konane's Blog

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/07/026788.php

"As Obama Kowtows, Unions Eye the Private Sector
The unions want more legislation from the Democrats.

July 15, 2010 12:00 A.M.
By Michael Barone
Source National Review Online

"The Obama administration is dominated by labor unions. Yes, Barack Obama and other Democratic leaders do owe the unions something: Unions gave $400 million to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle, and thus expect to get something in return.

What they haven’t gotten out of the Democratic Congress is the thing they wanted most — the card-check bill that would effectively abolish the secret ballot in unionization elections. Unions now represent only 7 percent of private-sector workers, the lowest percentage since the early 1930s. Union leaders believe that with card check they could vastly increase their dues income.

But the unions have gotten lots of other things, as Peyton R. Miller reports in The Weekly Standard. Obama has appointed as head of the National Labor Relations Board a former union lawyer who once wrote that the NLRB could institute something very much like card check without congressional action.

An Obama appointee has changed the National Mediation Board’s rules in a way designed to produce more strikes by airline and railroad union members.

Many of Obama’s executive orders have encouraged unionization by employees of government contractors and the seniority-based promotion practices preferred by union leaders. Obama has granted a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires sought by the United Steelworkers and, in contravention of the North American Free Trade Agreement, has blocked Mexican trucks from U.S. roads as demanded by the Teamsters Union.

The Democrats’ stimulus package includes Davis-Bacon requirements that union wages be paid on construction jobs, which means that the government will pay more or get less production than it would if contractors were free to pay market wages. The complex Davis-Bacon process also means huge delays in getting supposedly shovel-ready projects underway.

And Obama Democrats are trying to force FedEx to become unionized by subjecting it to the same law as unionized UPS.

Meanwhile, one-third of the stimulus money went to state and local governments, with the effect of propping up the pay and saving the jobs of public-employee union members. As a result, while 8 million private-sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public-sector jobs has barely budged.

The cynical will see these measures as a political payoff and might venture that the unions have gotten something like a hundredfold payout for the $400 million they gave to Obama and his co-partisans.

Those who insist on looking for purer motives, in contrast, might see something potentially more sinister. They might see a former community organizer acting out of a sincere conviction that America would be better off with a much, much larger unionized private sector.

That prompts the question of what the private sector would look like if nearly half its workers were union members, as is now the case with the public sector.

As one who grew up in Detroit in the heyday of the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers, I have some idea what the answer would be.

Adversarial unionism, as prescribed by the New Deal–era Wagner Act, would mean an end to management flexibility and the cooperative management techniques employed by, among others, the foreign-based auto manufacturers. UAW contracts had some 5,000 pages of work rules; if any were violated, the shop steward could shut down the assembly line.

We know how that story turned out. It took the U.S. manufacturers decades to achieve quality levels comparable to those their foreign-based competitors achieved with American workers.

We also have some idea how seniority promotion systems work out from what happens in unionized school systems. Incompetent senior teachers get their choice of assignments and, thanks to union contract provisions, are almost never fired, while talented junior teachers are laid off.

It is no accident that the rate of unionization in the private sector has plummeted since its peak in the 1950s. Scholars have found that unionized firms are at a competitive disadvantage against non-union firms. Over the years, their workforce tends to shrink, while non-union firms grow.

Since the 1950s, private-sector employees have gained protections that only unions once provided through pensions laws like ERISA, anti-discrimination legislation, and developing human-relations law. We're a long way from the 1930s.

But the Obama Democrats want to take us back to a system that produced huge inefficiencies and rigidity in the private sector. Does that sound progressive?"

http://article.nationalreview.com/438137/as-obama-kowtows-unions-eye-the-private-sector/michael-barone

For example, imagine two widget factories: one big one that employs 5,000 people and a small one that employs just five. If a new regulation requires all widget-makers to hire one person in charge of monitoring quality control, the big company's labor costs increase by 0.02%, while the smaller firm's labor costs increase by 20%. Smaller companies take a much bigger hit to their proportionally smaller earnings when additional regulation is imposed.

4. Financial Reform Won't Protect Taxpayers From a Future Bailout. If financial reform accomplishes anything, it should minimize the cost to taxpayers of future financial crises. But looking at the bailouts that Americans will be on the hook for, it fails that very basic test. And this isn't really a controversial point, since it does nothing to reform the government-sponsored entities (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. [Via Bloomberg:] "The White House's Office of Management and Budget estimated in February that aid could total as little as $160 billion if the economy strengthens."

5. A Derivatives Loophole Could Cost Main Street $1 Trillion. From the International Swaps Dealers Association statement: "A change in the wording of the financial reform bill now being finalized in the US Congress could cost US companies as much as $1 trillion in capital and liquidity requirements, according to research by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc. (ISDA). About $400 billion would be needed as collateral that corporations could be required to post with their dealer counterparties to cover the current exposure of their OTC derivatives transactions. ISDA estimates that $370 billion represents the additional credit capacity that companies could need to maintain to cover potential future exposure of those transactions. If markets return to levels prevailing at the end of 2008, additional collateral needs would bring the total to $1 trillion."

6. Can You Trust a Bill That Requires 79 Years of Cumulative Studies? Reform isn't easy. Beyond making tough decisions, it also apparently involves an awful lot of research. The 3,321 pages of financial regulation bills being melded together by Congress' conference committee contain an incredible number of studies to be completed: 74. Approximately four of the studies are nearly identical. The other 70 all investigate different aspects of finance, economics, lending, etc. If you add up all the time allotted for these studies to take place, and did them back to back instead of simultaneously, then you'd be doing studies for almost 79 years.

7. We Failed to Kill 'Too Big to Fail.' In Fact, We Might Have Made It Stronger.  What happens when lots of banks start to fail together? The liquidation process will be so onerous and ugly that in future severe crises where we've got widespread problems in the industry with multiple systemically crucial banks -- the once-every-three-generations kind of catastrophes -- the government might not have the stomach for widespread liquidation. "Think about it this time around," says Brookings' Doug Elliott. "If they had to take down Citi and Bank of America and the law required them to liquidate these guys, it would have been a disaster. And we would have created TARP."

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/7-reasons-to-be-skeptical-about-financial-reform/59846/

Interesting facts I've seen other articles allude to.

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"The economic frustration of the American people is reaching a fever pitch.  Millions of Americans can't seem to get a good job no matter what they do.  Millions of others are working as hard as they can but find that they keep coming up short at the end of the month.  Record numbers of Americans are still going bankrupt.  Record numbers of Americans are still losing their homes.  Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is a dead horse at this point.  It just doesn't have any more to give.  At this point the U.S. economy is like an aging rock star that requires larger and larger doses of drugs each night just to be able to perform.  The U.S. economy is addicted to "drugs" such as debt and government stimulus, and years ago those things really supercharged the U.S. economic system, but at this point they aren't provoking much of a response at all.  In fact, the things that once "stimulated" the economy are now slowly killing it.  But the vast majority of the American people do not understand this.  All they know is that the economy is broken and they want someone to "fix" it.

For most Americans, all we have ever known is tremendous prosperity.  All our lives we have been taught that America is the richest and most prosperous nation on the planet, and that while there will always be times of "recession", things will always bounce back and be better than ever before.

But this time things aren't bouncing back.

And Americans are starting to become extremely frustrated.   

A couple of quotes that appeared in a recent article in The New York Daily News really embodied the growing frustration that so many are feeling at this point....

"My husband and I are fortunate to be able to move in with my 81-year-old mother-in-law. But how sad is that? I apply for jobs and nothing happens," writes Gayle Hanson. "Who wants to hire a 59-year-old woman? My answer is nobody. [I] have years of experience, excellent references. And nothing to show for it."

"I am soon to be 57 and considered too old, too expensive, etc. I can't get an employer to hire me at any salary," writes Mike Stiller. "I am BOILING MAD."

But Gayle Hanson and Mike Stiller are far from alone.

Millions upon millions of Americans are "boiling mad" about the economy at this point.

The truth is that the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.  Many of those jobs have been shipped off to countries like China and India where labor is much cheaper and they are never coming back.

There just are not enough jobs for everyone in America at this point.  The number of "chronically unemployed" has been rising at a frightening pace.  In fact, the average duration of unemployment in the United States has risen to an all-time high. 

If you have never been unemployed and unable to find a job, then you just don't know how soul crushing it can be.  This is especially true when you have a family to support.

Right now, there are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but are not even receiving an unemployment insurance check.  It is easy to tell those unemployed workers that they should "get a job", but as the chart below shows, the gap between the number of unemployed workers and the number of job openings has increased dramatically over the last couple of years....

***Chart****

But in this economy, even many of those who do have jobs are still struggling mightily.  According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck.  That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

And Americans are still losing their homes in record numbers.  Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 south Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, which was up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.

Meanwhile, demand for homes is dropping through the floor.  The Mortgage Bankers Association announced on Wednesday that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes sunk to a 13 year low last week, and refinancing demand also plummeted despite near record-low mortgage rates.

So considering all of these statistics, is it any wonder why so many Americans are so pessimistic?

According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.

But the truth is that we haven't seen anything yet.

Things are going to get much worse.

Already, Federal Reserve policymakers are discussing what steps they might take to stimulate economic activity "if the outlook were to worsen appreciably".

So can more economic stimulus help?

To a limited extent.

The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government will likely try to inject more debt and more "economic stimulus" into the system to try to shock the economy back to life.

But the more debt the U.S. government takes on the worse our long-term problems are going to get. 

The reality is that the U.S. economic system is broken, and there is simply not any "quick fix" that is available that is going to get things back to normal.

So on an individual level, what should we all do?

Well, we all need to start becoming a lot less dependent on the system.

We should all consider how we can start our own businesses, grow our own food and trade within our own communities.

If the entire system is starting to break down, it is those who are the least dependent on the system that will have the best chance to prosper during the times ahead."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-u-s-economy-is-a-dead-horse-and-the-american-people-are-starting-to-get-really-pissed-off-and-frustrated

By Matt Cover, StaffWriter

According to the CDC, “BMI provides a reliable indicator of body fatness for most people and is usedto screen for weight categories that may lead to health problems.”
 
Aperson’s BMI score is used as a tool to screen for obesity or excessive body fatthat could lead to other health problems. While it does not actually measurebody fat directly, according to CDC, the BMI scores generally correlate with aperson’s body fat percentage.
 
The new regulations also stipulate thatthe new electronic records be capable of sending public health data to state andfederal health agencies such as HHS and CDC. The CDC, which calls Americansociety “obesogenic” – meaning that American society itself promotes obesity –collects BMI scores from state health agencies every year to monitor obesitynationwide.
 
“Electronically record, retrieve, and transmit syndromebased public health surveillance information to public health agencies,” theregulations read.
 
With the spread of electronic health records, the CDCapparently will be able to collect such data more efficiently and with greateraccuracy because the electronic record keeping systems can send the dataautomatically, eliminating the need for government – both state and federal – tokeep, send, and process physical records."

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/69436

Video of noon Fox 5 newscast.

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http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/local_news/tea-party-friday-event-marietta-20100716-am-es#

My son sent me this.  Fascinating, thought provoking.  You decide.

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Found this interesting.  There are 7 charts in the article so would suggest navigating to the site if you wish to view them and read the rest of the article.

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 Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/16/2010 09:28 -0500
Source Zero Hedge

We are a rather surprised that this morning's stunning Treasury International Capital report has not gotten far more prominent attention. The reason: in it we read that in May 2010, China dumped $33 billion in Treasuries, bringing its total to the lowest since June 2009. Furthermore, Japan also offloaded $8.8 billion in bonds, as did the Oil Exporters. Yet total foreign Treasury holdings increased from $3,957 billion to $3,964 billion almost exclusively as a result of ongoing exponential UK accumulation. It is time someone in the mainstream media asked just who is doing all this "UK-based" buying? It is not hedge funds, which operate out of Caribbean Banking Centers, and which saw an increase in holdings from $151.8 billion to $165.5 billion as risk went completely off in the month of May courtesy of the Flash Crash, Greece, and the general insolvency of Europe. It is also not China due to a diverging pattern in Bills accumulation versus disposition. Additionally, May saw a dramatic decline in total foreign purchases of total US assets, dropping from $110.3 billion to just $33 billion, with Corporate Bonds and Corporate Stocks seeing a rare monthly sell off ($9 billion and $432 million). .........."

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/chinese-treasury-dump-brings-its-total-holdings-one-year-low-uk-continues-exponential-accumu?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29

From Steve Quayle, Q-news photo of the day. 

Look quickly as these never stay up long.

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"how two horses plotted history

http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/10_Photo_of_Day/100715.photo.of.day.b.html

My apologies .... I can not find the original post of this video to link to.  I was unable to view it on FoxNews but did find it on YouTube.

While I have never been a Hillary fan from First Lady onward, this video is a documentary showing that Hillary voters of all races were intimidated and turned away all over the country by thugs intent on Obama wining the popular vote.

You decide.

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"Brief for 9 states backs Arizona immigration law

Jul 15, 3:50 AM (ET)
By DAVID RUNK
Source My Way News
 
"DETROIT (AP) - States have the authority to enforce immigration laws and protect their borders, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said Wednesday in a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting Arizona's immigration law.

Cox, one of five Republicans running for Michigan governor, said Michigan is the lead state backing Arizona in federal court and is joined by Alabama, Florida, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia, as well as the Northern Mariana Islands.

The Arizona law, set to take effect July 29, directs officers to question people about their immigration status during the enforcement of other laws such as traffic stops and if there's a reasonable suspicion they're in the U.S. illegally.

President Barack Obama's administration recently filed suit in federal court to block it, arguing immigration is a federal issue. The law's backers say Congress isn't doing anything meaningful about illegal immigration, so it's the state's duty to step up.

"Arizona, Michigan and every other state have the authority to enforce immigration laws, and it is appalling to see President Obama use taxpayer dollars to stop a state's efforts to protect its own borders," Cox said in a statement.

Arizona's Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, in a statement released by Cox's office, said she was thankful for the support.

In a telephone interview, Cox said the nine states supporting Arizona represents "a lot of states," considering it was only Monday that he asked other state attorneys general to join him. The brief was filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona on the same day as the deadline for such filings.

"By lawsuit, rather than by legislation, the federal government seeks to negate this preexisting power of the states to verify a person's immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the states can lawfully provide to the Federal government," the brief states.

The brief doesn't represent the first time Cox has clashed with the Obama administration. Earlier this year, he joined with more than a dozen other attorneys general to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of federal health care changes signed into law by the Democratic president.

Like with his stance on health care, the immigration brief again puts Cox at odds with Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Granholm, who can't seek re-election because of term limits, disagrees with the Arizona law, her press secretary Liz Boyd said. The Michigan primary is less than three weeks away on Aug. 3.

"It's a patently political ploy in his quest for the Republican nomination for governor," Boyd said. "

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100715/D9GVBRK80.html

@ July 15, 2010 8:56 AM

Source Boortz.com 

"Taxes have consequences. Liberals only see taxes as a wonderfully easy way to seize wealth so that they can work their redistribution schemes. For some reason - abject ignorance might be an explanation - liberals just can't see how tax policy might affect people's behavior. This takes us back to that article I shared with you several weeks ago. Some researchers quizzed liberals, conservatives, libertarians and progressives on their economic knowledge. It came as no surprise to Boortz listeners that the further you were to the left, the less you knew about basic economics. By the time you identified yourself as a "progressive" you occupied the position of economic idiot. It's no surprise then that liberals just cannot grasp the concept that if you start to punish small businesses with regulations and taxes these small business owners are going to change their behavior .. and that behavioral change may well include the decision to stockpile wealth instead of sticking your neck out in an expansion effort that might cause you to hire more workers. You might even start firing permanent staff and look to temporary staffing agencies to replace employees.

It's not just businesses that change behavior, individuals do as well; especially the evil and disgusting rich people whom the liberals just LOVE to nail with more taxes. They (politicians) will do anything to get their hands on money that somebody else earned. The problem is that they're just not bright enough to realize that these evil achievers will eventually comes a point where they throw up their hands and say "enough already." That is exactly what is happening in Great Britain.

Remember Usain Bolt? Fastest guy in the world? He won a bunch of track medals at the last Olympics. So this organization in London wanted to set up a race between the fastest guys in the world, including Bolt. Usain Bolt declined. Why? Taxes. Since April of this year, Britain has new tax laws in place that would tax foreign sports stars competing in Britain at a rate of 50% on their earning in Britain. On top of that, athletes are taxed on their global endorsement income. For example, "If Bolt races 10 times in a year with just one event in the UK, the taxman would claim 10 per cent of his multi-million dollar earnings." Presumably this event - this race - would generate income for several British concerns. It won't happen though. The government simply wants too much of the take.

Golf is also having a hard time attracting top athletes to its tournaments. According to the Telegraph of London, "The European Tour will tell the Government that the tax measures disproportionately affect overseas golfers and are a major reason why UK tournaments, including the Welsh Open played over the Celtic Manor course that will host the Ryder Cup, attract fewer overseas stars."

It seems worldwide. There is no limit to government's desire to confiscate the wealth produced by private labor. Governments now look at private property as nothing more than sources of tax revenue. That's why government feels it is proper and appropriate to seize property from one party and transfer it to another if there are additional property taxes to be garnered through the move. Ditto for individuals. We now exist - we now work - for the sole purpose of generating revenue that the political class can use to buy votes. They'll allow us to retain just enough to keep us from sliding into open revolt.

Hopefully more Americans are waking up to this nonsense."

http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2010/07/enough-with-the-taxation.html

"First question: How is it that the Treasury Department can go ahead and give the trial lawyers a tax break that Congress didn’t pass?

Second question: Why on earth would we want to give a tax break to trial lawyers for filing speculative lawsuits? It would, in fact, be a subsidy for lawsuits not unlike the mortgage deduction on your income tax is a subsidy for home ownership. That mortgage deduction is one of the chief reasons why our country has had troubles with housing bubbles (unlike Canada which has no such tax deduction).

Can you imagine what a tax-subsidized lawsuit bubble would do to our economy? If anything, we need tort reform in this country to reduce the number of lawsuits filed every year. Not subsidies that will make it cheaper and easier to file lawsuits.

VANCOUVER, Canada (Legal Newsline) – The nation’s trial lawyer group, the American Association for Justice, revealed Tuesday that it expects the U.S. Department of Treasury to soon give its members a tax break on contingency fee lawsuits.

The tax break could be similar to proposed legislation that didn’t make it through Congress last year. That proposal, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., would have allowed attorneys to deduct fees and expenses up-front for filing contingency fee lawsuits.

John Bowman, the Director of Federal Relations for the AAJ, said in response to a question from a state delegate regarding recruiting new members that an administrative order from the Treasury Department could come as soon as tomorrow, sources told Legal Newsline.

So, basically, our elected representatives didn’t pass this tax break but the trial lawyers are expecting to get it anyway through the actions of the unelected bureaucrats at the Treasury Department.

Carter Wood notes that Congress has been considering this legislation for some time and that the politicians have simply not moved it forward:

Congress has had ample opportunity to vote on legislation to change tax law as desired by the trial lawyers. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) introduced S. 437 in February 2009, and Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) introduced H.R. 2519 in May 2009. The committees of jurisdiction did not take up the legislation because it’s political poison and bad policy — stimulating more economy-sapping litigation. As the American Association for Justice’s top lobbyist, Linda Lipsen, told trial lawyers at the AAJ’s convention last summer in San Francisco, “You cannot have a stand alone bill to help lawyers … so we have to tuck it into something.”

Laws are supposed to be passed by Congress and signed by the President. If Congress doesn’t act, then a given piece of legislation shouldn’t become law. This is Civics 101.

But apparently things work different for the trial lawyers."

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/trial-lawyers-expecting-treasury-department-to-give-them-1-6-billion-tax-break/