ADDENDUM::Scott Walker’s $400 Million Arena Subsidy Belies His Tightfisted Image - Bloomberg Politics

Walker, 47, argues that the subsidy is a "good deal," partly because Wisconsin would lose revenue if the Bucks leave, as they had threatened. The owners of the Bucks, a team whose value Forbes pegged at $600 million, will pick up half the cost of the $500 million arena.

The governor has friendships among the team’s owners, including some who contributed to his presidential effort. Through a limited-liability corporation registered under his son’s name, Bucks co-owner Jon Hammes on May 27 donated $150,000 to the super political action committee backing Walker, according to state and federal records.

Hammes didn’t return a phone call to his office seeking comment on the donation.

The super-PAC also received $50,000 on May 15 from Ted Kellner, another Bucks owner, Federal Election Commission records show. Kellner didn’t return a phone message seeking comment on the deal.

Scott Walker’s $400 Million Arena Subsidy Belies His Tightfisted Image - Bloomberg Politics

Food Stamps Are Worth Double at These Michigan Farmers Markets—Helping Families and Local Businesses - NationofChange

ATTENTION MICHIGAN READERS:: 

(Please note that the left side of the article is cut off, this is occurring in all browsers.  As per a suggestion from comments, copy+paste into a suitable word processing program to read.) 

Zilke is a farmer in Ypsilanti, Mich., population 20,000, where more than a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. Every week, she sells her vegetables at Downtown Ypsilanti Farmers Market, one of two in the city. Nearly 40 percent of the shoppers at both hubs are on some form of food assistance funding from the government.

The two farmers markets first started accepting payment through food assistance programs back in 2006. But that year, they only received $378 from the program.

But in 2010, an incentive program called Double Up Food Bucks expanded from Detroit to Ypsilanti. The program matches SNAP money (formerly known as “food stamps”) dollar-for-dollar when people spend it at farmers markets. That means shoppers can double up to $20 in spending on fruits and veggies. By 2014 customers spent more than $39,000 at these markets through initial SNAP dollars combined with Double Up’s supplement.

So instead of a customer base with $20 of SNAP money to spend, farmers like Zilke had a customer base with $40 to spend. “I make more money, I expand my business, and then I can hire more people,” Zilke said. “If I hire more people I then improve the bottom line of my community. It’s a ripple effect.”

That’s why the USDA is providing $31 million in grants to finance organizations around the country that, like Double Up Food Bucks, provide SNAP incentives. The grants were announced March 31 and were authorized under the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Program in last year’s Farm Bill. Double Up Food Bucks will receive $5.1 million and will be matched in full by private donations.

Food Stamps Are Worth Double at These Michigan Farmers Markets—Helping Families and Local Businesses - NationofChange

Gov. Scott Walker seeks $300 million in university cuts, but $220 million to build Bucks a new arena

Educating Wisconsin's residents, however, is just a gigantic money drain. How does getting an education help anyone? How does having a college-educated workforce help Wisconsin, especially when compared to the revenues that could be gotten by wooing hotel visits by visiting sporting teams? No sir, you young people and educated people need to learn that we in America can no longer afford to have nice things these days. If you wanted a high-paying career or want to work in a well-appointed, state-funded venue that the politicians of the state can devote themselves to building, you should have done something decent with yourself and become a member of a prominent sporting team and/or the owner of a sporting team. You know, a real career. Grab a ball, junior, and hope you make the cut.

And this is why we cannot have nice things, and why Scott Walker will run for president on a platform of doing for the nation what he did for Wisconsin, which is to explain to all the little people that they should not expect to have nice things and then setting about to prove it to them good and hard.

Gov. Scott Walker seeks $300 million in university cuts, but $220 million to build Bucks a new arena

4 Things That Were Supposed To Happen By 2015 Because Obama Was Reelected | ThinkProgress

It’s now 2015, nearly two years after Obama took the oath of office for the second time. A few years ago, prognosticators were very confident about what would happen to America by now because of Obama’s reelection. Let’s check in and see how their predictions turned out:

1. Gas was supposed to cost $5.45 per gallon.

2. Unemployment was supposed to be stuck at over 8%

3. The stock market was supposed to crash

4. The entire U.S. economy was supposed to collapse

4 Things That Were Supposed To Happen By 2015 Because Obama Was Reelected | ThinkProgress

Wall Street crushes records yet again - The Washington Post

For the last 5 years or so, I have been sitting on this Op-ed, "Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow." It was penned by Michael J. Boskin over at the Wall Street Journal in response to the free-fall of the financial markets. A catastrophe he placed at the feet of President Obama, contrary to the reality of the situation.

It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.

So nothing give me more pleasure than to highlight this bit of news,,,

In a year full of market milestones, Wall Street crushed a couple more Tuesday, lifting the Dow Jones industrial average past the 18,000-point mark for the first time and delivering the Standard & Poor’s 500 index its second record-high close in two days.

Investors welcomed the latest encouraging news on the economy as the government said the United States grew at a 5 percent annual rate, the fastest pace in more than a decade in the third quarter.

The rally gave the Dow and the S&P 500 their fifth straight gain. It also marked the 51st all-time high for the S&P 500 and the 36th for the Dow this year, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

What is bizarre, we will still have many within the ranks of the Reich who will continue to claim that President Obama is in fact a socialist. If that were true, the financial gains of the last six years would have gone to the middle class and low wage earners, not to the pockets of the already wealthy one percent. A point that EJ Dionne makes:

This habit seems especially pronounced in the way President Obama’s adversaries treat him. It’s odd that so many continue to see Obama as a radical and a socialist even as the Dow hits record levels and the wealthy continue to do very nicely. If he is a socialist, he is surely the most incompetent practitioner in the history of Marxism.

As well as Paul Krugman:

You know the spiel: that the U.S. economy is ailing because Obamacare is a job-killer and the president is a redistributionist, that Mr. Obama’s anti-business speeches (he hasn’t actually made any, but never mind) have hurt entrepreneurs’ feelings, inducing them to take their marbles and go home.

This story line never made much sense. The truth is that the private sector has done surprisingly well under Mr. Obama,,,

So to those that call President Obama a socialist, I will borrow from the great Florence Jean Castleberry, "Kiss my grits!!"

Wall Street crushes records yet again - The Washington Post

America Has a Scary Sewage Problem: Let's Clean It Up and Jumpstart the Economy While We're At It | Alternet

The problem is simple, surprising, and quite honestly disgusting: Our nation’s older cities depend largely on sewage treatment systems that overflow when it rains, dumping 860 billion gallons of raw sewage a year into “fresh” water across the country—enough to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania an inch deep.

This problem is very, very real for people like Lori Burns in Chicago, whose basement full of sewage and "climate change maggots" recently found its way into the Washington Post. Or for the people of Toledo, where a chronic "combined sewer overflow" problem has combined with runoff from industrial agriculture to drastically alter the ecological balance of Lake Erie, with toxic algal blooms making the city's drinking water poisonous.

But the stormwater crisis is also a tremendous opportunity to move in the direction of a new, community sustaining local economy.

[,,,]
Happily, new methods of stormwater management are increasingly recognized as compelling alternatives to burying bigger and bigger pipes under our city streets. In green stormwater management, rather than scaling up overtaxed sewage pipes, the point is, wherever possible, to prevent runoff from entering the system in the first place. A rain garden with native plants captures water running off roofs and channels it into the soil, not the streets. Permeable paving does the same for traditionally impervious parking lots.

By reworking the urban environment along ecologically sensitive lines, the green stormwater management toolbox—which also includes urban forestry, green roofs and artificial wetlands—provides an effective way to lighten the load on our sewage systems, while reducing the pollution associated with runoff—not to mention sprucing up our communities with more plants.

But jobs–and new principles of systemic and institutional design that can be implemented in the creation of those jobs—are the real reasons to be encouraged by green stormwater management,,,

America Has a Scary Sewage Problem: Let's Clean It Up and Jumpstart the Economy While We're At It | Alternet

Bernie Sanders Asks Fed Chair Whether the US Is an Oligarchy | The Nation

If the US Senate really is the world’s greatest deliberative body, it ought to consider consequential questions. That does not happen often in a Senate where trivia tends too frequently to triumph over issues of substance. But Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, raised what might just be the most substantial issue of all Wednesday, at a Joint Economic Committee hearing where Federal Reserve board chair Janet Yellen was testifying.

The senator began with the facts: “In the US today, the top 1 percent own about 38 percent of the financial wealth of America. The bottom 60 percent own 2.3 percent. One family, the Walton family, is worth over $140 billion; that’s more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. In recent years, we have seen a huge increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires, while we continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Despite, as many of my Republican friends talk about ‘the oppressive Obama economic policies,’ in the last year Charles and David Koch struggled under these policies and their wealth increased by $12 billion in one year. In terms of income, 95 percent of new income generated in this country in the last year went to the top 1 percent.“

Sanders then introduced an academic study, by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, that concludes, “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

That sounds like an oligarchy.

So Sanders asked Yellen: “In your judgment, given the enormous power held by the billionaire class and their political representatives, are we still a capitalist democracy or have we gone over to an oligarchic form of society in which incredible enormous economic and political power now rests with the billionaire class?”

Bernie Sanders Asks Fed Chair Whether the US Is an Oligarchy | The Nation

Lawmakers Will Move Tuesday to Approve Hundreds of Billions in Business Tax Breaks -- and Still No Help for the Unemployed | Tax Justice Blog

Economics is not one of my strong suits (something I hope to change in the near future), but even to my simple understanding I find it very troubling that many (conservative) politicians insist that the national deficit is solely the result of excessive spending, and that huge tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and gaping corporate tax loopholes are irrelevant to this issue.

The reality here is there has been a dramatic decrease in federal revenue due to low wages which equates to a lower tax burden on American taxpayers combined with many corporations not paying their fair share of taxes due to gaping loopholes. The net effect, a significant contribution to the current federal deficit and rising national debt

What makes this Republican push for these tax provisions so idiotic is the hypocrisy behind them. Remember back in December, when Republicans wouldn’t pass long term unemployment benefits without offsets; everything must be paid for they said. Well there is nothing "backing up" these tax cuts. Nothing, nada, zilch; a big ole fat 0.

Republicans are trying to do exactly what got us into this mess in the first place, with unpaid for tax credits (ala junior Bush) and give aways, after years of taking from the poor and the vulnerable in order to "pay" their puppet masters. The total amount of these provisions, these tax cuts, is five times more than we spend on veterans. It is more than three times what we spend on education, job training and social services. And it is five times more than what we spend on medical research/public health. Something is very wrong with this scenario!!
__
Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will take the first step to make permanent certain business tax breaks on Tuesday, when his committee marks up legislation that would increase the deficit by $300 billion over the coming decade.

The provisions are among the “tax extenders,” the package of tax breaks that mostly benefit businesses and that Congress extends every couple of years. We have pointed out that even if Congress simply continues its practice of extending these tax breaks for another two years, it would signal that these corporate tax breaks will likely be with us forever — which the Congressional Budget Office projects would increase the deficit by $700 billion over the coming decade. Camp’s move to make certain of the tax extenders permanent would make that unfortunate outcome even more likely.

Lawmakers Will Move Tuesday to Approve Hundreds of Billions in Business Tax Breaks -- and Still No Help for the Unemployed | Tax Justice Blog

Fox’s Eric Bolling suggests ditching minimum wage and labor laws because China works hard

What Bolling fails to realize in espousing this view, he has shown the true colors of the Reich. The political model of the Chinese government is an oligarchy which enhances the wealth of the few (the elite, ie the Reich) while enslaving the rest of the people. He is therefore supporting a tyrannical form of government, relying on the oppression of the masses.
__

Fox News host Eric Bolling and most of his colleagues on The Five dismissed seemingly the whole idea of a balance between life and work on Tuesday, with Bolling suggesting that the U.S. look to China, and not Europe, for inspiration.

“Some of the economies that are starting to kick our butt, those people work hard,” Bolling said. “There aren’t labor laws, there aren’t minimum wages, they’re working harder than we are.”

“That’s what we should have — no labor law and no minimum wage,” co-host Bob Beckel countered. “They work for a dollar a week.”


Fox’s Eric Bolling suggests ditching minimum wage and labor laws because China works hard



Note: 

Some may argue we are already there, Bernie Sanders for example, an

,,,upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economicand political life of our country.

Or, as reported by Common Dreams, a new study not yet published gives this sober analysis,

,,,When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average Americanappear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically
non-significant impact upon public policy,,,The United States is nodemocracy, but actually an oligarchy."

Paul Krugman: We live in the most unequal society ever, and it’s only getting worse

Paul Krugman: We live in the most unequal society ever, and it’s only getting worse (via Raw Story )

Americans may be living in the most unequal society that has ever existed, said economist Paul Krugman. The New York Times columnist and Princeton University professor said Thursday there is zero evidence to suggest extreme inequality is good for economic…

---

The War on the Poor and Working Families - YouTube

The "safety nets" will be first then minimum wage, IF this "war" is not stopped. How much time has been wasted raging against the ACA (50 repeal votes and counting)? How much time and energy has be squandered fighting against marriage equality? The list is endless, "teach the controversy" bills, "religious liberty" bills, anti-abortion bills. Where are the jobs in all that?

"They're waging a war against the poor and working class,,,when you're desperate, you will take what ever they're willing to pay you, even if it is next to nothing,,,Without extended unemployment benefits, a declining real minimum wage, no Medicaid, no food stamps, no education, job training, or jobs program and no union, you'll do exactly as they tell you, and that's fine with them."

The War on the Poor and Working Families - YouTube

Who gets food stamps? More are college grads; half are working age. (+video) - CSMonitor.com

Working-age people are now the majority recipients of food stamps, overtaking the share who are children and seniors, the traditional beneficiaries of the program, according to a new analysis from The Associated Press and University of Kentucky economists. At the same time, the demographics of the food-assistance program have shifted enormously over the past three decades to include more college graduates, the report also found.

The analysis identified multiple causes for the demographic shifts in the program’s enrollees, including overall changes in the US population, but it spotlighted the role that rising inflation and stalled wage growth have played in leaving more people under the poverty line.

The report comes as Democrats in Washington, in particular, are pushing income inequality as a hot-button issue, noting that most of the income gains since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009 have come at the top of the income ladder. President Obama’s State of the Union message on Tuesday is expected to follow a theme similar to last year's message, in which he promised to make it a priority to narrow the income gap between the rich and the poor. Tuesday's address, though, is expected to be even more urgent in cadence, as Congress weighs a bill that would over 10 years shave about $9 billion from food stamps funding, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The new report shows that 50.2 percent of US households receiving food stamps since 2009 are made up of adults between the ages of 18 and 59 (or non-elderly, working-age adults). In 1998, the portion of such households getting food stamps was 44 percent, according to the report.

Who gets food stamps? More are college grads; half are working age. (+video) - CSMonitor.com

Marco Rubio: Minimum wage plan ‘stale’ - Lucy McCalmont - POLITICO.com

Uhm, so Mr Rubio, what exactly is YOUR plan again? The only thing I have heard from you and your ilk is how you want to regulate my uterus and whom I am allowed to sleep with. I'm not so sure that helps the job market or lifts people out of poverty. All we see are your threats to eliminate programs altogether: slashing SNAP, not extending unemployment and hindering medicaid. None of this does anything to lift us out of poverty.

And what exactly is "opportunity inequality?" Sounds like a catch phrase for doing away with minimum wage, something your handlers would love. You haven't offered any solutions just more whinny rhetoric,,,

“The president’s focused on income inequality, the difference between the rich and the poor and the gap that’s grown, and that’s the wrong focus. It doesn’t give you a complete picture,” the Florida senator said.

Instead, Rubio says “opportunity inequality” needs to be the focus of reform and proposes control of anti-poverty programs should be handed to the states as the current government programs do not help people emerge from poverty.

“I do not believe, in fact, I know that Washington and its one-size-fits-all approach is not conducive to finding the kind of innovative solutions it will take,” Rubio said Thursday on CNN’s “New Day.”

Rubio also has the Democrats in his cross hairs, saying their focus on unemployment benefits rather than finding long-term solutions “is indicative of the flaw in their thinking.”


Marco Rubio: Minimum wage plan ‘stale’ - Lucy McCalmont - POLITICO.com

Thought this was apropos

Debt Ceiling Deadline - The Colbert Report - 2013-08-10 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

I take it Mr Yoho this is how you run your household: "If America defaults on its debt, President Obama will just have to pick which programs get funded." Can we say clueless,,,

Will the real comedian please stand up. No Mr Colbert, not you!!

Debt Ceiling Deadline - The Colbert Report - 2013-08-10 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

Does economy affect religion? Does religion affect economy? | HeritageDaily – Latest Archaeology News, Archaeology Magazine

An interesting question and one I have never considered before especially in the means this article cites, zooarcheology, "[s]tudies must then be performed on the remains to determine how the animals may have applied to the economic and non-economic structure of the society."

When one studies zooarchaeology, s/he is seeking knowledge about the animals that existed in the past for the purpose of understanding the culture of the society that exploited them. Not only are the taxa being identified, but additionally the understanding of the degree of exploitation of the animals to better appreciate the importance of those animals in the lives of the people ultimately being studied. Are there other motives for examining zooarchaeological remains other than discovering the economic status of the society?

[,,,]
The question of whether or not religion can be tied to economy is a debatable one. The use of animals in non-food, strictly religious means, is more difficult to link economically; however, it can still be attempted.

[,,,]
Religion and economy do not necessarily go hand in hand, however, the people who obtained the materials needed for constructing these rosaries or any other religious artefact made with fish remains, would need to either be in the fish processing business or in a trade agreement with other groups who utilize fish regularly.

[,,,]
This ensures the least amount of mental trauma for the animal. In butchery practices, zoorchaeological evidence from the first century BC, also illustrates the possibilities of early kosher practices.

[,,,]
Many other religious customs can be observed though archaeological practices. Ancient Egypt was highly religious with many gods and goddesses ruling the land as well as the underworld. Ikram (2002) discusses a possible ritual deposit in Saqqara, and the faunal remains in a religious context. Animals were likely deposited for ritualistic and god-appeasing purposes.

Does economy affect religion? Does religion affect economy? | HeritageDaily – Latest Archaeology News, Archaeology Magazine

We'd All Be Much Wealthier If We Acted Like a Society—Instead We Prop Up the Private Wealth of a Small Number of Elites | Alternet

Congress is in recess, but you'd hardly know it. This has been the most do-nothing, gridlocked Congress in decades. But the recess at least offers a pause in the ongoing partisan fighting that's sure to resume in a few weeks.

It also offers an opportunity to step back and ask ourselves what's really at stake.

A society -- any society --- is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers, and are available to all. If the tax system is progressive, those who are better off (and who, presumably, have benefitted from many of these same public institutions) help pay for everyone else.

"Privatize" means "Pay for it yourself." The practical consequence of this in an economy whose wealth and income are now more concentrated than at any time in the past 90 years is to make high-quality public goods available to fewer and fewer.

In fact, much of what's called "public" is increasingly a private good paid for by users -- ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.

Much of the rest of what's considered "public" has become so shoddy that those who can afford to do so find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.

Gated communities and office parks now come with their own manicured lawns and walkways, security guards and backup power systems.

Why the decline of public institutions? The financial squeeze on government at all levels since 2008 explains only part of it.



We'd All Be Much Wealthier If We Acted Like a Society—Instead We Prop Up the Private Wealth of a Small Number of Elites | Alternet

Robert Reich (Why Republicans Want Jobs to Stay Anemic)

Job-growth is sputtering. So why, exactly, do regressive Republicans continue to say “no" to every idea for boosting it — even last week’s almost absurdly modest proposal by President Obama to combine corporate tax cuts with increased spending on roads and other public works?

It can’t be because Republicans don’t know what’s happening. The data are indisputable. July’s job growth of 162,000 jobs was the weakest in four months. The average workweek was the shortest in six months. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has also lowered its estimates of hiring during May and June.

It can’t be Republicans really believe further spending cuts will help. They’ve seen the effects of austerity economics on Europe. They know the study they relied on by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff has been debunked. They’re no longer even trying to make the case for austerity.

It could be they just want to continue opposing anything Obama proposes, but that’s beginning to seem like a stretch. Republican leaders and aspiring 2016 presidential candidates are warning against being the “party of ‘no.’" Public support for the GOP continues to plummet.

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

Robert Reich (Why Republicans Want Jobs to Stay Anemic)

OMG, Socialism! | The Big Slice

Capitalism has built the most powerful economy that the world has ever seen.  But socialism has been its traveling companion.  We need socialism because profit is the last surviving principle of capitalism.  Completely unprincipled capitalism is the most frightening prospect I can think of.

[,,,]
What has made American capitalism strong is the social safety nets that we’ve put under displaced people.  When America was headed toward real socialism in the 1940’s, our government was frightened by that powerful trend and asked the big corporations to fill the gap.  That was the beginning of corporate provided socially oriented benefits like health insurance.  I won’t argue whether they went too far but the resultant expansion of benefits rivaled the European socialist democracies.  But in America they were provided by corporations.  The tax payers still paid for these benefits in the prices we were charged for corporate products and services.

That game is over.  American companies can no longer compete with companies in foreign countries, especially when in those countries the government supplies the benefits.  Every successful industrialized nation on the planet is part capitalistic and part socialistic in varying degrees.

[,,,]
We’ve been lulled into an anti-intellectualism’s that being held together by special interest political agendas.  Too many Americans don’t know a socialist from a dog’s ear but depend on irresponsible media personalities to tell them what to believe.

Socialism is with us and has been for a long time.  It is not the enemy of capitalism but is its most powerful enabler.  Socialism reminds capitalism that the end goal of all capital and labor is human flourishing – not just for a privileged few, but for anyone willing to work at it.

OMG, Socialism! | The Big Slice

Georgia flouts federal order, withholds lunch ladies' unemployment benefits - CSMonitor.com

 "Tradition" versus reality, tough call,,,my question, (this is also an issue here locally) is this an example of legal vs moral OR an example of complacency (not being prepared),,, as we all are (or should be) well aware of the economic difficulties our country is facing as a whole,,,falling back on the status quo just isn't enough,,,


Mr. Butler has called it a states’ rights issue, contending he within his rights to refuse payment because the people aren't technically unemployed; summer breaks are a part of their contracts and they don't receive new contracts until the fall. But these 4,000 school bus drivers, janitors, pre-K teachers, and landscapers have traditionally received jobless benefits during the summer and have budgeted for it, creating hardships.

Georgia flouts federal order, withholds lunch ladies' unemployment benefits - CSMonitor.com