Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, February 10, 2015


I... Can't... Get... This... Tune... Out.. Of... My... Head...!


Posted by at

16 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/232249-feds-wont-release-irs-targeting-documents

The Obama administration is refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups.

Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was spearheading the agency’s scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations.

* "SCRUTINY...???" (I BELIEVE THE WORD THEY WERE LOOKING FOR IS "PURSECUTION."

The Hill sought access to government documents that might provide a glimpse of the decision-making through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups.

TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article.

* FOLKS...

(*SHRUG*)

Congressional Republicans say there is no evidence of any prosecution in the works, and media outlets have indicated that the Department of Justice and the FBI have already determined that no charges will be filed.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) notes that eight months after Lerner was held in contempt of Congress for not testifying at two hearings, the matter has not yet been referred to a grand jury. (The contempt citation is in the hands of Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who was appointed by President Obama.)

TIGTA’s FOIA practices have come under criticism before. In the fall of last year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia admonished the agency for its use of FOIA exemptions. Cause of Action, a non-profit group that has sued TIGTA, announced in December that the agency declined to fork over more than 2,000 documents related to a FOIA request.

Judicial Watch, another group that has sued the Obama administration on FOIA, said in December that the DOJ withheld 832 documents pertaining to meetings between the IRS and the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and Election Crimes Division.

February 10, 2015 at 12:15 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/joseph-rossell/2015/02/09/nets-barely-cover-obamas-internet-regulations

It has been nearly three months since President Barack Obama spoke out in favor of Internet regulation...

(*PURSED LIPS*)

And in spite of the massive impact such regulations could have on Americans, the broadcast networks have given the issue short shrift.

FCC commissioner Ajit Pai said in a press release on February 6 that the plan "marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet."

The liberal Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) predicted that households could pay an additional $156 in fees to federal, state, and local governments if regulators reclassified the internet as a public utility in a report released December, 2014.

* AND YET...

Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Tom Wheeler said on February 4 that he backed Obama’s plan to reclassify the Internet as a public utility under the government agency’s Title II authority.

(*SIGH*)

Despite its importance, the broadcast news networks’ morning and evening shows dedicated only three minutes, 38 seconds of coverage to these potential regulations over the Internet since Obama’s announcement November 10, 2014 through February 9, 2015. When they did cover the issue, the networks were almost entirely uncritical in their reporting. On November 11, CBS's "This Morning" co-host Gayle King echoed the White House’s talking points, saying that Obama wanted the FCC "to adopt tough rules to protect a free and open internet."

Gayle said that "broadband service providers want to charge higher fees" for Internet access, which could "result in the blocking or slowing down of content for some." Yet, she failed to explain how the president’s proposal would improve this situation or describe the plan’s potential costs. ABC News only mentioned the proposed regulations once during a segment on "World News" January 20. While previewing the State of the Union address, chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl vaguely referenced that Obama wanted to expand "faster, cheaper Internet access" for the "middle class."

Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, told MRC Business, "There has been almost no coverage of the president strong-arming what is supposed to be an independent agency, or the highly questionable policy he has proposed that would reverse the past two decades of Internet policy and install a heavy-handed regulate-and-tax alternative."

Although the networks avoided airing dissenting opinions, critics have long said that giving the FCC greater control over the Internet could have severe impacts on freedom of speech and the economy. Former FCC commissioner Robert M. McDowell said that "FCC 'oversight of the political process' through more Internet regulations sounds eerily like political speech controls," in an op-ed for The Washington Post on July 14, 2014.

February 10, 2015 at 12:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/clarence-thomas-another-example-court-s-increasingly-cavalier

In a dissenting opinion joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Clarence Thomas excoriated his fellow justices for refusing to temporarily stop enforcement of a federal district judge's ruling that overturned the marriage laws of the state of Alabama and ordered Alabama to recognize as legal "marriages" unions between two people of the same sex.

On Jan. 23, U.S. District Judge Callie Granade ruled that Alabama laws limiting marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the law. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent the judge's decision from going into effect until the Supreme Court itself issued its ruling on same-sex marriage - which the court will do this term.

* AND AS ANYONE WHO KNOWS A THING ABOUT HOW OUR JUDICIAL SYSTEM SHOULD WORK... THIS PETITION SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED.

The Supreme Court refused to stay the lower court ruling - with Justice Thomas and Scalia dissenting.

* BECAUSE A MAJORITY OF THE SUPREME COURT DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION.

(*SHRUG*)

In his dissent from the court's refusal to grant the stay, Justice Thomas rhetorically smacked his colleagues for disregarding it own standard practices and the deference due to state governments and voters.

"This acquiescence [in the lower court ruling] may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question [of same-sex marriage]," wrote Thomas.

"This is not the proper way to discharge our Article III responsibilities," he said.

* AND ANY CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR WITH INTEGRITY - REGARDLESS OF PERSONAL IDEOLOGY - WOULD AGREE!

"And, it is indecorous for this Court to pretend that it is."

(*NOD*)

"Today’s decision represents yet another example of this Court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the States. Over the past few months, the Court has repeatedly denied stays of lower court judgments enjoining the enforcement of state laws on questionable constitutional grounds. It has similarly declined to grant certiorari to review such judgments without any regard for the people who approved those laws in popular referendums or elected the representatives who voted for them," wrote Thomas.

"In this case, the Court refuses even to grant a temporary stay when it will resolve the issue at hand in several months."

* THE MASK IS OFF, FOLKS...

February 10, 2015 at 1:49 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/editorial-end-extended-jobless-benefits-helped-recovery

Remember the warnings of economic harm when the country’s extended unemployment benefits ended a little more than a year ago?

* NO. BUT I'M SURE I JUST TUNED THE DEMS OUT...

Like so many doomsday predictions from Washington, they didn’t come true.

Through the Great Recession and the weak economic recovery, Congress allowed the jobless to draw unemployment income long after their state benefits normally would have run out.

* WHICH I OPPOSED...

President Barack Obama, the Congressional Budget Office, Democrats and even some Republicans insisted that benefit extensions were vital to the health of our economy.

* RINO SCUM...

The Obama administration warned that letting the extensions expire would cost 240,000 jobs. The CBO estimated that continuing the benefits could increase employment by as many as 300,000 jobs. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., favored the benefit extensions, too. They didn’t want to be deemed responsible for cutting off checks in a state with one of the country’s highest unemployment rates.

At the end of 2013, the Senate voted to renew the program, but the House chose not to proceed with the bill, causing the extensions to expire.

* OK. THE BOEHNER HOUSE GETS CREDIT FOR THAT...

(*NOD*)

Democrats lambasted House Speaker John Boehner and supposedly uncompassionate Republicans, who argued that providing jobless benefits for up to 73 or 99 weeks was not helping the economy, but rather holding it back.

* WHICH WAS AND IS THE CASE!

According to a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, it seems Rep. Boehner was right.

As President Obama has pointed out whenever possible, the labor market has improved significantly in recent months. And the study indicates the recent employment boom appears to be due, in large part, to the expiration of the unemployment benefit extensions the president, Sen. Heller and Rep. Heck were so adamant about continuing.

The bureau says that instead of bringing about widespread doom and gloom the expiration of extended benefits actually boosted job creation, labor-force participation and hiring.

Instead of costing 240,000 jobs, as the Obama administration had warned, the NBER says the expiration was responsible for the creation of 1.8 million jobs.

The scope of unemployment benefits during the Great Recession was unprecedented. ... But data show that when temporary benefits intended as a safety net are turned into borderline permanent welfare, they become an unnecessary hindrance to the labor market. According to the NBER, the most clear illustration of this came from looking at states with long benefit terms versus states with short ones.

In 2013, states with generous jobless benefits created fewer jobs than the national average. In 2014, after those same states reduced benefits, their job creation numbers far exceeded the national average. When the long-term jobless finally, absolutely had to get a job, they got a job.

* ONE MORE TIME...

In 2013, states with generous jobless benefits created fewer jobs than the national average. In 2014, after those same states reduced benefits, their job creation numbers far exceeded the national average. When the long-term jobless finally, absolutely had to get a job, they got a job.

February 10, 2015 at 1:58 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/Sharyl-Attkisson-hillary-clinton-brian-williams-Bosnia/2015/02/09/id/623668/?Dkt_nbr=EB8D-1&nmx_source=Nationalreview-Conservative&nmx_medium=widget&nmx_content=135&nmx_campaign=widgetphase2

Emmy Award-winning journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who covered the story of Hillary Clinton's lie about being shot at in Bosnia, says she can't understand how the former secretary of state weathered the scandal while NBC News anchor Brian Williams may not.

"To me, part of the irony is if Brian Williams isn't able to survive it — that we think it's important enough when somebody gives this kind of story that he would lose his career — yet we didn't care enough to have it matter that much with someone who became our secretary of state," Attkisson said Monday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"[A person] we relied on for honest answers and truths in the aftermath of Benghazi and so on."

(*SNORT*)

Last Wednesday, Williams, one of NBC's biggest stars, recanted his longtime claim of being aboard a helicopter forced down by a rocket-propelled grenade during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that Williams was nowhere near that aircraft — but on another aircraft that took no fire.

* WILLIAMS LIED; HILLARY LIED.

"Is it really more important that Brian Williams has a certain type of character and honesty than a presidential candidate or secretary of state?" said Attkisson, a former CBS News reporter.

* APPARENTLY.

(*SHRUG*)

"I don't know, that's up to the American people to decide, but clearly they got past it in the case of Hillary Clinton, although it was never explained. We'll see if people can get past it in the case of Brian Williams."

Clinton's [lie] came during her 2008 run for the White House, when she claimed she and her staff had dodged sniper fire on an airport landing strip in Bosnia. But news video of the event revealed it never happened.

"With Hillary Clinton, after the video was found that there was no sniper fire, there was no apparent danger on the runway as she claims, she doubled down and said, 'Well, I stopped and you saw pictures of me greeting the young girl, because how could I walk past her and break her little heart? But after that I ran to the car.'"

So I was assigned to do a second day story by [the CBS] Evening News … that showed more video that too wasn't true, and when Mrs. Clinton knew we had the video it is just beyond me that she continued to tell this tale."

Attkisson said the video showed that Clinton "lingered on the runway, took pictures with a group of seventh graders, visited with the troops, [and] took photographs with them."

"There was no apparent danger to us, there was no mention of it, there was no corkscrew landing, there was no sniper fire," she said.

"You kind of wonder in both instances … how they got away for so long with telling the story and how they thought that they would get away with it without somebody coming to them, family members and so on, saying that didn't happen."

February 10, 2015 at 3:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398270/its-time-conservatives-fight-corruption-jay-cost

It is getting hard to ignore the growing number of conservative reformers.

Utah senator Mike Lee has been a veritable innovation factory since he entered Congress, promoting new ideas on education, taxes, and energy, among other issues.

Last year’s publication of Room to Grow: Conservative Reforms for a Limited Government and a Thriving Middle Class brought together the brightest conservative minds to think through tough problems.

Meanwhile, the Left seems stuck in the failed policies of the mid 20th century.

Barack Obama’s recent tax proposal was a classic example: Sock it to the wealthy, and spend the money on new entitlements, plus a huge payoff to profligate state governments and unions via new infrastructure spending. In Obama’s world, it is always 1935.

Conservatives are the ones coming up with new ideas on how to improve the fortunes of middle-class America — but, as it stands, the plans are incomplete. A comprehensive strategy to boost the middle class has to include an aggressive assault on political corruption.

Every year, the government wastes an obscene amount of money through corrupt public policies. And let’s be careful with our terms here. If we think of corruption merely as illegal activity, we’re defining it too narrowly. As I argue in my new book, A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption, the better way to understand it is as James Madison might have: In Federalist 10, he worried about the “violence of faction,” which he defined as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

This is all too common in public policy.

From farm subsidies to Medicare, regulatory policy to the tax code, and highway spending to corporate welfare, our government does violence to the public interest by rewarding the interest groups that lobby it aggressively.

The total price tag every year extends into the tens of billions of dollars — and beyond.

Of course, these policies are inevitably disguised as "helping" the country at large, or some sympathetic group.

(Maybe it’s the struggling family farm, or the senior citizen who can’t pay his medical bills, or the small business in need of a loan.)

But the rhetoric does not match reality.

When you look more closely at federal policy, you see just how regularly it works against the public interest.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 3:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Pressure groups with a stake in some obscure issue ply members of Congress with money, lobby them aggressively, and implicitly promise them cushy gigs after they leave office. The strategy works, time and again. So, underneath these seemingly virtuous policies lays a wide-ranging patchwork of interest-group payoffs.

Madison called it factionalism. Sometimes, we call it cronyism. But it is all corruption.

Ultimately, corruption is a loser for the middle class. Middle-class Americans do not have the money to pay for lobbyists to make sure they are getting a piece of the action. They don’t usually contribute to political candidates, and when they do, it is typically for a presidential candidate whose ideas they think are sound. They do not subsidize the otherwise obscure subcommittee chairman with oversight on a critical policy. And, of course, they cannot offer politicians seven-figure employment opportunities for post-government life.

And yet the middle class foots the bill.

Average Americans pay higher taxes to subsidize this misbehavior, and their children will have to pay down an ever-higher debt burden.

But beyond that, corruption distorts the economy ... for instance, any time Congress creates a tax loophole, it shifts the flow of capital from some otherwise productive outlet to the tax-preferred end. And this is true not just of tax policy; any dollar spent by the government corruptly is a dollar better spent somewhere else. There are, in other words, substantial opportunity costs to be paid, mostly by the middle class.

This has to be brought to an end, but who is up to that task? The Left is so mired in machine-style politics that expecting the Democratic party to fight corruption would be like looking for the sun to rise in the West. It is just not going to happen. Conservatives must therefore answer the call.

Reform conservatism is an exciting new movement. Conservatives are looking beyond traditional GOP tropes to think about how to fix issues like K–12 education, energy, health care, and higher education.

The animating belief is that these policies are not optimized for the middle class, and that smart reforms can fix that.

The same goes for the government itself.

In truth, the public-policy process is as broken as the energy, tax, or health policies it produces. Washington systematically tilts the law toward the wealthy and well-connected, at the expense of the middle class. Conservative reformers need to figure out how to bring an end to this corruption.

* HEAR! HEAR!

February 10, 2015 at 3:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d61b711c-b148-11e4-831b-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl#axzz3RNXrqc1g

Chinese hackers hijacked the Forbes website and used it to target thousands of computers linked to blue-chip companies, including U.. defense contractors and banks, in one of the most brazen cyber espionage campaigns apparently launched by Beijing-linked groups so far.

* AND YET I'M READING THIS IN THE FOREIGN PRESS...

(*SNORT*)

During a four-day period from November 28 to December 1 last year, any visitor to the Forbes website would have been infected by the Chinese attack, according to the cyber security company iSight Partners, which detected the intrusion on some of its clients’ networks, among them a top-tier U.S. arms manufacturer. It blamed a Chinese hacking group known as Codoso.

A spokesperson for Forbes said the vulnerability had now been closed.

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

The news came on the same day that Twitter’s chief financial officer had his Twitter account hacked, underlining how few are immune to cyber criminals and safe from vulnerabilities online.

Visitors to Forbes during the period it was compromised who have not subsequently cleaned or scanned their systems are still likely to be infected, however, and might be being spied on by the Chinese group.

The attack is the latest evidence of a cyber espionage war against western businesses from groups within China that has expanded dramatically in recent months and left many governments struggling to stem the threat.

* NOTHING HAPPENS IN CHINA WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT'S KNOWLEDGE AND APPROVAL... OR AT LEAST SUFFRAGE.

Chinese authorities have consistently denied they sponsor such attacks, but western security agencies insist Beijing is involved.

(*NOD*)

As well as online espionage attempts from state-backed groups, security officials are also having to grapple with a deluge of blunter, damaging attacks that have grown in scale against the backdrop of an increase in geopolitical tensions in the past 12 months.

Earlier on Tuesday, hackers sympathetic to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the brutal jihadi insurgency also known as Isis that has taken over much of eastern Syria and western Iraq, took over Newsweek’s Twitter account, broadcasting threats to the family of U.S. President Barack Obama.

* AGAIN... FIRST TIME I'M HEARING OF THIS...

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 4:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

iSight said the hackers used two so-called “zero day” exploits — previously unknown loopholes in widely used software — to crack security systems such as firewalls and antivirus software and indiscriminately infect readers of the business news site. “It’s one of the most brazen [attacks] we have seen in terms of what it targeted,” said Patrick McBride, vice-president at iSight. “It’s probably one of the most popular websites we have ever seen leveraged for an attack like this. Using [Forbes] gave them a tremendous amount of options after they had got their initial foothold [in visitors’ systems].”

(Visitors to Forbes who worked for defense companies and banks were those who were subsequently targeted most, Mr McBride said.)

iSight said they were confident the attack was state-backed. Codoso is one of the more prominent and well-resourced hacking groups in China and has been followed by western security analysts and cyber security agencies for years. In 2010 the group performed a similar attack on the Nobel Prize website after the honor was awarded to a leading Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Software exploits identical to those used to target Forbes have also been used to infiltrate websites associated with the Hong Kong protests and the restive Uighur minority population in western China in recent weeks, iSight said.

Adobe found and closed the loophole on December 9. Microsoft released a patch to fix the loophole in its software on Tuesday.

After using a vulnerability in a website — often called a watering hole because it lures the victims — cyber criminals will select which companies that visit the site they want to target and use other vulnerabilities to access their networks, said Chris Eng, vice-president of research at cyber security company Veracode.

“Once they have control, they will target certain people, see who they are connected to, what information is on their system, what might they siphon off as interesting data,” he said. The Chinese have long been interested in hacking to steal intellectual property from western companies and defense contractors, and banks have often been prime targets, he said.

* AND YET WE'RE TOLD BY OUR OLIGARCHS THAT CHINA IS OUR FRIEND AND RUSSIA IS OUR ENEMY...

February 10, 2015 at 4:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2015/02/10/the_unsung_reasons_why_rand_paul_is_right_about_the_fed_101528.html

In response to Sen. Rand Paul's efforts to pass "Audit the Fed" legislation, Richard Fisher, outgoing president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, lashed out at the Kentucky senator last week. In an interview with The Hill, Fisher asked "Who in their right mind would ask the Congress of the United States - who can't cobble together a fiscal policy - to assume control of monetary policy?"

There's much that should trouble readers about Fisher's statement, but perhaps not for the reasons commonly assumed. To show why, it's most useful to get the "shooting fish in a barrel" stuff out of the way first.

Fisher abhors the notion of more detailed congressional oversight of the Fed, but then the Constitution is very explicit that Congress is empowered "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof."

Fisher is no doubt right that Congress is filled with incompetents prone to egregious error, but that's not the point. The law is the law. Also, fairly explicit in Fisher's question is that the Fed is in fact is staffed by competent types; a rather debatable presumption. More on the presumed competence of the Fed in a bit.

(*HUGE FRIGGIN' GRIN*)

Another argument that is popular among Fed skeptics concerns the dollar. Naysayers point out that the dollar has lost over 90% of its value since the Fed came into existence over 100 years ago. About this, the dollar's value is hugely important since the investors who create all jobs are tautologically buying future dollar income streams when they commit capital to new ideas. That Fed officials almost to a man and woman (not Fisher, to his credit) think devalued money is the path to consumption heaven at the very least calls into question the common sense of those in the central bank's employ.

(*NOD*)

Still, what's too often forgotten is that the dollar's exchange value versus other floating currencies, or in a more sane world its value in terms of gold, is not a Fed function. It's a Treasury thing, and more specifically U.S. presidents generally get the dollar they want. So while the dollar certainly has lost a sickening amount of value since 1913, and has done so to the U.S. economy's major detriment (odd here again is that most Fed officials think devalued money a good thing), this truth is not the fault of the Fed. In fact it was FDR who devalued the dollar from 1/20th of an ounce of gold to 1/35th in 1933, it was Richard Nixon and John Connally at the U.S. Treasury who delinked the dollar from gold (much to then Fed Chairman Arthur Burn's dismay) in 1971 on the way to further declines, and while Presidents Reagan and Clinton pursued strong dollar policies in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was President George W. Bush who reversed our dollar course in the early 2000s.

* ABSOLUTELY! ONE OF MY MAIN BONES OF CONTENTION WITH "DUBYA!"

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 5:16 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

Implicit in the silly notion that the Fed caused the dollar's decline is the view that the Fed "prints money," only to force it into circulation, thus driving down the dollar's value. The obvious problem with such a view is that "money printing" by its very name leads to reduced money supply, by definition. Simply put, good money (there's a reason the Swiss franc is strong despite its plentiful supply) is heavily demanded by producers and traders, while devalued, unstable money is anathema to them. Even if the Fed could print money in the way that some presume, the act of doing so would actually lead to a reduction of dollars in circulation, not an increase.

* MONEY IS DIGITAL NOW. WHAT WE SEE... WHAT WE HOLD, HANDLE, AND TRADE, PAPER CURRENCY IS SIMPLY THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG THAT WE CAN SEE.

So with the traditional - and sometimes confused - responses to Fisher out of the way, we can now focus on why the Fed needs oversight.

Exhibit A is former Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn's 2008 utterance that "A model in the Phillips curve tradition remains at the core of how most academic researchers and policymakers - including this one - think about fluctuations in inflation."

Put as simply as possible, the alleged wise minds at the Fed think that low unemployment, economic growth and prosperity cause inflation.

* IDIOTS...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

For its confused views on the nature of inflation alone, the Fed very much needs to be audited.

* HEAR! HEAR!

And then there were the bailouts.

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gravely told former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that absent the bailouts of the banks that the U.S. economy would fall into a recession so brutal that would it would take us decades to recover from.

* HE LIED.

Ok, so Japan and Germany were each reduced to rubble during World War II, even worse both countries lost at least a generation of their best and brightest to a hideous war, but within a few years of the war's end both were once again listed among the richest and most prosperous nations in the world. Japan and Germany rebounded fairly quickly from total devastation, but the U.S. economy couldn't survive the failure of institutions like Citigroup; the latter having been bailed out by the Fed (this factoid came to me directly from a former FOMC official who asked to remain off the record) 5 times over the last 24 years?

* FOR GOD'S SAKE, PEOPLE, TAKE YOUR HEADS OUT OF THE SAND! STOP GETTING PLAYED!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 5:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

For the absurd reasoning behind bailouts that greatly weakened an economy reliant on failure (failure is the constant genius behind Silicon Valley's wealth) and a healthy financial system (government is now the #1 client of finance according to former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack), the Fed most definitely needs serious oversight.

(*NODDING*)

Other than the price of the dollar, the price of credit is easily the most important in the world. Figure a proper price reached in the marketplace is the way that those desirous of accessing the economy's resources can borrow from those who have access to them. Yet the Fed thinks it can and should regulate access to credit, all the while decreeing it "easy" when markets think it should be tight. Fisher buys into the horror of central bank credit allocation as evidenced by his assertion last July, "I believe the time to dilute the [easy money] punch is close upon us." In truth, the Fed should have no role whatsoever when it comes to how much or how little credit there is on offer. More important, the Fed misses the essential truth that "tight" credit is just as healthy of an economic scenario as is "easy" credit. It is because it signals the happy process whereby lousy commercial ideas are being starved of resources so that good ones don't go without. In truth, tight credit is the path to easy credit, but on this subject (like so many) the Fed gets it backwards. For trying to centrally plan access to the economy's resources, the Fed seemingly begs for oversight.

* YEP!

Yet arguably the biggest reason that our central bank needs babysitting is one that is perhaps least often mentioned. To be blunt, recessions, despite the near-term pain they bring, are in fact beautiful. Recessions are a wondrous sign that an economy is fixing itself, that it's starving theglobe.com so that Google can attain more funding, that the Mike Shulas of the world are being replaced by their betters in Nick Saban. Without recessions there is no growth simply because recessions ensure that the myriad Webvans in our midst are put out of their misery so that they're no longer consuming the economy's always limited resources.

Despite this truth, our Fed thinks its job is to shield us from recession, and it attempted to do just that in 2008. We to a high degree can blame the slow recovery on the Fed's hubris; the latter having robbed us of what would have been a staggering rebound.

* ABSOLUTELY!

In short, Rand Paul is right that the Fed needs a constant audit.

Fisher is surely right about the incompetence that defines Congress, but what he seems to miss is that it very much extends to our central bank. Big time. So while most in Congress are surely clueless about the ongoing economic damage that is the Fed, accountability has to mean something. Congress must audit the Fed simply because someone somewhere must be on the hook for the Fed's actions. Senator Paul is right about the need for a Fed audit, perhaps far more than he realizes.

February 10, 2015 at 5:17 PM
William R. Barker said...

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

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/02/14417/

A new study published in the February 2015 issue of the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science appears to be the largest yet on the matter of same-sex households and children’s emotional outcomes. It analyzed 512 children of same-sex parents, drawn from a pool of over 207,000 respondents who participated in the (U.S.) National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) at some point between 1997 and 2013.

The population-based study pooled over 2,700 same-sex couples, defined as “those persons whose reported spouse or cohabiting partner was of the same sex as themselves.” This is a measure similar to that employed in the U.S. Census, but it has the advantage of clarity about the sexual or romantic nature of the partnership (being sure to exclude those who are simply same-sex roommates). Among these, 582 had children under 18 in the household. A battery of questions was completed by 512 of them.

Results reveal that, on eight out of twelve psychometric measures, the risk of clinical emotional problems, developmental problems, or use of mental health treatment services is nearly double among those with same-sex parents when contrasted with children of opposite-sex parents.

The estimate of serious child emotional problems in children with same-sex parents is 17%, compared with 7% among opposite-sex parents, after adjusting for age, race, gender, and parent’s education and income.

Rates of ADHD were higher as well — 15.5% compared to 7.1%.

The same is true for learning disabilities: 14.1% vs. 8%.

The study’s author, sociologist Paul Sullins, assessed a variety of different hypotheses about the differences, including comparative residential stability, experience of stigma or bullying, parental emotional problems (6.1% among same-sex parents vs. 3.4% among opposite-sex ones), and biological attachment. Each of these factors predictably aggravated children’s emotional health, but only the last of these — biological parentage — accounted for nearly all of the variation in emotional problems.

While adopted children are at higher risk of emotional problems overall, being adopted did not account for the differences between children in same-sex and opposite-sex households.

It’s also worth noting that while being bullied clearly aggravates emotional health, there was no difference in self-reported experience of having been bullied between the children of same-sex and opposite-sex parents.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 6:12 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

Vocal critics, soon to emerge, will likely home in on the explanatory mechanism — the fact that two mothers or two fathers can’t possibly both enjoy a biological connection to a child — in suggesting the results of the study reveal nothing of value about same-sex households with children. On the contrary, the study reveals a great deal. Namely, there is no equivalent replacement for the enduring gift to a child that a married biological mother and father offer.

It’s no guarantee of success...

It’s not always possible...

But the odds of emotional struggle at least double without it.

Some critics might attribute the emotional health differences to the realities of “adoption by strangers,” but the vast majority of same-sex couples in the NHIS exhibited one parent with a biological relationship with the child.

Even research on “planned” same-sex families — those created using assisted reproductive technology (ART) — reveals the significance of biological ties. Sullins notes such studies have long recognized that the lack of conjoined biological ties creates unique difficulties and relational stresses. The birth and non-birth mother . . . are subject to competition, rivalry, and jealousy regarding conception and mothering roles that are never faced by conceiving opposite-sex couples, and which, for the children involved, can result in anxiety over their security and identity.

* MAKES SENSE.

This is not the first time the NHIS data have been used to analyze same-sex households and child health. A manuscript presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Population Association of America assessed the same data. Curiously, that manuscript overlooked all emotional health outcomes.

(*SMIRK*)

* YEAH... "CURIOUSLY..." UH-HUH...

Instead, the authors inquired only into a solitary, parent-reported measure of their “perception of the child’s overall health,” a physical well-being proxy that varies only modestly across household types. Hence, the authors readily concluded “no differences.”

I’m not surprised.

(*SNORT*)

* NOPE... NOT SURPRISING AT ALL!

(*GUFFAW*)

This juxtaposition provides a window into the state of the social science of same-sex households with children.

Null findings are preferred — and arguably sought — by most scholars and journal editors.

* NO DOUBT...

Indeed, study results seem to vary by author, not by dataset. It is largely a different approach to the presentation of data that distinguishes those population-based studies hailed by many as proof of “no differences” from those studies denounced by the same people as “junk science.”

In fact, population-based surveys of same-sex households with children all tend to reveal the same thing, regardless of the data source. It’s a testimony to the virtues of random sampling and the vices of relying on non-random samples, which Sullins argues — in another published study — fosters “a strong bias resulting in false positive outcomes . . . in recruited samples of same-sex parents.”

He’s right.

* OF COURSE HE'S RIGHT!

* TO BE CONTINUED...

February 10, 2015 at 6:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Published research employing the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), the ECLS (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), the U.S. Census (ACS), the Canadian Census, and now the NHIS all reveal a comparable basic narrative, namely, that children who grow up with a married mother and father fare best at face value.

* ALL REVEAL...

The real disagreement is seldom over what the data reveal. It’s how scholars present and interpret the data that differs profoundly. You can make the children of same-sex households appear to fare fine (if not better), on average, if you control for a series of documented factors more apt to plague same-sex relationships and households: relationship instability, residential instability, health and emotional challenges, greater economic struggle (among female couples), and — perhaps most significantly —the lack of two biological connections to the child.

(If you control for these, you will indeed find “no differences” left over.)

Doing this gives the impression that “the kids are fine” at a time when it is politically expedient to do so.

(*SHRUG*)

This analytic tendency reflects a common pattern in social science research to search for ‘‘independent’’ effects of variables, thereby overlooking — or perhaps ignoring — the pathways that explain how social phenomena actually operate in the real world.

* AND, FOLKS... THE PATHWAYS MATTER!

By way of a helpful comparison, I can state with confidence that after controlling for home ownership, residential instability, single parenthood, and neighborhood employment levels, there is no association between household poverty and child educational achievement.

(*SNORT QUICKLY FOLLOWED BY A SNICKER*)

But it would be misleading to say this unless I made it clear that these were the pathways by which poverty hurts educational futures — because we know it does.

* GOT IT...???

The academy so privileges arguments in favor of same-sex marriage and parenting that every view other than resounding support — including research conclusions — has been formally or informally scolded.

(I should know. The explosive reaction to my 2012 research about parental same-sex relationships and child outcomes demonstrates that far more is at work than seeking answers to empirical research questions.)

Such reactions call into question the purpose and relevance of social science.

(*NOD*)

Indeed, at least one sociologist holds that social science is designed “to identify and understand the various underlying causal mechanisms that produce identifiable outcomes and events of interest.” That this has not been the case with the study of same-sex households raises a more basic question: Is the point of social science to win political arguments? Or is its purpose to better understand social reality?

* IT SHOULD BE THE LATTER!

* ANYWAY, FOLKS... THERE'S MORE TO THE ARTICLE... BUT I'VE COVERED THE MEAT.

February 10, 2015 at 6:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.economics21.org/commentary/job-creation-workers-labor-force-participation-rate-02-09-2015

The labor force participation rate — the percentage of people who are employed or who are looking for work — has barely moved - declining from 63% in January 2014 to 62.9% in January 2015.

These are levels equivalent to the late 1970s, before the movement of women into the labor force.

After most recessions, people gradually go back into the labor force as jobs become available.

This time is different.

University of Chicago professor Casey Mulligan, in his book Side Effects: The Economic Consequences of the Health Reform, suggests that the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) has discouraged people from working. When you earn between 133% and 400% of the poverty line, which translates into between $32,250 and $97,000 for a family of four, every extra dollar you earn means fewer premium subsidies.

Mulligan suggests that under the Affordable Care Act, up to 11 million people can gain from not working.

* DO GAIN! (WE PAY... THEY GAIN! WE SUBSIDIZE... THEY'RE SUBSIDIZED!)

One woman I spoke to was happy to have earned less in 2014 than in 2013, because the cost of her health insurance for her and her husband declined by more than her earnings. There are many more like her.

* GEEZUS...

* AND I'M PAYING FOR THIS SHIT! AND CHANCES ARE YOU ARE TOO!

This new disincentive to work has come on the heels of the greatest expansion of unemployment benefits in modern history, from 26 weeks of benefits to 99 weeks.

* YEP... THAT WAS PARTIALLY ON MY TAB TOO...

The number of people on food stamps has risen from 26.3 million in 2007 to 46.5 million in 2014.

* DITTO! (I PAY FOR MY FOOD; I PAY FOR THEIR FOOD.)

The number on workers and dependents on disability insurance has gone from 8.9 million to 10.9 million over the same period. Economics21 contributor Charles Blahous wrote, “the rise reflects causes ranging from a liberalization of eligibility criteria in 1984, to a surge in disability benefit applications when unemployment rose during the Great Recession.”

* THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SIGNALED THE OPENING OF THE FLOOD GATES; WE ALL KNOW THIS!

At the same time, the Affordable Care Act has made it harder for employers to hire workers.

(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)

If employers with over 49 full-time-equivalent employees do not offer the right kind of health insurance, they owe a non-deductible fine of $2,000 per full-time worker per year. So moving from 49 to 50 workers can cost $40,000 a year, as the first 30 are exempt. Employers become “49ers,” limited to 49 workers.

Employers also have an incentive to make their workers into “29ers,” those who work only 29 hours a week. No penalty is owed on those who work fewer than 30 hours. Their incentive is to hire as few workers as practical, and, when possible, hire part-timers.

* WELCOME TO OBAMA'S AMERICA!

When people are better off staying home, they don’t go out to work. When employers are better off with fewer workers, they don’t hire. That is how America has ended up with 1970's levels of labor force participation and 1970's "growth" rates.

February 10, 2015 at 6:42 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)