She draws analogies to Halliburton, and says that the health care bill, “would legally require a portion of Americans to pay more than 20% of the fruits of their labor to a private corporation in exchange for 70% of their health care costs.”
She is completely correct.
Go and read it.
Seriously, just go and read it.
Yes, the group most likely to be thrown under a bus by Barack Obama, the LGBT community, just got thrown under the bus again going through back-flips to defy a Federal Judge’s order on this:
Because she is a federal employee, Golinski’s benefits are overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, which effectively serves as the human resources department for about 1.9 million federal workers nationwide. Golinski’s insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, declined to provide health benefits for her legal spouse, Amy Cunninghis, but ninth circuit chief judge Alex Kozinski said that violated the court’s guarantee of equal employment opportunity and that same-sex spouses were entitled to benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.
OPM attorneys consulted with the Department of Justice on this case, and the key to the case, according to the OPM official, was that Kozinski was presiding over an administrative proceeding that’s an internal employee grievance procedure — he was not serving in his official capacity as a ninth circuit judge.
I suppose that he’s better for Gays than the Christo-Fascist right, which was actively working for a death penalty for gays in Uganda until Rachael Maddow outed their murderous efforts, and that he figures that the LGBT community knows that it has no where else to go, but such a calculus is repugnant, immoral, and evil.
Let me quote Joseph Nye Welch:
Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
I support Howard Dean for President in 2012…………………Hell I support anyone who opposes Barack Obama in the primaries† in 2012.
*The Donnie McClurkin episode.
†This offer does not apply to Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, or Paris Glendenning. Note that side effects of an endorsement from Matthew Saroff can include:
Do not operate a political campaign under the influence of a Matthew Saroff endorsement, and avoid heavy consumption of alcohol.
No, really, I am completely serious:
Some of the most senior bankers in Britain are planning to convince the Treasury to drop the new 50% tax on bonuses by dangling the prospect of a combined contribution to the exchequer of £2bn. The promise of the boost to Britain’s depleted coffers has been made in recent days and is almost four times the £550m Alistair Darling has said he intends to raise through his payroll tax on bonuses. The Chancellor has been met with anger in the City since he announced the one-off tax in his pre-budget report last week and been warned of a mass exodus of high-flying bankers to countries with a less punitive tax regime.
(emphasis mine)
I don’t know what is going on here, but when Britain’s own little vampire squids wrapped around the face of humanity,* decide that it’s time to overpay their taxes by a factor of 4, something very hinky going on.
Somewhere in these bonus pools that Chancellor Darling wants to tax is something bad….Something Really, Really, Really, Really bad.
We are talking something murder-for-hire and laundering drug money through child prostitutes bad. Something is rotten in the Street City,† and they, whoever exactly they are, very badly want it covered up.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm Goldman Sachs, The Great American Bubble Machine.
†The UK equivalent of Wall Street. Corrected my error on edit.
Which is distinct from the aviation company, having been sold off to GM some years ago. It appears that the GM and bidder, Danish company Spyker, could not close the deal, and so it will be shut down.
I’m not sure what queered the potential deal, but I think that GM’s turnabout on Opel may make any potential investor leery of attempting to buy a brand from them.
After all, the “try to sell a division, take state aid to facilitate that sale, and then turn around and not sell and keep the aid,” 2-step does not make negotiating partners confident.
It’s a pity. It was something different in the auto industry.
Well, someone sliced and diced the numbers, and the unemployment picture continues to improve, with unemployment dropping in 36 States in November, though this U3, and not the more expansive, and to my mind more accurate U6.
We are also seeing a marked improvement in German business confidence this month.
In real estate, we have another shoe dropping, with Moody’s Investors Service stating its intend to review $143 billion in residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) with an eye toward downgrading them, because their loss rates have continued to climb.
In currency and energy, the reversed the past few days’ course, with oil rising, and the dollar weakening, but these may just be traders unwinding positions that they accumulated over the past week.
Shultz and Katrina Vanden Heuvel open up a can of whup ass on Barack Obama and his “do nothing but sign it” policy on a healthcare bill.
Uh-oh, I dissed the mouse. They will send the snow white commandos to kill me
So, Roy Disney just died, and here is how the Dawn C. Chmielewski and James Bates of LA Times described him?
Despite wealth estimated at $600 million, Disney remained shy and outwardly unpretentious, according to people who knew him. His main indulgences were a castle in Ireland, a jet, sports cars and financing a passion for sailboat racing. In 1999, Disney fulfilled a lifelong dream when he and the 12-member crew of his 74-foot sloop Pyewacket — named for the witch’s cat in the 1958 film “Bell, Book & Candle” — won the 2,225-mile Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu, setting a course record.
Let me get this straight, he owned sports cars (plural), owned a 12 crew 74-foot yacht, a private jet, and an Irish Castle, and he’s “unpretentious”?
He might be a nice guy. All I know about him is that he took Michael Eisner down, which is a plus in my book, but when you own sports cars (plural), owned a 12 crew 74-foot yacht, a private jet, and an Irish Castle, unpretentious is the last adjective that should be used.
The guy owned a freaking castle, and probably sharks with frikkin laser beams in the moat.
H/t Radosh.net
So, we have a poll out from Wall Street Journal/NBC News, and it shows that Barack Obama’s approval numbers are below 50%:, which makes it the “the steepest first year decline in modern history.
And Henry Blodget, of all people, along with Aaron Task, notes the problem, it’s that the bankers insurance companies, pharma, and the rest of the special interests have a seat at the table, while the taxpayer does not.
Basically, it comes down to cowardice. People expect a president to fight for things, even if he loses, and not to point the finger at Congress, particularly when his own party controls the legislature.
So, we now have a huge give away to the insurance companies and pharma, and the American public realizes that they will be taxed, and that this money will be given to insurance companies, and they wonder who he is really working for.
I wonder too.
H/t The Big Picture
But it seems to me that the juxtaposition of the patron saint of thieves,* well repentant ones anyway, and Goldman Sachs does seem to be apropos.
*Oh for Pete’s Sake, just wiki it.
To paraphrase Nietzsche, expecting children to queue up politely for sweets, like the bite of a dog into a stone, is a stupidity.
We were at Hanukkah party for the kids in the Beth Israel religious school…Cookies, doughnut holes, home made Hanukkah gelt, etc.
And people were surprised when the kids did not queue up at the table in an orderly manner.
h/t Calculated Risk
Yea, sure, the recession is over. That’s why initial jobless claims rose again this week, up 7000 to 480,000, and continuing claims rose as well, though the 4-week average fell.
I’m beginning to think that those “stunning” NFP payroll numbers in November were an artifact of a seasonal correction of some kind.
In any case, real estate is not looking so hot, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rising again, and the estimates for the “shadow inventory” in housing , basically homes that are being foreclosed on, or are being held off the market by the foreclosing institutions to keep from depressing prices too much was revised upward:
The number of homes that may be in the pipeline for a sale because of foreclosure and delinquency climbed about 55 percent to 1.7 million at the end of September, according to estimates by First American CoreLogic.
The “shadow inventory” rose from 1.1 million a year earlier. Such properties include those taken over by banks and mortgage companies and those where the loans are at least 90 days delinquent, the Santa Ana, California-based research firm said in a report today. The number of unsold homes listed for sale was 3.8 million in September, down from 4.7 million a year earlier, First American said.
So I think that any claim to a recovery in residential real estate has been, greatly exaggerated.
That being said, the Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators, as well as the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s Business Outlook Survey both showed signs of growth, though, as Calculated Risk notes, the recovery is weaker than in earlier months, indicating, perhaps, the start of a “W” downturn.
In either case, the LEI and the Philly Fed report did not seem to have much of an effect on Treasuries, which rose, meaning that the yield dropped, largely on concerns about Greece.
This sentiment also drove the dollar up.
In energy, the strong dollar drove oil down, but natural gas rose, largely on the cold weather and smaller than expected inventory numbers.
I found it only 8 days ago, and now all I’m getting is that test signal with the colored bars with a Telemundo caption.
I blame Comcast.
[on edit]
It came back up a few days later, no clue as to why.
Al Franken just told Joe Lieberman to STFU when he refused to consent for Lieberman to extend his comments.
And then Holy Joe’s best bud, John “Hey You Kids, Get off My Lawn” McCain got his knickers in a twist:
*In a 110% purely heterosexual kind of way, of course, as the General would say.
I know that there are a lot of people who think that Bernanke did the right thing, and I know that I am not one of them.
That being said, the real question is whether or not Bernanke is the right person for the path forward, and it is clear from his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee that he is completely unsuited to the task.
The fact is that it was clear from his earlier testimony, when he endorsed gutting Social Security, which was completely inappropriate for a Fed Chair, that he is a conservative (though not necessarily crazy).
But at the confirmation hearings, he was asked a very good question by, of all people David “Diaperman” Vitter.
Vitter did not come up with the question, Brad Delong came up with the question, and it’s why he’s on my blogroll, but it is a good question, and his response is telling:
Q: Why haven’t you adopted a 3% per year inflation target? [Note, the target is 2%]
Bernanke: The public’s understanding of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to price stability helps to anchor inflation expectations and enhances the effectiveness of monetary policy, thereby contributing to stability in both prices and economic activity. Indeed, the longer-run inflation expectations of households and businesses have remained very stable over recent years. The Federal Reserve has not followed the suggestion of some that it pursue a monetary policy strategy aimed at pushing up longer-run inflation expectations. In theory, such an approach could reduce real interest rates and so stimulate spending and output. However, that theoretical argument ignores the risk that such a policy could cause the public to lose confidence in the central bank’s willingness to resist further upward shifts in inflation, and so undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy going forward. The anchoring of inflation expectations is a hard-won success that has been achieved over the course of three decades, and this stability cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, the Federal Reserve’s policy actions as well as its communications have been aimed at keeping inflation expectations firmly anchored.
(emphasis mine)
When you translate this from Fed Speak, it reads as follows, “If inflation threatens to rise above 2%, I will slap it down, and I don’t care if unemployment remains above 10% for the next decade.”
We are in a liquidity trap, and the only way out of it is to create the expectation of inflation, so people worry about their money losing value and spend it.
That’s Econ 101, and I believe that Ben Bernanke has written things to this effect too.
The vote was 16-7, with 1 Democrat, out of 13 on the committee and 6 Republicans out of 10 on the committee voted against:
| Yes |
No
|
| Christopher Dodd (D) | Jeff Merkley (D) |
| Tim Johnson (D) | Richard Shelby (R) |
| Jack Reed (D) | Jim Bunning (R) |
| Chuck Schumer (D) | Mike Crapo (R) |
| Evan Bayh (D) | Jim DeMint (R) |
| Robert Menendez (D) | David “Diaperman” Vitter (R) |
| Daniel Akaka (D) | Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) |
| Christopher Dodd (D) | |
| Sherrod Brown (D) | |
| Jon Tester (D) | |
| Mark Warner (D) | |
| Herb Kohl (D) | |
| Michael Bennet (D) | |
| Bob Bennett (R) | |
| Bob Corker (R) | |
| Mike Johanns (R) | |
| Judd Gregg (R) |
I’m not sure if the Republican voted against Bernanke because they believe that the economy will suck in 2010, and they want to be able to say that they opposed “helicopter Ben”, or if they are opposing him just because he’s Obama’s nominee, but it’s pretty clear that there will be some number greater than 2 Republicans who will be willing to vote for cloture, so it’s pretty much a done deal.
It sucks, because not only does Bernanke conflate the well being of Wall Street with that of the nation, but he’s also pretty right wing, see his comments earlier on gutting Social security.
Yeah, I’ve added a donate button. It’s at the bottom of the right column. It’s called Matthew’s Saroff’s Beer Fund and Tip Jar.
Remember yesterday, when I wrote about the contemptible tax-giveaway that Obama’s Treasury department engineered for Citi?
Basically, it involved allowing Citi to carry forward losses after a change in ownership when Obama’s Treasury department sells out the US stake.
Well, not so fast. It turns out that, not withstanding all manner of subsidies and payoffs to Bob Rubin’s old firm, people still think that the company is crap, and are not willing to pay much for the stock, so in order to Treasury Secretary Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner to sell the US government’s stock now, they would have to take a big loss, which would clearly demonstrate that Timmeh grossly overpaid for the stock when they swapped preferred shares for common stock a few months ago:
Two days after Mr. Pandit trumpeted news that Citigroup would start untangling itself from the federal government, his bank stumbled — this time, on Wall Street. Badly misreading the financial markets, the company struggled on Wednesday to raise the money it needed to repay its bailout funds.
While Citigroup managed to raise $20.5 billion in the stock market and will forge ahead with the repayment, the sale went so poorly that anxious Treasury officials reversed course and delayed their plans to start unwinding the government’s stake in the company immediately, according to people briefed on the matter.
……………
After the close of trading in New York, Citigroup priced its new shares at $3.15 each, below the $3.25 price at which the government assumed its one-third stake in the company. Before the sale, the share price of Citigroup fell 11 cents to $3.45, as investors braced for the new stock.
Rather than suffer a loss for taxpayers, the Treasury Department will now hold on to the $5 billion stake it planned to sell alongside Citigroup’s own $17 billion stock offering. After an initial 90-day delay, the government will try to sell its entire stake — about 7.7 billion shares — over the next six to 12 months.
What this means is that anyone with a pulse………Well, anyone with a pulse whose tongue is not so far up Wall Street’s ass that they taste tonsils (see Geithner, Timothy and Obama, Barack), realizes that Citi is a mess and they won’t pay what the government paid for it.
The US Navy forbids hypergolic fuels, liquids where the fuel and oxidizer ignite on contact with each other, for shipboard use, but since the US MDA is looking at ground baseing, they are considering liquid fuels for these interceptors.
Basically, because you can throttle liquid fueled rocket motors, it means that you can, for example, shut down at some point in the intercept, and restart the motor for improved kinematics for the end game, or to extend range, etc.
I still see missile defense as a big hole that people are dumping money into, particularly hit to kill.