Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of August 8, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty for these and many more topics from 6-9 am.

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1. Obama and the Culture of Dependency (link)

Does President Obama favor a culture of dependency? Mitt Romney thinks so.

Republican Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama on Tuesday of ditching a long-standing work requirement for welfare recipients, accusing him of fostering a "culture of dependency" and backing up the charge with a new television commercial.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the allegations were "blatantly dishonest ... hypocrisy knows no bounds." He added that Romney, while serving as Massachusetts governor, had once petitioned the White House to loosen employment rules for those on welfare.

Romney is 100% right on this. Obama and the left want you to depend on Government. Just look at how many households do now.

What do you think?

2. Petraeus as VP? (link)

Well this would be an interesting pick. General David Petraeus now being linked as a possible VP pick for Mitt Romney. From Drudge:

President Obama whispered to a top fundraiser this week that he believes GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney wants to name Gen. David Petraeus to the VP slot!

"The president wasn't joking," the insider explains to the DRUDGE REPORT.

A Petraeus drama has been quietly building behind the scenes.

Romney is believed to have secretly met with the four-star general in New Hampshire.

The pick could be a shrewd Romney choice. A cross-party pull. The Obama administration hailed Petraeus as one of history's greatest military strategists. Petraeus was unanimously confirmed as the Director of the CIA by the US Senate 94-0.

But Petraeus has categorically asserted that he has NO political ambitions. And Team Obama stands prepared to tie one of their own to "Bush wars." A Petraeus pick could been seen as simply shuffling the decks of power in DC.

"He's a serious man, for seriously dangerous times," notes a top Republican.

Remember, this is coming from the Drudge Report that also linked Condeleezza Rice to the VP slot. As of right now, I still think Marco Rubio, Tim Pawlenty, and Paul Ryan are in the top three to be VP.

3. Romney Calls on Reid to Reveal Source (link)

Yesterday, Mitt Romney called on Harry Reid to reveal his source behind the claim that Romney didn't pay taxes for ten years.

Romney, in an interview with Fox News, said he doesn't believe Reid has a credible source but urged the Senate Democratic leader to reveal who it is.

"I don't really believe that he's got any kind of a credible source," Romney said. "I don't know who gave him this line of reasoning, whether it came from the White House or the DNC or a staffer, but he ought to say where it came from, and then we can find out whether that person has any credibility. I know they don't."

He said Reid also has "lost a lot of credibility."

Romney's latest comments came as two major fact-check sites knocked down Reid's comments, which the senator amplified by repeating them last week on the Senate floor. Reid has said his source is an investor with Romney's former venture capital company Bain.

But PolitiFact wrote that it is "far-fetched" to believe Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. Further, the article stated the obvious -- "Reid has produced no evidence to back up his claim other than attribution to a shadowy anonymous source."

PolitiFact concluded: "Reid has made an extreme claim with nothing solid to back it up." They gave the accusation a "Pants on Fire!" rating.

The Washington Post's fact-check column, too, gave Reid's remark the equivalent of a "Pants on Fire!" score. The Post gave it "four Pinocchios," which is the newspaper's score for a claim they knock down.

"Without seeing Romney's taxes, we cannot definitively prove Reid  incorrect. But tax experts say his claim is highly improbable. Reid also has made no effort to explain why his unnamed source would be credible. So, in the absence of more information, it appears he has no basis to make his incendiary claim," the Post wrote.

The White House is continuing to distance itself from Reid and they should. Though, it's possible that Reid got marching orders from the Obama campaign on this. Personally, I don't see Reid backing down anytime soon.

4. 75% Tax (link)

OUCH! The rich in France are about to get hit with a 75% tax. How much longer will the rich stay in that country?

President François Hollande is vowing to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of anyone’s income above a million euros ($1.24 million) a year. “Should I be preparing to leave the country?” the executive asked Mr. Grandil.

The lawyer’s counsel: Wait and see. For now, at least.

“We’re getting a lot of calls from high earners who are asking whether they should get out of France,” said Mr. Grandil, a partner at Altexis, which specializes in tax matters for corporations and the wealthy. “Even young, dynamic people pulling in 200,000 euros are wondering whether to remain in a country where making money is not considered a good thing.”

A chill is wafting over France’s business class as Mr. Hollande, the country’s first Socialist president since François Mitterrand in the 1980s, presses a manifesto of patriotism to “pay extra tax to get the country back on its feet again.” The 75 percent tax proposal, which Parliament plans to take up in September, is ostensibly aimed at bolstering French finances as Europe’s long-running debt crisis intensifies.

But because there are relatively few people in France whose income would incur such a tax — perhaps no more than 30,000 in a country of 65 million — the gains might contribute but a small fraction of the 33 billion euros in new revenue the government wants to raise next year to help balance the budget.

Can't you just see the left wishing we would have this in the United States?

Other Top Stories:

These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of Lubbock’s First News with Chad Hasty. Tune in mornings 6-9am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.

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