Thursday, July 1, 2010
Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, July 1, 2010
Once again, my friends... they don't write 'em like this anymore!
Folks... check out the first two newsbites.
Of course I'd advise you to read all the newsbites... but today's opening newsbites come from a "must read" op-ed published in today's WSJ, penned by John B. Taylor, professor of economics at Stanford and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338732174405398.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The sheer complexity of the 2,319-page Dodd-Frank financial reform bill is certainly a threat to future economic growth. But if you sift through the many sections and subsections, you find much more than complexity to worry about.
The main problem with the bill is that it is based on a misdiagnosis of the causes of the financial crisis... The biggest misdiagnosis is the presumption that the government did not have enough power to avoid the crisis.
But the Federal Reserve had the power to avoid the monetary excesses that accelerated the housing boom that went bust in 2007[!] The New York Fed [under the leadership of Tim "The Tax Cheat" Geithner] had the power to stop Citigroup's questionable lending and trading decisions and, with hundreds of regulators on the premises of such large banks, should have had the information to do so.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could have insisted on reasonable liquidity rules to prevent investment banks from relying so much on short-term borrowing through repurchase agreements to fund long-term investments.
Treasury, working with the Fed, had the power to intervene with troubled financial firms and in fact used this power in a highly discretionary way to create an on-again off-again bailout policy that spooked the markets and led to the panic in the fall of 2008.
* AND REMEMBER, FOLKS... BUSH'S TEAM OF INCOMPETENTS IS LARGELY NOW OBAMA'S TEAM OF INCOMPETENTS.
The [Dodd-Frank] bill creates a new resolution, or "orderly liquidation," authority in which the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) can intervene between any complex financial institution and its creditors in any way it wants to. [I]nstead of trying to make implementation of existing government regulations more effective, the bill vastly increases the power of government in ways that are unrelated to the recent crisis and may even encourage future crises.
* AND DON'T BELIEVE FOR A MOMENT THAT THE DEMOCRATS DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS; THIS IS OBAMA'S DODD-FRANK BILL!
Effectively the bill institutionalizes the harmful bailout process by giving the government more discretionary power to intervene.
The FDIC does not have the capability to take over large, complex financial institutions without causing disruption, so such firms and their creditors are likely to be bailed out again. The problem of "too big to fail" remains, and any cozy relationship between certain large financial institutions and the government that existed before the crisis will continue.
* DOESN'T MATTER IF WE'RE TALKING GOLDMAN SACHS OR BP... OBAMA, THE DEMOCRATS, AND TOP BUSINESS INTERESTS HAVE LONG BEEN "PARTNERS" - JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY! (AND FOLLOW THE APPOINTMENTS!)
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
Another false remedy is a new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection housed at, and financed by, the Fed. The new bureau will write rules for every type of financial service, most of which (such as payday loans) have no conceivable connection with the crisis.
* HMM... YOU KNOW ALL THAT TALK ABOUT SOCIALISM... (*SHRUG*) AT WHAT POINT DOES REGULATION BECOME CONTROL...???
The bill does reduce the power of the Fed to intervene to bail out the creditors of a single financial institution, as the Fed did in the case of Bear Stearns and AIG. But at the same time it authorizes bailouts if the financial institution is a "participant in any program or facility with broad-based eligibility" that the Fed has established for emergency purposes, which hardly is a constraint on bailouts in an interconnected financial system. It also gives complete discretion to the Fed and the Treasury to determine "the policies and procedures governing emergency lending."
* HMM... AGAIN... IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK AND QUACKS LIKE A DUCK... (*SHRUG*)
Yet another false remedy is a new Office of Financial Research at the Treasury that will look into systemic risk. The unrealistic hope here is that it will somehow do a better job than the Fed, which already had that responsibility leading up to the crisis.
Yet another false remedy is a new regulation for non-financial firms that use financial instruments to reduce risks of interest-rate or exchange-rate volatility. The bill gives the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC) authority to place margin requirements, which call for higher collateral on risk-reducing instruments, on such firms even though they had nothing to do with the crisis; their customers and employees will be penalized by the increased costs.
* HMM... ON THIS ONE I'M AGNOSTIC. HIGHER MARGIN/COLLATERAL MAKE INTUITIVE SENSE TO ME, YET... TAKE THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY FOR EXAMPLE - THEY JUGGLE FUEL PRICE FUTURE CONTRACTS IN ORDER TO MINIMALIZE EXPOSURE TO PRICE SPIKES. WOULD THIS BILL SIMPLY ENSURE THAT THEY DO THE SAME THING THEY'RE DOING NOW, ONLY THE DIFFERENCE IS THAT CUSTOMERS PAY MORE ACROSS THE BOARD FOR TICKETS IN ORDER TO PAY FOR THIS NEW REGULATION...???
[W]hile the bill sensibly merges the Office of Thrift Supervision into the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, it creates more regulatory ambiguity by assigning both the SEC and the CFTC the new job of regulating over-the-counter derivatives with imprecise guidance on who does what.
* I TELL YA... WE'RE TALKING TOTAL INCOMPETENTS HERE... (*SIGH*)
By far the most significant error of omission in the bill is the failure to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government sponsored enterprises that encouraged the origination of risky mortgages in the first place by purchasing them with the support of many in Congress.
Another serious error of omission is [the refusal of Democrats to support] reform of the bankruptcy code to allow large complex financial firms to go through a predictable, rules-based Chapter 11 process without financial disruption and without bailouts - a far better alternative than the highly discretionary resolution authority in the bill. Without this orderly bankruptcy alternative, the too-big-to-fail problem will not go away.
The continuing debate over the Dodd-Frank bill in the days since it emerged from conference is good news. People may be waking up to the fact that the bill does not do what its supporters claim. It does not prevent future financial crises. Rather, it makes them more likely and in the meantime impedes economic growth.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338832391393128.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
At last week's G-20 meeting, President Barack Obama...suffered a significant international defeat...
Mr. Obama's international defeat was self-inflicted. He went to Toronto to press other major nations to do as he has done: Expand government spending, or suffer, in the president's words, "renewed economic hardship and recession."
Canada, Germany, Great Britain and most other countries declined Mr. Obama's invitation.
The German economic minister "urgently" prodded America to cut spending at a press conference on June 21, prior to the G-20 meeting.
The president of the European central bank took direct aim at Mr. Obama's argument, telling the Italian newspaper La Repubblica on June 16 that "the idea that austerity measures could trigger stagnation is incorrect."
The European Union president, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, tore into Mr. Obama's stimulus and other spending policies in a stunning address to the European Parliament in March 2009, calling them "the road to hell" and saying "the United States did not take the right path."
* IT IS AMAZING... EVEN THE EUROPEANS ARE FINALLY "GETTING IT." YET OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS... FULL SPEED AHEAD IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!
If it sounds strange to have European leaders lecturing the U.S. about fiscal restraint, it should. But that is where America finds itself after Mr. Obama's 17-month fiscal orgy.
* INSERT AL GORE/BILL CLINTON JOKE HERE ____________________________________________. (*CHUCKLE*) (*WINK*)
Deficit spending did not begin when Mr. Obama took office. But he and his Democratic allies have supported, proposed, passed or signed and then spent every dime that's gone out the door since Jan. 20, 2009.
* AND DON'T FORGET FOLKS... DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN IN CONTROL OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS - IN CONTROL OF THE NATION'S PURSE STRINGS - SINCE JANUARY OF 2007. WITH POWER COMES RESPONSIBILITY. (*SHRUG*)
Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one.
* FOLKS... RECALL... EVEN AS BUSH (AND MCCAIN) WERE PUSHING TARP, THE DEMOCRATS - INCLUDING THEN-SENATORS OBAMA AND CLINTON, INCLUDING PELOSI AND REID - WERE *ALSO* SUPPORTING TARP!
Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion "stimulus" and a $1 trillion health-care "overhaul," and they now are trying to add $266 billion in "temporary" stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline.
* THE TRUTH IS WHAT IT IS... (*SHRUG*)
It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars...
* TRUE DAT!
...and [it is Obama and the Democrats who] want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit.
* DITTO...!!!
It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury.
(*NOD*)
It is the Democrats' profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year.
* YEP...
* AND STILL... JUST THIS PAST WEEKEND AN IDIOT FRIEND OF MINE (NAME WITHHELD!) (*GRIN*) WAS INSISTING THAT THE DEFICITS AND DEBT ARE "BUSH'S FAULT."
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... IGNORANCE - WILLFUL, BLIND, IDEOLOGICAL IGNORANCE ON THE PART OF MANY OTHERWISE INTELLIGENT CITIZENS - IS WHAT ALLOWS THE POLITICIANS CARTE BLANCHE TO WOUND THIS COUNTRY FROM WITHIN.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338553459934636.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
For generations, coal miners gauged the health of their workplace with a critical indicator: canaries. Any buildup of carbon monoxide and other gases would silence the singing canaries before reaching levels toxic to humans.
Today, another leading indicator - multinational companies headquartered in the U.S. - is signaling widespread and legitimate concerns about the health of the U.S. economy.
U.S. multinational companies have long been among America's strongest firms. Although they comprise far less than 1% of U.S. companies, they account for about 19% of all private jobs, 25% of all private wages, 48% of total exports of goods, and a remarkable 74% of nonpublic R&D spending.
* WOW...!
For decades, U.S. multinationals have driven an outsized share of U.S. productivity growth, the foundation of rising standards of living for everyone. They are responsible for 41% of the increase in private labor productivity since 1990.
McKinsey [,the renouned consulting company,] conducted in-depth interviews with senior executives from 26 of America's largest and best-known multinationals. Their message is sobering: Today the U.S. is in an era of global competition to attract, retain and grow the operations of multinational companies that it's never faced before. [T]here is no guarantee that the past will be prologue.
These leading executives laud many longstanding economic strengths of the U.S., such as its large and competitive domestic market. But they also see dozens of other countries - and not just fast-growing economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China - making dramatic improvements in the policies and overall economic environment they present to the world's leading companies. These improvements are not simply a matter of tax holidays and other financial subsidies. Rather, these countries have opened their markets broadly, and they are redefining where U.S. multinationals can successfully operate.
All of the business leaders interviewed for this study agreed that U.S. tax policy has a "major impact" on their competitiveness and investment decisions, and most said that policies like limits on skilled immigration handicap their companies.
In the words of one executive, tax considerations are "often one of the largest line items in the investment projection." Moreover, many of these leaders voiced concern about the future ability of this country to attract and grow corporate investment, R&D and jobs.
U.S. multinationals will not aggressively invest and hire here at home if they can't realize attractive returns from doing so.
[W]hen millions of American workers are facing severe hardship, driving our strongest companies with the best-paying jobs overseas certainly won't help.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703964104575335220892954324.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
In the long war between teachers unions and education reformers, the reformers won a big victory this week that could serve as a model for school districts across the U.S. The breakthrough is a new contract between the District of Columbia and 4,000 public school teachers that shatters taboos on teacher tenure, seniority and pay-for-performance.
The contract, which was approved by the D.C. Council on Tuesday, is a triumph for hard-bargaining Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who took on American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten and has lived to tell about it.
"Seniority used to drive all kinds of decisions, including who was hired or laid off," said Ms. Rhee during a recent visit to the Journal. "Now that will be determined by performance and quality."
Among other things, the new contract abolishes lock-step pay and implements a voluntary performance-based system that could add $20,000 to $30,000 to the salaries of teachers whose students show above-average improvement in test scores. Tenure rules will no longer compel principals to hire rotten instructors.
(*HEADACHE*)
* OK... FORGIVE ME FOR ASKING AN OBVIOUS QUESTION, BUT... WHAT HAPPENS REGARDING THE PAY OF TEACHERS WHO DON'T... er... "VOLUNTEER?"
* NEXT QUESTION: ASSUMING A TEACHER DECIDES TO STICK WITH HIS OR HER ALREADY QUITE GENEROUS PAY PACKAGE - WITH PLATINUM-PLATED BENEFITS - AND THAT PAY PACKAGE IS... SAY... $100,000 FOR A TEACHER WITH 15 YEARS ON THE JOB... DOES THAT MEAN THAT A "DESERVING" PEER WHO DOES "VOLUNTEER" AND IS DEEMED WORTHY OF A "PERFORMANCE BONUS" WILL BE PAYING $120,000/$130,000...??? WHERE'S THE MONEY FOR ALL THIS COMING FROM...?!?!
Teacher performance will be judged by student achievement and evaluations by administrators and "master educators" appointed by Ms. Rhee's office who can make surprise classroom visits. Bad teachers can be terminated more easily, while teachers rated "minimally effective" will have their pay frozen and can be fired after two years if they don't improve.
* OK. I'M WILLING TO GIVE THE PLAN A CHANCE... (*SHRUG*)
Ms. Rhee's challenge now is to use the new rules forcefully enough to drive improvements because the unions will assume they can wait her out.
http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local-beat/LA-to-Generate-More-Trash-Than-It-Can-Handle-97528034.html
Los Angeles County's expanding population will soon generate more trash than the county can handle, according to a grand jury report released Wednesday.
* HMM... ISN'T LOS ANGELES ONE OF THOSE CITIES WITH A HUGE ILLEGAL ALIEN POPULATION...???
"The projected population increase will surpass the county's ability to export enough solid waste to keep up with the amount of trash generated in the next 10 years," according to the report.
"The projected export figure for 2018 is 48,000 tons per day, without any new facilities to supplement solid- waste reduction.
* AND... er... WHAT'S THE FINANCIAL COST OF THIS...???
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338903466619736.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
If our era needs a bumper sticker, this is it: Void for Vagueness.
Paste it on the 2,000-plus pages of the new ObamaCare law, paste it on the 2,000 pages of the floundering financial regulation bill. Hand it out in front of Elena Kagan's confirmation hearings. Heck, chisel it on the facade of the U.S. Capitol.
Just when you're thinking all hope is lost, along comes the "void-for-vagueness doctrine," invoked this past week by the Supreme Court to restrict a hopelessly vague law.
In 2006, the most hated man in America was probably Jeff Skilling, who once sat atop Enron, perhaps the most hated corporate name in all American history. This heap of unpopularity notwithstanding, the Supreme Court said last week the government wrongly prosecuted the abominated Jeff Skilling under something called the "honest services fraud" law. The Court ruled - unanimously - that the law was, in a word, too "vague."
* REPEAT: "UNANIMOUSLY." REPEAT AGAIN: "UNANIMOUSLY." REPEAT ONE MORE TIME: "UNANIMOUSLY!"
Here is the classic description of the void-for-vagueness doctrine from Justice George Sutherland in 1926: "a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning . . . violates the first essential of due process of law."
Strictly, the vagueness test applies only to penal law, but in a better world would it not also apply to much else in public life?
If only on principle, someone from the GOP in Congress should start demanding that all federal legislation pass through a void-for-vagueness test. This session, none would survive. If the Supreme Court can demand clarity on behalf of convicted felons, how about adopting it on behalf of everyone else, who until their luck runs out, remain innocent?
* FOLKS. READ THE FULL PIECE. YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHAT'S TAKING PLACE IN OUR NATION'S CAPITAL, HOW THE DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION ARE DELIBERATELY CREATING LAWS WHERE FOR BOTH PRIVATE CITIZENS AND PRIVATE BUSINESS, THE RULE OF LAW IS "HEADS GOVERNMENT WINS, TAILS GOVERNMENT WINS."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100701/ap_on_re_us/us_electric_bill_fraud
A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million-dollar mansions, according to a government investigation. (For example, the program helped pay the electric bill of a woman who lives in a $2 million home in a wealthy Chicago suburb and drives a Mercedes, according to the yet-to-be released report obtained by The Associated Press.)
The GAO investigated Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Virginia, which represented about one-third of the program's funding in 2009. The agency found improper payments in about 9% of households receiving benefits in those states, totaling $116 million.
* HMM... IF THAT RATIO HOLDS... WE'RE TALKING APPROXIMATELY $348 MILLION IN PROGRAM FRAUD NATIONWIDE. RIGHT...???
"LIHEAP is supposed to be for poor people, not for cheats who pose as something or someone they're not and get their paperwork rubber-stamped by gullible government officials," said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the ranking GOP member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which requested the investigation.
[T]he study found lax oversight by HHS...
* BIG FRIGG'N SURPRISE, HUH?! (*SMIRK*)
Several state officials said they typically don't investigate or prosecute fraud in the program because the amount of money paid to each resident is so low.
* ONE MORE TIME: "...THEY TYPICALLY DON'T INVESTIGATE OR PROSECUTE FRAUD..."
(*HEADACHE*)
* BTW... 9% AIN'T POCKET CHANGE. SAY YOU MAKE $50,000/YEAR. WE'D BE TALKING $4,500 OF THAT JUST PISSED AWAY...! IMAGINE THAT, FOLKS... JUST IMAGINE THAT...
Illinois paid $840 toward energy bills for a U.S. Postal Service employee who fraudulently reported zero income even though she earned about $80,000 per year. "Times are tough and I needed the money," she told investigators.
* HAS SHE BEEN PROSECUTED...??? WILL SHE BE GOING TO JAIL...?!?! SHE SHOULD BE GOING TO JAIL...!!!
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she was "very disturbed" by the investigation.
* YEAH... (*SNICKER*)... I BET SHE IS!
A Pennsylvania woman who was an administrator for the program pleaded guilty in February to falsifying documents so she and five family members could receive about $24,000 in assistance, even though they were not eligible.
A New Jersey administrator was indicted in May for writing three applications to the program and then keeping the checks for himself.
* GOTTA LOVE THOSE GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES... (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/06/access-hard-to-come-by-in-reporting-on-health-in-the-gulf.html+
[PBS] health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser and I spent last week reporting the health impact of the oil spill in Plaquemines Parish - Louisiana's southernmost parish where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
During that time local officials and media contacts at the Unified Command Center Operations were mostly helpful in finding answers to our questions and providing us information about scheduled media boat tours of the cleanup operations (even if it did take sometimes take them a few days to get back to us).
But there's one roadblock that we encountered that mystified us - and, we understand, many other journalists.
It has been virtually impossible to get any information about the federal mobile medical unit in the fishing town of Venice, La.
The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the "BP compound."
Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it's tightly restricted by police and private security guards.
* PERHAPS THAT'S WHERE PRESIDENT OBAMA DOES HIS... er... ASS KICKING - ABSENT THE GLARE OF A MEDIA SPOTLIGHT?
(*SMIRK*)
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. ... For over two weeks, my [PBS] NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there, who they were and what illnesses they had.
We got nowhere.
It was either "access denied," or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We're usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
In their May 31 press release, HHS said the [barbed wire-topped chain link fenced-in] mobile unit "will integrate with the local medical community to triage and provide basic care for responders and residents concerned about the health effects of the oil spill," but we heard from local fisherman Acy Cooper, vice president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, and others in Venice that only those contracted by BP for cleanup operations are allowed to seek treatment at the mobile unit.
Cooper also told us anyone seeking treatment was pre-screened by a private company hired by BP - Acadian Ambulance Services.
* HMM... PERHAPS THIS IS WHERE OBAMA IS PLANNING TO MOVE THE GUANTANAMO BAY PRISONERS... (*SNORT*) (*SMIRK*)
After a week of repeatedly calling HHS media contacts, I finally got some answers from Ron Burger, the Medical Unit Operations Chief for HHS's National Disaster Medical System, who spoke with me by phone from Venice. He confirmed that only responders were being treated at the mobile unit.
When I asked him why residents weren't being seen there he responded: "I can't answer that" and he added that he didn't know if any residents had in fact requested treatment at the facility.
[Burger] confirmed that Acadian had been contracted to set up an infirmary near the mobile medical unit and their staff indeed saw responders first. [He] estimated that out of every 30 to 40 responders that present at Acadian, only about 10 are referred to HHS medical staff.
He told me that most people come for basic primary care - a band-aid - and others for illnesses that you "normally see in a community where people are gathered together" like runny noses, upper respiratory infections or gastro-intestinal problems like diarrhea. But Burger said he didn't think those health issues were related to oil spill exposure and the patients were generally back on the cleanup job within a day or two. He said he didn't know what types of illnesses the Acadian Ambulance Services team was seeing. Representatives of Acadian said they were unable to provide us with any information.
* OK. YOU READ THAT, RIGHT? IT SAYS WHAT IT SAYS... RIGHT? HERE'S MY QUESTION: HOW MUCH HAS THIS COST TAXPAYERS SO FAR...??? HOW MANY MILLIONS HAVE WE SPENT ON BARBED WIRE, BAND-AIDS, TISSUES, AND MAALOX...?!?!
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... THIS OPERATION - PAYROLL, EQUIPMENT - IS NO DOUBT COSTING BIG BUCKS. WHY...??? WHY ARE RESOURCES BEING SQUANDERED...?!?!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gcx9bjqSn_mHLMw5rb3eoY32TZdQD9GMFDPO0
About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired — meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million are being written off as trash.
"It's a lot, by historical standards," said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
* BUT, HEY... THIS IS THE AGE OF OBAMA... THE OLD NORMS NO LONGER APPLY.
The amount, as much as four times the usual leftover seasonal flu vaccine, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it. About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.
* HMM... CALL IT "HEALTHCARE STIMULUS." (*SMIRK*)
Federal officials defended the huge purchase as a necessary...
* OF COURSE THEY DID! (*SNORT*)
Many health experts had feared the new flu could be the deadly global epidemic they had long warned about, but it ended up killing fewer people than seasonal flu.
* IMAGINE THAT! (*SNICKER*) I WONDER HOW MANY OF THESE "EXPERTS" ARE ALSO GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS AND CAP AND TRADE SUPPORTERS... (*SHRUG*)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100630/ap_on_bi_ge/us_epa_vs_texas
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday officially overturned a 16-year-old Texas air permitting program it says violates the Clean Air Act, leaving some of the country's largest refineries in a state of limbo.
* I'D ADVISE TEXAS TO TELL THE EPA TO GO STUFF ITSELF.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's chairman Bryan Shaw insisted Wednesday the state's permitting program complies with the Clean Air Act and has improved air quality in Texas.
The EPA's move on Wednesday addresses Texas' so-called flexible permits, which set a general limit on how much air pollutants an entire facility can release.
* MAKES SENSE TO ME...
The federal Clean Air Act requires state-issued permits to set limits on each of the dozens of individual production units inside a plant.
* DOESN'T MAKE SENSE TO ME. (ISN'T "THE WHOLE" THE SUM OF ITS PARTS...???)
* AFTER 16 YEARS, IS NOW REALLY THE TIME TO LIMIT DOMESTIC ENERGY PRODUCTION...???
http://article.nationalreview.com/437402/the-obama-spoils-system/darrell-issa
A disturbing precedent appears likely to emerge from the controversy surrounding the job offers by White House officials to Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak and former Colorado house speaker Andrew Romanoff in exchange for their withdrawal from primary challenges to sitting Democratic United States senators.
The White House counsel’s office has asserted that a desire to protect the campaign coffers of the president’s political party is a “legitimate interest,” and that White House officials may therefore offer taxpayer-funded positions in the federal government to further that interest.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs elaborated on this theory, arguing, “The president has, as the leader of the party, has an interest in ensuring that supporters don’t run against each other in contested primaries.” Gibbs later added, “Again, does the leader of the party have an interest in ensuring that primaries that tend to be costly aren’t had so that you’re ready for a general election? Of course.”
* THIS TAKES THE POLITICAL SPOILS SYSTEM TO A WHOLE NEW LEVEL.
* I DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE AN OBAMA FAN, AN OBAMA HATER, OR CONSIDER YOURSELF AS HAVING AN OPEN MIND. DOES THIS SEEM TO YOU TO BE A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION... OR WRONG DIRECTION...???
In 1883, Congress passed the Pendleton Act, a major reform designed to rein in the political spoils system...
More than 50 years later, Congress passed the Hatch Act, a sweeping reform that strictly limited the use of federal funds and forbade public officials from using promises of employment, compensation, or any other benefit to affect the outcome of an election. In unambiguous language, the Hatch Act prohibits all federal executive-branch employees, among others, from engaging in political activity while on duty or using government resources for partisan political purposes.
Federal statute leaves no room for doubt: “Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress . . . to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”
Putting aside the defense that other administrations also engaged in undisclosed backroom deals, a review of the facts and the plain language of the law support the charge that the White House violated the law in both the Sestak and the Romanoff affairs. Indeed, it is precisely this type of activity that the law was written to prohibit. It is also the type of activity that President Obama pledged to end, once and for all, by bringing change to Washington.
* WELL... (*CHUCKLE*)... COM'ON... WE ALL KNOW HOW MUCH FAITH ONE CAN PUT IN AN OBAMA PLEDGE. (*SNICKER*)
So far, the administration has rebuffed every request to have a thorough investigation. The Justice Department has refused to follow up on these serious allegations, and the only account the public has been given comes from an internal memorandum released by the president’s lawyer on May 28. ... With respect to the Romanoff job, e-mails have now become public that reveal how White House officials made offers of at least three paid positions. Rather than exonerating the White House, the emerging facts continue to undergird concerns about illegal activity in the administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/30/AR2010063003097.html
The way pay is rigged at publicly owned Wall Street firms creates incentives for casino-style gambling, because bankers reap all the upside and stick shareholders or taxpayers with the losses. When their big bets go bad, in other words, top bankers walk away rich anyway.
This is not how capitalism is supposed to work.
* AMEN!
To be sure, Wall Street's rigged compensation is part of the broader problem of executive pay. ... Carly Fiorina, now the Republican candidate for California senator, made a mess of Hewlett-Packard - and then departed with $100 million.
Gerald Levin earned $600 million after engineering the failed Time Warner-AOL merger. (Not long ago Levin said that, in retrospect, he was sorry, though not sorry enough to accompany his regret with a check to shareholders for his ill-gotten gains.)
It wasn't always like this.
There was a time when CEOs and boards of directors operated with at least some understanding of proportion and restraint. George Romney (father of Mitt) [was] perhaps the most interesting example of this lost species. Romney voluntarily turned down $268,000 over five years, about 20% of his earnings, when he was CEO of American Motors.
"In 1960, for example," the New York Times noted, "he refused a $100,000 bonus. Mr. Romney had previously told the company's board that no executive needed to make more than $225,000 (about $1.4 million in today's dollars), a spokesman for American Motors explained at the time, and the bonus would have put him above that threshold."
[In order to return to true capitalism in the board room and on Wall Street we must] re-create some version of the old private Wall Street partnership structure, in which every partner bore full personal liability for the firm's losses.
When your entire net worth is on the line, "this has the effect of focusing the minds of management on exactly what the worst-case scenario of the behavior can wreak," writes investor and financial blogger Barry Ritholtz.
[F]ixing Wall Street's pay racket isn't some liberal cry or populist peeve. It's essential for saving capitalism from phony capitalists whose perverse insistence on outsized rewards with little risk threatens the entire economy.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/30/greater-depression-still-ahead-personal-finance-economy.html?boxes=Homepagelighttop
The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy.
Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.
The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt.
Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt.
Messrs. Barack Obama, Benjamin Bernanke and Timothy Geithner do not understand the real cause of this debt crisis. They are politicians first and economists or students of the market second - if at all. If policymakers do not understand the real cause of a problem, they will in all likelihood be unable to provide a genuine solution. Therefore, it is not wise to count on them to tell us when the Great Recession is over, or to provide a plan to prevent another one in the future.
During this latest economic contraction, the Federal Reserve took interest rates to near 0%, and the Obama administration is leveraging up the public sector to record levels in a bid to re-leverage the private sector. The government's philosophy is tantamount to sticking a frostbitten man in the freezer so he won't have to suffer the pain associated with the thawing of his extremities.
Household debt as a percentage of GDP reached nearly 100% in 1929. To put that number in perspective, household debt did not go back above 50% of GDP until 1985. It was not until the first quarter of 2009 that household debt once again approached the Great Depression level of 100% of GDP. Thanks to government efforts to carry on our debt-fueled consumption binge, during today's Great Recession household debt has barely contract at all; it fell to 92.5% of GDP in the first quarter of this year.
To make matters even worse, during this current crisis our government's response has been to dramatically increase its own borrowing.
At the start of the Great Depression, gross federal debt was 16% of GDP. It peaked just below 44% when the Depression ended.
The U.S. entered the current Great Recession with gross national debt equal to 65% of GDP. It has since exploded to 90% of GDP!
National debt did rise dramatically during World War II, topping out at 120% of GDP in 1946. But consumer debt plunged concurrently. So while the nation was adding debt to fight and win a global war, households were taking the necessary steps to ensure their balance sheets were well prepared for the aftermath of the battle. Today, gross national debt and household debt are both at or above 90% of GDP for the first time in our history.
* YA EVER NOTICE HOW MANY "FIRSTS" THERE HAVE BEEN SO FAR DURING THE AGE OF OBAMA...??? (*SIGH*)
[G]overnment spending doesn't increase GDP; it only chokes off private-sector growth. ... Since we have yet to address the real cause of this recession, we are moving inexorably closer to causing The Greater Depression.
If policymakers do not understand that the progenitor of a depression is debt...
* THEY DON'T. NOT THESE POLICYMAKERS. NOT BUSH'S POLICYMAKERS. NOT OBAMA'S POLICYMAKERS. GOD HELP US...
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://the-diplomat.com/2010/07/01/why-west-lost-afghan-war/
The former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit says the US-led coalition has already lost the war in Afghanistan. A shake-up in military leadership won't change that.
‘Winning’ in Afghanistan was never anything more than killing Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, as many of their fighters and civilian supporters as possible and then getting out immediately with the full knowledge that - as Mao said long ago - insurgencies always rebuild and the process might need to be repeated.
The best and most appropriate response to al-Qaeda’s September 11 raid, then, would have been a unilateral US punitive expedition that inflicted massive death and destruction on the enemy and delivered a clear warning to Islamists not to pick fights with the United States.
[M]any Islamists expected this response, which is why they poured vitriol on bin Laden and expected the US military to set back their movement a decade, if it did not destroy it completely. Faced with this criticism, bin Laden simply said ‘wait,’ adding (in paraphrase) that the Americans and their allies can’t stomach casualties, that they won’t use their full military power and will unite Afghans by trying to Westernize them via popular elections, installing women’s rights, dismantling tribalism, introducing secularism and establishing NGO-backed bars and whorehouses in Kabul.
Bin Laden was right...
After nine years, it is utterly impossible to restart Western policy in Afghanistan. Too many Afghans are dead; too many Afghans and non-Afghan Muslims have joined the Taliban-led insurgency; too much pro-Taliban money is pouring into Afghanistan from wealthy donors on the Arabian Peninsula and across the Muslim world; too much Western funding has been stolen and sent abroad by Karzai’s cronies; too much popular support for the war in the West has been squandered; too many U.S.-NATO troops are dead or maimed; too much has been done by the West to push Pakistan toward the abyss by demanding its military do Western dirty work; and too much time has been wasted on counterinsurgency theories and policies that avoid killing the enemy and his civilian supporters.
* To be continued...
* WOW...!!! IT'S GONNA BE A THREE-PARTER...!
** CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Lindsay Graham, a much but inexplicably respected Republican senator from South Carolina, [recently] said: ‘This [the McCrystal debacle] is a chance to start over completely in Afghanistan.’
At the start of the US Civil War it was said South Carolina’s fatal flaw was that it’s too small to be a nation and too big to be an insane asylum. Sen. Graham has reconfirmed this truism. The [only] thing the West ‘can start over completely’ is a revision of the plans for withdrawal that moves up the departure date.
The bottom line is that the United States and NATO stand defeated in Afghanistan. Under McChrystal, Petraeus, or Obama himself the counterinsurgency strategy now being flogged has been intellectually bankrupt from its inception.
There are 3 million-plus more Afghan children in school today than in 2001; more electricity and potable water are available; many roads and irrigation systems have been rebuilt; and more primary health care is being delivered.
[Supporters of a counter-insurgency policy have long] argued that such success would prompt the Afghans to turn away from the Taliban’s religiosity and nationalism and isolate that purportedly small force from a population swelling with delight and loyalty to Karzai because of material improvements.
In short, a social science-powered, mini-New Deal in Afghanistan would win with minimal use of US-NATO military power because Afghans would joyfully jettison God and country for better teeth and smoother roads.
Well, no such thing occurred.
As the trend line for these accomplishments rose, the positive trend line for the Taliban-led insurgency rose faster.
The once southern-Afghanistan-based insurgency spread across the nation; the Taliban and its allies struck in Kabul at their pleasure; and the large military/social-work operation to clear insurgents from Marjah District in Helmand Province - framed as the test case to validate US-NATO strategy - became, in McChrystal’s words, an endless, ‘bleeding ulcer’ as the Taliban has gradually reasserted control there.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 3)
The enraging and unifying impact on Afghans of the US-NATO occupation of the country; Western support for the unrepresentative and corrupt Kabul regime; and the secularizing campaign by Western governmental agencies and NGOs has not and will never be negated by purer water and more refrigeration. The Afghans will appreciate and pocket the material improvements even as more of them take up arms to drive out occupiers they perceive as the enemies of God and Afghanistan.
Western leaders should have recalled they’re not fighting Westerners...
* BUT THEY DIDN'T. LIBERAL UTOPIANISM - WESTERN UTOPIANISM AT THAT - TRY (AND FAIL!) TO TRUMP REALITY EVERY TIME.
A year after Obama outlined this new strategy at West Point it lay in shreds and tatters: the Taliban, et. al are more powerful and geographically dispersed, and the Afghan people are no less Islamic or nationalistic. The ever-present avenging angel of history ignored is exacting its pound of flesh and is still hungry. And the bin Laden-inspired Islamists are nearing victory over the world’s last superpower, a win that will have a galvanizing anti-US impact in the Islamic world by showing Muslims the impossible is possible.
* BUSH SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN IN AND GOTTEN OUT. PERIOD. END OF STORY. REMOVE THREATS TO AMERICA AS THEY EMERGE; REPEAT AS NECESSARY.
The tragedy of this reality is that it would have taken no highly classified intelligence data or deeply penetrating brain power to predict its occurrence. A week’s reading at the local library about the occupations of Afghanistan by Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union shows each empire was sooner or later defeated and evicted...
Reading history’s lessons also would have shown that the one foreigner who had the most successful strategy for Afghanistan was Genghis Khan. He killed all the Afghan fighters and their families he encountered, built mountains of their skulls to remind Afghans that Mongols are not to be trifled with and then got his army out of the country to India as quickly as possible.
George W. Bush had the chance to play Genghis for about a year but didn’t.
* AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT... WHILE IT'S RIGHT TO BLAST BUSH AND THE RINOs FOR STARTING THE FIRE, IT'S OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS WHO HAVE BEEN POURING GASOLINE ON THE EMBERS!
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