Position: 38.8N 56.0W [10PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: East-Southeast [110°] near 13 mph [20 kph].
Maximum sustained winds: 45 mph [ 75 kph].
Wind Gusts: 60 mph [ 95 kph].
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 70 miles [110 km].
Minimum central pressure: 1005 mb.

Currently about 565 miles [910 km] South-Southwest of Cape Race, Newfoundland.

I’ve been watching this for a day or so and it finally got its act together to become a Tropical Storm. It is not expected to be a threat to land.

CBS News has an ‘exclusive’ interview with Mitch McConnell: Tax code favors lower income too much already

(CBS News) The United States tax code favors lower income Americans too much already and should be restructured to make it fairer to upper income earners, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

In an interview that aired on “CBS This Morning” Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican said he is ready to sit down with “this president or the next president” and have an animated discussion about the tax code to “reach a conclusion” that would bring down the ballooning U.S. deficit.

“Almost 70 percent of the federal revenue is provided by the top 10 percent of taxpayers now. Between 45 percent and 50 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all. We have an extraordinarily progressive tax code already. It is a mess and needs to be revisited again,” McConnell said in the interview, taped Monday.

He is lying and knows it. The tax code includes so many loopholes for the wealthy that the alternate minimum tax had to be instituted to collect anything from a lot of people in the top bracket.

The personal income tax only represents a little over 40% of the Federal revenue stream, just slightly more than the revenue from payroll withholding taxes, which are only collected from working people and are currently capped at about $110,000 of income.

The poor may not make enough to pay income taxes, but they pay the payroll withholding taxes, as well as state and local taxes, like sales taxes, school and property taxes, gas taxes, utilities taxes, etc. The wealthy generally pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the poor, as I can personally attest to based on my last tax return, compared to Mitt Romney’s for the same period.

The super-rich don’t usually pay at the income tax rate, they pay at the capital gains rate of 15%, the bottom of the income tax table and don’t pay payroll withholding taxes.

McConnell has made it crystal clear who he works for, and it isn’t the coal miners of Kentucky, it is the mine owners.