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I know kovert..SS and 401K and IRAs are next on the chopping block.
Too much "chatter" is turning up on MSM about them..how the government can manage them better for us (401K & IRA) !!!! What a hoot.
I know kovert..SS and 401K and IRAs are next on the chopping block.
Too much "chatter" is turning up on MSM about them..how the government can manage them better for us (401K & IRA) !!!! What a hoot.
Its Jamie Dimon's world and we're all just living in it.
"The National Priorities Project (NPP) offers a cool online tool that brings this budget trade-off to life by showing -- specifically -- all the things that could have been done with the money spent on Afghanistan and Iraq. It allows you to break the numbers down by your state, Congressional district, or town and to focus on the kinds of opportunity costs that most interest you, including education, public safety, affordable housing, and health care for kids.
For example, according to the NPP, since 2003, Americans have spent over $747 billion in Iraq. Of that, taxpayers living in California have forked over $94.7 billion. That could have provided 35 million children with health care for a year -- or 11 million places in a Head Start program. Or funding for over 1.6 million public safety officers. Or 283,378 affordable housing units. Or 1.3 million elementary school teachers. Or 11.3 million college scholarships. This in a state that has laid off more than 23,000 teachers, and has seen tuition rates at public universities skyrocket -- putting higher education beyond the reach of the very students these universities were created for."
I know kovert..SS and 401K and IRAs are next on the chopping block.
Too much "chatter" is turning up on MSM about them..how the government can manage them better for us (401K & IRA) !!!! What a hoot.
"Wall Street billionaires who helped Bush blow a whole in the federal budget - and who also actively enabled the financial deregulation and speculation that created today's economic crisis and deficits - are gathering (at the Ronald Reagan building!) to lecture senior citizens and the rest of us about the need to tighten our belts and allow them to slash Social Security and Medicare.
This billionaires' bash might seem comical - Saturday Night Live couldn't do justice to it - except for the fact that the organizers have massive resources at their disposal and they are deadly serious.
For one thing, they are trying to sabotage all further efforts to stimulate a stronger economic recovery. And it is pretty clear that they have had an impact on the Obama administration, which seems to be giving up pushing for significant new aid to the states or job creation, like Rep. George Miller's Local Jobs For America Act.
Under pressure from these conservatives, President Obama is on the verge of pivoting to the deficit, not jobs creation, as we go into the election season. That would be disastrous, both economically and politically - as Americans who watched the bank bailouts, continue to look for a jobs recovery."
Ms. HuffPo, an economist talking about the imminent danger of American not being able to produce anything other than a Paris Hilton or a Palin.
"Making goods is on balance -- with exceptions -- more productive than providing services, and rising productivity is the fundamental source of prosperity... a major nation must be able to maintain a balanced current account (and trade balance) over time, and goods are far more tradable than services. Without something to export, a nation will either become over-indebted or forced to reduce its standard of living.
In other words, in the absence of manufacturing, the only way to compete with Third World nations is to become a Third World nation, which is exactly what will happen if we allow our middle class to disappear.
What's more, it's not just manufacturing and lower skilled service jobs that are disappearing. According to the Hackett Group, companies with revenues of $5 billion and over are expected to take an estimated 350,000 jobs offshore in the next two years alone -- nearly half in IT, and the rest in finance, procurement and human resources."
kovert's comment quoted in post #9 makes the most sense.
Corporations are creations of the state designed to limit liability. They are not and never have been citizens protected under our Constitution. That concept is an abomination.
kovert's comment quoted in post #9 makes the most sense.
Corporations are creations of the state designed to limit liability. They are not and never have been citizens protected under our Constitution. That concept is an abomination.
"The bill, authored by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.), would prohibit any member of the House or Senate from taking a job with a lobbying firm after retiring. It would force staffers to wait six years before becoming lobbyists, and it would force lobbyists to wait six years before they can become staffers -- a phenomenon that gets little attention despite its prevalence. And the bill would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists, who contribute tens of thousands of dollars over meals and hundreds of thousands in mysteriously legal "bundles.
The Bennet-Tester bill is a bold step towards reducing corruption in Congress," said Public Citizen's Angela Canterbury in a statement to HuffPost. "We absolutely should close the revolving door, but when we do, we also must be sure that we are not shutting out advocates and experts who 'lobby' not for big business interests, but rather, are among the few who represent the interests of ordinary people -- folks who cannot afford high-priced K Street lobbyists. To help clean up Washington, other members of Congress should support this bill and take our personal integrity pledge to refuse the revolving door."
This guy even admits its his job to protect the kleptocrats.
"Then he acknowledged that the anti-bank fervor on Capitol Hill may be too much to resist. "I think it's going to be job employment for me for the next decade, undoing some of this stuff," he said."
"According to the analysis, between 1999 and 2008, the suburban poor grew by 25 percent; five times the growth rate of the poor in cities. During that same time period, the median household income in the U.S. declined by $2,241.
Of the top 100 metro areas, 42 experienced a drop in the size of their middle class, according to the Brookings analysis. Of those 42 cities, 10 saw the middle class decline by at least 5 percentage points.
The size of the middle class (households earning between 80 and 150 percent of median income) dropped almost 30 percent between 1999 and 2008.
Calling 2010 the "decade of reckoning," the report urges policymakers to shed outdated notions of America's cities and suburbs and work quickly to address the coming problems caused by the dramatic shifts in population."
"The gyrations in the market last week have the look and feel of classic market manipulation.
If you want to manipulate a market, deregulate it as much as possible. Then make it as "dark," and fast as possible. Make it hard for outsiders to view your trades as they get done, and make it even harder for anyone to figure out why you are trading. Get as much monopoly power as possible over the market. Get funding at the cheapest possible rate. The best possible rate is the near zero cost funding available from the Federal Reserve."
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