Saturday, April 24, 2010

Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., April 24 & 25, 2010


Let's see...

Hmm...

This weekend's theme music...

(*SCRATCHING MY CHIN*)

Ahh...! Got it...!
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13 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703876404575200420877856064.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Environmental activists this week marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which happened to fall three days before World Malaria Day. Insofar as Earth Day politics have contributed to today's malaria epidemic, the two events are related.

Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, was a leading opponent of the insecticide DDT, which remains the cheapest and most effective way to combat malarial mosquitoes.

[O]ther leading greens of the period, including...biologist Paul Ehrlich and ecologist Garrett Hardin, were also animated by a belief that growth in human populations was harming the environment. In his book "The Population Bomb," Mr. Ehrlich criticized DDT for being too effective in reducing death rates and thus contributing to "overpopulation." Hardin opposed spraying pesticides in the Third World because "every life saved this year in a poor country diminishes the quality of life for subsequent generations." For these activists, malaria was nature's way of controlling population growth, and DDT got in the way.

* SICK, HUH?

Today, malaria still claims about one million lives every year - mostly women and children in sub-Saharan Africa. There's no evidence that spraying the chemical inside homes in the amounts needed to combat the disease harms humans, animals or the environment. Yet DDT remains severely underutilized in the fight against malaria because the intellectual descendants of Senator Nelson continue to hold sway at the World Health Organization and other United Nations agencies.

The good news is that the Obama Administration has continued the Bush policy of supporting DDT spraying in Zambia, Mozambique and other countries where the locals want it used.

* WELL GOOD FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA! THIS IS INDEED GOOD NEWS!

DDT helped to eradicate malaria in the U.S. and Europe after World War II, and the U.S. is right to take the lead in reforming public health insecticide policy and putting the lives of the world's poor above green ideology.

(*THUMBS UP*)

April 24, 2010 at 2:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704671904575193930226978178.html

Democrats are pushing to weaken ballot security at the state and national level.

Three decades ago absentee and early ballots were only 5% of all votes cast nationwide. In 2008, they exceeded 25%.

An attempt to hijack the state's election laws and open the door for voter fraud failed at the last minute this week in Wisconsin's legislature. ... Late in March, a 72-page bill was suddenly introduced and rushed forward with only abbreviated hearings. The bill would have given "nationally recognized" community organizing groups access to the state driver's license database to encourage voter turnout. After the infamous registration scandals involving Acorn in 2008, this was clearly a strange priority.

Coercion and chicanery are made much easier by the excessive use of absentee ballots. Most of the elections thrown out by courts - Miami, Florida's mayoral election in 1998, the East Chicago, Indiana's mayor's race in 2005 - involved fraudulent absentee votes. ... Wisconsin's bill would also have allowed voters to register on the Internet without supplying a signature - thus removing a valuable protection against identity theft and election fraud.

In the end, [Wisconsin] Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker [a Democrat] admitted the bill was being rushed through too quickly and adjourned the session without brining it up for a vote. (Democratic leaders also worried that a popular amendment to require photo ID at the polls would have been attached to their measure. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has vetoed three previous photo ID laws...)

(*SMIRK*)

In 2004, John Kerry won Wisconsin over George W. Bush by 11,380 votes out of 2.5 million cast. After allegations of fraud surfaced, the Milwaukee police department's Special Investigative Unit conducted a probe. Its February 2008 report found that from 4,600 to 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once.

(The report was largely ignored, and just before the 2008 election the police department's Special Investigative Unit was ordered by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day.)

Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, a Democrat, has introduced federal legislation to mandate same-day registration in every state...

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is readying a bill to override the election laws of all 50 states and require universal voter registration - which would automatically register anyone on key government lists. This is a move guaranteed to create duplicate registrations, register some illegal aliens, and sow confusion.

April 24, 2010 at 2:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703709804575202072055128934.html

No one seems to know precisely who is behind the "Miss Me Yet?" billboard - the cheeky one featuring a grinning George W. Bush that looks out over I-35 near Wyoming, Minn. But Syrian dissident Ahed Al-Hendi sympathizes with the thought.

In 2006, Mr. Hendi was browsing pro-democracy Web sites in a Damascus Internet café when plainclothes cops carrying automatic guns swooped in, cuffed him, and threw him into the trunk of a car. He spent over a month in prison, some of it alone in a 5-by-3 windowless basement cell where he listened to his friend being tortured in the one next door. Mr. Hendi was one of the lucky ones: He's now living in Maryland as a political refugee where he works for an organization called Cyberdissidents.org. [T]his past Monday, he joined other international dissidents at a conference sponsored by the Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University to discuss the way digital tools can be used to resist repressive regimes.

Mr. Hendi elaborated on the policy changes he thinks Mr. Obama has made toward his home country. "In Syria, when a single dissident was arrested during the administration of George W. Bush, at the very least the White House spokesman would condemn it. Under the Obama administration: nothing."

Adrian Hong, who was imprisoned in China in 2006 for his work helping North Koreans escape the country (a modern underground railroad), echoed that idea. "When I was released [after 10 days] I was told it was because of very strong messaging from the White House and the culture you set," he told Mr. Bush.

Then there is Marcel Granier, the president of RCTV, Venezuela's oldest and most popular television station. He employs several thousand people - or at least he did until Hugo Chávez cancelled the network's license in 2007. Now, he's struggling to maintain an independent channel on cable: Mr. Chávez ordered the cable networks not to carry his station in January. Government supporters have attacked his home with tear gas twice, yet he remains in the country, tirelessly advocating for media freedom.

Like many of the democrats at the conference, Mr. Granier was excited by Mr. Obama's historic election, and inspired by the way he energized American voters. But a year and a half later, he's disturbed by the administration's silence as his country slips rapidly towards dictatorship.

This sense of abandonment has been fueled by real policy shifts. Just this week word came that the administration cut funds to promote democracy in Egypt by half. Programs in countries like Jordan and Iran have also faced cuts. Then there are the symbolic gestures: letting the Dalai Lama out the back door, paltry statements of support for Iranian demonstrators, smiling and shaking hands with Mr. Chávez, and so on.

April 24, 2010 at 2:05 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bank-owned-by-senate-candidates-family-closed-2010-04-23?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Chicago's Broadway Bank, which is owned by the family of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias, was closed by regulators on Friday.

Broadway Bank had roughly $1.2 billion in assets and $1.1 billion in deposits as of Dec. 31, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The bank's failure will cost the deposit insurance fund $394.3 million, the FDIC said.

April 24, 2010 at 2:05 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531277

President Barack Obama's health care bill aims to achieve universal coverage while at the same time reducing costs. In reality, this contradictory strategy will ensure that Americans enjoy less health care, of poorer quality, and from fewer doctors.

A mere 1 in 12 medical-school graduates now head to family medicine. In 2009, the American Academy of Family Physicians warned that we'd be short 40,000 family doctors in a decade, if present trends continued. Today, medical schools produce one primary care doctor for every two who are needed.

* ANY OF YOU FOLKS READING THIS HAVE A KID IN MEDICAL SCHOOL...??? (*SMIRK*)

* HMM... PERHAPS IF WE SIMPLY PROVIDE ALL INCOMING UNDERGRADUATE ENGLISH MAJORS AND GRAD SCHOOL SOCIOLOGY MAJORS WITH SCALPLES... (*SNORT*)

* SERIOUSLY... FOLKS... HOW DO YOU THINK THIS IS GOING TO WORK ITSELF OUT IN THE REAL WORLD...???

ObamaCare will add strain to an already burdened system. The new bill seeks to increase the load on family doctors while holding the line on costs by putting price controls on government insurance plans. In due course, price controls on private plans will be inevitable. The combination of increased coverage and emphasis on primary care, experts say, will increase demand for primary care docs by as much as 29%, or 44,000 doctors, over the next 15 years. But just as demand is increasing, doctors are making plans to exit. A 2009 survey by medical recruiters Merritt Hawkins found that 10% of respondents were planning to leave medicine within three years.

* HMM... PERHAPS PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL SIMPLY MANDATE "MEDICAL SCHOOL FOR ALL" VIA "EXECUTIVE ORDER." (*SMIRK*)

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... IT'S NOT FRIGG'N FUNNY. THESE JACKASSES IN WASHINGTON ARE BREAKING SOMETHING THAT CAN'T EASILY BE UNBROKEN IN SHORT ORDER.

[T]he next generation of doctors may be even smaller than the current one. [A recent] IBD study found that two-thirds of practicing physicians believed that fewer students would apply to medical school if Obama's health care plan passed.

If supply is constant - or goes down - and demand increases, one of two things must happen. The price paid per unit of service must increase. Or bureaucrats will control prices, lines will form, services will disappear and rationing will result.

* ANYONE CARE TO DISPUTE THIS ANALYSIS...???

This is what's happening in the Bay State, the laboratory that spawned Obama's plan. Since Massachusetts's 2006 reform, 440,000 people have been added to the insurance rolls, including Medicaid or government-funded plans. Yet even freshly armed with insurance, many have struggled to find a doctor. Many doctors have quit, retired or moved out of state. A family care doctor in Amherst told NPR in 2008 that 18 of her colleagues left in the wake of Massachusetts' reform. One clinic in Western Massachusetts has a waiting list of 1,600 patients.

Now bureaucrats have responded by explicitly controlling prices. Shortages will grow. The Bay State's response is to impose a giant government-dominated HMO - lovingly called a system of global capitated payments. What doctors should know and patients will soon understand is that the push for reform is really a return to HMO-style managed care - this time called "coordinated care" and explicitly dominated by the federal government.

April 25, 2010 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531329

Rep. James Oberstar wants to rewrite the Clean Water Act.

If the Minnesota Democrat gets his way, the federal government will have even greater authority to take private property.

This isn't Oberstar's first attempt. In 2007 he also tried to rewrite the water bill. He and others weren't happy with Supreme Court rulings that defined the limits Washington has over bodies of water that have no nexus to navigable waters. They want full federal control over all waters. Consequently, changing the law has become an obsession for Oberstar, and not a harmless one. Should his rewrite become law, property owners will pay.

Oberstar...wants to strike from the Clean Water Act the word "navigable," a restriction in the original bill based on constitutional principles that limit Washington's regulatory reach.

Farmers should be particularly concerned. The Oberstar bill gives federal regulators the power to police farming practices and to take their land through regulatory restrictions if those practices are deemed to be in violation of the law. With the federal government already hobbling California farmers by denying them water, in large part due to the Endangered Species Act, Oberstar's ambition is an existential threat to farms.

* FOLKS... RECALL MY NEWSBITE OF A FEW DAYS AGO CONCERNING RISING FOOD PRICES...

April 25, 2010 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531330

An analysis from an objective source - Medicare's actuary - says ObamaCare will increase costs and relies on projected savings that may be unrealistic. Now isn't that a surprise?

(*SNORT*) (*SMIRK*)

[O]bservers will notice that the administration no longer talks about "bending the cost curve" in health care. The analysis released last week by Medicare's Office of the Actuary tells why. It looks ahead 10 years and reaches two conclusions about the new health care overhaul: More people will be covered, and costs will continue to soar. The cost curve is unbending still.

Chief Actuary Richard Foster pegs ObamaCare's added costs (that is, beyond what was projected without the overhaul in effect) at $311 billion over 10 years.

* AND I'M GUARANTEEING - RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW - THAT THIS IS A LOWBALL ESTIMATE.

As Foster points out, much of what ObamaCare proposes to reduce the nation's health tab, especially in Medicare, is politically unrealistic. The overhaul projects a net decrease in projected Medicare spending (more accurately, a reduction in future spending increases) of more than $400 billion. But Congress has talked this way before and has been notably timid about pulling the trigger. Under a 1997 law, for instance, a 21% cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians was supposed to go into effect on April 1. But Congress two weeks later put the cut on hold as part of a bill to extend unemployment benefits.

This pattern of avoiding politically difficult spending cuts has been going on pretty much since the start of Medicare. ObamaCare promises that this behavior will somehow change.

(*LAUGHING MY FRIGG'N ASS OFF*)

* COM'ON... SERIOUSLY... YOU FOLKS KNOW THE DEMS AIN'T GONNA CUT SQUAT. HELL... THE RINOs WILL BE STANDING SHOULDER TO SHOULDER WITH THE DEMS WITH REGARD TO OPPOSING CUTS! AGAIN... WE CAN GUARANTEE THIS! THAT'S WHY OBAMACARE IS SO DAMNED DESTRUCTIVE! IT'S BASED UPON NOT JUST FAULTY ANALYSIS AND A REFUSAL TO STARE REALITY IN THE FACE... BUT WORSE... IT'S "DEFENDED" BY LIE AFTER LIE AFTER LIE...

At 17% of GDP and rising, the nation's health care economy is a case study in how to structure incentives, price signals (if any) and buying power to maximize inflation. Those who receive services hardly ever pay for them directly, and prices are rarely revealed, much less advertised. Providers long ago learned the power of lobbying to keep the money rolling in and to defeat any attempts at fiscal restraint. What was billed as "reform," in other words, actually reformed nothing.

April 25, 2010 at 1:29 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531278

The news that the U.S. has become a two-class society - i.e., half of Americans pay federal income taxes and half don't - has bounced around the media and shocked Americans.

Even worse is the reality that 40% of Americans receive federal government handouts of cash and valuable benefits. Those handouts are financed by the people who do pay federal income taxes.

Those handouts create a big bloc of people who depend on the government for their living expenses. The Tax Foundation reports that 20% of Americans get 75% of their income from the federal government and another 20% get 45% of their income from the government.

According to the Tax Foundation, married taxpayers pay three-fourths of all federal income taxes, whereas two-thirds of single parents who file as head of household pay no income tax at all. According to a Heritage Foundation report, taxpayers (mostly those who are married) will spend more than $300 billion providing welfare aid to single parents (mostly women).

[T]he overwhelming reason for big government's extravagant spending...is the breakdown in our culture...

* THE AUTHOR IS TALKING ABOUT IRRESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED ILLEGITIMACY. (BTW... ANYONE WHO THINKS THIS IS "RACIST CODE" OR EVEN SIMPLY "REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS" SHOULD GOOGLE "MOYNIHAN REPORT OF 1965" - EXPOSE YOURSELF TO A BIT OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT.)

In 2008, 40.6% of children born in the U.S. were born outside of marriage; that's 1,720,000 children.

This is not, as the media try to tell us, a teenage problem. Only 7% of those illegitimate babies were born to girls under age 18, and over three-fourths were born to women over 20.

The problem is the collapse of marriage as the social institution responsible for the costs of child care. ... The wrong-headed welfare system started in the 1960s with Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and his proclaimed war against poverty. The system should have been called the war against marriage. LBJ's Great Society set up a grossly immoral system whereby millions of people were taught they had an "entitlement" to pick the pockets of law-abiding, taxpaying families if they met two conditions: They didn't work, and they were not married to someone who did work. This destroyed the work ethic and subsidized illegitimacy by giving single moms money and scores of benefits, such as welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, housing, utilities, WIC and commodities.

* To be continued...

April 25, 2010 at 1:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

LBJ's welfare system undermined marriage and greatly increased all the social problems that flow from fatherless homes, such as drugs, sex, suicide, runaways and school dropouts. The feminists rejoiced because all the cash went to women, thereby deconstructing what they called the oppressive patriarchy, and the liberals rejoiced because these handouts required more bureaucrats and higher taxes.

True to their Contract With America, the Republican Congress passed welfare reform in 1996. It was even [eventually - after two initial vetos] signed by President Clinton, who admitted it was time to "end welfare as we know it." The goal of Republican welfare reform was to help families move to employment and self-sufficiency and end long-term dependence on government assistance.

This policy was repealed by Obama's stimulus, which will add more families to welfare dependency by paying bonuses to states that increase their welfare caseloads.

* YES... IN CASE YOU'VE MISSED PREVIOUS POSTINGS BRINGING THE FACTS TO LIGHT... THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION - WITH THE COOPERATION OF PELOSI, REID, AND THEIR DEMOCRATIC MAJORITIES IN CONGRESS - HAVE BASICALLY GUTTED WELFARE REFORM.

Obama's real goal is a permanent expansion of the welfare system. Nothing promotes that goal as much as discouraging marriage and providing financial incentives to increase the number of single moms.

Single moms have become a fast-growing demographic group that demands a growing welfare industry. They look to Big Brother government (aka the administration) as a provider and the solution to their problems. Even Obama's health control law contains a subsidy of thousands of dollars a year to unmarried couples and a penalty if they get married. That's the goal of the Obama liberals: a society dependent on the government.

* OBVIOUSLY THIS IS "ANALYSIS" - "OPINION" - BUT IF THE AUTHOR IS FULL OF IT... THEN WHY EXACTLY HAVE THE DEMOCRATS BEEN DOING WHAT THEY'VE BEEN DOING...???

April 25, 2010 at 1:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531328

The financial reform that Sen. Chris Dodd has put forward contains little if any input from opposition Republicans. With their 59-41 majority in the Senate, Dodd and his Democrat colleagues are convinced they no longer need to compromise.

In his speech on financial reform last Thursday in New York, President Obama made his case and invited Americans to "debate" it. But that very day, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to the surprise of nearly everyone, announced there could be a vote on Dodd's bill as early as Monday.

Has a U.S. government ever been so transparently insincere? Not content to let the opposition respond, the Democrats are moving forward with a plan that will not end bailouts, will not fix what ails Wall Street and will in no way guarantee there won't be another meltdown.

But don't take our word for it. Claims such as "this is not a bailout bill" ring hollow even on the Left. Adam Davidson, a reporter for the reliably liberal National Public Radio's Planet Money blog, did what he called "an informal survey of economists and regulatory experts on the right and left." The result? "We couldn't find any who fully endorse the reforms backed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress." That's how bad this legislation is. For example:

1) It makes bailouts a routine part of America's financial markets, putting smaller, entrepreneurial financial houses at a serious competitive disadvantage to bigger firms such as Goldman Sachs that give millions to Democratic candidates. 2) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which triggered the housing meltdown in 2005 with an unparalleled surge in mortgage lending, go untouched. And taxpayers are still on the hook for a $400 billion bailout of the two largest mortgage banking companies on Earth. 3) Sweeping new powers are given to the Fed to regulate not just banks, but all financial companies, across the board. As Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute wrote: "The Fed, never having regulated a hedge fund or an insurance company, is now supposed to set capital levels, liquidity requirements and permissible activities for each type of business and for each individual institution." Good luck with that, Ben Bernanke.

What we know about the bill is bad enough. But it's what we don't know that really has us worried. As with health care reform, we wonder what we'll find on further inspection - the shocking political favors, taxes and loopholes that will make our system more complex and less accountable. If Reid gets his way, due diligence is out the window. Is this the new style of governance the Democrats want? Is this the "change" they promised...[?]

April 25, 2010 at 1:31 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/sb1070_bill_text_2010

* THE LINK PROVIDES THE ACTUAL TEXT OF THE NEW ARIZONA IMMIGRATION STATUTE.

* I'VE GONE OVER IT... IT'S TOTALLY REASONABLE AND CONTRARY TO VARIOUS MISCHARACTERIZATIONS DOES NOT CALL FOR OR ALLOW RACIAL PROFILING. I KNOW THIS BECAUSE... er... I JUST READ THE BILL.

April 25, 2010 at 1:32 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/04/state-reps-want-to-fight-violence-with-national-guards-help.html

Two state representatives called on Gov. Pat Quinn Sunday to deploy the Illinois National Guard to safeguard Chicago's streets.

Chicago Democrats John Fritchey and LaShawn Ford said they want Quinn, Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis to allow guardsmen to patrol streets and help quell violence.

* NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, FOLKS; ALL IS WELL IN THE AGE OF OBAMA!

So far this year, 113 people have been killed across Chicago, the same number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined in the same period, Fritchey said.

April 25, 2010 at 8:46 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28959166-5082-11df-bc86-00144feab49a.html

The US is preparing to pivot from domestic regulatory reform to a push for a tough new international capital regime after the weekend’s G20 and International Monetary Fund meetings glossed over differences between leading economies.

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, met Mario Draghi, chairman of the Financial Stability Board, on Sunday to discuss the contours of a system that would decide the safety and profitability of banks for decades to come and could eclipse the arguments over bank taxes and regulation.

* YA KNOW... THERE'S A GUY BY THE NAME (HANDLE?) OF "MOOSE" WHO SOMETIMES STOPS BY AND WHO IS (OR AT LEAST USED TO BE) A "REGULAR" AT "RAGGED THOTS," THE BLOG OF WRITER ROBERT A. GEORGE. I REMEMBER HOW HE USED TO DECLARE - JUST A FEW SHORT YEARS AGO - HOW SILLY IT WAS TO FEAR THAT "CERTAIN FORCES" WERE LOOKING TO SUPPLANT U.S. SOVEREIGNTY TO ARTIFICIAL INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCT ORGANIZATIONS SUCH AS THE UN AND REGIONAL BODIES. IF MOOSE IS PEEKING IN... "HEY MOOSE... STILL SOUND LIKE CONSPIRACY THEORIES TO YOU...???"

April 25, 2010 at 8:47 PM

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