Shhhhhh, don't tell the Republicans ....

Congratulations, America! Your deficit fell 37 percent in 2013.

The federal government's 2013 fiscal year ended Sept. 30, though most of us were so busy focusing on the government shutdown that accompanied the new fiscal year that there wasn't much time to reflect on the year that had passed.

Now the Treasury and Office of Management and Budget is out with the final budget results.
Surprise! The deficit fell quite a bit in 2013. The federal government took in $680 billion less revenue than it spent, or about 4.1 percent of gross domestic product. In 2012, those numbers were $1.087 trillion and 6.8 percent of GDP. That means the deficit fell a whopping 37 percent in one year.

This is the first sub-$1 trillion and sub-5 percent of GDP deficit since the 2008 fiscal year, which ended the very month that Lehman Brothers fell and a deep crisis set in.

What's behind it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/30/congratulations-america-your-deficit-fell-37-percent-in-2013/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein&clsrd&wpisrc=nl_wonk

MIT Wristband Could Make AC Obsolete

Here’s a scary statistic: In 2007, 87 percent of households in the U.S. used air conditioning, compared to just 11 percent of households in Brazil and a mere 2 percent in India. Another one: By 2025, booming nations like those are projected to account for a billion new consumers worldwide, with a corresponding explosion in demand for air conditioning expected to arrive along with them. Keeping indoor spaces at comfortable temperatures requires a huge amount of electricity–especially in sweltering climates like India and Brazil–and in the U.S. alone it accounts for a full 16.5 percent of energy use.

All of that adds up to a big problem. At a point when humans need to take a sober look at our energy use, we’re poised to use a devastating amount of it keeping our homes and offices at the right temperatures in years to come. A team of students at MIT, however, is busy working on a prototype device that could eliminate much of that demand, and they’re doing it by asking one compelling question: Why not just heat and cool our bodies instead?

Shames runs hot. His mom runs cold. He figured there must be a way for them to coexist.

Wristify, as they call their device, is a thermoelectric bracelet that regulates the temperature of the person wearing it by subjecting their skin to alternating pulses of hot or cold, depending on what’s needed. The prototype recently won first place at this year’s MADMEC, an annual competition put on by the school’s Materials Science and Engineering program, netting the group a $10,000 prize, which they’ll use to continue its development. It’s a promising start to a clever approach that could help alleviate a serious energy crisis. But as Sam Shames, the MIT senior who helped invent the technology, explains, the team was motivated by a more prosaic problem: keeping everyone happy in a room where no one can agree where to set the thermostat.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/10/an-ingenious-wristband-that-keeps-your-body-at-the-perfect-temperature-no-ac-required/#oo

Executions on Monday Night Football ...

Urban Cleansing by Class: The Perfect Crime

"When policy making is surrendered to public-private partnerships or privately empowered bodies without accountability to the entire community, and without recourse or provision for redress of grievance, established principles of democratic society are jeopardized and are at risk of being bastardized."


http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/19683-urban-cleansing-by-class-the-perfect-crime

Criminalizing Immigrants = The Safe Act

STOP THE SAFE ACT NOW ....

The day the middle class died ...

THIRTY years ago today, when he threatened to fire nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off an illegal strike, Ronald Reagan not only transformed his presidency, but also shaped the world of the modern workplace.

More than any other labor dispute of the past three decades, Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or Patco, undermined the bargaining power of American workers and their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.

By firing those who refused to heed his warning, and breaking their union, Reagan took a considerable risk. Even his closest advisers worried that a major air disaster might result from the wholesale replacement of striking controllers. Air travel was significantly curtailed, and it took several years and billions of dollars (much more than Patco had demanded) to return the system to its pre-strike levels.

But the risk paid off for Reagan in the short run. He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan’s firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/opinion/reagan-vs-patco-the-strike-that-busted-unions.html?_r=0

When the President of the USA fires air traffic controllers ...

We the working class, blue collar, union men/women were screwed and have been ever since ....

After the Shutdown: No Time for Compromise

Will the Dems insist on a budget that addresses unemployment and inequality? Or will they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by seeking “common ground”?

Congressional Democrats were in an understandably celebratory mood after the shutdown schemes of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party went so awry that conservative stalwarts like Representative Sean Duffy were admitting, “Big picture: I think this was a horrible strategy.” What was horrible in the eyes of the Grand Old Partisans wasn’t the damage done to public services, the economy or confidence in the “full faith and credit” of the United States. It was the political cost: by the time Republicans allowed the government to reopen, the party’s favorability rating had fallen ten points—to 28 percent, the lowest level recorded for a major party since Gallup began asking the question in 1992.
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http://www.thenation.com/article/176801/after-shutdown-no-time-compromise?rel=emailNation#

Blackburn says ACA website costs 500 million and

was put together by a Canadian company ,,,,

Fox Column Shrugs Off Unprecedented Obstruction Of Obama's Judicial Nominees

Right-wing media continue to deny that President Obama's judicial nominees have faced unparalleled obstruction from congressional Republicans, and is mischaracterizing the legal philosophies of those nominees.

FoxNews.com contributor John Lott not only misled on the overwhelming hurdles President Obama's nominees have faced, he also rather bizarrely branded one nominee as "controversial," even though his legal opinions are based on well-established Supreme Court precedent.

From Lott's October 16 column:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/10/18/fox-column-shrugs-off-unprecedented-obstruction/196502