The LuLac Edition #772, Apr. 2nd, 2009

PHOTO INDEX: FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NEWT GINGRICH AND A TONIC ON THE WAY FOR PA. TAXPAYERS.

TAX RELIEF

Help is on the way for the beleaguered middle class in Pennsylvania from the Obama administration. Yesterday, the Obama Administration released a state-by-state analysis to show the impact the Making Work Pay tax credit is having across the country. In Pennsylvania that means 4.8 million working families will collectively get $2.5 billion hand to help them weather the current economic storm. This reflects the Administration’s strong and sustained commitment to the middle class. Nationally, the credit provides over 110 million working families—about 95%—the tax relief they need right now and will give nearly 60 billion dollars to America’s working families. The Republican alternative budget, announced today, would roll back these tax credits in 2010, thereby increasing taxes for the same 95 percent of working families. IRS guidance asks that, by April 1, employers must have instituted the lower withholdings for their employees.

A GIFT FOR LIZ

President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth a gift. It was an iPOD. Now I don’t even have a video iPOD. I thought maybe the Obamas would give the Queen a list of songs she could play. Surely a little Vivaldi, perhaps the Beatles or the Royal Philharmonic. Instead, it was a personalized iPod with video footage of her 2007 visit to Washington and Virginia. There were however some show tunes on it like "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" and a few other showstoppers. She was also given a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers. In return the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, gave the Obamas signed portrait of themselves. Okay then, if they end up on Ebay a few decades from now, we’ll know where they originated. Elizabeth has met with 11 of the last 12 U.S. presidents, including a meeting that took place with Harry Truman when she was a princess.

NEWT ON THE MOVE

Newt Gingrich is running for President. Big time. He recently announced his conversion to Catholicism and has supplanted former Veep nominee Sarah Palin at a major fundraising event this summer. Palin, the party's 2008 nominee for vice president, had been slated to address the annual Senate-House Dinner in Washington on June 8. The dinner, sponsored by the House and Senate Republican campaign committees, is one of the GOP's biggest fundraisers. A spokesman for the Senate GOP committee, Brian Walsh, said Palin's team informed the campaign committees that her responsibilities in Alaska prevented her from committing to the speech until the end of the legislative session.
Gingrich’s willingness to step in for Palin as well as his many appearances on national TV (even seen as being reasonable in his presentations like criticizing Rush Limbaugh) have given political observers the feeling that the former House Speaker is charting a course for the 2012 nomination.

EGGS WITH SKLAROSKY

Atty. Joseph Sklarosky, Junior will be having a fundraising breakfast Saturday April 4th, 9AM to 11AM at St. Mary’s Antiochian Church Hall, 905 South Main Street in Wilkes Barre. Sklarosky is a candidate for Judge of Common Pleas. Tickets can be obtained at the door.