Obama, 2007: Time to End ‘Deplorable Conditions at Some VA Hospitals’
...After seven years of an Administration that has stretched our military to the breaking point, ignored deplorable conditions at some VA hospitals, and neglected the planning and preparation necessary to care for our returning heroes, America’s veterans deserve a President who will fight for them not just when it’s easy or convenient, but every hour of every day for the next four years....
It's Not Just the VA; Government Health System Waiting Lists Are Lethal in Canada, Too
At least 40 veterans may have died in Phoenix alone, while languishing on secret Veterans Administration waiting lists, according to CNN. Such delays are typical of government-controlled, single-payer systems, I wrote yesterday. They're such a regular feature that the U.K. National Health Service boasts "you have the legal right to start your NHS consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral."
And the deaths that go with such delays may also be a regular feature of single-payer systems.
"Canada's growing wait times for health care may have contributed to the deaths of 44,273 Canadian women between 1993 and 2009," that country's Fraser Institute announced just yesterday....
Monday, May 26, 2014
White House: No More CIA Fake Vaccination Programs
The White House has announced that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is no longer conducting fake vaccination campaigns, which the World Health Organization blames for contributing to the resurgence of the polio virus. The CIA previously employed the controversial tactic in Pakistan, where they collected DNA from children as part of the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden....
...The White House's letter comes several days after the Pakistani government laid partial blame on the CIA for the virus's rise and less than two weeks after a WHO Emergency Committee issued a statement that the debilitating disease is spreading at an alarming rate...
The White House has announced that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is no longer conducting fake vaccination campaigns, which the World Health Organization blames for contributing to the resurgence of the polio virus. The CIA previously employed the controversial tactic in Pakistan, where they collected DNA from children as part of the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden....
...The White House's letter comes several days after the Pakistani government laid partial blame on the CIA for the virus's rise and less than two weeks after a WHO Emergency Committee issued a statement that the debilitating disease is spreading at an alarming rate...
The New Obama Narrative: Epic Incompetence
The last eight months have battered the Obama administration. From the botched rollout of the health-care website to the VA scandal, events are now cementing certain impressions about Mr. Obama. Among the most damaging is this: He is unusually, even epically, incompetent. That is not news to some of us, but it seems to be a conclusion more and more people are drawing.
The emerging narrative of Barack Obama, the one that actually comports to reality, is that he is a rare political talent but a disaster when it comes to actually governing. The list of his failures is nothing short of staggering, from shovel-ready jobs that weren’t so shovel ready to the failures of healthcare.gov to the VA debacle. But it also includes the president’s failure to tame the debt, lower poverty, decrease income inequality, and increase job creation. He promised to close Guantanamo Bay and didn’t. His administration promised to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a civilian jury in New York but they were forced to retreat because of outrage in his own party. Early on in his administration Mr. Obama put his prestige on the line to secure the Olympics for Chicago in 2016 and he failed. ...
The last eight months have battered the Obama administration. From the botched rollout of the health-care website to the VA scandal, events are now cementing certain impressions about Mr. Obama. Among the most damaging is this: He is unusually, even epically, incompetent. That is not news to some of us, but it seems to be a conclusion more and more people are drawing.
The emerging narrative of Barack Obama, the one that actually comports to reality, is that he is a rare political talent but a disaster when it comes to actually governing. The list of his failures is nothing short of staggering, from shovel-ready jobs that weren’t so shovel ready to the failures of healthcare.gov to the VA debacle. But it also includes the president’s failure to tame the debt, lower poverty, decrease income inequality, and increase job creation. He promised to close Guantanamo Bay and didn’t. His administration promised to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a civilian jury in New York but they were forced to retreat because of outrage in his own party. Early on in his administration Mr. Obama put his prestige on the line to secure the Olympics for Chicago in 2016 and he failed. ...
Sunday, May 25, 2014
“Operation Choke Point”
...The general outline is the DOJ and bank regulators are putting the screws to banks and other third-party payment processors to refuse banking services to companies and industries that are deemed to pose a “reputation risk” to the bank. Most controversially, the list of dubious industries is populated by enterprises that are entirely, or at least generally, legal. Tom Blumer’s extremely informative post summarizing what is known to date about Operation Choke Point reproduces the list, which includes things such as ammunition sales, escort services, get-quick-rich schemes, on-line gambling, “racist materials” and payday loans. Quite obviously, some of these things are not like the other; moreover, just because there are some bad apples within a legal industry doesn’t justify effectively destroying a legal industry through secret executive fiat.
Especially ironic, of course, is that while the DOJ and bank regulators are choking off financial services to legal industries, they are also encouraging banks to provide banking services to illegal marijuana sales.
The ability to destroy legal industries through secret actions to deprive them of banking services has obvious political consequences. For example, it was reported last week that firearms shops are alleging that Operation Choke Point is being used to pressure banks into refusing to providing financial services. There are also reports that porn stars (and here) have had their bank accounts terminated for “moral” reasons related to the “reputation risk” of banking individuals in the porn industry. IRS officials must already be salivating about ways to apply Operation Choke Point to tea party groups.
In principle, of course, the logic of Operation Choke Point could be extended to groups not currently targeted. Notably absent from the FDIC’s hit list, for example, are abortion clinics, radical environmental groups, or, well, marijuana shops, for that matter. Something similar was done to cut off credit-card payments to support the operation of WikiLeaks....
...The general outline is the DOJ and bank regulators are putting the screws to banks and other third-party payment processors to refuse banking services to companies and industries that are deemed to pose a “reputation risk” to the bank. Most controversially, the list of dubious industries is populated by enterprises that are entirely, or at least generally, legal. Tom Blumer’s extremely informative post summarizing what is known to date about Operation Choke Point reproduces the list, which includes things such as ammunition sales, escort services, get-quick-rich schemes, on-line gambling, “racist materials” and payday loans. Quite obviously, some of these things are not like the other; moreover, just because there are some bad apples within a legal industry doesn’t justify effectively destroying a legal industry through secret executive fiat.
Especially ironic, of course, is that while the DOJ and bank regulators are choking off financial services to legal industries, they are also encouraging banks to provide banking services to illegal marijuana sales.
The ability to destroy legal industries through secret actions to deprive them of banking services has obvious political consequences. For example, it was reported last week that firearms shops are alleging that Operation Choke Point is being used to pressure banks into refusing to providing financial services. There are also reports that porn stars (and here) have had their bank accounts terminated for “moral” reasons related to the “reputation risk” of banking individuals in the porn industry. IRS officials must already be salivating about ways to apply Operation Choke Point to tea party groups.
In principle, of course, the logic of Operation Choke Point could be extended to groups not currently targeted. Notably absent from the FDIC’s hit list, for example, are abortion clinics, radical environmental groups, or, well, marijuana shops, for that matter. Something similar was done to cut off credit-card payments to support the operation of WikiLeaks....
Saturday, May 24, 2014
They Had a Dream
...And thus the elites had to wait for the man of their dreams.
When they found him, he was a rare breed: a genuine African American (his father was Kenyan) who thought and talked like the academics on both sides of his family, a product of the faculty lounge who dabbled in urban/race politics, a man who could speak to both ends of the liberals’ up-and-down coalition, and a would-be transformer of our public life whose quiet voice and low-key demeanor conveyed “moderation” in all that he spoke and did. Best of all, he was the person whom the two branches of the liberal kingdom—the academics and journalists—wanted to be, a man who shared their sensibilities and their views of the good and the beautiful. This was the chance of a lifetime to shape the world to their measure. He and they were the ones they were waiting for, and with him, they longed for transcendent achievements. But in the event they were undone by the three things Siegel had pegged as their signature weaknesses: They had too much belief in the brilliance of experts, they were completely dismissive of public opinion, and they had a contempt for the great middle class....
..."Sinclair Lewis’s 1920s never went away,” says Fred Siegel, citing Obama as the first American president to campaign against Main Street, in word, thought, and deed. There was “you didn’t build that!” said to every entrepreneur who imagined that his business had been his creation, and the comment on those clinging to guns and to God out of bitterness. But all that was just a prelude to the targeted attack on the middle class in his single and signature legislative creation. Last October, amid the troubled rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, some six million Americans who had purchased their plans on the individual market were stunned to find out that their plans were being canceled, and the new ones would not only cost them hundreds or thousands more but in many cases cause them to lose their own doctors and enjoy a less comprehensive level of care. ...
...With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the administration has badly injured that cause.” One could say also that for the better part of the past century intellectual liberals had been attempting to prove they had superior judgment, and that hadn’t gone too well, either. But to note that it was a setback for their belief in themselves and their wisdom might have been a little too much to expect.
But that doesn’t mean that we cannot draw some conclusions about them and their class and their kind. One is that they were perhaps not as good as they thought they were, and perhaps deserved to be not that much listened to. Another is that the people who shine in the faculty lounge ought to stay in it, that novelists have not been good judges of political horseflesh, and that if you really believe you belong to an aristocracy of the intellect, you most likely do not. The intellectual salons include a whole lot of windbags, and would have excluded a number of very effective real-world practitioners, such as Truman and Reagan and Ike.
“It is actually harder to do some of these things in reality than we thought when we put it down on paper,” a book review in the Washington Post quoted a former Obama health care adviser as saying. This can stand as the last word for the great aspiration, and the people who held it. They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done....
...And thus the elites had to wait for the man of their dreams.
When they found him, he was a rare breed: a genuine African American (his father was Kenyan) who thought and talked like the academics on both sides of his family, a product of the faculty lounge who dabbled in urban/race politics, a man who could speak to both ends of the liberals’ up-and-down coalition, and a would-be transformer of our public life whose quiet voice and low-key demeanor conveyed “moderation” in all that he spoke and did. Best of all, he was the person whom the two branches of the liberal kingdom—the academics and journalists—wanted to be, a man who shared their sensibilities and their views of the good and the beautiful. This was the chance of a lifetime to shape the world to their measure. He and they were the ones they were waiting for, and with him, they longed for transcendent achievements. But in the event they were undone by the three things Siegel had pegged as their signature weaknesses: They had too much belief in the brilliance of experts, they were completely dismissive of public opinion, and they had a contempt for the great middle class....
..."Sinclair Lewis’s 1920s never went away,” says Fred Siegel, citing Obama as the first American president to campaign against Main Street, in word, thought, and deed. There was “you didn’t build that!” said to every entrepreneur who imagined that his business had been his creation, and the comment on those clinging to guns and to God out of bitterness. But all that was just a prelude to the targeted attack on the middle class in his single and signature legislative creation. Last October, amid the troubled rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, some six million Americans who had purchased their plans on the individual market were stunned to find out that their plans were being canceled, and the new ones would not only cost them hundreds or thousands more but in many cases cause them to lose their own doctors and enjoy a less comprehensive level of care. ...
...With the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, the administration has badly injured that cause.” One could say also that for the better part of the past century intellectual liberals had been attempting to prove they had superior judgment, and that hadn’t gone too well, either. But to note that it was a setback for their belief in themselves and their wisdom might have been a little too much to expect.
But that doesn’t mean that we cannot draw some conclusions about them and their class and their kind. One is that they were perhaps not as good as they thought they were, and perhaps deserved to be not that much listened to. Another is that the people who shine in the faculty lounge ought to stay in it, that novelists have not been good judges of political horseflesh, and that if you really believe you belong to an aristocracy of the intellect, you most likely do not. The intellectual salons include a whole lot of windbags, and would have excluded a number of very effective real-world practitioners, such as Truman and Reagan and Ike.
“It is actually harder to do some of these things in reality than we thought when we put it down on paper,” a book review in the Washington Post quoted a former Obama health care adviser as saying. This can stand as the last word for the great aspiration, and the people who held it. They wanted their chance, and they got it. They had it. They blew it. They’re done....
The FT Isn't Just Saying Piketty Made A Mistake — It's Saying He Manipulated Data
...In a follow-up video on FT.com, Giles shows another example: Piketty appears to have added random numbers to certain formula to bend the data toward his hypothesis. "A 2 is added because the number wasn't high enough — it didn't seem to fit what he wanted to show in his charts, so he just added 2 to it," Giles says. "There was quite a lot of this sort of thing in his spreadsheets."...
Facts Are Stubborn Things . . . As Thomas Piketty Is Beginning to Find Out
...Thomas Piketty is in no doubt that data underpin the conclusions of his best selling economics book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” .
He writes, in the introduction: “Compared with previous works, one reason why this book stands out is that I have made an effort to collect as complete and consistent a set of historical sources as possible in order to study the dynamics of income and wealth distribution over the long run”.
While the conclusions of his work, including his call for an international wealth tax, have stirred controversy among academics, commentators and policy makers, even his critics have generally praised the ambition and quality of the data presented in the text.
Reviewing the book this month, Lord Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, said, “the principal weakness of the book is that the carefully assembled data do not live up to Piketty’s rhetoric about the nature of capitalism”.
The sense of diligence in Professor Piketty’s compilation of trends in wealth is bolstered by an online technical annex and spreadsheets containing the data, with sources.
An investigation by the Financial Times, however, has revealed many unexplained data entries and errors in the figures underlying some of the book’s key charts.
These are sufficiently serious to undermine Prof Piketty’s claim that the share of wealth owned by the richest in society has been rising and “the reason why wealth today is not as unequally distributed as in the past is simply that not enough time has passed since 1945”.
After referring back to the original data sources, the investigation found numerous mistakes in Prof Piketty’s work: simple fat-finger errors of transcription; suboptimal averaging techniques; multiple unexplained adjustments to the numbers; data entries with no sourcing, unexplained use of different time periods and inconsistent uses of source data....
...But while the two Harvard professors’ errors seemed to have been unintended, Giles levels a more serious critique: that Piketty actively manipulated his data.
His most damning claim: Piketty altered U.K. data to show that wealth distribution there is worse off than it appears to be.
Piketty says the share of income going to the top 10% never fell lower than 60%, and since the end of the 1970s has returned to 70%, a level not seen in 70 years.
But the data Piketty himself cites shows the top 10% share of wealth is no greater than 50%, and may be as low as 42%.
Giles writes: “This appears to be the result of swapping between data sources, not following the source notes, misinterpreting the more recent data and exaggerating increases in wealth inequality.“...
...The second thing we ought to note is that neither Giles, nor Giugliano, nor the Financial Times would have discovered that Piketty’s books is fundamentally flawed if they listened to Paul Krugman, who famously said on his blog that “if you think you’ve found an obvious hole, empirical or logical, in Piketty, you’re very probably wrong. He’s done his homework!” Yes, that was a real statement by Paul Krugman, and yes, it ought to haunt him for the rest of his life–and beyond. We now know that it is more accurate to say that Piketty fudged his homework. I doubt that Krugman knew that Piketty’s conclusions were pretty much made up out of thin air–if he did, there is truly something rotten in the state of economics–but the point is that Krugman tried his damnedest to ensure that no one would take a critical eye to Piketty’s data and conclusions. ...
Thomas Piketty ‘Cherry Picked’ Data In His Book Critiquing Capitalism
...Upon reviewing Piketty’s sources and research methodologies, Giles says he found transcript errors in the author’s spreadsheets and evidence that he used incorrect formulas.
Implying that these miscalculations may have been deliberate mistakes, Giles noted that some of the information used in the book looked like it had been “cherry picked.”
When FT contacted Piketty to question him about how he gathered his data, he told the outlet that he had used “a very diverse and heterogeneous set of data sources … [on which] one needs to make a number of adjustments to the raw data sources.”
Piketty added, “I have no doubt that my historical data series can be improved and will be improved in the future … but I would be very surprised if any of the substantive conclusion about the long-run evolution of wealth distributions was much affected by these improvements.”
Ever since its release last year, Piketty’s book has been enthusiastically applauded among left-leaning groups, lawmakers and economists.
Economist and Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University, said he considered the book to be the “most important economics book of the year – and maybe of the decade”.
And during the US portion of his book tour last month, Piketty had a meeting with US Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, gave a presentation to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and lectured at the International Monetary Fund and the UN.
In an email to the FT responding to Giles’ article, Piketty defended his findings, adding that income inequality might be even more pervasive in the West than what he outlines in his book.
...In a follow-up video on FT.com, Giles shows another example: Piketty appears to have added random numbers to certain formula to bend the data toward his hypothesis. "A 2 is added because the number wasn't high enough — it didn't seem to fit what he wanted to show in his charts, so he just added 2 to it," Giles says. "There was quite a lot of this sort of thing in his spreadsheets."...
Facts Are Stubborn Things . . . As Thomas Piketty Is Beginning to Find Out
...Thomas Piketty is in no doubt that data underpin the conclusions of his best selling economics book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” .
He writes, in the introduction: “Compared with previous works, one reason why this book stands out is that I have made an effort to collect as complete and consistent a set of historical sources as possible in order to study the dynamics of income and wealth distribution over the long run”.
While the conclusions of his work, including his call for an international wealth tax, have stirred controversy among academics, commentators and policy makers, even his critics have generally praised the ambition and quality of the data presented in the text.
Reviewing the book this month, Lord Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, said, “the principal weakness of the book is that the carefully assembled data do not live up to Piketty’s rhetoric about the nature of capitalism”.
The sense of diligence in Professor Piketty’s compilation of trends in wealth is bolstered by an online technical annex and spreadsheets containing the data, with sources.
An investigation by the Financial Times, however, has revealed many unexplained data entries and errors in the figures underlying some of the book’s key charts.
These are sufficiently serious to undermine Prof Piketty’s claim that the share of wealth owned by the richest in society has been rising and “the reason why wealth today is not as unequally distributed as in the past is simply that not enough time has passed since 1945”.
After referring back to the original data sources, the investigation found numerous mistakes in Prof Piketty’s work: simple fat-finger errors of transcription; suboptimal averaging techniques; multiple unexplained adjustments to the numbers; data entries with no sourcing, unexplained use of different time periods and inconsistent uses of source data....
...But while the two Harvard professors’ errors seemed to have been unintended, Giles levels a more serious critique: that Piketty actively manipulated his data.
His most damning claim: Piketty altered U.K. data to show that wealth distribution there is worse off than it appears to be.
Piketty says the share of income going to the top 10% never fell lower than 60%, and since the end of the 1970s has returned to 70%, a level not seen in 70 years.
But the data Piketty himself cites shows the top 10% share of wealth is no greater than 50%, and may be as low as 42%.
Giles writes: “This appears to be the result of swapping between data sources, not following the source notes, misinterpreting the more recent data and exaggerating increases in wealth inequality.“...
...The second thing we ought to note is that neither Giles, nor Giugliano, nor the Financial Times would have discovered that Piketty’s books is fundamentally flawed if they listened to Paul Krugman, who famously said on his blog that “if you think you’ve found an obvious hole, empirical or logical, in Piketty, you’re very probably wrong. He’s done his homework!” Yes, that was a real statement by Paul Krugman, and yes, it ought to haunt him for the rest of his life–and beyond. We now know that it is more accurate to say that Piketty fudged his homework. I doubt that Krugman knew that Piketty’s conclusions were pretty much made up out of thin air–if he did, there is truly something rotten in the state of economics–but the point is that Krugman tried his damnedest to ensure that no one would take a critical eye to Piketty’s data and conclusions. ...
Thomas Piketty ‘Cherry Picked’ Data In His Book Critiquing Capitalism
...Upon reviewing Piketty’s sources and research methodologies, Giles says he found transcript errors in the author’s spreadsheets and evidence that he used incorrect formulas.
Implying that these miscalculations may have been deliberate mistakes, Giles noted that some of the information used in the book looked like it had been “cherry picked.”
When FT contacted Piketty to question him about how he gathered his data, he told the outlet that he had used “a very diverse and heterogeneous set of data sources … [on which] one needs to make a number of adjustments to the raw data sources.”
Piketty added, “I have no doubt that my historical data series can be improved and will be improved in the future … but I would be very surprised if any of the substantive conclusion about the long-run evolution of wealth distributions was much affected by these improvements.”
Ever since its release last year, Piketty’s book has been enthusiastically applauded among left-leaning groups, lawmakers and economists.
Economist and Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton University, said he considered the book to be the “most important economics book of the year – and maybe of the decade”.
And during the US portion of his book tour last month, Piketty had a meeting with US Treasury secretary Jacob Lew, gave a presentation to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and lectured at the International Monetary Fund and the UN.
In an email to the FT responding to Giles’ article, Piketty defended his findings, adding that income inequality might be even more pervasive in the West than what he outlines in his book.
Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
--Jean Rostand
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”
-- Augustine of Hippo
--Jean Rostand
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”
-- Augustine of Hippo
Targeted? Gun sellers say ‘high risk’ label from feds cuts off banking options, restricts business
Gun retailers say the Obama administration is trying to put them out of business with regulations and investigations that bypass Congress and choke off their lines of credit, freeze their assets and prohibit online sales.
Since 2011, regulators have increased scrutiny on banks’ customers. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2011 urged banks to better manage the risks of their merchant customers who employ payment processors, such as PayPal, for credit card transactions. The FDIC listed gun retailers as “high risk” along with porn stores and drug paraphernalia shops....
Gun retailers say the Obama administration is trying to put them out of business with regulations and investigations that bypass Congress and choke off their lines of credit, freeze their assets and prohibit online sales.
Since 2011, regulators have increased scrutiny on banks’ customers. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2011 urged banks to better manage the risks of their merchant customers who employ payment processors, such as PayPal, for credit card transactions. The FDIC listed gun retailers as “high risk” along with porn stores and drug paraphernalia shops....
The Veterans Scandal: Socialized Medicine on Trial
Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.
The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.
Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)
But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory....
The VA’s Socialist Paradise
...As my National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, the usual excuses don’t apply here. The existence of the VA isn’t politically controversial. No one is trying to repeal it, or “sabotage” it. It hasn’t lacked for funds. Its budget has been increasing at a rapid clip. What we’re seeing is simply unaccountable bureaucracy in action....
In 2012, PolitiFact Rated Obama's Promise to "Make the VA a Leader in National Health" A "Promise Kept"
Is that embarrassing? Well, PolitiFact has revisited that old "promise kept" rating. It now rates it... "promise stalled."...
Krugman, Kristof, and Klein All Praised the "Success" of the VA's Socialized Medicine Model
...But the stupidity of the left is its abject refusal to see that The Government is a corporation, and is in fact the most powerful, richest, and most heavily armed corporation in the history of the world.
The left endlessly rages against misbehaving corporations with one-one thousandth of the resources of the government, and of course none of the government's armed agents and prison wardens, and endlessly fights to take power out of the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated unarmed corporation... and put that power into the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated armed corporation.
They're never quite able to understand this: The conservative preference for power in private hands isn't that we love big, unaccountable, guild-agenda-serving corporations.
It's that the alternative ever proposed by the left is just an even bigger, more unaccountable, more guild-agenda-serving corporation called the US Government.
And you can't quit the US Government without quitting the the United States itself.
Socialist Supermodel
Not long ago, the left raved about the VA.
...Krugman is far from alone in having oversold the VA. Timothy Noah, then with Slate.com, proclaimed in 2005: "Socialized medicine has been tried in the United States, and it has proven superior to health care supplied by the private sector. . . . The socialized medicine to which I refer is the complex of hospitals managed by the Veterans Administration." His post, "The Triumph of Socialized Medicine," was based on a Washington Monthly article by Phillip Longman, which carried the slightly more modest headline "The Best Care Anywhere." And in 2009, Ezra Klein revealed that "one of my favorite ideas" is "expanding the Veterans Health Administration to non-veterans."...
Left's VA-Worship Comes Back to Bite
...Similarly, Nicholas Kristof of the Times wrote in 2009:
Take the hospital system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health system in the United States. It is fully government run, much more “socialized medicine” than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effectiveelements in the American medical establishment.
Just last year, Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton wrote in the pages of the Times:
Remarkably, Americans of all political stripes have long reserved for our veterans the purest form of socialized medicine, the vast health system operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (generally known as the V.A. health system). If socialized medicine is as bad as so many on this side of the Atlantic claim, why have both political parties ruling this land deemed socialized medicine the best health system for military veterans? Or do they just not care about them?...
...Jonathan Golob of The Seattle Stranger has written in the same vein: “Every time I read about a Teabagger ranting about how socialized medicine will destroy this country I think of the VA system. There it is, a huge and vastly important universal healthcare system—government run, single payer and therefore socialist—right here in the brave and privatized United States: The Veterans Affairs hospitals.”...
Liberals touted Veterans Affairs hospitals as evidence government-run health care works
...Both authors cited Phillip Longman, who wrote an influential book on the Left titled Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours. Longman, in a 2005 article for the Washington Monthly that led to the book, wrote, “It turns out that precisely because the VHA is a big, government-run system that has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients, it has incentives for investing in quality and keeping its patients well--incentives that are lacking in for-profit medicine.”
The description of the system offered by liberals stands in stark contrast to the horrifying reality depicted in recent reports on how the veterans' health care system has neglected patients and covered up wait times – at a deadly cost....
Veterans scandal risks engulfing Obama
Amid contrived outrage over Benghazi and the improving fortunes of its healthcare reform, the Obama administration could be facing a genuine scandal about its treatment of military veterans that has the potential to attract broad political condemnation of its competence.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor.
More damning, the department is investigating the claims of a whistleblower doctor in Arizona that dozens of patients at one hospital died while they were languishing on a hidden waiting list without ever being given an appointment....
Obama warned about VA wait-time problems during 2008 transition
The Obama administration received clear notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care — problems that have turned into a growing scandal.
Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting....
This memo shows that the VA knew of records manipulation in 2010
...Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”
The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days....
Report: Obama transition team was warned about unreliable wait times at VA in 2008
...There are three steps in Hopenchange crisis management: (1) they profess to be “mad as hell”; (2) they accept a resignation/announce the retirement/place on “administrative leave” some relatively low-ranking officials; (3) as time wears on and media interest fades, they pronounce the whole thing a phony scandal. Their problem with the VA mess is that, no matter how long it drags out, they don’t dare pronounce this one “phony”; they can laugh at “#Benghazi” but they won’t laugh at wounded troops. So they need a Plan B for defusing the crisis, which, in this case, will be to claim that it’s another problem they’ve inherited from Bush. For, er, five and a half years....
Pauly Krugnuts: Health Care Confidential
..I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system's success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn't just pay the bills in this system -- it runs the hospitals and clinics.
No, I'm not talking about some faraway country. The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate....
...The secret of its success is the fact that it's a universal, integrated system. Because it covers all veterans, the system doesn't need to employ legions of administrative staff to check patients' coverage and demand payment from their insurance companies. Because it covers all aspects of medical care, it has been able to take the lead in electronic record-keeping and other innovations that reduce costs, ensure effective treatment and help prevent medical errors.
Moreover, the V.H.A., as Phillip Longman put it in The Washington Monthly, ''has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients.'' As a result, it ''actually has an incentive to invest in prevention and more effective disease management. When it does so, it isn't just saving money for somebody else. It's maximizing its own resources. In short, it can do what the rest of the health care sector can't seem to, which is to pursue quality systematically without threatening its own financial viability.''...
...For the lesson of the V.H.A.'s success story -- that a government agency can deliver better care at lower cost than the private sector -- runs completely counter to the pro-privatization, anti-government conventional wisdom that dominates today's Washington....
VA Budget Skyrockets Despite Federal Spending Cuts
DAYTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs spends more today in inflation adjusted dollars than it did after World War II and the Vietnam War, when millions of troops returned from the battlefield, according to federal budget figures.
By the next fiscal year, the VA budget is projected to rise 58 percent since 2009 to $152.7 billion, more than double the $70.9 billion spent in 2005, agency figures show.
At the Dayton VA, spending has risen to a projected $285.3 million this year compared to $131.2 million in 2001.
Two factors more than any others have driven health care costs higher at the Dayton VA Medical Center, officials said. Aging Vietnam veterans who have more health needs as they grow older, and the return home of thousands of veterans from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It's the number of veterans returning from the war, but it's also the conditions they are returning with," said Dr. William J. Germann, Dayton VA chief of primary care service and a retired Air Force brigadier general. "There are a number of veterans coming back dysfunctional and as a result may not be able to hold a job."
Straining under the national debt, budget cutters have slashed billions in federal spending and ordered unpaid furloughs of hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense civilian employees, but the VA's spending has more than doubled in little more than a decade and keeps climbing....
The Veterans Health Administration Really Does Offer 'Lessons' in 'Socialized Medicine'
Just a couple of years ago, Paul Krugman pointed to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as a "huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform." He gloated, "yes, this is 'socialized medicine.'"
Similarly, a letter touted by Physicians for a National Health Program trumpeted "the success of 22 wealthy countries and our own Department of Veterans Affairs, which use single-payer systems to provide better care for more people at far less cost."
How could a bloated government bureaucracy achieve such low-cost success? As we found out recently, it's by quietly sticking veterans on a waiting list and putting off their treatment for months—sometimes until the patients are far too dead to need much in the way of expensive care. Which is to say, calling it a "success" is stretching the meaning of the word beyond recognition.
And, while the White House insists it learned from press reports about the secret waiting lists, Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledges that the administration long knew about "the backlog and disability claims" that have accumulated in the VHA.
This should surprise nobody. Canada's government-run single-payer health system has long suffered waiting times for care. The country's Fraser Institute estimates "the national median waiting time from specialist appointment to treatment increased from 9.3 weeks in 2010 to 9.5 weeks in 2011."
Likewise, once famously social democratic Sweden has seen a rise in private health coverage in parallel to the state system because of long delays to receive care. "It's quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks' time rather than having to wait for a year," privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio
An article in The Local noted that "visitors are sometimes surprised to learn about year-long waiting times for cancer patients."
Britain's single-payer National Health Service (NHS) is up front about wait times for care, with the organization's website promising, "you have the legal right to start your NHS consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral." Last year, the Daily Telegraph reported that "waiting lists, which have hovered around 2.5 million patients in recent years, reached 2.88 million in June, the highest level since May 2008."...
Many have wondered about Barack Obama’s prolonged silence concerning the disastrous situation at the Veterans Administration hospitals and then his odd detached demeanor (well, maybe not that odd for him) when he finally did discuss it at a press conference.
The answer is simple. His lifetime dream of a free public (single payer) healthcare system for all just disintegrated in front of him. Forget the wildly ambitious and pervasive “Affordable Care Act,” the government couldn’t even handle the health of our wounded servicemen, acknowledged for years to be by far the group most deserving of medical attention in our country. With veterans dying while waiting lists are falsified, it’s hard to see government healthcare as anything but incompetent, disgraceful and quite possibly criminal.
Government has failed utterly. Does anyone have any doubt that Halliburton or even the dreaded Koch brothers could have better handled the health of our wounded warriors? Probably almost any business would have. There at least would have been some accountability. (It’s interesting to see the quaint Bernie Sanders, the one self-described socialist in the Congress, as opposed to the closeted ones, being the most outspoken defender of VA malfeasance and urging us not to “rush to judgement” on a three page bill.)
But it’s not just healthcare, although it’s certainly prominent, important and symbolic. The Obama administration has been the best advertisement for libertarianism across the board in recent memory....
The VA’s Socialist Paradise
...As my National Review colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, the usual excuses don’t apply here. The existence of the VA isn’t politically controversial. No one is trying to repeal it, or “sabotage” it. It hasn’t lacked for funds. Its budget has been increasing at a rapid clip. What we’re seeing is simply unaccountable bureaucracy in action....
In 2012, PolitiFact Rated Obama's Promise to "Make the VA a Leader in National Health" A "Promise Kept"
Is that embarrassing? Well, PolitiFact has revisited that old "promise kept" rating. It now rates it... "promise stalled."...
Krugman, Kristof, and Klein All Praised the "Success" of the VA's Socialized Medicine Model
...But the stupidity of the left is its abject refusal to see that The Government is a corporation, and is in fact the most powerful, richest, and most heavily armed corporation in the history of the world.
The left endlessly rages against misbehaving corporations with one-one thousandth of the resources of the government, and of course none of the government's armed agents and prison wardens, and endlessly fights to take power out of the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated unarmed corporation... and put that power into the hands of the misbehaving, selfishly-motivated armed corporation.
They're never quite able to understand this: The conservative preference for power in private hands isn't that we love big, unaccountable, guild-agenda-serving corporations.
It's that the alternative ever proposed by the left is just an even bigger, more unaccountable, more guild-agenda-serving corporation called the US Government.
And you can't quit the US Government without quitting the the United States itself.
Socialist Supermodel
Not long ago, the left raved about the VA.
...Krugman is far from alone in having oversold the VA. Timothy Noah, then with Slate.com, proclaimed in 2005: "Socialized medicine has been tried in the United States, and it has proven superior to health care supplied by the private sector. . . . The socialized medicine to which I refer is the complex of hospitals managed by the Veterans Administration." His post, "The Triumph of Socialized Medicine," was based on a Washington Monthly article by Phillip Longman, which carried the slightly more modest headline "The Best Care Anywhere." And in 2009, Ezra Klein revealed that "one of my favorite ideas" is "expanding the Veterans Health Administration to non-veterans."...
Left's VA-Worship Comes Back to Bite
...Similarly, Nicholas Kristof of the Times wrote in 2009:
Take the hospital system run by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health system in the United States. It is fully government run, much more “socialized medicine” than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effectiveelements in the American medical establishment.
Just last year, Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton wrote in the pages of the Times:
Remarkably, Americans of all political stripes have long reserved for our veterans the purest form of socialized medicine, the vast health system operated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (generally known as the V.A. health system). If socialized medicine is as bad as so many on this side of the Atlantic claim, why have both political parties ruling this land deemed socialized medicine the best health system for military veterans? Or do they just not care about them?...
...Jonathan Golob of The Seattle Stranger has written in the same vein: “Every time I read about a Teabagger ranting about how socialized medicine will destroy this country I think of the VA system. There it is, a huge and vastly important universal healthcare system—government run, single payer and therefore socialist—right here in the brave and privatized United States: The Veterans Affairs hospitals.”...
Liberals touted Veterans Affairs hospitals as evidence government-run health care works
...Both authors cited Phillip Longman, who wrote an influential book on the Left titled Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care is Better Than Yours. Longman, in a 2005 article for the Washington Monthly that led to the book, wrote, “It turns out that precisely because the VHA is a big, government-run system that has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients, it has incentives for investing in quality and keeping its patients well--incentives that are lacking in for-profit medicine.”
The description of the system offered by liberals stands in stark contrast to the horrifying reality depicted in recent reports on how the veterans' health care system has neglected patients and covered up wait times – at a deadly cost....
Veterans scandal risks engulfing Obama
Amid contrived outrage over Benghazi and the improving fortunes of its healthcare reform, the Obama administration could be facing a genuine scandal about its treatment of military veterans that has the potential to attract broad political condemnation of its competence.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor.
More damning, the department is investigating the claims of a whistleblower doctor in Arizona that dozens of patients at one hospital died while they were languishing on a hidden waiting list without ever being given an appointment....
Obama warned about VA wait-time problems during 2008 transition
The Obama administration received clear notice more than five years ago that VA medical facilities were reporting inaccurate waiting times and experiencing scheduling failures that threatened to deny veterans timely health care — problems that have turned into a growing scandal.
Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting....
This memo shows that the VA knew of records manipulation in 2010
...Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”
The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days....
Report: Obama transition team was warned about unreliable wait times at VA in 2008
...There are three steps in Hopenchange crisis management: (1) they profess to be “mad as hell”; (2) they accept a resignation/announce the retirement/place on “administrative leave” some relatively low-ranking officials; (3) as time wears on and media interest fades, they pronounce the whole thing a phony scandal. Their problem with the VA mess is that, no matter how long it drags out, they don’t dare pronounce this one “phony”; they can laugh at “#Benghazi” but they won’t laugh at wounded troops. So they need a Plan B for defusing the crisis, which, in this case, will be to claim that it’s another problem they’ve inherited from Bush. For, er, five and a half years....
Pauly Krugnuts: Health Care Confidential
..I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system's success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn't just pay the bills in this system -- it runs the hospitals and clinics.
No, I'm not talking about some faraway country. The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate....
...The secret of its success is the fact that it's a universal, integrated system. Because it covers all veterans, the system doesn't need to employ legions of administrative staff to check patients' coverage and demand payment from their insurance companies. Because it covers all aspects of medical care, it has been able to take the lead in electronic record-keeping and other innovations that reduce costs, ensure effective treatment and help prevent medical errors.
Moreover, the V.H.A., as Phillip Longman put it in The Washington Monthly, ''has nearly a lifetime relationship with its patients.'' As a result, it ''actually has an incentive to invest in prevention and more effective disease management. When it does so, it isn't just saving money for somebody else. It's maximizing its own resources. In short, it can do what the rest of the health care sector can't seem to, which is to pursue quality systematically without threatening its own financial viability.''...
...For the lesson of the V.H.A.'s success story -- that a government agency can deliver better care at lower cost than the private sector -- runs completely counter to the pro-privatization, anti-government conventional wisdom that dominates today's Washington....
VA Budget Skyrockets Despite Federal Spending Cuts
DAYTON -- The Department of Veterans Affairs spends more today in inflation adjusted dollars than it did after World War II and the Vietnam War, when millions of troops returned from the battlefield, according to federal budget figures.
By the next fiscal year, the VA budget is projected to rise 58 percent since 2009 to $152.7 billion, more than double the $70.9 billion spent in 2005, agency figures show.
At the Dayton VA, spending has risen to a projected $285.3 million this year compared to $131.2 million in 2001.
Two factors more than any others have driven health care costs higher at the Dayton VA Medical Center, officials said. Aging Vietnam veterans who have more health needs as they grow older, and the return home of thousands of veterans from the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It's the number of veterans returning from the war, but it's also the conditions they are returning with," said Dr. William J. Germann, Dayton VA chief of primary care service and a retired Air Force brigadier general. "There are a number of veterans coming back dysfunctional and as a result may not be able to hold a job."
Straining under the national debt, budget cutters have slashed billions in federal spending and ordered unpaid furloughs of hundreds of thousands of Department of Defense civilian employees, but the VA's spending has more than doubled in little more than a decade and keeps climbing....
The Veterans Health Administration Really Does Offer 'Lessons' in 'Socialized Medicine'
Just a couple of years ago, Paul Krugman pointed to the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as a "huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform." He gloated, "yes, this is 'socialized medicine.'"
Similarly, a letter touted by Physicians for a National Health Program trumpeted "the success of 22 wealthy countries and our own Department of Veterans Affairs, which use single-payer systems to provide better care for more people at far less cost."
How could a bloated government bureaucracy achieve such low-cost success? As we found out recently, it's by quietly sticking veterans on a waiting list and putting off their treatment for months—sometimes until the patients are far too dead to need much in the way of expensive care. Which is to say, calling it a "success" is stretching the meaning of the word beyond recognition.
And, while the White House insists it learned from press reports about the secret waiting lists, Press Secretary Jay Carney acknowledges that the administration long knew about "the backlog and disability claims" that have accumulated in the VHA.
This should surprise nobody. Canada's government-run single-payer health system has long suffered waiting times for care. The country's Fraser Institute estimates "the national median waiting time from specialist appointment to treatment increased from 9.3 weeks in 2010 to 9.5 weeks in 2011."
Likewise, once famously social democratic Sweden has seen a rise in private health coverage in parallel to the state system because of long delays to receive care. "It's quicker to get a colleague back to work if you have an operation in two weeks' time rather than having to wait for a year," privately insured Anna Norlander told Sveriges Radio
An article in The Local noted that "visitors are sometimes surprised to learn about year-long waiting times for cancer patients."
Britain's single-payer National Health Service (NHS) is up front about wait times for care, with the organization's website promising, "you have the legal right to start your NHS consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral." Last year, the Daily Telegraph reported that "waiting lists, which have hovered around 2.5 million patients in recent years, reached 2.88 million in June, the highest level since May 2008."...
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Divorce and suicide risk
...Divorced men were over eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women (RR = 8.36, 95% CI = 4.24 to16.38). After taking into account other factors that have been reported to contribute to suicide, divorced men still experienced much increased risks of suicide than divorced women. They were nearly 9.7 times more likely to kill themselves than comparable divorced women (RR = 9.68, 95% CI = 4.87 to 19.22). Put another way, for every divorced woman that committed suicide, over nine divorced men killed themselves....
...Divorced men were over eight times more likely to commit suicide than divorced women (RR = 8.36, 95% CI = 4.24 to16.38). After taking into account other factors that have been reported to contribute to suicide, divorced men still experienced much increased risks of suicide than divorced women. They were nearly 9.7 times more likely to kill themselves than comparable divorced women (RR = 9.68, 95% CI = 4.87 to 19.22). Put another way, for every divorced woman that committed suicide, over nine divorced men killed themselves....
Security Tight at Secretive Democracy Alliance Meeting
Democrats have long railed against the lack of transparency in political funding, but security was airtight this week as a hush-hush network of progressive moneymen and activists held a closed-door conference to map out their plan to shift U.S. policy to the left.
At the elegant Ritz Carlton hotel in downtown Chicago, wealthy donors, Democratic politicians, and representatives from left-leaning activist groups met for a conference hosted by the Democracy Alliance, a progressive donor network that funnels millions of dollars to undisclosed activist groups and political causes....
...A tired-sounding Alan Grayson, who is embroiled in a messy divorce involving bigamy and assault allegations, barked schedule changes into his cell phone in the lounge area, backlit by floor-to-ceiling views of the Chicago skyline.
David Axelrod dined at the hotel’s restaurant Deca, which had a sign outside advertising its $100 grilled cheese sandwich filled with “40-year aged Wisconsin cheddar infused with 24K gold flakes.”...
The Black Book of Tom Steyer
Allegations of fraud plague hedge fund of Democratic super-donor
The former hedge fund of one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors was allegedly involved in a scheme to defraud foreign investors out of tens of millions of dollars, according to documents filed in a Texas court....
...The case, which was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds—the court agreed with Farallon that it didn’t operate in Texas and hence could not be sued there—is being re-examined by the Republican politicians and activists scrutinizing the record of the billionaire and controversial environmentalist, who has pledged $100 million to help Democrats in this year’s midterm elections....
Democrats have long railed against the lack of transparency in political funding, but security was airtight this week as a hush-hush network of progressive moneymen and activists held a closed-door conference to map out their plan to shift U.S. policy to the left.
At the elegant Ritz Carlton hotel in downtown Chicago, wealthy donors, Democratic politicians, and representatives from left-leaning activist groups met for a conference hosted by the Democracy Alliance, a progressive donor network that funnels millions of dollars to undisclosed activist groups and political causes....
...A tired-sounding Alan Grayson, who is embroiled in a messy divorce involving bigamy and assault allegations, barked schedule changes into his cell phone in the lounge area, backlit by floor-to-ceiling views of the Chicago skyline.
David Axelrod dined at the hotel’s restaurant Deca, which had a sign outside advertising its $100 grilled cheese sandwich filled with “40-year aged Wisconsin cheddar infused with 24K gold flakes.”...
The Black Book of Tom Steyer
Allegations of fraud plague hedge fund of Democratic super-donor
The former hedge fund of one of the Democratic Party’s most important donors was allegedly involved in a scheme to defraud foreign investors out of tens of millions of dollars, according to documents filed in a Texas court....
...The case, which was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds—the court agreed with Farallon that it didn’t operate in Texas and hence could not be sued there—is being re-examined by the Republican politicians and activists scrutinizing the record of the billionaire and controversial environmentalist, who has pledged $100 million to help Democrats in this year’s midterm elections....
The economics of political correctness
... I may buy an exquisite variety of wine because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation. But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start drinking the same wine, or attending the same university.
If I value those goods for their intrinsic qualities, their increasing popularity will not trouble me at all. After all, the enjoyment derived from wine or learning is not fixed, so your enjoyment does not subtract from my enjoyment. I may even invite others to join me – we can all have more of it.
But if you see me moaning that the winemakers/the university have ‘sold out’, if you see me whinging about those ignoramuses who do not deserve the product because they (unlike me, of course) do not really appreciate it, you can safely conclude that for me, this good is a positional good. (Or was, before everybody else discovered it.) We can all become more sophisticated wine consumers, and we can all become better educated. But we can never all be above the national average, or in the top group, in terms of wine-connoisseurship, education, income, or anything else. We can all improve in absolute terms, but we cannot all simultaneously improve in relative terms. ...
... I may buy an exquisite variety of wine because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation. But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start drinking the same wine, or attending the same university.
If I value those goods for their intrinsic qualities, their increasing popularity will not trouble me at all. After all, the enjoyment derived from wine or learning is not fixed, so your enjoyment does not subtract from my enjoyment. I may even invite others to join me – we can all have more of it.
But if you see me moaning that the winemakers/the university have ‘sold out’, if you see me whinging about those ignoramuses who do not deserve the product because they (unlike me, of course) do not really appreciate it, you can safely conclude that for me, this good is a positional good. (Or was, before everybody else discovered it.) We can all become more sophisticated wine consumers, and we can all become better educated. But we can never all be above the national average, or in the top group, in terms of wine-connoisseurship, education, income, or anything else. We can all improve in absolute terms, but we cannot all simultaneously improve in relative terms. ...
Union leader representing news industry joins group that shuns news coverage
Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a Democratic donor network that has raised more than $30 million. CWA senior director George Kohl joined the network last year.
The group is highly secretive and goes to great efforts to prevent any reporters from covering its activities. At a recent gathering in Chicago, alliance members called security on Politico reporter Kenneth P. Vogel for trying to interview a member.
That is pretty ironic because one of the groups that CWA represents is … reporters. Its website boasts that its members include workers at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ABC andNBC, among others. The Newspaper Guild of America, which represents about 34,000 news industry workers, is part of the CWA.
The guild's constitution states that part of its mission is to "Raise the standards of journalism and ethics of the industry." That would seem to pretty clearly conflict with Cohen's membership in the Democracy Alliance.
The CWA is itself part of the AFL-CIO labor federation, an aggressively partisan union. It has made more than $36 million to political contributions since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Of that, 99 percent has gone to Democrats. It has spent more than $43 million on lobbying over the same period....
Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a Democratic donor network that has raised more than $30 million. CWA senior director George Kohl joined the network last year.
The group is highly secretive and goes to great efforts to prevent any reporters from covering its activities. At a recent gathering in Chicago, alliance members called security on Politico reporter Kenneth P. Vogel for trying to interview a member.
That is pretty ironic because one of the groups that CWA represents is … reporters. Its website boasts that its members include workers at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, ABC andNBC, among others. The Newspaper Guild of America, which represents about 34,000 news industry workers, is part of the CWA.
The guild's constitution states that part of its mission is to "Raise the standards of journalism and ethics of the industry." That would seem to pretty clearly conflict with Cohen's membership in the Democracy Alliance.
The CWA is itself part of the AFL-CIO labor federation, an aggressively partisan union. It has made more than $36 million to political contributions since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Of that, 99 percent has gone to Democrats. It has spent more than $43 million on lobbying over the same period....
The Global Climate Model clique feedback loop
...AND who has the time and indirect support etc, gets funded? Who reviews the grants?
Why, the very people you would be competing with, who all have a number of vested interests in there being an emergency, because without an emergency the US government might fund two or even three distinct efforts to write a functioning climate model, but they’d never fund forty or fifty such efforts. It is in nobody’s best interests in this group to admit outsiders — all of those groups have grad students they need to place, jobs they need to have materialize for the ones that won’t continue in research, and themselves depend on not antagonizing their friends and colleagues....
...AND who has the time and indirect support etc, gets funded? Who reviews the grants?
Why, the very people you would be competing with, who all have a number of vested interests in there being an emergency, because without an emergency the US government might fund two or even three distinct efforts to write a functioning climate model, but they’d never fund forty or fifty such efforts. It is in nobody’s best interests in this group to admit outsiders — all of those groups have grad students they need to place, jobs they need to have materialize for the ones that won’t continue in research, and themselves depend on not antagonizing their friends and colleagues....
French Foreign Minister: '500 Days to Avoid Climate Chaos'
...It is unclear what the foreign minister had in mind with the 500 days. However, France is scheduled to host the "21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change" in December 2015, about 565 days from now.
...It is unclear what the foreign minister had in mind with the 500 days. However, France is scheduled to host the "21st Conference of the Parties on Climate Change" in December 2015, about 565 days from now.
Joel Kotkin: Stop favoring investors, speculators over middle class
...Clearly, something needs to change, and, ironically, one wonders where the class warriors of the Left are on this. They have become increasingly bold (or honest) in stating that we should continue raising taxes on the middle and upper-middle classes, as a recent New Republic piece suggests, but seem less than vehement about equalizing taxes on capital gains and other income.
This may have something to do with the shift in backing for “progressive” causes coming from the very people – Wall Street traders, venture capitalists and tech executives – who benefit most from the capital gains scam. The confluence of big money and populist rhetoric is epitomized by New York’s powerful senior senator, Charles Schumer, who has made a career of both raising money from Wall Street financiers and defending preferential treatment for their outsized profits. Their growing power over the party of ever-expanding government leaves only one place to finance Democrats’ ambitious plans – the middle and upper-middle classes....
...Clearly, something needs to change, and, ironically, one wonders where the class warriors of the Left are on this. They have become increasingly bold (or honest) in stating that we should continue raising taxes on the middle and upper-middle classes, as a recent New Republic piece suggests, but seem less than vehement about equalizing taxes on capital gains and other income.
This may have something to do with the shift in backing for “progressive” causes coming from the very people – Wall Street traders, venture capitalists and tech executives – who benefit most from the capital gains scam. The confluence of big money and populist rhetoric is epitomized by New York’s powerful senior senator, Charles Schumer, who has made a career of both raising money from Wall Street financiers and defending preferential treatment for their outsized profits. Their growing power over the party of ever-expanding government leaves only one place to finance Democrats’ ambitious plans – the middle and upper-middle classes....
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
--Robert A. Heinlein
--Robert A. Heinlein
‘Homo Rapiens’: Anti-PIV RadFem Goes Total Moonbat on Climate Change
...The major cause of this extinction will be that the global warming and melting of the ice has triggered a series of feedback loops of toxic gas emissions such as methane and carbon dioxide which were trapped in the soils and underwaters of the earth by the ice and frost. These feedback loops have already started, are now unstoppable and life on earth is already on its way to extinction. No technology can stop this — especially since male technology is part of the problem and their use and fabrication will only emit more greenhouse gases. Even if men’s system collapsed now, if all men died and we returned back to stone age, it is unstoppable. ...
...I’ve known all along that patriarchy would collapse. It confirms what we have been hearing more or less explicitly for some time now. It also confirms some visions that women have shared with me. I myself have been saying it out loud for a while, that men’s system will collapse, maybe not so much online. My only question was whether men would destroy the rest of us in their demise or if some of us would survive. We now have the answer. It appears that men will take everything away with them.
Men, homo rapiens, you scum, you filth. There is no word to describe the extent of your evil, you are pure evil, pure lechery. I hate you, how I hate you. In the 250,000 years of your rotten, defunct existence, you have managed to kill 5 million years of life on earth....
The unstoppable death-machine has always only been orchestrated by the homo rapiens. By men. YOU. Women are not and have never been responsible for the atrocities committed by men, for men’s global industrial rape and death system. By lying and deceiving you are continuing to be part of the problem, because you are masking the fact that the obvious solution all the time, long before the extinction of all life was impending, was to depopulate the earth of males or to reduce them to manageable levels again — only by doing so would have men’s patriarchal and industrial necrophilic sado-system come to an end without destroying the rest of life....
...The major cause of this extinction will be that the global warming and melting of the ice has triggered a series of feedback loops of toxic gas emissions such as methane and carbon dioxide which were trapped in the soils and underwaters of the earth by the ice and frost. These feedback loops have already started, are now unstoppable and life on earth is already on its way to extinction. No technology can stop this — especially since male technology is part of the problem and their use and fabrication will only emit more greenhouse gases. Even if men’s system collapsed now, if all men died and we returned back to stone age, it is unstoppable. ...
...I’ve known all along that patriarchy would collapse. It confirms what we have been hearing more or less explicitly for some time now. It also confirms some visions that women have shared with me. I myself have been saying it out loud for a while, that men’s system will collapse, maybe not so much online. My only question was whether men would destroy the rest of us in their demise or if some of us would survive. We now have the answer. It appears that men will take everything away with them.
Men, homo rapiens, you scum, you filth. There is no word to describe the extent of your evil, you are pure evil, pure lechery. I hate you, how I hate you. In the 250,000 years of your rotten, defunct existence, you have managed to kill 5 million years of life on earth....
The unstoppable death-machine has always only been orchestrated by the homo rapiens. By men. YOU. Women are not and have never been responsible for the atrocities committed by men, for men’s global industrial rape and death system. By lying and deceiving you are continuing to be part of the problem, because you are masking the fact that the obvious solution all the time, long before the extinction of all life was impending, was to depopulate the earth of males or to reduce them to manageable levels again — only by doing so would have men’s patriarchal and industrial necrophilic sado-system come to an end without destroying the rest of life....
House Republicans find 10% of tea party donors audited by IRS
Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday....
Despite assurances to the contrary, the IRS didn’t destroy all of the donor lists scooped up in its tea party targeting — and a check of those lists reveals that the tax agency audited 10 percent of those donors, much higher than the audit rate for average Americans, House Republicans revealed Wednesday....
The heavy hand of the IRS seizes innocent Americans’ assets
...The Internal Revenue Service, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year....
...Because 35 percent of Schott’s Supermarket’s receipts are in cash, Terry and Sandy make frequent trips to the bank to avoid tempting actual criminals by having large sums at the store. Besides, their insurance policy covers no cash loss in excess of $10,000.
In 2010 and 2012, IRS agents visited the store and examined Terry’s and Sandy’s conduct. In 2012, the IRS notified them that it identified “no violations” of banking laws. But on Jan. 22, 2013, Terry and Sandy discovered that the IRS had obtained a secret warrant and emptied the store’s bank account. Sandy says that if the IRS had acted “the day before, there would have been only about $2,000 in the account.” Should we trust that today’s IRS was just lucky in its timing?...
...The Internal Revenue Service, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year....
...Because 35 percent of Schott’s Supermarket’s receipts are in cash, Terry and Sandy make frequent trips to the bank to avoid tempting actual criminals by having large sums at the store. Besides, their insurance policy covers no cash loss in excess of $10,000.
In 2010 and 2012, IRS agents visited the store and examined Terry’s and Sandy’s conduct. In 2012, the IRS notified them that it identified “no violations” of banking laws. But on Jan. 22, 2013, Terry and Sandy discovered that the IRS had obtained a secret warrant and emptied the store’s bank account. Sandy says that if the IRS had acted “the day before, there would have been only about $2,000 in the account.” Should we trust that today’s IRS was just lucky in its timing?...
Climate Change Debate: A Famous Scientist Becomes a Skeptic
...SPIEGEL ONLINE: But weren't you one of the alarmists 20 years ago? Do you think your position at that time was wrong?
Bengtsson: I have not changed my view on a fundamental level. I have never seen myself as an alarmist but rather as a scientist with a critical viewpoint, and in that sense I have always been a skeptic. I have devoted most of my career to developing models for predicting the weather, and in doing so I have learned the importance of validating forecasts against observed weather. As a result, that's an approach I strongly favor for "climate predictions." It's essential to validate model results, especially when dealing with complex systems such as the climate. It's essential do so properly if such predictions are to be considered credible.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You think there's a need for climate research to do some catching up in this regard?
Bengtsson: It is frustrating that climate science is not able to validate their simulations correctly. Since the end of the 20th century, the warming of the Earth has been much weaker than what climate models show.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the IPCC report discusses these problems in detail.
Bengtsson: Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion....
Study suggesting global warming is exaggerated was rejected for publication in respected journal because it was 'less than helpful' to the climate cause, claims professor
A scientific study which suggests global warming has been exaggerated was rejected by a respected journal because it might fuel climate scepticism, it was claimed last night.
The alarming intervention, which raises fears of ‘McCarthyist’ pressure for environmental scientists to conform, came after a reviewer said the research was ‘less than helpful’ to the climate cause.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of five authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published.
‘The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,’ he told the Times....
...SPIEGEL ONLINE: But weren't you one of the alarmists 20 years ago? Do you think your position at that time was wrong?
Bengtsson: I have not changed my view on a fundamental level. I have never seen myself as an alarmist but rather as a scientist with a critical viewpoint, and in that sense I have always been a skeptic. I have devoted most of my career to developing models for predicting the weather, and in doing so I have learned the importance of validating forecasts against observed weather. As a result, that's an approach I strongly favor for "climate predictions." It's essential to validate model results, especially when dealing with complex systems such as the climate. It's essential do so properly if such predictions are to be considered credible.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You think there's a need for climate research to do some catching up in this regard?
Bengtsson: It is frustrating that climate science is not able to validate their simulations correctly. Since the end of the 20th century, the warming of the Earth has been much weaker than what climate models show.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But the IPCC report discusses these problems in detail.
Bengtsson: Yes, the scientific report does this but, at least in my view, not critically enough. It does not bring up the large difference between observational results and model simulations. I have full respect for the scientific work behind the IPCC reports but I do not appreciate the need for consensus. It is important, and I will say essential, that society and the political community is also made aware of areas where consensus does not exist. To aim for a simplistic course of action in an area that is as complex and as incompletely understood as the climate system does not make sense at all in my opinion....
Study suggesting global warming is exaggerated was rejected for publication in respected journal because it was 'less than helpful' to the climate cause, claims professor
A scientific study which suggests global warming has been exaggerated was rejected by a respected journal because it might fuel climate scepticism, it was claimed last night.
The alarming intervention, which raises fears of ‘McCarthyist’ pressure for environmental scientists to conform, came after a reviewer said the research was ‘less than helpful’ to the climate cause.
Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a research fellow at the University of Reading and one of five authors of the study, said he suspected that intolerance of dissenting views on climate science was preventing his paper from being published.
‘The problem we now have in the climate community is that some scientists are mixing up their scientific role with that of a climate activist,’ he told the Times....
Don’t wait for the good woman. She doesn’t exist. There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts. The female loves to play man against man, and if she is in a position to do it there is not one who will resist. The male, for all his bravado and exploration, is the loyal one, the one who generally feels love. The female is skilled at betrayal and torture and damnation. Never envy a man his lady. Behind it all lies a living hell.
-– Charles Bukowski
-– Charles Bukowski
NPR: Great News, Employers Might Start Paying You For Health Care!!!
Employers will pay you money!!! Only in Obama's America would employers pay you consideration for your work!!!
Now, as Ed Morrissey noted, this is of course just an enormously deceptive, put-on-a-happy-smile euphemism for the truth: As predicted, and long denied by Obama and the progressives, Obamacare is a glidepath to destroying private insurance.
What NPR means, of course, is that employers plan to dump you on to the Obamacare exchanges.
They're not "paying you for healthcare," at least not in any new way: They were already paying you for healthcare. That's what "employer-provided healthcare" means, after all. They're paying you, partly in the form of a healthcare policy.
But that policy was a private one.
Now they'll be saving money (hint: this means paying you less) by paying you a contribution towards your health care, which you will then use to... buy Obamacare on the terrific website Healthcare.gov....
Employers will pay you money!!! Only in Obama's America would employers pay you consideration for your work!!!
Now, as Ed Morrissey noted, this is of course just an enormously deceptive, put-on-a-happy-smile euphemism for the truth: As predicted, and long denied by Obama and the progressives, Obamacare is a glidepath to destroying private insurance.
What NPR means, of course, is that employers plan to dump you on to the Obamacare exchanges.
They're not "paying you for healthcare," at least not in any new way: They were already paying you for healthcare. That's what "employer-provided healthcare" means, after all. They're paying you, partly in the form of a healthcare policy.
But that policy was a private one.
Now they'll be saving money (hint: this means paying you less) by paying you a contribution towards your health care, which you will then use to... buy Obamacare on the terrific website Healthcare.gov....
Thomas Piketty Wants Income Equality -- And the Hell With Growth
...The Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship points out that relying, as Piketty does, on tax returns for the U.S. statistics means omitting income from Social Security, food stamps, public housing, Medicare and Medicaid.
Tax returns count roommates and unmarried partners as separate units when they are part of a larger household.
They don't include employer-paid health insurance -- an increasing share of employee compensation in recent decades....
..."In perhaps the most revealing line of the book," Cowen writes, "the 42-year-old Piketty writes that since the age of 25, he has not left Paris, 'except for brief trips.'"
France, where a cozy elite runs government and large corporations, has a 75 percent top income tax rate and essentially zero economic growth. Is that the future American liberals want?
...The Manhattan Institute's Scott Winship points out that relying, as Piketty does, on tax returns for the U.S. statistics means omitting income from Social Security, food stamps, public housing, Medicare and Medicaid.
Tax returns count roommates and unmarried partners as separate units when they are part of a larger household.
They don't include employer-paid health insurance -- an increasing share of employee compensation in recent decades....
..."In perhaps the most revealing line of the book," Cowen writes, "the 42-year-old Piketty writes that since the age of 25, he has not left Paris, 'except for brief trips.'"
France, where a cozy elite runs government and large corporations, has a 75 percent top income tax rate and essentially zero economic growth. Is that the future American liberals want?
How the USPS Killed Digital Mail
...The founders were summoned to a meeting with the Postmaster General, who told them. 'We have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and we will never work with you. You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.' ..
...The founders were summoned to a meeting with the Postmaster General, who told them. 'We have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and we will never work with you. You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.' ..
Jobless mum advises her daughter, 19, to get pregnant - for an easy life on benefits
...Sinead Clarkson, 36, has no qualifications, has never worked and rakes in £1,200 a month from the State.
She has now admitted encouraging her 19-year-old daughter Melissa to follow her shameless example and ‘work the system’ by having a baby.
Melissa became pregnant six months ago, and is now in line for an extra £400 a month courtesy of taxpayers when her baby is born, as well as a two-bedroom council house.
Her mother, who has another daughter, Amie, aged 12, said: ‘I am better off on benefits. I refuse to work for a pittance and struggle.
‘I don’t have any qualifications so it is easier to claim money than persuade an employer to give me a job. ...
...Sinead Clarkson, 36, has no qualifications, has never worked and rakes in £1,200 a month from the State.
She has now admitted encouraging her 19-year-old daughter Melissa to follow her shameless example and ‘work the system’ by having a baby.
Melissa became pregnant six months ago, and is now in line for an extra £400 a month courtesy of taxpayers when her baby is born, as well as a two-bedroom council house.
Her mother, who has another daughter, Amie, aged 12, said: ‘I am better off on benefits. I refuse to work for a pittance and struggle.
‘I don’t have any qualifications so it is easier to claim money than persuade an employer to give me a job. ...
How Paulson Gave Hedge Funds Advance Word of Fannie Mae Rescue
...Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.
“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said.
On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets....
...Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.
After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.
The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information -- to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents....
...Paulson had been pushing a plan in Congress to open lines of credit to the two struggling firms and to grant authority for the Treasury Department to buy equity in them. Yet he had told reporters on July 13 that the firms must remain shareholder owned and had testified at a Senate hearing two days later that giving the government new power to intervene made actual intervention improbable.
“If you have a bazooka, and people know you have it, you’re not likely to take it out,” he said.
On the morning of July 21, before the Eton Park meeting, Paulson had spoken to New York Times reporters and editors, according to his Treasury Department schedule. A Times article the next day said the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were inspecting Fannie and Freddie’s books and cited Paulson as saying he expected their examination would give a signal of confidence to the markets....
...Around the conference room table were a dozen or so hedge- fund managers and other Wall Street executives -- at least five of them alumni of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), of which Paulson was chief executive officer and chairman from 1999 to 2006. In addition to Eton Park founder Eric Mindich, they included such boldface names as Lone Pine Capital LLC founder Stephen Mandel, Dinakar Singh of TPG-Axon Capital Management LP and Daniel Och of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC.
After a perfunctory discussion of the market turmoil, the fund manager says, the discussion turned to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Paulson said he had erred by not punishing Bear Stearns shareholders more severely. The secretary, then 62, went on to describe a possible scenario for placing Fannie and Freddie into “conservatorship” -- a government seizure designed to allow the firms to continue operations despite heavy losses in the mortgage markets.
Paulson explained that under this scenario, the common stock of the two government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, would be effectively wiped out. So too would the various classes of preferred stock, he said.
The fund manager says he was shocked that Paulson would furnish such specific information -- to his mind, leaving little doubt that the Treasury Department would carry out the plan. The managers attending the meeting were thus given a choice opportunity to trade on that information.
There’s no evidence that they did so after the meeting; tracking firm-specific short stock sales isn’t possible using public documents....
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