Using a chained Consumer Price Index to calculate Social Security increases would negatively affect millions of seniors, whose benefits are already low.

And Social Security isn't in any kind of trouble to begin with, so why is all this even being considered?

(posted on youtube by MoveOn)

Also see:
Tax the Rich: An animated fairy tale
6 executive bonuses equal 2.86 million jobs
1 CEO bonus = 100 years of 1 middle-class worker income

Wal-mart, Wal-fare, or maybe Wel-mart. 

But the name doesn't matter, as long you understand that the store you know as Wal-mart probably carries the most responsibility for welfare and poverty in the U.S.

• Wal-mart is responsible for 11 percent of the trade deficit with China
• Wal-mart's active import of products from China is responsible for the loss of 196,000 American jobs
• 80 percent of Wal-mart employees - that's over 1.1 million Americans - qualify for food stamps due to their low pay
• the annual costs of food stamps and Medicaid for Wal-Mart workers, as well as free and reduced-price lunches at school for their children, come to $2.66 billion
  

Check the graphic below that offers more details on how Wal-mart (or Wal-fare) is the biggest freeloader of all time. We're the ones paying for it, and in more ways than one.

(from The Winning Words Project)

Also see:
How Wal-Mart is devouring the food system

As if the pay and benefits weren't bad enough

If no budget deal is reached between Congress and President Barack Obama by the end of the year, the United States will face what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described as "a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases."

We know the seriousness of this situation because no news program goes more than 10 minutes without telling us the seriousness of the situation.

The closest historical precedence for anything like the "fiscal cliff" is found in the 1984 movie, "Ghostbusters" -- when the ghostbusters inform the mayor of New York that the city is threatened by a disaster of biblical proportions:

Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?

Dr. Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.

The news media have told us that the failure to avoid the fiscal cliff will result in--and make no mistake about it--a serious situation. They've reported that there will be an immediate tax increase on most earners and massive cuts to government programs, the defense budget, and Medicare.

But this is just the stuff they're telling us. Could it mean the end of the world? It might just be worse than that.

Here is a partial list of what will happen if Congress and the president don't agree to a budget deal before January 1, 2013.

-- The United States will convert to the metric system.

-- Replacement refs will return to the National Football League.

-- Congress will repeal the laws of gravity, leaving thousands of other bills up in the air.

-- The National Anthem will change from the "Star-Spangled Banner" to "Everybody Wang Chung Tonight."

-- Hours will have 61 - minutes.

-- All prime-time television programs will be required to include at least one appearance by a member of the Kardashian family.

-- Cell phones will only work in South Dakota.

-- Supreme Court justices will exchange their traditional robes for hoodies, low-rider jeans, tank tops, and doo rags and write their decisions in rap.

-- The letter "e" will be removed from the alphabt.

-- You will only be able to buy shoes for left feet and socks for right feet.

-- Olivia Newton-John will marry former major league pitcher Tommy John, divorce him, marry singer Wayne Newton, divorce him and then marry chef Jamie Oliver. She will become Olivia Newton-John-John-Newton-Oliver.

-- Texting will end, forcing millions of Americans to talk to each other.

-- Texas and Arizona will be returned to Mexico, which will then pass repressive anti-immigrant legislation.

-- "Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together . . . Mass Hysteria."



Chris Lamb is a professor of Communication at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC. His last book was The Sound and Fury of Sarah Palin (Frontline Press). This entry was first posted on OpEdNews, and is included here with Lamb's permission. 

Also see:

Lamb does double book signing this Saturday
Haley's low rating too high, says local Prof

Everyone craves a fistful of dollars.

If the Government Accountability Office has its way, though, you might need a big cup to hold plenty of coins instead.

One dollar bills don’t last very long in circulation and need frequent replacement, GAO told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Thursday.

As a result, $1 coins should replace bills, and in a recommended four-year program that could save $4.4 billion over the next 10 years.

(What’s your opinion of $1 coins instead of $1 bills? Take the survey!)

Examine the bills in your wallet. You’ll see the year that paper money was printed in the bottom-right, to the immediate left of the treasurer’s signature. It’s hard to find a $1 bill that was printed before 2000, and they only last an average of 4.7 years, GAO says.

Now scoop the coins out of your pocket and you’ll likely find some made in the 1980’s. In fact, coins typically last 30 years – over six times longer than paper $1 bills.

This reduction in printing costs isn’t the chief savings benefit, though; the net benefit of $4.4 would result from seigniorage – “the difference between the cost of producing coins or notes and their face value,” says GAO’s report.

Every paper bill costs 9.6 cents to make currently, and after a recent 50-percent increase in production costs. Producing a dollar coin would be notably less, GAO says.  “It reduces government borrowing and interest costs, resulting in a financial benefit to the government.”

Many other countries know of this first-hand. When it introduced a $1 “loonie” coin over a five-year period beginning in 1987, Canada saved $450 million in comparative paper-money printing and replacement costs. It introduced a $2 “toonie” in 1996, too. And Canadians had no complaints about these dollar coins.

A $1 coin might not be so popular here in the U.S., though, and which GAO acknowledged in Thursday’s testimony.

“We realize that replacing the $1 note with the $1 coin is controversial,” GAO director Lorelei St. James said. “In fact, public opinion has consistently been opposed to the $1 coin.”

Citing a 2006 Gallup poll, St. James noted that 76 percent of Americans state opposition to $1 bill replacement by coins.

Of the $1 coins currently minted, over 40 percent are returned to the government unused, causing the U.S. Treasury to reduce their production last year.  

About $8 million would need to be spent on a public promotion campaign, St. James said, should the coin-replacing-bill proposal go into effect.

The response from Subcommittee members seemed mixed, with some citing Canada’s success in switching to coin dollars, while others complained of inconveniences they could create for consumers.

The Subcommittee also seemed to focus more on the metals that would be used, not just for this $1 coin but on all U.S. coin currency, since costs of nickel and copper continue to increase.

How far the coin-switch proposal will go remains to be seen. GAO has provided the same request six times since 1990 with no success. And a House bill introduced last year to promote $1 coins – the Currency Optimization, Innovation, and National Savings (COIN) Act, introduced by Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) – has yet to make it out of committee. (The COIN Act has only a 4 percent chance of passing, notes Govtrack.us.)


What’s your opinion of $1 coins instead of $1 bills? Take the survey!



Also see:
Dollar bill protest underway

What's wrong with the economic plans of the Republican's presidential ticket? Just about everything, says Robert Reich. 

See the video below for details:

A professor of public policy at UC-Berkeley, Reich is former Secretary of Labor.  (He's pretty handy with those markers, too, ain't he?)