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2010
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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.
13 comments:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101024/ap_on_go_ot/us_palin_florida_9
[F]ormer vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told a jubilant crowd of Florida Republicans on Saturday: "You know, the president is now telling us that we're not thinking straight because of all the fear and frustration," Palin said. "You know Mr. President, you have it right on one point there. We are afraid, knowing that your economic policies are driving us off a cliff."
* NOW LET ME ASK YOU... WHO WITH EVEN HALF A BRAIN COULD DISAGREE WITH THAT STATEMENT?
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele thanked Tea Party supporters for their contributions to the Republican Party.
"They restored our faith in the Constitution," Steele said.
* THE PROBLEM IS... HALF THE TIME THE REPUBLICANS DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE - LET ALONE ABIDE BY - THE CONSTITUTION ONCE THEY'RE ELECTED. (STILL... THEY HAVE A BETTER RECORD THAN THE DEMS IN THIS REGARD.) MY POINT BEING... WE THE PEOPLE MUST DEMAND OUR LEADERS - LEADERS OF BOTH PARTIES - REVERE, RESPECT, AND ABIDE BY THE CONSTITUTION.
* IF THIS BELIEF MAKES ME SOUND LIKE AN "EXTREMIST"... (*SIGH*)... WHAT DOES THAT SAY...?!?!
http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/Regulators-close-6-banks-in-apf-1135619637.html?x=0
Regulators on Friday shut down a total of seven banks in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and Arizona, lifting to 139 the number of U.S. banks that have fallen this year as soured loans have mounted and the economy has sputtered.
* AND HOW MANY POLITICALLY CONNECTED BANKERS WHO MADE FORTUNES RUNNING THESE BANKS (INTO THE GROUND!) HAVE GONE TO JAIL...???
* ALLOW ME TO ADD A NEW TRUISM TO THE AMERICAN LEXICON: "FOLLOW THE PROSECUTIONS!" (AS IN "FOLLOW THE MONEY!")
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the banks, the largest of which by far was Hillcrest Bank, based in Overland Park, Kan., with $1.6 billion in assets.
A newly chartered bank subsidiary of Boston-based NBH Holdings Corp. was set up to take over Hillcrest's assets and deposits. The new subsidiary is called Hillcrest Bank N.A.
The FDIC and Hillcrest Bank N.A. agreed to share losses on $1.1 billion of the failed bank's assets. Its failure is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $329.7 million.
* QUESTION: WHY WOULD HILLCREST BANK N.A. AGREE TO THIS...??? HMM...??? AS THE GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO DISTORT MARKETS BY PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS, WHAT'S THE PAYOUT TO HILLCREST BANK N.A. AND WHICH INDIVIDUALS ARE FINANCIALLY BENEFITING...? (WE KNOW THE TAXPAYERS ARE GETTING SCREWED...)
The failure of First Bank of Jacksonville is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $16.2 million; the failure of Progress Bank of Florida is expected to cost $25 million; that of First National Bank of Barnesville, $33.9 million; that of Gordon Bank, $9 million; First Suburban National Bank, $31.4 million; and First Arizona Savings, $32.8 million. In addition, the FDIC and Ameris Bank agreed to share losses on $60 million of First Bank of Jacksonville's loans and other assets. The FDIC and Bay Cities Bank are sharing losses on $82.6 million of Progress Bank of Florida's assets, while the agency and United Bank are sharing losses on $107.3 million of First National Bank of Barnesville's assets. The FDIC and Seaway Bank and Trust are sharing losses on $116.6 million of First Suburban National Bank's assets.
With 139 closures nationwide so far this year, the pace of bank failures exceeds that of 2009, which was already a brisk year for shutdowns with a total of 140.
* AS WITH UNEMPLOYMENT AND DEBT, BANKING FAILURES HAVE GONE FROM BAD TO WORSE UNDER OBAMA... (*SHRUG*)
The growing bank failures have sapped billions of dollars out of the deposit insurance fund. It fell into the red last year, and its deficit stood at $15.2 billion as of June 30.
* FELL INTO THE RED UNDER... (*DRUM ROLL*)... OBAMA... (*SIGH*)
The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list jumped to 829 in the second quarter from 775 three months earlier, even as the industry as a whole had its best quarter since 2007, making $21.6 billion in net income. Banks with more than $10 billion in assets - only 1.3% of the industry - accounted for $19.9 billion of the total earnings.
(*SMIRK*) SEEMS THE OLIGARCHS CONTINUE TO DO EXTRAORDINARILY WELL UNDER... (*DRUM ROLL*)... OBAMA...
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/Barack-and-Michelles-Mumbai-darshan-plans/articleshow/6797379.cms
US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle will be extremely busy in Mumbai, upon landing on November 6 for a two day India visit.
Adding to the Obamas’ busy schedule is Michelle’s likely visit to Kamathipura, where she will meet commercial sex workers...
* HMM... DIDN'T BILL CLINTON DO THE SAME WHEN HE VISITED INDIA...??? (*HUGE FRIGG'N GRIN*)
To ensure fool-proof security, the President’s team has booked the entire the Taj Mahal Hotel, including 570 rooms, all banquets and restaurants.
(*FACE TURNING RED*) (*EYES BULGING*) (*NECK VEINS BULGING*) (*BLOOD PRESSURE SHOOTING THRU THE ROOF*)
* HEY... IT'S NOT LIKE THE U.S.A. IS BROKE... (*SNORT*)... IT'S NOT LIKE WE HAVE EMBASSIES AND CONSULATES IN INDIA... (*GRITTING MY TEETH*)
* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... IT'S A PATTERN. THERE'S NO GETTING AWAY FROM IT; NO DENYING IT.
Since his security contingent and staff will comprise a huge number, 125 rooms at Taj President have also been booked, apart from 80 to 90 rooms each in Grand Hyatt and The Oberoi hotels. The NCPA, where the President is expected to meet representatives from the business community, has also been entirely booked.
* YOU'RE... F--KING... KIDDING... ME... (*GASPING FOR BREATH*) (*ONSET OF A STROKE*)
The officer said, “Obama’s contingent is huge. There are two jumbo jets coming along with Air Force One...
(*CALLING FOR A CRASH CART*)
The President will be accompanied by his chefs, not because he would not like to savour Indian cuisine, but to ensure his food is not spiked.
(*SMIRK*) YEAH... I BET THAT GOES OVER REAL WELL...
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/1010/Blago_retrial_delayed_til_April.html?showall
That sound you hear is Rahm Emanuel exhaling.
A federal judge in Chicago today granted a defense request to delay the retrial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) from January until April 20, a Chicago source confirms. That would put the trial after the Feb. 22 election and even after a runoff, if necessary, slated for April 5.
That's all good news for mayoral candidate and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who was subpoenaed as a defense witnesses at Blago's first trial but never called. The judge is encouraging defense lawyers to change their tactics, so it could be that Emanuel might fit into their revised case. But, even if he does, he'll already have been either defeated for elected to the mayor's job.
(*SNORT*)
* VERY "CONVENIENT," NO? (*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*) CHICAGO (AS WELL AS THE ENTIRE STATE OF ILLINOIS) IS A POLITICAL CESSPOOL. (HEY... WASN'T CHICAGO - AND SPRINGFIELD ILLINOIS - THE POLITICAL TRAINING GROUND OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT...???)
(*SMIRK*)
http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2010/10/24/g-20-a-green-light-to-beat-down-the-buck/
The initial verdict is in after this weekend’s G-20 meeting: expect continued declines in the U.S. dollar.
* TWO-PARTER... Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873.html
The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite.
That a New Elite has emerged over the past 30 years is not really controversial. That its members differ from former elites is not controversial. What sets the tea party apart from other observers of the New Elite is its hostility, rooted in the charge that elites are isolated from mainstream America and ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans.
Let me propose that those allegations have merit.
* FOLKS... THIS IS CHARLES MURRAY WRITING THIS. CHARLES MURRAY IS ONE OF MY IDOLS!
Compared with 50 years ago, the proportion of students coming from old-money families and exclusive prep schools has dropped. The representation of African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans has increased. Yet the student bodies of the elite colleges are still drawn overwhelmingly from the upper middle class.
According to sociologist Joseph Soares's book "The Power of Privilege: Yale and America's Elite Colleges," about four out of five students in the top tier of colleges have parents whose income, education and occupations put them in the top quarter of American families, according to Soares's measure of socioeconomic status. Only about one out of 20 such students come from the bottom half of families.
The discomfiting explanation is that despite need-blind admissions policies, the stellar applicants still hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class and above.
Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55% of SAT-takers this year but got 87% of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board.
This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent - such coaching buys only a few dozen points - but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting.
Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them - which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.
* BINGO!
When they leave college, the New Elite remain in the bubble.
Harvard seniors surveyed in 2007 were headed toward a small number of elite graduate schools (Harvard and Cambridge in the lead) and a small number of elite professional fields (finance and consulting were tied for top choice). Jobs in businesses that provide bread-and-butter goods and services to individual Americans, which make up the overwhelming majority of entry-level openings for aspiring managers, attracted just 1.7% of the Harvard students who went to work right after graduation.
* 1.7%... (THIS IS INSANITY...!!!)
When the New Elite get around to marrying, they don't marry just anybody. ... The New Elite marry each other, combining their large incomes and genius genes, and then produce offspring who get the benefit of both.
* To be continued...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of..._
* SORRY, GANG... IT'S ACTUALLY GONNA BE A THREE PARTER!
(Part 2 of 3)
We know, for one thing, that the New Elite clusters in a comparatively small number of cities and in selected neighborhoods in those cities. This concentration isn't limited to the elite neighborhoods of Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. It extends to university cities with ancillary high-tech jobs, such as Austin and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle.
With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows - "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end. Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.
* MIXED MARTIAL ARTS. (CONFESSION: I HAD TO LOOK THAT ONE UP MYSELF! BUT, HEY... I GET THE POINT.)
They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).
* AGAIN... I'VE NEVER READ A "LEFT BEHIND" NOVEL EITHER; BUT I KNOW WHAT THE SERIES IS ABOUT. SAME WITH HARLEQUIN ROMANCES... (*SMILE*)
They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.
* I'M AN "EXQUISITE B&B" KINDA GUY MYSELF AND CRINGE AT THE IDEA OF A "FLOATING MALL" CRUISE MYSELF, BUT... I'D ENJOY AN RV VACATION AND I'D LOVE TO "DO" BRANSON!
There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.
(*NOD*)
Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation.
* To be continued...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Part of the isolation is political.
In that Harvard survey I mentioned, 72% of Harvard seniors said their beliefs were to the left of the nation as a whole, compared with 10% who said theirs were to the right of it. The political preferences of academics and journalists among the New Elite also conform to the suspicions of the tea party.
But the politics of the New Elite are not the main point. When it comes to the schools where they were educated, the degrees they hold, the Zip codes where they reside and the television shows they watch, I doubt if there is much to differentiate the staff of the conservative Weekly Standard from that of the liberal New Republic, or the scholars at the American Enterprise Institute from those of the Brookings Institution, or Republican senators from Democratic ones.
* AND THIS IS A KEY POINT...!!! IT'S GONE BEYOND "OUR TEAM" VS. "THEIR TEAM" IN AN IDEOLOGICAL SENSE; IT'S NOW "THEM" - THE ELITE - VS. "US"... THE FOLKS WHO PAY FOR RATHER THAN PROFIT FROM BAILOUTS.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/mary-kate-cary/2010/10/22/big-labors-big-mistake-in-the-2010-elections.html
[T]he American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME...just became the single biggest outside spender of the 2010 election cycle...
They’re the biggest union of government workers in the United States.
If you take a look at the top five outside spenders on [political] candidates running in the midterms, you’ll see that the National Education Association (the teachers union) and the Service Employees International Union (second largest after AFSCME in terms of public employees, also has a lot of healthcare workers) have spent a combined total with AFSCME of $171.5 million.
* ALMOST ALL OF IT TO ELECT/RE-ELECT DEMOCRATS TO OFFICE.
Because mandatory union dues are taken out of union workers’ government payroll checks, and those payroll checks are paid for by taxpayers, it’s our money, too. And it’s an average of $390 per union member in mandatory dues that they never see in their government paycheck. It comes right out through the payroll system. (Maybe a union member will run for governor of New York on “The Dues Are Too Damn High” platform.)
After trillions in government spending to increase the size and scope of government, AFSCME's membership has grown 25% in the past decade.
Here’s a quote that says volumes, from Larry Scanlon, head of AFSCME’s political operations: "The more members coming in, the more dues coming in, the more money we have for politics.” [T]hey think the bigger the government, the better.
* FOLKS... WE'VE GOT TO BREAK THE POWER OF THE GOVERNMENT UNIONS. INDEED, WE SHOULD GO BACK TO TRADITIONAL AMERICAN THINKING AND BAN GOVERNMENT UNIONS. (NOTE: GOVERNMENT UNIONS - NOT "UNIONS" - NOT PRIVATE UNIONS.)
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100008311/will-someone-please-shut-krugman-up/
Will someone please shut Krugman up[?]
* THAT'S ACTUALLY THE TITLE OF THIS OP-ED! (*HUGE FRIGG'N GRIN*) HEAR! HEAR!
"[O]ld Kruggers," Nobel prize winner and New York Times columnist, is at it again. Not content to lecture his own country’s administration about how they are not spending enough, Professor Krugman lambasts Britain’s coalition government in his latest column for its deficit reduction plan, which he reckons will condemn the UK to a depression.
(*SMILE*)
[T]he idea that you can more or less indefinitely keep putting off deficit reduction until the economy is firing on all cylinders again just looks like an excuse to me for continuing to spend at unaffordable levels.
[Krugman] accuses the Tories of being “ideological” in their single minded pursuit of deficit reduction, and of using the crisis to dismantle the welfare state, yet he conveniently skirts around the underlying issue, which is in essence that the country can no longer afford this expenditure.
(*NOD*)
The Obama Administration’s reluctance to take similar action in the US is extraordinarily irresponsible, and one of the reasons why the Democrats are so hopelessly down in the polls.
(*NOD*)
The striking thing about my last two visits to the US is just how worried by the deficit most Americans are. Indeed they are ashamed by it...
* YES! YES!! YES!!! THIS BRIT HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! I AND EVERY ONE OF MY FELLOW CITIZENS WHOM I RESPECT IS ACTIVELY ASHAMED OF OUR NATION'S FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY!
Professor Krugman suggests that Britain has nothing to fear from excessive public debt...
* BECAUSE KRUGMAN IS A MORON...!!! YES...! IT'S THAT FRIGG'N SIMPLE...!!! KRUGMAN IS A MORON AND THE PEOPLE WHO TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY ARE MORONS TOO!
Britain’s decline through the twentieth century as an economic superpower directly correlates with increased indebtedness.
What makes the current unsustainable trajectory of public debt so worrying is that it’s not military spending that is [both of our main] problems...
[Unlike WW-1 and WW-2] we cannot rely on demilitarisation [post-Iraq War and post Afghanistan War] to come to the rescue of the public finances, as it has in the past. [Current] public debt is excessive for entirely different reasons - the excess in public spending is not on fighting wars but on treating ourselves - and unless America does something about it soon, the US will decline economically and geopolitically over the next fifty years as surely as Britain did in the last century.
* TRUTH... (*SIGH*)
http://www.sfweekly.com/2010-10-20/news/let-it-bleed/
* QUESTION: WHICH AMERICAN CITY WOULD YOU NAME AS THE "CAPITAL" OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM...???
"Infinite" is not a word you expect to find in a report on municipal spending. It's more of a science fiction–type term - "Tremble, Earthling, before the infinite might of Galaxor!" But there it was, in a recent report on San Francisco's finances...
* YEP. HAD I BEEN ASKED THE QUESTION PRIOR TO READING THIS ARTICLE I TOO WOULD HAVE ANSWERED "SAN FRANCISCO."
Spending on the city's employee retirement system in the past decade had grown at an "infinite" rate.
Naturally, that's an exaggeration. If you do the math, the city's retirement costs for employees in the past 10 years actually grew only 66,733%.
(*GUFFAW*)
Still, you might call that a "Galaxor-sized" number.
In fiscal year 1999-2000, the city spent about $300,000 on its retirement system.
In fiscal year 2009-10, it was $200.5 million.
* YEP... YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY... (*SIGH*)
Benefits alone - not salaries, just benefits - for current and retired employees this year are budgeted at $993 million.
* OH... AND BY THE WAY...
Spending on retirees' health care and pensions is conservatively projected to triple within five years.
And after that? Infinite.
This is not a conspiracy but, rather, a mathematical certainty. It's also not a surprise. Every San Francisco government official who can do math has known about this calamity for years.
This isn't a uniquely San Franciscan problem. Cities and states across the country are facing a pension and health care meltdown. In fact, compared to many retirement systems nationwide, San Francisco's has been well run. There's no rampant corruption (cough, cough, Bell), and it wasn't spectacularly mismanaged (Achoo! San Diego). Many retirement systems would gladly trade places with this city's. But that's because, given the chance, those other cities would actually try to solve the problem.
What's uniquely San Franciscan about our benefits crisis is that we aren't trying. San Francisco has known about this looming crisis for a decade - and gone out of its way to make things worse. In fact, on those few occasions when somebody has tried to do something about it, city government has worked with unions to successfully sabotage those efforts.
* ANYWAY, FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THIS IS WHO THE DEMOCRATS ARE. THEY'RE NOT SIMPLY THE PARTY OF INCOMPETENCE. NO! THEY'RE THE PARTY ACTIVELY DOING EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO COLLAPSE AMERICA'S TRADITIONAL FREE MARKET ECONOMY.
* AND THEY'RE SUCCEEDING...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/250784/npr-test-case-republicans-andrew-c-mccarthy
The least significant aspect of NPR’s canning of Juan Williams is . . . Juan Williams. The important thing is what [America] should start looking like after November 2.
Why does a country that is trillions in debt, and in which people have unlimited options for obtaining information, need NPR? More to the point, why do we need to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which keeps NPR afloat?
Juan Williams is getting the attention, but he’s just a sideshow. The real scam is NPR.
It is no longer [even] known as “National Public Radio.” On marketing’s scale of toxicity, “Public” comes in about where “Fried” did for Colonel Sanders. So NPR, like KFC, became a set of initials that formally stand for nothing yet bear a nostalgic ring, signaling to loyal patrons that NPR still traffics in the same old lefty gospel.
NPR’s viewpoint is public only in the sense of who is picking up the tab, not whose perspective is being represented. Trouble is that when consigned to the market’s not so tender mercies, that gospel crashes and burns, à la Air America. Hence NPR strategically dropped “public,” intuiting that most of the real public might be inclined to shut off the spigot if it were constantly reminded that it is paying for this bunk. Better to let sleeping rubes lie.
[T]he former National Public Radio is now at pains to assure the public that less than 2% of NPR’s support comes from federal sources (i.e., taxpayers). Instead, [they'll tell you,] “the greatest portion of our funding comes from our stations.”
Those, of course, would be public television stations, which, NPR’s fine-print concedes, get a lot of their “support” from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
(*SMIRK*)
The tab for [CPB] this year will be a staggering $420 million, and President Obama’s requests in the out years (through 2013) reach $460 million.
NPR’s lifeline - taxpayer underwriting of the CPB - has actually metastasized into about 9,000% of its original size.
That pile of CPB dough, once channeled back to NPR through its “member stations,” is laundered of its “public” character because CPB masquerades (courtesy of federal law) as a private company. Indeed, it says it is a private non-profit company because the annual hundreds of millions it rakes in from you do not come directly from you; they flow through Uncle Sam. (In Washington finance, this hocus-pocus makes you a “non-profit.”)
(*GRIM CHUCKLE*)
[So forget Juan Williams. He's already landed on his feet.] The real victim here is the public.
And the real test is what Republicans do about that if the Tea Party tide sweeps them back into power. The CPB is a...grossly irresponsible expenditure for a government that is flat broke. [I]t’s not even a rounding error compared to Obamacare, but if [a newly elected Republican House] can’t bring [itself] to repeal the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . . .
(*SHRUG*)
* THE AUTHOR IS CORRECT. WE'LL SEE...
http://blogs.forbes.com/gordonchang/2010/10/22/will-beijing-own-the-smithsonian/?boxes=opinionschannellatest
“Why do great nations fail?” asks a graying figure - presumably a professor - to an audience of Chinese students in Beijing, in a video released yesterday by Citizens Against Government Waste as part of a national ad campaign.
The year is 2030.
His answer: “They all make the same mistakes, turning their back on the principles that made them great.”
America, in particular, took on “crushing debt.”
“Of course, we owned most of their debt,” the professor, referring to Americans, smiles, “so now they work for us.”
The students laugh.
* SEE THE COMMERCIAL VIA: http://swineline.org/media/
Today, Uncle Sam owes $13.67 trillion, and the amount increases $4.2 billion a day. The Federal deficit for the current year, FY 2011, is $1.27 trillion...FY 2010’s $1.29 trillion.
* $2.56 BILLION IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION. (IF YOU REALLY WANNA GET SICK TO YOUR STOMACH, CHECK OUT EVERY YEAR SINCE THE DEMS TOOK OVER CONGRESS IN JANUARY OF 2007!)
In FY 2010, the interest on the national debt was $414.0 billion.
Prime Minister David Cameron is slashing the U.K. budget, making painful decisions, because he realizes the alternative to austerity is selling his country to China. He doesn’t want to do that. We shouldn’t either.
China is no ordinary holder of our debt. It is not a benign Spain or Singapore, for instance. Chinese leaders see every economic advantage as a geopolitical tool and will seek to use each one of them against us. This is the lesson we should have learned when Beijing stopped the export of rare-earth minerals to Japan last month to gain an advantage in their East China Sea dispute.
[Last] Monday, Beijing stopped exports of these minerals to us.
The Chinese say they intend to change the international system, and it’s obvious they want to do so in ways that will disrupt stability and undermine the values free peoples hold dear. This means, at a minimum, we shouldn’t be giving Beijing more leverage than it already holds.
In August, Mainland China held $868.4 billion in U.S. Treasury obligations, according to official statistics that do not include holdings through nominees. In addition, it owns about $400 billion in government agency debt, such as that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Beijing can’t hurt us unless we give it the means to do so. We are, at this moment, doing just that.
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