Category: Government

OK, The Caroline Kennedy Senate Bid Has Jumped the Shark

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Fundamentally, there is a difference between a celebrity running for office, and a celebrity being appointed to office.

It’s even more extreme when said celebrity has little in the way of personal accomplishments, and is being considered simply because of who her father was, and the fact that she is a FOB (friend of Barack).

But now, Caroline Kennedy is refusing to make financial disclosures unless she is offered the appointment:

If she were applying to be, say, an undersecretary of education in Barack Obama’s new administration, Caroline Kennedy would have to fill out a 63-item confidential questionnaire disclosing potentially embarrassing text messages and diary entries, the immigration status of her household staff, even copies of every résumé she used in the last 10 years.

If she were running for election to the Senate, Ms. Kennedy would have to file a 10-part, publicly available report disclosing her financial assets, credit card debts, mortgages, book deals and the sources of any payments greater than $5,000 in the last three years.

But Ms. Kennedy, who has asked Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to succeed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — and who helped oversee the vetting process for Mr. Obama’s possible running mates — is declining to provide a variety of basic data, including companies she has a stake in and whether she has ever been charged with a crime.

Ms. Kennedy declined on Monday to reply to those and other questions posed by The New York Times about any potential ethical, legal and financial entanglements. Through a spokesman, she said she would not disclose that kind of information unless and until she becomes a senator.

“If Governor Paterson were to choose Caroline, she would, of course, comply with all disclosure requirements,” said the spokesman, Stefan Friedman.

Caroline Kennedy has led an intensely private life by the standard of a Kennedy, and has generally eschewed the limelight, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’s trying to throw the appointment derby, and that she is in only because the family is pressuring her to do so.

If that’s the case, it would better to be honest with her family. If that is not the case, this is insanely reckless and stupid.

If she is not willing to make these disclosures prior to a selection, particularly given Governor Patterson’s concerns that have popped up among his own staff regarding proper vetting, then she is not ready for any public office.

But what she is doing now is just nuts.

Reinventing Government Initiative is Inherently Corrupt

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The WaPo has a story about how Countrywide Mortgage went regulator shopping to find a more compliant agency, they ended up going with the Office of Thrift Supervision, who wooed the now disgraced mortgage lender. Why?

Winning Countrywide was important for OTS, which is funded by assessments on the roughly 750 banks it regulates, with the largest firms paying much of the freight. Washington Mutual paid 13 percent of the agency’s budget in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, according to OTS figures. Countrywide provided 5 percent. Individual firms tend to make a larger difference to OTS finances than other bank regulators because the agency oversees fewer companies with fewer assets.

Yes, let’s make sure that regulators are paid by the industries that they regulate.

Let’s make sure that regulators are forced to compete for who they regulate.

That way, they won’t regulate at all.

What This Means

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This graph, from The Big Picture, means some combination of the following items:

  1. The economy of the past 18 years has sucked so badly that people have increasingly given up looking up.

  2. The basic unemployment number has been screwed with by administrations on both sides of the aisle, and significantly understates the unemployment rate.

  3. That the economy has shifted significantly in the past 2 decades, and high levels of long term unemployment are the norm.

My money is mostly on number 2, though reverse Robin Hood is part of it.

Short term solution is more aid to the long term unemployed. The long term solution is fixing the BLS data, and creating a more just society.

Truth be told, I’m surprised that the divergence did not occur around 1983, when Reagan and His Evil Minions™ screwed with the unemployment numbers with things like counting active duty military as a part of the workforce, to keep the unemployment number below 10.

Check out Daniel Gross in Slate, who argues that the normal unemployment numbers are complete crap.

Gives Me Shivers

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A snipped from an interview eith Seymour Hersh:

…for Hersh this will be a starting gun. ‘You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president’s inauguration],’ he says, with relish. ‘[They say:] ‘You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.’ So that is what I’ll do, so long as nothing awful happens before the inauguration.’

(emphasis mine)

I am trembling like a school girl.

Eurocrats Looking at Massive Propaganda Campaign in Ireland

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It looks like they are looking for another bite at the apple after the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty went down in flames.

So, now we are seeing EU propoganda minister communication commissioner Margot Wallstrom suggesting what is needed is a major education campaign, but remember, don’t actually talk about the treaty that is at issue:

“Whatever you do, you won’t have in the end everybody reading a 400-page document,” she said. “That’s what MEPs are being paid for.”

Better yet, don’t have a 400 page constitution. The original constitution of the United States, including all amendments, is less than 15 pages.

You had people vote on a byzantinely complex document where no one, not even your vaunted MEPs understand the complete document.

That’s enough reason to vote against it, because who knows what mischief, corruption, and self dealing lives in those pages.

Big Three Welfare Queens

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They are looking for $25 billion in federal loans…..at 4.25%……about 1/3 of what they are paying now….with the government having an option to defer any payments 5 years.

In 1980, Ronald Wilson Reagan rode into the white house on the story of a welfare mother who drove a Cadillac.

Now it appears that the welfare recipient is Cadillac, with John Dingell and the rest of the whores in Michigan backing it.

If they want a bailout, then shareholders and senior management need to lose, and lose big.

Americans Increasingly Sick of Religion in Politics

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I’m not surprised. As anyone who has followed Bush and His Evil Minions™ knows, religiously based government does not work.

The Iranian people know that too, which is why they are increasingly restive under the Mullahs.

Chart pr0n:

I would note that there appears that only the 2 data points show a real shift, so we could be dealing with sampling or question issues.

Of interest is that more people are now saying that politicians talking religion makes them uncomfortable too.

Municipal Bond Rates Skyrocketing

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One consequence of the credit crunch is that even with a Fed Funds rate of 2%, interest rates for everyone are going up.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in municipal bonds, where you also have the collapse of the monoliner insurers making getting a good rating more difficult.

The article gives an example, where the Bay Area Toll Authority refinanced $700 million in bonds at 5.33%, when last year it was 4%.

That’s an additional $9.31 million that they have to carry, and we are seeing this across the country, so new roads and bridges, and needed maintenance on existing infrastructure, are all being deferred.

I don’t see it getting any better for a while.

Unintentionally Funny Line of the Day

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Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was sent to the county jail for violating his bond by going to Windsor, Ontario without the court’s permission.

Hizonner Kilpatrick is on trial for perjury and other charges as a result of a sex scandal with his assistant.

Kilpatrick’s office said that his chief of staff, would serve as acting mayor, so that:

Residents can be assured government will continue to operate as usual.

In Detroit…..Somehow….Not so reassuring.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?*

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Stanford University’s law and business schools just completed a review of the various corporate governance rating firms, “which include the Corporate Library and RiskMetrics Group’s ISS Governance Services”, and conclude that their ratings on corporate governance have little to do with whether a company is actually well run.

This is not surprising. When we look at the credit rating firms such as S&P, Moody’s, etc. we see a very similar pattern.

A private ratings agency is always at risk from conflicts of interest.

*Most commonly translated from the Latin as “Who Watches the Watchmen”.

Carlyle Group to Buy/Split Booz Allen (Yep, I Worked for Them*)

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It looks like Carlyle group will buy Booz Allen and spin off their commercial business.

About 75% of their staff, and so I would assume business is in government services, and they thought that the two groups were going in different directions, particularly after 911, when government work ramped up rapidly.

Assuming that a Democrat gets into the white house, my guess is that they will one day rue this decision, as the privatization of is a racket, and if it is reviewed by anyone other than right wing ideologues, it’s going to be cut back significantly.

Then again, we all know about my predictive powers.

*I worked at United Defense for two years, which was owned by the Carlyle Group, and then a year more at BAE Systems, which bought them out.

Completely Bogus Government Statistics: Seasonal Adjustments to Inflation Edition

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I point you to some good work by Barry Ritholtz, who notes:

For example, crude energy materials “only” advanced 4.1% in April, with crude petroleum gaining 4.5 % and natural gas prices rising 4.3%. After the seasonal adjustments, these prices appeared rather odd: They showed energy prices falling by 0.2%, while gasoline costs dropping 4.6%.

It turns out that this all goes back into the numbers in July.

According to this article, if prices were flat, we would still see a 16.3% increase in July….Not pretty.

Economics Update

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The employment data is done for the week, so we have energy news, where Oil, after breaking $135/bbl then settling around #131, is now back above $132/bbl, and gas prices are trending up again, though some of the latter is no doubt due to the upcoming 3 day weekend.

The dollar is trending down against all major currencies, hitting $1.5755:€1.0000, a bit below the $1.60 record, but not by much.

In real estate, we have existing home sales falling 1% in April, no signs of the foreclosure rate abating, and inventories soaring.

Is it any wonder that mortgage lenders are tightening standards to where they were a few deccades back?

This credit tightening is going to take an economy already in recession*, and throw it down a well.

On the brighter side, it appears that the municipal bond market has finally shaken itself out a bit, recovering from the auction rate security implosion of a few months back.

*Yes, I know that it’s not official yet, but we know the reality when it bites us on the ass.