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Javier E

Americans Aren't Saving Enough for Retirement, but One Change Could Help - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...but-one-change-could-help.html

retirement conflict of interest wall street saving

shared by Javier E on 05 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • On average, a typical working family in the anteroom of retirement — headed by somebody 55 to 64 years old — has only about $104,000 in retirement savings
  • more than half of all American households will not have enough retirement income to maintain the living standards they were accustomed to before retirement,
  • 83 percent of baby boomers and Generation Xers in the bottom fourth of the income distribution will eventually run short of money.
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  • More than a quarter of those with incomes between the middle of the income distribution and the 75th percentile will probably run short.
  • The standard prescription is that Americans should put more money aside in investments. The recommendation, however, glosses over a critical driver of unpreparedness: Wall Street is bleeding savers dry.
  • “A greater part of the problem is the failure of investors to earn their fair share of market returns.”
  • His observation suggests a different policy prescription: shoring up Americans’ retirement requires, first of all, aligning the interests of investment advisers and their clients.
  • Actively managed mutual funds, in which many workers invest their retirement savings, are enormously costly.
  • Altogether, costs add up to 2.27 percent per year, Mr. Bogle estimates.
  • The White House’s Council of Economic Advisers argues that “conflicted advice” by advisers who get payments from the funds they recommend reduces the annual returns to investment by 1 percentage point, a more modest penalty than Mr. Bogle’s analysis
  • Assuming an annual market return of 7 percent, he says, a 30-year-old worker who made $30,000 a year and received a 3 percent annual raise could retire at age 70 with $927,000 in the pot by saving 10 percent of her wages every year in a passive index fund. (Such a nest egg, at the standard withdrawal rate of 4 percent, would generate an inflation-adjusted $37,000 a year more or less indefinitely.) If she put it in a typical actively managed fund, she would end up with only $561,000.
  • In 1979, almost two in five private sector workers had a defined-benefit pension that would pay out a check until they died. Today only 14 percent do. Almost one in three, by contrast, must make do with a retirement savings account alone to supplement their Social Security check.
  • nobody was paying attention to the safeguards that might be needed when corporate retirement funds managed by sophisticated professionals were replaced by individual 401(k)s and Individual Retirement Accounts.
  • “Wall Street makes no money on low-cost index funds,” said David F. Swensen, who runs the investment portfolio for Yale. “That is the problem.”
  • Harvard and colleagues from M.I.T. and the University of Hamburg sent “mystery shoppers” to visit financial advisers. They found that advisers mostly recommended investment strategies that fit their own financial interests. They reinforced their clients’ misguided biases, encouraging them to chase returns and advising against low-cost options like low-fee index funds.
  • For all their flaws, 401(k) plans have a fiduciary responsibility to act in participants’ best interest. Managers of I.R.A.s, by contrast, are not legally bound to put their clients’ interests first. They must offer “suitable” products — a much squishier standard.
  • By contrast, a passive index fund, like Vanguard’s Total Stock Market Index Fund, costs merely 0.06 percent a year in all.
  • In 2010, the Labor Department proposed imposing fiduciary responsibility on I.R.A. advisers. The resistance from Wall Street was so fierce that the Obama administration was forced to back down. Last month, the administration tried again.
  • Unlike regulations in Canada and some Western European countries, which have essentially banned kickbacks from funds to investment advisers, the Obama administration’s proposed rule does not directly attack conflicts of interest.
Javier E

The American retirement system is built for the rich - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...tirement-ira-inequality-budget

retirement system rich wealth IRA benefits inequality politics history policy tax tax shelter

shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 22 - No Cached
  • While loudly and proudly proclaiming that their goal is to nurture nest eggs for the working class, lawmakers have constructed a complex of tax shelters for the well-to-do. The lopsided result is that as of 2019, nearly 29,000 taxpayers had amassed “mega-IRAs” — individual retirement accounts with balances of $5 million or more — while half of American households had no retirement accounts at all.
  • according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top 10th of households reap a larger share of the income tax subsidy for retirement savings than the bottom 80 percent.
  • It’s working out just fine for the financial institutions that manage assets in IRAs and 401(k)s. The combined amount in those vehicles reached $21.6 trillion at the end of 2021 — up fivefold since 2000 — and the more money that pours in, the more that managers collect in fees
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  • University of Virginia law professor Michael Doran — who held tax policy roles at the Treasury Department under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — calls the current state of affairs “the great American retirement fraud.”
  • Secure 2.0 would take the fraud to a new level: Its congressional supporters have engaged in Enron-style accounting gimmicks to mask the bill’s effects on deficit
  • from the outset, IRAs were a generous gift to the upper class. At the time, very few low- and middle-income individuals could afford to stash $1,500 in a retirement account each year — median income for U.S. households was $11,100 in 1974 — so the people taking full advantage of the new IRAs tended to be relatively rich
  • since the benefit was structured as a deduction, it was worth more to taxpayers in higher income brackets.
  • In the nearly half-century since, Congress has continually expanded the amount that individuals can pour into tax-deferred savings accounts.
  • Now, the JCT estimates that 401(k)s and other similar defined-contribution plans cost the federal government $200 billion per year.
  • individuals can contribute up to $6,000 per year to an IRA ($7,000 if age 50 or older), plus $20,500 to a 401(k) ($27,000 for 50-year-olds and up), with their employers potentially chipping in to bring the 401(k) total to $61,000 ($67,500 for the over-50 set).
  • In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, 58 percent of taxpayers with wage income made no contribution to 401(k)-style plans, and less than 4 percent bumped up against the contribution cap.
  • As of 2020, approximately 63 percent of U.S. households had no such accounts.
  • I calculated that an individual who made the maximum 401(k) contributions since 1990, investing exclusively in an S&P 500 index fund, would have more than $7 million in her account today.
  • When JCT released data last summer showing that 28,615 taxpayers had accumulated $5 million or more in IRAs, lawmakers cried foul. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee is the top tax writer in the House, lamented the “exploitation” of IRAs. “IRAs are intended to help Americans achieve long-term financial security, not to enable those who already have extraordinary wealth to avoid paying their fair share in taxes,”
  • (The very largest IRAs, like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s reported $5 billion account, result from a different loophole: the ability of founders and early-stage investors to stuff IRAs with start-up stock
  • Forbes revealed more than a decade ago that Thiel and another PayPal co-founder were using their IRAs to shelter entrepreneurial earnings; the Government Accountability Office flagged the IRA-stuffing phenomenon in 2014; and rather than clamping down, lawmakers from both parties sat on their hands.)
  • The Secure 2.0 bill, sponsored by Neal, doubles down on the inequities of the status quo. It will inevitably result in even more of the mega-IRAs that Neal and other Democrats decry.
  • Under current law, taxpayers must begin to take withdrawals from their 401(k)s and traditional IRAs at age 72. (It had been 70½ before Secure 1.0, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2019, raised the age by a year and a half.
  • Secure 2.0 would bump that up to age 75. The change would mean that taxpayers with supersize IRAs could enjoy three extra years of tax-free growth before they needed to take money out
  • Lower-income retirees wouldn’t benefit because they don’t have the luxury of holding off on withdrawals, which they need to cover living expenses.
  • Another provision would lift the cap on 401(k) catch-up contributions at ages 62, 63 and 64 from $6,500 to $10,000. Factoring in employer matching contributions, that would raise the maximum 401(k) inflow to $71,000 per year.
  • if lawmakers were genuinely concerned about retirement security for people who need it, they wouldn’t start by aiding taxpayers who can afford to save more each year than most Americans earn. The higher limit on catch-up contributions will simply allow high-income taxpayers to race further ahead.
  • The top-weighted benefits of Secure 2.0 might be tolerable if they were offset by other tax increases on the rich — if this were all just moving money from one deep pocket to another. But the items audaciously labeled as “revenue provisions” in the bill generate revenue as real as Monopoly money.
  • The Rothification provisions in Secure 2.0 bring $35 billion of revenue into the 10-year window — ostensibly offsetting the cost of the bill’s giveaways — but the $35 billion is pure make-believe: It comes at the expense of an equivalent amount of revenue down the road.
  • If lawmakers from either party were truly concerned about the plight of low-income retirees, they would focus on strengthening Social Security, which actually provides a safety net for older people, rather than adding more deficit-financed bells and whistles to retirement accounts for the rich.
Javier E

Why Conservatives Must Abandon Trumpocracy - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...550685

conservatism gop trump politics boomers party

shared by Javier E on 18 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • it will require much more than Republican congressional defeats in 2018 to halt Trumpocracy. Indeed, such defeats may well perversely strengthen President Trump. Congressional defeats will weaken alternative power centers within the Republican Party. If they lose the House or the Senate or many governorships—or some combination of those defeats—then Republicans may feel all the more compelled to defend their president. The party faithful may interpret any internal criticism of Trump as a treasonable surrender to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
  • The more isolated Trump becomes within the American political system as a whole, the more he will dominate whatever remains of the conservative portion of that system. He will devour his party from within.
  • If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
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  • That means slowing the pace of immigration so that the existing population of the country does not feel it is being displaced and replaced. Economists will argue that a country with a slow-growing population needs more immigrants to sustain the growth of its labor force. But a population is a citizenry as well as a labor force, and when it grows slowly, it can less easily assimilate newcomers. Immigration is to natural population increase as wine is to food: a good complement, a bad substitute.
  • In the most immediate sense, that means accepting that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay, and to work to reform it so that it costs less and protects middle-class families more
  • The stability of American society depends on conservatives’ ability to find a way forward from the Trump dead end, toward a conservatism that cannot only win elections but also govern responsibly, a conservatism that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible, that upholds markets at home and U.S. leadership internationally.
  • Then struck the financial crisis, followed by the presidency of Barack Obama. The proportion of baby boomers who called themselves “angry with government” surged from 15 percent before 2008 to 26 percent the next year. By 2011, 42 percent of baby boomers were labeling themselves “conservative,” the same percentage as the next generation up.
  • Here’s what those right-leaning boomers did mean by “conservatism.” If read a list of scally liberal statements like, “It is the responsibility of government to take care of people who cannot take care of themselves,” boomers became increasingly likely to deliver a stern no over the 20 years between the 1990s and the 2010s. In fact, by 2010, they had become the age cohort most likely to answer no, more so than either their elders or juniors.
  • They were the cohort most likely to attribute individual economic troubles to those individuals’ own personal failings, rather than to ill fortune, racism, or any other systemic cause.
  • The boomers had faced more competition for everything, from jobs to housing, and now faced an ominous retirement environment. If they acted like shipwreck survivors in an already overcrowded lifeboat … well, the boat really was jammed awfully tight.
  • Americans
  • “Seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts,” reported Teresa Ghilarducci of The New York Times. They would need their federal retirement benefits much more than they had anticipated back when they were younger and more liberal.
  • As when they had resisted the draft in the 1960s, so now when they refused changes to Medicare, the politics of the baby boom generation were the politics of generational self-defense.
  • “Tea Partiers judge entitlement programs not in terms of abstract free-market orthodoxy, but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients.” Tea Partiers differentiated between those who worked (or who had worked) and those who sought something for nothing—in other words, between people as they imagined themselves and the people they imagined competing against them.
  • In a multiethnic society, economic redistribution inescapably implies ethnic redistribution.
  • Of the U.S. residents who lacked health insurance prior to the 2008 financial crisis, 27 percent were foreign born. As the Obama administration squeezed Medicare to fund the Affordable Care Act, it’s not surprising that many white boomers perceived Obamacare as a transfer of health care resources from “us” to “them”—by a president who identified with “them” and not with “us.”
  • The social scientist Robert Putnam observed with dismay in 2007 that “new evidence from the U.S. suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down.’ Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” Projects of social and economic reform crash into the reality that human beings most willingly cooperate when they feel common identity. In a society undergoing rapid demographic change, loyalties narrow.
  • Republican politicians since the 1980s had spoken a language of “hope” and “opportunity.”
  • “Believe in America!” “A new American century!” What are they talking about? wondered voters battered and bruised by the previous American century.
  • the political language of the 1980s had lost its power. The most common age for white Americans in 2015 was 55. These older white voters were more eager to protect what they had than to hustle for more. They wanted less change, not more. They cared about security, not opportunity. Protection of the status quo was what candidate Trump offered.
  • One poll found that nearly half of all white working-class voters agreed with the statement, “Things have changed so much that I often feel like a stranger in my own country.” As America has become more diverse, tribalism has intensified. The Left’s hopes for a social democratic politics founded on class without regard to race look only slightly less moribund than the think-tank conservatism of low taxes and open borders.
  • Perhaps the very darkness of the Trump experience can summon the nation to its senses and jolt Americans to a new politics of commonalit
  • Trump appealed to what was mean and cruel and shameful. The power of that appeal should never be underestimated. But once its power fades, even those who have succumbed will feel regret.
  • Those who have expressed regret will need some kind of exit from Trumpocracy, some reintegration into a politics again founded on decency.
Javier E

The good economic news is actually bad. Here's why. - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-8777-2a059f168dd2_story.html

savings habits consumption economic progress gratification

shared by Javier E on 03 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • In his essay “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” Keynes, seeking to dispel pessimism, predicted that, “assuming no important wars and no important increase in population,” the “permanent problem of the human race” — the “struggle for subsistence” — “may be solved.”
  • This, Keynes warned, could discombobulate the human race’s neurological wiring, because mankind has evolved through many millennia for toil and stress. Basic “habits and instincts” are unsuitable for a future of leisure and abundance. Because we have evolved as creatures designed by nature “to strive and not to enjoy.” So, work would have to be apportioned, perhaps in three-hour shifts and 15-hour workweeks, to keep people preoccupied.
  • In 1943, Paul Samuelson, who would become one of America’s leading economists and win a Nobel Prize, anticipated peace with foreboding. Good things — demobilization of more than 10 million from the armed services, the economy no longer busy producing instruments of destruction — would cause bad things. There would be “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” Any economy. Ever.
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  • A 2015 Federal Reserve study revealed that half of those surveyed said they could not gather $400 to cope with an emergency; one-third said they could not sell assets, tap retirement savings or turn to family and friends to pay three months of expenses.
  • In December, America’s household savings rate was the lowest (2.4 percent of disposable income) since the negative savings rates in 2005 and 2006, before the housing bubble burst.
  • As of 2013, 45 percent of working-age households had no retirement savings.
  • This stroll down memory lane suggests this rule: All news is economic news, because everything affects the economy, or reveals attitudes or behaviors that soon will affect it. And all economic news is bad — especially good economic news, because it gives rise to bad behavior.
  • By 2017, median household savings ($14,500) for those near retirement age had declined 32 percent in a decade, and for the first time, older Americans had more credit card debt than younger Americans.
  • Between 2003 and 2015, the indebtedness of those between ages 50 and 80 increased 60 percent. Today, those between 65 and 74 have five times more debt than that age cohort did two decades ago.
  • Do you wonder how such behavior became to seem normal? A partial answer might be:
  • Americans consider deferral of gratification unnatural, which it is. Time was, however, thrift was considered a virtue. People sat at kitchen tables, calculating how to bring their outlays, for living and retiring, into alignment with their incomes.
  • But eventually many people decided: This is no fun. Instead, let’s disconnect enjoyable spending decisions from tiresome facts about resources, thereby living the way the federal government does.
izzerios

2 Experts Back James Mattis, Defense Nominee, as 'Stabilizing' Force - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-mattis-defense-secretary.html

shared by izzerios on 12 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • The prospects for James N. Mattis to serve as secretary of defense in the Trump administration received a boost on Tuesday when two experts in military policy recommended that an exception be made so Mr. Mattis, a retired four-star general, can assume the top Pentagon post.
  • Military officers are barred by law from serving as defense secretary unless they have been retired for seven years.
  • John McCain, the Arizona Republican who leads the Senate Armed Services Committee and has strongly supported General Mattis’s nomination
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  • hearing on Tuesday that was intended to give committee members, particularly Democrats, a chance to explore the issue of civilian control of the military,
  • Mr. Cohen, who signed a letter during the campaign arguing that Donald J. Trump was unfit to serve as commander in chief, argued that an exception should be made because General Mattis was a person of integrity, had important experience at a time when the Pentagon has to contend with multiple threats and might dissuade the incoming administration from acting recklessly.
  • Hicks, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the hearing that it was appropriate to make an exception for General Mattis, and praised his character and expertise. But she stressed that this was the sort of exception that should be made only rarely.
  • The only previous case in which a legal exception was made so that a military officer could become defense secretary was George C. Marshall.
  • Faced with the Korean War and growing tensions with the Soviet Union, Congress passed an amendment in 1950 allowing General Marshall to become the Pentagon chief.
  • Senator Jeane Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, said that Mr. Cohen’s assertion that General Mattis could be a stabilizing force within the Trump administration was the “strongest argument” in favor of confirming the retired Marine general.
  • asked for advice on crafting legislation to ensure that confirming General Mattis would not open the door for similar nominations of recently retired officers to run the Pentagon.
  • General Mattis’s supporters hope President Obama will sign the legislation before leaving office.
malonema1

ICE acting director Thomas Homan announces plan to retire - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...-announces-plan-retire-n870216

US history culture

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • The acting director of the agency responsible for deporting immigrants plans to retire.Thomas Homan, whose retirement plans were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, has served as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement since the beginning of the Trump administration.
  • oman told Fox News in February that politicians who govern so-called sanctuary cities, where local police limit their cooperation with federal immigration agents, should be charged with crimes. Under his tenure as the top official at ICE, the agency has increased arrests of noncriminal migrants and raids on workplaces
  • "Because of their tremendous dedication and hard work, we have made significant progress this past year in enforcing our nation’s immigration and customs laws, and in protecting public safety and national security. I will continue to be a strong advocate for the workforce and for the ICE mission," Homan said.Breaking News EmailsGet breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.SUBSCRIBE
sidneybelleroche

Breyer's retirement preempts more Supreme Court hardball from McConnell - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/itch-mc-connell-205055024.html

shared by sidneybelleroche on 27 Jan 22 - No Cached
  • While many Democratic activists may regard Mitch McConnell as an all-powerful bogeyman, there is little that the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky can do to stop President Biden from nominating the next Supreme Court justice.
  • While many Democratic activists may regard Mitch McConnell as an all-powerful bogeyman, there is little that the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky can do to stop President Biden from nominating the next Supreme Court justice.
  • Republicans hope to take back the Senate majority in the midterm elections this fall, and McConnell had already signaled last summer that if that were to happen, he would likely block any attempt by Biden to nominate a justice to an open Supreme Court seat.
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  • Justice Stephen Breyer’s impending retirement comes none too soon for Democrats.
  • McConnell’s position does not have precedent, despite his claim to be an institutionalist.
  • But as long as Democrats have the majority in the Senate, Biden can nominate justices to the Supreme Court. That’s because McConnell abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017, in order to appoint Neil Gorsuch to the bench.
  • When Scalia, a conservative justice, died almost six years ago, McConnell — who controlled the Senate at that time as majority leader — moved with lightning speed. Within an hour, he issued a statement saying he would not even allow a hearing for any nominee put forward by then-President Barack Obama.
  • Under McConnell’s rationale for blocking the Garland nomination in 2016, he would have left the seat open and allowed “the American people” to “have a voice in the selection.
  • nstead, McConnell reversed himself. “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,” he said. The confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett moved the court solidly to the right, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority in some cases and a 5-4 majority even in cases in which Chief Justice John Roberts did not rule their way.
  • I
  • His retirement now, rather than a year from now, will prevent conservatives from dominating the court even more than they already do. And it may end up being the only Supreme Court vacancy filled by Biden.
Javier E

Springtime for Scammers - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...springtime-for-scammers.html

wall street reform

shared by Javier E on 06 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • so far his economic policies are all about empowering ethically challenged businesses to cheat and exploit the little guy.
  • In particular, he and his allies in Congress are making it a priority to unravel financial reform — and specifically the parts of financial reform that protect consumers against predators.
  • Last week Mr. Trump released a memorandum calling on the Department of Labor to reconsider its new “fiduciary rule,” which requires financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests
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  • He also issued an executive order designed to weaken the Dodd-Frank financial reform, enacted in 2010 in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
  • Why, after all, was the fiduciary rule created? The main issue here is retirement savings — the 401(k)’s and other plans that are Americans’ main source of retirement income over and above Social Security. To invest these funds, people have turned to financial professionals — but most probably weren’t aware that these professionals were under no legal obligation to give advice that maximized clients’ returns rather than their own incomes.
  • This is a big deal. A 2015 Obama administration study concluded that “conflicted investment advice” has been reducing the return on retirement savings by around one percentage point, costing ordinary Americans around $17 billion each year. Where has that $17 billion been going? Largely into the pockets of various financial-industry players.
  • why are consumer protections in the Trump firing line?
  • Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs banker appointed to head Mr. Trump’s National Economic Council — populism! — says that the fiduciary rule is like “putting only healthy food on the menu” and denying people the right to eat unhealthy food if they want it. Of course, it doesn’t do anything like that. If you want a better analogy, it’s like preventing restaurants from claiming that their 1400-calorie portions are health food.
  • Mr. Trump offers a different explanation for his hostility to financial reform: It’s hurting credit availability. “I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they can’t borrow money.” I
  • Only 4 percent of the small firms surveyed by the National Federation of Independent Business report themselves unsatisfied with loan availability, a historic low.
Javier E

Raise, Don't Save, Social Security - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...20geoghegan.html

retirement benefits US

shared by Javier E on 21 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • A recent Harris poll found that 34 percent of Americans have nothing saved for retirement — not even a hundred bucks. In this lost decade, that percentage is sure to go up. At retirement the lucky few with a 401(k) typically have $98,000. As an annuity that’s about $600 a month — not exactly an upper-middle-class lifestyle.
  • The most paralyzing half-truth in this country is that people hate taxes. People are willing to pay taxes that they spend on themselves. Two-thirds of those surveyed in a CBS/New York Times poll in January were willing to pay more taxes to save Social Security at its modest level.
  • To “save” it, most of us don’t need to pay. We could lift the cap on high earners, the 6 percent of workers who make over $106,800 a year. If earnings above the cap were subject to the payroll tax with no increase in benefits to high earners, there would be no deficit in the Social Security trust fund in 2037, as projected.
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  • Retirees today are shortchanged on Social Security because they have been shortchanged on wages for their entire working lives. The labor economist Richard B. Freeman points out that the hourly earnings of workers dropped by 8 percent from 1973 to 2005 while productivity shot up 55 percent or more. The United States is one of the few developed countries where workers are routinely cheated of a share in higher productivity.
  • to close the deficit and raise benefits to nearly half of average worker earnings, we would need to find an additional 5 percent of taxable payroll, or find the money elsewhere. If we lift the cap on the payroll tax without paying more benefits to those above it, that gets us 2.32 percent (or a bit less if we slightly increase benefits to the rich). Dedicating revenues from the estate tax at its 2009 levels to Social Security gets another half percent. A few other tweaks, like covering new public employees, add another 0.42 percent. The remainder can be found by raising the payroll tax by roughly 1 percentage point for both employees and employers.
  • And where has the money from the extra productivity gone? It’s gone right to the top, to the top few percent. If wages had been paid fairly based on productivity, there would have been enough money subject to the payroll tax to avoid even a modest shortfall.
malonema1

Former military officials challenge Haspel nomination to lead CIA - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US politics

shared by malonema1 on 01 May 18 - No Cached
  • Scores of former military officials signed on to an open letter published by an activist group Monday challenging President Donald Trump's nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the CIA -- and called for the declassification of her agency records
  • Signatories to the letter include former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh H. Shelton, retired Marine Corps Gen. John R. "Jack" Dailey and retired Air Force Gen. Walter Kross.The letter from 109 former military officials pushes back on praise Haspel received from former intelligence leaders, and disputes the notion that she was "just following orders."
  • he CIA declassified a memo last week absolving Haspel of responsibility for destroying tapes showing torture, but key Democrats said the agency should go much further to square their concerns.Raha Wala, national security advocacy director at Human Rights First, told CNN on Monday that retired Gen. Charles Krulak, former commandant of the Marine Corps, led the effort around the letter.
malonema1

New alarm among Republicans that Democrats could win big this year - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html

US politics

shared by malonema1 on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November.
  • But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.
  • In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House “and lost it big,” in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats. McCarthy outlined trends over recent decades for parties in power and spotlighted vulnerable Republican seats where Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Eight years ago, before the 2010 midterms swept the GOP to power, he had drafted a similar presentation with the opposite message for his party. Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map, with more House seats than ever benefiting from Republican-friendly redistricting and a Senate landscape that puts 26 Democratic seats in play, including 10 states that Trump won in 2016, and only eight Republican seats.
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  • At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November following announced retirements, a greater number for the majority party than in each of the past three midterm elections when control of Congress flipped.
  • Who knows what 2018 will be like? Nobody called 2016, right?” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the second-ranking Republican in that chamber. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to get elected and that Chuck Schumer was going to be the majority leader. And none of that turned out to be true.”
  • In private conversations, Trump has told advisers that he doesn’t think the 2018 election has to be as bad as others are predicting. He has referenced the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush and Republicans fared better after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, these people said.
  • Trump continually reminds advisers that he remains popular in a number of states, including West Virginia, Montana and North Dakota, according to aides. But slow fundraising and anemic candidate recruitment have caused tensions between the White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, White House advisers said. Still, two people with direct knowledge of that relationship said it has improved considerably in recent months. One person said “there is an active effort to professionalize the operation,” and “coordination has improved.”
  • White House officials said they expect a full plunge in upcoming weeks into a special House race in Pennsylvania, with trips from Trump, Vice President Pence and Cabinet members. The race has taken on a larger-than-life role in the White House because officials want to stem the tide of the losses they suffered last year in Virginia and Alabama.
  • But maintaining that message can be a challenge, as the president showed this week when his vulgar comments about some developing countries sparked international outrage. Dave Hansen, a political adviser to Love, the Utah congresswoman, said such conflicts are unavoidable during the Trump presidency. “It’s certainly not like running with Ronald Reagan, that’s for sure,” Hansen said. “What a candidate has to do in a situation like this is, you can’t be all in for the guy. Basically, you support him when you think he’s right and oppose him when you think he’s wrong.”
jayhandwerk

Rep. Liz Pike announces retirement from politics | The Columbian - 0 views

www.columbian.com/...unces-retirement-from-politics

politics US liz pike rep retirement

shared by jayhandwerk on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • Rep. Liz Pike, R-Camas, announced late Friday evening she is withdrawing from the race for Clark County council chair.
  • She said after her 58th birthday she “realized I want to spend more time with the people I love,” according to her post. “I’ve been truly blessed with the best friends and family a girl could ever have.”
  • Clark County Republican Party Chair David Gellatly said he wishes her the best of luck but is not surprised to hear Pike’s announcement.
zareefkhan

FBI's Andrew McCabe leaving deputy director job, will retire in March - The Washington ... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html

fbi politics US trump director

shared by zareefkhan on 29 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — a frequent target of President Trump’s ire dating to the 2016 presidential election — is stepping down as he nears the date in March when he can retire with full pension benefits
  • Trump responded to the revelation with a tweet, writing at the time, “90 days to go?!!!”
  • Technically, he will remain an FBI employee for the next several weeks, but he has left the deputy director position and is not expected back to work
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • McCabe, 49, rose quickly through the FBI’s ranks as a counterterrorism supervisor, playing a key role in reorganizing how the U.S. government interrogates international terrorism suspects
  • David Bowdich, a senior FBI official who led the agency’s response to the San Bernardino terrorist attack, is expected to serve as the next deputy director
  • McCabe ran the FBI for three turbulent months last year, until Christopher A. Wray took over as director.
  • Trump’s dislike of McCabe dates back to October 2016, when news stories revealed that McCabe’s wife had run as a Democrat for the Virginia legislature
  • In recent months, McCabe has been harshly criticized by congressional Republicans who challenge the FBI’s rationale for opening the Russia probe in July 2016.
  • Former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. called McCabe “a dedicated public servant who has served this country well.” Holder, a Democrat, denounced “bogus attacks on the FBI and DOJ to distract attention from a legitimate criminal inquiry.”
  • The political scrutiny surrounding McCabe intensified in December, when The Post reported that his senior adviser, Lisa Page, had been engaged in a romantic relationship with Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent, and the two exchanged anti-Trump, pro-Clinton text messages while they we
  • re immersed in ongoing investigations about the two presidential candidates.
Javier E

An Exit Interview With Richard Posner, Judicial Provocateur - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...richard-posner-retirement.html

justice system poor interpretation legal law

shared by Javier E on 11 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • He called his approach to judging pragmatic. His critics called it lawless.
  • “I pay very little attention to legal rules, statutes, constitutional provisions,” Judge Posner said. “A case is just a dispute. The first thing you do is ask yourself — forget about the law — what is a sensible resolution of this dispute?”
  • The next thing, he said, was to see if a recent Supreme Court precedent or some other legal obstacle stood in the way of ruling in favor of that sensible resolution. “And the answer is that’s actually rarely the case,” he said. “When you have a Supreme Court case or something similar, they’re often extremely easy to get around.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • I asked him about his critics, and he said they fell into two camps.
  • The immediate reason for his retirement was less abstract, he said. He had become concerned with the plight of litigants who represented themselves in civil cases, often filing handwritten appeals. Their grievances were real, he said, but the legal system was treating them impatiently, dismissing their cases over technical matters.
  • “A lot of the people who say that are sincere,” he said. “That’s their conception of law. That’s fine.”
  • Some, he said, simply have a different view of the proper role of the judge. “There is a very strong formalist tradition in the law,” he said, summarizing it as: “Judges are simply applying rules, and the rules come from somewhere else, like the Constitution, and the Constitution is sacred. And statutes, unless they’re unconstitutional, are sacred also.”
  • He said he had less sympathy for the second camp. “There are others who are just, you know, reactionary beasts,” he said. “They’re reactionary beasts because they want to manipulate the statutes and the Constitution in their own way.”
  • low level of intelligence,” he said. “I gradually began to realize that this wasn’t right, what we were doing.”
  • Judge Posner said he hoped to work with groups concerned with prisoners’ rights, with a law school clinic and with law firms, to bring attention and aid to people too poor to afford lawyers.
  • In one of his final opinions, Judge Posner, writing for a three-judge panel, reinstated a lawsuit from a prisoner, Michael Davis, that had been dismissed on technical grounds.
  • “The basic thing is that most judges regard these people as kind of trash not worth the time of a federal judge,” he said.
mattrenz16

New Stimulus Package Brings Big Benefits to the Middle Class - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...lus-middle-class-benefits.html

shared by mattrenz16 on 10 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — The economic relief plan that is headed to President Biden’s desk has been billed as the United States’ most ambitious antipoverty initiative in a generation. But inside the $1.9 trillion package, there are plenty of perks for the middle class, too.
  • “For a lot of the country, $160,000 buys you the house on the hill,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who pointed out that a couple making that level of income in New York City, for example, would be stretched.
  • The existing credit tops out for individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $400,000. As with the stimulus payments, the expanded credit will phase out for individuals making more than $75,000 and married couples earning more than $150,000.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The legislation also bolsters the tax credits that parents receive to subsidize the cost of child care this year. The current credit is worth 20 percent to 35 percent of eligible expenses with a maximum value of $2,100 for two or more qualifying individuals. The stimulus bill increases that amount to $4,000 for one qualifying individual or $8,000 for two or more.
  • After four years of being on life support, the Affordable Care Act is expanding, a development that will largely reward middle-income individuals and families, since those on the lower end of the income spectrum generally qualify for Medicaid. The relief legislation expands the subsidies for buying health insurance. As a result, a 64-year-old earning $58,000 would see monthly payments decline to $412 from $1,075 under current law, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
  • The money is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income. The plans cover about 10.7 million active and retired workers, many of whom are middle class and work in fields like construction or entertainment where the workers move from job to job.
aidenborst

Supreme Court spokeswoman to step down after more than 20 years - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

US politics history Culture Supreme-Court Kathy-Arberg

shared by aidenborst on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Supreme Court public information officer Kathy Arberg will step down on July 3 after some 22 years at the high court, the court announced Wednesday.
  • The announcement -- and the word "retirement" -- came as a jolt to the Supreme Court press corps that is on high alert to see if Justice Stephen Breyer will retire at the end of the term, which is expected to go through June.
  • Arberg joined the court in 1982 and served as an assistant in the office for 17 years before becoming head of the office in 1999.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • She serves as the court's official spokesperson and manages a staff of six employees who assist in furthering the public's understanding of the history and function of the court.
  • For more than a year, due to Covid-19, the court building and the chamber itself have been closed to the public.
rerobinson03

Capitol Riot Investigation: Man Who Carried Confederate Flag Arrested - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...Kevin-Seefried-arrested.html

shared by rerobinson03 on 15 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • A federal prosecutor in Texas also said on Thursday that a retired Air Force officer who stormed the Senate chamber dressed in military-style clothing and holding zip ties had intended to “take hostages.”
  • he retired officer, Larry Rendell Brock, was arrested in Texas on Sunday on one count of unlawfully entering a restricted building and another of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, the Justice Department said at the time.
  • The top federal prosecutor in Washington said this week that he expected the number of people charged with crimes tied to the Capitol riot to rise into the hundreds.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • A retired firefighter from Chester, Pa., was also arrested on Thursday after he was identified as the man seen in a video throwing a fire extinguisher at police officers during the riot. The man, Robert Sanford, is charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer engaged in the performance of official duties and civil disorder among other crimes.
  • Another man was charged on Thursday after law enforcement officials identified him as the person seen repeatedly striking an officer with a flagpole on the stairs of the Capitol in a video posted on Twitter. That man, Peter Stager of Arkansas, was charged with obstructing law enforcement, according to the criminal complaint.
annabelteague02

Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher to retire, review of his case canceled - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...4305553002

shared by annabelteague02 on 26 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher, whose demotion for posing for a photo with a combatant's corpse was reversed by President Donald Trump, will retire and a planned review of his status has been canceled, the Navy announced late Monday.
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 26 Nov 19
       
      Why.
  • Eddie Gallagher will retain his Trident as the commander in chief directed, and w
    • annabelteague02
      annabelteague02 on 26 Nov 19
       
      this is so horrible and gross
saberal

Biden Asks Congress to Grant Waiver for 'Cool Under Fire' Defense Pick - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...yd-austin-pentagon-waiver.html

politics US

shared by saberal on 10 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., on Wednesday praised Lloyd J. Austin III, his choice for secretary of defense, as “a leader of extraordinary courage, character, experience and accomplishment,”
  • “He’s loved by the men and women of the armed forces, feared by our adversaries, known and respected by our allies,” Mr. Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Del. “And he shares my deeply held belief in the values of America’s alliances.”
  • He said he and Mr. Biden had “gotten to know each other under some intense and high-pressure situations” and pledged to give Mr. Biden “the same direct and unvarnished counsel” that he had during the Obama administration, when he oversaw the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and then the military campaign against the Islamic State.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • General Austin called the younger Mr. Biden, who died in 2015, “a very special person, and a true patriot, and a good friend to all who knew him,”
  • To be confirmed, however, General Austin will need to win a congressional exemption from a 1947 law requiring that military veterans be retired from active duty for at least seven years before leading the Defense Department. General Austin retired from the Army in April 2016.
  • But a vote by both chambers of Congress can waive the requirement, as has happened twice before
  • On Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also declared her support for General Austin in a statement that did not address his recent retirement.
  • But many Democrats still have qualms.“As Democrats, we just spent four years watching these kinds of rules be violated,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey and a former State Department official. “It really does feel as if a waiver would turn the exception into a rule.”
  • General Austin’s intended nomination won ringing endorsements on Wednesday from two leading national security figures who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
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