In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
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Question: Once upon a time 20 years ago, the average San Francisco home cost the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $400,000. All one had to do was own a million-dollar home (or $1.5 million today) and they could be confidently among San Francisco’s wealthy elite. Ah, it was a simpler time. 
  
 But now? Heck, every house costs at least a million dollars. They even advertise it. And the average income for both individuals and families is climbing every year. It takes a lot more riches just to be rich anymore. 
  
 So who's rich and who's not in this crazy market? To alleviate this burning question, the local branch of investment firm Charles Schwab commissioned a survey of a 1,000 Bay Area residents to see what they think.To wit: "The survey of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that local residents think it takes about $2.5 million in most areas of the United States to be considered wealthy while a net worth of more than $6 million is what it takes to be wealthy in the Bay Area." 
  
 Ignoring for a moment the idea that $2 million doesn’t qualify as rich most places anymore, imagine how embarrassing it must be for anyone worth $3 million to find out that they only rate as middle class in the Bay Area. What will the neighbors think? 
  
 Of course, this was only a survey of people’s opinions, meaning it’s less a hard numbers look at the cost of living so much as a glimpse into how people are feeling these days. Eighty-six percent of those polled say that the cost of living in the region is too high, 55 percent say they have trouble meeting their financial goals, and 68 percent say the Bay Area has one of the worst housing markets in the country. 
  
 (The other 32 percent are presumably sellers.) ||||| Charles Schwab study concludes that you need $6 million to be 'wealthy' in the Bay Area 
  
 If you don't already feel poor living in the Bay Area, you will now. 
  
 A new Charles Schwab survey says that in order to be considered "wealthy" in the Bay Area, you need a net worth of at least $6 million. A net worth of $1 million is the baseline for being "comfortable." 
  
 Excuse us while we take a quick break to cry into the $8 artisanal coffee that we really can't afford. 
  
 Charles Schwab surveyed 1,000 Bay Area residents aged 21 to 75 in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Solano counties. The survey asked what residents considered enough money to be "wealthy" vs. "comfortable." 
  
 Respondents said they believed $2.5 million was the average needed to be wealthy in other parts of the country. 
  
 Unsurprisingly, the survey also found that locals are shocked by the cost of living here. Eighty-six percent said the cost of living is "unreasonable" and 55-percent said living in the Bay Area makes it "difficult to reach their financial goals." Only two percent agreed strongly that the cost of living in the Bay Area is reasonable. Who these people are, exactly, remains a question. 
  
 Off-setting those depressing statistics are upbeat outlooks on job opportunities. Eighty percent believe the region is a great place for career growth, 88-percent say it's a prime place for innovation and 70-percent say the Bay Area's economy is better than the national one. 
  
 To read the full Charles Schwab study, click here. |||||

Answer: Residents of the Bay Area in California think it takes more than twice as much money to be considered wealthy there than in the rest of the country, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. A survey of 1,000 residents by Charles Schwab found you need to be worth more than $6 million in the Bay Area to be considered wealthy, but only $2.5 million in the rest of the country. They say it also takes $1 million to even be "comfortable" in the Bay Area. The survey found 86% of residents believe the Bay Area's cost of living to be unreasonable. The whole thing is bad news for both actual poor residents and "Bay Area poor" residents. "Imagine how embarrassing it must be for anyone worth $3 million to find out that they only rate as middle class in the Bay Area," Curbed San Francisco notes. "What will the neighbors think?"


Question: Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee. 
  
 The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job, and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent. 
  
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 In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger. 
  
 “Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House. 
  
 The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.” 
  
 “First, they’ve got to like you, and there’s not a lot to like about Mitt Romney,” said Chicago Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco, who worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign. “There’s no way to hide this guy and hide his innate phoniness.” 
  
 A senior Obama adviser was even more cutting, suggesting that the Republican’s personal awkwardness will turn off voters. 
  
 “There’s a weirdness factor with Romney, and it remains to be seen how he wears with the public,” the adviser said, noting that the contrasts they’d drive between the president and the former Massachusetts governor would be “based on character to a great extent.” 
  
 The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession — a sort of political Gordon Gekko. 
  
 “He was very, very good at making a profit for himself and his partners but not nearly as good [at] saving jobs for communities,” said David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist. “His is very much the profile of what we’ve seen in the last decade on Wall Street. He was about making money. And that’s fine. But often times, he made it at the expense of jobs in communities.” 
  
 Romney officials shrug off the tough talk, arguing that there’s nothing Obama can do that will turn the campaign away from functioning as a referendum on his stewardship of the economy. ||||| 2012 Obama to Pull a George W. Bush, Go Negative on ‘Weird’ Mitt Romney [Update] 
  
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 A report in Politico today allows President Obama's team of aides and advisers an extensive dress rehearsal of their reelection strategy — assuming Mitt Romney gets the Republican nomination — of painting the former Massachusetts governor as "inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama's advisers in about a dozen interviews, 'weird.'" Speaking both on the record and anonymously, Obama's team uses an article ostensibly about what their plan will be to actually begin enacting that exact plan: "a ferocious personal assault," modeled on President George W. Bush's dismantling of John Kerry in 2004. It's a two-pronged attack — both personal and professional — and it all stings already. 
  
 "They can try anything they want — but this race is going to be about the economy," said a Romney strategist in half of his side's lone retort in the article. (Update: Romney's camp responds in a statement below.) 
  
 But try they will: Romney, according to Obama's side, has an "innate phoniness" and a "weirdness factor" that results in awkward and off-putting public appearances. "When he makes jokes about being unemployed, or a waitress pinching him on the butt, it does snap your head back and you say, 'what's he talking about?'" said Obama chief strategist David Axelrod. ("Weird," at least on this go-around, has nothing to do, at least explicitly, with Romney's religion.) 
  
 There's also Romney's past as the CEO of Bain Capital, which Axelrod describes as "very much the profile of what we've seen in the last decade on Wall Street. He was about making money." And, assuming Romney moves farther to the right to claim the GOP nomination, that all makes way for the charges of fickleness: "If you were to write the history of his political career it would be called 'Extreme Makeover,'" said Axelrod, with Politico citing both "skinny jeans" and "abortion" as examples of Romney's changes over the years. 
  
 All told, that leaves us with a "principled" incumbent in tough times and "another stiff, wealthy patrician politician from Massachusetts with attacks on his alleged 'flip-flopping,'" just like 2004. Everyone remembers how that turned out. |||||

Answer: If Politico has it right, team Obama not only expects Mitt Romney to be the GOP nominee, it is ready to unleash a "ferocious personal assault" against him. The go-negative approach would have two fronts: portray Romney as a "weird" guy out of touch with ordinary people and as a greedy CEO willing to sacrifice jobs. For guidance, it will model its strategy in part on the one George W. Bush used in depicting John Kerry as an aloof rich guy. As Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin explain, the Obama camp figures that a nasty campaign will be a necessity because of the economy. "The candidate who ran on 'hope' in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent," they write. The story already has generated a response from the Romney camp blasting the approach, notes New York's Daily Intel, as well as a Democratic response to that response.


Question: This crawl of online resources of the 113th US Congress was performed on behalf of NARA. ||||| The already scandal-plagued IRS is about to once again feel the political heat from lawmakers — this time for getting its groove on to the “Cupid Shuffle” on the taxpayers’ dime. 
  
 House Ways and Means Republicans on Friday evening released an IRS video depicting agency employees line dancing to singer Cupid’s “down, down, do your dance.” The IRS shot the video for entertainment at a 2010 agency conference in Anaheim, Calif. 
  
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 The release of the video comes just days before the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — the same watchdog that uncovered IRS employees were targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status — is set to release a report that’s likely to bring a new wave of troubles for the IRS. 
  
 (PHOTOS: 8 key players in IRS scandal story) 
  
 The report is titled “Collected and Wasted: The IRS Spending Culture and Conference Abuses,” and part of it looks at the Anaheim conference. The probe shows the agency spent about $49 million on at least 220 conferences for employees over the past three years, according to a Washington Post report. 
  
 House Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is slated to hold a hearing on IRS conference spending Thursday, will surely use the new video to blast the agency for wasting money. 
  
 The video doesn’t lack for theatrics. 
  
 Employees in the film are whipped into shape by a colleague yelling, “Get in line now. … Chop, chop!” 
  
 “After countless hours of hard work and one broken leg,” the moderator says, the employees end up picking up on the shuffle and have fun. 
  
 “They finally got it,” the woman who plays the trainer jokes. “They’re ready for Anaheim!” 
  
 But Republicans don’t find it funny. 
  
 “Whether it is the tens of thousands of hard-earned taxpayer dollars spent to produce frivolous entertainment for agency bureaucrats, or the IRS’s own admission that it targeted the American people based on their personal beliefs, the outrage toward the IRS is only growing stronger,” said Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany in a statement. 
  
 The Louisiana Republican said the video proves the IRS is a place “where abuse and waste is the norm and not the exception.” |||||

Answer:
Another day, another cringe-inducing instance of the IRS looking tone deaf: The latest embarrassment comes via the House Ways and Means Committee, which Friday released a video of IRS employees line-dancing to the "Cupid Shuffle"—on the taxpayer dime. The video is apparently what passed for entertainment at a 2010 IRS conference in Anaheim that cost $4.1 million, reports Politico, but Republicans aren't exactly chuckling. One committee members blasts it as "frivolous entertainment," adding that "abuse and waste is the norm and not the exception.” The IRS is already on damage control, with acting chief Daniel Werfel calling spending outlined in a report coming this week “an unfortunate vestige from a prior era.” He notes that IRS spending on conferences is down "80% since 2010 and similar large-scale meetings did not take place in 2011, 2012 or 2013." The report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is called “Collected and Wasted: The IRS Spending Culture and Conference Abuses," and reportedly outlines some $49 million the IRS spent on conferences over the past three years. Click for the video.


