Year: 2011

Because it Pisses off Democrats. That’s why.

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Medicare fraudster, and Florida governor, Rick Scott has decided to cancel a high speed rail project between Orlando and Tampa Florida:

Florida’s congressional delegation, state officials and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer are pushing back against Gov. Rick Scott’s decision Wednesday to reject $2.4 billion in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed train between Orlando and Tampa.

“This is a century-type decision that needs to be vetted,” Dyer said. “I don’t think it was given a fair hearing.”

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood intends to meet either in person or by phone Friday with Florida elected officials, likely including Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Reps. John Mica, R-Winter Park, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, to discuss ways of keeping the project alive even as California, New York and Washington state offered to take some of the money.

And some officials were bitterly critical of Scott for pulling the plug even before bids had gone out to build the 84-mile system. Eight consortia of companies from 11 countries had indicated they would be willing to put up some or all of the state’s $280 million share of the project, while the bid terms would have required them to absorb cost overruns and any operating losses for 20 years.

So, let’s look at this, it would:

  • Cost the state little or no money.
  • Losses and cost overruns are someone else’s problem.
  • Disney wanted it for their Disney World Theme park.
  • It would have created 23,000 construction jobs.

So, why did he cancel it?  Because in so doing, he’s pissing off Democrats and liberals.

When looking at Republican policy making, one needs to realize that there is an imperative, pissing off Democrats, that frequently subordinates good policy, and sometimes even good politics.

Basically, Republicans are dicks.

No, they aren’t dicks, a dick has a head.

The Only Answer is that Some People Are Above the Law

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The great Matt Taibbi Asks, “Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?,” and he doesn’t have an answer per se, but he does explain the consequences of the fact that the banksters are untouchable:

The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don’t feel real; you don’t see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They’re crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let’s steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim their money through a captive bureaucracy. They’re attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone’s claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.

This is the America that we live in, and Barack Obama and Timothy Geithner like it that way.

It really is a pity that the other side is so thoroughly contemptible, because there appears to be no good option.

Read the whole thing.

Just When You Thought that Republicans Could Not Get Any More Evil…

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Republicans in South Dakata are pushing a law to legalize the murder of abortion providers:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of “justifiable homicide” to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state’s GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

Jeebus.

I don’t mean to state the obvious, but it’s pretty clear that there no middle ground here to negotiate. You would sooner get meaningful consensus from Osama bin Laden.

Props to Obama on Generic Drugs

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Obama’s budget achieves a fair amount of costs savings by shortening the exclusivity period for drugs and ending payments from big pharma to generic drug manufacturers not to manufacture their drugs:

Big pharmaceutical companies could face increased competition from generic drugmakers under two proposals put forth by the Obama administration on Monday despite earlier savings extracted from drugmakers as part of last year’s healthcare law.

President Barack Obama, as part of his 2012 budget proposal, called for cutting the number of years drugmakers could exclusively market brand-name biologic drugs to 7 years from 12.

He also set his sights on ending controversial “pay-for-delay” deals that affect traditional, chemical drugs by giving the U.S. Federal Trade Commission power to block them. Under such pacts, brand-name and generic drugmakers settle patent challenges with payoffs that delay lower-cost rivals from reaching the market.

I’d feel a little bit better about this if he also wasn’t cutting home heating aid to the poor in the same budget though.

Not Enough Bullets

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No, but apparently we look like a bitch


This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter “B”, as in bullet, and banker …

So, Citi’s CEO, the incomparably incompetent Vikram Pandit, is saying that if if regulators reign in debit card fees, they will have to stick it to poor people:

U.S. banks may cut their services to the poorest Americans as a result of new U.S. financial regulations, including federal caps on debit card processing fees, Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit said Tuesday.

New U.S. laws, including the Dodd-Frank financial regulation act passed last year, “will change banking,” Pandit said in prepared remarks due to be delivered at an investors’ conference in New York Tuesday.

This makes me want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass …… OK, I want to go all Samuel L. Jackson/Pulp Fiction on his ass dressed in an Elmo suit, but that last bit is just me …… Or at least I think (hope) that the last bit is just me.

Let’s be clear here the debit card fees are a fee levied disproportionately on the poor, and he’s saying that if he can’t f%$# the poor like a bitch, then he won’t serve them?

This guy has a job because he f%$#ed so badly no one wants to take his job, because they would have to fix his mess, and so he, and the whole rotten bank, live off of TARP money, back door Treasury Department subsidies, and the largess of “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve, and he has the nerve to suggest that he is anything but a leech at the public tit.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Shirley Sharrod Finally Sues Andrew Breitbart

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About damn time:

Former USDA official Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against conservative firebrand and web entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. The suit stems from the notorious video Breitbart posted online last year, showing an out-of-context excerpt from a speech Sherrod gave to the NAACP Freedom Fund in March 2010. The clip suggested she had used her position at the Department of Agriculture to discriminate against white farmers. The media devoured the Breitbart’s version of story so voraciously that the NAACP denounced Sherrod and the Obama administration fired her. The charge was, in fact, entirely untrue.

Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip “damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.” Breitbart, meanwhile, denounced the suit, saying he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

Let’s be clear, as a public official at the time, Shirley Sharrod has a very high burden of proof, so I do not know her chances of prevailing, but even if she wins, it is highly unlikely that she will get anything unless she takes action in advance to ensure that the real assets of his operations are secure.

His real assets would walk out of his office tommorow, on a memory stick, we are talking about things like his subscriber database, so if I were her lawyer, I would suggest that she move to have the court appoint a special master to oversee this data, to ensure that it doesn’t walk out the door.

Then again, I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, Dammit.*

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

God Bless The Onion

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Don’t be drinking anything when you read the rest of This:

U.S. Authorities Can’t Really Fault Al-Qaeda For Deadly Bombing Of Carnival Cruise Ship
‘Those Things Represent Everything That’s Wrong With America,’ Officials Say

February 9, 2011 | ISSUE 47•06

WASHINGTON—Following Monday’s deadly terrorist attack on a Carnival Cruise Line ship, U.S. officials have had difficulty issuing a stern condemnation of the incident, saying that while any act of terrorism is inexcusable, they couldn’t completely blame al-Qaeda for wanting to blow up what is essentially a giant, floating symbol of everything that is truly god-awful about America.

………

OMFSM, this is funny!

Vasimr Electric Propulsion System Heading Out to ISS

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NASA will be sending the variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (Vasimr) up to the International Space Station (Paid subscription required) for tests and validation. (Earlier posts)

It’s expected to put out about 5.7 Netwons, about a pound, with an ISP (fuel economy) of somewhere between 10 and 30 times that of chemical propellants.

While a pound does not seem like much thrust, it’s more than enough for station keeping and orbital, or for that matter interplanetary, maneuvering, as you can get the thrust for months, rather than hours, and compared to other electric thrusters systems, like the ion drive used on the Dawn Probe, it provides a lot more thrust. (Dawn has a thrust of only 90mN, about 1/50 that of the Vasimr).

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

I would note that this trend seems to be hewing fairly close to last year’s pattern so far,

  1. Sunshine State Community Bank, Port Orange, FL
  2. Peoples State Bank, Hamtramck, MI
  3. Badger State Bank, Cassville, WI
  4. Canyon National Bank, Palm Springs, CA

Full FDIC list

And we have the first credit union closing of the year:

  1. Oakland Municipal Credit Union, Oakland, CA

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

And since it’s early in the year, here is a detail of the first few weeks:

Clearly the British Isles Must Be Invaded For Their Own Protection

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Click for full size

Yes, These Are Royal Wedding Commemorative Condoms

I came across a web page titled, “Lie back and think of England,” in which someone is flogging condoms commemorating the royal wedding.

Clearly they have forfeited any right to self governance.

Needless to say, this does not apply to the Republic of Ireland, who do not have the Royals as head of state, though their dealings with their banks does make one wonder about whether they are suited for self government, but that is a post for another day.

Mubarak Flees Cairo, Soon to Go to R’Lyeh* Riyadh

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Well, it looks like something between a popular uprising and a military coup just took place in Egypt, as Hosni Mubarak has resigned as President and left the capital:

Egypt erupted in a joyous celebration of the power of a long repressed people on Friday as President Hosni Mubarak resigned his post and ceded control to the military, ending his nearly 30 years of autocratic rule.

Shouts of “God is Great” competed with fireworks and car horns around Cairo after Mr. Mubarak’s vice president and longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, announced during evening prayers that Mr. Mubarak had passed all authority to a council of military leaders, bowing to a historic popular uprising that has transformed politics in Egypt and around the Arab world.

Protesters hugged and cheered and shouted, “Egypt is free!” and “You’re an Egyptian, lift your head.”

“He’s finally off our throats,” said one protester, Muhammad Insheemy. “Soon, we will bring someone good.”

The departure of the 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak, at least initially to his coastal resort home in Sharm el-Sheik, was a pivotal turn in a nearly three-week revolt that has upended one of the Arab’s world’s most enduring dictatorships. The popular protests — peaceful and resilient despite numerous efforts by Mr. Mubarak’s legendary security apparatus to suppress them — ultimately deposed an ally of the United States who has been instrumental in helping to carry out American policy in the region for decades.

The country is now being run by a “council of military leaders,” but they have made strong assertions that they will return the country to civilian rule, and something resembling a representative democracy, in a timely manner, but, there have been lots of promises throughout the Arab world about reform of governance, and they generally have not panned out.

Time will tell, I guess.

*“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” (In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming) as the fictional “Mad Arab”†, Abdul Alhazred, would say.
†And yes, I appreciate the irony of referring to the “Mad Arab” in the context of the overthrow of an Arab despot.

Unsurprising News of the Day

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In the last election, the City banks, the London equivalent of Wall Street, supplied half the campaign donations for the Tories:

Financiers in the City of London provided more than 50% of the funding for the Tories last year, new research has revealed, prompting claims that the party is in thrall to the banks.

A study by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism has found that the City accounted for £11.4m of Tory funding – 50.79% of its total haul – in 2010, a general election year. This compared with £2.7m, or 25% of its funding, in 2005, when David Cameron became party leader.

The research also shows that nearly 60 donors gave more than £50,000 to the Tories last year, entitling each of them to a face-to-face meeting with leading members of the party up to and including Cameron.

The study shows the impact that Michael Spencer has had on party funding. He was appointed by Cameron as Tory treasurer in an attempt to reduce the influence of Lord Ashcroft, the party’s former deputy chairman. Spencer was asked by Cameron to increase the number of relatively small donations of £50,000 to curb the influence of large donors such as Ashcroft, and for these smaller donations the City was place to look.

Relatively small donations of fifty thousand quid? That’s like eighty thousand US Dollars!

This might explain why their proposals to reign in bankster pay are so toothless.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Well, it’s Jobless Thursday, and the initial unemployment claims numbers are good, they fell to 383,000, a 36,000 drop, with the less volatile 4-week moving average falling to 415,000 from 431,000, and continuing claims fell by 49K to 3.89 million, though extended and emergency claims rose by 84K to 4.64 million.

I hope that this is a part of a trend, but much of this may be driven by the extreme weather that we have seen recently, which has the effect of delaying people trying to get to the unemployment offices.

Of particular concern is the rising emergency and extended claims, because there are large numbers of people, the so-called “99-ers” who have run out of benefits completely, and are so not caught in any of these numbers.

The Football is Pulled Away Again…

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Who knew that Lucy Van Pelt was an 82 Year Old Egyptian President?

In a move that stunned observers, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak refused to step down, and instead delegated his powers to his VP, Omar Suleiman, who is also doing duty of the state intelligence services, which, unsurprisingly, does not bode well for the prospects of democratic reform.

Note here that he did not “transfer” his authority, he “delegated” it, which means that he can take the powers back whenever he wants:

President Hosni Mubarak told the Egyptian people on Thursday that he would delegate authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman but that he would not resign, enraging hundreds of thousands gathered to hail his departure and setting in motion a volatile new stage in the three-week uprising.

The declaration by Mr. Mubarak that he would remain president appeared to signal a dangerous escalation in one of the largest popular revolts in Egypt’s history, and some protesters warned that weeks of peaceful rallies might give way to violence as early as Friday.

The 17-minute speech itself underlined a seemingly unbridgeable gap between ruler and ruled in Egypt: Mr. Mubarak, in paternalistic tones, talked in great detail about changes he planned to make to Egypt’s autocratic Constitution, while crowds in Tahrir Square, with bewilderment and anger, demanded that he step down.

Mr. Mubarak seemed oblivious. “It’s not about me,” he said in his address. When he was done, crowds in Cairo waved the bottoms of their shoes in the air, a gesture intended to convey disgust, and shouted, “Leave! Leave!”

This is not going to end well.