Former Senator John Edwards is being trounced by an ultra-Republican state government.

I always liked John as a Senator in North Carolina. He stood up for the average person and sought to protect children in his capacity in the Senate.

Infidelity is unbecoming, but, it isn't criminal.

I am leaving North Carolina after living there for 16 years. I don't believe it is safe under the direction of the current legislature. They are dismantling all the venues of safety for citizens including seeking justice through civil courts when a person is wrongfully effected by circumstances beyond their control and imposed by others.

In Emergency Rooms now physicians have no liability. Yet, we know there are sincere problems that do happen with ERs sometimes. The Republican presence in the state has become overwhelming to decent people and they are offensive in their assault against the moral content of the communities.

That is something the Republicans of North Carolina don't seem to understand. They don't understand that laws can be offensive to a person's conscience. They don't care, they believe a democracy can be used to be oppressive if good people simply because power is out of their reach. So, there are many kinds of moralities and immoralities. The immorality viciously attacking a former Senator is the most egregious of them.

I wish the former North Carolina Senator the best and his family including his youngest daughter and her mother. I wish them peace. I sincerely believe the persecution of John Edwards speaks more to the oppressive nature of the current political tone of the Republicans than is says about the capacity a democracy should have in vengeance of personal choices.

Cate Edwards, (click title to entry - thank you) the oldest daughter of John Edwards and his late wife, Elizabeth, is among the witnesses who may be called to testify in the criminal trial that could send her father to prison for up to 30 years. Her name appeared among a list of dozens of potential witnesses who could be called by the defense team.

A newly married graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School,  Cate Edwards  recently put her own fledgling legal career on hold to launch an educational foundation in her mother’s name....

Friday the 13th and the hammer falls. I did not alter this image. It is real.

April 13, 2012
1930:00z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite of the USA, Southern Canada and Northern Mexico (click title for 12 hour loop - thank you)


Looks like there is going to be some trouble. Hot and cold, when they meet all sorts of stuff happens.


The hammer-like appearance in the upper troposphere is due to a 'piling up' of air. The air came over the continent faster than it moved off into the Atlantic. There is a large air mass just offshore of North America and it is causing this to happen. 


These images are about an hour old. The system in over the Atlantic received a huge hot, wet air mass from the tropics and it is probably heading for the UK and Europe.


There is probably going to be some excitement over the next 24 hours in the USA.

Child Care in the USA as of 2010 (click title to entry - thank you)

Frequently low paid workers have exorbitant child care costs which could be their entire paycheck. So, unless there are fantastic benefits, child care is a disincentive to work and provides no relief from poverty.

Who's Minding the Kids? Child Care Arrangements: Spring 2010 – Detailed Tables (click title to entry - thank you)

Table 6 is about families. It divides the cost study by age of the child. In all these tables if the mother has dropped out of the work force and have no independent income they don't show up on these tables. So, families experiencing prohibitive child care costs to facilitate work don't even show up here.

Table 6. Average Weekly Child Care Expenditures of Families with Employed Mothers that Make Payments, by Age Groups and Selected Characteristics: Spring 2010 (click here)


In this table, for children under six years old, the over all expenditure for child care as of 2010 was 22.1% of the mother's income.


Depending on marital status of this group it can be 24.9%.


Depending on race of this children age group it can be as much as 25.7% of a mother's salary.


Depending on the education level of the mother it can be as much as 36.3% of the mother's salary.


Depending on the age of the mother it can be as much as 24.8% of her income.


Depending on the employment status of the mother it can be as much as 43% for self-employed women.


Depending on the monthly income of the mother it can cost as much as 54.6% of her monthly income.


If the family is poverty level the child care costs for under 5 years old is as much as 60.9% of her monthly income.


These are survival statistics. Women that have to work and have to support their families, like I used to do, pay considerable amounts for child care for their children. There were times when I had to pay as much as 50% of my after tax dollars for childcare with the rest being divided between food, medical, housing, clothing and toys. Toys were always on the  shopping list. They were going to have what their peers had and they weren't going to be deprived. I believe those values can be transmitted across the spectrum of women. Unfortunately, those values are sometimes truncated by poverty. I might add, paying up to 50% of a mother's income for child care prohibits upward movement and the ability to entertain home ownership.


These statistics impact THE WEALTH mothers can accumulate. It is a life long burden and retirement often depends on a good SSI monthly income if the mother was lucky enough to have an excellent paying job. It impacts the children when they go to college and there are few investments to pay for college and the student has to rely on loans and scholarships. 


Having to pay for child care in high levels of percentages of income have an extremely profound impact on the lives of mothers and their children for their lifetime.

The rise in unemployment is due to a stagnating consumer ability to participate.

That consumer is also global and is indicted in trade deficit. The cost of energy through traditional fossil fuels is incredibly expensive and ends up in the pockets of Wall Street and not in circulation in economies, including the USA.


Besides the cost of fossil fuels globally, Europe is still struggling under oppressive economic conditions. So, where the USA economy connects with the global economy there is a stagnant effect. 


The level of business transacted at the whole sale level hasn't changed and that is somewhat reassuring, but, that can change and probably will. The global trend started two months before we realized it two months ago. The global trend was discovered four months ago and it reached the USA two months later.


It ain't over yet.

Small businesses and strong local economies to the extent it can occur is the best option for Americans and acts as a buffer to these downturns.


Buy American and fight fossil fuel energy. THINK DOMESTIC and CLEAN and GREEN ENERGY. The cost of fossil fuels are set by Wall Street on a global basis. There is no amount of USA drilling that will effect the cost of fossil fuels. There is no capacity that can be achieved to reduce its costs. Morally, there is no capacity that should be achieved either, but, the physical ability to actually achieve that is not there. 

...Another government report says a key measure of inflation at the wholesale level stayed level in March. Outside the volatile areas of energy and food, prices in the overall economy rose three-tenths of a percent, which is a bit more than the previous month.

A separate report showed the U.S. trade deficit dropped to the lowest point in four months in February. The gap between what U.S. producers sell overseas and what Americans buy from foreign sources declined more than 12 percent for the month as the volume of oil imports dropped and orders for Chinese-made goods declined....

How does the uber-wealthy Romney pay so little in taxes?

What Romeny and his peer group did in accumulating wealth while saddling the USA's Middle Class with burden is immoral. It is not illegal, but, it is highly immoral.


He used the power of money to reduce his participation in supporting the governments at all levels of the USA. He has cost Americans their jobs while doing it. It is immoral. Just that simple. Why do Middle Class Americans carry a heavier burden for their governments than the wealthy do?


Bush’s tax cuts (click here) gave a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722 – or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids. A 2-child family earning $50,000 gets $2,050 -or 1/5 the cost of public college for one kid.

Romeny's low tax rate, (click title to entry - thank you) and how he achieved it, provides an important lesson in how tax laws need to change.

By Robert Reich

Guest blogger 

April 12, 2012

Now that Mitt Romney is the presumed Republican candidate, it’s fair to ask how he made so much money ($21 million in 2010 alone) and paid such a low rate of taxes (only 13.9 percent)....

...The magic of private equity isn’t really magic at all. It’s a magic trick – and it’s played on you and me....

Private Equity like Bain Capital their IPO relatives now running for more money in the Wall Street Exchange. Evidently, enough equity is never enough.

"Bain Capital (click here) Private Equity has raised ten global funds and made more than 250 investments. The private equity activity includes leveraged buyouts and recapitalization in a variety of industries."

"Brookside Capital is the public equity affiliate of Bain Capital. (click here) The principal investment objective of the Fund is to achieve capital appreciation through investing primarily in publicly traded equity securities globally. Brookside employs an experienced team of industry oriented investment professionals to achieve its investment objective. The Brookside team evaluates investments based on in-depth strategic and financial analysis, emphasizing industry fundamentals, competitive position and management capability."


"Sankaty Advisors, LLC, the credit affiliate of Bain Capital, LLC,(click here) is one of the nation's leading private managers of fixed income and credit instruments. With approximately $15.5 billion assets under management as of 1/1/2012, Sankaty invests in a wide variety of securities and investments, including leveraged loans, high-yield bonds, distressed/stressed debt, mezzanine debt, structured products and equities."

"We’re proud of the history of our firm, (click here) the experience of our team and the breadth of our network – let’s talk about how we can put these resources to work for you."

"Absolute Return Capital (ARC) (click here) is the absolute return affiliate of Bain Capital. ARC manages assets in fixed income, equity, commodity, and currency markets to produce attractive risk-adjusted returns while maintaining low correlation to traditional and other alternative investments."

Mitt Romney has made his money on the back of the Middle Class by accumulating wealth at their expense. He has closed down businesses and exported jobs. Is there anything else we have to know about this candidate? There isn't anything else I need to know!

Representative Lieutenant Colonel Alan West states 78 to 81 Democratic Congressional members of the Progressive Caucus are communists.

I think Alan West's comments say more about the leadership in the USA military than it does about his political aspirations.


Alan West was a career military officer for 20 years and had several deployments in Iraq. As an Iraq Veteran of Officer status where does he get the view innumerable members of a governing body of the federal government are lined with communists? Where does that idiotic idea come from? I want to  know if those views stem from his years in the military?


WASHINGTON -- Republican Rep. Allen West (click title to entry - thank you) said he believes 75-plus House Democrats are members of the Communist Party, a claim that echoed Joe McCarthy's unsubstantiated 1950s charges that communists had infiltrated the top ranks of the U.S. government....



I also want to know if the GOP has the same view, including any prospective candidate for President. Currently, Rep. Paul serves with these members of Congress along with West. What does he and other candidates have to say about Rep. West statement?