Random Politics & Religion #00

Would rather people spent their disposable income on things like health insurance than get sick and pass their medical bills onto the taxpayer like they did before ACA.

Wild guess, you don't have health insurance provided by the ACA? (Obamacare)

The White House is sending the message to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that the Republican budget he just passed will be rejected by President Obama unless serious changes are made.

No subsidies?! That must be pricey.

"While it is not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department," Gowdy said.

You might think the timing of the Federal Reserve’s move to raise interest rates is the biggest concern on Wall Street these days. But maybe not. Maybe it’s Elizabeth Warren.

Reuters reports some of the biggest financial firms on the Street are so infuriated by Warren’s anti-bank crusade that they are considering withholding political donations to Democratic Senators in protest. Reuters says representatives of Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs (GS) and Bank of America (BAC) have met to discuss how they might be able to get Democrats to tone down their rhetoric. And while there’s no coordinated plan to cut off funding, the idea has been raised in one-on-one conversations among banking officials.

This comes as no surprise to Yahoo Finance Editor in Chief Andy Serwer.

“She is their enemy, no question about it,” he says. “I was just at one of these large Wall Street banks, talking to a senior official, and unprompted he brought up Elizabeth Warren’s name. And he was really concerned that she really had drawing power because of the polarization of American politics.”

Warren has said she won’t run for President in 2016, although there is a draft effort by some in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. But Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michel Santoli says the banks’ concern is not about Warren winning elections, it’s whether or not she can influence the country’s mindset about them.

A little bit of good news:

Forget the Fed, this is Wall Street's big worry

Let's be 100-percent clear: Indiana's brand new Religious Freedom Law is a measure that fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down. And I say that as not only a conservative, but a religious conservative.

Saudis invading Yemen. Sounds legit.

Meanwhile supporting Iran in Syria and support the fight against them in Yemen. Three cheers for hypocrisy!

ou need to know this number: $18,433. That's the median amount in a 401(k) savings account, according to a recent report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Almost 40 percent of employees have less than $10,000, even as the proportion of companies offering alternatives like defined benefit pensions continues to drop.

Older workers do tend to have more savings. At Vanguard, for example, the median for savers aged 55 to 64 in 2013 was $76,381. But even at that level, millions of workers nearing retirement are on track to leave the workforce with savings that do not even approach what they will need for health care, let alone daily living. Not surprisingly, retirement is now Americans' top financial worry, according to a recent Gallup poll.

To be sure, tax-advantaged 401(k) plans have provided a means for millions of retirement savers to build a nest egg. More than three-quarters of employers use such defined contribution plans as the main retirement income plan option for employees, and the vast majority of them offer matching contribution programs, which further enhance employees' ability to accumulate wealth.

But shifting the responsibility for growing retirement income from employers to individuals has proved problematic for many American workers, particularly in the face of wage stagnation and a lack of investment expertise. For them, the grand 401(k) experiment has been a failure.

"In America, when we had disability and defined benefit plans, you actually had an equality of retirement period. Now the rich can retire and workers have to work until they die," said Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist at the New School for Social Research who has proposed eliminating the tax breaks for 401(k)s and using the money saved to create government-run retirement plans.
A historical accident?

It wasn't supposed to work out this way.

The 401(k) account came into being quietly, as a clause in the Revenue Act of 1978. The clause said employees could choose to defer some compensation until retirement, and they would not be taxed until that time. (Companies had long offered deferred compensation arrangements, but employers and the IRS had been going back and forth about their tax treatment.)

"401(k)s were never designed as the nation's primary retirement system," said Anthony Webb, a research economist at the Center for Retirement Research. "They came to be that as a historical accident."

Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren: No one

Not sure what the article is about so I'll save you the 3 minutes it would take to read it !

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/whos-afraid-of-elizabeth-warren-116471.html?hp=t2_r

Arab leaders agreed on Sunday to form a joint military force after a summit dominated by a Saudi-led offensive on Shiite rebels in Yemen and the threat from Islamist extremism.

Arab representatives will meet over the next month to study the creation of the force and present their findings to defence ministers within four months, according to the resolution adopted by the leaders.

"Assuming the great responsibility imposed by the great challenges facing our Arab nation and threatening its capabilities, the Arab leaders had decided to agree on the principle of a joint Arab military force," Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the summit in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The decision was mostly aimed at fighting jihadists who have overrun swathes of Iraq and Syria and secured a foothold in Libya, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said ahead of the summit.

On Sunday, Arabi told the meeting the region was threatened by a "destructive" force that threatened "ethnic and religious diversity", in an apparent reference to the Islamic State group.

"What is important is that today there is an important decision, in light of the tumult afflicting the Arab world," he said.

Egypt had pushed for the creation of the rapid response force to fight militants, and the matter gained urgency this week after Saudi Arabia and Arab allies launched air strikes on Huthi rebels in Yemen.

Arabi, reading a statement at the conclusion of the summit, said on Sunday the offensive would continue until the Huthis withdraw from regions they have overrun and surrender their weapons.

Several Arab states including Egypt are taking part in the military campaign, which Saudi King Salman said on Saturday would continue until the Yemeni people "enjoy security".

- 'Months to create' -

Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi at the start of the summit called for the offensive to end only when the Huthis "surrender", calling the rebel leader an Iranian "puppet".

However, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the leaders to find a peaceful resolution in Yemen.

"It is my fervent hope that at this Arab League summit, leaders will lay down clear guidelines to peacefully resolve the crisis in Yemen," he said.

James Dorsey, a Middle East analyst with the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said that despite support for a joint-Arab force, "it would still take months to create and then operate on an ad-hoc basis.

"I don't think we will get an integrated command anytime soon, as no Arab leader would cede control of any part of their army anytime soon," he said.

"Today we will have a formal declaration that would be negotiated every time during action."

Sisi said in a recent interview that the proposal for a joint force was welcomed especially by Jordan, which might take part alongside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

Aaron Reese, deputy research director at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said "each of these countries would bring a different capability.

"The Jordanians are well known for their special forces capability... the Egyptians of course have the most manpower and bases close to Libya."

Before Egyptian air strikes in February targeting the IS in Libya, the United Arab Emirates, which shares Cairo's antipathy towards Islamists, had reportedly used Egyptian bases to launch its own air strikes there.

Cairo had sought UN backing for intervention in Libya, dismissing attempted peace talks between the rival governments in its violence-plagued North African neighbour as ineffective.