There is a big loophole in prop 13, the California initiative that limits property tax increases.
If you sell the property, the new owner is assessed at full market value, but if you sell the corporation that owns the property, there is no reassessment.
Honestly, I don’t understand why 60% of Californians still support the measure, when it has so clearly screwed up the state.
Well, this ruling shoots a hole in the claim that Dems are getting something from the current FISA clusterf%$#. The Judge says that the original FISA bill is the exclusive means for wiretap.
That being the case, this means that Bush has been violating the law already, and a felony to boot, and that the bill does not change the legal situation.
So the Dems have nothing, except for proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Oh, I forgot:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
Thank you Speaker Pelosi for taking impeachment off the table.
The rumor is that the US is yielding on contractor immunity in its negociations for a status of forces agreement in Iraq.
If so, this is the first smart thing done in Iraq since 2002.
Economist and former Clinton deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury Brad Delong asks, “Is the Federal Reserve too volatile and hair-trigger? Or is the ECB too sluggish?“
I think that a more accurate answer is that Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan is an idiot, you will notice that the volitility, except for the steep decline at the end, is all under his watch, and “Helicopter Ben” throwing money out the window is as a result of Greenspan’s disastrous policies.
I would also note that the ECB is not charged with maintaining employment, just keeping inflation down, so they would naturally be slower to reduce rates. They have no balance to keep for them.
Insurrection in Tibet, Earthquake Algae Bloom, Floods, and The most protested torch relay in history.
And now a plague of locusts in China.
I agree with the author of the piece, “Locusts? What is going on here? The litany of near-biblical woes would seem to lack only a famine, frogs and smiting of the first born.”
Dude, I understand that you are all officially atheists and all in the PRC, but slaughter a few dozen goats or something.
You’ve done something to piss him off.*
*Note: this is humor, not serious. I’m making a joke in bad taste, not suggesting that God is actually punishing the Chinese people.
Joe Hagin, a White House deputy chief of staff. He’s been with Bush for a very long time, and he is yet another of the folks from Chiquita who pay terrorists to murder labor organizers.
I look forward to his memoir.
I tend to think that a solution to the US healthcare crisis may very originate from the states, where competition for jobs and businesses would push this along*.
As such, this raises the question of “health tourism” between the states, where people from one state would go to a state with more generous healthcare provisions.
It turns out that the EU is dealing with this problem right now:
European Union citizens will be able to receive most health care treatment anywhere in the 27-nation bloc without getting prior authorization under a long-awaited draft law published Wednesday.
Postponed for months because of fears in some countries of a large-scale increase in “health tourism,” the plan could extend options available to EU citizens who live in countries where waiting lists are long.
But the entitlement applies only to procedures that are publicly funded in EU citizens’ home states and reimbursement would be only up to the amount the procedure would cost in that country.
Obviously, there will be some bugs as this is implemented, but equally as obvious is the fact that by the time we get something here, the Europeans will have worked out those bugs, and we can benefit from their experience.
*Once the Erisa preemption clause is repealed, anyway.
I think that his assesment may be closer to reality than most of us would like to think:
Russia’s new president, Dmitri Medvedev, less swaggering than his predecessor but as touchy about criticism from abroad, said in an interview that an America in “essentially a depression” was in no position to lecture other countries on how to conduct their affairs.
With soaring oil revenues bolstering the Russian economy and Kremlin confidence, Medvedev brushed aside American criticism of his country’s record on democracy and human rights. He also said that a revived Russia had a right to assume a larger role in a world economic system that he suggested should no longer be dominated by the United States.
If, in 2001, he had said this, most of the world would have been stunned and appalled at the concept that US hegemony is failing.
Today, I think that there are a lot of silent nods and smiles, because the Europeans understand what it means in a monopolar world if the single hyper-power is run by a group of madmen.
It turns out that when Hunt Oil, run by a Bush political ally, cut a deal with the Kurds over oil last year, pissing off the Iraqi central government, and throwing a monkey wrench into the works of a comprehensive oil law, Bush and the state department not only knew about it, but they tacitly approved it.
Oh, well…Only 6 months and 20 days left for him and his to rape US interests for personal profits.
Rasmussen Reports™ has Barack Obama leading John McCain by 5 points 48% to 43% in Montana.
It’s gotta be an outlier, if not, maybe I’ll just toss it all in, and follow my heart and become a dental floss farmer out there.
It’s a Blackhawk with a vector ducted fan and wings.
I think that it’s promising technology, perhaps more promising than the tilt rotor tech.
They are now sending prosecutors to the USA to get more information on the money paid to Olmert.
Stick a fork in him, he is done.
Dogemperor at Kos notes that HR 6358 has passed the House, and so will be on its way to the Senate.
This bill would regulate the completely unregulated world of teen “residential treatment facilities”. Among its features:
Unfortunately, offshoring facilities to avoid supervision is still allowed in this bill though.
Bush is may veto this, as he has his done his level best to make sure that faith based social services group are given a complete free ride, and the worst, and most unregulated, groups are religiously based ones like “Teen Challenge”.
Minstrel Boy has a righteous takedown of America’s torture policy that is, like everything else on the internet, better written than my stuff, titled, They Don’t Even Plagarize From the Best.
Of interest is that he has actually been through SERE anti-torture training, and he has a low opinion of them too:
It was sadistic bullshit run by sick f@cking bullies. It was some real REMF puke sons of bitches getting their jollies off by acting like a bunch of swaggering pieces of shit. It accomplished jack fucking sh@t. It didn’t train anybody in any kind of knowledge except that there were a lot of pissant low rent bastards who wore the same uniforms as us. F@ck SERE.
Highly recommended read.
First, I just think that is a nice hed, mostly because of the “Inland Empire” name, but of course, the real meat of the matter is that there are thousands of houses built, and more under construction in Inland empire, and Sandler O’Neill & Partners analyst Aaron Deer is warning of “ghost towns”.
I’m wondering when they will start seeing squatters on a massive scale.
U.S. District Judge James Robertson is looking at the case of Salim Hamdan, bin Laden’s driver, and senior Judge Thomas Hogan is managing the proceedings.
I would note that while he was extensively debriefed, Hitler’s driver was never charged with anything, because driving a war criminal is not considered being a war criminal in any fair system of justice.
Not surprisingly, it was an executive at Chiquita, formerly United Fruit, which did so much to destabilize and de-democratize Latin America, who is involved, Carl H. Lindner Jr., whose firm admitted to knowingly supporting a terrorist organization:
Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company’s board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University’s National Security Archive as an “illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country’s most notorious civilian massacres.”
Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita’s payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.
According to the Justice Department, the payments “were reviewed and approved by senior executives” of Chiquita, who knew by no later than September 2000 “that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization.”
Lindner has hosted a number of fund raisers for McCain, and is on his “Ohio Victory Team”.
Chiquita also did gun running to the AUC, which I suppose is one way to keep the banana plantation workers from organizing.
And, of course, Mr. Straight Talker also did favors for the guy regarding a land deal in Arizona in the 1990s.
Oh, and I almost forgot, his chief political advisor, Charlie Black, lobbied for both Chiquita and Columbia.
What a bloody witches brew we have here….but the press won’t cover it, because McCain is a straight talker and honest.
It appears that the FDIC is taking exception some bank policies that are becoming more frequent, blanket suspension of home equity lines of credit (HELOC), and management of real estate owned (REO) properties.
In the first, the FDIC is saying that, “under Regulation Z [of the truth in lending laws], lenders can reduce an applicable credit limit only in the event of “significant decline” to the value of an individual property (a “material change” in the borrower’s financial condition — such as the loss of a job — qualifies as well),” so it must be handled on a case by case basis
In the second, the FDIC has issued instructions on proper management of REO properties, because, “some banks are choosing not to pay taxes on certain low-value REO properties in hard-hit neighborhoods, in the hopes that local municipalities will take the property to a tax sale rather than force the lender to carry the property on its books.”
Neither of these notes suggest that housing is heading for a recovery.
Teddy Kennedy is working very hard to try and get his ducks in a row on universal healthcare legislation , i.e. before Bush leaves office.
I understand the power of the first 100 days, but I find it highly unlikely that you could get this through that quickly, so I’m thinking that he knows that he doesn’t have much time left, and he is throwing a hail Mary pass.
Damn.
Given the poor fundamentals for the US dollar, trade and budget deficits, and the near certainty that the European Central Bank will bump rates to fight inflation, Citigroup Global Markets Inc. is predicting s major and abrupt fall for the dollar.
The trading pattern, including a so-called double-bottom that tested lows, resembles the one before Feb. 26 that preceded the surge to $1.6019 per euro, analysts Tom Fitpatrick in New York and Shyam Devani in London wrote in the note today.
They are right, the pattern looks similar.
In fact, you see it over longer periods:
It should be noted that the Canadian dollar is at a 2 month high too, so I expect things to be down tomorrow, and I agree with their prediction of $1.69:€1.00 by September.