The New Deal Constitution (c1937)

H.L. Mencken already had 2010 figured out in 1937. A better Constitution for a New Year!
-----------------------
This satirical piece first appeared in The American Mercury, 41 (June 1937), 129-36, and was reprinted in condensed form by The Reader’s Digest, 31 (July 1937), 27-29. In order to indicate what reached the widest audience, the condensed version appears here, thanks to LewRockwell.com
The principal cause of the uproar in Washington is a conflict between the swift- moving idealism of the New Deal and the unyielding hunkerousness of the Constitution of 1788. What is needed, obviously, is a wholly new Constitution, drawn up with enough boldness and imagination to cover the whole program of the More Abundant Life, now and hereafter.
That is what I presume to offer here. The Constitution that follows is not my invention, and in more than. one detail I have unhappy doubts of its wisdom. But I believe that it sets forth with reasonable accuracy the plan of government that the More Abundant Life wizards have sought to substitute for the plan of the Fathers. They have themselves argued at one time or another, by word or deed, for everything contained herein:
PREAMBLE
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish social justice, draw the fangs of privilege, effect the redistribution of property, remove the burden of liberty from ourselves and our posterity, and insure the continuance of the New Deal, do ordain and establish this Constitution.


ARTICLE I
The Executive
All governmental power of whatever sort shall be vested in a President of the United States. ...
The President shall be commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy, and of the militia, Boy Scouts, C.I.O., People’s Front, and other armed forces of the nation.
The President shall have the power: To lay and collect taxes, and to expend the income of the United States in such manner as he may deem to be to their or his advantage;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States, and to provide for its repayment on such terms as he may fix;
To regulate all commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and within them; to license all persons engaged or proposing to engage in business; to regulate their affairs; to limit their profits by proclamation from time to time; and to fix wages, prices and hours of work;
To coin money, regulate the content and value thereof, and of foreign coin, and to amend or repudiate any contract requiring the payment by the United States, or by any private person, of coin of a given weight or fineness;

To repeal or amend, in his discretion, any so-called natural law, including Gresham’s law, the law of diminishing returns, and the law of gravitation.

The President shall be assisted by a Cabinet of eight or more persons, whose duties shall be to make speeches whenever so instructed and to expend the public funds in such manner as to guarantee the President’s continuance in office.
The President may establish such executive agencies as he deems necessary, and clothe them with such powers as he sees fit. No person shall be a member to any such bureau who has had any practical experience of the matters he is appointed to deal with.
One of the members of the Cabinet shall be an Attorney General. It shall be his duty to provide legal opinions certifying to the constitutionality of all measures undertaken by the President, and to gather evidence of the senility of judges.
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/10/28/a-new-deal-constitution/

Cruel Hard Math

Naked emperors do not trouble themselves with such prosaic things as math
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We're Screwed!  ShadowStats.com founder John Williams explains the risk of hyperinflation. Worst-case scenario? Rioting in the streets and devolution to a bartering system.

What can we do to avoid hyperinflation? What if we just shut down the Fed or something like that?
We can't. The actions have already been taken to put us in it. It's beyond control. The government does put out financial statements usually in December using generally accepted accounting principles, where unfunded liabilities like Medicare and Social Security are included in the same way as corporations account for their employee pension liabilities. And in 2008, for example, the one-year deficit was $5.1 trillion dollars. And that's instead of the $450 billion, plus or minus, that was officially reported.

Wow.
These numbers are beyond containment. Even the 2008 numbers, you can take 100 percent of people's income and corporate profit and you'd still be in deficit. There's no way you can raise enough money in taxes.


http://www.fairfieldweekly.com/article.cfm?aid=16014

Blue Moon on New Year's Eve!

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Once in a blue moon there is one on New Year's Eve. Revelers ringing in 2010 will be treated to a so-called blue moon. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month. But don't expect it to be blue - the name has nothing to do with the color of our closest celestial neighbor.
...
A full moon occurs every 29.5 days, and most years have 12. On average, an extra full moon in a month - a blue moon - occurs every 2.5 years. The last time there was a lunar double take was in May 2007. New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won't come again until 2028.


http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091229/D9CT6H701.html

GM=Amtrak

This will never end, on the finance side or the automotive side.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - GMAC Financial Services is expected to get about $3.5 billion in additional U.S. government aid to help the troubled lender absorb mortgage losses, a financial industry source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The announcement is expected within days, the source said, speaking anonymously because the talks have been private.

GMAC has already received $12.5 billion in aid from the U.S. government since December 2008.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BT06O20091230

Daley Says Dems too Radical

You know they have gone over the edge when even the Chicago machine thinks things have gone too far:

Keep the Big Tent big
By William M. Daley
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A15

The announcement by Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith that he is switching to the Republican Party is just the latest warning sign that the Democratic Party -- my lifelong political home -- has a critical decision to make: Either we plot a more moderate, centrist course or risk electoral disaster not just in the upcoming midterms but in many elections to come.
 ...
The party's moment of choosing is drawing close. While it may be too late to avoid some losses in 2010, it is not too late to avoid the kind of rout that redraws the political map. The leaders of the Democratic Party need to move back toward the center -- and in doing so, set the stage for the many years' worth of leadership necessary to produce the sort of pragmatic change the American people actually want. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/23/AR2009122302439_pf.html

Max Baucus or Max Bacchus?

Drunk with power? You decide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Y9X5ggxzA

Surprise- You're a State Employee!

We're from the Union, and we're here to help you.
Do you provide services to anyone who receives government subsidies?  Congratulations- you're now a State Employee! Under this logic, anyone who accepts subsidized rent payments, food stamps, provides health care, etc., etc.... is a public employee.
This is how freedom really dies- from a million paper cuts:

Michigan Forces Business Owners Into Public Sector Unions
Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is crazy—and it's happening elsewhere in the country.
A year ago in December, Ms. Berry and more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union had won a certification election conducted by mail under the auspices of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. In that election only 6,000 day-care providers voted. The pro-labor vote turned out.
Many of the state's other 34,000 day-care providers never even realized what was going on. Ms. Berry tells us she was "shocked" to find out she was suddenly in a union. The real dirty work, however, had been done when the state created an "employer" for the union to "organize" against.
Of course, Michigan's independent day-care providers don't work for anybody except the parents who were their customers. Nevertheless, because some of these parents qualified for public subsidies, the Child Care Providers "union" claimed the providers were "public employees."
Michigan's Department of Human Services then teamed with Flint-based Mott Community College to sign an "interlocal agreement" in 2006 establishing a separate government agency called the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council. This council was directed to recommend good child-care practices—and not coincidentally, to serve as a "public employer." Although the council had almost no staff, no control over the state subsidies and no supervision of the providers' daily activities, it became the shell corporation against which the union could organize.
Thus the state created an ersatz employer and an ersatz "bargaining unit" against which what was essentially an ersatz union could organize.

Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in annual dues to the union—from the child-care subsidies. The money should be going to home-based day-care providers—themselves not on the high end of the income scale. Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to her go to a union that does little for her. She says she is "self employed and wants nothing to do with the union." 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612341241120838.html

CPSIA- No Joy in Toyland

Among the worst bills ever passed; OpEd written by one of the CPSIA regulators!

Thanks to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), small businesses like Baby Sprout Naturals and Whimsical Walney have already closed their doors. And some 40% of companies responding to a Toy Industry Association survey planned to eliminate jobs this year because the cost and complexity of compliance with this law is too great. For manufacturers and sellers of children's products, perhaps a renewed interest in saving small businesses comes in the nick of time.
The safety legislation, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in 2008, is a study in the law of unintended consequences. The new law reduced the Consumer Product Safety Commission's longstanding discretion to act in response to genuine risks, substituting instead the rigid, broad-brush, and unscientific judgment of Congress. 
Though written in response to dozens of recalls of Chinese-made toys with lead paint, the law goes well beyond lead paint (which poses an undeniable risk to children) to ban all children's products that contain a component with more than three one-hundredths of 1% lead. This means such ordinary items as zippers, buttons, belts, the hinge on a child's dresser—and even that bicycle from Santa Claus—are outlawed.
These products often contain lead in excess of the new legal limit, but unlike lead surface paint, this lead is contained within the metal or other substrate material. The lead can rub off these items in miniscule amounts detectable only with sensitive lab equipment, but it is not "bioavailable"—meaning it is unable to be extracted and absorbed into a child's bloodstream. By failing to distinguish between easily absorbable lead in paint and not easily absorbable lead in other materials, the legislation was a dramatic overreach. 
It gets worse. In addition to banning components that do not create a lead hazard for children, the law also imposes onerous product testing by outside labs that smaller manufacturers and handicraft makers simply cannot afford. Instead of spending money to expand and create jobs, companies have diverted billions of dollars so far to destroy innocuous but noncompliant inventory, as well as to understand and meet complex new compliance obligations.
Major charities, like Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army, have publicly estimated lost inventory and disposal costs at $100 million to $170 million in secondhand children's clothing—such as winter coats with metal snaps—that's not affordable to test for compliance, yet still needed by many families.
Bicycle manufacturers have re-engineered dozens of parts from more expensive and less environmentally friendly materials to replace handle bars, spokes, tire valve stems and other harmless metal parts that contain lead.
To cope with annual testing costs running to half a million dollars or more, domestic retailers and manufacturers like Challenge & Fun, Inc., Constructive Playthings, and ETA Cuisenaire (a maker of educational tools), have reduced payrolls or limited product lines. Many small apparel companies, including JenLynnDesigns, have either closed shop or exited the children's apparel market completely.
In just the first eight months after enactment, the Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that the 2008 safety law cost businesses in the "billions of dollars range," including: more than $2 billion in losses to the toy industry; $200 million in potentially violative inventory for members of one apparel industry group (the California Fashion Association); and an estimated $1 billion in annual losses reported by the Motorcycle Industry Council for lost sales of youth model motorbikes and off-road vehicles. Several popular German toymakers such as Selecta Spielzeug, whose products comply with stringent EU regulations, have stopped selling their toys in this country. Consumers are facing higher prices for a smaller variety of products that are no safer than before.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703478704574612573263963560.html

Naked Emperors at Copenhagen!

So Chavez, one of the world's top oil barons, gets thunderous applause at Copenhagen. Doesn't this fact alone tell you that this farce has nothing whatever to do with "carbon" or even "climate"?  Down with "imperial dictatorships" he says (up with non-imperial dictatorships)?  This would all be ridiculous enough, but then they trot out Robert Mugabe...

"President Chavez brought the house down.
When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.
When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.
But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ - “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell....let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation.

 And a mass-murderer at Copenhagen lectures us about our crimes:

The anti-capitalist theme was picked up on by Mr Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s veteran President, who is the target of Western sanctions over alleged human rights abuses.
“When these capitalist gods of carbon burp and belch their dangerous emissions, it’s we, the lesser mortals of the developing sphere who gasp and sink and eventually die.”

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/putting_our_economy_in_the_hands_of_chavez_fans

Death & Taxes

3 weeks before the year ends, and they are toying around with this? 45% vs, Zero?  I swear much of this recession is just about regime uncertainty. No one can make any financial decisions because you never know what this gaggle of idiots is going to impose on us next. With so much uncertainty, no investments are made.

"In less than three weeks, the hated death tax is scheduled to expire—with the rate falling from 45% to zero for 2010. Then the tax will be resurrected in 2011 at a rate of 55%. This bizarre policy dates back to 2001 when Democrats wouldn't let President Bush permanently kill the death tax, so Republicans bet that if the tax were eliminated for one year, it would never come back.
Well, the moment of truth has arrived, and House Democrats recently voted 234-199 to cancel the 2010 repeal and hold the rate permanently at 45% with a $3.5 million exemption."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703558004574579932066655144.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

SARBOX and Emperor Spawning

SARBOX is among the worst blows to capitalism we have experienced in the US, and a little recognized driver of the great recession. If the Supremes do their job, the entire law could be revoked for an unconstitutional spawning of Czars!

The most powerful czar in Washington will receive some long-overdue scrutiny today when the Supreme Court hears a challenge to the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).
This board, created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, regulates the auditors of publicly-traded firms. The members are hired by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and, say the plaintiffs in Free Enterprise Fund v. PCAOB, do not answer to the president. This violates the Constitution's "appointments clause," according to which senior executive-branch officials should be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

A glimmer of hope lies in the fact that Sarbox, drafted in the political panic following the Enron and Worldcom accounting scandals, failed to include a "severability clause." Thus if PCAOB is struck down as unconstitutional, all of Sarbanes-Oxley could come crashing down with it.


Is all this fuss about board appointments just legal hairsplitting? Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the plaintiffs suing the PCAOB, doesn't think so. He notes that "responsibility for bureaucrats was a fundamental issue for the Framers," and that the appointments clause was created "as an essential check on overweening bureaucracy. As colonists of England, they had seen offices created by both the king and Parliament spawn more offices with no accountability, creating what the Declaration of Independence refers to as a 'multitude of new offices' and 'swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.'"
Today, people who work at public companies—and their investors—understand this problem perfectly.





http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704431804574539921864252380.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Property Rights Victory in NY! - Kaur Case

If only the Supremes had done their job as well in Kelo...  Opinion in the Kaur case:

"The time has come to categorically reject eminent domain takings solely based on underutilization. This concept put forward by the respondent transforms the purpose of blight removal from the elimination of harmful social and economic conditions in a specific area to a policy affirmatively requiring the ultimate commercial development of all property regardless of the character of the community subject to such urban renewal."

http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/04/new-york-court-puts-a-stop-to

Sacrifice for Thee, But Not For Me

Hypocritical self-righteous naked celebrity emperors are so annoying;
Taking the private jet to Copenhagen

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/celebrity/article6931572.ece

Kid Art Comes to Life

Fun- Korean photographers bring kid art to life;

http://www.hemmy.net/2008/03/12/kids-drawing-reenacted-using-professional-photography/

ClimateGate! Bare Naked "Scientists"

Bare Naked "Scientists"
We knew something was up with the "missing data" in September, and now we can be pretty sure why it is missing. This is just shameful, if there is actually any sense of shame left in this world. Read the bit from September, and the bit from November 24.

---FLASHBACK---

September 23, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
The Dog Ate Global Warming
By Patrick J. Michaels
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWM=
Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.


Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

...Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”


Enter the dog that ate global warming.


Roger Pielke Jr., an esteemed professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, then requested the raw data from Jones. Jones responded:

Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.

The statement about “data storage” is balderdash. They got the records from somewhere. The files went onto a computer. All of the original data could easily fit on the 9-inch tape drives common in the mid-1980s. I had all of the world’s surface barometric pressure data on one such tape in 1979.


If we are to believe Jones’s note to the younger Pielke, CRU adjusted the original data and then lost or destroyed them over twenty years ago. The letter to Warwick Hughes may have been an outright lie. After all, Peter Webster received some of the data this year. So the question remains: What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?

FASTFORWARD to present: 
NOVEMBER 24, 2009, 7:18 A.M. ET

Global Warming With the Lid Off  
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
The emails that reveal an effort to hide the truth about climate science.


'The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind."
So apparently wrote Phil Jones, director of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and one of the world's leading climate scientists, in a 2005 email to "Mike." Judging by the email thread, this refers to Michael Mann, director of the Pennsylvania State University's Earth System Science Center.

SNL; Obama China Visit Parody

If you have not seen this, it's a must see. Does this mean it is FINALLY acceptable to criticize his highness?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d9c_1258865433

Too many people? No, too many Malthusians

They are wrong EVERY time because this is NOT a zero sum game. At what point do we stop listening?

What this potted history of population scaremongering ought to demonstrate is this: Malthusians are always wrong about everything.
The extent of their wrongness cannot be overstated. They have continually claimed that too many people will lead to increased hunger and destitution, yet the precise opposite has happened: world population has risen exponentially over the past 40 years and in the same period a great many people’s living standards and life expectancies have improved enormously. Even in the Third World there has been improvement – not nearly enough, of course, but improvement nonetheless. The lesson of history seems to be that more and more people are a good thing; more and more minds to think and hands to create have made new cities, more resources, more things, and seem to have given rise to healthier and wealthier societies.
Yet despite this evidence, the population scaremongers always draw exactly the opposite conclusion. Never has there been a political movement that has got things so spectacularly wrong time and time again yet which keeps on rearing its ugly head and saying: ‘This time it’s definitely going to happen! This time overpopulation is definitely going to cause social and political breakdown!’
There is a reason Malthusians are always wrong. It isn’t because they’re stupid… well, it might be a little bit because they’re stupid. But more fundamentally it is because, while they present their views as fact-based and scientific, in reality they are driven by a deeply held misanthropy that continually overlooks mankind’s ability to overcome problems and create new worlds.
The language used to justify population scaremongering has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the time of Malthus in the eighteenth century the main concern was with the fecundity of poor people. In the early twentieth century there was a racial and eugenic streak to population-reduction arguments. Today they have adopted environmentalist language to justify their demands for population reduction.
The fact that the presentational arguments can change so fundamentally over time, while the core belief in ‘too many people’ remains the same, really shows that this is a prejudicial outlook in search of a social or scientific justification; it is prejudice looking around for the latest trendy ideas to clothe itself in. And that is why the population scaremongers have been wrong over and over again: because behind the new language they adopt every few decades, they are really driven by narrow-mindedness, by disdain for mankind’s breakthroughs, by wilful ignorance of humanity’s ability to shape its surroundings and its future.
The first mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate how society can change to embrace more and more people. They make the schoolboy scientific error of imagining that population is the only variable, the only thing that grows and grows, while everything else – including society, progress and discovery – stays roughly the same. That is why Malthus was wrong: he thought an overpopulated planet would run out of food because he could not foresee how the industrial revolution would massively transform society and have an historic impact on how we produce and transport food and many other things. Population is not the only variable – mankind’s vision, growth, his ability to rethink and tackle problems: they are variables, too.
The second mistake Malthusians always make is to imagine that resources are fixed, finite things that will inevitably run out. They don’t recognise that what we consider to be a resource changes over time, depending on how advanced society is. That is why the Christian Tertullian was wrong in 200 AD when he said ‘the resources are scarcely adequate for us’. Because back then pretty much the only resources were animals, plants and various metals. Tertullian could not imagine that, in the future, the oceans, oil and uranium would become resources, too. The nature of resources changes as society changes – what we consider to be a resource today might not be one in the future, because other, better, more easily-exploited resources will hopefully be discovered or created. Today’s cult of the finite, the discussion of the planet as a larder of scarce resources that human beings are using up, really speaks to finite thinking, to a lack of future-oriented imagination.
And the third and main mistake Malthusians always make is to underestimate the genius of mankind. Population scaremongering springs from a fundamentally warped view of human beings as simply consumers, simply the users of resources, simply the destroyers of things, as a kind of ‘plague’ on poor Mother Nature, when in fact human beings are first and foremost producers, the discoverers and creators of resources, the makers of things and the makers of history. Malthusians insultingly refer to newborn babies as ‘another mouth to feed’, when in the real world another human being is another mind that can think, another pair of hands that can work, and another person who has needs and desires that ought to be met.
We don’t merely use up finite resources; we create infinite ideas and possibilities. The 6.7billion people on Earth have not raped and destroyed this planet, we have humanised it. And given half a chance – given a serious commitment to overcoming poverty and to pursuing progress – we would humanise it even further. Just as you wouldn’t listen to that guy who wears a placard saying ‘The End of the World is Nigh’ if he walked up to you and said ‘this time it really is nigh’, so you shouldn’t listen to the always-wrong Malthusians. Instead, join spiked in opposing the population panickers.


http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7723/

Union "Troubled" by Eagle Scout Project

Look out Scouts- the Union thugs have you in their sites. They would have volunteerism abolished if/when they can get away with it. It is already a Federal crime to volunteer at a private company- you must be paid minimum wage, even if you are willing to work for free to gain valuable experience.

In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.

Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

"We'll be looking into the Cub Scout or Boy Scout who did the trails," Balzano told the council.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path.


http://www.mcall.com/news/all-a8_5scout.7084728nov15,0,6238384.story

Climatologists Baffled

When your religion insists the world is flat, reality might deal you a few surprises.


Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

But notice warming has "stalled", because it would be heresy to consider that they are barking up the wrong tree in the first place.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html

Good News for Skirt-chasers

Women banned from wearing trousers in Paris

A decree banning women from wearing trousers in Paris is still technically in force, it emerged on Monday, making the laissez-faire French capital theoretically stricter than hardline Sudan in the fashion stakes. The rule banning women from dressing like men – namely by wearing trousers - was first introduced in 1800 by Paris' police chief and has survived repeated attempts to repeal it.

The 1800 rule stipulated than any Parisienne wishing to dress like a man "must present herself to Paris' main police station to obtain authorisation".
In 1892 it was slightly relaxed thanks to an amendment which said trousers were permitted "as long as the woman is holding the reins of a horse".
Then in 1909, the decree was further watered down when an extra clause was added to allow women in trousers on condition they were "on a bicycle or holding it by the handlebars". 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/fashionnews/6583074/Women-banned-from-wearing-trousers-in-Paris.html

Spitzer Presents at Harvard "Ethics" Conference

Talk about naked emperors!  Well, I guess Madoff was unavailable, so...

Today, former governor Eliot Spitzer will be at Harvard, speaking at the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, discussing, "What Should Be the Rationale for Government Participation in the Market?" But given Spitzer's past, from Troopergate to Hookergate, one person is very upset—a madam who had Spitzer as a client. In a letter to Professor Lawrence Lessig, Kristin Davis wrote, "For nearly 5 years, I supplied Mr. Spitzer with high priced escorts while he was both Attorney General and Governor. For this crime, I served four months on Rikers Island, had all of my assets confiscated and am now considered a sex offender on 5 years probation. Mr. Spitzer broke both state and federal laws and walked away free."
She also adds, "I am greatly intrigued as to what Mr. Spitzer could contribute to an ethical discussion when as Chief Executive Law Enforcement Officer of NY he broke numerous laws for which he has yet to be punished. As Attorney General he went around arresting and making examples out of the same escort agencies he was frequenting." 

http://gothamist.com/2009/11/12/spitzers_ethics_speaking_gig_at_har.php

38k Drivers Stopped for Air Fresheners, Fuzzy Dice, or GPS Units?

The police state of Illinois.  Seriously now. Where does this end? The "primary enforcement" seat belt laws started all of this nonsense.

An increasing number of drivers are being cited for windshield and window obstructions, which can include anything an officer deems to "materially obstruct" a driver's vision. The only exceptions are government-issued items such as I-PASS boxes and parking stickers.

Since 2004, the number of motorists stopped by state police for breaking the obscure law has jumped 91 percent. In 2004, about 20,000 drivers were warned or cited, most of them receiving warnings. This year, the number is expected to hit about 38,000.

Offenders can expect little sympathy from Master Sgt. Isaiah Vega of the Illinois State Police.

"Driving is a privilege, and drivers should take every precaution," he said. Hanging anything from the rear-view-mirror "could be a dangerous if not deadly error," Vega said.
...
A sheriff's deputy pulled him over in Colorado for his GPS unit. 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-air-freshener-crackdownnov08,0,3262354,full.story

Serious Environmentalists Should Be Anti Warmist

Resources on a massive scale are being diverted toward the myth, and starving out resources for actual environmental problems. Coyote makes the case;

I often conclude my presentations on climate that conservationists will likely look back in 10-20 years on the global warming hysteria as the worst thing that has ever happened to the environmental movement.  While we focus 110% of our attention on a trace, naturally occurring atmospheric gas that our bodies exhale and plants need to live, here is what we are not focusing on.
All the problems in these pictures are ones we demonstrably know how to solve while still allowing for the economic growth that is pulling a billion Asians our of poverty.  The same cannot be said for our current ability to eliminate CO2, and therefore most combustion, without imploding our economy.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/11/sucking-the-oxygen-out-of-the-environmental-movement.html

Water on the Moon!

Incredible discovery- I was recently reading a space science book to my boy which bluntly states that "there is no water on the moon".

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/11/13/water.moon.nasa/index.html

ACORN- Blocking Their Funding is Unconstitutional!

ACORN has a Constitutional RIGHT to Federal funding.  I'm sure that protecting the people from having their Fed funds cut off is exactly the "infringement" the the founders had in mind with the Due Process clause.

Thursday's lawsuit claims that Congress violated the right to due process enshrined in the Fifth Amendment -- declaring the group guilty of a crime and punishing its members without completing an investigation within the Department of Justice or the IRS.
"It's not the job of Congress to be the judge, jury, and executioner," said Jules Lobel, an attorney representing the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"We have due process in this country, and our Constitution forbids lawmakers from singling out a person or group for punishment without a fair investigation and trial."


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/12/acorn-sues-unconstitutional-funding-cuts-congress/

FDIC Seizes Bank Hours After Geithner Gives Them $50m

This is just an unbelievable naked emperor moment. Pretty much sums up our 'through the looking glass' world of insane bailouts and subsidies in one event.

Park National Bank of Chicago received $50 million in tax credits to encourage investment in poor communities at an Oct. 30 ceremony attended by Geithner. Hours later, though, it was seized along with eight other banks around the country that formed part of a holding company called FBOP Corp. and sold to U.S. Bancorp (USB Quote).

One financial services executive, who did not want to be on the record for fear of running afoul of regulators, accused the FDIC of timing the closure as it did in a deliberate effort to embarrass Geithner.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10624514/1/fdic-disowns-geithner-embarrassment.html?puc=_mdb_html_pla4&cm_ven=EMAIL_mdb_html

Baby Cry App

 Something truly useful for mankind.

Having trouble understanding your baby’s burbles, screeches and noisy, wheedling screams? There’s an app for that.
The Cry Translator listens to a whining child and analyzes the pitch, volume, tone and inflection of his nerve-jangling noise. Ten seconds later, it provides you with one of five “translations”: hungry, sleepy, stressed, annoyed or bored.


http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/iphone-application-translates-babies-howls/

Baguette Dropped By Bird Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add additional safety features. Now, a bird dropping a piece of bread on a section of the accelerator has, according to the Register, shut down the whole operation.
The bird dropped some bread on a section of outdoor machinery, eventually leading to significant over heating in parts of the accelerator. The LHC was not operational at the time of the incident, but the spike produced so much heat that had the beam been on, automatic failsafes would have shut down the machine.
This incident won't delay the reactivation of the facility later this month, but exposes yet another vulnerability of the what might be the most complex machine ever built. With freak accident after freak accident piling up over at CERN, the idea of time traveling particles returning from the future to prevent their own discovery is beginning to seem less and less far fetched. 

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/bread-loving-bird-shuts-down-lhc

Kelo Neighborhood Goes To Weeds

Unbelievable. They forced everyone out, took the neighborhood, and now it goes to weeds. Poetic justice in a way, but what a colossal waste. IMHO, this was the Supremes worst act ever- if they can't protect private property from being appropriated for private development, they serve no useful purpose.


The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.
But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.
To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of "public use."
Although her side lost, Kelo said she sees the wider ramifications of her property rights battle.
"In the end it was seven of us who fought like wild animals to save what we had," she said. "I think that though we ultimately didn't win for ourselves, it has brought attention to what they did to us, and if it can make it better for some other people so they don't lose their homes to a Dunkin' Donuts or a Wal-Mart, I think we did some good."
 
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Pfizer-abandons-site-of-infamous-Kelo-eminent-domain-taking-69580497.html

Fall of The Wall Day- 20 Years Ago

This should really be a day of international rejoicing, but for some reason it feels like the lessons of history are being forgotten. We can't even get decent recognition of the event from our gov officials.  Why does Hollywood make hero films about Ernesto Che Guevara?  How is his legacy really any better for humanity than the Fascist dictators who are toxic to champion? Why is it ok for US Administration officials to lovingly quote Chairman Mao, but not Hitler? Pop quiz- who is responsible for killing more people? To me, the only distinction between a "leftist" dictator and a "rightist" dictator are the lies they use to justify their brutal crimes against humanity.

Today, rejoice and remember the brave crowds with the sledgehammers, and the brave border guards who refused to carry out their immoral duties.

[Via Radley Balko]
Today, Berlin celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Sadly, much of Europe is already beginning to forget the atrocities wrought by communism. We libertarians regularly make the point that while Nazism is still regularly and justifiably vilified, communism periodically enjoys rebirths of chic. The point can’t be made enough. Not to diminish the horrors of Nazism, but to confront the cultural whitewashing of the horrors of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Il, and the others.
This weekend at the Students for Liberty conference I was privileged to hear the great historian Alan Charles Kors give a rousing and inspiring speech demanding an accounting for the horrors of communism. I don’t think the speech is available online, but here’s an essay Kors wrote for Reason several years ago that touches on the same themes. The concluding graph is stirring.

No cause in the history of mankind has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than communism. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. No one honors those dead. No one does penance for them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag: “No, no one would have to answer.” Communism was not a “god that failed.” Rather, it was an intellectually organized slaughter and slavery that succeeded, but that could not sustain itself against the productivity and resistance of free men and women.

http://www.theagitator.com/2009/11/09/fall-of-the-wall/

Here's an accounting of the mass "democide".
 

Source: http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.TAB1.GIF

The Empress Has No Clothes

The peasants are revolting, so we have to work fast!

The Madness of Queen Nancy

More than a few Democrats in Congress are perplexed and worried that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting on ramming through a 1,900-page health care bill on Saturday, just days after her party took heavy losses in Tuesday's elections. "It reminds me of Major Nicholson, the obsessed British major in the film 'Bridge on the River Kwai,'" one Democrat told me. "She is fixated on finishing her health care bridge even as she's lost sight of where it's going and what damage it could cause to her own troops."

Indeed, the Speaker's take on Tuesday's off-year elections struck some of her own members as delusive "happy talk." "From our perspective, we won last night," a cheerful Ms. Pelosi told reporters, citing her party's pick-up of a single House seat in a New York special election and retention of another strongly Democratic seat in California.


But Speaker Pelosi isn't about to step back. In fact, she plans to force her troops to vote on health care just one day after Friday's jobless numbers are due, which are likely to show unemployment still growing. "When I take this bill to the floor, it will win," she proclaimed earlier this year.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013004574517603592213342.html

Market Flat For 3 Months When Priced in Euro or Yen

Ouch. All that is nothing but inflation we have not really felt yet. Another interesting fact (not here) is that priced in Euros, the all time market high was not in 2007, it was in 1999.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/171499-dollar-s-decline-has-contributed-to-market-s-recent-rise?source=article_sb_picks

Home Prices- Look out below?!?

Think it's safe to go back in the water?  Home prices are still 43% above their long term trend line! Is there any special reason why prices should hold at 2004 levels?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/170526-property-values-set-to-fall-43-from-current-depressed-levels?source=article_sb_popular

Secret "Anti-Counterfeiting" Trade Agreement

Slow march toward world government- and how is this a matter of grave "national security" that must be done in secret? Do you suppose the RIAA and the MPAA have security clearance here, because it sounds like their lawyers are writing the treaty.

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
  
• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
  
• * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html

Global Warming Gets Legal Religion Status in UK

You no longer have to say that anthropogenic global warming is LIKE a religion.

Climate change belief given same legal status as religion.
An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.


In a landmark ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton said that “a belief in man-made climate change … is capable, if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations”.
The ruling could open the door for employees to sue their companies for failing to account for their green lifestyles, such as providing recycling facilities or offering low-carbon travel.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/04/its-official-climate-change-beliefs-now-have-religious-status/

India Buys Gold From IMF

This is an important development- the IMF sells some of its gold to India, and the price of gold goes up!
What? Everyone has been speculating that the IMF dumping their gold reserves on the market represents a huge risk to gold investors. Then when it actually happens, gold goes up? What gives?

http://seekingalpha.com/article/170940-india-s-gold-grab-boosts-metal-s-price?source=email

Tax Rates Required to Erase Deficit

Fear this. Really, completely naked, I tell you! Why can't everyone see it!

Assuming deductions, exemptions and credits were kept the same as they are now, the government would have to nearly triple every tax rate. Table 1 shows the effect on statutory rates of such a hypothetical tax hike. Instead of taxing couples with rates that range from 10 percent to 35 percent, tax rates would have to start at 27.2 percent and range up to 95.2 percent.
 http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/25415.html

 

CA Arbitrarily Increases Tax Withholdings By 10%

Statist extortion- To be repaid in April!?! They couldn't even pay out their tax refunds this year- now they are going to extort an extra 10% arbitrarily?- I see more IOUs in the future. Seriously- how does anyone ever get reelected in CA- I think their populace may be even stupider than ours.

"Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.
Technically, it’s not a tax increase, even though it may feel like one when your next paycheck arrives. As part of a bundle of budget patches adopted in the summer, the state is taking more money now in withholding, even though workers’ annual tax bills won’t change.
Think of it as a forced, interest-free loan: You’ll be repaid any extra withholding in April. Those who would receive a refund anyway will receive a larger one, and those who owe taxes will owe less."

A sad historical footnote: It was Milton Friedman who came up with the tax withholding scheme. He spent the rest of his life wishing he could put that genie back in the bottle.

"Stimulus" Writ Small

Stimulus in a microcosm- there is no difference between what this guy is doing and what the Fed Gov is forcing upon us on a grand scale. It's all Bastiat's broken window fallacy.

Arrest Him? He Should Be Named The Obama Stimulus Czar


Tennessee police said a mechanic was drumming up business by tampering with parked cars, then charging to help start them. Police arrested 41-year-old Christopher Walls of Johnson City on Thursday night.
Investigators said Walls disabled cars parked at restaurants, waited for the owners to try to start them and then offered his services as a mechanic. Police said Walls charged between $40 and $200 to get the vehicles running again.
He’s charged with two counts of theft under $500, but police suspect there are other victims. They’re urging anyone else who thinks they were scammed to call them.

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2009/11/arrest-him-he-should-be-named-the-obama-stimulus-czar.html

Geithner Should Go Down For This

By all rights, TurboTax Tim should be ousted for this AIG backroom dealing alone;

Still, officials at AIG object to the secrecy that surrounded the transactions. One top AIG executive who asked not to be identified says he was pressured by New York Fed officials not to file documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that would divulge details.
“They’d tell us that they don’t think that this or that should be disclosed,” the executive says. “They’d say, ‘Don’t you think your counterparties will be concerned?’ It was much more about protecting the Fed.”
‘An Outrage’
Friedman’s role remains controversial. In December 2008, weeks after the payments to the banks were authorized in November, Friedman bought 37,300 shares of Goldman stock at $80.78 a share, according to SEC filings. On Jan. 22, he bought 15,300 more at $66.61.
Both purchases took place before the payments to Goldman Sachs were publicly disclosed under pressure from Senator Dodd in March. On Oct. 26, Goldman Sachs stock closed at $179.37 a share, meaning Friedman had paper profits of $5.4 million.
Jerry Jordan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, says Friedman should have resigned from the New York Fed as soon as it became clear that Goldman stood to benefit from its actions.
“It’s an outrage,” Jordan says. “He needed to either resign from the Fed board or from Goldman and proceed to sell his stock.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a7T5HaOgYHpE

Roubini on Carry Trade

Is the mother of all short squeezes forming?  This is the only thing the dollar seems to have going for it- that the current carry trade bubble will eventually burst.

So what is behind this massive rally? Certainly it has been helped by a wave of liquidity from near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. But a more important factor fuelling this asset bubble is the weakness of the US dollar, driven by the mother of all carry trades. The US dollar has become the major funding currency of carry trades as the Fed has kept interest rates on hold and is expected to do so for a long time. Investors who are shorting the US dollar to buy on a highly leveraged basis higher-yielding assets and other global assets are not just borrowing at zero interest rates in dollar terms; they are borrowing at very negative interest rates – as low as negative 10 or 20 per cent annualised – as the fall in the US dollar leads to massive capital gains on short dollar positions.
Let us sum up: traders are borrowing at negative 20 per cent rates to invest on a highly leveraged basis on a mass of risky global assets that are rising in price due to excess liquidity and a massive carry trade. Every investor who plays this risky game looks like a genius – even if they are just riding a huge bubble financed by a large negative cost of borrowing – as the total returns have been in the 50-70 per cent range since March. 

But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and credit instruments.
Why will these carry trades unravel? First, the dollar cannot fall to zero and at some point it will stabilise; when that happens the cost of borrowing in dollars will suddenly become zero, rather than highly negative, and the riskiness of a reversal of dollar movements would induce many to cover their shorts. Second, the Fed cannot suppress volatility forever – its $1,800bn purchase plan will be over by next spring.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9a5b3216-c70b-11de-bb6f-00144feab49a.html

HealthScare Bill- Big Wet Kiss to Trial Lawyers

The health care bill recently unveiled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi is over 1,900 pages for a reason. It is much easier to dispense goodies to favored interest groups if they are surrounded by a lot of legislative legalese. For example, check out this juicy morsel to the trial lawyers (page 1431-1433 of the bill):

Section 2531, entitled “Medical Liability Alternatives,” establishes an incentive program for states to adopt and implement alternatives to medical liability litigation. [But]…… a state is not eligible for the incentive payments if that state puts a law on the books that limits attorneys’ fees or imposes caps on damages.

So, you can’t try to seek alternatives to lawsuits if you’ve actually done something to implement alternatives to lawsuits. Brilliant! The trial lawyers must be very happy today!
http://biggovernment.com/2009/10/30/pelosi-health-care-bill-blows-a-kiss-to-trial-lawyers/#more-23042

740 Pounds of Food for Just $180!

Yeah right. If you count all of the maintenance staff and equipment as free. Missing from this article was the part where the soil was found to be contaminated, and had to be replaced- how much did that cost? I wouldn't mind any of this if they weren't so annoyingly self-righteous about this whole prop, and the press didn't gush on about the righteousness of it.

The First Lady also asked the students how much they thought it cost to plant the garden. They guessed $300, $800, $1000 and $6000 as Michelle acted as auctioneer.

She then revealed the answer: "Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land..... It [cost] about $180."


http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2009/10/white-house-garden-typical-bs-with-real.html

Net Neuterality

Once in a great while, some of the Congress Critters actually "get it".

"If the Internet were invented by a politician or worse, managed by bureaucrats, cell phones would still look like bricks and the information superhighway would still be a dirt road. If there is any sector of our economy where competition is so fierce and where the pace of innovation is so rapid that government interference would only get in the way, it is the Internet and telecommunications market.

The Internet has grown because of a virtuous and mutually beneficial circle: network operators provide ever-increasing speed and bandwidth; content providers one-up each other with game-changing innovations; and consumers adapt and adopt at lightning speed.

Ten years ago, we effectively had no broadband marketplace. Dial-up Internet was common, but not ubiquitous. Consumers had a choice of service providers, but they were typically confined to walled gardens of preselected or preferred content. The broadband revolution led us out of that desert. Instead of dog-paddling, we could surf the net, choosing between broadband service offered by traditional phone and cable companies and, now, wireless companies as well.

Compare that to the last decade of success at government dominated companies like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM or Chrysler.

Yet despite an overwhelming record of innovation, and customer satisfaction, Washington wants to replace the judgment of consumers with that of politicians and bureaucrats.
 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703363704574503331828238574.html

HBD Internet!

The Internet turns 40!  Wait, how old was Al Gore in 1969? Amazing!

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.34dd88291e1ac5a96cd13fac3e3de311.41&show_article=1

Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car

Big surprise, and on CNN no less

http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/28/autos/clunkers_analysis/index.htm

Halloween Treat- Severed Hand

Yum!

See how to make it
http://www.notmartha.org/archives/2009/10/27/meat-hand/

3rd GM Bailout!

This will never end. GM is going to be another AMTRAK, but much bigger.

Treasury, GMAC in talks for 3rd round of US aid

NEW YORK (AP) _ GMAC, the former lending arm of General Motors Co., is in talks with the Treasury Department for a third injection of taxpayer aid, a further sign of the U.S. government's entrenchment in the U.S. auto industry. The Treasury Department mandated earlier this year that GMAC Financial Services raise an additional $11.5 billion in capital after undergoing a "stress test" along with 18 other banks. While other banks deemed undercapitalized have been able to raise funds from private investors, GMAC has been forced to go back to the government.

Laboratory Black Hole with 'Metamaterials'

Wow

Artificial Black Hole Created in Chinese Lab

Cloaking technology used to create a region of space that allows microwaves in, but not out again

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24234/

Safety Deposit Box Dragnet in UK

Imagine having your assets confiscated, and having to prove exactly how you accumulated them over a lifetime to get them back.
Don't think even for a second that this could not happen here. We have plenty of laws that would enable such a thing, from RICO, to the Patriot Act, among others.

In all, more than 500 officers had gathered to receive orders to raid smart addresses in well-heeled parts of the capital. The locations included three of Britain's largest and most well-established safety-deposit box depositories in Edgware, Hampstead and Park Lane as well as an office and the homes of the three directors of Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, which owned the vaults - two in Hampstead and one in Barnet. 

Under POCA, the burden of proof lay with the box-holders. Finding evidence for wartime treks across Europe, or charting migration stories from the Partition of India and beyond, would cost many of the box-holders tens of thousands of pounds.
Mark Richardson, a former military intelligence officer and now a forensic accountant, who has been employed by several box-holders to explain their wealth, told us: 'We had to get one family's diamonds carbon-dated at great expense to demonstrate to the police that they had been cut in the Thirties, which tallied with their story of fleeing Germany before World War II.'
Lawyer Sara Teasdale, of City practice Roiter Zucker, whose client had kept more than £900,000 in his box at the vaults in Edgware as cash flow for his business leasing black cabs, said: 'The police are "deep-pocketing" - hauling people through a protracted legal process that they know is so costly that most will roll over.' 
Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met's history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'

This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still investigating.
That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they would find while wooing Judge Macrae. 

And look- they had asset seizure quotas:
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html#ixzz0VGAtdFTT

Quote of the Day

One might have guessed it would take a decade of Obamanomics to produce European welfare state levels of youth unemployment, but at 18.5% we're there.
About the only positive sign is the price surge in normally uncorrelated assets—stocks, bonds, commodities, gold—as fund managers use cheap credit to play the carry-trade opportunity.
All this might be defensible if time were being bought to clean up an accumulation of past excesses. Instead, the president is creating a new one. "It's no exaggeration to say the Senate health-care bill taking shape is the equivalent of climbing aboard a train about to plunge into a canyon and deciding what it really needs is a bomb on board."


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703574604574499430059865524.html

The End of Baseball?

The plaintiff alleges that get this- bats are excessively effective as implements for hitting baseballs! Not only that, can you believe they market their defective product to children! Clearly what we need to be using are those foam bats with foam balls in our lawyer-proof, mattress-covered world.

Suit blames baseball bat maker for death

 According to the plaintiff's attorneys, Patch's death was caused by the defective and unreasonably dangerous product because the bat was designed and manufactured to allow the ball to be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety of those playing the game. No warnings were given to adequately provide sufficient notice to users such as Patch of the dangerous propensities of these products, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit states the plaintiff is entitled to punitive damages for the sake of example and as punishment from the makers of Louisville Slugger, Hillerich & Bradsby Co., which acted with actual malice due to their knowledge or intentional disregard of facts, creating a high probability of injury to players such as Patch. The makers of Louisville Slugger misrepresented to the end user and to the general public that the bat in question was safe for use in competitive baseball games, the suit argues.

http://www.helenair.com/news/article_1368a56a-be08-11de-a668-001cc4c002e0.html

Democrats Vote To Give ACORN Regulatory Authority Over Financial Institutions

What could possibly go wrong?

By making representatives of ACORN and other consumer activist organizations eligible to serve on the Oversight Board, the amendment creates a potentially enormous government sanctioned conflict of interest. ACORN-type organizations will have an advisory role on regulating the very financial institutions from which they receive millions of dollars annually in direct corporate contributions and benefit from other financial partnerships and arrangements. These are the same organizations that pressured banks to make subprime mortgage loans and thus bear a major responsibility for the collapse of the housing market.

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2599000/

Got Perfect Credit? You Could Be Charged For It!

I once had a credit card company close my account because I never carried a balance. They are gunning for me again:

Loraine Mullen-Kress carries a Bank of America credit card and religiously pays off her balance.

"Flawless credit," she boasted.

Yet now, her good credit habits could cost her. Earlier this month Bank of America started notifying customers like Mullen-Kress that they will be charged a new annual fee of $29 to $99.

"There is a big segment of their population that they will have never made money on, which is people who pay their bills on time every month," said Ben Woolsey, Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com.

Bank of America said in a statement: "At this point we're testing the fee on a very small number of accounts and haven't made any final decisions." Citigroup is also trying out an annual fee with some card holders, and analysts expect more banks to follow their lead.

 http://wcbstv.com/consumer/credit.card.fees.2.1272124.html

Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation

Stimulating waste, fraud, and abuse- big surprise.

To spend the stimulus money quickly, many of the projects to improve military facilities were added to existing contracts. Although those contracts had been competitively bid in the past, none of the new stimulus work the companies received was open to competition.

The Department of Defense awarded nearly $30 million in stimulus contracts to six companies while they were under federal criminal investigation on suspicion of defrauding the government.
According to Air Force documents, the companies claimed to be small, minority-owned businesses, which allowed them to gain special preference in bidding for government contracts. But investigators found that they were all part of a larger minority-owned enterprise in Southern California, making them ineligible for the contracts.


Call me an originalist. or whatever, but shouldn't awarding Federal contracts based upon race parameters be unconstitutional on the face of it?

http://www.propublica.org/ion/stimulus/item/stimulus-contracts-go-to-companies-under-criminal-investigation-1023

Carnivore?

I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to need a "support" group.

Naked emperors make the news

I thought this was a funny argument over who is an Emperor, and who is not:

Further, it diminishes the president for him to act as media critic. As Obama himself suggested in trying to dodge Savannah Guthrie's question, why isn't he concentrating on the economy, Afghanistan and other matters that are actually part of his job? Eric Burns of MediaMutters.org makes the point, hilariously if unwittingly, in a Puffington Host post:

The issue is not whether it was a good idea politically for the White House to say that the emperor has no clothes. The issue is that the emperor actually has no clothes. In other words, the administration's comments about Fox News aren't the story. Fox News is the story.

In Burns's rendition of "The Emperor's New Clothes," the president of the United States is cast in the role of the innocent child who isn't afraid to observe that the emperor is naked. That seems to get the fable exactly backward. Of course, for a professional ankle-biter like Burns, Fox News is the emperor--i.e., a vastly more powerful and important institution than MediaMutters. But it doesn't seem to occur to Burns that he diminishes the president by bringing him down to his own level--perhaps because the president has been so busy diminishing himself of late.

Which brings us back to Alinsky, and this quote from the "Rules for Radicals" prologue:

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

For an example of how the Have-Nots are capitalizing on Alinsky's insights, read our Weekend Interview with Andrew Breitbart, the Internet entrepreneur who masterminded the publicity campaign that made the Acorn scandal into a story the media couldn't ignore.

But Alinskyite tactics are of no use to Obama. As president of the United States, he is the ultimate Have. Maybe he is wearing an exquisite suit of clothes, but Obama doesn't seem to have a clue that he is the emperor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703573604574491290971140508.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Scholarship Fund, pay to play?

This is how "soft corruption" works.

Rep. Steve Buyer’s (R-IN) “scholarship fund” is five years old, has raised nearly a million dollars,  has paid for fun fundraising trips and golf outings at exotic locations for Buyer and his contributors, who also happen to be corporations with business before his committee. Oh, also, the fund hasn’t yet handed out a single scholarship.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20091018/NEWS05/910180398/Rep.+Buyer+raising+a+lot++giving+a+little

Setting Up The Next Financial Crisis

Meltzer exposing the 800 pound naked emperor in the room

Don't be fooled by the bond market. Banks are holding prices down because they can buy Treasurys with free money from the Fed.

Many market participants reassure themselves that inflation won't come by noting the decline in yields on longer-term Treasury bonds and the spread between nominal Treasury yields and index-linked TIPS that protect against inflation. They measure expectations of higher inflation by the difference between these two rates, and imply long-term investors aren't demanding higher interest rates to protect themselves against it. But those traditional inflation-warning indicators are distorted because the Fed lends money at about a zero rate and the banks buy Treasury securities, reducing their yield and thus the size of the inflation premium.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704224004574489251193581802.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Prescription Sudafed?

First they hide it behind the counter, then they get busy arresting grandmothers who buy it too often, now it's going prescription so it will cost like $100 just to get some decongestants. Talk about health care inflation. I have to see a doctor to diagnose a stuffy nose? Come on now...

"They plan to do what prohibitionists always do in the face of failure: double down—in this case by requiring prescriptions for a cheap, safe, effective decongestant that not long ago was readily available in convenience stores across the land. That requirement will force doctors to police Americans' pseudoephedrine consumption, encouraging them to treat every patient with a stuffy nose as a potential crank kingpin."


http://reason.com/blog/2009/10/21/a-prescription-should-be-requi#comments

Man Arrested for Being Naked- In his Own Home!

Apparently, the woman who called the police was trespassing on the naked guy's property at the time.
(Decidely not an emperor)

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local-beat/Man-Charged-After-Being-Seen-Naked-in-His-Home-65316082.html

Can't Take the Heat? Change the Locks!

More farce. I just gotta say that if you were to reverse the political parties in this 'friends of Angelo' drama, it would be incessant front page news everywhere. These guys pull these silly stunts because they believe they can get away with it, and so far, they have.

Democratic staff for the House oversight committee informed their GOP counterparts today that the majority has changed the locks on the committee's hearing room. While Republicans previously enjoyed their own key to the room, they will now have to request access from Democrats. This followed a bitter partisan argument in which Republicans refused to take down a video from their website that contradicted Dem explanations about a closed-door meeting on the Countrywide VIP loan scandal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574485783622311444.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Extremely Overbought?

Or why I just can't seem to find anything I want to invest in right now...

The Stock Market Has Never Been This (Intermediate-Term) Overbought 
In reviewing the status of the market late last week, the condition of the data was something of an anomaly in that regard. On the valuation front, stocks are presently overvalued, but to levels that we've observed at least several times in history. The anomaly relates to market action, where we can no longer find a single historical instance where stocks were more overbought on the combination of short- and intermediate-term measures we respond to most strongly. Indeed, only one instance comes close, which is November 28, 1980.

Now, if that date doesn't ring a bell, I have to admit that it didn't resonate with me either at first. On that date, the stock market was just a few months into a fresh economic recovery following the 1980 recession, employment conditions were just beginning to improve, capacity utilization was picking up, the Purchasing Managers Index had just moved back over 50, and stocks were certainly not overvalued on the basis of normalized earnings or cash flows. Indeed, the P/E multiple of the S&P 500 was just over 9, on the basis of both trailing and normalized earnings. Advisory sentiment was not strenuously bullish either, so there was little to identify it as a date to remember.

As it happened, however, November 28, 1980 was the peak of the furious advance in S&P 500 driven by enthusiasm over "less bad" economic news, though with little proven economic strength. It was the last day of the 1980 bull market. The economy later proved to have been in a short lull within a double-dip recession, taking stocks to their final lows in 1982.

One of the notable features of extreme overbought conditions is that investors rarely have much opportunity to get out, just like the fast and furious advances that clear oversold conditions tend to occur too quickly to capture unless one has already established a position. As for the present, we have rarely seen 90% of stocks suspended above their 50- and 200-day moving averages for as sustained a period as we have now observed.

http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc091019.htm