BEST ECONOMIC PRESIDENT EVER! President Obama according to new numbers/

Because President Obama was in office for only three years at the time of the writing, Deitrick and his co-author left him out. But Deitrick now has enough of an Obama track record to have recently declared in a Forbes interview, "By all measures, President Obama has outperformed every modern president." 

His findings were so lopsided in favor of Democrats I had to ask him whether he is one. He said no. "I really was apolitical until 2000," start of the George W. Bush era. That's when he saw massive mismanagement of the economy at the expense of his middle- to upper-middle-class clients. 

"The average retail investor got slammed, where hedge funds were allowed to take advantage of everyone else," he told me. 

The best overall economic performance pre-Obama was that of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (whom Deitrick put together because of Kennedy's early death). No. 2 was Bill Clinton, with Franklin D. Roosevelt in third place. 

http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/

Wall Street: Everyone breaks the rules but NOONE GOES TO JAIL. They get a bonus.

After the crash of 2008, regulators finally did exactly that. What has resulted is a wave of scandals with odd names; LIBOR fixing, FX collusion, ISDA Fix.
To outsiders they sound like complex acronyms that occupy the darkest corners of Wall Street, easily dismissed as anomalies. They are not. LIBOR, FX, ISDA Fix are at the very center of finance, part of the daily flow of trillions of dollars. The scandals are scarily close to what some on Wall Street believe is standard business practice, a matter of shades of grey.
I imagine the people who are named in the scandals are genuinely confused as to why they are being singled out. They were just doing what almost everyone else was, maybe just more aggressive, more reckless. They were doing what they had been trained to do: bending the rules, pushing as far as they could to beat competitors. They had been applauded in the past for their aggressive risk taking, no doubt. Now they are just whipping boys.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/wall-street-ethics?page=0%2C1&akid=11202.294211.vqZDqm&rd=1&src=newsletter930687&t=11

WalMart could pay $5.80 more per hour WITHOUT RAISING PRICES!

The report, titled “A Higher Wage is Possible: How Walmart Can Invest in Its Workforce Without Costing Customers a Dime,” found that Walmart could raise wages by $5.83 per hour without raising prices. The report revealed that Walmart spends $7.6 billion annually buying back shares of its own stock. Amy Traub, co-author of the report, said share buybacks are “Wall Street financial maneuvers” that are unproductive, and often fail, in the long run, its goal of making its shares worth more. The report quotes a Wall Street Journal business analyst,

http://www.alternet.org/labor/why-walmarts-plan-pit-low-wage-workers-against-low-wage-consumers-failing

Land Tax: If we really want the 1% to pay their fair share of taxes

Tax Land value. If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

http://www.alternet.org/tax-land-end-1-percents-plutocracy?akid=11177.294211.UTPmsy&rd=1&src=newsletter928098&t=17

Robin Hood Tax: I support it - could you? Let Wallstreet and the wealthy help pay for the US recovery.

I SUPPORT THE ROBIN HOOD TAX!

This is a transaction tax (very small - less than 1%) on Wallstreet which would raise over 350 Billion Dollars.  These are the folks who crashed the economy and they should help pay for it's recovery.  This seems totally reasonable.

I also feel that Billionaires and Corporations should pay at least 20% income tax on their income.  That would still be less than I pay.  (Any taxing of wealthy or corporations less than 20% would only be allowed if they provided living wage jobs HERE IN THE US.)

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=10943

How the Republicans have destroyed the Middle Class the last 30 years.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president, he started the United States down a path of economical and social destruction. In his first four years in office, from 1981 to 1985, Reagan lowered the top income tax bracket from 70% to 50%. Over the next four years, Reagan took the top bracket from 50% and cut it down to only 28%. With the lack of revenue coming into the federal government, the national debt tripled and to make up for the loss, Reagan raided the Social Security trust fund and went on to raise taxes eleven times, primarily on working Americans.

http://www.examiner.com/article/from-reagan-to-bush-how-the-gop-has-broken-the-american-dream

Heartlessness: Cutting Food Stamps to Children and more - Where does Heartless come from?

America’s current surge of mean-spiritedness,  observes Gordon Lafer, the University of Oregon author of the EPI study, essentially erupted right after the 2010 elections. In 11 states, those elections gave right-wingers “new monopoly control” over the governor’s mansion and both legislative houses.
Lafer links this right-wing electoral triumph directly to growing inequality. A widening income gap, he explains, “has produced a critical mass of extremely wealthy businesspeople, many of whom are politically conservative,” and various recent court cases have given these wealthy a green light to spend virtually unlimited sums on their favored political candidates.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/are-heartless-people-simply-born-way?page=0%2C1&akid=11130.294211.ChixoG&rd=1&src=newsletter922213&t=19

A POOR CHILD in the South will remain POOR! Upward mobility is worse in the US than most countries.

Class Warfare is real and worse than most other major countries.  The Southern US is particularly worse than most other parts of the US.  The Poor will Stay Poor in the South, not much chance of moving up economically.

http://www.alternet.org/media/no-class-warfare-please-were-americans?akid=11129.294211.XOYYYp&rd=1&src=newsletter921903&t=23

STEALING RETIREMENT MONEY BY HEDGE FUND RICH GUYS! Teachers, Firefighters and Police Retirement funds being stolen

MATT TAIBBI: Sure, there is a huge corruption case that just broke open [on September 26].  What I would say about that, is what did Willie Sutton say about why he robbed banks? That’s where the money is. Look, pension funds are sort of the last great big unguarded piles of money in this country and there are going to be all sorts of operators who trying to get their hands on that money. During the crisis era, it was Wall Street banks who were essentially looting these funds by selling them toxic, fraudulent mortgage backed securities. In Detroit, it was the workers themselves who were taking the money. They’re giving themselves what they called 13th checks, taking advances of their own money. But across the country the more typical narrative is not some worker who is making $19,000 who is really making out in this kind of corruption. It is the hedge fund who is making $50 and $60 million in fees managing state funds. That is the much more typical narrative.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/taibbi-his-latest-expose-how-wall-street-hedge-funds-are?akid=10978.294211.U2Xj9P&rd=1&src=newsletter901960&t=7

Supply Side Economics FAILED! Here is the data. It was just a bad idea.

The biggest political theory of the last 30 years is supply side economics. It was the basis of the policies of all Republican presidents from Ronald Reagan onward. The idea is that if the rich are given more money, they will use it to invest in business and thus create jobs. According to the theory, if you give money to the poor, they will just spend it. The rich, on the other hand, will help businesses to grow and this will help the poor.

The idea is nonsense as anyone who has ever run an actual business should be able to explain. Businesses expand when they see a lot of demand for their products.

http://franklycurious.com/index.php?itemid=6366

$6000.00: Your Gift to Corporate America each year. Don't talk - just pay up.

The average American family pays $6,000 a year in subsidies to big business.
That's over and above our payments to the big companies for energy and food and housing and health care and all our tech devices. It's $6,000 that no family would have to pay if we truly lived in a competitive but well-regulated free-market economy.
The $6,000 figure is an average,


http://www.alternet.org/economy/average-american-family-pays-6000-year-subsidies-big-business?akid=10963.294211.DhRkzL&rd=1&src=newsletter899822&t=11