Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, June 26, 2013


Another depressing news day...

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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/memo_to_wannabes_the_city_out_of_LFfkAMTLOwxv0eVooeJcPI

‘We’ve done all we can to manage the city’s finances in the most responsible manner possible,” Mayor Bloomberg said Sunday night in his final budget speech.

If so, we’re all in trouble.

But just because Bloomberg hasn’t been most responsible doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of less fiscally responsible wannabes waiting to take his place.

Voters elected Bloomberg because they were too terrified to let a Democrat take over after 9/11 — and re-elected him to a third term for the same reason after the financial crisis.

As Ronald Lauder, the billionaire who got the two-term limits passed in 1993, wrote in 2008 by way of giving Bloomberg a pass: “A city poised on the brink of economic disaster” needs “a mayor with a deep understanding of finance.”

* WELL, FOLKS... GUESS WHAT? (READ ON!)

You wouldn’t know we have that mayor.

In 2002, city-funded spending was $26.4 billion.

In the budget for the fiscal year that starts next week, spending will be $53.7 billion — twice as much.

(*SHRUG*)

We spend $19 billion more than if the budget had kept up with inflation.

Over the mayor’s third term, spending is up 17% — nearly twice inflation.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The culprits, as everyone knows, are public-employee benefits. Next year, the city will spend $17.1 billion on pensions, health care and other “fringe” benefits — 12 times what it will spend on welfare.

Everyone knows — except the Democrats who want to be mayor.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Standing with the mayor Sunday was City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. You’d think she’d strike a sober note. If she’s mayor next year, she’ll face a $2 billion deficit. Here was her last chance to blame Bloomberg. (She’s signed off on the last eight budgets, so it’s her fault, too — but some fiscal awareness would be better late than never.) But she was rosy. “We now have a better outlook than we had at any time since the financial crash of 2008,” said Quinn.

Toward the end of the next mayor’s first term, pensions and health care will run $19.7 billion annually — 33% of city-funded spending (up from 22% when the mayor took office).

And as interest rates rise, the next mayor will face another crunch: It will cost more to borrow.

* BUT FORGET THAT... AND GET THIS... (READ ON!)

[O]ther Democratic contenders criticized Bloomberg (and Quinn) for not spending enough.

Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said City Hall should have “provided pre-K for every child” by raising taxes on people making more than half a million dollars.

(Britain tried to raise taxes on the rich two years ago, but backtracked when the data showed that the result “could be negative” as people shifted their income to avoid the taxes, its treasury said.)

Comptroller John Liu slammed the mayor for leaving “the biggest question — expired labor contracts — for another mayor and another day.” But workers can’t get retroactive raises, because the city can’t afford them.

Bill Thompson and Anthony Weiner stayed quiet. Thompson may not want to annoy his new patron, the United Federation of Teachers. Fresh from endorsing the former comptroller, union chief Michael Mulgrew accused Bloomberg of playing a “confidence game” in hiding budget surpluses — ignoring the fact that six of the past seven budgets have been in deficit. The only “surplus” was from before Lehman Brothers collapsed, and that $8 billion is gone.

(*SIGH*)

If the candidates are playing make-believe, it’s partly due to lack of adult supervision. Bloomberg is supposed to be the guy with the “deep understanding of finance.” Yet he didn’t use his final budget speech to sound alarms.

True, that would mean admitting fiscal defeat. But the next mayor could turn defeat into disaster.

June 26, 2013 at 6:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/06/25/the-insiders-what-edward-snowden-teaches-us-about-obamas-climate-change-policy/

[The other day], with the release of the “The President’s Climate Action Plan,” Barack Obama announced the damage he’s going to do to the American economy through actions that will have no appreciable effect on the global environment, much less lower the earth’s temperature to President Obama’s desired level.

And you’ll notice that while Obama’s proposed plan contains a section on “leading international efforts to address global climate change,” his international plan consists of eye-rolling homilies and tired slogans like “spurring concrete action” through “bilateral initiatives with China” (what a joke) and “forging global responses to climate change” through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The president cannot even deal effectively with Congress, and he certainly hasn’t demonstrated the diplomatic skills or foreign policy strength to move the world in the direction he wants it to go.

In case we needed a more vivid illustration of the president’s diplomatic limits, the case of [NSA Whistleblower] Edward Snowden is revealing, in real time, Obama’s lack of stature abroad and the diminished power of the White House.

Russia, China, and no less than Ecuador are all showing defiance on this issue.

If these countries thought they would suffer any consequences or that they had any price to pay whatsoever — or, for that matter, if any reservoir of goodwill had been built during the Obama presidency — they would do the reasonable thing and matter-of-factly hand over Mr. Snowden. But in this case, they obviously have no interest in cooperating with President Obama.

These countries are gratuitously taunting the president and won’t even extend us common diplomatic courtesies. And even worse, it is all happening in public. Essentially, the leaders of China, Russia and Ecuador are giving the president of the United States the diplomatic equivalent of the middle finger.

Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed today that Snowden is in Russia but he will not be extradited to the United States. The Russians may give Snowden up eventually. They likely don’t want him taking up room in their prisons or even in their cities, but they’re toying with Obama just because they can. It’s humiliating, and it’s not helpful to us for other countries to see us in this weakened position.

What does the Snowden episode say about our diplomatic relationships? And by extension, what does it say about President Obama’s ability to forge international consensus on climate change policy? It says something important that President Obama cannot rely on other world leaders to cooperate with him in a situation even where they have no strategic interest.

Snowden doesn’t mean anything to any of these countries. .... These countries are not protecting one of their agents. They are doing this because they can, and because they believe what they are doing is preferable to working with this president.

If we can’t get them to give up Snowden, there is no way the president is going to get them to join him in his global warming crusade.

June 26, 2013 at 7:04 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/06/obama-wants-action-on-climate-change-in-the-worst-way-and-thats-what-america-is-getting/

Listening to President Obama’s big climate-change policy speech, one would never realize that climate-change science has been going through a rough patch.

(*SNORT*)

For the past 15 years, as [even] The Economist recently noted, Earth’s surface air temperature has unexpectedly been flat even as greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. Climatologists are befuddled.

* NOT THE CLIMATOLOGISTS I'VE BEEN RELYING UPON FOR THE PAST 35 YEARS!

[T]his scientific reality doesn’t seem to have penetrated the White house or affected Obama’s decision to pursue an economically inefficient, top-down, centrally-planned approach to reducing “carbon pollution.” Nope, it’s full speed ahead with executive action directing the EPA to create carbon standards for new and existing U.S. power plants, one of the country’s largest sources of greenhouse-gas emissions. And Obama also added a climate-change litmus test to approving the Keystone pipeline, even though that oil will get shipped no matter what, if not by pipeline then by rail.

* IT'S A NIGHTMARE, MY FRIENDS...

Not that Obama had many options left for an activist environmental agenda given the general Republican abhorrence of cap-and-trade or carbon taxes. If there was ever a time, however, to take a “watchful waiting” approach to climate change — along with greater research energy science research, particularly into geo-engineering - this would seem to be it.

* SO ANY REASONABLE PERSON WOULD THINK!

Also worrisome: the president’s nonchalance about potential economic trade-offs to increased regulation, something he waved away by talismanically invoking America’s innovative ability.

And what is the cost-benefit analysis here? As AEI’s Ben Zycher has noted: "U.S. emissions of GHG are about 18% of global emissions, a proportion that is declining steadily. If we ignore that ongoing decline in the U.S. proportion, the U.S. would contribute about 0.5 degrees of the IPCC [year 2100] best estimate of 3 degrees. Suppose that U.S. policies over time reduce our contribution by half, an outcome that could be achieved only in the face of massive economic dislocation. In that case, the reduction in the U.S. contribution would be about 0.2-0.3 degrees, a change that no climate model predicts would yield measurable effects in terms of climate patterns and attendant impacts upon weather and other parameters."

So what we have is an anti-growth, environmental agenda being pushed ASAP when the science is in a bit of flux.

Odd timing for bad policy.

* THESE... PEOPLE... DON'T... CARE...!!! THEY'RE FANATICS! IT'S THAT SIMPLE...

June 26, 2013 at 7:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.aei.org/article/energy-and-the-environment/climate-change/obama-turns-climate-change-into-corporate-bonanza/

President Obama, speaking on climate change at Georgetown University on Tuesday, invoked science again and again. But the policies he pushed had less to do with the findings of physics than the wish lists of corporate lobbyists.

And still, Obama had the audacity to throw barbs at the "special interests."

"Science" is a favorite mantra of the Democrats and the Left today. It justifies both executive power grabs and a smug sense of superiority. Those barbaric Republicans oppose our policies only because they're anti-science, the argument goes. Obama on Tuesday even pegged the opponents of his policies as the "flat-Earth society." Accusing opponents of denying science is a focus-group-tested, party-approved message of the Democrats these days. It's the charge they throw at anyone who opposes their regulations and subsidies.

There is, of course, a decent amount of scientific consensus on climate change. We know that methane and carbon dioxide act as greenhouse gasses, applying upward pressure on temperatures. We know that industrial activity adds to greenhouse-gas concentrations. And we know that rapid changes in temperature can disrupt climate and have harmful effects.

But Obama and his allies pretend science tells us much more. They talk as if we can precisely know what amount of emissions will cause how much temperatures will change, and thus how much the seas will rise or storms will hit. Most importantly - and most falsely - they pretend that we can count on Democrats' policies to meaningfully mitigate these effects.

In Washington, though, this sort of technocratic talk always gives way to corporatist policy making. And Obama's energy plan bubbles over with corporate-government collusion.

His climate plan rests primarily on a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gasses are "pollutants," which the EPA must regulate. Obama even called CO2 (the stuff you breathe out and plants breathe in) a "toxin," in the energy plan he released Tuesday.

During the arguments in that 2007 case, energy giants Entergy and Calpine both filed amicus curiae briefs asking the court to force the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.

Calpine lobbyist Michael Brady was a special guest of Obama on Tuesday, according to National Journal.

(Obama's constant anti-lobbyist rhetoric notwithstanding.)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 26, 2013 at 7:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Back in 2007, Calpine's brief rattled off a murderers row of special interests that sided with them in favor of regulation: General Electric, which spends more on lobbying than any other corporation; Exelon, so cozy with Obama that a company lobbyist once called it "The President's utility;" Duke Energy, which underwrote Obama's 2012 convention with $10 million in financing; and others.

Why would all these companies want EPA to regulate their emissions? Maybe they're worried about melting polar ice caps?

(*GUFFAW*)

Or maybe they see profit in these policies.

(*NOD*)

This latter possibility - which seems more likely - ought to raise doubts about how much policy will follow science as opposed to lobbying.

For instance, a month after the Obama administration placed greenhouse gas caps on all new power plants in 2011, the EPA's Gina McCarthy (now in line to run the agency) announced the first plant to win an exemption - and that plant happened to be installing GE turbines.

* GE - AS IN GENERAL ELECTRIC.

Obama's energy plan also calls for more loan-guarantees for renewable energy. This was the Solyndra program. It involves trusting bureaucrats to pick winning projects to back with taxpayer money, subsidizing banks and solar-panel makers in the process.

(*SIGH*)

Obama even gave a nod to ethanol, saying we need "farmers to grow new fuels." Ethanol subsidies are widely derided as a wasteful corporate welfare boondoggle. Now Obama wants more.

(*NOD*)

Despite the glaring clashes with his rhetoric on "special interests," Obama considers it a virtue to have corporations at the center of his climate plan. At Georgetown, he touted Wal-Mart and General Motors - and the fact that they see profits in pursuing green energy and supporting green policy - as signs that his grand plans wouldn't hurt the economy. (In the process, he seems to have given a 5.5% boost to the stock of Solar City, the solar company installing Wal-Mart's solar panels, and founded by $100,000 Obama donor Elon Musk.)

(*SNORT*)

This is the conflation at the heart of Obamanomics: Obama points out that a few politically connected very large corporations would profit from his policies as if that's evidence the economy will benefit. But GE's windmill profits come at the expense of Americans who pay more for electricity when utilities have to buy wind power. And regulations or mandates that roll off Wal-Mart's back can crush smaller competitors.

Obama even named Nike as one of his allies on U.S. climate policy.

(Does Obama realize that Nike's manufacturing is almost all done in the Third World?)

Tax energy in the U.S. and you hurt Nike's U.S.-based competitors like New Balance, while Nike hardly feels a pinprick.

With all this profit from politically connected companies on the line, do you think policy will be crafted by science - or by [cronyism]?

June 26, 2013 at 7:24 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/zimmerman-witness-gets-twitter-scrub-748092

In a late-night scrubbing spree, dozens of embarrassing and incriminating posts were deleted Tuesday evening from the Twitter account of a Florida woman who has been described as a star government witness in the George Zimmerman murder case, The Smoking Gun has learned.

* WHO DID THE SCRUBBING...? DID PROSECUTORS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS?

The sanitizing of Rachel Jeantel’s Twitter account came as the 19-year-old Miami resident prepared to take the stand and testify about a phone call she had with Trayvon Martin immediately before the unarmed 17-year-old was shot to death by Zimmerman in February 2012.

In relating that conversation, Jeantel has told investigators that a “scared” Martin said he was being followed by an unknown white man who demanded to know what the teen was doing inside the Retreat at Twin Lakes, a gated community in Sanford, Florida. Jeantel contends that she heard Martin ask the man, “Why you following me for?” before she heard someone “bump” the teenager. “Next thing I hear…the phone is shut off,” Jeantel told investigators in an April 2012 interview.

* HEARD SOMEONE "BUMP" MARTIN...? OVER A CELL PHONE...??? TWO FLESH AND BLOOD HUMAMS "BUMPING" MADE A NOICE THAT COULD BE HEARD OVER A CELL PHONE...? HMM... POSSIBLE, I SUPPOSE. I SURE WISH MY CELL PHONE HAD SUCH RECEPTION!

Jeantel’s testimony may allow prosecutors to further portray Zimmerman, a 29-year-old neighborhood watch commander, as Martin’s pursuer, an armed aggressor who profiled the black teen before murdering him with a single gunshot to the chest.

* WAS THIS PHONE CONVERSATION A VIDEO CONVERSATION...???

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 26, 2013 at 11:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

As The Smoking Gun reported yesterday, Jeantel...maintains a Twitter account (@MsRachel_94) to which she has made more than 200 posts over the past five months. Many of the teenager’s tweets referred to drinking, smoking, and getting high. She also made references to Martin’s death, referred to acquaintances as “bitch” and “nigga,” and wrote about having “jackass lawyers on my ass.”

Yesterday afternoon, after The Smoking Gun sought to contact several of Jeantel’s Twitter followers and Facebook friends, 14 tweets - and 13 linked Twitpic photos - were deleted from her Twitter account (which carries the personal motto “My Character And Action Describe Who I Am”).

(*GUFFAW*)

The removed tweets included references to drinking and a link to a sexually suggestive set of photos. Another killed tweet, from June 23, read “Court nails” and linked to a photo of fingernails (presumably Jeantel’s) with fresh orange polish. Additionally, several Twitpic images of assorted liquor bottles were deleted. The scrubbing of Jeantel’s Twitter account, however, did not end there. After 10 PM (Eastern) last night, 43 other tweets were deleted. The postings disappeared about two hours after TSG published a story about Jeantel’s social media musings. A TSG comparison of Jeantel’s sanitized Twitter account with the version from early Tuesday afternoon showed that the number of published tweets plummeted from 202 to 146.

A compilation of the 43 deleted Jeantel tweets can be found on pages beginning here. The 14 tweets deleted yesterday afternoon can be found here.

* LINKS PROVIDED WITHIN THE STORY...

The material deleted last evening included nearly all remaining references to the underage Jeantel’s partying, including tweets like “When u drinking & smoking u need good music in ur ears hahaha I feel so good on Sunday” and “I need a drink to sleep dis off fuck dis shit boi.”

A quartet of consecutive February 24 tweets was also killed. “Party time let get high,” read the first tweet, which included beer glass emoticons. The messages “Omg everybody high” and “Lol we going to hell for smoke on Sunday I need some more drink” then followed. Jeantel’s final tweet that day was “I hope I dnt hit no one tonight lord plz watch my driving.” Her first February 25 tweet, also deleted, read, “Just got home thank u lord good night.”

Several tweets from February 26 - the one-year anniversary of Martin’s death - were also deleted, including one that read, “Omg people calling n praying n shit lol I need a drink smoke and a pray my head killing me right now cannot wait when this day end.” A February 26 message reading “#rip Tray” remains on Jeantel’s Twitter page.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

June 26, 2013 at 11:45 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

On March 5, it was disclosed that Jeantel was not truthful to investigators last year when she claimed that the reason she did not attend Martin’s funeral was due to a hospitalization.

* WILL THIS INFORMATION BE KEPT FROM THE JURY...???

In apparent response to news reports about that lie, Jeantel tweeted, “Jus got home n hear wat was going and I’m angry.” In a follow-up post, she wrote, “remember who cause the funeral to happen keep it 100% Mr.ass hoe damn they p*ssed me off.” Those two tweets were erased last night.

A pair of Jeantel’s deleted April tweets appear to refer to Robert Zimmerman, Jr., George’s older brother and the outspoken Zimmerman family spokesman who recently had to apologize for a pair of his own controversial Twitter posts. In one tweet, Zimmerman juxtaposed a photo of Martin with an image of a Georgia teen recently charged with murdering a 13-month-old boy. The picture of Martin shows him holding up two middle fingers, while the photo of the other teen appears to show him flashing gang signs. “A picture speaks a thousand words. Any questions?" tweeted Zimmerman, who is seen above on CNN's "Piers Morgan Live.".

* THE MORE PHOTOS THE BETTER! THE MORE INFO THE BETTER! I'M NOT DEFENDING MIXING APPLES AND ORANGES (JUXTAPOSING PHOTOS), BUT WHAT THE MEDIA DID WITH THEIR "CHOICES" OF WHICH MARTIN PHOTOS TO AIR AND WHICH NOT TO AIR... (*SHRUG*)... OBVIOUSLY THEY WERE ACTING AS "TEAM MARTIN" RATHER THAN MEDIA REPORTERS.

In an April 4 tweet, Jeantel recounted a tweet she had received from “J” asking her “did you see the bro talking shit bout u.” Her tweet concluded, “oh really I have jackass lawyers on my ass kno “JR” want to up in ok.”

The following day Jeantel tweeted, “JUST FOR ‘JR’,” and included a link to a Twitpic showing someone giving the camera the finger. The image was deleted last night.

A third post seeming to refer to Robert Zimmerman, Jr. appeared on Jeantel’s Twitter page on May 28. That day, Robert appeared at the Sanford courthouse for a hearing in his brother’s case and later conducted a press conference during which he declared his brother’s innocence and called for the withdrawal of second-degree murder charges against his sibling.

“Omg can somebody Robert jr shut the fuck up with his life story,” Jeantel wrote in her May 28 tweet. While that message was not among the 43 tweets removed last night from Jeantel’s Twitter account, it was deleted early this morning. A follow-up tweet, scrubbed last night, reported, “This shit right here goin make me smoke I need a drink a Lott.” (5 pages)

* AGAIN... DID THE STATE PROSECUTORS HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS SCRUBBING ATTEMPT?

June 26, 2013 at 11:45 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130625/lakeview/mob-beats-man-unconscious-outside-belmont-cta-station

A crowd of people watched a man get beaten unconscious outside the Belmont Red, Brown and Purple Line Station early Sunday morning after he tried to take his cellphone back from a thief, prosecutors said.

* JUST "A MAN?"

Morgan Townsend, 22, and Deondre Williams, 18, appeared in court Tuesday, charged with multiple counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, robbery and mob action after the attack.

* THE ARTICLE INCLUDES PHOTOS: BOTH MEN ARE BLACK.

The victim, a 25-year-old man from Orland Hills, and a second victim were at the Belmont station, eyes fixed on their cellphones, when two unidentified thieves snatched the phones out of their hands and took off, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Erin Antonietti said during a bond hearing Tuesday.

* ARE THE VICTIMS ALSO BLACK? (I ONLY ASK BECAUSE I'D BE CURIOUS TO KNOW IF THERE'S REASON TO THINK THERE WAS A RACIAL ANGLE TO THIS CRIME.)

The victims caught up with the suspected thieves in an alley adjacent to the CTA stop, Antonietti said. They were able to detain one of the alleged thieves and were waiting for police when the suspect "dropped the phone on the ground, and an unknown female came by and picked it up."

(*JUST SCRATCHING MY HEAD*)

Moments later, Townsend and Williams came into the alley and demanded the victims "let go of their friend," Antonietti said.

* SO... THE CRIMINALS HAD "FRIENDS...?!?!" "FRIENDS" RIGHT THERE...???

The victims refused, Antonietti said. Townsend allegedly started throwing punches, and Williams picked up a piece of wood, breaking it as he used it as a weapon against one of the victims.

* AGAIN... JUST CURIOUS... ARE WE TALKING BLACK ON BLACK CRIME OR BLACK ON WHITE CRIME?

At one point, between 15 and 20 people surrounded one victim as the two alleged attackers continued to beat him, Antonietti said.

* NICE...

A witness on his way home from a party stumbled upon the scene. "He was knocked out, completely," said the 36-year-old witness. "He was on the ground, right by the alley. One guy hit him in the face, and another guy kicked him. It looked like he was going to die or something."

When the witness rushed to aid the bleeding man, his attackers fled.

The two victims were taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital.

Williams and Townsend, arrested soon after the attack, were ordered held on $350,000 bond by Cook County Judge Adam Bourgeois Jr. Tuesday.

* HAVE THEY IDENTIFIED THEIR "FRIENDS" YET...???

June 27, 2013 at 12:01 AM

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