Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Global Warming Activist Freezes to Death in Antarctica
Famed global warming activist James Schneider and a journalist friend were both found frozen to death on Saturday, about 90 miles from South Pole Station, by the pilot of a ski plane practicing emergency evacuation procedures.
...Apparently, while all of Prof. Schneider's friends were assuming that the July trek would be to Greenland, during Northern Hemisphere summer, his plans were actually to snowmobile to the South Pole - which, in July, is in the dead of winter.
Mr. Dolittle related how some people do not realize that, even if there has been warming in Antarctica, the average temperature at the South Pole in July still runs about 70 degrees F below zero. "Some people think that July is warm everywhere on Earth."
NASA Data Worse Than Climate-Gate Data, Space Agency Admits
NASA was able to put a man on the moon, but the space agency can't tell you what the temperature was when it did. By its own admission, NASA's temperature records are in even worse shape than the besmirched Climate-gate data.
E-mail messages obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that NASA concluded that its own climate findings were inferior to those maintained by both the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) -- the scandalized source of the leaked Climate-gate e-mails -- and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.
The e-mails from 2007 reveal that when a USA Today reporter asked if NASA's data "was more accurate" than other climate-change data sets, NASA's Dr. Reto A. Ruedy replied with an unequivocal no. He said "the National Climatic Data Center's procedure of only using the best stations is more accurate," admitting that some of his own procedures led to less accurate readings.
"My recommendation to you is to continue using NCDC's data for the U.S. means and [East Anglia] data for the global means," Ruedy told the reporter.
"NASA's temperature data is worse than the Climate-gate temperature data. According to NASA," wrote Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who uncovered the e-mails. Horner is skeptical of NCDC's data as well, stating plainly: "Three out of the four temperature data sets stink." ...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory.
It follows a tumultuous few months in which public opinion on efforts to tackle climate change has been undermined by events such as the climate scientists' emails leaked from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit.
"I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change," said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. "The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful."
One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is "modern democracy", he added. "Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."...
Monday, March 29, 2010
Bigger danger of healthcare bill: the arrogance of Congress
We may never fully know the damage that will be done by the massive health care bill Congress passed on Sunday, but one thing is certain: It will lead to lower-quality care at higher costs.
Dozens of new health boards will come on line in the next few years, as bureaucrats gradually take control of our health care system. Who knows how many bright college students will decide to avoid medical careers because they don’t want to follow orders from these bureaucrats?
As alarming as some of the bill’s provisions are, what’s more dangerous is the arrogance this Congress demonstrated.
The House of Representatives used to represent; now it rules.
This health care reform was widely debated for a year, and it became less popular by the month. A weekend poll by Rasmussen Reports showed the depth of that unpopularity, with only 26 percent strongly supporting the reform and 45 percent strongly opposing it.
How can elected representatives defy the considered will of the people?
Because defiance becomes an easy habit when you know that there is almost no chance you will lose your next election. The loss of accountability enables public servants to indulge their own lust for power. As Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”...
...The reason is a century of entrenchment by incumbents looking out for themselves. They have large staffs and budgets to run a permanent campaign; they have pork and patronage to distribute at taxpayer expense; and they enacted campaign restrictions to hobble challengers.
With mostly one-party districts, incumbents own their seats unless they face serious primary challenges. But party organizations controlled by incumbents work to discourage primary challenges, regardless of the performance of the incumbent. In fact, only eight incumbents have lost their primary races in the past three elections combined – that’s a renomination rate of over 99 percent. ...
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Health overhaul likely to strain doctor shortage
WASHINGTON – Better beat the crowd and find a doctor.
Primary care physicians already are in short supply in parts of the country, and the landmark health overhaul that will bring them millions more newly insured patients in the next few years promises extra strain.
The new law goes beyond offering coverage to the uninsured, with steps to improve the quality of care for the average person and help keep us well instead of today's seek-care-after-you're-sick culture. To benefit, you'll need a regular health provider.
Yet recently published reports predict a shortfall of roughly 40,000 primary care doctors over the next decade, a field losing out to the better pay, better hours and higher profile of many other specialties. ...
Your Medical Records Aren’t Secure
...In fact, the passage of HIPAA in 1996 (under President Bill Clinton) set the course for this outcome. The fact that HIPAA privacy was undone during the Bush administration is a coincidence convenient for his ideological and political opponents. If I’m mistaken, the proof will be the reversal of the policy during the current administration. I’m not aware of any plan for that to happen.
“Electronic record systems that don’t put patients in control of data or have inadequate security create huge opportunities for the theft, misuse and sale of personal health information,” says Peel. I agree, but more importantly, I think, public policies that don’t put patients in control create the same—or at least parallel—problems.
Transferring control of health care to the federal government transfers control of health information to the federal government. The government has interests distinct from patients, and no matter how hard one fights to protect patients’ privacy interests, the government’s interests in cost control, social engineering, and such will ineluctably win out....
Stunning flood of claims held in secret diocesan archive
A METICULOUSLY maintained secret archive on abuse allegations against clerics in the Diocese of Cloyne has shocked both victim representatives and church investigators.
The revelation came as the Irish Independent has learnt that the same archive will be used to support a flood of civil damages claims once a state-ordered probe into alleged clerical abuses in Dublin and Cloyne is published.
The archive contains stunning data -- recorded in meticulous detail -- on abuse allegations dating over several years, related correspondence, clerical responses and the diocesan handling of the individual complaints. Gardai were, at the time, unaware of significant data in the file.
The number of people alleging clerical abuse in the sprawling Cork diocese in the 1970s and 1980s has almost doubled since a shocking church child protection watchdog report was launched three years ago.....
Democrats threaten companies hit hard by health care bill
...On Thursday and Friday, the companies -- so far, they include AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, Deere, Valero Energy, AK Steel and 3M -- said a tax provision in the new health care law will make it far more expensive to provide prescription drug coverage to their retired employees. Now, both retirees and current employees of those companies are wondering whether the new law could mean reduced or canceled benefits for them in the future.
The news is an embarrassment for Democrats. As President Obama and congressional leaders tout the purported benefits of the new health care law, some of the nation's biggest companies are saying it will mean higher costs and fewer benefits -- not exactly what Democrats want to hear in the days after their historic victory.
So Waxman has ordered the executives to explain themselves at an April 21 hearing before the Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative subcommittee. That subcommittee just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who held out his vote on health care reform until a few hours before final passage on March 21, giving the bill's opponents the unfounded hope that he might vote against it....
...Waxman's request could prove particularly troubling for the companies. The executives will undoubtedly view such documents as confidential, but if they fail to give Waxman everything he wants, they run the risk of subpoenas and threats from the chairman. And all as punishment for making a business decision in light of a new tax situation....
The ObamaCare Writedowns
It's been a banner week for Democrats: ObamaCare passed Congress in its final form on Thursday night, and the returns are already rolling in. Yesterday AT&T announced that it will be forced to make a $1 billion writedown due solely to the health bill, in what has become a wave of such corporate losses.
This wholesale destruction of wealth and capital came with more than ample warning. Turning over every couch cushion to make their new entitlement look affordable under Beltway accounting rules, Democrats decided to raise taxes on companies that do the public service of offering prescription drug benefits to their retirees instead of dumping them into Medicare. We and others warned this would lead to AT&T-like results, but like so many other ObamaCare objections Democrats waved them off as self-serving or "political."
Perhaps that explains why the Administration is now so touchy. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke took to the White House blog to write that while ObamaCare is great for business, "In the last few days, though, we have seen a couple of companies imply that reform will raise costs for them." In a Thursday interview on CNBC, Mr. Locke said "for them to come out, I think is premature and irresponsible."...
...In other words, shoot the messenger. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don't like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.
On top of AT&T's $1 billion, the writedown wave so far includes Deere & Co., $150 million; Caterpillar, $100 million; AK Steel, $31 million; 3M, $90 million; and Valero Energy, up to $20 million....
...The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don't make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Another T.S.A. Nominee Withdraws
...Maj. Gen. Robert A. Harding, a retired Army intelligence officer, was selected to take over the Transportation Security Administration, or T.S.A., just two and a half weeks ago, following the withdrawal of Mr. Obama’s first pick under fire.
No third choice was announced, and the back-to-back failed nominations mean that the job is likely to remain unfilled for months to come.
General Harding’s bid came unraveled after reports that his firm collected more federal money than it was entitled to for providing interrogators in Iraq. ...
Government Caused the Meltdown
... The first part of the book examines the government’s policy blunders, beginning with the very notion of federal housing policy. The Constitution says nothing about housing, but in 1938 Congress and President Roosevelt created the Federal National Mortgage Association, usually called “Fannie Mae.” They did so because they thought it was a good idea to promote home ownership and figured that establishing a “government sponsored entity” to buy mortgages from lenders would do that. Of course, there were millions of Americans who owned houses prior to the creation of Fannie. There was no problem that needed to be solved, but the politicians thought it would be a popular move, so they went ahead, never contemplating that getting the government into the home-financing business would one day lead to disaster.
Fannie’s mortgage-backed securities were sold to investors worldwide, most of whom assumed that the paper was sound, backed by the U.S. government. Woods writes, “Everybody knew that if the GSEs [Fannie and its younger sibling, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation or “Freddie Mac,” are known as government-sponsored enterprises — GSEs] ran into trouble, they would be bailed out at taxpayer expense.” They ran into enormous trouble and were bailed out, but hardly anyone has had the guts to blame these political pets and call for their abolition.
Another of the culprits Woods identifies is the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which used political leverage to compel banks to make more loans “in their communities.” This law (again, outside the constitutional authority of Congress but enacted anyway) was a power play to force banks to make loans they would not otherwise choose to, directing capital in ways that please the activists and politicians. Under the Clinton administration, this statute was used to compel banks to meet quotas of home loans to high-risk people. At the same time, Clinton forced Fannie and Freddie to purchase high-risk mortgages. Woods shows, in short, that political pressure was used to undermine the traditionally cautious lending standards in the mortgage industry.
Politicians in both parties took delight in crowing that home ownership was increasing, especially among minority voting groups, without realizing that home ownership is not necessarily good for everyone. For persons with low and unsteady incomes, home ownership can be a costly mistake, as later proved to be the case for millions who had taken out loans they couldn’t repay.
By themselves, however, Fannie, Freddie, and the CRA could have done only minor economic damage. Woods identifies the main villain in this drama as the Federal Reserve System. For years, the Fed under long-time chairman Alan Greenspan pumped up the money supply so as to drive interest rates down to artificially low levels. Artificially low interest rates tricked people into acting differently than they otherwise would have. Home ownership and housing construction looked like great investments during the years 2002 to 2006 because of the outpouring of credit from the Fed, steered by politicians toward the housing market. If interest rates had remained at market levels, the housing bubble could not have grown to the enormous size it did. ...
On Health Care Day, Obama Skips Signing Executive Order on Abortion; Stupak, on Defense, Compares Order to Emancipation Proclamation
President Obama signed the Senate health care bill into law Tuesday. He did not sign the executive order on abortion negotiated with Michigan Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak in an 11th-hour arrangement that may well have saved the entire health care reform effort.
A White House official told Fox, Obama will not sign the Executive Order Tuesday and has set no specific date to do so. Stupak predicted Obama would sign the order later this week. The White House said only that Obama would sign the order "soon."...
The Government Pay Boom
It turns out there really is growing inequality in America. It's the 45% premium in pay and benefits that government workers receive over the poor saps who create wealth in the private economy.
And the gap is growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), from 1998 to 2008 public employee compensation grew by 28.6%, compared with 19.3% for private workers. In the recession year of 2009, with almost no inflation and record budget deficits, more than half the states awarded pay raises to their employees...
Cantor Says Campaign Office Was Shot At, Accuses Dems of Exploiting Threats
Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor said Thursday that his Richmond campaign office has been shot at and that he's received "threatening e-mails" -- but at the same time the House minority whip accused top Democrats of trying to exploit the threats they've been receiving for "political gain."
Cantor said "a bullet was shot through the window" of his campaign office. The incident happened Monday, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress. Most of the threats so far have been reported by Democrats, but Cantor -- the No. 2 Republican in the House -- is one of about 10 lawmakers who has asked for increased security protection, Fox News has learned.
In brief and pointed remarks, Cantor said he would not be releasing any information about the other threats he's received, as some lawmakers have done, out of concern that it would "encourage more to be sent." ...
REMEMBERING WHEN G.O.P. Offices Were Vandalized: “An apparent mob of vandals attacked the North Carolina Republican Party headquarters, causing minor smoke damage, breaking windows and leaving vulgar messages, police said.” I don’t remember a national panic over this, or over the bullet-riddled Bush/Cheney headquarters.
Then there was this episode. And, of course, this: “A group of protestors stormed and then ransacked a Bush-Cheney headquarters building in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.”...
Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor said Thursday that his Richmond campaign office has been shot at and that he's received "threatening e-mails" -- but at the same time the House minority whip accused top Democrats of trying to exploit the threats they've been receiving for "political gain."
Cantor said "a bullet was shot through the window" of his campaign office. The incident happened Monday, Fox News has learned, the latest in a rash of apparent threats and acts of intimidation against members of Congress. Most of the threats so far have been reported by Democrats, but Cantor -- the No. 2 Republican in the House -- is one of about 10 lawmakers who has asked for increased security protection, Fox News has learned.
In brief and pointed remarks, Cantor said he would not be releasing any information about the other threats he's received, as some lawmakers have done, out of concern that it would "encourage more to be sent." ...
REMEMBERING WHEN G.O.P. Offices Were Vandalized: “An apparent mob of vandals attacked the North Carolina Republican Party headquarters, causing minor smoke damage, breaking windows and leaving vulgar messages, police said.” I don’t remember a national panic over this, or over the bullet-riddled Bush/Cheney headquarters.
Then there was this episode. And, of course, this: “A group of protestors stormed and then ransacked a Bush-Cheney headquarters building in Orlando, Fla., Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.”...
Obama's opposition to the individual mandate.
..."When Senator Clinton says a mandate, it's not a mandate on government to provide health insurance. It's a mandate on individuals to purchase it. Massachusetts has a mandate right now. They have exempted 20% of the uninsured because they've concluded that that 20% can't afford it. In some cases, there are people who are paying fines and still can't afford it so now they're worse off than they were. They don't have health insurance and they're paying a fine. In order for you to force people to get health insurance, you've got to have a very harsh, stiff penalty."...
The Obamaklatura
...But the Tribune story shows that political control introduces its own kind of inequality, to benefit the political class:
While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help through a shadowy appeals system created in recent years under former schools chief Arne Duncan.
Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city's premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan's office and obtained by the Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Duncan is now secretary of education under President Barack Obama.
The log is a compilation of politicians and influential business people who interceded on behalf of children during Duncan's tenure. It includes 25 aldermen, Mayor Richard Daley's office, House Speaker Michael Madigan, his daughter Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.
Non-connected parents, such as those who sought spots for their special-needs child or who were new to the city, also appear on the log. But the politically connected make up about three-quarters of those making requests in the documents obtained by the Tribune.
This is "the aristocracy of pull," in Ayn Rand's memorable phrase. Its existence is probably inevitable inasmuch as government's is, but its extent can only increase with the power and reach of government.
If you and Larry Summers both get sick and need a treatment that the Medicare Advisory Commission (dysphemistically known as the Death Panel) deems too expensive, what are the odds that you'll find a way to get it anyway and he won't? How about the other way around? In the Soviet Union, those privileged by political connections were called the nomenklatura. Here, we can call it the Obamaklatura....
All the 'Nuance' That's Fit to Print
The New York Times relaxes taboos about Nazi Germany.
The other day David Leonhardt, who writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times business section, offered an analogy that some are likely to find shocking:
In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.
More than any other country, Germany--Nazi Germany--then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.
The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn't look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn't become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.
What interests us here is not the merits of the argument but the fact that it is being aired at all on the pages of the nation's leading liberal newspaper. Not long ago it was considered in horribly poor taste to praise anything about the Nazi regime, or to liken contemporary liberalism to Nazism or other fascist movements of the past. (The left's hostility to Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" rested heavily on the latter element of the taboo.)...
Obama gives sugar plums to the special interests
"Tonight," President Obama intoned near midnight Sunday, after the House had passed two health care bills, "we pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. ... We proved that this government -- a government of the people and by the people -- still works for the people."
But even before the president spoke, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America -- whose $26.1 million lobbying effort in 2009 was the most expensive by any industry lobby in history -- hailed the health package as "important and historic."
The second-biggest industry lobby in America, the American Medical Association, also cheered, as did the American Hospital Association, the No. 5 industry lobby. Throw in the goliath senior lobby AARP and Beltway powerhouse General Electric, and you realize Obama's underdog tale is all bark and no bite.
The health care bill Obama signed into law Tuesday is a triumph for the special interests. It will benefit the biggest businesses, and by injecting more government into the economy, it will permanently stimulate K Street.
Yet all along Obama has claimed the opposite. ...
A Point of No Return?
...If the current legislation does not entail the transmission of all our individual medical records to Washington, it will take only an administrative regulation or, at most, an Executive Order of the President, to do that.
With politicians now having not only access to our most confidential records, and having the power of granting or withholding medical care needed to sustain ourselves or our loved ones, how many people will be bold enough to criticize our public servants, who will in fact have become our public masters?
Despite whatever "firewalls" or "lockboxes" there may be to shield our medical records from prying political eyes, nothing is as inevitable as leaks in Washington. Does anyone still remember the hundreds of confidential FBI files that were "accidentally" delivered to the White House during Bill Clinton's administration?
Even before that, J. Edgar Hoover's extensive confidential FBI files on numerous Washington power holders made him someone who could not be fired by any President of the United States, much less by any Attorney General, who was nominally his boss....
20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms
...2. You are young and healthy and want to pay for insurance that reflects that status? Tough. You'll have to pay for premiums that cover not only you, but also the guy who smokes three packs a day, drink a gallon of whiskey and eats chicken fat off the floor. That's because insurance companies will no longer be able to underwrite on the basis of a person's health status. (Section 2701).
3. You would like to pay less in premiums by buying insurance with lifetime or annual limits on coverage? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer such policies, even if that is what customers prefer. (Section 2711).
4. Think you'd like a policy that is cheaper because it doesn't cover preventive care or requires cost-sharing for such care? Tough. Health insurers will no longer be able to offer policies that do not cover preventive services or offer them with cost-sharing, even if that's what the customer wants. (Section 2712).
5. You are an employer and you would like to offer coverage that doesn't allow your employees' slacker children to stay on the policy until age 26? Tough. (Section 2714).
6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302)....
A battle won, but a victory?
...On Sunday, as will happen every day for two decades, another 10,000 baby boomers became eligible for Social Security and Medicare. And Congress moved closer to piling a huge new middle-class entitlement onto the rickety structure of America's Ponzi welfare state. Congress has a one-word response to the demographic deluge and the scores of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities: "More."
There will be subsidized health insurance for families of four earning up to $88,200 a year, a ceiling certain to be raised, repeatedly. The accounting legerdemain spun to make this seem affordable -- e.g., cuts (to Medicare) and taxes (on high-value insurance plans) that will never happen -- is Enronesque.
As America's teetering tower of unkeepable promises grows, so does the weight of government, in taxes and mandates that limit investments and discourage job creation. America's dynamism, and hence upward social mobility, will slow, as the economy becomes what the party of government wants it to be -- increasingly dependent on government-created demand.
Promoting dependency is the Democratic Party's vocation. The party knows that almost all entitlements are forever, and those that are not -- e.g., the lifetime eligibility for welfare, repealed in 1996 -- are not for the middle class. Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter. The taxes will disproportionately burden high earners, thereby tightening the noose of society's dependency on government for investments and job creation. ...
...The bill is a museum of hoary artifacts from liberalism's attic. The identity politics of quasi-quotas? The secretary of health and human services "in awarding grants and contracts under this section . . . shall give preferences to entities that have a demonstrated record of . . . training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or disadvantaged backgrounds." And the bill creates an Advisory Council on Green, High-Performing Public School Facilities and grants for "retrofitting necessary to increase the energy efficiency and water efficiency of public school facilities." ...
The Fix Is In
Why Britain’s National Health Service spends so much and does so little
Americans would do well to ponder a recent admission by a former British minister in the Blair government. On March 2, the Guardian reported that the ex-minister, now Lord Warner, said that while spending on Britain’s National Health Service had increased by 60 percent under the Labour government, its output had decreased by 4 percent. No doubt the spending of a Soviet-style organization like the NHS is more easily measurable than its output, but the former minister’s remark certainly accords with the experiences of many citizens, who see no dramatic improvement in the service as a result of such vastly increased outlays. On the contrary, while the service has taken on 400,000 new staff members—that is to say, one-fifth of all new jobs created in Britain during the period—continuity of medical care has been all but extinguished. Nobody now expects to see the same doctor on successive occasions, in the hospital or anywhere else.
The ex-minister admitted that most of the extra money—which by now must equal a decent proportion of the total national debt—had been simply wasted. (The same might be said, of course, of the increased outlays put toward state education.) But his explanation for this state of affairs was superficial and self-exculpating, to say the least: he said that the NHS received more money than it knew what to do with because of managerial inexperience. “It was like giving a starving man foie gras and caviar,” he said....
Some States Find Burdens in Health Law
Because of the new health care law, Arizona lawmakers must now find a way to maintain insurance coverage for 350,000 children and adults that they slashed just last week to help close a $2.6 billion budget deficit.
Louisiana officials say a reduction in federal money to hospitals that treat the uninsured under the bill could be a death knell for their state-run charity hospital system.
In California, policymakers estimate they will have to come up with an additional $500 million a year to make necessary increases in payments to Medicaid providers.
Across the country, state officials are wading through the minutiae of the health care overhaul to understand just how their governments will be affected. Even with much still to be digested, it is clear the law may be as much of a burden to some state budgets as it is a boon to uninsured consumers. ...
The NHS Jobs Program
It was the tragic case of 73-year-old Mavis Skeet, said the Tory-leaning Daily Telegraph, that "came to symbolize the crisis in the NHS" during the early Blair-Brown years. After having her cancer surgery cancelled five times—it was first scheduled for December 1998; it was cancelled a fifth time in January 2000—her condition was declared inoperable. She died in May 2000.
In January 2000, as the situation with the health service worsened, Blair appeared on David Frost’s morning program to declare that NHS spending was "too low" by European standards and a request a new infusion of cash to shore up the faltering system by adding doctors, nurses, and beds.
In a 2007 interview with the BBC (for the very good documentary "The Blair Years"), Blair acknowledged that around the time of Skeet’s death he was "receiving letters from people—heartbreaking letters—about people waiting for their heart operation, their husband or their relative, and dying on a waiting list because they couldn’t get treated quickly enough."
So while the NHS was denying life-extending cancer drugs to patients like Peter Herbert (because a year’s treatment cost approximately £10,000), refusing to reimburse desperate queued up patients who had their procedures done abroad , and simply wouldn’t tell patients about treatments deemed too costly, the system was using the new Blair cash to add bureaucrats at an alarming clip. ...
Number of NHS bureaucrats increases SIX TIMES as fast as number of nurses
The workforce of bureaucrats in the NHS is growing six times as quickly as the number of nurses, according to official figures.
While the number of health service managers went up 12 per cent in one year, the number of nurses increased by less than 2 per cent - and the number of health visitors plummeted.
Since Labour came to power, the number of managers has almost doubled, partly as a result of the need to monitor stringent Whitehall targets on waiting times. ...
AT&T will take $1B non-cash charge for health care
NEW YORK – AT&T Inc. will take a $1 billion non-cash accounting charge in the first quarter because of the health care overhaul and may cut benefits it offers to current and retired workers.
The charge is the largest disclosed so far. Earlier this week, AK Steel Corp., Caterpillar Inc., Deere & Co. and Valero Energy announced similar accounting charges, saying the health care law that President Barack Obama signed Tuesday will raise their expenses. On Friday, 3M Co. said it will also take a charge of $85 million to $90 million.
All five are smaller than AT&T, and their combined charges are less than half of the $1 billion that AT&T is planning. The $1 billion is a third of AT&T's most recent quarterly earnings. In the fourth quarter of 2009, the company earned $3 billion on revenue of $30.9 billion.
AT&T said Friday that the charge reflects changes to how Medicare subsidies are taxed. Companies say the health care overhaul will require them to start paying taxes next year on a subsidy they receive for retiree drug coverage....
Hospital wards to shut in secret NHS cuts
...The proposals could lead to:
* 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.
* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.
* A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.
* Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.
The plans are contained in a series of internal NHS documents uncovered by The Daily Telegraph.
The final details of the plans are not due to be announced until the autumn, well after the country has gone to the polls for the general election.
The Conservatives and health campaigners said the public deserved to know the true extent of cuts at their local surgeries and hospitals before voting. ..
Turning immigration into a tool of social engineering
...In recent months there have been many interesting revelations about New Labour’s immigration policy, but in keeping with our era of dumbed-down political debate the revelations have either been downplayed or have been used to fuel conspiracy theories.
At the end of last year, a former government adviser revealed that ministers frequently discussed ‘open[ing] up the UK to mass migration’. But their aims were as much political and social as they were economic. Indeed there was a ‘driving political purpose’: ministers’ belief that bringing in more immigrants would make manifest their ideal of a ‘truly multicultural society’ and allow them to ‘rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’ (4). Here, we can see how ‘diversity’ is looked upon by New Labour as more than a fluffy value – it is also considered an explicitly political tool that might be used to boost Labour’s fortunes and denigrate its critics.
At the start of this year, government documents released under a Freedom of Information claim confirmed what the government adviser said. In one, written in 2000, officials discussed their desire to ‘maximise the contribution’ of migrants to achieving the government’s ‘social objectives’. The document makes clear that New Labour, unlike previous governments, is keen to exploit the ‘social benefits’ of increased immigration. It argues that it is ‘clearly correct that the government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy’, and lists the ‘social impacts’ of immigration as including ‘a widening of consumer choice and significant cultural contributions’. ‘Migration policy has both social and economic impacts and should be designed to contribute to the government’s overall objectives on both counts’, the document proposed, describing this as ‘a considerable advance on the previously existing situation [where immigrants were allowed in primarily for economic reasons]’ (5).
Strikingly, these discussions were kept as far away from the public as possible. The government adviser says there was ‘an unusual air of… secrecy’ in government discussions about immigration, and the internal document of 2000 was passed between ministers with ‘extreme reluctance’: ‘there was a paranoia about it reaching the media’ and causing concern amongst Labour’s ‘core white working-class vote’ (6). Indeed, when the 2000 document was published as a consultation paper in 2001, it was heavily edited: all mentions of the ‘social objectives’ of increased immigration were removed (7). This provides a glimpse into the elitism that drives the ‘pro-immigration’ stance today, where migrants are considered socially beneficial while the white working classes are looked upon as volatile, potentially racist, and best kept in the dark....
...Those who claim that New Labour relaxed immigration controls in order to remake Britain in its own image are missing the main point: that New Labour’s instinctive attraction to immigration is a product precisely of its lack of real values, of its cultural and political disorientation and uncertainty about what to make Britain into. What the elite likes most about the immigrant is the idea that his arrival and his presence constantly remakes Britain, so that the absence of core British political and moral values can be glossed over with the positive-sounding notion that ours is a nation of forever-changing values, reflecting, in the words of one government minister, ‘the influences of the many different communities who have made their home here’ (10). Indeed, there has been an important shift over the past 30 years from emphasising the assimilation of immigrants into the values of British society to celebrating British society’s assimilation of the immigrants’ values.
For the contemporary elite, taking a ‘pro-immigration’ stance is a way of creating a distance between itself and ‘Old Britain’, a way of disavowing elements of the past, whether it is imperial values, outdated ideas of ‘Great’ Britain, the old-style education system, or aspects of British culture. As the former government adviser said at the end of last year, one of the reasons ministers wanted to increase immigration was to ‘render [the old right’s] arguments out of date’ (11). In a speech and report published in 2001, New Labour argued that there was little fixed about ‘British identity’ and that the ‘changing ethnic composition of the British people themselves [through immigration]’ can only ‘strengthen and renew British identity’ (12). Behind the PC-sounding language, it is a profound discomfort with the ‘identity’ of Old Britain – fixed, homogenous, nationalistic – which leads the elite to celebrate the impact of immigration on British identity today....
...In the political elite’s view, the real ‘foreigners’ in Britain are the white working classes. It looks upon them as an inscrutable, incomprehensible mass, relating to them as an anthropologist does to a tribe rather than as democrats should to the demos. At the end of last year, the New Labour communities secretary, John Denham, drew up a list of the top 100 ‘extremism hotspots’ in the UK where social deprivation threatens to ‘fuel far-right extremism’. They were mostly poor working-class communities, of course, and Denham promised to try to rescue them by pumping in millions of pounds for social improvements and awareness-raising projects on immigration and other issues. ‘[I]f we fail’, he said, ‘the danger is that extremists will try to exploit dissatisfaction and insecurity in ways which will pull communities apart’ (24). This is a modern-day version of writing off certain communities as ‘beyond the pale’, as moral no-go zones, socially warped areas in need of re-education in the values of their elite superiors....
...The truth is that celebrating immigration as a ‘social good’ is no more progressive than treating it as a narrow ‘economic good’: in both instances, the needs and desires of individual migrants and their families are subordinated to an abstract, external measurement. The only ‘good’ in this debate should be the argument that it is good for individuals to have full, unfettered freedom of movement with no interference from the state. And if we want to win that argument, we will need to challenge New Labour’s transformation of immigration into an elite weapon, and take the debate to the mass of the population.
Pastor Dean Tarkington pleads guilty in Lubbock federal court
LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) – Former Lubbock pastor Dean Richard Tarkington, 57, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of attempted possession of child pornography, according to the office of U.S. Attorney. He had been pastor at Word of Faith Christian Center in the 7300 block of 82nd.
Official records say that for several years Tarkington had secretly engaged in sex chat and phone sex with young women and teenage girls on the Internet. He did so at home and using his church office. Official records say Tarkington made contact in November of 2009 with an undercover police officer who was posing as a 15-year-old girl. The two talked using a chat room called "married but looking." ...
The Lie of Fiscal Responsibility
...A little more than 24 hours after releasing the reconciliation bill's preliminary score—the one that picked up the majority of the headlines and votes—the CBO released another report, this one produced at the request of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). It said that if in addition to the health care bill, the Democrats also pass legislation known as the "doc fix"—which would cost an additional $208 billion—the total effect would be to add $59 billion to the deficit over the first 10 years.
Defenders of the reform bill now argue that the doc fix is a separate issue. But Democrats didn't always think so: Last summer's first draft of the House health care bill included the doc fix. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has reportedly used the provision to ensure support from the American Medical Association. Are we somehow supposed to believe that it's good enough to bargain with but not good enough to figure into the budget?
Maybe the problem is something more elementary: Democrats just don't know how to count. Hard to believe? The CBO's letter also says that, contrary to administration claims, the bill won't both reduce the deficit and extend the solvency of Medicare. One or the other, perhaps, but not both.
Nor is that the only double count. The score for the Senate bill includes $72 billion in revenues generated by the CLASS Act, a federally-backed disability insurance program. But that $72 billion is just premium revenue that will eventually have to be used to pay out benefits. The score counts that revenue anyway, despite the fact that, according to the CBO, it would likely add to the deficit in the long term.
Eventually, the deficit damage starts to add up. Toss out a few of the bill's more fanciful assumptions—the implementation of the tax on so-called "Cadillac" insurance plans (already successfully delayed by a full five years by benefits-rich unions), cuts to Medicare payments, and a planned slowing of the growth of insurance subsidies—and the CBO reports that, two decades out, the deficit would spike “in a broad range around one-quarter percent of GDP”—something like $600 billion. Fiscally responsible! ...
Don't Buy It
The crazy constitutional logic of the individual insurance mandate
A few weeks before Congress passed a law that orders every American to buy health insurance, the Virginia legislature passed a law that says "no resident of this Commonwealth…shall be required to obtain or maintain a policy of individual insurance coverage." Two weeks later, Idaho’s governor signed a law that declares "every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty."...
...This sort of reasoning leaves nothing beyond the reach of Congress, since anything you do (or don't do) can be said to affect interstate commerce. In its 1995 decision overturning a federal ban on possessing guns near schools, the Supreme Court cautioned against the temptation "to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States." That kind of analysis, the Court warned, threatens to "obliterate the distinction between what is national and what is local."
In a recent Heritage Foundation paper, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett and two co-authors note that the decision upholding wheat quotas does not mean "Congress can require every American to buy boxes of Shredded Wheat cereal on the grounds that, by not buying wheat cereal, non-consumers were adversely affecting the regulated wheat market." Likewise, federal regulation of carmakers does not mean "Congress could constitutionally require every American to buy a new Chevy Impala every year."...
Even Still More on The Coming War Between Public & Private Sector Workers or, Don't Read This Unless You Want to Get Hulk-Style Pissed
...California, Nevada New Jersey and Ohio all allow double dipping, which lets government workers retire in their 50s and then work another full-time job while collecting retirement checks. In Ohio, police, firefighters and teachers can retire after 30 years on the job, collect a full benefit each year and go back to work full-time doing the same job. This is called retire and rehire.
As the Columbus Dispatch reported last year: "Across the state, Ohio's State Teachers Retirement System paid out more than $741 million in pension benefits last school year to 15,857 faculty and staff members who were still working for school systems and building up a second retirement plan." Some teachers can earn nearly $200,000 a year in pensions and salaries....
...According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), from 1998 to 2008 public employee compensation grew by 28.6%, compared with 19.3% for private workers. In the recession year of 2009, with almost no inflation and record budget deficits, more than half the states awarded pay raises to their employees....
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Peering Into Our Future?
...As some of you know, I’ve been living in France for almost 7 years now. I am pretty much blessed with a good condition, so I never had to deal much with the French healthcare system until my son, Arthur, was born in May 2009.
During holidays Arthur had to be hospitalized for a few weeks when he caught the H1N1 flu on top of his already severe bronchiolitis. He’s alright now, but his stay at the hospital was hard on him. Attached are some pictures of his room in the pediatric service of Hopital Nord, Marseille, that I thought I’d share so you get a good idea of what “world class universal healthcare coverage” looks like.
On this first picture you can witness the comfort of world class state provided healthcare. Now, my son is obviously too young to use the bathroom, but this room was in the pediatric service, where kids up to 14 years old actually resided while trying to recover. Notice the seatless toilet (great for kids!), the mold in the corner, the paint job… all a kid needs to ‘get well soon’ at a “world class” level....
Powerful Lies
Most people become stressed when lying, but new research shows that people with power feel just fine when lying — and are better at getting away with it.
...The researchers found that subjects assigned leadership roles were buffered from the negative effects of lying. Across all measures, the high-power liars — the leaders —resembled truthtellers, showing no evidence of cortisol reactivity (which signals stress), cognitive impairment or feeling bad. In contrast, low-power liars — the subordinates — showed the usual signs of stress and slower reaction times. “Having power essentially buffered the powerful liars from feeling the bad effects of lying, from responding in any negative way or giving nonverbal cues that low-power liars tended to reveal,” Carney explains.
It’s an unsettling finding that prompts a number of questions, the first of which is, if powerful people can lie without suffering consequences, are they prone to lie more? “Even a very ethical person who suddenly finds herself in a position of power is probably going to notice on a conscious or unconscious level that lying no longer feels bad,” Carney says. “We can’t say empirically that power makes a person lie more, but the evidence does suggest that power would make you lie more easily and therefore more often.”...
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Prepared for Failure
During the Bush years, left-of-center critics noted a curious phenomenon among backers of the war in Iraq. Regardless of how bad the situation looked, it was always a vindication of the hawkish world view.
The occupation has been a miserable failure? That's because we didn't have troops, we haven't been tough enough, and we need more-expensive military hardware. ...
...Now, however, we're about to see a Democratic version of Dolchstoss. If you believe as I do that the president's health-care reform legislation will not perform as advertised, you can see it as a failure of the policy itself. Or you can see it as an inevitable consequence of the fact that the legislation was, as liberal wonks insist, a "moderate Republican bill," one that true progressives supported only very reluctantly. So to fix the legislation, we'll need to spend more money, further centralize the system, and impose tighter regulation and control. And if that doesn't work, well, clearly we need to spend still more money, centralize the system even more, and impose even tighter regulation and control. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Five Reasons The CBO Figures Are Phony
...1. Medicare cuts
The Senate health care bill relied heavily on unprecedented cuts in Medicare spending increases. If implemented, this would have a huge impact on seniors’ care. But Congress has always balked at Medicare cuts. (See No. 3).
2. Delayed start
To make the budget math work, Democrats plan on delaying the start of subsidies and other costly provisions for several years. (The bill spends just $17 billion through 2013). The true 10-year cost is far higher.
3. The “doc fix” is excluded
The Sustainable Growth Rate imposes automatic cuts in Medicare payment rates to doctors.
For several years, fearing a revolt by doctors — and seniors — Congress has suspended those cuts. The original draft of the House health care bill included a permanent “doc fix.” But that ballooned deficits, so Democrats dropped it, even though everyone knows Congress isn’t going to slash doctors’ rates. The CBO has estimated a “doc fix” would cost $247 billion over 10 years.
4. Student loans are included
Doctors’ payments are excluded from the health bill, but major student loan program changes are included? Yep. The reconciliation bill will end student loan subsidies to lenders. The CBO says this will save $19.4 billion over the first decade, accounting for virtually all of the $19.8 billion in deficit reduction from the health care reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills must cut the deficit by at least $1 billion. So, without the non-health care items, the health care reconciliation bill would not pass muster.
5. It’s a CLASS act
In the Senate health bill, a new, voluntary long-term care insurance program called CLASS accounted for some $72 billion of the deficit reduction. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program is supposed to be deficit-neutral long-term. But Democrats are counting the upfront premium surplus in the short term and ignoring the significant operating deficits after 2029. Update: Democrats also are counting on projected additional Social Security revenues from payroll taxes on higher wages in lieu of lower health benefits. Again, those benefits have to be paid out....
The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform
ON Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that, if enacted, the latest health care reform legislation would, over the next 10 years, cost about $950 billion, but because it would raise some revenues and lower some costs, it would also lower federal deficits by $138 billion. In other words, a bill that would set up two new entitlement spending programs — health insurance subsidies and long-term health care benefits — would actually improve the nation’s bottom line.
Could this really be true? How can the budget office give a green light to a bill that commits the federal government to spending nearly $1 trillion more over the next 10 years?
The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.
In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.
Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending....
...Finally, in perhaps the most amazing bit of unrealistic accounting, the legislation proposes to trim $463 billion from Medicare spending and use it to finance insurance subsidies. But Medicare is already bleeding red ink, and the health care bill has no reforms that would enable the program to operate more cheaply in the future. Instead, Congress is likely to continue to regularly override scheduled cuts in payments to Medicare doctors and other providers.
Removing the unrealistic annual Medicare savings ($463 billion) and the stolen annual revenues from Social Security and long-term care insurance ($123 billion), and adding in the annual spending that so far is not accounted for ($114 billion) quickly generates additional deficits of $562 billion in the first 10 years. And the nation would be on the hook for two more entitlement programs rapidly expanding as far as the eye can see.
The bottom line is that Congress would spend a lot more; steal funds from education, Social Security and long-term care to cover the gap; and promise that future Congresses will make up for it by taxing more and spending less. ...
Here comes the next bubble – carbon trading
Forget CDOs and other inventions of the great credit bubble. That’s all old hat. Investment bankers are moving on to an area of securities trading that is potentially even more lucrative, and what’s more, even has a social value – saving the planet. Or supposedly so, anyway. I’ve long had my suspicions about the great carbon trading bubble, and I’ve had them pretty much confirmed by a brilliant article which has been drawn to my attention by one Mark Schapiro in Harper’s magazine.
According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States – and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency – demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market.
And here’s the great thing about it. Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one. Since the market revolves around creating carbon credits, or finding carbon reduction projects whose benefits can then be sold to those with a surplus of emissions, it is entirely intangible....
Mass.-type health care could wipe out economy, state Treasurer Timothy Cahill says
BOSTON – The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health-care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.
Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill – a former Democrat running as an independent for governor – said the local plan enacted in 2006 has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.
“Who, exactly, is going to bail out the federal government if this plan goes national?” he asked. ...
...He also gave reporters a copy of a recent state ledger sheet, showing the state’s Medicaid program ballooning from $7.5 billion to a projected $9.2 billion since the plan was adopted. Meanwhile, of the 407,000 newly insured, only 32 percent paid for private insurance wholly by themselves....
...“If President (Barack) Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform adopted here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” the treasurer said.
Cahill’s comments came as the administration launched three days of hearings on rising health care costs in Massachusetts that threaten the 2006 law. ...
Why can't Uncle Sam learn?
Doubling down on dubious bets is characteristic of compulsive gamblers and federal education policy. The nation was essentially without such policy for grades K through 12, and better off for that, until 1965. In that year of liberals living exuberantly, they produced the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Now yet another president has announced yet another plan to fix education. His aspiration has a discouraging pedigree. ...
...Abundant evidence demonstrates that money is not an Archimedean lever for moving the world of education. Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending tripled over four decades; pupil-teacher ratios were substantially reduced as the number of teachers increased 61 percent while enrollments rose about 10 percent. Yet test scores stagnated or declined.
So, what will government do now to reverse the decline that has pretty much coincided with federal intervention since 1965? Double down.
Dogged by Leading Role in Mortgage Meltdown, Andrew Cuomo Personifies Democrats’ Reversal of Fortune
With despair gripping New York Democrats over ethical scandals claiming Governor David Patterson, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), and Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo cuts a heroic figure as the presumptive heir to the governorship.
But catching up with Cuomo is his relationship with the mortgage meltdown that nearly destroyed the American economy. Appointed by Bill Clinton as secretary of the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Andrew Cuomo has been called “the father of the subprime crisis” for the policies he orchestrated.
It was Cuomo’s directives that mandated HUD to vastly increase the amount of risky home loans bought by quasi-governmental housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now, Cuomo may be haunted by his tenure as HUD secretary, where he planted the seeds for the nation’s housing collapse.
Though America’s financial fortunes suffered after Cuomo’s time at HUD, his own personal fortune soared. The bulk of this financial “windfall” came courtesy of Andrew Farkas, the billionaire real estate developer who helped Cuomo amass his wealth as a business partner and campaign fundraiser. Farkas — now Cuomo’s financial chairman as he circles the governorship — has personally given Cuomo at least $1.8 million in cash.
As New Yorkers are beginning to discover, Andrew Cuomo personifies the long reach of many at the top of the Democratic Party who built their fortunes on the mortgage bubble and the sub-prime collapse, but have yet to be tarred and feathered as architects of the nation’s worst housing crisis....
...Notably, another recipient of largess while Cuomo was HUD secretary is current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Clinton appointed Emanuel to the board of Freddie Mac while Cuomo headed HUD. Both Cuomo and Emanuel turned their privileged positions atop the nation’s mortgage finance system into opportunities for quickly amassing personal wealth, which they then leveraged into greater political power....
...Richard Bové, financial analyst at Rochdale Securities, agrees. In a March 3 interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, Bové charged that Cuomo’s irresponsible stewardship at HUD was a key cause of Fannie and Freddie’s bankruptcy and still-deepening bailout.
Speaking by telephone, Bové echoed Barrett’s claim that Cuomo was “the father of the subprime crisis,” an appointee out of his depth who imposed negligent and irresponsible risks on Fannie and Freddie in an apparent crusade to get the “underprivileged” into homes. Cuomo “was not as concerned about the audits or the types of loans that Fannie and Freddie were making,” Bové said, “as long as there was an expansion of mortgage services to that segment of the population.”..
...Bové chalked up Cuomo’s disastrous HUD performance to a “total lack of knowledge of economics, finance, and …what companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could endure.” But he underscored that every board member overseeing Fannie and Freddie shares responsibility for the mortgage crisis. Their responsibility, he said, was to protect, at the most basic level, the health and stability of the corporation. “It is clear that the boards of directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not do that, because those companies are bankrupt.”
Worse, said Bové, “the American taxpayer is on the hook for more money in these two companies than anything else the government may be doing to assist AIG or General Motors.”...
Real Estate Interests Help Cuomo Gain a Big Edge in Cash
As Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo readies his candidacy for governor, one industry is helping him amass a huge fund-raising advantage: real estate.
New records show that even as the industry has confronted its worst crisis in decades, developers, construction executives and real estate lobbyists have given millions of dollars to Mr. Cuomo, providing one in every five dollars over the past six months. ...
...And in his role as attorney general, Mr. Cuomo has responsibility over the offering plans of condominium and cooperative apartments, real estate investments, mortgage fraud cases and complaints about construction flaws that violate what developers originally promised. Nearly all plans for new residential development must be approved through his office...
NY's Cuomo Is 'Father of Subprime Crisis:' Bove
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is the "father of the subprime crisis" and his aggressive attacks on Wall Street could make him dangerous to the banking sector if he becomes the next governor of New York, well-known banking analyst Dick Bove told CNBC.
"One of the key reasons why [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are] bankrupt today, and why the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in supporting them, is because of the edicts pushed through by Mr. Cuomo," said Bove, of Rochdale Securities, in a live interview.
"It's also thought by many that the hundreds of thousands of people who are losing their homes, are [doing so] to a great degree because of the actions taken by Mr. Cuomo at HUD," Bove added.
Cuomo, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001, has been blamed in some quarters for helping to trigger the financial crisis by pushing Fannie and Freddie to buy more subprime mortgages to increase home ownership among the poor. Many of those homeowners eventually defaulted, and the mortgage-backed securities market later collapsed....
With despair gripping New York Democrats over ethical scandals claiming Governor David Patterson, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), and Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY), New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo cuts a heroic figure as the presumptive heir to the governorship.
But catching up with Cuomo is his relationship with the mortgage meltdown that nearly destroyed the American economy. Appointed by Bill Clinton as secretary of the U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Andrew Cuomo has been called “the father of the subprime crisis” for the policies he orchestrated.
It was Cuomo’s directives that mandated HUD to vastly increase the amount of risky home loans bought by quasi-governmental housing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now, Cuomo may be haunted by his tenure as HUD secretary, where he planted the seeds for the nation’s housing collapse.
Though America’s financial fortunes suffered after Cuomo’s time at HUD, his own personal fortune soared. The bulk of this financial “windfall” came courtesy of Andrew Farkas, the billionaire real estate developer who helped Cuomo amass his wealth as a business partner and campaign fundraiser. Farkas — now Cuomo’s financial chairman as he circles the governorship — has personally given Cuomo at least $1.8 million in cash.
As New Yorkers are beginning to discover, Andrew Cuomo personifies the long reach of many at the top of the Democratic Party who built their fortunes on the mortgage bubble and the sub-prime collapse, but have yet to be tarred and feathered as architects of the nation’s worst housing crisis....
...Notably, another recipient of largess while Cuomo was HUD secretary is current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Clinton appointed Emanuel to the board of Freddie Mac while Cuomo headed HUD. Both Cuomo and Emanuel turned their privileged positions atop the nation’s mortgage finance system into opportunities for quickly amassing personal wealth, which they then leveraged into greater political power....
...Richard Bové, financial analyst at Rochdale Securities, agrees. In a March 3 interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, Bové charged that Cuomo’s irresponsible stewardship at HUD was a key cause of Fannie and Freddie’s bankruptcy and still-deepening bailout.
Speaking by telephone, Bové echoed Barrett’s claim that Cuomo was “the father of the subprime crisis,” an appointee out of his depth who imposed negligent and irresponsible risks on Fannie and Freddie in an apparent crusade to get the “underprivileged” into homes. Cuomo “was not as concerned about the audits or the types of loans that Fannie and Freddie were making,” Bové said, “as long as there was an expansion of mortgage services to that segment of the population.”..
...Bové chalked up Cuomo’s disastrous HUD performance to a “total lack of knowledge of economics, finance, and …what companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could endure.” But he underscored that every board member overseeing Fannie and Freddie shares responsibility for the mortgage crisis. Their responsibility, he said, was to protect, at the most basic level, the health and stability of the corporation. “It is clear that the boards of directors of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not do that, because those companies are bankrupt.”
Worse, said Bové, “the American taxpayer is on the hook for more money in these two companies than anything else the government may be doing to assist AIG or General Motors.”...
Real Estate Interests Help Cuomo Gain a Big Edge in Cash
As Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo readies his candidacy for governor, one industry is helping him amass a huge fund-raising advantage: real estate.
New records show that even as the industry has confronted its worst crisis in decades, developers, construction executives and real estate lobbyists have given millions of dollars to Mr. Cuomo, providing one in every five dollars over the past six months. ...
...And in his role as attorney general, Mr. Cuomo has responsibility over the offering plans of condominium and cooperative apartments, real estate investments, mortgage fraud cases and complaints about construction flaws that violate what developers originally promised. Nearly all plans for new residential development must be approved through his office...
NY's Cuomo Is 'Father of Subprime Crisis:' Bove
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is the "father of the subprime crisis" and his aggressive attacks on Wall Street could make him dangerous to the banking sector if he becomes the next governor of New York, well-known banking analyst Dick Bove told CNBC.
"One of the key reasons why [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are] bankrupt today, and why the government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars in supporting them, is because of the edicts pushed through by Mr. Cuomo," said Bove, of Rochdale Securities, in a live interview.
"It's also thought by many that the hundreds of thousands of people who are losing their homes, are [doing so] to a great degree because of the actions taken by Mr. Cuomo at HUD," Bove added.
Cuomo, who was secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001, has been blamed in some quarters for helping to trigger the financial crisis by pushing Fannie and Freddie to buy more subprime mortgages to increase home ownership among the poor. Many of those homeowners eventually defaulted, and the mortgage-backed securities market later collapsed....
How going green may make you mean
When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to "green" type.
According to a study, when people feel they have been morally virtuous by saving the planet through their purchases of organic baby food, for example, it leads to the "licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour", otherwise known as "moral balancing" or "compensatory ethics".
Do Green Products Make Us Better People is published in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science. Its authors, Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, argue that people who wear what they call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. "Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviours," they write.
The pair found that those in their study who bought green products appeared less willing to share with others a set amount of money than those who bought conventional products. When the green consumers were given the chance to boost their money by cheating on a computer game and then given the opportunity to lie about it – in other words, steal – they did, while the conventional consumers did not. Later, in an honour system in which participants were asked to take money from an envelope to pay themselves their spoils, the greens were six times more likely to steal than the conventionals....
Saturday, March 20, 2010
The Euro in Crisis
The financial crisis of 2008, still far from over, has done severe damage to the reputation of the free market. The crisis, we are assured, was caused by the withdrawal of the state and an excess of deregulation. To get out of it will thus require a massive return to public spending and intervention, which is in fact what we see happening all over Europe and in the United States. However, what we might call the Greek affair should make us question the statist solution. We ought to consider the possibility that public management could prove even more dangerous than private—that state regulation is no less chancy than deregulation.
The duplicity and corruption of Greek public accounting was more than an error of bookkeeping. The concealment of the country’s real budget deficit necessarily involved a gigantic network of complicity that included the whole political class, the state bureaucracy, and the banks. This network was not confined to Greece: it included Greece’s European partners, Europe’s political leaders, the governors of the Eurozone, the directors of the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. It’s hard to believe that the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs was ignorant of what was really happening in Greece; and it will come as a surprise to some but not others that Eurostat, the statistical institute of the European Commission, has for years been publishing deliberately false numbers that make the phony accounting of the ratings agencies implicated in the 2008 financial crisis pale in comparison....
...What’s telling is that the people who brought the hoax to light were neither the Greek nor the European authorities but private speculators. The Greek state, to its great dismay, suddenly discovered that it could no longer sell treasury bonds on financial markets at the same rate as the Germans did. The open market had decided that euros owned by Greeks were not the same as euros owned by Germans. Should we blame these private actors for exposing the truth? On the contrary: it was their professional duty to generate profits for their clients, often for their retirement accounts. The public actors, for their part, were duty-bound in principle to manage the euro through predictable and transparent rules. It is therefore inappropriate for French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Greek prime minister George Papandreou to accuse private speculators of “attacking” the euro. If the euro—at least in Greek hands—had been above suspicion, it would not have been attacked....
Brevard pastor charged with statutory sex offense
BREVARD — A Brevard pastor has been arrested by the Transylvania County Sheriff's Office and charged with two counts of statutory sex offense and three counts of indecent liberties with a child.
Michael Waddell Miller, 49, of Pisgah Forest, turned himself in to deputies after the Transylvania County Department of Social Services was called to investigate allegations of child molestation.
Miller has allegedly committed sex acts with a Transylvania County teen for the last five years, beginning when the girl was 10 years old. The girl and her family are members of the church congregation.
He is the pastor of Living Waters Church at Oak Grove, on Asheville Highway in Brevard....
Christian Soldiers
Last Friday night a New York Times headline underwent an online transformation. The article formerly known as “A Christian Overture to Muslims Has Its Critics” acquired a new billing: “A Dispute on Using the Koran as a Path to Jesus.”
For my money this was a big improvement, and explaining what I mean will illuminate a dirty little secret: some American Christians are fostering religious strife abroad. They mean well, but the damage they’re doing can be seen all the way from Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims are killing each other, to Malaysia, where Muslims are trying to keep Christians from using the term “Allah” for God.
The Times story is about an outreach technique that some Baptist missionaries use with Muslims. It involves stressing commonalities between the Koran and the Bible and affirming that the Allah of the Koran and the God of the Bible are one and the same.
You can see how a headline writer might call this an “overture.” And certainly the Christians who deploy the technique see it in sunny terms. Their name for it — the “Camel Method” — comes from the acronym for Chosen Angels Miracles Eternal Life.
But a more apt etymology would involve the “camel’s nose under the tent.” The “overture” — the missionary’s initial bonding with Muslims via discussion of the Koran — is precision-engineered to undermine their allegiance to Islam.
These missionaries start out by noting that the Koran depicts Jesus and his mother, Mary, in a favorable light. Indeed, they point out, the Koran depicts Jesus as a great prophet and a miracle worker who can even raise the dead. In contrast, the Koran doesn’t show Muhammad himself doing that sort of thing. Hmmm … kind of makes you wonder who the top prophet is, doesn’t it?
In some cases even the “camel’s nose” image doesn’t do justice to missionary wiliness. “Trojan Camel” might be better; some Christian missionaries call themselves Muslims — or at least muslims — because, after all, “muslim” literally means one who surrenders to God. A few have gone way undercover, growing beards and abstaining from pork. ...
Friday, March 19, 2010
Is Passing the Health Care Bill Really a Bad Idea?
...Deem and pass? Are you kidding me? Is this what the Revolutionary War was fought for? Is this what the boys on Normandy beach were trying to defend? Is this where we thought we would end up when Obama was speaking so beautifully in Iowa or promising to put away childish things?
Yes, I know Republicans have used the deem and pass technique. It was terrible then. But those were smallish items. This is the largest piece of legislation in a generation and Pelosi wants to pass it without a vote. It’s unbelievable that people even talk about this with a straight face. Do they really think the American people are going to stand for this? Do they think it will really fool anybody if a Democratic House member goes back to his district and says, “I didn’t vote for the bill. I just voted for the amendments.” Do they think all of America is insane?...
...Either this whole city has gone insane or I have or both. But I’m out here on the ledge and I’m not coming in the window. In my view this is no longer about health care. It’s just Democrats wanting to pass a bill, any bill, and shredding anything they have to in order to get it done. It’s about taking every sin the Republicans committed when they were busy being corrupted by power and matching it with interest....
Rep. Darrell Issa: The lackluster record of government-run health care
...Moreover, an expansion of the federal bureaucracy at that rate will greatly increase the incidence of waste, fraud and abuse in health care. Already Medicare, which accounts for 14% of all federal spending, is rife with waste, fraud and abuse. Even Attorney General Eric Holder has said, “By all accounts, every year we lose tens of billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid funds to fraud.”
A recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that federal subsidy programs cost taxpayers about $100 billion every year in improper payments, with Medicare and Medicaid accounting for more than half of that. Harvard Professor Malcolm Sparrow, a specialist in health care fraud teaching at the Kennedy School of Government, has estimated that as much as 20% of the federal health program budgets – or approximately $150 billion – is eaten up by improper payments every year....
...Each year, the government spends an average of $927 in administrative costs per person for Medicaid and $509 for Medicare. Private insurance, on the other hand, costs only $453 per person in administrative costs. Until the government can demonstrate an ability to get administrative costs under control for programs that it already runs, Americans should vehemently oppose any effort to give bureaucrats in Washington any more power to control the one-sixth of the U.S. economy that affects health care....
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Reality show contestants willing to kill in French experiment
...Eighty people who thought they were participating in the shooting of a pilot for a French reality series were willing to deliver potentially lethal electric shocks to a contestant who had incorrectly answered knowledge questions, according to the documentary, "The Game of Death," airing on French TV on Wednesday night. ...
...In "Zone Xtreme," the faux contestants who gave all the wrong answers were actually actors. Each "contestant" was strapped into an electric chair. The 80 wannabe famesters were each asked to punish the contestant, when a wrong answer was given, by administering up to 460 volts of electricity. The majority of them ignored the contestant's screams and obeyed the orders of the weather-chick hostess to ratchet up the jolt. They also obeyed the chant of "Punishment!" from the studio audience -- which did not know the game show was a fake -- until the contestant fell silent and appeared to have died. Only 16 contestants walked away, according to press reports.
The idea for the show came from the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram, who conducted the experiment at Yale University in the 1960s. Milgram found that most people, if pushed by an authority figure, would administer ostensibly dangerous electric shocks to another person. His experiment became famous, having been conducted at the same time as the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. ...
Walgreens: no new Medicaid patients as of April 16
Effective April 16, Walgreens drugstores across the state won't take any new Medicaid patients, saying that filling their prescriptions is a money-losing proposition — the latest development in an ongoing dispute over Medicaid reimbursement.
The company, which operates 121 stores in the state, will continue filling Medicaid prescriptions for current patients.
In a news release, Walgreens said its decision to not take new Medicaid patients stemmed from a "continued reduction in reimbursement" under the state's Medicaid program, which reimburses it at less than the break-even point for 95 percent of brand-name medications dispensed to Medicaid patents....
Nothing Outside the State
A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.
What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life....
...Besides, isn’t statism itself a religion for most Americans? Do they not honor the state above all else, above even the commandments of a conventional religion they may embrace? If their religion tells them “thou shalt not murder,” but the state orders them to murder, then they murder. If the state tells them to rob, to destroy property, and to imprison innocent people, then, notwithstanding any religious strictures, they rob, destroy property, and imprison innocent people, as millions of victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and millions of victims of the so-called Drug War in this country will attest. Moreover, in every form of adversity, Americans look to the state for their personal salvation, just as before the twentieth century their ancestors looked to Divine Providence....
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Explosive Survey: Physicians in Full-Blown Panic Over Obamacare
This could be the most alarming story yet to come out of the health care debate.
Forget about all the inane squabbling on Capitol Hill. Forget what the polls say. Forget the Tea Party rallies, the town hall meetings, the strong-arm tactics of MoveOn and the SEIU, the debunked sob stories… For a moment, let’s just look at what physicians say they will do if Obamacare becomes a reality.
The Medicus Firm, a national physician search firm, recently surveyed 1,195 doctors, and what they found should shock you more than Nancy Pelosi after another eyelift:
46.3% of primary care physicians (family medicine and internal medicine) feel that the passing of health reform will either force them out of medicine or make them want to leave medicine....
Monday, March 15, 2010
Obama's illusions of cost-control
...Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax.
There's a parallel here: housing. Most Americans favor homeownership, but uncritical pro-homeownership policies (lax lending standards, puny down payments, hefty housing subsidies) helped cause the financial crisis. The same thing is happening with health care. The appeal of universal insurance -- who, by the way, wants to be uninsured? -- justifies half-truths and dubious policies. That the process is repeating itself suggests that our political leaders don't learn even from proximate calamities.
How often, for example, have you heard the emergency-room argument? The uninsured, it's said, use emergency rooms for primary care. That's expensive and ineffective. Once they're insured, they'll have regular doctors. Care will improve; costs will decline. Everyone wins. Great argument. Unfortunately, it's untrue.
A study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the insured accounted for 83 percent of emergency-room visits, reflecting their share of the population. After Massachusetts adopted universal insurance, emergency-room use remained higher than the national average, an Urban Institute study found. More than two-fifths of visits represented non-emergencies. Of those, a majority of adult respondents to a survey said it was "more convenient" to go to the emergency room or they couldn't "get [a doctor's] appointment as soon as needed." If universal coverage makes appointments harder to get, emergency-room use may increase. ...
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Subprime Cover-Up
...Jaffee tries to make the case that CRA loans pose no more risk than conventional loans. As proof, he claims that delinquency rates on CRA loans are "actually slightly lower." This flies in the face of studies showing the opposite holding true. CRA loans consistently bear higher delinquency rates than prime loans.
How did Jaffee come up with his supporting data? Very selectively. He took a slice of 2008 loans just above the subprime threshold and compared their average delinquency rate to those just below the threshold in CRA ZIP codes. The difference is statistically insignificant: 24.9% vs. 24.1%.
"Slightly" lower, yes, but still outrageously high — and hardly proof CRA loans are safe and sound. If anything, the analysis seems more a hair-splitting exercise to manufacture a conclusion "slightly" favorable to the CRA.
Jaffee also argues that only 6% of subprime mortgages in 2006 were made to CRA-qualified borrowers or neighborhoods by CRA-regulated banks. This stat, too, is misleading, since it doesn't include:
• Vintage subprime mortgages.
• Subprime loans made by mortgage subsidiaries or affiliates of banks indirectly affected by the CRA.
• Subprime mortgage-backed securities purchases, for which banks received "CRA credit."
• High-risk loans underwritten by Acorn Housing, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America and other CRA shakedown groups using the billions in commitments and other subsidies banks made to them to satisfy CRA "investment" tests....
..."That the GSE housing goals are consistent with high-risk mortgage activity does not imply that the housing goals caused the GSEs' high-risk activity," he maintained. "The housing goals were a distinctly secondary priority for GSE management compared to profits as a factor motivating their investments in high-risk mortgages."
Really? That's not what GSE managers say.
The higher goals "forced us to go into that (riskier subprime) market to serve the targeted (uncreditworthy) populations that HUD wanted us to serve," said Freddie Mac spokeswoman Sharon McHale....
Saturday, March 13, 2010
No Recovery Until America Invests Again
...In this light, we can appreciate that enhanced government spending does not bulk up the economy, nor merely crowd out worthwhile private activity. Instead, it undercuts, penalizes and distorts everything that private parties attempt to do to create wealth. Ham-fisted government regulations and additional taxes are known killers of economic growth.
The investors' famine and the government's feast therefore are not merely coincidental, but causally connected.
Making matters worse, the explosion of the federal government's size, scope and power since mid-2008 has created enormous uncertainties among investors.
New taxes and higher rates of old taxes; potentially large burdens of compliance with new environmental and energy regulations and mandatory health care expenses; new, intrinsically arbitrary government oversight of systemic risks associated with virtually any type of business — all of these unsettling possibilities must give pause to anyone considering a long-term investment.
Investors now face regime uncertainty to an extent that few have experienced. To find anything comparable, one must go back to the 1930s and 1940s, when the menacing clouds of the New Deal and World War II darkened the economic horizon....
Climategate Stunner: NASA Heads Knew NASA Data Was Poor, Then Used Data from CRU
Email messages obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that the climate dataset of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was considered — by the top climate scientists within NASA itself — to be inferior to the data maintained by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).
The NASA scientists also felt that NASA GISS data was inferior to the National Climate Data Center Global Historical Climate Network (NCDC GHCN) database.
These emails, obtained by Christopher Horner, also show that the NASA GISS dataset was not independent of CRU data.
Further, all of this information regarding the accuracy and independence of NASA GISS data was directly communicated to a reporter from USA Today in August 2007.
The reporter never published it.
—————————————
There are only four climate datasets available. All global warming study, such as the reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), must be based on these four.
They are: the NASA GISS dataset, the NCDC GHCN dataset, the CRU dataset, and the Japan Meteorological Agency dataset.
Following Climategate, when it became known that raw temperature data for CRU’s “HADCRU3″ climate dataset had been destroyed, Phil Jones, CRU’s former director, said the data loss was not important — because there were other independent climate datasets available.
But the emails reveal that at least three of the four datasets were not independent, that NASA GISS was not considered to be accurate, and that these quality issues were known to both top climate scientists and to the mainstream press....
6 of the 10 richest counties in U.S. are in DC area
Loudoun ranks as the richest county in the United States, immediately followed by Fairfax and Howard counties, while Montgomery, traditionally one of the wealthiest, is now 10th.
Forbes magazine ranked eight other Washington-area counties in its list of the nation's 25 wealthiest counties, far more than any other area in the country. The rankings are based on 2008 median household income data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Loudoun's median household income was $110,643, while Fairfax's was $106,785 and Howard's came in at $101,710.
"This is obviously very good news," said David Robertson, executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. ...
Federal pay ahead of private industry
Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.
Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.
Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available. ...
Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban
The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today. ...
Bomb Threat At Bunning's Hazard Office
Friday afternoon state police took a phone call from the FBI after a threat had been made at the William D. Gormam Educational Center in Hazard.
The center houses the offices of U.S. Senator Jim Bunning and Congressman Hal Rogers.
According to officials working the investigation, the threat was that an explosive device or devices had allegedly been placed at the educational center.
A threat had also been made at Senator Bunning's Office in Louisville....
For Obama and Pelosi, health care is ego trip
...It's gotten personal, Griffith says. "You have personalities who have bet the farm, bet their reputations, on shoving a health care bill through the Congress. It's no longer about health care reform. It's all about ego now. The president's ego. Nancy Pelosi's ego. This is about personalities, saving face, and it has very little to do with what's good for the American people."
Conflicts driven by personal feelings can lead to self-destructive outcomes. Ask Griffith whether Speaker Pelosi, his old leader, would accept losing Democratic control of the House as the price for passing the health care bill, and he answers quickly. "Oh yeah. This is a trophy for the speaker, it's a trophy for several committee chairs, and it's a trophy for the president." It does not seem to matter that if Democrats lose the House, the speaker will no longer be speaker, the chairmen will no longer be chairmen, and the president will be significantly weakened.
As Griffith sees his former colleagues, Democratic leaders have become so consumed with the idea of achieving the historical goal of a national health care system that they are able to explain away the scores of opinion polls over the last six months that show people solidly opposed to the Democratic proposal.
The polls are wrong, they say. Or the polls are contradictory. Or the polls actually show that people love the health care plan. And even if the polls are right, and people hate the plan, real leaders don't govern by following the polls. So just pass the bill.
That's easy for Democrats like Pelosi, who occupy safe seats. Not so for dozens of moderate House Democrats whose votes are required for passage, but who face likely defeat for it. "I don't think there are that many moderate or conservative Democrats who want to be sacrificial representatives," says Griffith....
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