Friday, August 27, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, August 27, 2010


Leaving for D.C. at noon!

God bless Glenn Beck!

Make sure you watch Fox News tomorrow morning...
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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-08-25-flood-insurance_N.htm

In Wilkinson County, Miss., a home has been flooded 34 times since 1978.

Extraordinary as the damage may be, even more extraordinary is that an insurer has paid claims every time, required no flood proofing, never raised premiums after a claim and vowed to continue insuring the house. Forever.

The home's value is $69,900. Yet the total insurance payments are nearly 10 times that: $663,000.

The insurer? The federal government.

A USA TODAY review of FEMA records found that the owners of 19,600 homes and commercial buildings worth $25,000 or more have collected insurance payments that exceed the value of their property.

It's no surprise that the insurer [- Uncle Sam -] faces huge financial problems.

* AND GUESS WHO "UNCLE SAM" WILL PASS THOSE PROBLEMS ON TO... (*SIGH*)

The Mississippi home [referred to above] is [just] one of a growing number of repeatedly flooded properties whose owners have collected billions of dollars from an insurance program regulated by Congress and run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

(*CONTEMPLATING HEADING TO WALMART AND MAXING OUT MY CREDIT CARD ON GUNS AND AMMO*)

* To be continued...

August 27, 2010 at 9:24 AM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program is the nation's main flood insurer...[and is] running deeply in the red. A major reason, a USA TODAY review finds, is that the program has paid people to rebuild over and over in the nation's worst flood zones while also discounting insurance rates by up to $1 billion a year for flood-prone properties.

"If this were a private insurer, it would be bankrupt," said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry think tank.

Along with the huge losses from Hurricane Katrina, the generous benefits have forced the program to seek an unprecedented $19 billion taxpayer bailout.

In Fairhope, Ala., the owner of a $153,000 house has received $2.3 million in claims. A $116,000 Houston home has received $1.6 million.

USA TODAY also found that the owners of 370,000 second homes and rental houses get huge insurance discounts. Wealthy resort areas such as Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Longboat Key, Naples and Sanibel, Fla., have some of the largest numbers of second homes and rentals getting the discounts.

* HOW'S THAT HOPE AND CHANGE WORKING OUT FOR YOU... (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)

The program's financial problems reflect a broader government reluctance to restrain benefits. FEMA leaders and some lawmakers have tried to end the premium discounts and the multiple insurance payments, "but there's always been a few in Congress that have had enough political muscle to hold that back," former FEMA assistant administrator David Maurstad said.

* YA MIND NAMING NAMES...???

The $17 billion the program borrowed from taxpayers for Katrina claims created such large interest payments that another $1.7 billion had to be borrowed to pay routine losses in subsequent years. Interest payments to the Treasury since 2006 have cost $2.4 billion alone. The program has repaid just $600 million in principal.

"The size of the current debt creates an unstable financial situation," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees FEMA, said in a 2009 letter to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass.

* AAH-HAH! BARNEY FRIGG'N FRANK...!!! (I SHOULD HAVE GUESSED!)

The Congressional Budget Office says premium discounts and claims will add $900 million a year to the debt.

* HECK OF A JOB, BARNEY!

Congress' Government Accountability Office said in April that the program is "by design, not actuarially sound" because it has no cash reserves to pay for catastrophes such as Katrina and sets rates that "do not reflect actual flood risk."

* GUNS... AMMO... GUNS... AMMO...

The owners of 1.2 million older buildings, including 370,000 second homes and rentals, enjoy insurance discounts that encourage them to leave their homes in dangerous flood areas.

August 27, 2010 at 9:25 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/25/postmaster-general-other-executives-give-varying-v/

The U.S. postmaster general and his top officials gave investigators varying accounts about the decision to allow a top executive to retain his six-figure outside corporate jobs while working full time, earning more than $230,000 as a vice president of shipping, for the U.S. Postal Service, records show.

* WOW - MULTIPLE SIX-FIGURE JOBS! I'D BE MORE THAN HAPPY WITH JUST ONE!

Mr. Bernstock resigned earlier this year before an inspector general's report concluded that he awarded no-bid contracts to former business associates, failed to report information on a financial disclosure form, and used Postal Service staff and resources for private business activities.

The U.S. attorney's office in Washington declined to press charges.

* AND WHY, PRAY TELL...???

* FOLKS... READ THE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELVES. IT PROBABLY WON'T TELL YOU ANYTHING YOU DON'T ALREADY KNOW. THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE IS RUN BY IDIOTS.

* OH... BTW... OUR CURRENT POSTMASTER GENERAL IS A GUY NAMED JOHN E. POTTER - A BUSH APPOINTEE.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

August 27, 2010 at 9:26 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38733

* BY PAT BUCHANAN --

Why...cannot our elites accept that, be it by nature, nurture, attitude or aptitude, we are not all equal in academic ability?

What raises this issue is the anguish evident in New York over the latest state test scores of public school students, which reveal that the ballyhooed progress in closing the racial achievement gap never happened.

That gap approached closure only by lowering the pass-fail score and by using similar tests, year-after-year, so teachers could prepare the kids to take them.

After a new, tougher state test was used in 2010, where 51 correct answers, not 37, meant achieving the desired grade, the old gaps between Hispanics, blacks, whites and Asians reappeared as wide as they were when Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city schools chief Joel Klein set out to close them.

"We are closing the shameful achievement gap faster than ever," blared Bloomberg in 2009, in the euphoria of what The New York Times now calls "the test score bubble."

* I KNOW HE'S A BILLIONAIRE, BUT REALLY... BLOOMBERG SIMPLY ISN'T THE SHARPEST TOOL IN THE SHED. I KNEW THEY'D DUMBED DOWN THE TESTS... WHY DIDN'T HE...???

"Among the students in the city's third through eighth grades, 40% of black students and 46% of Hispanic students met state standards in math, compared with 75% of white students and 83% of Asian students. In English, 33% of black students and 34% of Hispanic students are now proficient, compared with 64% of whites and Asians."

Appalling, when one considers New York City usually ranks first or second in the nation in per-pupil expenditures.

Nor has George W. Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind program fared better. Results of national tests conducted in 2009 make New York students look like the Whiz Kids.

"Forty-nine percent of white students and 17% of black students showed proficiency on the fourth-grade English test, up from 45% of white students and 14% of black students in 2003."

One in six African-American fourth-grade kids is making the grade. [Five out of six aren't.]

How many scores of billions did this pathetic gain cost us?

Since 1965, America has invested trillions in education with a primary goal of equalizing test scores among the races and genders. Measured by U.S. test scores, it has been a waste - an immense transfer of wealth from private citizens to an education industry that has grown bloated while failing us again and again.

Perhaps it is time to abandon the goal of educational equality as utopian - i.e., unattainable - and to focus, as we do in sports and art, on excellence.

Teach all kids to the limit of their ability, while recognizing that all are not equal in their ability to read, write, learn, compute or debate, any more than they are equally able to play in a band or excel on a ball field.

When it comes to sports - high school, collegiate or professional - Americans are intolerant of lectures about diversity and inclusiveness. They want the best - the best in the NFL, the best in the NBA, the best at Augusta, the best at Wimbledon, the best in the Olympics, the best in the All-Star Game, the World Series, the Super Bowl.

When it comes to artistic ability, musical ability, acting ability, athletic ability, Americans accept the reality of inequality. We are not all born equal, other than in our God-given and constitutional rights.

We are not all equally gifted. There are prodigies like pianist Van Cliburn, chess wizard Bobby Fischer, actress Shirley Temple. Every kid halfway through first grade knows who can spell and sing and who cannot, and who is bright and talented and athletic, and who is not.

What most Americans seek is a level playing field on which all compete equally, for what we ultimately seek is excellence, not equality.

* HEAR! HEAR! BRAVO...!!!

August 27, 2010 at 10:27 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100826/NEWS01/8260357/1001/NEWS/Des-Moines-police-say-they-can-t-confirm-race-was-factor-in-fights-near-fairgrounds

Des Moines police investigators are [now supposedly] unable to "confirm" that weekend violence outside the Iowa State Fairgrounds was racially motivated, officials said Wednesday - shifting away from written reports and public statements made by officers after the melee.

(*SNORT*) CHECK THIS OUT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qeMslmDBxY&feature=watch_response

"We don't want to jump to conclusions," Lt. Joe Gonzalez said. "It is not the standpoint of the police department right now to say that it's racially motivated. We are following up and continually talking to the victims."

The statements were a change from earlier in the week, when a police official said it was very possible race was a factor in the incidents.

(*SMIRK*)

A report filed by Sgt. Dave Murillo said there were 30 to 40 people roaming the fairgrounds openly referring to "beat whitey night."

* AS ALWAYS, YOU CAN READ THE FULL ARTICLE VIA THE LINK PROVIDED. ALL I KNOW IS THAT THIS SUDDEN "TURNAROUND" SOUNDS AWFUL SUSPICIOUS.

August 27, 2010 at 10:27 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.mdgop.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=9sILJXMCLdJ0H&b=5962673&ct=8615857

Early this morning a single gunshot was fired into the Maryland Republican Party’s Salisbury Victory Field Office shattering the office’s front door.

Salisbury Police discovered the vandalism sometime after midnight and filed a report that the Salisbury Victory Office had been vandalized. Upon entering the office this morning, MDGOP field staff discovered a bullet in the office and police have since confirmed it had caused the damage.

* IT'LL BE INTERESTING TO SEE HOW MUCH COVERAGE THIS INCIDENT GETS VIA THE MSM.

August 27, 2010 at 10:28 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/08/25/analyst-citigroup-cooking-books/

An all-out war has broken out between Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and a prominent securities analyst who is saying that the big bank may be cooking the books by inflating its earnings through an accounting gimmick, FOX Business Network has learned.

The analyst, Mike Mayo, of the securities firm CLSA, has been telling investors that Citigroup should take a writedown, or a loss on some $50 billion of “deferred-tax assets,” or DTAs. That is a tax credit the firm has on its financial statement that Mayo says is inflating profits at the big bank by as much as $10 billion.

(*TUT-TUT*) "ONLY" TEN BILLION...? POCKET CHANGE!

* HEY... SPEAKING OF "CHANGE"... HOW'S THAT HOPE AND CHANGE WORKING OUT FOR YOU...???

People close to Citigroup say one of the current problems between the company and Mayo is the analyst’s insistence that Citigroup is possibly violating securities laws by failing to take losses on its DTAs. During conference calls, Citigroup has maintained that its accounting is in full compliance with the law, though Mayo has told investors the Securities and Exchange Commission should investigate the matter.

An SEC spokesman had no immediate comment.

(*SNORT*)

August 27, 2010 at 10:28 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iadyD5XKmEBG9rKT1EOkoaeIUPwwD9HRMPH01

Nearly 18 months since it started, [President Obama's] "stimulus" weatherization program has experienced spending delays, inefficiencies and mismanagement. In [Vice President Joe} Biden's home state of Delaware, the entire program has been suspended since May, and last month federal auditors identified possible fraud.

(*SNORT*)

In Alaska, the program has yet to retrofit one home.

In Texas, auditors found the private contractor earning the most in stimulus money did shoddy work on 60% of the houses it was hired to weatherize.

In California, a contracting company paid nearly $3 million to caulk low-income residents' homes didn't train two dozen of its employees, the state's inspector general found last week.

* TO BE FAIR... HOW MUCH FRIGG'N "TRAINING" DOES CAULKING REQUIRE...??? (HEY... BILL'S ALWAYS FAIR!) (*WINK*)

Just months ago, at the one-year anniversary of the stimulus law, the Energy Department's inspector general complained in a report about "little progress" weatherizing homes and said the government's best efforts "appeared not to have significantly increased the tempo of actual units weatherized across the nation."

In Delaware, where [VP] Biden served as a U.S. senator for 36 years, the tangible benefits of weatherization are hard to find. [L]ast month federal officials released an audit that found lax oversight, conflicts of interest and possible fraud. ... Contractors reportedly were paid for insulating attics they barely visited. Companies earned the same amount whether they installed high-quality or low-quality equipment. One resident who didn't qualify for the program's income levels got a boiler installed just the same, the Energy Department audit concluded.

* HECK OF A JOB BROWNIE... er... I MEAN, MR. VICE PRESIDENT... (*SNORT*)

August 27, 2010 at 10:29 AM

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