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Use of gun-related crime increased 40% during the gun ban and smuggling of guns was rampant, along with people turning every possible object into a gun. Not the answer obviously.

Abortion: Just the Data
With High-Court Debate Brewing, New Report Shows Procedure's Numbers Down

The Centers for Disease Control released a new report today that found that Mississippi �now has the nation�s highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title.� The report found that in 2006, the Mississippi teen pregnancy rate was over 60 percent higher than the national average and increased 13 percent since the year before.
While the new report does not explain why the state�s teen pregnancy rate is increasing, one reason may be the poor quality of its sex ed programs. As the Sexuality Information and Education Center explains, Mississippi focuses heavily on abstinence education and teachers are prohibited from demonstrating how to use contraceptives:

Mississippi schools are not required to teach sexuality education or sexually transmitted disease (STD)/HIV education. If schools choose to teach either or both forms of education, they must stress abstinence-until-marriage, including �the likely negative psychological and physical effects of not abstaining.� [�]
If the school board authorizes the teaching of contraception, state law dictates that the failure rates and risks of each contraceptive method must be included and �in no case shall the instruction or program include any demonstration of how condoms or other contraceptives are applied.�

A reporter for ABC News�s Jackson, MS affiliate explained, �The Mississippi Department of Human Services says abstinence is the only birth control that is 100 percent effective. And that�s the only message teens need to hear.� Unfortunately, numerous studies show that abstinence-only education is not effective. As one study found:

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

Further, a review by the House Oversight Committee found that �80% of the abstinence-only curricula�contain false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health.�
Pregnant teens in Mississippi face few options. Access to facilities that provide abortions in that state is extremely limited. Indeed, because of an unusually effective anti-choice campaign in the legislature, only a single abortion clinic remains open in the state.

UpdateThe report also found that the teen pregnancy rate is rising fastest in Alaska, where Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is a strong proponent of abstinence-only sex ed.

Very, very contradicting to me. Obama changing a lot of what he said lately and it gets worse. He wants us to vote early and take off from work Nov. 4th to help him win. Fox news also reports Obama and his campaign lays out plans to kill expectations after win because of concerns that many supporters are now harboring unrealistic hopes of what can be achieved. What the heck? Now he says, "it will be hard to achieve goals and will take time." He says one thing and then says another. I want to know where these unauthorized credit cards came from for his campaign. I want to see his birth certificate that he cannot cough up and there is a petition out and he is under investigation if he was truly born in the good ole USA. Call your State Department and they will tell you there is an investigation and they trying to get this resolved before Nov. 4th. So much uncertainty. Hope I do not offend anyone, but just like a bumper sticker I read

I'll keep my God, my freedom, my guns, and my money, you can keep THE CHANGE. VOTE FOR MCCAIN/PALIN.

Even he see the unfairness here. Some conservatives are fond of saying that Democrats want to tax the wealthy unfairly, but what I would like to see is the wealthy taxed equally. "Mr. Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent." Here is the entire article. It's a great read. Trust me.

Tom Bawden in New York

Warren Buffett, the third-richest man in the world, has criticised the US tax system for allowing him to pay a lower rate than his secretary and his cleaner.

Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (�26 billion), said: �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 cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.�

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent. Mr Buffett told his audience, which included John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley, and Alan Patricof, the founder of the US branch of Apax Partners, that US government policy had accentuated a disparity of wealth that hurt the economy by stifling opportunity and motivation.

The comments are among the most signficant yet in a debate raging on both sides of the Atlantic about growing income inequality and how the super-wealthy are taxed.

They echo those made this month by Nicholas Ferguson, one of the leading figures in Britain�s private equity industry, when he criticised tax rates that left its multimillionaire venture capitalists �paying less tax than a cleaning lady�.

Last week senior members of the US Senate proposed to increase the rate of tax that private equity and hedge fund staff pay on their share of the profits, known as carried interest, from the 15 per cent capital gains rate to about 35 per cent.

Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, acknowledged in an interview yesterday that there were justified concerns about the huge profits generated by private equity firms and that he worried that income inequality was �poisoning democracy�. He also said that he would be voting for the Democrat candidate at the next election. Mr Blankfein is the highest-paid executive on Wall Street, earning $54 million last year.

Mr Buffett, who runs the investment group Berkshire Hathaway and is widely regarded as the world�s most successful investor, said that he was a Democrat because Republicans are more likely to think: �I�m making $80 million a year � God must have intended me to have a lower tax rate.�

Mr Buffett said that a Republican proposal to eliminate elements of inheritance tax, which raises about $30 billion a year from the assets of about 12,000 rich families, would broaden the disparity between rich and poor. He added that the Republicans would seek to recover lost revenue by increasing taxes for the less prosperous.

He said: �You could take that $30 billion and give $1,000 to 30 million poor families. Or should you favour the 12,000 estates and make 30 million families pay an extra $1,000?�

If you want a lower rate -- refinance it

Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary