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2010
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June
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- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 30, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 29, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 28, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 26 & 27
- Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" Left Me Cold
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 25, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 24, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 22, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 19 & 20
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 18, 2010
- A Good Man Passed On Yesterday
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 17, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 16, 2010
- I Love the WSJ, But Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Read...
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 15, 2010
- Why Has Bob Etheridge Not Been Arrested...???
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 14, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., June 12 & 13, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 11, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, June 10, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 9, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, June 8, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, June 7, 2010
- Back from South Carolina!
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June
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
16 comments:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575328993006115992.html
President Obama hailed the financial bill that House-Senate negotiators finally vouchsafed at 5:40 a.m. Friday, and no wonder. The bill represents the triumph of the very regulators and Congressmen who did so much to foment the financial panic, giving them vast new discretion over every corner of American financial markets.
Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, those Fannie Mae cheerleaders, played the largest role in writing the bill. Congressman Paul Kanjorski even offered a motion to memorialize it as the Dodd-Frank Act. It's as if Tony Hayward of BP were allowed to write new rules on deep water drilling.
The Federal Reserve, which promoted the housing mania and failed utterly in its core mission of monitoring Citigroup, will now have more power to regulate more financial institutions and more ability to dictate the allocation of credit.
The Treasury, which bailed out institutions willy-nilly without consistent rules, will now lead the Financial Stability Oversight Council that will have the arbitrary power to define which financial companies pose a "systemic risk" and which can be shut down without recourse to bankruptcy. Willy-nilly will now be the law.
And the SEC, which created the credit-ratings oligopoly and missed Bernie Madoff, will get new powers to decide how easy it should be for union pension funds to get their candidates on corporate proxy ballots.
Oh, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They aren't touched at all, even as they continue to lose billions of taxpayer dollars each quarter.
In other words, our Washington rulers have taken 2,000 or so pages to double and triple down on the old system that failed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575329252152750186.html
* FILE UNDER: HILLARY CLINTON IS A F--KING IGNORANT MORON! (KEEP READING... I'LL MAKE MY CASE!)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared recently at the Brookings Institution, "The rich are not paying their fair share."
She then went on to praise Brazil as the tax holy grail for the rest of the world: "Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what - it's growing like crazy."
* WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
Take a look at Brazil's income tax rates - they are lower than ours.
The highest rate is a mere 27.5%, far below our top federal rate of 35%, which, given the complexity of our tax code, is actually closer to 38%. Moreover, that exaction will climb to almost 43% come January.
Sadly, for our beleaguered economy, Hillary Clinton and her staff had no idea that Brazil's income tax rate on the rich is slightly lower than that levied even in Ronald Reagan's heyday (28%), a rate Bill Clinton railed against when he was running for the White House.
(*SHRUG*)
* SO SERIOUSLY FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... WE'RE TALKING MORON HERE.
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and the rest of the administration don't grasp that the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. already pay about 40% of federal income tax receipts, and the top 5% pay some 60%.
Clinton/Obama statists will never grasp the truth that those who create wealth will almost always reinvest it far more productively than government bureaucrats.
Bill and Melinda Gates have established a foundation with assets of $35 billion. Does anyone really believe that money would do the world more good if it were put in the hands of the bloated bureaucracies of the Department of Health & Human Services or the Department of Housing and Urban Development?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703964104575334701513109426.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNewsCollection
The Supreme Court ruled for the first time that gun possession is fundamental to American freedom...
* NOT SURE WHERE THE AUTHOR GETS THIS "FIRST TIME" STUFF, BUT WHATEVER...
(*SMILE*)
The court in 2008 voided a District of Columbia handgun ban, and Monday's ruling extended that to the rest of the country. Because Washington is federal territory and not part of a state, the legal basis for imposing federal constitutional limits on gun laws adopted by states had been unclear.
* OK. THAT'S WHAT HE WAS REFERRING TO. (STILL... I'M THINKING THERE WERE CASES PRIOR TO 2008...)
(*SMILE*)
The legal question before the court had much to do with questions of constitutional history. Before the Civil War, courts held that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. After the Union victory, the Reconstruction amendments were adopted to elevate individual rights over state powers and cement the federal role in enforcing them.
* AHH... OK... THAT'S THE ROAD THE AUTHOR IS GOING DOWN. GOT IT.
The Supreme Court has subsequently held that many constitutional rights considered fundamental to American principles of liberty override state laws. However, more technical provisions - such as the Fifth Amendment requirement that grand juries approve criminal indictments - apply only to the federal government and don't necessarily bind states.
Monday's ruling elevates the Second Amendment right to bear arms to the status of a fundamental right that states can't abridge.
* THE AUTHOR IS SPINNING. YES, PRE/POST CIVIL WAR CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION IS A "REAL" FORK IN THE ROAD FOR CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, HOWEVER... THE SECOND AMENDMENT ALWAYS APPLIED TO "THE PEOPLE."
"It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty," wrote Justice Alito in his majority opinion.
* YES. IT IS! IT ALWAYS WAS! (WHICH IS MY POINT...)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704638504575318850772872776.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories
More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.
* HMM... PAST THREE YEARS, HUH? HALF BUSH... HALF OBAMA... ALL UNDER THE NOSES OF A DEMOCRAT CONGRESS...
* YEP! THESE ARE DEFINITELY THE FOLKS WE WANT CONTROLLING THE ECONOMY AND HEALTHCARE!
Officials believe some of the cash, if not most, is siphoned from Western aid projects and U.S., European and NATO contracts to provide security, supplies and reconstruction work for coalition forces in Afghanistan. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spent about $14 billion here last year alone. Profits reaped from the opium trade are also a part of the money flow, as is cash earned by the Taliban from drugs and extortion, officials say.
The amount declared as it leaves the airport is vast in a nation where the gross domestic product last year totaled $13.5 billion. More declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide. "It's not like they grow money on trees here," said a U.S. official investigating corruption and Taliban financing. "A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen. And opium, of course."
(*SIGH*)
http://article.nationalreview.com/437185/the-unengaged-president/mark-steyn
Only the other day, Sen. George Lemieux of Florida attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America’s overpaid, over-manned, and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “super-skimmers”: Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Senator Lemieux found the president unengaged and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care.
* GOD BLESS YOU, MARK STEYN!
* MY GOD... THAT'S EXACTLY HOW I DESCRIBE MOST PEOPLE!
* CARL... YOU CARE - A BIT - ABOUT WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW. AT THE SAME TIME YOU SEEMINGLY VIEW NOT KNOWING, NOT CARING, AND NOT CARING THAT ONE DOESN'T CARE TO BE... er... NOT SIMPLY ACCEPTABLE, BUT LAUDABLE.
* ROB... (ROB L. THAT IS)... YOU GO BEYOND STEYN'S DESCRIPTION BY DECLARING THAT EVEN WHEN YOU DO KNOW - OR RATHER, FIND OUT - IT SIMPLY WON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND.
* MARY... TED... IF YOU'RE READING THIS, YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND WHY STEYN'S LINE REVERBERATES FOR ME, RIGHT...?!?!
(*WINK*)
“It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in the Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. . . . The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
“This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?”
Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses.
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
“The ugly truth,” wrote Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, “is that no one in the Obama White House wanted this Afghan surge. The only reason they proceeded was because no one knew how to get out of it.”
Well, that’s certainly ugly, but is it the truth? Afghanistan, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the Democrats’ war, the one they supported, the one the neocons’ Iraq adventure was an unnecessary distraction from. Granted the Dems’ usual shell game - to avoid looking soft on national security, it helps to be in favor of some war other than the one you’re opposing - Candidate Obama was an especially ripe promoter. In one of the livelier moments of his campaign, he chugged down half a bottle of Geopolitical Viagra and claimed he was hot for invading Pakistan.
* YEAH, YEAH... A BIT OF HYPERBOLE... BUT I CLEARLY RECALL THE EPISODE STEYN IS REFERRING TO.
Then he found himself in the Oval Office, and the dime-store opportunism was no longer helpful. But, as Friedman puts it, “no one knew how to get out of it.” The “pragmatist” settled for “nuance”: He announced a semi-surge plus a date for withdrawal of troops to begin. It’s not “victory,” it’s not “defeat,” but rather a more sophisticated mélange of these two outmoded absolutes: If you need a word, “quagmire” would seem to cover it.
(*SIGH*) (*NOD*)
* PERSONALLY... I'D GO WITH CLUSTERF--K.
Moveon.org have quietly disappeared their celebrated “General Betray Us” ad from their website.
Cindy Sheehan, the supposed conscience of the nation when she was railing against Bush from the front pages, is an irrelevant kook unworthy of coverage when she protests Obama.
Why, a cynic might almost think the “anti-war” movement was really an anti-Bush movement, and that they really don’t care about dead foreigners after all.
http://www.house.gov/htbin/blog_inc?BLOG,tx14_paul,blog,999,All,Item%20not%20found,ID=100628_3716,TEMPLATE=postingdetail.shtml
* BY CONGRESSMAN RON PAUL (R-TX)
There really is nothing for us to win in Afghanistan.
Our mission has morphed from apprehending those who attacked us, to apprehending those who threaten or dislike us for invading their country, to remaking an entire political system and even a culture.
I remain highly skeptical that, as foreign occupiers, we can ever impose western-style democracy on another country.
* AND WHY WOULD WE WANT TO...??? WE ARE NOT AN IMPERIALISTIC EMPIRE; AT LEAST OUR FOUNDERS NEVER MEANT US TO BE.
Our troops have debilitating restrictions on defending themselves against enemies, which are so often indistinguishable from civilians. They also face dire setbacks in winning hearts and minds when innocents are mistakenly harmed, which happens all the time. We can never make friends this way; the tactic never works.
This is an expensive, bloody, endless exercise in futility.
Not everyone is willing to admit this just yet. But every second they spend in denial has real costs in lives and livelihoods.
* AMEN!
Our military spending in general has grown way out of control.
It is important to defend our soil, but...
* BUT DEFENDING OUR NATION, OUR PEOPLE, AND OUR TRUE ALLIES AND VITAL NATIONAL INTERESTS DOES NOT MEAN AN OPEN-ENDED ACCEPTENCE THAT WE MUST BE THE WORLD'S POLICEMAN.
It is also important that while our troops are in combat, our soldiers have what they need to do the best they can, even if we disagree with why they are there. It is an embarrassment that some soldiers and families have had to buy body armor at their own expense when billions are awarded to politically well-connected defense contractors for weapon systems that don’t work, are over-budget, past deadline.
Of course, the obvious way to save money and be safer is to stop meddling in the affairs of foreign countries and just bring our troops home. This will happen eventually if our empire, like every other fallen empire, insists on spending itself into collapse. If we want to avoid this, we must look into ways to bring our costs under control.
Military budgets must be on the chopping block along with everything else.
* AMEN!
* TWO-PARTER... (PART 1 of 2)
http://article.nationalreview.com/437133/the-law-how-quaint/victor-davis-hanson
[Not since the New Deal] have we seen such a systematic attack on our framework of laws as the present assault from the executive branch.
Federal immigration statutes mandate a clearly defined American border, which aliens may not cross without authorization. Yet the Obama administration not only does not fully enforce those statutes (in this regard, it is not behaving much differently from the prior administration), but also is preparing to sue the state of Arizona for implementing enforcement that follows the intent of neglected federal laws on the books. (Apparently, the president believes that enforcement of existing law is a bargaining chip that can be used to obtain “comprehensive immigration reform” - a euphemism for blanket amnesty.)
Recently, as if on cue, the secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, produced a video advising workers to contact her office should they feel that they have been shorted wages by their employers. Fair enough. But then she goes on to explicitly include workers who are not documented and to promise them confidentiality, i.e., de facto federal protection for their illegality: “Every worker has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.”
“Undocumented” is part of the current circumlocution for breaking federal law and residing here illegally. In short, although Solis is a federal executive sworn to uphold existing federal law, she has decided which laws suit her and which do not. She rightly promises to pursue lawbreaking employers, but quite wrongly not to pursue lawbreaking employees.
[W]hen we become unequal before the law, the entire notion of a lawful society starts to erode. If Secretary Solis has decided that lawbreaking aliens can in confidence count on her protection, then can those who don’t pay their taxes (perhaps citing some sort of prejudice) likewise find exemption from Treasury Secretary Geithner?
(*ROFLMAO*)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Recently in Port Chester, N.Y., a federal judge made a mockery of the concept of one man, one vote. Apparently the magistrate felt that Hispanics in Port Chester needed help to elect someone with whom they can identify along racial lines. So, to ensure the election of an Hispanic to the village Board of Trustees, the judge created a system of cumulative voting. Each voter was given six votes, and the explicit hope was that Hispanics would give all their votes to Hispanic candidates, voting on the basis of race rather than policy. (Now we hear this may well become a precedent that the federal government will use to ensure diversity elsewhere.)
[T]he Obama administration, when it bailed out the bankrupt Chrysler Corporation...by executive order overturned the legally determined order of creditors. “Senior” creditors were to have been, by contract, the first paid, while junior creditors waited in line.
But the latter group included union workers.
So Obama derided the senior lenders as “speculators” and simply put his own constituents and campaign donors in front of them.
The first sign of a debauched society is that it does not honor contracts, but reinterprets them according to perceived political advantage.
Now there is talk of an executive decree from the Environmental Protection Agency to implement provisions of cap-and-trade legislation that Congress will not pass.
Republican senators are already worried that the administration will likewise simply begin to grant amnesty to illegal aliens en masse, without introducing such a proposal to Congress, which alone has the right and responsibility to make our laws.
[T]he recent executive order to ban all offshore drilling in the Gulf clearly circumvented the legal process. ... Instead of putting a moratorium on the sort of deep-drilling procedure and pipe fittings that BP used, the Obama administration simply issued a blanket ban on all offshore drilling - as if the real intent was not to allow the crisis of an oil spill to go to waste in the larger environmental effort to reduce carbon emissions.
The final irony? It was law professor Obama who campaigned on respect for the rule of law as he serially trashed elements of the Bush administration’s war on terror - almost all of which he subsequently kept or expanded. Note how what was deemed illegal before 2009 has suddenly become quite legal and worthy of emulation and indeed expansion.
While the media still rail about fanciful threats to constitutional stability from right-wing Tea Party types, we are getting real usurpation - but with a hope-and-change smile.
http://www.ots.org/news10062010.php
BP [on June 10th] signed a letter of intent with Ocean Therapy Solutions to deploy thirty-two centrifuge machines to assist in the cleanup of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. [The company] agreed to use the technology after testing machines during the past week.
In testimony yesterday before the House of Representatives' Science and Technology committee, Ocean Therapy Solutions partner Kevin Costner told the panel about the challenges he faced bringing the technology into industrial use, including his own personal investment of over $20 million developing the technology.
He urged committee members to legislate that oil rigs be required to have mitigation equipment onsite. ”We've legislated life preservers. We legislated fire extinguishers,” Costner said. ”We legislated lifeboats and first aid kits. It seems logical that as long as the oil industry profits from the sea, they have the legal obligation to protect it, except when they find themselves fighting for life and limb.”
* YOU KNOW WHAT... MAKES SENSE TO ME!
Just one of the company's V20 machines can clean up to 210,000 gallons of oily water per day. (There are 3 V20 centrifuge machines currently operational in the Gulf. Ten more should become operational within weeks.)
”Once production at our factory in Nevada ramps up in July, OTS will be able to produce 10 machines a month,” said Pat Smith, Chief Operating Officer for OTS. ”We are currently ramping up production of new machines with a goal toward deploying the machines along the entire coast,” he said.
The centrifuge machines are sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate oil at unprecedented rates. Costner has been funding a team of scientists for the last 15 years to develop a technology which could be used for massive oil spills.
* AMERICAN INGENUITY, MY FRIENDS! GOD BLESS KEVIN COSTNER. (HELL... HE SHOULD MAKE A FRIGG'N MOVIE ABOUT THIS!)
The machines are taken out into the spill area via barges, where they can separate the oil and water. The machines come in different sizes, the largest of which, the V20, can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute. Depending on the oil to water ratio, the machine has the ability to extract 2,000 barrels of oil a day from the Gulf. Once separation has occurred, the oil is stored in tanks. The water is then more than 99% clean of crude.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/kagan-254701-government-commerce.html
[H]ere are some lines of questioning senators should explore with Kagan:
Can the federal government regulate activity that is neither commerce nor crosses state lines?
The Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause says no, but the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn allowed the government to fine a farmer for growing too much wheat and not taking enough of it to market - because his actions, when aggregated with other farmers, could affect national wheat prices.
How would Kagan have decided that case?
If aggregating economic activity transforms that activity into interstate commerce, ask her to give examples of activities the government cannot regulate.
What can Congress force people to do under its power to regulate commerce?
The government imposes three duties: register for the draft, sit on a jury and pay income tax. All are duties of citizenship tied to specific constitutional provisions that have nothing to do with the Commerce Clause.
Senators can't ask about the individual health care mandate - since that issue likely will come before the court - but how about a requirement to buy spinach or join a gym?
Can Congress make any crime a federal crime?
In 1946, Congress passed the Hobbs Act, which allows the federal prosecution of extortion and robbery that impedes the flow of commerce across state lines.
The Act is now used to prosecute crimes having no effect on interstate commerce.
In United States v. Baylor, for example, the 6th Circuit allowed the federal prosecution of a man who robbed a Cleveland-area pizzeria because the shop obtained its flour, sauce and cheese from various states outside Ohio. (There are many other examples where the federal government intrudes on states' police powers.)
* THE BOTTOM LINE QUESTION, HOW MUCH LEEWAY DOES THE CONSTITUTION (THE CONSTITUTION... NOT SIMPLY PRECEDENT) GIVE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO SIMPLY "REDEFINE" THE REALITY OF WHAT WORDS MEAN?
Can the government rewrite leases, mortgages, and other contracts?
The Depression-era Supreme Court said yes because constitutional protections for property and contract rights can be sacrificed to "protect" homeowners.
* THEY JUST MADE THAT ONE UP.
More recently, the court allowed the Chrysler bankruptcy to proceed even though the government subverted the rights of the automaker's secured creditors.
How would Kagan have voted in those cases?
* THE REAL QUESTION IS, AFTER THE CHRYSLER CASE CAN AMERICA STILL BE LOOKED UPON AS A NATION UNDER THE RULE OF LAW. I SAY "NO."
What kind of protections does the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause give to private property?
In the infamous 2005 case of Kelo v. New London, that city condemned people's houses and gave them to a company that promised to use the land to create jobs and increase tax revenue. The court, in an opinion by Justice Stevens, approved this eminent domain abuse because the Fifth Amendment's "public use" requirement included the "public benefit" contemplated here.
* NO IT DIDN'T. STEVENS AND THE MAJORITY WERE WRONG; JUST PLAIN WRONG.
Justice O'Connor dissented: "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."
* AND OF COURSE O'CONNOR WAS CORRECT.
Which opinion would Kagan have joined?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-27/wall-street-hiring-increases-most-since-2008-as-guaranteed-bonuses-return.html
Leverage is back on Wall Street - and this time it’s the bankers who have it.
Firms are adding jobs for the first time in two years, rebuilding businesses cut during the financial crisis and offering guaranteed payouts to lure top bankers.
In New York, 6,800 financial-industry positions were added from the end of February through May, the largest three-month increase since 2008, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
* AND THIS IS GOOD... HOW AND WHY...??? (AGAIN... WE'RE "PRODUCING" MONEY MOVERS, NOT PRODUCTS; PAPER PUSHERS, NOT CREATORS OF REAL WEALTH.)
Firms are paying 30% to 40% more than what employees are expecting to earn to lure them from other banks this year, according to an April report from Options Group, a New York-based executive search and compensation consulting company.
* AGAIN... AND THIS IS GOOD HOW... WHY...??? (MORE MONEY IS BEING SPENT FOR THE SAME "TALENT." COSTS ARE DRIVEN UP BASED UPON... WHAT...???)
Equity derivatives and commodities trading are two of the fastest-growing areas, the report said.
* AND THIS MAKES MY LIFE AND YOUR LIFE EASIER AND BETTER... HOW...???
* I DON'T KNOW... (*SIGH*)... READ THE FULL ARTICLE FOR YOURSELF. (*SHRUG*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704846004575332801115612086.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_3
Complex loans that allowed borrowers to make low initial payments that adjust sharply higher later helped to fuel the housing bubble and lead to today's foreclosure crisis.
* YEP...
The lending industry already has moved away from option adjustable-rate loans, or option ARMs, which allow borrowers to defer principal and interest payments to keep initial costs low.
* AND THAT'S GOOD...
The [Dodd-Frank] bill requires lenders to have "skin in the game" on riskier types of loans - such as option ARMs or loans that don't require full documentation of income - that are bundled and sold to investors as securities. The provision requires lenders to retain at least a 5% stake on such loans that are securitized.
* 5% SURE DOESN'T SOUND LIKE MUCH "SKIN," DOES IT...?!
* WHY CONTINUE TO ALLOW BUNDLING AND SECURIZING OF MORTGAGES IN THE FIRST PLACE...??? (OH, YEAH... THE BRIBES... er... I MEAN "CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS...)
But the mortgage industry won a provision that directs regulators to exempt certain lower-risk mortgages, such as those backed by government agencies and those that involve verification of the borrower's financial situation and don't allow deferral of principal payments.
* ANYTHING "BACKED BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES" MEANS... BACKED BY US POOR TAXPAYING SCHMUCKS. (I DON'T SEE THIS AS A "PLUS.")
Provisions that require stricter checks on a borrowers' ability to pay could make it harder or more expensive for self-employed borrowers or those who rely on commission or seasonal income to qualify for loans.
* OK. I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.
Another key provision of the bill tries to make compensation of mortgage brokers and loan officers more transparent. It bans any sort of payment based on steering the consumer to a particular type of loan or rate. (During the housing bubble, loan officers and mortgage brokers often could get higher compensation if they persuaded borrowers to go with option ARMs or subprime loans.)
* NOW THAT PROVISION I LIKE...!!!
The legislation includes $1 billion to establish a program that would offer short-term loans to unemployed homeowners at risk of foreclosure.
* NOPE. DON'T LIKE THAT!
The bill also provides an additional $1 billion in funding for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which helps local organizations buy and repair foreclosed and vacant homes.
* NOPE. DON'T SEE THE NEED FOR THAT EITHER. LET THE FREE MARKET HANDLE BANKRUPTCIES...
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/105663-ryan-dems-kick-the-can-down-the-road-by-failing-to-pass-budget
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) accused Democrats Saturday of "kick[ing] the can down the road" on the deficit by failing to pass a comprehensive budget resolution.
Democrats are capping next year's discretionary spending bills and setting a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2015, but they won't detail how they'll reach that goal.
* ...2015...??? (*SNORT*)
* ...BUT THEY WON'T DETAIL HOW THEY'LL REACH THAT GOAL...??? (*SNICKER*) (*SMIRK*)
Republicans have hammered Democrats in recent weeks for failing to pass a budget. As the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, Ryan has been helping lead that effort.
* YOU'D THINK THAT THE MSM WOULD DO A BIT MORE "HAMMERING" OF THEIR OWN; I MEAN THIS IS CONSTITUTIONALLY CONGRESS' MAIN RESPONSIBILITY - A RESPONSIBILITY THEY'RE DELIBERATELY SHIRKING FOR PURELY PARTISAN POLITICAL REASONS.
"This is a time to make tough choices, not run from them," Ryan said. "To that end, Republicans on the Budget Committee have already identified $1.3 trillion in specific spending cuts we would implement right now to make Washington do more with less and help small businesses put people back to work."
Ryan suggested rescinding bailout and stimulus funds that have not been spent and freezing pay for federal workers.
"Instead of growing government, we need to restart the engine of economic growth," Ryan said.
* MAKES SENSE TO ME...!!!
http://feingold.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=326020
* SENATOR RUSSEL FEINGOLD --
As I have indicated for some time now, my test for the financial regulatory reform bill is whether it will prevent another crisis. The conference committee’s proposal fails that test and for that reason I will not vote to advance it.
During debate on the bill, I supported several efforts to break up ‘too big to fail’ Wall Street banks and restore the proven safeguards established after the Great Depression separating Main Street banks from big Wall Street firms, among other issues. Unfortunately, these crucial reforms were rejected.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/47817-1.html
Rep. Nita Lowey announced Monday that she would ax a presidential request for roughly $4 billion in State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development funding for Afghanistan...
* LET'S HOPE SO!
...the latest sign of growing angst among House Democrats about the U.S. war efforts.
* OH... BTW... LOWEY IS A NY CONGRESSWOMAN... A NY DEMOCRATIC MEMBER OF THE HOUSE... A FORMER COLLEAGUE AND SUPPORTER OF SECRETARY OF STATE - FORMERLY NY SENATOR - HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON.
* HMM... EITHER LOWRY IS TAKING A SLAP AT THE ADMINISTRATION WITH CLINTON'S FOREBEARANCE, OR... (*SHRUG*)
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_154/ma_congressional_relations/47787-1.html
The Deepwater Horizon spill was not an act of God; it was the product of human and mechanical error. These errors are identifiable and preventable.
BP centered the well pipe for cementing with six braces, rather than the 21 braces recommended by cement contractor Halliburton, and it used a method of constructing the well that has been criticized as inferior to the industry’s best practices. When the blowout preventer was activated, it failed to properly deploy. There are questions as to whether the BOP was properly maintained and tested.
The day of the explosion, a decision was made to replace drilling mud with sea water, despite evidence that the well was beginning to “flow” three hours before the explosion. Immediately prior to the explosion, the flow meter indicated that the well was flowing. This evidence was ignored or misinterpreted.
According to BP’s drilling permit, which was approved by the Minerals Management Service, the company’s plan in case of a major blowout was to drill a relief well. BP officials said that they were prepared to handle a major oil spill. Clearly, they were not. Now, there are calls to end offshore production altogether, despite the fact that procedures and policies that led to the Deepwater Horizon spill can be fixed.
The consequences of this spill are excruciating, but demanding an end to offshore production is an emotional overreaction to a problem that demands serious, evidence-based solutions. The repercussions of such short-sighted policy are immediate and severe.
Ending offshore production is equivalent to unilateral disarmament. Doing so would not end America’s dependence on oil and gas; it would simply make America more dependent on other nations’ oil and gas. Every gallon not produced at home is a gallon imported from abroad, most often from Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries nations.
* WELL... IN THEORY. THE PROBLEM IS, THERE'S A WORLD OIL MARKET. THAT'S WHY OIL PRODUCED IN ALASKA GOES TO JAPAN AND WHY OIL PRODUCED IN CANADA GOES TO AMERICA AND.... (*SHRUG*)
* STILL... THE POINT IS... IF PUSH COMES TO SHOVE IT'S BEST TO HAVE THE DOMESTIC CAPACITY ON HAND SHOULD THE POLITICAL DECISION EVER NEED BE MADE TO "KEEP OUR OWN OIL" FOR OUR OWN NECESSARY USAGE.
Ironically, importation is worse for the environment than drilling. [I]t is worth noting that 19,142 wells have been drilled offshore since 2000 and only 0.001 percent of petroleum produced offshore has spilled over the past 30 years... And even accounting for the Deepwater Horizon spill, statistically, far more oil is spilled from oil tankers than from oil rigs.
An offshore moratorium is also a job killer, not for executives at multinational energy corporations but for welders, pipefitters, roustabouts and the range of service and support industries connected to them. And these blue-collar workers won’t be able to make their mortgage payments or buy groceries for their families with unemployment checks and food stamps.
* ...OR STIMULATE THE ECONOMY, MR. PRESIDENT!
[D]eep-water drilling rigs, upon which many of these jobs depend, can rent for $500,000 per day. During a moratorium, these rigs will be towed to Africa or Brazil to begin multiyear projects. Jobs directly and indirectly associated with these rigs will go to Africa and Brazil with them. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s already happening. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. already announced that it is moving rigs from the Gulf to other countries, and officials at Port Fourchon, La., have said that some of their tenants are weighing layoffs.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/rotten_reform_LOEzv2SW7w5JTWThXLIYHJ
The obvious - and correct - way to end Wall Street rescues is to let a failed financial firm go bankrupt. That is, the people who invested in a failed company - including bondholders, people owed money on derivatives and other lenders - should take the losses.
* MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME!
The Dodd-Frank Act to "reform" Wall Street [unfortunately doesn't do this.] Instead, Congress would "end" bailouts by directing the feds to rescue the creditors to any failed "too big to fail" financial company. Later, the feds would make the failed firm's competitors pay the cost.
* YEP. THAT'S WHAT THE PROPOSED SLUSH FUND IS ALL ABOUT.
Don't buy the claim that this is similar to our 80-year-old system of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance is meant to protect mom-and-pop savers, not sophisticated global investors. And because there are only so many small-scale American savers with a finite amount of cash saved up, any single bank's risk of having to make good on a failed firms' FDIC-insured deposits is limited, and roughly predictable.
By contrast, Dodd-Frank would force financial institutions to shoulder an unknowable and unpredictable risk - but one that stands a good change of being huge. Worse, the approach encourages wild risk-taking - and penalizes prudence.
Say you're the CEO of Downtown Investment Bank, and you spend a lot of time worrying about the next financial crisis: You sacrifice some profits now by keeping lots of cash on hand in case investors demand it one day. You borrow debt that doesn't mature for a few years, rather than debt that matures every night. It costs more, but "cheaper" short-term lenders could pull all their money out in a panic. When you suspect a bubble's going to pop, you pull back a little - even as your competitors chase after every last dollar.
Under Frank-Dodd, Downtown Investment Bank gets no reward for this. Indeed, its massive cash stash is at risk of being grabbed by the feds to pay for the bailout of its profligate competitor Midtown Investment Bank. Meanwhile, no one has to worry about trusting their money to Midtown's madmen, because the feds will likely make good on it, courtesy of the saps at Downtown.
The penalties for good behavior don't end there. Frank-Dodd's system will inflate the size of the bailout, too - because the government would be in charge. The feds would arbitrarily determine how much they'd front to rescue global investors to a failed bank - and then hand the bill to the bank's competitors. In the midst of a panic, eager to mute the chaos, they're going to err on the side of paying investors in a bad bank too much. They're not going to worry about the economic impact of the bill they later hand to the surviving banks. The result: Every firm will take more risks, guaranteeing another crisis down the line, and more taxpayer bailouts.
The Dodd-Frank Act to "reform" Wall Street isn't yet a sure thing, votes-wise. New York's congressional delegation can still do the right thing for the city and state - and should vote against this bad bill. Democrats don't want to hand President Obama a legislative defeat before November elections. But that would be far better than the current alternative - voting for a bill that would slowly suffocate New York's successful financial companies by shouldering them with failed firms' losses.
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