Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, December 29, 2010


Oh, no! It's Big Sis!
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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203731004576045871958570788.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

A major Republican victory in the recent tax deal with the White House was the refusal to extend the Build America Bond (BAB) program. But Wall Street needn't fear. Republican Congressman John Mica recently said that "I can almost guarantee" that the program for subsidized bonds will be funded next year.

* JOHN MICA = RINO.

A stalwart of the Tom DeLay era, Mr. Mica will soon be running the House Transportation Committee...

* WHY...? (RHETORICAL QUESTION, OBVIOUSLY.) I SAY SCREW SENIORITY; LET'S APPOINT THE BEST PEOPLE TO THE BEST POSTS AND LOCK THE RINO's OUT OF POWER.

* I SUGGEST CALLING JOHN BOEHNER's OFFICE TO MAKE THIS POINT. HIS NUMBER: (202) 225-6205 or (513) 779-5400

The program's biggest winners are arguably Wall Street bond traders, who have earned some $700 million in fees over two years. Goldman has received at least $55 million.

* THE GOP MUST BREAK THE POWER OF THE OLIGARCHS!

Extending the [Obama initiated] program would also add [yet another] $36 billion to the federal debt over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

[As to the states,] with more than $2.8 trillion in outstanding debt carried by municipalities and another $2 trillion in unfunded public worker pension and health-care liabilities, the feds should be finding ways to encourage states and cities to cut their debt burdens, not add to them.

* HERE'S WHAT'S FRUSTRATING: I JUST CALLED BOEHNER'S WASHINGTON OFFICE. VOICEMAIL PICKS UP BUT IT'S FULL SO YOU CAN'T LEAVE A MESSAGE. THERE WAS HOWEVER A LIVE HUMAN BEING ANSWERING PHONES AT HIS DISTRICT OFFICE IN OHIO SO I LEFT MY COMMENTS WITH HER. UNFORTUNATELY, SHE HAD NO CLUE WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT. YOU'D THINK THAT A STAFFER TO THE INCOMING SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES READS THE WSJ... BUT APPARENTLY YOU'D THINK WRONG. (*SHRUG*)

December 29, 2010 at 1:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204467204576048062199771064.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

Earlier this year, leading House Republicans proposed to privatize mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or place them in receivership starting in two years.

Now, as Republicans prepare to assume control of the House next week, they aren't in as big a rush...

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

Republicans were backing a bill by Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) to start cutting the government's ties to the mortgage giants or begin winding them down in two years; if they were deemed financially viable, they would become fully private within five years. "Of all the dumb regulation that caused our economic crisis, none was dumber than that which created the (Fannie and Freddie) monopolies," Mr. Hensarling said in March.

(*NOD*)

* BUT NOW WE'RE GETTING STATEMENTS LIKE THIS OUT OF CERTAIN REPUBLICANS:

"We recognize that some things can be done overnight and other things can't be," said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), incoming chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee, which oversees Fannie and Freddie. "You have to recognize what the impact would be on the fragile housing market as it stands right now."

* PERHAPS LIKE JOHN MICA, SCOTT GARRETT ISN'T READY FOR A CHAIRMANSHIP.

A hasty end to the government's support of Fannie and Freddie would mean fewer Americans could get home loans...

* SO...??? IN THE MEANTIME THEY'D CONTINUE TO SAVE, INVESTING THESE GROWING SAVINGS IN THE LARGER ECONOMY, STIMULATING THE LARGER ECONOMY! (MEMO TO GOP: SAVINGS ARE GOOD...!!!)

...causing home sales and prices to drop even further...

* AND ISN'T THAT GOOD FOR THOSE IN THE MARKET FOR A HOUSE...?!?! (PARTICULARLY THEIR FIRST HOUSE...?!?!)

...and pushing taxpayers' cost for rescuing the mortgage giants even higher, said Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas), a former banker and housing developer who serves on the House Financial Services Committee.

(*SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)

* To be continued...

December 29, 2010 at 1:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

* WHAT'S NEUGEBAUER BLATHERING ABOUT...??? THE SOLUTION IS NOT TO "RESCUE" THE MORTGAGE GIANTS! PERIOD! LET 'EM TAKE THEIR LOSSES AS THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN MADE TO FROM THE BEGINNING! STOP TRYING TO CREATE A NEW HOUSING BUBBLE...!!! (FRIGG'N IDIOTS...)

"You'd cause Freddie and Fannie to have even larger losses than they'd already have," Mr. Neugebauer said.

* FINE. IF THAT'S REALITY THEN THAT'S REALITY. LET'S FACE UP TO IT NOW AND DEAL WITH IT NOW INSTEAD OF CONSTANTLY KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD.

One way to lessen the government's role would be to reduce the maximum size of loans Fannie and Freddie can purchase. The amount is now set at $729,750 in high-cost areas such as New York and San Francisco.

* I'VE GOT AN EVEN BETTER IDEA! LIMIT THE AMOUNT TO FOUR TIMES THE BUYER'S DOWN PAYMENT OR $200,000 - WHICHEVER IS LARGER!

With home prices sinking, lawmakers and the Obama administration face intense pressure from the real estate and banking industries to maintain some federal support.

* LET PRICES SINK! THE MARKET IS THE MARKET; INTERFERRING WITH THE MARKET IS WHAT GOT US IN TO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE...!!!

"We don't believe that the private market - right now - is willing or able to provide the liquidity that's necessary to get us out of this," said Joe Stanton, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Home Builders.

(*SMIRK*) AND YOU'D EXPECT HIM TO SAY OTHERWISE...???

"To erode that support right now would be a disaster," said Vince Malta, a real estate agent in San Francisco and a vice president of the National Association of Realtors.

(*SNICKER*) (*ROLLING MY EYES*) THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO GOT US INTO THIS MESS IN THE FIRST PLACE...!!!

"The Republican effort will be focused on diminishing the government guarantee, to the extent possible," said Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA). "In terms of where we end up, that remains to be seen."

* WHAT BETTER BE SEEN IS THE REPUBLICAN HOUSE LIVING UP TO THE PRO-MARKET RHETORIC OF IT'S SELF-STYLED CONSERVATIVE MEMBERS!

December 29, 2010 at 1:58 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513204576047370292186758.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

[I]n new research that builds on the pioneering work of Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, [three respected social scientists] analyzed the history of fiscal consolidations in 21 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development over 37 years. Some of those nations repaired their fiscal problems; many did not. Our goal was to establish a detailed recipe for success.

[S]uccessful attempts to balance [government] budgets rely almost entirely on reduced government expenditures...

[U]nsuccessful ones rely heavily on tax increases.

The natural impulse of a conciliator might be to ["split the baby"]: reduce deficit[s] with equal parts spending cuts and tax increases. But history suggests that such an approach would be a recipe for failure. On average, the typical unsuccessful consolidation consisted of 53% tax increases and 47% spending cuts.

(*SHRUG*)

By contrast, the typical successful fiscal consolidation consisted, on average, of 85% spending cuts.

[S]uccessful consolidations focused on reducing social transfers, which in the American context means entitlements, and also on cuts to the size and pay of the government work force.

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

December 29, 2010 at 1:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/558016/201012281843/Fresno-Zimbabwe.aspx

Fresno, Calif., stands as the de facto capital of California's mighty Central Valley, the breadbasket of America.

* THAT WAS THEN...

Fresno, a city of 505,000, [is also a city where] 24.1% of...families are going hungry.

* WELCOME TO THE AGE OF OBAMA.

Fresno is the agricultural capital of America. More food per acre in more variety can be grown in the fertile Central Valley surrounding this community than on any other land in America - perhaps in the world. Yet far from being a paradise, Fresno is starting to resemble Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine, a victim of a famine machine that is entirely man-made, not by red communists this time, but by greens.

State and federal officials, driven by the agenda of environmental extremists, have made it extremely difficult for the valley's farms, introducing costly environmental regulations and cutting off critical water supplies to save the Delta smelt, a bait fish. It's all driving the economy to collapse.

In the southwest part of the Central Valley, water allotments as low as 10% of normal have created a visible dust bowl. The knock-on effect can be seen in cities like Fresno, where November's unemployment among the packers, cannery workers and professional fields that make agriculture productive stands at 16.9%.

Other Central Valley cities such as Hanford-Corcoran, Merced, Modesto, Stockton and Visalia-Porterville have similar jobless numbers, the highest in the country.

That's right - a community that supplies a quarter of America's fruit and vegetables is begging for food.

* HAIL OBAMA! HAIL HOPE! HAIL CHANGE!

Fresno was ranked dead last at 102 as the worst city in America to do business, according to a 2010 MarketWatch survey. Four other Central Valley cities made the national bottom 10 - Bakersfield, Sacramento, Modesto and Stockton. If that's not a sign of a distressed region, what is?

Fresno shouldn't know the meaning of hunger or poverty, given its natural bounty.

It's high time the greens who did this to the richest farmland in the country be held accountable. Far from bringing greenery, their disruptive agendas have left central California a wasteland.

December 29, 2010 at 10:18 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=558013&p=1

While most of America was unwrapping their Christmas presents, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was staring at a lump of coal [President Obama's] Environmental Protection Agency put in his state's stocking.

Two days before Christmas, EPA Regional Administrator Al Armendariz, in a letter to industry, said the agency was taking permitting authority over refineries, power plants and cement facilities in Texas away from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) as of Jan. 2, 2011.

* GOV. PERRY SHOULD SIMPLY DECLARE THE EPA's ANNOUNCEMENT TO BE NOTHING MORE THAN HOT AIR - UNENFORCEABLE IN TEXAS.

The EPA's new rules - continuing an Obama administration pattern of using regulations to circumvent the will of the people in implementing what it cannot get through Congress, such as cap-and-trade - were issued after the U.S. Supreme Court said it had the authority to regulate carbon dioxide, the basis of all life on the planet and what we exhale, as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

* TRUE, A MAJORITY OF SITTING JUSTICES ON THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MADE THEIR DECISION; NOW LET THEM ENFORCE IT. AGAIN, GOV. PERRY SHOULD SIMPLY DECLARE THAT THE EPA WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO ENFORCE IT'S DICTATES IN TEXAS. PERIOD.

* FOLKS... THE LEFT HAS BEEN TRASHING THE CONSTITUTION FOR DECADES... IT'S TIME SOME STATE GOVERNOR TOOK A STAND.

Texas was not amused and is the only state to refuse to implement the rules, filing suit against the EPA.

(*CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

Perry , a champion of the 10th Amendment, says, "This legal action is being taken to protect the Texas economy and the jobs that go with it, as well as defend Texas' freedom to continue our successful environmental strategies free from federal overreach."

(*MORE ENTHUSIASTIC CLAPPING*)

Two days after the midterm elections, President Obama served notice that the failure of the outgoing Congress to pass cap-and-trade and the unlikelihood of a GOP House pursuing the matter would not be an impediment.

"Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way," he said. "I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem."

* THE MAN TRULY IS POWER MAD.

December 29, 2010 at 10:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/29/nature-v-nurture-did-blizzard-federal-rules-cause-massive-flight-cancellations/

In April, new rules went into effect that threatened airlines with a $27,500 per passenger fine if their planes didn't take off within three hours after pulling out to the tarmac.

Charges have been flying that airlines prematurely canceled flights ahead of the East Coast snowstorm because of [these] new rules fining airlines for leaving planes standing idle on tarmacs, though transportation experts say that such claims are impossible to quantify.

* THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES, FOLKS.

* ASK YOURSELF, PEOPLE, WOULDN'T IT HAVE MADE MORE SENSE TO SIMPLY REQUIRE THAT ONCE A PLANE HAD SAT ON THE TARMAC FOR THREE HOURS PASSENGERS WOULD BE GIVEN THE CHOICE OF REMAINING ON THE PLANE OR DISEMBARKING VIA ROLLED STAIRWAY (ASSUMING A GATE WAS UNAVAILABLE)? OF COURSE IT WOULD HAVE! BUT, NO... THESE ASSWIPES IN WASHINGTON HAVE TO MANDATE FINES - WHICH BTW WOULD BE VIEWED AS BUSINESS EXPENSES FOR TAX PURPOSES; MEANING THAT IN THE END THE TAXPAYERS WOULD TAKE THE HIT!

"There's no doubt about it, airlines (were) pre-emptively canceling flights because they don't want to be stuck paying $27,000 per passenger," said Vaughn Cordle of Airline Forecasts.

"I think it's safe to say that there are many passengers who would have reached their destination, albeit with non-trivial delays, had the ... ruling not be in effect," said Amy Cohn, an associate professor of industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and an affiliate at MIT's Global Airline Industry Program.

* HEY... IT CAN'T BE PROVEN... BUT I'M WITH CORDLE AND COHN; WHAT THEY'RE SAYING MAKES SENSE. (*SHRUG*)

A Department of Transportation official said the department does not get real-time information - it receives monthly reports - so it's too early to say how many cancellations and delays occurred over the last couple of days.

* DOES... NOT... GET... REAL-TIME INFORMATION...?!?! JUST PONDER THAT LAST STATEMENT, FOLKS... JUST PONDER IT...

(*SHAKING MY HEAD*)

December 29, 2010 at 10:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/12/29/morning-bell-obama-wants-you-to-pay-more-at-the-pump/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Since President Barack Obama was inaugurated, gas prices have been on the steady rise, as have home energy prices.

During his tenure, he presided over arguably the worst federal response to an oil spill in our nation’s history, and has pressed legislation on Capitol Hill that would, in his own words, cause electricity prices to “skyrocket.”

[C]onsumers face $3/gallon gasoline at the pump in December for the first time in U.S. history and see their home heating bills soar in the winter months.

* WELCOME TO THE AGE OF OBAMA, FOLKS!

Now this week, analysts including former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, say Americans could be paying $5/gallon of gasoline by 2012. Investment banks are predicting a return to $100/barrel oil, and OPEC is refusing to raise production. All of this news would be less frightening if the White House were focusing on potential ways to lower energy prices. Instead, President Obama is admittedly fixated with raising them.

* THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS; AS I'VE NOTED ALL ALONG, OBAMA AND HIS LEFT WING CRONIES ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO PAY MORE TO DRIVE AND HEAT YOUR HOME SO AS TO "NUDGE" YOU TOWARDS DRIVING LESS OR DRIVING SMALLER, LESS COMFORTABLE, LESS SAFE CARS AND LIVE IN SMALLER HOUSES.

Just last week (as frigid temperatures and blizzards blasted Europe and the U.S.), the EPA announced that it will begin regulating power plants and oil refineries in an attempt to curb [...er...] "global warming."

* FOLKS... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

The new regulations will seek to cut greenhouse gas emissions by making it more expensive to turn fossil fuels into energy.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar [also recently] announced that the Bureau of Land Management would issue new rules making it harder to develop natural resources on government-owned land. These measures will not only drive up the cost of electricity and gasoline but will also make us more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

(*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

President Obama has unilaterally declared the U.S. oil industry dead. During the BP oil spill, Obama needlessly declared a moratorium on deepwater and shallow water drilling, since no White House advisers apparently could draw a distinction between the two. After two federal courts said the moratorium was illegal, the Obama administration instead moved to a de facto moratorium, by issuing no permits, while speeding up the permitting process for wind farms.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS YOUR ENEMY. PERIOD. NO QUESTION.

In October, President Obama “lifted” the moratorium, but since then has issued almost no new permits. In late November, his administration effectively issued a seven-year ban on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. We’re not even talking about ANWR anymore; these are publicly and politically accepted areas of drilling. (These actions, of course, increase our reliance on foreign oil, which as OPEC points out, will only become more expensive in the near future.)

* AGAIN, FOLKS... IF OBAMA IS NOT DELIBERATELY ATTEMPTING TO HURT THE UNITED STATES... THEN WHAT IS HE TRYING TO DO?

[T]his all spells disaster for the jobs market. Higher energy prices translate into higher costs for small businesses, which cause less hiring. Energy producers are moving platforms out of U.S. waters rather than have multi-million dollar assets sit idle as the president destroys an industry. And local businesses and retailers who service this industry along the coast are losing money and employees, if not entirely shutting down.

* FOLKS... YA BETTER GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES...

December 29, 2010 at 10:19 PM

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