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October
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- Nancy Calhoun, Roxanne Donnery, and Chris McKenna
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 29, 2010
- Hide Your Young Daughters...!!!
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 28, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 27, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 26, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 25, 2010
- Weekend Newbsites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 23 & 24, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 22, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 21, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 20, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 19, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 18, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun.; Oct. 16 & 17, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 15, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 14, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 13, 2010
- I Need A Vacation To Recover From My Vacation!
- Vacation Time! "See" You On Tuesday, Oct. 12th!
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 2 & 3, 2010
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 1. 2010
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October
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About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
14 comments:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11579979
[UK] Chancellor George Osborne is to slash welfare benefits by a further £7bn as he sets out the biggest spending cuts since the Second World War.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
* NOW IF THE BRITS CAN DO IT, WHY CAN'T WE...?!?!
The pension age will rise sooner than expected, some incapacity benefits will be time limited and other money clawed back through changes to tax credits and housing benefit.
(*FURTHER APPLAUSE*)
The 19% average cuts to departmental budgets were less severe than the 25% expected - thanks to bigger savings from the welfare budget, the chancellor told MPs.
* SO IF THE BRITS CAN CUT 19% FROM GOVERNMENTAL DEPARTMENT BUDGETS WHY CAN'T WE...?!?!
Unveiling his Spending Review in the Commons, which includes £81bn in spending cuts, [the UK Chancellor} told [Members of Parliament]: "Today is the day when Britain steps back from the brink, when we confront the bills from a decade of debt." He added: "It is a hard road, but it leads to a better future."
(*WILD CHEERING AND THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE*)
Up to 500,000 public sector jobs could go by 2014-15 due to the changes, according to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility.
(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/traffic/traffic_news/audit-excessive-perks-for-nj-turnpike-employees-20101019-apx
Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses. In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included.
The audit says that toll dollars were spent on items ranging from an employee bowling league to employee bonuses for working on birthdays.
All this took place while tolls were being increased.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The biggest expense uncovered in the audit was $30 million in unjustified bonuses to employees and management in 2008 and 2009 without consideration of performance. One example was paying employees overtime for removing snow and working holidays and then giving additional "snow removal bonuses" and "holiday bonuses."
The Comptroller's Office audit released Tuesday says taxpayers also paid $430,000 for free E-ZPass transponders...
(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
Comptroller Matt Boxer says..."While tolls are going up, the Turnpike Authority is overpaying its employees, overpaying its management, overpaying for its health plan and overpaying for legal services."
(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)
Public money was also used to cover costs for a toll operators event that none of the authority's employees actually attended.
Another audit finding was that employees were allowed to cash out a portion of their unused sick and vacation days at the end of the year to circumvent the current $15,000 limit for sick leave payouts upon retirement. That cost $3.8 million a year.
Among the questionable legal expenses was a billing for $111,840 for a law firm's weekly internal status meetings that were generally attended by 10 to 15 of the firm's attorneys and two to three of its paralegals.
* GO, CHRIS CRISTIE, GO! GET 'EM GOV!
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Report-In-Obamas-Chicago-stimulus-weatherization-money-buys-shoddy-work-widespread-fraud-105300303.html
* FIRST... THE HEADLINE:
Report: In Obama's Chicago, Stimulus Weatherization Money Buys Shoddy Work, Widespread Fraud
* AS IF THIS COMES AS A SURPRISE TO ANYONE... (*SNORT*)
Last year, [President Obama's] Department [of Energy] awarded [the President's home state of] Illinois $242 million, which was expected to pay for the weatherization of 27,000 homes.
[A] new report by [this very same] Department of Energy has found "serious problems" in stimulus-funded weatherization work - problems so severe that they have resulted in homes that are not only not more energy efficient but are actually dangerous for people to live in.
(*MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE*) (*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Specifically, Energy Department inspectors took a close look at the troubled operations of the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County (Cook County is, of course, home to Chicago.), known as CEDA, which is the largest recipient of weatherization money in Illinois with $91 million to weatherize 12,500 homes.
The findings are grim. "Our testing revealed substandard performance in weatherization workmanship, initial assessments, and contractor billing," the inspector general report says. "These problems were of such significance that they put the integrity of the entire program at risk."
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Department inspectors visited 15 homes that were being weatherized by CEDA and paid for by stimulus funds. "We found that 14 of the 15 homes failed final inspection because of poor workmanship and/or inadequate initial assessments." In eight of the homes, CEDA had come up with unworkable and ineffective plans - like putting attic insulation in a house with a leaky roof. In ten of the homes, "contractors billed for labor charges that had not been incurred and for materials that had not been installed."
The report calls billing problems "pervasive," with seven of ten contractors being cited for erroneous invoicing.
* IN OTHER WORDS... FRAUD. (LET'S SEE HOW MANY OF THE CROOKS GO TO JAIL; MY BET... NONE WHO ARE ACTIVE DEMOCRATIC DONORS.)
And the department found a 62% final inspection error rate when CEDA inspectors reviewed their own work.
(*MASSIVE MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)
The work was not just wasteful; it was dangerous. Department inspectors found heat barriers around chimneys that had not been installed, causing fire hazards. They found a furnace that had not been vented properly. The found a shut-off valve that had not been installed on a gas stove. And they found carbon monoxide detectors, smoke alarms and fire extinguishers had not been installed as planned.
And then there was fraud. At ten of the 15 homes visited, Department inspectors found examples in which a contractor had installed a 125,000 BTU boiler, but had billed CEDA for a 200,000 BTU boiler costing an estimated $1,000. more. Another contractor billed for almost four times the amount of drywall actually installed. And another installed 12 light bulbs but had billed CEDA for 20. (The Department found that CEDA paid almost three times the retail price for each light bulb.) "Billing issues appeared to be pervasive," the report concludes.
* "BILLING ISSUES...???" (*SMIRK*) AGAIN, FOLKS... WE'RE TALKING FRAUD. CAN'T YOU JUST HARDLY WAIT TILL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT COMPLETELY RUNS ALL MEDICAL CARE IN THIS COUNTRY... (*SIGH*)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575560302444820376.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
In an important speech last week in Boston, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke proposed that the central bank pursue a monetary policy that would encourage some growth in the rate of inflation...
* OBVIOUSLY REGULAR NEWSBITE READERS ARE WELL AWARE OF THIS... BUT OUT OF A POPULATION OF MORE THAN 300 MILLION AMERICANS, HOW MANY WOULD YOU SUPPOSE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE THAT OUR OWN GOVERNMENT IS DELIBERATELY ATTEMPTING TO DEVALUE OUR CURRENCY AND MAKE GOODS AND SERVICES MORE EXPENSIVE FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS...???
(*SIGH*)
[T]he Fed will use as an inflation target the core index for personal expenditure, excluding the cost of energy and food. The exclusion of food and energy from the inflationary indices dates back to the 1970s, when Arthur Burns was Fed chairman. Burns did this to minimize perception of the outbreak of inflation at that time.
* AGAIN... YOU FOLKS ALL KNOW THIS. QUESTION: WHAT PERCENTAGE OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WOULD YOU GUESS ARE AWARE OF THIS...???
Food and energy prices clearly affect household spending.
* DUH...!!!
Moreover, by excluding energy prices - especially oil - the Fed's monetary policy serves to support the pricing practices of the international oil cartel by supplying sufficient bank reserves to justify those prices.
Now that an inflationary bias [has been directly proclaimed] market and economic uncertainty will heighten. [This] Fed approach will increase financial markets' volatility.
[I]f a 2% annual increase in inflation becomes [a] target, Americans will be forced to accept a substantial depreciation in the purchasing power of [our] currency. A 2% annual depreciation equals a compounded loss of 22% over 10 years, and the loss would total 34% if the inflation rate averages 3% annually.
That's a target we can afford to miss.
* FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATION, I PRAY THAT BEN BERNANKE IS SOMEHOW FORCED FROM OFFICE SOONER RATHER THAN LATER.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703794104575546052343243306.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Well, well. In the clearest evidence so far that ObamaCare is harmful in practice and an election-year liability, the Obama Administration has decided not to enforce some of the law's "consumer protections." (At least when the results are politically embarrassing. )
(*SMIRK*)
Over the last several weeks the Health and Human Services Department has granted dozens of temporary waivers to certain ObamaCare mandates so that insurers and businesses won't drop or cancel coverage.
[As a sharp comic - or Republican - might well note] -- people don't regularly need exemptions from a bill of rights.
(*SMIRK*)
At least this sudden regulatory flexibility is protecting the coverage that people have today, as President Obama promised. But it isn't much of an improvement if HHS retreats only after a national political blow-up. ... And is it really better that HHS will impose destructive regulations and then decide on ad hoc basis who they'll hit? This is an invitation to play favorites, exact political retribution and pursue whatever arbitrary goals HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her successors happen to hold.
ObamaCare amnesty shouldn't go merely to the CEOs who can get White House aide Valerie Jarrett on the horn.
HHS is pre-emptively declaring that it will grant a special dispensation to rules that haven't even been finalized.
Wouldn't it be better to write less destructive rules in the first place? Or why not give everyone a waiver from everything?
(*AMUSED SNORT*)
The reality is that ObamaCare assigns HHS vast, undefined new powers that will mean whatever Ms. Sebelius and her team decides they will mean. The bill uses the phrase "the Secretary shall" or one of its variants more than a thousand times.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service found that ObamaCare created a "currently unknowable" number of new boards, commissions and offices, adding that "it is currently impossible to know how much influence they will ultimately have."
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... AMUSED SNORT OR NOT, THIS REALLY ISN'T FUNNY.
HHS is also not building this bureaucratic apparatus in a transparent way. Ten of the 12 new regulations that HHS has issued in the last six months have been "interim final rules" that are not open to the ordinary process of public comment.
The White House had to play favorites with Senators and special interests to pass ObamaCare, and its implementation is no less ugly. But the waiver wave is most telling for what it says about the architects of this plan. By bending their own rules, they're conceding their destructiveness.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575560421374193814.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Life must be very good in Canada, or at least dull, judging by the domestic reaction to its failed bid last week for a temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council. Listen to the yowls in the papers north of the border -- "A nation reeling," "humiliating defeat," "a rebuke from the global community," "tarnishes our reputation," "a slap in the face."
Canada seems to have annoyed a sufficient number of Third World dictators and liberally pious Westerners to come up short in a secret General Assembly ballot.
The United Arab Emirates took credit for putting together a group of anti-Canadian Arab and Islamic states to stop the bid for the two-year rotating chair.
The U.S. role here is also embarrassing - to the U.S.
(*PURSED LIPS*) (*FROWN*)
Richard Grenell, a former senior official at the U.S. Mission to the U.N., reported last week that [President Obama's] U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, refused to campaign on Canada's behalf.
(*SIGH*)
Mr. Harper's politics are not hers, and Liberal opposition leader and Obama political soulmate, Michael Ignatieff, declared last month that Canada under Mr. Harper didn't deserve to get one of the 10 temporary seats.
* NO... THE PRESIDENT ISN'T A SECRET MUSLIM... YES... PRESIDENT OBAMA IS A U.S. CITIZEN. (*ROLLING MY EYES*) THIS FREELY ADMITTED, I'D ADD THIS LEGITIMATE ANALYSIS: BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS "ANTI-WESTERN" IN THE SENSE OF REJECTING NOT ONLY AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, BUT IN LARGE MEASURE REJECTING THE POST-WW-2 PRESIDENTIAL ROLE OF "LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD" AGAINST THE NON-FREE WORLD.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304510704575561682510521208.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Americans arriving in Paris these days will notice that France's planes, trains and automobiles are all being slowed or stopped by nationwide protests over President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to raise the retirement age by . . . all of two years.
Protesters are blockading refineries, truckers clog the roads, and yesterday air-traffic controllers walked off the job.
Hundreds of schools around the country are closed...
Mr. Sarkozy's reform is intended to shore up France's public pension system, which faces a €32 billion ($45 billion) shortfall. But this modest reform, which has passed the lower house and is scheduled for a vote in the Senate this week, is merely a downpayment on France's unfunded liabilities. The larger issue is whether France and other Western nations will grapple with their entitlement obligations before it's too late, or sink under their weight, dragged down by intransigent government-employee unions.
Sound familiar, Californians?
France's prospects don't look good: Some polls show that as many as 70% of the French support the protesters, who seem to think the budget shortfalls can be addressed by raising payroll taxes on businesses, currently north of 40% for employers.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Across Europe, the recession that began in 2008 has laid bare how unaffordable the extravagant promises of the welfare state have become.
[There was] a study conducted by Gavekal Research earlier this year, which compared economic growth in the U.K. to government spending over the past 40 years. The trend was clear: The bigger the bite the government takes out of the economy, the slower the average growth rate.
The obvious lesson for America is to avoid the mistake of imposing such unaffordable entitlements in the first place. Ronald Reagan helped the U.S. dodge that fate in the 1980s, but President Obama has put us back on the road to fiscal perdition.
As for Mr. Sarkozy, he has become fond of decrying the very concept of gross domestic product, preferring instead to measure national happiness, as they do in Bhutan. But the French government can't pay its retirement and welfare promises with smiles. And if the current week of strikes teaches anything, it's that a nation that forgoes economic growth ultimately forsakes its pensioners. And there's little to smile about in that.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704469004575533880328930598.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
One trillion dollars is roughly the amount of earnings that American companies have in their foreign operations - and that they could repatriate to the United States.
That money, in turn, could be invested in U.S. jobs, capital assets, research and development, and more.
* NOTICE, FOLKS, THE USE OF THE WORD "COULD" IN BOTH PRIOR SENTENCES...
But for U.S companies such repatriation of earnings carries a significant penalty: a federal tax of up to 35%. This means that U.S. companies can, without significant consequence, use their foreign earnings to invest in any country in the world - except here.
* YEP... (*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)... THESE ARE THE SORTS OF "ECONOMIC POLICIES" WHICH ARE HATCHED IN WASHINGTON BY POLITICIANS.
The U.S. government's treatment of repatriated foreign earnings stands in marked contrast to the tax practices of almost every major developed economy, including Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Australia and Canada, to name a few.
* HERE... LOT ME REPEAT THAT:
The U.S. government's treatment of repatriated foreign earnings stands in marked contrast to the tax practices of almost every major developed economy, including Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, Australia and Canada, to name a few.
(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
Companies headquartered in any of these countries can repatriate foreign earnings to their home countries at a tax rate of 0%-2%. That's because those countries realize that choking off foreign capital from their economies is decidedly against their national interests.
* OBVIOUSLY...!!!
Many commentators have pointed to the large cash balances sitting on U.S. corporate books as evidence that the economy is still stalled because companies aren't spending. That analysis misses the point. Large cash balances remain on U.S. corporate books because U.S. companies can't spend their foreign-held cash in the U.S. without incurring a prohibitive tax liability.
* BINGO! (PLUS... LET'S BE HONEST... AS LONG AS THE DEMOCRATS CONTROL THE LEVERS OF POWER IN WASHINGTON WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD INVEST IN AMERICA...???)
Especially with corporate bond rates falling below 4%, it's hard to imagine any responsible corporation repatriating foreign earnings at a combined federal and state tax rate approaching 40%.
(*NOD*)
http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/dc/dc-students-receive-dinner-at-school-101910
Getting kids to eat three healthy meals a day can be a challenge, especially if money is tight. But D.C. Public Schools have found a way to take some of that burden off parents. They are now serving dinner at school.
On the menu are things like salmon salad, a whole grain roll, orange juice, 1% milk and a corn and pepper relish.
(*BLOOD SHOOTING OUT OF MY EYES*)
"With positive feedback, the kids will enjoy the food," Chef Edward Kwitowski said. He is in charge of whipping up healthy dinners for D.C. school kids as part of this new program to provide three healthy meals a day at school. "Our program is from scratch cooking with local produce," said Kwitowski. "And definitely low fat cooking."
(*FOR ONCE... SPEECHLESS*)
D.C. joins 13 states which serve three meals a day at school...
* ONE OF MY BROTHERS-IN-LAW ASKED ME TODAY IF I THOUGHT THERE WAS ANY HOPE OF SAVING THE COUNTRY. MY ANSWER: "NO."
“We're reaching 10,000 kids a day at 99 of our 120 schools," said Anthony Tata, Chief Operating Officer of D.C. Public Schools.
That's about 25% of the student population.
Another "big benefit" of the after school dinners are that more kids are enrolling in after school programs where they can get some academic help as well. So the dinners are really serving three purposes - fighting hunger, obesity and offering help with classwork too.
And the best news of all is this is a federally-funded program.
* NOTICE THERE ARE NOT QUOTES AROUND THE SENTENCE ABOVE. THAT'S THE REPORTER "SPEAKING."
(*SHAKING*) (*MY ENTIRE BODY SHAKING*)
“We're reimbursed on a per meal basis," Tata said.
(*CONSIDERING JOINING AL-QAIDA*)
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/250180/global-warming-s-corrupt-science-patrick-j-michaels
Like lab rats that will do anything to keep the cocaine flowing, climate scientists, universities, and federal laboratories are addicted to the public’s money.
The latest illustration of this sad new reality is the letter of resignation from the American Physical Society (APS) of one of the lions of science, Harold Lewis, emeritus professor at University of California–Santa Barbara.
In his letter, Lewis rightly states that it is the global-warming-research industry, “with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS with it like a rogue wave.”
Specifically, Lewis objects to the heavy-handed way in which APS quashed and impeded any attempt to modify its outrageous 2007 “national policy” statement on climate change. The statement is remarkably misleading, and commits the same rhetorical mayhem as similar statements from the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. APS’s solemn declaration - “The evidence is incontrovertible. Global warming is occurring.”- has recently been part and parcel of all such statements.
.
What Lewis has uncovered is that climate scientists are behaving normally. They are responding to the incentives of financial and professional security and advancement.
(*SHRUG*)
An incredible outlay of money to academic researchers has ensued. And any incentive to write a paper describing the exaggeration of global warming all but disappeared - indeed, the disincentive to publish such a finding became, and remains, strong indeed. And so, APS has no incentive to do anything but flog global warming.
People often ask me how to stop the hysteria. It’s simple: Stop feeding our addiction. How many of us were once wringing our hands over acid rain? When it finally became obvious that it, too, was real but overhyped by its proponents, the issue left the public consciousness.
The public can certainly make the same thing happen to global warming. But rest assured that scientists will find something else to worry you over.
P.S.: The next hysteria will be something called “ocean acidification.” Stay tuned.
(*CHUCKLE*)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250297/shovel-ready-white-elephants-jonah-goldberg
It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building...
The Pentagon took a year and a halfThe Pentagon took a year and a half...
[T]he Alaska Highway [was laid in] just nine months...
These days it takes longer to build an overpass.
* AGAIN, FOLKS... AND BELIEVE ME, I HATE TO HAVE TO SAY THIS - BUT IT'S TRUE: AMERICA IS IN DECLINE. WE'VE BEEN IN DECLINE FOR SOME TIME; YES... PRE-DATING THE AGE OF OBAMA.
[P]lanning for Boston’s “Big Dig” officially began in the early 1980s with a budget of $2.6 billion, but ground wasn’t broken until 1991 and the last ramp wasn’t opened until 2006. The final estimated cost: $22 billion. According to the Boston Globe, it won’t be paid off until 2038.
Meanwhile, the “race” to rebuild the World Trade Center as some kind of "remorse theme park" approaches its second decade.
(*SIGH*)
And across the harbor from Ground Zero, in New Jersey, Republican governor Chris Christie has earned scorn for thinking that a proposed underwater rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey might be too pricey. Under discussion for decades, it was originally projected to cost $5 billion. Estimates are now $9 billion and rising. Christie still might reverse course if he can cut a better deal for his state. But the underlying fact remains the same: This country can’t build stuff the way it used to.
The simple reality is that Uncle Sam’s arteries are hardened. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush’s allegedly tardy response was seen as proof that conservatism itself was inadequate to the demands of responsible government. But it wasn’t conservatism that kept some volunteer firefighters out of commission because they were in Atlanta for sexual-harassment training and video tutorials about how great FEMA is.
(*SMIRK*)
"Not in my backyard" is surely a bipartisan phenomenon. [That said,] it is not conservative opposition that has delayed the construction of windmills that would diminish the view from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port.
Nor was it primarily the Right that boosted entitlements until they crowded out public works.
(*SHRUG*)
And let’s not forget Yucca Mountain in Nevada - a project under way for decades that has already cost untold billions and is being shuttered in no small part because environmentalists say that it won’t be safe enough 10,000 years from now.
(*HEADACHE*)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/bam_desperate_bribe_1NA4yZs2CqQaEQvkrR9t0N
* TO REITERATE FROM PAST NEWSBITES...
President Obama last week urged Congress - likely in a post-election lame-duck session - to send senior citizens a [check for] $250...
Total cost of [Obama's irresponsible proposal]: $15 billion.
Social Security's built-in cost-of-living adjustments are meant to protect seniors. But inflation has been flat, so the Social Security Administration hasn't raised benefit levels for two years. But that won't buy many votes, so the administration wants to borrow and spend another $15 billion to purchase as many as possible.
It's transparent, and it's disgraceful.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=550957
Government Motors' all-electric car isn't all-electric and doesn't get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like "shovel-ready" jobs, maybe there's no such thing as "plug-ready" cars either.
Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to grandma's house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down. It was still an electric car, we were told, and not a hybrid on steroids.
That's not quite true.
The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors.
That's not charging the battery - that's driving the car.
So it's not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it.
We heard GM's then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions.
(*DRUM ROLL*) WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT...
Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: "Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma's house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s."
Car and Driver reported that "getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic - basically the worst-case scenario - yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s."
We are not told that we will be dependent on foreign sources like Bolivia for the lithium to be used in these batteries. Nor are we told about the possible dangers to rescuers and occupants in an accident scenario. (This is what happens when government picks winners and losers in the marketplace and tries to run a business.)
There's [also] the issue of asking grandma to use her electricity for the three or four hours necessary to recharge your car so you can get home to charge it again. (And since electricity rates are "necessarily going to skyrocket" as a result of this administration's energy policies and fondness for cap-and-trade, what's the true cost of operating a not-so-all-electric car like the Volt?)
In 2008, candidate Obama pledged to put 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. Not likely. It was a tough sell when we thought it was all-electric and could get 230 mpg. It will be a tougher sell now that we find it's a glorified Prius with the price tag of a BMW that seats only four because of a battery that runs down the center of the car.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/20/fannie_freddie_frank_and_fiction/
Is it fair to blame [Barney] Frank for the ill-advised home loans to unqualified borrowers that were at the heart of the economic crisis?
* RHETORICAL QUESTION... (*CHUCKLE*)
Frank, [the long serving liberal democrat] who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, has always been ardent in his defense of Fannie and Freddie.
In 2003, he insisted that the two mortgage giants were not “facing any kind of a crisis.’’
In July 2008, just weeks before they collapsed and were taken over by the federal government, he publicly maintained that “Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound - they are not in danger of going under.’’
(*SNORT*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Frank recently told the Boston Globe’s Donovan Slack that “he missed the warning signs [in 2003] because he was wearing ideological blinders,’’ while in 2008 “he was deliberately trying to reassure the public.’’
* IF ONLY FRANK WAS A JAPANESE TRADITIONALIST... (*SLY SMILE*) (PERHAPS WE COULD HOLD A FUNDRAISER TO BUY BARNEY A WAKIZASHI...???)
[Frank now] portrays himself now as a lifelong advocate for affordable rental housing only. To hear him tell it, it was never a part of his agenda to make it easier for low-income homebuyers to get mortgages. Indeed, he says, he always fought the idea.
* BULLSHIT!
Over the years, Frank has been a consistent critic of many things (defense spending, Republicans, free enterprise), but an opponent of programs to assist low-income homeowners?
(*CHUCKLE*) (*SNORT*)
As far back as 1991, the [Boston] Globe reported that Frank lobbied Fannie Mae to ease its rules restricting mortgages on two- and three-family homes, even though the default rate on those mortgages was far higher than the rate for single-family dwellings.
[I]n 2003 [Frank] blasted Bush administration efforts to reform Fannie/Freddie on the grounds that “the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.’’
[Frank] saluted Fannie Mae in 2004 for backing mortgages with as little as 5% down on factory-built “trailer’’ houses, and chided the media for not showing enough interest in what he called “an essential part of any program to increase home ownership in America.’’
[Do these words and actions seemingly describe] a man who was "a consistent critic of low-income home ownership?" (How about when he gave a speech in 2005 praising the “advocacy groups that work with us so that we can make homeownership available to people who might not on their own in a market situation be able to afford it’’?)
* IN PLAIN ENGLISH... BARNEY FRANK IS A LYING PIECE OF CRAP. PERIOD. END OF STORY.
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