Both parties of Congress are in agreement on diverting billions in Wall Street subsidies to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure. If you’re by a window, look outside for flying pigs.
Currently, the Federal Reserve pays out a 6 percent annual dividend to roughly 2,900 banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo net approximately $350 million apiece each year from the dividend. These banks own stock in the Federal Reserve as a means of becoming members of regional Fed branches around the country, and unlike other stocks, the big banks are guaranteed to never lose money on their investment in the Fed. For years, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has proposed reducing that dividend to 3 percent in order to pay for repairing American infrastructure. After lying dormant for over a year, it appears that idea has now caught on with Republicans as well.
According to Bloomberg, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently told a group of Wall Street executives at a Financial Services Roundtable event that he wouldn’t use his power to remove a new rule that allots funding for federal highways by reducing that dividend to 1.5 percent. The House is now weighing whether or not to back the dividend reduction before highway funding runs out at the end of October. Should the proposal go through, America’s highways would benefit from an additional $17 billion in repairs over the next ten years.
Now, Wall Street is in panic mode.
“The idea that going forward that we are going to pay for our nation’s infrastructure on the backs of one industry sector is a really flawed public policy,” said American Bankers Association president Rob Nichols.
While Fed chair Janet Yellen has taken the banks side, saying she believes the policy “could conceivably have unintended consequences,” Washington prognosticators believe the banks will ultimately have to sacrifice their Fed dividend, and possibly more federal handouts further down the road.
“The industry is in a very dangerous spot because it is a pot of gold,” Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, told Bloomberg. “With the general political climate I don’t know a lot of people on Capitol Hill that like banks.”
The proposal is likely to pass, as past Republican proposals to fund infrastructure repair included a tax repatriation holiday — allowing corporations to bring back some of the $2.1 trillion stashed in overseas tax havens back to the U.S. at a 5 percent rate rather than a 35 percent rate — something President Obama has promised to veto in the past. As I previously wrote in The Guardian, the only result that came out of past attempts at repatriation was mass layoffs of workers, while corporations used the repatriated cash to buy back their own stock, driving up the value of the options owned by executives.
Bad of an idea as it is, repatriation still attracted the support of Wall street-backed Democrats like Chuck Schumer, and corporations have lobbied Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House Ways and Means chairman, to include repatriation in a tax reform package. However, lawmakers predicting an Obama veto are rejecting the idea of repatriation for now and are gravitating toward a solution for America’s highways they know Obama will sign by the end of the month.
The dividend cut has already been included in the Senate’s compromise bill, which will fund highways over the next 3 years. That bill passed by an almost two-thirds margin in July.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Congress to Eliminate Billions in Wall Street Subsidies to Fund Repair of Nation’s Highways
from U.S. Uncut
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Stephen Hawking Says We Should Really Be Scared Of Capitalism, Not Robots
A young Stephen Hawking on wedding day, prior to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
from the Huffington Post:
"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed."
Machines won't bring about the economic robot apocalypse -- but greedy humans will, according to physicist Stephen Hawking.
In a Reddit Ask Me Anything session on Thursday, the scientist predicted that economic inequality will skyrocket as more jobs become automated and the rich owners of machines refuse to share their fast-proliferating wealth.
If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.Essentially, machine owners will become the bourgeoisie of a new era, in which the corporations they own won't provide jobs to actual human workers.
As it is, the chasm between the super rich and the rest is growing. For starters, capital -- such as stocks or property -- accrues value at a much faster rate than the actual economy grows, according to the French economist Thomas Piketty. The wealth of the rich multiplies faster than wages increase, and the working class can never even catch up.
But if Hawking is right, the problem won't be about catching up. It'll be a struggle to even inch past the starting line.
Friday, October 9, 2015
TWITTER IS SAYING MY BLOG POSTS ARE DANGEROUS TO CLICK THROUGH - THEY ARE NOT! IGNORE THE WARNING AND CLICK THROUGH, THANKS!
PLEASE, IF YOU ENJOY READING MY BLOG JUST CLICK THROUGH TO THE ARTICLES AND IGNOR THE WARNINGS... TWITTER SEEMS TO THINK ALL BLOGS ON "BLOGGER" ARE FULL OF SPAM SO THEY ARE NOT ALLOWING DIRECT CLICK THROUGH, JERKING US.
ANYWAY, HOPE YOU CONTINUE TO CLICK THROUGH UNTIL THEY FIX THIS PROBLEM OR I MOVE TO ANOTHER HOSTING SERVICE - THANKS!
REALLY?
ANYWAY, HOPE YOU CONTINUE TO CLICK THROUGH UNTIL THEY FIX THIS PROBLEM OR I MOVE TO ANOTHER HOSTING SERVICE - THANKS!
REALLY?
Thursday, October 8, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Class Dismissed: Malala's Story
from The New York Times
The subject of a new documentary, here's an early story that first brought attention to Malala.
A 2009 documentary by Adam B. Ellick profiled Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl whose school was shut down by the Taliban. Ms. Yousafzai was shot by a gunman on Oct. 9, 2012.
2013 update:
The subject of a new documentary, here's an early story that first brought attention to Malala.
A 2009 documentary by Adam B. Ellick profiled Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl whose school was shut down by the Taliban. Ms. Yousafzai was shot by a gunman on Oct. 9, 2012.
2013 update:
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
HENRY ROLLINS: WHY I'M NOT AN ATHEIST
from the LA Weekly:
Recently I was on the podcast You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes. He’s an incredibly nice guy, and it was a good experience overall.
At one point, he moved the conversation toward the spiritual. I told him that I had no religious or spiritual beliefs but was too lazy for atheism. I was trying to be funny, but basically it’s true.
Many years ago, I concluded that people need leadership and rules to follow. Government, laws, the threat of incarceration, traffic lights. Freedom is great, but the freedom to drive over someone and go on your way isn’t.
I reckon that religion was an early method of keeping people from running amok. The act of worshipping an unseen force requires faith and strength of conviction — and that in itself is a profound concept. If you believe in what you can’t prove conventionally, you have to land on that very hard to beat back the doubters. Like when the Westboro Baptist Church people got pushback for their “God hates fags” signs, they just made bigger signs.
To be a person of faith, it seems to me, takes no small amount of work. This idea is succinctly addressed in the King James version of the Bible, John 20:29: “Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” I had to look it up to get the words right, but I actually read a version of that in a hotel room once.
Since there aren’t enough resources for everyone to have a personal cop monitoring their every action, there must be a mega-cop so huge that his omnipresence is invisible and unquestionably powerful.
This is what I figure religion is. Try to be good. Being human, you will make mistakes, but all is not lost. You can ask to be forgiven; by meditating on your mistake, you will see that it would be unwise to repeat the behavior. Throw in the idea of punishment and reward and it’s a workable system.
I think the most brilliant part of religion, as I understand it, is what comes after you die — eternity.
In life, Martin Luther King had to put up with the boiling rage of Jesus-loving, God-fearing citizens who wanted to keep schools segregated. It had obviously crossed his mind that something bad might come his way. On April 3, 1968, at this end of his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, Dr. King said that he would like to have a long life, but perhaps that wasn’t what was going to happen. In spite of that, he was happy and not afraid of any man, because his eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He was dead less than 24 hours later. I guess in his way of thinking, the everlasting good stuff and far bigger part of the picture was waiting post-life.
This is why I am not an atheist. If you believe that President Obama was born outside of America, no paperwork or witness testimony will convince you otherwise. If you believe in a higher power, then anyone trying to find holes in your logic causes you to stand your ground more tenaciously.
Basically, I believe that someone believes something.
Now and then, I get emails from religious people. They pity me and the life choices I have made. Some ask why I have covered my body with those awful tattoos and turned myself into such a freak. Others gently admonish me for not having a problem with anyone’s sexual orientation. They let me know that they will be praying for me.
Since they started it, I feel free to have a little fun. I reply, “Thanks, Gandhi!”
This often results in a long letter about the sinner and the sin. I wait a day or two and then write back, asking when they were first attracted to someone of their own gender. I let them know that I am just fine with their gayness and I bet the big guy is, too.
The benevolence usually starts to wear a little thin in the next reply. One of my favorite questions to ask is: In a fight, who would win, Jesus or Glenn Danzig?
It’s around then that the gloves come off. I have even gotten some of them to curse, which I love. There is nothing like being told to go fuck yourself by the same person who was, only days before, praying on your behalf.
When someone tells me that America is a Christian nation and all the laws we need are contained in the Bible, to me that is not a religious discussion. It’s about the notion of authority this person is employing in an attempt to control others. God might be real to this person, but what is as real to me is Article VI of the Constitution. All of our disagreements will end in stalemate, so why even bother? I have no interest at all in trying to “win” an argument like this, because to me the premise is bent to begin with.
Do I have beliefs? You bet! I will leave this now and be back in several hours to testify!
It’s 0107 hrs. on Feb. 17, 2015. I have just returned from the Griffin in Atwater Village. Fuzz and Thee Oh Sees played a free show. I am such a fan of these bands. I stood in a highly packed room. Both groups completely ripped it up.
I saw, I heard, I experienced — I believed. What did I believe? Same thing I always have: the here, the now, the Rock!
Monday, October 5, 2015
Stecyk - Word.
My man C.R. Stecyk III
people finally catching up
or trying to
no one will...
Craig and i shot by Ed Templeton earlier in 2015
Sunday, October 4, 2015
What ‘The Wall Street Journal’ Gets Totally Wrong About Bernie Sanders’s Agenda
from The Nation
The Journal wants to shock and awe voters with big numbers, but Sanders’s proposals would save America big bucks.
By Joshua Holland
his week, The Wall Street Journal dropped a terrifyingly large number on Senator Bernie Sanders’s upstart campaign, warning that his proposals would carry a “price tag” of $18 trillion over a 10-year period. It’s a number designed to shock and awe and discourage voters from giving the social democrat’s ideas a close look.
But according to the very data cited by The Journal’s Laura Meckler, Sanders’s highly progressive proposals wouldn’t cost the United States a single penny, on net, over that 10-year window. In fact, they’d cost less, overall, than what we’d spend without them.
It’s not hard to understand why. The lion’s share of the “cost”—$15 trillion—would pay for opening up Medicare to Americans of all ages. (Meckler notes that Sanders hasn’t released a detailed proposal, so she relies on an analysis of HR 676, Representative John Conyers’s Medicare-for-all bill.)
Rather than cost us more as a society, this proposal would only shift spending from businesses and households to the federal government by replacing our current patchwork system of public and private insurance with a single, more efficient system of financing.
But it wouldn’t be a dollar-for-dollar transfer from the private to the public sector. According to Gerald Friedman, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who authored the analysis cited by the Journal, that transition would reduce American healthcare costs by almost $10 trillion over 10 years through economies of scale, better control of pharmaceutical costs, and savings on administrative bloat.
Friedman also projects that, as every American got coverage, we’d spend close to $5 trillion more on actual healthcare services. So we would get more healthcare and still end up saving around $5 trillion on net. In other words, Sanders’s Medicare expansion would cost $15 trillion, but without it American businesses and taxpayers would spend $20 trillion over the same period, while still leaving millions uninsured.
This shows just how badly we get ripped off under our current system. And as Friedman writes at the Huffington Post, “The economic benefits from Senator Sander’s [sic] proposal would be even greater than these static estimates,” because they don’t factor in “the productivity boost coming from a more efficient health care system and a healthier population.”
So let’s look at the rest of the Journal’s terrifyingly socialist buffet of policies:
As you can see, the $5 trillion we’d save on healthcare costs would more than cover the costs of the rest of Sanders’s agenda—offering tuition-free education at public colleges, expanding Social Security benefits, bolstering private pensions, repairing some of our aging infrastructure and establishing a fund to help cover paid family leave. That doesn’t seem so frightening after all.
If the study cited by the Journal is correct, all of those benefits would not only effectively cost us nothing, we’d still have $2 trillion left over to, say, cut federal deficits for the next ten years—something that should warm the hearts of fiscally conservative Wall Street Journal readers.
But the real challenge Sanders’s proposals present for the Wall Street Journal crowd is ideological. In America, our taxes are quite low relative to other advanced countries, but we shell out dramatically more out-of-pocket for social goods like healthcare, education, and retirement. In fact, in 2009 (before Obamacare’s subsidies and Medicaid expansion kicked in), Americans spent almost four times as much as the citizens of other wealthy countries buying social goods on the private market. As a result, while we know that a big chunk of our paychecks are going to Uncle Sam, we don’t see the same kind of benefits coming back to us as people in the rest of the developed world do. And that disparity makes Americans receptive to the right’s anti-government rhetoric.
So this isn’t really about costs, because the government is more efficient than private enterprise in providing social insurance and higher education. If, in some alternate universe, Bernie Sanders were able to win the presidency and enact his proposals in their entirety, it would pose an existential threat to the conservative project to convince Americans that their tax dollars don’t buy much—that government is all about bloat and corruption and giving their hard-earned dollars to the undeserving poor.
Seen in that light, it’s no surprise that The Wall Street Journal would drop this kind of bunker-busting number-bomb on the gentleman from Vermont.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
South Park good politics
from The Daily Mail:
Controversial South Park episode shows Donald Trump being raped and murdered: Show attacks tycoon's run for President, his immigration policies and then kills him off in shocking final scene
South Park launched vicious attack on Trump and his election policies Shows character Mr Garrison pledging to 'f***' illegal immigrants to death Promise is in reference to Trump's real-world zero-tolerance approach Also brands Trump a 'brash a*******' and a 'joke' that got out of hand Garrison also pledges to build a wall between the U.S. and Canada But when Canada beats him to it, he travels into the country before carrying out his sick rape threat on Trump himself Trump campaign declined to comment on the show
Donald Trump was on the receiving end of a vicious take-down by South Park on Wednesday evening, which skirted the borders of decency and taste and arguably crossed them.In an almost unprecedented attack on a running presidential candidate, the adult cartoon lampooned the Republican and in a shocking finale, showed the billionaire businessman being brutally raped to death.The inflammatory episode of the satirical cartoon, created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, was supposed to attack Trump's immigration policies and mocked his oft-repeated promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico.
Shocking: Satirical cartoon South Park has aired an inflammatory new episode which mocks Donald Trump before showing the presidential candidate being raped to death in a shocking scene
Brutal: The episode - called 'Where My Country Gone' in reference to Trump's election slogan 'Make America Great Again - launched a scathing attack on The Donald and his policies
Safety Dance: In it, Trump is shown as becoming the President of Canada causing all of the Canadians to flee across the border into America, creating an immigration problem
The show had featured Trump briefly once before, back in 2001, but had largely steered clear of mocking him - until now.
Tycoon Trump's campaign declined to comment on the episode, which was entitled 'Where My Country Gone'.
The eye-opening episode showed South Park being overrun by Canadian immigrants, prompting high school teacher Mr Garrison to launch a political career aimed at getting rid of them.
Fired from his job at the school for referring to Canadian children as 'canucks', he begins running for election under the slogan 'Where my country gone' which he has printed on to a hat in clear reference to Trump's 'Make American great again' mantra.He then begins holding rallies, at which several people are carrying banners with Trump's actual slogan on, proposing a radical policy on immigrants.'I propose we f*** them all to death,' Mr Garrison tells a CNN journalist, as a shocking answer as how he would deal with the influx migrants.Asked what he means by the remark, Mr Garrison continues. 'We round them up, pull down their pants and f*** them 'til their souls leave their bodies. Then we build a wall.'However, his mood turns sour after the journalist informs him that Canada has already built a wall across the border with America - a clear riposte to Trump's supposedly simple plan to prevent illegal immigration into the US.
Angry: The influx of Canadians caused high school teacher Mr Garrison to launch a campaign to 'f*** them to death' in echoes of Trump's rela-life zero-tolerance approach to illegal immigrants
Supporters: At Garrison's political rallies, several supporters are shown waving banners with 'make America great again' - Trump's real-life political slogan - written on them
Made good on his promises: Mr Garrison pledges to build a wall between the U.S. and Canada, but upon learning that the Canadians beat him to it, he pledges to go into Canada and 'f*** them all to death' in their own countryAfter a furious press conference along the U.S.-Canadian border, where Garrison shuts down his more mild-mannered opponents with his harsh and insulting rhetoric, he promises to go into Canada and 'f*** them to death' in their home country.
In the meantime it transpires in the alternate world of South Park that the real Donald Trump has actually been elected as the leader of Canada which is what prompted all of the Canadians to flee to America.As one Canadian explains in a clear dig at Trump's rise to prominence in the polls this summer: 'There were several candidates during the Canadian elections. One of them was this brash a****** who just spoke his mind.
'He didn’t really offer any solutions, he just said outrageous things. We thought it was funny. Nobody really thought he’d ever be president. It was a joke! But we just let the joke go on for too long.'He kept gaining momentum, and by the time we were ready to say, "OK, let’s get serious now, who should really be president?" he was already being sworn into office.'We weren’t paying attention… We weren’t paying attention!'
Finding the entire country deserted, Mr Garrison wanders around until he finds Trump dancing in his office, at which point he launches his sick attack
With Trump dead, all the immigrants return home, promoting Mr Garrison to announce that he is running for the white house, along with running mate Caitlyn Jenner (pictured)
Front runner: Donald Trump spoke at the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston on Wednesday. He has yet to respond to the South Park episode
Desperate to carry out his threat against Canadians, Mr Garrison has launched himself into the nation in a barrel over Niagara falls, only to find the country deserted except for Trump, who is dancing in his office to The Safety Song.
Once inside the two begin fighting, before Mr Garrison strips his wrestling outfit off and brutally beats trump into submission before raping him to death.
Back in South Park, news that the Canadian president has been 'f***** to death' causes jubilation, and the Canadians return home.
Mr Garrison then decides to take his election campaign to the White House, along with running-mate Caitlyn Jenner, who drives off with him at the end.
However, in another controversial joke, she is shown running over a pedestrian - a reference to the real-life Caitlyn's fatal car crash along a Los Angeles freeway earlier this year.
BonoBono's obsession with being the best at things got the South Park treatment when he takes on Stan's dad, Randy, at a 'biggest poop' competition.While it is first thought that Bono holds the current record that Randy is trying to beat, it turns out that Bono is actually the record-breaking feces, who was raised as a human.In the words of one character, that explains why Bono is so obsessed with being number one 'because really he'll always be a number two'.
Michael JacksonWhile the character is actually called Mr Jefferson, he bears an unmistakable resemblance to the former celebrity, and wears a fake mustache which keeps falling off.The character keeps inviting children to stay at his house and take part in magical imaginary adventures with him.When the town turns on him, he keeps accusing worried parents of being 'ignorant'.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Selfies kill more people than sharks
from MacDailyNews:“Think before you selfie, you guys, because sometimes getting the right angle on those pictures can have serious (even fatal!) consequences,” Lindsey Caldwell reports for E! Online.
“According to a new study, there have now been more deaths this year from selfies than there have been from shark attacks,” Caldwell reports. “The death toll for selfie-related deaths now totals 12 people, whereas deaths related to shark attacks totals 8 people.”
“The most recent selfie related death occurred in India where, according to BBC, a 66-year-old tourist named Hideto Ueda died after attempting to take a, you guessed it, photo of himself for his friends and family to see,” Caldwell reports. “Per an eyewitness’ account, Ueda and a friend fell to their untimely deaths while attempting to take a picture at the Taj Mahal’s Royal Gate. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Darwinism at work.
Thursday, October 1, 2015
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