Monday, January 24, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, January 25, 2011


We're NOT going to discuss last night's game...
Posted by at

9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704881304576094132896862582.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

No sooner had President Obama told the bureaucracies to subject all regulations to a cost-benefit test than the bureaucrats began telling reporters that they are already a model of modern efficiency, thank you very much. Among many others, the Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement that it was "confident" it wouldn't need to alter a single current or pending rule. "In fact, EPA's rules consistently yield billions in cost savings that make them among the most cost-effective in the government."

(*SNORT*) (*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Perhaps the EPA's confidence owes to a little-noticed proviso in Mr. Obama's order. When the agencies weigh costs and benefits, the order says, they should always consider "values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts."

(*SMIRK*)

Talk about economic elasticities. Equity and fairness can be defined to include more or less anything as a benefit.

Any cost-benefit analysis depends to some extent on matters of judgment, but typically the criteria are more economically tangible, such as how to price risk or the discount rate. No business would recognize Mr. Obama's version, since his "values" loophole boils down to a preference for bigger government.

The danger is that his executive order will transform an important tool to check excessive regulation into a way to justify whatever rule the permanent bureaucracy wants.

(*NOD*)

[W]hile Mr. Obama wants the country to think a new rigorous empiricism is guiding his government, his appointees can justify any rule that fits their ideological goals. This sounds more like the end of cost-benefit analysis than the beginning.

* READ THE FULL PIECE TO GET EXAMPLES OF EXACTLY HOW THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS LYING TO YOU ABOUT ITS GOAL. AGAIN, FOLKS... AS ALWAYS... FOLLOW THE ACTIONS, NOT THE WORDS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION.

January 24, 2011 at 12:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/business/24fees.html?_r=2&hp

Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud.

The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress.

* FUNNY HOW NONE OF THIS INFO CAME OUT WHEN THE DEMS RAN THE HOUSE, HUH?

(*SMIRK*)

The legal payments show no sign of abating.

Documents reviewed by The New York Times indicate that taxpayers have paid $24.2 million to law firms defending three of Fannie’s former top executives: Franklin D. Raines, its former chief executive; Timothy Howard, its former chief financial officer; and Leanne Spencer, the former controller.

* THIS IS INSANE. THAT'S OVER $8 MILLION PER SCUMBAG! HOW CAN SUCH FEES BE JUSTIFIED...?!?!

Late last year, Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas and now chairman of the oversight subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, requested the figures from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. ... “One of the things I feel very strongly about is we need to be doing everything we can to minimize any further exposure to the taxpayers associated with these companies,” Mr. Neugebauer said in an interview last week.

* THANK GOD THE REPUBLICANS CAPTURED THE HOUSE. LOOK AT WHAT THE DEMS HAVE BEEN HIDING...!!!

Since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government in September 2008, their losses stemming from bad loans have mounted, totaling about $150 billion in a recent reckoning. Because the financial regulatory overhaul passed last summer did not address how to resolve Fannie and Freddie, Congress is expected to take up that complex matter this year.

* TRANSLATION: THE DEMS IGNORED THE FANNIE/FREDDIE MESS ALL DURING 2007, 2008, 2009, AND 2010 WHEN THEY HELD POWER.

* To be continued...

January 24, 2011 at 1:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

Freddie’s problems [came to light] in 2003 when it disclosed that it had understated its income from 2000 to 2002; the company revised its results by an additional $5 billion.

In 2004, Fannie was found to have overstated its results for the preceding six years; conceding that its accounting was improper, it reduced its past earnings by $6.3 billion.

Mr. Raines retired in December 2004 and Mr. Howard resigned at the same time.

Ms. Spencer left her position as controller in early 2005.

The following year, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, then the company’s regulator, published an in-depth report on the company’s accounting practices, accusing Fannie’s top executives of taking actions to manipulate profits and generate $115 million in improper bonuses. The office sued Mr. Raines, Mr. Howard and Ms. Spencer in 2006, seeking $100 million in fines and $115 million in restitution.

In 2008, the three former executives settled with the regulator, returning $31.4 million in compensation. Without admitting or denying the regulator’s allegations, Mr. Raines paid $24.7 million and Mr. Howard paid $6.4 million; Ms. Spencer returned $275,000.

* FUNNY HOW THIS "SETTLEMENT" CAME ABOUT AFTER DEMS HAD TAKEN OVER CONGRESS, HUH?

(*SMIRK*)

Fannie Mae also settled a fraud suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting or denying the allegations; the company paid $400 million in penalties.

* WELL, SINCE WE THE TAXPAYERS BASICALLY OWN FANNIE MAE, THAT MEANS THE TAXPAYERS PAID... er... THEMSELVES $400 MILLION IN PENALTIES. (SEE THE DISCONNECT HERE FOLKS...???)

* To be continued...

January 24, 2011 at 1:18 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 3)

In addition to the $160 million in taxpayer money, Fannie and Freddie themselves spent millions of dollars to defend former executives and directors before the government takeover. Freddie Mac had spent a total of $27.8 million. The expenses are significantly larger at Fannie Mae.

Legal costs incurred by Mr. Raines, Mr. Howard and Ms. Spencer in the roughly four and a half years prior to the government takeover totaled almost $63 million.

* HUH...?!?! THAT'S OVER $20 MILLION PER SCUMBAG...!!! HOW THE F--K DOES AN INDIVIDUAL RACK UP OVER $20 MILLION IN LEGAL FEES...?!?!

* HEY... WHAT DO YOU WANNA BET THAT IF THE TIMES WERE TO FOLLOW THE MONEY - LINK THE LAW FIRMS - YOU'D FIND DEMOCRATIC FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER THIS SCAM? (I DOUBT THE NYT WILL INVESTIGATE HOWEVER...)

The total incurred before the bailout by other high-level executives and board members was around $12 million, while an additional $18 million covered fees for lawyers for Fannie Mae officials below the level of executive vice president.

* FOLKS... THE FEDERAL TREASURY WAS AND CONTINUES TO BE LOOTED BY THE DEMOCRATS. (GOOGLE FRANKLIN RAINES AND THE OTHERS...)

After the government moved to back Fannie and Freddie, the Federal Housing Finance Agency agreed to continue paying to defend the executives, with the taxpayers covering the costs.

(*SMIRK*) (SURE SOUNDS LIKE A CONFLICT OF INTEREST TO ME!)

Richard S. Carnell, an associate professor at Fordham University Law School who was an assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions during the 1990s, questions why Mr. Raines, Mr. Howard and others, given their conduct detailed in the Housing Enterprise Oversight report, are being held harmless by the government and receiving payment of legal bills as a result.

“Their duty of loyalty required them to put shareholders’ interests ahead of their own personal interests,” Mr. Carnell said. “Had they cared about the shareholders, they would not have staked Fannie’s reputation on dubious accounting. They defied their duty of loyalty and served themselves. At a moral level, they don’t deserve indemnification, much less payment of such princely sums.”

Lawyers for Mr. Raines...have received almost $38 million so far, while Ms. Spencer’s bills exceed $31 million.

* IS IT JUST ME, FOLKS, OR DO THE NUMBERS KEEP RISING...??? WHAT IS WITH THIS REPORTER...??? WHAT IS WITH THIS EDITOR...???

[T]he largest costs are being generated by a lawsuit centering on accounting improprieties that erupted at Fannie Mae in 2004. This suit, a shareholder class action brought by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, is being heard in federal court in Washington. Although it has been going on for six years, the judge has not yet set a trial date. Depositions are still being taken in the case, suggesting that it has much further to go with many more fees to be paid.

* FOLKS... OUR LEGAL SYSTEM IS TOTALLY BROKEN, DYSFUNCTIONAL... RIGGED. THE OLIGARCHS AND THEIR COMPATRIOTS IN THE LEGAL WORLD ARE PULLING A CON THE LIKES OF WHICH THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN.

January 24, 2011 at 1:18 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/23/AR2011012302899.html

Last month, President Obama would agree to maintain current tax rates only if Congress would agree to increase federal deficit spending. We are headed toward a cliff, yet the president hits the accelerator.

Obama's chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, lashed out at Republicans for trying to lower the deficit as part of the effort to raise the debt ceiling, which we are on track to hit in March. He scolded Congress: "Do not tie the discussion about the budget to a thing that is fundamentally about the trustworthiness of the U.S. fiscal system."

(*HEADACHE*)

On Tuesday, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address. Soon after, he will come forward with a new budget. This is a defining moment for his presidency. [H]e must demonstrate that he is at last willing to shed his Keynesian worldview.

As we enter the annual budget season, Washington will need to consider the kind of change this country has not accomplished since 1997 - when a strong Republican Congress passed a budget that converted soaring deficits into surpluses. We need a budget with a bold vision - like those unveiled in Britain and New Jersey; one that reduces both the size of the deficit and the size of the government.

We need a budget that does not require tax increases as the price for spending cuts - because while the spending cuts may disappear, the economic drain of higher taxes will not.

[W]e need a budget that turns us back from the cliff so we can head down a new road - toward leaner government, responsible spending and a thriving private sector.

Before the financial crisis of 2008, then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson reassured Americans that he had the "housing correction" under control and had "confidence in our capital markets and in their resilience." Just a few months later, Paulson declared that our financial system was "on the verge of collapse" and that "we have not in our lifetime dealt with a financial crisis of this severity."

For years, Washington officials played down the systemic risks behind the crisis while they pushed policies that hastened its arrival.

Today, we are again rushing in the wrong direction.

* THE OF THIS PIECE, JEFF SESSIONS, IS THE RANKING REPUBLICAN ON THE SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE.

January 24, 2011 at 1:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257730/ho-hum-horror-editors

The case of Kermit Gosnell reached the newspapers just a few days before the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

President Obama did not mention Gosnell in his official statement celebrating the anniversary, but the case sheds more light on Roe’s import than the statement did.

(*NOD*)

Obama did not refer to the word “abortion,” preferring instead to discuss “reproductive freedom”...

(*SNICKER*)

...and the “fundamental principle” that “government should not intrude on private family matters.”

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The stories about Gosnell were a little less abstract. They told of a clinic where dirty instruments spread venereal disease, cats roamed and defecated freely, and some patients died. The state government conducted essentially no oversight; administrations of both parties wanted to keep abortion as free from governmental intrusion as possible.

Gosnell frequently, perhaps hundreds of times, fully delivered intact fetuses and then used scissors on the newborn. In his words, he engaged in “snipping” to “ensure fetal demise.” In many cases, the fetuses were in the third trimester. This procedure, sometimes called a “live-birth abortion,” is illegal.

When Congress moved to ban partial-birth abortion, most liberals took the view that any prohibition had to include a "health" exception: If in the judgment of the abortionist the safest method of . . . ensuring fetal demise . . . was to partly deliver the fetus, crush its skull, vacuum its brains, and then deliver the rest, then he had to be free to do so - at any stage of pregnancy. President Obama favored this health “exception.”

As a state legislator in Illinois, he argued that the law should offer no protection to neonates if they had been delivered before viability. He said that protecting them would violate Roe v. Wade and undermine the right to abortion. What looked like infanticide to most people was for him, it must be inferred, a “private family matter.” When Gosnell applied his scissors to pre-viable children, he was, on Obama’s terms, merely exercising a cherished freedom.

January 24, 2011 at 2:59 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chibrknews-court-rules-against-emanuel-on-01242011,0,4083659.story

Rahm Emanuel should not appear on the Feb. 22 mayoral ballot, according to a ruling issued by a state appellate court today.

* "SHOULD NOT...???" (IS THE COURT'S DECISION A SUGGESTION OR A RULING...?!?!) (*SNORT*)

In a 2-1 ruling, the appellate panel said Emanuel does not meet the residency requirement of having lived in Chicago for a year prior to the election.

* WHO IS THE "1" CLOWN - THAT'S WHAT I'D LIKE TO KNOW!

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... WE ALL KNOW EMANUEL DOESN'T MEET RESIDENCY REQUIREMENTS!

The judges reversed a decision by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, which had unanimously agreed that Emanuel was eligible to run for mayor.

* AGAIN... SOMETHING ELSE WE ALL KNOW... THE CHICAGO BOARD OF ELECTIONS COMMISSIONERS ARE... er... NOT ADVERSE TO PUTTING POLITICS ABOVE PRINCIPLE. (*SHRUG*) CHICAGO - AND ILLINOIS - ARE CORRUPT POLITICAL ENTITIES.

"We conclude that the candidate neither meets the Municipal Code's requirement that he have 'resided in' Chicago for the year preceding the election in which he seeks to participate nor falls within any exception to the requirement," the majority judges wrote.

Appellate Justice Bertina E. Lampkin wrote a dissenting opinion.

(*SNORT*) WELL... THAT ANSWERS ONE QUESTION!

Today’s ruling seems certain to be appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

January 24, 2011 at 3:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/257695/president-americans-tax-reform-grover-norquist

The United States, unlike most other developed nations, taxes the international income of its companies when they bring that income home. This “worldwide” tax regime is in stark contrast to most countries’ “territorial” tax systems, which tax only that business activity occurring within their borders. Therefore, a U.S. company earning a profit in Germany is responsible for paying both the German tax authorities and, should the company want to bring the money back to the United States, the IRS. There is a complex hodgepodge of deferrals and tax credits that clumsily combat this inequity.

* THIS OF COURSE - IN LINE WITH THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES - IS A MAJOR DISINSENTIVE WITH REGARDS TO U.S. OPERATIONS ABROAD REPATRIATING PROFITS HOME TO THE U.S. FOR REINVESTMENT IN OUR DOMESTIC ECONOMY.

Having the highest corporate-tax rate in the developed world doesn’t help.

* THAT'S TWO STRIKES!

When factoring in state income taxes, the U.S. rate is nearly 40%.

* OUTRAGEOUS!

Suppose an American company has already paid a 28% corporate-income tax to Italy. Should the company want to bring the after-tax dollars back to the United States, it will have to pay the IRS the difference between our rate and Italy’s, or an additional 12%. For most companies, the smarter move is to not pay extra taxes, keep the money overseas, and invest it in jobs over there.

The “repatriation tax” we impose is one of the most singularly stupid tax policies in existence today.

If the United States wants to be truly competitive, it should move to a territorial system, like the ones our trading partners have. This would reduce the complexity of the tax code by eliminating the need for corporate deductions and credits on international income. The only reason not to do this is pigheaded resentment.

Many on the professional Left will oppose this plan merely because they don’t want to permit corporations to do more with their own money without the government taking some. What they don’t get is that under the current system, these companies aren’t bringing this money back to the U.S. for taxation at all. The only way to get them to do so is to reduce (or, ideally, eliminate) the second bite at the international tax apple (remember that all this money is from after-tax profits earned in other countries).

* LET'S HOPE PRESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCES HIS SUPPORT FOR SUCH A LOGICAL FIX DURING TOMORROW NIGHT'S SOTU ADDRESS!

January 24, 2011 at 7:45 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/health/policy/23drug.html?ref=politics

The Obama administration...[has]...decided to start a billion-dollar government drug development center to help create medicines.

* NO! NO! NO! NO! NO...!!!

Promising discoveries in illnesses like depression and Parkinson’s that once would have led to clinical trials are instead going unexplored because companies have neither the will nor the resources to undertake the effort.

* BECAUSE OBAMA AND OBAMACARE IS HOSTILE TO AND HAS BEEN TARGETING THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY...!!!

* QUITE A CYNICAL PLOY, HUH? FIRST WOUND PRIVATE INDUSTRY TO THE EXTENT THAT AN EXCUSE IS PRESENTED TO INCREASE GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT AND DISPLACEMENT!

The cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $1 billion, according to some estimates...

* NOW COULD THAT PERHAPS... PERCHANCE... BE PART OF THE FRIGG'N PROBLEM...?!?!

[T]he drug industry’s research productivity has been declining for 15 years...

* PERHAPS THE FOCUS OF GOVERNMENT CONCERN SHOULD BE UPON WHY THIS IS...?!?!

Whether the government can succeed where private industry has failed is uncertain, officials acknowledge, but...

* BUT WHAT THE HELL... WHAT'S ADDING ANOTHER $1 BILLION TO THE NATIONAL DEBT GONNA MATTER - RIGHT...?

(*SMIRK*)

January 24, 2011 at 9:47 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)