NFL-Shurmur is first coaching head to roll on Black Monday

Pat Shurmur became the first coaching casualty on what has become known around the National Football League as Black Monday when he was sacked by the Cleveland Browns just hours after the regular season had concluded.
The 5-11 Browns, who closed out the season on Sunday with a 24-10 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, were among the first teams to begin house cleaning by announcing Shurmur and general manager Tom Heckert had both been relieved of their duties.
"We felt that these moves were in the best interests of the Cleveland Browns and our future," said Browns owner Jimmy Haslam in a statement on the team's website.
"I enjoyed getting to know Tom and Pat over the past several months, and want to thank them, not just for their contributions to the Browns, but also the insight they were able to provide.
"They are both fine men and hope they have the best of success as they move forward with their careers."
Black Monday began with the Jacksonville Jaguars announcing they had fired general manager Gene Smith and was quickly followed by the New York Jets dumping GM Mike Tannenbaum.
The Jets, however, ended the speculation swirling around Rex Ryan by confirming the under-fire head coach would be back next season.
"Rex Ryan will remain the head coach of our football team. I believe that he has the passion, the talent, and the drive to successfully lead our team," said Jets owner Woody Johnson on the team's website.
After a tumultuous 6-10 season, overshadowed by a quarterbacking controversy around the use of incumbent Mark Sanchez and polarizing Tim Tebow, Ryan was widely expected to pay for the Jets under-achieving results with his job.
With Ryan back for next season the speculation will now center on the futures of Sanchez and Tebow in New York.
The Jets sputtering offense ranked 30th among 32 teams, generating an average of just 299 yards per game.
Changes had been expected in Jacksonville after the toothless Jaguars finished the season tied with Kansas City Chiefs for the NFL's worst record (2-14).
"Now it is time for the Jacksonville Jaguars to begin a new chapter," Khan said in a statement. "We're not looking back.

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Reid among 4 NFL coaches sacked in firing frenzy

Less than 24 hours after the regular season ended, NFL firings began at a furious pace.
In a span of about 90 minutes before lunch Monday, coaches Andy Reid, Pat Shurmur, Romeo Crennel and Chan Gailey were let go by their teams after losing seasons. None of the moves were surprising, and more are expected.
The Jets decided to keep their coach, Rex Ryan, but fired general manager Mike Tannenbaum.
The Browns made it a clean sweep, dismissing GM Tom Heckert along with Shurmur.
Reid was the longest tenured of the group, let go after 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles.
Gailey was dumped after three seasons with the Bills, Shurmur after two in Cleveland and Crennel was coach of the Chiefs for one full season.
Jacksonville fired GM Gene Smith.

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Iraq Sunni rallies gather steam

 Thousands of protesters from Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority kept up a week-old blockade on a key highway on Thursday and readied mass rallies for Friday to demand concessions from Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Protests flared last week after troops loyal to Maliki, who is from the Shi'ite majority, detained bodyguards of his finance minister, a Sunni. Many Sunnis, whose community dominated Iraq until the fall of Saddam Hussein, accuse Maliki of refusing to share power and of favoring Shi'ite, non-Arab neighbor Iran.
A year after U.S. troops left, sectarian friction, as well as tension over land and oil between Arabs and ethnic Kurds, threaten renewed unrest and are hampering efforts to repair the damage of years of violence and exploit Iraq's energy riches.
"The people want to bring down the regime," chanted some of about 2,000 demonstrators in the Sunni city of Ramadi - an echo of those used abroad during last year's "Arab Spring" and still a rallying cry for mainly Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria.
Some flew the old Iraqi flag, introduced by Saddam's Baath party and bearing three stars. It was replaced in 2008. Earlier in the week, Syria's rebel flag was also flown at the protests.
The main highway at Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, was barricaded for a fifth day, disrupting transit of government supplies along a key trade route to and from Jordan and Syria. Protesters were, however, letting most trucks, carrying private goods, pass along another road through Ramadi.
There was also a small protest in the northern city of Mosul. Activists, who want changes to laws on terrorism that they say penalize Sunnis, plan bigger rallies on Friday, the traditional day of rest - and protest - in the Muslim world.
"If the government does not deal seriously with the people's demands, we will take our battle to the gates of Baghdad," said Sheikh Ali Hatem Sulaiman, head of the Dulaimi tribe, which dominates Ramadi and the sprawling desert province of Anbar.
Recalling the role the Anbar tribes played in first fighting the U.S. occupation and then allying with U.S. forces and the Baghdad government to contain al Qaeda fighters in the region, the sheikh warned Maliki's administration that Sunnis might resort to violence - though it is unclear how ready they are:
"Just as we fought al-Qaeda and the Americans, we will fight the government inside Baghdad," he said.
Should Friday's protests provide a mass show of force, it may add to concerns that the increasingly sectarian Syrian civil war, where majority Sunnis are battling a ruler backed by Iran, will push Iraq back to the Sunni-Shi'ite slaughter of 2005-07.
Al Qaeda fighters appear to be regrouping in Anbar and to be joining rebel ranks across the border in Syria.
While demands so far focus on the anti-terrorism laws which Sunnis say are being used against them, one lecturer in law at Baghdad University said Sunnis might be emboldened to call for regional autonomy in Anbar and other provinces in the northwest where they are in a majority - a status similar to that of the Kurds, who won Western-backed autonomy from Saddam in 1991.
"I'm seeing greater determination to defy Maliki and if their demands are not met, the call to have their own region will be an inevitable consequence," said Ahmed Younis. "The Kurdish region could become a model for Sunnis in Anbar."
SECTARIAN SLANT
Sunni complaints against Maliki grew louder a week ago when, just hours after Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd seen as a steadying influence, was flown abroad for medical care, troops arrested bodyguards for Finance Minister Rafaie al-Esawi.
For many it recalled how Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, was forced to flee into exile a year ago, just when U.S. troops had withdrawn. Hashemi, sentenced to death in absentia, told al-Hayat newspaper on Thursday that it was "fresh evidence of a plot to exclude Sunni Arabs from the political process".
Maliki has sought to divide his rivals and strengthen alliances in Iraq's complex political landscape before provincial elections next year and a parliamentary vote in 2014.
A face-off between the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces over disputed oilfields in the north has been seen as a possible way of rallying Sunni Arab support behind the prime minister.
Shi'ite rivals to Maliki, notably cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have also looked to broader alliance, notably by voicing support for the protesters' grievances in Anbar this week.
But anti-Shi'ite rhetoric among them limits the chances for cooperation: "They lost a lot of sympathy by using these sectarian slogans," lawmaker Hakim al-Zamili, a Sadr ally, told Reuters. "I don't expect many Maliki opponents to join them".
An analyst at the Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies also doubted the protests would broaden greatly to threaten Maliki: "We are talking about demands that have a certain geography," said Yahya Qubaisi. "They are not national demands."

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Egypt's opposition leaders under investigation

 Egypt's chief prosecutor ordered an investigation on Thursday into allegations that opposition leaders committed treason by inciting supporters to overthrow Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
The probe by a Morsi-appointed prosecutor was launched a day after the president called for a dialogue with the opposition to heal rifts opened in the bitter fight over an Islamist-drafted constitution just approved in a referendum. The opposition decried the investigation as a throwback to Hosni Mubarak's regime, when the law was used to smear and silence opponents.
The probe was almost certain to sour the already tense political atmosphere in the country.
The allegations were made initially in a complaint by at least two lawyers sent to the chief prosecutor earlier this month. They targeted opposition leaders Mohammed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate and former head of the U.N. nuclear agency, former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, and Hamdeen Sabahi. Both Moussa and Sabahi were presidential candidates who competed against Morsi in the last election.
There was no immediate comment by any of the three opposition leaders named but the opposition dismissed the allegations.
Emad Abu Ghazi, secretary-general of the opposition party ElBaradei heads, said the investigation was "an indication of a tendency toward a police state and the attempt to eliminate political opponents." He said the ousted Mubarak regime dealt with the opposition in the same way.
Mubarak jailed his opponents, including liberals and Islamists. International rights groups said their trials did not meet basic standards of fairness.
ElBaradei was a leading figure behind the uprising against Mubarak and at one point, he was allied with the Brotherhood against the old regime.
The investigation does not necessarily mean charges will be filed against the leaders. But it is unusual for state prosecutors to investigate such broad charges against high-profile figures.
Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, asked the opposition on Wednesday to join a national dialogue to heal rifts and move on after a month of huge street protests against him and the constitution drafted by his allies.
Some of the protests erupted into deadly violence. On Dec. 5, anti-Morsi demonstrators staging a sit-in outside the presidential palace in Cairo were attacked by Morsi supporters. Fierce clashes ensued that left 10 people dead.
The wave of protests began after Morsi's Nov. 22 decrees that gave him and the assembly writing the constitution immunity from judicial oversight. That allowed his Islamist allies on the assembly to hurriedly rush through the charter before an expected court ruling dissolving the panel.
After the decrees, the opposition accused Morsi of amassing too much power in his hands. They said the constitution was drafted without the participation of liberal, minority Christian and women members of the assembly, who walked out in protest at the last minute.
Even though the constitution passed in a referendum, the opposition has vowed to keep fighting it. They say it enshrines Islamic law in Egypt, undermines rights of minorities and women, and restricts freedoms.
Morsi and Brotherhood officials accused the opposition of working to undermine the president's legitimacy, and accused former regime officials of working to topple him.
Although he reached out to the opposition for reconciliation, Morsi did not offer any concessions in his speech Wednesday calling for a dialogue.
On Wednesday Morsi asked his prime minister to carry out a limited reshuffle of his government, without offering the opposition any seats.
In an apparent protest against the decision to keep the same prime minister, the minister of parliamentary affairs resigned. A member of his Islamist party said Prime Minister Hesham Kandil has not lived up to the challenges of the previous period, and a stronger, more political prime minister should be nominated.
This is the second resignation of a Cabinet minister this week and follows a spate of resignations of senior aides and advisers during the constitutional crisis.
Details of the complaint filed by the two lawyers were carried on the website of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has become Egypt's most powerful political faction since the 2011 uprising.
The report said their complaint alleged that the opposition leaders were "duping simple Egyptians to rise against legitimacy and were inciting against the president," which constitutes treason.
Yara Khalaf, a spokeswoman for Moussa, said there were no official charges and he had not been summoned for investigation. But she declined to comment on the accusations.
Heba Yassin, a spokesman for the Popular Current headed by Sabahi, said Sabahi faced similar charges under Mubarak and his predecessor. She dismissed them as fabrications and an attempt to smear his reputation and silence the opposition.
"Morsi is confirming that he is following the same policies of Mubarak in repressing his opponents and trying to smear their reputation through false accusations," Yassin said.
"Also this is evidence of what we had warned about — the judiciary and the prosecutor-general must be independent and not appointed by the president," she said. "He is a Morsi appointee and this is where his loyalty lies and he is now implementing orders to eliminate the opposition."
The chief prosecutor, Talaat Abdullah, was appointed by Morsi at the height of the political tension over the constitution. He could not be immediately reached for comment.
Morsi's Nov. 22 presidential decrees appointed Abdullah to replace the chief prosecutor who was a holdover from the Mubarak regime. The judiciary protested the move, seeing it as trampling of its authority to choose the chief prosecutor.
The Supreme Judicial Council, the country's highest judicial authority, asked Abdullah to step down Wednesday because he was appointed by the president.
Human Rights lawyer Bahy Eddin Hassan said the fact that the chief prosecutor has asked for an investigation meant he is taking the accusations by the lawyers seriously.
Abdullah asked a judge to conduct the investigation, the state news agency reported.
Hassan said this was an attempt to show that the investigation is independent. However the judiciary, like the rest of the country, is divided between supporters and opponents of Morsi and the Brotherhood.
"This is the beginning of a series of events where the judiciary will be used to settle political scores with opponents," Hassan said. "This is not a new policy. But it is new that a regime that is just starting out uses such tools."
With an economic crisis and unpopular austerity measures looming in Egypt, Hassan said: "The regime wants to keep the opposition busy with its legal battles.

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Iran's Ahmadinejad sacks only female government minister

 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday dismissed his only female cabinet minister, Health Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi, after she criticized her colleagues for failing to provide funds to import vital medicines.
Appointed in 2009, Dastjerdi was the first woman government minister since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979. While seen as politically conservative, the gynecologist has advocated a greater role for women in society.
Reports have emerged in recent weeks of shortages of some critical medicines for treatment of cancer, multiple sclerosis, blood disorders and other serious conditions.
Last month, Dastjerdi said only a quarter of the $2.4 billion earmarked for medicine imports had been provided in the current year and there was a shortage of foreign currency for the shipments.
"Medicine is more essential than bread. I have heard that luxury cars have been imported with subsidized dollars but I don't know what happened to the dollars that were supposed to be allocated for importing medicine," she said on state television.
Iranian officials blame the shortages on sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union. The government has come under heavy criticism itself for failing to manage the needs of Iranians properly.
Ahmadinejad's political rivals accuse him of exacerbating the effects of sanctions through poor management and cronyism.
In a short statement, he announced the interim appointment of Mohammad Hassan Tariqat Monfared as head of the ministry, replacing Dastjerdi.
"Noting your commitment and valuable experience and based on the ... constitution, I appoint you as the caretaker health minister," read the statement published widely across Iranian media.
Dastjerdi's dismissal was criticized in parliament, where Ahmadinejad has been accused of concentrating power in his own hands.
"Although the president has the authority to sack the health minister, the move was not wise and doesn't have acceptable logic," the head of parliament's health committee, Hosseinali Shahriari, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.
"The dismissal of the health minister was caused by nothing but ... personal issues. I hope the president has the courage to explain why he made this change," Fars quoted Shahriari as saying.

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Russia's Putin signals he will sign U.S. adoption ban

 President Vladimir Putin signaled on Thursday he would sign into law a bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children and sought to forestall criticism of the move by promising measures to better care for his country's orphans.
In televised comments, Putin tried to appeal to people's patriotism by suggesting that strong and responsible countries should take care of their own and lent his support to a bill that has further strained U.S.-Russia relations.
"There are probably many places in the world where living standards are higher than ours. So what, are we going to send all our children there? Maybe we should move there ourselves?" he said, with sarcasm.
Parliament gave its final approval on Wednesday to the bill, which would also introduce other measures in retaliation for new U.S. legislation which is designed to punish Russians accused of human rights violations.
For it to become law Putin needs to sign it.
"So far I see no reason not to sign it, although I have to review the final text and weigh everything," Putin said at a meeting of federal and regional officials that was shown live on the state's 24-hour news channel.
"I intend to sign not only the law ... but also a presidential decree that will modify the support mechanisms for orphaned children ... especially those who are in a difficult situation, by that I mean in poor health," Putin said.
Critics of the bill say the Russian authorities are playing political games with the lives of children, while the U.S. State Department repeated its "deep concern" over the measure.
"Since 1992 American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, and it is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.
Ventrell added that the United States was troubled by provisions in the bill that would restrict the ability of Russian civil society organizations to work with U.S. partners.
Children in Russia's crowded and troubled orphanage system - particularly those with serious illnesses or disabilities - will have less of a chance of finding homes, and of even surviving, if it becomes law, child rights advocates say.
They point to people like Jessica Long, who was given up shortly after birth by her parents in Siberia but was raised by adoptive parents in the United States and became a Paralympic swimming champion.
However, the Russian authorities point to the deaths of 19 Russian-born children adopted by American parents in the past decade, and lawmakers named the bill after a boy who died of heat stroke in Virginia after his adoptive father left him locked in a car for hours.
Putin reiterated Russian complaints that U.S. courts have been too lenient on parents in such cases, saying Russia has inadequate access to Russian-born children in the United States despite a bilateral agreement that entered into force on November 1.
NATIONAL IDENTITY
But Putin, who began a new six-year term in May and has searched for ways to unite the country during 13 years in power, suggested there were deeper motives for such a ban.
"For centuries, neither spiritual nor state leaders sent anyone abroad," he said, indicating he was not speaking specifically about Russia but about many societies.
"They always fight for their national identities - they gather themselves together in a fist, they fight for their language, culture," he said.
The bid to ban American adoptions plays on sensitivity in Russia about adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed as the social safety net unraveled with the 1991 Soviet collapse.
Families from the United States adopt more Russian children than those of any other country.
Putin had earlier described the Russian bill as an emotional but appropriate response to the Magnitsky Act, legislation signed by President Barack Obama this month as part of a law granting Russia "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) status.
The U.S. law imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in a Moscow jail of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer, in 2009.
The Russian bill would impose similar measures against Americans accused of violating the rights of Russian abroad and outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups.

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India gang rape spurs national dialogue

The Indian government’s crackdown on the anti-rape protests that have continued for nearly two weeks in New Delhi has only aggravated public anger and concern about women’s safety.
The protests were sparked by the gang rape and brutal assault of a 23-year-old student on a bus in the elite South Delhi district on Dec. 16.
As the girl battles for her life in a Singapore hospital, Indians are debating how to make the country safer for women. Ten days after the incident, it dominates newspaper headlines and op-ed pages, pushing to the margins stories like the retirement of cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, the popular Indian sportsperson, highlighting just how much the case has affected people.
Sexual harassment is rampant in India, and the public has been largely apathetic to women’s plight, but many are hoping the attack could be a turning point in the way India treats women.
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Calls for capital punishment, including the chemical castration of rapists, have died down, with various women’s groups decrying them. Given that in 94 percent of rape cases the rapist is known to the victim, Nilanjana S. Roy, writing in the Hindu, she wonders if the protestors would be okay with death penalty for fathers, uncles, neighbors, and Indian security forces in conflict zones.
The Monitor reported that India is considering a fast-track court process to expedite rape cases and step up punishment for sexual violence on the heels of the bus rape incident.
Beyond the law, what needs to happen, writes Shilpa Phadke, author of a book on women’s safety in Mumbai, has to do with how Indians use their streets: “We are safer when there are more women (and more men) on the streets. When shops are open, when restaurants are open, when there are hawkers and yes, even sex workers on the street, the street is a safer space for us all.”
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The outrage that this case has spurred might finally bring about a cultural change in India, Stephanie Nolen of The Globe and Mail suggests in a report:
Women assaulted leaving bars or late at night or while wearing Western clothes have been chastised by police, judges and politicians for bringing their misfortune on themselves. This time, however, there is a current of defiance in the protests, noted Subhashini Ali of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. A young woman in central Delhi on Tuesday carried a sign saying, “Stop telling me how to dress, start telling your sons not to rape.”
But rape is still not seen as a men’s issue, Ms. Ali said. “I don’t think many people are asking that question yet [of how men are being brought up and how it shapes their attitude toward rape].”
“But that’s where we have to go.”
And that should start with using sexual education in schools as a means to counter systemic patriarchal attitudes, writes Ketaki Chowkhani in Kafila, a collaborative blog that I work with.
That need for an emphasis on social change rather than law enforcement was also highlighted by Praveen Swami in The Hindu newspaper. India could learn a lot from the United States, he writes, where the incidence of rapes have fallen:
“The decline in rape in the U.S. has mainly come about not because policing has become god-like in its deterrent value, but because of hard political and cultural battles to teach men that when a woman says no, she means no.”
Meanwhile, the crackdown on the protests in Delhi has drawn sharp reactions and much anger across the Internet. On Facebook, graphic designer Sangeeta Das narrated her experience of the protests on Dec. 23, republished on the Kafila blog:
“There were many volunteers distributing biscuits and water to every protestor. We were talking ... on how to tackle the violence on women and children starting from ourselves, our homes, and communities. We were simply talking ... when the police, hundreds of them ... charged at us from behind, without any warning.”
Meanwhile, the media have drawn the government’s ire. On Sunday, the same day one journalist was killed in Manipur when police opened fire on protestors, the government issued an advisory to news channels to show “maturity and responsibility” in their coverage of protests:
No programme should be carried in the cable service which is likely to encourage or incite violence or contains anything against maintenance of law and order or which promotes anti-national attitude.

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"Fiscal cliff" creates waiting game for payrolls firms

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - At payroll processing businesses across the United States, the "fiscal cliff" stalemate in Washington means uncertainty over tax-withholding tables just days before the start of 2013.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service still has not issued the tables for next year that show how much money employers should hold back from workers' paychecks to cover federal income taxes.
Payroll processors need the tables to get their systems geared up for the new year. The tables are set by many factors, including tax rates and annual inflation adjustments.
In anticipation of late-breaking developments, Rochester, New York-based Paychex Inc will be serving Buffalo chicken wings for staffers working late on New Year's Eve, said Frank Fiorille, an executive at the payroll processing giant.
"Our systems are flexible enough that we can wait almost up until the last minute and still make changes," he said.
The IRS appreciates of the impact of Congress' inaction.
"Since Congress is still considering changes to the tax law, we continue to closely monitor the situation," IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said in a statement. "We intend to issue guidance by the end of the year on appropriate withholding for 2013."
Tax rates are slated to rise sharply for most Americans if Congress and President Barack Obama fail to reach an agreement that averts the "fiscal cliff" approaching at year-end.
"The political process will determine one way or the other what" the IRS must do, said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a business-oriented tax research group.
For now, he said, from the tax-collection agency's viewpoint, "doing nothing is probably the best course." This would be because withholding tables distributed now might only have to be revised if Congress acts in the next few days.
Some payroll servicers are not waiting for formal IRS guidance. The American Payroll Association, which represents about 23,000 payroll professionals, told members on Friday to rely on 2012 withholding tables until the IRS releases the new forms for 2013.
The association said its decision was based on a statement earlier this month from an IRS official.
The agency would not confirm that policy on Friday.
Tax preparer H&R Block Inc said it will use 2012 tax-withholding tables if the 2013 tables are not issued.
Executives said they were frustrated with the uncertainty in Washington, but were doing their best to cope.
"We are not doctors or surgeons and this is not life threatening," said Rob Basso with Advantaged Payroll Services, an Auburn, Maine-based payroll processor that serves 30,000 businesses. "It is annoying and disruptive to people's lives, but we will get through it.

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Future of state estate taxes hangs on U.S. "fiscal cliff"

Not necessarily for some state governments that could begin collecting more in estate taxes on wealth left to heirs if the United States goes over the "cliff," allowing sharp tax increases and federal spending cuts to take effect in January.
In an example of federal and state tax law interaction that gets little notice on Capitol Hill, 30 states next year could collect $3 billion more in estate taxes if Congress and President Barack Obama do not act soon, estimated the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
The reason? The federal estate tax would return with a vengeance and so would a federal credit system that shares a portion of it with the 30 states. They had been getting their cut of this tax revenue stream until the early 2000s. That was when the credit system for payment of state estate tax went away due to tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush.
With the return of the credit system next year as part of the "cliff," states such as Florida, Colorado and Texas - which have not collected estate tax since 2004 - could resume doing so. California Governor Jerry Brown has already begun to add the anticipated estate tax revenue into his plans, including $45 million of it in his 2012-2013 revised budget.
Brown may or may not be jumping the gun.
CLOUDY CLIFF AHEAD
The outlook on the "fiscal cliff" coming up at year-end is uncertain. Democratic President Barack Obama has said he hopes for a last-minute deal to avert it. That would need to get done soon, with Congress just now coming back from its holiday break.
Chances of an agreement became more remote last week after Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives fumbled their own legislative attempt to prevent the fiscal jolt that economists say could trigger a recession.
House Speaker John Boehner abruptly adjourned the chamber for the holidays after failing to gather the votes from within his own party to pass legislation he and other Republicans had drafted, after walking out of negotiations with Obama.
Weeks of inconclusive political drama over the "cliff" have focused largely on individual income tax rates and spending on federal programs such Medicare and Social Security, but many tax issues are also involved, including the estate tax.
At the moment, under laws signed a decade ago by Bush, the estate tax is applied to inherited assets at a rate of 35 percent after a $5 million exemption. That means a deceased person can pass on an inheritance of up to $5 million before any tax applies. Inherited wealth passed to a spouse or a federally recognized charity is generally not taxed.
Obama wants to raise the rate to 45 percent after a $3.5 million exemption. Republicans have called for complete repeal of the estate tax, which they call the "death tax," though Boehner earlier this month called for freezing the estate tax at its present level. It was difficult to determine what the Republicans want after last week's events in the House.
STATES STAND TO GAIN
If Congress and Obama do not act by December 31, numerous Bush-era tax laws will expire, including the one on estate taxes. That would mean the estate tax rate will shoot up next year to the pre-Bush levels of 55 percent after a $1 million exemption.
It would also mean that for the first time in years, a portion of that estate tax would go to the states, through the return of the credit system.
Under that old law, estates paying the tax could get a credit against their federal tax bill for state estate tax payments of up to 16 percent of the estate's value.
If the fiscal cliff were allowed to take hold unaltered by Washington, 30 states would again automatically begin getting their share of federal estate taxes. The state laws are generally written so the state estate tax amounts are calculated under a formula based on the amount of the federal credit.
This would help states that have struggled with lower tax revenues since the 2007-2009 financial crisis and resulting recession, according to research by the Pew Center on the States, though painful federal spending cut backs would also hurt the states.

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Consumer Mattress Reviews Supports Findings in Mattress Inquirer’s Study of Best and Worst Mattresses

Mattress review website Consumer-Mattress-Reviews.com responds to and confirms a recently released study from Mattress-Inquirer.com regarding the best and worst rated mattresses.

Tempe, AZ (PRWEB) December 26, 2012
In an effort to provide consumers a consolidated resource for assessing the best mattress options, the blog Mattress Inquirer recently posted a revealing consumer opinion study. Consumer Mattress Reviews also announced their support for the findings, as they echo many other recent studies.
The news is likely to prove alarming to the traditional bedding industry, which tends to be heavily vested in innerspring mattresses. According to consumer opinions, less than two-thirds of innerspring mattress owners report satisfaction, much lower than the top four “specialty” mattress categories. Indeed, more and more traditional manufacturers are expanding their lines to include memory foam and latex options as buying habits continue shifting.
In the post titled “Worst & Best Mattress Types of 2012” on Mattress-Inquirer.com, it is revealed that a study of over 16,000 customer reviews indicated the top five mattress types, in order from best-rated to lowest, as:
1) Memory Foam Mattresses - 82%

2) Latex Mattresses - 80%

3) Waterbeds - 79%

4) Air Bed Mattresses - 78%

5) Innerspring Mattresses - 64%
The percentages indicate the proportion of owners who report satisfaction with their bed. Consumer Mattress Reviews supports the finding of this study, as the results match closely with their own research, and that from other large-scale polls of consumer satisfaction.
The Mattress Inquirer article goes on to report their recommendation for memory foam is the Amerisleep line of plant-based memory foam mattresses, which receives customer ratings for comfort and satisfaction well above 90% on their website and third party reviews. This also echoes similar findings from Consumer Mattress Reviews which found Amerisleep to be one the best memory foam options in terms of quality, comfort, price and eco-friendliness.
Consumer-Mattress-Reviews.com aims to make shopping easier by researching and compiling reviews on top mattresses. The website analyzes consumer opinions in addition to manufacturer and retailer qualities to provide outlines of the positive and negative aspects of owning specific beds. Prospective consumers can find an ever-expanding collection of mattress reviews ranging from memory foam to air and more, all designed to offer the facts needed to make informed decisions.

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