Hillary Clinton Supporters Have Already Launched A Super PAC For 2016

Hillary Clinton

Long-time supporters of Hillary Clinton have opened a super PAC to lay the groundwork for a 2016 presidential campaign, even though Clinton, just finishing a four-year term as secretary of state, has said nothing about her future plans.

ReadyForHillary launches a splash page next Monday at its website, ReadyForHillary.com.

Allida Black and Judy Beck, two veteran Clinton fundraisers, are spearheading the new organization.

They recruited Adam Parkhomeko, who helped launch a "Draft Hillary" movement in 2003 and was later hired by the campaign, to corral the far-flung vestiges of the Clinton campaign organization.

NGP Software, which designed the Clinton campaign website in 2008, has been hired by the PAC.

Several former Clinton campaign staffers are offering input and suggestions. The PAC has no formal affiliation with Clinton or any of her top aides.

The first inklings of the new organization came late last year, when a @ReadyForHillary Twitter handle began to follow Democratic activists and political reporters.

Black is a formidable force. Co-editor of the Eleanor Roosevelt papers and a George Washington University professor, she took to the floor of the Democratic convention in 2008 to protest the treatment accorded to Clinton delegates.

Beck, listed as the treasurer on organization papers filed with the Federal Election Commission on Jan. 25, is Black's partner. 

In an interview that aired last night on 60 Minutes, Clinton said neither she nor President Barack Obama "can make predictions about what's going to happen tomorrow or the next year," referring to the prospect of a presidential run.

Clinton confidantes have said that Clinton has not telegraphed to them in any way what her intentions are after she takes a well-deserved break from the stresses of the public eye and public diplomacy.

ReadyForHillary aims to have its ducks in a row should Clinton decide to press go on a 2016 bid. It will serve as a virtual gathering place for supporters and donors.

When prominent Democrats like Donna Brazile offer their endorsements — like Brazile did today in a tweet — the organization, which already claims close to 50,000 Twitter followers, will document them and push them out to the world.

And why the name? It was chosen, according to someone involved in the group, because everyone seems "Ready for Hillary."  

Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/O75rd2EZEms/hillary-supporters-launching-super-pac-2013-1

capquest debt recovery christian debt relief clear your debt cnn debt calculator

Fat Dividends From Real Estate

Watch stocks you care about

The single, easiest way to keep track of all the stocks that matter...

Your own personalized stock watchlist!

It's a 100% FREE Motley Fool service...

Click Here Now

Exchange-traded funds offer a convenient way to invest in sectors or niches that interest you. If you'd like to add some real estate stocks to your portfolio, the First Trust S&P REIT Index ETF (NYSEMKT: FRI  ) could save you a lot of trouble. Instead of trying to figure out which companies will perform best, you can use this ETF to invest in lots of them simultaneously.

The basics
ETFs often sport lower expense ratios than their mutual fund cousins. The First Trust ETF's expense ratio -- its annual fee -- is a relatively low 0.50%. It recently yielded about 2.1%

This ETF has performed rather well, beating the world market over the past three and five years. As with most investments, of course, we can't expect outstanding performances in every quarter or year. Investors with conviction need to wait for their holdings to deliver.

With a low turnover rate of 9%, this fund isn't frantically and frequently rejiggering its holdings, as many funds do.

Why real estate?
Perhaps because there's a finite amount of it, real estate tends to increase in value over time, though not always in a straight line. Real estate investment trusts (REITs), meanwhile, offer an extra benefit via their requirement to pay out at least 90% of their income in the form of dividends.

More than a handful of real estate companies had strong performances over the past year. Realty Income (NYSE: O  ) , for example, surged 25%, and yields an attractive 5%. It's a retail REIT, leasing property to retailers and aiming to lock in long-term income through long leases. The company has been investing in growing its property portfolio, and its occupancy rate has been rising as well. It's also a dividend star, upping its payout 70 times since going public in 1994. Its most recent increase was a whopping 19.2%. Recent acquisitions  include American Realty Capital Trust. Trading near its 52-week high, it's not a screaming bargain right now.

Health Care REIT (NYSE: HCN  ) gained 16% and recently yielded about 4.9%, also hitting a 52-week high. Management has explained in a conference call that "[o]ur business model continues to hit on all cylinders." Earlier this year, the company acquired  Sunrise Senior Living, boosting its elder-care facility portfolio. Meanwhile, same-store margins and occupancy rates have been growing. Obamacare will boost the number of people receiving medical care, which should help REITs such as this one that focus on health-care properties. The company's average annual revenue growth has topped 25% over the past five years.

Other companies didn't do as well last year, but could see their fortunes change in the coming years. Digital Realty Trust (NYSE: DLR  ) advanced 9%, as investors excited about the growth in cloud computing grabbed shares of this company that focuses on data-center properties. It's geographically diversified, too, with properties in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Its dividend recently yielded 4.2%. After its last quarter, management noted, "While slow economic growth in the U.S. and abroad has delayed the decision-making process of many enterprise customers... we are very optimistic about the growth prospects and the near- and long-term outlook for our business. In fact, we are on the offensive, taking advantage of our strong balance sheet and financial resources to continue to both expand our portfolio through new development leasing and to be the consolidator in the industry consistently making accretive investments of strategic data center portfolios and individual properties."

UDR (NYSE: UDR  ) shed 1%, and recently yielded 3.6%. Formerly known as United Dominion Realty Trust and specializing  in mid-market apartment complexes, some of its properties in and near New York City were damaged  by Hurricane Sandy. In its last quarterly conference call, management noted  "strong organic rent growth as well as slightly higher occupancy rates."


The big picture
Demand for real estate isn't going away anytime soon. A well-chosen ETF can grant you instant diversification across any industry or group of companies -- and make investing in and profiting from it that much easier.

If you're interested in more high-yielding stocks, The Motley Fool has compiled a special free report outlining nine top dependable dividend payers. It's called "Secure Your Future With 9 Rock-Solid Dividend Stocks." You can access your copy today at no cost -- just click here to discover the winners we've picked.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin Wordpress | Android Forums | Wordpress Tutorials

Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/01/28/fat-dividends-from-real-estate.aspx

credit debt elimination credit debt solutions debt advice uk debt advisor

Yahoo! JAPAN Pre-Earnings: Mobile Revenues In Focus

During the earnings announcement, we will be closely watching the progress the firm has made in its mobile advertising and online shopping & auctions divisions, which are the two largest contributors to the firm?s value at approximately 18% each.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/01/28/yahoo-japan-pre-earnings-mobile-revenues-in-focus/

debt to wealth debt trouble erase credit card debt family credit counseling

Government Spending Isn't Actually Out Of Control

capitol congressIt is a standard talking point of Republicans and deficit hawks of all political stripes that federal spending is out of control; that major surgery is needed, especially on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, to get the budget on a sustainable course.

In fact, our long-term deficit situation is not nearly as severe as even many budget experts believe.

The problem is that they are looking at recent history and near-term projections that are overly impacted by one-time factors related to the economic crisis and massive Republican tax cuts that lowered revenues far below normal.

Taking a longer-term view, such as that in a recent Treasury Department report, shows that our longer-term fiscal problem is in fact quite manageable.

As the chart below illustrates, federal spending ballooned in fiscal year 2009 mainly because of what economists call “automatic stabilizers” – programs already in law such as unemployment compensation that rises whenever a recession occurs. Spending rose from 20.7 percent of the gross domestic product in fiscal year 2008 to 25 percent in 2009.


Republicans would have us believe that all of this resulted from Barack Obama’s policies, but this is simply a partisan lie. Fiscal year 2009 actually began on September 1, 2008, and was based on the budget that George W. Bush submitted in January 2008.

Moreover, if we look at projections from the Congressional Budget Office on January 7, 2009 – while Bush was still in office and which do not incorporate any Obama policies – we see that the deficit was projected to rise from $455 billion in 2008 to $1.2 trillion in 2009 under existing law.

The actual deficit for fiscal year 2009 was $1.55 trillion. But the difference was due entirely to lower revenues than expected, not higher spending. Outlays in fiscal year 2009 actually came in below CBO’s projection – $3,518 billion actual vs. a projection of $3,543 billion.

The point is not to assess blame for the deficit; only to emphasize the temporary nature of the historically large deficits of the last few years and show that they did not result from an explosion of new spending initiated by Obama. This is important because Republicans continually make that claim, thus justifying their belief that spending must be massively slashed, especially for entitlements.

Getting back to the chart, we see that spending for every single government program going forward is remarkably stable as a percentage of GDP. Those who complain loudest about spending and deficits nearly always base their concerns on projections of nominal spending that are unadjusted for inflation, growth of the population or growth of the economy. This is intellectually dishonest.

In fact, virtually all the growth in projected spending comes not from entitlements or giveaways to the poor and lazy, as Republicans would have us believe, but rather from interest on the debt. This is a problem, but not nearly to the extent that it appears.

The reason is that interest on the debt is what economists call a pure transfer. Economically, it is little different from taking money out of your right pocket and putting it into your left pocket. That is because the vast bulk of interest goes to people and institutions who simply use it to buy more Treasury securities.

Back in the days when the federal debt was owned almost entirely by Americans, one could reasonably say that we owed it to ourselves and it was a matter of no economic concern. As Franklin D. Roosevelt put it Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation.

If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.

Of course, we no longer owe the debt all to ourselves; about half of the publicly-held national debt is owned by foreigners, but most of that is held by central banks that will hold it pretty much forever. Nevertheless, there is still a fundamental economic difference between a debt arising from higher government spending on goods and services and one arising from higher interest expense.

When government buys stuff or employs workers, they are not available for use by the private sector. If the economy were growing and the unemployment rate was low, this would be a bad thing. Under current circumstances, however, when GDP is far below its potential and unemployment is high, government spending on goods and services is not displacing private use, but rather putting otherwise idle resources to good use.

My point is that economists have long differentiated between non-interest spending and that for interest, which, as I said, is a pure transfer that has essentially benign economic effects. For this reason, they are mainly concerned about what is called the “primary deficit,” which is non-interest spending as compared to revenues. As the chart shows, the primary deficit going forward is actually quite small – just 1.7 percent of GDP in the long run.

Moreover, this estimate is high because it was calculated before the effects of the fiscal cliff deal, which substantially raised revenues and reduced projected deficits relative to the assumptions used in the Treasury report. Consequently, the long-term budget situation is better than shown in the chart. It’s difficult to estimate that effect at this time – we will get additional data within the next two weeks in the president’s budget and CBO’s annual projections.

In conclusion, it is silly to obsess about near-term nominal budget deficits. What matters is the deficit as a share of GDP minus interest spending, which economists call the primary deficit. On that basis, we are much closer to fiscal sustainability than even most economists realize.

Relatively small adjustments to the growth path of federal revenues and Medicare would be sufficient to eliminate the primary deficit. Taking a meat ax to every federal program, as Republicans demand, is neither necessary nor desirable.

More from The Fiscal Times:

Please follow Politics on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/ddsjQQtGO54/government-spending-isnt-out-of-control-2013-1

debt fix debt free america debt freedom canada debt harassment

Optimists Are Ignoring Two Key Points About The US Housing Recovery (ITB, XHB)

Everyone has been celebrating the recent increase in U.S. home prices. But in the latest RPX monthly housing market report, Quinn Eddins, Director of Research at RadarLogic writes that it is too early to call a housing recovery.

Looking at the 25-MSA RPX composite home prices that are up 9.2 percent as of November 21, Eddins writes that the "public discussion has missed a critical point", that the gain reflects the weakness of home prices in 2011, more than the strength in 2012. 

"In each year since the end of the housing boom, the RPX Composite has weakened during the second half of the year. In 2011, it weakened more than usual.

"So when we talk about a 9.2 percent year-over-year gain in the RPX Composite, it is a gain off an unusually low base. It does not simply reflect strength in housing prices during the 2012, but also extreme weakness in housing prices during the second half of 2011."

RPX home price

 

What's more the rise in home prices has been driven by a shift in the composition of sales driven by institutional investors trying to build up rental property portfolios. In a report released earlier this month Eddins wrote:

"Investors appear to be purchasing properties mostly from two sources: financial institutions selling REO and investors trading distressed properties purchased earlier in the housing crisis. They have not purchased significant volumes of homes from builders and households.

"Thus, it is hard to see a direct connection between the current increase in institutional demand and future gains in household demand, especially at a time when traditional buyers are faced with high down payment requirements and tight standards for mortgages."

SEE ALSO: The 10 American Housing Markets That Made Tremendous Turnarounds In 2012 >

Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/MgOj3Fpfiuo/what-housing-optimists-are-ignoring-2013-1

debt consolidation agency debt consolidation blog debt consolidation canada debt consolidation florida

Can Harley-Davidson?s Earnings Deliver Growth And Fatter Margins?

The company is nearing the end of a comprehensive five-year long restructuring process and will hope to see substantial cost savings from its efforts going forward.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/01/28/can-harley-davidsons-earnings-deliver-growth-and-fatter-margins/

debt settlement agency debt settlement leads debt settlement software debt settlement solution

Learn The Value Of Canny House loan Research

There is certainly zero hesitation produce that propane is a wonderful long-term expense. We have actually peaked within our power to increase creation meaningfully, just as we now have with gentle essential oil. I do think in order for there to become an increase in long-term propane supply, you have to supply incentive to producers [...]

The post Learn The Value Of Canny House loan Research appeared first on legal debt help online.

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2012/06/27/learn-the-value-of-canny-house-loan-research/

consumer debt advocate consumer debt collection consumer debt relief consumer debt settlement

The 7 Best Super Bowl Halftime Shows Of All Time

michael jackson superbowl halftime show

From Prince's 'Purple Rain' to U2's 'Where The Streets Have No Name,' the Super Bowl halftime show has been home to great performances by artists.

Here are our picks for the best. (They're in chronological order, not order of greatness.)

1. Michael Jackson (1993)

The singer performing as the halftime act caused audience numbers to go up during the show itself (the first time that had ever happened during the Super Bowl), causing Jackson's act to be often cited as the reason the Super Bowl tries to book big musical acts for the halftime show rather than the marching bands of yore.

When Jackson first appeared on the stage amid a flash of smoke, he stood dramatically silent and immobile for a full 1.5 minutes while many of the 98,000 at the Rose Bowl Stadium cheered. 

During his performance, a chorus of more than 3,000 children from Los Angeles performed "We Are The World," and footage of Jackson being involved in charities was screened. Jackson sang "Billie Jean," "Black or White" and "Jam."

Arlen Kantarian, chief executive of halftime show producers Radio City Productions, remembered how Jackson was struck by the idea of the viewers who would be watching in other countries.

“He said, ‘Man, I’ll never tour there,’ ” Kantarian recalled in an article with the New York Times which detailed how Jackson's performance forever changed the halftime show. “We talked to him about the blue-collar football fan that might not otherwise be a Michael Jackson fan and about how he could build a new fan base. He got that as well.”

Bleacher Report writer Gordon Block ranked Jackson’s show as the best halftime show ever.

Super Bowl XXVII is the standard for all Super Bowl halftime shows, as the league called in the star power of Michael Jackson to keep audiences tuned in to the game,” Block wrote. “Jackson did not disappoint… Since that 1993 show, the halftime performance has become a huge part of the game and made the game much bigger than the sport of football. It's a cultural event and one that is almost impossible to miss.”

2. Aerosmith, Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Nelly, 'N Sync (2001)

The Super Bowl halftime show has often tried to book the artists who were leading the pop culture zeitgeist, and while some of them have put on great performances, others have stumbled. However, the 2001 combination of artists managed to be a perfect capsule of who was popular at the time as well as entertaining.

Aerosmith performed two solo numbers, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" and "Jaded," while 'N Sync chose "It's Gonna Be Me" and "Bye Bye Bye" for their numbers. The entire group sang Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" to close out the show.

3. U2 (2002)

The Irish band's performance was the first halftime show after the Sept. 11, 2001, and the performance included large backdrops onto which were projected the names of many of the victims who died in the attacks.

After the band performed "MLK," "Beautiful Day" and "Where the Streets Have No Name," frontman Bono revealed an American flag on the lining of his jacket. Many called it a stirring and respectful tribute.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/mw5fQGWx75A/the-7-best-halftime-shows-of-all-time-2013-1

best debt consolidation company best debt consolidation loan best debt management best way to pay off debt

Strongly Bullish Winter Seasonality Lifts Stocks Again

It never ceases to amaze me how background conditions work out to continue the long history of the market making most of its gains each year in the winter months and when there is a correction of any degree it almost always takes place in the unfavorable season between May and November.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/01/25/strongly-bullish-winter-seasonality-lifts-stocks-again/

sample debt collection letter sample debt settlement letter settling credit card debt stop debt collectors