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Looking for Cash, Congress Finds Some in a Corporate Pension Rule TweakBy MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Published: June 28, 2012 Lawmakers looking for money to finance low-cost student loans and fix aging highways have found about $20 billion in an unlikely place: company pension funds. Pension funds are not exactly brimming over with extra money. In 2006, Congress was concerned enough about bolstering them to pass legislation closing loopholes and making companies set money aside more quickly. But the highway bill that Congress is rushing to complete by Friday contains a measure that would let companies slow their pension contributions again....

Regulators have a July deadline to finish the rule, but officials have said it appears unlikely they will meet it. The October draft rule issued by the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators permits what is known as "portfolio hedging," or buying and selling in order to reduce the risk of a portfolio of securities held at the bank. Messrs. Merkley and Levin say regulators inserted a "loophole" into the rule's draft. The Dodd-Frank law says banks can conduct hedging activities related to "individual or aggregated positions." It is unclear whether that includes buying or selling to...

A better "Buffet, Soros, Weinstein, Spielberg, Reiner, Hanks Rule." They want one that applies to everyone else while they get "waivers" for being useful idiots. I say we "honor" them with one JUST FOR THEM.

USA today cannot be posted as per FR rules. Link only below

FCC might end sports blackout ruleBy Brendan Sasso - 01/13/12 03:19 PM ET The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Thursday issued a formal request for public comment on a proposal to end its sports blackout rule. The rule, first adopted in 1975, prohibits cable and satellite providers from carrying a sports event if the game is blacked out on local broadcast television stations. Dropping the rule would have the most effect on the National Football League, which requires broadcasters to black out games if the local team does not sell out the stadium. The rule is meant to encourage fans...

Reporting from Washington— The Obama administration will announce Friday a proposed new regulation that would allow certain undocumented immigrants to remain in America while applying for legal status -- a step aimed at keeping families intact and one that may also shore up the president's support with Latino voters. As it stands, people living in the U.S. illegally who leave the country to apply for a green card face years of separation from family members. Depending on how long they've lived in America, once they leave they are barred from returning for up to 10 years.

Under fire from gun owners concerned about draft guidelines that could limit areas for target practice on western public lands, the Interior Department today said it would make sure shooters still have access to lands long available for firearms recreation. "Our goal is to leave lands open to shooting," said an Interior official for the Bureau of Land Management, which is drafting guidelines to deal with the growing clash between skittish urbanites moving to western wilderness areas and America's tradition of letting gun owners shoot targets on public lands. [Read: Obama Pushing Shooters Off Public Lands.] "We don't want to...

Ferry Building merchants and managers are fed up with the mayhem that has come with the nearby Occupy SF encampment. A spike in shoplifting, break-ins and reports of abandoned human waste — and a reported drop in foot traffic — has management fuming about the Justin Herman Plaza encampment. There even are reports of occupiers using the building’s restrooms as washrooms — with folks taking sponge baths from toilets. And last Monday, eight men were allegedly escorted out of the building after they attempted to use the bathrooms wearing nothing but their boxer shorts. Property manager Jane Connors has written...

A proposed revision to Freedom of Information Act rules would allow federal agencies to lie to citizens and reporters seeking certain records, telling them the records don’t exist. The Justice Department has proposed the change as part of a large revision of FOIA rules for federal agencies. Specifically, the rule would direct government agencies who are denying a request under an established FOIA exemption to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist,” rather than citing the relevant exemption. The proposed rule has alarmed government transparency advocates across the political spectrum, who’ve called it “Orwellian” and...

His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the Middle East might have, but few in the West and across the world would have heard of him. Time to catch up. Because the story of how an al-Qaeda asset turned out to be the top Libyan military commander in still war-torn Tripoli is bound to shatter - once again - that wilderness of mirrors that is the "war on terror", as well as deeply compromising the carefully constructed propaganda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) "humanitarian" intervention in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi's fortress of Bab-al-Aziziyah was essentially invaded and conquered last...

Senate Republicans ripped into the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for ignoring a new executive order from President Barack Obama regarding to “quickie” union elections. Obama’s most recent executive order asked all federal agencies, including independent ones like the NLRB, to refrain from making quick decisions without much public input. The new “quickie” election rules the NLRB just finalized make it easier for labor unions to organize. They allow unions to request a unionizing election date mere days after initiating an organization effort. Because unions got their way, many working men and women who are subjected to the NLRB’s new...

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan. Answer: T Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/05/obama-skirts-rule-law-reward-pals-punish-foes#ixzz1NNIqd79w

California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman was among the loudest proponents of whistleblower protections during the Bush years ̶ particularly when the subject was the Iraq war ̶ but GOP staffers say his attitude seems to have changed with the shift to a Democratic administration. Waxman spoke out loudly for protecting whistleblowers from “incompetent management” (Snip) Waxman chose to ignore a large stamp stating “NOT FOR PUBLIC DISCLOSURE” on a series of emails between Dan Grazer, the data manager for the NRC’s Yucca Mountain licensing program, and Judge Roy Hawkins, the chief administrative judge of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board,

Fresh off the allegations that Donald Trump's various "birther" and affirmative action conspiracies about President Obama were racist, now the spotlight is being shone on Trump's long history of sexist, if not downright sleazy, comments about women. In a column for the Washington Post, Anna Holmes brings up the "Trump Rule," as described by beauty queen Carrie Prejean, in her book about the Miss USA pageant. According to Prejean, the Miss USA pageant had a requirement that contestants parade in front of pageant owner Donald Trump so he could separate out those he found sexually appealing from those he did...

One of the basic gun safety rules is that owners should be sure their guns are never accessible to unauthorized or untrained individuals. Recently, two gun owners broke that cardinal rule. Restroom surprise Walmart, located at 755 S. 20th Ave. in Safford, is unquestionably the area's busiest store. Numerous people of all types and ages visit the store, and many of them utilize its restrooms. Safford Police were dispatched to the store at about 11:35 a.m. on Thursday after a maintenance employee discovered a fanny pack with a Taurus .357 Magnum in the men's restroom. The employee turned the gun...

It was progressives who won the mid-term elections, particularly incumbents in a socialist-founded congressional caucus that emerged from last week's ballots virtually unscathed, boasted an article published by the George Soros-funded Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist-oriented think-tank in Washington, D.C.

Snips from excerpt only website: NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Industry experts say more insurers will drop health care coverage or go out of business if they are forced to meet a Jan. 1 deadline that requires them to boost the money devoted to providing care. Under health reform, beginning 2011, insurance companies will have to spend 80% to 85% of the premiums they collect on care instead of toward their own profits and overhead costs. Beginning in 2012 If insurers don't increase that loss ratio to 80 cents per dollar paid, they will have to give customers a rebate for...

The top Republican on a Senate environmental panel released a scathing report Tuesday that he contends shows that the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule on cleaning up boilers nationwide could devastate America's manufacturing base and imperil hundreds of thousands of jobs without providing any real public health or environmental benefits. In June, the EPA issued a proposal that would force industrial, commercial and institutional boilers and heaters to use "maximum achievable control technology" to reduce harmful emissions that erode air quality and pose a public health risk.

This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved a rule that is designed to make it much easier for large shareholders to force out corporate directors. The rule allows a big shareholder to nominate his own board slate and have those its board nominees listed on a company-mailed “proxy” ballot alongside the candidates favored by management.On one hand, the rule seems pretty reasonable, why shouldn’t the average shareholder have a choice in who to vote for? Its the American way.This rule, however has nothing to do with the average shareholder, in fact it probably guarantees the average shareholder will have...

Gainful Employment limits options for students WASHINGTON, July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In response to the Department of Education issuing a "Gainful Employment" rule today that would make certain career college programs ineligible for Title IV financial aid and effectively eliminate the opportunity for lower-income students to attend career colleges, Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce issued the following statement. "Gainful Employment will disproportionately harm low-income and minority populations by discriminating against students who must borrow the needed tuition to attend college. Without financial aid, access to higher education will be limited for thousands of students. At...