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POPSSmall Banks Fail in Big Numbers
Closures and government takeovers of failing banks have become so routine that they barely gets noticed each Friday when the FDIC makes its announcements. While the banking crisis began with escalating defaults and foreclosures on home mortgages, the increase of bank failures in recent weeks has been driven by rising losses on commercial real estate loans, which are starting to default in large numbers. Community and regional banks hold a disproportionate share of commercial real estate and construction loans. My sister-in-law works at a local bank and says they are only accepting signature loan applications, fixed 5-yr home loans, and no car loans. My brother-in-law sells commercial real estate and every loan he has setup this year has been denied. My wife works for a car dealer who is losing his lines of credit after years of pristine credit. Our home value lost $50,000 and our property taxes went up $500. How the middle class is going to survive this mess is anyone
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POPSReforming health care is fiscally conservative
More: Real conservatives should point out that the current proposals are not tough enough on costs - and criticize Obama for that, not for fantasies like a communist takeover or euthanasia program for special needs kids. The Romney-Obama model will require fiscal boundaries to healthcare provision and this will mean a trade-off that will be hard to postpone much longer. We'll get less innovation, and probably some rationing at some point. But that is already happening - the rationing is done by insurance companies. One final thing: most Americans do not want people dying in the streets. If you have guaranteed emergency room care for the uninsured at public expense, you have already effectively socialized medicine. It makes no sense not to bring these people into the insurance system, and to offer less expensive, long-term preventive healthcare. To insist that ideology stand in the way of this piece of compassionate common sense is irresponsible.
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POPS“Russ Carnahan voted to … close us and other … small business”
David McArthur, vice president of the 52-year-old family operation, a Gateway City institution, is one of a growing number of business owners and taxpayers nationwide who are mobilizing against the so-called cap-and-trade bill . . . "We make (our product) with electricity, we bake it with gas, we refrigerate and freeze it with electricity and we distribute it with gas and oil," said McArthur, who said he worries that high prices could cost his company up to $15,000 a year in an industry with a very tight margin for profit. The legislation requires that the country reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020. Big energy plants and producers would have a cap on emissions like carbon dioxide, but could purchase "credits" from other companies that have met their reduction goals. The Obama administration says it will pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. "Russ Carnahan voted to ... close us and other ... small business."
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POPSCommunities print their own currency to keep cash flowing Its an attempt to keep money within the local community, which works to help the merchants and the local citizenry. About a dozen communities have local currencies. The idea came about during the depression and is generally favored by local government. The one caveat is that the currency cannot claim to be or be perceived to be U.S. currency. U.S. Treasury agents feel that von Nothaus and others crossed this line when they stamped coins (Liberty Dollar) instead of paper ‘money’. The U.S. Department of Justice has charged the men with fraud and conspiracy. In a bill of indictment filed when they were arrested, the word "counterfeit" never appears. Authorities say the coins too closely resemble actually US currency by using the dollar sign, burning torch and crowned head. Also troublesome is the inclusion on some coins of the words "Trust in God".
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POPSBring the Guard home National Guard are for domestic protection, not for imperial wars. Use of National Guard in the occupation of foreign country is one more point of charge. And change.
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POPSAmerica recruits Immigrants
plowed and planted for the first time, yielded bumper crops. Promoters made the most of it ... most of these efforts came to nothing. Factory workers weren't farmers, and even those who might try it could rarely afford it. Land itself was cheap, but getting to it, getting started, and surviving for the five years required to get title to a homestead cost money that most of them didn't have. "Prospects seemed better overseas. The Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society recruited Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe to establish farming communes in Oregon, Colorado, Kansas, and the Dakotas. The First Swedish Agricultural and Galesburg Colonization Companies started the towns of Salemsborg and Lindsborg in Kansas. Small groups of Dutch, French, Bohemian, English, and Irish families scattered across the Plains. Two hundred Scottish families settled together on the Kansas-Nebraska border. By 1875, more than half of Nebraska's 123,000 settlers were members of families headed by
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POPS ACORN's Radical Anti-Capitalism Agenda ......millions of low-income residents of cities pay excessively high prices for consumer goods in part because of a lack of competition. The report noted that in Chicago "higher priced, small grocery stores" are concentrated in the city's poorer neighborhoods—exactly the kind of place where big-box stores now want to open. Far from rejecting these stores, inner-city residents have embraced them. Thousands of local residents showed up to apply for jobs when Wal-Mart announced it was opening a new store in an abandoned former Macy's outlet in the Baldwin Hills section of Los Angeles. After the store opened in 2003, sales soared at the mall were the Wal-Mart was located and other national retailers moved into the predominantly black neighborhood, vastly improving the range of products offered to residents.
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POPSC'mon McCain - Do You Really Think They'll Share the Wealth McCain's plans for spurring economic growth are wishful thinking. Sure, lowering taxes on businesses will leave them with more money. But do you really think businesses are going to share that extra money by paying their people more? C'mon now, if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. It'll be the same way it is now - the leaders/CxOs of companies will just continue to take in more and more while wage growth for workers stays where it is.
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POPSBush Calls Out the Dems Next was ANWR, which can be exploited with "virtually no impact on the land or local wildlife." Finally, refining capacity: It has been 30 years since a new refinery was built in our Nation, and lawsuits and red tape have made it extremely costly to expand or modify existing refineries. The result is that America now imports millions of barrels of fully refined gasoline from abroad. This imposes needless costs on American families and drivers. It deprives American workers of good jobs. Finally, Bush laid the problem once again at the Dems' door: I know Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past. Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act. Excellent stuff. We need to do this every single day.
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POPSCity road networks grow like biological systems "Beyond the economic, demographic and geographic "forces" that shape a town, there are a myriad of small "accidents" that contribute",says Marc Barthélemy of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Bruyères-le-Châtel."Although these are unpredictable, they can be understood in terms of statistics and simple modelling." The researchers will now study how road networks developed over time in old cities, such as London and Paris. They hope to unearth other possible universal features that might be present to refine their model.
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POPSWal-mart spying on employees The quote that jumped out at me: "We operate for the benefit of our shareholders to make sure this company is being appropriately and ethically run ." I'm not sure following people to the far corners of the globe to spy on their personal dealings is what I'd call ethical - that amongst other grievances like union busting , lowering basic standard of living , inequality in the work place , and destroying local economies & small businesses .
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