“Bankruptcy decisions by Stockton and San Bernardino in California signal more cities may be losing their willingness to pay debt obligations, Moody’s Investors Service said.

“The looming defaults by Stockton and San Bernardino raise the possibility that distressed municipalities — in California and, perhaps, elsewhere — will begin to view debt service as a discretionary budget item, and that defaults will increase,” Anne Van Praagh, a managing director at the ratings company, said in a report Thursday.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hotter-than-average temperatures are expected over the vast majority of the contiguous 48 U.S. states in August, with below-average precipitation for Midwest areas already hit by the worst drought in a half century, the government said on Thursday.

After the hottest half-year on record in the United States, hotter, drier conditions from the Southwest, through the Midwest and across the East Coast from Florida to Maine are forecast to continue through October, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Drought hit 29 U.S. states, with Texas feeling the heaviest impact, followed by Colorado, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Arkansas, Indiana and Hawaii.

$MS says the USDA is too conservative with estimates relating to corn and wheat. In addition the lack of grain harvest will have a serious impact on cow herds.

Eat up before prices sky rocket.

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No keeping up with the Joneses here; Americans areturning to pay day loans just ot pay for basics like food and energy.

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Default rates are up 70% in the past few years. Currently the problem only amounts to $37 billion a year, but is a bad scenario for those raiding their nest egg.

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(CNSNews.com) — The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) approved flight training for 25 illegal aliens at a Boston-area flight school that was owned by yet another illegal alien, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The illegal-alien flight-school attendees including eight who had entered the country illegally and 17 who had overstayed their allowed period of admission into the United States, according to an audit by the GAO.

Six of the illegal aliens were actually able to get pilot’s licenses.

READ THE REST HERE 

“Everybody plays the fool”

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“Gotz to get da money from somewhera” (sic)

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Hat Tip: @BrokeHerman on Twitter for the story lead…

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., are close to a deal on legislation to legalize online poker while tightening restrictions on other forms of Internet gaming and are seeking Republican support for the agreement, according to Reid and a Democratic aide.

“Here’s the issue, Sen. Kyl and I’ve worked very hard. What we need to do is get some Republican support. That hasn’t been forthcoming yet,” Reid told Tech Daily Dose on Tuesday. He did not elaborate on where negotiations stand, but a Democratic aide said Reid and Kyl are close to a deal and are now trying to solicit GOP support.

The Democratic aide said Reid is looking to his fellow Nevada senator, Republican Dean Heller and Kyl to sell the deal to other Republicans.

Kyl was one of the authors of a 2006 law that aimed to curb online gambling by barring banks, credit card companies and others from processing payments for online bets.

Federal authority over online gambling, however, was tossed into limbo late last year after the Justice Department released an opinion reversing its interpretation of the 1961 federal Wire Act and said it no longer believed the law barred all Internet gambling. In response to state inquiries, Justice said in the memorandum that the Wire Act only applies to sports bets.

READ THE REST HERE AT TECHDAILYDOSE.COM

NASA has taken a Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer to show just how bad crops have been damaged.

The device is able to allow NASA scientists to compare average vegetation growth in a given area, and shade the areas accordingly.

Financial problems for many states may bring a gradual erosion of services. A tough economy, aging population, medicaid and pension strains will curtail even the most basic services many come to expect after paying their taxes.

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NfLUCBZ1is 450 300]

“The can has been kicked. The austerity has been implemented. The revenues have fallen. And as we see in the chart below, the pace of local government distress is accelerating. As has been made so clear in the past, defaults cluster; and sure enough it is starting, as tensions between unions and city managers become irreconcilable.”

Full article and chart porn

(Reuters) – A disgraced former McKinsey & Co partner whose testimony helped convict Wall Street giants Raj Rajaratnam and Rajat Gupta on insider trading charges deserves leniency at sentencing because his cooperation was exceptional, federal prosecutors said

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“Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, cheated at least 34,000 minority homeowners during the 2004-2008 housing boom, either charging them more for their mortgages or steering them into risky loans. For these acts of discrimination the bank has agreed to pay a penalty of $175 million, while not admitting any wrongdoing.

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Milk the farmer!

In a monthly report to be released Monday, the National Climatic Data Center is expected to announce that this year’s drought now ranks among the ten largest drought areas in the past century.

Read the article and view the graphs here.

A final report has come out on our tax dollars being squandered in Iraq. The sad part is the money in some sense can be said to be stolen by private contractors who intentionally ran up bills.

The question now is will you allow this to happen again.

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Perhaps Meredith Whitney was correct, but had a timing issue.

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Just another instance of big government and how big business is destroying the rights and freedoms of the citizens in the best country in the world. Perhaps this issue is of no real importance to most city dwellers, but the greater picture is the future of our rights and the rights of generations to come.

Cheers on your weekend !

Americans’ right to access fresh, healthy foods of their choice is under attack. Farmageddon tells the story of small, family farms that were providing safe, healthy foods to their communities and were forced to stop, sometimes through violent ac-tion, by agents of misguided government bureaucracies, and seeks to figure out why.

Filmmaker Kristin Canty’s quest to find healthy food for her four children turned into an educational journey to discover why access to these foods was being threatened. What she found were policies that favor agribusiness and factory farms over small family-operated farms selling fresh foods to their communities. Instead of focusing on the source of food safety problems — most often the industrial food chain — policymakers and regulators implement and enforce solutions that target and often drive out of business small farms that have proven themselves more than capable of producing safe, healthy food, but buckle under the crushing weight of government regulations and excessive enforcement actions.

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasona-bly burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.

“Facing the same financial stressors that pushed San Bernardino toward bankruptcy, cities across California are slashing day-to-day services and taking other drastic actions to skirt a similar fiscal collapse.

For some, it may not be enough.”

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