Monday, November 28, 2011

Mission Accomplished! America's Job Market Begins to Resemble Europe's

Excellent charts from the Wall Street Journal's graphics feed (@WSJgraphics):

As the U.S. tries to dodge Europe's debt crisis, the job market is starting to look a lot like Europe's.


Which is the point, I suppose.


More media myths shattered: #OWS 'income inequality' scam exposed

Democrats, the media and Marxists hardest hit. But I repeat myself. Jim Pethokoukis explains:

The core argument of the Occupy movement and its Obamacrat friends is this: The rich stole all the money. That explains why over the past four decades, the income of the broad American middle class supposedly has stagnated even as the economy expanded. Why? Did you forget already? The rich stole all the money. And now it’s time to take it back...

...From 1975-2009, real per capita GDP increased by 90 percent vs. 17 percent growth in real median household income, as measured by the Census Bureau. What happened? Again, the rich stole all the money. Yet if you make a couple simple adjustment for household size and a more accurate inflation measure, a different picture emerges, as Sanandaji illustrates:

Let’s sum up. Income inequality may have increased in recent decades, but a stagnating middle class has not been the result. And the 1 percent didn’t steal all the money.

This is but a snippet. Read the whole thing.


RED ALERT: Deputy A.G. behind 'Fast and Furious' met with President Obama four times during the height of the operation

Item 1: In March of 2011, President Obama denied knowledge of 'Operation Fast and Furious' -- the Justice Department program that sent thousands of murder weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

25 March 2011 - Under fire for an operation that allowed smuggling of U.S. weapons across the nation’s border with Mexico, President Obama said in an interview that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the controversial “Operation Fast and Furious.”

...Obama told Univision‘s Jorge Ramos that President Felipe Calderon wasn’t informed of the operation because he — the president of the United States — wasn’t informed either. When asked whether he knew of the weapon smuggling plan, Obama responded that it is “a pretty big government” with “a lot of moving parts.”

...President Obama said ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms enforcement) was behind "Operation Fast and Furious."

Item 2: According to documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee, Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler was keenly aware of all aspects of Operation Fast and Furious as early as March 2010. In a letter to A.G. Holder, Chairman Issa wrote:

Gary Grindler, the then-Deputy Attorney General and currently your Chief of Staff, received an extremely detailed briefing on Operation Fast and Furious on March 12, 2010. In this briefing, Grindler learned such minutiae as the number of times that Uriel Patino, a straw purchaser on food stamps who ultimately acquired 720 firearms, went in to a cooperating gun store and the amount of guns that he had bought. When former Acting ATF Director Ken Melson, a career federal prosecutor, learned similar information, he became sick to his stomach...

Item 3: Newly released White House Visitor Logs list Grindler as having visited the White House 40 times, but only four times with the President himself. All four meetings with the President occurred over a two-week period, between 7 May 2010 and 19 May 2010.

According to The Los Angeles Times, these dates just so happened to represent the run-up to "the height of [Operation] Fast and Furious":

In the U.S., intelligence officials consider the Sinaloa cartel the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world. Weekly reports from U.S. intelligence authorities to the Justice Department in the summer of 2010, at the height of Fast and Furious, warned about the proliferation of guns reaching the Sinaloa cartel... Under Fast and Furious, begun in fall 2009, the ATF allowed illegal buyers to walk away with weapons in the hope that agents in Phoenix could track the guns and arrest cartel leaders.

Summary: In early 2010, Gary Grindler was intimately involved in all aspects of Operation Fast and Furious. During the height of the operation, Grindler visited the President on four separate occasions in only two weeks -- his only documented meetings with the president at the White House.

So my question is this:

What did President Obama know -- and when did he know it?


Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.

Say, Anyone Know How President Obama's Mortgage Modification and Home-Buyer Tax Incentive Programs Worked Out?

Answer: Just as well as the Stimulus, Cash-for-Clunkers, "green jobs" programs and the rest of the President's exercises in central planning. Which is to say: it's another Obama record!

Today's new annualized home sales print was 307k, below expectations of 315k (yet oddly better than last month's downward revised which moved from 313k to 303k, wink wink nudge nudge Census bureau). This is not to be confused with the actual number of houses sold which came at a whopping 25k, and the third month in a row in which under 500 homes sold in the over $750,000 category.

Yet the most notable data point was the average new house sale price which dropped to $242,300. This is the lowest price since 2003! Something tells us that an MBS LSAP [Ed: i.e., monetization of securitized mortgage debt by the Fed] is pretty much guaranteed at this point.

And I simply adore the shrill shrieks of the drones when confronted with these increasingly dire statistics after three years under the Obama regime. They follow the same general template:

"After eight years of Bush (please note the heart-wrenching affliction -- that all drones suffer -- of Bush Tourette's Syndrome, even after all these years), what d'ya expect? It would'a been worse if he hadn't a'done it!"


Really, drones?

May I then refer you to One Chart to Rule Them All? This is a joint product of The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, which patiently explains to even the most radicalized Leftist how the mortgage crisis began. Enjoy, miscreants!


Larwyn's Linx: For 2012, Be Wary of Obama’s Ties to Corrupt Project Vote

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

Nation

For 2012, Be Wary of Obama’s Ties to Corrupt Project Vote: PJM
Demand Kagan Recuse Herself From Obamacare Litigation: Morris
Along Mexican Border, US Ranchers Live in Fear: Borderland

Why Not Pay Higher Taxes?: Hanson
To Be Taken With A Grain of Galt: NoisyRm
For Republicans Newt Gingrich is the Only Choice: ZH

Entitlement, Not Tax Cuts, Widen the Wealth Gap: Barone
Republican Senate Prospects for 2012: IntelCon
Customer, armed robbers engage in shootout: Click2Houston

Economy

SS Spendaholic sailing into debt abyss: Steyn
Were Wall Street Banks Bailed Out?: Power Line
Money slated for health law gets detoured: Times

$6.7M help subsidize YMCA memberships in Cincinnati: VirtRep
Occupy Dallas Thugs Throw Fake Blood on Store Windows: WZ
The untold jobs boom: Non-green edition: Hot Air

Pay More, Get Less: Samuelson
Stringing up Gibson; tales of the American Nomenklatura: Pournelle
No Surprise Here: Study Shows Teachers Overpaid: OfficialWire

Gunrunner & Energygate

Media Silent As 3 Presidential Contenders, 51 Congressmen Demand Eric Holder’s Resignation: BigJourn
Rep. Maloney Lies about Fast and Furious: AT
ATF gun probe: Behind the fall of Operation Fast and Furious: AZ Central

Climate & Energy

Climategate II More Devastating Than Climategate I: Strata
BBC Executives Bought Off To Promote Global Warming Propaganda: WZ
Confessions of a Light Bulb Addict: Rosett

BREAKING: Canada to pull out of Kyoto Protocol: Watts
An Open Letter to Dr. Phil Jones of the UEA CRU: Watts
Westar lawsuit says meeting EPA’s emission regulation deadline will spur blackouts: KC

Media

Chicago’s New Media Outperforms Two Old Dying Papers: Illinois Pay-To-Play
The New Hampshire Union Leader Endorses...: Malkin
Eleanor Clift: What Irritates Media Most About Newt Gingrich Is 'The Fact That He Is Right': NB

It’s been four weeks since Politico broke the story of accusations against Herman Cain: LI
Occupoops Merely a Distraction: iOTW
Colon Powell Blames Media and Tea Party for Divisive Tone in Washington: NB

The Forgotten Look of Prosperity: Mead
David Frum To Leave The GOP If Either Huntsman Or Romney Isn’t Nominated?: RWN
Democrats post big fundraising numbers for 2012 House races: WaPo

World

The rapidly-decaying Pakistan situation: RS
Pakistanis burn Obama effigy, U.S. flag: IHTM
Heathrow Airport worker fired for standing up to abuse by Muslim employees: Creeping

Muslim Persecution of Christians: October, 2011: Ibrahim
Union barons behind strike that will cripple Britain enjoy gold-plated pensions: Daily Mail
Equity Futures Ripping, Bond Market Still on Deathbed; Germany Allegedly Mulls Five-Nation "Elite Bonds": Mish

Sci-Tech

LandingZone, a Clever Dock for The MacBook Air: Wired
OSHA’s $200,000 Mobile App Criticized: TPM
Michael Arrington Wants You to Work in a Digital Sweatshop: AtlWire

Cornucopia

This Week in Automotivators: RWN
Nasty Lego “Bible” Is Pulled From Sam’s Club Shelves: Spew
Arizona woman tries to rob store with toy penguin, police say: AZ Central

Image: iOwnTheWorld
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: DEMAND KAGAN RECUSE HERSELF FROM OBAMACARE LITIGATION

QOTD: "[The new batch of Climategate] emails is more damning than the first because of the whitewash by the media and pols who have no clue how to interpret the data, algorithms, graphs, nor have a clue how the scientific process works (being published in niche journals by like minded alarmists is not the scientific process). With the fiction that CRU and IPCC were vindicated having been played, the more damning second round of emails puts us in the “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ state. The alarmists’ credibility is toast given the new revelations, as is their media and political cheer leaders. There is no pretending the science is sound now." --AJStrata

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Summing up the #OWS Movement in a Single Photo

L.C. relays this gem:

Tommy Christopher hardest hit.


Escape from Washington [Biff Spackle]

By Biff Spackle:

It's been a long time since Commander Wingnut permitted me to post, so I will beg your forgiveness in advance for rusty sentence structure and participles which dangle. Long-suffering readers will recall that the Vicar of Vitriol usually relegates me to backoffice chores, among them cleaning the JihadShredder 3000™, photoshopping the President into even the most nonsensical of images, and dredging up obscure baseball statistics for his long-running email trivia war with George Will.

So I was truly surprised to learn that the Ayatollah of Irrationality had actually approved one of my story ideas. The last, if memory serves, was a 1965 rebuttal to President Johnson's "Great Society" which, in retrospect, proved eerily prescient. Given my employer's penny-pinching thriftiness, that post unfortunately long ago disappeared into the bit-stream diaspora when the original free blogging service -- Dave's Discount Blogspot -- filed for bankruptcy in 1971.

Ah, but that is only spilt milk. Let us return to the present and my idea. I call it "Escape From Washington".

In evaluating America's 90-year transition from a constitutional republic to a post-constitutional central government, one fact has become increasingly clear:

Too much power is centralized in Washington, D.C.

We wonder how the corporate media's blinkered worldview could be so out-of-step with mainstream America. We wonder why "conservatives" inside the Beltway are tepid milquetoasts who save their rhetorical fire for true conservatives like Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum rather than radical progressives. We wonder how lifetime Republican politicians can't see the country sailing into the economic abyss and only oppose the liberal agenda with a vigor that can optimistically be described as halfhearted.

The answer is right in front of us: the insular collective of power, lobbyists and media inside Washington has created a fishbowl utterly disconnected from the constituents, the stakeholders and the audience they serve, respectively.

We can see the symptoms in front of us: conservatives that insist on politicians honoring the nation's highest law -- upon which they swear an oath to uphold! -- are ridiculed, pilloried and dismissed. Tea Party activists that peacefully assemble, demanding a return to the nation's first principles, are accused of racism and, that tactic having failed, fomenting violence.

It is the centralization of power that has infected politicians with greed, insulated them from their constituents, and allowed members of the media to operate in a self-perpetuating fiction bubble. It has given lobbyists a fertile hunting ground and spawned countless cases of crony capitalism and outright corruption.

An answer is forthcoming. If you'll forgive my French, it's: "Get these bastards the hell out of D.C."

And by that I mean: the Congress. And how do we keep Congress out of Washington?

• De-fund all Congressional offices and staff members except for those in each representative's home state. Ban the maintenance of said offices and employment of staffs within 100 miles of the Beltway, save those representatives whose districts reside therein.

• Slash the legislative session to no more than four days each month, except for national emergencies.

• Establish sunset provisions for all executive agencies and offices; after the first 10 years, every agency must operate on a reduced budget, year-over-year until each disappears altogether after 20 years.

• Slash the size and scope of the unelected fourth branch of government, which has grown at a phenomenal clip over the last 50 years. A good starting point would be to use the sunset provisions for all existing bureaucracies.

If we can keep these S.O.B.'s fine, upstanding Congressional representatives out of Washington, we'll reduce the nefarious impact of both lobbyists and corporate media. We'll bring the politicians closer to their constituents. And we'll begin eroding the centralization of power that has turned a constitutionally-authorized federal government into some amorphous, nationalized collection of Soviet-style, central planners.


Mediate's Tommy Christopher Beclowns Himself, Chapter MCMXCVI

Behold the sublime genius that is Mediaite's Tommy Christopher:

Current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich referenced a popular (among right-wingers) but baseless attack against President Obama this weekend during a speech in Naples, Florida. Challenging the President to a series of Lincoln-Douglas style debates, Gingrich told the crowd “If he (President Obama) wants to use a teleprompter, that would be fine with me.”

...I hate to break it to Newt Gingrich, but President Obama isn’t going to need a teleprompter to debate Newt Gingrich, he’s going to need fist-pillows so he doesn’t hurt him too badly.

Gee, Tommy, I'm sure Newt's trembling at the prospect.

That is, as long as the President isn't asked to count the number of states, pronounce the word corpsman, discuss the Intercontinental Railroad, translate sentences into Austrian, or give a eulogy for the 10,000 killed by a tornado in Kansas.

I'm actually a little miffed because now we'll have to update President Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts to include Tommy Christopher's noteworthy accomplishment; he's the first reporter ever to have his lips surgically attached to a president's keister.


Public utility commission and FERC board slam EPA: it "ambushed" utilities, will cause "widespread and uncontrolled blackouts"

The electric grid is in grave danger thanks to the EPA's arbitrary and draconian new regulations for utilities. Oh, and that's not just according to the utilities impacted by the agency's hastily constructed rules, it's a message echoed by public utility boards and the Midwest's seven-state Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Kansas electric utility Westar Energy contends that meeting a mid-December Environmental Protection Agency deadline on new air emission regulations will result in rolling blackouts for its customers.

“We asked the EPA for more time, but they tell us they're enforcing the Dec. 15 deadline,” said Westar Energy CEO Mark Ruelle. “So we're pushing back. KCPL, Sunflower and us have asked a court to stay the rule. It's not our style, but we've sued through the court in D.C. and the Kansas Attorney General has filed his own lawsuit... We've cut sulfur by 80 percent and NOX (nitrogen oxide) by 50 percent,” Ruelle said, from highs in the years 2002 and 2003. “We've still a ways to go, but we have a plan to get there. Then this rule came out based on emissions crossing state lines. It came out in July and it says we must comply by Jan. 1. You can't.”

...The company can meet the more stringent regulations, but not until 2018, Ruelle said... A separate study by the Southwest Power Pool agrees with Westar's assessment... [the] seven-state regional transmission organization [was] mandated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure reliable supplies of power, adequate transmission infrastructure, and competitive wholesale prices of electricity for its region.

In a September letter to the EPA, which used the word concern seven times, the organization warned an initial “reliability analysis” of utility operations under the EPA timeline pointed to hundreds of potential system overloads in the region and more than a thousand cases of system voltages going too low to meet mandated levels.

The result, the letter advised, could include “the potential of cascading blackouts... or localized rolling blackouts initiated by utilities within the SPP region, to avoid more widespread and uncontrolled blackouts and to remain in compliance with reliability standards... SPP encourages the EPA to work with generation owners to develop flexible compliance schedules to ensure equipment installation is completed in a timely, safe, reliable and cost-effective manner without an arbitrary deadline..."

...Even the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board, which represents customers in utility rate requests, voiced sympathy to Westar's situation... “The EPA really kind of ambushed the utility, in terms of the process,” said David Springe, CURB's consumer counsel. “Clearly they're all working toward reducing emissions to the level the EPA wants. In their final order they were really radically different than the preliminary. They changed the mark they were supposed to hit and made it under a timeline that is simply not reasonable.”

Whether the EPA sticks with its deadline or works with utilities, it's ultimately the consumer that pays, Springe said... “Whether it's January or 2015, they have to retrofit the plants and rates will go up,” he said. “I don't know that I've seen a full rate estimate, but it won't be small.”

If we don't begin defunding the Environmental Protection Agency -- first by handing a pink-slip to President Obama in 2012 -- the damage to the electric grid will be catastrophic.

We can see that the eco-Marxist Left is well on its way to shredding America's energy infrastructure. 2012 may be the last chance we have to save this country from the Cloward-Piven Leftists bent on -- in President Obama's words -- "transforming this society".

What this society would ultimately be transformed into under Obama I leave as an exercise for the reader.


Larwyn's Linx: Michelle Obama’s warning to gun owners

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

Nation

Michelle Obama’s warning to gun owners: DC
Order of the Reich President for Protection of People and State: GreenMnts
Thanks for the absurd but true: Will

The Absent President: The World Burns, Obama Plays: Bruce
Occupy Nut Arrested After Threat To Murder Gov. Nikki Haley: Ace
Rangel’s ‘rehabilitation’ is a travesty: Milbank

Bold Leadership Versus Political Parasites: BigGovt
Gingrich on Fire in Naples: Shark Tank
Texas court refuses to hold GOP-contested redistricting map: Hill

Economy

The Biggest Entitlement of All: Emerging Corruption
The Grover Norquist tax myth: Krauthammer
Government Stress Tests For Banks May Hurt Recovery: IBD

What really happened at UC Davis?: ProWis
How the War on Drugs Creates Perverse Incentives for Police: Volokh
The Spanish bank run has started: EuroIntelligence

Gunrunner & Energygate

Somebody figured it out: "Behind the fall of Operation Fast and Furious": SSI
What it is like Trying to Reveal Truths in the Blogsphere: WSE
Allianz: ‘Green’ energy could trigger catastrophic blackouts: JunkScience

Climate & Energy

More Leaked ClimateGate Emails Suggest Politics Reigned In "Science": Ace
More bad news for the global warming scam artists: WZ
Scientists in Revolt against Global Warming: AT

Obama nixes UN climate fund: Surber
Climategate II Emails: US, UK Colluded to Suppress Anti-Warming Data: Lid
Proposed initiative on nuclear plants would spur blackouts, state says: LAT

Media

Sarah Palin Lied!: Rottweiler
Predictable: Politico Asks If Newt Gingrich Is Really Smart: Ace
Heh: Obama And MSNBC Mouth-Breather Ed Schultz Make GQ’s “25 Least Influential People Alive”: NB

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?: Atlantic
CNN Hack, Gabby Giffords' Husband Slam Palin For Not Apologizing For... ??!@!?!??: WZ
The View from Moonbase Whoopi: Driscoll

An Accumulation of Little Extravagances: William F. Buckley Jr. on Barack Obama: Kimball
Tebow, Palin, and the Pain of Remorse: AT
The Mob And Media War On Police: BigJourn

World

The Ally From Hell: Atlantic
Pakistan Demands U.S. Vacate Suspected Drone Base Within 15 Days: NatlJrnl
Pakistan Closes NATO Supply Lines Into Afghanistan Following Attack On Two Outposts: Ace

Looting the Egyptian Currency: Democracy in Action: Spengler
Guns Better Investment Than Gold?: Mead
157 Air Force Majors terminated without retirement benefits: AT

Britain's Foreign Office Prepares For Riots In Europe; Sees Euro Collapse "When, Not If": ZH
It is now becoming clear Germany has had enough of this euro mess: Telegraph
New Death Threats from Islamic Supremacists and their Leftist Enablers Show How Much They CAIR: Zilla

Sci-Tech

Manila says arrested hackers funded by Saudi group: Reuters
U.S. Authorities Seize Domain Names: AtlWire
FBI, DHS say no evidence of a hack in an Illinois water district pump failure: NetworkWorld

Cornucopia

Revenge of the Turkey: JPA
Black Friday You Can Believe In! : MOTUS
Want to See the Human-Sized Hobbit House That Costs Less Than $5,000 to Build?: Blaze

Image: Sondrakistan
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: The Call For A Summit

QOTD: "This [scramble for firearms among civilians in Syria and Lebanon] is the pattern I saw at work in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus twenty years ago as ethnic groups geared up to butcher their neighbors and drive them from their homes; I will never forget the night a Georgian poet asked me how much guns cost on the Istanbul black market; he was arming himself against what he called the “Abkhazian menace.”

I made a note to myself at that time: when poets buy guns, tourist season is over. They are buying them now in Damascus; something wicked this way comes." --Walter Russell Mead

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Circle Quirk: how the EPA takes your money, gives it to the eco-Marxist Left, which then uses it to sue... the EPA

Item 1: EPA sued over unenforced ozone standards


...In a suit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the environmental group [WildEarth Guardians] said the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt regulations by March 2010 requiring states to meet the new ozone levels... Because of the EPA's inaction, air quality is still measured by weaker standards enacted in 1997, the suit said.

...WildEarth Guardians has about 5,000 members, mostly in the Southwest, and is based in Santa Fe... The EPA did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

Item 2: WildEarth Guardians Annual Report 2010 (PDF)


...WildEarth Guardians’ goal has been and continues to be simple: To help clean energy take root by exposing the true cost of fossil fuels.

• Filed lawsuits to overturn billions of tons of new coal mining in the nation’s largest coal producing region, the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.
• Brought pressure to bear against the region’s largest coal-fired power plants, including New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station and Four Corners Power Plant, two of the largest coal-fired power plants in the American West.
• Applied pressure until Xcel Energy committed to retiring four coal-fired power plants in Colorado.
• Halted 41,000 acres of oil and gas drilling in Montana.
• Successfully pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt the first-ever rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources of air pollution.
• Filed first-ever lawsuit challenging global warming impacts of coal mining in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

Item 3: Public Sources of Funding for WildEarth Guardians (PDF)


Major Contributors

make our work possible from January 1 - December 31, 2010.

GOVERNMENT GRANTS
City of Santa Fe
NM Enviromental Department
Santa Fe County
US Environmental Protection Agency
US Fish and Wildlife Service
US Forest Service

Item 4: The Executive Summary


The federal government, already spending more than a trillion dollars every year that it doesn't have, is devoting substantial funds to groups like "WildEarth Guardians" so they can sue... the federal government.

Oh, but there's nothing to cut -- right, liberals?

Think about it. The EPA takes your money -- without your permission, mind you -- and then redistributes it to the flat-earth, no growth, anti-civilization eco-Marxists. The flat-earthers then use your money to turn around and sue the federal government! And, at this point, the federal government steals more of your money to "defend" against these insane, self-flagellating lawsuits and hire more bureaucrats!

The federal government already owns nearly a third of all land in the country. And these enemies of humanity want still more, so they can continue to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and continue their mission to turn America into a centrally-planned, socialist-style, agrarian, third-world country.

Consider: the U.S. is the only country in the world that restricts access to its own vast treasure troves of energy.

If this kind of insanity doesn't make you scream in anger, then -- I'm sorry -- you're simply not paying attention.

2012 is coming. And it's high time we nuke these bureaucracies' budgets from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.


Related: Genocide in Green

One Chart to Rule Them All

Before you click to enbiggen the chart (below), please consider this Los Angeles Times article by Ronald Brownstein, which appeared in print on page A-5 of the May 31st, 1999 morning edition.

"It’s one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era. In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African Americans owning their own home is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites.

These numbers are dramatic enough to deserve more detail. When President Clinton took office in 1993, 42% of African Americans and 39% of Latinos owned their own home. By this spring, those figures had jumped to 46.9% of blacks and 46.2% of Latinos.

That’s a lot of new picket fences. Since 1994, when the numbers really took off, the number of black and Latino homeowners has increased by 2 million. In all, the minority homeownership rate is on track to increase more in the 1990s than in any decade this century except the 1940s, when minorities joined in the wartime surge out of the Depression.

This trend is good news on many fronts. Homeownership stabilizes neighborhoods and even families. Housing scholar William C. Apgar, now an assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, says that research shows homeowners are more likely than renters to participate in their community. The children of homeowners even tend to perform better in school. Most significantly, increased homeownership allows minority families, who have accumulated far less wealth than whites, to amass assets and transmit them to future generations.

What explains the surge? The answer starts with the economy. Historically low rates of minority unemployment have created a larger pool of qualified buyers. And the lowest interest rates in years have made homes more affordable for white and minority buyers alike.

But the economy isn’t the whole story. As HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo says: “There have been points in the past when the economy has done well but minority homeownership has not increased proportionally.” Case in point: Despite generally good times in the 1980s, homeownership among blacks and Latinos actually declined slightly, while rising slightly among whites.

All of this suggests that Clinton’s efforts to increase minority access to loans and capital also have spurred this decade’s gains. Under Clinton, bank regulators have breathed the first real life into enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, a 20-year-old statute meant to combat “redlining” by requiring banks to serve their low-income communities. The administration also has sent a clear message by stiffening enforcement of the fair housing and fair lending laws. The bottom line: Between 1993 and 1997, home loans grew by 72% to blacks and by 45% to Latinos, far faster than the total growth rate.

Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more.

In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains. It has aimed extensive advertising campaigns at minorities that explain how to buy a home and opened three dozen local offices to encourage lenders to serve these markets. Most importantly, Fannie Mae has agreed to buy more loans with very low down payments–or with mortgage payments that represent an unusually high percentage of a buyer’s income. That’s made banks willing to lend to lower-income families they once might have rejected.

But for all that progress, the black and Latino homeownership rates, at about 46%, still significantly trail the white rate, which is nearing 73%. Much of that difference represents structural social disparities–in education levels, wealth and the percentage of single-parent families–that will only change slowly. Still, Apgar says, HUD’s analysis suggests there are enough qualified buyers to move the minority homeownership rate into the mid-50% range. [Ed: brilliant.]

...But with discrimination in the banking system not yet eradicated, maintaining the momentum of the 1990s will also require a continuing nudge from Washington. One key is to defend the Community Reinvestment Act, which the Senate shortsightedly voted to retrench recently. Clinton has threatened a veto if the House concurs.

The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer... Barry Zigas, who heads Fannie Mae’s low-income efforts, is undoubtedly correct when he argues, “There is obviously a limit beyond which [we] can’t push [the banks] to produce.” But with the housing market still sizzling, minority unemployment down and Fannie Mae enjoying record profits (over $3.4 billion last year), it doesn’t appear that the limit has been reached.

The breathless mainstream media and the race-obsessed Democrat Party hyped the kind of no-documentation, loosely underwritten loan that formed the core of the housing crisis.

In July of 2009, according to The New York Times, Andrew Cuomo's Department of Housing and Urban Development mandated that half of all loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were to have originated with low- and moderate-income borrowers. In 1998, 44% of all Fannie loans had already met those criteria.

Consider the chart in that context.

On the way: more central planning, more social engineering, more Democrat-inspired disasters, but this time with your health care, not just your home.


The ancestor of #OWS: "The Other 95%", a Democrat propaganda arm

The birth of Occupy Wall Street's "99 percenters" may have occurred early in 2010. It was then that a group called "The Other 95%" came into being. The group was funded by Democrats and appeared explicitly designed to counter the Tea Party movement.

And the group also fit a template for propaganda marketed by a man named Cass Sunstein. Sunstein, Barack Obama's 'Regulatory Czar', has a long history of left-wing advocacy. Unfortunately for Americans, it's for the kind of Statism that would make Mussolini cringe. Sunstein, among other egregious activities, supports the establishment of government propaganda ministries.

Writing on January 15, 2010, Glenn Greenwald at Salon noted Barack Obama’s new head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, had championed creating fake websites and using outside 501(c)(3) interest groups to act as alleged independent champions of government policy and to “cognitively infiltrate” opposition websites, etc...

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging

These tactics may explain websites like The Other 95, which itself was a thinly veiled propaganda site hawking White House talking points. Some would call it astroturf.

Why this sort of site was needed, when Democrats already have The New York Times, is a question for the DNC. Or its contributors, who appear happy to throw money into a sinkhole.

In 2010, RedState's Erick Erickson reported the website designer was affiliated with MoveOn.org and other Soros-controlled groups. You know, grassroots.

Let’s also remember that Center for American Progress, led by Obama’s transition team director John Podesta, has regular 8 a.m. phone calls to coordinate activity on the left.

It’s a play right out of Lenin’s handbook, forget Alinsky, to call the authentic “inauthentic” and then create something inauthentic demanding it be called “authentic.”

We would do well to consider the probable genesis of "The Other 99%": it's as genuine a pro-America movement as astroturf is real grass.


Climategate 2.0 emails: Warming "Scientist" Michael Mann Eviscerated by the Late John L. Daly

The author of the infamous -- and now debunked -- "hockey stick" graph that purported to prove global warming is a climate "scientist" by the name of Michael Mann.

Mann's work depended in great part upon tree ring data. The relative width of tree rings, in Mann's estimation, could be used as proxy data for reconstructing past temperatures.

Newly revealed by the Climategate 2.0 email drop: the late John L. Daly eviscerated Mann's use of tree rings, in language as terse and powerful as one could imagine (emphases mine).

A tree only grows on land. That excludes 70% of the earth covered by water. A tree does no grow on ice. A tree does not grow in a desert. A tree does not grow on grassland-savannahs. A tree does not grow in alpine areas. A tree does not grow in the tundra. We are left with perhaps 15% of the planet upon which forests grow/grew. That does not make any studies from tree rings global, or even hemispheric.

The width and density of tree rings is dependent upon the following variables which cannot be reliably separated from each other. sunlight – if the sun varies, the ring will vary. But not at night of course.

• cloudiness – more clouds, less sun, less ring.

• pests/disease – a caterpillar or locust plague will reduce photosynthesis

• access to sunlight – competition within a forest can disadvantage or advantage some trees.

• moisture/rainfall – a key variable. Trees do not prosper in a droughteven if there’s a heat wave.

• snow packing in spring around the base of the trees retards growth temperature – finally!

The tree ring is a composite of all these variables, not merely of temperature. Therefore on the 15% of the planet covered by trees, their rings do not and cannot accurately record temperature in isolation from the other environmental variables.

...Mann’s theory simply does not stack up. But that was not the key issue. Anyone can put up a dud theory from time to time. What is at issue is the uncritical zeal with which the industry siezed on the theory before its scientific value had been properly tested. In one go, they tossed aside dozens of studies which confirmed the existence of the MWE and LIA as global events, and all on the basis of tree rings – a proxy which has all the deficiencies I have stated above.

The worst thing I can say about any paper such as his is that it is `bad science’. Legal restraint prevents me going further. But in his case, only those restraints prevent me going *much* further.

Cheers
John Daly

The entire global warming movement was the product of an utterly corrupt United Nations; it can be considered a follow-on project to "Oil-for-Food" and other ripoffs designed to redirect billions of dollars into the pockets of global bureaucrats.

And some "scientists" -- eager to cash in on immense grants offered by governments to strengthen their case for more regulations and more control -- were happy to oblige. The fact is, man-made global warming is the new alchemy -- and the Climategate emails reinforce the raw greed and criminality behind this pseudo-scientific religion.


Larwyn's Linx: Experts: CIA Penetration by Terrorist Group is 'Catastrophic'

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

Nation

Experts: CIA Penetration by Terrorist Group is 'Catastrophic': HE
McCaskill calls for probe into vaccine boondoggle: Hot Air
Gingrich Shows 'Compassion' for Illegals He Helped Stay in U.S.: NUSA

Jihadist convicted in 2009 NYC plot nowhere to be found: Creeping
Obama Plays Golf for the 30th Time This Year: Dossier
The Return of Van Jones: Politico

Economy

Trust, Growth and Obama: BigGovt
Crony Capitalism: Palin Was Right Again: C4P
NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw at 6PM on Black Friday: ZH

And Now They Want To Occupy Christmas: RWN
Terrorist Bill Ayers to Teach Radicalism at #Occupy Harrisburg: GWP
Occufail: SF Shoppers Ignore Protesters: JWF

Climate & Energy

John L. Daly’s message to Mike Mann and The Team: Watts
Measuring Precipitation on Willis' Boots: ClimateAudit
The Non-Green Energy and Jobs Boom: Carpe Diem

Climategate scientists colluded with govt. officials to hide data that disproved warming: Daily Mail
Obama Administration Approving Only 35 Percent of Gulf Drilling Plans: Foundry
U.S. And Europe threaten their own energy independence: RWN

Media

Obama’s Thanksgiving Tune: Dossier
Obama: I ran for President to serve self-absorbed poo-flinging rapists: Owens
The Unelectable Mitt Romney, Part II: RS

Some things in this world, you just can't explain: AT
The Call For A Summit: TL in Exile
Mitt v. Newt: '76, '80 and '92: Hewitt

World

Cairo rally: One day we'll kill all Jews: ynet
Romney Versus Gingrich on Jihad and Sharia: A Clear Contrast: Big Peace
EMPs: The Next Great Threat to America: Foundry

Eurogeddon Approaches: AT
Kuwait's constitutional showdown: ForPol
In Arab Spring, a Young Man’s Fancy Turns to…: Steyn

Sci-Tech

The Tricorder Lives: Belmont Club
Meet Curiosity, NASA's New $2.5 Billion Mars Rover: Wire
AT&T readies a Hail Mary pass on T-Mobile--report: CNet

Cornucopia

Incredible 10-Year-Old Mexican Singer Rocks the World With Music Video: RSM
Bad-Ass: Alpine Roller Coaster With No Brakes: Dollard
Police Blast Pepper Spray At Unruly Black Friday Shoppers Inside NC Wal-Mart: Mediate

Image: ynet - Cairo rally: One day we'll kill all Jews: ynet
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Build the Border Fence Donation Site

QOTD: "We can now see where such [Keynesian, public sector] profligacy has led Europe — and, indeed, where it has led the United Kingdom. Our treasury is empty, our credit exhausted, and we are reduced to relying on inflation to erode a deficit which we daren't tackle with spending cuts. Yet, broke as we are, it is seriously being proposed by our immaculately educated officials and ministers that we borrow billions more in order to prop up a currency union which is asphyxiating its participants. My masters, are you mad?" --Daniel Hannan

Friday, November 25, 2011

Full Transcript: Neurosurgeon Briefed by HHS Reveals Obamacare's Death Panels (Hint: Patients Are Called 'Units')

A caller -- "Jeff" from Chicago, Illinois -- spoke with Mark Levin on November 22nd regarding advanced neurological care under the auspices of the new health care law.

Junior Cub Reporter Biff Spackle transcribed the entire conversation (only excerpts had been published before).

Every American concerned with health care needs to read this conversation.

I heard you talk earlier about the government not knowing how to make pencils and you talked about brain surgeons. And I happen to be a brain surgeon, so I found your topic quite interesting.

I just returned from Washington, DC, where we were reading over what the Obama health care plan would be for advanced neurosurgery for patients over 70, which we all found quite disturbing. As our population gets older, the majority of our patients are getting over 70. They'll require stroke therapy, aneurysm therapy, and basically what the document stated is that if you're over 70 and you come into an emergency room... if you're on government-supported health care, you'll get "comfort care".

ML: Wait a minute... what’s the source for this?

Jeff: This is Obama’s new health care plan for advanced neurosurgical care.

ML: And who issued this? HHS?

Jeff: Yes. And basically they don’t call them patients, they call them units. And instead of, they call it “ethics panels” or “ethics committees”, would get together and meet and decide where the money would go for hospitals, and basically for patients over 70 years of age, that advanced neurosurgical care was not generally indicated.

ML: So it’s generally going to be denied?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely... If someone comes in at 70 years of age with a bleed in their brain, I can promise you I’m not going to get a bunch of administrators together on an ethics panel at 2 in the morning to decide that I’m OK to do surgery.

ML: Is this published somewhere where the general public could get a hold of it?

Jeff: Not yet.

ML: So this was just discussed with your community of neurosurgeons?

Jeff: Yes, the AANS [Ed: the American Association of Neurological Surgeons] and the Congress of Neurosurgeons, because everybody knows that cuts are coming in Medicare and medical reimbursement. And we're the most expensive out of all the fields in medicine. And we're the smallest field. But at two, three, four in the morning, we're the ones in the operating room. And we have to wait for an ethics panel to convene, which are not made of physicians -- they're made of administrators. To decide whether a patient should receive our care.

ML: So Sarah Palin was right. We're going to have these "death panels", aren't we?

Jeff: Oh, absolutely. I'm German by heritage, and I've read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and -- basically, they don't call them patients, they call them units. And if you're a unit above a certain age, you get comfort care instead of advanced neurosurgical intervention.

ML: You went to a seminar in Washington, DC?

Jeff: Yes. Where a few of my former partners, two of them, have gone to work... one for the Veteran's Administration and one for the Congress of Neurosurgeons out of DC.

ML: And this information is based, you're certain, on representations and information provided by HHS and other government officials?

Jeff: Yep.

ML: And when will the rest of us become aware of it? After the [presidential] election?

Jeff: Probably. I mean, there's so many things that the government keeps under control that are used -- things called H.U.D. devices -- humanitarian use devices that we're allowed to use now because they haven't undergone full FDA approval. And they're used in surgery because people know it's the right thing to do. But the government can step in at any time, like they did two months ago with a device, and say, 'this device hasn't met what we want' and there's no exact criteria, and can therefore take it away from us.

ML: And the people telling you what to do -- they don't know how to make a pencil, do they?

Jeff: Exactly. That's what I'm saying. You know, we always joke around -- 'it's not brain surgery' -- but I did nine years after medical school, I've been in training ten years, and now I have people who don't know a thing about what I'm doing telling me when I can and can't operate.

The unintentionally satirical "Politifact" website hardest hit.


Found Video: Milton Friedman Obliterates the Communist Shrew Frances Fox Piven

I had no idea that Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell once publicly battled Leftists like Frances Fox Piven in a televised debate. Which explains my surprise in happening upon this video.

Piven, for those unaware of her despicable background, was one of the authors of the "Cloward-Piven Strategy". Put simply, Piven helped create an architecture for collapsing capitalistic economic systems through the exploitation of their social welfare systems.

It is this strategy that many astute observers believe that Barack Obama is executing as he follows through on his promise to "fundamentally transform" America.


Fortune 500 companies come and go -- it's the federal government that never shrinks

Professor Mark J. Perry points us to some fascinating historical data concerning corporations, the amorphous collections of individuals so often demonized by the Left.

What do the companies in these three groups have in common?

Group A. American Motors, Studebaker, Detroit Steel, Maytag and National Sugar Refining.

Group B. Boeing, Campbell Soup, Deere, IBM and Whirlpool.

Group C. Cisco, eBay, McDonald's, Microsoft and Yahoo.

All the companies in Group A were in the Fortune 500 in 1955, but not in 2011.

All the companies in Group B were in the Fortune 500 in both 1955 and 2011.

All the companies in Group C were in the Fortune 500 in 2011, but not 1955.

Comparing the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 and 2011, there are only 67 companies that appear in both lists. In other words, only 13.4% of the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 were still on the list 56 years later in 2011, and almost 87% of the companies have either gone bankrupt, merged, gone private, or still exist but have fallen from the top Fortune 500 companies (ranked by gross revenue).

Perry notes that the cause is creative destruction -- the continual economic upheaval necessary for the advancement of humankind. Yes, these changes include ATMs and automated car washes, which certain politicians believe cause unemployment.

What Perry doesn't say is that over the same period of time, the federal government has swallowed more and more of the private sector. Through its unelected fourth branch of government -- the federal bureaucracies -- its agencies, offices, bureaus, czars, departments, committees, and countless other groups have spewed forth millions of pages of regulations, all with the force of law.

For those who demonize corporations, I ask you to consider:

• It is the U.S. government, not a corporation, that is the most powerful monopoly on the planet, for it is the largest insurer, guarantor, pension provider, banker, health care system, debtor, etc.

• It is the U.S. government, not a corporation, that grows always larger -- never shrinking -- as temporary politicians attempt to construct a Utopian society that never was and never can be.

• It is the U.S. government, not a corporation, that constantly seeks to evade the laws, the bonds and constraints placed upon it by the Constitution.

• It is the U.S. government, not a corporation, that has the ability to imprison, to punish, to fine under force of law, almost always for the sole purpose of growing larger and confiscating more and more private property.

Those on the Left would do well to consider the government as the world's largest, most powerful corporation. And now that it has breached the firewalls of the Constitution, it is a corporation on the road to total control over its citizens. In fact, some would call it tyranny.


Image: AdClassix.

Larwyn's Linx: #Occupy Black Friday?

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

Nation

#Occupy Black Friday?: RSM
Stealing as Policy, from the Iron Curtain to Robert Byrd: Pacepa
House Judiciary asks for Elena Kagan documents: Politico

Bravest teacher in Wisconsin: LI
The Real Prison Industry: RWN
Anarchy in the U.S.A.: WS

Russia's Middle Finger for Hillary's Reset Button: PJM
Oops: POTUS unwittingly bans FBI/CAIR cooperation: JihadWatch
Male Nurse Files Lawsuit in Dearbornistan: Creeping

Economy

MF Global Indirectly Ruins The Futures Industry: P&F
FDA Considers Mandatory Salt Reductions: Cato
Insight: Fidelity's expensive debt raises eyebrows: Yahoo!

Milton Friedman Responds To OWS Protestors : Carpe Diem
#OWS Celebrates Thanksgiving By Spitting On Cops: GWP
Leftist: 'Tea partiers out-organized Occupy Wall Street': Volpe

Gunrunner & Energygate

U.S. Seals Court Records Of Border Patrol’s Murder: JW
Gov. Rick Perry Has Come Out Swinging Against Obama and Fast and Furious: BigGovt
Obama's the Target of Mexico Gunrunning Probe: Hedgecock

Climate & Energy

Google Abandons “Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal” Project: VS
Going green gets the green: Surber
Eat Your Leftovers, Or The World Will Die: RWN

Media

Decades Instead Of Centuries; Republicans Instead Of Conservatives: Camp o' the Saints
Katie Couric Excited Over The Prospect Of Ruining ABC News, Too: BigJourn
The Tea Party versus the Occupiers: Ricochet

“The Anti-Wall Street Movement That Has Gripped a Nation Consumed by Economic Despair”: JWF
"The Most Insane Job-Interview Tips Ever"... from Duke's Women Law Students Association.: Atlhouse
Rewarding Rotten Ricky Gervais: RWN

World

‘They Stole Our Land’ vs. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem: FPM
Turkey, Israel clash over gas drilling: DefenceGreece
Christians in imminent danger across the world are refused refugee status (not so much for Muslims): JihadWatch

Twilight of the Eurocrats : Hannan
European banks' asset sales face disastrous failure: IFRe
UK Banks Brace for Eurozone Break-Up; Eurogeddon and the Death of a Currency: Mish

Sci-Tech

Carrier IQ apologizes, drops threat to security researcher: CNet
AT&T braces for T-Mobile deal collapse: Reuters
Stolen certs an issue for Malaysia, a security reminder for all of us: Symantec

Cornucopia

Los Angeles OWSers Make Video Addressing President Obama: Spew
A flight on a B-17: Boing Boing
The Presidency I Always, Always Wanted: Dossier

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

QOTD: "Indeed, it should be obvious at this point that the main inhibitors to the building of any large project whatsoever are regulatory overreach and complexity and the exploitation of the legal and regulatory environment by precisely the kind of activists that Obama the community organizer has spent much of his life encouraging. Obama’s complaints about us not building things resemble the plea of the defendant who killed both of his parents and then asked for mercy because he was an orphan." --Chicago Boyz

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Embarrassing: Fiat 500 Driven by Jennifer Lopez Body Double Breaks Down During Commercial Shoot

Fiat's public relations department hardest hit:

With a Jennifer Lopez lookalike seated behind the wheel, a Fiat 500 actually broke down on a Bronx street during the recent filming of a TV commercial purportedly showing the actress driving around the borough in which she grew up.

As seen above, the Fiat came to a halt during filming in September on East 136th Street in Mott Haven. While two men tinkered with the engine, the J. Lo stand-in sat patiently at the wheel, her face obscured by honey-colored hair styled just like Lopez’s.

I happened to be given a rental Fiat 500 Sport accidentally a couple of weeks ago and got to drive it in a variety of urban and rural settings for a few days:

It was so small, it literally occupied only half of a normal parking spot. Slightly smaller than a Mini Cooper and slightly bigger than a Smart ForTwo, the car has a number of disappointing qualities:

• The Sport starts at $17,500
• The car is woefully underpowered, pumping out 101 horses while weighing a relatively staunch 2,400 pounds (for comparison purposes, the 2012 Mazda Miata generates 167 HP and weighs only 100 pounds more). The answer to the 0 to 60 question is... uhm, yes, it can go 0 to 60. I think.
• The build quality is spotty; the sunroof liner was falling apart in the unit I rented (with only 3,000 miles on it)
• The backseat is so small it's just a rumor; the front is plenty cramped for anyone over 6-feet tall

The price is what really gets me: you could buy a base Nissan Altima for $20,270 or a base Nissan Sentra for $1,500 less than the Fiat ($16,060). In fact, the sport version of the Sentra -- the SR -- is only $17,990.

Both the Sentra and Altima are infinitely larger, more comfortable, and drivable than the Fiat 500. And you would certainly feel safer in either Nissan.

The Fiat may be fine if you live in inner-city Rome, where the streets were designed for horse-drawn carts. But in this country, it feels like you're driving a scale-model of a real car.