Greater Brisbane Junior Rugby League game erupts into brawl

MORE than 50 players and parents were involved in a sickening brawl during a junior rugby league game yesterday, in which first aid officers had their heads stomped on by parents.

Rugby league endured some of its most shameful scenes, as the Greater Brisbane Junior Rugby League grand final day descended into violent chaos that required police intervention.

There were two separate brawls involving parents, one in an under-15 final, the other in an under-18 final both played at Wests Centenary ground in Wacol.

The second incident was so frightening it has even prompted calls for fences to lock parents out of future grand final days.

The second brawl occurred moments after the hooter sounded in the Waterford v Redcliffe under-18 grand final.

Coach of the Redcliffe team Leon Cherry, uncle of NRL star Daly Cherry-Evans, said it was the most horrendous thing he had witnessed during 35 years involved in the game.

"The image I can't get out my head is when I was signing the game sheet, I turned around to see one my players king hit then kicked while he was on the ground. A safety officer jumped in to help him and he was knocked to the ground and had his head stomped on while laying on my player," Cherry said.

"Parents rushed the field. They targeted my players, just attacked them for no reason.

"There would have been 50 or more people involved in the brawl.

"I'm absolutely disgusted with Waterford and what those parents did.

"There should be minimum five year bans handed out to a number of players from Waterford.

"I'm amazed that no one was seriously injured."

Cherry said the fight occurred because Waterford, who had defeated Redcliffe easily in each of their encounters this season, could not handle losing.

"Our guys defended themselves and threw some punches no doubt but half as many as they did and only to protect themselves," Cherry said.

"I honestly think we should consider erecting fences around the ground to lock out parents from grand final days."

The event was supposed to be the highlight of the rugby league season, featuring hundreds of kids from across Brisbane seeking premiership glory.

There were several Brisbane Broncos players in attendance including winger Dale Copley, who used Twitter to vent his shock at witnessing the under-15 brawl.

"Parents running onto the field fighting at junior rugby league... Really?#disgrace" he wrote.

"Should be banned from junior footy forever."

The Queensland Rugby League will launch a full investigation tomorrow.

A police spokesperson confirmed they were called to the field after a "massive brawl" took place.

"We arrived on the scene but the offenders had left, we patrolled the area to ensure nothing else happened," police said.

Oops, Chicago Bears Sport Wrong Colored Orange Pants in Madden ’13

On Wednesday, Marcus Thomas, the New York Giants’ defensive lineman was upset with the makers of “Madden 13″ after they botched his photo in the latest edition of the popular video game. Now an entire team has a reason to be upset with the game makers.

Jake Flannigan of Comcast SportsNet Chicago reported Thursday that the Chicago Bears are the victims of a team-wide wardrobe malfunction.

In the game, Chicago wears white jerseys and orange pants on the road. In reality, that is not quite the case for the Bears.

The Bears have worn white jerseys and navy pants on the road since 1984. White tops with white pants have seen a little action, too, for what Flannigan calls the team’s “storm trooper look.” A third combination, navy tops with white bottoms are employed when the home team prefers white tops, but orange pants have never been a staple.

“I can’t recall that they have ever sported orange pants in the history of the organization dating back to when the club was founded in 1919 at A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company in Decatur,” Flannigan wrote.

Obama Fuel-Economy Rule Gives Sweeteners to Honda, Tesla

Honda Motor Co. (7267), which last year complained that a proposed fuel-economy rule was unfair to non- U.S. automakers, got a boost when the final version added extra credits for sellers of natural gas-powered vehicles.

Honda, based in Tokyo, is the only automaker selling compressed natural gas-powered cars to U.S. drivers and will be able to use the credits to meet the fuel-economy standards. It’s one of the few changes made to a rule for 2017 to 2025 that was proposed in November 2011 and released in final form by President Barack Obama’s administration yesterday.

“Providing incentive credits for natural gas vehicles makes a great deal of sense under this regulation,” Edward Cohen, Honda vice president of government and industry relations, said in an e-mail yesterday. “A dedicated natural gas vehicle reduces CO2 emissions by 25 percent and petroleum consumption by 100 percent.”

The corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, rule may cost the auto industry as much $136 billion to comply with, while saving consumers up to $451 billion in fuel costs, regulators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a briefing. They declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to be quoted about the rule.

A Romney policy he dare not tout

Mitt Romney is a tax evader — but not, I hasten to add, in the sense that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) so scurrilously suggested.

Rather, Romney is being evasive about exactly what he plans to do on tax reform. Rates and rate cuts, he’ll spell out: Romney proposes an across-the-board 20 percent reduction in the existing marginal rates, while keeping the 15 percent top rate on capital gains, except for filers who make less than $200,000; for them, capital gains would be tax-free.
As for which deductions and special breaks Romney would eliminate to offset the lower rates — well, he’s getting back to us on that.

Consider Romney’s position on one notorious tax break: the favorable treatment of “carried interest.” Mainly enjoyed by private equity and hedge fund managers, this break is a big reason Romney’s own tax bill was no more than about 14 percent of his multimillion-dollar income in recent years.

The carried-interest break not only accentuates income inequality but also overincentivizes the formation of investment partnerships, diverting capital — financial and human — from other, more productive uses. President Obama has sensibly proposed getting rid of it.

Given his background as founder of Bain Capital, Romney would have been the perfect Republican to join Obama’s call for carried-interest reform, in a Nixon-goes-to-China sort of way. Romney could even have turned the tables on the president’s party, noting that this loophole’s fiercest defender on Capitol Hill is the populistic Charles Schumer, Democrat of Wall Street — er, New York.

Instead, when Fortune magazine asked him about carried interest in a recent interview, Romney lamely replied that “if something is a capital gain, it should be treated as a capital gain. If something is ordinary income, it should be treated as ordinary income. I would look at each type of income, and I’m sure the IRS would do the same, to determine, is this really a capital gain or is it ordinary income?”

The former governor obfuscates out of self-interest — not personal but political. He dares not risk a rebellion by the Wall Streeters who flock to his fundraisers. Some of them can be remarkably self-righteous about carried interest, waxing eloquent about the risk-taking, job creation and freedom this arcane tax provision supposedly fosters. In 2010, billionaire Steve Schwartzman of Blackstone Group likened Obama’ s plan to end the carried-interest break to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. (He later apologized.)

And so in his Fortune interview Romney did not even attempt to claim credit for this surprising fact: Even though his tax plan does not target, and would not eliminate, the carried-interest break, it would significantly reduce the break’s value.

How? Typically, private equity, venture capital and hedge fund general partners collect 1 or 2 percent of the assets under management as an annual fee, which is taxed as ordinary income — top rate, 35 percent.

In addition to that, the general partners get 20 percent of the fund’s profits (above a minimum “hurdle rate”). This is the carried interest. If you think it sounds more like compensation for services rendered than a return on investment, I agree with you — especially since general partners rarely have much of their own money at risk.

But the IRS long ago embraced a different metaphysical perspective, which is why it’s treated as a capital gain.

And since the top capital gains rate is 15 percent — 20 percentage points less than the top rate on ordinary income — the characterization of carried interest as capital gains is very advantageous indeed. The cost of this loophole to the Treasury is about $1.5 billion per year, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

Romney’s plan, however, would reduce the top rate on ordinary income by a fifth, leaving it at 28 percent. The differential between the maximum ordinary and capital gains rates would decline as well, to 13 percentage points. This amounts to an implicit 35 percent cut in the value of treating carried interest as capital gains.

To be sure, there would be no impact on the deficit; revenue gained from closing the loophole would be lost to the lower ordinary-income rate. The disparate treatment of ordinary and investment income would remain embedded in the tax code. Other ways to exploit carried interest would not be affected.

But to the extent that Romney’s plan would alter perverse incentives that the current carried-interest break engenders, it would make both the tax code and the economy more efficient — at the expense of his financier supporters.

In short, Romney’s policy, though not nearly as definitive as Obama’s, is less retrograde than it might appear. Too bad the internal politics of his party prevent him from saying so.

Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan GOP ticket reflects religious shift

By naming devout, conservative Catholic U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan to be his running mate, former governor Mitt Romney, once a Mormon bishop, did more than ensure

the USA will have a Catholic vice president in 2013.
He established the first Republican ticket without a Protestant since 1860, when Abraham Lincoln, who belonged to no church, chose Maine Sen. Hannibal

Hamlin, a Unitarian as his running mate, says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

Yet today's GOP ticket — two Christians who are neither evangelical nor mainline Protestants — isn't a major marker of social change, University of

California history professor David Hollinger says.

For a real sign of the decline of American mainline Protestantism, Hollinger looks to the Protestant-free U.S. Supreme Court: six Catholics and three Jews.

The Romney-Ryan ticket is well in line with today's wider, less brand-specific Christian culture, he says.

The number of Americans who identify with a Protestant denomination has been steadily slipping from over 60% in the 1970s to 52% in 2010, says Duke

University sociology professor Mark Chaves, who tracks religion statistics in the national General Social Survey, conducted biannually by the National

Opinion Research Center.

With this comes a shift in assumption about values, says Stephen Prothero, author of The American Bible, examining core civic, political, literary and

religious texts of U.S history and society. "We can no longer assume when people speak of American values, they're speaking in terms of Protestants who

dominated American religious and public life" since the nation's founding, Prothero says.

Besides the Supreme Court's makeup, he cites today's diversity in Congress, which has Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims.

The Bible isn't every candidate's go-to text any more. Prothero expects Vice President Biden, a Catholic, and Ryan to argue over their different views of

Catholic social teachings rather than stand on Gospel quotations.

Some evangelicals claim Ryan as one of their own, says David Brody, chief political correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network and author of a

book, The Teavangelicals.

Brody says that Ryan, as a "dedicated pro-life, true blue conservative," is a Tea Party evangelical, too, because he stands for the movement's agenda of

"fiscal austerity and social conservatism."

Silk, who blogs at Spiritual Politics, points out, "I haven't heard any Protestants complaining that Romney didn't pick one of their own. The default mode is

'Christian' and Catholics are seen in the Christian tent."

Mormons see themselves as Christian and many scholars, but not all evangelicals, agree.

There's history to this. Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1800s, "announced he had been called to set

Christianity straight," says Robert Millet, professor of religion at Brigham Young University. Smith preached that the historic churches — their bishops,

priests and pastors — had lost their divine authority and he offered a radically different vision of God, Jesus and the path to salvation.

Today, Millet says, "Mormons and Catholics are side by side with evangelicals in sharing very conservative beliefs in the traditional family, and in the idea

that there are absolute truths and moral values."

The groups stand together in opposing abortion, same-sex marriage, and a provision in Obama's health care law. It requires employers, including faith-based

institutions, to provide or facilitate employee insurance coverage for contraception. When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the rule an affront

to religious liberty, Mormons were right with them, Millet says.

The Bishop John Wester of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City says "we have a healthy relationship and work closely on issues of compassion."

Ultimately, the symbolism of the Romney-Ryan ticket may be that it doesn't matter any more which religion a candidate claims as long as he claims one, says

Grant Wacker, professor of Christian history at Duke Divinity School. "It would be much more significant if the candidates had no faith or called themselves

agnostics or unbelievers. That is still unimaginable in the USA today," Wacker says.

Joe Biden comes across as a ball and chain in 2012 election, but President Obama won't dump him from the ticket in favor of Hillary Clinton

If this were the real world, which presidential politics sure are not these days in a campaign that feels like mud-wrestling, Joe Biden would be fired for

what he said the other day about chains. Biden would be gone and Barack Obama would be doing something he should have done a year ago, at least, which means

ask Hillary Clinton to run with him.

“It’s a little bit of a dream,” a big Democrat told me on Monday, talking about Hillary, before Biden opened his big mouth again and made you wonder how

he got this close to the presidency in the first place. “A little bit of a dream, but for what would be a dream ticket.”

You can come up with a hundred reasons why it will never happen, starting with the fact that Obama, who never wants you to see him sweat, would never allow

himself to look like he needs to bring Hillary out of the bullpen. A better reason, of course, is that as tremendous a secretary of state as Hillary Clinton

has been for him, Obama doesn’t like the Clintons any more than the Clintons really like him.

Sometimes you get the idea that the President likes having Hillary Clinton traveling the world the way she does so nobody spends too much time looking for an

answer to the great unknowable question from 2008:

How much better off might we all be if Hillary Clinton had won?

Maybe all the experts will be right about the candidates for vice president in the end, and they won’t matter, not Paul Ryan and not Biden, who heads to the

finish line of his first term looking like he’s in a sack race. And by the way, nobody cares what he meant to say the other day, whether he meant to talk

about shackles rather than chains.

What matters is what the vice president of the United States did say to a predominantly black audience in Danville, Va.: “They’re going to put y’all back

in chains.”

That was the big money quote from Biden, who doesn’t back up or apologize for what he said originally. “I know I am sometimes criticized for saying exactly

what I mean,” Biden said in Blacksburg, Va., on Wednesday. “It’s not going to change.”

That is only good news for the people running against him. You know all those pictures we see these days of Paul Ryan, fitness buff, running? The guy will

run faster getting to a debate with Biden than the anchor leg of the 4x100 relay in the Olympics.

This doesn’t make Biden some enemy of the state, or as dangerous as Dick Cheney once was. But Biden continues to live one of the great charmed lives any

vice president has ever lived.

   

Silversun Pickups Tell Mitt Romney To Stop Using 'Panic Switch,' Say They Dislike The GOP Candidate

The Silversun Pickups have asked Mitt Romney's campaign to stop using their song "Panic Switch" at events. The band has issued a cease-and-desist order and

released a statement Wednesday, roundly denouncing Romney and his campaign.

"We don't like people going behind our backs, using our music without asking, and we don't like the Romney campaign," frontman Brian Aubert wrote. "We're

nice, approachable people. We won't bite. Unless you're Mitt Romney!"

A spokeswoman for the campaign told the Associated Press that while the campaign did not ask for permission for the song, it was allowed to play it under a

"blanket licensing agreement." The campaign also said it would not play "Panic Switch" again.

The band suggested that Romney's use of the single was ironic because "he is inadvertently playing a song that describes his whole campaign."

Here's the song's chorus, as posted on online lyric websites:

    When you see yourself in a crowded room
    Do your fingers itch, are you pistol-whipped?
    Will you step in line or release the glitch?
    Can you fall asleep with a panic switch?

Romney wouldn't be the first politician to run afoul of a musician's wishes. Tom Petty sent Rep. Michele Bachmann a cease-and-desist after she used "American

Girl" when announcing her presidential campaign. Talking Heads singer David Byrne sued then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for using "Road to Nowhere" in an

attack ad Crist's campaign used in a race against Marco Rubio.

In fact, Romney himself faced similar issues in February, when singer K'Naan said the campaign used "Wavin' Flag" without permission. Like the Silversun

Pickups, K'Naan said he did not support the Romney campaign and would not have given allowed the use of the song even if he was asked. (More examples of

artists suing politicians are available at the bottom of this article.)

TMZ has obtained a copy of the letter the Silversun Pickups' attorney sent Romney's campaign. "As the former governor of the state of Massachusetts, a

graduate of Harvard Law School, and candidate for U.S. President, we're pretty sure you are familiar with the laws of this great country of ours," the snarky

missive reads. "We're writing because, like you, we think these laws are important."

Here's the full statement:

    Seems as if the GOP is once again whimsically ignoring our great nation's laws to do whatever it wants to do, and shooting itself in the foot in the

process. Without any regard for copyright or intellectual property laws, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has, without permission, begun to use

Silversun Pickups' 2009 smash "Panic Switch" at campaign stops across the country. Neither the band nor its representatives were contacted to gain permission

for the use of the song and the band has no intention of endorsing the Romney campaign. The band's attorney issued a cease and desist today.

    "We don't like people going behind our backs, using our music without asking, and we don't like the Romney campaign. We're nice, approachable people. We

won't bite. Unless you're Mitt Romney! We were very close to just letting this go because the irony was too good. While he is inadvertently playing a song

that describes his whole campaign, we doubt that 'Panic Switch' really sends the message he intends."