Thursday, November 17, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, November 17, 2011


Nah...Nah-Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...

Nah...Nah-Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...Nah...

Ya feel me?

Protesting? Fine! Rioting...??? A criminal rabble? Shot 'em down like rabid dogs.

Nah...Nah-Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...

Nah...Nah-Nah-Nah...Nah-Nah...Nah...
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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/conditions_just_offal_ZPpC4vbKIacJIdGJhvgXnJ

City sanitation workers yesterday were forced to pick through a filthy pile of property seized from Zuccotti Park including dirty hypodermic needles, moldy food and glass-littered, broken gadgets.

“I pick up garbage for a living, and these were some of the worst smells I’ve ever experienced,’’ one worker grumbled to The Post.

About 150 trashmen stuffed the massive pile of soiled tents, old bikes and spoiling food into dump trucks - 26 loads in all - and hauled it to a West 57th Street Sanitation facility...

* HOPE... CHANGE... HOPE... CHANGE... HOPE... CHANGE...

(*SIGH*)

November 17, 2011 at 9:13 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://news.yahoo.com/middle-class-areas-shrinking-us-study-000732421.html

The number of middle-income neighborhoods in the United States has dwindled significantly over the past 40 years, as the rich-poor divide deepens across the country, a study released Wednesday showed.

In 2007, nearly a third of American families - 31% - lived in either an affluent neighborhood or a mainly low-income one, up from just 15% in 1970, according to the study conducted by Stanford University, and released in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University.

* ABSOLUTELY CORRECT, FOLKS! WHILE NO DOUBT MANY ON THE LEFT VIEW THIS AS GREAT "CLASS WARFARE" AMMO, THE SAD TRUTH IS THAT THIS STUDY ONLY CONFIRMS WHAT I'VE BEEN RELATING FOR YEARS BASED UPON MY OWN EXPERIENCE AS SOMEONE WHO WAS BORN IN 1962 AND GREW UP WITHIN A "MIDDLE CLASS" THAT HAS LARGELY VANISHED IN TERMS OF ITS BROADNESS.

* WE DIDN'T HAVE "MCMANSION NEIGHBORHOODS." NOT IN THE SENSE WE DO TODAY! DEVELOPMENTS OF BI-LEVELS AND COLONIALS... YEP. STREETS WHERE YOU HAD OLD VICTORIANS NEXT TO SMALL CAPES NEXT TO MULTI-FAMILY HOMES... YEP.

* WHEN I WAS A KID - ON MY STREET - WE WERE ALL "MIDDLE CLASS" AMERICANS... THOUGH MY DAD WAS A CARPENTER AND MY BUDDY'S DAD WAS A DOCTOR AND ANOTHER KID'S DAD WAS A COP... AND SO ON AND SO FORTH.

Meanwhile, 44% of American families lived in middle-class neighborhoods in 2007, down from 65% in 1970.

"Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common," the study said.

November 17, 2011 at 9:25 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/nov/16/cancer-centers-santa-gets-boot/

It's not even December, but Santa has already been fired from the Charleston, S.C. Hollings Cancer Center.

For each of the past two years, hospital volunteer Frank Cloyes spent one day as St. Nick, spreading good cheer and snacks to patients sitting through chemotherapy treatments.

The 67-year-old James Island resident, a retired insurance executive who calls himself a "gregarious guy," paid for his own costume rental.

On Tuesday morning, a volunteer coordinator told Cloyes his services no longer were needed.

"Because of our state affiliation, we decided not to have a Santa presence this year," Hollings spokeswoman Vicky Agnew said.

* I'M GUESSING THIS ASININE DECISION WILL BE REVERSED. WHETHER IT IS OR ISN'T, THOUGH, THE IDIOT(S) RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING THIS CALL SHOULD BE FIRED. WE NEED TO SEND A STRONG SIGNAL THAT SUCH IDIOCY WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!

November 17, 2011 at 11:06 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/1111/biden_hidin_e42e6930-e288-47d8-9a86-b6a3cca55b8a.html

Spot the irony in Vice President Biden’s schedule today, from the White House’s daily guidance:

“At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs' Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press.”

* JUST... JUST... JUST... (*SIGH*)

November 17, 2011 at 11:09 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577040430486060086.html

The decision by the Obama administration to "delay" building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this.

The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate.

Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his "environmental base" in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada.

(*PURSED LIPS*) (*SNARL*)

Recall as well the president's gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. Writing in these pages this week, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski described how Mexico, the Russians, Canada and even Cuba are moving to exploit oil and gas deposits adjacent to ours, while the Obama administration slow-walks new drilling permits.

(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)

* FOLKS... IN ALL SERIOUSNESS... OBAMA IS DOING EVERYTHING WITHIN HIS POWER TO HURT OUR COUNTRY. SPEND A FEW MINUTES RANDOMLY BROWSING THROUGH PAST NEWSBITES. I LIST THE EVIDENCE FOR MY CONTENTION DAY IN AND DAY OUT!

No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means [families] making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion. This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion [only] of the public-sector middle class.

Many farmers, ranchers and timber workers went Republican years ago over an increasingly ideological and uncompromising Democratic environmentalism that was wrecking their livelihoods. Now the same thing is happening to blue-collar workers. Mr. Obama from his first days made clear his hostility to carbon production. At best he views much of the private blue-collar work force as carbon enablers for whom he himself will create a new harmony of "green" industries.

* WAIT FOR IT... WAIT FOR IT... (*DRUM ROLL*)

That would be Solyndra.

(*SAD NOD*)

Solyndra isn't just a fiasco. It's a clear warning that launching new industries onto the big muddy of massive public subsidies is fraught with economic and political problems.

* CRONY CAPITALISM IS NOT CAPITALISM. OBAMA'S ECONOMIC POLICIES ARE FASCISTIC IN NATURE. (IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IT'S ONLY BECAUSE YOU WERE MISEDUCATED BY LEFTIST EDUCRATS.) (FASCISM AS AN ECONOMIC MODEL IS WHERE THERE'S PRIVATE "OWNERSHIP" - AND PROFIT TAKING - BUT GOVERNMENT DIRECTION OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY AND EVEN "PERSONAL" LIFESTYLE POLICY. IN A FASCIST ECONOMY - AS IN A SOCIALIST ECONOMY - THE POPULACE AS A WHOLE ULTIMATELY IS FORCED TO SUBSIDIZE LOSSES CAUSED BY BAD ECONOMIC DECISIONS MAKE BY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS.)

There's little hope that anyone in the leadership of the traditional union movement, public or private, would entertain a rethinking of their historic ties to the Democratic Party. But younger workers should. The economic crisis of the past two years is no blip.

* FOLKS... I WANT AMERICANS WORKING! I WANT THERE TO BE GOOD PAYING JOBS OFFERING A MIDDLE-CLASS LIFESTYLE FOR ALL THOSE WILLING TO WORK HARD. UNION OR NON-UNION, GROWING GOVERNMENT WHILE THE PRIVATE SECTOR SHRIVELS IS NO RECIPE FOR SUCCESS, BUT INSTEAD IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER... OR SHOULD I SAY FURTHER DISASTER.

November 17, 2011 at 11:44 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ge-filed-57000-page-tax-return-paid-no-taxes-14-billion-profits_609137.html

General Electric, one of the largest corporations in America, filed a whopping 57,000-page federal tax return earlier this year but didn't pay taxes on $14 billion in profits. The return, which was filed electronically, would have been 19 feet high if printed out and stacked.

The fact that GE paid no taxes in 2010 was widely reported earlier this year, but the size of its tax return first came to light when House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) made the case for corporate tax reform at a recent townhall meeting. "GE was able to utilize all of these various loopholes, all of these various deductions - it's legal," Ryan said.

GE wasn't taxed on $5 billion in U.S. profits because it utilized numerous deductions and tax credits, including tax breaks for investments in low-income housing, green energy, research and development, as well as depreciation of property.

* FUNNY... I HAVEN'T READ ANYTHING ABOUT OCCUPY WALL STREET OCCUPYING GE.

(*SMIRK*)

Ryan used the data point to underscore the irrationality of the corporate income tax code. He also contrasted GE with UPS to make the point that the corporate income tax code doesn't make sense. "UPS paid a 34% effective tax rate," while its biggest foreign competitor, DHL, paid a 24% tax rate, Ryan said.

(*HEADACHE*)

November 17, 2011 at 3:17 PM

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