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(AP) Retirement unlikely for some blue-collar Americans By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press Tom Edwards grew up in a family that's been cutting trees and hauling timber in the Pacific Northwest for more than a century. The Spanaway, Wash., resident says he has worked as a logger since he was a kid _ it's just what an able-bodied youngster was expected to do.

In regards to the 1.3 Million still unemployed for 2 or 3 years and still begging for more,anyone want to take a guess where the bulk of them live? If we had a "Top 10 Laziest/Least Educated Towns" in America, odds are most of these 1.3 Million live there.These unfortunate/unemployed have had plenty of time to look for work and develop new work skills to get them back into the working class. And yet the left is making the GOP look so evil because they want to stop wasting billions on these people who should of found a job by...

The last few months have taken their toll on President Obama's popularity. Currently vacationing in Hawaii, Obama is finishing 2013 with approval ratings at an all-time low – and the lowest they've been for any president at this point in their term since Richard Nixon, according to one new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The Real Clear Politics average puts Obama's approval rating at just over 42 percent, and his disapproval rating at 54 percent. The numbers are particularly striking when you consider that just a year ago, they were reversed, with approval ratings of about 54 percent and disapproval ratings...

He said it’s crucial for retailers to get sales post Christmas as consumers visit stores to redeem gift cards, which don’t count as sales until after they are redeemed. In fact, Dec. 26 and this Saturday both are expected to be among the season’s top 10 shopping days. “There’s a lot of money that’s still out there.” Meanwhile, weak in-store sales are being partly offset by growth online. Online sales between Dec. 15 and Dec. 18, for instance, jumped 13%, with 23% traffic growth, according to Custora Pulse, which tracks real time data from over 100 U.S. retailers. Indeed, other...

<p>NEW YORK – Sparse crowds at malls and “50 percent off” signs at The Gap, Ann Taylor and other stores give a clue as to how the holiday season is going.</p> <p>This is shaping up to be the most discount-driven holiday season since the country was in a deep recession. It’s also one of the most disappointing for stores.</p>

U.S. home resales fell sharply in November to their lowest level in nearly a year, hurt by a rise in interest rates since the spring and ongoing price increases that have shut some home buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Thursday that sales of previously owned homes dropped 4.3 percent last month, the third monthly fall in a row, to an annual rate of 4.90 million units. That was the lowest annual rate since December 2012, and well below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of a 5.03 million unit pace. "It...

LOS ANGELES — After 20 years in the US military, James Cummiskey was divorced and looking for a change. Relenting to his buddy's request, he flew to Medellín, Colombia, for a visit. He looked, he saw, and, by dinner time, he decided to stay. Permanently. "After four to five hours, I was immediately captured by everything I saw," says the ex-marine, who has lived in 35 countries. He spent the next four months selling two homes, three vehicles, two motorcycles, and one airplane. He put the money aside and decided to retire early. Now he lives in a posh section...

Day in and day out, the message from the media is the same. Your country is becoming a nightmare. However you can, get out—and do it now, before you’re trapped. From Saul Alinsky to Sarah Palin, the view of the problem is also the same. Society has been divided into Elites and Real People. But the situation now seems so dire that instead of achieving transformative change, many of us are simply opting to flee into dreams—of a post-revolutionary paradise, or of traditional times restored. As the promise of real life claustrophobically collapses around us, we turn our sights on...

The No. 2 Democrat in the House said Tuesday that the top GOP negotiator on the budget is not interested in finding a compromise that would replace automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland says that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is not engaging in “a serious effort to reach agreement” and hasn’t forwarded an offer to Democrats. …

Looks like the Affordable Care Act has another potential critic: Wal-Mart. The discount retail giant mentioned the ACA as a potential factor that will hurt consumer spending this holiday season on an analysts press call Thursday. "While it is not coming through in customer research, we do know that some of our customers are concerned about the impact of the Affordable Care Act," Carol Schumacher, vice president of investor relations said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "For many of our customers, having to afford health care and insurance may be another line item in their personal budget that they...

Stock market indexes are hitting new milestones on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 16,000 points for the first time early Monday and the Standard & Poor's 500 index crossed 1,800 points. Stocks have been rising sharply this year as the U.S. economy improves, companies report bigger profits and the Federal Reserve keeps up its easy-money policies.

Five years on and President Obama still refuses to assume responsibility for his woeful economic record. The buck stops with Republicans, other countries, changes in the weather, etc.—anywhere but the Oval Office. Of course, it’s not new having a chief executive who refuses to admit failure. What is rare is having a news media that does not hold the President accountable. So let’s establish the record. At 2.2 percent annual growth, we are now witnessing the slowest economic recovery in generations. Even the Council on Foreign Relations says “the economic expansion following the 2008 recession has been the weakest of...

Most two-term presidents leave some sort of legacy. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. George W. Bush prevented another 9/11, and constructed an anti-terrorism protocol that even his critical successor embraced and often expanded. Even our one-term presidents have achieved something. JFK got Soviet missiles out of Cuba. LBJ oversaw passage of civil rights legislation. Jerry Ford restored integrity to the White House. Jimmy Carter finally issued the Carter Doctrine to stop Soviet expansionism at the Persian Gulf. George H.W. Bush won the first Persian Gulf War and got Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. And even our impeached or abdicated...

Sales growth during the fourth quarter is shaping up to be the weakest since 2008, according to predictions from Morgan Stanley. Same-store sales, a key metric that measures sales at store locations open at least a year, are expected to grow a mere 1.6% from a year ago during the fourth quarter, Morgan Stanley estimates. Last year's holiday sales were up 3.5% from the fourth quarter of 2011. The 1.6% figure excludes sales at troubled J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500). That's because J.C. Penney is expected to offer deep discounts to try and get back on track after a disastrous...

One in two adults has received financial support from their parents, a new study shows.A report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) has found that the "bank of mum and dad" is an essential source of welfare for people, particularly those on low incomes. Of 2,565 people of all ages polled, 55% (1,400) said they had received money, of whom almost half that number (52% or 628) earn less than £20,000. Almost one in four low earners (23%) said that without the money they would not have been able to survive. The 25-34 age group across all income levels had...

Cessna CEO Scott Ernest told aviation media at NBAA 2013 in Las Vegas the company's made-in-China S-LSA Skycatcher has "no future" but he didn't have much to say about it other than that.

This week we explore sales at casual restaurants, what people think of Congress, where business people really eat and more. Malcolm Knapp reported that September sales were down 1.9 percent over sales of last year for the 50-plus casual restaurant chains that participate in the Knapp-Track program. Same-store guest counts dropped 3.6 percent while check averages were up 1.7 percent on a year-to-year basis. This was the fourth consecutive month that companies included in the Knapp-Track report posted negative same-store sales. In a bit of better news, family dining and upscale steak houses Malcolm Knapp also tracks are trending positive...

President Barack Obama is demanding a $1.1 trillion "ransom"--or else he will not allow the debt ceiling to be raised. That's the effective offer on the table from the president and Senate Democrats. They have now refused to pass a "clean" short-term debt ceiling hike unless Republicans agree to reverse the "sequester" spending cuts in the 2011 Budget Control Act that were enacted--at Obama's suggestion--to end the last debt ceiling crisis. The president, who has invited congressional leaders to conduct talks at the White House Monday afternoon, still continues to insist that he "will not pay a ransom for Congress...

It’s become common over the past year or two to note how well Wall Street is doing while Main Street is still struggling. Sadly, that tale of two economies has resulted from a conscious choice by those at the very top levels of our nation’s financial and political elites. The choice was inadvertently highlighted in a recent USA Today column by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In that column, Pelosi describes some of the political dynamics surrounding the beginning of the bailout era five years ago. In Pelosi’s telling of the story, public opinion was never mentioned once. That’s significant...

College graduates are tending bar and driving taxis, pushing people without degrees out of those jobs.