California approves high speed rail

The Republicans don't like it because it means jobs and money in the pockets of the middle class rather than the 0.1%. Working families terrify Republicans, thus their consistent voting record.

California lawmakers gave final approval to a high-speed rail plan on Friday in a make-or-break vote for $8 billion in funding to start construction on a 130-mile (210-km) section of track through the state's central agricultural heartland.

The 21-16 vote in the state Senate was a substantial win for Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, who says a bullet train network will boost job creation and provide an alternative to car and plane travel in the country's most populous state.

Unions also lobbied hard for the network, the most ambitious public works project to date in California. Republicans opposed it, saying the $68 billion project would be a massive financial burden that could jeopardize state spending on basic services such as education and healthcare.

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Barclays knew about Libor corruption four years ago

Not only was the Libor manipulation crimes by Barclays openly discussed by a Barclays strategist, but the WSJ also reported at the same time about banks such as Citibank and JPMorgan that were "reporting significantly lower borrowing costs." What we need to know now is how many banks are currently under investigation for this crime. Again, when setting the Libor rates, the top and bottom four are discarded so we know there are a number of banks that will be involved.

While speaking this week, shamed CEO Bob Diamond claimed to have never heard of the Libor fixing until last month yet it is hard to believe that he wasn't aware of something like this. It either shows incompetence, negligence or that the banks are too large to be managed and need to be broken up to a more manageable level.

Have the banks finally reached their tipping point by going too far, too many times? I'm still not convinced because they are the government and they are the law but they're definitely in for some challenging months.

More from Bloomberg on the ongoing Libor ripoff.

Banks routinely misstated borrowing costs to the British Bankers' Association to avoid the perception they faced difficulty raising funds as credit markets seized up, said Tim Bond, a strategist at Barclays Capital.

"The rates the banks were posting to the BBA became a little bit divorced from reality," Bond, head of asset-allocation research in London, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "We had one week in September where our treasurer, who takes his responsibilities pretty seriously, said: 'right, I've had enough of this, I'm going to quote the right rates.' All we got for our pains was a series of media articles saying that we were having difficulty financing."

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MP pulls gun on opponent on Jordan TV

More from the Huffington Post on the scene that somehow makes the US gun crazies look relatively normal. Read the rest of this post...

Why diet soda makes you fat

There have been some interesting studies in the past showing the rise of obesity increasing at the same time as "diet" or "lite" food products gaining popularity. It would not be much of a surprise if the diet food industry knew of this problem years ago, but at least us on the outside know more now.

Eat this stuff at your own risk.

Consuming high amounts of fructose (a type of sugar), artificial sweeteners, and sugar alcohols (another type of low-calorie sweetener) cause your gut bacteria to adapt in a way that interferes with your satiety signals and metabolism, according to a new paper in Obesity Reviews. (If you've noticed you've been feeling tired all the time and gaining weight, your metabolism may be slowing.)

"An evolution of the gut flora to this new sweetener-rich environment has a potential to negatively impact our health," says Amanda Payne, Ph.D., lead author of the review.

How does that happen? As bacteria in the gut process food, they give off byproducts called short-chain fatty acids. These can be beneficial and serve as energy in the body. But as the sweetener-adapted bacteria thrive and become more efficient at processing large amounts of high-fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners, and sugar alcohols, they also produce more and more short-chain fatty acids. (Not to imply that sugar is any better than artificial sweeteners.)

In those high amounts, Payne says, short-chain fatty acids decrease satiety signals. "This signaling may cause disruptions in our feeling full and hence prevent us from stopping to eat when we should," Payne says.

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GOP Rep. Brady overlooks Bush jobs failure, calls Obama "dead last"

Ah, no, that would be the Bush years where the Republicans dominated Washington for 6 of the 8 years in office. While everyone knows a clown like Larry Kudlow won't be able to recognize reality, the truth is, Rep. Brady is completely wrong. During the full term, Bush only averaged 20,000 jobs per month so if my math is correct, that would be dead last. More from CNBC:

With a report showing lower-than-expected number of new jobs added to the U.S. economy last month, President Obama has come to preside over a recovery that is “dead last in the modern era,” Texas Congressman Kevin Brady said Friday on CNBC.

“This is more than just a bad month or the worst quarter in two years. President Obama, which had ranked dead last in economic growth in the past seven years, with today’s job report also ranks dead last when it comes to job creation,” he said on “The Kudlow Report.”

“In fact, his growth is about half of what we’ve come to expect in these recessions,” he added. “And it pales, obviously, of course, to those of President Reagan, whose job growth was 2½ times greater at this same point.”

Oh, and can Republicans stop slobbering over Reagan? The guy wouldn't even fit in today's GOP yet people like Brady still have raging hardons for the guy. Move on boys and stop looking to the past that wasn't all that great in the first place. Read the rest of this post...

Flashback to Romney's unusually big IRA fund

Earlier this year, there were reports about Romney's mega-IRA that dwarfs what most Americans will ever see. Even before the destruction of wealth by Wall Street from the 2008 crisis, Romney's IRA is something to behold. If anyone is looking for the poster boy of a one-sided and abusive tax code, behold the Mitt Romney account that is estimated to be valued at around $100 million.

So while everyone is wondering where Romney is stashing his millions and why he's doing it since he says the taxes would be the same whether the money was in the US or abroad, we should also take a fresh look at his $100 million IRA. Since other Americans can only put up to $6,000 per year into their IRA, clearly there has to be yet another catch that Romney has to know about. Here's the flashback to January:

In the wake of news reports last week that presidential contender Mitt Romney owns an individual retirement account worth as much as $101 million, questions are growing over how it could have gotten so big when contribution limits are capped at $5,000 or $6,000 a year.

Tax lawyers and accountants suggest an answer: Romney may have made use of an Internal Revenue Service loophole that allows investors to undervalue interests in investment partnerships when first putting them into an IRA. These assets can produce returns far in excess of those that could be generated from other investments made at the capped level.

An investor could even set an initial value for a partnership interest at zero dollars, because under tax regulations an interest in a partnership represents future income, not current value, said Chris Sanchirico, co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

So yes, maybe he would be paying the same rate in the US with loopholes like this. That said, this only proves yet again how abusive the 1% has become with the system. They have access to trickery that only applies to people of their wealth. Sorry middle class, but you'll have to work longer and deal with less public benefits, which ultimately means higher costs for your kind.

What's also alarming about this news of Romney hiding millions abroad in tax havens is that I was told directly years ago by a US tax attorney that doing so is an open invitation for an IRS audit. This tax attorney was adamant about the high risk of putting money - regardless of the amount, let alone millions - into a bank in one of those locations.

That was over ten years ago so one has to wonder how Romney has slipped through the cracks. Or, is it yet another scenario where the 1% know enough of the tricks or pull special privileges since they are part of the ruling political class? Either way, it's Romney sticking his thumb in the eye of middle class Americans who are never allowed such circumstances.

Money has obviously bought a lot with Mitt Romney. Make no mistake about it, he's played his part in this war on the middle class, yet he still wants more. Read the rest of this post...

Leadbelly - House of the Rising Sun

Over here in waterlogged Paris, signs of summer are here. No, not the weather,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif because it's especially lousy this season with rain, rain, rain and for an added bonus, more rain. It's the autoroute becoming a parking lot with Dutch, Belgian, British, Danish and other drivers. This weekend is the first big travel weekend of the year when Europe comes to spend summer holidays in France.

Our little cat boy is about one month away from his radio iodine treatment and is making a strong recovery. After losing a lot of weight from his sickness (hyperactive thyroid) he's now gained back about one pound and is eating with a passion. We've had to switch him over to soft food because we also discovered that he has painful cystitis. Our little 18 pound cat girl Nasdaq (who John busted last summer) is going crazy because she's eager to dive into his food rather than her diet food. Ahhh, cats. Read the rest of this post...