That won't come for months in Michigan, Tansy, weather-wise.

(Under a GOP dominated government, probably never, politically)

Got a link that explains it?

it's not only bright and sunny, it's going up into the 70s a little later this week. It won't last, of course, it can snow through the first couple of weeks of May at this altitude.

But I wasn't in my city at the time....

This week from March 10th to March 16th is National Sunshine Week.

Launched in 2005, Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government, freedom of information and push back against excessive government secrecy.

This non-partisan, non-profit initiative is celebrated in mid-March each year to coincide with President James Madison’s birthday on March 16th.

President Madison is considered the "Founding Father of Freedom of Information."

Sunshine Week was created by the American Society of News Editors and is now coordinated in partnership with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, but freedom of information isn’t just a press issue. It is a cornerstone of democracy, enlightening and empowering people to play an active role in their government at all levels. It helps keep public officials honest, makes government more efficient and provides a check against abuse of power.


more info here
http://www.nfoic.org/sunshine-week-2013

and here
http://sunshineweek.rcfp.org/how-to-get-involved/

Monday was sunny with a high of 70. A light rain that was done by noon in the mid 60's today. It will get colder by week's end.

Friday we had pouring rain most of the day, Saturday was just cold and damp and raw, but now we're back to normal -- sunshine, sunshine, and more sunshine. (Don't hate me!)


And after having a new roof put on two weeks ago, now I get to replace the entire HVAC $y$tem. ASAP. No, it wasn't a surprise; I knew it was coming but had hoped not quite this soon. . . . .


But hey, the Dow is up! (At least for the moment. . . . .)

My own house has so much wrong with it that I feel like moving, selling it for what I paid for it to a rehabber to try to fix and make a buck on.

Then I think about packing all this shit and I get tired.

it truly boggles.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that we need new carpets, new floors, new windows, new kitchen cabinets & counters, new bathrooms, new paint, etc. etc.

Sometimes I think it would take less time and money, to just move to a new place. With 3 dogs now and a cat, why bother to start any project. Too much inconvenience, too much stuff to move out of the way. Besides, I hate shopping.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/03/12/174145057/obamacare-taxes-not-in-ryans-crosshairs?ft=1&f=1001

As he has said many times in recent years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is no fan of President Obama's health care law. The Republican repeated his view again Tuesday as he laid out the House Republicans' proposed budget:

"We don't like this law. This is why we're proposing to repeal this law in our budget. More importantly, we believe that this law is going to collapse under its own weight," he said. "So we will never be able to balance the budget if you keep Obamacare going, because Obamacare is a fiscal train wreck."

Yet the 2012 vice presidential nominee's dislike of Obamacare does not appear to extend to the $800 billion in new taxes it raises over the next decade. These include a new 3.8 percent tax on capital gains and dividends on households that earn more than $250,000 a year, 0.9 percent additional Medicare taxes on all household income over $250,000 a year, a new 2.3 percent tax on medical devices and a 10 percent tax on tanning salon services.

Ryan explained that he is not interested in re-litigating old battles over taxes. I'LL BET HE ISN'T!

"We are not going to refight the past, because we know that that's behind us," he said. "So what we're showing here is that with the fiscal cliff and all the other things that have occurred in the past — spending is going down in this baseline as well — that clearly makes it easier to balance the budget."

That fiscal cliff deal raised another $600 billion over 10 years with higher taxes on the wealthy. Ryan would also leave that alone.

http://news.yahoo.com/drops-approval-trust-economy-end-obamas-post-election-040606345--abc-news-politics.html

I'D THINK RENEWING THE "OFFER" TO SCREW AROUND WITH SOCIAL SECURITY MIGHT HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT...ESPECIALLY WHEN THE CAMPAIGN WAS ALL PROMISES NOT TO SCREW OVER THE SENIORS....

The post-election party is over for Barack Obama, with the president slipping in overall approval and relinquishing his advantage over congressional Republicans in trust to handle the economy. But it looks not so much like a gain for the GOP as a sequester-inspired pox on both houses. The automatic budget cuts now in effect are unpopular, if not overwhelmingly so - Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll disapprove by 53-39 percent. But concerns about their impact are broad, and, by a 14-point margin, more put responsibility on the Republicans in Congress than on Obama for the sequester taking place.

That said, it's Obama's economic stewardship that's taken the bigger hit. Last December, still enjoying a post-election glow, he held an 18-point edge over the Republicans in Congress in trust to handle the economy. Today, with the latest budget impasse in full force, that's now shrunk to an insignificant 4 percentage points. The president's job approval rating overall, meanwhile, has lost 5 points, from nearly a three-year high of 55 percent in January to his more customary 50 percent. The Democrats in Congress have moved in the same direction, down 5 points in approval since December to 34 percent in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates...Approval of the Republicans in Congress is flat, but, at 24 percent, even lower than it is for the Democrats. And the Congress as a whole has a dismal 16 percent job approval rating, a mere three points from the record low in nearly 40 years of polling it set slightly more than a year ago.

CUTS AND CRITICISM - A quarter of Americans say they've been negatively impacted by the cuts, with about half that number calling it a major impact. Complaints likely will grow if more are hurt: Those who report a negative impact are 15 points more likely than those not impacted to disapprove of the cuts. And that rises to 24 points among those heavily impacted. Notably, the impact of the cuts relates to income, a strong measure of economic vulnerability: Among people with household incomes less than $20,000 a year, 35 percent say they've been hurt by the sequester. Among those with $100,000-plus incomes, it's 16 percent. Additionally, strength of sentiment is running against the cuts - 34 percent strongly disapprove, twice as many as strongly approve. That appears to be inspired at least in part by the concerns they raise, if not the damage they've done to date...Support for specific proposals does provide some guidance: The public by a 20-point margin, 58-38 percent, supports cutting military spending, albeit in a more targeted way than across the board. And support is similar for one item on the revenue side; Americans by 56-38 percent favor limiting the level of deductions available to higher-income taxpayers. It's a closer call, 48-44 percent, on limiting deductions that businesses can take on their federal taxes. And two other proposals, back on the spending-cut side, engender substantial opposition: by 60-39 percent against raising the age for Medicare coverage from 65 to 67; and by 71-26 percent against cuts in Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor.

PARTY LINES - Partisan affiliation divides the public on some of these issues, including on views of the sequester-forced cuts themselves. Democrats disapprove of the across-the-board spending cuts by a wide 60-33 percent. Among Republicans that narrows to 52-41 percent; among political independents it approaches an even split, 48-43 percent...


MUCH MORE...GOOD READ

http://www.alternet.org/undead-unnecessary-unhelpful-grand-bargain?akid=10167.227380.shq955&rd=1&src=newsletter807453&t=8

Begging Republicans to let us cut Social Security and Medicare is insane (no matter how much pundits lust after it).

...For some reason, the options for dealing with sequestration — a self-inflicted made-up austerity crisis — are being purposefully and pointlessly limited to a) spending cuts, either those in sequestration or different ones, or b) spending cuts and tax increases. “Let’s just not do this, everyone” is rarely presented as a viable option. Instead, the single best end result, according to lots of pundits, Democrats and even Republicans, is the Mythical Grand Bargain.

This is awful news, for most people. A “grand bargain” is not going to be good. But after Barack Obama had fancy dinners with some Republicans last week, everyone is again hopeful. The president is hopeful. John Boehner is hopeful. David Gergen is probably hopeful. They can all taste the Bargain. Ooh, it’ll be so great when we get that Bargain!

The Grand Bargain is revered, among the Sunday Show set, as a goal essentially for its own sake. Its Grandness is its point. The thought of the parties coming together, agreeing on a mutually unpleasant compromise involving great political “sacrifice” (symbolic sacrifice for the politicians, likely eventual actual sacrifice for the constituents), warms the cockles of the Beltway Establishmentarian’s heart. If liberals and conservatives can’t stand the deal, all the better, even if one or both sides have perfectly valid reasons for blanching. The Bargain must, by necessity, reduce the deficit by “reining in entitlements.” “Entitlements” means Social Security and Medicare, two very popular and successful programs designed to keep retired people alive. Social Security and Medicare “reforms” that make both programs less generous are among the least popular policy proposals in America today, but both parties — at least, the leaders of both parties — support them (rhetorically). Cutting these programs is probably the single highest priority of the tiny centrist elite, and it has been for years, excepting the usual run-ups to our various wars. Part of the elaborate theater of Performing Seriousness in Washington is claiming that “everyone agrees” that the cuts are urgent and necessary, while also bemoaning that no politicians are “brave” enough to support them.

Cuts to those programs have been offered, repeatedly, by the president, to Republicans. Republicans, thus far, have pretended not to notice, because their parallel news media misinforms them and because they incorrectly believe the president to be insincere in his desire to hack away at those very popular and successful programs. The recent Obama charm offensive is designed to convince Republicans that he is very sincere in his efforts to get a Serious Debt Deal, involving “entitlement” cuts and tax reform...bless the Republicans for being totally insincere in their deficit hysteria. If they actually did care, as opposed to using it as a bizarre excuse for opposing all tax increases, we’d have had a crappy long-term debt deal by now, in the middle of our pitiful “economic recovery.”...if Barack Obama finally gets his Grand Bargain, we’re going to get “entitlement” cuts despite the fact that that is a bad idea that Americans do not want...

BETTER ALTERNATIVES (AND MORE BITING SCORN) AT LINK

We all live better lives when the common good is not for sale.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-privatization-poisoning-america?akid=10166.227380.uBjL0R&rd=1&src=newsletter807015&t=4

It gets more maddening every day. Essential human needs are being packaged into products to be bought and sold. The right to food and water, education, health care, public spaces, and unrestricted speech shouldn't be based on who can pay the most, or on who can generate profits with the slickest marketing pitch. The free-market capitalism that drives our economy is a doctrine of individuals pursuing profit. Nothing else matters. An executive for Roche, a healthcare company, said "We are not in the business to save lives, but to make money." With privatization of the common good we risk losing both our heritage and our humanness.

1. The Taking of Public Land

Attempts to privatize federal land were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. The assault on our common areas continues with even greater ferocity today, as the euphemistic Path to Prosperity has proposed to sell millions of acres of "unneeded federal land," and libertarian groups like the Cato Institute demand that our property be "allocated to the highest-value use." Mitt Romney admitted that he didn't know "what the purpose is" of public lands...Examples of the takeaway are shocking. Peabody Coal is strip-mining public lands in Wyoming and Montana and making a 10,000% profit on the meager amounts they pay for the privilege. Sealaska is snatching up timberland in Alaska. The Central Rockies Land Exchange would allow Bill Koch to pick up choice Colorado properties from the Bureau of Land Management, while neighboring Utah Governor Gary Herbert sees land privatization as a way to reduce the deficit. Representative Cliff Stearns recommended that we "sell off some of our national parks." One gold mining company even invoked an 1872 law to grab mineral-rich Nevada land for which it stands to make a million-percent profit. The National Resources Defense Council just reported that oil and gas companies hold drilling and fracking rights on U.S. land equivalent to the size of California and Florida combined. Much of this land is "split estate," which means the company can drill under an American citizen's property without consent. Unrestrained by government regulations, TransCanada was able to use eminent domain in Texas to lay its pipeline on private property and then have the owner arrested for trespassing on her own land, and Chesapeake Energy Corporation overturned a 93-year-old law to frack a Texas residence without paying a penny to the homeowners. Most recently, the oil frenzy in North Dakota has cheated Native Americans out of a billion dollars worth of revenue from drilling leases...Away from the mountains and the plains, back in the cities of Chicago and Indianapolis and L.A. and San Diego, our streets and parking spaces have been surrendered to corporations until the time of our great-grandchildren, with some of the highest profit margins in the corporate world.

2. Water for Sale

The corporate invasion of the water market is well underway. In May 2000 Fortune Magazine called water "one of the world's great business opportunities..[It] promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th." Citigroup is on board, viewing water as a prime investment, and perhaps the "single most important physical-commodity based asset class." The vital human resource of water is being privatized and marketed all over the country. In Pennsylvania and California, the American Water Company took over towns and raised rates by 70% or more. In Atlanta, United Water Services demanded more money from the city while prompting federal complaints about water quality. Shell owns groundwater rights in Colorado, oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is buying up the water in drought-stricken Texas, and water in Alaska is being pumped into tankers and sold in the Middle East. A 2009 analysis of water and sewer utilities by Food and Water Watch found that private companies charge up to 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewer services. Various privatization abusesor failures occurred in California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. Of course, water monopolization is a global concern, and a life-threatening issue in undeveloped countries, where 884 million people are without safe drinking water and more than 2.6 billion people lack the means for basic sanitation. Whether in the U.S. or in the world's poorest nation, the folly of privatizing water is made clear by the profit-seeking motives of business:

(1) Water corporations are primarily accountable to their stockholders, not to the people they serve.
(2) They will avoid serving low-income communities where bill collection might be an issue.
(3) Because of the risk to profits, there is less incentive to maintain infrastructure.

3. Owning Human Life

Monsanto and their agro-chemical partners call themselves the "life industry." In 1980 a General Electric geneticist engineered an oil-eating bacterium, effective against oil spills, and in the first case of its kind the Supreme Court ruled that "a live, human-made micro-organism is patentable subject matter." Fifteen years later a World Trade Organization decision allowed plants, genes, and microorganisms to be owned as intellectual property. The results, not surprisingly, have been disastrous. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life forms to perform cancer research. Thus the cost of life-preserving tests often depends on the whim (and the market analysis) of the organization claiming ownership of the biological entity. The results have also been otherworldly. In 1996 the U.S. National Institutes of Health attempted to patent the blood cells of the primitive Hagahai tribesman of New Guinea. U.S. companies AgriDyne and W.R. Grace tried to gain ownership of the neem plant, used for centuries in India for the making of medicines and natural pesticides. Other examples of 'biopiracy': The University of Cincinnati holds a patent on Brazil's guarana seed; the University of Mississippi holds a patent on the Asian spice turmeric...Most tragically, tens of thousands of Indian farmers, charged for seeds that they used to develop on their own, and forced to repurchase them every year, have been driven to suicide after experiencing crop failures and ruinous debt. Monsanto is at the forefront of GMO seeds and litigation against vulnerable farmers. To date the company has won over half of its patent infringement lawsuits. The Supreme Court is currently weighing the arguments in Bowman vs. Monsanto, which asks if a company can have a claim on a farmer whose crops were derived from a seed already paid for. More significantly, the question is whether a company can claim the rights to a form of life that has been nurtured by communities of farmers for centuries.

4. Owning the Air

In polluted Beijing, wealthy entrepreneur Chen Guangbiao is selling "fresh air" in a soft drink can for about 80 cents. While Americans are not yet dependent on (real or imagined) breathing supplements, we have relinquished public access to the air in another important way: the 1996 Telecommunications Act led the way to a giveaway of the transmission airwaves to the broadcast media. Through an effective lobbying campaign the communications industry gained all the benefits of a lucrative public space without even a licensing fee. Objected former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, "The airwaves are a natural resource. They do not belong to the broadcasters, phone companies or any other industry. They belong to the American people." Closely related is our right to freedom of expression on the Internet, which has been repeatedly threatened, despite the presence of existing copyright laws, by aggressive proposals like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Privacy is at risk with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed in the House despite objections by Ron Paul and others who recognize the "Big Brother" implications of government monitoring of Google and Facebook accounts. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has facilitated the monitoring of foreign communications in the name of anti-terrorism. A 2011 UNESCO report offered this worrisome insight: "..the control of information on the Internet and Web is certainly feasible, and technological advances do not therefore guarantee greater freedom of speech."

5. Children as Products

Leading capitalists like Bill Gates and Jeb Bush and Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee, who together have a few months teaching experience, have decided that the business model can pump out improved assembly line versions of our children. Charter schools simply don't work as well as the profitseekers would have us believe. The recently updated CREDO study at Stanford concluded again that "CMOs (Charter Management Organizations) on average are not dramatically better than non-CMO schools in terms of their contributions to student learning." Approximately the same percentages of charters and non-charters are showing improvement (or lack of improvement) in reading and math. In addition, poorly performing charters tend not to improve over time. Nevertheless, charters remain appealing to poorly informed parents. The schools like to represent themselves as equal opportunity educational options, but the facts state the opposite, as many of them have strict application standards that ensure access to the most qualified students. Funding for such schools drains money out of the public system. Children are viewed as products in another way -- on the school-to-prison pipeline. Many school districts employ "school resource officers" to patrol their hallways, and to ticket or arrest kids who disrupt the academic routine, no matter the age of the offender or the nature of the "offense":

-- A twelve-year-old was arrested for wearing too much perfume.
-- A five-year-old was handcuffed for committing "battery" on a police officer.
-- A six-year-old was called a "terrorist threat" for talking about shooting bubbles at a classmate.

Along with these bizarre instances is the frightening precedent set by a private prison, Corrections Corporation of America, which despite having no law enforcement authority was allowed to participate in a drug sweep at a high school in Arizona.

An Antidote?

A successful society doesn't derive from a few Ayn-Rand-type individuals. It's the other way around, as philosopher John Dewey reasoned in the 1930s. It's easy to forget that our country's greatest success was due to a collaborative effort in the years during and after World War 2, when advances in manufacturing and technology made us the strongest economy the world had ever seen. It was a shared success. The common good was not for sale.

MORE

...or the lack thereof.

(oh, did I say something TRUE? Please pardon my error...)

http://www.nationofchange.org/president-who-ll-cut-social-security-and-liberals-who-love-him-too-much-1363011472

The spectacle of a supposedly liberal President repeatedly and needlessly trying to cut Social Security is enough to bring a reasonable, economically literate person to the point of existential despair. To see leading liberal lights like Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein chuckle indulgently at those foolish Republicans in Congress over the subject—Don’t they know he’s already giving them what they want? —is to risk plunging into the depths of that despair...This week the President hosted a dinner for Republicans leaders where he worked to sell his budget proposal, including his harmful plan to cut benefits through the “chained CPI.” National Security was the main course and Social Security was the dessert. And guess who wasn’t coming to dinner: The elderly, the disabled, or any policy experts who understand the disastrous implications of the chained CPI.

The Maddow/Klein exchange (which we’ll bring to you as soon as a transcript is available) is the crest of a building wave in pro-Democratic Party commentary, which says, as Klein puts it, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Klein says that at least “some of the gridlock (in Washington) is due to poor information.” Jonathan Chait bemoans the fact that Republicans “won’t acknowledge (Obama’s) actual offer, which includes large cuts to retirement programs.” Silly, silly Republicans. Klein quotes one reporter as saying of the White House, “They tell us three times a day that they want to do chained CPI!” That’s right: The White House has been trying to impose this benefit cut on Social Security’s elderly and disabled recipients for years and Republicans don’t even know. Neither do most Democrats, for that matter. They think they voted for a President who will defend those benefits, not work relentlessly to cut them.

But Democrats like Maddow, Klein, and Chait know better. They know exactly what Obama’s been trying to do. And their only complaint seems to be that he’s not doing effectively enough. We’re not hearing much from the ‘left’ side of the debate about the profound flaws, biases and inherent cynicism behind both the President’s policy and his rhetoric.

Here are the facts:

Research suggests that Social Security cost-of-living increases are already inadequate. (See studies on “CPI-E” for more details on the best ways to increase them.)

Obama’s proposed chained-CPI cut would typically reduce benefits for 3 percent, and by as much as 6 percent for some recipients.

The White House’s decision to label this cut the “superlative CPI” is grotesque. It suggests that elderly women who receive an average of $950 or so per month are receiving “superlative” benefit increases each year.

The Administration’s insistence on speaking of “entitlement reform,” mixing Medicare (which has a real cost problem because of our for-profit health system) with Social Security, is a cheap trick first devised by Republican consultants.


Progressive commentators—or neutral but well-informed observers—should be emphasizing these points. Instead, we’re hearing that the President’s opponents are foolish for not knowing the President agrees with them! Each of MSNBC’s major personalities has developed his or her own personal brand of eye rolling at Republicans. In this case, we’re told that Republicans are stupid for not knowing the details of Obama’s budget proposal—especially his planned cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Stupid? Stupid like a fox—or, if you prefer, like a Fox News Network. By feigning ignorance of the President’s plan, they’re forcing the White House to repeat it over and over: We want to cut Social Security, guys! We want to cut Medicare! “They tell us three times a day …” Surprisingly, both Maddow and Klein buy into the implausible premise that Senate Republicans—each of who have large staffs and access to Republican Party employees—literally don’t know that Obama has offered to cut Social Security as part of a Grand Bargain. As a result of their feigned ignorance, the White House is now reiterating that offer repeatedly and publicly. “Obama renews budget offer to cut social safety nets,” says a typical story on this subject from Reuters. This is shaping up to be quite a victory for the GOP. Unless something changes, they’re about to see a core Democratic program cut—and the Democrats will take the heat for it! The only thing that can stop that outcome is concerted public pressure from the Democratic base. That’s what makes the Maddow/Klein school of partisanship so tragic in this instance: By reducing this disastrous idea—the product of all the “buy-partisan” cash being spread among leader of both parties—they’re defusing political blowback from the party’s base. Public pressure from Democratic voters could stop this headlong rush into a decision that will harm America’s seniors and disabled and save their party from a potential political catastrophe. Maddow, Klein and others know, or should know that Social Security doesn’t contribute to the deficit. They know—or should know—how politically damaging this move would be. They know, or should know how much it would harm seniors. They should be demanding that the President defend the program, while forcing his opponents to attack it. Instead, they’re applauding him for doing the dirty work himself and criticizing his shrewd opponents for their lack of public gratitude...MORE...If things don’t change, we’ll remember President Obama for cutting Social Security—and his party will pay the price. Disabled and elderly Americans will pay an even higher price. And the Republicans will be laughing all the ways to the 2014 polls.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/mar/12/george-osborne-spending-industrial-production


When water fails to gush from a tap, either a pipe is blocked or the mains is switched off. George Osborne, in his guise as an economic plumber, has preferred to keep his head under the sink in search of a serious blockage, despite a welter of opinion that points to a lack of water entering the system.

So, Tuesday's fall in industrial production is, in part, the result of a pound that is too high and a workforce that lacks the right skills. Just as the lack of house building is the result of outdated planning laws and lending to small businesses is low because the banks have failed to develop low interest products to entice customers.

Push the pound lower, supercharge the Bank of England's Funding for Lending Scheme to reduce interest rates and rip up the planning laws.

Yet there is no blockage. The supply-side obsession of various monetarists is based on a myth.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WORLD_MARKETS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-13-05-21-58

BANGKOK (AP) -- World stock markets ran out of steam Wednesday after a sharp drop in Britain's industrial production and a warning from the head of Germany's central bank that the euro debt crisis isn't over.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said Tuesday that the European Union needs to move ahead with reforms to keep troubles in the banking system from dragging down government finances.

He also urged faster reforms in the financially troubled countries, saying "only governments and not the central bank system" can solve the crisis.

Meanwhile, the British government issued data showing industrial production for January dropped sharply, a day after data released by the French government for factory output showed the same result.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_HEALTH_OVERHAUL_APPLYING_FOR_BENEFITS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-03-13-03-09-45

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Applying for benefits under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul could be as daunting as doing your taxes.

The government's draft application runs 15 pages for a three-person family. An outline of the online version has 21 steps, some with additional questions.

Seven months before the Oct. 1 start of enrollment season for millions of uninsured Americans, the idea that getting health insurance could be as easy as shopping online at Amazon or Travelocity is starting to look like wishful thinking.

At least three major federal agencies, including the IRS, will scrutinize your application. Checking your identity, income and citizenship is supposed to happen in real time, if you apply online.

http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2013/02/passover-seder-menu-stopskys.html


This year's seder is still familiar; just a little updated. (Credit: All, Ditte Isager)


cross the country, a new crop of chefs is reinventing Jewish delicatessen standbys. They're serving smoked trumpet mushroom Reubens at Wise Sons in San Francisco, and you can order a celery soda cocktail at DGS Delicatessen in Washington, D.C. And if the shmear on your bagel can be made from local, grass-fed dairy, then your Passover menu deserves a touch of 2013, too. This year's seder gets a revamp from chef Austin Zimmerman of Stopsky's Delicatessen on Mercer Island, WA. "At the restaurant, we start with the standards," he says, "then change the technique or ingredients to make a dish relevant to contempo-rary cooking." Zimmerman does the same here, enlivening flanken-style short ribs with a flavor-packed chile paste, reimagining gefilte fish with whitefish that's been smoked and fried, and giving macaroons a cool new look (and a welcome touch of lime zest). It's enough to impress today's chefs and bubbes alike.

Chile-Braised Short Ribs

Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandforums/blogs/badaily/2013/02/passover-seder-menu-stopskys.html#ixzz2NQ0fEfmf

Oy gevalt! Your arteries will hate you.

but i'll die happy.

And Crabcakes Benedict for breakfast.

All between cocktails.

We're going up to Cedar Key for the week-end. A little fishing and touristy place about 100 miles north of here. You can walk the whole island in about 15 minutes. We have a hound-friendly hotel. Hound friendly bars and restaurants, and small beaches.

St Paddy's Day and Spring Break combined. What could possibly go wrong.

Oh, and it's our 16th Anniversary.

for putting up with you for 16 long years.

Have a good time!

The Republicans won't let her.

I'm all in. Just do not mess with the knish. Some things are too sacred to mess with.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21765738

Internet search giant Google is paying nearly $15m (£10.1m) in bonuses to four of its top executives for their performances last year.

Neither of Google's two co-founders, including chief executive Larry Page, will get a bonus though.

Executive chairman and former boss Eric Schmidt will get $6m - the largest reward.

The rest of the money will go to its top lawyer, chief financial officer and chief business officer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21762247

President Francois Hollande has admitted France will miss its target on lowering the budget deficit this year.

France's deficit will "without a doubt" be 3.7% of its output this year, he said, above the 3% he promised to cut it to during the election last year.

The 3% deficit target is also one set by the European Union - but most of the major euro nations are in breach.

The news comes as France's economic progress was criticised by a European Central Bank board member.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/underwater-americans-skirting-default-as-harp-use-rising.html

Homeowners with underwater mortgages in U.S. states worst-hit by foreclosures are leading refinancings after the government expanded programs to aid borrowers, strengthening the weakest link in the housing recovery.

In Nevada, where property values fell by half in the real estate bust, the government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, accounted for 68 percent of refinancing in December, the Federal Housing Finance Agency will say in a report today. For Florida, 58 percent went through HARP. The states topped the nation in loans more than three months overdue at 2012’s end, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The U.S. housing market is rebounding as foreclosure sales drop after a record number of seized properties had dragged on prices and sapped buyer confidence, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. The inventory of homes for sale dropped to 1.7 million in January, the lowest in more than a decade, according to the National Association of Realtors. Underwater borrowers, with mortgages that exceed their property values, are most at risk of default, Swonk said.

“The biggest hurdle the housing market has to overcome to stay on its upward trajectory is keeping the foreclosure inventory down,” Swonk said. “HARP refis are keeping people in their homes, especially in the states where property is severely underwater.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/workweek-tying-longest-since-wwii-spurs-hiring-at-u-s-factories.html

he last time U.S. factory workers put in longer weeks than they averaged in February, Rosie the Riveter was on the assembly line and American GIs were fighting Nazis in Europe.

All those extra hours helped to drive five straight months of manufacturing growth in the U.S., racking up 52,000 new factory jobs, according to Labor Department data. That includes 14,000 positions in February alone.

“The workweeks are very, very, very long right now, on a historical basis,” said Michael Montgomery, U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. “That’s why you’re seeing job growth in manufacturing. When you have to start to pay people time and a half, and you have the volume of business, you can justify hiring people.”

The strongest U.S. auto industry since 2007 is benefiting companies such as American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. (AXL), which by year-end will add 400 more people at one of its Michigan factories. Transportation and metal fabrication industries make up a majority of the job gains since September as auto sales rebounded more quickly than housing from the U.S. recession that ended in 2009.

3/12/13 Big Sugar Is Set for a Sweet Bailout

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering buying 400,000 tons of sugar—enough for 142 billion Hershey's Kisses—to stave off a wave of defaults by sugar processors that borrowed $862 million under a government price-support program.

The action aims to prop up tumbling U.S. sugar prices, which have fallen 18% since the USDA made the nine-month operations-financing loans beginning in October. The purchases could leave the price-support program with an $80 million loss, its biggest in 13 years, said Barbara Fecso, an economist at the USDA, in an interview.

The move would benefit companies that turn sugar beets and sugar cane into granulated sweetener, a business plied by American Crystal Sugar Co., Amalgamated Sugar Co. and U.S. Sugar Corp. The USDA wouldn't say how many companies have received loans, or identify them. U.S. Sugar said it doesn't have any USDA loans outstanding. American Crystal and Amalgamated didn't respond to requests for comment.

Higher prices would hit food companies including candy giants Mars Inc., Hershey Co. and Nestlé SA, and could ultimately boost retail food prices, at a time when many consumers are financially stretched.

"Clearly, the USDA has made up its mind that Big Sugar is going to trump the American consumer," said Pierson Bob Clair, president and chief executive at Brown & Haley, a confectioner in Tacoma, Wash., that makes Roca butter-crunch candy.

The USDA makes loans to sugar processors annually as part of a program that is rooted in the 1934 Sugar Act. The loans are secured with some 4.1 billion pounds, or 2.05 million tons, of sugar that companies expect to produce from the current harvest. That comes to almost a quarter of total U.S. output that the USDA forecasts for this year.

more...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-sugar-set-sweet-bailout-234800763.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-wolf-on-david-cameron-2013-3



***SNIP

But Cameron (and his finance minister Osborne) have no plans to reverse the ship, taking a "beatings will continue until morale improves" approach to the economy.

In a new FT piece, Martin Wolf absolutely eviscerates Cameron.

These two paragraphs are some of the sharpest, best writings against misguided austerity we've seen.

Mr Cameron argues that those who think the government can borrow more “think there’s some magic money tree. Well, let me tell you a plain truth: there isn’t.” This is quite wrong. First, there is a money tree, called the Bank of England, which has created £375bn to finance its asset purchases. Second, like other solvent institutions, governments can borrow. Third, markets deem the government solvent, since they are willing to lend to it at the lowest rates in UK history. And, finally, markets are doing this because of the structural financial surpluses in the private and foreign sectors.

Again, Mr Cameron notes that “last month’s downgrade was the starkest possible reminder of the debt problem we face”. No, it is not, for three reasons. First, Moody’s stressed that the big problem for the UK was the sluggish economic growth in the medium term, which austerity has made worse. Second, the rating of a sovereign that cannot default on debt in its own currency means little. Third, the reason for believing long-term interest rates will rise is expectations of high inflation and so higher short-term rates. But such a shift is going to follow a recovery, which would make austerity effective and timely.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-wolf-on-david-cameron-2013-3#ixzz2NQAfjDEm

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/11/173631168/in-one-key-way-the-housing-crisis-is-still-going-strong

The housing market is recovering. Prices are rising, the number of foreclosures is falling, and construction crews are finally starting to build again. But in one key way, housing remains in crisis mode: The U.S. housing market is still a ward of the state. The vast majority of new mortgages — $1.6 trillion out of a total of $1.9 trillion last year alone— are guaranteed by the federal government. If a borrower defaults on a guaranteed loan, taxpayers are on the hook.



This is one of those semi-hidden subsidies that distort the economy and can leave taxpayers with a huge bill if there's another big downturn. It was supposed to be temporary, something that would be unwound once the crisis ended. But more than four years since crisis peaked, there's no clear plan to get the government out of the business of guaranteeing America's mortgages.

The government has always backed some mortgages to make it easier for people like veterans and low-income, first-time home buyers to get into the housing market. But during the crisis, the government's role exploded. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, private companies that guarantee mortgages, collapsed and were taken over by the government. Then, as private lenders pulled out and the market collapsed, the government increased the size of the loans guaranteed by Fannie and Freddie and other government programs. As a result, the government now guarantees almost the entire mortgage market. Last week, the agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie said certain operations of the two firms would be consolidaded. This apparently boring, technical announcement got a fair bit of news coverage, which made me wonder if I was missing something. I called Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, to ask if this was a bigger deal than it seemed. It wasn't.

"It's just that there hasn't been anything concrete in the last five years of discussing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the housing market," he told me. "So we get excited about something as small as this."

Cecala said the housing market is healthy enough to support more substantive steps, including lowering the cap on loans guaranteed by the government. The government currently guarantees some mortgages over $700,000, which, at 14 times the median household income, is far more than most middle class families can afford.



TIME TO PLAY: SPOT THE FALLACIES AND ELIDED INFORMATION!

#1: fANNIE AND fREDDIE STARTED OUT AS GSE'S: PUBLICLY OWNED GOVERNMENT SPONSORED AGENCIES. THEY BECAME PUBLICLY TRADED STOCK COMPANIES IN 1968 (THEY WERE "PRIVATIZED", IN OTHER WORDS) "to remove its activity and debt from the federal budget."--WIKIPEDIA

AND THEN, LIKE THE CASH COWS THEY WERE, FANNIE AND FREDDIE WERE MILKED TO DEATH BY THE SHADOW BANKING SYSTEM. WHOLE LIBRARIES OF BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT IT.

WHEN THE CRASH OF 2008 CAME, FANNIE AND FREDDIE COLLAPSED, AND WERE TAKEN OVER BY THE GOVT. BY 2010, THEY WERE DELISTED.


NOW, THE GREEDY INVESTOR CLASS, HUNGRY FOR ANOTHER FEAST, IS WHINING ABOUT HOUSING. LET THEM EAT CDS!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/popularity-of-french-president-francois-hollande-in-steep-decline-a-888568.html

On a recent trip by French President François Hollande to the eastern city of Dijon, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. The visit earlier this week was intended to improve the president's miserable approval ratings and "renew direct contact with the French." Instead, Hollande found himself so clearly confronted with the wrath of the people as never before. He was visibly overwhelmed.

"Monsieur Hollande, where have your promises gone?" one young man hollered out to the president as he arrived in the working-class quarter of Les Grésilles. Two bodyguards immediately and violently carried the man out of the crowd. The image of the scene was too disastrous for the television news crews to pass up. Hollande's predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, once told a heckler to "get lost, you poor jerk!" He never lived the phrase down.
Before Hollande arrived, the police had already dispersed a group of unionists who were holding up a picture of early French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, "to remind him that he's a Socialist." French newspaper Le Monde reported another resident was silenced after calling out to Hollande, "We're still waiting for your change, François!"

The 'President of Kisses'

After Hollande became the Socialists' candidate for president -- in the party's first-ever direct primary election -- he relished the public strolls that brought him closer to his supporters. They were scheduled at every campaign event, and Hollande was happy to take the time for them. So many elderly women wanted kisses on the cheek from him that, shortly after his election, he jokingly called himself le président des bisous, or "the president of kisses."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-888401.html

He's not François Hollande, but one could be forgiven for believing he has taken his cue from the Socialist French president. On Monday, Peer Steinbrück, the chancellor candidate for the center-left Social Democratic Party, said he wants to significantly increase taxes for Germany's top earners if elected in September.

It's not nearly as dramatic as the 75 percent wealth tax called for by Hollande in his campaign, but at the core of the proposal is also the idea that the rich should be asked to contribute more to society.
If elected, the SPD candidate says his party will increase the highest tax rate from 42 to 49 percent for any single person earning €100,000 ($130,120) or more a year and any married couple earning in excess of €200,000.

'Out of Sync'

When Hollande tried to reach into the pockets of his country's wealthiest, he came under massive criticism. But Steinbrück sought to defend himself against potential detractors by stating that the tax increase had become a societal necessity. Many things have been "thrown out of sync" in Germany's social market economy, he said. He described a "drift in the distribution of wealth" between the country's poor and rich and "disastrous" financing of German municipalities, which are partly funded through federal taxes.


Peer Steinbrück (left) and SPD party boss Sigmar Gabriel at a joint press conference in Berlin: a "drift in the distribution of wealth"

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-11/dont-exempt-boomers-from-the-pain-of-medicare-reform#r=hpt-fs

...CONG. PAUL Ryan gave a preview of his approach on Fox News Sunday. Not surprisingly, health care lies at the core of his plan for cutting federal spending by $5 trillion over the next decade. Specifically, Ryan wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, turn Medicaid into a block grant program for the states, and allow new Medicare beneficiaries the option of buying private insurance with a government voucher or premium-subsidy payment. Anyone 55 and over, however, is protected from future changes to Medicare. “You have to remember, all of that money that was taken from Medicare was to pay for Obamacare,” Ryan said, referring to the $716 billion the Affordable Care Act trimmed from Medicare provider payments. “We say we get rid of Obamacare, we end the raid, and we apply those savings to Medicare to make Medicare more solvent and extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund.” ...For a variety of reasons Ryan’s plan is DOA, especially since his blueprint relies on repealing Obamacare. The numbers also suggest the cost shifting in the Medicare premium subsidy idea will dramatically increase senior out-of-pocket health-care spending over time, largely because the value of the voucher is slated to rise at a much slower rate than health-care costs. But set those concerns aside for the moment. The biggest flaw in Ryan’s budget—one shared by other ambitious deficit-reducing plans in recent years—is protecting anyone 55 and older from shifts in Medicare policy. Big mistake. Of course, the reason for segregating many boomers from reform is political calculation: The fear is that seniors will rebel at the ballot box against a major rewrite of the Medicare rules. Thing is, almost every New Year brings new rules, new coverage, and new deadlines. “Current beneficiaries are being affected by Medicare changes all the time,” says Jill Quadagno, professor of sociology at Florida State University.

There’s something unseemly and unjust about segregating an aging population of boomers from reform. Why should a large chunk of the massive baby boom generation—those 55 and over—not share in the gain and the pain, assuming a major overhaul is needed? “Personally, I find it insulting,” says Eric Kingson, professor of social work at Syracuse University. “Every generation is threatened by rising health-care costs.” Adds David Cutler, economist at Harvard University: “It’s ironic that protecting the young from greedy geezers means exempting the greedy geezers from pain and putting all the pain on the young.” Perhaps worst of all, the political maneuver cynically feeds the false belief that federal public policy has become a zero-sum game, where one generation gains, say boomers, at the others expense of other generation, such as millennials—and vice versa. The big problem weighing on household budgets, state budgets, and the federal budget is high and rising health-care costs. Everyone has a stake—young and old—in bringing down the rate of health-care spending. Health-care economists have repeatedly shown that population aging is a relatively small factor behind the cost increase. Far more important is rapid technological innovation, followed by steep administrative costs and the transfer of resources into the medical-industrial complex. “Consequently, efforts to contain Medicare costs—without limiting coverage for the health care of older patients—should in principle focus on reforming the health-care system generally, not just Medicare,” wrote Robert Binstock, the late leading gerontologist.

In other words, let’s stop hermetically sealing off older people from the rest of society when it comes to health-care spending reform, let alone other entitlements. The young and old alike have a huge stake in designing a better system. After all, the U. S. pays more than twice as much per person for health care as the average for other wealthy countries. Bringing U.S health-care costs more in line with those of Germany, Switzerland, Canada, and the like while providing universal access will free up staggering resources for all generations. “One way or another, when medical costs increase, we all pay,” says Cutler. “The key is to lower total spending, not just spread it around in some different way.” He’s right. To increase the pressure for smart reform, no one of voting age—especially those 55 and over—should be exempt from the impact of change. We’ll all be better off, politically and economically.

SO, THROW OUT THE BABY WITH THE BATH WATER, THEN BURN DOWN THE HOUSE! I HAVE NEVER HEARD SUCH BRAIN-DEAD DRIVEL!

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/03/12/inenglish/1363090704_969642.html

Saving the euro required two things: a clear political decision that would put an end to the speculation about its future; and a financial mechanism that would make such a promise credible. In 2012, after several years of doubts, clumsiness, and mistakes, Europe's leaders did both things: on the one hand, German Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted the idea of moving toward banking union; and on the other, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi was allowed to buy as much debt accumulated by member states as necessary to save the euro. These two decisions prevented the euro from slipping off the cliff edge, returning it to a stability it hadn't known for a few years.

The euro's strength, albeit temporary, explains why the shock waves from last week's elections in Italy were relatively benign. We should not forget the impact of the outcome of Greek Prime Minister Yorgos Papandreou's decision in October 2011 to call a referendum on the austerity measures being imposed on Greece by the troika of the EU, the ECB and the IMF: this sent some of the measures of market uncertainty monitored by financial analysts to levels higher than those that followed the attacks of September 11 in the United States. Nor should we forget the Greek elections of June 2012, when the likelihood of a win by the Syriza left-wing coalition was seen as a financial Armageddon. Italy may currently be chaotic, but the euro is holding on, at least for the moment.

The outcome of the elections in Italy, as with the temporary improvement of the euro, is also a reflection of Europe's political fragility, and points to a crisis of legitimacy that looks to be the pattern for forthcoming elections throughout the bloc. Surveys carried out by the EU's Eurobarometer quarterly opinion poll clearly show to what degree confidence in the European Union has fallen.

In countries like Spain, "net" trust in the EU (a measure calculated by subtracting the percentage of those who have trust from those who do not) was 42 points in 2007 (65 percent trusted, and 23 percent didn't). Today, the figure is 52 points, with 72 percent having no trust in the EU, and just 20 percent continuing to trust it. A spectacular fall.

to the detriment of the populace.

You cannot "save" a currency by destroying the people it serves.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/03/13/the-eyes-have-it-google-glass-and-the-myth-of-multitasking/



Christmas came early for gadget enthusiasts everywhere when news recently broke that the highly-anticipated Google Glass would soon be available to the public. These glasses, which look like they were stolen from the set of Star Trek, (think of Lavar Burton’s character in Next Generation – they look a little bit like his clunky glasses band, but without all the… well, without the glass), can display a mini computer screen so that glass wearers can call up a variety of displays such as GPS maps, the weekly weather forecast, or last night’s sports scores.

Recently, quite a bit of ink has been spilled about the potential privacy concerns associated with Glass – the glasses also allow you to instantly record any conversation – not to mention the obvious fashion concerns. (In response, Google is reportedly partnering with hipster frame makers Warby Parker.) Notably absent from this list of concerns is how Google Glass will encourage its users to multitask in ways that they probably shouldn’t.

As a multimedia and technology scholar, I’m fascinated by how our technological developments reflect our culture’s desire to perform more and more tasks at once. Communication researchers have recently found that we multitask with media not because it helps us get things done, but perhaps because we think we are getting things done. It feels good to multitask. So it’s not surprising that we would crave technologies that will help us multitask, right?

Google Glass is just the most recent addition to a long list of technologies that have been developed to help people multitask. Take Bluetooth, for example. Its technology has allowed us to drive hands-free without one hand having to fiddle with a phone. Or for a more outrageous attempt to accommodate people’s desire to multitask, check out ‘Type n Walk’, an iPhone app that allegedly lets people text while still being able to see the sidewalk and obstacles in front of them.

ONLY A CONCERN IF YOU EXPECT ETERNAL REVENUE FROM THE TAX...OTHERWISE, I DON'T SEE THE PROBLEM...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/markets-money-repo-idUSL6N0C38JM20130311

The European Union's planned financial trading tax could strangle the region's secured funding market just as it recovers from the financial crisis, an industry official warned on Monday. The proposal to tax transactions in the repo market, where banks commonly use government bonds as collateral to raise funds, could also squeeze funding to the rest of the economy, Godfried de Vidts, Chairman of the International Capital Market Association's European Repo Council said.

"The market liquidity will dry up totally because the cost is so prohibitive that people will not do repo transactions with each other. The repo market will cease to exist," de Vidts told Reuters by telephone from Paris.

The Repo Council, which represents major banks active in the market, wants repo transactions to be exempted from the tax and was discussing the issue at its annual general meeting in Paris on Monday before taking it up with European Union authorities, de Vidts said. The trading tax, intended to make banks pay for aid they received in the financial crisis, would be set at 0.01 percent for derivatives and 0.1 percent for stocks and bonds and aims to raise 30-35 billion euros annually.

It has already been approved by 11 European Union countries, including Germany and France. Further approvals are needed in the EU before it can take effect. Gabriele Frediani, head of electronic trading platform MTS, urged a rethink of the tax at a conference last week, saying that the European repo market could shrink by 99 percent if the proposal was adopted. "The repo market will disappear," he said. According to the latest ICMA survey, the European Central Bank's 1 trillion euros of cheap three-year funds continued to stifle repo market activity towards the end of last year. The twice-yearly survey showed the amount of business outstanding in the market fell to 5.611 trillion euros by Dec. 12 from 5.647 trillion in June 2012. The survey was conducted before European banks began making early repayments of the ECB's three-year funds on Jan. 30 Repo deals reached a high of 6.204 trillion in December 2011 and a low of 4.633 trillion reached in December 2008, at the height of the financial crisis which froze interbank lending.

The survey showed a rise in German and French government bonds used as collateral as investors stopped hoarding higher-rated assets, after an offer by the ECB to buy bonds of struggling states who ask for aid improved sentiment in euro zone markets. The use of bonds issued by Italy, one of the countries at the forefront of the euro zone debt crisis, edged up to 8.7 percent from 8.3 percent in June 2012 while that for fellow straggler Spain slipped to 4.9 percent from 5.0 percent.

So, I'm going to grab breakfast before the day grabs me...


and speaking of weekends, we will be going down to Havana, reviewing or learning the history of our neighbor Cuba. It seems to follow after last week's Chavez-ganza.

Euro, Yen and Dollar all plunging, and the dollar is the loser in today's race to the bottom....and as a result, both gold and oil are up. So they are trying to refloat, yet again, the stock markets.....


Simple things for simple, greedy minds.

kiss the papal ring and all that....

Not that it will ever happen...

but it involves drones, and would get me tombstoned, if not Gitmoed.

THAT'S ONE WAY TO GET THE ATTENTION OF THE GOOD OLE BOYS AND GIRLS

http://news.yahoo.com/sequester-squeeze-delays-openings-cuts-campgrounds-national-parks-100805977--abc-news-politics.html

The motto on the National Park Service's website is "Experience Your America," but visitors to many parks in the coming weeks and months may find their experience lacking, thanks to sequester cuts.

This weekend the Washington Post reported that Yellowstone National Park will delay its opening by at least a week - likely more - to the chagrin of surrounding small businesses. Several other of the nation's most majestic landmarks will be making similar adjustments to accommodate the tightening of their budgets that comes as a result of across-the-board $85 billion federal spending cuts.

Months before the sequester hit, parks were already working creatively to make ends meet. Now all parks are cutting their budgets by 5 percent, with each deciding how that will work for their park, according to NPS spokesman Jeff Olson.

For most it starts with travel: cancel any employee trips that aren't mission-critical. Then it moves to office supplies, hiring freezes and - in some cases - delayed or eliminated openings of some park areas...

http://news.yahoo.com/no-sense-speculating-euro-exit-ecbs-weidmann-103304172--business.html

It makes no sense to speculate about the possibility of countries leaving the euro zone, European Central Bank policymaker Jens Weidmann said on Wednesday.

Weidmann was asked about a comment last week from Rainer Bruederle, a leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partners, who said Italy may decide to exit the euro or take other drastic action.

"I do not believe it makes sense to speculate about individual countries leaving the euro area," Weidmann, also chief of Germany's Bundesbank, said during a question and answer session after giving a speech in Cologne.

http://www.france24.com/en/20130309-greek-pm-says-no-more-austerity

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Saturday promised his recession-weary nation that there would be "no more austerity measures" as international creditors prolonged an audit of crisis reforms.

"There will be no more austerity measures," Samaras said in a televised speech to his conservative party's political committee.

"And as soon as growth sets in, relief measures will slowly begin," Samaras said.

But he noted that Greece's ailing economy was "out of intensive care, not out of the hospital."

Representatives from the so-called troika of Greece's creditors -- the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- are currently reviewing the steps Greece has taken to meet its multi-billion bailout obligations. Thorny issues that Athens still needs to address include shrinking the number of jobs in the public sector, speed up privatisation plans and recapitalise four of its main banks. The auditors have decided to extend their stay by another week and a scheduled meeting with the PM on Thursday was scrapped. But Samaras on Saturday denied there was a stalemate in talks.

"There is discussion over certain things. I would not call it a hitch, mainly a discussion over how to apply agreed (measures)," he told financial weekly Axia in an interview.

Under the bailout conditions adopted last year, Greece needs to cut public sector workers by 25,000 in 2013 and a total of 150,000 by the end of 2015. The job cuts have sparked friction with Samaras' junior coalition partner Fotis Kouvelis, head of the moderate Democratic Left party, who is citing Greece's soaring unemployment rate. Facing a sixth consecutive year of recession, the heavily-indebted country has been relying on international rescue packages to avoid bankruptcy. A return to growth initially foreseen for 2012 is now not expected before 2014. AT WHCIH POINT, IT WILL BE PUSHED BACK ANOTHER YEAR, OR TWO

Since 2010, the EU and the IMF have committed 240 billion euros ($314 billion) overall in rescue loans to Greece. The next payment to Greece, of 2.8 billion euros, is due at the end of March.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/spiegel-interview-with-luxembourg-prime-minister-juncker-a-888021.html

...For my generation, the monetary union has always been about forging peace. Today, I notice with a certain sense of regret that far too many Europeans are returning to a regional and national mindset....The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there. I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform. Sentiments suddenly surfaced that we thought had been finally relegated to the past. The Italian election was also excessively anti-German and thus un-European...anyone who believes that the eternal issue of war and peace in Europe has been permanently laid to rest could be making a monumental error. The demons haven't been banished; they are merely sleeping, as the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo have shown us. I am chilled by the realization of how similar circumstances in Europe in 2013 are to those of 100 years ago....

http://www.dw.de/oecd-sees-signs-of-emerging-eurozone-growth/a-16664294

There is hope for a recovery in 2013, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said in a new report. Within the crisis-hit eurozone, the German economy is now the primary motor driving growth.

Economic growth was beginning to re-emerge in the 17-nation euro currency area, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said as it released key economic indicators Monday.

The recovery in Europe's biggest economy, Germany, had pushed up an OECD indicator for the eurozone designed to identify turning points in the business cycle, said the organization, which represents senior Western industrialized nations.

In addition, indicators for Italy's economy were in a stabilizing phase, the OECD said, which was an improvement from a recent period of decline...

FROM THE WSJ BS FILE...IT'S A WELL-DOCUMENTED FACT THAT THE 1% CAN AFFORD TO FEED THE REST OF US, WE JUST HAVE TO MAKE THEM GIVE UP THEIR ILL-GOTTEN LOOT

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-your-standard-of-living-will-keep-shrinking-2013-03-13?siteid=YAHOOB

http://business.time.com/2013/03/07/have-americans-given-up-on-saving-for-retirement/

In the wake of the Great Recession, retirement-minded Americans are feeling an unprecedented amount of futility. They are undersaved and — worse — see little reason to do anything about it. That’s the alarming conclusion in a new report from the Deloitte Center for Financial Services, which found that 60% of preretirees believe health care costs will consume their savings no matter how much they save. Similarly, 39% believe investment returns won’t be high enough to provide decent retirement income regardless of how much they manage to put away.

Deloitte found exasperation at every turn: 58% don’t have a retirement plan; nearly 40% don’t know what an annuity or mutual fund is; and 20% expect to rely purely on Social Security for their retirement needs. More than half don’t trust anyone’s advice.

Collectively, we seem to be throwing the towel. It’s not difficult to understand why, to be sure. After a sharp pullback in 2008 and ’09, stocks are only now touching levels they first reached in the late 1990s. So the market has been dead money for nearly 15 years if you bought then and simply held on. A lot of folks who were on track with savings at, say 45, have fallen way behind and now they are 60. This helps explain why so many boomers now plan to work past their normal retirement age of 66 or 67. Meanwhile, housing is finally making a comeback. But real estate values in most markets are nowhere near the levels seen in 2007. And historically low interest rates are behind the spreading feeling that decent retirement income is a pipe dream.

The high cost of health care, and slowly disappearing coverage for retirees, further fuel the growing sense of retirement futility. Extend Health found in a survey that adequate health insurance coverage was retirees’ top concern and that the share of those worried about “having enough money to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses” had doubled in the past five years. One out of two workers says they will delay retirement solely to keep their health plan, reports the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI); 1 in 4 says they would retire earlier than currently planned if they were guaranteed access to health insurance. Only 18% of workers are employed at firms that offer health coverage to early retirees, down from 29% in 1997, EBRI reports. Between 1997 and 2010, the percentage of retirees over age 65 with retiree health benefits fell to 16% from 20%.

With an economic recovery under way, and housing rebounding and stocks verging on new highs, perhaps the sense of futility will ease before we all slip into a coma. Let’s hope so, because giving up isn’t the answer.



Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/03/07/have-americans-given-up-on-saving-for-retirement/#ixzz2NRpj5dp8

At its core, the Boston Tea Party was an act of corporate sabotage. Those ships were owned by the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation of its day. The Company was tightly connected to the British government, so much so that when it stumbled and found itself teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, Parliament quickly stepped in and passed the Tea Act. The Tea Act created a special exemption for the British East India Company so that it could sell tea in the colonies without paying any tax. The idea was that it could undercut local tea merchants and take their business. So what ignited the Boston Tea Party was not so much a tax, but a corporate tax loophole.

This story of highly concentrated economic power married with political influence is something that sounds very familiar to us today. A handful of big companies have taken over large swaths of our economy. Our banking system, diversified as recently as the 1990s, is now mostly controlled by a handful of big banks. Our food system has come to resemble an hour glass, where we have millions of farmers and millions of eaters, connected by this incredibly narrow passageway. The gatekeepers are a few big food companies and supermarket chains. One company now handles 40 percent of the nation’s milk supply. And then there’s Walmart, which was a small player in the grocery industry 15 years ago. Today, it captures one of every four dollars Americans spend on food and already has half the market in three dozen metro areas. The future of retail looks even more concentrated: one-third of everything sold on the web comes from a single company.

Many people are beginning to question the wisdom of this, and they’re changing where they shop and what they buy and where they do their banking, but what I want to suggest is that a purely consumer-based response to this problem, on its own, is not likely to get us where we need to go.

For a long time, the story of how big companies came to control much of our economy was that bigger is better. It’s more efficient, more productive, it outperforms. But that idea suffered a serious blow four years ago. We all remember this. It was one of history’s most dramatic reveals. Toto pulled back that curtain, and there stood Wall Street’s wizards of finance: insolvent, panic-stricken, their hands out. It turns out that big banks are not safer, and they’re not even more efficient.



Read more: http://www.utne.com/politics/real-economy-zm0z13mazlin.aspx#ixzz2NRrluzRC

and is from Argentina. The markets don't seem impressed, though.

And Jeremiah was a bullfrog.

(Priests are supposed to be chaste, not sterile)