Smaller paychecks, bigger taxes

February 6, 2013 (WABC) -- They call it the Affordable Health Care Act, but I'm scratching my head tonight about the affordable part of the title. Pay checks for the first time this week are lower because of it, and health premiums are higher. Tell me how the affordable part of this works? Wasn't it less expensive before? Or maybe I've forgotten how to do this arithmetic stuff.

I'll tell you who loves all this: Health insurance companies. They're making more money than ever.

The whole thing seems a bit screwy. I mean what kind of tax hike is it when the Buffet Rule doesn't include its namesake, multi-billionaire Warren Buffet. You remember - Mr. Buffet, an investing genius, urged Pres. Obama to increase tax rates so that super rich people like him weren't paying lower income tax rates than his secretary.

And so Mr. Obama embraced his tax hike plan as the Buffet Rule. Just one problem: He rose the rates only on peeps who work for a living and get a paycheck, not on those who rake in their fortunes through capital gains and dividends, like Mr. Buffet.

I wonder how much easier the income tax hikes would have been accepted had the super rich been made to chip in as much as everyone else. I'm just sayin'.

That's the bee in my bonnet as we prep tonight's 11 p.m. newscast.

We're on Staten Island tonight as a widower arrives back home from Turkey, having retrieved his wife's body from authorities in Istanbul. It's a murder mystery is so filled with puzzling questions and contradictions. What's this young mom of two doing by herself (her first trip ever internationally) in Turkey? Who killed her? Why was she staying in a low-life part of town? Who did she see there? Why did her friend suddenly claim right before the trip that she couldn't accompany her to Turkey because she couldn't afford it? Flights aren't that expensive to Turkey - and didn't they plan this trip for a while? And did hubby try to convince her not to travel by herself in a country where she didn't know anyone?

Carolina Leid is on the story for us, tonight at 11.

And Meteorologist Lee Goldberg is tracking what figures to be a big snowmaker for much of New England - and it will bring snow to our area as well. Lee is timing it all out - the forecast is now coming together with estimates of who gets what and when.

We'll also have any breaking news of the night, plus Rob Powers with the night's sports. I hope you can join Sade Baderinwa and me, tonight at 11.

BILL RITTER

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