Keystone XL Pipeline Might Get Approved to Save Mary Landrieu's Job

I guess that is a good a reason as any to generate some jobs and get things moving again.

Long-stalled legislation to build the Keystone XL pipeline got new life on Wednesday after Senate Democrats suddenly abandoned efforts to block the measure in hopes of helping endangered Sen. Mary Landrieu keep her seat in energy-rich Louisiana.

Republicans responded swiftly to Landrieu's maneuvering, scheduling a vote in the House on Thursday on an identical bill sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy, Landrieu's Republican rival in a Dec. 6 runoff.

I guess it will hit Obama's desk soon and we will see if he chooses environmentalists over his own party or not. My money is on an under bus treatment given to the green lobby. I mean they didn't help the Dems hold the Senate so they aren't worth it anymore. Jobs (especially Senator Landrieu's) trump ideology in big party politics.

It Seems Piketty Got it Wrong: They Forgot to Include Government Freebies in their Calculations

Hmm it seems that the wealth gap between the rich and the poor hasn't yawned as far as these academics think.

If that dark picture doesn’t sound like the country you lived in, that’s because it isn’t. The Piketty-Saez study looked only at pretax cash market income. It did not take into account taxes. It left out noncash compensation such as employer-provided health insurance and pension contributions. It left out Social Security payments, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, and more than 100 other means-tested government programs. Realized capital gains were included, but not the first $500,000 from the sale of one’s home, which is tax-exempt. IRAs and 401(k)s were counted only when the money is taken out in retirement. Finally, the Piketty-Saez data are based on individual tax returns, which ignore, for any given household, the presence of multiple earners.

And now, thanks to a new study in the Southern Economic Journal, we know what the picture looks like when the missing data are filled in. Economists Philip Armour and Richard V. Burkhauser of Cornell University and Jeff Larrimore of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation expanded the Piketty-Saez income measure using census data to account for all public and private in-kind benefits, taxes, Social Security payments and household size.

The result is dramatic. The bottom quintile of Americans experienced a 31% increase in income from 1979 to 2007 instead of a 33% decline that is found using a Piketty-Saez market-income measure alone. The income of the second quintile, often referred to as the working class, rose by 32%, not 0.7%. The income of the middle quintile, America’s middle class, increased by 37%, not 2.2%.

What is interesting is that the things the left out are the cornerstones of middle class living. Leaving out taxes which many Americans get back in the form of a sizable check every April 15th is an big miss in their calculations. Also the sale of a house is usually a massive transfer of wealth for many Americans who didn't turn their houses into a piggy bank. Some prudent families bought a house at reasonable rates 20 years ago and end up selling them for 10x or more gain. They kept building their home equity year after year and paid their mortgages off and suddenly they are sitting on $500K tax free. As housing recovers this kind of thing might happen again 20 years from now.

Ben Carson Might Run for President? Fox News Dumps him from Their Lineup in Anticipation

Hmm, it looks like the good doctor is going to make a run at the White House.

The scrutiny was probably inevitable after Fox dropped Carson as a contributor on Friday. The trigger there was the Baltimore physician’s plan to run an hourlong infomercial on local stations as a prelude to a possible presidential run.

I addressed the development on Sunday’s “Media Buzz”: “This was a smart move by Fox. Because a guy who is more or less running for president shouldn't be on a network payroll. Which means Fox also faces a decision about former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who is openly weighing a White House run as well.”

Yeah Huckabee will get his ass whooped by Carson if they both chose to run. I mean Carson is a neuro-surgeon and can diagnose Putin as a madman and maybe provide a prescription to take care of that sort of thing. Also an actual doctor might have quite a bit of gravitas when it comes to Health Care spending and medicare reimbursements and other topics. It would be nice to have a super-smart President as well. I was told Obama was smart but the jury is still out.

Paper Suggests Conservatives don't Like Climate Science because it Suggests Policies They Don't Like: Um Yeah Pretty Much

I think many Conservatives would be okay with some of what Climate Science has to say about Global Warming if it didn't include anti-growth measures in it.

So-called "solution aversion" colors conservatives' thinking about the science itself, the research found.
The researchers say they tested the theory using four different experiments.
In one experiment, two different groups of subjects across the political spectrum were given articles to read, one which talked about a government regulatory policy solution to climate change while another discussed a free market solution.

While Democrats in both groups viewed the science of climate change equally regardless of which article they read, the percentage of Republicans who believed the climate change was caused by humans was much lower among those who read about the regulatory solution. It isn't the science that is flawed (for the most part) but what the science will lead to.

I think the Conservatives viewed climate science remedies as yet another way for the government to control your life. I mean an anti-climate change measure can pretty much be used for any sort of draconian control you can think of. I mean the UN wants to extort billions from rich countries to give to poor countries to "combat climate change." I'm sure the poor countries will use that money wisely and every dollar will be accounted for by independent auditors. Yeah right.

Idiot Ted Cruz Calls Net Neutrality Obamacare for the Internet

I guess we might get some bad legislation from the know-nothing wing of the GOP.

This is an insanely cynical tactic that should worry all citizens regardless of political stripe, and it's coming from the guys at the top; Ted Cruz (R-TX) is a powerful member of the GOP in the Senate and a potential presidential candidate for 2016. Republicans just took over Congress and hold the keys to policymaking for at least the next two years. If the best they can continue to come up with is repeating "Obama is bad!" the internet is in serious trouble.

The only people that want to kill Net Neutrality are the ISPs who cannot wait to charge people depending on what they use the Internet for. So in other words if you are a gamer you will get a Gamer Fee for accessing "gamer packets" tacked onto your bill. Or if you watched lots of Netflix you will get a "Netflix streaming fee" added to your bill. That is strait-up anti-competitive and screws consumers so ISPs can make billions of extra money in fees.

What is especially galling is what idiots like Ted Cruz that want to kill Net Neutrality say they don't want to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. They attacked the since-failed Solyndra (and rightly so) as being hand-picked by the White House as a poster-child for a green company. They also attacked the Export Import bank about being the bank of Boeing.

Now they are pulling for the ISPs to be able to kidnap the Internet and hold it for ransom by charging you for what you want to do with it. That should be against the GOPs own view about the government picking and choosing winners in the economy. It will also potentially mess up businesses that use data in the Internet as well. I mean what is there to stop Comcast from charging companies "cloud access fees" or "big data processing fees?" That means everyone will have to pay more to make up for ISP greed.

#BanBlackFriday Or Why I Will Never Buy Anything on That Date Again

I was talking to my coworkers at lunch time about Sears opening at 6PM on Thanksgiving because Eddie Lampert is crazy and the company is nearly bankrupt. This got me thinking why should we play ball with these retailers that force their people to come in on a holiday and be away from their family? I think it isn't fair that they have to come in and miss Thanksgiving dinner.

Then we couple this with the fact that Jdimytai Damour a Wal-mart clerk died during a Black Friday stampede in 2008 and we have the recipe to avoid this terrible day. So I will not buy a single thing at a department store on Black Friday no matter how good the sales are. A cheap flat-screen TV is not worth a mans life or be the reason behind forcing some clerk to have to come in and miss Thanksgiving dinner.

Sears has broke this camels back and I hope other people will not buy from a department store on that day as well. I mean if you really want to buy something wait until cyber-Monday and let Amazon get your business. No one will have to get trampled and hopefully they will let their employees have Thanksgiving off so they can have dinner with their families.

Why the Dems Didn't Appeal to the Middle Class: The Middle Class Does not Make Minimum Wage

I was reading this postmortem on the midterms and this part jumped out at me.

Some Democrats felt that the party didn’t offer enough obvious relief to middle class voters worried about their job and stagnant wages, a broad group Obama targeted relentlessly in his 2012 campaign.

“I’m a strong believer in raising the minimum wage and it needs to happen,” Democratic strategist Greg Greene told msnbc. “That said it’s not something people necessarily identify with when they see themselves as middle class. That in itself was not enough.”

This is the exact reason why some people in the middle class don't line up for the Dems. If you are middle class you do not want to be making the minimum wage at any time after you got out of high school or college. If you are making the minimum wage chances are you cannot be called "middle class." So when the Dems want to raise it then the middle class shrugs their shoulders because that rhetoric does not effect them.

Also attacking the rich does not resonate with middle class voters as much as the Dems think. I mean most middle class people would love to be upper middle class or rich and aspire to that goal. You won't be a billionaire but you will be comfortable in your old age. Many billionaires got there because of hard work and a knowledge set that many in the middle class cannot follow. Not everyone can be Steve Jobs and not many would want to.

So when the Dems go after the rich and give freebies to the poor they attack what the middle class aspire to while giving something to the class they no longer want to be. So raising the minimum wage would help some other guy and an 80% tax on the wealthy might just hurt the middle class in the long run.

Senate Democrats' Campaign Committee gives up Landrieu for Dead

Well it seems that the some of the big money men are jumping off one of the last Democratic Senate ships still afloat.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee initially had reserved $1.8 million in television advertising for after Tuesday's first round of voting. On Thursday, the DSCC dumped the bookings in the state's big cities.

I like this idea by Cassidy who is running against her.

Cassidy, meanwhile, attended an anti-abortion event slamming Landrieu for her support of abortion rights. He agreed to participate in one of the six debates Landrieu had proposed — on Dec. 1 — but threw in a twist: Cassidy said he'd agree to another debate date for every time Landrieu campaigns in Louisiana with the unpopular President Barack Obama.

I'm sure Obama is gassing up Air Force 1 and heading down there at once but the Landrieu people will tell them that the runways are totally full. She should toss caution to the wind though and have Obama hang around down on the bayou for the hell of it.

GOP Gets Smart and Rejects Tea Party Maneuvering on Debt Ceiling

The GOP is finally getting smart when it comes to the Tea Party.

Just days after their historic midterm victories, the Republican congressional leadership is sending out signals to the caucus that infighting and gridlock will not be tolerated.

According to Politico, incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has suggested he will not go along with conservative calls to use the debt ceiling as leverage for spending cuts, an insistence by tea party members which triggered the government shutdown last year. 

It seems that they will be picking the low hanging fruit with Obama as well.

And in his victory speech Tuesday night, he made it clear he would also be extending the olive branch to President Barack Obama, saying the GOP has a "duty" to work with the White House on issues they agree on.
"I'm pretty familiar with our conference including the new members who are coming in," McConnell said, according to Politico. "The vast majority of them don't feel they were sent to Washington to fight all the time."
House Speaker John Boehner is telling colleagues he plans to be a "responsible leader," and that the party needs to be unified to take advantage of its political dominance, Politico reported.

So do the Asian trade deal, ISIS war-powers authorization, create a way for companies to pull money from overseas at a lower tax rate. Then they should send a Keystone XL pipeline bill through and have Obama veto it if he has to. After that stuff is done then work on some sort of immigration reform before Obama just executive orders amnesty. If Obama vetoes the legislation then does his own thing he looks even more like an out-of-touch dictator then he already does.

It Seems that Midterms are Good for the Market: Stocks are Positive 86% of the Time Since 1928

That would be nice and cheerful if we go up 16% from here.

Since 1950, the S&P 500 jumped 16%, on average, in the six months following midterms. The market was green following all 16 of them, points out Bob Doll, chief equity strategist at Nuveen Asset Management. 

Since 1928, the market advanced 7%, on average, and it’s been positive 86% of the time in the three months following midterms, notes Barclays Capital strategist Jonathan Glionna.

Why is this? Markets hate uncertainty, and elections remove uncertainty, says Doll. It doesn’t matter which party wins. 

I already think a nice Santa Clause rally is baked into this market unless Ebola gets very bad or we have an escalation (or a big-time terrorist attack) in the war with ISIS. You add low gas prices to this equation and it is like nearly every American gets a raise of a few percent going into the holidays. Hopefully, they will spend this money and feel a little richer and more confidant because of it.

What would be interesting is if the GOP lets Obama win a few like a free-trade agreement with Asia and maybe some tax reform before they go to war over immigration reform. The GOP wants a few wins to run on in 2016 and Obama probably would like a nice roaring economy to make us forget the last 6 years of malaise. Freer trade and tax reform would go a long way to accomplishing those goals. 

It Seems Americans are Saving More and Not Getting so Deeply in Debt

I guess one good thing came out of the Great Recession. Americans are gun-shy when it comes to debt and are actually saving some of their hard earned cash.

“Household Debt” is a combination of your mortgage payments plus the required payments you have to make on “consumer” debt- including credit card accounts- each quarter.  This amount is divided by your quarterly disposable (after income tax) income to find the percent or “ratio” of debt-to-income.

Henry points out that the Household Debt Service rate is the lowest it’s been since the Fed began measuring it.

They first measured it in 1980 so debt at 30 year lows which is awesome. Americans are also socking away the money for a rainy day.

In addition to reducing our reliance on debt. Henry points to another positive factor:  we’re saving more.  “In the mid-80s the personal saving rate peaked at 10%.  And then from there on it declined to 2% as the use of credit continued to expand.”   Again, it’s no coincidence that we sank to that all-time low in saving around 2005-2007-- just before the recession hit.

Since then, according to Henry, the personal savings has been rising.  It reached 6.7% in June 2009- more than twice the rate of December 2007.  By the end of the second quarter of this year it had declined to 5.6%.  None-the-less, Henry maintains that Americans’  “balance sheets have improved even though they’re saving less than [immediately] after the recession.”

It would be great to have a generation that values thrift and swears off most debt going forward. I mean the Millennials will be very wary of debt after they have to pay off $25K in tuition for a major that sometimes never pays them back. It would be hard to see that same person rack up $25k more worth of consumer debt after they have paid off that mountain.

Hmm Does the Double-Blind Test Need to be Used for Social Sciences? Maybe Climate Science Too?

This is an interesting article about the biases in the field of social sciences and how they might be influencing the field in general.

For studies and grants, though, even that may not be enough. What is needed in those cases is a blinding of the peer-review system—both in terms of applicants’ names and personal backgrounds and the hypotheses (or findings) of their research. If you want to research Democrats and Republicans, say—or any other ideologically loaded topics—call them Purples and Oranges for the duration of the paper. The methods and research structure will be evaluated without any ideological predispositions. Blind peer review in papers and grants would also solve a number of other bias problems, including against certain people, institutions, and long-held ideas. As for ideologically sensitive papers that have already been published, blind that data as well and reanalyze the premises and conclusions, pairing them with Tetlock’s turnabout tests. Is the opposite approach nonsensical? Chances are, then, that this one is, too.

This is what the biotech field does and it allows for totally unbiased testing for the most part. You have just the data and nothing else there to cloud the issue. Maybe this needs to be done for climate science as well. That way we don't have this supposed 97% consensus that people keep touting like it is gospel. Perhaps some of those 97% can say that it is happening but it won't be too bad after all. Or maybe they don't actually agree with the rest of them but are knuckling under so they won't be called heretics by their colleagues.

It would be nice to just see some dissenting theories be put forth without fear of repercussion. Some scientists even see benefits of warming but seem to be shouted down by the IPCC. When people are afraid to speak out because they will be dubbed a denialist there is a problem with the system. I always thought that questioning the status quo was heroic in science. But climate science (and social science in this article) seems like a monolith that keeps dissent out and only lets money and prestige go toward the catastrophic warming side and nowhere else.

Rate of Returns and Not Scare-Tactics is How High Global Warming Evanglistis Need to Sell Alternative Energy like Solar

This is exactly what environmentalists need to do to sell their ideas to the investment community.

In other words, Altus quickly morphed from using its own money for demos to selling investments in its building projects to commercially minded investors. And the principals developed a sales pitch that eschews talk of rising sea levels in favor of terms like IRR (internal rate of return) and cash flow. “The question any investor asks is how much cash flow they’ll receive,” Norell says. “We have delivered annual returns of 8 to 10 percent to our investors.” (The offering documents he showed me bore that claim out.) And in a world of exceedingly low interest rates—a 10-year U.S. government bond pays interest of only about 2 percent per year—that’s quite appealing.

 They don't have to appeal to scare-tactics that global warming will make the seas 100 feet higher by 2020 or other nonsense. This company Altus, is putting solar panels on roofs and cashing in tax credits and creating a revenue stream out of the power. This revenue stream is pretty solid and recession-proof too because these building owners will be paying their power bill in good times and bad. Also they probably won't be taking these panels off of their roofs if they are cutting their electricity bill by $200,000.

The only thing that would sink Altus would be a cut on solar subsidies. They need some powerful Democratic backers and this kind of thing might appeal to the GOP as well. That party doesn't like the idea of big government going to patronage like Solyndra but public/private partnerships is what the GOP loves. They can also look so anti-environment by backing the idea of solar panels popping up all over the US and allowing investors to make money in the process.

BlackRocks Plan to Have Millennials Convert Student Loan Debt into Home Mortgages Just Might Work

I like this kind of out-of-the-box thinking by a company that would love to get the fees that this transaction would start.

"Fiscal policy initiatives targeted at young workers with high levels of student indebtedness might, perhaps surprisingly to some, have an outsize impact in supporting the housing recovery and financial markets," Rick Rieder, co-head of Americas Fixed Income at BlackRock, wrote in a recent commentary.

BlackRock estimates there are about seven million people in the U.S. that would be eligible for an FHA-approved mortgage but are burdened by student loans. The thinking is that because they are devoting a large chunk of their income to pay down student debt, they probably aren't saving for a down payment on a house. 

If just one million of them are converted to homebuyers through some form of student debt forgiveness, more than three million jobs could be created, Rieder recently told CNNMoney.

You get to convert worthless debt into productive debt and you let millennial contribute that much more to the economy once they are home owners. They get that mortgage deduction and can get off the rental treadmill and actually build some equity.

It would be kind of a GI Bill for people with lots of college loan debt. Maybe the government could also back some loans at below market rates for first time loan buyers for people that were able to pay for college so they won't get left out. In any case this would be an interesting bipartisan bill because it will reduce debt, forgive crushing student loans, might pay for itself and create jobs.

Quantum Phenomena Might be Explained by Many 'Parallel' Everyday Worlds Theory: That Explains Ghosts

I read about how physicists might be changing their idea about parallel worlds.

The bizarre behavior of the quantum world — with objects existing in two places simultaneously and light behaving as either waves or particles — could result from interactions between many 'parallel' everyday worlds, a new theory suggests.

“It is a fundamental shift from previous quantum interpretations,” says Howard Wiseman, a theoretical quantum physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who together with his colleagues describes the idea in Physical Review X.

These worlds are supposed to behave similarity to our own and touch and interact with one another but very tenuously. This gives me a good idea of what ghosts are. They are images from a different quantum world that interacts with our own. So we will see a person from that other world for a split second and they might or might not see us as well. Most of the time we only see a ghostly image for a few seconds and then nothing. Maybe "haunted houses" are just areas where that other world bleeds into ours easier for some reason of another. I wonder if physicists did experiments in these sorts of places they would get stronger results?

Another Crowd Walks out on Obama: He is a Team That is 30 Points down

It is sad that a guy that can command a crowd and was a special orator way back when is getting the "beat traffic" treatment from his adoring fans.

For the second time in as many weeks, persons have walked out during a campaign speech given by President Barack Obama. Last week, it happened as the president spoke in Maryland – and this week, it happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to a WND report on Tuesday. It was apparent that the president was still delivering his speech as people were marching out of the venue where he was campaigning for Mary Burke, the Democratic Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate who is trying to take incumbent Gov. Scott Walker’s job away from him in the midterm election next week.

He is like a team that is getting blown out in the third quarter when you see streams of fans heading for the exits. I guess you can call him the Oakland Raiders of politics. They were great way back when but due to mismanagement they are perennial losers. 

One Good Thing About Millennials: They are Adding to 401Ks like crazy

They are finally getting jobs as the economy improves and are seeing that a 401K is a great way to save for retirement.

In the first half of 2014, the number of Millennials enrolling for the first time in a 401(k) plan jumped 55%, according to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 401(k) Wellness Scorecard. This twice-yearly report examines trends among 2.5 million plan participants with $129 billion of assets under the bank’s care.

The brisk initial enrollment pace is due partly to the sheer number of Millennials entering the workforce. They account for about 25% of workers today, a figure that will shoot to 50% by 2020. But it also reflects a broader trend toward 401(k) enrollment. Across all generations, the number enrolling for the first time jumped 37%, Bank of America found.

Those opt-out 401K forms (instead of the opt-ins of yesteryear) are doing wonders for 401K plan growth. Plus there are apps you can use to manage your account and keep tabs on the amounts going in and growing. I wonder what the numbers are for Millennials re-balancing their portfolios though. Do they set-it and forget it or do they look at it quarterly? Or do they change things around whenever they see something on TV?

Now what the government needs to do is allow people to put more money in 401Ks than ever before to encourage savings. The employee match is one of the few ways a person can accrue wealth tax free left in America and Millennials need to tap that source for all its worth.

Mom and Pop Investors Back in the Market? Is it Time to Sell?

Most of the time when Individual Investors buy stock in a big way the market will drop.

This means that approximately 35% of all household financial assets are “at risk.” In fact, we’re now getting back to investment market participation levels not seen since the third quarter of 2007, during which 34% of all household assets were invested. The two previous peaks before then were Q1 2000 (43%) and 1968 (31%). Bears will note that these moments coincided nicely with the onset of the last three major bear markets, 1966 to 1982, 2000 to 2002, and 2007 to 2009.

 The individual investor is usually holding the bag when the music stops and the pros flee the field. This article points out that these investors are going in using passive Index funds and other more conservative stuff. No pets.com or Nifty 50 or other mess as far as I can tell. At least the economy is improving so there really isn't a true reason for a massive drop or recession in our future. 

Darius Foster: The Face of a New GOP?

Well I like his political philosophy already.

With the bulky frame of a former linebacker and a warm, hearty laugh, Foster fashions himself as a Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt Republican.

"The fight-for-the-people Republican. That's what they were. I'm not sure where the Democratic Party was able to hijack that narrative from us. But they did. And they have it. I'm trying to bring it back," he says.

Foster is a 33-year-old business consultant. He's been active in the GOP since he founded a lonely chapter of College Republicans at the historically black Miles College in Birmingham. He's been tapped by the Republican National Committee as a future leader.

So he actually got in the trench and started a College Republican chapter at a historically black college. He also sounds like a happy warrior which the GOP sorely needs. Plus, the idea of the GOP fighting for the average American has been long overdue. Growing the economy so that people can find meaningful jobs and eventually become prosperous is the dream of many Americans. The so called "Compassionate Conservative" should be more than just a buzzword.

His wife has some of my political philosophy as well.

Over breakfast at their neighborhood IHOP, his wife, 28-year-old Setara Foster, a lawyer, talks about growing up black in Houston where her parents were union members and loyal Democrats.

She now identifies more closely with the GOP. But she says she tends to split her ticket.

"I think that when we as a group identify with one party, for one thing, all the time, that party never has to earn our vote. Ever. And so I think that by having a diversity of political ideology within ethnic, racial, gender, age groups, we force politicians to work," she says.

I agree with the GOP on some things (mostly economic growth and taxes) and disagree with them on other things (most social issues.) I think all Americans should have a little of Mrs. Foster's idea that no party should take your vote for granted and have to keep working for it. If minorities had more of this idea then the Dems couldn't just put them in their pocket and to keep doing nothing for them.

The First Outrage of the 2014 Election Season: Wasabi Ginger Wins the New Lays Flavor! #OUTRAGE

You got to be kidding me! I enjoy wasabi (with shoyu and ginger afterward) with sushi but on chips? No way!

The entry to the brand’s annual “Do Us a Flavor” contest beat out Mango Salsa, Cheddar Bacon Mac & Cheese, and—likely much to the relief of coffee expert Oliver Strand and Yahoo Readers everywhere—Cappuccino. The unique flavors have been on sale nationwide since late July, and chip lovers have been voting on them. We got the winner of the people’s choice award on the horn to tout her flavor combo. 

I cannot believe it beat out the very tasty Cheddar Bacon Mac & Cheese. I actually enjoyed the bacon taste of the chips and hope someone makes a bacon flavored potato chip in the US soon. There seems to be one in England but that doesn't help me when I go to Safeway on a chip purchasing mission.