it's against the law to be homeless

as the american middle class disappears, jobs that pay enough to cover basic necessities are shipped overseas or split into part-time positions to avoid providing healthcare and other benefits, and mortgages continue the relentless tide of foreclosure, an increading number of people are homeless, literally living out of their cars.

and now cities are making even that illegal.

paul ryan wants to save the middle class... by killing it

paul ryan has an interesting way of talking. almost every word that comes out of his mouth is fashioned to make you believe a lie. and his latest budget proposal is no exception. for a man in the hot seat for congressional budget committee, you would think he knows how social security works - and he does - but you'd never know it from his latest statements, designed to fool you into thinking the program is broke. it's not - but he doesn't want you to get any of the money that you put in.

warren buffet - animated

warren buffet - at last count, the 3rd richest man on the planet - created an animated series to teach children how to do well in business. you can watch it free: http://www.smckids.com/.

rethinking religion

economic inequality slows growth

the imf has released a study that shows that income inequality equals slow growth, and that efforts to redistribute wealth have a neutral effect on gdp. in other words, increasing the minimum wage and capping ceo pay is actually better for growth than doing neither.

where rich americans hide their money

a senate probe has accused swiss bank creditsuisse of helping 22,000 rich americans hide more than us$12 billion to avoid paying taxes on it, going back to at least 2001, and has also accused the justice department of being lax about going after the perpetrators.

creditsuisse delivered bank statements to their wealthy customers hidden in magazines, and told them to burn the statements so that there would be no paper trail. the bank even has a special elevator at its offices for these 'special clients to use, that has no buttons and is run by remote control (cool - spy gear!).

senators levin and mccain are leading the charge to reveal the names of the u.s. customers and prosecute them, which may explain why the far right is going after both of them so rabidly (via front groups, of course).

the bank is pushing back.

how offshore tax havens hurt everyone

allowing u.s. corporations to hide their money in offshore accounts means less tax money to fund education and everything else. then they complain about the state of education and say we don't have the money to do what needs doing, so programs have to be cut. this is ridiculous. write to your members of congress and tell them to draft legislation that makes hiding profits made from the u.s. taxable in the u.s.!

how the 1% became the 1%

one of the interesting things about the sudden dramatic shift in wage disparity that no one seems to talk about are the causative factors. certainly, declining quality of education plays a major role - anyone who thinks that the u.s. can continue to call itself a superpower when half the world has a better educated population is delusional - but the real reason flies in the face of the american traditional idea of where wealth comes from: hard work and a better idea.

beginning in the mid-70's and continuing to this day, the majority of created wealth has flowed from changes in how money works. that is, a ceo didn't used to have a salary that was literally hundreds of times higher than a company's average worker, or have his compensation package written and approved by other ceo's (i.e., the company's board members).

another major change was how companies made money and kept more of what they made. it used to be about creating products and services that were better than your competitors', making revenue simply by selling more. now, it's much more about cutting the workforce and making sure that the wages of the workers who remain don't rise, so that - as the company makes more money - it keeps a larger and larger percentage of that money.

the world of finance bets on the house even more. financial institutions involved in payday loans claim an average 400% interest rate - high enough to put a mobster in jail for life - and create bets against their own clients, create fictional value and lie about it, lose our savings and then borrow money from us at zero percent interest to pay it back. then pay any fines that result with that same interest-free cash.

and no one goes to jail.

this is what happens when an economic system allows companies and special interests to contribute anonymously and without oversight to the political process, and allows a revolving door between those companies and members of congress. until we close and lock that door and restore transparency and true regulation to campaign donations and other forms of payoff, things will only get worse.

are you living paycheck to paycheck?

you're not alone. 3 out of 4 americans are in the same boat. so how do you climb out of that sinking boat? there are 4 simple steps, and you can do it without spending a dime or even much time:

1. vote out any senator that voted down a jobs bill that would have helped veterans. there is just no excuse for that.

2. tell your own senator(s) that you want a jobs bill passed before they do anything else, and before justin bieber gets thrown in jail again (the clock is really ticking).

3. tell members of the house that you want a raise in the minimum wage, because that will help the economy grow, which will lift all boats - including yours.

4. vote out anyone that doesn't do those two things.

see? simple. all you have to do is act, and i promise that you'll feel better than you do right now.

losing the lottery

the odds of winning last night's mega millions lottery were 1 in 176 million - about the same as getting hit by lightning while being attacked by a great white shark in your bathtub.

we spent almost $2 billion in 1 week on this pipe dream.

americans spend more on lottery tickets than on books or movies, and 1 in 5 of us believe that winning the lottery is the best way to achieve financial independence. so while we're apparently not poor enough yet, our national iq has slipped down into the cow range.

we've said it before: lotteries are a tax on the poor and the hopeless, who are the ones who buy most of the tickets (instead of food, clothing, education, or something that might actually make a difference in their lives). the media never talks about that, or about how lotteries encourage gambling addiction, which is just as real as addictions to drugs or alcohol.

the next step will be web-based gambling, because states have become so dependent on this revenue stream that they can't get enough of it. that nonsense about lottery money going to education isn't even mentioned any more.

you might as well set your money on fire.

the blobs that ate banking

if you're like us, the chart below scares the hell out of you. (if you need a clue why, imagine shopping for a loan and, instead of being able to shop around for rate, there was only one place you could go, and they charged you 100% interest, or denied your application. plus they offered 0% return on your savings deposits.

(well, maybe not that last one, which is already what most of them do. when we were kids, interest rates on deposits were above 5%. now they're around 1%, plus they charge pages & pages of fees for letting us touch our own money. but don't get us started...)

supreme court affirms support for well-heeled candidates

here's another coffin nail for campaign finance reform.

the current supreme court bench clearly favors candidates that are either extremely wealthy or well-supported by special interests. given that scalia frequently appears to live in the pocket of those interests - and that thomas is proud to be their dogsbody, and to have his wife ride the same cart with impunity - this should come as no surprise.

don't let anyone fool you: this issue has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with the wealthiest people and corporations taking over the election process by sheer weight of money.

did banks tank economy on purpose?

congress is investigating whether some of the banks that sold synthetic cdo's and then bet against them by selling short may have steered their clients toward buying them. this cost insurance companies and pension funds billions of dollars and helped to precipitate the current recession.

we quote: 'one focus of the inquiry is whether the firms creating the securities purposely helped to select especially risky mortgage-linked assets that would be most likely to crater, setting their clients up to lose billions of dollars if the housing market imploded.'

translation: sold clients on investments that they knew were bad, then bet money that their clients would lose their shirts. now remind us why these fine fellows aren't hanging from a gallows somewhere. oh, that's right - they own congress.

names of the banks involved after the jump.

let's play hangman

so we gave the banks a trillion bucks out of our own - i mean, out of china's - pocket (so far), which we have to pay back by giving up all of our medical care, retirement benefits, and wage increases for the next few decades or so. which is bad, right, but they say it's what we need to do to get the economy moving again, so we bent over. that's one.

then, of course, the banks refused to tell us what they were doing with our - i mean china's - money. because they knew what to do with it, and that was all they decided that we needed to know. and when it turned out that they used it to give themselves bonuses, we bent over a little further and took the fist.

now, of course, they're raising interest rates and fees. you know - in case we have any money left at all that they've somehow missed.

and they still say class warfare like it's a bad thing.

banks to bailout questions: bugger off!

so - as we predicted - not only did the fed and congress completely fail to provide adequate oversight of the banks that dipped their beaks in our us$700 billion in bailout funds but - when asked what they did with our money - not one bank out of the 21 polled deigned to answer.

it's good to be the king.

lehman brothers: hangin's too good for'em

so congress did the right thing and declined to bail out lehman brothers - score one for rational thought. but did you know that - even as they were pitching for congress to bail them out - lehman was arranging millions of dollars in bonuses for its execs?

let's run that one up the flagpole again, just because it sounds so dreamy: the company was going down in flames. investors were losing their shirts. and they gave the poindexters who brought about the meltdown rewards.

in a footnote, aig sent its execs to a posh resort after it got a federal bailout. but did any aig execs invite you to enjoy the $440,000 in spa, golf course, or banquet time that you paid for? (we're betting no,unless they invited you and somehow forgot to invite us.)

if we needed any further proof that the banking industry can't be trusted with our money, we're betting this is it. (and that our own government can't be trusted to oversee squat, of course - but that's kind of a foregone conclusion, isn't it?)

iraq: balance sheet

as of this writing, the total number of american casualties in iraq, as confirmed by the dod, is 4,180. the number of iraqi casualties is astounding: 1,273,378. and the current amount that it's cost you, your children, and your grandchildren: more than us$563 billion. (you'll see the most current figures in our counter in the sidebar to your right.)

if, like us, you like to play with numbers, this works out to almost us$135 million per american death, but only us$442k per iraqi - a comparative bargain. also, thanks to improvements in production numbers, each american death now buys us roughly 3.5 million fillups at the pump (that's about 11,000 tankfuls per iraqi death), compared to the wasteful stats at the beginning of the war (only 2 million tankfuls per dead american and just 6,500 fillups per iraqi death).

while all of this has been going on, the oil companies have been consolidating their hold on the market, securing no-bid contracts for oilfield services, production, and distribution, and buying smaller players until just a few powerful names are left in the ring.

it's worthwhile and instructive to look at the change in oil company stock as the death tolls - and our debt load (which you owe to china, by the way) - have stacked up.

so what's our takeaway? does exxon demand blood sacrifices in exchange for higher share prices? will cheney (whom we affectionately call tricky dickless, for obvious reasons) get his old job back at halliburton when biden boots him out of his vp digs? did we avoid attacking saudi arabia - where almost all of the 911 hjijackers were actually from - because the saudi royal family is friends & business partners with dubya's family?

how the hell should we know? go find out for yourself!

army spends $4 million on mind control helmet

speaking of where our tax money goes...

no, really - it's not a joke. and can you imagine the pitch? "see, this helmet, it will allow soldiers to directly transmit their thoughts to each other! and... and... they can fly drones! yeah! and play wii without those wacky stick thingies!"

(actually, we're just bitter because they turned down our photonic crystal time travel belt buckle. the lights spelled out 'nugent'. we knew we should have gone with 'frampton'. everybody likes frampton.)

wonder where your tax money goes?

now that our government has spent us$1 trillion of your retirement and your children's future earnings to pay off felonious actions by well-connected, filthy rich crooks, have you begun to develop an interest in exactly where your tax money goes?

it doesn't cover black budget items or the cia's drug money, of course, but it's tasty, anyway.

fbi investigates credit crash companies

hallelujah! we can't do anything about the bailout that's going to cost us the rest of our savings, but at least congress is talking about capping the salaries of the execs involved, and now there's word that the fbi is investigating them for possible fraud and other violations. that's good news all around.

(and when it comes time to hang them, we'll chip in for the rope.)