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2010
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August
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- The Last Hurrah...???
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, August 31, 2010
- The Man is an A--hole... (And that's all there is ...
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, August 30, 2010
- Restoring Honor - August 28, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, August 27, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, August 26, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, August 25, 2010
- Is Hamas a Terrorist Organization?
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, August 24, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, August 23, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, August 19, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, August 17, 2010
- So... when's the last time you got new tires?
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, August 16, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., August 14 & 15, 2010
- Harold Curtis VanDemark
- Barker's Newsbites: August 13, 2010
- Vernon Baker
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, August 12, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, August 10. 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, August 9. 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., August 7 & 8, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, August 6, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, August 5, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, August 4, 2010
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August
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
11 comments:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/082910dntexcongress.2c049bb.html
Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson [Democrat] has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide's two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers' causes.
The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member's district.
(*SMIRK*) (*SNORT*)
* FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... EXPLAIN TO ME WHY IT WOULD BE A BAD THING TO TAR AND FEATHER THIS HUMAN PIECE OF GARBAGE...
* FOLKS... SERIOUSLY... FAR, FAR TOO MANY OF OUR NATION'S "LEADERS" HAVE THE MORALS AND ETHICS OF... WELL... CONGRESSWOMAN EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (D-TX).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703618504575459823259071294.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond
Faced with mounting debt and looming costs from the new federal health-care law, many local governments are leaving the hospital business, shedding public facilities that can be the caregiver of last resort.
* OBAMACARE 2010, BABY!
Officials in Lauderdale County, Ala., this spring opted to transfer their 91-year-old Eliza Coffee Memorial Hospital and other properties to a for-profit company after struggling to satisfy an angry bond insurer. "We were next to knocking on bankruptcy's door,'' said Rhea Fulmer, a Lauderdale County commissioner who approved the deal with RegionalCare Hospital Partners, of Brentwood, Tenn, but with trepidation. She said the county had no guarantee the company would improve care in the decades to come. "Time will tell.''
* YA EVER HEAR OF THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES... (*SMIRK*)
More than a fifth of the nation's 5,000 hospitals are owned by governments and many are drowning in debt...
* OH... (*SNORT*)... WHAT A SURPRISE...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-08-30-1Asafetynet30_ST_N.htm
Government "anti-poverty programs"...now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.
* DISGRACEFUL.
More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid...
(*SIGH*)
(The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. "Private physicians are already indicating that they're at their limit," says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.)
More than 40 million people get food stamps...
* UNFRIGG'NBELIEVEABLE...
Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance...
(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
More than 4.4 million people are on welfare...
* HOPE... CHANGE... HOPE... CHANGE... HOPE... CHANGE... (*SMIRK*)
The federal price tag for Medicaid has jumped 36% in two years, to $273 billion. Jobless benefits have soared from $43 billion to $160 billion. The food stamps program has risen 80%, to $70 billion. Welfare is up 24%, to $22 billion.
* THE AGE OF PELOSI, REID, AND OBAMA...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100829/ap_on_bi_ge/ml_iraq_us_reconstruction_legacy
A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty.
A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south.
A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
(*SIGH*)
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted - more than 10% of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. (And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17% for some projects.)
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100829/D9HT5OJ80.html
Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions...
(*SIGH*)
Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day...
* DO YOU FEEL SAFER? I DON'T. I FEEL THAT SEVEN MORE AMERICAN LIVES HAVE BEEN SQUANDERED BY A GOVERNMENT RUN AMOK.
The latest deaths bring to forty-two the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of sixty-six.
A total of sixty-two international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.
* R.I.P.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100828/ap_on_re_us/us_brewer_un_report
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer demanded Friday that a reference to the state's...immigration law be removed from a State Department report to the United Nations' human rights commissioner.
The U.S. included its legal challenge to the law on a list of ways the federal government is "protecting" human rights.
(*SMIRK*)
In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brewer says it is "downright offensive" that a state law would be included in the report, which was drafted as part of a UN review of human rights in all member nations every four years. "The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to 'review' by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional," Brewer wrote.
(*SHRUG*) BREWER IS RIGHT.
A State Department spokesman had no immediate comment on Brewer's letter.
(*SMIRK*)
TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575454431457720188.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The unemployment-insurance program involves a balance between compassion - providing for persons temporarily without work - and efficiency.
In a recession, it is more likely that individual unemployment reflects weak economic conditions, rather than individual decisions to choose leisure over work. Therefore, it is reasonable during a recession to adopt a more generous unemployment-insurance program.
In the past, this change entailed extensions to perhaps 39 weeks of eligibility from 26 weeks, though sometimes a bit more and typically conditioned on the employment situation in a person's state of residence.
[W]e have never experienced anything close to the blanket extension of eligibility to nearly two years. We have shifted toward a welfare program that resembles those in many Western European countries.
The administration has argued that the more generous unemployment-insurance program could not have had much impact on the unemployment rate because the recession is so severe that jobs are unavailable for many people. This perspective is odd on its face because, even at the worst of the downturn, the U.S. labor market featured a tremendous amount of turnover in the form of large numbers of persons hired and separated every month. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, near the worst of the recession in March 2009, 3.9 million people were hired and 4.7 million were separated from jobs. This net loss of 800,000 jobs in one month indicates a very weak economy - but nevertheless one in which 3.9 million people were hired. Moreover, although the peak unemployment rate (thus far) of 10.1% in October 2009 is very disturbing, the rate was even higher in the 1982 recession - 10.8% in November-December 1982.
* To be continued...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703959704575454431457720188.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
[Overly] generous unemployment-insurance programs have been found to raise unemployment in many Western European countries in which unemployment rates have been far higher than the current U.S. rate. In Europe, the influence has worked particularly through increases in long-term unemployment.
[I]n the 1982 recession the peak unemployment rate of 10.8% in November-December 1982 corresponded to a mean duration of unemployment of 17.6 weeks and a share of long-term unemployment (those unemployed more than 26 weeks) of 20.4%.
Long-term unemployment peaked later, in July 1983, when the unemployment rate had fallen to 9.4%.
At that point, the mean duration of unemployment reached 21.2 weeks and the share of long-term unemployment was 24.5%. These numbers are the highest observed in the post-World War II period until recently.
Thus, we can think of previous recessions (including those in 2001, 1990-91 and before 1982) as featuring a mean duration of unemployment of less than 21 weeks and a share of long-term unemployment of less than 25%.
These numbers provide a stark contrast with joblessness today. The peak unemployment rate of 10.1% in October 2009 corresponded to a mean duration of unemployment of 27.2 weeks and a share of long-term unemployment of 36%.
The duration of unemployment peaked (thus far) at 35.2 weeks in June 2010, when the share of long-term unemployment in the total reached a remarkable 46.2%.
These numbers are way above the ceilings of 21 weeks and 25% share applicable to previous post-World War II recessions.
The dramatic expansion of unemployment-insurance eligibility to 99 weeks is almost surely the culprit.
To get a rough quantitative estimate of the implications for the unemployment rate, suppose that the expansion of unemployment-insurance coverage to 99 weeks had not occurred and - I assume - the share of long-term unemployment had equaled the peak value of 24.5% observed in July 1983. Then, if the number of unemployed 26 weeks or less in June 2010 had still equaled the observed value of 7.9 million, the total number of unemployed would have been 10.4 million rather than 14.6 million.
If the labor force still equaled the observed value (153.7 million), the unemployment rate would have been 6.8% rather than 9.5%.
http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/26/obamas-green-initiatives-lobbied-for-by-the-same-people-who-profit-from-them/
In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the country of what he called the “military-industrial complex,” a reference to the growing relationship between the military industry in the private sector and the federal government.
Today, there is another industrial complex taking shape. Only this time, [a different American] president is not warning anyone about it – he’s actually directly involved in its growth. One may call it the “green industrial complex.” Enter John Doerr, a billionaire venture capitalist at the Silicon Valley firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers (KPCB).
Since 2000, Doerr and his wife Anne have donated approximately $800,000 to Democrats.
Moreover, KPCB has donated more than a million dollars to Democrats since 2005.
In February 2009, President Obama named Doerr to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
(*SMIRK*)
In the stimulus bill that passed Congress, $86 billion was earmarked for “green initiatives,” something that was heavily lobbied for by Doerr. The Department of Energy was then put in charge of choosing which companies to award grants to. [C]lose examination of those companies who have so far received grants reveals that KPCB venture companies - businesses in which Doerr has a vested financial interest - have received a large portion of the DOE’s fund.
* COINCIDENCE...??? (*SNORT*)
“The most frustrating thing is that there’s no accountability,” Tom Borelli, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research and director of the Free Enterprise Project, told TheDC. “It’s crony capitalism. It’s essentially elites dictating energy policy. And we the people get left out.”
[F]inancially unsound companies have the use of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to try to produce a product for a marketplace that, for all intents and purposes, does not even exist yet.
Dan Kish, senior vice president at the Institute for Energy Research...[notes]...the only reason there is even a fledgling market for green energy products now, is because the federal government is forcing it. “But anytime the government artificially stimulates the consumption of something that doesn’t make economic sense,” said Kish, “when the market finally corrects itself, people will get hurt.”
Kish continued by explaining how this is the “Tanya Harding approach to energy.”
“The president wants to make green energy be profitable,” he said. “The only way to do that is break the leg of other types.” But that will only create a “green-energy bubble,” said Kish. “When the government money dries up, the product will dry up.” In the meantime, he added, the government subsidies will cause the price of electricity to skyrocket.
People like KPCB partners Al Gore, Ellen Pao (who also sits on the board of the left-leaning “green” think tank Apollo Alliance), Ray Lane, and KCPB “in-house advisor” Colin Powell, to name a few, consistently lobby the Obama administration to end the use of fossil fuels, pass carbon taxes, and provide government support to things like wind turbines and electric cars. What is never mentioned is that once these policies are passed, their supporters often personally profit.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703369704575461714115902100.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTSecondBucket
The dominant theme of the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is ... that the extraordinary power given to regulators - and particularly the Federal Reserve - is likely to change the nature of the U.S. financial system.
Where financial firms once focused on beating their competitors, they will now focus on currying favor with their regulator, which will have the power to control their every move.
What may ultimately emerge is a partnership between the largest financial firms and the Federal Reserve - a partnership in which the Fed protects them from failure and excessive competition and they in turn curb their competitive instincts to carry out the government's policies and directions.
In addition, with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Act abandons a fundamental principle of the U.S. Constitution, in which Congress retains the power to control the agencies of the executive branch.
* FOLKS... HERE'S THE DEAL: NOT THAT THE AVERAGE REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN HAS A GREAT DEAL OF RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION... BUT THE DEMS SEEM NOT SIMPLY WILLING, BUT EAGER TO ACTIVELY SUBVERT THE CONSTITUTION ON ISSUE AFTER ISSUE.
These wholesale changes in traditional relationships are hard to explain except as the triumph of a fundamentally different view - a corporatist political model more characteristic of Europe - of the government's role in the U.S. economy.
* "CRONY CAPITALISM," FOLKS... (*SIGH*)
In the interest of "protecting" consumers, the Act sacrifices the basic protections built into the U.S. Constitution, creating an agency - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - that is answerable to no one.
* WELL... I SUPPOSE CONGRESS COULD OVERRIDE A PARTICULAR DECISION, BUT HOW LIKELY IS THAT? I MEAN, LOOK AT WHAT TYPICALLY HAPPENS WITH THE EPA AND FDA! CONGRESS LIKES TO PASS THE BUCK... (*SHRUG*)
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/city-to-employees--were-broke-so-were-breaking-your-contracts-101830903.html
The city of Miami is so broke it's forcing employees to take pay cuts, even though they're under contract.
* THE AGE OF OBAMA HASN'T EXACTLY BEEN KNOWN FOR ADHERENCE TO THE RULE OF CONTRACT LAW... (*SMIRK*)
The city is operating under a state of "fiscal urgency," declared earlier this summer. The budget deficit for next fiscal year is about $110 million. The proposed cuts in salary, pension contributions and health insurance costs amounts to about $86 million in savings for the city. That fiscal urgency declaration allows city commissioners to impose salary cuts on employees, despite their contracts.
* SO... LEGAL CONTRACTS ARE LEGALLY BINDING UNTIL... (*PAUSE*)... THE POLITICIANS DECLARE THEY'RE NOT...???
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
[W}hat really stirs some is that this is happening while the city contributes about $125 million in tourism tax dollars to the construction of the new Marlins baseball stadium.
* CRONY CAPITALISM, FOLKS... CRONY CAPITALISM...
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