Saturday, January 4, 2014
Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Jan. 4 & 5, 2014
Well, folks, as you can see... down below... scrolling down... I've begun to post our UAE travelogue.
The plan is to continue using that particular space to lay down the whole story, but if the format gets screwed up due to add-on text (which happens sometimes; Blogspot is a bit buggy via Firefox) I'll switch to separate stand-alone posts.
Anyway... stay tuned...
It's a beautiful day out! The snow is white (and off the cars and off the roads), the sky is blue, and the sun is bright!
(Hmm... speaking of... today's newsbites theme song...)
Anyway, folks... enjoy this weekend's newsbites! (Found in the comments section... as always!)
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http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/uncle-sam-s-new-year-s-binge-borrows-1088-household-1-day
On October 16, Congress enacted legislation that suspended the debt limit through Feb. 7.
* AND SO... (READ ON...)
Uncle Sam — AKA the federal government — went on a New Year’s Eve binge, adding a net of $125,202,709,546.99 to its total debt in just the one day of Dec. 31, 2013, according to the U.S. Treasury.
* VIOLENCE IS THE ONLY ANSWER...
That equals approximately $1,088.60 for each of the 115,013,000 households the Census Bureau currently estimates there are in the United States.
* LEAD POISONING... THAT'S WHAT THESE BASTARDS DESERVE...
Overall, in the first quarter of fiscal 2014, which ended on Dec. 31, the total debt of the federal government jumped $613,787,258,252.83
That equals $5,336 for each household in the country.
* BUT THE MARKETS ROARED... (*SMIRK*) (*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
At the close of business on Dec. 30, 2013, the total debt of the federal government was 17,226,768,075,403.16.
By the close of business on the next day — New Year’s Eve — the debt had risen to 17,351,970,784,950.15 — a one-day jump of $125,202,709,546.99.
* THIS IS WITH THE BOEHNER RINOs CONTROLLING THE HOUSE.
In the five-month period from May 17 and October 16, 2013, the Treasury reported that the portion of the federal debt subject to a legal limit set by Congress closed every business day at $16,699,396,000,000, or approximately $25 million below the then-legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60.
* THEY LIED. AND THEY'RE STILL ON THE JOB. THERE IS NO RULE OF LAW IN OBAMA'S AMERIKA. NOT FOR THOSE IN CHARGE. THERE ARE NO PROTECTIONS YOU ENJOY THAT THESE PEOPLE CAN'T AND WOULDN'T TAKE AWAY WITH A SNAP OF THE FINGERS OR THE STROKE OF A PEN. YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS. YOU NEED TO BE ANGERED BY THIS.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-waived-laws-keep-f-35-track-204531422--sector.html
The Pentagon repeatedly waived laws banning Chinese-built components on U.S. weapons in order to keep the $392 billion Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program on track in 2012 and 2013, even as U.S. officials were voicing concern about China's espionage and military buildup.
* AND SOME OF YOU DON'T THINK THE FUCKING COUNTRY IS COLLAPSING AROUND US...?!?!
According to Pentagon documents reviewed by Reuters, chief U.S. arms buyer Frank Kendall allowed two F-35 suppliers, Northrop Grumman Corp and Honeywell International Inc, to use Chinese magnets for the new warplane's radar system, landing gears and other hardware. Without the waivers, both companies could have faced sanctions for violating federal law and the F-35 program could have faced further delays.
* THIS... IS... INSANITY...
"It was a pretty big deal and an unusual situation because there's a prohibition on doing defense work in China, even if it's inadvertent," said Frank Kenlon, who recently retired as a senior Pentagon procurement official and now teaches at American University. "I'd never seen this happen before."
* THE AGE OF OBAMA...
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is examining three such cases involving the F-35, the U.S. military's next generation fighter, the documents show. The GAO report, due March 1, was ordered by U.S. lawmakers, who say they are concerned that Americans firms are being shut out of the specialty metals market, and that a U.S. weapon system may become dependent on parts made by a potential future adversary.
* YA THINK...?!?!
Kendall said the waivers were needed to keep production, testing and training of the Pentagon's newest warplane on track; avert millions of dollars in retrofit costs; and prevent delays in the Marine Corps' plan to start using the jets in combat from mid-2015, according to the documents.
* COMBAT AGAINST WHOM...?!?! THE CHINESE...?!?! GEEZUS FRIGGIN' CHRIST...
Lockheed is developing the F-35, the Pentagon's costliest arms program, for the United States and eight countries that helped fund its development: Britain, Canada, Australia, Italy, Norway, Turkey...
* TURKEY...
...Denmark and the Netherlands. Israel and Japan have also placed orders for the jet.
* AND YET WE'RE BUYING PARTS FROM CHINA...
The program is already years behind schedule and 70% over initial cost estimates.
* OF COURSE IT IS! (AND YET NO ONE IS HELD RESPONSIBLE... NO ONE IS FIRED, LET ALONE STOOD AGAINST A WALL AND SHOT!) FOLKS... IMAGE THE BONUSES WHICH WERE GIVEN OUT TO REWARD SUCH "EXPERTISE!"
At the time Kendall was granting the waivers, officials were acutely worried that further delays and cost increases would erode the foreign orders needed to drive down the future cost of each warplane.
* THIS WAS A POLITICAL PROJECT FROM THE FIRST. AGAIN, FOLKS... WHILE THE DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE THAN THE REPUBLICANS... ONLY "BIPARTISAN" LEAD DISEASE CAN SAVE THIS COUNTRY.
Bill Greenwalt, a former senior defense official and now an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute think tank, said the risk to national security appeared low since the magnets in question had no programmable hardware.
* IT'S NOT THE MAGNETS! IT'S THE POINT THAT THEY GET TO THIS POINT... MANUFACTURING... AND SUDDEN "DISCOVER" THAT WE CAN'T MAKE CERTAIN PARTS OURSELVES! AND THEN WE OUTSOUCE TO CHINA, NOT ONE OF OUR ALLIES! IT'S THE THINKING - OR LACK THEREOF - BEHIND THIS LOGISTICAL SCREW-UP THAT TELLS YOU OUR GOVERNMENT IS CHOCK FULL OF INCOMPETENTS!
However, he added: "This is an area that will need considerable due diligence in the future to ensure that components for more high-risk applications are safe from potential tampering and foreign mischief."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304591604579288233398520354?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
HealthCare.gov has started to work as a new year dawns. But work at what? It still delivers a faulty vision of health-care reform.
Let it be said that ObamaCare provides fabulous benefits for some Americans. If you have serious health problems and a low income (but not low enough to qualify for Medicaid), you can get unlimited health care for a premium largely or completely subsidized by someone else.
If you are a young adult under 26, you can be covered on your parents' policy at the expense of other insurance customers.
Down the road, if your employer doesn't lay you off or reduce your hours, you may get health care.
But these benefits are delivered to some at the expense of others, thus qualify as "redistribution," not "reform."
(Reform, defined in any rigorous way, would benefit everybody because it would remove distortions that cause Americans to spend too much and get too little for their health-care dollar.)
Way back in 2010, Mr. Obama's strongest business supporter, Warren Buffett, made the case for reform before redistribution, telling CNBC: "Universality—yeah, I believe in insuring more people, but I don't believe in insuring more people until you attack the cost aspect."
One might quibble: Why couldn't a proper law do both at the same time? But what we got instead, as Mr. Buffett foretold in the same television interview, was not reform but "2,000 pages . . . of nonsense."
So let's talk about deductibles.
In terminal desperation, liberals now are calling Republicans hypocrites for criticizing ObamaCare's high deductibles. After all, didn't Republicans once favor higher out-of-pocket costs as a way to introduce more consumer sensitivity to the cost and value of health care?
* I BELIEVE IN HIGH DEDUCTIBLES! BUT IN EXCHANGE FOR LOWER PREMIUMS AND CATASTROPHIC COVERAGE AT 100%! THAT'S NOT WHAT OBAMACARE GIVE US!
The characteristic pathology of ObamaCare is that government is making the choices. Consumers aren't. ObamaCare means higher deductibles than many customers would choose for themselves. It means a narrower choice of doctors and hospitals than many would choose for themselves. These sacrifices, in turn, are required to pay for a broader package of benefits than many customers would choose for themselves.
The biggest, dumbest ObamaCare lie of them all was that these distortions were necessary to cover the poor and those with pre-existing conditions. [No!] Direct tax dollars could have been used to cover these users. Everybody else could have been left free to buy insurance in a market not distorted by mandates — exactly what a broad spectrum of health-care reformers (not just Republicans) have sought for decades.
* EXACTLY!
As serious reformers have always known, the real political challenge has been unwinding inefficient and illusory favors directed at various classes of health-care users and providers. In the absence of these government-mandated distortions (including tax distortions), then the market would necessarily gravitate toward insurance arrangements that help Americans make better use of their health-care resources.
You can blame congressional sausage-making for the crummy excuse for reform Mr. Obama gave us. You can suspect that its creators were mostly interested in undermining what's left of our private system of health insurance.
(*NOD*)
ObamaCare was not the product of a blue-ribbon commission or some body of learned advisers, recall; it was assembled in logrolling exclusively among Democrats in Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, who is not known as a policy thinker.
ObamaCare's authors are being mugged by reality in real time, before our eyes. This is the most propitious development for health-care reform in decades.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304367204579268771980972030?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
On Dec. 13, the proposed Rosemont Copper project in southwestern Arizona — which would produce about one-tenth of all the copper in the U.S. every year — got the green light from the U.S. Forest Service to begin operations.
It was a long time coming — more than seven years after the company presented its mine plan and began the National Environmental Protection Act review process.
(Then again, since the average time to get a mine permitted in the U.S. is a worst-in-the-world seven-to-10 years, Rosemont's long wait isn't the exception. It's the rule.)
* AGAIN... WE'RE A NATION SLOWLY COMMITTING SUICIDE...
The Forest Service's approval should be great news for our high-tech economy, powered by copper in, for instance, electric vehicles, smart homes and smartphones (about 10% of an average phone's weight is copper). But that decision is overshadowed by the last remaining — and most formidable — governmental hurdle, the Environmental Protection Agency, the guardian of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
Having run the gauntlet of state and local permitting requirements, Rosemont now faces two potentially fatal challenges from the EPA in the final stages of review: either death by a thousand pesky comments or an outright veto.
In the bureaucratic equivalent of sticky riot foam — a substance meant to slow and stop people on the street — every few months, a couple of dozen pages furl out from the EPA to Rosemont's managers. Past communications have included the suggestion that the project might jeopardize the leopard frog, or the Gila topminnow, or the water umbrel.
(One official worry was that the project might impede the opportunity for people to canoe in a desert region where summer temperatures reach 118 degrees.)
The EPA churns out concerns about potential impacts on 18 miles of streams and threats to the "water quality" of the Davidson Canyon Wash, a single gulch — filled intermittently by rain — in a state with 39,039 rivers and streams.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
The agency also lets Rosemont know it will be looking at the impacts of mining on air quality — but only after a preliminary process to determine which air-quality standard should apply. Each governmental query receives a Rosemont reply in the never-ending race toward a moving finish line.
* YEP. THAT'S THE THING; THE GOAL POSTS ARE CONSTANTLY BEING MOVED... THE RULE ARE CONSTANTLY CHANGING SO AS TO MAKE THEM ARBITRARY IN FACT IF NOT IN THEORY!
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Even this snail's pace doesn't satisfy anti-mining advocates.
Many environmentalists and anti-capitalists (and many critics are both) would like to see the EPA simply short-circuit the review process and veto the mine proposal. After all, the agency has used Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to shut down a mine — famously, the Spruce Mine in West Virginia — even after it had received its operating permit.
* ARBITRARY. CAPRICIOUS. ANTI-FREEDOM! ANTI-SELF-INTEREST! ANTI-COMMON-SENSE!
For the most vocal environmental groups, the EPA is perfectly suited as judge and jury. Jennifer Krill, the director of Earthworks, confirmed in congressional testimony earlier this year that her group has never supported or endorsed a single U.S. mine.
* NOT A SINGLE ONE!
The threat of an EPA Clean Water Act veto of various projects hangs over more than $220 billion in economic development, ranging from mines to agriculture and infrastructure projects.
(*SIGH*)
Sadly for communities around the proposed mine — about 30 miles southwest of Tucson in an area where unemployment is still stubbornly close to 10% — every day of delay means a longer wait for much-needed jobs, which would funnel much-needed revenue into local tax coffers. Mothers and fathers struggling to support their families may feel endangered, but unlike the leopard frog, they're not on a government list.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The nation, meanwhile, is losing the output of a mine with a projected yearly output of more than 100,000 metric tons. That's Arizona copper the U.S. wouldn't need to import from abroad, feeding a negative balance of trade, and providing political and economic leverage to nations that supply the metal we fail to mine ourselves.
If we mine fewer metals, won't manufacturing jobs leave the U.S. and go where the metals are?
* YES!
If we don't mine in the U.S. — with arguably the world's most stringent oversight, environmental and safety standards — won't Americans end up importing products made with metals mined in other places under less-stringent standards (if any), leading to far more damage to the environment and the health of the miners?
* OBVIOUSLY!
All of these questions are critical to determining whether a mine serves the public good. Surely they must matter to the nation as much as a topminnow does to the EPA.
* OUR NATION IS POPULATED BY SHEEP... AND MORONS.
Finally, did Congress pass the National Environmental Protection Act to put in place a means of balancing the benefits of resource extraction with competing public goods? Or did it set up an endless bureaucratic gauntlet designed to delay, derail or economically exhaust mine developers? Seven and a half years on, Rosemont Copper is still waiting for an answer.
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