I thought we would get the stories that really reflect the reality of what is happening in this country and our state out of the way early this week on Monday morning, so the week has to improve......
1/ Why is the stock market so high? Why is the media saying there is a recovery?
There is some good news - for the corporations....but not for you. You are working harder, you are more productive but your salary is the same of maybe less.....and if you're over 50 there is even more pressure because the company can always hire someone younger and cheaper....
With the Dow Jones industrial average flirting with a record high, the split between American workers and the companies that employ them is widening and could worsen in the next few months as federal budget cuts take hold.
That gulf helps explain why stock markets are thriving even as the economy is barely growing and unemployment remains stubbornly high.
With millions still out of work, companies face little pressure to raise salaries, while productivity gains allow them to increase sales without adding workers.
“So far in this recovery, corporations have captured an unusually high share of the income gains,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The U.S. corporate sector is in a lot better health than the overall economy. And until we get a full recovery in the labor market, this will persist.”
The result has been a golden age for corporate profits, especially among multinational giants that are also benefiting from faster growth in emerging economies like China and India.
These factors, along with the Federal Reserve’s efforts to keep interest rates ultralow and encourage investors to put more money into riskier assets, prompted traders to send the Dow past 14,000 to within 75 points of a record high last week.
While buoyant earnings are rewarded by investors and make American companies more competitive globally, they have not translated into additional jobs at home.
Other recent positive economic developments, like a healthier housing sector and growth in orders for machinery and some other durable goods, have also encouraged Wall Street but similarly failed to improve the employment picture. Unemployment, after steadily declining for three years, has been stuck at just below 8 percent since last September.
With $85 billion in automatic cuts taking effect between now and Sept. 30 as part of the so-called federal budget sequestration, some experts warn that economic growth will be reduced by at least half a percentage point. But although experts estimate that sequestration could cost the country about 700,000 jobs, Wall Street does not expect the cuts to substantially reduce corporate profits — or seriously threaten the recent rally in the stock markets.
“It’s minimal,” said Savita Subramanian, head of United States equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Over all, the sequester could reduce earnings at the biggest companies by just over 1 percent, she said, adding, “the market wants more austerity.”
As a percentage of national income, corporate profits stood at 14.2 percent in the third quarter of 2012, the largest share at any time since 1950, while the portion of income that went to employees was 61.7 percent, near its lowest point since 1966. In recent years, the shift has accelerated during the slow recovery that followed the financial crisis and ensuing recession of 2008 and 2009, said Dean Maki, chief United States economist at Barclays.
Corporate earnings have risen at an annualized rate of 20.1 percent since the end of 2008, he said, but disposable income inched ahead by 1.4 percent annually over the same period, after adjusting for inflation.
“There hasn’t been a period in the last 50 years where these trends have been so pronounced,” Mr. Maki said.
At the individual corporate level, though, the budget sequestration could result in large job cuts as companies move to protect their bottom lines, said Louis R. Chenevert, the chief executive of United Technologies. Depending on how long the budget tightening lasts, the job cuts at his company could total anywhere from several hundred to several thousand, he said.
“If I don’t have the business, at some point you’ve got to adjust the work force,” he said. “You always try to find solutions, but you get to a point where it’s inevitable.”
The path charted by United Technologies, an industrial giant based in Hartford that is one of 30 companies in the Dow, underscores why corporate profits and share prices continue to rise in a lackluster economy and a stagnant job market. Simply put, United Technologies does not need as many workers as it once did to churn out higher sales and profits.
2/ The sequester cuts will be kicking in over the next few months thanks to the mule-headedness of the Republicans in the House, but the stock market is ignoring them, probably because the people who will be affected the most will be the ones who can least afford it....the working poor. You know, those people who don't have lobbyists.
Getting screwed again.
As Automatic Budget Cuts Go Into Effect, Poor May Be Hit Particularly Hard
Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
The $85 billion in mandatory across-the-board federal budget cuts, which started on Friday, were expected to disproportionately affect low-income Americans like those living in the Langston Terrace Dwellings, a public housing project in northeast Washington.
By ANNIE LOWREY
Published: March 3, 2013
But the sequestration cuts, as they are called, still contain billions of dollars in mandatory budget reductions in programs that help low-income Americans, including one that gives vouchers for housing to the poor and disabled and another that provides fortified baby formula to the children of poor women.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers largely resigned themselves to allowing sequestration — a policy meant to force them to the negotiating table, not to actually reduce the deficit — to take wider effect after it started on Friday. That leaves agencies just seven months to carry out their cuts before the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. In many cases, they will eventually have to deny aid to eligible needy families.
Unless a deal is reached to change the course of the cuts, housing programs would be hit particularly hard, with about 125,000 individuals and families put at risk of becoming homeless, the Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated. An additional 100,000 formerly homeless people might be removed from emergency shelters or other housing arrangements because of the cuts, the agency said.
Local administrators are trying to decide how to put the mandatory 5.1 percent budget cuts into effect by the end of September. Adrianne Todman, the executive director of the District of Columbia Housing Authority, said that no person in her program currently using a housing voucher or living in a public facility would be affected or put out on the street.
But to absorb the cuts, Ms. Todman plans to defer maintenance and leave staff vacancies open. She may also not be able to fill open public housing units as tenants vacate them. And she may stop rolling over housing vouchers to families on the waiting list. Eventually, she said, she may have to furlough employees.
“It’s a shame. It’s more than a shame, it’s despicable,” Ms. Todman said, noting that her agency already lacked enough capacity to meet the district’s needs. “These are real families that we have deemed eligible and are waiting to receive their voucher from us.”
In Washington and across the country, families and individuals generally need to have very low incomes to be eligible for federal assistance. Public housing residents in Washington have an average annual income of just $12,911. More than 40 percent are either children or the elderly, and more than a quarter live with a disability. In the voucher program, the annual income is even lower, just over $10,000 a year, and similarly large proportions of residents are elderly, disabled or young.
“These people are very, very, very poor,” said Sheila Crowley, the president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, speaking of recipients of federal housing support across the country. “They don’t have resources to fall back on.”
3/ Floriduh
The ugly, bald piece of filth sitting in the Governors mansion in Tallahassee "changed his mind" about taking federal funds for Medicaid, and is getting a load of flak from the Tea Party for it. At that time I wondered what he was up to, because this is a corrupt, devious bastard we have as a Governor, but Paul Krugman has the details in his column this morning. There is, of course, a catch.
Here is the column in full so you can savour it over your mid-morning coffee......
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mooching Off Medicaid
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 3, 2013 270 Comments
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Conservatives like to say that their position is all about economic freedom, and hence making government’s role in general, and government spending in particular, as small as possible. And no doubt there are individual conservatives who really have such idealistic motives.
Related in Opinion
Editorial: Medicaid After the Supreme Court Decision (July 29, 2012)
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When it comes to conservatives with actual power, however, there’s an alternative, more cynical view of their motivations — namely, that it’s all about comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted, about giving more to those who already have a lot. And if you want a strong piece of evidence in favor of that cynical view, look at the current state of play over Medicaid.
Some background: Medicaid, which provides health insurance to lower-income Americans, is a highly successful program that’s about to get bigger, because an expansion of Medicaid is one key piece of the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare.
There is, however, a catch. Last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare also opened a loophole that lets states turn down the Medicaid expansion if they choose. And there has been a lot of tough talk from Republican governors about standing firm against the terrible, tyrannical notion of helping the uninsured.
Now, in the end most states will probably go along with the expansion because of the huge financial incentives: the federal government will pay the full cost of the expansion for the first three years, and the additional spending will benefit hospitals and doctors as well as patients. Still, some of the states grudgingly allowing the federal government to help their neediest citizens are placing a condition on this aid, insisting that it must be run through private insurance companies. And that tells you a lot about what conservative politicians really want.
Consider the case of Florida, whose governor, Rick Scott, made his personal fortune in the health industry. At one point, by the way, the company he builtpleaded guilty to criminal charges, and paid $1.7 billion in fines related to Medicare fraud. Anyway, Mr. Scott got elected as a fierce opponent of Obamacare, and Florida participated in the suit asking the Supreme Court to declare the whole plan unconstitutional. Nonetheless, Mr. Scott recently shocked Tea Party activists by announcing his support for the Medicaid expansion.
But his support came with a condition: he was willing to cover more of the uninsured only after receiving a waiver that would let him run Medicaid through private insurance companies. Now, why would he want to do that?
Don’t tell me about free markets. This is all about spending taxpayer money, and the question is whether that money should be spent directly to help people or run through a set of private middlemen.
And despite some feeble claims to the contrary, privatizing Medicaid will end up requiring more, not less, government spending, because there’s overwhelming evidence that Medicaid is much cheaper than private insurance. Partly this reflects lower administrative costs, because Medicaid neither advertises nor spends money trying to avoid covering people. But a lot of it reflects the government’s bargaining power, its ability to prevent price gouging by hospitals, drug companies and other parts of the medical-industrial complex.
For there is a lot of price-gouging in health care — a fact long known to health care economists but documented especially graphically in a recent article in Time magazine. As Steven Brill, the article’s author, points out, individuals seeking health care can face incredible costs, and even large private insurance companies have limited ability to control profiteering by providers. Medicare does much better, and although Mr. Brill doesn’t point this out, Medicaid — which has greater ability to say no — seems to do better still.
You might ask why, in that case, much of Obamacare will run through private insurers. The answer is, raw political power. Letting the medical-industrial complex continue to get away with a lot of overcharging was, in effect, a price President Obama had to pay to get health reform passed. And since the reward was that tens of millions more Americans would gain insurance, it was a price worth paying.
But why would you insist on privatizing a health program that is already public, and that does a much better job than the private sector of controlling costs? The answer is pretty obvious: the flip side of higher taxpayer costs is higher medical-industry profits.
So ignore all the talk about too much government spending and too much aid to moochers who don’t deserve it. As long as the spending ends up lining the right pockets, and the undeserving beneficiaries of public largess are politically connected corporations, conservatives with actual power seem to like Big Government just fine.
4/ More Floriduh....
And for some local depressing news.....the district I live in [Mount Dora] has Alan Hays as our State Senator, and as usual with local politicians unless you take an interest you really don't know much about them.
Now we do, thanks to this excellent column from Lauren Ritchie in the Orlando Sentinel.
We now know Alan Hays is an egotistical, arrogant, certified prick with a mean temper who could give a rat's ass about anyone but him. Read this story, and let the disgust roll around in your brain for a while........because you may have even voted for him.
What an asshole......
Lauren RitchieCOMMENTARY
March 3, 2013
The head of the county's bus service and the director of transportation planning for the region were summoned to the office of state Sen. Alan Hays on Sept. 11.
The Umatilla Republican was not happy.
The pair said he was blustering and visibly angry as he told this story to illustrate his desire to keep transit buses from stopping on roads to let passengers on and off:
Hays had been driving on Bay Street in Eustis behind a LakeXpress public bus when it pulled toward the side of the road to pick up and discharge passengers. But the bus wasn't completely off the road, and Hays couldn't go around it.
So there sat the senator behind the wheel, steaming at the delay.
The two public transportation advocates figured the senator was just blowing off some frustration.
But, no.
"He was very agitated, so I just listened," said Dottie Keedy, Lake County's director of community services, which operates the public transit system. "He said he wasn't going to take it anymore, and if I didn't do something, he would."
So, Keedy did something. She sent him copies of Florida laws that were developed because public transportation is desirable — it reduces traffic, provides a way for the poor and handicapped to get around the community and is environmentally better than individual cars. The laws are specific about motorists yielding to buses on public streets, and they detail the rights of buses to be there.
Then Hays did something, too. He filed Senate Bill 158, which seeks to prohibit buses from stopping on public streets.
The complete bill is one single paragraph:
"Notwithstanding any other law to the contrary, a bus, other than a school bus, may not be stopped in such a manner so as to impede, block, or otherwise restrict the progression of traffic on the main traveled portion of a roadway while the bus is loading or discharging passengers if another reasonable means is available to safely load or discharge passengers."
..............................
Polite understatement. It is not just "unfortunate." It is keenly embarrassing. Chances of it passing are slim, considering the number of urban areas in Florida that rely on public transportation to move big chunks of the population to work, school, medical appointments and grocery shopping.
But that's not the point. The point is that Lake County has an elected official who even would consider such a kooky measure. It is troubling to contemplate the depth of arrogance in a man who thinks that a minor inconvenience to himself should be fixed by codifying the "solution" in Florida law.
Hays needs to remember that he is not the representative just for well-to-do people who hold power lunches and tool around town in big SUVs. Those residents who can't afford cars at all or who use wheelchairs also are his constituents. And those are the folks who make the majority of the 300,000 trips annually on LakeXpress buses. Of course, the bill would not be limited to Lake County, which is why Lynx, the public transportation system based in Orlando, opposes it.
OK OK - a joke after all that garbage news......
A balding, white haired man from Chebacco Lake, Florida, walked into a jewelry store this past Friday evening with a beautiful much younger gal at his side. He told the jeweler he was looking for a special ring for his girlfriend. The jeweler looked through his stock and brought out a $5,000 ring.
The man said, 'No, I'd like to see something more special.'
At that statement, the jeweler went to his special stock and brought another ring over. 'Here's a stunning ring at only $40,000 the jeweler said. The lady's eyes sparkled and her whole body trembled with excitement. The old man seeing this said, 'We'll take it.'
The jeweler asked how payment would be made and the man stated, 'By check. I know you need to make sure my check is good, so I'll write it now and you can call the bank Monday to verify the funds and I'll pick the ring up Monday afternoon.'
On Monday morning, the jeweler angrily phoned the old man and said, 'There's no money in that account.'
'I know,' said the old man, 'But let me tell you about my great weekend!
And a video too....a rerun, but I love this one.....David Blaine......
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