Friday, November 18, 2011

Larwyn's Linx: Paul Ryan Crushes the Left on Income Inequality

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

Nation

Paul Ryan Crushes the Left on Income Inequality: Pethokoukis
Cronies: Buffett To Profit From Pipeline Demise: HayRide
Newt Gingrich is for real: Morrissey

How Congress Occupied Wall Street: Palin
Who are these Republicans?: Ace
Romney: “I am not going to walk away from [Romneycare]“: Hot Air

Economy

Obama's corporate crony GE paid no taxes on $14B in profits: WS
'The Entire System Has Been Utterly Destroyed...': ZH
OWS honors White House shooter with moment of silence: Bruce

Teachers Unions Personified: MB
OWS goons assault police officers: OWZ
The Meaning of the OWS Day of Protest: PJM

Price Tag of Obama’s 2025 Fuel Efficiency Standards: $157B: WZ
A Personal Account of the MF Global Fallout: P&F
California catches up to can kicked down road: OCR

Gunrunner & Energygate

The Accountability Charade: Malkin
DOE’s Chu Takes Responsiblity for Solyndra Amid Charges of Unlawful Conduct: Tatler
Pelosi Leads List Of Conflict Of Interest Dems: IBD

Climate & Energy

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up, Nov. 17th 2011: Daily Bayonet
A New Hope for Beating Back the Regressive Green Movement: PJM
Junk Science War: Fracking Quakes and ‘Dirty Faces’: PJM

Media

So-Called Electability and MSM Bias: DLimbaugh
Newt Gingrich, Bill Daley, and the Dirtiest Word in Politics: ChicagoMag
Obama Scores a Hat Trick: Granny Jan & Jihad Kitty

Allen West to Media: “Stop Being Afraid of this President… [He] Is Destroying This Country": GWP
Gingrich to media: Let me explain the difference between the tea party and OWS: Hot Air
Feel Good Story of The Day: Lefty Nitwit Joy Behar’s Show Cancelled: WZ

Dem Rep thanks MSNBC host for Ohio union advocacy: Exam
Rasmussen: Gingrich Ahead In Iowa: Ace
Texas FBI official meets with Muslims, who ask for help enforcing sharia blasphemy laws: Creeping

World

Obama Has a Knack for Ticking off America’s Friends: NRO (Barone)
Israel watches as world rejects strict sanctions on Iran: JPost
Iranian official: Islam is against nukes: Exam

JPMorgan Joins Goldman Keeping Italy Derivatives Risk in Dark: Bloomberg
Germany's secret plans to derail a British referendum on the EU: Telegraph
The Rise of a Euro Doomsayer: Gray Lady

Sci-Tech

Why Is China Building These Gigantic Structures In the Middle of the Desert?: Gizmodo
Is Amazon Working on a Cheap Smartphone?: Consumerist
Zero-Day BIND Flaw Crashes DNS Servers: DarkReading

Cornucopia

“Sins committed in the name of a higher good can smell and look like lilies. But they flank a coffin” : Doswell
There's No Fuzzy Math in NASCAR: MOTUS
33 Years Ago Tonight: It Happened: Ace

Image: Investors Business Daily
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Herman Cain's 404 Page

QOTD: "California’s regulations often utterly defeat entrepreneurs. John Bowen, the owner of an 82-year-old family-run business, King Kelly Marmalade, sold his firm to an out-of-state operator in 2007 after tiring of the ceaseless regulatory battle. At one point, Bowen started counting the government agencies that he had to deal with to run his business; he gave up when he reached 44. Bowen’s biggest woe was complying with the state’s aggressive air-pollution laws, wastewater regulations, and workplace rules. “I loved the work,” he says. “This decision [to sell] was largely as a result of excessive and oppressive government rules.”" --Steven Malanga

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Photo: a Young Mark Levin

Via The Right Scoop:

As an aside, Levin's new book -- the followup to the bestselling Liberty and Tyranny -- promises to be a doozy.

My guess is that The New York Times will repeat its cowardly performance -- refusing to review the book no matter how many million of copies it sells. Because conservatism's logic, its principles, its philosophical foundations and its historical bases are no more assailable by progressives than Everest can be scaled by a gerbil.


World War IV? Secret German Report Details a Super-EU Able to 'Take Over Economies of Eurozone Countries'

The Telegraph reports that Germany's leaders have laid down a secret contingency plan for hostile economic takeovers of sovereign members of the EU.

And what could possibly go wrong with that? Besides, of course, a failed Viennese artist with a tiny mustache, a world war, and tens of millions dead?

[A] leaked memo, written by the German foreign office, discloses radical plans for an intrusive new European body that will be able to take over the economies of beleaguered eurozone countries.

It discloses that the EU’s largest economy is also preparing for other European countries, which are too large to be bailed out, to default on their debts — effectively going bankrupt. It will prompt fears that German plans to deal with the eurozone crisis involve an erosion of national sovereignty that could pave the way for a European “super state” with its own tax and spending plans set in Brussels...

...The eurozone contagion is threatening to spread to Spain and France... The six-page German foreign ministry paper sets out plans for the creation of a European Monetary Fund with a transfer of sovereignty away from member states.

The fund will have the power to take ailing countries into receivership and run their economies. Even more controversially, the document, entitled The future of the EU: required integration policy improvements for the creation of a Stability Union, declares that the treaty changes are a first stage “in which the EU will develop into a political union”. “The debate on the way towards a political union must begin as soon as the course toward stability union is charted,” it concludes.

The EU is dead: its leaders just refuse to acknowledge what everyone else in the world knows. It allowed countries to violate their terms of membership, it facilitated outrageous amounts of debt, and it helped promote the contamination of the entire world financial system.

The fuse was lit long ago. The only question is how many weeks (not months) it will all take to implode.


Oopsie! IRS reports Obamacare will force millions to go without health insurance

Gee, it's so surprising how a 2,200-page bill that no one read could lead to all of these... complications:

President Obama's healthcare law will leave millions of families without affordable coverage unless tax officials rewrite the rules on who gets subsidies, advocates warned Thursday.

...The issue risks blowing up in Democrats' face in 2014, when the subsidies for coverage in state-based insurance exchanges become available. House Republicans have already used the glitch, which The Hill first reported in July, as ammunition to hammer the law for allegedly discriminating against marriage.

Advocates shared their concerns in person with the IRS during a hearing on the tax credits after deluging the agency with comments about its proposed regulation last month. The proposed rule would not penalize families that can't afford insurance, but advocates say that's not enough.

IRS officials listened silently for two and a half hours and asked no questions. The Treasury Department has said its hands are tied because of the way the law was written.

In related news, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber just threw a temper tantrum.


Ann Barnhardt pulls the plug on her brokerage business: the 'entire system has been utterly destroyed' by MF Global

You may know the gutsy, anti-Jihad crusader Ann Barnhardt from her use of bacon bookmarks or her shocking exposé of Islamist misogyny. But Barnhardt was also, until a day ago, a principal of Barnhardt Capital Management, a commodity brokerage that specialized in cattle and grain.

This is an abridged version of the letter Barnhardt just sent to clients to announce that her firm has ceased operations:

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm...

...And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism...

With Best Regards-
Ann Barnhardt

Barnhardt will continue blogging at Barnhardt.biz

Excellent News: Self-Described 'Militant Marxist-Leninist Skinhead' Heads Obama's Political Action Wing

Barack Obama's personal political action wing -- don't call them modern day brown-shirts! -- is "Organizing For America", or OFA. Among OFA's leaders is a self-described "Marxist-Leninist Skinhead" who is also behind the Young Communist League.

Yesterday we released a video of John Bachtell, a national board member from the Communist Party U.S.A., addressing the bongo-banging, spoiled, suburban run-aways at the #OccupyChicago tent city and an interview with a few of his “fellow travelers” in the march... In the photo [at right] starting on the left is James Raines, a University of Memphis teacher (from reader tip), next to his right is Jordan Farrar (Young Communist League & Organizing for America), and next to him is Gabe Niechcial, another young communist.

...Farrar, seen in the white C.P. USA shirt, is not only a Young Communist League leader, but he is also a member of Barack Obama’s Organizing for America and he organized a rally in 2009 for OFA to support President Obama’s health care bill. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) was featured guest at Farrar’s event as well.

...Jordan is a self-described “militant anti-racist anti-fascist Marxist-Leninist skinhead... fight[ing] along with my comrades for a better world through peace, equality, democracy and by creating a socialist America to put an end to the imperialist and capitalist aggression that has been carried out in the name of the American people.”

Another world is possible, another United States is necessary!

In other words, a prominent Obama supporter is also an advocate for the overthrow of the United States government.

As an aside, can anyone tell me when it become acceptable for a member of the Democrat Party to be an avowed, militant Communist? I'm just looking for the year this happened so I can figure out when and how a mainstream political party became infected with a virulent strain of anti-Americanism.


Hat tip: TrendingRight.

Larwyn's Linx: Observations From a Fringe Extremist Hobbit

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

Nation

Observations From a Fringe Extremist Hobbit: ProWis
A Brutally Honest Evaluation of the GOP Field: RWN
Gun rights or states' right: Hot Air

Why I Support Newt Gingrich: LI
Another Look at Newt: Times
Budget Chicanery Has Already Doomed the Super Committee: PJM

Economy

Obama pal Buffett helped shape bailout rules; then profited: BigGov
Cali to Business: Get Out!: Malanga
City Braces for March on Financial District: Post

Oops! "Another ObamaCare Glitch": ProWis
Detroit May Run Out of Cash Next Month: Mish
Good News: We Won't Lose $14.3B on Auto Bailout...: LessGov

What #OWS Really Proved: TAB
Rape and the Occupation: Sultan Knish
Just Like the Tea Party: A List of Occupy Mayhem: VS

Gunrunner & Energygate

Chu on Solyndra hot seat today in Congress: Exam
Another Obama Scandal In the Making: Power Line
Chu, the DOE and new Solyndra skulduggery emerge: Hot Air

Climate & Energy

Captain Communist Helps Out the Little Guy Once Again: VirtRep

Media

Right journos must test conservative candidates: Freddoso
Penn State: the Banality of Collaborative Evil: RWN
Some speech is more equal than others: ProWis

Former SEAL stands by account of bin Laden raid, says administration out to get him: DC
Occupy has lost Jon Stewart: Exam
Stunning Silence From the White House on GSE Bonuses: Hot Air

World

Why does America defend the weak and small?: Hanson
On waterboarding: Let’s stick to the facts: Thiessen
Probe: Obama Admin Broke Law to Push Abortion in Kenya: LifeNews

To Save the Euro We Must Destroy Germany: Mish
The Christians of Egypt, Part I: PJM
Spanish 10-Year Bond Yield Hits Euro-Era Record 6.61%, Italian 10-Year Yield at 7.04%: Mish

Sci-Tech

Massive lakes could lie beneath Jupiter moon: smh
Facebook Slammed by Porn Attack: WSJ
Android 4.0 arrives as Galaxy Nexus goes on sale: CNet

Cornucopia

Insider Trading for Insiders: That’s Not You: MOTUS
While Visiting Australia, Obama Bows to Nobody in Particular: JWF
A crushing loss for Woods, a lead for Americans: MyWay

Image: The People's Cube, via American Digest
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate

QOTD: "Too sad for commentary, but here is some math: total US debt has increased by 41.5%, or $4.4 trillion, from $10,626,877,048,913 on January 20, to $15,033,607,255,920, under Obama as president." --Tyler Durden

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber Fears Supremes Could Rely Upon Constitution, Other Old Documents In Voiding Health Care Law

I've dispensed with my usual blockquote style to interject responses more rapidly because... the stupid, it burns:

Jonathan Gruber, a key intellectual architect of President Obama's overhaul of the American health care system, is a little frustrated... "I'm frustrated that the future of the American health care system rests in the hands of one or two of these unelected people who might make the decision based on political grounds..." a few hours after the Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to hear challenges to the Affordable Care Act. "It's very disturbing."


Gruber wasn't disturbed by other rulings, however, that upheld left-wing positions like the Constitutional right to an abortion and the Constitutional right to collect welfare.

The court consolidated several different challenges and will hear a host of issues related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which became law in March 2010, granting a full five-and-a-half hours for oral argument. But the central question is whether Congress can require people to buy health insurance, and, if not, whether that mandate can be severed from the rest of the bill.


Yes, because the Constitution can be interpreted to allow a massive, authoritarian, centralized government to force people to buy health care insurance, to buy certain kinds of clothing, to buy certain kinds of housing, and to buy only approved food items. After all, food, housing and clothing are as essential to human beings as heath care (if not more crucial), which means the government can compel you to buy those products.

Those sections are right next to the Abortion Clause of the Constitution.

Gruber, whose ideas also made up the landmark overhaul of health care in Massachusetts that was overseen by then-governor Mitt Romney, thinks that the Obama health care package would still be better than nothing if the mandate were removed, but said that it wouldn't be nearly as effective... Without the mandate, Gruber said, the bill would only cover a third to half as many people, and that premiums go up 20 to 30 percent.


What a schmuck. The European social welfare states -- with cradle-to-grave "free" health care and outrageous pension programs -- are collapsing as we speak. And Gruber thinks that the individual mandate will help drive down costs.

"Look, if this succeeds, then Obama becomes F.D.R. This is the most important social policy accomplishment since the 1960s. And if this succeeds, this could be the kind of benefit to the Democratic Party that Social Security was..."


Would that be the same program of which its trustees -- including Timmy Geither, Hilda Solis, and Kathleen Sebelius -- wrote, "Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing, and will require legislative corrections if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided"?

And yet Gruber evangelizes for still more deficits as the economy teeters on the brink of utter and complete collapse. He screeches for more debt as Democrats fight the reform of Social Security and Medicare, which -- according to their own experts -- are poised to implode in just a few years' time. He cries to borrow more money as Democrats have already saddled our children and grandchildren with debts that simply can't be repaid.

There's a special place in Hell for the likes of Gruber, who represents nothing less than an enemy of civilization. For he is helping to shred the most magnificent society ever created on the face of the Earth; and he does so in order to construct some sort of sick monument to Soviet-style central planning, which can't succeed and has never succeeded in all of human history.


Obama Silent as Millionaires and Billionaires at Fannie and Freddie Collect Huge Bonuses From the Taxpayer

After literally years of demonizing "millionaires and billionaires" (which, best I can figure, means people who make $200,000 a year), the President has gone curiously silent about a certain segment of the rich: the guys running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the ground.

Barack Obama has exhorted supporters to object to large bonus payouts at financial institutions that took TARP bailout money. The House Oversight Committee and its chair, Rep. Darrell Issa, want to know why Obama hasn’t objected to the ridiculous levels of compensation at the two largest bailout recipients — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

...lucrative compensation packages may be appropriate for profitable companies in the private sector, but substantial questions exist whether they are appropriate for entities in taxpayer-funded conservatorship, especially those that are bleeding billions of dollars each quarter. In this context, it is important to remember that taxpayers – not corporate shareholders – are footing the bill for these lavish bonuses.

Countdown to Democrat outrage in: three... two... never.


On the First Tuesday in November, the Dead will walk the Earth and... Vote Democrat

Not content with its constituencies of felons, illegal aliens, voters from other states, and clueless drones, Wisconsin's Democrat Party appears ready to borrow a page from the Chicago machine:

You know what they say: 9 out of 10 Dead Voters vote Democrat. [Ed: Must be a typo on Jim's part: it's usually ten of ten]. Democrats are heading out to the cemeteries to collect names for their petition drive to oust Governor Scott Walker...

...From the Wisconsin DNC website, via Free Republic.

Having realized that the site was inadvertently made public, Wisconsin Democrats appear to have taken it offline where they will presumably spread the word via Journolist.


Larwyn's Linx: We Are the 'Lazy,' 'Soft,' and Lacking In 'Hunger' Movement

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

Nation

We Are the 'Lazy,' 'Soft,' and Lacking In 'Hunger' Movement: Ace
C-SPAN asks SCOTUS to open Obamacare arguments to cameras: Malkin
Perry argues for cutting government, hits nerve: Pundette

Bullet Hits White House Window: Powers
Is That a Threat?: Spew
Obama nominee favors rationing health care: WklyStd

Supreme Ironies: Obamacare and the Court: PJM
CAIR uses DOJ to shake down MN school district: Creeping
Obama Thrown Softballs in Hawaii Presser: Dossier

Economy

Poverty Data Used To Justify Political Greed: Williams
Protester threatens Macy's with Molotov Cocktail: VS
Obama's children sent home to Mama: Boortz

Rhode Island: the Meltdown Continues: Mead
Visa's Happenstance IPO Coincidentally Benefited Pelosi: Ace
The Post Office Is Doomed: Atlantic Wire

Gunrunner & Energygate

Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s ‘Green’ Company Scored $1.4 Billion Taxpayer Bailout: BigGov
Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal: Malkin
Politico Runs Story on Pelosi's Political Acumen: "Nancy Pelosi Still Has The Golden Touch": Ace

SSI Exclusive: They knew. Everybody knew. This one email proves it.: SSI
Eric Holder Manipulated Mainstream Media to Taint Fast/Furious Investigation: Lid
Penn State vs. Gunwalker: Warped Priorities?: Owens

Climate & Energy

Chevy Volts Are, it Appears, Bursting into Flames: BigGov
EPA using ‘press release science’ to justify regulations, congressmen say: DC
Erratic, extreme, press release puts Princeton climate science in a new light: Watts

Media

Diane Sawyer Again Links Tea Party And Sarah Palin to Rep. Giffords’ Shooting: BigJ
Breitbart's Big House: Slate
Where I’ve been, and how Newt’s coming: Kimball

A Revolving Door Of Media Bias: IBD
Liberals On Government Healthcare Then And Now: Glob
Obama Thinks Hawaii Is in Asia (Video): GWP

World

Europe's Next Crisis: Beyond Finance: Stratfor
A Moat Too Far: Steyn
Report: Chinese Banking System Nearly Bankrupt: Mish

Will North Korea Collapse?: PJM
Poll: Troops Losing Confidence in Obama Commander-in-Chief: BigPeace
Obama’s Favorite Middle East Leader: Anti-American Radical Who Loathes America and Israel: BRubin

Sci-Tech

Having Solved All Other Legal Matters, DOJ Focuses on Your Match.com Profile: AllAm
Walt Mossberg Reviews Kindle Fire, Amazon's Color Tablet: WSJ
Verizon Wireless presses its 4G LTE edge into new markets: CNet

Cornucopia

NBA Should Have Learned From MLB: Chron
Assistant coach went to police, helped stop assault, e-mail says: CNN
MMM MMM MMM: iOwnTheWorld

Image: Weasel Zippers
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Senate Conservatives Fund

QOTD: "I asked the CBO to model the economy going forward under so much debt. Beyond 2029, the computer models used by CBO crash because they can’t conceive of any way the U.S. economy can continue under such a massive debt burden." --Rep. Paul Ryan

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Botox-laden swamp-drainer made $100K in two days by savvy investing and blocking legislation, but mostly blocking legislation

Retail investors would love to learn former Speaker Nancy Pelosi's investing secrets, which magically increased her net worth 62% during the worst of the financial crisis (spiking her portfolio's value from $22 million to $35.2 million in a year's time).

CBS News explains how the Botox-laden, swamp-draining, small business-stiffing Pelosi made her millions:

The former speaker and her husband have participated in at least eight IPOs, one of which was from Visa in 2008 - just as a troublesome piece of legislation that would have hurt credit card companies began making its way through the House. The Pelosis purchased 5,000 shares of Visa at the initial price of $44 dollars. Two days later it was trading at $64.

...this stock purchase was made as Visa was engaged in a full-court press to lobby Pelosi to stop legislation to curb credit-card swipe fees to vendors.

In 2007, Visa used an army of lobbyists to try to influence Pelosi, including one of her former advisers, Dean Aguillen... In addition to exploiting the revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms, Visa's political action committee made a $1,000 donation to Pelosi's re-election campaign... Two days after that donation was made, Pelosi met with Visa executives in her office. Aguillen also contributed $1,000 to Pelosi and another $1,000 to the campaign arm of the House Democratic caucusin the first half of 2008.

Dave Del Dotto could not be reached for comment at press time.


Related:

Caller to Mark Levin Show Describes How Nancy Pelosi and her Husband Abuse Their Power to Stiff Small Business
Gallery of Twitches: Stop-Action Photos of Nancy Pelosi as She Faces Blistering Questions


Hat tip: Ace.

Occupy Mom's Basement Begins #omb

Dan from New York:

NY Post, November 15, 2011

Judge: OWS protestors can't return to Zuccotti Park with tents, overnight gear


Protestors will not be allowed to bring tents and overnight gear to Zuccotti Park, a Manhattan judge ruled today, dealing a huge blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"The [protestors] have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations to the exclusion of the owner's reasonable rights and duties to maintain Zuccotti Park, or to the rights to public access of others who might wish to use the space safely," Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Michael Stallman wrote in a four-page decision.

"Neither have the applicants shown a right to a temporary restraining order that would restrict the city's enforcement of law so as to promote public health and safety."

DNC headquarters will reportedly fly its official flag -- which depicts a donkey taking a dump on a police car -- at half-staff tomorrow, after employees have been de-loused.


Oh, my: Obama White House demanded that Solyndra delay its layoff announcements until after... the 2010 midterm elections

The House Energy and Commerce Committee may have just opened up EnergyGate's Pandora's Box:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu is scheduled to appear before a Solyndra inquiry on Thursday, so I’m sure he’ll be asked about this:

The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show...

...Solyndra, the now-shuttered California company, had been a poster child of President Obama’s initiative to invest in clean energies and received the administration’s first energy loan of $535 million. But a year ago, in October 2010, the solar panel manufacturer was quickly running out of money and had warned the Energy Department it would need emergency cash to avoid having to shut down...

As you read content of one of the emails, keep in mind that the 2010 election was on November 2nd:

"DOE continues to be cooperative and have indicated that they will fund the November draw on our loan (app. $40 million) but have not committed to December yet," a Solyndra investor adviser wrote Oct. 30. “They did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd – oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.

This particular “investor adviser” possessed the kind of lack of inquisitiveness that probably contributed to the excitement level in the VP’s office.

As instructed, Solyndra announced the layoffs and a factory shutdown just after the elections were over. In spite of that, the DoE continued to give Solyndra installments of their taxpayer backed loan...

Update: Rahm Emanuel still doesn’t remember anything about Solyndra... whatever that was.

The malevolent propagandist named Jonathan Alter hardest hit:


Hat tip: TrendingRight.

Larwyn's Linx: Kagan Cheered Obamacare Passage – Must Recuse Herself

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

Nation

Kagan Cheered Obamacare Passage – Must Recuse Herself: GWP
Court sets 5 1/2-hour hearing on health care: SCOTUSblog
The Man Who Will Be President: Power Line

Cain continues being very authentic: Ace
Will Republicans Blow It?: Sowell
Smug Shot From the GOP Debate: Malkin

Kagan celebrated with Laurence Tribe when Obamacare passed: CNS
Michelle’s “Women for Obama” versus Obama’s women: Malkin
Penn State's Shame -- And Ours: Thomas

Economy

Obama spends $1B training "community workers": Bruce
Poverty in America: Williams
Lots of Democrats Traded on TARP Non-Public Information, Too: Ace

The Same Old Obama: David Limbaugh
70 Arrested in NY City as Police Clear the Zuccotti Tramp Camp: GWP
Retail Store Closing Roundup: Mish

Energygate

Smallpox Scandal Plagues White House: RT
Emails: Rahm Emanuel suggested White House involvement in Solyndra: DC
The Solyndra Steves: NRO

Climate & Energy

Canada: Obama's Pipeline Delay Means Oil Will Go To Asia (Losing Another 20,000 US Jobs): GWP
Report: 80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers: Foundry
How President Obama Killed Thousands of Jobs: Foundry

Media

The Republican Candidate from Politico: LI
No debate over CBS debate debacle: IBD
Blog Con 2011 Denver (45 pics): RWN

Krauthammer rips Obama’s ‘ill-concealed contempt’ for Americans: ‘It’s unseemly’: DC
Pelosi aide: '60 Minutes' report a 'right-wing smear': SFGate
CNN WH Correspondent Asks Obama if GOP Candidates Are 'Uninformed, Out of Touch, or Irresponsible': NB

Hoping for a New Generation of Useful Dupes: Betsy's Page
On Idiot Repug Pundits Running Amuck: AmDigest
CNN shows heavy bias in waterboarding question to Obama, gets facts wrong: Toldjah

Politico's Mike Allen: 'Very Possible' Dems Will Win Back House Majority: NB
The Secrets of Soros, Obama, Occupiers and the MSM: Norris
The real Cain scandal: Video cringe alert: Malkin

World

Iran's Head of Missile Development Dies of 'Zucotti Pud' and Mossad Bomb But Mostly Mossad Bomb: Ace
Saudi Journalist: Let’s Just Call It the Muslim Brotherhood Spring, Already: BigPeace
French CDS Hit Escape Velocity: ZH

Sci-Tech

Duqu Meets Dexter: CSO Online
Online video viewers watching longer on tablets: CNet
The Android tablet developers love most: CNet

Cornucopia

My Night At The Marine Corps Ball: Justin Timberlake
With Apologies to Allan Sherman: IowaHawk
Unconfirmed Report: Larry Sinclair Killed In Hit And Run Car Crash In Tennessee?: BIN

Image: iOwnTheWorld - Meghan McCain Barbie?
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Senate Conservatives Fund

QOTD: "The status quo is broken. The euro experiment has failed. The European Central Bank, fixated by its legal mandate of restraining inflation, is actively exacerbating the impetus to recession. Whatever happens, Greece is heading for a depression, Italy is in recession, and the entire euro zone will be in recession soon enough." --Paul Sheehan, "Europe shows how a fat public sector consumes an economy"

Monday, November 14, 2011

What do you get when you put a former ACORN community agitator, who never held a job, in charge of the world's largest economy?

Pretend it's a hypothetical question, so you won't grow even more depressed.

Here's the latest Case-Shiller data, adjusted for October 2011.

Say, is that a green shoot?


Compulsive Intervention Disorder

President Obama and other Democrats have routinely pinned the blame for the 2008 housing crisis on the mistakes of the prior administration. In fact, two years ago the New York Times published a 5,100-word article alleging that the Bush administration’s housing policies had “stoked” the foreclosure crisis and, therefore, the financial meltdown. Using a variety of governmental mechanisms, the Times alleged, Bush seduced millions of people into mortgages that they ultimately couldn’t afford.

The Times has forgotten -- or, more likely, chosen to ignore -- a long and sordid history of government involvement with housing.

In 1922, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, overreacting to a tiny dip in home ownership rates reflected by the 1920 census (from 45.9% in 1910 to 45.6%), warned that three-quarters of all Americans would be renters within a few decades (experts believe that the small drop was actually related to the after-effects of World War I).

The New York Times echoed Hoover's urgency, "The nation’s stability [is] being undermined... The masses [are] losing their struggle for a better life.”

Without waiting to see if postwar prosperity might change the trend, Hoover launched a program of aggressive government intervention into the housing market. Hoover's Own Your Own Home program prompted GM, U.S. Steel and -- most significantly -- federally chartered banks to dive into the housing business.

From 1927 to 1929, national banks’ mortgage lending increased 45 percent. Despite an obviously overheated market, The New York Times applauded the “wave of home-building” turning America into "a nation of home owners."

The 1930 census revealed 47.8% of U.S. households were living in their own homes.

But all was not well. Foreclosures rose from 2% in 1922 to 11% in 1927.

The October 1929 stock market crash touched off bank runs and cash-starved institutions stopped lending altogether.

By 1933, 1,000 homes were foreclosing each day.

Hoover's Own Your Own Home program had created a housing bubble. Mortgage loans more than doubled in less than ten years, a primary reason that 750 financial institutions failed in 1930 alone.

Construction jobs also fell 70% from 1929 to 1933.

You might thank that Hoover's housing debacle would have taught politicians the dangers inherent in engineering housing policy.

Instead, the feds reacted to the crisis by forming the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). HOLC was a New Deal bailout organization that turned government into an even bigger player in the housing market. HOLC would buy up troubled mortgages from banks and allow homeowners to refinance.

HOLC turned into a massive federal agency, reaching 20,000 employees at its height. Despite the new loans it negotiated, 20% of these reformulated mortgages defaulted.

HOLC loan officers characterized two thirds of the defaults as borrowers refusing to renoegotiate, as homeowners rightly figured that the government wouldn't kick them out of their homes.

And despite all of its purchases of bad loans, mortgage lending never revived during the thirties.

The feds' attempts at central planning continued with the Federal Home Loan Bank system to provide funds to banks; the Federal Housing Administration to insure loans; the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) to purchase insured mortgages; and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation to prevent future bank runs.

Put simply, the U.S. government had federalized much of the mortgage market.

1944's GI Bill included government-subsidized mortgages for returning veterans. By 1949, more than half of U.S. households owned homes and 40% were government-subsidized.

As homeownership grew, political pressure to allow riskier loans increased. As a result, the government eased its lending requirements, approving riskier loans and extending terms.

Predictably, the failure rate on FHA-insured loans spiked by 500% from 1950 to 1960.

By contrast, the foreclosure rate of conventional mortgages barely changed at all; many traditional lenders had maintained strict underwriting standards.

Ignoring all of these issues, the FHA embarked on a massive urban-loan program in the sixties and seventies. It turned out to be a catastrophic failure.

After the riots of 1968, the government passed a law giving poor families FHA-insured loans with nearly no down payments.

The result: massive real-estate flipping as speculators took advantage of the easy loan terms and uneducated home buyers. Foreclosures ran wild in more than 20 cities. The FHA became Detroit's biggest homeowner after it took about $200 million in losses. In New York, the tab ran more than $300 million. The final bill to taxpayers was estimated at $1.4 billion in losses.

Aside from the monetary losses, the program caused many neighborhoods to fall into ruins. Bushwick, a once-stable blue-collar Brooklyn community, became a burned-out husk of its former self as many buyers walked away from their properties and arsonists torched vacant homes. Entire blocks remained burned-out for years.

Once again, Washington's attempts at social engineering had failed as rampant speculation and corruption ran unchecked because the taxpayers were on the hook.

Again ignoring the problems endemic in any central planning of the housing market, the government next stepped into the breach in 1975.

Community agitators claimed studies were demonstrating that blacks were not receiving the same number of loans as whites; and the media jumped on the bandwagon. Experts pointed out, however, that creditworthiness of borrowers had not been taken into account.

Despite these obvious failings, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977. It gave regulators the power to deny banks the right to expand if they didn’t lend at "acceptable rates" in poor neighborhoods. In 1979, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) rocked the banking industry when it used the CRA to deny the Greater New York Savings Bank to open a bank branch in Manhattan, claiming it hadn't met its lending obligations in Brooklyn.

The theme was repeated over and over again. In 1980, the FDIC told a Maryland bank that its expansion plans would be denied unless it started lending in the District of Columbia, though the bank had no branches there. Then the government began instructing wholesale banks—institutions without retail branches and that don’t lend to consumers —that they, too, had to implement urban lending programs.

Another milestone to the current meltdown was caused directly by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), which threatened to stop bank acquisitions in 1986 until it accepted "flexible credit and underwriting standards" for minority borrowers.

Acorn also successfully applied political pressure to Congress, which passed legislation in 1992 that required Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to devote 30% of their loan portfolios to low- and moderate-income borrowers.

The campaign gathered inertia with the election of Bill Clinton, whose secretary of HUD, Henry Cisneros, began lobbying for zero-down loans, expanding federal insurance and using the CRA and other laws to force private money into low-income programs. Fannie and Freddie (also known as government-sponsored entities -- or GSEs) followed Cisneros' guidelines and further loosened underwriting standards, despite the FHA disaster of the sixties.

To meet the stated goals, the GSEs began enlisting large lenders to meet the new, flexible underwriting standards. In 1994, after accusions in Congress of "egregious redlin[ing]" by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shocked the banking world by signing an agreement with HUD to increase minority lending. The first MBA member to enlist: Countrywide Financial, the firm at the center of the subprime meltdown.

As the volume of low-income loans increased, Wall Street began to take note.

In early 2000 the FDIC proposed increasing capital requirements for lenders making subprime loans, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and John J. LaFalce (D-NY) battled the attempts, urging the regulators “not to be premature” with stricter underwriting.

In 1999, despite new lenders in the market, the Clinton administration kept pushing aggressive mortgage products.

In July, HUD increased desired levels for the GSEs low-income lending. In September, the GSEs began purchasing loans made to “borrowers with slightly impaired credit”, lowering the bar still further. In the following years, Congress set higher goals for the GSEs.

By 2007, some $1 trillion in loans had been made to lower- and moderate-income buyers. And Countrywide was the biggest supplier of mortgages to low-income buyers for Fannie Mae.

There was no shortage of evidence that this approach was doomed to fail.

In October 1994, Fannie Mae head James Johnson reminded a banking convention that mortgages with small down payments had a much higher risk of defaulting (actually, three times more likely to default). Yet the very next month, Fannie expanded its program to include products with a 97 percent loan-to-value ratio (a 3% down payment), the result of more political pressure from Maxine Waters and others in Congress.

No matter how high ownership rates climbed, however, a new group below the bar needed help. Massive immigration during the nineties, for example, created huge new pools of prospective borrowers. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus created Hogar, an initiative that eased lending standards for immigrants, and mortgage lending to Hispanics soared. Today, in areas where Hispanics make up 25 percent or more of the population, foreclosure rates are now nearly 50 percent higher than the national average.

Last year, lenders began foreclosing on roughly 2.3 million homes; some experts believe that before the crisis is over, 8 million homes will have been foreclosed upon.

Despite all of these lessons, Washington is preparing for the next housing debacle.

Barney Frank (D-MA) has aggressively resisted attempts to privatize the GSEs, which would eliminate both the risk to taxpayers and the political influence endemic in the series of failures. And the Obama administration’s various mortgage bailout plans have not only failed, they also eerily resemble the New Deal’s HOLC.

Behind all of these efforts are fundamental misconceptions about central planning; that masterminds in Washington can somehow perform better than the free market, where conventional underwriting programs have succeeded admirably in the past without government regulation.

If nothing else, the last ninety years have proven that political tampering in the housing market results in nothing less than disaster. And we're on course for more, if we keep electing big government Statists to office.

The pinnacle of this senseless treadmill is having the likes of Chris Dodd and Barney Frank -- arguably as responsible as any two living individuals for the most recent crisis -- writing the "fixes" for the financial system; or President Obama's pursuit of reduced underwriting standards that "repeats [the] mistakes of the past".

What's that definition of insanity, again?

It's time to get government out of the housing business, once and for all.


Based upon: Steven Malanga's outstanding Obsessive Housing Disorder in City Journal.

Larwyn's Linx: How Nancy Pelosi Made Millions Blocking Credit Card Legislation

Have a news tip or great story? Drop me an email. Bloggers: you can install a Larwyn's Linx blog widget!

Nation

How Nancy Pelosi Made Millions Blocking Credit Card Legislation: BG
Those sick of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz have reason to cheer: Hot Air
GOP Rep. Bachus Profited from ‘Inside Trades’ on TARP: BG

Obamacare Arrives at the Supreme Court: Malkin
Tea Partiers, Like Peaceniks, Upset Political Order: Barone
The GOP Dilemma on a Balanced Budget Amendment: PJM

Economy

The Euro Is Dead: ZH
Biden: First Guy We Called for Economic Advice Was Jon Corzine: JWF
Europe shows how a fat public sector consumes an economy: smh

Men from Occupy Portland Arrested with Homemade Grenades: VS
Bring the supercommittee out from behind closed doors: Exam
Confirmed: EFSF Is A Fraud: Denninger

The Obama Psalm: Spartacus
Big banks binge on Bush-Obama 'venture socialism': Exam
A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage: Awl

Gunrunner & Energygate

Good advice to the GOP candidates from a Brit: SSI
Who Holder sent guns to: Hyperviolent drug cartel decapitates members of internet chat rooms: Daily News
I increasingly hear a legal term being mentioned: Misprision of a Felony: SSI

Climate & Energy

Obscene Green Gold Rush Embarasses the New York Times: Mead
Pacific Gas and Electric: not so climate smart after all: Watts
Bummer: Drying Your Hands Like A Rational Human Now Bad For Globull Warming: RWN

Media

Throw Them All Out -- Including Politico: BigJ
Tom Friedman: 'I’d Give Obama High Marks for Fulfilling Bush's Foreign Policy': NB
Pelosi drives even Jon Stewart crazy: JWF

The Cowards of Penn State: Pundette
Photoshopping the Past: Belmont Club
Grand Jury Report on Jerry Sandusky: Public Intelligence

AP, NYT Not Yet Reporting $433M Perelman-Smallpox Cronyism Story: NB
Bummer: Little People Who Can’t Vote Lose Obsession With Barack Obama: RWN
Did CBS intentionally squelch Bachmann in the debate?: Hot Air

World

The Devil's Smile: Sultan Knish
Acropolis now: Greece may be just the start: MacLeans
Pigs’ heads found at planned Swiss mosque site: iOTW

A 2012 World View: What is the End Game?: NMJ
Clinton, Albright Smile: Hundreds of North Korean Nuclear Experts Are Working in Iran: GWP
300 lashes for practicing black magic: Arab News

Sci-Tech

Six Lessons I Learned From Bombing Iran: Wired
So You Want To Be A Zero Day Exploit Millionaire?: InfoWeek
Israel May Have Developed Cancer Vaccine: Atlas

Cornucopia

Heartless: iOTW
Report: Mother Of Murdered Gay Lover Speaks Up: Dollard
Seven Reasons Life is Hard for Everyone: Hawkins

Image: iOwnTheWorld
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: National Right-to-Carry Act Slated for House Floor on Tuesday

QOTD: "How did Nancy Pelosi snag one of the most coveted initial public offerings in history? ...Pelosi received her Visa IPO almost two weeks after a potentially damaging piece of legislation for Visa, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act, had been introduced in the House. If passed, the bill would have cut into Visa’s profits substantially by lowering so-called “interchange fees,” the 1% to 3% charge retailers pay Visa when customers use Visa cards for purchases. Interchange fees are a critical source of revenue for the four credit card companies–$48 billion in 2008, to be exact.

...[But] with at least ten percent of the Pelosi family’s entire stock portfolio invested in a single stock, Nancy Pelosi clearly had a vested interest in ensuring that Visa’s profits were protected. And that is exactly what she accomplished. Despite broad public support for the bill—77% in one study—Pelosi saw to it that the bill never made it to the House floor." --Wynton Hall

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Madoff's SEC regulators get off scot-free; liberals who bleat endlessly for more regulation hardest hit

I just love it when progressives and big government Republicans prattle endlessly about the need for more regulation. Every industry in America is regulated to an unprecedented degree, with thousands upon thousands of federal bureaucrats micromanaging light-bulbs, shower heads, the size of toilet tanks, gas mileage, energy exploration, dishwasher design, and everything else you can think of.

And no industry is more regulated than financial services.

After the housing market melted down thanks to eight decades of government tinkering, none other than Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank -- prime culprits in the debacle -- put themselves in charge of "fixing" the financial system.

And the fixes consisted of thousands of pages of new regulations.

Dodd and Frank curiously ignored their financial benefactors -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which contributed mightily to the disaster. Barney Frank used his pull to get his lover a job at Fannie (no pun intended) and Chris Dodd received sweetheart loan deals under the table.

In other words, the regulators were themselves in need of regulation.

A prime example of this kind of cronyism and corruption involves the aftermath of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme. Madoff's multi-billion dollar fraud represented the biggest and most obvious failure of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an agency designed to protect investors against precisely this type of crime.

Despite seventeen (17) years of warnings about Madoff, the SEC declined to seriously investigate until it was too late.

And what happened to the all-too-cozy regulators who should have heeded the warnings and protected investors from Madoff? You guessed it: virtually nothing. Not one was fired.

The Washington Post reported on its Web site Friday that seven SEC employees had been disciplined, based on details provided by a person familiar with the actions. A second source, an official involved in the process, told The Post that Schapiro had received recommendations to fire an employee over the mishandling of the Madoff case.

Later Friday, Nester confirmed details and added that an eighth employee also received disciplinary action. A ninth employee, who was facing a potential seven-day suspension, resigned before disciplinary action was taken, Nester said.

The punishments given the SEC employees varied and included suspensions, pay cuts and demotions.

The employee recommended for termination received one of the more severe penalties, a 30-day suspension along with a reduction in pay and grade. Another was given a pay cut of 5.7 percent. At the low end, one employee was suspended for seven days, another for three days and two others were issued counseling memos, a step below a reprimand.

What needs to be regulated is government itself. Crony capitalism is rampant in Washington, with politicians like Dodd and Frank out to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense.

We don't need more regulations or regulators. What we need are more controls on government, to protect the people from predators like these corrupt slime-balls.


Related: Compulsive Intervention Disorder

Schweizer's New Book: 80% of Energy Department's "Green Loan" Program Went to Obama's Backers

Peter Schweizer's new book has received attention from across the political spectrum, including law enforcement. Even 60 Minutes reportedly leveraged the book to shine a spotlight on Nancy Pelosi's insider trades.

When President-elect Obama came to Washington in late 2008, he was outspoken about the need for an economic stimulus to revive a struggling economy... After he was sworn in as president, he proclaimed that taxpayer money would assuredly not be doled out to political friends...

...But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies...

...In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.

...The Government Accountability Office has been highly critical of the way guaranteed loans and grants were doled out by the Department of Energy, complaining that the process appears “arbitrary” and lacks transparency. In March 2011, for example, the GAO examined the first 18 loans that were approved and found that none were properly documented. It also noted that officials “did not always record the results of analysis” of these applications. A loan program for electric cars, for example, “lacks performance measures.” No notes were kept during the review process, so it is difficult to determine how loan decisions were made. The GAO further declared that the Department of Energy “had treated applicants inconsistently in the application review process, favoring some applicants and disadvantaging others.” The Department of Energy’s inspector general, Gregory Friedman, ... has testified that contracts have been steered to “friends and family.”

...These programs might be the greatest—and most expensive—example of crony capitalism in American history. Tens of billions of dollars went to firms controlled or owned by fundraisers, bundlers, and political allies, many of whom—surprise!—are now raising money for Obama again...

The ludicrous Jonathan Alter hardest hit.