Disconnect between the two parties

Major shift in Party Affiliation

By contrast, the percentage of self-described political independents has steadily climbed, on a monthly basis, from 30% last December to 39% in April. Taking an average of surveys conducted this year, 36% say they are independents, 35% are Democrats, while 23% are Republicans. On an annual basis, the only previous year when independent identification has been this high was in 1992 when Ross Perot ran a popular independent candidacy.

As has been the case in recent years, more independents "lean" Democratic than Republican (17% vs. 12%). Yet an increasing share of independents describe their views as conservative; in surveys conducted this year, 33% of independents say they are conservatives, up from 28% in 2007 and 26% in 2005. Again, this ideological change is at least in part a consequence of former Republicans moving into the ranks of independents.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1229/political-values-core-attitudes-trends-2009

Corporation runs for Congressional Seat

Murray Hill Incorporated is Running for Congress
Corporations are people too!

Until now, corporations only influenced politics with high-paid lobbyists and backroom deals. But today, thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, corporations now have all the rights the founding fathers meant for us. It was their dream to build the best democracy money can buy.

That's why Murray Hill Incorporated is taking democracy's next step — running for Congress. Join us and build a vision for the future we can all be proud of. Vote Murray Hill Incorporated for Congress!

http://www.murrayhillincforcongress.com/



Facebook page -
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Murray-Hill-Inc-for-Congress/314963396608?v=wall

Foreign businesses might be the real winners in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the landmark case that allows corporations and unions to spend limitless amounts of money on presidential and congressional political campaigns. A majority of large businesses are now owned by foreign entities, and this means international corporations could pour tons of money into the United States political scene, potentially swaying the political climate.

 http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/01/22/should-foreign-corporations-spend-money-on-u-s-political-candidates.aspx

While political observers have dissected much of yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, one potentially huge (and probably unintended) consequence has gotten little notice: the impact the decision could have on foreign government spending on federal campaigns.

The ruling essentially gives corporations the same rights as individuals in their ability to spend freely on political advertising, even if those advertisements explicitly advocate the election or defeat of a federal candidate. This means that candidates who support, say, increased restrictions on tobacco products could find themselves up against the corporate treasury of say, a major American tobacco company. And even the fear of $10 million in attack ads blanketing the airways come re-election time may give sitting legislators pause before taking on moneyed industries.

But it’s one thing for U.S. firms to have their say. What about foreign companies that operate U.S. subsidiaries? Many of these, like American businesses, are owned by ordinary shareholders — but a host of others are owned, in whole or in part, by the foreign governments themselves.

One prominent examples is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.

And it’s not just Chavez. The Saudi government owns Houston’s Saudi Refining Company and half of Motiva Enterprises. Lenovo, which bought IBM’s PC assets in 2004, is partially owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences. And Singapore’s APL Limited operates several U.S. port operations. A weakening of the limit on corporate giving could mean China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and any other country that owns companies that operate in the U.S. could also have significant sway in American electioneering.
Federal election law has long prohibited any foreign national from directly or indirectly making “an independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.” And the Supreme Court’s ruling does not explicitly address the issue of foreign corporations. However, in his dissent in Citizens United, Justice John Paul Stevens cautioned that the decision “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”

http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1913/

WASHINGTON -- Forty-one business leaders have co-signed letters sent to Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress voicing their opposition to Thursday's Supreme Court ruling that frees corporations to spend unlimited amounts on influencing elections.

"Is there a difference between campaign contributions and bribery?" said Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of Hasbro, Inc, who co-signed the letter.

"It is long past the time to stop requiring that our elected officials moonlight as telemarketers raising money for their re-election campaigns rather then devoting all their time to solving the problems before this nation," he said.


The letter read: "As business leaders, we believe the current political fundraising system is already broken. The Supreme Court decision further exacerbates this problem."

Signatories include current and former high-ranking corporate executives of enterprises such as Playboy Enterprises, MetLife, Ben & Jerry's, and Delta Airlines, among others.

http://rawstory.com/2010/01/business-leaders-finance-ruling-extremely-troubling/

Farmers win on Election Year

Less than two years ago, Congress seemingly ended a decades-old practice of rushing to the rescue of farmers any time they suffered weather damage to their crops. The costly old system of “emergency aid” was a regular drain on the budget, and there were so many loopholes that some farmers with no appreciable losses were able to cash in.

But some habits are hard to break.  The Senate this week is on the verge of bypassing new procedures set up by the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill in order to bestow $1.1 billion of  emergency aid on farmers as part of a huge package of renewed tax provisions and a one-year extension of unemployment insurance. Also tucked into the legislation is nearly $350 million to help ranchers, fruit and vegetable producers, catfish farmers hit with high feed costs, and poultry raisers left high and dry by the closing of southern chicken processing plants.

For the legislation’s main champion, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., obtaining the farm aid for Mississippi Delta cotton and soybean growers hurt by last fall’s heavy rains is a crucial step in an uphill battle to retain her seat in November.

Lincoln has been sharply criticized by conservatives for allowing health care legislation to proceed in the Senate, and has been hurt by a groundswell of anti-government feelings throughout her state.  Polls show her trailing several Republicans, and she is now also being challenged in the May 18 Democratic primary by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is being backed by liberal groups who are displeased with her close ties to corporate agriculture and her stands on health care, union rules and global warming.

Lincoln ascended to chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee late last September, and since then has been pressing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other Democratic leaders to help her pass emergency assistance for farmers in her region.  An aide to Reid confirmed Monday that emergency agriculture assistance was included in the $138 billion package of tax extenders and unemployment insurance provisions awaiting action in the Senate.

But how Congress handles the farm aid issue will be a test of both parties’ commitment to control spending.

That’s because the 2008 farm bill was supposed to end such ad hoc payouts and replace them with a permanent — and less politically driven — system.

The farm bill set up a $3.8 billion trust fund, financed out of customs duties rather than appropriated funds. Last December, the Department of Agriculture followed up by announcing stringent eligibility standards that required farms to demonstrate substantial losses not just on one crop but across their entire farming operation. The new Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payment Program (SURE) closed significant  loopholes that had been part of emergency farm aid spending measures enacted by Congress. And it requires farmers to have purchased their own private crop insurance — providing incentives to growers not to rely on government alone to manage risks

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., a principal architect of the program, hailed SURE as a better solution to the more expensive disaster bills common in Congress.

But the current push for special one-time aid — coming before a single dollar has been paid out by SURE — is being driven by strong political pressures and, less obviously, by striking differences in the ways farmers in different regions of the country cope with risk.     

“Arkansas’ farmers are the backbone of our state’s economy,” Lincoln said last week of the emergency assistance. “This will provide the helping hand they need to get back on their feet and save jobs.”

Theo Eldridge, director of the Farm Service Agency in Phillips County, Ark., in the Mississippi Delta, estimates 30 percent of the local soybean and cotton crop was lost due to record rainfall at harvest time. But that tells only part of the story because rice — a major local crop and the second largest after soybeans in the state — did not have significant losses, Eldridge said.       

Although Republicans and Tea Party activists are targeting Democrats for their free spending ways, Lincoln has political cover on farm aid because her legislation is co-sponsored by Sen. Thad Cochran , R-Miss., the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee.

Even so, after a year of record outlays, Democratic leaders are under enormous pressure to show fiscal restraint. That could involve standing up to the powerful farm bloc, something few in either party have been willing to do.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/03/08/Farmer-Could-Reap-Big-Subsidies.aspx

Side note (with political map):

Few Democratic Governors Are Safe

"There are states where we didn't think we could play, say, two months ago, that now we think we can play in," says Tim Murtaugh, spokesman for the Republican Governors Association. "I don't think it has anything to do with Obama's personality as much as it has to do with his policies."

With 37 governorships up for grabs this year — including 23 left open by term limits or retirement — that likely translates into bad news for the Democrats.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124497762&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+StatelineorgRss-Headlines+%28Stateline.org+RSS+-+Headlines%29 

 

Unlimited Corporate Power in Politics

Thursday was a bad day for democracy. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission paves the way for unlimited corporate and union spending in elections, and the drowning out of the average citizen’s voice in our public policy debates. In other words, the court has made a bad situation worse by enhancing the ability of the deepest-pocketed special interests to influence elections and the US Congress. http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0122/Supreme-Court-s-campaign-ruling-a-bad-day-for-democracy

The Supreme Court recently freed [1] corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won't know it, because it's easy for them to legally hide their political spending.Under current disclosure laws for federal elections, it's virtually impossible for the public to track how much a business spends, what it's spending on, or who ultimately benefits. Experts say the transparency problem extends to state and local races as well.

"There is no good way to gauge" how much any given company spends on elections, said Karl Sandstrom, a former vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission and counsel to the Center for Political Accountability. "There's no central collection of the information, no monitoring."

Companies invest in politics to win favorable regulations or block those "that could choke off their business model," said Robert Kelner, chairman of Covington & Burling's Washington, D.C., political law group. But they'd rather hide these political activities, he said, because they fear backlash from customers or shareholders.

For instance, a company may want to help Democratic politicians who support health care reforms that would benefit the company, but it worries about offending "Republican shareholders who may care more about their personal ideology than about their three shares of stock in the company," said Kelner, who says he represents many politically active Fortune 500 companies. "The same would be true on the other side of the political spectrum."

Businesses must reveal their identities on public [2] reports [3] to the Federal Election Commission if they buy advertising on their own. But one popular and perfectly legal conduit for companies wanting to influence politics under the radar is to give money to nonprofit trade groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber and its national affiliates spent $144.5 million [4] last year on advertising, lobbying and grass-roots activism -- more than either the Republican or Democratic party spent, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of public records -- while legally concealing [5] the names of its funders. The Los Angeles Times reported this week [6] that the Chamber is building a grass-roots political operation that has signed up about 6 million non-Chamber members.

Some of the positions the Chamber has successfully advanced on behalf of its donors include a nationwide campaign to unseat state judges [7] who were considered tough on corporate defendants and opposition to a federal bill that would have criminalized defective auto manufacturing [8].

Now the Jan. 21 Supreme Court ruling that increases the potential political clout of businesses is drawing fresh attention to the problem of tracking them.
That decision [9] (PDF), Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allows corporations to run television ads that don't merely speak to an issue but say outright whether a candidate should be elected, and allows them to do so any time they want to, using their general funds. The ruling also gives nonprofit groups like the Chamber these new freedoms, because they are technically structured as corporations.

Before, corporations had to rely on employee and shareholder contributions to a separate political account to finance the most explicit commercials and, in the months before an election, any issue ads that mentioned a candidate. Although the decision addressed federal election rules, its constitutional rationale also dismantles similar restrictions in 24 states [10].

http://www.propublica.org/article/higher-corporate-spending-on-election-ads-could-be-all-but-invisible

Overview of Political Process

"... why am I so interested in politics? If I were to answer you very simply I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations in which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct? The essence of our life consists, after all of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves." Michel Foucault 
From Wiki -

Since the 1790s, the country has been run by two major parties. The United States does not have a parliamentary system, in which governing coalitions are formed after elections, so coalitions are formed before elections under the umbrella of the party organizations. In the absence of a parliamentary system, third parties cannot thrive. Since the Civil War, the two major parties have been called the Republican and Democratic parties. Many minor or third political parties appear from time to time. They tend to serve a means to advocate policies that eventually are adopted by the two major political parties. At various times the Socialist Party, the Farmer-Labor Party and the Populist Party for a few years had considerable local strength, and then faded away. At present, the Libertarian Party is the most successful third party.
Most officials in America are elected from single-member districts and win office by beating out their opponents in a system for determining winners called first-past-the-post—the one who gets the plurality wins, (which is not the same thing as actually getting a majority of votes). This encourages the two-party system; see Duverger's law.

Another critical factor has been ballot access law. Originally, voters went to the polls and publicly stated which candidate they supported. Later on, this developed into a process whereby each political party would create its own ballot and thus the voter would put the party's ballot into the voting box. In the late nineteenth century, states began to adopt the Australian Secret Ballot Method, and it eventually became the national standard. The secret ballot method ensured that the privacy of voters would be protected (hence government jobs could no longer be awarded to loyal voters) and each state would be responsible for creating one official ballot. The fact that state legislatures were dominated by Democrats and Republicans provided these parties an opportunity to pass discriminatory laws against minor political parties, yet such laws did not start to arise until the first Red Scare that hit America after World War I. State legislatures began to enact tough laws that made it harder for minor political parties to run candidates for office by requiring a high number of petition signatures from citizens and decreasing the length of time that such a petition could legally be circulated.
It should also be noted that while the overwhelming majority of elected officials do identify with a political party, the political parties of the United States are much more individualistic than in other political systems (i.e. in a parliamentary system). More often than not, party members will "toe the line" and support their party's policies, but it is important to note that they are free to vote against their own party and vote with the opposition ("cross the aisle") whenever they please.

"In America the same political labels—Democratic and Republican—cover virtually all public officeholders, and therefore most voters are everywhere mobilized in the name of these two parties," says Nelson W. Polsby, professor of political science, in the book New Federalist Papers: Essays in Defense of the Constitution. "Yet Democrats and Republicans are not everywhere the same. Variations—sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant—in the 50 political cultures of the states yield considerable differences overall in what it means to be, or to vote, Democratic or Republican. These differences suggest that one may be justified in referring to the American two-party system as masking something more like a hundred-party system."

Youth Guide to Politics, Part One: What Are Political Action Committees? 

http://www.wiretapmag.org/rights/43192/ 

About PACs - Political Action Committees

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepoliticalsystem/a/aboutpacs.htm

List of Political Action Committees via Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_action_committees

In the 2008 elections, the top 9 PACs by money spent by themselves, their affiliates and subsidiaries were as follows:

1. IBEW PAC $3,344,650
2. AT&T Federal PAC $3,108,200
3. American Bankers Association (BANK PAC) $2,918,14
4. National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC $2,869,000
5. Dealers Election Action Committee of the National Automobile Dealers Association $2,860,000
6. International Association of Fire Fighters $2,734,900
7. International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Political Education Committee $2,704,067
8. American Association for Justice PAC $2,700,500
9. Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) PAC $2,555,350

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

Power Struggle

The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America
Part 1 of 6
http://ampedstatus.com/the-economic-elite-vs-the-people-of-the-united-states-of-america-part-i

State Unemployment Borrowing

Arizona and Delaware given credit allotment and added to the unemployment borrowing list for March.  New Hampshire managed to make it through February without tapping their line of credit while Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Vermont began borrowing in February.  California is now over $7.5 billion followed by Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio for the top spots.  All together....over $33.6 billion in borrowing as of March 1st 2010 that is accruing 5% interest and doesn't show up in the state budgets as it will be taxed directly via employers.  Thus curbing future job growth for years to come.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/tfmp/tfmp_advactivitiessched.htm

Here are some statistics on unemployment....

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a new report last week showing that
1.2 million jobless workers will become ineligible for federal unemployment benefits in March unless Congress extends the unemployment safety net programs from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). By June, this number will swell to nearly 5 million unemployed workers nationally who will be left without any jobless benefits.
...
Currently, 5.6 million people are accessing one of the federal extensions (34-53 weeks of Emergency Unemployment Compensation; 13-20 weeks of Extended Benefits, a program normally funded 50 percent by the states).

According to the BLS, there are a record 6.31 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks (and still want a job). This is a record 4.1% of the civilian workforce. (note: records started in 1948).

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/02/five-million-workers-to-exhaust.html
Bold and Underline Mine
 

The nation's employment picture continues to remain bleak.

The U-S unemployment rate fell from 10 to 9.7 percent in January, but a Gallup poll out yesterday found that nearly one out of every five members of the country's workforce is underemployed. That's about 30 million Americans who are without jobs or unable to find full-time work.

"Underemployed people spent 36 percent less on household purchases than their fully employed neighbors in January, while six out of 10 were not hopeful about their chances of finding adequate work in the coming month, the poll said…
The poll comes at a time when voter anger over the slow economic recovery is running high and President Barack Obama's hopes of boosting employment through government programs have been frustrated by partisan rancor in Congress."

The poll also found that underemployed Americans have a more favorable view of the president than those with full-time work.

There are increasing worries that the 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer will continue to be out of work, possibly for years to come. The 6.3 million is a record number more than double what it was in the early 1980s.

The NY Times dubs them the "new poor," people who once enjoyed a middle-class life but since the recession have been forced to rely on public assistance for the first time.

Millions could soon face having to do without an unemployment check over the next few months, unless Congress approves an extension. And that's for those lucky enough to be getting any assistance in the first place, as many have no real social safety net to speak of and "are landing in this netherworld," as one expert puts it.

Economists think that the highly educated and those with specific skills are likely to bounce back, but the ability to eke out a middle-class existence with only a high school education and no specialized skills might largely be relegated to history books. Even if the economy begins to recover, it's going to take a long time to get the more than 15 million people who are officially jobless back into the work force, particularly since the speed with which jobs come back after downturns has been on a downward cycle over the past 50 years, according to The Times.

To make matters worse, it's difficult to be optimistic about the three sectors that have traditionally helped the country get out of a recession: the auto industry, home building, and banking.

If you are unemployed or underemployed, what are you doing to make ends meet?

For those of you who are employed, there is this sobering thought to consider: Since health insurance, and other fringe benefits, are routinely based on full-time employment, many of these under-employed Americans do not qualify for these benefits. It means that many more millions of Americans who, when they get sick, will be treated by hospitals, which will pass that cost onto states systems (those that have them) or, more likely, insurance companies. Couple that with rising health care costs in the medical field and the insurance industry and fewer and fewer businesses will be able to afford health benefits for their employees --or they'll lay off more people. Or close their doors.
Either way, a smaller and smaller pool of insured will remain, increasing the risk pool for private insurers who will then be forced to raise their rates --on you, and on group plans. This was precisely the reasoning Anthem Blue Cross in California used to justify their rate increase proposal of 39 percent this year and 41 percent last year (though they've now been found by the state to have committed over 700 violation, including late payment of claims and misrepresenting facts or insurance policies to consumers).
Bottom line: The unemployment picture is another aspect of health reform seldom discussed and another strong argument for single-payer national health insurance. If you want to argue that you don't want to pay for other people's health care, guess what: You already are, and under the current system, you will pay more.

 http://www.examiner.com/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2010m2d23-Poll-One-in-five-Americans-underemployed
Bold and Underline Mine

California saw 834,329 unemployment claims filed in January, a 34% increase over the 621,468 in January of 2009 when the financial meltdown escalated and employers started slashing payrolls, reports the state Employment Development Department.

The cost of unemployment in California also has soared as more people collect benefits for a longer period.

EDD reported the state paid out $2.44 billion in benefits this January up from $1.34 billion in January 2009, an 82% increase. That equates to about $81 million a day in pay outs.

http://economy.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/23/calif-sees-jobless-claims-jump-in-january/27613/

To put that in perspective, from my own research - average daily revenue for California for the current fiscal year ( July 1st 2009 through Dec 31st 2009) is $220 million per day.  That puts average daily unemployment expenses at over 36% of average daily revenue.....which is clearly unsustainable.  To top it off, unemployment expenses are rising while revenue is declining.  Average daily borrowing from the Fed for unemployment was $32.1 billion.

Five states will be added to the list (currently 30 states) in the next six months:

Arizona will begin borrowing from the Fed by the end of March - first of April.  Delaware will begin end of April - first of May.  Hawaii will start in June.  New Hampshire by mid March.  Tennessee in August.

The Trust Fund balances of the remaining states, that aren't borrowing from the Federal Government yet, have been declining at just under 10% per month since June 2009.  At this rate all but two states will be borrowing from the Federal Government by the end of 2012....and that is if the trend doesn't accelerate....which in all likelihood...will!

If global markets ever get tired of fretting over the debt situation in Europe there's certainly no shortage of cash-strapped government entities in the United States that give cause for concern. Setting aside the exploding federal deficit situation, ABCNews.com set out to take a close look at the 50 states from a variety of economic and demographic factors, including total population, projected 2010 budget deficits, credit ratings, foreclosure rates, energy costs, total outstanding debt and unemployment.

Here are the five states spiraling most dangerously toward insolvency:

California Reaming

With a fiscal year 2010 budget gap of nearly $52 billion, or 56 percent of its total general budget, California is hands down the poster child of fiscally imperiled states. It also enjoys the dubious distinction of having the single worst credit rating (A-) of any of the 50 states, as measured by Standard & Poor's.

Ill in Illinois

By most measures, Illinois has a troubling financial outlook. It has a $14.3 billion budget deficit, which amounts to 41 percent of its total budget, as well as double-digit unemployment. Illinois also has the second lowest S&P credit rating behind California.

Earlier this year a group of Chicago-based civic leaders created a Web site, Illinoisisbroke.com, to raise awareness and keep a running tally on the state's total debt which is expected to reach $130 billion by July. The state, according to the site, spends $3 for every $2 it takes in. Much of the debt is related to pension and health care benefits for state retirees.

Florida, Foreclosed

No state with a population as large as Florida's (at 18.5 million people) has a foreclosure rate as high as the Sunshine State. At 2.7 percent, it is twice the national average, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's National Delinquency Survey.

New York State of Bind

The Empire State faces a $21 billion budget deficit this fiscal year which ends in April. To put that in perspective, that is 38 percent of New York's total budget. Only California has a higher absolute dollar deficit figure weighing it down, and only four states (California, Arizona, Nevada and Illinois) have larger gaps when measured as a percentage of total budget. The state has historically relied heavily upon revenues from taxes on bonuses paid out by Wall Street firms, in some years accounting for nearly one-fifth of the total budget. The collapse of several Wall Street firms, along with a backlash against financial industry pay in general, is expected to put the state in a severe bind. As state legislatures go, Albany gives Sacramento a run for its (ability to mismanage) money.

Michigan's Mess

Detroit's auto woes have pushed Michigan's unemployment level to 14.6 percent, the highest in the country. The eighth most populated state, Michigan has been forced to partially shut down state government functions twice in the past two years as lawmakers failed to agree on a budget, according to the Pew's study. It currently faces a $2.8 billion budget gap.

When the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis releases finalized 2009 data, Michigan is expected to be among the 10 poorest states, according to Donald Grimes, a senior research specialist at the University of Michigan.

 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/california-illinois-florida-york-michigan-states-dire-financial/story?id=9856552 

Side note on banking...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Tuesday that its deposit-insurance fund fell to $20.9 billion at the end of 2009, a $12.6 billion drop in the final three months of the year, as bank failures continued at a pace not seen since the savings and loan crisis. The fund's reserve ratio was -0.39% at the end of the quarter, the lowest on record for the combined bank and thrift fund.

The deposit insurance fund is unlikely to soon see a respite from a decline in the number of failing banks: The FDIC said the number of banks on its "problem" list climbed to 702 at the end of 2009 from 552 at the end of September and 252 at the end of 2008. The number of banks on the list, which have combined assets of $402.8 billion, is the highest since June 1993.

"The continued rise in loan losses and troubled assets points to further pressure on earnings," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said in a statement. "The growth in the numbers and assets of institutions on our 'Problem List' points to a likely rise in the number of failures."

Industry indicators deteriorated nearly across the board. The FDIC said loan losses for U.S. banks climbed for the 12th straight quarter, while the total loan balances for U.S. banks continued to fall. The agency said the quarterly net charge-off rate and the total number of loans at least three months past due both were at the highest level ever recorded in the 26 years the data have been collected.

Net charge-offs of troubled loans occurred across all major loan categories, led by a $3.3 billion increase in residential mortgage loans. The FDIC said U.S. banks' coverage ratio--reserves divided by the amount of noncurrent loans--fell to 58.1% in the fourth quarter from 60.1% in the third quarter.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fdic-hits-record-default-levels-deposit-insurance-fund-plunges-127-billion-negative-209-bill
Bold and Underline Mine

Stimulus Funding

Track stimulus funding down to your local level...click on the link after the excerpt.....click your state....click your county....then scroll down to see all of the individual items funded with stimulus money in your area.

We’ve taken all the data used on the government’s stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, cleaned out the cobwebs and added thousands of records the feds didn't include — the law doesn't require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov — to create the most comprehensive publicly available analysis of stimulus spending that we know of. Type in your county or click on your state to find local projects, and check out how per capita spending compares with poverty, income and unemployment in your area.

http://projects.propublica.org/recovery/

America's Financial Future

 Excerpts for interesting look...



A little dated but good overview...






Perhaps some more insight...