SIX MONTHS: 37,477 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT KIDS RELEASED, 280 DEPORTED

Washington Examiner
August 29, 2014

The Obama administration has released a huge majority of illegal immigrant children who poured over the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year into dozens of tiny counties without notifying the public, while deporting just 280, according to new reports.

The Health and Human Services Department released a list of 126 counties 29,890 of the kids were placed into, sometimes with their parents who are also in the United States illegally.

Those counties include some of the most exclusive in the nation, including the Washington suburbs of Fairfax and Loudoun in Virginia and Howard and Montgomery in Maryland. Fairfax received 1,023.

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Iran Begins Arming Palestinian Terrorists

Washington Free Beacon
August 28, 2014

Masked Palestinian militants march with guns / AP

Promises ‘the annihilation of the Zionist regime’

Iranian military leaders say that they have begun weapons deliveries to Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank and elsewhere in the region after months of promising increased military support for Israel’s enemies, according to regional reports.

A top Iranian military commander confirmed that weapon shipments to the West Bank have already begun and that more will be sent to other “Palestinian resistance groups.”

“Arming the West Bank has started and weapons will be supplied to the people of this region,” Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of Iran’s volunteer Basij force told the state-run Fars News Agency on Wednesday.

The announcement was made after weeks of inflammatory statements from Iranian leaders threatening war on Israel and promising to rearm Palestinian militants such as Hamas so that they can continue their war on the Jewish state.

The military leader also confirmed what has long been suspected by Israeli intelligence agencies: That Iran is responsible for training and arming Hamas with highly advanced rockets that were used to penetrate deep into Israeli territory during the most recent conflict.

Much of the arms Hamas deployed “were the products of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Fars reported Naqdi as saying.

Iran is arming terrorists in the more moderate West Bank of Israel—as opposed to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip—because attacks on Israel from this area will ensure “the annihilation of the Zionist regime.”

“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” Naqdi said.

An Iranian General this week vowed to launch a surprise attack on Israel in retaliation for an Israeli drone that was reportedly shot down near an Iranian nuclear site.

Anger at the incident has also prompted Tehran to step up its military support for Palestinian terrorists.

“We will accelerate arming the West Bank and we think that we are entitled to give any response (to the recent aggression) which we deem appropriate,” Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Aerospace Force, was quoted as saying on Monday.

Iran also is considering military force, according to Hajizadeh.

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A day of reckoning has arrived to retiring Americans: 63 percent of Americans that start working by the age of 25 will be dependent on Social Security, relatives, or charity by the time they hit 65.

MyBudget360
August 29, 2014

The notion of retirement is a fairly new one outside of wealthy circles. For most of civilized history, people worked until they died. Not a glamorous way to go but that is simply the course of human history. Only until recently with the emergence of the middle class was there a general semblance that retirement may be accessible to all. However looking at actual figures reflects a very different picture. It is hard to get a perfect balance sheet as to where older Americans stand today since there are many differing resources floating out in the market. Yet one thing is consistent and that is, older Americans are entering into a major day of reckoning with not enough. Older Americans are woefully unprepared for what lies ahead in retirement. Many are basically at the mercy of Social Security, family, or charity. Not exactly the retirement paradise Wall Street started pitching to the masses starting early in the 1980s. The reason this has gone on for so long is the political system is co-opted by big money. Over this period of time real substantive reforms could have occurred. Instead a generation has passed and many have nothing to show for it even with the stock market at record highs.

Retirement plan number 1: have no savings

Everyday roughly 6,000 Americans hit the age of 65. Too bad 36 percent of Americans have nothing saved for retirement. The typical cost of medical service for someone 65 and older and living 20 more years is $215,000. Given that many have nothing, they are simply one medical event away from the poor house. This is why programs like Social Security and Medicare are protected with such fury by older Americans. In many ways, this is their only form of wealth in retirement. Most do not participate in the Wall Street casino.

Some interesting figures regarding older Americans:

63 percent of Americas hitting the age of 65 will depend on Social Security, friends, family, or charity assuming they started working by the age of 25. I suppose if you weren’t working then retirement should be obviously off the table. Many are even in a more troubled position by being deeply in debt. To save for retirement, you need to have disposable income left over once the bills are paid and with inflation slowly eating away at purchasing power, many are starting to see their dollars are not going as far as they once did. Sure, the Fed says inflation is low and the BLS has inflation plodding along but compare the prices of the following from today and a decade ago:

-College tuition

-Medical costs

-Housing

-Cars

-Food

Still think inflation is not happening? And this is even scarier for older Americans living off Social Security with a Cost of Living Adjustment index that will look at the CPI measure for inflation. Slowly, they are being pushed out of the market. It is called purchasing power erosion.

As you would expect, older Americans spend a large amount of money in healthcare and also buy a good number of cars:

Those 50 and older account for:

77% of all prescription drug purchases

61% of all over-the-counter drug purchases

47% of all auto sales

The last point ties in with the subprime emergence in auto loans. Many older Americans with blemishes on their credit history are now buying cars thanks to financial intuitions looking for another segment of the economy to securitize and sell off to the world.

And this cycle is likely to persist given younger Americans are basically spending more of their income versus saving it for a rainy day:

51 percent of Millennials say they are spending more today than they were last year but when we look at net worth data, we find less money being saved. The feeling of course is that this is a problem for another day. With thousands of baby boomers hitting 65 years of age each and every day more strain will be put on programs that were never intended to be lifetime pension funds. You can only kick the can down the road so far before having to pick it up. The day of reckoning is falling on many older Americans and Congress and Wall Street really have any little sympathy to what is unfolding.