"This country is going to move so far to the right, you won't recognize it".

As for the Cargo Cult out there, I don't think there's this much knob-gobbling going on at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.

Of all the spectres of Watergate, he is the worst. We will have to undo his evil tribe's best efforts. If it can be undone at all!

Martha. She kept saying they were up to no good and they kept telling everyone that she was just crazy (even had her committed) and vindictive. Well, she died (I believe of cancer) but not before she got to see him charged with the very thing she had been saying all along.

Total Return (includes dividends)
1 yr - 27.83%
5 yrs - 5.91% per year
10 years - 8.35% per year

and we don't advertise for things here.

http://assets.amuniversal.com/66db25d0b3590130de73001dd8b71c47?width=750.0

And frankly, I don't believe it. If they want to, they can intercept your mail. They probably can waive the warrant, too, under these hateful, lawless times.

When the technology improves, even the privacy within your own head will be violated routinely...

I needs glasses.

The Dilbert reminds me of Ohio Chicks sig line. "Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints".

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/opinion/krugman-the-big-shrug.html

I’ve been in this economics business for a while. In fact, I’ve been in it so long I still remember what people considered normal in those long-ago days before the financial crisis. Normal, back then, meant an economy adding a million or more jobs each year, enough to keep up with the growth in the working-age population. Normal meant an unemployment rate not much above 5 percent, except for brief recessions. And while there was always some unemployment, normal meant very few people out of work for extended periods.

THAT'S FUNNY, I STARTED GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT IN 1975. EVEN THEN, THE SIGNS OF THINGS TO COME WERE RAMPANT: ENGINEERS COULDN'T GET WORK OF ANY KIND IN THEIR FIELD, PEOPLE TRAVERSING THE COUNTRY EVERY TWO YEARS IN SEARCH OF A PERMANENT JOB, MASSIVE LARGE FIRMS DISINTEGRATING, ETC. AND THEN CAME REAGAN...


So how, in those long-ago days, would we have reacted to Friday’s news that the number of Americans with jobs is still down two million from six years ago, that 7.6 percent of the work force is unemployed (with many more underemployed or forced to take low-paying jobs), and that more than four million of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months? Well, we know how most political insiders reacted: they called it a pretty good jobs report. In fact, some are even celebrating the report as “proof” that the budget sequester isn’t doing any harm....For more than three years some of us have fought the policy elite’s damaging obsession with budget deficits, an obsession that led governments to cut investment when they should have been raising it, to destroy jobs when job creation should have been their priority. That fight seems largely won — in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like the sudden intellectual collapse of austerity economics as a policy doctrine.

But while insiders no longer seem determined to worry about the wrong things, that’s not enough; they also need to start worrying about the right things — namely, the plight of the jobless and the immense continuing waste from a depressed economy. And that’s not happening. Instead, policy makers both here and in Europe seem gripped by a combination of complacency and fatalism, a sense that nothing need be done and nothing can be done. Call it the big shrug. Even the people I consider the good guys, policy makers who have in the past shown real concern over our economic weakness, aren’t showing much sense of urgency these days. For example, last fall some of us were greatly encouraged by the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it was instituting new measures to bolster the economy. Policy specifics aside, the Fed seemed to be signaling its willingness to do whatever it took to get unemployment down. Lately, however, what one mostly hears from the Fed is talk of “tapering,” of letting up on its efforts, even though inflation is below target, the employment situation is still terrible and the pace of improvement is glacial at best. And Fed officials are, as I said, the good guys. Sometimes it seems as if nobody in Washington outside the Fed even considers high unemployment a problem.

Why isn’t reducing unemployment a major policy priority? One answer may be that inertia is a powerful force, and it’s hard to get policy changes absent the threat of disaster. As long as we’re adding jobs, not losing them, and unemployment is basically stable or falling, not rising, policy makers don’t feel any urgent need to act. Another answer is that the unemployed don’t have much of a political voice. Profits are sky-high, stocks are up, so things are O.K. for the people who matter, right? A third answer is that while we aren’t hearing so much these days from the self-styled deficit hawks, the monetary hawks — economists, politicians and officials who keep warning that low interest rates will have dire consequences — have, if anything, gotten even more vociferous. It doesn’t seem to matter that the monetary hawks, like the fiscal hawks, have an impressive record of being wrong about everything (where’s that runaway inflation they promised?). They just keep coming back; the arguments change (now they’re warning about asset bubbles), but the policy demand — tighter money and higher interest rates — is always the same. And it’s hard to escape the sense that the Fed is being intimidated into inaction.

The tragedy is that it’s all unnecessary. Yes, you hear talk about a “new normal” of much higher unemployment, but all the reasons given for this alleged new normal, such as the supposed mismatch between workers’ skills and the demands of the modern economy, fall apart when subjected to careful scrutiny. If Washington would reverse its destructive budget cuts, if the Fed would show the “Rooseveltian resolve” that Ben Bernanke demanded of Japanese officials back when he was an independent economist, we would quickly discover that there’s nothing normal or necessary about mass long-term unemployment.

So here’s my message to policy makers: Where we are is not O.K. Stop shrugging, and do your jobs.


FIRST THEY MOVED JOBS OUT OF THE RIOT-TORN CITIES...AND THAT WAS OKAY, BECAUSE ANYONE WHO COULD AFFORD TO MOVED TO THE SUBURBS ANYWAY....

THEN THEY IGNORED THE UNIONIZED NORTH AND MOVED THE FACTORIES TO THE SOUTH...AND THAT WAS OKAY, BECAUSE WINTER IS SUCH A DRAG....

THEN THEY MOVED THE WORK TO ASIA....AND AMERICANS REALIZED THEY HAD BEEN CHEATED OF THEIR BIRTHRIGHTS. MAYBE.

http://robertreich.org/post/52488978442

...the nation’s work doesn’t stop even if Washington does. By default, more and more of it is shifting to the states, which are far less gridlocked than Washington. Last November’s elections resulted in one-party control of both the legislatures and governor’s offices in all but 13 states — the most single-party dominance in decades. This means many blue states are moving further left, while red states are heading rightward. In effect, America is splitting apart without going through all the trouble of a civil war.

Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, for example, now controls both legislative chambers and the governor’s office for the first time in more than two decades. The legislative session that ended a few weeks ago resulted in a hike in the top income tax rate to 9.85%, an increased cigarette tax, and the elimination of several corporate tax loopholes. The added revenues will be used to expand early-childhood education, freeze tuitions at state universities, fund jobs and economic development, and reduce the state budget deficit. Along the way, Minnesota also legalized same-sex marriage and expanded the power of trade unions to organize. California and Maryland passed similar tax hikes on top earners last year. The governor of Colorado has just signed legislation boosting taxes by $925 million for early-childhood education and K-12 (the tax hike will go into effect only if residents agree, in a vote is likely in November).

On the other hand, the biggest controversy in Kansas is between Governor Sam Brownback, who wants to shift taxes away from the wealthy and onto the middle class and poor by repealing the state’s income tax and substituting an increase in the sales tax, and Kansas legislators who want to cut the sales tax as well, thereby reducing the state’s already paltry spending for basic services. Kansas recently cut its budget for higher education by almost 5 percent. Other rightward-moving states are heading in the same direction. North Carolina millionaires are on the verge of saving $12,500 a year, on average, from a pending income-tax cut even as sales taxes are raised on the electricity and services that lower-income depend residents depend on. Missouri’s transportation budget is half what it was five years ago, but lawmakers refuse to raise taxes to pay for improvements.


The states are splitting as dramatically on social issues. Gay marriages are now recognized in twelve states and the District of Columbia. Colorado and Washington state permit the sale of marijuana, even for non-medical uses. California is expanding a pilot program to allow nurse practitioners to perform abortions. Meanwhile, other states are enacting laws restricting access to abortions so tightly as to arguably violate the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. In Alabama, the mandated waiting period for an abortion is longer than it is for buying a gun. Speaking of which, gun laws are moving in opposite directions as well. Connecticut, California, and New York are making it harder to buy guns. Yet if you want to use a gun to kill someone who’s, say, spray-painting a highway underpass at night, you might want to go to Texas, where it’s legal to shoot someone who’s committing a “public nuisance” under the cover of dark. Or you might want to live in Kansas, which recently enacted a law allowing anyone to carry a concealed firearm onto a college campus. The states are diverging sharply on almost every issue you can imagine. If you’re an undocumented young person, you’re eligible for in-state tuition at public universities in fourteen states (including Texas). But you might want to avoid driving in Arizona, where state police are allowed to investigate the immigration status of anyone they suspect is here illegally. And if you’re poor and lack health insurance you might want to avoid a state like Wisconsin that’s refusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even though the federal government will be picking up almost the entire tab.


Federalism is as old as the Republic, but not since the real Civil War have we witnessed such a clear divide between the states on central issues affecting Americans...

I'm in the "Rust Belt" - sorta. In actuality, the jobs around here were almost all a bit more hi-tech. IBM. Singer-Link. But in the early 70's, looking for work ... there was none. Here on the NY/PA border we were falling into a long decline. Jobs lost, population loss ... it has never really reversed.

as if that whole Watergate-Constitutional Crisis-Peace Movement-Stagflation-Oil Shock, etc. never occurred.

But it scarred me for life, and my family, and I'm sure we weren't the only ones.

Is it Nixon they are trying to forget? Or the whole collapse of the American dream? Or is it part of the Bash the Boomers drive?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/uk-g4s-gates-idUKBRE9590IJ20130610

(Reuters) - Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has increased his stake in G4S, the world's biggest security firm, which is looking to bounce back from a blunder over its staffing of the London 2012 Olympics.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and Cascade Investment, an asset management firm owned by Bill Gates - one of the world's richest people - increased their combined holding in G4S to 3.2 percent last week by acquiring around 6 million more shares, G4S said on Monday.

G4S, which runs services such as cash transportation and prison management in over 125 countries, suffered a blow to its reputation when it failed to provide a promised 10,400 guards for the London Games. Following a profit warning in May, its chief executive stepped down last month.

Gates's investments range from stakes in the Canadian National Railway Co. to global drinks group Diageo and British carpet firm Carpetright.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/uk-britain-banks-privatisations-idUKLNE95900220130610

(Reuters) - The government will give its strongest indication yet that it is ready to return part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland to private ownership later this month, political and industry sources said.

Chancellor George Osborne will signal the time is right to offload the government's 81 percent shareholding in RBS and a 39 percent stake in Lloyds in his annual Mansion House speech to financiers on June 19, the sources said on Monday.

The government pumped a combined 66 billion pounds into the banks to keep them afloat during the 2008 financial crisis. It is keen to start re-privatising the banks before the next election in 2015 and Prime Minister David Cameron said last month that he was "open to all ideas" for returning the banks to private ownership.

The Treasury and UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which manages the government's stakes, are still looking at a range of options and Osborne is not yet ready to set out how the shares will be disposed of, the sources said.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/10/uk-britain-eef-credit-idUKLNE95900520130610


(Reuters) - British manufacturers are increasingly turning away from external funding to grow their businesses, a survey found, despite tentative signs that the cost of credit is easing.

Nearly 52 percent of companies polled by manufacturers' organisation EEF for its quarterly Credit Conditions Survey said they had no need to borrow to support their business, a record high.

Industry turning its back on sources of credit would be bad news for the government and the Bank of England, which are trying to get lending going with measures such as the Funding for Lending scheme that makes it cheaper for banks to lend to small businesses.

Some improvement of such lending may be starting to emerge in the second quarter, said EEF economist Andrew Johnson.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-high-court-considers-challenge-to-ecb-bond-purchases-a-904745.html


Somebody at the European Central Bank (ECB) must have pressed the wrong button. A fire alarm went off at the bank's high-rise headquarters in Frankfurt, everything was shut down, including the elevators, and firefighters rushed to the scene.

The false alarm hit the monetary watchdogs last September shortly before ECB President Mario Draghi made the dramatic announcement that he would purchase sovereign bonds in "unlimited quantities" to help debt-ridden countries like Italy, Spain and Greece.
Now, alarm bells are again ringing inside the ECB tower -- only this time it's no drill. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, Germany's Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe will rule on the euro crisis aid measure that Draghi announced last fall. As Draghi and his monetary experts on the executive floor of the bank were told by their constitutional experts long ago, this court decision could have an enormous impact on the bank's policies -- and potentially spell the end of the euro.

Over the past few months, Draghi and the heads of government in the European capitals have felt confident about the outcome of the impending ruling. After all, the judges in Karlsruhe have always ultimately endorsed Germany's contributions to euro-zone bailout programs. Nevertheless, the list of questions compiled by the judges for this week's deliberations indicates that everything may be at stake this time around.

Back in Indy for a few days. When I left my beloved central FL, gas there was about $3.28 - $3.35.

Arriving in Indy this morning? $4.29!

$1/gal difference (presumably for reformulated/summer gas???) this is insanity.

They do it because they can.

I don't even bother complaining.

I talked to a few friends in Cleveland last week. They were talking $4.19.

save me from having to fill up (and get reimbursed later).