Spies in the sky signal new age of surveillance
..."If you're concerned about it, maybe there's a reason we should be flying over you, right?" said Douglas McDonald, the company's director of special operations and president of a local chapter of the unmanned vehicle trade group. "But as soon as you lose your kid, get your car stolen or have marijuana growing out at your lake place that's not yours, you'd probably want one of those flying overhead."...
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Doc says ‘physicians have reached a tipping point’ [VIDEO]
...In 1995, Westchester Orthopedic employed one person to perform administrative tasks. By the late ’90s, they employed one per doctor.
Mark Smith, president of physician recruiter Merritt Hawkins in Irving, Texas, said there are more regulations today than ever before. Doctors in his association report spending 60 percent of their time on completing regulatory paperwork.
“There have even been reports of small practices going out of business,” Smith said. “This has been unheard of in my 24 years in this organization.”
In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act mandated specific data collection that increased costs on doctor’s private practices without increasing reimbursements. The next year, the Obamacare decreased reimbursement and specified more reporting requirements — again increasing costs....
“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Obama to Americans: You don’t deserve what you’ve earned
...There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet....
Government Didn’t Create the Internet
The Internet is a trillion dollars of fiber optic cables laid in the ground and under our oceans. Fiber optic technology was developed by corporations, such as Corning Glasworks, not the government. The trillion dollars in capital that was used to pay for laying cable came from Wall Street, not the government.
The one thing you might be able to credit the government with is standards. The early days of computing were a hodge-podge of networking standards. Only computers from the same vendor could talk to each other -- indeed, often only the same model of computers. The situation was like the railroad network in the pre Civil-War South: each state’s rail network had different gauge tracks, different widths, different turn radiuses, different slopes. As cargo was shipped across the South, it needed to be offloaded from one rail network and loaded onto another, several times. After the Civil War, the U.S. government decreed a common railroad standard for the entire country so that it could move troops quickly to anywhere in the country to suppress insurrections.
In much the same way, around 1980, governments around the world, working with international standards organizations, created the "OSI" or "Open Systems Interconnect" group. The purpose of OSI was to create a single standard for all networks, to create a world wide "internetwork" that all computers could be connected to. By 1990, developed countries (US, Europe, Japan) had laws called "GOSIP" or “Government OSI Profile” that required all computers purchased by the government must support the OSI network standard. All large corporations, such as IBM and HP, supported this standard with their computers.
What’s important about the Internet is that the OSI standard failed. It’s not the standard of today’s Internet. The government backed the wrong horse, so to speak. Instead, today’s Internet is based on TCP/IP -- a networking standard the government tried to kill off....
Obama: “If You’ve Been Successful, You Didn’t Get There On Your Own”
The wealthy already pay more taxes than everyone else, both as a percentage of total federal taxes collected and as a percentage of their own income. So unless Obama is seeing different facts than the rest of us, upper-income earners are definitely not getting a free ride, or even half of a free ride, on the backs of middle-class earners. So the “somebody” who “invested” in “publicly funded widget XYZ” is actually the wealthy person Obama is bashing....
Mankiw: Middle Class Receives More in Government Benefits Than They Pay in Taxes
Because transfer payments are, in effect, the opposite of taxes, it makes sense to look not just at taxes paid, but at taxes paid minus transfers received. For 2009, the most recent year available, here are taxes less transfers as a percentage of market income (income that households earned from their work and savings):
Bottom quintile: -301%
Second quintile: -42%
Middle quintile: -5%
Fourth quintile: 10%
Highest quintile: 22%
Top one percent: 28%
The negative 301% means that a typical family in the bottom quintile receives about $3 in transfer payments for every dollar earned....
Obama's Soft-Core Socialism
...The contempt for small business was aptly summarized by Hillary Clinton back in 1993, when she was pushing her plan to nationalize health care. Told that her proposals would devastate small companies, she replied: "I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized small business in America."...
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Obama to Americans: You don’t deserve what you’ve earned
...There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet....
Government Didn’t Create the Internet
The Internet is a trillion dollars of fiber optic cables laid in the ground and under our oceans. Fiber optic technology was developed by corporations, such as Corning Glasworks, not the government. The trillion dollars in capital that was used to pay for laying cable came from Wall Street, not the government.
The one thing you might be able to credit the government with is standards. The early days of computing were a hodge-podge of networking standards. Only computers from the same vendor could talk to each other -- indeed, often only the same model of computers. The situation was like the railroad network in the pre Civil-War South: each state’s rail network had different gauge tracks, different widths, different turn radiuses, different slopes. As cargo was shipped across the South, it needed to be offloaded from one rail network and loaded onto another, several times. After the Civil War, the U.S. government decreed a common railroad standard for the entire country so that it could move troops quickly to anywhere in the country to suppress insurrections.
In much the same way, around 1980, governments around the world, working with international standards organizations, created the "OSI" or "Open Systems Interconnect" group. The purpose of OSI was to create a single standard for all networks, to create a world wide "internetwork" that all computers could be connected to. By 1990, developed countries (US, Europe, Japan) had laws called "GOSIP" or “Government OSI Profile” that required all computers purchased by the government must support the OSI network standard. All large corporations, such as IBM and HP, supported this standard with their computers.
What’s important about the Internet is that the OSI standard failed. It’s not the standard of today’s Internet. The government backed the wrong horse, so to speak. Instead, today’s Internet is based on TCP/IP -- a networking standard the government tried to kill off....
Obama: “If You’ve Been Successful, You Didn’t Get There On Your Own”
The wealthy already pay more taxes than everyone else, both as a percentage of total federal taxes collected and as a percentage of their own income. So unless Obama is seeing different facts than the rest of us, upper-income earners are definitely not getting a free ride, or even half of a free ride, on the backs of middle-class earners. So the “somebody” who “invested” in “publicly funded widget XYZ” is actually the wealthy person Obama is bashing....
Mankiw: Middle Class Receives More in Government Benefits Than They Pay in Taxes
Because transfer payments are, in effect, the opposite of taxes, it makes sense to look not just at taxes paid, but at taxes paid minus transfers received. For 2009, the most recent year available, here are taxes less transfers as a percentage of market income (income that households earned from their work and savings):
Bottom quintile: -301%
Second quintile: -42%
Middle quintile: -5%
Fourth quintile: 10%
Highest quintile: 22%
Top one percent: 28%
The negative 301% means that a typical family in the bottom quintile receives about $3 in transfer payments for every dollar earned....
Obama's Soft-Core Socialism
...The contempt for small business was aptly summarized by Hillary Clinton back in 1993, when she was pushing her plan to nationalize health care. Told that her proposals would devastate small companies, she replied: "I can't be responsible for every undercapitalized small business in America."...
All Claimed July Warming In The US Is Due To Data Manipulation
...The unadjusted graph shows no warming since 1895, with the hottest July occurring in 1901. All of the claimed July warming is due to data manipulation....
New paper blames about half of global warming on weather station data homgenization
...Here’s the part I really like: of 67% of the weather stations examined, questionable adjustments were made to raw data that resulted in:
“increased positive trends, decreased negative trends, or changed negative trends to positive,” whereas “the expected proportions would be 1/2 (50%).”
And…
“homogenation practices used until today are mainly statistical, not well justified by experiments, and are rarely supported by metadata. It can be argued that they often lead to false results: natural features of hydroclimatic times series are regarded as errors and are adjusted.”...
...The unadjusted graph shows no warming since 1895, with the hottest July occurring in 1901. All of the claimed July warming is due to data manipulation....
New paper blames about half of global warming on weather station data homgenization
...Here’s the part I really like: of 67% of the weather stations examined, questionable adjustments were made to raw data that resulted in:
“increased positive trends, decreased negative trends, or changed negative trends to positive,” whereas “the expected proportions would be 1/2 (50%).”
And…
“homogenation practices used until today are mainly statistical, not well justified by experiments, and are rarely supported by metadata. It can be argued that they often lead to false results: natural features of hydroclimatic times series are regarded as errors and are adjusted.”...
Why Our Elites Stink
Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Protestant Establishment sat atop the American power structure. A relatively small network of white Protestant men dominated the universities, the world of finance, the local country clubs and even high government service.
...As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service...
Through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Protestant Establishment sat atop the American power structure. A relatively small network of white Protestant men dominated the universities, the world of finance, the local country clubs and even high government service.
...As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership.
The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service...
The Polluted Waters of 50 Shades of Grey, Etc.
...however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed....
...True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not “no authority,” but an authority which devours....
...however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed....
...True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not “no authority,” but an authority which devours....
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Newly found weather records show 1930′s as being far worse than the present for extreme weather
...It also is useful for putting the recent heat wave in perspective. Despite the 24/7 caterwauling, only two new state records—South Carolina and Georgia—are currently under investigation. And, looking carefully at Shein et al. dataset, there appears to be a remarkable lack of all-time records in recent years.
This is particularly striking given the increasing urbanization of the U.S. and the consequent “non climatic” warming that creeps into previously pristine records. Everything else being equal—and with no warming from increased greenhouse gases—most statewide records should be in or near big cities. But they aren’t.
This year there were a huge number (many thousands) of reports of daily high temperature records being set across the eastern two-thirds of the country in recent weeks, and even a large number (a few hundred) reports of all-time records high temperatures being set for a particular location. But if only two new statewide records were set, that’s hardly an historic heat wave when considered in its totality....
The Other Scandal In Unhappy Valley
...Michael Mann, like Joe Paterno (and to a lesser degree, Jerry Sandusky) was a rock star in the context of Penn State University, bringing in millions in research funding. The same university president who resigned in the wake of the Sandusky scandal was also the president when Mann was being investigated. We saw what the university administration was willing to do to cover up heinous crimes, and even let them continue, rather than expose them. Should we suppose, in light of what we now know, they would do any less to hide academic and scientific misconduct, with so much at stake?
It’s time for a fresh, truly independent investigation.
Climate was HOTTER in Roman, medieval times than now: Study
...A new study measuring temperatures over the past two millennia has concluded that in fact the temperatures seen in the last decade are far from being the hottest in history.
A large team of scientists making a comprehensive study of data from tree rings say that in fact global temperatures have been on a falling trend for the past 2,000 years and they have often been noticeably higher than they are today - despite the absence of any significant amounts of human-released carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back then.
"We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low," says Professor-Doktor Jan Esper of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, one of the scientists leading the study. "Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy."
They certainly are, as it is a central plank of climate policy worldwide that the current temperatures are the highest ever seen for many millennia, and that this results from rising levels of atmospheric CO2 emitted by human activities such as industry, transport etc.
If it is the case that actually the climate has often been warmer without any significant CO2 emissions having taken place - suggesting that CO2 emissions simply aren't that important - the case for huge efforts to cut those emissions largely disappears....
The other foreclosure crisis: Losing a home over $400 in back taxes
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- People are losing their homes over unpaid tax bills that, in some cases, add up to just a few hundred dollars.
Outdated state laws that allow local governments to sell tax liens on delinquent properties to investors in order to more quickly collect on overdue property taxes is sparking a second "foreclosure crisis," a report from the National Consumer Law Center said Tuesday....
...The report cited a case of an 81-year-old Rhode Island woman who fell behind on a $474 sewer bill. A corporation bought the home in a tax sale for $836.39. The woman was evicted from the home she had lived in for more than 40 years and the corporation resold the place for $85,000, the report said....
Applying Title IX to science enrollment – what possibly could go wrong?
...Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised that “new guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges” spelling out “Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.” These guidelines will likely echo existing Title IX guidelines that restrict men’s percentage of intercollegiate athletes to their percentage in overall student bodies, thus reducing the overall number of intercollegiate athletes. (Under the three-part Title IX test created by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, where I used to work, colleges are allowed to temporarily comply by increasing the number of female athletes rather than cutting the number of male athletes, but the only viable permanent way to comply with its rule is to restrict men’s participation relative to women’s participation, reducing overall participation.) Thus, as Charlotte Allen notes, the Obama administration’s guidelines are likely to lead to “science quotas” based on gender....
Applying Title IX to science enrollment – what possibly could go wrong?
...Quotas limiting the number of male students in science may be imposed by the Education Department in 2013. The White House has promised that “new guidelines will also be issued to grant-receiving universities and colleges” spelling out “Title IX rules in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.” These guidelines will likely echo existing Title IX guidelines that restrict men’s percentage of intercollegiate athletes to their percentage in overall student bodies, thus reducing the overall number of intercollegiate athletes. (Under the three-part Title IX test created by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, where I used to work, colleges are allowed to temporarily comply by increasing the number of female athletes rather than cutting the number of male athletes, but the only viable permanent way to comply with its rule is to restrict men’s participation relative to women’s participation, reducing overall participation.) Thus, as Charlotte Allen notes, the Obama administration’s guidelines are likely to lead to “science quotas” based on gender....
83% of doctors say they might quit over Obamacare, according to new poll
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the median debt at graduation from medical school is $150,000 at public institutions and $180,000 at private institutions. Add to that malpractice insurance premiums that can as high as $200,000 a year, and you begin to get a sense of why American physicians might be wary of government intrusion into the practice of medicine.
One new survey shows the disenchantment running so high that 83% of doctors queried say they are thinking of hanging up their stethoscopes permanently now thatObamacare stands poised to remain the law of the land....
Saturday, July 14, 2012
NY Times Columnist: Glass-Steagall Wouldn't Have Prevented the JPMorgan Loss or the Financial Crisis
...A meme around Glass-Steagall has been created, repeated so often that it has almost become conventional wisdom: the repeal of Glass-Steagall led to the financial crisis of 2008. And, the thinking goes, has become almost religious for some people, that if the law were reinstated, we would avoid the next crisis.
The facts — basic facts — just aren’t that convenient. While the repeal of Glass-Steagall has seemingly become the sine qua non of the financial crisis, it is pure historical revisionism. [...]
Glass-Steagall wouldn't have prevented the last financial crisis. And it probably wouldn't have prevented JPMorgan’s $2 billion-plus trading loss. The loss occurred on the commercial side of the bank, not at the investment bank. [...]
The first domino to nearly topple over in the financial crisis was Bear Stearns, an investment bank that had nothing to do with commercial banking. Glass-Steagall would have been irrelevant. Then came Lehman Brothers; it too was an investment bank with no commercial banking business and therefore wouldn't have been covered by Glass-Steagall either. After them, Merrill Lynch was next — and yep, it too was an investment bank that had nothing to do with Glass-Steagall.
Next in line was the American International Group, an insurance company that was also unrelated to Glass-Steagall. While we're at it, we should probably throw in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which similarly, had nothing to do with Glass-Steagall....
6 charts that show the Welfare State run amok
– In the 1960s, there were 18 workers per Medicaid recipient. Today that number is 2.5.
– The number of Americans on disability has risen 19% faster than jobs created during this recovery.
– There are just 1.2 private sector workers per 1 person on welfare or working for government.
– There are now just 1.65 employed persons in private sector per 1 person on welfare assistance.
The Politics of Cognitive Dissonance
"Don't repeat conservative language or ideas, even when arguing against them."
That bit of advice, No. 1 on a list titled "The 10 Most Important Things Democrats Should Know," comes from the promotional material for "The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic" by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling. (You may remember them from our June 12 column.) In a PJMedia.com essay, the anonymous blogger whose pen name is Zombie draws out the implications:
Many politicians, pundits and talking heads have taken Lakoff's recommendation to heart. This is why conservatives and liberals can't seem to have the simplest conversation: liberals intentionally refuse to address or even acknowledge what conservatives say. Since (as Lakoff notes) conservatives invariably frame their own statements within their own conservative "moral frames," every time a conservative speaks, his liberal opponent will seemingly ignore what was said and instead come back with a reply literally [sic] out of left field.
Thus, he is the progenitor of and primary advocate for the main reason why liberalism fails to win the public debate: Because it never directly confronts, disproves or negates conservative notions--it simply ignores them. . . .
By intentionally refusing to challenge, disprove, understand or even acknowledge the existence of the other side's argument, you allow that argument to grow in strength and win converts.
This is an important insight, not only into the way the left debates and otherwise communicates, but into the way the left thinks--or fails to think. The book's subtitle, after all, promises an instruction in "Thinking and Talking Democratic." Lakoff and Wehling command their readers not only to act as if opposing arguments are without merit, but to close their minds to those arguments. What comes across to conservatives as a maddening arrogance is actually willed ignorance....
The Coming Middle-Class Anarchy
...What’s really important is that law-abiding middle-class citizens are deciding that playing by the rules is nothing but a sucker’s game.
Just like the poker player who’s been fleeced by all the other players, and gets one mean attitude once he finally wakes up to the con? I’m betting that more and more of the solid American middle-class will begin saying what Brian and Ilsa said: Fuckit.
Fuck the rules. Fuck playing the game the banksters want you to play. Fuck being the good citizen. Fuck filling out every form, fuck paying every tax. Fuck the government, fuck the banks who own them. Fuck the free-loaders, living rent-free while we pay. Fuck the legal process, a game which only works if you’ve got the money to pay for the parasite lawyers. Fuck being a chump. Fuck being a stooge. Fuck trying to do the right thing—what good does that get you? What good is coming your way?
Fuckit.
When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.
TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry—the upright citizenry—throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.
If a big enough proportion of the populace—not even a majority, just a largish chunk—decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.
Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists—grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average—that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore. ...
Americans Revolt Billions of Times a Day
...And most people have absolutely no moral compunction about any of these violations, either of the spirit or the letter of the law, because deep down they no longer believe that the law, especially the tax code, represents any compelling moral principle, nor do its dictates seem any longer to be fair. They don’t think their home state has earned taxes on the Amazon purchases or that it deserves any share of the mutually beneficial exchange between you and your dry wall guy.
I bet you can think of a few dozen more examples, and increasingly we’re all in business and in personal life thinking of more and more ways to game a system which we have less and less faith in.
It’s not civil disobedience that I’m talking about. It’s the opposite: Civil disobedience is meant to be noticed. It is a price paid in the hope of creating social change. What I’m talking about is not based on hope; in fact, it has given up much hope on social change. It thinks the government is a colossal amoeba twitching mindlessly in response to tiny pinpricks of pain from an endless army of micro-brained interest groups. The point is not to teach the amoeba nor to guide it, but simply to stay away from the lethal stupidity of its pseudopods.
The amoeba does not get smarter but it does get hungrier and bigger. On the other hand, we get smarter. More and more of our life takes place outside of the amoeba’s reach: in the privacy of our own homes, or in capital accounts in other nations, or in the fastest growing amoeba avoidance zone ever created, cyberspace. We revolt decision by decision, transaction by transaction, because we believe deep down that most of what government tells us to do is at bottom illegitimate....
Saturday, July 07, 2012
Florida Cop Fired for Planting Dope, Says He Did That and More Under Orders
...“I advised my supervisor of my findings and my supervisor advised me ‘if I was in your shoes I’d get marijuana from the SWAT closet and add it to what you found,’ ” he said in the letter.
“I again was in fear of losing my job and felt obligated to do as instructed by my supervisor,” he added....
Countrywide Loans Sought Favor With Fannie Mae, Report Says
Countrywide Financial Corp. gave discount loans to former and current members of the U.S. Congress and executives at Fannie Mae (FNMA) as it lobbied to scuttle legislation that would have diminished its sale of sub-prime mortgages, according to a report released today by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.
The report, which caps a three-year inquiry by the panel, concluded that between 1996 and 2008, Countrywide executives used a special VIP loan program to try to stop legislation that would have restrained the company’s business with Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored mortgage company. Countrywide had an exclusive agreement to sell billions of dollars in mortgages to Fannie Mae at a discounted rate, according to the report....
...Jim Johnson, chief executive officer of Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, earned $100 million during his time at the company. Nonetheless, Countrywide employees expressed concern about giving him a loan because he didn’t pay his bills regularly and had a low credit score, according to e-mails published in Issa’s report.
Because of Johnson’s credit report, “I’m concerned about signing on these loans,” Countrywide underwriter Gene Soda said in a 2005 e-mail to another Countrywide employee, according to the report.
Countrywide’s chief executive officer, Angelo Mozilo, who had a close relationship with Johnson, wrote back, instructing his employees to give Johnson a loan “1/2 below prime.”
“Don’t worry about” the credit score, Mozilo wrote. “He is constantly on the road and therefore pays his bills on an irregular basis but he ultimately pays them.”
In another e-mail, Mozilo wrote, “Jim Johnson continues to be a source of many loans for our company and this is just a small token of appreciation for the business that he sends to us.”...
After Right to Work Takes Effect in Indiana, Unions Seek a Judicial Bailout
...The union’s primary complaint, however, is that the law reduces its revenues. In a revealing affidavit, a union organizer explained that, in light of the right-to-work law, union members would have the freedom to pursue their own self-interest, to the detriment of the union: “I believe the ability to cease paying dues completely may prove too attractive for some of our members to resist. If just 10 percent of the Union’s Indiana members resign, the Union will lose at least $600,000 in annual revenues.” Remarkably, the union essentially concedes that a significant portion of its members would leave the union if they were free to pursue their own self-interest....
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