So the trial of Baltimore Mayor is over, with the defense resting today, so we have final arguments, juror instructions, and then it’s in the Jury’s hands.
I haven’t followed it that closely, but I’m thinking that we will see a conviction, because Sheila Dixon did not testify.
I know that it’s not supposed to happen, but when a political figure is on trial, and refuses to testify, your average jury does hold it against them.
Background here.
I’ve known the Old Pinko for years, and we exchange emails frequently, and I sent him notice of the twitter meme about using some celebrities to read the bill if the Republicans demand a full reading on the floor of the Senate.
His response:
They should use folks, perhaps children, who have serious illnesses and no health insurance. That, that would really stick it too them.
I will note, however, that I would probably avoid using children, since the right wing in general, and Michelle Malkin, and her deranged Minions™ in particular, already have a history of going after people whose politics they find distasteful, including 12 year old boys critically injured in auto accidents.
Now, if only he’d post more frequently to his blog.
H/t Calculated Risk
H/t Calculated Risk
H/t Calculated Risk
H/t Calculated Risk
ABI, H/t Calculated Risk
The Consumer Price Index is up again, largely on rising fuel prices, with CPI up 0.3%, and down -0.2% year over year, and the “core” CPI, which strips out food and energy, is up 0.2%, up 1.7% year over year for the core rate.
This is raising concerns about inflation (stupid, but it’s the way that these folks think) because energy is still about 14% lower than it was last year, so if equilibrium in oil prices is higher than it is now we may see non trivial (over 2% annual according to the inflation hawks) inflation rates.
Meanwhile, the bad news continues along (see graph pr0n), with housing starts and applications for building permits falling unexpectedly in October. (pics 1, 2, 3, and 4)
Additionally, the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) while rising, remained below 50, indicating a continuing contraction in future commercial real estate construction. The ABI leads construction by 9-12 months, so 2010 looks bleak for non-residential building. (pic 5)
There is also the fact that rents are continuing to fall, and since the best metric of house prices is their ratio to renting, this indicates that there housing in general, not just the price of a single family dwelling are still overpriced, and have a way to fall.
Additionally, I think that home sellers are running out of buyers, as mortgage applications fell even though rates were down this week.
The inflation that I mention has spooked the bond market, driving prices down and yields up.
And some news on the weird side, monoliner insurer Ambac announced in its SEC filing that its capital levels were well in excess of regulatory requirements.
Everyone figured that they were due for a takeover by regulators…I guess that “everyone” was wrong.
We are seeing some signs of recovery in international trade, with the Baltic Dry Index, an indicator of the demand for shipping hitting a high for this year.
It appears to be driven by increased Chinese demand for raw materials, and the fact that there are large fleets of ships that have been mothballed that won’t be able to address marked demand for months.
Meanwhile, in energy, oil rose above $80/bbl on a drop in US inventories, and in currency, the dollar fell on statements by a Federal Reserve member that rates would stay low.
So, you have a phony newspaper, the Moonie Washington Times, in the process of imploding (see here), and now you are seeing the people who have been kicked to the curb going after the paper.
Case in point, former Washington Times editorial editor and ” vice president of opinion” (whatever the f^%$ that is) Richard Miniter has filed a religious discrimination claim, alleging that he was “coerced” into attending a religious retreat:
The former editorial page editor of the Washington Times has filed a discrimination complaint against the paper, saying he was “coerced” into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by the church’s leader, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Richard Miniter, who was also vice president of opinion, made the claim in a filing Tuesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that also disclosed he was fired last month. He said in an interview that he “was made to feel there was no choice” but to attend the ceremony if he wanted to keep his job, and that executives “gave me examples of people whose careers at the Times had grown after they converted” to the Unification Church. A Times spokesman said the paper would not comment.
The paper has been a money loser for its entire existence, with its deficits being financed through subsidies from the church, and he’s surprised that doing obeisance at Sun Myung Moon’s feet is a part of the job?
This is particularly galling for someone who was their editorial page editor, since their editorial page was arguably the worst in the nation, though, unlike the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, it does not suffer in comparison to their news gathering operation, because it is equally laughable.
It should be noted that at least a part of the right-wing nutjob community is supporting Miniter in this, as Larry Klayman, late of the whack-job Judicial Watch is his attorney, which implies that there some Scaife or Olin money behind this lawsuit.
It appears that the Republicans are going to insist on having the whole healthcare bill read in the Senate.
The Dems have a team of speed readers standing by to do this, and there is a discussion on twitter as to whether we should give an hour to Christopher Walken or William Shatner to read the bill.
It’s a fascinating concept.
I have two vids after the break to give a compare and contrast Shatner and Walken.
Feel free to add your take in the comments.
[on edit] Yes, Jack Nicholson should be included too.
[on further edit]James Earl Jones as Darth Vader might be a bit much.
Walken reading Lady GaGa’s Poker Face
William Shatner’s seminal I am a Canadian.
Nicholson, 5 Easy Pieces
Hint: The car ain’t a Hyundai, regardless of the license plate frame and hood ornament.
H/t Bill Volk
Surprise! Artist Revenues Increase
One of the claims made by the record distributors is that file sharing cheats the artists out of their fair share.
What’s left off of this statement is that it’s the job of the lables to cheat the artists out of their fair share.
What’s also left unsaid, at least by the music industry, is that the artists make more money in a world where we see widespread file sharing:
An even more striking thing, perhaps, emerges in this second graph, namely that revenues accrued by artists themselves have in fact risen over the past 5 years, despite the fall in record sales. (All the blue bars in the chart above represent revenues that go directly to artists. As you can see, the ‘blue total’ has risen noticeably.) This is mostly because of live revenues, but also because of the growing amount collected by the PRS on behalf of artists, which accounts for a much bigger chunk of industry revenues than most people realise.
The question about IP is whether it promotes, “the progress of science and the useful arts,” and it appears here that the Jihad by the record industry against file sharers does not.
Without the competition of easy file sharing, they would just take more from the artists, which would, in classic economics anyway, decrease the incentives for artists to produce music.
The file sharing campaigns are about keeping record executives’ worthless half brothers on the payroll.
Remember the Silverdome, in Pontiac Michigan, which cost $55.7 million to build, and was just sold for $583,000.00, not much more than a nice house.
Not a bad deal, when you realize that it also includes a sizable lot as well:
As a result, Leeb said, Pontiac could ill afford to continue paying $1.5 million in annual upkeep for the stadium. With a private owner, the property “will go back on the tax rolls,” he explained.
The 80,000-seat Silverdome was the biggest stadium in the National Football League when it was built in 1975 for $55.7 million [about $220 million in 2009 dollars]. The stadium, which sits on a 127-acre plot, is also the former home of the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons.
Something should be done about the legalized extortion that pro sports franchises engage in, but I don’t expect to see this in my lifetime.
From the Classic WKRP Episode
If we are in a deflationary spiral, aka a “liquidity trap,” and I believe that we are, then one of the questions is how does one get us out.
suggests that it is essential for the Federal Reserve to engage in actions that make it blindingly clear that holding to cash will be long term disastrous.
The problem right now is that, with inflation being negative, people are all too willing to sit on their cash.
John Hempton has a most unorthodox proposal, that we literally drop large amounts of currency onto the streets of American cities:
You need to convince people not to hold money. You need to convince them that cash is trash.And to do that you need to convince the public that there will be inflation (the above gross leverage argument notwithstanding).To do that the Federal Reserve has to be credibly irresponsible. It is not enough to print a couple of trillion dollars (which they have) because everyone thinks (with some justification) that they will suck back the money supply when the crisis is over.No – you have to be more visibly reckless than that. You have to really convince people that there will be inflation.So the suggestion in my title is literal. The Federal Reserve should hire a couple of hundred helicopters and load each one 10 million dollars in neatly bound parcels of $1000 each. Total cost $2 billion plus trivial helicopter hire.
Well, running the numbers, a dollar bill weighs about a gram, so let’s bundle 10 $100 bills together, so as not to create an “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly,” issue.
So, $1000.00 would weigh about 11 grams (adding 1g for the wrapper), which means that if you have a helicopter carrying 4400kg in currency, they would be carrying $400,000,000.00.
So he’s wrong. You would only need 5 medium to heavy lift helicopters, or 1 Mi-26, which has a payload of 22 metric tonnes.
You probably want to spread it a bit further out, but still you are well under 100 helicopters, particularly if you allow them to make multiple trips.
Heck, even a Robinson R22 helicopter could carry more than $10 million per sortie.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Bankfein has apologized for Goldman Sachs role in the meltdown:
“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by the Directorship magazine. “We apologize.”
Notice, of course, that the wrong doing is completely unspecified, but still, given the fact that arrogance is a part of the DNA of that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs, there are really only two possibilities here:
If they are worried about the latter, they have a far more optimistic view of the American public, and American politics, than I do.
*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, The Great American Bubble Machine.
It covers more than genetic markers. It also prohibits the use of family history by employers (with 15+ employees) and health insurers.
Good law, though, of course, the insurance industry hates it.
H/t Calculated Risk
Empire State Manufacturing Index
H/t Calculated Risk
The Power of Computers Over Inventory
H/t Calculated Risk
Sorry about missing yesterday, life intervened.
Well, retail sales rose in October, (1st pic)up 1.4% from September’s anemic post “cash for clunkers” numbers.
September was down 2.3%, so you can do the math.
We also had the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Empire State Manufacturing Index falling in November, though it is still above zero, indicating continued growth. (2nd pic)
This is consistent with the small rise in industry capacity utilization. (3rd Pic)
Additionally, we have business inventories falling September, (4th Pic) and it looks like inventory restocking won’t be the thing that makes this a v-shaped recovery.
One interesting note on this graph: You can see a generally downward trend in the ratio of inventory to sales, and it is likely a result of the increasing computerization of retail.
Once you have a better picture of what you need, and when, you need to keep less as a backup.
In real estate, today’s news was grim, with delinquencies on commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) rising 28 basis points (0.28%) in October, to 3.86%, or about 1 in 30.
In home mortgages, delinquencies hit a new record, with 6.25%, or about 1 in 16 mortgages being 60 days or further delinquent, which is a very scary number.
We also have the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index flat in November, at 17, which is a pretty awful number. (5th Pic)
Finally, in currency and energy, the dollar rose on comments by Ben Bernanke which imply support of a strong dollar policy by the fed, and oil rose, largely on the expectation of more demand to support retail activity during the holiday season.
A Couple of updates, one completely predictable that New York Governor David Paterson is polling behind everyone. He trails Andrew Cuomo by 75% to 16%, which makes him less polular amongst New York Democrats, and in the general election he trails Giuliani by 33% to 56% (Cuomo trounces Giuliani by 53%-41%), and Rick Lazio by 39% to 42% (Cuomo crushes him 67%-22%).
Give it up dude. People find you incompetent, uninspiring, craven, and stupid, and no amount of political organization, fund raising, and advertisements will change this, because you are incompetent, uninspiring, craven, and stupid.
A surprise in another poll, the Delaware Senate race, where Beau Biden(D)/Mike Castle(R) race has gone from 55%-34% in Castle’s favor in April to 45%-40% in Biden’s favor.
Admittedly, it’s been 7 months between polls, but Beau Biden (Joe’s kid), has not formally announced, nor have there been any scandals to change these numbers.
The only thing that people see that might have changed this, is that Mike Castle, a Republican who is known for being one of the most, if not the most liberal Republicans in Congress, cast a vote against the healthcare plan.
Castle’s strength in Delaware politics was always that he was perceived an an iconoclastic man of integrity, not a party apparatchik, is now voting like a party apparatchik:
What’s responsible for the Biden surge? He’s grabbed the lead in vote-rich New Castle County, built up a 41-point lead among Democratic voters, and moved to only 5 points behind Castle among independents. According to the pollster, the shift “may be a result of negative publicity [Castle] received in the state after casting a ‘no’ vote for President Obama’s health care reform bill in the U.S. Congress.” Castle, who has thrived as a moderate Republican in an increasingly Democratic state, has been casting more partisan votes–against the stimulus package, for the Stupak amendment–that have been well-reported in Delaware.
I think that if there is a final version healthcare, there will be more Republicans than just Anh “Joseph” Quang Cao voting for this bill, because some of them will realize just how toxic their leadership is from an electoral standpoint,
It’s on how much the Obama is willing to cave on healthcare.
The best line though, is “Worse than Scranton.”
Once again, the geniuses at Google™ Adsense™ have served up an ad which appears diametrically opposed to what I write about.
I saw this on Monday, but I’ve set it to post on Tuesday at 10:00am, because driving watchers to the interview might lead other news folks to interview her in search of ratings.
Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.
Obviously, I have opinions on the behavior of the Church, and particularly the US Conference of Bishops, but to get true clarity, you need the viewpoint of someone raised in the faith. Case in point is thhis post by Lance Mannion:
Taking orders from the priests is exactly what JFK had to promise he wouldn’t do when he ran for President.
Several Democrats, including Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pennsylvania, said they are in touch with their Catholic bishops back home. Altmire said he must have the approval of his bishop in Pittsburgh before he can vote yes.
That’s from CNN by way of Ed Brayton by way of Mike the Mad Biologist. And Altmire was talking about a health care reform bill that hadn’t been amended by Stupak-Pitts yet. He was planning to ask his bishop for permission to vote to expand health care to the poor and protect the sick from losing it.
Mr. Mannion was a devout Catholic in his youth, and lays some serious whup ass on the Church. I highly recommend that you read it.
It is remarkable the change. In 1928, Al Smith was the target of claims that a picture of him opening the Holland Tunnel was actually a “tunnel to the Pope,” and today, it appears that the Conference of Bishops is demanding a tunnel to the pope.
I would also point you to the debate on the BBC about whether or not the Catholic Church was a force for good in the world, between Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan on the pro side, and Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry (of Fry and Laurie, Blackadder, etc) on the other.
Hitchens is, as always, an obnoxious drunk, who delights in offending the religious, and so was not interesting, but Laurie, I think, has genuine affection for faith in general, but not the church.
There is a difference between criticizing a religion for it’s beliefs and observances, and criticizing any organization for its policies.
The Catholic Church is a hierarchical absolute monarchy, and as such, their policies, whether it be the Pope lying about the use of condoms to prevent aids, or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbying against healthcare, though not, it should be noted not saying a word on the death penalty, which is also deemed a sin, need to be viewed in the exact same context as the United States setting up Gulags and torturing people.
A condemnation of torture, and wars of choice, is no more a condemnation of Americans than a condemnation of the Church in its actions regarding AIDS, or healthcare for the poor, or the complicity of its officers of state in concealing child abuse.
The BBC vid is after break. It’s broken into 5 parts, and cycles though, and Fry is on at about 2:20 in the 3rd segment.
Atrios calls Mark Shields his Wanker of the Day for the following (video after break):
SHIELDS: We have a president of real intellectual horse power who is cool, detached and analytical and if anything you can watch the emotional side of him emerge in this whole process.
I mean…We saw it at Arlington, we saw it at Fort Hood, we saw it at Dover Air Force Base
There’s an emotional aspect, the comforter in chief as well as the commander in chief. Both roles. And I think it makes me nostalgic for those days when we had a manly man in the White House who could say, “Let’s kick some tail and ask questions afterwards” you know? That’s what we really need instead of any reflection.
(emphasis mine)
If I thought that Shields were seruious, I’d be dismissing him as a wanker too, but I think that the, “Manly man in the White House,” is the tell here. It’s a joke, and the the target here, I think is actually David Broder, who that morning wrote the following on Afghanistan (no direct link to the Kaplan Test Prep Company), “The urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.”
Mark Shields was calling David Broder out, in the smarmy, inside-the-Beltway subtle way….You see, if he had said it with a jacking off motion with his hand, it would have been clear, but instead, he just used an arch voice.
I find out that the Bush appointees in the Veteran’s Administration went all out in an attempt to deny care to soldiers suffering from PTSD.
The reason that they gave was because they believed that it was an indicator of insufficient patriotism and faith in God, but there is also a more sinister, and self-serving calculus here (at bottom), one that would have Richard Dawkins maintaining that these folks would be damned for all eternity:
During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.” Benimoff and the others who returned with devastating psychological injuries found a faith-based bureau within the VA. At veterans’ hospitals, chaplains were conducting spirituality assessments of patients.
Sullivan was working as an analyst at the Veterans Benefits Administration in Washington in early 2005 when he was called to a meeting with a top political appointee at the VA, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Michael McLendon. McLendon, an intensely focused man in a neatly pressed suit, kept a Bible on his desk at the office. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.” At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack. Everyone in the room fell silent.
“I was a little bit surprised,” Sullivan said, recalling the incident. “In that one comment, he appeared to be a religious fundamentalist.” [Appeared to be? Is a religious nutcase] For Sullivan, McLendon’s remarks reflected the views of many political appointees in the VA and revealed what was behind their efforts to reduce costs by restricting claims. The backlog of claims was immense, and veterans, often suffering extreme psychological stress, had to wait an average of five months for decisions on their requests.
….
When a 2006 Government Accountability Office report raised questions about whether soldiers were getting the psychiatric help they needed, an assistant secretary of defense disputed the report’s findings, pointing to the fact that soldiers were being referred to chaplains. During this time contracts for veterans’ services were increasingly parceled out to leaders of faith-based organizations rather than to secular ones, even though veterans’ advocates opposed any bias toward faith-based treatment and argued that replacing empirically proven, nonsectarian programs with faith-based ones was a mistake.
(emphasis mine)
We have to realize that there was more to this though, than just penny pinching, or a wish to rely on the the great “Sky God”, this is also all about patronage.
The Bush administration used its “faith based initiative” as a patronage and pork-barrel program, and every dollar that they diverted to their Evangelical Christo-Fascist allies was a dollar that could be used by these folks to politically support the Republican Party.
Click image for full size, with swear word.
H/t driftglass.
Last Wednesday, Charlie went on a field trip to Biztown, a Junior Achievement sponsored program for elementary school students.
We pretty much had to use explosives get him out of bed, and off to school.
He has been complaining about the program, which is a part of his curriculum, for weeks. He thought that it was a complete waste of time, and he has been scheming the whole time to find a way to ditch this.
Eventually, we made it clear to him that he wasn’t going to get out of it, and when I dropped him off at school (his delaying tactics made him miss the bus), I explained to him that whether he liked it or not, he’d enjoy it a lot less if he went in to the experience determined to be miserable.
I spent the entire day expecting a call from administrators about him having a melt-down.
When he got home, he said that he loved Biztown, and he wants to do their summer camp.
Great googly moogly, this was a lot of tsuris (aggravation) for nothing.
Excuse me now, while I bang my forehead against the monitor.