Weekend Digest: After The Elections

For our weekend political readers:

ARE SUPER PACS GETTING THEIR BANG FOR THE BUCKS?
Marketplace proposes an interesting question.  Are super PACS a good return on investment?

This election, there was ad after ad after ad, and many of those were not paid for by the campaigns themselves. The “Citizens United” Supreme Court case gave rise to super PACS. Those groups raised millions of dollars, and then funneled that money into political races.

But how effective was all that money spent, and if a super PAC supported candidate lost, then who benefits in the end? And what’s the preliminary outlook for 2016 super PAC contributions?

Go to this link for the full story.
 
WHAT TOP CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROBLEMS ARE IN NEED OF FIXING BY CONGRESS?
The list is lengthy, but Daily Finance U.S. News has narrowed it down to the “10 Money Problems that Need Fixing Now.”

In an era of increasingly sophisticated technologies and transactions, many consumers are falling behind in understanding how to use essential financial products and services. The result is not just personal loss for individuals: Businesses, and hence the economy as a whole, suffer from friction between confused consumers and their providers. And government, when it steps in, can exacerbate these problems if regulation isn’t carefully crafted.

The post says it starts with 401(K)S.

Retirement investment companies constantly reassure us that their defined-contribution accounts are successful, or would be if consumers set aside sufficient funds for retirement. Of course, they fund these commercial messages and voluminous studies with the enormous fees they earn by “managing” retirement accounts, often with mediocre results. Is there any doubt we need new ideas to achieve better retirement outcomes?

To learn the other nine recommended “money matters that need attention in Washington and other centers of financial power,” click on this link.

A LOOK AT WHAT’S BEHIND BOEHNER’S NEW TONE
“In the summer of 2011, House Speaker John Boehner was negotiating with a president up for reelection, a House filled with red-hot firebrands and a leadership team dragged down by internal staff warfare. This time, his party has suffered an electoral beat down and Obama has run his last campaign,” says Politico.

Now, the D.C.-based web newsmagazine reports the Speaker’s tone and rhetoric have changed drastically. His new strategy was unveiled last week in a speech at the Capitol.

Every word seemed carefully chosen. Boehner quoted from the Bible, mentioned former Speaker Tip O’Neill’s famous tax compromise with Ronald Reagan and pleaded with Obama to lead. Boehner sounds like a man ready to make a deal, but he has an excruciating negotiating task in finding something that somehow passes muster with an invigorated second-term Democratic president, a reinforced Senate Democratic majority and a conservative House majority.

Will Boehner’s Republican colleagues go along with his willingness to compromise with President Obama and has he decided to scrap his fight against Obamacare?

Politico poses the question of whether Congress will “need to tack to the right to win back voters, or cut a deal in order to prove to the American people they are responsible partners in governing?”

For the full analysis go to this link.

ROMNEY WEB SITE A LITTLE AHEAD OF THE GAME
It was all set.  Presidential Republican candidate Mitt Romney had an election victory web site ready to go.  A transition site titled: “Mitt Romney Elected the 45th President of The United States of America.”  The problem was, he lost.

A draft version of his transition website was visible to the public on a server belonging to the company that designed it, a Utah software shop called SolutionStream.

Huffiington Post has the story and a video of this embarrassing footnote to the defeated candidate’s campaign.

SLEEP HABITS OF PAST PRESIDENTS
It’s a fact that stress can affect your sleep.  Huffington Post reports that stress keeps 46 percent of Americans up at night.

And all that stress can put you at risk for heat problems, stroke, depression and memory issues not to mention stress makes it tough to form the best decisions and can totally screw up your sleep.

So how did past presidents sleep with “the most stressful job in the country” and what peculiar sleep habits did they have?

The Post has the surprising details of the sleep habits of six past presidents including JFK and William Jefferson Clinton.