireland have larger deficits this year than we do.'

'If one includes all the unfunded liabilities of pension and health-care systems, Greece’s total debt equals 875% of its GDP. France, the next-most insolvent country in Europe, owes 570% of GDP. The United States, however, now owes 885% of GDP, more than any other industrialized country.'

Why There Is No Human Progress without Capitalism | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why There Is No Human Progress without Capitalism | Jim Powell | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'For thousands of years, there was virtually no such thing as human progress. The great French historian Fernand Braudel observed, “Peasants represented immense numbers of people, the vast majority of human beings... constant poverty... For century upon century, clothing remained unchanged... the general rule was changelessness.” In Europe, peasant possessions were generally limited to little more than a shirt, a pair of pants, perhaps a simple jacket, a bench, a table and a straw-filled sack that served as a mattress. In India, there were hardly any chairs or tables to be found. There were few chairs in Islamic lands. Multitudes perished because of famines — France alone had hundreds of famines before 1800. Famine undermined the ability of people to resist common deadly diseases like typhoid fever, purple fever, whooping cough, sweating sickness, diphtheria, smallpox, influenza, syphilis and the plague.

Capitalism, as economic freedom is often called, has changed the world for the better by harnessing individual self-interest — the most reliable motivator there is. In markets, functioning without subsidies, special favors or bailouts, entrepreneurs have had powerful incentives to provide what consumers want.'

Revealing Slain Victims' Rap Sheets Draws Fire | Fox News

Revealing Slain Victims' Rap Sheets Draws Fire | Fox News: 'As Mike Ainsworth walked his two sons to a school bus stop, he heard a woman being carjacked scream, and ran to help. The woman was not hurt, police said, but the Good Samaritan was shot to death by a suspect who fled.

When police gave out the details of Ainsworth's killing, they also announced he had been arrested for drugs and other non-violent crimes, keeping with a year-old policy in which criminal records for slain victims are released — sometimes before they've been publicly identified.

New Orleans police say revealing a victim's rap sheet lets the public know that much of the violence is happening between people with similar criminal backgrounds. Families of the slain victim's say the practice is insensitive, and others outraged with the policy say it has racial overtones and sends a message that the victims got what was coming to them.'

A 'thermal battery' for villages in India | Cutting Edge - CNET News

A 'thermal battery' for villages in India | Cutting Edge - CNET News: The thermal battery is a large container that stores a specially designed liquid that doesn't freeze, even below the freezing point. People pour milk, which has just been milked from cows, onto a cylinder-shaped tank, which is cooled by the thermal battery's liquid. As the milk flows over the cylinder, it's rapidly chilled to an appropriate temperature for storing.
And when the grid is not available, the thermal battery can run for several hours on a car battery, and so it avoids dirty diesel generators. The first machines Promethean Power will deploy are roughly the size of a large refrigerator. To remove heat from the cooling liquid, it circulates through a traditional compressor loop, the same used in heat pumps, air conditioners, and refrigerators, White explained.

New Science Being Used To Fight Arson Convictions | Fox News

New Science Being Used To Fight Arson Convictions | Fox News: 'Research in recent decades has challenged long-held assumptions about how flames spread and the tell-tale signs they leave.

"Our scientific understandings have improved in recent years, and the effect of that has to be to say, 'We've got some innocent people who've been declared guilty based on misunderstandings,'" said John Hall, director of analysis and research for the National Fire Protection Association.

For example, decades ago, it was common for investigators to conclude an accelerant like gasoline was used if a fire burned particularly hot. In fact, the new arson science has found no such correlation, experts say. Another mistaken assumption: A V-shaped pattern on a wall of a burned building is proof of arson. All it shows is where a fire started.'

'For example, tests have found that pour-like patterns on the floor can occur because of radiant heat, even without accelerants, according to Beyler's report. Experiments have also found that melted plastics can create patterns that look like liquid spills, Beyler said.'

'But tests conducted in the 1990s showed that fires can hit the point of "flashover" — when all combustible surfaces ignite at once — in under four minutes with no accelerants.
Connections between a fire's speed and heat and the possibility of arson have "been discredited and shown to be much less significant than previously thought in the investigation of a fire," Florida-based fire scientist John Lentini, one of the country's leading independent fire analysts, said in a 2002 affidavit on Lee's behalf.
"Back in the day there were a lot more fires called arson that were actually accidents," Lentini said in an interview. "There was a lot of misinformation out there."'

Our best scientific knowledge may not always be accurate and we need to take into consideration the confidence that our best scientific knowledge has -- especially when it involves people lives!