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With an increase in electric and hybrid vehicles along with better fuel-efficient vehicles, changing Bay Area drivers habit are posing a serious problem for state coffers. As motorists use less and less gas, gas tax revenues to pay for state highways, roads and bridges shrink. Meanwhile, as gas prices fall, so does the sales tax generated by fuel sales. In California, among the taxes collected on fuel is a 2.25% sales tax on gasoline and a 9.67 percent tax on diesel.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama released an anti-oil drilling environmental video shot aboard Air Force One–an aircraft that has a 53,611 gallon fuel capacity. The video, which shows Obama aboard Air Force One, is interspersed with scenes of arctic animals and wildlife landscapes, reports National Public Radio (NPR). It’s all part of Obama’s ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) newly proposed plan to ban roads, permanent structures, vehicles, drilling, and mining on 12.28 million acres in ANWR. On Saturday, Obama flew Air Force One over 8,000+ miles to India to discuss global warming and other issues.

More than 1,400 flights were already canceled in the greater New York City area Monday morning. Gov. Cuomo told commuters Sunday they should consider staying home in preparation for the storm that's set to dump up to 3 feet of snow on the city.

Meet the Americans who want Obama to repeal the Bill of Rights in order to keep the country safe from terrorists. Political prankster Mark Dice asks Obama supporters if they would support Obama's plan to repeal the Bill of Rights to protect Americans from terrorists.

The crash in oil prices is weighing on Texas' economy. The January Texas manufacturing survey from the Dallas Fed was a huge miss, with the general business activity reading coming in at -4.4. Expectations were for the composite index to come in at 3.0, down from 4.1 in December. Factory activity in the region was flat in January. The big takeaway, however, is that as with last month, numerous business executives expressed concerns over how the crash in crude oil prices would affect results.

As late as yesterday I read numerous mainstream media reports that Syriza would win by three to five percent and would need to form an unstable coalition to rule. In contrast, here was my January 19 prediction (and rationale): Expect a Blowout Win by Syriza in Greece. Syriza Trounces New Democracy The final votes are not counted, but exit polls show a blowout, with incumbent party New Democracy going down in flames. The Wall Street Journal reports GreeceÂ’s Radical Leftist Syriza Party Poised to Win Election, Exit Polls Say. Syriza appeared set to win between 35.5% and 39.5% of the...

The Milwaukee Business Journal is reporting that Gov. Scott Walker will include a jock tax in the next budget to help fund a new Milwaukee arena project for the Milwaukee Bucks. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is preparing to propose diverting revenue from taxes on NBA players for public funding of a new arena in downtown Milwaukee, sources close to the situation told the Milwaukee Business Journal. In June 2014 Walker said in an interview with the Milwaukee Business Journal that he was studying the possibility of tapping NBA players' income tax for arena construction funding, a so-called "jock tax." Since...

In Greece, the far-left Syriza party has won a stunning victory. Under the leadership of charismatic populist Alexis Tsipras, it has claimed around 150 parliamentary seats and defeated the governing centrist New Democracy party. Across Europe, leftists are elated. They see this as a historic turning point, the moment when they can put a stop to the austerity-through-spending-cuts approach. And to some degree, they’re right. There’s no question that voters have rewarded a far-left party for its far-left platform. Just consider what Syriza proposes: significant increases in government spending, a rise in the minimum wage and in pensions, and a...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, column here.

.... Obama released an anti-oil drilling environmental video shot aboard Air Force One–an aircraft that has a 53,611 gallon fuel capacity.

New information from the federal government suggests workers’ interest in unions continues to fall, with union membership reaching its lowest rate in 100 years. According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics today, the union membership rate fell to 11.1 percent, with just 14.6 million wage and salaried workers maintaining membership. In 2013, the union membership rate was 0.2 percentage points higher, at 11.3 percent.

A former member of a panel created to examine the causes of the financial crisis of 2007 says government policies that were really at the core of the crash are being quietly resurrected by the Obama administration, and that they are creating another housing bubble similar to the one that burst more than eight years ago. Appearing Friday on The Mark Levin Show, Peter Wallison, author of the new book “Hidden in Plain Sight,” and the Arthur F. Burns Fellow in Financial Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said that the federal government “was the central player” in the...

The elation over wage increases in private business reported in last month’s job report has been replaced by disappointment. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Jan. 16 that average hourly earnings fell five cents in December, eating up most of the six-cent increase in November. Between 2010 and 2014, the average real wage fell 1.1%, a poor showing after rising 3.4% between 2006 and 2010. What accounts for this performance? There are basically two ways that the average economywide wage can fall. There might be a shift in employment away from high-paying to lower-paying industries; in other words, the...

.....it is clear that millions are struggling to hang on to accouterments that most experts consider essential to a middle-class life..... Lisa Land, 49, is one of those who have dropped through the hatch. She gets by on her father’s $1,300 monthly Social Security checks and by having her adult daughter pitch in for groceries. Her circumstances are a stark change from just a few years ago, when she considered herself firmly in the middle class. Despite a relatively modest salary, her pay and other resources went a long way in tiny Eden, N.C., where she worked for 13 years...

....the mayor of Glendale, Arizona - home to Super Bowl XLIX - is questioning the money-making potential of this year's big game, CBS News' David Begnaud reports. "I think if you looked in the till at the end of the day, I think you'll have less money in it than came in," said Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers. Weiers suspects that when the sun sets on Super Bowl XLIX, the only real loser may be his city. "I'm sure that we're going to spend $3 million," Weiers said. "I would hope, in tax revenues, that we can actually account for well...

The middle class that President Obama identified in his State of the Union speech last week as the foundation of the American economy has been shrinking for almost half a century.In the late 1960s, more than half of the households in the United States were squarely in the middle, earning, in today’s dollars, $35,000 to $100,000 a year. Few people noticed or cared as the size of that group began to fall, because the shift was primarily caused by more Americans climbing the economic ladder into upper-income brackets.But since 2000, the middle-class share of households has continued to narrow, the...

For the last several months, the likes of Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have dominated the media coverage of the still-nascent contest for the White House. But when the 2016 Republican presidential race roared to life this weekend with twin events in Iowa and Louisiana, two lesser-known contestants left indelible impressions on the GOP faithful. Former Hewlett-Packard chief executive and current American Conservative Union Foundation Chairwoman Carly Fiorina and battle-tested Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker left the crowds stirring after a nonstop ten-hour festival in Des Moines that exposed voters to 27 speakers and at least 10...

As I have noted previously bond yields continue to go lower, and Investment News reports that it has some bond managers worried that it means that the country will suffer a bout of deflation this year, which mean that the economy, might be, could be, holy cow, a little weaker than expected. Wow. You donÂ’t say? Investment News reports that bond yields are a pretty accurate predictor of which way consumer prices will be going. And in this case the yields are saying consumer prices will be going down. ThatÂ’s good news for those of us who still buy things...

[When] Obama delivered his first State of the Union address in 2009, 53% of Americans considered themselves middle class. Six years later, just 44% of Americans define themselves that way..... The middle class itself, however, has changed notably during the relatively short time Obama has been in office, as the chart below shows. The portion of Americans who consider themselves middle class has dropped (as has the portion considering themselves upper class), while the ranks who call themselves lower class have swelled.

...WALLACE:The White House has made it clear that it flatly opposes paying ransom..now,ISIS is making a new demand,offering a swap of the Japanese hostage for a terrorist being held in Jordan.Is that something to be considered?MCDONOUGH:You know,our policies are pretty well set..We don't get into negotiation with terrorists.We don't pay ransom..we're not going to do that.WALLACE:And a prisoner swap?MCDONOUGH:We're not going to do that.WALLACE:And you would advise the Japanese not to do that......WALLACE:..the president wants to pay for free community college,for increased child care tax credits by raising taxes on the wealthy,$210 billion over 10 years......WALLACE:..during the Obama years,the top...

Germany has decided to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia because of “instability in the region,” German daily Bild reported on Sunday. Weapons orders from Saudi Arabia have either been “rejected, pure and simple,” or deferred for further consideration, the newspaper said, adding that the information has not been officially confirmed. The decision was taken on Wednesday by the national security council, a government body that includes Chancellor Angela Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and seven other ministers, it said. …

Near-term global warming projections (brick-red region) on[0.13, 0.50] K decade-1, compared with observations (green region)that fall on [0.0, 0.11] K decade-1, and the simple model's 21stcentury warming projections (yellow arrow), falling on 0.09 [0.06,0.12] K decade-1. Credit: Science China PressA major peer-reviewed climate physics paper in the first issue (January 2015: vol. 60 no. 1) of the prestigious Science Bulletin (formerly Chinese Science Bulletin), the journal of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, exposes elementary but serious errors in the general-circulation models relied on by the UN's climate panel, the IPCC. The errors were the reason for concern about Man's effect...

In the autumn of 2013 I was in my first term of school in a decade. I had two jobs; my husband, Tom, was working full-time; and we were raising our two small girls. It was the first time in years that we felt like maybe things were looking like they’d be OK for a while. After a gruelling shift at work, I was unwinding online when I saw a question from someone on a forum I frequented: Why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive? I thought I could at least explain what I’d seen and how...

The president was a conservative's conservative. He had campaigned on reducing taxes and made it his legacy. But when a gas tax increase was proposed, it was a different story. In his weekly radio address, he said, "We simply cannot allow this magnificent (highway) system to deteriorate beyond repair." That was 1982. The president was Ronald Reagan. Unfortunately, the disrepair Reagan feared has come to pass. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents hasn't been raised since 1993, and the Highway Trust Fund is severely underfunded. A 10- to 15-cent a gallon increase would provide enough money to meet the...

Target Corp. Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell said Thursday that the company was unable to find a realistic scenario in which the 133-store Target Canada would become profitable before at least 2021. It is Cornell's first major move since becoming CEO in August. Cornell, who's been tasked with maintaining the retailer's momentum and reclaiming its image as a purveyor of cheap chic fashions and home decor, said it was a difficult decision "but it was the right decision for our company." "We have determined that it is in the best interest of our business and our shareholders to exit the...

Despite all the fear-mongering by Nea Demokratia (ND), Syriza's victory over the incumbent is dramatically larger than expected (exit polls indicate a potential 12 point margin vs 7 point spreads in the run-up). However, as JPMorgan details, the fear-mongery was very evident in bank deposit runs as proxied outflows surge EUR8 billion last week - more than all of December and the rest of January combined...Via JPMorgan Flows & LiquidityGreek deposit outflows rise sharply this week The monthly Bank of Greece balance sheet data for the month of December revealed a significant increase in Greek bank ECB borrowing which...

Four men have been charged, after police say they tried to rob a pizza delivery driver this past weekend. Greenville Police say around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, the Papa Johns driver was trying to make a delivery at the Province Apartment Complex on Boxelder Way. The driver told police that two men approached him in the parking lot and demanded money and the pizza. The driver used pepper spray to stop the robbery. A Province employee saw what happened and tried to help, but police say they were assaulted by one of the suspects while attempting to get the vehicle's license...

Why don’t abused women just leave their partners? Why don’t poor people just spend less? Why do people in positions of power ask so many stupid questions? ‘Inequality has become a challenge to us as moral beings’Last week, I took part in a comedy night to raise money for the charity Refuge, which supports women and children who have experienced domestic violence. It was a great night: partly because it raised several thousands of pounds for the cause; partly because it was sponsored by Benefit cosmetics, and the idea of a benefit being sponsored by Benefit pleased me greatly; and...

Voting in Sunday's much-watched Greek elections has ended, and exit polls suggest that the far-left Syriza party has captured nearly 40 percent of the vote. While this may not be enough to ensure a parliamentary majority in Greece's electoral system, it's now clear that Alexis Tsipras, a fiery 40-year-old once considered too radical for national politics, will lead the next Greek government. Tsipras has promised to end Greece's "austerity program," a series of spending cuts and tax hikes designed to reduce the country's enormous bailout debt, which equals 175 percent of its GDP. Freed from this burden, Tsipras argues, the...

Myles UdlandJanuary 25, 2015 Good evening! The weekend is over in New York and near 7:05 pm ET, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down another 2.5% to $44.45 a barrel.(snip)(snip)

~~~ Come on in and shoot the breeze! ~~~ Welcome to Tom Gresham's Gun Talk® Radio Network, the only nationally syndicated radio talk show about firearms, shooting and gun rights. Tune in on Sundays, 08:00-11:00pm EST, and give us a call at 1-866-825-5486. In its 20th year of national syndication, Tom Gresham's Gun Talk® radio show airs live on Sundays from 2PM-5PM Eastern, and runs on more than 186 stations every week. Listen live on a radio station near you, or via href="http://www.guntalk.com/site38.php">live Saturday afternoon streaming from one of the stations. All Gun Talk® shows, and the "After Show" can...

A businessman in central Sweden is advertising what he claims is the world’s first Hummer limousine snowplough for hire on Blocket, Sweden’s version of eBay. Håkan Andersson, who runs the Haga Limo company in the tiny town of Töreboda, is leasing out the unlikely machine on the site under the slogan “plough in style”. "We have given an incredible number of tours with our limousines to everyone from students to the municipality's director, all of them swilling bubbly, so now we're taking it a step further and offering ploughing in a little style," Andersson told the local Skaraborgs Läns Tidning...

The Texas Workforce Commission released state employment data today for the month of December, and job growth in the Lone Star State continues to lead, and in fact carry the nation’s improving labor market as the chart above shows. Here are some highlights of the December employment report for Texas:1. Texas ended the year with the state’s largest ever year-over-year payroll gain with the eye-popping addition of 457,900 new jobs between December 2013 and December 2014. That’s more than 1,700 new payroll jobs that were added every business day last year in the Lone Star State, and 220 new jobs...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is boosting protection of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and will ask Congress to designate more than 12 million acres as a wilderness area, including its potentially oil-rich Coastal Plain. The designation would seal off the area in Alaska's northeast corner from oil exploration and give it the highest degree of federal protection available to public lands. Obama and the Interior Department announced the effort Sunday.

Political cartoons, if done correctly, are remarkably effective tools for teaching about economics and public policy. In this post from last year, for instance, I put together some of my favorite examples on topics such as Keynesian economics, labor supply incentives, minimum wage, and the welfare state. Today, we’re going to try something different. Using a series of cartoons, we’re going to explain the need for Social Security reform. First, let’s establish that there is a problem. I’ve shared data on America’s long-run fiscal crisis from international bureaucracies such as the IMF, BIS, and OECD. And I’ve explained that demographics...

I received an interesting email today from Geopolitical Information Service (GIS) regarding statements made by Prince Michael of Liechtenstein on European QE by the ECB. Let's compare and contrast what Prince Michael has to say with what economic writer Martin Wolf had to say, also from today. QE a Sign of Helplessness, Will Not Reach Economy Please consider European QE Funds Will Not Reach the Economy by Prince Michael of Liechtenstein. The European Central Bank’s decision to introduce a programme of Quantitative Easing (QE) is not a win-win situation but rather an expression of helplessness ... that politicians in European...

The White House is proposing to designate the oil-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness permanently off limits to drilling. The proposal sets up a showdown with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who said the White House also intends to put much of the Arctic Ocean off limits to drilling in the new five-year offshore leasing plan to be released this week. SNIP Obama’s proposal to designate 12.3 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness would require Congressional approval, and there is no chance...

Considering the top headlines were about soft footballs this has to have been an easy no-brainer week for investments.  Maybe; here's what he experts are telling us:                     [excerpt from Investors Business Daily At Davos, Hypocrites Tell Rest Of Us To Lower Expectations]Former Vice President Al Gore listens to singer Pharrell Williams... [snip]...talking, of course, about the annual confab at Davos, Switzerland, ...[snip] "The purpose," said former vice president and climate-change entrepreneur Al Gore, standing with hip-hop star Pharrell Williams, "is to have a billion voices with one message, to demand climate action now." OK, so how about you flying commercial,...

The place in Brooklyn looks like a CIA safehouse. Red brick office building with peeling metal awning. No sign. Inside, writers are plotting out the popular Cold War espionage show “The Americans” — one of an assortment of Hollywood spy and national security dramas being driven by ex-spies. The show’s creator and co-head writer, Joe Weisberg, is a former CIA officer who never fathomed that he would one day sit in an office with Soviet propaganda posters and a cutout figure of President Ronald Reagan, concocting television fiction. “When I left the CIA, if you were going to ask me,...

Chief of Staff rallies Democrats behind Sheldon Silver Sheldon Silver declines synagogue's prayer offer Democrats defend Silver because they profit from his corrupt system Silver's law firm rakes in millions from judges he controls Show us the money Sheldon Silver's arrest sends Albany into a state of panic Sheldon Silver has perverted the courts as well as the Capitol. His law firm, Weitz & Luxenberg, gets its asbestos cases — and paydays — moved more quickly than those of other attorneys, and reaps a fortune from favorable rulings by friendly judges, charge lawyers and tort-reform advocates. Silver’s East Village firm...

The first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos was dominated by calls for 2015 to be a year of action on climate change. But while some in the business community worry about sustainability, there is plenty of evidence that the vast bulk of business executives give it no consideration at all. “We are seeing the accelerated impact of climate change,” World Bank boss Jim Yong Kim said in a speech on Wednesday. “Last year was the hottest on record. That matters. Extreme weather is real. It’s a complete no-brainer to move towards cleaner, more livable cities.” Yet according...

apzzyk12 wrote: As a comrade (progressive Democrat), I would like to remind the author that it was over the very strong objections of the TEA party that the Democrats passsed the Lilly Ledbetter Act , which allows women to sue at any time, if they have been paid less than the males for doing the same work. The the Federal system, one has some idea of what others make by their GS level, so there is very little discrimination in that system, while in the private sector it remains taboo for employees to compare wages.- Mitt Who?Dear Pzzy,Employees in the...

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) - The global economic outlook just got brighter after this week's big stimulus from the European Central Bank, leading policymakers from around the world said Saturday. In a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, they said a perkier Europe, coupled with a prolonged period of low oil prices, could help shore up the global economy following a period of underperformance that has prompted many forecasters to reduce their growth forecasts. "Lower oil prices and the big decision by ECB could further improve world economic outlook," said Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan.

About 3.1 million wage and salary earners in Germany had an income below the poverty threshold, according to Saturday’s edition of the Saarbrücker Zeitung newspaper. The paper cited an overview from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office showing the most recent available data, which covered the year 2013. It also showed the numbers of workers struggling to make ends meet jumped from about 2.5 million in 2008—an increase of 25 percent in five years. Data based on household surveys showed that those living on low wages were cutting back on food and heating, among other things, to save money. According to a...

Germany would be prepared to negotiate a free-trade agreement between the European Union and Russia as a way out of the deadlocked Ukraine conflict, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. Merkel told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Germany was “ready” to open talks about “possibilities for cooperating in a collective trade area”, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. But she said that a precondition for the plan, suggested by Russian President Vladimir Putin several years ago but ignored by European leaders, would be a comprehensive peace agreement in Ukraine. …

The Texas conservative and his team are trying to lock down a state director for his White House run.DES MOINES -- Ted Cruz's presidential campaign​ in Iowa is unofficially underway. The Texas senator and his lieutenants have been making calls to top Iowa activists and consultants for the past two weeks, multiple Republican sources told National Journal, hoping to lock down a state director for his White House campaign. Cruz has not yet made that critical hire, the sources said. But he's making other moves in this first nominating state. At the end of a fiery speech here Saturday to...

Where I live they are building houses again. The neighborhood beside me should have been built 5 years ago and finally the bulldozers are in motion again. But don’t call it a recovery. There is no vibrance in the market. Just a subset of people escaping places like California with solid state jobs at the University.But even here there is concern. 2 years ago the builders began again, thinking the market had finally turned. But after a brief uptick things settled down again. The all cash buyers disappeared and all that was left were regular people who actually needed mortgages.And getting...

On Thursday, January 15th, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) discontinued its three year effort to maintain its minimum currency floor of the Swiss franc. In a single day the move sent the Swiss Franc (SWF) climbing a massive 21% against the U.S. dollar and 41% against the euro. The move sent shockwaves of unprecedented ferocity through the massive foreign exchange (FX) market, which is by far the largest, and most highly levered, trading market in the world. The monetary tsunami threatened both FX participants and even their brokers. But more importantly, even as the rest of Europe looks to suffocate...

In the wake of ECB's €60 billion a month QE madness (see "QE already Working" Says IMF Lagarde; Ho-Hum Details Announced; Gold the Place to Be), one might be wondering what it may do to European bond yields. German 10-Year Bond Yield image: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-of_KecAryfU/VMKLTNvRyfI/AAAAAAAAcFk/6Kswiqag_hg/s400/German%2B10-Year%2Bbond%2Byield.png click on chart for sharper image Since September of 2013, yield on the German 10-year bond has plunged from around 2% to 0.367%. ECB Risks German Bonds Mismatch Exceeding 100 Billion Euros With €720 billion annual asset purchases, a huge portion of the bonds the ECB buys will be German. Bloomberg explains ECB Risks German Bonds...

The conflicting messages from Wall Street and the end of the world collided Thursday. Wall Street’s Odd Way of Showing LoveVirtually, all firms on the street are bullish in 2015 for a variety of reasons that include economic momentum, wage growth, an accommodative Fed (even a rate hike would be infinitesimal), and a strong dollar.Yet, every single day this year, there have been more stock downgrades than upgrades. In fact, year-to- date, it is almost a two to one ratio. This morning, the ratio was almost 4 to 1, with only 11 upgrades. Analyst Rating Changes Yesterday Year to Date Upgrades...