Month: October 2008

Somehow, now, reporters aren’t able to get stories in. It was stunning to me how many good, rational people – people I respect – supported going into war in Iraq. And it was stunning to me how many people thought you could go to war against an idea. – Seymour Hersh

George Bush and his administration has made so many errors.

Since 2004,
F.B.I. officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish the ranks of agents handling nonterrorism investigations.

But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes.

Wall Street Journal photo of 100,000 attending Obama rally under the St. Louis Gateway Arch in red state Missouri.

It’s emotionally lifting to read the comments under this photo. Very few of the common trolls dare, but many good hearted Americans reveal they are filled with hope and very, very clear about the country they want ahead.

Why is corporate responsibility a failure in this country? Our nation should be a leader in reducing impact.

More than 1,000 power plants and factories around the country use water from rivers, lakes, oceans and creeks as a coolant. At Indian Point plant in New York, the two reactors can pull in 1.7 million gallons of water per minute. Nineteen plants on or near the California coast use 16.3 billion gallons of sea water every day.

It takes thousands of eggs to result in one adult fish. The EPA counts only commercial or recreational species, but shows we lose 1.5 billion year-old fish because of eggs and larvae killed each year at the nation’s large power plants.

Technology has long existed that might reduce the fish kill by 90 percent or more.

For the first time, corporations and their lobbyists are being required to disclose donations they make to the favorite causes of House and Senate members, and a review of thousands of pages of records shows the extent — and lavishness — of this once hidden practice.

During the first six months of 2008, lobbyists, corporations and interest groups gave approximately $13 million to charities and nonprofit organizations in honor of more than 200 members of the House and Senate.

…donors said they were supporting worthy causes, such as scholarships and research. But several also acknowledged that charitable giving is a way to build good will with lawmakers, whose decisions can have a huge effect on their business.

In addition, with new restrictions on the access lobbyists have to lawmakers, the practice provides the lobbyists a way to publicly support — and, sometimes, mingle with — the members of Congress and their staffs.

“It’s a very personal way to curry favor with powerful lawmakers.”

See? Obama can dance!
[full size]

Historic Comparison of China versus United States GDP

Something else during the Bush years…

There’s a few points left to reduce George Bush’s popularity poll below today’s 23%.

Destroying FEMA and creating TSA are worth another downward ten points. Here’s a special article at The Atlantic. It’s a kick. Someday, maybe, let’s do it.

Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items—as our correspondent did with ease.

Comment:
‘The stupid security theater is the major reason I don’t fly. The risk of explosion of my head is just too great.”

Cory Doctorow points out what the Department of Homeland Security is doing to web pages. “Imagine the federal government making you agree to waive your legal rights in order to read about one of its programs!”

There’s no higher assertion of your freedom than to follow your conscience. – Camilo Mejia, U.S. Soldier

McCain’s redneck so-called plumber said that Obama can dance. “He was almost as good as Sammy Davis Jr.”

McCain tricks us with Wall Street Health Care, Wall Street Schools, and again, Wall Street Homes.

‘Yes, let’s help homeowners refinance at today’s appraisal’, he says. McCain is lying big time.

On a $100,000 loan at the current 6.3%/fixed 30, the cumulative/total interest is $122,800. That’s bad enough. But the real story is the rate at which you, the borrower, pay that interest to the lender.
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For about 17 years with that loan, each month you pay more to the bank in interest than to the principal. The highest I:P ratio is in the first payment, and that shifts microscopically each month. On the front end, about 5/6 of each month’s payment is interest. At the end of 10 years, you’ve paid the note down only by about $18,000, and you’ve paid the lender $63,874. You’re halfway through paying the whole interest bundle before you’re even 1/5 through paying your principal down. Around year 20, by the time you are paying about 50-50 each month, the bank has already made as much in interest as they lent you.
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Think about this in light of the current mortgage crisis. The bigger the loan, the more heavily the interest is balanced on the front end. THIS is why they pushed the jumbo ceiling up for Freddie/Fannie. THIS is why they want housing prices to stay up. They want more people in packages NOW to get the interest river flowing again. And this is why they want people in houses NOW before things go down more. They encourage blame–all those greedy people, stupid about mortgages–but the fact is, bankers COUNT on their customers to be arithmetically ignorant.
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Now consider the median CA housing price, $370K. Multiply that 6.3%/30/100K loan by 3.7:
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3.7 x $618.97 = $2,290/mo, you’re thinking, and “How much would I have to make” and so on. But what your lender is thinking is 3.7 x $122,800 = $454,000 in interest over the term of the 30. ***The lender gets $370,000 of that by the time the mortgage holder’s payments just start to break even with interest,*** in year 19! The lender gets their half of their total interest long before you reach half of your principal paydown.
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This is why they encourage people to refinance–to get the interest to reset to the fat part of the curve, the beginning. This is why they encourage people to “trade up” with housing, or to flip. This is the hidden Mobility Tax on people who move every few years, as Americans did thru the ’90s and till recently.
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These numbers don’t include other costs, like tax and insurance. Nor does it cover the fact that a lot of people finance their closing costs. But if you plan carefully, and save, and have discipline, you can effectively reduce your mortgage rate to about 2 percent by aggressive prepayment in the first 1/3 of the loan.
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However you cannot do that while the median price of housing ($370K) is more than 5.4 times the CA FTB’s estimated state median income ($68K).
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Another banking industry strategy is longer loans. If you take the 100K loan to 40 years, as some are suggesting, a 6.3% loan would make the lender a whopping $174,208 in total interest. At the end of the loan, the borrower pays close to twice the principal amount.
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If you borrowed the CA median for 40/6.3%? The total interest would be $644,571. Front end loaded. The first 30 months of this loan would pay under $200 to principal, and nearly $2,000 to the bank. It’d take you nearly 30 years before you were paying more principal than interest each month, and by then, the bank would have gotten $567,528 from you. The more money you borrow, the more heavily loaded on the front end the interest is, and the quicker the banks make their lump. This is why they don’t want affordable housing, or big down payments, or reasonable terms.
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See why they want and still want refinancing?

To wreck our nation, we give banks trillions, and trillions more to keep them.

Electioneering by McCain and Pickens, sometimes Obama too, say we spend $700 billion importing oil from unfriendly nations, but Canada and Mexico alone account for 30 percent of imports.

Wrong.

According to government agencies that track energy imports, the U.S. spent $246 billion in 2007 for all imported crude oil, a majority of it coming from friendly nations, including neighboring Canada and Mexico.

An additional $82 billion was spent on imported refined petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel and fuel oil. A majority of the refined products came from refineries in such friendly countries as the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago and the Virgin Islands.

Excellent economics blog, Dr. Housing Bubble.

The psychology is already changing.

During the debates, I was watching CNN with their little audience meter on the bottom and the quickest way from the middle to the top was bashing Wall Street. Some issues took time to work up or down but whenever someone said “corporate greed” or “Wall Street speculators” the bar shot up.

This is class warfare folks.

We are seeing a generational system collapsing and many cannot confront the idea that their ideology was so utterly wrong.

10 Reasons how this Bailout Fails the Middle Class American Worker.

One.
The legislative report, filed by one of Alaska’s most respected and nonpartisan prosecutors, states with absolute clarity that as governor, Palin violated the Executive Branch Ethics Act, which prohibits any official from seeking to “benefit a personal interest.” She, her husband and her aides tried on nearly 20 separate occasions to induce Mr. Monegan to fire her former brother-in-law.

The wording of the report’s conclusion could not be plainer — namely that “impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.”

Two.
“I’m very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that,” Sarah Palin told reporters. “If you read the report, you’ll see that there was nothing unlawful or unethical about replacing a cabinet member.”

Whitewash, rinse and repeat.

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Detroit Free Press, where it matters:

Joe the Plumber?
October 15, 2008

You could see how eagerly John McCain brought up “Joe the Plumber” Wednesday night, as an example of how Barack Obama’s tax plan would hurt working people.

McCain said “Joe” was a voter Obama encountered in Ohio this week. He was fretting Obama’s election because after some 20 years working for a business, he was now in a position to buy that business, and didn’t want to pay higher taxes.

But what an absurd example.

As Obama pointed out, his tax plan will equate to a reduction for some 95% of working families, and for any business that makes less than a quarter million dollars a year.

If “Joe” has done well enough to buy a business that’s doing that well, is he really the type of voter we should be worried about? People are losing their jobs. Losing their houses. Seeing their retirement and college savings evaporate.

McCain made his anecdote worse by trudging out the coded “Obama is a socialist” canard, saying he wanted to “redistribute” Joe’s wealth.

It’s a shame that McCain, once a Republican with real ideas of his own, has sunk to poorly told sob stories.

Average health care policy in USA is $12,000 per year says Obama. McCain says it’s $5,800. McCain’s rebate is $5,000 plus tax on the remainder. There are few regulations and little agreement. What will happen?

Not on the radar but very important, because 100s of billions of our dollars are at stake.

McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to create “423 casinos across the country.” [Story at Salon]

Read this twice:

Gambling is a multi-billion dollar drag on the economy, not the moneymaking boost touted by supporters.

Cash merely changes hands from bettors to casino owners, creating no products or anything else of value.

If the estimated $100 billion now spent annually on gambling went into the marketplace instead, economic models show it would generate more than $300 billion for the nation’s slumping economy.

…also would save hundreds of billions in costs to society stemming from gambling addictions, bankruptcies and crime that studies show increases when casinos open.

[link Science Daily]

More than $300 billion wasted on bandits we can see.

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. – Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Center for Global Development reveals America is worth it.

“This is the best estimate of real income per capita in the United States since 1820. Over these years we had violent financial crashes of various types, bank panics, piles of recessions and a huge depression, many foreign wars and one enormous domestic war, had a central bank and didn’t, were on the gold standard and weren’t, had governments topple in scandal and multiple leaders assassinated, and what did it all amount to in the medium to long run? In per-capita income terms: Nothing. The overall trend does not bend or shift. Every bad year was followed by a good year that returned us to trend. The US average growth rate of real per capita incomes over the last 190 years has been 1.8% a year, and the same rate over the last 10 years has been…. 1.8% a year.”

Crisis? Not If We Take a Long View

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. – Philip K. Dick

Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has lashed out at the world’s big banks.

He hit out at failures in lending standards, risk management and corporate governance in major institutions around the world.

“In fact, obscene failures in corporate governance rewarded greed without any regard to the integrity of the financial system.”

“These failures weren’t limited just to businesses on the margins of the financial system. They happened in our major global financial institutions – the Wall Street investment banks that were the pillars of the global financial system.”

Mr Rudd says the system has been reduced to panic and pushed to the brink resulting in a comprehensive failure of “extreme capitalism”.

“As a Government and as a nation we must respond to the twin evils which are at the root of this malaise – greed and fear.”

Pound for Pound, All Life Uses Same Amount of Energy

The matter of justice and prosperity took place in our country during the entire Twentieth Century up until the 1980s. – NPR

William F. Buckley Jr.’s son who owns 1/7th of the conservative rag New Republic endorses Barack Obama. The Washington Post noted he is “the latest right-leaning pundit to be slammed by his side for criticizing or breaking with John McCain.”

In his embrace of Obama, Buckley quoted his father as saying, “You know, I’ve spent my entire lifetime separating the Right from the kooks.”

When we first govern to deceive, deception loses importance. Until we vote.

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided ‘an influence effort‘ on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime. …agents of Saddam Hussein’s government.

Another Basement Cheney

McCain’s own staffers had early concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental.

Timmons declined to comment for this story.

An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press.

Never speak? Move into White House?