Friday, June 15, 2012

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, June 15, 2012


Now this should put smiles on your face, folks!

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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9332570/Osborne-unveils-140bn-scheme-to-kick-start-stagnant-economy.html

The Bank of England is to offer money to high-street banks...

* JEEZUS... POOR, STUPID BRITS... AS CLUELESS AS BERNANKE...

(*SIGH*)

June 15, 2012 at 9:48 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100165458/elizabeth-warrens-native-american-claims-if-she-was-a-republican-the-media-would-call-her-a-racist/

Imagine if a Republican candidate claimed, confidently, that she was part Native American.

Imagine if she had actually used that identity to have herself listed as a minority at Harvard, qualifying her for special treatment and celebration as proof of how diverse and progressive her department is.

Imagine if, many years later, it turned out that her claims to Native heritage were dubious and, when pressed for proof, she offered her “high cheekbones.” (Oh, and she once contributed a recipe to a Native American cookbook called “Pow Wow Chow” that may even have been plagiarized).

Chances are, that Republican candidate would be hounded night and day by the press, branded a racist and probably be winding down her political career. Right now, she’d be sitting by the phone, praying for a call from the producers of Celebrity Apprentice - gotta pay the mortgage on that wigwam somehow[!]

The incredible thing is that all this has happened to a Democratic senatorial candidate called Elizabeth Warren.

* MASSACHUSETTS! YA GOTTA LUV IT!

And not only has she been given a pass by her party...

(*SMIRK*)

but also by the mainstream media.

* AS IF ANY OF THIS COMES AS A SURPRISE... (*SIGH*)

Last night she was chatting with Chris Matthews on MSNBC and Matthews failed to mention the scandal once.

(*SNICKER*)

[T]he liberal media has tried to smooth the story over. [H]eadlines have been massaged, innuendoes have gone unreported, and only one local paper has pursued Warren with the righteousness that the issue deserves.

* INDEED... (READ ON!)

Articles have been written expressing sympathy along the lines of “Well, we’re probably all a little bit Native American.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Democrats can have records of racist activity (the former Senate Majority Leader, Robert Byrd, was a member of the KKK in his youth), express racist sentiments towards Asians (step forward, Marion Barry) and appropriate the racial heritage of others – and no one seems to mind.

When it comes to racism, the Democratic credo is “Do as I say, not as I do.”

June 15, 2012 at 10:03 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2706

America is going bankrupt, in large part due to a vast and ever-growing array of federal aid programs.

One of these that has expanded enormously in recent years is the federal Pell Grant Program.

Started in 1972 to help poor students pay for college, Pell now extends well beyond the original intention. [While] he amount of money given to each individual student has stayed largely flat over the program’s four decades of existence the number of students in the Pell Grant Program has grown so vast that currently about 60% of undergraduate students in the country are receiving stipends from it.

At some schools, upwards of 80% of students receive Pell grants.

As a result, the nation is spending billions on the program — nearly $42 billion in 2012. [Indeed,] Pell grants are the biggest expenditure of the Department of Education.

Much of that increase is quite recent. In the short span between 2008 and 2010, Pell grants roughly doubled, with total disbursements growing from $18 billion to $36 billion.

* YEP. BUSH WAS PRESIDENT THROUGHOUT 2008... BUT... LET'S NOT FORGET... DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS (AND THUS THE PURSE STRINGS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT) FOLLOWING THE 2006 ELECTION AND SO IT WAS NANCY PELOSI AND HARRY REID WHO ACTUALLY INCREASED SPENDING IN 2008!

The number of grant recipients grew from 4.1 million in 2000 to 9.6 million in 2010 — when there were only 16 million undergraduates in the country.

* JEEZUS...

Though not technically an entitlement program, it has become a de facto entitlement — everyone who qualifies gets a grant, regardless of budgeted funding.

* INSANITY, FOLKS... INSANITY!

What are we getting for all that money?

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 15, 2012 at 2:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

What are we getting for all that money?

The latest Pope Center report, "Pell Grants: Where Does All the Money Go?" by my colleague Jenna Ashley Robinson and me, indicates that the answer is... [*PAUSE*]... not very much.

There are two major problems with the program: Not only has it expanded to cover more than half of all students, but almost anyone — regardless of academic background — can qualify. Recipients must meet only a minimal academic standard: obtaining a high school diploma or the equivalent. There are no minimum SAT scores or GPAs. Consequently, many grant recipients go to college but flunk out or lose interest, often going deep into debt at the same time.

* "I'M FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND I'M HERE TO HELP." (*SNORT*) INDEED... (*SIGH*)

That doesn’t mean that Pell is completely ineffective. Our review of existing research on Pell grants shows that Pell grants have helped to attract more poor students into college. The problem is that they haven’t been much help in getting them to graduation.

* WE AS A SOCIETY MUST STOP FORCING PEOPLE TO GO TO COLLEGE! ALONG THESE LINES WE MUST END FRAUDULENT "REQUIREMENTS" FOR NON-SPECIFIC COLLEGE DEGREE AS A SCREEN FOR THE INTERVIEWEE POOL! MOST JOBS SHOULD NOT - AND THEREFORE DO NOT - REQUIRE A COLLEGE DEGREE. PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION PROGRAMS... FINE. BEING ABLE TO PASS JOB PERFORMANCE SPECIFIC TEST SCREENINGS... GREAT! BUT MOST JOBS ON "TRAINED ON THE JOB" JOBS. WE NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THIS SIMPLE TRUTH!

The federal government does not regularly publish graduation rates for Pell recipients. Thus, we don’t know precisely how well recipients do. What we do know is that low-income students (the supposed focus of Pell grants) aren’t graduating at better rates since the program began in 1972.

Since 1970, the percentage of high school graduates from the bottom income quartile going to college has increased by about 60% — a substantial amount.

However...

the percentage of those students who received a bachelor’s degree by age 24 actually decreased from 21.9% to 19.9%.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

The legislation that founded and expanded the Pell program over time apparently assumed that providing access was the same as enabling students to graduate. But now we know that there’s a vast difference.

* YA THINK...?!?!

Moreover, although available data suggest Pell grants are more effective when targeted to genuinely low-income students, the grants are increasingly going to middle-income families - with 6% of Pell recipients in 2009-10 coming from a family with income over $50,000, the grant is losing its effectiveness.

Perhaps most distressing of all, a number of studies show that the Pell program is actually contributing to higher tuition, working against the initial reason for which it was set up.

The problem with Pell, then, is that it has grown out of control. To rein it back in, we must: Target the grants to low-income students; Target the grants to well-prepared students; and Require the federal government to regularly track the performance of Pell recipients.

June 15, 2012 at 2:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9334550/IMF-urges-Europe-to-help-refinance-Irish-bank-bail-out.html

* IN LINE WITH TODAY'S OPENING NEWSBITE CONCERNING (NO LONGER SO) GREAT BRITAIN...

(*SIGH*)

The International Monetary Fund on Friday urged Europe to help Ireland refinance its crippling bank bailout...

* IN OTHER WORDS... BAILOUT THE BAILOUT.

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

Dublin, which signed up to an 85 billion euro ($108 billion) EU/IMF bailout in late 2010, aims to return to long term debt markets later this year to help it prepare for the ending of official funding next year and meet borrowing needs of up to 20 billion euros in 2014.

* IN OTHER WORDS... WE NEED TO BORROW MORE SO WE CAN KEEP ENGAGING IN ONGOING DEFICIT SPENDING WHICH WILL LEAD TO MORE BORROWING...

(*MASSIVE MIGRAINE HEADACHE*)

* HEY... FOLKS... RAISE YOUR HANDS IF YOU KNOW WHO FUNDS MUCH OF THE IMF...

(*SIGH*)

June 15, 2012 at 2:48 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/house-obamas-fda-causing-drug-shortages/600936

President Obama's Food and Drug Administration has caused "a public health crisis" - a prescription drug shortage over the past two years - by increasing the number of threats issued to raid and close drug manufacturing plants, according to House investigators.

* FOLKS... (*PAUSE*)... WE'VE COVERED THIS BEFORE. IT'S TRUE. YOUR DOCTORS WILL TELL YOU IT'S TRUE!

"This shortage appears to be a direct result of over-aggressive and excessive regulatory action," House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-CA, said in a statement.

President Obama signed an executive order last year to help the FDA anticipate drug shortages while knocking Congress for failing to pass his preferred legislation on the issue. "Congress has been trying since February to do something about this," Obama said in November. "It has not yet been able to get it done . . . we can't wait."

The committee report concluded that a significant portion of the drug shortage is a problem of the Obama administration's making.

"Among shuttered manufacturing lines that occurred over the previous two years, the committee’s review did not find any instances where the shutdown was associated with reports of drugs harming customers," the report says, noting a 30% drop in the manufacture of certain prescription drugs at the largest manufacturers in the country.

Instead, the drug shortage crisis began in 2010 after the FDA began sending letters to companies found to be in violation of a given rule, in which the company was warned that "failure to promptly correct these violations may result in legal action without further notice including, without limitation, seizure and injunction."

* JEEZUS... THESE DUMB, POWER MAD BUREAUCRATS! (AND THIS IS AN EXECUTIVE BRANCH AGENCY - THEY WORK FOR OBAMA!)

The FDA sent just 474 such letters in 2009, but that number spiked to 1,720 in 2011.

(*HEADACHE*) HEY... SOMEONE PASS ME AN ASPIRIN... (HEY! WHAT DO YOU MEAN "WE'RE OUT?!")

"A common sense approach to regulations must be restored at the FDA," the committee report advised, calling for more targeted measures to induce company compliance with regulations.

"Agency protocols should be revised so that the agency is required to consider the implications of its actions on the nation’s supply of critical drugs."

* DUH!

June 15, 2012 at 3:12 PM

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