Author: Matthew G. Saroff

What a Surprise

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When another vote comes up on a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, the Democratic Leadership in the House whips against it:

Yesterday, on the House floor, there was a furious debate over the prospect for HR 541, Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Federal Reserve. The Republicans are by and large supportive of this bill, seeking to hamstring the ability of the Federal Reserve to act in secret. Democratic members, were they left to their own devices, would be split. But on votes on bills like this, party leaders can choose to endorse a position, or not endorse a position. Some votes are what’s called “whipped”, and some aren’t. There’s an intricate system of whips and assistant whips and staff networks who encourage members to vote a certain way, so when the party takes a position on an issue, it has a big impact on the final vote count. This is a whipped vote, which means that this is one of those times where the Democratic leadership – Steny Hoyer, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi – are putting their stamp on an issue. They have come out firmly for Fed secrecy.

Here’s the whip notice from Democratic leadership on the House side encouraging members to vote against transparency at the Fed.

………

UPDATE: The bill passed, 327-97. A bunch of Democrats flipped against an audit. Just glancing at the roll call, Louise Slaughter, Lynn Woolsey, Marcy Kaptur, Heath Shuler, and Donna Edwards (among others) cosponsored the bill either last Congress and/or this Congress, and then voted against it on the floor. Go Team Blue!

UPDATE, AGAIN: The Democratic leaders, despite whipping, barely got a majority of the caucus to vote no. This is a massive failure on their part, and shows how weak they are.

It won’t ever make it to the floor of the Senate, and if it passed there, Obama would veto it.

I am not a Ron Paul gold nut, but I do think that the Fed, with regard to its non-monetary activity in particular, should be more accountable, and I think that opposition to that idea is because they (they being the usual suspects) want to make sure that the Fed is free to bail them (them being the usual suspects) the next time that they (they being the usual suspects) drive themselves (they being the usual …… you get the point) off a cliff and need rescuing.

This Quarter’s GDP Numbers

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Click for full size


H/t Paul Krugman for the Graph Pr0n

The GDP numbers for the 2nd quarter sucked:

The U.S. economy probably expanded in the second quarter at the slowest pace in a year as a softening labor market caused Americans to cut back on spending, economists said before a report today.

Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced, rose at a 1.4 percent annual rate after a 1.9 percent gain in the prior quarter, according to the median forecast of 81 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Consumer purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy, may have grown at the weakest pace in a year.

As the good Doctor notes, the real; problem is that the stimulus was too small in the first place, and too short as well, so we are effectively doing austerity in the worst recession in 80 years.

Twitter Joke Conviction Overturned

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Finally, some sanity in the courts, though it’s across the pond.

Perhaps we’ve finally found judges who have a clue about Twitter:

A bloke found guilty of tweeting a “menacing” joke about blowing up a UK airport has had his conviction quashed by the High Court today. A collective sigh of relief was heard moments later from comedians addicted to the micro-blogging website.

Paul Chambers, 28, was waiting to fly from Doncaster’s Robin Hood airport to Belfast to see his girlfriend, whom he met on the social networking site, when snow closed the airfield and delayed his flight.

He vented his frustration in a series of tweets to his squeeze Sarah Tonner, now his fiancee, including a suggestion that he had considered “resorting to terrorism” to ensure he could visit her.

………

Mr Justice Owen and Mr Justice Griffith Williams said in the High Court today that the facts needed to be considered in context, pointing out that the tweets had clearly appeared to be a reference to the airport closing due to adverse weather conditions.

“There was no evidence before the Crown Court to suggest that any of the followers of the appellant’s ‘tweet’, or indeed anyone else who may have seen the ‘tweet’ posted on the appellant’s time line, found it to be of a menacing character or, at a time when the threat of terrorism is real, even minimally alarming,” the High Court heard.

His comedian supporters were stoked:

‘Phants Ceding PA

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It looks like both the Rmoney campaign and the super PACS that support him, are pulling out of Pennsylvania:

One of the early peculiarities of the advertising campaign is the half-hearted effort in Pennsylvania—a state which figured prominently in the electoral calculus of the last three presidential elections. Despite that place in recent electoral history, Romney hasn’t aired any ads in Pennsylvania since the general election began. And although the Obama campaign and the super PACs have waged a low-intensity ad war in Pennsylvania, the most recent data suggests that even these limited efforts might be winding down.


For the first time in the campaign, Republicans are completely off the air in Pennsylvania. According to The Washington Post’s ad tracker, neither Crossroads nor Restore Our Future have aired ads in Pennsylvania since the beginning of July, and although Americans for Prosperity purchased buys for the early half of July, they appear to have gone off the air as well. This could be temporary, of course: there were weeks when the GOP went off the air in Michigan, only to return a few weeks later. Americans for Prosperity isn’t airing any ads this week, and they were carrying the load in Pennsylvania before dropping off the air, so they might start contesting Pennsylvania again once they return to the presidential race. But the decision to cease advertisements shouldn’t be overlooked: ads quickly lose their punch once the airwaves go quiet, so it’s important to remain persistent once advertisements begin.


Why is Pennsylvania falling off of the radar? Although the state is typically characterized as a white working class state reminiscent of the Midwest, the Democratic coalition in Pennsylvania is far more diverse and upscale than Ohio or Michigan. Democrats also have a large registration advantage in Pennsylvania, and a Romney victory would require a degree of crossover appeal that he has not yet demonstrated. Instead, Romney and his allies appear more interested in testing the waters of the Great Lakes, where demographics or electoral history are arguably more promising than Pennsylvania. Obama is more dependent on white working class voters in Michigan than Pennsylvania, and recent polls provide cause for Republicans to be hopeful about their chances. This week, Crossroads turned up the volume in Michigan and spent nearly $600,000 on advertisements. That’s not as much as other battleground states, but it’s a hefty investment. For comparison, Obama spent $1 million in Ohio—a slightly larger state, generally considered more likely to decide the election. The RNC has also announced it will invest in Wisconsin, a state where Obama looks strong but that Kerry won by just 14,000 votes in 2004.

This is unsurprising.

The last time that Pennsylvania went Republican was in 1988, and that was close.

For all the talk of it being a swing state, it isn’t.

I’ll Have a Side Order of Racist Ratf%$# with That

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Yes, the Rmoney campaign has denied it, but one of his surrogates just threw out a blatantly racist agitprop:

As the Republican presidential challenger accused Barack Obama of appeasing America’s enemies in his first foreign policy speech of the US general election campaign, advisers told The Daily Telegraph that he would abandon Mr Obama’s “Left-wing” coolness towards London.

In remarks that may prompt accusations of racial insensitivity, one suggested that Mr Romney was better placed to understand the depth of ties between the two countries than Mr Obama, whose father was from Africa.

“We are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he feels that the special relationship is special,” the adviser said of Mr Romney, adding: “The White House didn’t fully appreciate the shared history we have”.

Mr Romney on Wednesday embarks on an overseas tour of Britain, Israel and Poland designed to quash claims by Mr Obama’s team that he is a “novice” in foreign affairs. It comes four years after Mr Obama’s own landmark foreign tour, which attracted thousands of supporters.

(emphasis mine)

Romney promptly disavowed whoever said this, and the most likely suspect for this is a Heritage Foundation puke by the name of Nile Gardiner, (he has denied it) who is rather fond of the the phrase.

Yes, the Pilots Choking is Really Solved This Time

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They say that it’s just an overinflating pressure vest that is part of their G-suit:

The mysterious engineering problem causing F-22 Raptor pilots to choke in their cockpits has been solved, the Pentagon says. And it’s not the nearly $400 million aircraft’s fault after all.

The problem lies with a valve in the pressurized vest pilots wear as they fly the jet at high altitudes, Pentagon spokesman George Little said. The valve inflated the vest, limiting the pilots’ oxygen supply. It does not appear that the vest was affecting quality of the oxygen in the Raptor. The valve will be replaced; the garment’s use will be “suspended,” Little said.

Additionally, the Air Force has decided to remove a filter it placed in the jet to test the oxygen quality. Ironically, the filter ended up limiting the oxygen supply to the pilots. But the charcoal filter resulted in “no oxygen contamination,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday.

Accordingly, the Air Force will gradually take its premiere stealth jet off of the probation that the so-called “hypoxia” incidents — a term indicating problems with the oxygen in the cockpit — necessitated. Over an unspecified period of time, the F-22 will no longer be restricted to flying short missions at low altitudes near air bases. The first indication that the jet is off probation will be an imminent flight of an F-22 squadron over the Pacific to Kadena Air Force Base in Japan — which will occur at a “lower altitude,” Little said.

I’ll believe this if we don’t have any more incidents for at least 6 months.

Speaking of Wankers

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The Australian prosecutors, who tried to seize proceeds from David Hicks’ memoir about his captivity and torture at the US facility in Guantanamo Bay:

So the Australian government has shot itself in the foot while aiming at David Hicks. It would be funny if it weren’t so appalling.

The withdrawal of the dubious literary proceeds of crime action against Hicks raises questions the Commonwealth DPP has not fully answered. Why was the case dropped? What new material was presented by Hicks that prosecutors were unaware of when launching proceedings?

The DPP’s statement acknowledges the plea Hicks entered in the US – an ++”Alford plea” whereby a defendant is able to acknowledge the evidence without admitting commission of the offences charged – “is not recognised in Australia”. Furthermore, the DPP was unable to “satisfy the court that the admissions should be relied upon”, and the defendant “served evidential material not previously available to the CDPP & AFP”.

The “evidential material” in question were his allegations of coercion and torture, which were in the book that generated the moneys in question.

Yes, This Both Cowardice and Hypocrisy

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Roger Simon (not the Pajamas Media Guy) notes that both Presidential candidates are full of it in their expressions of sympathy for the victims of the Batman shootings.

The issue here is that both candidates, while expressing sympathy, are refusing to do anything, even the most basic stuff, like keeping records of gun purchases, as they do with explosives (and many types of fertilizer), so when someone purchases 6000 rounds and multiple weapons, someone might flag this as being a matter of concern.
Here is the money quote from the OP/EE:

What was baloney is that he intends to do nothing about preventing it in the future.

His White House press secretary had announced as much to reporters on Air Force One on the flight to Colorado. Jay Carney said Obama “believes we need to take steps that protect Second Amendment rights of the American people but that ensure that we are not allowing weapons into the hands of individuals who should not, by existing law, obtain those weapons.”

That “existing law” was painfully inadequate to protect the 70 people who had been shot in a movie theater was obvious to all. All except for politicians running for reelection, that is.

Mitt Romney is no better. Having opposed “deadly assault weapons” as governor of Massachusetts in 2004, he now does “not support any new legislation of an assault weapon-ban nature.”

But he, too, said he was “deeply saddened” by the Aurora shootings. Just not deeply saddened enough to promise to do anything about future shootings.

I think that every player in American politics is Wayne LaPierre’s bitch.

Wanker of the Decade

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Wisconsin State Senator Tim Cullen, who left the Democratic Caucus over a hissy fit about committee assignments.

While he’s not joined the Republican caucus, which would flip the Senate.

All reports are that he was Republican Governor Scott Walker’s favorite Democrat in the Senate, so I peg this as a case of Joe Lieberman syndrome, where they act like a complete prat if they feel that they have not received the requisite obsequious adulation.

The ILECS Suck

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Yes, those relics of the Bell Telephone System, the incumbent local exchange carrier are a bunch of pig felching scum, and US telecommunications and data costs and performance will continue to lag behind the rest of the world until they are treated as rent seeking parasites, rather than valued participants in the process.

In the case of Verizon, it now appears that they are deliberately sabotaging its own DSL service and forcing its customers with which it colludes, with the hope that these people will be forced to move to (almost completely unregulated) wireless.

It has the additional “benefit” of moving their business from their unionized land line market to their non-unionized wireless division.

We also have AT&T reporting improved profits by deliberately and aggressively making their product worse:

AT&T reported their second quarter results today. According to this analysis, AT&T achieved better profitability by (a) dramatically limiting their broadband service; (b) discouraging consumers from upgrading their devices; and (c) figuring out new charges for consumers to enhance overall profit per customer.

I get that firms are supposed to maximize profit. But when every single incentive to profit maximization relies on providing less service for more money and discouraging people from using your service, something is seriously messed up. This is doubly true when usual trend in information technology is to drive prices down. And, more tellingly, it creates a real concern if we are relying on market incentives to ensure that providers do things like build out networks and provide us with better service and lower prices.

………

I’d be happy to concede the issue on metred pricing, except that there doesn’t seem to be any actual relationship between the price metering and the cost of provisioning. The idea of metering is that I want to provide you with more capacity because that way I make more profit. If this were bananas, I would have a fairly direct incentive to grow more bananas so I can sell more bananas. But AT&T doesn’t want to charge me for more bandwidth, which would arguably give it incentive to build better systems and sell me ever more capacity. It wants to sell me limited capacity and then stop, presumably so it can capture some imaginary and unspecified revenue on the the other side of the platform. That creates a fairly unfriendly incentive to create scarcity and avoid investment in the network.

It’s what economists call rent seeking behavior, where a company manipulates the social or political environment to extract money, as opposed to doing that icky, “out-competing the competition” thing.

It Appears that McClatchy Employes the Only People Who Practice Journalism in Washington, DC

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Because it appears that the rest of the Washington press corps(e) allow administration officials to dictate and re-edit their quotes:

To our staff and to our readers:

As you are aware, reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg and others are agreeing to give government sources the right to clear and alter quotes as a prerequisite to granting an interview.

To be clear, it is the bureau’s policy that we do not alter accurate quotes from any source. And to the fullest extent possible, we do not make deals that we will clear quotes as a condition of interviews.

With the government trying to do more of the public’s business in secret, the demands that interviews be conducted off the record is growing. While it puts us at a disadvantage, we should argue strenuously for on-the-record interviews with government officials.

When they absolutely refuse, we have only two options. First, halt the interview and attempt to find the information elsewhere. In those cases, our stories should say the official declined comment. Second, we can go ahead with the interview with the straightforward response that whatever ultimately is used will be published without change in tone, emphasis or exact language.

The fact that McClatchy is alone in taking such a position is troubling, to say the least..

H/t Taylor Marsh

Penn State Gets Slap on the Wrist

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Let’s look at the term of the so called punishment:

  • A $60 million fine. (For a program routinely generates revenue, not counting alumni donations in the $50 million dollar range).
  • Vacating all victories since 1998, which means nothing except that Paterno is no longer the winningest coach in college football.
  • A 4 year ban on bowl games.
  • Loss of 20 scholarships for the next 4 years.
  • Allowing players to transfer into other programs.

The biggest deal is the post season ban.  It reduces revenue, and makes recruiting of top level players all but impossible, so everything else is pretty much nothing.

Compare this to SMU, which had the temerity to conspire with boosters to pay its so-called “student athletes”, and had its football program shut down for a year, and their football program has never recovered.
http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-dufresne-ncaa-penn-state20120723,0,6729566.story

Amity Shlaes is a F%$#ing Moron, Part LVMXXVII

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Here latest brain fart is the suggestion that the federal government place levies on the states, and to allow them to collect the taxes, because the Articles of Confederation were such a good idea.

I’m not being metaphorical here.  She literally extolls the virtues of the articles of confederation:

.There will be objections, of course. The first is that states’ collecting the money isn’t our tradition. It is, actually. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states, not individuals, owed payments to the federal government. The modern income tax, where citizens pay the federal government, came into being only a century ago. 

Which is not the same thing as saying that the federal government hasn’t had taxing authority for the past 223 years, though she is implying that the failed and rejected Articles of Incorporation is part of the American tradition of governance.

The Magna Carta, and the Marine Insurance Act of 1746 have more to do with the heritage and traditions of the United States than does the Articles of Confederation.

Just remember that she spent decade as a “senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations,” as well as being an adjunct (temp) prof at NYU’s Stern School of Business, despite making sh%$ up in her so called histories, and despite the fact that she her degree in is in English.

So if a representative from either of the above institutions claims that the sky is blue, find independent verification.

Any organization that hires her has no credibility.

Round Up the Usual Suspects

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The operative quote here is, “individual traders“:

American prosecutors and European regulators are close to arresting individual traders over the Libor scandal and charging them with colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Federal prosecutors in Washington DC have recently contacted lawyers representing some of the individuals under suspicion to notify them that criminal charges and arrests could be imminent, said two sources speaking anonymously.

Defence lawyers representing individuals under suspicion said prosecutors have indicated they will begin making arrests and filing charges in the next few weeks. In long-running financial investigations it is not uncommon for prosecutors to contact defence lawyers for individuals before filing charges to offer them a chance to co-operate or take a plea, the lawyers said.

(emphasis mine)

This is looking a lot like a US military investigation of war crimes.  The goal is to prosecute at absolutely the lowest level possible, and come down on the little fish like a ton of bricks.

We know how this works.  It’s called “looking forward, not back.”

If any one at the VP level is charged, I predict that they will be non-white, south or east Asian.

Today’s Civil Rights Heroes

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No, this is not intentional, just very apropos!

The Muppets. Seriously:

The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD. (http://www.glaad.org/)

You know, it’s a never a good idea to f%$# with the Muppets.  When you f%$# with the (what the hell is Gonzo anyway?) you get the horns.

H/t Think Progress.