WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve has declared economic growth “solid.” But several new reports show most Americans are treading along a dangerous financial tightrope, where one slip could be devastating.

Nearly half of U.S. households – 47 percent – say they spend all of their income, go into debt or dip into savings to meet their annual expenses, according to an analysis of Fed survey data released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

“They could not withstand a serious financial emergency,” said Diana Elliott, a Pew research manager who co-wrote the analysis. “That really is the contrast to the macroeconomic story” of a recovering economy.

“Macro indicators tell us a lot, but they don’t tell us what is specifically happening within families,” she said.

If a typical middle-class household had to weather a period of joblessness without any income, they would exhaust their available savings within 21 days, the analysis found. If that same family also cashed in all their retirement investments to get by, they would burn through those assets within four months.

Nor is there much flexibility in family budgets. Americans are dev****g more of their income to housing, health care and personal insurance and pensions since 1984. After adjusting for inflation, their average annual expenses have risen 6 percent to $51,105 during that period. Their earnings have largely been flat for three decades – increasing only when factoring in government “t***sfers” such as tax cuts and Social Security checks.

The household numbers contrast sharply with broader economic indicators that tell a more upbeat story. According to those figures, the U.S. economy has roared back to life in recent months after muddling its way out of the Great Recession over the past seven years.

The unemployment rate has plunged to 5.6 percent from 6.7 percent over the past year. Gross domestic product surged at an annual pace of 4.8 percent in second and third quarters of 2014, with growth projected to be above 3 percent in the fourth quarter in a government report being released Friday.

Fed officials ended their January meeting on Wednesday by pronouncing the job gains as “strong” and growth as “solid,” an unmistakable v**e of confidence based on the broader data that has yet to fully t***slate for many families. Yet that same Fed statement indicated that the central bank would be patient in raising historically low interest rates that are designed to stimulate growth, a nod to the dire situation confronting many families.

A separate economic scorecard released Thursday reported that 55.6 percent of U.S. consumers have subprime or near-prime credit scores, meaning they must pay a premium to borrow if they qualify at all for traditional loans and credit cards. Roughly 20 percent of households must routinely depend on “fringe financial services” such as payday lenders, according to the report by the nonprofit Corporation for Enterprise Development. The scorecard evaluated economic opportunity in every state based on 67 different measures drawn from government and industry data.

“There is something to be said about thinking who the economy is improving for,” said Kasey Wiedrich, director of applied research at the nonprofit.

Based on updated tax data released this week, the evidence is that the economy has improved for the 1 percent.

Including capital gains, they earned nearly 19 percent of all income in 2013, according to Emmanuel Saez, an economist at University of California at Berkeley. To be in the top 1 percent, a family had to earn at least $391,960. That’s more than seven times the annual median household income of $54,417, according to Sentier Research.

http://sbnation.com/?utm_source=msnbanner/

Gordon is another in a long line of fools who has used union intrusive rules to make a name for himself as a project not worth building upon, and being protected from consequences by a set of rules that are so i***tic as to make one's skin crawl!

I grew up in the inner city; my parents (both) worked hard for everything that they had, and could give to their children. My dad was not well educated, but he know that working for money would help his family, so that is what he did.

NO excuses for being sick or for coming from a poor background; he hit the pavement and at times worked three jobs!

Gordon tell sin his open letter, tht he has succeeded from gang life, and he should be applauded for his seeming tenacity to survive. Big deal! I survived combat -conditions during r**ts, and gang-wars and actual organized combat! left some of myself in a foreign land in doing so. No drugs in my past; no alcoholism, no abuse of spouse. I should have a freaking parade thrown in my honor, if I should take Gordon's' slant on this issue.

Here it is Gordon: we do not have to care that you overcame long odds, because this places you upon a list that more than 99% of the people who watch you play, can attest to have been standing in, long before you were even born!

Take the gift of an opportunity to enhance your life with NFL money and piss it away; oh well, next in line please!

The NFL and its fans will get along fine without you; and at this rate, you're going to find this out, sooner rather than later.

TED CRUZ: ABOLISH THE IRS!

(Investor’s Business Daily) - Tax Reform: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a possible Republican p**********l candidate in 2016, might have hit on the most important fiscal issue facing the U.S.: the need for major tax reform. But he takes it a step further.

Speaking Monday, the senator from Texas threw another thunderbolt: Republicans should use their control of Congress to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service.

“We need to pass fundamental tax reform making our tax code simpler, flatter, fairer,” he told a crowd at a Heritage Foundation event. “And I’ll tell you, the single most important tax reform, we should abolish the IRS.”

It’s not as radical as it sounds.

In recent years, the IRS has become overtly political, or “weaponized,” as Cruz puts it. The IRS scandal, in which it “slow-walked” applications by Tea Party and other conservative groups to deny them non-tax status during the 2012 p**********l race, is but one example.

Its 110,000-person workforce has become a silent army working on behalf of progressive causes.

That, in itself, is bad enough. But as the Americans for Tax Reform point out in a recent blog post on their website, unless his agency gets more money, “IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has threatened delayed refunds, long call-wait times, the specter of identity theft, and now, no-show days for IRS employees.”

In short, it’s a dysfunctional agency that’s lost its way.

The easiest way to get rid of the IRS, as Cruz suggests, is fundamental tax reform. But there are many other great reasons for reforming the code.

For one, the U.S. tax code has become so unfair, so complex, so burdensome and so costly that we have nothing to lose by changing it radically.

In a report to Congress in 2013, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson told Congress that America’s tax code now runs to well over 70,000 pages, with more than 30 million words — about 38 times larger than the King James Bible.

Individual taxpayers and businesses spend 6.1 billion hours each year filling out their taxes and complying with its laws — the equivalent of three million full-time employees working for a year.

Since 2001, there have been nearly 5,000 changes in the tax code — about one a day. No individual can keep up with it all. And all that complexity isn’t free: It costs us $170 billion annually to fill out our taxes. Enough.

We’ve said before: we support a flatter, fairer tax, with lower taxes for all, paid for by spending cuts — not new taxes like the recent “bipartisan” gasoline tax hike.

Even basic tax reform, say economists, would be a winner. Just this week, a new study by the National Association of Manufacturers estimated that if tax reform were passed, over 10 years “the economy would grow by more than $12 trillion relative to Congressional Budget Office projections, investment would increase by more than $3.3 trillion and the economy would add 6.5 million jobs.” Other studies find similarly large gains.

Today, our tax code resembles more a Rube Goldberg device than an efficient system for raising money to fund the necessary operations of our government. By all means, we should reform it. And while we’re at it, as Cruz suggests, why not get rid of the IRS?


http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/011515-734954-ted-cruz-says-tax-reform-should-begin-by-getting-rid-of-irs.htm#ixzz3OzQrJgD7

A good article! It is tragic that this great nation has been sullied by so many goons, thugs, c*******ts, opportunists, criminals - a goodly part of them members of our government and members of the MSM, ALL OF WHOM CONSIDER THEMSELVES "THE ELITE". I have another word for them, but would rather not print it. To be gentle, I will simply refer to them as SCUM in high places spreading malignancies far and wide.

All of this occurred under the radar to a large degree while honest and good Americans went about working, earning a living, caring for their loved ones. Good Americans are not known for their deep interest in covert operations, but that is what has been going on for decades. America's enemies have been clandestinely and methodically feeding poison to our great institutions and our worthwhile practices. And where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright shouts, "GOD DAMN AMERICA!", I am, at this moment shouting, "GOD DAMN ALL WHO REFUSE TO SEE, ALL WHO WALLOW IN PC, AND ALL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO OUR DOWNFALL."

Am I on a rant? ABSOLUTELY, I AM. I HAVE EARNED A GOOD RANT! WHY AREN'T ALL GOOD AMERICANS RANTING !?!?!?! C'mon people, we are being herded and we are being herded by people not fit to mow our lawns or clean our toilets. Personally I think it is way past time to let go a little steam for the royal raping that our "elites" have been giving us and that we have been politely enduring. This crap MUST STOP.

TOTAL CONSERVATIVE

December 20, 2014


Writer Stretches “R****m” to Its Breaking Point

Only a couple of days after Michelle Obama told People magazine that she had encountered “r****m” at Target when asked by an innocent bystander to take something off the shelves, Salon’s Brittney Cooper has stretched the definition of r****m to its absolute breaking point.

Recounting her “nightmarish” journey into New York on public t***sit, Cooper relays the harrowing story of how she became the victim of white entitlement. Sitting on the train, ears plugged with headphones, with her carry-on bag taking up the seat next to her, Cooper was astonished when she “suddenly saw a white hand shoving my work carry-on toward me.” Instantly enraged when she saw that the white hand belonged to a white man, Cooper directed him: “Never put your hands on my property.”

With a response that I can only describe as greatly restrained, the white man in question told her, “Well, you should listen when I talk to you.” That wasn’t acceptably contrite for Cooper, of course, and she chalks up the man’s actions as those of a r****t. More than that, she determined that it “encapsulates the breadth of the battle against r****m we have to fight in this country.”

Indeed.

Cooper anticipates the argument that she is overreacting to “one jerk on the train,” though she doesn’t seem to make room for the possibility that she is that jerk. In defending her position, she reminds us that “the civil rights movement was catalyzed by a squabble over a seat on a bus.” Yeah…she went there. And though she quickly dispels the notion that she’s a modern-day Rosa Parks, that’s not the kind of comparison you can make and then backtrack from. I’ve no doubt in my mind that she sees her 2014 Train Incident as part of the same struggle.

In closing up her rambling discourse, Cooper says that she kinda/sorta misses the old days when white people were more forthcoming in their r****m. Today, she thinks, she has to spend most of her time convincing white people “that things are r****t to begin with.”

I’ll bet she does. In that struggle, she joins the far-left feminists (a club to which she likely already claims membership) in redefining the world’s words and actions so that every minority is in a state of constant oppression. No one is lynching black people in 2014, there are no segregated water fountains, and a black man is in the White House. Therefore, this social justice movement that has gained so much traction on websites like Salon has to find new kinds of r****m to decry.

Don’t like Obama? R****t.

Painted your face black for a “blackout” football game? R****t.

Used the word “thug?” R****t.

Didn’t feel like being polite about it when a self-obsessed, arrogant woman with Beats headphones wrapped around her head took up two seats on a packed train? Why, of course that’s r****t!

Whenever one of these social justice warriors is confronted with how much better America is for minorities today, they always have the same response: we’ve still got a long way to go. But, maybe we don’t. Maybe things are about as good as they’re going to get. Maybe once we’re down to incidents like the one Cooper got so worked up about, the movement has run out of gas. Because no matter how many articles you write or how many words you make off-limits, you can’t magically make r****m disappear. The country – nay, the world – will never be perfect. And judging by the kinds of things these SJWs say, their idea of a perfect world would probably be a real d**g.



Obamas Highlight America’s R****m Once Again


In the midst of some of the worst racial divisions the country has seen in years, the president and first lady decided it was a good time to tell People Magazine (America’s leading source for investigative journalism) about their own experiences with racial injustice. While observers might be justified in wondering how authentic these experiences are, coming as they do from one of the most powerful men on the planet, those concerns are surely put to rest by the depth and seriousness of the incidents.

Or not. Michelle insists that the protection they’ve experienced while in the White House was preceded by a period where “Barack Obama was a black man who had his share of troubles catching cabs.” She then launched into a “did that really happen?” story about her publicized trip to Target as first lady. Despite being surrounded by Secret Service and photographers, Michelle says “the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her.”

The implicit r****m in such an event – if it happened at all – is hard to find. Anyone clueless enough to A) not recognize Michelle Obama and B) be blind to the entourage surrounding her is not playing with a full deck. Either that or she was messing with the first lady deliberately, which would be hilarious.

Even allowing for the ultra-slim possibility that the incident played out like Michelle insists, how does that invoke r****m? In her trip to Target, Michelle was dressed down but she wasn’t wearing a red shirt and a pair of khakis. It’s doubtful that the woman mistook her for an employee. So therefore, we’re left to assume that the first lady ascribes r****m to anyone who asks her for assistance. If that’s the new definition of r****m in 2014, then it’s no wonder the liberals are always up in arms about it. It literally is everywhere.

For his part, Barack said in the interview: “There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys.” He clarified that it had happened to him as well.

Time to pull out the good ol’ r****m scale again. Let’s see. On one end of the scale we’ll put “Twice elected president of the United States.” On the other end of the scale we’ll put “Once mistaken for valet.” Hmm, interesting. Interesting. (Scribbles note on science-pad.)

Real r****m, when heard or seen, should always be condemned. But when liberals looking to demonize white America insist that things today are only marginally better than they were in the early 1960s, they succeed only in sinking their own ship. The Obamas have every right to gossip about their “microaggressions” to the tabloids, but the t***h is that things will never be perfect. Many white people have been mistaken for Target employees and car valets as well. Many more than have been, let’s say, elected to the highest office in the land.

It seems that one of the most h**ed federal programs, at our house, the EITC will be extended to many more i*****l a***ns with the latest of Obama's last so-called, EOs. I seriously do wonder how many new i******s will begin taking advantage of EITC and how much they will take in from the program.

In fact, the president obscured what is happening by telling the covered i*****l i*******ts that if “you’re willing to pay your fair share of taxes, you’ll be able to stay … ” In fact, for many of those affected, “willing to pay your fair share of taxes” actually means “willing to accept an assistance check from the government.”

If past practice is any guide, the Obama administration will likely start an aggressive, multilingual campaign to encourage i*****l i*******ts affected by the president’s action to apply for as many benefits as possible. And if not all of them are actually eligible to receive the taxpayers’ money? Well, no one will be checking that too closely.

Anyone who doesn't understand EITC and how it works please ask me and I will be glad to explain. Maybe the IRS could do it better, though.


http://humanevents.com/2014/12/17/obama-opens-fraud-ridden-benefits-program-to-illegal-immigrants-2/?utm_source=hedaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

That is one of the best posters to come out of this event. Those people didn't want anything to do with the kid until he was dead and then they were able to use his death to make money. Why did that woman turn on her mother like that?

I can explain why those r****t bastards mentioned in that one section of the message don't want to "fix" the problems in the black sections of our cities. They need things like this one to keep people at each other's throats and are very happy to have things like this to use.

The Ferguson, Missouri, r****rs put on one heck of a show for all the world to see on Monday night, didn’t they? That was not your traditional American Thanksgiving display. But what do I know? I’m just a middle-class white guy. I was raised to respect property, respect police, never say “F– the police,” never desecrate the American f**g, never burn down stores in my own neighborhood, love my country, believe in the American dream, study hard, get straight A’s, work hard and good things will happen. And funny enough, my life has worked out pretty well.

Maybe there’s a lesson there for the Ferguson protesters.

I’ve watched the proceedings in Ferguson from August until the verdict was read on Monday night. I watched on Monday night as the Ferguson crowd r**ted, set police cars on fire, set buildings on fire, fired shots at police, threw bottles and stones at police, and attacked small businesses.

And to me, the lessons of Ferguson are crystal clear.

First, if the verdict had gone the other way (against the police officer) and angered law-and-order conservatives like me, conservatives wouldn’t have r**ted, or thrown bottles, or burned our neighborhoods down. We don’t do things like that. We have too much respect for law and order and property rights.

We also own homes and businesses, so we have too much to lose. Maybe the people protesting and r**ting should learn a lesson here. Liberals and media elites will say “people r**t and l**t because they have nothing.” I believe the opposite is true; people have nothing because they r**t and l**t. It’s their attitude that causes them to have nothing in life.

Secondly, it’s not smart to burn down your own community. The rest of the world stops feeling sorry for you and just wants to avoid you. The stores you’re burning or l**ting are often owned by b****s, or other minority small-business owners. They will be forced to leave and never come back. The rest of the world won’t dare replace them. Who’d want to invest in a neighborhood where people burn, destroy or rob their own community businesses?

Third, I was taught by my father that when a cop stops you or asks you a question, you hand over your ID and say “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” Respond politely, with respect. That could be why no policeman has ever hurt me, shot me or k**led me — or anyone I’ve ever known. If you choose to curse, or shove, or punch, or struggle with a man with a badge and gun, there is a strong likelihood you’re going to wind up injured or dead. So instead of complaining about r****m, or protesting, or r**ting, how about saying “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” Then you won’t have anything to protest or r**t about.

Fourth, open your eyes and mind to the t***h, not to liberal media propaganda. Millions of people are surprised, saddened and shocked by the Ferguson grand jury’s verdict. Really? Why? My educated guess about the case was published here at Personal Liberty in August (“I Stand with Police Officer Wilson”). My gut instincts about what happened that day — only days after the incident — have proven to be 100 percent accurate.

From simply taking the time to look at the facts in multiple media, I figured out what happened. Evidence that anyone could find in the media left me convinced the officer had probable cause to stop Michael Brown. He probably knew (or quickly figured out) that Brown was the suspect in the strong-armed robbery of a convenience store nearby and he struggled in the car with Brown, where a gun went off. Brown ran from the officer, then decided to turn around and charge the officer, who clearly felt his life was in danger and responded in self-defense. Those were my educated guesses from the first days after the shooting.

The prosecutor (and grand jury verdict) just declared all of my original gut instincts to be fact. How did I know all of that — back in August? I educated myself. I read. I listened. I watched. I wasn’t biased. It was all right there for anyone to see — back then. I predicted the police officer would never be indicted — back then. This is not brain surgery. You only have to have common sense, think for yourself and ignore rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the Black Panthers, trying to stir up trouble and profit from crisis and racial strife.

The t***h isn’t black or white. It isn’t conservative or liberal. It’s based on evidence and fact. It was clear to me the police officer was justified from the first days after the shooting.

Then there’s lesson No. 5; I call it “the Obama lesson.” That split TV screen of Obama pleading for calm and praising Attorney General Eric Holder for the work he did to promote peace and calm next to the other screen of r**ting, l**ting, burning and shooting is the perfect image for the entire Obama presidency. The iconic image of Obama is a perfect mixture of incompetence, cluelessness and lawlessness. Some might call it “the money shot.”

It was as if Obama was saying, “If you like your city, you can keep your city.” That promise would’ve held as much t***h as, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance.”

But the final lesson is perhaps the most important. The Ferguson verdict is nothing but a weapon of mass distraction. It pales in comparison to really important developments like Obama’s violating the Constitution and breaking the rule of law by ignoring Congress, checks and balances, and the will of the people to issue amnesty for millions of i*****l i*******ts, i.e., criminals; the words of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber indicating deception, misrepresentation and fraud were used to sell Obamacare; and plans for 3,415 new federal regulations being publicly announced on Thanksgiving eve when no one is paying attention.

Brown’s death is a tragedy for the Brown family. But it has very little effect on the daily lives of the rest of us. On the other hand, 3,415 new federal regulations will badly damage business, k**l jobs and dramatically raise consumers’ costs and energy bills, thereby driving the economy off a cliff. That’s the real tragedy. That’s the real definition of “deadly.”

So my big takeaway from Ferguson is: Use common sense and keep your eyes on the things that really matter in your life like your job, or your health insurance, or the U.S. Constitution, which has given us the greatest nation in world history. Watch what the president does to you — and to that Constitution.

Oh, and one more thing: Don’t charge at an armed policeman. But, hey, I guess I’m just a middle-class white guy. What do I know?