Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, November 29, 2011


Chapter 11, huh?

Sadly symbolic if you ask me.

(*SIGH*)
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11 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/states-face-bleak-economic-forecast-report-says/2011/11/28/gIQAZ1t26N_story.html

States are caught in a fiscal vise as weak economic growth, dwindling federal help and increasing appeals from hard-pressed local governments squeeze their budgets.

* GOTTA LUV THE MINDSET ON DISPLAY UP ABOVE. MIGHT NOT THE FACT THAT STATES HAVE IRRESPONSIBLY OVERSPENT, UNDERSAVED, AND OVERPROMISED FOR YEARS HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH THEIR SITUATION? HMM...???

[S]tates face a dire fiscal situation, according to a report to be released Tuesday by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO). The Fiscal Survey of States says that even as states struggle with tepid revenue growth, they will be called on to spend more because of the economic distress caused by continued high unemployment.

* AGAIN... NOTE... THE IDEA OF ACTUALLY SHRINKING RATHER THAN GROWING THE WELFARE STATE DOESN'T EVEN OCCUR TO THE AUTHORS!

[G]rowth is weak, and there is not enough money for all the bills coming in,” said NASBO Executive Director Scott Pattison.

* SO... CUT DOWN ON THE BILLS! CUT THE SPENDING! STOP PROMISING PEOPLE SOMETHING FOR NOTHING...!!!

The report says that Medicaid, the combined federal-state health program for the poor and the disabled, will place the biggest budgetary burden on states.

* GOOGLE WASTE AND FRAUD PLUS MEDICAID. (*SMIRK*) AS WITH MOST GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS, MEDICAID IS SIMPLY OUT OF CONTROL.

The federal government had provided extra Medicaid help to states as part of the stimulus program.

* BY THIS THE AUTHOR IS REFERRING TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BORROWING MONEY FROM CHINA AND ELSEWHERE WHICH DOWN THE ROAD YOU AND I WILL HAVE TO REPAY - WITH INTEREST.

[S]tates [have] increased their Medicaid spending by an average of 29% this fiscal year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* FOLKS... FOR GOD'S SAKE... IF YOU DON'T GET THAT THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE... (*SIGH*)

Many states have streamlined their Medicaid programs in an effort to control costs. Still, officials in more than half of the states said in a recent survey that there is an even chance that their Medicaid programs will face a budget shortfall as enrollment continues to increase.

* FOLKS... JEEZUS FRIGG'N CHRIST... WHILE OBAMACARE WAS BEING DEBATED PEOPLE LIKE ME TOLD YOU THAT EXPANDING MEDICAID AND MEDICARE WAS A GOAL OF OBAMA'S SCAM!

Officials say the fiscal pressure that Medicaid puts on states is expected to increase when the federal health-care overhaul takes effect in 2014. Although the federal government is required to pick up the costs for people newly eligible for the program, many who are now eligible but not enrolled are expected to be drawn in, and states must shoulder part of those costs.

* RE-READ THAT, FOLKS! JEEZUS... NONE OF THIS IS NEW INFO TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE BEEN FAITHFULLY READING NEWSBITES.

November 29, 2011 at 10:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284273/exit-barney-frank-editors

Rep. Barney Frank will be remembered for three things:

First, he was not only the first openly gay member of Congress but the first involved in a gay-prostitution scandal.

Second, he said, “I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness” regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as exercised with regard to other government-affiliated agencies, preferring, as he memorably put it, to “roll the dice a little bit.”

Third, he was co-author of the Frank-Dodd financial-reform legislation.

* SO BOTTOM LINE...

Frank will be remembered as an embarrassment, a reckless gambler, and a legislative malefactor.

(*NOD*)

Frank was...a powerful politician whose homosexual orientation was hardly the most remarkable feature of his private life, which included involvement with a gay hustler and convicted drug dealer whom the congressman was paying for sex, and who ended up running a prostitution operation out of the congressman’s home.

Frank was reprimanded by the House for making misleading statements to a Virginia prosecutor on behalf of the prostitute - whom the congressman eventually put on his own payroll - and for having fixed dozens of parking tickets on his behalf.

Americans are broadly tolerant of homosexuality; they are rightly less tolerant of prostitution and political corruption.

* THE MEDIA, ON THE OTHER HAND - AS WELL AS FRANK'S COLLEAGUES - HAVE ALWAYS BEEN "BROADLY TOLERANT" OF ALL THREE.

[T]hough his private life spilled over into his public duties, it is as a champion of a different kind of pay-for-play operation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the congressman did the most damage to the country. The government-backed mortgage giants were at the center of the housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis. Representative Frank was a stalwart defender of the organizations, even after the government uncovered extensive fraud at Fannie Mae and found that Freddie Mac had illegally channeled funds to its political benefactors.

(*NOD*)

[Frank] was sexually involved with a Fannie Mae executive during a time when he was voting on laws affecting the organization.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The final cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailouts will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the real damage that the organizations did to the U.S. economy - and the world economy, for that matter - probably is incalculable.

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

In response to a financial crisis in which he was a significant figure, Frank helped to craft a financial "reform" law that bears his name.

The drafting of Dodd-Frank began as a punitive measure, evolved into a dispensary of political favors, and in the end did little or nothing to address the problems that led to the 2008–09 crisis or to prevent similar crises in the future.

* WHICH MEANS...? (READ ON!)

Which means that we may have Barney Frank partly to thank not only for the last financial crisis but for the next one.

November 29, 2011 at 11:19 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/music/Elvis-Costello-Dont-Buy-My-225-Boxed-Set-134660643.html

Just in time for the holidays, Elvis Costello has a new $225 box set for sale - and he's telling fans NOT to buy it. The singer says $225 is just too much to pay for "Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook"...

Costello tried to get the record company to knock the price down, but was unsuccessful. "Unfortunately, we find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire," Costello wrote on his website.

(*STANDING OVATION*)

The London-born, 57-year-old artist, whose real name is Declan MacManus, calls the collection being peddled by Universal Music Enterprises a "hoax," and advises those who really want it to wait until after the holidays and buy pieces of the package separately.

* IN FACT... (READ ON!)

Costello is recommending buying the work of another legendary artist: "If you should really want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we can whole-heartedly recommend, 'Ambassador of Jazz' - a cute little imitation suitcase, covered in travel stickers and embossed with the name 'Satchmo' but more importantly containing TEN re-mastered albums by one of the most beautiful and loving revolutionaries who ever lived - Louis Armstrong," Costello wrote. "The box should be available for under one hundred and fifty American dollars and includes a number of other tricks and treats. Frankly, the music is vastly superior."

* WOW... WHAT A CLASS ACT!

November 29, 2011 at 11:38 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284111/more-more-more-mark-steyn

The government of the United States currently spends $188 million it doesn’t have every hour of every day.

[T]he government of the United States is planning to spend $44 trillion in the next decade.

We’re approaching a state in which the government spends $4 trillion but only raises $2 trillion.

November 29, 2011 at 12:07 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/11/28/did-you-miss-the-thanksgiving-white-house-visitor-log-document-dump/

ust like clockwork, the Obama administration never misses an opportunity to unload thousands of records it hopes no one will ever bother sifting through during the holidays.

On Black Friday, the White House released more visitor log info — trumpeting disclosures it has fought tooth and nail.

I’ve started looking through the data. And you can, too [at] http://opendata.socrata.com/Government/White-House-Visitor-Records-Requests/644b-gaut

A few things that jumped out at me:

1) This August 5, 2011 visit to the president by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and her party of seven. She made no mention of the visit on her Aug. 5 show. What did she and POTUS discuss? Just wondering… (Fun fact: According to the White House logs, this was Maddow’s fifth trip to the White House - and fourth to see the president personally.)

2) Another busy bee: Convicted felon, Huffington Post/Alinskyite agitator, and husband of Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Robert Creamer. According to the newly released records, Creamer was at the White House five times in August 2011 meeting with various officials, including Jon Carson, Cecilia Munoz, and Stephanie Cutter. He’s listed nearly 60 times in visitor logs since the start of the administration. (Corruptocrats of a feather…)

Why aren’t WaPo and the NYTimes crowd-sourcing the White House visitor log data like they did Sarah Palin’s e-mails?

Hmmm?

November 29, 2011 at 12:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/27/in-race-for-fastest-supercomputer-china-outpaces-u-s.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=in_newsweek&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bin_newsweek&utm_term=Tina%20Brown%20List

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is one of the great symbols of America’s scientific and military prowess.

Livermore’s biggest claim to fame involves designing the world’s most advanced nuclear warheads - this was the mission of the lab when it was created in 1952 by Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. To do this, Livermore relies on powerful machines called supercomputers, which hum away inside top-secret, heavily guarded buildings. The U.S. has long dominated the industry.

* HAD LONG DOMINATED... WITH "HAD" BEING THE OPERATIVE WORD.

[Last November] Bruce Goodwin, head of the lab’s weapons program [admitted that] the Chinese had unveiled the world’s most powerful supercomputer, a machine five times more powerful than Livermore’s biggest computer.

* I COVERED THIS AT THE TIME, BUT JUST AS A REMINDER I'M COVERING IT AGAIN, HERE.

[T]o the scientists, industry titans, and world leaders who understand how delicate America’s position as a global superpower really is, this was a Sputnik moment. Only this time, it wasn’t Russia trouncing the U.S. in the space race, but China surging ahead in one of the most vital areas of national security.

By running thousands of processors in parallel, supercomputers not only help design weapons systems, they also model climate change, crack codes, and help develop new and life-changing drugs. ... [I]f the U.S. falls behind in supercomputing it could quickly lose its edge in all areas of science, in industries like oil and gas exploration and pharmaceutical research, and in security and military fields.

When China flipped the switch on the Tianhe-1A, also called the "Milky Way" supercomputer, last fall, it placed itself at the top of the technology world with a stunning demonstration of its newfound engineering prowess. The Chinese grip on the top spot turned out to be short-lived, since six months later, a team in Japan announced an even bigger supercomputer that bumped Tianhe-1A into second place. Nevertheless, the Chinese had made their point, demonstrating to the world that when it comes to developing the newest, biggest, fastest machines, the inconvenient truth is that China, our No. 1 military and political rival, now runs neck and neck with the U.S. in a field that for decades the U.S. dominated.

Experts predict China will soon leapfrog Japan again. Already, it has 74 of the 500 biggest supercomputers in the world, up from zero a decade ago and second only to the U.S., which has 263. And while the U.S. struggles to fund new development, China seems to have limitless resources to pursue its ambitious goals.

Goodwin, the weapons chief at Livermore, puts it more bluntly: "If we don’t win this race," he says, "we’re screwed. We’re in a world of hurt."

November 29, 2011 at 2:12 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senators-demand-military-lock-american-citizens-battlefield-they-define-being

The Senate is voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield - even people in the United States itself.

* HAT TIP MIKE D!

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president - and every future president - the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world.

The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during the last Republican debate.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill [which] was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

* YEP. CONFIRMED. (*SHRUG*)

[I]t sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States?

* WHAT OF POSSE COMITATUS...?!?!

American citizens and people picked up on American...being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really?

* YES. ACCORDING TO MY RESEARCH... APPARENTLY SO!

The White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are harmful and counterproductive. The White House has even threatened a veto. But Senate politics has propelled this bad legislation to the Senate floor.

* I'D GO BEYOND "COUNTERPRODUCTIVE." I'D GO STRAIGHT TO UNCONSTITUTIONAL...!!!

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the Udall Amendment that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power.

* AGAIN... THE CONSTITUTION SUPERCEDES CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY ABSENT CONGRESSIONAL AMENDMENT.

In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.”

* YOU'RE READING THIS... RIGHT, FOLKS...???

Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*) FOLKS... WE'RE LOSING OUR COUNTRY. BELIEVE ME! BELIEVE WHAT YOU'RE READING HERE!

Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.

There you have it - indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.

* THANKS AGAIN TO MIKE D. FOR BRINGING THIS TO MY ATTENTION. GOD HELP THIS ONCE GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC!

November 29, 2011 at 4:53 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/29/senate-defies-obama-veto-threat-terrorist-custody-/

* FOLLOW-UP TO THE PREVIOUS NEWSBITE.

Defying a veto threat from President Obama, the Senate voted Tuesday to preserve language that would give the U.S. military a crack at al Qaeda operatives captured in the U.S., even if they are American citizens.

* ALLEGED AL QAEDA OPERATIVES! FOLKS... WE'RE TALKING ABOUT U.S. CITIZENS! REMEMBER "INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY?"

* THIS IS CLEARLY AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTION!

Led by Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, senators voted 61-37 to preserve the language that gives the military custody of al Qaeda suspects, rather than turning them over to law enforcement officials.

* INCLUDING U.S. CITIZEN SUSPECTS...!!!

* AGAIN... THIS IS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL...!!!

“We are at war with al Qaeda and people determined to be part of al Qaeda should be treated as people who are at war with us,” Mr. Levin said.

* ONLY A COURT OF LAW CAN "DETERMINE" WHETHER AN AMERICAN CITIZEN IS GUILTY OF... WELL... OF ANYTHING!

* THIS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL...!!!

He and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on his committee, had struck a deal earlier this month on giving the military priority custody, while allowing the administration to waive that and give civilian authorities priority if it deems the waiver in the interests of national security.

* AS ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM LEVIN AND MCCAIN, THIS IS TOTALLY ASS BACKWARDS! CONGRESS CAN NOT GIVE THE PRESIDENT THE POWER TO SHORT-CIRCUIT BASIC CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS! THIS IS CLEARLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL...!!!

Sixteen Democrats, one independent and 44 Republicans joined together to defy Mr. Obama’s threat. Two Republicans - Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois - voted to strip out the detainee language.

* FOLKS... IF THIS DOESN'T TELL YOU HOW LOW WE'VE SUNK... NOTHING WILL.

November 29, 2011 at 5:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-29/how-henry-paulson-gave-hedge-funds-advance-word-of-2008-fannie-mae-rescue.html#dsq-comments

It was July 21, 2008, and market fears were mounting.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson stepped off the elevator into the Third Avenue offices of hedge fund Eton Park Capital Management LP in Manhattan.

Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.

On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets.

At the Eton Park meeting, he sent a different message, according to a fund manager who attended.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Over sandwiches and pasta salad, Paulson delivered that information to a group of men capable of profiting from any disclosure.

(*GRITTING MY TEETH*)

Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives - at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006.

In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.

After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” - a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.

Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.

The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information - to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.

(*MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

* To be continued...

November 29, 2011 at 5:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

There’s no evidence that they did so...

* HOWEVER...

...tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents.

(*SMIRK*)

* OH...! AND GET THIS! (READ ON...)

[L]aw professors say that Paulson himself broke no law by disclosing what amounted to inside information.

* FOLKS... WE NEED VIGILANTE JUSTICE. IT'S THE ONLY ANSWER. THE SYSTEM IS SO TOTALLY CORRUPT THAT ONLY VIA LITERALLY KILLING THE WORST OFFENDERS CAN WE HOPE TO SAVE THIS REPUBLIC.

William Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, can’t understand why Paulson felt impelled to share the Treasury Department’s plan with the fund managers. “You just never ever do that as a government regulator - transmit nonpublic market information to market participants,” says Black, who’s a former general counsel at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. “There were no legitimate reasons for those disclosures.”

Janet Tavakoli, founder of Chicago-based financial consulting firm Tavakoli Structured Finance Inc., says the meeting fits a pattern. “What is this but crony capitalism?” she asks. “Most people have had their fill of it.”

* HEAR! HEAR! THOSE WHO ENGAGE IN CRONY CAPITALISM MUST BE TARGETED AND ELIMINATED.

Paulson’s book on the financial crisis, “On the Brink”...makes no mention of the Eton Park meeting.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Paulson is now a distinguished senior fellow at the University of Chicago, where he’s starting the Paulson Institute, a think tank focused on U.S.-Chinese relations.

(*BANGING MY HEAD AGAINST THE DESK*)

William Poole, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis...says government officials need to communicate with industry participants in order to gain insights into market conditions and gauge likely reaction to interventions. “How do you prepare the market for the fact that policy has changed without triggering the very crisis that you’re trying to avoid? What is Paulson supposed to say without misleading these people?”

* FAIR QUESTION... HOWEVER... (READ ON...)

The University of Missouri’s Black says there’s no question that the plan to take over Fannie and Freddie - however uncertain - was material nonpublic information that could not be lawfully traded on. “What Paulson said put those managers in an untenable position,” he says. “They were exposed to all kinds of liabilities.” Black says the Eton Park meeting was the wrong way to communicate to the markets. “Wink, wink, nod, nod is no way to approach sensitive information,” he says.

November 29, 2011 at 5:33 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/11/29/former-philadelphia-schools-chief-arlene-ackerman-files-unemployment-claim/

Former Philadelphia schools superintendent Arlene Ackerman, who was given a nearly $1-million buyout earlier this year, has applied for unemployment.

* SCUMBAG!

* OH... FOLKS... GOOGLE THIS LIBERAL DEMOCRAT WALKING DISASTER!

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Based on her former salary, Ackerman would be eligible for the state maximum of $573 a week.

November 29, 2011 at 8:29 PM

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