Thursday, December 30, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, December 30, 2010


Forget the lawyers - and the money - sometimes all you need is...
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11 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/sanit_filthy_snow_slow_mo_qH57MZwC53QKOJlekSSDJK

Sanitation Department bosses from the snow-slammed outer boroughs ordered their drivers to snarl the blizzard cleanup to protest budget cuts - a disastrous move that turned streets into a minefield for emergency-services vehicles, The [New York] Post has learned.

Miles of roads stretching from as north as Whitestone, Queens, to the south shore of Staten Island still remained treacherously unplowed last night because of the shameless job action, several sources and a city lawmaker said, which was over a raft of demotions, attrition and budget cuts.

* IF THESE CHARGES CAN BE CORROBORATED THEN CRIMINAL CHARGES SHOULD BE FILED AGAINST THOSE RESPONSIBLE.

* BUT, FOLKS... THERE'S NO "ROSY SCENARIO" HERE. IF THESE LATEST CHARGES ARE FALSE - OR CAN'T BE PROVEN - THEN WHAT ARE WE LEFT WITH? THAT'S RIGHT... WE'RE LEFT WITH KNOWING THAT THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK IS TOTALLY INCOMPETENT. ONE THING IS FOR SURE, THE SNOW - AND THE UNPLOWED STREETS... DAY AFTER DAY... - WERE AND ARE REAL.

City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Queens)...was visited yesterday by a group of guilt-ridden sanitation workers who confessed the shameless plot. Halloran said he met with three plow workers from the Sanitation Department - and two Department of Transportation supervisors who were on loan - at his office after he was flooded with irate calls from constituents. The snitches "didn't want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation," Halloran said. "They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

New York's "Strongest" used a variety of tactics to drag out the plowing process - and pad overtime checks - which included keeping plows slightly higher than the roadways and skipping over streets along their routes, the sources said.

* AGAIN, FOLKS, TO MAKE IT CLEAR, THESE ARE SIMPLY ALLEGATIONS. EITHER WAY, THOUGH, THE FACT REMAINS... THE SNOW DIDN'T GET HANDLED THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE.

* FOLKS... IMAGINE IF ALONG WITH BEING STRANDED THESE PEOPLE HAD HAD THEIR POWER CUT OFF...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* FOLKS... AMERICA IS IN DECLINE. THERE'S SIMPLY NO DOUBT OF THIS.

December 30, 2010 at 10:05 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304173704575578190261574342.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

[T]he home price boom that began in January 1998, when the previous 1989 peak was finally surpassed, and topped out in June 2006 was extraordinary. The 173% gain in the Case-Shiller 10-City Index (the only monthly data metric that predates the year 2000) in those nine years averaged an eye-popping 19.2% per year.

As we know now, those gains had very little to do with market fundamentals, and everything to do with distortionary government policies that mandated loans to marginal borrowers, and set off a national mania for real-estate wealth and a torrent of temporarily easy credit.

* THESE WERE THE POLICIES OF BILL CLINTON, HIS HOUSING SECRETARY OF THE TIME ANDREW CUOMO (NOW GOV. OF NY) AND OF COURSE BARNEY FRANK, CHRIS DODD, AND UNFORTUNATETLY - THOUGH TO A LESSER EXTENT - GEORGE W. BUSH AND HIS FELLOW RINOs IN CONGRESS DURING THESE YEARS.

In his book "Irrational Exuberance," Yale economist Robert Shiller (co-creator of the Case-Shiller indices along with economists Karl Case and Allan Weiss), determined that in the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, home prices in the U.S. increased an average 3.35% per year, just a tad above the average rate of inflation.

* WHICH IS WHY A HOUSE IS NOT AN "INVESTMENT," FOLKS - IT'S A PLACE TO LIVE!

* NOTE... THAT 3.25% FIGURE DOESN'T TAKE ACCOUNT OF THE COSTS OF HOME OWNERSHIP - i.e. TAXES, UPKEEP AND REPAIR, INSURANCE... ETC.

In January 1998 the 10-City Index was at 82.7. If home prices had followed the 3.35% annual 100 year trend line, then the index would have arrived at 126.7 in October 2010. This week, Case-Shiller announced that figure to be 159.0. This would suggest that the index would need to decline an additional 20.3% from current levels just to get back to the trend line.

* IN PLAIN ENGLISH: AMERICAN RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE IS STILL OVER-PRICED BY SLIGHTLY MORE THAN TWENTY PERCENT!

In trying to maintain artificial prices, government policies are keeping new buyers from entering the market, exposing taxpayers to untold trillions in liabilities and delaying a real recovery. We should recognize this reality and not pin our hopes on a return to price normalcy that never was that normal to begin with.

* I PRAY TO GOD THAT REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS - INCLUDING MY CONGRESSWOMAN, NAN HAYWORTH - ARE READING THIS COLUMN.

December 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204527804576043893513811886.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

You'd think poor Michigan has enough economic troubles without the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission placing a $300 million to $500 million annual surtax on the state's electric utility bills. But on December 16 FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff announced new rules that would essentially socialize the cost of transmission lines across 13 states in the Midwest.

* WHAT...? YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THIS BEFORE...? WELL... NEITHER HAD I!

That region-wide pricing scheme, according to a study commissioned by utility companies, will force Michigan to pay about 20% of as much as $20 billion in new high-voltage transmission lines - though Michigan businesses and homeowners will get little benefit.

Thanks to FERC's new tariff, nearly everything in Michigan - from cars and trucks to Frosted Flakes - will be more expensive to make.

Indiana will also absorb new costs, as will industrial users and utility rate payers in Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

* HUH...?!?! WHAT...?!?! OBAMANONICS STRIKES AGAIN...!!! (YES, VIRGINIA... OBAMA IS A SOCIALIST...) (*SMIRK*)

FERC's grand vision is to build hundreds of miles of transmission lines across the Midwest, linked to windmills in Iowa and the Dakotas. Mr. Wellinghoff says this new ruling "is the next step in the evolution of its transmission and cost allocation process." [The consequence?] This is another discriminatory subsidy for wind energy that will raise electricity prices on everyone, notably on those who don't rely on wind for electric power.

* A*G*E... O*F... O*B*A*M*A...!!!

[T]his is the first step in a FERC scheme to socialize transmission costs nationwide.

Traditionally and by law, FERC has set prices on the economically efficient and environmentally sound standard that users pay for the cost of the electricity they consume. For at least 65 years, the courts have ruled that payment by the beneficiaries is the "touchstone in any legal analysis of FERC-approved rate schemes" (as the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has put it). The new pricing rule departs from that principle, because FERC would establish a new category of transmission lines called "Multi-Value-Projects." This would take into account broad "public policy goals," most notably increased use of so-called clean energy to comply with renewable energy standards.

* TRANSLATION: IF OBAMA GETS HIS WAY, WE'RE SCREWED!

Let's be very clear on what's happening here: Mr. Wellinghoff and FERC are trying to establish by regulatory fiat a national energy policy that Congress has refused to endorse.

Last summer Congress [ - a Democrat Congress at that - ] rejected the Obama Administration's renewable energy standard law because it would have inflated power costs. So the fiefdom at FERC is unilaterally moving ahead to require that industries and homeowners pay a surtax on their utility bills for a nonexistent renewable energy policy. This is similar to the EPA's initiatives to regulate carbon even after Congress rejected cap and trade. The governors of at least 15 Western and Northeastern states have sent a letter to Congress objecting to the socializing of costs, complaining that the pricing plans would make electricity more expensive.

* TRULY, PEOPLE, OBAMA SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. DAY IN AND DAY OUT YOU READ (HERE) ABOUT THE ADMINISTRATION'S VARIOUS ASSAULTS UPON THE CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF POWERS AND INDIVIDUAL CIVIL LIBERTIES.

The FERC pricing scheme is politically insidious, and arguably unconstitutional, because it enables states with renewable standards to export the costs of those policies to other states without these laws. Why should a factory in Pontiac, Michigan subsidize the wind energy costs of a plant in Elgin, Illinois?

December 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047742746513406.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

ObamaCare proponents derided fears of "death panels" as a product of tea partiers' fevered imagination... [and then] the Food and Drug Administration banned doctors from prescribing Avastin...

(*SIGH*)

Yet in some clinical trials Avastin has halted the spread of patients' cancer for months, providing respite to women and their families wracked by physical and psychological pain.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Ponder the FDA's justification: there wasn't "sufficient" benefit in relation to Avastin's risks.

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

Sufficient according to whom? For your wife, mother or daughter with terminal breast cancer...[?]

The FDA made a crude cost calculation; as everyone in Washington knows, it wouldn't have banned Avastin if the drug cost only $1,000 a year, instead of $90,000. [T]he real cost to these women a swifter, less dignified death. The Avastin story is emblematic of the government's broader agenda to ration care based on cost and politics. Once ObamaCare comes into full force, such rationing will be pervasive. When the government sees insufficient benefit, all but the wealthiest and most politically connected will have to go without.

(*NOD*)

Think it can't happen here? Think again. The 2009 stimulus bill spent $1.1 billion to research "comparative effectiveness." That's the same approach used by Britain's National Health Service to ration care, weighing cost against factors such as the ever-elusive concept of quality of life.

ObamaCare created a commission - the Independent Payment Advisory Board - tasked with limiting spending on Medicare. Its "recommendations" will be binding, unless Congress can come up with equivalent cost-savings of its own. For the first time, an unelected group will be empowered to limit health spending...

There's an enormous difference between government-imposed rationing and treatment decisions in the private sector. When insurance companies deny coverage - for example, on grounds that treatment is "experimental" or not "medically necessary" - they do so based on contract language agreed to in advance by subscribers. If you don't like what a particular insurer offers, you're free to shop around. Moreover, you and your doctor have extensive rights to appeal the insurer's denial, and wealthy patients can pay for the care out of their own pockets. But when the government denies approval of a medication, there will often be no appeal and no escape. FDA disapproval will be the equivalent of the emperor's thumbs-down.

If government can limit Americans' choice of effective medical treatments, there's no limit to its control over our bodies, and the right to bodily autonomy is an illusion. In the context of the new health law, the FDA's Avastin decision is the tip of a looming iceberg of government rationing.

December 30, 2010 at 11:00 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/558190/201012291905/All-The-Missing-Devils.aspx

"All the Devils Are Here" has been billed as the definitive book on the cause of the financial crisis. But it follows the same anti-market narrative as other books on the subject. Same story, different title.

Typical for this genre, it demonizes bankers and absolves government officials. The "devils" are all on Wall Street, none on Pennsylvania Avenue.

How convenient...

(*SMIRK*)

This, of course, reflects the liberal journalist mindset.

According to the book's dust jacket, the authors are "two of America's most acclaimed business journalists" Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean.

* AHH... BUT WHO DO THEY WORK FOR...???

[T]hey work for the New York Times and Vanity Fair...

(*SMIRK*)

The historical record is clear that Washington laid the groundwork for the financial crisis by trying to expand U.S. homeownership through private lenders and government-sponsored Fannie and Freddie.

The government was the buyer of two-thirds of the subprime and other bad loans that triggered the financial collapse.

Through Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Administration, CRA and other programs, the government subsidized and in some cases mandated the extension of credit to high-risk borrowers. This in turn propagated risks for financial firms, the mortgage market, taxpayers and ultimately the entire financial system.

Through banking regulations - enforced by HUD and several other federal agencies - the government directed investments into "affordable" mortgages and pressured the financial community to lower credit standards.

Why? Because Washington wanted more people to buy homes.

* ...AND DAMN THE COST... DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES... (*SIGH*)

By focusing on Wall Street deregulation, "All the Devils" misses the point. The root problem was social policy in Washington, not financial practices on Wall Street.

The real "devils" were inside the Beltway. And many of them are still there, unscathed by the scandal - thanks in large part to a raft of intellectually dishonest books on the subject.

* SAY IT WITH ME, KIDS... B*A*R*N*E*Y... F*R*A*N*K...

December 30, 2010 at 12:21 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/135415-obama-uses-recess-appointment-to-seat-second-ranking-justice-official

President Obama (mis)used a recess appointment Wednesday to name James Cole as deputy attorney general.

* I'M TELLING YOU, FOLKS... BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA HAS ONLY CONTEMPT FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF POWERS. THE PROOF IS IN NEWSBITE AFTER NEWSBITE, DAY AFTER DAY, WEEK AFTER WEEK, MONTH AFTER MONTH... FOR MORE THAN TWO LONG YEARS... (*SIGH*)

* SEE RELATED -- http://thehill.com/homenews/house/135439-gop-lawmaker-calls-obama-recess-appointment-absolutely-shocking

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has angrily denounced President Obama’s recess appointment of James Cole as deputy attorney general. “I strongly oppose the recess appointment of James Cole to lead the national security team at the Department of Justice,” King said in a statement. “The appointment indicates that the Obama Administration continues to try to implement its dangerous policies of treating Islamic terrorism as a criminal matter.”

(*NOD*)

Cole has advocated for the use of civilian trials in prosecuting terrorism suspects, and King views the appointment as a sign of the administration’s intent to continue to try detainees through the criminal justice system rather than through military tribunals...

* YEP!

King said that Cole’s appointment is exactly the wrong message...especially after the public pushback on Obama’s attempts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba. During the lame-duck session, Congress attached language to the $1.1 trillion spending resolution to keep the government funded next year that would prevent Obama from spending any funds to try terrorism suspects in civilian court instead of military commissions.

* MEANING EVEN THE DEMOCRATS WHO CONTROLLED THE LAME DUCK CONGRESS CONCURRED!

“This may be one of the worst appointments by President Obama during his presidency,” King added, referring to Cole as a “left-wing ideologue who places terrorists in the same categories as drug peddlers."

“After the American people, and the Democratic Congress, unequivocally rejected President Obama’s plans to close Guantanamo and transfer admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed to the United States for trial in federal civilian court, I find it absolutely shocking that President Obama would appoint someone who has diminished the 9/11 terrorist attacks by comparing them to the drug trade and who believes that a civilian courtroom is the appropriate venue for 9/11 trials,” King continued.

December 30, 2010 at 12:42 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.breitbart.tv/liberal-star-blogger-ezra-klein-constitution-has-no-binding-power-on-anything-confusing-because-its-over-100-years-old/

* YOU'RE... JUST... NOT... GONNA... BELIEVE... THIS...

* CLICK THE LINK; PLAY THE VIDEO.

* THIS F--KING IDIOT KLEIN IS ON THE PAYROLL OF THE FRIGG'N WASHINGTON POST...!!!

* SERIOUSLY... THIS IDIOT SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY FIRED. ADVANCING THE ARGUMENT THAT THE CONSTITUTION IS IRRELEVANT IS THE VERY DEFINITION OF SEDITION.

* OH...! AND BESIDES WORKING FOR THE WASHINGTON POST, THIS FOOL IS PAID TO WRITE A COLUMN FOR NEWSWEEK AND ALSO TO APPEAR ON MSNBC.

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... THIS IS FRIGG'N UNBELIEVABLE. (OR AT LEAST IT WOULD BE IN AN AGE PRIOR TO THE AGE OF OBAMA.)

December 30, 2010 at 5:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/169577/Winter-may-be-coldest-in-1000-years/

Britain's winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years.

Latest figures reveal that the average temperature since December 1 has been a perishing -1C. That makes it the second coldest since records began in 1659.

* GLOBAL WARMING... (*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*) (*LAUGHING OUT LOUD*)

December 30, 2010 at 5:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=403

Liberals never tire of discussing their own generosity, particularly when demanding that the government take your money by force to fund shiftless government employees overseeing counterproductive government programs. This week, we'll take a peek at the charitable giving of these champions of the poor.

George W. Bush gave away more than 10% of his income each year he was president, as he did before becoming president.

In 2009, the Obamas gave 5.9% of their income to charity, about the same as they gave in 2006 and 2007.

[I]n 2005, Obama gave about the same dollar amount to charity as President George Bush did... on an income of $1.7 million - more than twice as much as President Bush's $735,180.

[I]n 2006, Bush gave more to charity than Obama on an income one-third smaller than Obama's.

In the eight years before he became president, Obama gave an average of 3.5% of his income to charity...

In the decade before Joe Biden became vice president, the Bidens gave a total - all 10 years combined - of $3,690 to charity, or 0.2% of their income. (They gave in a decade what most Americans in their tax bracket give in an average year, or about one row of hair plugs.)

Of course, even in Biden's stingiest years, he gave more to charity than Sen. John Kerry did in 1995, which was a big fat goose egg.

(*SMIRK*)

Kerry did, however, spend half a million dollars on a 17th-century Dutch seascape painting that year, as Peter Schweizer reports in his 2008 book, "Makers and Takers."

To be fair, 1995 was an off-year for Kerry's charitable giving. The year before, he gave $2,039 to charity, and the year before that a staggering $175. (He also dropped a $5 bill in the Salvation Army pail and almost didn't ask for change.)

In 1998, Al Gore gave $353 to charity - about a day's take for a lemonade stand in his neighborhood. That was 10% of the national average for charitable giving by people in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket. (Gore was at the very top of that bracket, with an income of $197,729.)

When Sen. Ted Kennedy released his tax returns to run for president in the '70s, they showed that Kennedy gave a bare 1% of his income to charity - or, as Schweizer says, "about as much as Kennedy claimed as a write-off on his 50-foot sailing sloop Curragh." (Cash tips to bartenders and cocktail waitresses are not considered charitable donations.)

In 2006 and 2007, John McCain, who files separately from his rich wife, gave 27.3% and 28.6% of his income to charity.

In 2005, Vice President Cheney gave 77% of his income to charity. (He also shot a lawyer in the face, which I think should count for something.)

Elected Democrats crow about how much they love the poor by demanding overburdened taxpayers fund government redistribution schemes, but can never seem to open their own wallets. The only evidence we have that Democrats love the poor is that they consistently back policies that will create more of them.

(*APPRECIATIVE SMILE*)

December 30, 2010 at 6:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/world/europe/29france.html?_r=2&scp=6&sq=doreen%20carvajal&st=cse

* YOU'RE GONNA LOVE THIS ONE, FOLKS...! (*BLOOD PRESSURE RISING*)

Since a low-key Christmas Eve announcement of a French sale of assault ships to Russia, high-level government deal makers have boasted about the multimillion-euro deal like it was a soccer game triumph. “France wins,” declares the Web site for the Élysée Palace.

* YEP! YOU READ THAT RIGHT! OUR NATO "ALLY" FRANCE IS SELLING PUTIN'S RUSSIA A STATE OF THE ART WARSHIP...!!!

The boxy, 600-foot-long Mistral vessel is an advanced helicopter carrier equipped with a command center and hospital for military landing operations.

One of the sticking points in negotiations was whether the deal would include advanced naval weapons and defense systems. In the months leading to the deal, a series of French officials softened their stand, saying that France was willing to supply the technology without restrictions.

* YEP! YOU READ THAT RIGHT TOO!

Under the deal, two of the ships will be built in the French shipyards of St.-Nazaire on France’s Atlantic coast and the next two will be built in St. Petersburg, Russia.

* MEANING THE FRENCH ARE EXPORTING THE TECHNOLOGICAL KNOW-HOW AS WELL AS THE ACTUAL TECHNOLOGY.

December 30, 2010 at 6:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/2010/12/30/20101230phoenix-area-residents-report-snow-falling-valley.html

Plunging temperatures and lingering cloud cover brought a rare sight to many parts of [Arizona's Paradise] Valley today - brief periods of snow flurries, the National Weather Service said.

Sightings were reported in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Fountain Hills, Cave Creek, Peoria, Glendale and Anthem and parts of Phoenix. (The Weather Service confirmed the reports in several of those communities.)

* JUST REMEMBER, FOLKS... (*GUFFAW*)... IT'S A GLOBAL WARMING (*STILL CHUCKLING*) EMERGENCY EVEN WHEN IT'S SNOWING IN ARIZONA!

* COOLING = WARMING; HEAT = SNOW; PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN...

(*SNORT*) (*SNICKER*)

December 30, 2010 at 6:14 PM

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