Tuesday, December 7, 2010

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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> from the <b>...</b>

Wikileaks is top news right now. And not only for political journalists. There is a science journalism perspective, too, proves the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Jürgen Kaube). “Every social relationship depends on some, perhaps a lot ...

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than <b>News</b>?

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways ...

Obama Defends Decision To Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts « CBS Los <b>...</b>

President Barack Obama on Tuesday staunchly defended his decision to compromise with Republicans and temporarily extend about-to-expire tax cuts for all Americans.



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Monday, December 6, 2010

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Deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles Falsely Claims Social Security ‘Runs Out Of Money In 2037′


Last week, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released a report outlining their recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit. One of their most contentious proposals is to gradually raise the retirement age to 69, a move the co-chairs claim is meant to maintain the system’s solvency.


This morning, Simpson and Bowles appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss their proposals. At one point, Simpson explained his view that balancing the budget would require going “to where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.” Host Joe Scarborough then complained that while AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka attacked the proposals for cutting Social Security, Scarborough said he doesn’t think the co-chairs went far enough (co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed). Bowles then defended their proposal, saying, “What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law”:


SIMPSON: You’ve gotta go where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Not balancing the books on the backs of poor old staggering seniors to make the damn thing solvent for 75 years.


SCARBOROUGH: We were stunned, Erskine, by some of the things that were said after the commission report came out, saying, “Seniors are going to be thrown out on the street!” I looked at the numbers to be really honest with you, and I didn’t think you moved fast enough on Social Security and Medicare. We calculated that I guess, it was Trumka, who I like very much, Trumka said that this throws old people out. My two year old son Jack will get Social Security at 69. People in their 20′s and 30′s will be just fine.


BRZEZINSKI: In fact, I think you could’ve gone further.


SIMPSON: I know Rich very well. He’s a good egg. He has to say for what he has to say for his membership. But he knows I’m right.


BOWLES: What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law.


Watch it:



Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation is accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon — certainly not in 2037. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.


However, the hike in retirement age that the MSNBC co-hosts and deficit commission co-chairmen are praising would be a very punitive way to ensure further solvency. As a Government Accountability Office report recently obtained by the AP found, “Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work.”


Scaborough may not be entirely wrong to shrug off the possibility of his son Jack retiring at 69, if his son ends up being in the same socioeconomic class as him. Almost all of the gains in life expectancy over the past few decades have been among upper income earners. If current trends continue, middle and lower class Americans will see very little gain in life expectancy by the time the co-chairs plan to hike the retirement age. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions,” meaning that if those trends continue, blue-collar workers will be hurt particularly hard by raising the retirement age.


Unfortunately, most Americans are not highly-paid TV hosts like Brzezinski and Scarborough.





In a letter to the New York Times, CPA John Carrick succinctly summarizes a governmental scheme that would send private citizens to jail if they did the same thing:


Social Security is in effect a giant Ponzi scheme. Today’s contributions are used to pay beneficiaries who contributed yesterday, and the surplus of current contributions is “lent” to the federal government and used for general spending.


The Ponzi scheme underlying the Medicare system is even more blatant. Consider the new “Medicare Contribution,” enacted as part of ObamaCare in the name of “fairness,” which extended the 3.8 percent Medicare tax to the investment income of those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of a couple). The legislation dispensed with the interim step of sending the money to the Medicare Trust Fund, to then be “lent” to the general fund and spent on non-Medicare programs. Instead, the money from the new “contribution” will go straight to the general fund; Medicare will not even get a government IOU to hold in “trust.” Privately run Ponzi schemes are generally less brazen.


Later this month, Democrats will attempt to increase the “fairness” of the most progressive income-tax system in the world (under which about half of American households pay no tax at all and the top 1 percent pay of earners pay about 40 percent of the total) by increasing taxes on the “rich” to help finance the trillion-dollar deficits Obama has made the new norm. The plan is to withdraw hundreds of billions more dollars from the private economy while assuring citizens that the economic consequences will be felt only by the targeted few. The public seems to understand that the economic effect will be somewhat broader.


It is a shame that there isn’t more money in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to “borrow.” That is such a simpler system — and there is no pesky criminal law to prevent it, since only private Ponzi schemes are banned. But the federal government has exhausted its current Ponzi possibilities and now seems more like Adam Sandler in a tax-fairness costume.




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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles Falsely Claims Social Security ‘Runs Out Of Money In 2037′


Last week, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released a report outlining their recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit. One of their most contentious proposals is to gradually raise the retirement age to 69, a move the co-chairs claim is meant to maintain the system’s solvency.


This morning, Simpson and Bowles appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss their proposals. At one point, Simpson explained his view that balancing the budget would require going “to where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.” Host Joe Scarborough then complained that while AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka attacked the proposals for cutting Social Security, Scarborough said he doesn’t think the co-chairs went far enough (co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed). Bowles then defended their proposal, saying, “What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law”:


SIMPSON: You’ve gotta go where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Not balancing the books on the backs of poor old staggering seniors to make the damn thing solvent for 75 years.


SCARBOROUGH: We were stunned, Erskine, by some of the things that were said after the commission report came out, saying, “Seniors are going to be thrown out on the street!” I looked at the numbers to be really honest with you, and I didn’t think you moved fast enough on Social Security and Medicare. We calculated that I guess, it was Trumka, who I like very much, Trumka said that this throws old people out. My two year old son Jack will get Social Security at 69. People in their 20′s and 30′s will be just fine.


BRZEZINSKI: In fact, I think you could’ve gone further.


SIMPSON: I know Rich very well. He’s a good egg. He has to say for what he has to say for his membership. But he knows I’m right.


BOWLES: What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law.


Watch it:



Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation is accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon — certainly not in 2037. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.


However, the hike in retirement age that the MSNBC co-hosts and deficit commission co-chairmen are praising would be a very punitive way to ensure further solvency. As a Government Accountability Office report recently obtained by the AP found, “Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work.”


Scaborough may not be entirely wrong to shrug off the possibility of his son Jack retiring at 69, if his son ends up being in the same socioeconomic class as him. Almost all of the gains in life expectancy over the past few decades have been among upper income earners. If current trends continue, middle and lower class Americans will see very little gain in life expectancy by the time the co-chairs plan to hike the retirement age. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions,” meaning that if those trends continue, blue-collar workers will be hurt particularly hard by raising the retirement age.


Unfortunately, most Americans are not highly-paid TV hosts like Brzezinski and Scarborough.





In a letter to the New York Times, CPA John Carrick succinctly summarizes a governmental scheme that would send private citizens to jail if they did the same thing:


Social Security is in effect a giant Ponzi scheme. Today’s contributions are used to pay beneficiaries who contributed yesterday, and the surplus of current contributions is “lent” to the federal government and used for general spending.


The Ponzi scheme underlying the Medicare system is even more blatant. Consider the new “Medicare Contribution,” enacted as part of ObamaCare in the name of “fairness,” which extended the 3.8 percent Medicare tax to the investment income of those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of a couple). The legislation dispensed with the interim step of sending the money to the Medicare Trust Fund, to then be “lent” to the general fund and spent on non-Medicare programs. Instead, the money from the new “contribution” will go straight to the general fund; Medicare will not even get a government IOU to hold in “trust.” Privately run Ponzi schemes are generally less brazen.


Later this month, Democrats will attempt to increase the “fairness” of the most progressive income-tax system in the world (under which about half of American households pay no tax at all and the top 1 percent pay of earners pay about 40 percent of the total) by increasing taxes on the “rich” to help finance the trillion-dollar deficits Obama has made the new norm. The plan is to withdraw hundreds of billions more dollars from the private economy while assuring citizens that the economic consequences will be felt only by the targeted few. The public seems to understand that the economic effect will be somewhat broader.


It is a shame that there isn’t more money in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to “borrow.” That is such a simpler system — and there is no pesky criminal law to prevent it, since only private Ponzi schemes are banned. But the federal government has exhausted its current Ponzi possibilities and now seems more like Adam Sandler in a tax-fairness costume.




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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


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Deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles Falsely Claims Social Security ‘Runs Out Of Money In 2037′


Last week, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission, released a report outlining their recommendations for reducing the federal budget deficit. One of their most contentious proposals is to gradually raise the retirement age to 69, a move the co-chairs claim is meant to maintain the system’s solvency.


This morning, Simpson and Bowles appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss their proposals. At one point, Simpson explained his view that balancing the budget would require going “to where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.” Host Joe Scarborough then complained that while AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka attacked the proposals for cutting Social Security, Scarborough said he doesn’t think the co-chairs went far enough (co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed). Bowles then defended their proposal, saying, “What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law”:


SIMPSON: You’ve gotta go where the meat is. And the meat is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Not balancing the books on the backs of poor old staggering seniors to make the damn thing solvent for 75 years.


SCARBOROUGH: We were stunned, Erskine, by some of the things that were said after the commission report came out, saying, “Seniors are going to be thrown out on the street!” I looked at the numbers to be really honest with you, and I didn’t think you moved fast enough on Social Security and Medicare. We calculated that I guess, it was Trumka, who I like very much, Trumka said that this throws old people out. My two year old son Jack will get Social Security at 69. People in their 20′s and 30′s will be just fine.


BRZEZINSKI: In fact, I think you could’ve gone further.


SIMPSON: I know Rich very well. He’s a good egg. He has to say for what he has to say for his membership. But he knows I’m right.


BOWLES: What we’ve done is make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law.


Watch it:



Social Security is currently projected to be fully solvent until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation is accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon — certainly not in 2037. That does not mean that there aren’t positive and progressive changes that could possibly be made to the system.


However, the hike in retirement age that the MSNBC co-hosts and deficit commission co-chairmen are praising would be a very punitive way to ensure further solvency. As a Government Accountability Office report recently obtained by the AP found, “Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work.”


Scaborough may not be entirely wrong to shrug off the possibility of his son Jack retiring at 69, if his son ends up being in the same socioeconomic class as him. Almost all of the gains in life expectancy over the past few decades have been among upper income earners. If current trends continue, middle and lower class Americans will see very little gain in life expectancy by the time the co-chairs plan to hike the retirement age. And “nearly half of workers over the age of 58 work at jobs that are either physically demanding or involve difficult work conditions,” meaning that if those trends continue, blue-collar workers will be hurt particularly hard by raising the retirement age.


Unfortunately, most Americans are not highly-paid TV hosts like Brzezinski and Scarborough.





In a letter to the New York Times, CPA John Carrick succinctly summarizes a governmental scheme that would send private citizens to jail if they did the same thing:


Social Security is in effect a giant Ponzi scheme. Today’s contributions are used to pay beneficiaries who contributed yesterday, and the surplus of current contributions is “lent” to the federal government and used for general spending.


The Ponzi scheme underlying the Medicare system is even more blatant. Consider the new “Medicare Contribution,” enacted as part of ObamaCare in the name of “fairness,” which extended the 3.8 percent Medicare tax to the investment income of those making more than $200,000 ($250,000 in the case of a couple). The legislation dispensed with the interim step of sending the money to the Medicare Trust Fund, to then be “lent” to the general fund and spent on non-Medicare programs. Instead, the money from the new “contribution” will go straight to the general fund; Medicare will not even get a government IOU to hold in “trust.” Privately run Ponzi schemes are generally less brazen.


Later this month, Democrats will attempt to increase the “fairness” of the most progressive income-tax system in the world (under which about half of American households pay no tax at all and the top 1 percent pay of earners pay about 40 percent of the total) by increasing taxes on the “rich” to help finance the trillion-dollar deficits Obama has made the new norm. The plan is to withdraw hundreds of billions more dollars from the private economy while assuring citizens that the economic consequences will be felt only by the targeted few. The public seems to understand that the economic effect will be somewhat broader.


It is a shame that there isn’t more money in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to “borrow.” That is such a simpler system — and there is no pesky criminal law to prevent it, since only private Ponzi schemes are banned. But the federal government has exhausted its current Ponzi possibilities and now seems more like Adam Sandler in a tax-fairness costume.




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Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...


bench craft company rip off

Light Can Generate Lift - Science <b>News</b>

Researchers create a lightfoil that can push small objects sideways.

This Week in Credit Card <b>News</b> - MoneyBuilder - making sense of <b>...</b>

Provided by LowCards.com More Than Eight Million People Drop Out of Credit Card Use More than eight million consumers stopped using credit cards over the past year, according to a new study by TransUnion. The use of general purpose ...

Lujiazui Breakfast: <b>News</b> &amp; Views About China Stocks (Dec. 6 <b>...</b>

Investors and traders in China's main financial district are talking about the following before the start of trade today: With expectations about inflation and monetary policy becoming clearer, investors are taking cues from overseas ...



















Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Making Money Opportunities


Bing Gordon, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, says that his venture capital firm has to gear up for the coming tech boom. That’s one reason that his company hired famous Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker as a new partner on Monday.


Meeker’s investing focus at the firm will be on the Internet and how the shift to mobile  will create huge new opportunities, Gordon said in an interview.


Gordon is sitting pretty himself as the backer of Kleiner’s investments in mobile gaming firm Ngmoco, which was bought by DeNA for $403 million, and Zynga, the hot social gaming company that is valued at $5.6 billion.


“She thinks big and thinks global,” Gordon (pictured right) said. “Among the analysts, she is my favorite personality. She makes fearless macro bets and is right most of the time.”


Gordon said he sees a big boom coming, not a bubble, much like Kleiner’s managing partner John Doerr, who said that we’re in the midst of yet another boom for internet investments at the recent Web 2.0 Summit. The reason is that he sees a lot of technologies that are changing the way we live.


“The world of digital media is being transformed,” Gordon said. “A bunch of new businesses can be reinvented, thanks to social graphs, the mobile internet, and the new shopping habits of the young. Those are going to create a whole generation of cool new companies. Mary has the right stuff to help people take advantage of the opportunities.”


As for his own focus, Gordon said he is fascinated how users are dealing with the information overload from the social internet and how users are building their own social capital. He is also interested in the “new algorithms, data structures and network topologies of the social web.” He is looking at the intersection of mobile operating systems, the social web, and entertainment. He is also interested in gamification, or making non-game applications more fun and engaging by making them more game-like.


Beyond spotting trends, Meeker will now have to pick the right companies and entrepreneurs that are riding those trends. Meeker will focus on Kleiner’s digital investments, which largely means the social and mobile Internet. But Gordon said that renewed emphasis on internet companies doesn’t mean that the company is backing off completely on big cleantech investments.


“If you look at our cleantech and life science press releases, you can see there are other partner recruitments happening there too,” he said.


Kleiner has a new fund, the sFund, to invest in social Internet companies. But Gordon said it isn’t easy to predict whether Kleiner will invest more money in 2011 than it will in 2010.


[photo credit: SF Business Journal]


Next Story: LinkedIn joins the article-sharing party Previous Story: NewsBasis: Death to the bad PR pitch!






Optimism can kill your business. There, I said it. Let the comments and rants begin (and if they are anything like those written in response to my Why "Be Passionate" Is Awful Advice post, I'm sure another great debate is on the horizon). But before you say that I'm clueless, out-of-touch with Gen Y, or a detriment to entrepreneurs, allow me to explain my position.

When I started my first business in 2003 - one that ended up being a colossal failure that almost bankrupted me (which I now refer to as "the company that shalt not be named") - I was optimistic about everything. Every "creative" marketing idea was touted as if it was destined to be a "guaranteed winner" capable of generating tons of high quality leads right out of the gate. My partners came out of every sales meeting as if we had been victorious (we even foolishly spent money on mini-celebrations at the local pub after most presentations).  Our business plan's seven figure financial forecasts seemed like certainties to us (we even made them "more reasonable" and scaled them back from our original eight figure forecasts). However, there was only one thing true about each of these scenarios.

They were all false, utterly unrealistic, and ended up playing a large role in the company going belly up.

In truth, our marketing campaign results were beyond subpar. Rarely did "the company that shalt not be named" convert sales - even after "great" meetings. And the fact that the company went bankrupt, well, that just shows you how credible our projections were.

The company folded in a little over a year as the result of my partners and I being overly optimistic every step of the way. Had I thought through our marketing campaigns more, learned from my selling mistakes or been more grounded with my financials - instead of being in the clouds and "hoping for the best" - the company that shalt not be named might still be in existence today.

In the new economy where the fight for market share and revenue is more fierce than ever, young entrepreneurs cannot afford to be overly optimistic about any of their goals, tactics, or initiatives. Excessive optimism leads to phrases such as "it will all work out somehow" rather than realistic mindsets such as "how can we make this work at all costs." In many cases, having a "the glass is half full" mentality blinds an entrepreneur from seeing all of the true challenges and issues that surrounds his business and decisions. In business, as in life, things don't always work out - and almost never work out as planned.

In my opinion, the best entrepreneurs are business owners who have an optimistic attitude coupled with a pessimist's viewpoint and rationality. Having an ever-present "glass is half full" mentality is dangerous and might very well lead your start-up or business down the toilet.

Mind you, I'm not advocating that you need to walk around acting as if there is a rain cloud following you. Nor am I telling you to be a Debbie Downer when it comes to growth opportunities. However, from a purely decision-making perspective, I advise you to be a cautious closet pessimist instead of an eternal optimist as you guide your business toward success - and your business will be better and stronger as a result.











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eric seiger do

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eric seiger do

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Flipboard killer? Pulse <b>News</b> Reader for iPad adds Facebook <b>...</b>

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Flipboard killer? Pulse <b>News</b> Reader for iPad adds Facebook <b>...</b>

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eric seiger do

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Flipboard killer? Pulse <b>News</b> Reader for iPad adds Facebook <b>...</b>

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eric seiger do

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Making Money Jobs

Dominic Pileggi, majority
leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, says privatizing the state's
liquor stores has "moved up to the top of the agenda" now that
Pennsylvania will have a Republican governor as well as a
GOP-controlled legislature. The New York Times notes
that incoming Gov. Tom Corbett (currently attorney general) "must
consider both a budget gap that could run as high as $5 billion and
his campaign pledge not to raise taxes." Getting the state out of
the booze business, the Times says, "would potentially
bring $2 billion for state coffers, but also layoffs of several
thousand state workers."


Allow me to question that but. The Times warns
that Pennsylvania's privatization plans are "endangering the jobs
of thousands of state workers." But if you believe states should
not participate in, let alone monopolize, profit-making businesses,
the fact that privatization reduces the public payroll while saving
on operating expenses and improving customer service hardly counts
as a disadvantage. Private businesses that sell wine and liquor do
employ people, by the way. But even if they were operated by
robots, how seriously can we take the argument that unnecessary
government jobs should not be eliminated because then there will be
fewer unnecessary government jobs? And if Corbett decided to
preserve the state stores and cover the deficit by raising taxes,
wouldn't that decision also have an impact on employment? Or is it
only government-directed money that creates jobs?


As I noted
in August, privatization advocates also have been known to argue,
with a logic
familiar to fans and foes of President Obama's stimulus package,
that the business of distributing alcoholic beverages should be
designed to maximize jobs—i.e., to be as inefficient as possible.
More on Pennsylvania's liquor distribution system
here. Reason coverage of liquor privatization in
Virginia
here.



Election week is done. It's time to get back to the business of finding real solutions for our nation's economic recovery. As this week ends it is clear that the appetite for federal stimuli is beginning its ebb tide. We see the Federal Reserve playing the risky cards of quantitative easing trying yet again to spark an economic recovery against the odds of a main street economy still mired in the collateral damage of central government's past grand visions.



Don't get me wrong. I actually agree that Fed needs to be doing what it is. We need to find a sustainable balance for our economy and it's a data intensive compass that can only be seen with clarity from the offices occupied by people like Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair. What I do worry about though is that these central solutions too often take from the small and give to the big because the simplifying assumptions used by the economists and statisticians that support the process aren't capable of seeing the one-by-one trench warfare fights being fought by small businesses and individuals. It's an inherent policy formulation weakness of the academic brain trust behind our system that may be costing ordinary people more pain than necessary. But these ordinary Americans are there. We know this because they voted on Tuesday.



Fortunately, the United States is a big country and Washington D.C. isn't the only place exploring ways to find economic recovery formulae. Across the country, cities and states are beginning to chart independent paths to creating their own "islands of recovery". The City of Los Angeles' proposed Responsible Banking Ordinance continues to move through the committee process improving bit-by-bit into what I believe is an important emerging economic policy counterweight to ensure that the "small to big" tendencies of central solutions do not take us astray yet again.



The tale of the tape is something I believe worth sharing with the readers of the Huffington Post.



On October 26th, there was a public hearing by the L.A. City Jobs Committee chaired by Councilman Richard Alarcon on item CF 09-0234, Responsible Banking. The measure was approved with a number of questions to be investigated and reported to a hearing of the L.A. City Budget and Finance Committee to take place on Monday, November 8th. The questions aired by Councilman Bernard Parks focused on two areas. He asked for more information to determine if the cost and design of the process for implementation by the City was indeed workable. He also asked for clarification about how the differences between community banks, large complex banks and the city's debt underwriters would be recognized within the final ordinance.



Mr. Park's questions tell me that the L.A. process is indeed making progress because these are no longer questions about whether this a good thing for the economic interests of the City but rather how well is the plan risk managed. The interests behind the initiative become more positive as banks, large and small, begin to recognize that there is opportunity to be had here. The carrot being offered by the City of L.A is preference to win lucrative contracts that the City will be issuing anyway if evidence can be presented by the bidders that they are placing the interests of the region higher up the business priority list than their competition. It's subtle and far reaching in its potential to encourage money to circulate locally longer.



So now to ponder details,



As I reviewed the current version of the ordinance draft, it was clear the that City of Los Angeles had specified a data collection and reporting request that seeks to get banks to translate the nature of their business activities into measurement language that city governments can understand. The policy question is actually spot on but I'm also pretty sure that asking a bank to deliver the answer on a silver platter to the city first time out is a bit of a stretch. I think there's a better way to make it work for everyone and bring the cost/risk of the process well into good comfort.



The path to success here is to recognize two things. The first is that banks know how to report data to their regulators. They actually track all the information the city wants to know. Once a year they even have to report data to the granularity of branch-by-branch information to the FDIC. The other thing that's clear from the city draft is that municipal governments analyze their quality of service based on census tracts because that's how voters are bucketed. The trick in getting one system to talk to the other is to leverage by translating between the two universes via the zip codes of the U.S. postal service.



Asking the banks to do all the work is a lot of work. But if the City of Los Angeles were to re-design the ordinance implementation process to be a two step process where the banks report data in branches with identification of which zip codes are affected by that branch and there was a post- process by the City to morph the submittals into census tract visibility I think this would actually work reasonably well. City employees and/or other specialty vendors are more knowledgeable about the second step of the transformation than any bank will ever be. And there's a reason for that. Bankers, being lenders, have been discouraged from doing the second step for a long time because the technology that does so equates to gathering the data to do "red lining". So it's actually a better plan for the City of L.A. to deliberately separate these two steps from each other in its ordinance design.



My point here is that by taking a step back and recognizing where natural divisions of skill can be used to complement each other what seems onerous as an all-in-one data request can quickly become very doable.



This gets us to Mr. Park's second inquiry about larger out of area institutions and debt underwriters seeking to do business with the City. To that my observation is that the City of Los Angeles needs to set up a fair playing field for everyone. It's my read that by combining the suggestion above for banks with local branches with the tenets of the current ordinance draft language requesting distilled data into zip codes there's plenty of wiggle room for presentation of evidence of local involvement by these larger institutions, even those that do not have physical branches in the region. Complex transforms of data to support reporting requests are well within the capabilities of the IT departments of these larger businesses. Bearing in mind that these are also the banks that will go after the largest contracts with the City there's plenty of incentive for them to get their systems to produce the reports that will give them an advantage over competing bidders.



And in the long run I'm not just talking about competing just for L.A.'s business. There's a far larger universe of municipal and state government opportunities out there and I'll remind the readers of the Huffington post to look back at the history of my blogs for the one reporting on Bill Lockyer's inquiry earlier this year to the largest municipal bond underwriters.



I mean does anyone really think that the rest of America's League of Cities isn't watching how this plays out? Or that incoming California Governor Jerry Brown, the former Mayor of Oakland, doesn't already know that Los Angeles, San Jose and other cities in California are actively exploring how to affect the future of the State's economy using local strategies? Or that Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair and Barack Obama won't read about this?



Keep going L.A. La-La Land may yet become the next shining star of economic recovery innovation.







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Canada is to get a conservative all-news TV channel after the CRTC on Friday granted Quebecor Media a license to launch Sun TV News nationwide. The upstart cable channel, dubbed Fox News North by liberal critics, has the go-ahead to ...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread: Onion <b>News</b> Network!

Angry Black Lady, in her recent post, pointed out how many of Fox's readers (not to mention employees) are humor-impaired. In response, commentor Trollhattan alerts us to the upcoming Onion News Network: ...

openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>

“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...


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Sun <b>News</b> Gets Green Light: &#39;Fox <b>News</b> North&#39; Secures Broadcast <b>...</b>

Canada is to get a conservative all-news TV channel after the CRTC on Friday granted Quebecor Media a license to launch Sun TV News nationwide. The upstart cable channel, dubbed Fox News North by liberal critics, has the go-ahead to ...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread: Onion <b>News</b> Network!

Angry Black Lady, in her recent post, pointed out how many of Fox's readers (not to mention employees) are humor-impaired. In response, commentor Trollhattan alerts us to the upcoming Onion News Network: ...

openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>

“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...


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Dominic Pileggi, majority
leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, says privatizing the state's
liquor stores has "moved up to the top of the agenda" now that
Pennsylvania will have a Republican governor as well as a
GOP-controlled legislature. The New York Times notes
that incoming Gov. Tom Corbett (currently attorney general) "must
consider both a budget gap that could run as high as $5 billion and
his campaign pledge not to raise taxes." Getting the state out of
the booze business, the Times says, "would potentially
bring $2 billion for state coffers, but also layoffs of several
thousand state workers."


Allow me to question that but. The Times warns
that Pennsylvania's privatization plans are "endangering the jobs
of thousands of state workers." But if you believe states should
not participate in, let alone monopolize, profit-making businesses,
the fact that privatization reduces the public payroll while saving
on operating expenses and improving customer service hardly counts
as a disadvantage. Private businesses that sell wine and liquor do
employ people, by the way. But even if they were operated by
robots, how seriously can we take the argument that unnecessary
government jobs should not be eliminated because then there will be
fewer unnecessary government jobs? And if Corbett decided to
preserve the state stores and cover the deficit by raising taxes,
wouldn't that decision also have an impact on employment? Or is it
only government-directed money that creates jobs?


As I noted
in August, privatization advocates also have been known to argue,
with a logic
familiar to fans and foes of President Obama's stimulus package,
that the business of distributing alcoholic beverages should be
designed to maximize jobs—i.e., to be as inefficient as possible.
More on Pennsylvania's liquor distribution system
here. Reason coverage of liquor privatization in
Virginia
here.



Election week is done. It's time to get back to the business of finding real solutions for our nation's economic recovery. As this week ends it is clear that the appetite for federal stimuli is beginning its ebb tide. We see the Federal Reserve playing the risky cards of quantitative easing trying yet again to spark an economic recovery against the odds of a main street economy still mired in the collateral damage of central government's past grand visions.



Don't get me wrong. I actually agree that Fed needs to be doing what it is. We need to find a sustainable balance for our economy and it's a data intensive compass that can only be seen with clarity from the offices occupied by people like Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair. What I do worry about though is that these central solutions too often take from the small and give to the big because the simplifying assumptions used by the economists and statisticians that support the process aren't capable of seeing the one-by-one trench warfare fights being fought by small businesses and individuals. It's an inherent policy formulation weakness of the academic brain trust behind our system that may be costing ordinary people more pain than necessary. But these ordinary Americans are there. We know this because they voted on Tuesday.



Fortunately, the United States is a big country and Washington D.C. isn't the only place exploring ways to find economic recovery formulae. Across the country, cities and states are beginning to chart independent paths to creating their own "islands of recovery". The City of Los Angeles' proposed Responsible Banking Ordinance continues to move through the committee process improving bit-by-bit into what I believe is an important emerging economic policy counterweight to ensure that the "small to big" tendencies of central solutions do not take us astray yet again.



The tale of the tape is something I believe worth sharing with the readers of the Huffington Post.



On October 26th, there was a public hearing by the L.A. City Jobs Committee chaired by Councilman Richard Alarcon on item CF 09-0234, Responsible Banking. The measure was approved with a number of questions to be investigated and reported to a hearing of the L.A. City Budget and Finance Committee to take place on Monday, November 8th. The questions aired by Councilman Bernard Parks focused on two areas. He asked for more information to determine if the cost and design of the process for implementation by the City was indeed workable. He also asked for clarification about how the differences between community banks, large complex banks and the city's debt underwriters would be recognized within the final ordinance.



Mr. Park's questions tell me that the L.A. process is indeed making progress because these are no longer questions about whether this a good thing for the economic interests of the City but rather how well is the plan risk managed. The interests behind the initiative become more positive as banks, large and small, begin to recognize that there is opportunity to be had here. The carrot being offered by the City of L.A is preference to win lucrative contracts that the City will be issuing anyway if evidence can be presented by the bidders that they are placing the interests of the region higher up the business priority list than their competition. It's subtle and far reaching in its potential to encourage money to circulate locally longer.



So now to ponder details,



As I reviewed the current version of the ordinance draft, it was clear the that City of Los Angeles had specified a data collection and reporting request that seeks to get banks to translate the nature of their business activities into measurement language that city governments can understand. The policy question is actually spot on but I'm also pretty sure that asking a bank to deliver the answer on a silver platter to the city first time out is a bit of a stretch. I think there's a better way to make it work for everyone and bring the cost/risk of the process well into good comfort.



The path to success here is to recognize two things. The first is that banks know how to report data to their regulators. They actually track all the information the city wants to know. Once a year they even have to report data to the granularity of branch-by-branch information to the FDIC. The other thing that's clear from the city draft is that municipal governments analyze their quality of service based on census tracts because that's how voters are bucketed. The trick in getting one system to talk to the other is to leverage by translating between the two universes via the zip codes of the U.S. postal service.



Asking the banks to do all the work is a lot of work. But if the City of Los Angeles were to re-design the ordinance implementation process to be a two step process where the banks report data in branches with identification of which zip codes are affected by that branch and there was a post- process by the City to morph the submittals into census tract visibility I think this would actually work reasonably well. City employees and/or other specialty vendors are more knowledgeable about the second step of the transformation than any bank will ever be. And there's a reason for that. Bankers, being lenders, have been discouraged from doing the second step for a long time because the technology that does so equates to gathering the data to do "red lining". So it's actually a better plan for the City of L.A. to deliberately separate these two steps from each other in its ordinance design.



My point here is that by taking a step back and recognizing where natural divisions of skill can be used to complement each other what seems onerous as an all-in-one data request can quickly become very doable.



This gets us to Mr. Park's second inquiry about larger out of area institutions and debt underwriters seeking to do business with the City. To that my observation is that the City of Los Angeles needs to set up a fair playing field for everyone. It's my read that by combining the suggestion above for banks with local branches with the tenets of the current ordinance draft language requesting distilled data into zip codes there's plenty of wiggle room for presentation of evidence of local involvement by these larger institutions, even those that do not have physical branches in the region. Complex transforms of data to support reporting requests are well within the capabilities of the IT departments of these larger businesses. Bearing in mind that these are also the banks that will go after the largest contracts with the City there's plenty of incentive for them to get their systems to produce the reports that will give them an advantage over competing bidders.



And in the long run I'm not just talking about competing just for L.A.'s business. There's a far larger universe of municipal and state government opportunities out there and I'll remind the readers of the Huffington post to look back at the history of my blogs for the one reporting on Bill Lockyer's inquiry earlier this year to the largest municipal bond underwriters.



I mean does anyone really think that the rest of America's League of Cities isn't watching how this plays out? Or that incoming California Governor Jerry Brown, the former Mayor of Oakland, doesn't already know that Los Angeles, San Jose and other cities in California are actively exploring how to affect the future of the State's economy using local strategies? Or that Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Sheila Bair and Barack Obama won't read about this?



Keep going L.A. La-La Land may yet become the next shining star of economic recovery innovation.







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Sun <b>News</b> Gets Green Light: &#39;Fox <b>News</b> North&#39; Secures Broadcast <b>...</b>

Canada is to get a conservative all-news TV channel after the CRTC on Friday granted Quebecor Media a license to launch Sun TV News nationwide. The upstart cable channel, dubbed Fox News North by liberal critics, has the go-ahead to ...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread: Onion <b>News</b> Network!

Angry Black Lady, in her recent post, pointed out how many of Fox's readers (not to mention employees) are humor-impaired. In response, commentor Trollhattan alerts us to the upcoming Onion News Network: ...

openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>

“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...


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Sun <b>News</b> Gets Green Light: &#39;Fox <b>News</b> North&#39; Secures Broadcast <b>...</b>

Canada is to get a conservative all-news TV channel after the CRTC on Friday granted Quebecor Media a license to launch Sun TV News nationwide. The upstart cable channel, dubbed Fox News North by liberal critics, has the go-ahead to ...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread: Onion <b>News</b> Network!

Angry Black Lady, in her recent post, pointed out how many of Fox's readers (not to mention employees) are humor-impaired. In response, commentor Trollhattan alerts us to the upcoming Onion News Network: ...

openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>

“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...


bench craft company filler st

Sun <b>News</b> Gets Green Light: &#39;Fox <b>News</b> North&#39; Secures Broadcast <b>...</b>

Canada is to get a conservative all-news TV channel after the CRTC on Friday granted Quebecor Media a license to launch Sun TV News nationwide. The upstart cable channel, dubbed Fox News North by liberal critics, has the go-ahead to ...

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread: Onion <b>News</b> Network!

Angry Black Lady, in her recent post, pointed out how many of Fox's readers (not to mention employees) are humor-impaired. In response, commentor Trollhattan alerts us to the upcoming Onion News Network: ...

openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>

“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...


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