Thursday, August 7, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, August 7, 2014


Well, folks... (*CHUCKLE*)... I didn't get around to newsbiting yesterday... other than the front page "opening" of course.

 Busy, busy, busy with Kim home!

 Anyway... I'll try and do better today!

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8 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/obamas-tax-law-rewrite-1407368237

It's going to be a busy autumn of law-writing for the Obama Administration.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

* NOT... FUNNY...

The President has said he plans to act unilaterally to reinterpret the immigration statutes, and now the Treasury Department says Secretary Jack Lew is looking for heretofore undiscovered legal ways to block corporate overseas tax inversions. The not-so-minor detail missing here is any legal justification.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Let's focus today on tax inversions, which allow corporations to relocate overseas in a way that reduces their tax liability. Mr. Obama has conceded these are legal...

* ONE... MORE... TIME...

...and as recently as July 16 Mr. Lew told CNBC that "we have looked at the tax code. There are a lot of obscure provisions that we do not believe we have the authority to address this inversion question through administrative action. If we did, we would be doing more."

* YOU AND THE PRESIDENT COULD GO ON THE PR OFFENSIVE AND DEMAND CONGRESS CHANGE THE LAW! (THE KEY WORD... "CONGRESS.")

But lo, on Tuesday a spokeswoman announced that Treasury "is reviewing a broad range of authorities for possible administrative actions" to limit inversions "as well as approaches that could meaningfully reduce the tax benefits after inversions take place."

Hello?

That sure sounds like rewriting tax law by executive fiat, which violates the Constitution's separation of powers.

* THEY... DON'T... CARE...

* NOR DO MOST AMERICANS.

(*SHRUG*)

August 7, 2014 at 10:15 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/kansass-earmark-shuckers-1407368612

The big underreported story of Tuesday's GOP primaries is how two Kansas spending reformers brushed back challenges from corporate rent-seekers. Their victories ought to give Republicans in Congress the confidence to buck crony capitalists.

In the first Congressional district that spans western and central Kansas, second-term Rep. Tim Huelskamp fended off farmer Alan LaPolice, who was backed by the farm and biofuel lobbies.

Mr. Huelskamp was a target because he dared to support a bill to eliminate the renewable fuel standard (i.e., the mandate to produce ethanol). He also voted against this year's farm bill because of its de minimis food-stamp reforms.

(*THUMBS UP*)

* GOD BLESS TIM HUELSKAMP!

That brought the wrath of Kansas Farm Bureau President Steve Baccus, who complained that the Congressman "shows a lack of understanding of commodity markets, value-added agriculture, and what it means to be a Congressional Representative to his constituents."

* DIE, BACCUS, DIE! (OK... MAYBE NOT LITERALLY... BUT YOU GET THE GIST!)

The Kansas Corn Growers Association, the Kansas Association of Ethanol Processors and the Kansas Grain Sorghum Producers Association also rebuked the reformer for "lack of understanding" of their subsidy needs.

* ETHANOL SUCKS, FOLKS!

Mr. Huelskamp fought back by explaining that he didn't "think Washington should be picking winners and losers" and that "industry should be able to compete in the marketplace." His district's Republican voters largely agreed, and he won by 10 points.

* PEOPLE CAN ACCEPT FACTS AND DO THE RIGHT THING IN RESPONSE! YOU JUST HAVE TO BE HONEST...!!!

As significant was fellow second-term Rep. Mike Pompeo's 25-point rout of his pork-barrel predecessor Todd Tiahrt, who had preceded Mr. Pompeo as the Congressman from Kansas's fourth district from 1995 to 2011.

(Mr. Tiahrt ran for Congress as a Newt Gingrich revolutionary but soon turned into a Tom DeLay pork-barreler, and he flogged Mr. Pompeo for not doing the same.)

Mr. Pompeo introduced a bill to eliminate energy subsidies in toto and has annually led the charge to unwind the wind energy tax credit. The wind lobby spent a bundle to beat him. He also voted against this year's farm bill because "it reflects a step backwards to the old Washington of pet projects, reckless spending and harmful regulation."

* GOD BLESS MIKE POMPEO!

Congratulations to Kansas voters for rewarding principle, and we hope Republicans across the country take the message.

August 7, 2014 at 10:24 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/articles/dodd-frank-goes-0-for-11-1407368348

The debate over whether federal officials believe the largest banks are still too big to fail ended this week in Washington.

(*SMIRK*)

After examining the second drafts of "living wills" that each bank is required to submit under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, financial regulators voted unanimously that not one of the country's 11 most complicated banks would be able to enter bankruptcy without causing dire economic consequences.

* LAYING THE OFFICIAL GROUNDWORK FOR FUTURE BAILOUTS...

* THANK YOU DODD... THANK YOU FRANK... THANK YOU OBAMA... THANK YOU DEMOCRATS! (SARCASM, FOLKS... SARCASM...)

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation jointly announced that the giant banks did not have adequate plans in the event of distress or failure. The FDIC board was especially pungent, finding that the plans submitted by the 11 giants "are not credible and do not facilitate an orderly resolution under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code."

* AND YET NO ONE GOES TO JAIL! NO ONE EVEN LOSES HIS/HER JOB! ALL CONTINUES AS IT WAS BEFORE...!!!

The Fed said the shortcomings include "unsupported expectations regarding the international resolution process" and "failures to address structural and organizational impediments to an orderly resolution."

In a separate statement, FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig sent a more direct warning to taxpayers: "Despite the thousands of pages of material these firms submitted, the plans provide no credible or clear path through bankruptcy that doesn't require unrealistic assumptions and direct or indirect public support." That's because, Mr. Hoenig said, these firms are more complicated than they were in 2008 and "when failure is imminent, no firm has yet shown how it will access private sector 'debtor in possession' financing, a critical element in restructuring a firm."

* MORE COMPLICATED...!!! MORE COMPLICATED THAN THEY WERE IN 2008! FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

In that sense Tuesday's failing grades represent most of all a failure of the Dodd-Frank vision for bank regulation. The model is supposed to be that regulators will be able to see failure coming and prevent it. They will also so thoroughly understand all that the banks do that the wind-downs will be seamless. Apparently not.

* NOPE... (*SIGH*)... APPARENTLY NOT.

As Mr. Hoenig also explained, the giant banks "remain excessively leveraged with ratios of nearly 22 to 1 on average. The remainder of the industry averages closer to 12 to 1. Thus, the margin for error and time to default for the largest, most systemically important financial firms is nearly half that of other far less systemically important commercial banks."

Our view is that it would be a brave Treasury Secretary, of either party, willing to shut down one of these banks without taxpayer help if they fail. That means the only way to prevent a bailout is with a large enough capital buffer to make failure less likely, or by writing a special provision of the federal bankruptcy code for these large institutions that removes political discretion. Until that happens, the living wills will be a fiction no matter what regulators say.

August 7, 2014 at 10:36 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-06/obama-let-delphi-avoid-taxes-in-tactic-president-assails.html

* HAT TIP TO MICHELLE ZORNES

President Barack Obama says U.S. corporations that adopt foreign addresses to avoid taxes are unpatriotic.

(*DRUM ROLL*)

His own administration helped one $20 billion American company do just that.

As part of the bailout of the auto industry in 2009, Obama’s Treasury Department authorized spending $1.7 billion of government funds to get a bankrupt Michigan parts-maker back on its feet - as a British company.

[Indeed, the] administration continues to award more than $1 billion annually in government business to more than a dozen corporate expats. Only this year did Obama include a measure in his annual budget proposal to prevent some tax-driven address changes, which are known as “inversions.”

The Obama administration is now trying to rescind the tax benefits of the Delphi deal that it helped broker.

(*SMIRK*)

In June, the Internal Revenue Service told Delphi that the 2009 address change should be disregarded for tax purposes, and that Delphi must pay taxes as a U.S. company. Delphi says in a securities filing that it will “vigorously contest” the IRS’s demand.

U.S. companies have been inverting for decades. The pace of departures began to quicken about two years ago, as a series of drug makers sought to become Irish. The issue caught the attention of lawmakers and the Obama administration this year. The companies are trying to escape our country’s 35% corporate income tax rate, the highest in the developed world.

* COULD THAT NOT POSSIBLY BE THE PROBLEM - THAT OUR 35% CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATE IS THE HIGHEST IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD?

The Treasury Department said yesterday that it is examining options for curbing inversions that wouldn’t require Congress to act.

* ONCE AGAIN... SCREW THE CONSTITUTION... SCREW THE SEPARATION OF POWERS YOU WERE TAUGHT ABOUT IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL...

* ANYWAY... A BIT OF HISTORY...

In December 2008, the outgoing Bush administration approved $17.4 billion in rescue loans for GM and Chrysler.

* GEORGE W. BUSH - CRONY FAUX CAPITALIST.

In February, Obama assembled a task force led by Steven Rattner, a Wall Street financier, to oversee the bailout.

* BARACK H. OBAMA - CRONYIST EXTRAORDINAIRE...

Analysts expect Delphi to earn about $2.2 billion before taxes next year...

Companies renouncing their U.S. tax citizenship became a front-page issue in April, when the drug maker Pfizer announced plans for a British address. A few days later, Rattner wrote a column in the New York Times urging Congress to revamp the tax code, and take quick action in the meantime to prevent such tax flights. “These days, tax avoidance feels like a full-fledged business strategy, with American citizens as the losers,” he wrote.

* BUT... BUT... BUT...

(*HEADACHE*)

President Obama took up the theme last month in a speech at a college in Los Angeles, where he called for an end to what he called an “unpatriotic tax loophole.”

* BUT...

(*JUST SHAKING MY ACHING HEAD*)

“My attitude is I don’t care if it’s legal - it’s wrong,” the president said. “You shouldn’t get to call yourself an American company only when you want a handout from American taxpayers.

* BUT YOU GAVE THEM HANDOUTS! YOU...!!!

August 7, 2014 at 11:52 AM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://online.wsj.com/articles/scott-gottlieb-and-coleen-klasmeier-why-your-phone-isnt-as-smart-as-it-could-be-1407369163?mod=hp_opinion

There's growing frustration among entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who are finding that the road to improving medical technology ends not in Palo Alto but in White Oak, Md. — at the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration.

"Health is just so heavily regulated," Google co-founder Sergey Brin complained last month to a group of high-tech CEOs, "it's just a painful business to be in."

The pain has become especially acute in the burgeoning field of mobile medical apps and health-care "wearables." Apple is reportedly making a health-information platform a key component of its next iPhone operating system — which is expected to be in the new iPhone it will unveil next month.

Other handset makers are following similar paths.

But these smartphones will be purposely dumbed down, according to early reports on their features, in order to manage the uncertain risk of unwieldy FDA regulation.

(*RAISING ONE EYEBROW*)

According to the tech publication Apple Toolbox, the FDA recently released (under a Freedom of Information Act request) a document describing its meeting with Apple executives last December. Senior agency officials told Apple that the FDA "would be more likely to regulate the software that puts [a medical] sensor to use, if use of the software alters the device's use to be a medical device."

The officials also told Apple that "apps that actively measure something" health-related, like glucose meters used by diabetics, are "diagnostic" and are likely to make the entire tool subject to regulation.

The FDA's regulatory dysfunction is driven by its 30-year failure to establish a coherent approach to regulating medically related software. Last fall the FDA issued guidance purporting to regulate only a limited subset of apps that qualify as "devices" under the law, and only if there is a meaningful risk to patients. The guidance says the FDA will regulate apps — using the same kinds of rules that apply to joint replacements and heart valves and the like — that display, transfer, store or convert patient-specific medical device data from a monitor (for example, a heart monitor) to a mobile platform. But under the guise of enabling innovation, the agency is making an already complex regulatory climate even harder to navigate.

Since the 1990s the FDA has adopted the bad habit of governing via guidance rather than by establishing clear rules. Regulators have also become addicted to addressing novel technologies by reflexively applying their premarket powers. The standard line is "come talk to us," a bureaucratic posture that leaves innovators in limbo while they wait sometimes long periods for a regulatory verdict.

The ambiguity created by the guidance and the agency's premarket review processes forces innovators to seek the FDA's nod for every new launch and every small advance. This slows progress to a crawl. Worse, the lag may be almost entirely unnecessary, as most of these products are not properly regarded as a medical device in the first place.

Many consumer-focused apps that support health are not "devices" — for example, apps that help patients self-manage a health condition. This is clear from the language of the relevant statute and case law. But the FDA's guidance says that they are medical devices but that the agency chooses, at this time, not to actively regulate them. What is an app developer supposed to do with that internally contradictory position?

* WHAT INDEED...?

* TO BE CONTINUED...

August 7, 2014 at 12:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The agency could help ensure the reliability of mobile health-information tools through clear rules that tech companies can apply on their own, without spending millions on lawyers and consultants to help them talk with regulators and without stymieing progress. To do so, the FDA needs to transform how it regulates.

* BUT THIS THEY WILL NOT DO! IT'S NOT IN THEIR BUREAUCRATIC SELF-INTEREST! BEYOND THAT... LAWYERS, CONSULTANTS, LOBBYISTS, AND REGULATORS USED TO THE REVOLVING DOOR OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE-PUBLIC-PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT CERTAINLY WOULDN'T BENEFIT! THE INSANITY IS WHAT CREATES THE ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY OF THE REGULATORY STATE AND ITS PROPONENTS...!!!

The agency's regulatory scheme was shaped around an expectation that medical devices could be risky if they are not properly conceived, crafted and labeled — necessitating premarket review. But the consumer devices and medical apps under consideration have little in common with the FDA's usual fare. These information tools are largely aimed at arming consumers with incremental data such as metabolic and cardiac readings to encourage better-informed health decisions. While faulty information can influence people to make bad decisions, the risks are far lower than those posed by a complex drug or implantable device.

Moreover, a mobile app is likely to be far more helpful in decision-making for many consumers — and certainly can't be worse — than online information sources of varying provenance and quality. There is already ample medical evidence to show that patients make bad decisions when they don't have adequate information about their health.

* YEP... BUT THE AUTHOR IS POINTING TO COMMON SENSE... TO FACTS; NONE OF THIS NECESSARILY MATTERS IN THE REAL WORLD OF WASHINGTON POLICY MAKING.

The FDA should exempt the majority of mobile-health apps from premarket review — the approach it has followed since at least 1997 for low-risk laboratory diagnostic tests. That would give the agency postmarket controls to make sure these tools are meeting expectations, but eliminate a company's need to get permission each time a new product wants to come to market.

(*NOD*)

The agency also could work with trade groups to establish general technical standards that these products must meet regarding safety, accuracy and data security. This would enable the FDA to draw on broader expertise when it comes to these fast-moving fields. A premarket exemption could hinge on products self-certifying that they meet these specifications.

Apps and smartphone tools are constantly revised, yet under the FDA's existing rules, once a medical app comes under the agency's premarket scheme, each iteration can require formal submissions and in some cases review by the agency before it can be offered to consumers. This can thwart the updating that keeps technology up to date.

Today, only about 100 mobile medical apps have been reviewed and approved by the FDA. That's a fraction of what's possible. The problem isn't merely a regulatory regime ill-suited for reviewing these innovations. It's the products that are never created because mobile-tech entrepreneurs choose to direct their talents elsewhere.

August 7, 2014 at 12:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2718143/Obamas-monsters-ball-How-White-House-opened-doors-Africas-evil-dictators-homophobes-turned-blind-eye-human-rights-record.html

* YA GOTTA LUV THE FOREIGN PRESS...

President Barack Obama drew a diplomatic line at the first ever U.S-Africa summit at the White House this week by not inviting Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe.

* AND FOR THIS HE RECEIVES MY SINCERE APPLAUSE!

But the guest list still included several other African leaders with only slightly better human rights records.

* MEANING...?

The red carpet was rolled out for Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who shot or jailed virtually all his political opponents...

Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, who threatened to ‘cut off the head’ of any homosexuals in the country and for Cameroon’s Paul Biya, who has the dubious honor of ranking 19th on author David Wallechinsky's 2006 list of the world's 20 worst living dictators.

The President's opening speech avoided the prickly issues...

* "PRICKLY ISSUES..." UH-HUH...

...of homophobia and torture...

* AND MURDER! DON'T FORGET MURDER! (AND THREATENING TO CUT OFF THE HEADS OF HOMOSEXUALS!)

...and instead sought out similarities between the two continents.

He opened with: ‘I stand before you as the president of the United States, a proud American. I also stand before you as the son of a man from Africa,’ before going on to say, ‘Our faith traditions remind us of the inherent dignity of every human being and that our work as nations must be rooted in empathy and compassion for each other, as brothers and as sisters.’

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*) YEAH... NOT SO SINCERE APPLAUSE...

August 7, 2014 at 1:08 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/08/07/border-patrol-agent-federal-government-releasing-murderers-into-us/

A Border Patrol agent claims that the federal government is allowing murderers from Central America to be released into the U.S.

* NOTHING NEW!

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, agent Chris Cabrera stated that these teenage gang members crossing the border are being released to family members in the U.S. “If they have family in the United States, they’ll release them to the family, even if they’re admitted gang members,” Cabrera explained to Fox News. “We’ve had a couple that had admitted to murders in their home country. They were 17 years old, 16 years old, and the United States government thought it fit to release them to their parents here in the United States.

* OBAMA. THE BUCK STOPS AT OBAMA'S DESK.

“Even if he’s a confirmed gang member, a confirmed criminal even by self-admission, we for some reason don’t send them back to their home country, we release them into our country.”

* O*B*A*M*A...!!!

Cabrera blamed these alleged gang members and murderers being released due to a “loophole.”

“They found a loophole with the unaccompanied women and children,” Cabrera told Fox News. “We don’t have anywhere to house these women and children and if the child has no family back in his home country, or claims he has no family back in his home country, we have to release him to a parent who is here.”

* CONGRESS IS TO BLAME FOR THIS... INITIALLY IS TO BLAME... BUT REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS HAVE TRIED TO REPEAL THIS SPECIFIC QUIRK IN THE LAW AND SENATE DEMOCRATS (AND OBAMA!) HAVE STOOD IN THEIR WAY! DELIBERATELY SO!

Cabrera added that morale among border agents is at an all-time low. “Our agents aren’t allowed to do the job they were hired to do,” Cabrera told Fox News. “We’re walking more and more people out the door … they’re catch-and-release that have family units. The criminal aliens that are coming in, some of these young gang member kids that are coming in, and there’s no criminal history in the United States, we’re releasing them out the door and more and more it gets frustrating.”

More than 57,000 children, most from Central America, entered the U.S. illegally between October and June without a parent or guardian. That was more than double the number who arrived over the same period a year earlier.

* HOW MANY ILLEGALS WERE WELCOMED INTO THE U.S. YESTERDAY... THE DAY BEFORE... THIS PAST WEEK...?

* OH... AND HERE'S JOE BIDEN:

Vice President Joe Biden said “These are not somebody else’s kids. These are our kids.”

* NO, JOE... THEY'RE CERTAINLY NOT! THEY'RE THEIR PARENT'S KIDS... THEIR FAMILY'S KIDS... THEIR COUNTRY'S KIDS!

* SERIOUSLY, FOLKS... THE SECRET SERVICE MUST BE SO, SO, SO VERY RELIEVED THAT JOE BIDEN IS VICE PRESIDENT; THEREFORE OBAMA IS SO MUCH SAFER!

Appealing to lawyers to help represent unaccompanied minors, Biden said it would be a difficult task for an overburdened legal system to assess whether children apprehended on the border meet the criteria for refugee status and whether returning them would risk their physical demise.

* JOE WANTS TO PUT ALL THESE KIDS IN THE SYSTEM... ON WELFARE...

(*HEADACHE*)

At the same time, he said it’s not feasible for the U.S. to let children stay here just because they would be better off in the U.S. than in their home countries.

* FOLKS... BIDEN IS RETARDED. IT'S THAT SIMPLE. THERE'S SOMETHING MISSING "UP THERE."

“Central American governments aren’t even close to being prepared to make some of the decisions the Colombians made, because they’re hard,” Biden said. “But the president and I are prepared.”

* AS I WROTE... RETARDED.

August 7, 2014 at 1:46 PM

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