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August 18, 2012 | | INJUSTICE The Moscow trial of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, which ended Friday with a two-year jail sentence for ‘felony hooliganism,’ showed just how far Russia is traveling back in time. The Daily Beast’s Masha Gessen on the 17th-century court. Scaremongering Mitt Romney has brought his campaign to a new technological level with a podcast, but he brought up the old issue of Medicare. In his first podcast, Romney claims that President Obama’s health-care proposal had taken $716 billion from the Medicare fund, which would deny "elderly Americans the care they've worked for their entire lives." Romney proposes that his plan would put more money into helping "the poor or the sick.” Medicare will be front and center on the campaign trail on Saturday: Obama plans to mention it in a speech in New Hampshire, and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan will be campaigning with his 78-year-old mother at a retirement community in Florida. Mother’s Day Who better to defend your record on Medicare than your 78-year-old mother? Paul Ryan’s mom, Betty Douglas, will defend her son in Florida on Saturday—the latest example of Republicans of using mothers to defend their entitlement cuts. Evacuation The last United Nations observers left in Syria are preparing to leave on Saturday, as their official mission ends Sunday at midnight. Most should be out of the country within hours. There were about 300 observers in the civil-war-torn country at the peak of the mission earlier this year; that number is down to about 100 now. Conditions for the mission's possible extension—including ending the Syrian government's use of heavy weapons—have not been met, and the U.N. plans instead to open a small liaison office to continue peace efforts. CASH MONEY That didn’t take long. Bushy-tailed Republican veep candidate Paul Ryan paid a tax rate of 20 percent in 2011 and 15.9 percent in 2010, according to tax returns the campaign gave the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The percentage was based on Ryan and his wife’s 2010 income of about $215,000 and $323,000 in 2011. While about half of that came from his congressional salary, much of Ryan’s investment money comes from his wife. Ryan has assets of $2.1 million to $7.8 million—which includes a trust valued from $1 million to $5 million. The trust is from his wife's inheritance of her mother's estate. His net worth exceeds $4 million. | | 
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