Belgian protesters destroy GM field trial
...In Wetteren, a municipality in the Belgian province of East Flanders, activists succeeded in damaging the GM potatoes being trialled for blight resistance, despite a large contingent of police officers who had been ordered to guard the GM trial. The officers were unable to stop the 300-400 or more peaceful protesters of all ages, who included local people....
Monday, May 30, 2011
Another Reminder That the Academic Elite Are Your Moral Superiors
Michael Schultz is associate vice president for development and alumni affairs at the University of Vermont, and wrote his 2009 Ph.D. thesis on a very interesting subject: “Elucidating the Role of the Presidential Spouse in Development and Alumni Relations.”
The role of the university president’s spouse in alumni relations is a subject Schultz knows intimately, as it turns out that he spent several years (allegedly) boinking Rachel Kahn-Fogel, the wife of University of Vermont president Daniel Fogel. The president’s wife worked as a volunteer events planner for the university’s development office, where Schultz also worked....
...Whether Rachel Kahn-Fogel was crazy or adulterous, whether Daniel Fogel was cuckolded by Michael Schultz or not, is incidental to the larger point. These people are all part of the academic elite, which makes them better than you, because you’ve never gotten a Ph.D. or written a dissertation on “Elucidating the Role of the Presidential Spouse in Development and Alumni Relations.” And you don’t have a taxpayer-funded salary of more than $150,000.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
This Is Your War on Drugs
We have another video of a raid by the Columbia Police Department. The action starts at 5:30. There’s more violence. More perfunctory dog killing. (I didn’t hear a single menacing growl, and the dogs were shot while retreating.) There’s more careless tossing of flash grenades. (They threw five, then, bizarrely, two more “to prove that the previous 5 grenades had done no damage.”) This raid, once again, was for marijuana.
I’ve become somewhat inoculated to the outrage in many these stories. I think you probably need to in order to write about this stuff every day. But I was shaking while watching this one. Then I let out a string of profanities. Then I gave my dog a hug.
All of which is why you need to watch it. And help distribute it as far and wide as the Columbia raid video from last year. This isn’t like watching video of a car accident or a natural disaster. This doesn’t have to happen. You’re watching something your government does to your fellow citizens about 150 times per day in this country. ...
Report: House members in the know score ‘abnormal’ stock profits
...An extensive study released Wednesday in the journal Business and Politics found that the investments of members of the House of Representatives outperformed those of the average investor by 55 basis points per month, or 6 percent annually, suggesting that lawmakers are taking advantage of inside information to fatten their stock portfolios....
...Despite the GOP’s reputation as the party of the rich, House Republicans fared worse than their Democratic colleagues when it comes to investing, according to the study. The Democratic subsample of lawmakers beat the market by 73 basis points per month, or 9 percent annually, versus 18 basis points per month, or 2 percent annually, for the Republican sample....
Insider trading at the FDA
The SEC has civilly charged an FDA employee under 17(a) and 10(b) with violating his duty of trust and confidence to the FDA and misappropriating drug approval information by using it to make $3.6 million in trading securities. ...
CREW sues for Arne Duncan documents
A key watchdog group issued a legal filing Thursday demanding e-mails and other documents from Education Department Sec. Arne Duncan and his top aides under the Freedom of Information Act relating to the influence of Wall Street short sellers on a controversial new regulation governing for-profit or “career” colleges.
The filing is the latest step in a lawsuit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed in October to compel the release of documents under the law.
After dragging its feet for months – and suddenly facing legal action – the Education Department released almost 2,000 pages of documents in late December, according to CREW’s March 17 filing.
However, the agency did not search for documents from Arne Duncan, his top aides in the Office of the Secretary, or several other top officials. CREW is now demanding in court the Education Department produce documents from those officials.
The documents are important because they could show the extent of involvement by Wall Street short sellers at the top levels of the agency in a bitter fight over strict new regulations of the for-profit education sector....
Obama: We’re working on gun control "under the radar"
... On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.” Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.
“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”...
...The statement reinforces an article in the Huffington Post describing how the administration is exploring ways to bypass Congress and enact gun control through executive action.
The Department of Justice reportedly is holding meetings discussing the White House’s options for enacting regulations on its own or through adjoining agencies and departments. “Administration officials said talk of executive orders or agency action are among a host of options that President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering. “...
... On March 30, the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, Jim Brady, who sustained a debilitating head wound in the attack, and his wife, Sarah, came to Capitol Hill to push for a ban on the controversial “large magazines.” Brady, for whom the law requiring background checks on handgun purchasers is named, then met with White House press secretary Jay Carney. During the meeting, President Obama dropped in and, according to Sarah Brady, brought up the issue of gun control, “to fill us in that it was very much on his agenda,” she said.
“I just want you to know that we are working on it,” Brady recalled the president telling them. “We have to go through a few processes, but under the radar.”...
...The statement reinforces an article in the Huffington Post describing how the administration is exploring ways to bypass Congress and enact gun control through executive action.
The Department of Justice reportedly is holding meetings discussing the White House’s options for enacting regulations on its own or through adjoining agencies and departments. “Administration officials said talk of executive orders or agency action are among a host of options that President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering. “...
1979 NCAR Forecast : Sea Level May Rise 15-25 Feet Before The Year 2000
EPA Administrator Confirms: No fracking water contamination
At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, President Barack Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.
“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said....
EPA Administrator Confirms: No fracking water contamination
At a U.S. House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, President Barack Obama’s EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, admitted the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing is practically nonexistent.
“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said....
The fake Chrysler loan payoff
...American taxpayers have already spent more than $13 billion bailing out Chrysler. The Obama administration already forgave more than $4 billion of that debt when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Taxpayers are never getting that money back. But how is Chrysler now paying off the rest of the $7.6 billion they owe the Treasury Department?
The Obama administration’s bailout agreement with Fiat gave the Italian car company a “Incremental Call Option” that allows it to buy up to 16% of Chrysler stock at a reduced price. But in order to exercise the option, Fiat had to first pay back at least $3.5 billion of its loan to the Treasury Department. But Fiat was having trouble getting private banks to lend it the money. Enter Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu who has signaled that he will approve a fuel-efficient vehicle loan to Chrysler for … wait for it … $3.5 billion....
...So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion....
...American taxpayers have already spent more than $13 billion bailing out Chrysler. The Obama administration already forgave more than $4 billion of that debt when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Taxpayers are never getting that money back. But how is Chrysler now paying off the rest of the $7.6 billion they owe the Treasury Department?
The Obama administration’s bailout agreement with Fiat gave the Italian car company a “Incremental Call Option” that allows it to buy up to 16% of Chrysler stock at a reduced price. But in order to exercise the option, Fiat had to first pay back at least $3.5 billion of its loan to the Treasury Department. But Fiat was having trouble getting private banks to lend it the money. Enter Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu who has signaled that he will approve a fuel-efficient vehicle loan to Chrysler for … wait for it … $3.5 billion....
...So, to recap, the Obama Energy Department is loaning a foreign car company $3.5 billion so that it can pay the Treasury Department $7.6 billion even though American taxpayers spent $13 billion to save an American car company that is currently only worth $5 billion....
Religion in Service of the Welfare State
...It’s hardly news, of course, that Catholics, along with other denominations, are divided on the “social justice” question. But as I wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, the idea that Jesus taught that we should be forced, by government, to aid the poor is a serious misreading of Christian doctrine, to say nothing of the Decalogue. Virtue arises from voluntary actions, of which there is no shortage here in America — at least so long as the burdens of the welfare state don’t crowd them out entirely. This use of the gospel to promote that state is not only unAmerican but unChristian as well.
...It’s hardly news, of course, that Catholics, along with other denominations, are divided on the “social justice” question. But as I wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, the idea that Jesus taught that we should be forced, by government, to aid the poor is a serious misreading of Christian doctrine, to say nothing of the Decalogue. Virtue arises from voluntary actions, of which there is no shortage here in America — at least so long as the burdens of the welfare state don’t crowd them out entirely. This use of the gospel to promote that state is not only unAmerican but unChristian as well.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
At What Price the Moon?
JFK challenged Americans to take to the skies half a century ago -- but as human space flight embraced rockets rather than reusable spacecraft, what did we lose?
...John M. Logsdon, a space policy specialist who's written a new book on the subject (John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon), told a New York Times writer last week that despite having praised the Apollo program in an earlier book, he's since come to the conclusion that the Apollo program's impact on the space program has "on balance, been negative." Apollo, Logsdon said, was "a dead-end undertaking in terms of human travel beyond the immediate vicinity of this planet."...
JFK challenged Americans to take to the skies half a century ago -- but as human space flight embraced rockets rather than reusable spacecraft, what did we lose?
...John M. Logsdon, a space policy specialist who's written a new book on the subject (John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon), told a New York Times writer last week that despite having praised the Apollo program in an earlier book, he's since come to the conclusion that the Apollo program's impact on the space program has "on balance, been negative." Apollo, Logsdon said, was "a dead-end undertaking in terms of human travel beyond the immediate vicinity of this planet."...
Carter: Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet
The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won’t hire.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how much it will cost,” he explains. “How can I hire new workers today, when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”
He’s referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can’t afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he’s hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost. ...
The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won’t hire.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know how much it will cost,” he explains. “How can I hire new workers today, when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”
He’s referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can’t afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he’s hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost. ...
Glenn Greenwald: David Brooks' political dream
...Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. But the plusses outweigh the minuses....
...It has long been the supreme fantasy of establishment guardians in general, and David Brooks in particular, that American politics would be dominated by an incestuous, culturally homogeneous, superior elite "who live in [Washington] and who have often known each other since prep school." And while these establishment guardians love to endlessly masquerade as spokespeople for the Ordinary American, what they most loathe is the interference by the dirty rabble in what should be their exclusive, harmonious club of political stewardship, where conflicts are amicably resolved by ladies and gentlemen of the highest breeding without any messy public conflict.
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Brooks fondly recollected that "once, there was a financial elite in this country" -- "middle-aged men with names like Mellon and McCloy led Wall Street firms, corporate boards and white-shoe law firms and occasionally emerged to serve in government" -- but that glorious "cohesive financial elite began to fall apart" in the 1960s. The 2008 financial crisis, celebrated Brooks, would lead to a rejuvenation of political power of "the sort that used to be wielded by the Mellons and Rockefellers and other rich men in private clubs" -- "unlimited authority to a small coterie of policy makers" that "does not rely on any system of checks and balances, but on the wisdom and public spiritedness of those in charge." This would usher in "an era of the educated establishment." "A new center and a new establishment is emerging," he gushed, one that will be disliked by liberals and conservatives alike; in other words, once you get rid of the commoners and the rambunctious ideologues, the somber, Serious elites will impose, with top-down magnanimity, true centrist wisdom (which just coincidentally happens to match the specific centrist-right views of David Brooks)....
...Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. But the plusses outweigh the minuses....
...It has long been the supreme fantasy of establishment guardians in general, and David Brooks in particular, that American politics would be dominated by an incestuous, culturally homogeneous, superior elite "who live in [Washington] and who have often known each other since prep school." And while these establishment guardians love to endlessly masquerade as spokespeople for the Ordinary American, what they most loathe is the interference by the dirty rabble in what should be their exclusive, harmonious club of political stewardship, where conflicts are amicably resolved by ladies and gentlemen of the highest breeding without any messy public conflict.
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, Brooks fondly recollected that "once, there was a financial elite in this country" -- "middle-aged men with names like Mellon and McCloy led Wall Street firms, corporate boards and white-shoe law firms and occasionally emerged to serve in government" -- but that glorious "cohesive financial elite began to fall apart" in the 1960s. The 2008 financial crisis, celebrated Brooks, would lead to a rejuvenation of political power of "the sort that used to be wielded by the Mellons and Rockefellers and other rich men in private clubs" -- "unlimited authority to a small coterie of policy makers" that "does not rely on any system of checks and balances, but on the wisdom and public spiritedness of those in charge." This would usher in "an era of the educated establishment." "A new center and a new establishment is emerging," he gushed, one that will be disliked by liberals and conservatives alike; in other words, once you get rid of the commoners and the rambunctious ideologues, the somber, Serious elites will impose, with top-down magnanimity, true centrist wisdom (which just coincidentally happens to match the specific centrist-right views of David Brooks)....
Wired: There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says
...Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation - an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.
"We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says," Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. "When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands."...
...Congress is set to reauthorize three controversial provisions of the surveillance law as early as Thursday. Wyden (D-Oregon) says that powers they grant the government on their face, the government applies a far broader legal interpretation - an interpretation that the government has conveniently classified, so it cannot be publicly assessed or challenged. But one prominent Patriot-watcher asserts that the secret interpretation empowers the government to deploy ”dragnets” for massive amounts of information on private citizens; the government portrays its data-collection efforts much differently.
"We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says," Wyden told Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. "When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands."...
#7. Child Protective Services That Operate Like the Mob
...Consider that, a few years ago, CPS employee Pat Moore was fired for refusing to put a child in a foster home simply because everyone in the foster family had a felony conviction, and the family occasionally hired a convicted sex offender to babysit....
...When Vanessa Shanks' child was taken away and she fought the decision in court, CPS responded rationally by taking away children of her relatives, and after Shanks finally won in court, they took away her attorney's children....
...Consider that, a few years ago, CPS employee Pat Moore was fired for refusing to put a child in a foster home simply because everyone in the foster family had a felony conviction, and the family occasionally hired a convicted sex offender to babysit....
...When Vanessa Shanks' child was taken away and she fought the decision in court, CPS responded rationally by taking away children of her relatives, and after Shanks finally won in court, they took away her attorney's children....
NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors
Latest performance data reveal number of English patients waiting more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in last year
Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends....
Strauss-Kahn, Exemplar of Socialism
The libertarian critique of socialism, or 'social democracy,' has usually gone something like this:
The socialist program demands a planned economy. A planned economy can result only from plans. Plans must be made by a group of experts who are not subject to the vagaries of the electoral process. To form and implement their plans, the planner-kings must know everything crucial to the economy. They must know everything significant to their own plans, and be able to predict everything significant that may result from them.
But that is impossible.
This being true, the people who become planners will be those who are either stupid enough to believe that Plans can succeed or cynical enough to care only about the personal power that can be acquired by Planning.....
Refocused
...What's the current perception of gay activists about Christian marriage? I sat down with one. He said, "You guys haven't done so well with marriage. Why are you upset about us having a try?" We've got to look at our own house, make sure that our marriages are healthy, that we're being a good witness to the world. Then we can continue to work on defending marriage as best as we can. ...
...What's the current perception of gay activists about Christian marriage? I sat down with one. He said, "You guys haven't done so well with marriage. Why are you upset about us having a try?" We've got to look at our own house, make sure that our marriages are healthy, that we're being a good witness to the world. Then we can continue to work on defending marriage as best as we can. ...
‘Reckless Endangerment’ by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner
...The book then gives examples where Fannie’s executives — Jim Johnson, CEO from 1991 to 1998, is singled out more than anyone else — used the excess profits to support government officials in a variety of ways with plenty left over for large bonuses: They got jobs for friends and relatives of elected officials, including Rep. Barney Frank, who is tagged as “a perpetual protector of Fannie,” and they set up partnership offices around the country which provided more jobs. They financed publications in which writers argued that Fannie’s role in promoting homeownership justified federal support. They commissioned work by famous economists, such as Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, which argued that Fannie was not a serious risk to the taxpayer, countering “critics who argued that both Fannie and Freddie posed significant risks to the taxpayer.” They made campaign contributions and charitable donations to co-opt groups like the community action organization ACORN, which “had been agitating for tighter regulations on Fannie Mae.” They persuaded executive branch officials — such as then Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers — to ask their staffs to rewrite reports critical of Fannie. In the meantime, Countrywide, the mortgage firm led by Angelo Mozilo, partnered with Fannie in originating many of the mortgages Fannie packaged (26 percent in 2004) and gave “sweetheart” loans to politicians with power to affect Fannie, such as Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut. The authors write that “Countrywide and Fannie Mae were inextricably bound.”...
...The Fed takes a beating throughout the book. Early on the authors take on the Boston Fed, and in particular its research director Alicia Munnell, for using a study documenting racial discrimination in mortgage lending to justify the relaxation of credit standards, even though the study’s findings were found to be flawed by other researchers. And they criticize the very low interest rate set by the Fed when Alan Greenspan was chairman and Ben Bernanke was a Fed governor, saying it “contributed mightily to the mortgage lending craze,” adding that “with the Fed on a rate-cutting rampage, demand for adjustable-rate mortgages with relatively low initial interest costs had become incendiary.”...
...The book certainly does not let the private sector off the hook, but it is very hard to imagine that heavily regulated banks could have engaged in such extreme risk-taking without the support of regulators. ...
The True Story of the Financial Crisis
...From the beginning, Fannie and Freddie's congressional charters required them to buy only mortgages that would be acceptable to institutional investors -- in other words, prime mortgages. At the time, a prime mortgage was a loan with a 10-20 percent down payment, made to a borrower with a good credit record who had sufficient income to meet his or her debt obligations after the loan was made. Fannie and Freddie operated under these standards until 1992.
The 1992 affordable housing goals required that, of all mortgages Fannie and Freddie bought in any year, at least 30 percent had to be loans made to borrowers who were at or below the median income in the places where they lived. Over succeeding years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, first to 42 percent in 1995, to 50 percent in 2000, and finally to 55 percent in 2007. It is important to note, accordingly, that this occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations....
...This is the claim that Fannie and Freddie became insolvent because, seeking profits or market share, they "followed Wall Street" into subprime lending. This idea neatly avoids the question of why Fannie and Freddie became insolvent in the first place, and focuses the blame again on the private sector. The statement, however, as the following quote from Fannie's 2006 10-K report makes clear, is untrue:
[W]e have made, and continue to make, significant adjustments to our mortgage loan sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD's increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals-qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher-risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD's goals and subgoals, which could increase our credit losses....
Government Role in Causing Financial Crisis Much Bigger than Thought
(PDF)
...US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector" However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all "non-traditional" mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards....
Barney Frank Mae have to find new friends
...It appears that back in 1991, Barney went to the mat in obtaining a six-figure hack job for his then-boyfriend, Herbie Moses, at, of all places, Fannie Mae.
You know, that same Fannie Mae that in the summer of 2007 Barney said publicly would be fine “going forward.” This was a couple of months before Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac almost brought down the entire world economy with the subprime mortgage policies they’d developed under the leadership of another Democrat hack who managed Fritz Mondale’s doomed 1984 campaign....
Sunday, May 22, 2011
San Diego police misconduct
...However, among other remedies, he does plan to increase ethics training for offiers because, you know, how else are cops going to know that stalking, rape, and drunk driving are wrong?
If you’re wondering why cops might behave like this, I mean aside from the fact that their fellow officers routinely cover up for them when they break the law, the answer, according to the mayor and chief of police, is simple:
In a story published by the Union-Tribune on Friday, Mayor Jerry Sanders endorsed the plan and said he continues to fully support Lansdowne as the city’s police chief. He described the rash of incidents as an embarrassment and echoed Lansdowne’s assertion that it was correlated to stress among officers....
Police decision to shoot dog questioned
...After the people in the home surrendered, the SWAT team approached to make sure no one else was inside. As ABC11 cameras recorded, the lead officer went up the front steps and then turned and fired at a dog three times - killing it.
The dog doesn't appear to be vicious and doesn't appear to lunge at officers. In the video, you can see a man sitting on the stoop of a home next door and others standing on the next porch as the three high-powered rounds were fired in their direction....
Menlo Park Cops Raided Wrong House, Says Claimants in Lawsuit
When Menlo Park police officers busted into an East Palo Alto home and pointed a firearm at a two-year old girl in November, they had the wrong house, say the two homeowners, who are filing a $500,000 claim against both cities.
The cops did have a search warrant for a home on Garden Street on Nov. 2, 2010, but it wasn't for the home of Carlos Nava and Melissa Verduzco, whose door cops broke down at 6:45 a.m. that day, reported the Palo Alto Daily News.
The East Palo Alto City Council rejected the claim on an unanimous vote. The Menlo Park City Council has yet to consider the case.
According to the claims, "A sergeant Cowans slammed (Nava's) face to the ground and kneed him in the back of the head. Later, this officer punched (Nava) about the body," the newspaper reported.
Other officers entered Verduzco's room and "pointed laser-sighted firearms" at Verduzco and her 2-year-old daughter, the claims state....
Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams Should Be Arrested
...Fiorino is the guy who was accosted by police officers in Philadelphia for openly carrying a gun in the city, despite the fact that he was perfectly within his legal rights to do so. He was in full compliance with the law. The problem is that the Philadelphia cops who confronted him were ignorant of the law. In the course of the confrontation, the cops repeatedly threatened to kill Fiorino, despite the fact that, again, he had broken no laws. They also illegally detained and arrested him. They then had to release him when they actually checked the law and discovered they were wrong....
...Note that nothing Fiorino did was on its own illegal. Willliams is attempting a striking, blatantly dishonest bit of legal chicanery. His theory goes like this: If you undertake a series of actions that are perfectly legal and well within your rights, but that cause government agents to react in irrational ways that jeopardize public safety, you are guilty of endangering the public....
Activist says missing video proves his innocence
An activist arrested while filming police in downtown Orlando is preparing for trial, but he says the video camera that would prove his innocence has gone missing.
John Kurtz has a history of videotaping police as a member of CopWatch, an organization whose members hope their cameras discourage officers from what they think are unnecessarily violent arrests. Kurtz was also in the spotlight last summer, when he handed out sandwiches in front of City Hall in defiance of a city ordinance regulating the feeding of the homeless in downtown parks.
But this time, the 27-year-old real estate broker could land in prison.
"My arrest was a clear violation of the first amendment," Kurtz said. "I was arrested for filming police, and OPD knows it."...
Philly Police Harass, Threaten to Shoot Man Legally Carrying Gun
A story in today's Philadelphia Daily News shows why it's so important that citizens be allowed to videotape cops - it can be citizens' only way to fight back against police abuse of power....
...Fiorino posted the audio recordings on youtube, and now they are harassing him again:
A new investigation was launched, and last month the District Attorney's Office decided to charge Fiorino with reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct because, a spokeswoman said, he refused to cooperate with police... He's scheduled for trial in July....
The unzippered princeling and the serving wench
...Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn't do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. "We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization," sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was "not like other men" and wondering why "this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion." Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America's "absurd" justice system, not to mention this ghastly "American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."...
...Before you scoff at Euro-lefties willing to argue for 21st century droit de seigneur, recall the grisly eulogies for the late Edward Kennedy. "At the end of the day," said Sen. Evan Bayh, "he cared most about the things that matter to ordinary people." The standard line of his obituarists was that this was Ted's penance for Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne – or, as the Aussie columnist Tim Blair put it, "She died so that the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act might live." Great men who are prone to Big Government invariably have Big Appetites, and you comely serving wenches who catch the benign sovereign's eye or anything else he's shooting your way should keep in mind the Big Picture....
...The arrest of a mediocre international civil servant in the first-class cabin of his jet isn't just a sex story: It's a glimpse of the widening gulf between the government class and their subjects in a post-prosperity West. Neither Geithner nor Strauss-Kahn have ever created a dime of wealth in their lives. They have devoted their careers to "public service," and thus are in the happy position of rarely if ever having to write a personal check. At the Sofitel in New York, DSK was in a $3,000-per-night suite. ...
...Fortunately, when the burdens of recognizability get too great, M Strauss-Kahn is able to retreat to his house in Washington, or his apartment in Paris, or his second apartment in Paris, or his riad in Marrakesh. Oh, c'mon, you provincial bozos: A "riad" is a palatial Moorish residence built around an interior courtyard. Everyone knows that. A lifetime of devoted "public service" in "socialist" France isn't yet as remunerative as in Mubarak's Egypt or Saddam's Iraq, but we're getting there. As the developed world drowns under the weight of Big Government, the gilded princelings of statism will hunker down in their interior courtyards and guard their privileges ever more zealously. Once in a while, as in that Manhattan hotel suite, a chance encounter between the seigneurs and their subjects will go awry, but more often, as in the Geithner confirmation, it will be understood that the Great Men of the Permanent Governing Class cannot be bound by the rules they impose on the rest of you schmucks....
The tyranny of science
It seems that certain men of science, like their hymn-sakes the Christian soldiers, are on the march. For these faithless crusaders, science is not simply a method by which we gain understanding and mastery of the physical world. No, it has become a weapon of enlightenment, a cudgel to be wielded against the ‘ignorant’ multitudes, ‘deluded to the point of perversity’ (to quote high priest of The Science, Richard Dawkins) by religious metaphysics and philosophical myth. For these Darwin-obsessed, unblinkingly deterministic culture-warmongers, science has become more than a method. It has become a mission....
...His utter contempt for those, religious or otherwise, whose beliefs deviate from the scientific proofs irrefutably outlined in his Big Book of Scientific Facts, is even reflected in the form of On Being. So while discussing the replication and modification of human DNA, Atkins warns the reader that, because of the complexity of what he’s discussing, the typeface will become smaller. We, the cretinous readers, are told that we can skip these sections if we like, that is, if we accept that ‘science has achieved the near-miracle of detailed understanding’. Form speaks louder than content here. Atkins doesn’t want us to understand the science so much as consent to it. The densely-packed passages of complex explication, published in nine-point font, are the scientistic equivalent of shock and awe. Look on science’s works, ye morons, and submit....
It seems that certain men of science, like their hymn-sakes the Christian soldiers, are on the march. For these faithless crusaders, science is not simply a method by which we gain understanding and mastery of the physical world. No, it has become a weapon of enlightenment, a cudgel to be wielded against the ‘ignorant’ multitudes, ‘deluded to the point of perversity’ (to quote high priest of The Science, Richard Dawkins) by religious metaphysics and philosophical myth. For these Darwin-obsessed, unblinkingly deterministic culture-warmongers, science has become more than a method. It has become a mission....
...His utter contempt for those, religious or otherwise, whose beliefs deviate from the scientific proofs irrefutably outlined in his Big Book of Scientific Facts, is even reflected in the form of On Being. So while discussing the replication and modification of human DNA, Atkins warns the reader that, because of the complexity of what he’s discussing, the typeface will become smaller. We, the cretinous readers, are told that we can skip these sections if we like, that is, if we accept that ‘science has achieved the near-miracle of detailed understanding’. Form speaks louder than content here. Atkins doesn’t want us to understand the science so much as consent to it. The densely-packed passages of complex explication, published in nine-point font, are the scientistic equivalent of shock and awe. Look on science’s works, ye morons, and submit....
Former 'alarmist' scientist says Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) based in false science
...The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant....
...This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.
That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.
What did they find when they tried to prove this theory?
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide....
...The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant....
...This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.
That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.
What did they find when they tried to prove this theory?
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide....
Why Don't We Hear About Soros' Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?
When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”...
...ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts....
...One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press. ...
When liberal investor George Soros gave $1.8 million to National Public Radio , it became part of the firestorm of controversy that jeopardized NPR’s federal funding. But that gift only hints at the widespread influence the controversial billionaire has on the mainstream media. Soros, who spent $27 million trying to defeat President Bush in 2004, has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets – including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.
Prominent journalists like ABC’s Christiane Amanpour and former Washington Post editor and now Vice President Len Downie serve on boards of operations that take Soros cash. This despite the Society of Professional Journalists' ethical code stating: “avoid all conflicts real or perceived.”...
...ProPublica, which recently won its second Pulitzer Prize, initially was given millions of dollars from the Sandler Foundation to “strengthen the progressive infrastructure” – “progressive” being the code word for very liberal. In 2010, it also received a two-year contribution of $125,000 each year from the Open Society Foundations. In case you wonder where that money comes from, the OSF website is www.soros.org. It is a network of more than 30 international foundations, mostly funded by Soros, who has contributed more than $8 billion to those efforts....
...One more thing: a 14-person Journalism Advisory Board, stacked with CNN’s David Gergen and representatives from top newspapers, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and the editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster. Several are working journalists, including:
• Jill Abramson, a managing editor of The New York Times;
• Kerry Smith, the senior vice president for editorial quality of ABC News;
• Cynthia A. Tucker, the editor of the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
ProPublica is far from the only Soros-funded organization that is stacked with members of the supposedly neutral press. ...
Rep. Bob Hasegawa hates the First amendment - wants to tax newspapers based upon content
Rep. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, hates the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
The good gentleman from the 11th district has introduced an amendment to a bill that would result in differing rates of taxation for newspapers based upon their editorial content.
This is a stupid and patently unconstitutional bit of legislative foolishness, and Hasegawa should be so ashamed of himself that he should resign in disgrace....
Rep. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle, hates the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
The good gentleman from the 11th district has introduced an amendment to a bill that would result in differing rates of taxation for newspapers based upon their editorial content.
This is a stupid and patently unconstitutional bit of legislative foolishness, and Hasegawa should be so ashamed of himself that he should resign in disgrace....
Wall Street: Not Guilty
Why have no executives gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis? Perhaps because risk-taking and stupidity aren't criminal
...Taken from the top, these sentiments imply that the financial crisis was caused by fraud; that people who take big risks should be subject to a criminal investigation; that executives of large financial firms should be criminal suspects after a crash; that public revulsion indicates likely culpability; that it is inconceivable (to Madoff, anyway) that people could lose so much money absent a conspiracy; and that Wall Street bears collective guilt for which a large part of it should be incarcerated.
These assumptions do violence to our system of justice and hinder our understanding of the crisis. The claim that it was "caused by financial fraud" is debatable, but the weight of the evidence is strongly against it. The financial crisis was accompanied by fraud, on the part of mortgage applicants as well as banks. It was caused, more nearly, by a speculative bubble in mortgages, in which bankers, applicants, investors, and regulators were all blind to risk. More broadly, the crash was the result of a tendency in our financial culture, especially after a period of buoyancy, to push leverage and risk-taking to the extreme.
Mortgage fraud exacerbated the bubble—as did, among other factors, lax monetary policy, failure by Congress and successive administrations to rein in Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), and weak financial regulation, itself a product of the discredited but entrenched thesis that markets are efficient and self-policing. At the banks, overconfidence in "risk management" methods (which were mostly worthless) and ill-considered compensation practices were serious contributing causes.
As this list suggests, the meltdown was multi-causal. That explanation will be unsatisfying to armchair prosecutors, but it has the virtue of answering to the complex nature of the bubble. To prosecute white-collar crime is right and proper, and a necessary aspect of deterrence. But trials are meant to deter crime—not to deter home foreclosures or economic downturns. And to look for criminality as the supposed source of the crisis is to misread its origins badly. ...
Why have no executives gone to jail for their roles in the financial crisis? Perhaps because risk-taking and stupidity aren't criminal
...Taken from the top, these sentiments imply that the financial crisis was caused by fraud; that people who take big risks should be subject to a criminal investigation; that executives of large financial firms should be criminal suspects after a crash; that public revulsion indicates likely culpability; that it is inconceivable (to Madoff, anyway) that people could lose so much money absent a conspiracy; and that Wall Street bears collective guilt for which a large part of it should be incarcerated.
These assumptions do violence to our system of justice and hinder our understanding of the crisis. The claim that it was "caused by financial fraud" is debatable, but the weight of the evidence is strongly against it. The financial crisis was accompanied by fraud, on the part of mortgage applicants as well as banks. It was caused, more nearly, by a speculative bubble in mortgages, in which bankers, applicants, investors, and regulators were all blind to risk. More broadly, the crash was the result of a tendency in our financial culture, especially after a period of buoyancy, to push leverage and risk-taking to the extreme.
Mortgage fraud exacerbated the bubble—as did, among other factors, lax monetary policy, failure by Congress and successive administrations to rein in Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), and weak financial regulation, itself a product of the discredited but entrenched thesis that markets are efficient and self-policing. At the banks, overconfidence in "risk management" methods (which were mostly worthless) and ill-considered compensation practices were serious contributing causes.
As this list suggests, the meltdown was multi-causal. That explanation will be unsatisfying to armchair prosecutors, but it has the virtue of answering to the complex nature of the bubble. To prosecute white-collar crime is right and proper, and a necessary aspect of deterrence. But trials are meant to deter crime—not to deter home foreclosures or economic downturns. And to look for criminality as the supposed source of the crisis is to misread its origins badly. ...
Two NYPD cops with history of hooker trouble being eyed in LI killings
Two NYPD cops are being eyed in the Long Island serial slayings after investigators learned they got into trouble for hiring prostitutes while working for the department, according to sources familiar with the probe.
One cop was forced out of the job in the 1990s when his supervisors learned he spent time pursuing hookers and paying street walkers and down-and-out women for sex while he was supposed to be on patrol.
An internal investigation led to his resigning under pressure, one source said.
The other officer still works for the NYPD but was stripped of his gun and badge years ago because he allegedly assaulted a prostitute and got arrested during a sting operation. ...
...Sources said Suffolk County detectives began looking at the NYPD cops last month after determining the killer likely worked in law enforcement or was familiar with police techniques.
They've focused on how the murderer abducted his victims and if he used insider knowledge to avoid being detected. ...
Two NYPD cops are being eyed in the Long Island serial slayings after investigators learned they got into trouble for hiring prostitutes while working for the department, according to sources familiar with the probe.
One cop was forced out of the job in the 1990s when his supervisors learned he spent time pursuing hookers and paying street walkers and down-and-out women for sex while he was supposed to be on patrol.
An internal investigation led to his resigning under pressure, one source said.
The other officer still works for the NYPD but was stripped of his gun and badge years ago because he allegedly assaulted a prostitute and got arrested during a sting operation. ...
...Sources said Suffolk County detectives began looking at the NYPD cops last month after determining the killer likely worked in law enforcement or was familiar with police techniques.
They've focused on how the murderer abducted his victims and if he used insider knowledge to avoid being detected. ...
Union whistleblowers: We were beaten and harassed after they accused bosses of looting
Unionized phone company employees say they were beaten or threatened after they accused their labor bosses of looting their coffers through various scams.
One member of Communications Workers of America Local 1101 said that after he reported a time-sheet padding scheme, a thug beat him so badly his spine was injured.
Another says he found a dead rat in his locker, while a third said a union officer warned that suspected informants should be brought off company property and "taken care of."
The threats come to light as the U.S. Labor Department is probing charges that union bosses lined their pockets at the rank-and-file's expense.
Accusations include an unauthorized 401(k) plan union officers gave themselves funded with members' dues, along with hefty weekly allowances, lavish expense accounts and six-figure salaries, union documents show....
Unionized phone company employees say they were beaten or threatened after they accused their labor bosses of looting their coffers through various scams.
One member of Communications Workers of America Local 1101 said that after he reported a time-sheet padding scheme, a thug beat him so badly his spine was injured.
Another says he found a dead rat in his locker, while a third said a union officer warned that suspected informants should be brought off company property and "taken care of."
The threats come to light as the U.S. Labor Department is probing charges that union bosses lined their pockets at the rank-and-file's expense.
Accusations include an unauthorized 401(k) plan union officers gave themselves funded with members' dues, along with hefty weekly allowances, lavish expense accounts and six-figure salaries, union documents show....
Saturday, May 21, 2011
GM's Profits are Still a Huge Net Loss For Taxpayers
...What lesson, exactly, are we supposed to learn from this "success"? What question did it answer? "Can the government keep companies operating if it is willing to give them a virtually interest free loan of $50 billion, and a tax-free gift of $20 billion or so?" I don't think that this was really in dispute. When all is said and done, we will probably have given them a sum equal to its 2007 market cap and roughly four times GM's 2008 market capitalization.
No, the question was not whether GM could make a profit after a bankruptcy that stiffed most of its creditors and shed the most grotesque burdens of its legacy costs, nor whether giving companies money will make them more profitable. The question is whether it was worth it to the taxpayer to burn $10-20 billion in order to give the company another shot at life. To put that in perspective, GM had about 75,000 hourly workers before the bankruptcy. We could have given each of them a cool $250,000 and still come out well ahead compared to the ultimate cost of the bailout including the tax breaks--and over $100,000 a piece if we just wanted to break even against our losses on the common stock. ...
GM Makes a Big Profit: Time to Celebrate?
...Okay, let's not get too excited here. GM sold off big stakes in Delphi (formerly its captive parts supplier) and Ally Financial (formerly its capital arm) to generate the bulk of that profit; the company's not making record money because it sold three times as many cars. GM is still excessively dependent on big incentives and fleet sales to move cars off of its lot, which means that despite quality enhancements made possible by the bankruptcy (which lowered fixed costs, and allowed them to put more money into making cars), their brand still hasn't recovered from decades of neglect. And while later in the post, Cohn makes it sound as if GM has suddenly turned itself into the world's premier small-car maker, it is still heavily dependent on the same old gas guzzling SUVs and trucks that have been shoring up GM profits for decades as foreign competitors steadily eroded their car sales. Right now in America, small cars are largely an economy business, which means that unless you can command the sort of quality premium that Toyota and Honda get--and I think the reliance on incentives shows that GM can't get that sort of markup--it's still very hard to make money in that space....
...What lesson, exactly, are we supposed to learn from this "success"? What question did it answer? "Can the government keep companies operating if it is willing to give them a virtually interest free loan of $50 billion, and a tax-free gift of $20 billion or so?" I don't think that this was really in dispute. When all is said and done, we will probably have given them a sum equal to its 2007 market cap and roughly four times GM's 2008 market capitalization.
No, the question was not whether GM could make a profit after a bankruptcy that stiffed most of its creditors and shed the most grotesque burdens of its legacy costs, nor whether giving companies money will make them more profitable. The question is whether it was worth it to the taxpayer to burn $10-20 billion in order to give the company another shot at life. To put that in perspective, GM had about 75,000 hourly workers before the bankruptcy. We could have given each of them a cool $250,000 and still come out well ahead compared to the ultimate cost of the bailout including the tax breaks--and over $100,000 a piece if we just wanted to break even against our losses on the common stock. ...
GM Makes a Big Profit: Time to Celebrate?
...Okay, let's not get too excited here. GM sold off big stakes in Delphi (formerly its captive parts supplier) and Ally Financial (formerly its capital arm) to generate the bulk of that profit; the company's not making record money because it sold three times as many cars. GM is still excessively dependent on big incentives and fleet sales to move cars off of its lot, which means that despite quality enhancements made possible by the bankruptcy (which lowered fixed costs, and allowed them to put more money into making cars), their brand still hasn't recovered from decades of neglect. And while later in the post, Cohn makes it sound as if GM has suddenly turned itself into the world's premier small-car maker, it is still heavily dependent on the same old gas guzzling SUVs and trucks that have been shoring up GM profits for decades as foreign competitors steadily eroded their car sales. Right now in America, small cars are largely an economy business, which means that unless you can command the sort of quality premium that Toyota and Honda get--and I think the reliance on incentives shows that GM can't get that sort of markup--it's still very hard to make money in that space....
The Stunning Explanation For The French Media's Shameful Defense Of Strauss-Kahn
...But there's another, more insidious aspect that's highlighted in a note from the research firm GaveKal, and that's the incestuous relationship between French media and the government.
First, the firm notes that government monopolies subsidize French newspapers significantly via ads. Various government-owned or partially government-owned companies (EDF, SNCF, Gaz de France, La Poste, Air France), buy extensively. That's one reason not to piss off elites.
The other, more shocking aspect is the ownership structure of big French media.
Did you know that newspaper Le Figaro is owned by aerospace manufacturer Dassault? Imagine if the NYT were owned by Boeing!
Other publications, like Paris Match are owned by Lagardere, and insutrial company with a big stake in EADS.
And beyond aerospace, the big media outlet TF1 is owned partially by Bouygues, a construction company that's hugely dependent on government money....
...But there's another, more insidious aspect that's highlighted in a note from the research firm GaveKal, and that's the incestuous relationship between French media and the government.
First, the firm notes that government monopolies subsidize French newspapers significantly via ads. Various government-owned or partially government-owned companies (EDF, SNCF, Gaz de France, La Poste, Air France), buy extensively. That's one reason not to piss off elites.
The other, more shocking aspect is the ownership structure of big French media.
Did you know that newspaper Le Figaro is owned by aerospace manufacturer Dassault? Imagine if the NYT were owned by Boeing!
Other publications, like Paris Match are owned by Lagardere, and insutrial company with a big stake in EADS.
And beyond aerospace, the big media outlet TF1 is owned partially by Bouygues, a construction company that's hugely dependent on government money....
Strauss-Kahn, Exemplar of Socialism
The libertarian critique of socialism, or “social democracy,” has usually gone something like this:
The socialist program demands a planned economy. A planned economy can result only from plans. Plans must be made by a group of experts who are not subject to the vagaries of the electoral process. To form and implement their plans, the planner-kings must know everything crucial to the economy. They must know everything significant to their own plans, and be able to predict everything significant that may result from them.
But that is impossible.
This being true, the people who become planners will be those who are either stupid enough to believe that Plans can succeed or cynical enough to care only about the personal power that can be acquired by Planning.
The libertarian critique has a logic that no socialist program ever possessed.
Now we witness the reductio ad absurdum of the socialist idea: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, chief honcho of the French Socialist Party, and prospective president of France, who was arrested Saturday on charges of trying to force a maid in his $3,000 a night hotel suite to have sex with him.
Suppose that the charges turn out not to be true. Suppose that Strauss-Kahn’s nickname, “the great seducer,” means nothing. Suppose that consensual sex is nobody’s business but one’s own. Suppose all these things — the last of which is certainly true. The $3,000 a night hotel remains a problem....
Bill Clinton Suggests Internet Fact Agency
...BARTIROMO: So we'll get to solutions on a corporate level. But, Mr. President, what about that? Is there a role for government in terms of ensuring that the information out there is accurate and someone cannot just hurt someone else through their reputation by attacking them with stories?
Mr. CLINTON: Well, I think it would be a legitimate thing to do. But if you wanted to do it--for example, you wanted to set up some sort of agency that would be a--ring the bell, you know, or--on the heavily visited sites, `This allegation has been made and here are the facts.' If the government were involved, I think you'd have to do two things, and--or if you had a multinational group like the UN. I think number one, you'd have to be totally transparent about where the money came from. And number two, you would have to make it independent. It would have to be like an independent--let's say the US did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn't think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out. That is, it would be like, I don't know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors. And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it's a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money. But if it's a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the Internet. ...
...BARTIROMO: So we'll get to solutions on a corporate level. But, Mr. President, what about that? Is there a role for government in terms of ensuring that the information out there is accurate and someone cannot just hurt someone else through their reputation by attacking them with stories?
Mr. CLINTON: Well, I think it would be a legitimate thing to do. But if you wanted to do it--for example, you wanted to set up some sort of agency that would be a--ring the bell, you know, or--on the heavily visited sites, `This allegation has been made and here are the facts.' If the government were involved, I think you'd have to do two things, and--or if you had a multinational group like the UN. I think number one, you'd have to be totally transparent about where the money came from. And number two, you would have to make it independent. It would have to be like an independent--let's say the US did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn't think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out. That is, it would be like, I don't know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors. And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it's a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money. But if it's a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the Internet. ...
The Secret Sharer
...One afternoon in January, Drake met with me, giving his first public interview about this case. He is tall, with thinning sandy hair framing a domed forehead, and he has the erect bearing of a member of the Air Force, where he served before joining the N.S.A., in 2001. Obsessive, dramatic, and emotional, he has an unwavering belief in his own rectitude. Sitting at a Formica table at the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Drake—who is a registered Republican—groaned and thrust his head into his hands. “I actually had hopes for Obama,” he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the “war on terror.”
“But power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”
The Justice Department’s indictment narrows the frame around Drake’s actions, focussing almost exclusively on his handling of what it claims are five classified documents. But Drake sees his story as a larger tale of political reprisal, one that he fears the government will never allow him to air fully in court. “I’m a target,” he said. “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back.” He continued, “I did not tell secrets. I am facing prison for having raised an alarm, period. I went to a reporter with a few key things: fraud, waste, and abuse, and the fact that there were legal alternatives to the Bush Administration’s ‘dark side’ ”—in particular, warrantless domestic spying by the N.S.A. ...
...One afternoon in January, Drake met with me, giving his first public interview about this case. He is tall, with thinning sandy hair framing a domed forehead, and he has the erect bearing of a member of the Air Force, where he served before joining the N.S.A., in 2001. Obsessive, dramatic, and emotional, he has an unwavering belief in his own rectitude. Sitting at a Formica table at the Tastee Diner, in Bethesda, Drake—who is a registered Republican—groaned and thrust his head into his hands. “I actually had hopes for Obama,” he said. He had not only expected the President to roll back the prosecutions launched by the Bush Administration; he had thought that Bush Administration officials would be investigated for overstepping the law in the “war on terror.”
“But power is incredibly destructive,” Drake said. “It’s a weird, pathological thing. I also think the intelligence community coöpted Obama, because he’s rather naïve about national security. He’s accepted the fear and secrecy. We’re in a scary space in this country.”
The Justice Department’s indictment narrows the frame around Drake’s actions, focussing almost exclusively on his handling of what it claims are five classified documents. But Drake sees his story as a larger tale of political reprisal, one that he fears the government will never allow him to air fully in court. “I’m a target,” he said. “I’ve got a bull’s-eye on my back.” He continued, “I did not tell secrets. I am facing prison for having raised an alarm, period. I went to a reporter with a few key things: fraud, waste, and abuse, and the fact that there were legal alternatives to the Bush Administration’s ‘dark side’ ”—in particular, warrantless domestic spying by the N.S.A. ...
Marine Survives Two Tours in Iraq, SWAT Kills Him
...The sheriff’s department maintains that Guerena was holding an AR-15 when the paramilitary force fired 71 bullets in his home, but other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While PCSD initially claimed Guerena fired the weapon he was alleged to have been holding, the department now says it was a misfire by one of the deputies that caused this deadly group panic inside a home containing a woman and a toddler...
Sheriffs: Slain Jose Guerena Linked to "Home-Invasion Crew"
...Storie also speculates that police officers casing Guerena’s house a few days before the shooting were spied on by parties unknown, and he says a portrait of Jesus Malverde, “believed to be a ‘narco saint’” was found under Guerena’s bed.
It was either Patrick Henry or Rooster Cogburn who observed that states and railroads will lie to you quicker than a man will. While the sheriff has been quiet about the case’s details (including the dispatcher’s apparent confusion over the raid during Vanessa Guerena’s 911 call), Storie’s claims are almost perfect examples of lawyerly pettifogging. Having a picture of a “narco saint” is evidence of nothing; in 1975, my wife’s grandmother was killed by one Lebanese militia because while raiding her home they found a magazine published by a rival militia. Finding a uniform in a private residence was one of the KGB’s favorite pieces of flimflammery when they wanted to arrest somebody. Possession of firearms is, for the time being, legal in the United States, and the fact that Guerena had an AR-15 has been part of this narrative since the beginning. ...
...The sheriff’s department maintains that Guerena was holding an AR-15 when the paramilitary force fired 71 bullets in his home, but other key parts of the government story have collapsed. While PCSD initially claimed Guerena fired the weapon he was alleged to have been holding, the department now says it was a misfire by one of the deputies that caused this deadly group panic inside a home containing a woman and a toddler...
Sheriffs: Slain Jose Guerena Linked to "Home-Invasion Crew"
...Storie also speculates that police officers casing Guerena’s house a few days before the shooting were spied on by parties unknown, and he says a portrait of Jesus Malverde, “believed to be a ‘narco saint’” was found under Guerena’s bed.
It was either Patrick Henry or Rooster Cogburn who observed that states and railroads will lie to you quicker than a man will. While the sheriff has been quiet about the case’s details (including the dispatcher’s apparent confusion over the raid during Vanessa Guerena’s 911 call), Storie’s claims are almost perfect examples of lawyerly pettifogging. Having a picture of a “narco saint” is evidence of nothing; in 1975, my wife’s grandmother was killed by one Lebanese militia because while raiding her home they found a magazine published by a rival militia. Finding a uniform in a private residence was one of the KGB’s favorite pieces of flimflammery when they wanted to arrest somebody. Possession of firearms is, for the time being, legal in the United States, and the fact that Guerena had an AR-15 has been part of this narrative since the beginning. ...
Nearly 20 percent of new Obamacare waivers are gourmet restaurants, nightclubs, fancy hotels in Nancy Pelosi’s district
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers....
Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.
That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.
Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers....
Political pressure tainted error-ridden GAO report
...GAO issued a slew of corrections in November to an undercover investigation into for-profit colleges requested by Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, who had unveiled the report at a hearing highly critical of the schools Aug. 4.
A internal GAO email obtained by The Daily Caller, a self-evaluation on what went wrong from a member of the team that wrote the report, suggests GAO was under the gun.
The email says GAO was put under “extreme short time frames” by Harkin to issue the report and “congressional staffers” demanded the inclusion of numerous details as it was being finalized.
“It certainly discredits the report, doesn’t it?” said Rep. Rob Andrews, New Jersey Democrat and long-time advocate for the for-profit schools, “The fact that they felt pressure to finish this on time is disquieting.”...
...GAO issued a slew of corrections in November to an undercover investigation into for-profit colleges requested by Sen. Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, who had unveiled the report at a hearing highly critical of the schools Aug. 4.
A internal GAO email obtained by The Daily Caller, a self-evaluation on what went wrong from a member of the team that wrote the report, suggests GAO was under the gun.
The email says GAO was put under “extreme short time frames” by Harkin to issue the report and “congressional staffers” demanded the inclusion of numerous details as it was being finalized.
“It certainly discredits the report, doesn’t it?” said Rep. Rob Andrews, New Jersey Democrat and long-time advocate for the for-profit schools, “The fact that they felt pressure to finish this on time is disquieting.”...
NHS budget squeeze to blame for longer waiting times, say doctors
Latest performance data reveal number of English patients waiting more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in last year
Doctors are blaming financial pressures on the NHS for an increase in the number of patients who are not being treated within the 18 weeks that the government recommends.
New NHS performance data reveal that the number of people in England who are being forced to wait more than 18 weeks has risen by 26% in the last year, while the number who had to wait longer than six months has shot up by 43%.
In March this year, 34,639 people, or 11% of the total, waited more than that time to receive inpatient treatment, compared with 27,534, or 8.3%, in March 2010 – an increase of 26% – Department of Health statistics show.
Similarly, in March this year some 11,243 patients who underwent treatment had waited for more than six months, compared with 7,841 in the same month in 2010 – a 43% rise....
Economic study: Stimulus 'destroyed/forestalled' 1 million private sector jobs
Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have issued a study about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the “Stimulus” – approximately a trillion dollars borrowed and spent ostensibly to create and save millions of jobs and keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
We’ve known for months, each and every time the unemployment numbers come out, that it failed miserably to keep unemployment below 8%.
Conley and Dupor give the short “bottom line” version of their study’s result:
Our benchmark point estimates suggest the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs....
Economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor have issued a study about the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, also known as the “Stimulus” – approximately a trillion dollars borrowed and spent ostensibly to create and save millions of jobs and keep the unemployment rate below 8%.
We’ve known for months, each and every time the unemployment numbers come out, that it failed miserably to keep unemployment below 8%.
Conley and Dupor give the short “bottom line” version of their study’s result:
Our benchmark point estimates suggest the Act created/saved 450 thousand government-sector jobs and destroyed/forestalled one million private sector jobs....
Warrants Let Agents Enter Homes Without Owner Knowing
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A special type of government search warrant that allows authorities to search homes without informing the owner for months is becoming more common, Target 7 has learned.
Imagine someone walking through your neighborhood, coming into your home and rifling through your intimate belongings.
“(They) search through your home, your dresser drawers, your computer files,” Peter Simonson, with ACLU New Mexico, said.
These search warrants don’t involve knocking on doors or any type of warning at all. Delayed-notice search warrants, or "sneak-and-peek" warrants, allow federal agents to enter your home without telling you they’ve been there until months later.
The warrants have always been around, but their use has spiked since the War on Terror and revamped Patriot Act was signed in 2005. The number of delayed-notice search warrants spiked nationally from nearly 700 in fiscal year 2007 to approaching close to 2,000 in 2009....
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A special type of government search warrant that allows authorities to search homes without informing the owner for months is becoming more common, Target 7 has learned.
Imagine someone walking through your neighborhood, coming into your home and rifling through your intimate belongings.
“(They) search through your home, your dresser drawers, your computer files,” Peter Simonson, with ACLU New Mexico, said.
These search warrants don’t involve knocking on doors or any type of warning at all. Delayed-notice search warrants, or "sneak-and-peek" warrants, allow federal agents to enter your home without telling you they’ve been there until months later.
The warrants have always been around, but their use has spiked since the War on Terror and revamped Patriot Act was signed in 2005. The number of delayed-notice search warrants spiked nationally from nearly 700 in fiscal year 2007 to approaching close to 2,000 in 2009....
The IRS Gets Political
The taxman goes after campaign donors.
...But even if the Obama Administration doesn't deserve primary credit for this idea to chill political activity, it will still serve the Democrats' purpose in time for 2012 fundraising. A tax probe of donations given by a specific class of political donors is a boldfaced attempt to punish and discourage political speech.
The IRS also says the investigations into a few deep-pocketed donors isn't the prelude to a broader offensive against the groups. Nah, that would mean they were taking their cues from liberal campaign finance groups like Democracy 21, which has been flogging this idea as a way to impose greater disclosure requirements. Last September, Montana Democrat Max Baucus wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to suggest he start investigating the political groups.
We wish we were shocked, but the plan is merely the latest play by Democrats to crack down on donors who support their opponents. In 2010 they tried and failed to pass the Disclose Act, which would have forced disclosure on business donations but left unions alone.
This year they've turned to harassment by regulation, first asking the Federal Communications Commission to require groups that run political ads to disclose their high-dollar donors. The Obama Administration is also working up an executive order to require anyone bidding for a federal contract to disclose if the company or its executives donated more then $5,000 to independent groups.
Now comes the 501(c)(4) net, which may catch the likes of liberal uber-donor George Soros, though we'd bet he's happy to lend his name to the project to create an appearance of nonpartisanship. The real targets of the disclosure project are conservative groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which have seen their fundraising and influence grow in recent years....
The taxman goes after campaign donors.
...But even if the Obama Administration doesn't deserve primary credit for this idea to chill political activity, it will still serve the Democrats' purpose in time for 2012 fundraising. A tax probe of donations given by a specific class of political donors is a boldfaced attempt to punish and discourage political speech.
The IRS also says the investigations into a few deep-pocketed donors isn't the prelude to a broader offensive against the groups. Nah, that would mean they were taking their cues from liberal campaign finance groups like Democracy 21, which has been flogging this idea as a way to impose greater disclosure requirements. Last September, Montana Democrat Max Baucus wrote a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to suggest he start investigating the political groups.
We wish we were shocked, but the plan is merely the latest play by Democrats to crack down on donors who support their opponents. In 2010 they tried and failed to pass the Disclose Act, which would have forced disclosure on business donations but left unions alone.
This year they've turned to harassment by regulation, first asking the Federal Communications Commission to require groups that run political ads to disclose their high-dollar donors. The Obama Administration is also working up an executive order to require anyone bidding for a federal contract to disclose if the company or its executives donated more then $5,000 to independent groups.
Now comes the 501(c)(4) net, which may catch the likes of liberal uber-donor George Soros, though we'd bet he's happy to lend his name to the project to create an appearance of nonpartisanship. The real targets of the disclosure project are conservative groups like Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity, which have seen their fundraising and influence grow in recent years....
Prison for you, but not for me
...Our rulers make laws to control and punish you and your family for doing the very acts they flaunted in their youth.
Smoking pot is not a big deal. If the politicians have enough common sense to know that their lives shouldn’t be ruined over a little drug use, they should also have enough common decency to recognize that neither should anyone else’s....
...Our rulers make laws to control and punish you and your family for doing the very acts they flaunted in their youth.
Smoking pot is not a big deal. If the politicians have enough common sense to know that their lives shouldn’t be ruined over a little drug use, they should also have enough common decency to recognize that neither should anyone else’s....
Climate cleansing: Google to censor skeptics?
... Meanwhile, can search engines do a better job of pointing the public toward credible sites?
A Google spokeswoman, who insisted on anonymity because she is not a Google executive, said the company is always looking for ways to improve results. “Last year, we made 500 changes to the algorithm to improve search quality,” she said....
... Meanwhile, can search engines do a better job of pointing the public toward credible sites?
A Google spokeswoman, who insisted on anonymity because she is not a Google executive, said the company is always looking for ways to improve results. “Last year, we made 500 changes to the algorithm to improve search quality,” she said....
Government Role in Causing Financial Crisis Much Bigger than Thought
(PDF)
...“US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector… However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all “non-traditional” mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards.”...
The True Story of the Financial Crisis
Peter Wallison Reasserts His View of What Caused the Financial Crisis
...In March 2010, Edward Pinto, a resident fellow (and my colleague) at the American Enterprise Institute who had served as chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, sent the Commission a 70-page, fully sourced memorandum on the number of subprime and other high-risk mortgages in the financial system in 2008. Pinto's research showed that he had found more than 25 million such mortgages (his later work showed that there were approximately 27 million). Since there are about 55 million mortgages in the U.S., Pinto's research indicated that, as the financial crisis began, half of all U.S. mortgages were of inferior quality and liable to default when housing prices were no longer rising. In August, Pinto supplemented his initial research with a paper documenting the efforts of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), over two decades and through two administrations, to increase home ownership by reducing mortgage-underwriting standards.
This information, which highlighted the role of government policy in fostering the creation of these low-quality mortgages, raised important questions about whether the mortgage meltdown would have been so destructive if those government policies had not existed. Any objective investigation of the causes of the financial crisis would have looked carefully at Pinto's research, exposed it to the members of the Commission, taken Pinto's testimony, and tested the accuracy of his research. But the Commission took none of these steps. Pinto's memos were never made available to the other members of the FCIC, or even to the commissioners who were members of the subcommittee charged with considering the role of housing policy in the financial crisis....
...From the beginning, Fannie and Freddie's congressional charters required them to buy only mortgages that would be acceptable to institutional investors -- in other words, prime mortgages. At the time, a prime mortgage was a loan with a 10-20 percent down payment, made to a borrower with a good credit record who had sufficient income to meet his or her debt obligations after the loan was made. Fannie and Freddie operated under these standards until 1992.
The 1992 affordable housing goals required that, of all mortgages Fannie and Freddie bought in any year, at least 30 percent had to be loans made to borrowers who were at or below the median income in the places where they lived. Over succeeding years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, first to 42 percent in 1995, to 50 percent in 2000, and finally to 55 percent in 2007. It is important to note, accordingly, that this occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations....
...This is the claim that Fannie and Freddie became insolvent because, seeking profits or market share, they "followed Wall Street" into subprime lending. This idea neatly avoids the question of why Fannie and Freddie became insolvent in the first place, and focuses the blame again on the private sector. The statement, however, as the following quote from Fannie's 2006 10-K report makes clear, is untrue:
[W]e have made, and continue to make, significant adjustments to our mortgage loan sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD's increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals-qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher-risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD's goals and subgoals, which could increase our credit losses....
(PDF)
...“US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector… However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all “non-traditional” mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards.”...
The True Story of the Financial Crisis
Peter Wallison Reasserts His View of What Caused the Financial Crisis
...In March 2010, Edward Pinto, a resident fellow (and my colleague) at the American Enterprise Institute who had served as chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, sent the Commission a 70-page, fully sourced memorandum on the number of subprime and other high-risk mortgages in the financial system in 2008. Pinto's research showed that he had found more than 25 million such mortgages (his later work showed that there were approximately 27 million). Since there are about 55 million mortgages in the U.S., Pinto's research indicated that, as the financial crisis began, half of all U.S. mortgages were of inferior quality and liable to default when housing prices were no longer rising. In August, Pinto supplemented his initial research with a paper documenting the efforts of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), over two decades and through two administrations, to increase home ownership by reducing mortgage-underwriting standards.
This information, which highlighted the role of government policy in fostering the creation of these low-quality mortgages, raised important questions about whether the mortgage meltdown would have been so destructive if those government policies had not existed. Any objective investigation of the causes of the financial crisis would have looked carefully at Pinto's research, exposed it to the members of the Commission, taken Pinto's testimony, and tested the accuracy of his research. But the Commission took none of these steps. Pinto's memos were never made available to the other members of the FCIC, or even to the commissioners who were members of the subcommittee charged with considering the role of housing policy in the financial crisis....
...From the beginning, Fannie and Freddie's congressional charters required them to buy only mortgages that would be acceptable to institutional investors -- in other words, prime mortgages. At the time, a prime mortgage was a loan with a 10-20 percent down payment, made to a borrower with a good credit record who had sufficient income to meet his or her debt obligations after the loan was made. Fannie and Freddie operated under these standards until 1992.
The 1992 affordable housing goals required that, of all mortgages Fannie and Freddie bought in any year, at least 30 percent had to be loans made to borrowers who were at or below the median income in the places where they lived. Over succeeding years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) increased this requirement, first to 42 percent in 1995, to 50 percent in 2000, and finally to 55 percent in 2007. It is important to note, accordingly, that this occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations....
...This is the claim that Fannie and Freddie became insolvent because, seeking profits or market share, they "followed Wall Street" into subprime lending. This idea neatly avoids the question of why Fannie and Freddie became insolvent in the first place, and focuses the blame again on the private sector. The statement, however, as the following quote from Fannie's 2006 10-K report makes clear, is untrue:
[W]e have made, and continue to make, significant adjustments to our mortgage loan sourcing and purchase strategies in an effort to meet HUD's increased housing goals and new subgoals. These strategies include entering into some purchase and securitization transactions with lower expected economic returns than our typical transactions. We have also relaxed some of our underwriting criteria to obtain goals-qualifying mortgage loans and increased our investments in higher-risk mortgage loan products that are more likely to serve the borrowers targeted by HUD's goals and subgoals, which could increase our credit losses....
Establishment Blues
...Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
...Some of the problem is intellectual. For almost a century now, American intellectual culture has been dominated by the values and legacy of the progressive movement. Science and technology would guide impartial experts and civil servants to create a better and better society. For most of the American elite today, progress means ‘progressive’; the way to make the world better is through more nanny state government programs administered by more, and more highly qualified, lifetime civil servants. Anybody who doubts this is a reactionary and an ignoramus. This isn’t just a rational conviction with much of our elite; it is a bone deep instinct. Unfortunately, the progressive tradition no longer has the answers we need, but our leadership class by and large cannot think in any other terms....
...The increasingly meritocratic elite of today has no such qualms. The average Harvard Business School and Yale Law School graduate today feels that privilege has been earned. Didn’t he or she score higher on the LSATs than anyone else? Didn’t he or she previously pass the rigorous scrutiny of the undergraduate admissions process in a free and fair process to get into a top college? Haven’t they been certified as the best of the best by impartial experts?...
...Here in the early years of the twenty-first century, the American elite is a walking disaster and is in every way less capable than its predecessors. It is less in touch with American history and culture, less personally honest, less productive, less forward looking, less effective at and less committed to child rearing, less freedom loving, less sacrificially patriotic and less entrepreneurial than predecessor generations. Its sense of entitlement and snobbery is greater than at any time since the American Revolution; its addiction to privilege is greater than during the Gilded Age and its ability to raise its young to be productive and courageous leaders of society has largely collapsed. ...
...Some of the problem is intellectual. For almost a century now, American intellectual culture has been dominated by the values and legacy of the progressive movement. Science and technology would guide impartial experts and civil servants to create a better and better society. For most of the American elite today, progress means ‘progressive’; the way to make the world better is through more nanny state government programs administered by more, and more highly qualified, lifetime civil servants. Anybody who doubts this is a reactionary and an ignoramus. This isn’t just a rational conviction with much of our elite; it is a bone deep instinct. Unfortunately, the progressive tradition no longer has the answers we need, but our leadership class by and large cannot think in any other terms....
...The increasingly meritocratic elite of today has no such qualms. The average Harvard Business School and Yale Law School graduate today feels that privilege has been earned. Didn’t he or she score higher on the LSATs than anyone else? Didn’t he or she previously pass the rigorous scrutiny of the undergraduate admissions process in a free and fair process to get into a top college? Haven’t they been certified as the best of the best by impartial experts?...
Sen. Rand Paul: Right To Health Care Is Like Believing In "Slavery"
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery."
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): "With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It's not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery."
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Compassion or Cover-Up? Teen Victim Claims Rape; Forced Confession in Church
...Anderson was only 16 when she said she was forced to stand terrified before her entire church congregation to confess her "sin" -- she had become pregnant. She says she wasn't allowed to tell the group that the pregnancy was the result of being allegedly raped by a fellow congregant, a man twice her age.
She says her New Hampshire pastor, Chuck Phelps, told her she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death. ...
...Her mother sought help from the pastor and they agreed to send her thousands of miles away to Colorado to live with another IFB family.
There, she said she was homeschooled and restricted from seeing others her age until she gave her child up for adoption. ...
...Anderson was only 16 when she said she was forced to stand terrified before her entire church congregation to confess her "sin" -- she had become pregnant. She says she wasn't allowed to tell the group that the pregnancy was the result of being allegedly raped by a fellow congregant, a man twice her age.
She says her New Hampshire pastor, Chuck Phelps, told her she was lucky not to have been born during Old Testament times when she would have been stoned to death. ...
...Her mother sought help from the pastor and they agreed to send her thousands of miles away to Colorado to live with another IFB family.
There, she said she was homeschooled and restricted from seeing others her age until she gave her child up for adoption. ...
Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!”
...Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony....
...Greens like to have it both ways. They warn darkly about “peak oil” and global resource shortages that will destroy our industrial economy in its tracks — but also warn that runaway economic growth will destroy the planet through the uncontrolled effects of mass industrial productions. Both doomsday scenarios cannot be true; one cannot simultaneously die of both starvation and gluttony....
Why the Left Needs Racism--II
...Barack Obama is at least the third consecutive president to be the subject of paranoid conspiracy theories, and it strikes us as odd that anyone who lived through the Clinton and Bush years would automatically assume it must be because he's black. The false claim that Obama was born outside the U.S. does not reflect any common racial stereotype. Nor, for that matter, do the rumors that he is Muslim. The vast majority of American blacks are natural born and Christian....
...Baselessly accusing their political foes of racism is a way in which today's liberals attempt to incite fear and loathing of "the other." As we argued last year, this serves a political purpose in that it helps persuade blacks not to consider voting Republican. But it serves a psychological purpose as well. It reinforces white liberals' sense of their own superiority.
Yet that sense of superiority is not as secure as it once was. Here is Remnick's most telling quote from that interview: "Really, I'm not in the habit of screaming racist at every turn. I don't think you [interviewer Michele Norris] are and I don't think most people are."
It used to be that people expressing politically incorrect views about race felt compelled to preface their statements with a defensive denial: "I'm not a racist, but . . ." The editor of The New Yorker, speaking to an NPR audience, now has a similar compulsion to deny that he is "in the habit of screaming racist."
The tables have turned. Now it is the left that is on the defensive over "racism." Their outdated attitudes about race put them in the absurd position of arguing that the most powerful man in the world is a victim of oppression because of the color of his skin. Men like David Remnick turn out to be the ones who aren't ready for a black president....
...Barack Obama is at least the third consecutive president to be the subject of paranoid conspiracy theories, and it strikes us as odd that anyone who lived through the Clinton and Bush years would automatically assume it must be because he's black. The false claim that Obama was born outside the U.S. does not reflect any common racial stereotype. Nor, for that matter, do the rumors that he is Muslim. The vast majority of American blacks are natural born and Christian....
...Baselessly accusing their political foes of racism is a way in which today's liberals attempt to incite fear and loathing of "the other." As we argued last year, this serves a political purpose in that it helps persuade blacks not to consider voting Republican. But it serves a psychological purpose as well. It reinforces white liberals' sense of their own superiority.
Yet that sense of superiority is not as secure as it once was. Here is Remnick's most telling quote from that interview: "Really, I'm not in the habit of screaming racist at every turn. I don't think you [interviewer Michele Norris] are and I don't think most people are."
It used to be that people expressing politically incorrect views about race felt compelled to preface their statements with a defensive denial: "I'm not a racist, but . . ." The editor of The New Yorker, speaking to an NPR audience, now has a similar compulsion to deny that he is "in the habit of screaming racist."
The tables have turned. Now it is the left that is on the defensive over "racism." Their outdated attitudes about race put them in the absurd position of arguing that the most powerful man in the world is a victim of oppression because of the color of his skin. Men like David Remnick turn out to be the ones who aren't ready for a black president....
Osama bin Laden dead: Blackout during raid on bin Laden compound
The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
"We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president. ...
The head of the CIA admitted yesterday that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
Leon Panetta, director of the CIA, revealed there was a 25 minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph released by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening in the compound.
In an interview with PBS, Mr Panetta said: "Once those teams went into the compound I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes where we really didn't know just exactly what was going on. And there were some very tense moments as we were waiting for information.
"We had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound."
Mr Panetta also told the network that the US Navy Seals made the final decision to kill bin Laden rather than the president. ...
7 Minutes Vs. 16 Hours: How The Media Reports Delay
...On the other hand, after Obama was told (most likely for the fifteenth time) that the CIA was really, really, really quite confident that Osama bin Ladin was at that compound in Abbottabad, he decided he needed to sleep on it.
Sixteen hours later (hours during which Osama might have fled-- bear in mind, his courier's name had just been outed by WikiLeaks), he made up his mind....
...On the other hand, after Obama was told (most likely for the fifteenth time) that the CIA was really, really, really quite confident that Osama bin Ladin was at that compound in Abbottabad, he decided he needed to sleep on it.
Sixteen hours later (hours during which Osama might have fled-- bear in mind, his courier's name had just been outed by WikiLeaks), he made up his mind....
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?
Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes....
What if groceries were paid for by taxes, and you were assigned a store based on where you live?
Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.
Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.
No family would be permitted to get groceries from a public supermarket outside of its district. Fortunately, though, thanks to a Supreme Court decision, families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge directly for the groceries they offer. Private-supermarket families, however, would receive no reductions in their property taxes....
Holder on gun smuggling scandal: ‘I frankly don’t know’ what really happened
Time for Daylight: U.S. Weapons Reaching Cartel Hands a Huge Scandal
The U.S. government has effectively allowed weaponry to reach cartels, and now uses the violence they helped cause as a gun control argument.
...The plan for a long gun registry is still one of the president’s goals, even as he creates the problem for which he proposes the solution. A virulent anti-gun radical since his days with the Joyce Foundation, Obama has previously stooped to despicable levels in order to pursue his gun control agenda. He now wants to use the bully pulpit of his office to play both arsonist and firefighter, and is willing to watch northern Mexico and the American southwest burn in order to restrict a constitutional right he has always abhorred.
Time for Daylight: U.S. Weapons Reaching Cartel Hands a Huge Scandal
The U.S. government has effectively allowed weaponry to reach cartels, and now uses the violence they helped cause as a gun control argument.
...The plan for a long gun registry is still one of the president’s goals, even as he creates the problem for which he proposes the solution. A virulent anti-gun radical since his days with the Joyce Foundation, Obama has previously stooped to despicable levels in order to pursue his gun control agenda. He now wants to use the bully pulpit of his office to play both arsonist and firefighter, and is willing to watch northern Mexico and the American southwest burn in order to restrict a constitutional right he has always abhorred.
The State
...War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. ...
...War, or at least modern war waged by a democratic republic against a powerful enemy, seems to achieve for a nation almost all that the most inflamed political idealist could desire. Citizens are no longer indifferent to their Government, but each cell of the body politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last on the way to full realization of that collective community in which each individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out. At war, the indvidual becomes almost identical with his society. He achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the power of the collective community. The individual as social being in war seems to have achieved almost his apotheosis. Not for any religious impulse could the American nation have been expected to show such devotion en masse, such sacrifice and labor. Certainly not for any secular good, such as universal education or the subjugation of nature, would it have poured forth its treasure and its life, or would it have permitted such stern coercive measures to be taken against it, such as conscripting its money and its men. But for the sake of a war of offensive self-defense, undertaken to support a difficult cause to the slogan of "democracy," it would reach the highest level ever known of collective effort....
...War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. ...
...War, or at least modern war waged by a democratic republic against a powerful enemy, seems to achieve for a nation almost all that the most inflamed political idealist could desire. Citizens are no longer indifferent to their Government, but each cell of the body politic is brimming with life and activity. We are at last on the way to full realization of that collective community in which each individual somehow contains the virtue of the whole. In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out. At war, the indvidual becomes almost identical with his society. He achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the power of the collective community. The individual as social being in war seems to have achieved almost his apotheosis. Not for any religious impulse could the American nation have been expected to show such devotion en masse, such sacrifice and labor. Certainly not for any secular good, such as universal education or the subjugation of nature, would it have poured forth its treasure and its life, or would it have permitted such stern coercive measures to be taken against it, such as conscripting its money and its men. But for the sake of a war of offensive self-defense, undertaken to support a difficult cause to the slogan of "democracy," it would reach the highest level ever known of collective effort....
SEIU drops mask, goes full commie
A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart....
A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions, reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there was no real way to tell the two apart....
Dept of Education orders universities to lower burden of proof in sex crime cases
...Will Creeley, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, added that the concerns are not theoretical, that students are already having to prepare defenses to the lower standards.
“OCR has moved past the kind of normal responses we would expect to see, i.e. more training, clearer policies, and has decided instead to ‘level the playing field’ by tilting the scales quite clearly in favor of the accuser at the expense of justice on campus,” Creeley told TheDC. “This is a very real dangerous change that will affect student’s lives. More students will erroneously be found guilty of sexual assault due to these lower standards.”
FIRE also wrote of concerns about the stifling of free speech, namely OCR’s failure to address distinctions between “politically incorrect” expression and sexual harassment...
...Will Creeley, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy, added that the concerns are not theoretical, that students are already having to prepare defenses to the lower standards.
“OCR has moved past the kind of normal responses we would expect to see, i.e. more training, clearer policies, and has decided instead to ‘level the playing field’ by tilting the scales quite clearly in favor of the accuser at the expense of justice on campus,” Creeley told TheDC. “This is a very real dangerous change that will affect student’s lives. More students will erroneously be found guilty of sexual assault due to these lower standards.”
FIRE also wrote of concerns about the stifling of free speech, namely OCR’s failure to address distinctions between “politically incorrect” expression and sexual harassment...
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Behind the coming physician shortage
...Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program....
...Existing government programs already reimburse physicians at rates that are often less than the actual cost of treating a patient. Estimates suggest that on average physicians are reimbursed at roughly 78% of costs under Medicare, and just 70% of costs under Medicaid. Physicians must either make up for this shortfall by shifting costs to those patients with insurance — meaning those of us with insurance pay more — or treat patients at a loss.
As a result, more and more physicians are choosing to opt-out of the system altogether. Roughly 13% of physicians will not accept Medicare patients today. Another 17% limit the number of Medicare patients they will see, a figure that rises to 31% among primary care physicians. The story is even worse in Medicaid, where as many as a third of doctors will not participate in the program....
The left decides who gets lawyers
...And who will determine what is “important”? Why Socarides, of course. The entire notion is at odds with the left’s usual defense of attorneys who represent all manner of heinous defendants. When conservatives merely wanted to know which Obama Justice Department attorneys had represented al-Qaeda terrorists the hollering was deafening. (McCarthyism! The right of legal representation!) When former White House counsel Greg Craig’s record of representing a long list of unsavory characters came to light liberals didn’t bat an eye.
The only ethical problems that would have excused King and Spalding’s withdrawal from the case would have been a conflict of interest (as the Gitmo attorneys encountered in switching sides to represent the U.S. government against detainees) or the absence of a viable set of facts or legal theory on which to base the case (which is not remotely in evidence here).
Frankly, the left’s unprincipled stance may come as a shock to the criminal defense bar. After all, don’t those people “defend murder,” under the left’s reasoning? ...
...And who will determine what is “important”? Why Socarides, of course. The entire notion is at odds with the left’s usual defense of attorneys who represent all manner of heinous defendants. When conservatives merely wanted to know which Obama Justice Department attorneys had represented al-Qaeda terrorists the hollering was deafening. (McCarthyism! The right of legal representation!) When former White House counsel Greg Craig’s record of representing a long list of unsavory characters came to light liberals didn’t bat an eye.
The only ethical problems that would have excused King and Spalding’s withdrawal from the case would have been a conflict of interest (as the Gitmo attorneys encountered in switching sides to represent the U.S. government against detainees) or the absence of a viable set of facts or legal theory on which to base the case (which is not remotely in evidence here).
Frankly, the left’s unprincipled stance may come as a shock to the criminal defense bar. After all, don’t those people “defend murder,” under the left’s reasoning? ...
UM union violence lectures grab attention
...The videos — posted online yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website — show snippets of Judy Ancel, director of UM-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, team-teaching with Don Giljum of Operating Engineers 148. The Labor in Society & Politics class is a joint effort between UMKC and UM-St. Louis.
In one clip, Ancel tells students, “Violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” ...
...The videos — posted online yesterday on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website — show snippets of Judy Ancel, director of UM-Kansas City’s Institute for Labor Studies, team-teaching with Don Giljum of Operating Engineers 148. The Labor in Society & Politics class is a joint effort between UMKC and UM-St. Louis.
In one clip, Ancel tells students, “Violence is a tactic, and it’s to be used when it’s the appropriate tactic.” ...
Lawrence O'Donnell: Jesus Specifically Endorsed A 100% Taxation Rates for The Top 5% of Earners In Society
...Also, the "give" part of the command seems rather more important than O'Donnell is letting on: Virtue is demonstrated by voluntary undertaking of it. Not state-compelled compliance with it....
...Also, the "give" part of the command seems rather more important than O'Donnell is letting on: Virtue is demonstrated by voluntary undertaking of it. Not state-compelled compliance with it....
Another Drilling Halt: Your Taxpayer-Funded Regulators at Work for You
...So all significant seafaring activity off the Alaskan coast in this area requires icebreaking services virtually all year. Shell isn’t the only economic actor contracting for icebreaking services. Most commercial maritime traffic operates within 70 miles of the coast – meaning that’s where the icebreakers will be cutting swaths through the ice and emitting their emissions – because that’s where the ice tends to be youngest and thinnest....
...So all significant seafaring activity off the Alaskan coast in this area requires icebreaking services virtually all year. Shell isn’t the only economic actor contracting for icebreaking services. Most commercial maritime traffic operates within 70 miles of the coast – meaning that’s where the icebreakers will be cutting swaths through the ice and emitting their emissions – because that’s where the ice tends to be youngest and thinnest....
RomneyCare's Unhappy Anniversary
Earlier this month, the landmark Massachusetts health care reform law turned five years old. Democrats were quick to applaud the anniversary, as the Bay State law is the model for the federal health care reform package that passed last year.
The anniversary has proved especially inconvenient for former Massachusetts Governor and probable Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who argued forcefully for his state's reforms. In 2006 he boldly stated, "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the cost of health care will be reduced."
Five years later, that prediction has proved false. Worse, the Massachusetts experiment offers an ominous preview of what lies ahead for the rest of the nation under ObamaCare.
When signing the bill into law, Romney claimed that it would "take about three years to get all of our citizens insured." In 2006 the number of uninsured in Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Five years later, over 100,000 remain uninsured.
So more Bay Staters do have insurance. But that doesn't mean they've been able to get care.
The Massachusetts Medical Society found that 56% of physicians are not taking on new patients. Wait times for appointments are climbing. Just two years after reform took root, one clinic in Western Massachusetts had amassed a waiting list of 1,600 patients.
RomneyCare expanded coverage simply by putting more people on the dole. Since 2006, 440,000 people have been added to state-funded insurance rolls. Medicaid enrollment alone is up nearly 25%, and Massachusetts is struggling to cover the cost.
Of the previously uninsured individuals who have signed up, 68% are receiving free or subsidized coverage.
Many of these people aren't even citizens of Massachusetts. A recent report from the Massachusetts Inspector General found that state agencies have failed to implement controls to prevent ineligible people from making claims. In 2010 millions of dollars were spent on medical services for individuals from 48 other states and several foreign countries....
Earlier this month, the landmark Massachusetts health care reform law turned five years old. Democrats were quick to applaud the anniversary, as the Bay State law is the model for the federal health care reform package that passed last year.
The anniversary has proved especially inconvenient for former Massachusetts Governor and probable Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who argued forcefully for his state's reforms. In 2006 he boldly stated, "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the cost of health care will be reduced."
Five years later, that prediction has proved false. Worse, the Massachusetts experiment offers an ominous preview of what lies ahead for the rest of the nation under ObamaCare.
When signing the bill into law, Romney claimed that it would "take about three years to get all of our citizens insured." In 2006 the number of uninsured in Massachusetts ranged from 372,000 to 618,000. Five years later, over 100,000 remain uninsured.
So more Bay Staters do have insurance. But that doesn't mean they've been able to get care.
The Massachusetts Medical Society found that 56% of physicians are not taking on new patients. Wait times for appointments are climbing. Just two years after reform took root, one clinic in Western Massachusetts had amassed a waiting list of 1,600 patients.
RomneyCare expanded coverage simply by putting more people on the dole. Since 2006, 440,000 people have been added to state-funded insurance rolls. Medicaid enrollment alone is up nearly 25%, and Massachusetts is struggling to cover the cost.
Of the previously uninsured individuals who have signed up, 68% are receiving free or subsidized coverage.
Many of these people aren't even citizens of Massachusetts. A recent report from the Massachusetts Inspector General found that state agencies have failed to implement controls to prevent ineligible people from making claims. In 2010 millions of dollars were spent on medical services for individuals from 48 other states and several foreign countries....
Political Privacy Should Be a Civil Right
Suppose that during the civil rights movement segregationist governors ordered all state contractors to disclose their political donations in an attempt to expose civil rights supporters to harassment and retaliation. The Supreme Court would have had none of it.
In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), the court barred Alabama from forcing the NAACP to disclose its members. Those justices would have struck down a similar effort to force the release of the NAACP's financial supporters. They would have rightly viewed it as an infringement of the constitutional right to free association and free speech.
Today President Obama is ignoring the lessons of the civil rights era he claims to revere. According to a draft executive order leaked last week, Mr. Obama plans to require any company seeking a federal contract to disclose its executives' political contributions over $5,000—not just to candidates, but to any group that might make "independent expenditure" or "electioneering communication" advertisements.
If a small businesswoman wants to sell paper clips to the Defense Department, Mr. Obama would force her to reveal contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood or the National Rifle Association. These donations are obviously irrelevant to whether she made the most reliable bid at the lowest price. The only purpose of the executive order is to dangle the specter of retaliation (by losing her contracts) and harassment (from political opponents)....
Suppose that during the civil rights movement segregationist governors ordered all state contractors to disclose their political donations in an attempt to expose civil rights supporters to harassment and retaliation. The Supreme Court would have had none of it.
In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), the court barred Alabama from forcing the NAACP to disclose its members. Those justices would have struck down a similar effort to force the release of the NAACP's financial supporters. They would have rightly viewed it as an infringement of the constitutional right to free association and free speech.
Today President Obama is ignoring the lessons of the civil rights era he claims to revere. According to a draft executive order leaked last week, Mr. Obama plans to require any company seeking a federal contract to disclose its executives' political contributions over $5,000—not just to candidates, but to any group that might make "independent expenditure" or "electioneering communication" advertisements.
If a small businesswoman wants to sell paper clips to the Defense Department, Mr. Obama would force her to reveal contributions to groups such as Planned Parenthood or the National Rifle Association. These donations are obviously irrelevant to whether she made the most reliable bid at the lowest price. The only purpose of the executive order is to dangle the specter of retaliation (by losing her contracts) and harassment (from political opponents)....
Inside Every Leftist Is a Little Authoritarian Dying to Get Out
...Making this connection got a lot easier the other day when the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, a leading advocate of a “public option,” vented his frustrations over at The American Prospect blog about how Congress is likely to defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board. And he ends up just where Hayek predicted:
Despite many reasons for caution — the words George W. Bush foremost among them — I’m becoming more of a believer in an imperial presidency in domestic policy. Congress seems too screwed up and fragmented to address our most pressing problems....
...Making this connection got a lot easier the other day when the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, a leading advocate of a “public option,” vented his frustrations over at The American Prospect blog about how Congress is likely to defang the Independent Payment Advisory Board. And he ends up just where Hayek predicted:
Despite many reasons for caution — the words George W. Bush foremost among them — I’m becoming more of a believer in an imperial presidency in domestic policy. Congress seems too screwed up and fragmented to address our most pressing problems....
Education Dept. inspector general investigating influence of Wall Street short sellers on regulations
The Education Department’s inspector general is investigating Wall Street short sellers’ role in strict new regulations of the for-profit college sector, sources confirm to The Daily Caller.
The investigation could reveal the extent to which the investors, who are hoping to profit when the for-profit firms’ stock goes down, influenced the process or received advance knowledge about regulatory actions by the department....
The Education Department’s inspector general is investigating Wall Street short sellers’ role in strict new regulations of the for-profit college sector, sources confirm to The Daily Caller.
The investigation could reveal the extent to which the investors, who are hoping to profit when the for-profit firms’ stock goes down, influenced the process or received advance knowledge about regulatory actions by the department....
Ocean Phytoplankton Apocalypse - Perhaps Not
...So good news: No massive decline in ocean phytoplankton after all. Over at his excellent New York Times blog, Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin takes readers through the whole saga (really folks, please go read it). Revkin points out that this is how science is supposed work - claims are made, challenged, defended, rechallenged, with the process leading us ever closer to actually describing reality.
However, how the study was reported in the mainstream press illustrates a big problem with journalism. Alarming studies get reported prominently and at length, but when they are later called into question, the mainstream press reports the refutations with a buried paragraph, if that much. Googling around, this seems to be happening in this case. Of course, the problem is that, for reasons of evolutionary psychology, only bad news is actually news to most editors and consumers....
...Setting aside the thorough-going politicization of climate science (assuming that's possible), I believe that a more general problem with peer-review is that studies that tend to confirm the dominant narrative in a science have a much easier time getting through the peer-review seive than those that challenge it. And this is especially so, if the claimed results are strikingly novel, e.g., phytoplankton declining massively....
...So good news: No massive decline in ocean phytoplankton after all. Over at his excellent New York Times blog, Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin takes readers through the whole saga (really folks, please go read it). Revkin points out that this is how science is supposed work - claims are made, challenged, defended, rechallenged, with the process leading us ever closer to actually describing reality.
However, how the study was reported in the mainstream press illustrates a big problem with journalism. Alarming studies get reported prominently and at length, but when they are later called into question, the mainstream press reports the refutations with a buried paragraph, if that much. Googling around, this seems to be happening in this case. Of course, the problem is that, for reasons of evolutionary psychology, only bad news is actually news to most editors and consumers....
...Setting aside the thorough-going politicization of climate science (assuming that's possible), I believe that a more general problem with peer-review is that studies that tend to confirm the dominant narrative in a science have a much easier time getting through the peer-review seive than those that challenge it. And this is especially so, if the claimed results are strikingly novel, e.g., phytoplankton declining massively....
Wal-Mart brings guns back
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart said Thursday that it is bringing guns back to many of its U.S. stores in an effort to lift slumping sales.
In 2006, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world's largest retailer stopped selling guns in the majority of its stores, blaming slow demand for those types of firearms.
Wal-Mart currently sells rifles, shotguns and ammunition in about 1,300 stores in the United States.
Those firearms will now be available at about half of Wal-Mart's 4,000 stores.
The retailer doesn't sell handguns in any of its stores, other than in Alaska....
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Wal-Mart said Thursday that it is bringing guns back to many of its U.S. stores in an effort to lift slumping sales.
In 2006, Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), the world's largest retailer stopped selling guns in the majority of its stores, blaming slow demand for those types of firearms.
Wal-Mart currently sells rifles, shotguns and ammunition in about 1,300 stores in the United States.
Those firearms will now be available at about half of Wal-Mart's 4,000 stores.
The retailer doesn't sell handguns in any of its stores, other than in Alaska....
Obama's Silence on Boeing Is Unacceptable
...South Carolina is a right-to-work state, and we're proud that within our borders workers cannot be required to join a labor union as a condition of employment. We don't need unions playing middlemen between our companies and our employees. We don't want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate. And we will not stand for them intimidating South Carolinians.
That is apparently too much for President Obama and his union-beholden appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, who have asked the courts to intervene and force Boeing to stop production in South Carolina. The NLRB wants Boeing to produce the planes only in Washington state, where its workers must belong to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers....
...The actions by the NLRB are nothing less than a direct assault on the 22 right-to-work states across America. They are also an unprecedented attack on an iconic American company that is being told by the federal government—which seems to regard its authority as endless—where and how to build airplanes.
The president has been silent since his hand-selected NLRB General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who has not yet been confirmed by the United States Senate as required by law, chose to engage in economic warfare on behalf of the unions last week.
While silence in this case can be assumed to mean consent, President Obama's silence is not acceptable—not to me, and certainly not to the millions of South Carolinians who are rightly aghast at the thought of the greatest economic development success our state has seen in decades being ripped away by federal bureaucrats who appear to be little more than union puppets. ...
Ron Paul: More Progressive Than Obama?
Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I'll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn't protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn't overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government's criminal behavior.
Can the same be said for Barack Obama?
Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you'll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul's good on the war stuff -- yawn -- but otherwise he's a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who'd kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He's more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He's a Democrat. And gosh, even if he's made a few mistakes, he means well.
Sure he's a murderer, in other words, but at least he's not a Republican!
Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn't be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, saying they'd prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)