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The source of this is apparently an e-mail that’s circulating widely: If you also get a chuckle out of this, that’s a good indication of the truth that lies behind it. ‘Nuf said. Click here for 4 searches of campaign contributions in the Federal Election Commission’s Disclosure Data Search. You might give it a try for your elected official. However, it looks like they’ve got the sponsors’ true identities pretty well buried behind committee names.
Click here to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C.: – Byron |
Archive for May, 2009
Who’s Calling the Tunes?
Sunday, May 31st, 2009Congress Legalized Loan-Sharking
Monday, May 25th, 2009|
That’s what the Congress did this past week. And, Senator Bernie Sanders used those exact words to describe the credit card bill. The bill does almost nothing except require that a credit card company give you a little advance notice before they pick your bank account. The card issuer still gets to decide when it wants to jerk you around by raising the interest rate on your existing balance. Where’s the remotely fair deal for the customer? Noting that one-third of credit card holder’s pay interest rates higher than 20% and up to 41%, Sanders said, “They are engaged in loan-sharking.” This next one-line quote has become part of American folklore. It is apparently incorrectly attributed to Albert Einstein. It is nevertheless something to remember at all times:
Also, don’t forget the handy rule of 72. If you pay an interest rate of 36%, divide 72 by 36. The answer is 2 years. That’s how long it takes for your debt to double. Imagine a typical household owing and simply continuing an average balance of $10,000. After 2 years, they owe $20,000. Now that’s the power of compound interest. That doesn’t even count late fees and penalties. Anything close to a 36% interest used to be called usury, and it was absolutely illegal in most states. So, credit card companies want the laws to enable them to do darned well what they please. Now let’s turn the tables upside down so that you the borrower can be protected from the corporate gouging. Oh, by the way, this solution is very fair and even-handed to the credit card companies. To simply cut to the chase, here’s a simple set of rules. Let’s explain by example under such a new, fair law for fair dealing. First, let’s set a maximum rate. Sanders said credit unions may not charge more than 15% under current law. But, let’s be overly-generous and say 18% at the most. So the credit card company can offer any lower rate for the life of the card, i.e. the term. Requiring a term would be like setting the length of a mortgage. That would be all we need to know about this The example is an attempt to describe an even-handed approach to these unsecured
Click here to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C.: – Byron
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Enough of the Happy Talk
Sunday, May 17th, 2009|
Do you hear this from time to time? ‘The economy is stronger than expected,’ or ‘the economic indicators are better than expected.’ You can ask, “Whose economy are we talking about?” “Whose expectations are those?” Here are a few facts that would seem to anchor us in reality. Bankruptcy Filings: 5,300 per day from JAN-MARCH, 2009. For the entire year of 2009, that would add up to over 1,300,000 bankruptcies. In 2006, the rate was about 2,000 per day. The rate had been rising steadily since then. Official Unemployment Rate: 8.9%. It’s rising steadily. The Dept. of Labor says, “The number of unemployed persons increased by 563,000 to 13.7 million in April.” Economist Mark Zandi suggests it will level off at 10% a year from now. Obama advisers are forecasting the unemployment level will not decline until the end of 2010, i.e. NEXT year. That’s a year and a half from now.
Official Underemployment Rate: 15.8%. This is called U-6, the estimate of the Bureau of Labor Home Prices: “Four years of gains in home prices wiped out.” That’s the national estimate using the S&P Case-Shiller Index for the top 20 cities. Home Foreclosures: 342,000 households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in April. That’s a 32-percent increase compared with April of last year. Stock Market Crash: Last November, Market Watch said the S&P 500 Index was at its lowest level in more than a decade and had lost almost half of its value in a year. Today, the index is 883, down further from last November when it was 929. The market watch reporter said, “Call it the Great Give-Back.” NEW Unemployed People: 637,000 workers lost their jobs and filed a first-time claim for unemployment money in the week ending May 9. This is what’s going on every week. Never mind the academic talk. It has the feel of a humanitarian disaster . . . each and every week. President Herbert Hoover, a great believer in statistics, said that the 1930 census would “show the first real determination of unemployment” and would prove his contention that “the worst effects of the crash . . . have passed.” Click here to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C.: – Byron
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Who Owns Our Congress?
Saturday, May 9th, 2009|
If you’ve never before heard the truth about the corruption of our decision-making in Washington, D.C., then you now have a very clear statement. As widely reported this week, Senator Dick Durbin, disappointed at the defeat of his bill,
“And the banks – hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created – are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” What more do we need to understand about corporate America calling the shots in our government? The adage is that money is the root of all evil. Well, corporate campaign contributions are the source of the money that buys the election process.There’s really nothing more to explain. Generations ago, Mark Twain observed:
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Today, there is only one party called the Corporatist Party. It has two wings, the Republican Wing and the Democratic Wing. The solution is to ban all contributions to parties and candidates. Until that happens, the corporations will, as Durbin said, “own the place.” Click here to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C.: – Byron |
Let’s Take the Money and Run!
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009|
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the famed and multi-talented English writer, had a strong opinion about the way the world works, to wit: And, so it is today with contracts in the world of modern enterprise. Contracts are promises. The longer the time horizon, the greater the likelihood that its promise will be broken, in part if not in whole. For some time, America has been watching the unraveling of its formerly largest and strongest companies. In the news this week, it’s the auto companies which are breaking their promises to their workers. Imagine devoting your entire working life to a job based on a promise. Imagine then, when your working life has ended and cannot be repeated, you would be told that the promises couldn’t be kept. In this context, broken promise is more than broken pie crust. It results in broken lives. Remember, it’s not just Chrysler and GM, the auto companies. It’s not just about organized labor. It has occurred time and time and time again throughout history. All too often the worker winds up with nothing at all; the auto workers are in fact lucky to wind up with anything at all. Enough should be enough for every fair-minded American. No more promises of money and benefits. Every payday, let’s just take the money and run. That would mean removing the control of all benefits and promises from the hands of the employers. Cash for work. We can all have a system that then divvies up your pay into wages, health insurance, pensions, and every other benefit.
Harold Geneen, former Chairman of International Telephone and Telegraph, seems to agree with Jonathan Swift. Geneen said:
Click here to contact your representatives in Washington, D.C.: – Byron |