No Big Govt; Less Taxes; Stop Subsidies... I mean unless they're agricultural or for the oil industry; squeals TEXAS!!! The lone star state with its hand out.

Farm Subsidies….Gaines County Texas 2^nd largest recipient of Federal Agricultural Funding but votes against Federal Handouts … hmm like farm subsidies…”oh no, we deserve those!”

The political shift hasn’t stopped the flow of payments to the county’s cotton and peanut growers who have relied on aid dating to the 1930s Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Gaines County farmers took $797 million in payments from 1995 to 2010, including price supports, soil-conservation programs and crop- failure compensation, according to a database compiled by Washington-based lobby the Environmental Working Group. That puts it second in the nation behind Fresno County, California, as a recipient of federal funds.

Farmers use the programs mainly to give banks confidence that the loans to finance planned crops will be paid back regardless of weather or commodity prices, says Delmon Ellison, Jr. who farms 4,000 acres of cotton, peanuts and wheat in the area.

Office of Ethics

Tough new limits proposed on the way special interests could court executive branch officials have prompted a fierce counterattack from lobbyists who fear they will end a cherished Washington ritual: hosting federal workers at events like conferences, cocktail parties, galas and movie screenings.

Filmmakers and farmers, gun makers and real estate agents, and people in dozens of other industries say the rules under consideration by the Obama administration would choke off their ability to have a mutually beneficial dialogue with government officials. As a result, they say, public policy would be made in a vacuum, and federal rules would be more unrealistic and unworkable.

The proposal would extend restrictions now on political appointees to more than two million government workers. Federal employees could no longer accept “gifts of free attendance” at the many seminars, receptions and other social gatherings held by registered lobbyists and lobbying organizations as a matter of course in Washington.

In issuing the proposal under instructions from President Obama, the Office of Government Ethics said lobbyists often used such events to curry favor with federal employees.

The ethics office, which is now weighing the response to the proposal it made last September, said lobbyists had used these gatherings not only to discuss business with federal employees, but also to “foster a social bond that may be of greater use in the long run.”

Watchdog groups like the Project on Government Oversight, the Government Accountability Project and Common Cause welcomed the proposal, saying it would help break up the cozy relationships between federal regulators and regulated industries.  

Bill passed into LAW banning Congress from Insider Trading!!!

I wanted to give you some good news about the bill banning insider trading in Congress that you took action on a few months back.

This week, the President signed that bill into law, making members of Congress play by the same rules as everyone else when it comes to investing. Before this week, it was -- amazingly -- not against the law for members of Congress to profit off of the insider information they pick up on Capitol Hill.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans like you stepped up and played a role in passing the STOCK Act, so thanks for standing with the President.
President Obama promised that he would work to change the old ways of Washington, and this is what that change looks like. There's still more that we have to do, obviously, but thanks to your support, we've made a step in the right direction.

US Coal Exports to China & India => you can feel it

Although the government's message about squeezing coal out of U.S. electricity production is loud and clear, coal producers will be able to ship their product abroad.

Even now, Congress is hinting at banning U.S. natural gas exports. They want to keep prices as low as possible for as long as they can — and that means limiting future LNG shipments.

Safe Chemicals Act

Did you know that the EPA is required to test only a few hundred of the 85,000 different chemicals currently on the market? In fact, the federal law governing how we regulate chemicals doesn’t even require chemical companies to prove that the chemicals they make are safe before they end up in products.

This means that on a daily basis we are at risk of being exposed to dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals. These harmful chemicals may be in our workplaces, our classrooms and our homes – in our clothing, furniture, cleaning products, plastics, cosmetics, children’s toys and countless other everyday products.

In response, we’re working with a coalition of organizations and activists from across the country to collect 100,000 signed petitions in support of the Safe Chemicals Act, which would take meaningful steps to protect our families from harmful chemicals.

The Toxic Substances Control Act, the nation’s primary chemical safety law, has failed to protect public health, the environment and our communities. While the rates of diseases like asthma, diabetes, childhood cancers, infertility, and learning and behavioral disorders keep going up, the federal system that should protect us from harmful chemicals hasn’t changed in 35 years.

The reason for this inaction? The chemical industry is vigorously fighting to protect its profits.

For decades, the chemical industry has fought efforts to reform our nation’s chemical safety laws. Last year, the industry spent $52 million lobbying Congress to block meaningful reform efforts. And just recently, they spent another $1.5 million on deceptive television ads to mislead and confuse the public about the severity of the problem.

Pension Funds should make money the old fashioned way = save it; invest in risk free assets and not gamble with workers' prosperity

Pensions Find Riskier Funds Fail to Pay Off

Searching for higher returns to bridge looming shortfalls, public workers’ pension funds across the country are increasingly turning to riskier investments in private equity, real estate and hedge funds. 

But while their fees have soared, their returns have not. In fact, a number of retirement systems that have stuck with more traditional investments in stocks and bonds have performed better in recent years, for a fraction of the fees. 

Consider the contrast between the state retirement fund for Pennsylvania and the one for Georgia.

The $26.3 billion Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System has more than 46 percent of its assets in riskier alternatives, including nearly 400 private equity, venture capital and real estate funds. 

The system paid about $1.35 billion in management fees in the last five years and reported a five-year annualized return of 3.6 percent. That is below the 8 percent target needed to meet its financing requirements, and it also lags behind a 4.9 percent median return among public pension systems. 

In Georgia, the $14.4 billion retirement system, which is prohibited by state law from investing in alternative investments, has earned 5.3 percent annually over the same time frame and paid about $54 million total in fees. The two funds represent the extremes, with Pennsylvania in a group of pension systems with some of the highest percentages of investments in alternatives and Georgia in a group of 10 with some of the lowest, according to groupings of funds identified by the London-based research firm Preqin. 

An analysis of the sampling presents an unflattering portrait of the riskier bets: the funds with a third to more than half of their money in private equity, hedge funds and real estate had returns that were more than a percentage point lower than returns of the funds that largely avoided those assets. They also paid nearly four times as much in fees. 

While managers for the retirement systems say that a five-year period is not long enough to judge their success, those fees nevertheless add up to hundreds of millions of dollars each year for some of the country’s largest pension funds. The $51.4 billion Pennsylvania public schools pension system, for instance, which has 46 percent of its assets in riskier investments, pays more than $500 million a year in fees. It has earned 3.9 percent annually since 2007.

Hiring is BACK!

Hiring is back in a big way on many college campuses, one of several signs a recovery in the U.S. jobs market is gaining traction. After four years during which many students graduated to find no job and had only their loans to show for their studies, most college campuses are teeming with companies eager to hire.

A survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found 2012 hiring is expected to climb 10.2 percent, above a previous estimate of 9.5 percent.

Companies such as General Electric, Amazon, Apple and Barclays Global are looking for new staff, even if some firms remain below the pre-recession levels of new hiring. In another sign of the recovery, some first-time job seekers are receiving multiple offers.

At University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, the career service office has seen up to now a 7.4 percent increase in the number of interviews of students by potential employers from last year and the number of companies seeking to recruit for full-time jobs is up 9.2 percent.

Undergraduate business majors reporting full-time job offers is up about 10 percent.

Career experts at a dozen of U.S. schools said they have seen an increase of 15 to 30 percent in the number of companies attending campus career fairs. At University of Florida, the fall career fair garnered 15 percent more companies in attendance than in 2010.

And 150 companies asked to conduct interviews versus about 100 in recent years, said Ja'Net Glover, associate director of employer relations at the school.

The increase in demand was so significant that it was the first time in years the school had to use both the first and second floors of the school's basketball facility for interviews.