Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 27, 2010


Remember who we used to be... who we can be again...

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12 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-27/republicans-plan-100-billion-budget-cut-as-early-act-if-they-take-power.html

U.S. House Republicans plan to try to slash $100 billion from the federal budget as early as January if they wrest power from Democrats in this year’s midterm elections...

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

The backdrop is a federal deficit that the Congressional Budget Office said totaled $1.29 trillion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. At 8.9% of the nation’s gross domestic product, it was the second-biggest shortfall since 1945.

* FOLKS... WE'VE GOT TO RESTORE AT LEAST A MEASURE OF SANITY TO WASHINGTON!

* FOLKS... DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN RUNNING CONGRESS SINCE JANUARY OF 2007; SINCE THEN, THEY'VE ADDED APPROXIMATELY $5 TRILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT. WE MUST REVERSE COURSE!!!

One of the few Republicans offering concrete proposals for cutting federal spending has been Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who would take the helm of the Budget Committee.

His “Roadmap for America’s Future” would establish a voucher system for Medicare, scrap the current tax exemptions for employer-sponsored health benefits in favor of individual tax credits, and let workers under the age of 55 steer a portion of their Social Security taxes into private accounts.

* SEE: http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/

October 27, 2010 at 12:18 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574322146119944.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

The September state unemployment numbers came out last Friday, and we couldn't help noticing that three of the four states with the highest job losses were California (-63,500), New York (-37,600) and New Jersey (-20,200).

The other was Massachusetts (-20,900).

(New Jersey is at least working to get its spending and taxes under control with Chris Christie as Governor, though its state and local tax burden remains the nation's highest and its business tax climate is the worst, according to the Tax Foundation.)

Texas, meanwhile, gained 4,000 jobs.

This continues a longer term trend.Over the last year, as the economy was beginning to grow again, the Lone Star State has led the nation with the addition of nearly 153,000 jobs, while California surrendered 43,700, New Jersey lost 42,300 and New York dropped 14,600.

The migration of factories, capital and jobs to states like Texas is no accident. Texas is a right to work state, meaning that workers cannot be compelled to join a union. Texas also has no income tax, which gives its firms a roughly 10% cost advantage over a "progressive" state like California.

There is also a lesson here for Washington. The job-free zones of California, New Jersey and New York each tax the rich more than nearly all other states. In these states the top 1% wealthiest taxpayers bear roughly 40% of the state income tax burden, but their budgets are still a mess and the job losses continue. If the next crop of Governors and the 112th Congress want faster growth and more job creation, they'll avoid the mistakes of California and New York and learn from Texas.

October 27, 2010 at 5:38 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303467004575574401127641896.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

Anyone who cares about the U.S. economy is breathing easier now that cap and tax appears to be on the political garbage barge, but don't be so sure. The White House is still pursuing its carbon agenda through regulation, albeit with almost no public attention, and a new study shows the damage that is already being done.

Yesterday the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, a highly regarded federal energy advisory body, released an exhaustive "special assessment" of this covert program. NERC estimates that the Environmental Protection Agency's pending electric utility regulations will subtract between 46 and 76 gigawatts of generating capacity from the U.S. grid by 2015. To put those numbers in perspective, the worst-case scenario would amount to a reduction of about 7.2% of national power generation...

(*SIGH*) (*HEADACHE*)

The EPA's battery of new rules is mostly obscure, ranging from traditional pollutants such as mercury and sulfur to new regulation of coal ash and even water intake structures, which power plants use to cool down equipment. NERC notes that the "pace and aggressiveness" of issuing so many new rules at once is unprecedented. ... As much as a fifth of the perfectly functioning coal-fired fleet will be forced into early retirement, to be replaced with a largely more expensive energy mix, especially natural gas.

In a recent research note, Credit Suisse estimates that compliance will cost as much as $150 billion in capital investment by the end of the decade. All of this will flow through to rising electricity prices, which is the same as a tax increase on businesses and consumers.

NERC also warns of "deteriorating resource adequacy" and of the logistical reality that replacing or upgrading so much capacity so fast may lead to brownouts and shortages. The danger is greatest throughout the Midwest in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where the costs will also be concentrated.

The larger point is that instead of debating a carbon program on the merits, the Obama Administration is now trying to impose the same burden step by step on the sly.

At this point, the only way voters can stop the EPA is to install a check in one of the other branches of government. Election Day is Tuesday.

* AMEN!

October 27, 2010 at 5:39 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304915104575572642896563902.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Halloween is the day when America market-tests parental paranoia. If a new fear flies on Halloween, it's probably going to catch on the rest of the year, too.

Take ["poisoned candy,"] the classic Halloween horror. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

(*CHUCKLE*) (*SMIRK*)

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

* GOTTA LOVE TEXAS...!!!

[S]tranger danger is still going strong, and it's even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That's why they don't let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: "You never know!" The psycho-next-door fear went viral.

* COM'ON, FOLKS... YOU ALL KNOW THESE WACKY PARENTS; INDEED, SOME OF YOU WERE - MAYBE EVEN STILL ARE - THESE NUTCASES!

Halloween taught marketers that parents are willing to be warned about anything, no matter how preposterous, and then they're willing to be sold whatever solutions the market can come up with. Face paint so no mask will obscure a child's vision. Purell, so no child touches a germ. And the biggest boondoggle of all: an adult-supervised party, so no child encounters anything exciting, er, "dangerous."

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves - at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza.

[Halloween] blazed the way for adult-supervised everything else. Let kids make their own fun? Not anymore! Let's sign our toddlers up for "movement" classes! Let's bring on the extracurricular activities, travel soccer and manicure parties for the older kids. Once Halloween got outsourced to adults, no kids-only activity was safe. Goodbye sandlot, hello batting coach!

And now comes the latest Halloween terror: Across the country, cities and states are passing waves of laws preventing registered sex offenders from leaving their homes - or sometimes even turning on their lights - on Halloween. The reason? Same old same old: safety. As a panel of "experts" on the "Today" show warned viewers recently: Don't let your children trick-or-treat without you "any earlier than age 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things."

Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, "There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation." In fact, she says, "We almost called this paper, 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day."

October 27, 2010 at 5:39 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303341904575576200794162356.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Millions of Americans have stopped paying their mortgages, creating a giant paperwork snafu and legal crisis, and yet . . .

Funny how many media accounts begin with that rarest of creatures, a homeowner fully paid up on his mortgage, or better yet a Florida man who paid cash for his house, and who was foreclosed on anyway thanks to a paperwork error by some confused bank. This poor shmuck then is made to symbolize the larger phenomenon when in fact the larger phenomenon is precisely the opposite.

* EXACTLY! THE MSM IS TRYING TO CAST THE EXCEPTION AS THE RULE!

You can't understand the latest mortgage mess without understanding the powerful appetite to cast borrowers as victims and banks as villains in the housing bubble. This tendency is present in claims that minorities have been especially victimized, that people were sold loans they didn't understand.

The battle of the narratives is reaching its climax in the robo-signer controversy, with lawyers seizing upon technicalities to let people go on living in homes they've stopped paying for.

Politicians have been frequent floggers of the bankers-as-villains, borrowers-as-victims story line. Yet the government has moved heaven and earth to prop up the self-same banks.

Every foreclosure is a different story, some painful to hear. But we had a housing bubble, and bubbles by definition occur because the incentives permit them to occur: The Fed kept interest rates low. Regulatory policy favored shoehorning more people into homes. Enormous tax inducements were dangled to encourage housing debt.

* IN OTHER WORDS, FOLKS... THE GOVERNMENT CAUSED THE PROBLEM. AND NOW WHO IS GETTING RICH? THE BANKERS WHO ARE READY TO "WORK WITH" THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.

(*SNICKER*)

* OH... BTW... JUST AS THE FED'S NAKEDLY STATED GOAL IS TO SPUR INFLATION, THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND MANY IN CONGRESS AND STATEHOUSES ACROSS THE NATION WOULD LIKE NOTHING BETTER THAN TO RE-INFLATE THE HOUSING MARKET WHILE HOPING THAT BY THE TIME IT POPS AGAIN THEY'LL BE SAFELY RETIRED.

(*SMIRK*)

October 27, 2010 at 5:40 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303341904575576342977166312.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

The brutal facts about Afghanistan are these: It is a broken country, a land of banditry, of a war of all against all, and of the need to get what can be gotten from the strangers. There is no love for the infidels who have come into the land...

Say what you will about the Iraq war - and there was disappointment and heartbreak aplenty - there always ran through that war the promise of a decent outcome: deliverance for the Kurds, an Iraqi democratic example in the heart of a despotic Arab world, the promise of a decent Shiite alternative in the "holy" city of Najaf that would compete with the influence of Qom.

No such nobility, no such illusions now attend our war in Afghanistan.

By latest cruel count, more than 1,300 American service members have fallen in Afghanistan.

* BUT WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT?! EXCEPT FOR CARL, TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE NONE OF YOU READING THIS HAVE - OR HAD - A "DOG IN THE FIGHT" IN THE SENSE OF HAVING A LOVED ONE IN UNIFORM RISKING HIS OR HER LIFE OVERSEAS.

* SCREW IT... "NOT OUR PROBLEM," RIGHT?! SO WHAT... SOME FAMILY WE DON'T KNOW HAS LOST A SON, DAUGHTER, FATHER, MOTHER, AUNT, UNCLE...

* I ESPECIALLY GET A "KICK" OUT OF MY FRIENDS WHO SAY ALL THE RIGHT THINGS ABOUT "OUR TROOPS" AND CLAIM TO "SUPPORT THEM." OF COURSE... MOST AMERICANS - AT LEAST THOSE OF "OUR" SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASS AND GEOGRAPHIC HABITAT - DON'T HAVE TO PERSONALLY WORRY ABOUT A FRIEND OR LOVED ONE BEING BLOWN TO BITS.

* COM'ON, KIDS... CHANT IT WITH ME... U*S*A...! U*S*A...! U*S*A...!

(*SMIRK*)

* READ THE OP-ED, FOLKS... THEN GO BACK TO YOUR LIVES.

October 27, 2010 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.breitbart.tv/okeefe-top-union-official-caught-on-tape-discussing-voter-fraud/

* PLAY THIS VIDEO.

* FOLKS... NO DOUBT REPUBLICANS HAVE OVER THE YEARS ENGAGED IN VOTER FRAUD, BUT WE KNOW THAT THIS IS MAINLY A DEMOCRATIC TACTIC, PARTICULARLY IN URBAN CENTERS BUT NOT LIMITED TO CITIES.

* FOLKS... NOTICE THAT I HAVEN'T BEEN POSTING ALL THE LINKS TO ALL THE STORIES "ALLEGING" VOTER FRAUD PRESENTLY GOING ON. THE REPORTS CAN BE FOUND ON DRUDGE AND ELSEWHERE. I TEND TO COVER ONLY FACTS AND "GUILT BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT."

* FOLKS... THESE BASTARDS MUST BE STOPPED.

October 27, 2010 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/26/AR2010102606571.html

An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan.

(*SIGH*)

* HOW MANY LIVES - DESTROYED AND LOST - DOES OBAMA HAVE TO ANSWER FOR...??? FOLKS... RIGHT OR WRONG, BUSH "BELIEVED" IN THE AFGHAN WAR, THAT IT WAS IN OUR NATIONAL INTEREST, THAT IT WAS WINNABLE. OBAMA BELIEVES NONE OF THESE THINGS. I KNOW IT... YOU KNOW IT. THIS IS CYNICAL POLITICS AT ITS WORST.

The blunt intelligence assessments are consistent across the main spy agencies responsible for analyzing the conflict, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, and come at a critical juncture. Officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

U.S. officials said Taliban operatives have adopted a refrain that reflects their focus on President Obama's intent to start withdrawing troops in the middle of next year. Attributing the words to Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, officials said, operatives tell one another, "The end is near."

October 27, 2010 at 5:41 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/sc-dc-1028-court-execution-20101027,0,6859358.story

Justice Elena Kagan cast her first vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday... The newest member of the Supreme Court was in the minority in backing a stay of execution over questions about the safety of a drug to be used in a lethal injection.

* YEP! YOU READ THAT RIGHT! "QUESTIONS ABOUT THE SAFETY OF A DRUG USED IN A LETHAL INJECTION."

(*SHRUG*)

* KAGAN WAS PREDICTABLY JOINED IN THIS INSANITY BY GINSBURG, BREYER, AND SOTOMAYOR.

* FOLKS... NEVER, NEVER, NEVER BELIEVE THE MAINSTEAM MEDIA WHEN THEY REPORT THAT A LEFTWING NOMINEE TO THE SUPREME COURT IS "MAINSTREAM" OR "MODERATE."

October 27, 2010 at 5:42 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703794104575546491036105542.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

[T]o date, all proposals to create [private] personal [retirement] accounts have provided workers with the option to invest for retirement or to stay with Social Security. Any worker could choose to reject the option.

[N]o proposal has required workers to invest personal account funds in Wall Street stocks, as opposed to other investments such as corporate or government bonds, bond mutual funds or indexes, or certificates of deposit.

Suppose a senior citizen - let's call him "Joe the Plumber" - who retired at the end of 2009, at age 66, had been able to set up a personal account when he entered the work force in 1965, at the age of 21.

Suppose that, paying into his personal account what he and his employer would have paid into Social Security, Joe was foolish enough to invest his entire portfolio in the stock market for all 45 years of his working career. How would he have fared in the recent financial crisis?

While working, Joe had earned the average income for full-time male workers. His wife Mary, also age 66, had earned the average income for full-time female workers. They invested together in an indexed portfolio of 90% large-cap stocks and 10% small-cap stocks, which earned the returns reported each year since 1965.

By the time of their retirement in 2009, Joe and Mary would have accumulated account funds, after administrative costs, of $855,175.

(Indeed, they would have been millionaires a few years earlier, but the financial crisis lost them 37% in 2008.)

They were unfortunate to retire just one year after the worst 10-year stock market performance since 1926. Yet their account, having earned a 6.75% return annually from 1965 to 2009, would still pay them about 75% more than Social Security would have.

[F]or young workers today, Social Security promises...returns of only 1.5% or less, given the actuarial value of all promised benefits.

For many, the promised returns are zero or negative.

And if Congress raises taxes or cuts benefits in order to close financial gaps - as everyone who rejects personal accounts effectively advocates - the eventual returns for young workers will be...

(*SNORT*)

* STILL OPPOSED TO A PARTIAL PRIVATE OPTION FOR YOUR... OR YOUR KID'S OR GRANDKID'S... RETIREMENT SAVINGS...???

October 27, 2010 at 6:22 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://city-journal.org/2010/eon1026sg.html

Even before Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed California’s state budget on October 8th - one hundred days late - it was clear that the deal that made it possible was a kick-the-can-down-the-road deception.

As the Los Angeles Times reported before the budget’s legislative passage: “If approved, [the budget] would fall out of balance almost the moment the ink dried.”

The paper concluded that legislators had, for the most part, “settled on accounting sleight-of-hand: deferred payments, borrowed money and optimistic revenue assumptions.”

Both Republicans and Democrats seemed happy enough with the agreement, relieved that the long ordeal was finally over until a new governor and legislature take office in January.

Some Republican officials even insisted that the deal wasn’t so bad, and that, at $87.5 billion, the budget was as lean as it could be, given today’s political realities.

* FOLKS... AS I OFTEN VOLUNTEER, THERE ARE MANY, MANY, MANY REPUBLICAN ELECTED OFFICIALS WHOM I'D GLADLY...

(*SELF-CENSORING SO AS TO AVOID A VISIT FROM THE SECRET SERVICE, FBI, ATF, OR HOMELAND SECURITY*)

(*CHEERFUL WINK*)

As Loyola Law School professor Jessica Levinson explained in a Huffington Post column: “California has balanced its budget in part based on the assumption that the state will get $5.4 billion in federal funds. The problem is that the federal government has indicated that it will give something closer to $1.3 billion.”

She notes, moreover, that $3 billion of the spending cuts come out of the education budget. Because the size of that budget is constitutionally mandated under the terms of a voter initiative (Proposition 98), those dollars must ultimately be repaid from the state budget - in other words, they’re not really cuts.

Delayed tax credits will also have to be paid.

And as antitax activist Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association points out, the budget’s “estimates of future revenue . . . would only be believed by someone who had just put their life savings into Florida swampland.”

Current estimates place California’s unfunded pension debt at somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion...

(*SIGH*)

Will the next governor be able to turn things around?

During the most recent Brown-Whitman debate, both candidates dealt with budget issues only in vague generalities. Brown, who as governor in the late 1970s helped create the state’s current mess when he approved collective bargaining for state employees, said he would "lead by example" [,while Whitman,] touting her “30 years of experience balancing budgets and using technology” championed pension reform, but only for rank-and-file state employees; she would exempt public-safety officials from her plan to switch to 401(k)-style, defined-contribution plans.

(*DISGUSTED SNORT*)

Meanwhile, the state’s gerrymandered legislative districts and budget-passage rules create an impasse.

* THE MOST NEED POLITICAL REFORM THE UNITED STATES AND EACH STATE REQUIRES IS TO DISMANTLE THE GERRYMANDER AND REDRAW POLITICAL PRECINCTS/DISTRICTS ALONG NON-PARTISAN, NON-IDEOLOGICAL, COLOR-BLIND MATHEMATICALLY NEUTRAL LINES.

[B]ecause of legislative gerrymandering, few seats are competitive in any election cycle.

* MEANING THERE REALLY IS NO VIABLE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE EXERCISE OF DEMOCRACY AS OUR FOUNDERS INTENDED.

October 27, 2010 at 8:45 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/battle10/251119/exclusive-patrick-murphys-campaign-linked-fictitious-voter-office-scandal-thomas-sha

Last week, it came to light that voters in southeastern Pennsylvania’s 8th district were receiving notices warning that their right to vote "could be in jeopardy" if they did not return an absentee ballot to the “Pennsylvania Voter Assistance Office,” a fictitious agency headquartered at a post office box.

The letters...were underwritten by the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee.

“By failing to return the enclosed [absentee ballot],” warned the notice, “you may be placing your ability to participate in this year’s general election at risk.” The mailer contained a postage-paid envelope instructing voters to return their ballots to a post office box controlled by the Democratic Party.

That post office box, Battle ‘10 has learned, was controlled at least in part by Tim Persico, the campaign manager for Rep. Patrick Murphy.

This comes on the heels of the county Board of Elections recording a unusual spike in Democratic absentee ballot application last week. Within a six day period from Oct. 14 to 19, Democrat absentee ballot applications to the county increased by 67% as compared to Republican applications, a spike that occurred nowhere else in the state.

* AGAIN, FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... IF WE WENT THROUGH EVERY CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT AND INDEED EVERY LOCAL POLITICAL PRECINCT IN THE COUNTRY NO DOUBT YOU'D FIND HANKY-PANKY. THING IS... VOTER FRAUD SEEMS MUCH MORE PREVALENT AND MUCH MORE ORGANIZED - INSTITUTIONALIZED - ON THE DEMOCRAT SIDE... ON THE LEFT.

* REMEMBER, FOLKS... JFK "STOLE" THE 1960 ELECTION WITH THE HELP OF THE MAFIA AND THE CHICAGO DEMOCRATIC MACHINE.

October 27, 2010 at 8:45 PM

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