Economy
Related: About this forumWeekend Economists' Christmas 2012
Wishing you all bright stars, warmth, comfort and joy....
It started snowing around 3 PM, the first serious snow of the winter, here in Ann Arbor. And in that peaceful falling snow, Christmas seemed finally possible.
It's been a hard, horrible year for many of us, but in the comfort and support of our patient friends, always willing to listen and affirm every whining whimper, we find the strength to persevere, to try and try and try again. Until we prevail.
Susan B. Anthony gave us the ultimate gift: "Failure is impossible."
And in that, she gave the REASON for democracy, for all time. Susan B. never got to vote. But she was right.
Fight on, people! And if you can, fight dirty. Martyrdom is too chancy.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)To long-time market professionals, Thursdays announced sale of NYSE Euronext, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, to an upstart derivatives exchange based in Atlanta isnt the shocker it is for the general public. Since decimalization and new market regulations effectively squeezed the margins and the potential for graft out of the system during the last decade, the business of running a stock-trading marketplace became a sideline to the only profit center left: listings.
With the initial-public-offering market moribund, that left exchanges such as the NYSE and the Nasdaq searching the globe for a merger partner. It was a buy-your-way-to-growth strategy that seemed certain to run afoul of antitrust regulators and did with the scuttled Deutsche Bourse merger...Meanwhile, the real growth business in the markets was happening at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME and Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE. While there was speculation those futures and options exchanges would be natural buyers of the stock exchanges, the executives always offered a blunt, but true, reply when asked about potential tie ups: Why would we need them?
There was an exception. The newcomer to the derivatives party, the IntercontinentalExchange ICE needed something to vault it into the conversation even though it not only had profits, but market share and a valuation to rival any exchange in the world.
For all of its lackluster financial cosmetics, the NYSE is still the Big Board. It is the venue where the great corporations of the world are listed. The announced deal will have some opportunities for technology sharing and other efficiencies, but mostly its an $8.2 billion deal for a brand.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)An important fact to keep in mind in the coming days: The Bowles plan that Speaker John Boehner endorsed is not the same as the Simpson-Bowles plan. Indeed, its not even the plan supported by its apparent namesake, Erskine Bowles, who insists that he was simply sketching out the evident middle ground between the members of the supercommittee...The Simpson-Bowles plan which Erskine Bowles does actually support occupies strange territory in Washington: Almost every politician professes to admire it, almost none of them are willing to vote for it, and almost none of its supporters know whats in it. So here, with an assist from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, are a few facts to keep in mind about the Simpson-Bowles plan. And while youre reading this list, remember: Simpson-Bowles is a centrist proposal.
1) Simpson-Bowles ends the the Bush tax cuts for income over $250,000. And note that they do that before they reform the tax code. The expiration of the tax cuts is built into their baseline. That way, their reform of the tax code starts from a revenue level that includes the revenue from those upper-income Bush tax cuts.
2) There are a lot of tax increases in Simpson-Bowles. $2.6 trillion over 10 years, to be exact. Thats more than President Obama ever proposed. Its way more than the Republicans have ever proposed. Its $1.8 trillion more than in the Bowles plan that Boehner is proposing. Think about that: To follow the Simpson-Bowles recommendation on taxes, youd have to take the $800 billion Boehner is proposing and then raise taxes by more than the $1.6 trillion Obama is asking for.
3) There are so many tax increases that the plan is nearly 1:1. According to CBPPs calculations, Simpson-Bowles includes $2.9 trillion in spending cuts and $2.6 trillion in tax increases. Thats 1.1:1. If you add the $800 billion in projected interest savings to the spending side, then its 1.4:1.
4) Simpson-Bowles taxes capital gains and dividends as normal income. The key difference between Simpson-Bowles-style tax reform and the tax reform plans we heard about through the election is that S-B eliminates the preferential rate on capital gains and dividend income. That amounts to a huge tax increase on the rich, and its how S-B manages to lower rates while raising revenue and retaining progressivity.
5) Charities, homes, health care and states. Simpson-Bowles turns the deductions for charitable contribution and mortgage interest into 12 percent, non-refundable tax credits. It caps the tax exclusion for employer-provided health care and then phases it out entirely by 2038. It eliminates the exemption for state and local bonds.
6) Simpson-Bowles raises the gas tax by 15 cents. Just saying.
7) Congress has already passed 70 percent of the discretionary cuts. Under the Budget Control Act, discretionary spending will be $1.5 trillion lower from 2013 to 2022 than was projected in the Congressional Budget Offices 2010 baseliner. That means that 70 percent of S-Bs cuts to discretionary spending are done.
8) Simpson-Bowles cuts security spending by $1.4 trillion, not including drawing down the wars. Thats far deeper than whats in the law now, far deeper than anything the White House or the Republicans have proposed, and deeper, I believe, than the sequester cuts that so many think would devastate the military.
9) The Social Security changes. Simpson-Bowles makes three main changes to Social Security. It increases the taxable maximum on income to 90 percent of all income, which raises $238 billion over the next decade. It uses a different measure of inflation to slow cost-of-living adjustments. It raises the retirement age to 68 in 2050 and 69 in 2075.
10) Paul Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles. And so, for the record, did Dave Camp and Jeb Hensarling, the other two House Republicans on the commission. Of the House Democrats, John Spratt voted for the proposal, and Xavier Becerra and Jan Schakowsky voted against. Among the senators, it was just the reverse: All three Republicans (Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, and Mike Crapo) voted for it, as did two of the three Democrats (Dick Durbin and Kent Conrd). Max Baucus voted against it.
11) Simpson-Bowles went down in the House, 382-38. In March, Reps. Jim Cooper and Steve LaTourette brought a modified version of Simpson-Bowles to the floor. This incarnation of the proposal was actually quite a bit to the right of the original, including smaller tax increases and defense cuts. It failed, and failed big.
These 11 facts should shed light on a couple of Washingtons enduring mysteries.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised. By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace...People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year it means that the police state is now officially here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by [ ] the defense sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs. Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them. An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)
The air force document explains that the air force will be overseeing the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders of the US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones for 90 days without a warrant and will then, retroactively, determine if the material can be retained which does away for good with the fourth amendment in these cases. While the drones are not supposed to specifically "conduct non-consensual surveillance on on specifically identified US persons", according to the document, the wording allows for domestic military surveillance of non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a group of activists or protesters) and it comes with the important caveat, also seemingly wholly unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals "unless expressly approved by the secretary of Defense". In other words, the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to hover outside your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your family, if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your friends and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not "specifically identified", a determination that is so vague as to be meaningless.
What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent, and that imagery can, in that case, be distributed to various government agencies; it may also include your most private moments and most personal activities. The authorized "collected information may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told CBS:
And drone fleets owned by private corporations means that a first amendment right of assembly is now over: if Occupy is massing outside of a bank, send the drone fleet to surveil, track and harass them. If citizens rally outside the local Capitol? Same thing. As one of my readers put it, the scary thing about this new arrangement is deniability: bad things done to citizens by drones can be denied by private interests "Oh, that must have been an LAPD drone" and LAPD can insist that it must have been a private industry drone. For where, of course, will be the accountability from citizens buzzed or worse by these things?...We don't need a military takeover: with these capabilities on US soil and this air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens. And these drones are not yet weaponized.
"At the same time, it is inevitable that we will see [increased] pressure to allow weaponized drones. The way that it will unfold is probably this: somebody will want to put a relatively 'soft' nonlethal weapon on a drone for crowd control. And then things will ratchet up from there."
And the risk of that? The New America Foundation's report on drone use in Pakistan noted that the Guardian had confirmed 193 children's deaths from drone attacks in seven years. It noted that for the deaths of ten militants, 1,400 civilians with no involvement in terrorism also died. Not surprisingly, everyone in that region is traumatized: children scream when they hear drones. An NYU and Stanford Law School report notes that drones "terrorize citizens 24 hours a day".
If US drones may first be weaponized with crowd-control features, not lethal force features, but with no risk to military or to police departments or DHS, the playing field for freedom of assembly is changed forever. So is our private life, as the ACLU's Stanley explains:
"So what? Why should they worry?" I asked.
"Your comings and goings can be very revealing of who you are and what you are doing and reveal very intrusive things about you what houses of worship you are going to, political meetings, particular doctors, your friends' and lovers' houses."
I mentioned the air force white paper. "Isn't the military not supposed to be spying on Americans?" I asked.
"Yes, the posse comitatus act passed in the 19th century forbids a military role in law enforcement among Americans."
What can we do if we want to oppose this? I wondered. According to Stanley, many states are passing legislation banning domestic drone use. Once again, in the fight to keep America a republic, grassroots activism is pitched in an unequal contest against a militarized federal government.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)SEE VIDEO ANIMATION OF DRONE IN ACTION AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If you thought there was one lesson from the financial crisis of the last 5 years, it would likely be that governments need to have the ability to cut themselves loose from large financial institutions, meaning that they have the power to liquidate or restructure them without incurring massive fiscal obligations. And when people look around for a model of how this process might actually work, they cite the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
It may be worth noting therefore that in the spending cuts bill (H.R. 6684) hastily assembled by US Congressional Republicans on Thursday to drum up votes for their fiscal cliff solution, the FDIC would have lost its expanded 2010 Orderly Liquidation Authority to liquidate or restructure bank holding companies, bank affiliates, or non-bank financial intermediaries (like AIG) its power prior to then only included banks that it directly insured. Its not like the bill proposed a better alternative had it passed, it would have been simply a reversion to the 2008 situation, which worked out so well with Lehmans and AIG. And this was being presented as a solution to the countrys long-term economic problems.
Lesson: the fiscal cliff isnt just about fiscal policy. There are other very damaging agendas being pursued under its cover.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)After years of offshore production, General Electric is moving much of its far-flung appliance-manufacturing operations back home. It is not alone. An exploration of the startling, sustainable, just-getting-started return of industry to the United States. For much of the past decade, General Electrics storied Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, appeared less like a monument to American manufacturing prowess than a memorial to it...The very scale of the place seemed to underscore its irrelevance. Six factory buildings, each one the size of a large suburban shopping mall, line up neatly in a row. The parking lot in front of them measures a mile long and has its own traffic lights, built to control the chaos that once accompanied shift change. But in 2011, Appliance Park employed not even a tenth of the people it did in its heyday. The vast majority of the lots spaces were empty; the traffic lights looked forlorn.
In 1951, when General Electric designed the industrial park, the companys ambition was as big as the place itself; GE didnt build an appliance factory so much as an appliance city. Five of the six factory buildings were part of the original plan, and early on Appliance Park had a dedicated power plant, its own fire department, and the first computer ever used in a factory. The facility was so large that it got its own ZIP code (40225). It was the headquarters for GEs appliance division, as well as the place where just about all of the appliances were made...By 1955, Appliance Park employed 16,000 workers. By the 1960s, the sixth building had been built, the union workforce was turning out 60,000 appliances a week, and the complex was powering the explosion of the U.S. consumer economy...The arc that followed is familiar. Employment kept rising through the 60s, but it peaked at 23,000 in 1973, 20 years after the facility first opened. By 1984, Appliance Park had fewer employees than it did in 1955. In the midst of labor battles in the early 90s, GEs iconic CEO, Jack Welch, suggested that it would be shuttered by 2003. GEs current CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, tried to sell the entire appliance business, including Appliance Park, in 2008, but as the economy nosed over, no one would take it. In 2011, the number of time-card employeesthe people who make the appliancesbottomed out at 1,863. By then, Appliance Park had been in decline for twice as long as it had been rising.
Yet this year, something curious and hopeful has begun to happen, something that cannot be explained merely by the ebbing of the Great Recession, and with it the cyclical return of recently laid-off workers. On February 10, Appliance Park opened an all-new assembly line in Building 2largely dormant for 14 yearsto make cutting-edge, low-energy water heaters. It was the first new assembly line at Appliance Park in 55 yearsand the water heaters it began making had previously been made for GE in a Chinese contract factory... On March 20, just 39 days later, Appliance Park opened a second new assembly line, this one in Building 5, to make new high-tech French-door refrigerators. The top-end model can sense the size of the container you place beneath its purified-water spigot, and shuts the spigot off automatically when the container is full. These refrigerators are the latest versions of a style that for years has been made in Mexico...Another assembly line is under construction in Building 3, to make a new stainless-steel dishwasher starting in early 2013. Building 1 is getting an assembly line to make the trendy front-loading washers and matching dryers Americans are enamored of; GE has never before made those in the United States. And Appliance Park already has new plastics-manufacturing facilities to make parts for these appliances, including simple items like the plastic-coated wire racks that go in the dishwashers.
In the midst of this revival, Immelt made a startling assertion. Writing in Harvard Business Review in March, he declared that outsourcing is quickly becoming mostly outdated as a business model for GE Appliances. Just four years after he tried to sell Appliance Park, believing it to be a relic of an era GE had transcended, hes spending some $800 million to bring the place back to life. I dont do that because I run a charity, he said at a public event in September. I do that because I think we can do it here and make more money.
MORE GOOD NEWS AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)YEAH, WHEN THE CHINESE GET UPPITY, THE AMERICAN CEO BUGS OUT...
Wu Jialiang, CEO of Ralls Corp. is challenging Obama's refusal on national security grounds to let him build a wind farm in America, marking the first such high level case in the US from a Chinese firm....One of Chinas richest men squared off against President Obama in a Washington federal court Nov. 28, challenging the US leaders refusal, on national security grounds, to let him build a wind farm in the US.
We are suing the president because we do not accept his finding that we are a national security threat. It is not true, says Wu Jialiang, CEO of Ralls Corp., whose deal to buy land for a wind farm in Oregon near a US Navy weapons training facility ran into a presidential veto in September.
US and Chinese lawyers say it is unlikely Ralls will win its case, but that the high profile challenge is a landmark in Chinese companies increasingly bold strategy of investing abroad. It could also serve as a test of Chinese allegations that US investment rules are biased against Chinese companies....Lawyers do not expect the case to go far.
The government has a pretty good case that once the president issues an executive order, that is the end of the story, says David Fagan, an expert on cross-border investment with Covington & Burling, a Washington law firm. The statute is pretty clear that the president has the authority to prohibit a transaction to safeguard national security.
AMUSING READ
Demeter
(85,373 posts)If youre the CEO of Goldman Sachs if you have a job that you love, a job that makes you so much money you can literally build a Scrooge McDuck room where you can swim through a pile of gold coins wearing only a topcoat then you should perhaps think twice before saying this:
Thats Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, talking to CBS. And hes not saying anything that people, particularly wealthier people with desk jobs, dont say all the time in Washington and New York. So I dont want to just pick on him. But the cavalier endorsement of raising the retirement age by people who really love their jobs, who make so much money they barely pay Social Security taxes, and who are, actuarially speaking, are ensured a long and healthy life, drives me nuts...If you want talk about cutting Social Security, talk about cutting it. Its a reasonable point of view. Youre allowed to hold it. But cutting Social Security is unpopular and people dont like to talk about it. So folks who want to cut the program have instead settled on an elliptical argument about life expectancy. Social Security, they say, was designed at a time when Americans didnt live quite so long. And so raising the retirement age isnt a cut. Its a restoration of the programs original purpose. It doesnt hurt anything or anyone.
The first point worth making here is that the countrys economy has grown 15-fold since Social Security was passed into law. One of the things the richest society the world has ever known can buy is a decent retirement for people who dont have jobs they love and who dont want to work forever. The second point worth making is that Social Security was overhauled in the 80s. So the promises the program is carrying out today were made then. And, since the 80s, the idea that weve all gained so many years of life simply isnt true...Some of us have gained in life expectancy, of course. As you can see on this graph, since 1977, the life expectancy of male workers retiring at age 65 has risen six years in the top half of the income distribution. But if youre in the bottom half of the income distribution? Then youve only gained 1.3 years.
Graph: The Incidental Economist
If youre wealthy, you do have many more years to enjoy Social Security. But if youre not, you dont. And so making it so people who arent wealthy have to wait longer to use Social Security is a particularly cruel and regressive way to cut the program. Its also a cut thats particularly tough on people who spend their lives in jobs they dont enjoy...You know what age most people actually begin taking Social Security? Sixty-five is what most people think. Thats the laws standard retirement age. But thats wrong. Most people begin taking Social Security benefits at 62, which is as early as the law allows you to take them. When they do that, it means they get smaller benefits over their lifetime. We penalize for taking it early. But they do it anyway. They do it because they dont want to spend their whole lives at that job. Unlike many folks in finance or in the U.S. Senate or writing for the nations op-ed pages, they dont want to work till they drop....
......................................................................................
Thats whats galling about this easy argument. The people who make it, the pundits and the senators and the CEOs, theyll never feel it. They dont want to retire at age 65, and they dont have short life expectancies, and theyre not mainly relying on Social Security for their retirement income. Theyre bravely advocating a cut theyll never feel. But you know what they would feel? Social Security taxes dont apply to income over $110,000. In 2011, Lloyd Blankfeins total compensation was $16.1 million. That means he paid Social Security taxes on less than 1 percent of his compensation. If we lifted that cap, if we made all income subject to payroll taxes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would do three times as much to solve Social Securitys shortfall as raising the retirement age to 70. In fact, it would, in one fell swoop, close Social Securitys solvency gap for the next 75 years. That may or may not be the right way to close Social Securitys shortfall, but somehow, it rarely gets mentioned by the folks who think theyre being courageous when they talk about raising a retirement age theyll never notice....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Although President Obama supports setting a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants, his administration deported a record 1.5 million of them in his first term. In addition, the latest data released by the government in recent days show that an unprecedented 409,849 people were deported for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The increase from the previous year occurred despite policy changes ordered by Obama to reduce the deportations of otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants.
Roughly 55 percent, or more than 225,000 people, deported in the past year were convicted of crimes such as drug offenses and driving under the influence. Immigration officials note that they deported nearly twice as many convicted criminals as in the year before Obama took office. That year, in 2008, criminals made up about a third of all deportations. The administration says the figures demonstrate that the shift in enforcement to focus on criminals is working. Priority cases include convicted felons, repeat violators of immigration laws, people who have recently crossed U.S. borders illegally and those who pose a national security threat, the White House says.
Burt immigrant advocates, including Latino politicians and civil rights groups, criticized the figures as evidence that Obama's policy changes don't sufficiently protect unintended targets.
"This is nothing to be proud of," Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said in a statement. "In the 409,849 deportations are hardened criminals for whom I have no sympathy, but we must also realize that among these ... are parents and bread-winners ... that are assets to American communities and have committed no crimes."
Some 90,000 people in this category are deported every year, Gutierrez estimates...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a son said. He was 90.
Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.
"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.
Adam Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause...
snot
(10,538 posts)I just want to thank you for all your work here. I'm continually amazed at all you bring here, and at how much you understand about it. I've rec'd this thread to a number of people on DU and elsewhere as THE best source I know of, aggregating economic and political info for which you and others here deserve great credit.
I wish more availed themselves of what you provide, but I for one share what I find here with others; and I'll share with you a quote in which I take comfort:
"I used to be concerned about this mass audience thing . . . not anymore. There are overlapping circles of activity and . . . . It doesn't matter what the volume is . . . These circles are not sealed off from each other, they affect each other."
Yvonne Rainer, in an interview by Lyn Blumenthal for "Women with a Past," Program Six from the series, What Does She Want
I want to thank everyone else here as well you all contribute but Demeter's done a lion's share for a while now, so special thanks to her.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)On the first day of Christmas my employer gave to me a penny for every $3 the richest 130,000 Americans make. It's been a national tradition since 1980.
On the second day my doctor showed me TWO Americans needing mental health care, but only one of the two could afford treatment. The doctor informed me that the fifty states have cut $1.8 billion from their mental health budgets during the recession, and that the 2013 Republican budget proposes further cuts. "It's crazy," I protested. "Some states are allowing guns in schools and daycare centers and churches and bars and hospitals, but they're cutting mental health care?" The doctor just nodded in frustration.
On the third day The Economist told me that it costs just THREE cents in administrative expenses for every $100 raised through a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in the United Kingdom, versus $1.42 for the personal income tax and $1.25 for the corporate income tax. With up to THREE quadrillion dollars in total U.S. financial transactions, we could replace federal income taxes with a tiny FTT.
On the fourth day a food pantry gave me FOUR dollars worth of food. That's about what food stamp recipients get each day through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). To pay for rent and utilities, a family of three gets $400 per month from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which comes to about FOUR dollars a day per person.
On the fifth day a financial advisor introduced me to his FIVE richest investors, who were the only ones out of 100 Americans to increase their wealth over the past 25 years, by the impressive rate of almost 20 percent. It's like that throughout the entire country, the advisor said: only 5 percent took almost all the gains.
Five golden rings, indeed.
On the sixth day, as the traditional 12-day song started to get annoying, Santa appeared to take me by the hand to the U.S. corporate offices, where the tax lawyers gave to me SIX cents for the national treasury. "Hey," I said, "this used to be twenty-five cents. You've doubled your profits in the last ten years, but individual and payroll taxes have to pay 94 cents out of every dollar!" The lawyers just smiled. Santa shook his head in frustration.
On the seventh day a guidance counselor informed me that one out of SEVEN Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 is neither working nor in school.
On the eighth day an IRS agent gave me these matching facts: Over EIGHT percent of the GDP (8.4 percent) goes for tax expenditures (subsidies provided through the tax code, mostly to the very rich). That's almost exactly the same amount (8.4 percent of the GDP) that goes to Social Security and Medicare.
On the ninth day an unemployed dietitian told me that the average male has increased his weight by NINE percent over the past 20 years (180 to 196), and the average female by TWELVE percent (142 to 160). As a NINE dollar per hour food-service worker gave me and Santa our burgers and fries and shakes, my jolly old partner chortled, "Ho Ho Ho, soon you'll all look like me!"
On the 10th day a Forbes article confirmed that the TEN richest Americans made more than our entire national housing budget in just one year. That's over $50 billion. The twenty richest Americans made more than our entire education budget. Santa assured me that the transfer of wealth from society's needs to a few individuals was not the norm around the world.
On the eleventh day a creditor gave me a bill for ELEVEN trillion dollars of debt incurred by the American consumer, including mortgages, student loans and credit card liabilities.
And on the twelfth day Santa gave me an IOU for TWELVE trillion dollars, the U.S. share of up to $32 trillion held overseas, untaxed. "One problem," cautioned Santa, "my reindeer haven't been able to find any of it yet."
After all this I stood perplexed. "What does it all mean?" I asked Santa.
"Well, that's capitalism," I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight. "It's all about the individual getting all he can, because that will benefit everyone. And let me tell you," he added with a twinkle, "those benefits are just as real as I am!"
And with that he was gone.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)Thousands of Christian pilgrims streamed into Bethlehem Monday night to celebrate the birth of Jesus. It's the major event of the year in that West Bank town. But Israeli archeologists now say there is strong evidence that Christ was born in a different Bethlehem, a small village in the Galilee.
About 100 miles north of where the pilgrims gathered, shepherds still guide their flocks through green unspoiled hills, and few give notice to the tucked-away village with the odd sounding name: Bethlehem of the Galilee. Archeologists who have excavated there say there is ample evidence that this Bethlehem is the Bethlehem of Christ's birth. "I think the genuine site of the nativity is here rather then in the other Bethlehem near Jerusalem," says Aviram Oshri, an archeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority which has excavated here extensively. He stands on the side of a road that now cuts through the entrance to the village. It was the construction of this road that led to the discovery of the first evidence that Bethlehem of the Galilee may have had a special place in history. "It was inhabited by Jews. I know it was Jews because we found here remnants of an industry of stone vessels, and it was used only by Jews and only in the period of Jesus," he says. Oshri also found artifacts which showed that a few centuries later the community had become Christians and had built a large and ornate church. He says there is significant evidence that in early Christianity this Bethlehem was celebrated as the birthplace of Christ. The emperor Justinian boasted of building a fortification wall around the village to protect it. The ruins of that wall, says Oshri, still circle parts of the Galilee village today. He thinks many early scholars would have concluded that this Bethlehem was the birthplace of Christ.
"It makes much more sense that Mary road on a donkey while she was at the end of the pregnancy from Nazareth to Bethlehem of Galilee which is only 7km rather then the other Bethlehem which is 150km," Oshri says. YA THINK?
He adds there is evidence the other Bethlehem in the West Bank or what Israelis call Judea, was not even inhabited in the first century...MORE
AND OF COURSE, ANOTHER SCHISM RESULTS....
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/25/168010065/dig-finds-evidence-of-pre-jesus-bethlehem?ft=1&f=1001
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)A mountain hamlet in northern Japan claims Jesus Christ was buried there
On the flat top of a steep hill in a distant corner of northern Japan lies the tomb of an itinerant shepherd who, two millennia ago, settled down there to grow garlic. He fell in love with a farmers daughter named Miyuko, fathered three kids and died at the ripe old age of 106. In the mountain hamlet of Shingo, hes remembered by the name Daitenku Taro Jurai. The rest of the world knows him as Jesus Christ.
It turns out that Jesus of Nazareththe Messiah, worker of miracles and spiritual figurehead for one of the worlds foremost religionsdid not die on the cross at Calvary, as widely reported. According to amusing local folklore, that was his kid brother, Isukiri, whose severed ear was interred in an adjacent burial mound in Japan.
n Shingo, the Greatest Story Ever Told is retold like this: Jesus first came to Japan at the age of 21 to study theology. This was during his so-called lost years, a 12-year gap unaccounted for in the New Testament. He landed at the west coast port of Amanohashidate, a spit of land that juts across Miyazu Bay, and became a disciple of a great master near Mount Fuji, learning the Japanese language and Eastern culture. At 33, he returned to Judeaby way of Morocco!to talk up what a museum brochure calls the sacred land he had just visited.
Having run afoul of the Roman authorities, Jesus was arrested and condemned to crucifixion for heresy. But he cheated the executioners by trading places with the unsung, if not unremembered, Isukiri. To escape persecution, Jesus fled back to the promised land of Japan with two keepsakes: one of his siblings ears and a lock of the Virgin Marys hair. He trekked across the frozen wilderness of Siberia to Alaska, a journey of four years, 6,000 miles and innumerable privations. This alternative Second Coming ended after he sailed to Hachinohe, an ox-cart ride from Shingo.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Little-Known-Legend-of-Jesus-in-Japan-183833821.html#ixzz2G5b3pnQn
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Rather like the Legends of Robin Hood....
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)I went riding around like this, this morning. All kinds of waves, and honking.
And, Dear Ole Pappy is down for the holidays. Too warm for that sweatshirt though, but it was a present from Mrs. Clause.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2012, 10:11 PM - Edit history (1)
and a Happy Happy!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)For more than a century, easy access to Lake Michigan has made Onekama a popular place for summer visitors and a refuge for boaters fleeing dangerous storms. Now the community itself needs a rescue, from slumping lake levels that threaten its precious link to open water.
The Great Lakes, the worlds biggest freshwater system, are shrinking because of drought and rising temperatures, a trend that accelerated with this years almost snowless winter and scorching summer. Water levels have fallen to near-record lows on Lakes Michigan and Huron, while Erie, Ontario and Superior are below their historical averages. The decline is causing heavy economic losses, with cargo freighters forced to lighten their loads, marinas too shallow for pleasure boats and weeds sprouting on exposed bottomlands, chasing away swimmers and sunbathers.
Some of the greatest suffering is in small tourist towns that lack the economic diversity of bigger port cities. Yet they are last in line for federal money to deepen channels and repair infrastructure to support the boating traffic that keeps them afloat....The Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that about 30 small Great Lakes harbors will need attention in the next couple of years. In bygone days, friendly members of Congress would slip money into the federal budget to dredge a harbor. But so-called earmarks have fallen out of favor, leaving business and civic leaders wondering where to turn. A desperate few are raising money locally for dredging but insist they cant afford it on a regular basis....What makes the situation particularly frustrating for small Great Lakes communities is that a fund for dredging and other harbor maintenance already exists. Its generated by a tax on freight shipped at U.S. ports and raises about $1.5 billion a year. But about half of the money is diverted to the treasury for other uses. Members of Congress from coastal states are pushing to change that policy.
...the falling water levels are taking a toll, illustrating how extensively the health of the Great Lakes affects the economy of a region that is home to more than 30 million people extending from Minnesota to New York...Lake Michigans level at the end of October was more than 2 feet below its long-term average. The Corps of Engineers says without heavy snowfall this winter, the lake may decline to its lowest point since record-keeping began in 1918...Onekamas year-round population is less than 2,000. Much of its tax base comes from expensive waterfront homes owned by summer residents who come for the boating and fishing. Without the link to Lake Michigan, property values would plummet, hammering local government budgets, Meister said. Youre talking about schools, 911 emergency, library, fire protection everything, he said.
SOUNDS LIKE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A PERSON LIKE ME....BUY CHEAP, WAIT FOR THE RAIN, OR JUST ENJOY...