Read the original here.
Report: Dependence on government up 23 percent under President Obama
HOTAIR.COM POSTED AT 3:45 PM ON FEBRUARY 8, 2012 BY TINA KORBE
President Barack Obama has proved his adeptness at exploiting the vote pump: Dependence on government has increased by 23 percent under his administration, according to the Heritage Foundation 2012 Index of Dependence on Government.
More people than ever before — 67.3 million Americans — depend on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. Consider: The nation committed more than 15 times the resources in 2010 than in 1962 to pay for people who depend on the government. More than 70 percent of the nation’s spending goes to dependence programs, up from 28.3 percent in 1962 and 48.5 percent in 1990. The Index grew 8.1 percent in 2010 alone.
So, lest you think the increase in dependence stems primarily from temporary, recession-related rises in flexible spending programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, note well that increased dependence has been a steady trend for the entire decade the Heritage Foundation has released its index.
At the same time, the percentage of the population that pays no federal income taxes whatsoever has also increased. In 1984, just 14.8 percent of Americans — or 34.8 million tax filers — paid no federal income taxes; in 2009, 49.5 percent — or 151.7 million tax filers — paid nothing.
Also coincidentally, individuals and local entities now provide less assistance to needy members of society today than they have historically. Before World War II, mutual-aid, religious and education organizations once provided the majority of housing assistance and financial aid; after World War II, the federal and state governments began to provide the bulk of low-cost housing and financial help. Same story with health care.
Heritage experts Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrell explain why government assistance is less conducive of human flourishing than the help civil society historically provided:
This shift from local, community-based, mutual-aid assistance to anonymous government payments has clearly altered the relationship between the receiver and the provider of the assistance. In the past, a person in need depended on help from people and organizations in his or her local community. The community representatives were generally aware of the person’s needs and tailored the assistance to meet those needs within the community’s budgetary constraints. Today, housing and other needs are addressed by government employees to whom the person in need is a complete stranger, and who have few or no ties to the community in which the needy person lives.
Both cases of aid involve a dependent relationship. However, support provided by families, churches, and other civil society groups aims to restore a person to full flourishing and personal responsibility, and, ultimately, to be able to aid another person in turn. This kind of reciprocal expectation does not characterize the dependent relationship with the political system. The former relationship is essential to the existence of civil society itself. The latter is usually based on one-sided aid without accountability for a person’s regained responsibility for self and toward his community. Indeed, the “success” of such government programs is frequently measured by the program’s growth rather than by whether it helps recipients to escape dependence. While the dependent relationship with civil society leads to a balance between the interests of the needy person and the community, the dependent relationship with the government runs the risk of generating political pressure from interest groups—such as health care organizations, nonprofit organizations, and the aid recipients themselves—to expand and cement federal support.
The Index points to two crucial steps the nation needs to take: We need to (a) reweave the fabric of civil society, strengthening and appreciating the ties that bind, rather than finding them restrictive and (b) REFORM ENTITLEMENTS!
At this point, it’s useless to debate whether the weakening of civil society led to increased government involvement or the other way around; it’s just time to rebuild a sense of community from the ground up. Here’s an idea: If you don’t already have this kind of relationship with your neighbors, offer to loan ‘em an egg if they ever need one! I’m not joking. If we’re serious about not wanting the government to interfere in our lives, then we can’t afford to live in a bubble, oblivious to the needs of those around us. I know it gets old to contribute endlessly and you’re probably tired of it; you probably already do more than your part — plus pay taxes. But a little more can’t hurt! Mobility and technology make it all too easy to zone out; please don’t. As this Index makes clear, we’re already paying the price for our own negligence.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Krauthammer on the Syria Situation
Read the original here.
Charles Krauthammer: Syria — It’s not just about freedom
WashingtonPost.com
Additionally, Iran exerts growing pressure on Afghanistan to the east and growing influence in Iraq to the west. Tehran has even extended its horizon to Latin America, as symbolized by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s solidarity tour through Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Of all these clients, Syria is the most important. It’s the only Arab state openly allied with non-Arab Iran. This is significant because the Arabs see the Persians as having had centuries-old designs to dominate the Middle East. Indeed, Iranian arms and trainers, transshipped to Hezbollah through Syria, have given the Persians their first outpost on the Mediterranean in 2,300 years.
But the Arab-Iranian divide is not just national/ethnic. It is sectarian. The Arabs are overwhelmingly Sunni. Iran is Shiite. The Arab states fear Shiite Iran infiltrating the Sunni homeland through (apart from Iraq) Hezbollah in Lebanon, and through Syria, run by Assad’s Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Which is why the fate of the Assad regime is geopolitically crucial. It is, of course, highly significant for reasons of democracy and human rights as well. Syrian Baathism, while not as capricious and deranged as the Saddam Hussein variant, runs a ruthless police state that once killed 20,000 in Hama and has now killed more than 5,400 during the current uprising. Human rights — decency — is reason enough to do everything we can to bring down Assad.
But strategic opportunity compounds the urgency. With its archipelago of clients anchored by Syria, Iran is today the greatest regional threat — to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states terrified of Iranian nuclear hegemony; to traditional regimes menaced by Iranian jihadist subversion; to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has pledged to annihilate; to America and the West, whom the mullahs have vowed to drive from the region.
No surprise that the Arab League, many of whose members are no tenderhearted humanitarians, is pressing hard for Assad’s departure. His fall would deprive Iran of an intra-Arab staging area and sever its corridor to the Mediterranean. Syria would return to the Sunni fold. Hezbollah, Tehran’s agent in Lebanon, could be next, withering on the vine without Syrian support and Iranian materiel. And Hamas would revert to Egyptian patronage.
At the end of this causal chain, Iran, shorn of key allies and already reeling from economic sanctions over its nuclear program, would be thrown back on its heels. The mullahs are already shaky enough to be making near-suicidal threats of blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The population they put down in the 2009 Green Revolution is still seething. The regime is particularly reviled by the young. And its increasing attempts to shore up Assad financially and militarily have only compounded anti-Iranian feeling in the region.
It’s not just the Sunni Arabs lining up against Assad. Turkey, after a recent flirtation with a Syrian-Iranian-Turkish entente, has turned firmly against Assad, seeing an opportunity to extend its influence, as in Ottoman days, as protector/master of the Sunni Arabs. The alignment of forces suggests a unique opportunity for the West to help finish the job.
How? First, a total boycott of Syria, beyond just oil and including a full arms embargo. Second, a flood of aid to the resistance (through Turkey, which harbors both rebel militias and the political opposition, or directly and clandestinely into Syria). Third, a Security Council resolution calling for the removal of the Assad regime. Russia, Assad’s last major outside ally, should be forced to either accede or incur the wrath of the Arab states with a veto.
Force the issue. Draw bright lines. Make clear American solidarity with the Arab League against a hegemonic Iran and its tottering Syrian client. In diplomacy, one often has to choose between human rights and strategic advantage. This is a rare case where we can advance both — so long as we do not compromise with Russia or relent until Assad falls.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Charles Krauthammer: Syria — It’s not just about freedom
WashingtonPost.com
Additionally, Iran exerts growing pressure on Afghanistan to the east and growing influence in Iraq to the west. Tehran has even extended its horizon to Latin America, as symbolized by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s solidarity tour through Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Of all these clients, Syria is the most important. It’s the only Arab state openly allied with non-Arab Iran. This is significant because the Arabs see the Persians as having had centuries-old designs to dominate the Middle East. Indeed, Iranian arms and trainers, transshipped to Hezbollah through Syria, have given the Persians their first outpost on the Mediterranean in 2,300 years.
But the Arab-Iranian divide is not just national/ethnic. It is sectarian. The Arabs are overwhelmingly Sunni. Iran is Shiite. The Arab states fear Shiite Iran infiltrating the Sunni homeland through (apart from Iraq) Hezbollah in Lebanon, and through Syria, run by Assad’s Alawites, a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Which is why the fate of the Assad regime is geopolitically crucial. It is, of course, highly significant for reasons of democracy and human rights as well. Syrian Baathism, while not as capricious and deranged as the Saddam Hussein variant, runs a ruthless police state that once killed 20,000 in Hama and has now killed more than 5,400 during the current uprising. Human rights — decency — is reason enough to do everything we can to bring down Assad.
But strategic opportunity compounds the urgency. With its archipelago of clients anchored by Syria, Iran is today the greatest regional threat — to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states terrified of Iranian nuclear hegemony; to traditional regimes menaced by Iranian jihadist subversion; to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has pledged to annihilate; to America and the West, whom the mullahs have vowed to drive from the region.
No surprise that the Arab League, many of whose members are no tenderhearted humanitarians, is pressing hard for Assad’s departure. His fall would deprive Iran of an intra-Arab staging area and sever its corridor to the Mediterranean. Syria would return to the Sunni fold. Hezbollah, Tehran’s agent in Lebanon, could be next, withering on the vine without Syrian support and Iranian materiel. And Hamas would revert to Egyptian patronage.
At the end of this causal chain, Iran, shorn of key allies and already reeling from economic sanctions over its nuclear program, would be thrown back on its heels. The mullahs are already shaky enough to be making near-suicidal threats of blocking the Strait of Hormuz. The population they put down in the 2009 Green Revolution is still seething. The regime is particularly reviled by the young. And its increasing attempts to shore up Assad financially and militarily have only compounded anti-Iranian feeling in the region.
It’s not just the Sunni Arabs lining up against Assad. Turkey, after a recent flirtation with a Syrian-Iranian-Turkish entente, has turned firmly against Assad, seeing an opportunity to extend its influence, as in Ottoman days, as protector/master of the Sunni Arabs. The alignment of forces suggests a unique opportunity for the West to help finish the job.
How? First, a total boycott of Syria, beyond just oil and including a full arms embargo. Second, a flood of aid to the resistance (through Turkey, which harbors both rebel militias and the political opposition, or directly and clandestinely into Syria). Third, a Security Council resolution calling for the removal of the Assad regime. Russia, Assad’s last major outside ally, should be forced to either accede or incur the wrath of the Arab states with a veto.
Force the issue. Draw bright lines. Make clear American solidarity with the Arab League against a hegemonic Iran and its tottering Syrian client. In diplomacy, one often has to choose between human rights and strategic advantage. This is a rare case where we can advance both — so long as we do not compromise with Russia or relent until Assad falls.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Friday, January 27, 2012
Self sufficient or government dependent?
Investor's Business Daily has the question and a breakdown. Read the original here.
Is President Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents?
Is President Obama Creating A Nation Of Dependents?
If the Republican primaries are any indication, one big debate in the upcoming election will be whether President Obama is pushing the country toward a European-style welfare culture.
Mitt Romney, for example, argues that "over the past three years, Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society."
Newt Gingrich has taken to calling Obama "the best food-stamp president in American history."
Obama, in contrast, says the government must play an increasing role — what he likes to call "shared responsibility" — to ensure a society that is fairer.
So is Obama turning the country into a welfare society and away from one focused on opportunity?
While it's true that the country has been headed in this direction for many years — with the explosion in entitlements since the 1960s and the aging of the population — Obama has, in fact, greatly accelerated the trend. Examples:
Direct payments. The amount of money the federal government hands out in direct payments to individuals steadily increased over the past four decades, but shot up under Obama, climbing by almost $600 billion — a 32% increase — in his first three years. And Obama's last budget called for these payments to climb another $500 billion by 2016, at which point they would account for fully two-thirds of all federal spending.
People getting benefits. According to the Census Bureau 49% now live in homes where at least one person gets a federal benefit — Social Security, workers comp, unemployment, subsidized housing, and the like. That's up from 44% the year before Obama took office, and way up from 1983, when fewer than a third were government beneficiaries.
Food stamps. This year, more than 46 million (15% of all Americans) will get food stamps. That's 45% higher than when Obama took office, and twice as high as the average for the previous 40 years. This surge was driven in part by the recession, but also because Obama boosted the benefit amount as part of his stimulus plan.
Disability. The number of people on Social Security disability has steadily climbed since the 1970s, thanks mainly to easier eligibility rules. But their numbers jumped 10% in Obama's first two years in office, according to the Social Security Administration. That sharp rise was due largely to meager job prospects since the recession ended in 2009. When employment opportunities are scarce, experts note, many who could otherwise work sign up for disability benefits instead.
Health care. The government's role in health care has grown over the past decades, with 45% of all health spending now coming from the federal government, up from 32% in 1990. But this trend will dramatically accelerate should ObamaCare remain the law of the land. In eight years, ObamaCare will add 16 million people to Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and another 24 million will be getting coverage through heavily subsidized government-run insurance exchanges, with the cost of those subsidies running $130 billion a year.
Corporate welfare. Prior to Obama, the federal government was already dishing out $92 billion in corporate welfare programs — in the form of subsidized loans, special tax breaks, bailouts and the like — the Cato Institute found. Obama added tremendously to this largesse. Federal grants to the energy sector, for example, quadrupled to over $18 billion in 2009, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts' Subsidyscope.
While each of these and other federal benefit programs may be designed with good intentions, their combined weight is already overwhelming the budget.
In just nine years, entitlement spending is on track to eat up 61% of the federal budget, according to the CBO. And unless these programs are cut back, they will soon consume all federal taxes, one CBO budget scenario predicts.
The problem is that once federal benefits get started, few Americans want to see them cut back, much less eliminated. Even with $1 trillion annual deficits, just 24% would support cutting Social Security and only 16% would back Medicare cuts, according to the November 2011 IBD/TIPP poll.
"Once we thought 'entitlement' meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed in the greatest country in the world," Romney said in a recent speech. "But today the new entitlement battle is over the size of the check you get from Washington."
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Chris Dodd, the MPAA, and the US Congress
...aka the shining example of corrupted, crony capitalism. I love capitalism. I despise crony capitalism. Chris Dodd bailed out of Congress when it became clear that his shady dealings with Countrywide and other mortgage companies would come back to bite him. And the MPAA gave him 7 figures a year to keep in touch with DC. Read the original here.
MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought
from the sickening dept
Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News toexplicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:
"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"
MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Aren't Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought
from the sickening dept
Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what's happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News toexplicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they'd better pass Hollywood's favorite legislation... or else:
"Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,"
This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.
It shows, yet again, that he just doesn't get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd's "buying" politicians and "buying" laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn't a way to fix things or win back the public. It's just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday's NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly how not to do it. It shows, yet again, a DC-insider's mindset. He used Fox News to try to "send a message" to politicians. But the internet already sent a much louder message... and, even worse for Dodd, he bizarrely sent his message in a way that everyone who's already fed up with this kind of corruption can see it too. It really makes you wonder what he's thinking and how someone so incompetent at this could keep his job.
The MPAA doesn't need a DC insider explicitly demanding the right to buy laws and buy politicians. The MPAA needs a reformer, one who helps guide Hollywood into the opportunities of a new market place. The MPAA needs someone who actually understands the internet, and helps lead the studios forward. That's apparently not Chris Dodd.
Public Knowledge issued a fantastic statement that not only highlights the ridiculousness of Dodd's threats, but also the hypocrisy of the Hollywood studios on this issue:
It shows, yet again, that he just doesn't get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd's "buying" politicians and "buying" laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn't a way to fix things or win back the public. It's just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday's NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly how not to do it. It shows, yet again, a DC-insider's mindset. He used Fox News to try to "send a message" to politicians. But the internet already sent a much louder message... and, even worse for Dodd, he bizarrely sent his message in a way that everyone who's already fed up with this kind of corruption can see it too. It really makes you wonder what he's thinking and how someone so incompetent at this could keep his job.
The MPAA doesn't need a DC insider explicitly demanding the right to buy laws and buy politicians. The MPAA needs a reformer, one who helps guide Hollywood into the opportunities of a new market place. The MPAA needs someone who actually understands the internet, and helps lead the studios forward. That's apparently not Chris Dodd.
Public Knowledge issued a fantastic statement that not only highlights the ridiculousness of Dodd's threats, but also the hypocrisy of the Hollywood studios on this issue:
Public Knowledge welcomes constructive dialog with people from all affected sectors about issues surrounding copyright, the state of the movie industry and related concerns. Cybersecurity experts, Internet engineers, venture capitalists, artists, entrepreneurs, human rights advocates, law professors, consumers and public-interest organizations, among others should be included. They were shut out of the process for these bills.
We suggest that in the meantime, if the MPAA is truly concerned about the jobs of truck drivers and others in the industry, then it can bring its overseas filming back to the U.S. and create more jobs. It could stop holding states hostage for millions of dollars in subsidies that strained state budgets can’t afford while pushing special-interest bills through state legislatures. While that happens, discussions could take place.
Not really trying too hard
Did the state of the union speech sound familiar at all? Weekly Standard thinks it does. Read the original here.
Haven't We Heard this Before?
11:46 PM, JAN 24, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
The Republican National Committee has compiled this video comparing lines President Obama used tonight in his State of the Union Address with lines he used in previous addresses before Congress:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDRiGIUYQo
Obama 2010: "It's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs.
Obama 2012: "Colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down."
***
Obama 2010: "And we should continue the work by fixing our broken immigration system."
Obama 2011: "I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration."
Obama 2012: "I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration."
***
Obama 2010: "We face a deficit of trust."
Obama 2012: "I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust . . ."
***
Obama 2010: "We can't wage a perpetual campaign."
Obama 2012: "We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign."
***
The good news is that after a couple years these sorts of speeches begin to write themselves.
Haven't We Heard this Before?
11:46 PM, JAN 24, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
The Republican National Committee has compiled this video comparing lines President Obama used tonight in his State of the Union Address with lines he used in previous addresses before Congress:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDRiGIUYQo
Obama 2010: "It's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs.
Obama 2012: "Colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down."
***
Obama 2010: "And we should continue the work by fixing our broken immigration system."
Obama 2011: "I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration."
Obama 2012: "I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration."
***
Obama 2010: "We face a deficit of trust."
Obama 2012: "I've talked tonight about the deficit of trust . . ."
***
Obama 2010: "We can't wage a perpetual campaign."
Obama 2012: "We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign."
***
The good news is that after a couple years these sorts of speeches begin to write themselves.
How much did you give to charity?
Not sure how relevant it is...but it might go to character. But don't take it from me...that's the pot calling the kettle black. Read the original here.
Obama Gave 1% to Charity, Romney Gave 15%
AP File
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.
The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income.
Romney charitable contributions
Tax year Taxable income Charitable donations Donations as % of income
2010 $21.7 million $2.98 million 13.73%
2011 (est) $20.9 million $4 million 19.14%
Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/mitt-romney/2012/01/24/whos-greedy-obama-gave-1-charity-romney-gave-15#ixzz1kThsCi7k
Obama Gave 1% to Charity, Romney Gave 15%
AP File
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.
The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income.
Romney charitable contributions
Tax year Taxable income Charitable donations Donations as % of income
2010 $21.7 million $2.98 million 13.73%
2011 (est) $20.9 million $4 million 19.14%
Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/mitt-romney/2012/01/24/whos-greedy-obama-gave-1-charity-romney-gave-15#ixzz1kThsCi7k
Friday, January 20, 2012
Democrats want to determine how much profit you're allowed to make?
Umm...does this strike anyone else as inherently un-capitalistic and un-american? Who is the government to tell me how successful I can legally be? Read the original here.
Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits- 01/19/12 10:20 AM ET
Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits.
The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.
The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding "a reasonable profit." It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.
The bill would also seem to exclude industry representatives from the board, as it says members "shall have no financial interests in any of the businesses for which reasonable profits are determined by the Board."
According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent. The bill also specifies that the oil-and-gas companies, as the seller, would have to pay this tax.
Kucinich said these tax revenues would be used to fund alternative transportation programs when oil-and-gas prices spike.
"Gas prices continue to rise, creating a hardship for the American people," he said. "At the same time, oil companies are making record profits gouging their customers. This bill would tax only the excess profits and create forward-thinking transportation alternatives."
Specifically, he said the money would be used to fund a tax credit on the purchase of fuel-efficient cars and set up a grant program for mass transit programs when oil-and-gas prices are high.
The bill does not estimate the size of these grants or the amount of money that might be collected through the tax.
Co-sponsoring the bill are five other Democrats: Reps. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Bob Filner (Calif.), Marcia Fudge (Ohio), Jim Langevin (R.I.), and Lynn Woolsey (Calif.).
Dems propose 'Reasonable Profits Board' to regulate oil company profits- 01/19/12 10:20 AM ET
Six House Democrats, led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), want to set up a "Reasonable Profits Board" to control gas profits.
The Democrats, worried about higher gas prices, want to set up a board that would apply a "windfall profit tax" as high as 100 percent on the sale of oil and gas, according to their legislation. The bill provides no specific guidance for how the board would determine what constitutes a reasonable profit.
The Gas Price Spike Act, H.R. 3784, would apply a windfall tax on the sale of oil and gas that ranges from 50 percent to 100 percent on all surplus earnings exceeding "a reasonable profit." It would set up a Reasonable Profits Board made up of three presidential nominees that will serve three-year terms. Unlike other bills setting up advisory boards, the Reasonable Profits Board would not be made up of any nominees from Congress.
The bill would also seem to exclude industry representatives from the board, as it says members "shall have no financial interests in any of the businesses for which reasonable profits are determined by the Board."
According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent. The bill also specifies that the oil-and-gas companies, as the seller, would have to pay this tax.
Kucinich said these tax revenues would be used to fund alternative transportation programs when oil-and-gas prices spike.
"Gas prices continue to rise, creating a hardship for the American people," he said. "At the same time, oil companies are making record profits gouging their customers. This bill would tax only the excess profits and create forward-thinking transportation alternatives."
Specifically, he said the money would be used to fund a tax credit on the purchase of fuel-efficient cars and set up a grant program for mass transit programs when oil-and-gas prices are high.
The bill does not estimate the size of these grants or the amount of money that might be collected through the tax.
Co-sponsoring the bill are five other Democrats: Reps. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.), Bob Filner (Calif.), Marcia Fudge (Ohio), Jim Langevin (R.I.), and Lynn Woolsey (Calif.).
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Newsweek is working hard for 2012...
After they drop all pretense at being an objective news organization. Read the original here. The money quote: "He noted that one of Obama’s biggest problems is that he “isn’t out there … grandstanding and talking about his accomplishments in a way that may be necessary to break through the noise."
(the 1/23/2012 Newsweek cover h/t: The Huffington Post)
Right blogs take on Newsweek cover
The latest edition of Newsweek features the face of a pensive President Barack Obama along with the provocative headline: “Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?” — and that’s hit a little too close to home for conservative bloggers.
Joel Pollak, editor in chief of Breitbart.com, turned the cover’s question around on Andrew Sullivan, who penned the magazine’s cover story, in a blog post called, “Why is Andrew Sullivan so dumb?”
“You’d have to be stupid, fanatical and dishonest to argue — as Trig Truther Sullivan does — that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious ‘long game’ that is destined to succeed,” Pollak wrote. “If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for reelection is the weak Republican field.”
Similarly, Power Line’s John Hinderaker vented in a blog post titled, “We must be really, really stupid!”
“Well, sure. We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama’s watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can’t pay — hey, we’re just dumb!” he blasted. “We obviously aren’t smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea.”
Sullivan, a self-described “unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on,” writes in the cover story that attacks against the president are not only out of bounds but “simply — empirically — wrong.”
“Given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb,” Sullivan wrote. “Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game — and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.”
The story was rated by Townhall’s Managing Editor Kevin Glass as “a doozy about how conservatives are delusional and the left-wing base is just dumber than the president,” and he added that the Newsweek writer has bought into what he called “The Obama Delusion.”
“The president’s critics, on both sides, have and will continue to make sound critiques. And Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Beast are just trolling us,” Glass wrote.
“Is there anything the mainstream media won’t do to get Obama reelected?” Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters wanted to know.
The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway ripped Newsweek for falling deeper into “self-parody”: “If in recent years it seems as if Newsweek has been descending into self-parody, it’s still hard to imagine that this is real.”
And over at Red State, the magazine’s cover inspired blogger Caleb Howe to exercise some creative liberties by declaring a “Photoshop contest” to make a fake Newsweek cover.
“I’m assuming the thought process, such as it is, was ‘controversial sells magazines,’” he wrote. “So in that light, I have a suggestion for Newsweek’s next cover, one that will really stir things up.”
One of Howe’s several mock Newsweek covers features a sad-faced puppy and the words: “Puppies: Why our editors torture them.”
Sullivan defended the president’s record Monday evening, saying, “Obama has governed as he said he would, as a sensible, pragmatic centrist.” He explained that a frustration about lies people were telling about the president’s record had inspired him to write the cover story.
“I just got frustrated hearing all these people tell untruths about the record,” Sullivan said on MSNBC. “The record is that he has done something perfectly sensible — he’s fulfilled the promises that he made to turn this country round slowly.”
He urged Obama’s critics to have more “patience” when scrutinizing the president’s accomplishments, and suggested that critics approach their negotiations with the president without a “fantasy about who this guy is.”
“He’s not a big old lefty,” he added. “I mean, ask the left. He’s a compromiser in the middle and I think what he’s done is set out very carefully where he wants to go.”
Mark Miller, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, insisted earlier on Monday that Sullivan’s piece articulates criticism of the president from “both the left and the right.”
“I think Andrew makes the case fairly well that the way that he’s been caricatured by the right and the way that the left is disappointed with him doesn’t actually serve him well,” Miller said on MSNBC.
He noted that one of Obama’s biggest problems is that he “isn’t out there … grandstanding and talking about his accomplishments in a way that may be necessary to break through the noise.”
(the 1/23/2012 Newsweek cover h/t: The Huffington Post)
Right blogs take on Newsweek cover
The latest edition of Newsweek features the face of a pensive President Barack Obama along with the provocative headline: “Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?” — and that’s hit a little too close to home for conservative bloggers.
Joel Pollak, editor in chief of Breitbart.com, turned the cover’s question around on Andrew Sullivan, who penned the magazine’s cover story, in a blog post called, “Why is Andrew Sullivan so dumb?”
“You’d have to be stupid, fanatical and dishonest to argue — as Trig Truther Sullivan does — that Barack Obama’s failures are part of an ingenious ‘long game’ that is destined to succeed,” Pollak wrote. “If this is the best Obama’s supporters can do, Obama’s only hope for reelection is the weak Republican field.”
Similarly, Power Line’s John Hinderaker vented in a blog post titled, “We must be really, really stupid!”
“Well, sure. We who are unhappy that unemployment has increased on Obama’s watch, that over-regulation has stymied economic growth, that our children now owe a $15 trillion debt that we can’t pay — hey, we’re just dumb!” he blasted. “We obviously aren’t smart enough to understand how devastating our economy, unemploying millions of Americans and burdening our children with trillions of dollars in debt is really a great idea.”
Sullivan, a self-described “unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on,” writes in the cover story that attacks against the president are not only out of bounds but “simply — empirically — wrong.”
“Given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb,” Sullivan wrote. “Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game — and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.”
The story was rated by Townhall’s Managing Editor Kevin Glass as “a doozy about how conservatives are delusional and the left-wing base is just dumber than the president,” and he added that the Newsweek writer has bought into what he called “The Obama Delusion.”
“The president’s critics, on both sides, have and will continue to make sound critiques. And Andrew Sullivan and The Daily Beast are just trolling us,” Glass wrote.
“Is there anything the mainstream media won’t do to get Obama reelected?” Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters wanted to know.
The Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway ripped Newsweek for falling deeper into “self-parody”: “If in recent years it seems as if Newsweek has been descending into self-parody, it’s still hard to imagine that this is real.”
And over at Red State, the magazine’s cover inspired blogger Caleb Howe to exercise some creative liberties by declaring a “Photoshop contest” to make a fake Newsweek cover.
“I’m assuming the thought process, such as it is, was ‘controversial sells magazines,’” he wrote. “So in that light, I have a suggestion for Newsweek’s next cover, one that will really stir things up.”
One of Howe’s several mock Newsweek covers features a sad-faced puppy and the words: “Puppies: Why our editors torture them.”
Sullivan defended the president’s record Monday evening, saying, “Obama has governed as he said he would, as a sensible, pragmatic centrist.” He explained that a frustration about lies people were telling about the president’s record had inspired him to write the cover story.
“I just got frustrated hearing all these people tell untruths about the record,” Sullivan said on MSNBC. “The record is that he has done something perfectly sensible — he’s fulfilled the promises that he made to turn this country round slowly.”
He urged Obama’s critics to have more “patience” when scrutinizing the president’s accomplishments, and suggested that critics approach their negotiations with the president without a “fantasy about who this guy is.”
“He’s not a big old lefty,” he added. “I mean, ask the left. He’s a compromiser in the middle and I think what he’s done is set out very carefully where he wants to go.”
Mark Miller, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, insisted earlier on Monday that Sullivan’s piece articulates criticism of the president from “both the left and the right.”
“I think Andrew makes the case fairly well that the way that he’s been caricatured by the right and the way that the left is disappointed with him doesn’t actually serve him well,” Miller said on MSNBC.
He noted that one of Obama’s biggest problems is that he “isn’t out there … grandstanding and talking about his accomplishments in a way that may be necessary to break through the noise.”
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Record Companies vs. Digital Streaming
Read the original here.
Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels
By Michael Robertson, MP3tunes Dec. 11, 2011, 9:00am PT 106 Comments
Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels
By Michael Robertson, MP3tunes Dec. 11, 2011, 9:00am PT 106 Comments
Imagine a new hot-dog selling venture. Let’s also say there’s only one supplier to purchase hot dogs from. Instead of simply charging a fixed price for hot dogs, that supplier demands the HIGHER of the following: $1 per hot dog sold OR $2 for every customer served OR 50 percent of all revenues for anything sold in the store.In addition, the supplier requires a two-year minimum order of 300 hot dogs per day, payable all in advance. If fewer hot dogs are sold, there is no refund. If more than 300 hot dogs are sold each day, payments to the supplier are generated by calculating $2 per customer or 50 percent of total revenues, so an additional payment is due to the supplier. After the first two years, the supplier can unilaterally adjust any of the pricing terms and the shop can never switch suppliers.
Would this imaginary hot dog establishment be able to generate a profit? Never, because the economics are one-sided. The supplier will always elect the formula that captures the largest amount of money for themselves, completely disregarding the financial viability of the store. If the store miraculously managed to generate a profit, the landlord would simply raise the rates after two years.
Such economic demands may be imaginary for the hot dog business, but they are the stark reality that every digital-music subscription service such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, and others must confront. These details aren’t well-known because digital music service deals are always wrapped tightly with strict non-disclosure agreements.
For the first time, people are talking, and these previously secret demands are being made public. The specifics are even more onerous than the hot dog example cited above. Together they doom online audio companies to a life of subjugation to the labels, as you will learn below.
Here are some specific demands that digital music companies are compelled to agree to:
General deal structure: Pay the largest of A) Pro-rata share of minimum of $X per subscriber, B) Per-play costs at $Y per play, C) Z percent of total company revenue, regardless of other business areas. As stated previously, this means labels de facto set retail price (they also regularly negotiate floors on price, giving even less wiggle room), which limits the ability of the music service to develop ancillary revenue streams that aren’t siphoned off by the labels.
Labels receive equity stake. Not only do labels get to set the price on the service, they also get partial ownership of the company.
Up front (and/or minimum) payments. Means large amounts of cash are necessary to even get into the game. In my experience, this further stifles innovation in services and business models.
Detailed reporting, including monthly play counts. This seems rational enough — you would assume this information is necessary to pay artists and make other business decisions. The problem is, the labels each make additional demands, including providing additional reports unrelated to payment, including overall market share of sales in various categories. I doubt that, for example, phone manufacturers demand Best Buy provide the percentage of sales of competitors’ phones. The labels effectively offload their business analysis (and the cost of such analysis) onto the music services. I can’t think of another industry where that is standard practice.
Data normalization. Labels all provide their data and files in different formats. That data is constantly changing as labels make available new material and make unavailable old material. This might seem trivial. It’s not. Without standard naming conventions and canonical methods for referencing artist, tracks and albums (ISRC and UPC don’t cut it), the services are left to try and match artist, track, album names provided by one label with those of another. It’s incredibly inefficient, as each service must undergo this process separately (although there are now companies that provide a service for doing this for the retailers).
Publishing deals. Once you’ve signed deals with the labels, you then need to cut deals with the publishers. Determining ownership is a complete nightmare and there are huge holes in the licensable catalog. The data issues here are worse than with the labels. The long and short of it: Although you may have the rights to stream from labels, you sometime can’t get the rights to stream from the publisher, or worse, even find the publisher.
Most favored nation. This is a deal term demanded by every major label that ensures the best terms provided to another label are available to it as well. This greatly constricts the ability to work out unique contractual terms and further limits business models. It is a form of collusion since each label gets the best terms the other label negotiates. It’s also why it’s easy to get one label (typically EMI) because they’ll provide low-cost terms knowing that others will demand higher rates, which EMI will then garner the benefit from.
Non-disclosure. Every contract has strict language prohibiting the digital music company from revealing what they pay to the labels. If they speak publicly about any of the licensing terms, they jeopardize invalidating their license which would torpedo their business. Since labels license on behalf of the artists any payment to the artist comes from the labels not the digital music company. This is the main reason music services, not the labels, have been getting heat from the artist community. Music services can’t defend against accusations about low artist payments because they pay the labels who don’t disclose what they’re paying to the artists.
With most other businesses, if a supplier makes unreasonable demands, a retailer can turn to other providers. Since copyright law gives record labels and publishers a government-granted monopoly, no such option is possible with music. Digital vendors have only two options: Accept the terms or not include those songs in their offering.
The sale of EMI to other music companies means there will shortly be only three major labels. If a music service rejects terms offered by a label, then that service’s offering will have an enormous hole in their catalog of 25 percent or more of popular songs. In the business world, a monopoly leads to lopsided economics, and the subscription digital music business is a poignant illustration of that.
Final note: Online radio services such as Pandora take advantage of a government-supervised license available only to radio broadcasters thus sidestepping dealing with record labels. While the per-song fees are daunting, they bypass virtually all of the terms listed above.
A 15-year veteran of the digital music business, Michael Robertson is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com and is currently CEO of personal cloud music service MP3tunes as well as the radio recording service DAR.fm. He can be reached at michael@michaelrobertson.com. He would like to thank Paul Petrick for his contribution to this piece.
Would this imaginary hot dog establishment be able to generate a profit? Never, because the economics are one-sided. The supplier will always elect the formula that captures the largest amount of money for themselves, completely disregarding the financial viability of the store. If the store miraculously managed to generate a profit, the landlord would simply raise the rates after two years.
Such economic demands may be imaginary for the hot dog business, but they are the stark reality that every digital-music subscription service such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, and others must confront. These details aren’t well-known because digital music service deals are always wrapped tightly with strict non-disclosure agreements.
For the first time, people are talking, and these previously secret demands are being made public. The specifics are even more onerous than the hot dog example cited above. Together they doom online audio companies to a life of subjugation to the labels, as you will learn below.
Here are some specific demands that digital music companies are compelled to agree to:
General deal structure: Pay the largest of A) Pro-rata share of minimum of $X per subscriber, B) Per-play costs at $Y per play, C) Z percent of total company revenue, regardless of other business areas. As stated previously, this means labels de facto set retail price (they also regularly negotiate floors on price, giving even less wiggle room), which limits the ability of the music service to develop ancillary revenue streams that aren’t siphoned off by the labels.
Labels receive equity stake. Not only do labels get to set the price on the service, they also get partial ownership of the company.
Up front (and/or minimum) payments. Means large amounts of cash are necessary to even get into the game. In my experience, this further stifles innovation in services and business models.
Detailed reporting, including monthly play counts. This seems rational enough — you would assume this information is necessary to pay artists and make other business decisions. The problem is, the labels each make additional demands, including providing additional reports unrelated to payment, including overall market share of sales in various categories. I doubt that, for example, phone manufacturers demand Best Buy provide the percentage of sales of competitors’ phones. The labels effectively offload their business analysis (and the cost of such analysis) onto the music services. I can’t think of another industry where that is standard practice.
Data normalization. Labels all provide their data and files in different formats. That data is constantly changing as labels make available new material and make unavailable old material. This might seem trivial. It’s not. Without standard naming conventions and canonical methods for referencing artist, tracks and albums (ISRC and UPC don’t cut it), the services are left to try and match artist, track, album names provided by one label with those of another. It’s incredibly inefficient, as each service must undergo this process separately (although there are now companies that provide a service for doing this for the retailers).
Publishing deals. Once you’ve signed deals with the labels, you then need to cut deals with the publishers. Determining ownership is a complete nightmare and there are huge holes in the licensable catalog. The data issues here are worse than with the labels. The long and short of it: Although you may have the rights to stream from labels, you sometime can’t get the rights to stream from the publisher, or worse, even find the publisher.
Most favored nation. This is a deal term demanded by every major label that ensures the best terms provided to another label are available to it as well. This greatly constricts the ability to work out unique contractual terms and further limits business models. It is a form of collusion since each label gets the best terms the other label negotiates. It’s also why it’s easy to get one label (typically EMI) because they’ll provide low-cost terms knowing that others will demand higher rates, which EMI will then garner the benefit from.
Non-disclosure. Every contract has strict language prohibiting the digital music company from revealing what they pay to the labels. If they speak publicly about any of the licensing terms, they jeopardize invalidating their license which would torpedo their business. Since labels license on behalf of the artists any payment to the artist comes from the labels not the digital music company. This is the main reason music services, not the labels, have been getting heat from the artist community. Music services can’t defend against accusations about low artist payments because they pay the labels who don’t disclose what they’re paying to the artists.
With most other businesses, if a supplier makes unreasonable demands, a retailer can turn to other providers. Since copyright law gives record labels and publishers a government-granted monopoly, no such option is possible with music. Digital vendors have only two options: Accept the terms or not include those songs in their offering.
The sale of EMI to other music companies means there will shortly be only three major labels. If a music service rejects terms offered by a label, then that service’s offering will have an enormous hole in their catalog of 25 percent or more of popular songs. In the business world, a monopoly leads to lopsided economics, and the subscription digital music business is a poignant illustration of that.
Final note: Online radio services such as Pandora take advantage of a government-supervised license available only to radio broadcasters thus sidestepping dealing with record labels. While the per-song fees are daunting, they bypass virtually all of the terms listed above.
A 15-year veteran of the digital music business, Michael Robertson is the founder and former CEO of MP3.com and is currently CEO of personal cloud music service MP3tunes as well as the radio recording service DAR.fm. He can be reached at michael@michaelrobertson.com. He would like to thank Paul Petrick for his contribution to this piece.
A Life Rule lesson
Seriously, what is going on. I railed against it when he announced, and I'll say it again. If you give bad guys a date that the good guys are leaving no matter what, the bad guys will usually just take a vacation and wait until you've left the premises. I genuinely question the logic of setting such a hard timetable for Iraq's exit, and vociferously question the logic and integrity of whomever decided it was worth announcing to the world. I don't understand how anyone will think it's a surprise when the violence goes up. If POTUS claims he ended the Iraq war, I disagree. I think this is a perfect example of why he has never made the transition from popular kid voted class president to being an actual class president. Read the original here.
Dozens die as 14 bombs explode across Baghdad - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - Conflict in Iraq
MSNBC:
BAGHDAD — A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 150 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country.
The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions that erupted this weekend.
The political spat has raised fears that Iraq's sectarian wounds will be reopened during a fragile time when Iraq is finally navigating its own political future without U.S. military support.
While the string of explosions was likely not a direct response to the political Sunni-Shiite confrontation, it will ratchet up tensions at a time when many Iraqis are already worried about security. If continued, it could lead to the same type of tit-for-tat attacks that characterized the insurgency years ago.
Iraqi officials said at least 14 blasts went off early Thursday morning in 11 neighborhoods around the city.
Figures gathered from Iraqi health and police officials across the city put the death toll at 60, with 160 injured. The spokesman for the Iraqi health ministry put the death toll at 57 and said at least 176 people were injured. Conflicting casualty figures are common in the aftermath of such attacks.
The explosions ranged from blasts from sticky bombs attached to cars to roadside bombs and vehicles packed with explosives. There was at least one suicide bombing among the attacks.
'A huge explosion'
At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in the Karrada district, sending up a dust cloud and scattering car parts into a kindergarten, police and health officials said.
"We heard the sound of a car driving, then car brakes, then a huge explosion, all our windows and doors are blown out, black smoke filled our apartment," said Maysoun Kamal, who lives in a Karrada compound.
Raghad Khalid, a teacher at a kindergarten near the Karrada blast, said "some parts of the car bomb are inside our building."
"I saw all the windows were blown out and glass scattered everywhere. The children were scared and crying," Khalid added.
Two roadside bombs struck the southwestern Amil district, killing at least seven people and wounding 21 others, while a car bomb blew up in a Shiite neighborhood in Doura in the south, killing three people and wounding six, police said.
"My baby was sleeping in her bed. Shards of glass have fallen on our heads. Her father hugged her and carried her. She is now scared in the next room," said one woman in western Baghdad who identified herself as Um Hanin. "All countries are stable. Why don't we have security and stability?"
More bombs ripped into the central Alawi area, Shaab and Shula in the north, all mainly Shiite areas, and a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, police said.
Violence in Iraq has ebbed since the height of sectarian violence in 2006-2007, when suicide bombers and hit squads targeted Sunni and Shiite communities in attacks that killed thousands of people.
Stubborn insurgency
Iraq is still fighting a stubborn, lower-grade insurgency with Sunni Islamists tied to al-Qaida and Shiite militias, who U.S. officials say are backed by Iran, still staging daily attacks.
The last few thousand American troops pulled out of Iraq over the weekend, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis had said they feared a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.
Just days after the withdrawal, Iraq's fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs share out government posts in a unwieldy system that has been impaired by political infighting since it began.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is a Shiite, has accused the Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi of running a hit squad that targeted government officials.
Al-Maliki is also pushing for a vote of no-confidence against another Sunni politician, the deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. Al-Maliki was likened to Saddam by al-Mutlaq.
Many Sunnis fear that this is part of a wider campaign to go after Sunni political figures in general and shore up Shiite control across the country.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the morning's violence. But the coordinated nature of the assault and the fact that the attacks took place in numerous neighborhoods suggested a planning capability only available to al-Qaida in Iraq.
Many of the neighborhoods were also Shiite areas which are a favorite target of al-Qaida. The Sunni extremist group often targets Shiites who they believe are not true Muslims.
U.S. military officials have said they're worried about a resurgence of al-Qaida after the American military leaves the country. If that happens, it could lead Shiite militants to fight back and attack Sunni targets, thus sending Iraq back to the sectarian violence it experienced just a few years ago.
Dozens die as 14 bombs explode across Baghdad - World news - Mideast/N. Africa - Conflict in Iraq
MSNBC:
BAGHDAD — A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 150 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country.
The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite factions that erupted this weekend.
The political spat has raised fears that Iraq's sectarian wounds will be reopened during a fragile time when Iraq is finally navigating its own political future without U.S. military support.
While the string of explosions was likely not a direct response to the political Sunni-Shiite confrontation, it will ratchet up tensions at a time when many Iraqis are already worried about security. If continued, it could lead to the same type of tit-for-tat attacks that characterized the insurgency years ago.
Iraqi officials said at least 14 blasts went off early Thursday morning in 11 neighborhoods around the city.
Figures gathered from Iraqi health and police officials across the city put the death toll at 60, with 160 injured. The spokesman for the Iraqi health ministry put the death toll at 57 and said at least 176 people were injured. Conflicting casualty figures are common in the aftermath of such attacks.
The explosions ranged from blasts from sticky bombs attached to cars to roadside bombs and vehicles packed with explosives. There was at least one suicide bombing among the attacks.
'A huge explosion'
At least 18 people were killed when a suicide bomber driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government office in the Karrada district, sending up a dust cloud and scattering car parts into a kindergarten, police and health officials said.
"We heard the sound of a car driving, then car brakes, then a huge explosion, all our windows and doors are blown out, black smoke filled our apartment," said Maysoun Kamal, who lives in a Karrada compound.
Raghad Khalid, a teacher at a kindergarten near the Karrada blast, said "some parts of the car bomb are inside our building."
"I saw all the windows were blown out and glass scattered everywhere. The children were scared and crying," Khalid added.
Two roadside bombs struck the southwestern Amil district, killing at least seven people and wounding 21 others, while a car bomb blew up in a Shiite neighborhood in Doura in the south, killing three people and wounding six, police said.
"My baby was sleeping in her bed. Shards of glass have fallen on our heads. Her father hugged her and carried her. She is now scared in the next room," said one woman in western Baghdad who identified herself as Um Hanin. "All countries are stable. Why don't we have security and stability?"
More bombs ripped into the central Alawi area, Shaab and Shula in the north, all mainly Shiite areas, and a roadside bomb killed one and wounded five near the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, police said.
Violence in Iraq has ebbed since the height of sectarian violence in 2006-2007, when suicide bombers and hit squads targeted Sunni and Shiite communities in attacks that killed thousands of people.
Stubborn insurgency
Iraq is still fighting a stubborn, lower-grade insurgency with Sunni Islamists tied to al-Qaida and Shiite militias, who U.S. officials say are backed by Iran, still staging daily attacks.
The last few thousand American troops pulled out of Iraq over the weekend, nearly nine years after the invasion that toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Many Iraqis had said they feared a return to sectarian violence without a U.S. military buffer.
Just days after the withdrawal, Iraq's fragile power-sharing government is grappling with its worst turmoil since its formation a year ago. Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs share out government posts in a unwieldy system that has been impaired by political infighting since it began.
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who is a Shiite, has accused the Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi of running a hit squad that targeted government officials.
Al-Maliki is also pushing for a vote of no-confidence against another Sunni politician, the deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlaq. Al-Maliki was likened to Saddam by al-Mutlaq.
Many Sunnis fear that this is part of a wider campaign to go after Sunni political figures in general and shore up Shiite control across the country.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the morning's violence. But the coordinated nature of the assault and the fact that the attacks took place in numerous neighborhoods suggested a planning capability only available to al-Qaida in Iraq.
Many of the neighborhoods were also Shiite areas which are a favorite target of al-Qaida. The Sunni extremist group often targets Shiites who they believe are not true Muslims.
U.S. military officials have said they're worried about a resurgence of al-Qaida after the American military leaves the country. If that happens, it could lead Shiite militants to fight back and attack Sunni targets, thus sending Iraq back to the sectarian violence it experienced just a few years ago.
Jimmy Carter is sad about Kim Jong Il
Seriously? Really Jimmy Carter? I suppose their is no action that he can give that he is out of step with the United States that he once was President of! Read the original here.
Ex-President Carter sends condolences to Kim Jong-un
By Victor Morton
Washington Times
December 21, 2011, 03:38PM
Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished “every success” to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country’s state-run news agency.
A dispatch from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Mr. Carter sent the message to Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s son and heir apparent.
“In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il. He wished Kim Jong Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to [North Korea] in the future,” the KCNA dispatch read.
When contacted by The Washington Times for comment, the Carter Center provided an email contact to a spokeswoman who is out of the office until the New Year.
North Korea is routinely labeled as one of the world’s most oppressive governments under an eccentric personality cult surrounding the Kim family. Harrowing reports from defectors describe North Korea as a dirt-poor nation filled with concentration camps and Communist propaganda. Kim Jong-il ran the reclusive country according to a “military first” policy since the mid-1990s, after a famine that may have killed as many as 2 million people.
Mr. Carter has visited North Korea twice — including a 1994 visit for talks on nuclear issues that led to a deal in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program in exchange for oil deliveries and the construction of two nuclear reactors. That deal collapsed in 2002.
The former U.S. president also downplayed a 2010 North Korean attack on a South Korean island and disclosure of a uranium enrichment facility, saying the acts were merely “designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future.”
Ex-President Carter sends condolences to Kim Jong-un
By Victor Morton
Washington Times
December 21, 2011, 03:38PM
Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished “every success” to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country’s state-run news agency.
A dispatch from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Mr. Carter sent the message to Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s son and heir apparent.
“In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il. He wished Kim Jong Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to [North Korea] in the future,” the KCNA dispatch read.
When contacted by The Washington Times for comment, the Carter Center provided an email contact to a spokeswoman who is out of the office until the New Year.
North Korea is routinely labeled as one of the world’s most oppressive governments under an eccentric personality cult surrounding the Kim family. Harrowing reports from defectors describe North Korea as a dirt-poor nation filled with concentration camps and Communist propaganda. Kim Jong-il ran the reclusive country according to a “military first” policy since the mid-1990s, after a famine that may have killed as many as 2 million people.
Mr. Carter has visited North Korea twice — including a 1994 visit for talks on nuclear issues that led to a deal in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear-weapons program in exchange for oil deliveries and the construction of two nuclear reactors. That deal collapsed in 2002.
The former U.S. president also downplayed a 2010 North Korean attack on a South Korean island and disclosure of a uranium enrichment facility, saying the acts were merely “designed to remind the world that they deserve respect in negotiations that will shape their future.”
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Kim Jong-Il's death, should the US have seen it coming?
Read the original here.
In Kim’s Death, an Extensive Intelligence Failure
Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.
For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.
Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.
As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea — a failed state with nuclear weapons — the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.
“We have clear plans about what to do if North Korea attacks, but not if the North Korean regime unravels,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser in the Bush administration. “Every time you do these scenarios, one of the first objectives is trying to find out what’s going on inside North Korea.”
In many countries, that would involve intercepting phone calls between government officials or peering down from spy satellites. And indeed, American spy planes and satellites scan the country. Highly sensitive antennas along the border between South and North Korea pick up electronic signals. South Korean intelligence officials interview thousands of North Koreans who defect to the South each year.
And yet remarkably little is known about the inner workings of the North Korean government. Pyongyang, officials said, keeps sensitive information limited to a small circle of officials, who do not talk.
“This is a society that thrives on its opaqueness,” said Christopher R. Hill, a former special envoy who negotiated with the North over its nuclear program. “It is very complex. To understand the leadership structure requires going way back into Korean culture to understand Confucian principles.”
On Monday, the Obama administration held urgent consultations with allies but said little publicly about Mr. Kim’s death. Senior officials acknowledged they were largely bystanders, watching the drama unfold in the North and hoping that it does not lead to acts of aggression against South Korea.
None of the situations envisioned by American officials for North Korea are comforting. Some current and former officials assume that Kim Jong-un is too young and untested to step confidently into his father’s shoes. Some speculate that the younger Mr. Kim might serve in a kind of regency, in which the real power would be wielded by military officials like Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law and confidant, who is 65.
Such an arrangement would do little to relieve the suffering of the North Korean people or defuse the tension over its nuclear ambitions. But it would be preferable to an open struggle for power in the country.
“A bad scenario is that they go through a smooth transition, and the people keep starving and they continue to develop nuclear weapons,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, a former Asia adviser to President Obama. “The unstable transition, in which no one is in charge, and in which control of their nuclear program becomes even more opaque, is even worse.”
As failures go, the Central Intelligence Agency’s inability to pick up hints of Mr. Kim’s death was comparatively minor. But as one former agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity about classified matters, pointed out: “What’s worst about our intel is our failure to penetrate deep into the existing leadership. We get defectors, but their information is often old. We get midlevel people, but they often don’t know what’s happening in the inner circle.”
The worst intelligence failure, by far, came in the middle of the Iraq war. North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in Syria, based on the design of its own reactor at Yongbyon. North Korean officials traveled regularly to the site.
Yet the United States was ignorant about it until Meir Dagan, then the head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, visited President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and dropped photographs of the reactor on his coffee table. It was destroyed by Israel in an airstrike in 2007 after the United States turned down Israeli requests to carry out the strike.
While the C.I.A. long suspected that North Korea was working on a second pathway to a bomb — uranium enrichment — it never found the facilities. Then, last year, a Stanford University scientist was given a tour of a plant, in the middle of the Yongbyon complex, which American satellites monitor constantly. It is not clear why satellite surveillance failed to detect construction on a large scale at the complex.
The failure to pick up signs of turmoil are especially disconcerting for people in South Korea. The South’s capital, Seoul, is only 35 miles from the North Korean border, and the military is on constant alert for a surprise attack.
Yet in the 51 hours from the apparent time of Mr. Kim’s death until the official announcement of it, South Korean officials appeared to detect nothing unusual.
During that time, President Lee Myung-bak traveled to Tokyo, met with the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, returned home and was honored at a party for his 70th birthday.
At 10 a.m. local time on Monday, even as North Korean media reported that there would be a “special announcement” at noon, South Korean officials shrugged when asked whether something was afoot. The last time Pyongyang gave advance warning of a special announcement was in 1994, when they reported the death of Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, who also died of a heart failure. (South Korea was caught completely off guard by the elder Mr. Kim’s death, which was not disclosed for 22 hours.)
“ ‘Oh, my God!’ was the first word that came to my mind when I saw the North Korean anchorwoman’s black dress and mournful look,” said a government official who monitored the North Korean announcement.
“This shows a big loophole in our intelligence-gathering network on North Korea,” Kwon Seon-taek, an opposition South Korean lawmaker, told reporters.
Kwon Young-se, a ruling party legislator and head of the intelligence committee at the National Assembly, said the National Intelligence Service, the main government spy agency, appeared to have been caught off guard by the North Korean announcement. “We will hold them responsible,” he said.
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
WASHINGTON — Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.
For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.
Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.
As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea — a failed state with nuclear weapons — the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.
“We have clear plans about what to do if North Korea attacks, but not if the North Korean regime unravels,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser in the Bush administration. “Every time you do these scenarios, one of the first objectives is trying to find out what’s going on inside North Korea.”
In many countries, that would involve intercepting phone calls between government officials or peering down from spy satellites. And indeed, American spy planes and satellites scan the country. Highly sensitive antennas along the border between South and North Korea pick up electronic signals. South Korean intelligence officials interview thousands of North Koreans who defect to the South each year.
And yet remarkably little is known about the inner workings of the North Korean government. Pyongyang, officials said, keeps sensitive information limited to a small circle of officials, who do not talk.
“This is a society that thrives on its opaqueness,” said Christopher R. Hill, a former special envoy who negotiated with the North over its nuclear program. “It is very complex. To understand the leadership structure requires going way back into Korean culture to understand Confucian principles.”
On Monday, the Obama administration held urgent consultations with allies but said little publicly about Mr. Kim’s death. Senior officials acknowledged they were largely bystanders, watching the drama unfold in the North and hoping that it does not lead to acts of aggression against South Korea.
None of the situations envisioned by American officials for North Korea are comforting. Some current and former officials assume that Kim Jong-un is too young and untested to step confidently into his father’s shoes. Some speculate that the younger Mr. Kim might serve in a kind of regency, in which the real power would be wielded by military officials like Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law and confidant, who is 65.
Such an arrangement would do little to relieve the suffering of the North Korean people or defuse the tension over its nuclear ambitions. But it would be preferable to an open struggle for power in the country.
“A bad scenario is that they go through a smooth transition, and the people keep starving and they continue to develop nuclear weapons,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, a former Asia adviser to President Obama. “The unstable transition, in which no one is in charge, and in which control of their nuclear program becomes even more opaque, is even worse.”
As failures go, the Central Intelligence Agency’s inability to pick up hints of Mr. Kim’s death was comparatively minor. But as one former agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity about classified matters, pointed out: “What’s worst about our intel is our failure to penetrate deep into the existing leadership. We get defectors, but their information is often old. We get midlevel people, but they often don’t know what’s happening in the inner circle.”
The worst intelligence failure, by far, came in the middle of the Iraq war. North Korea was building a nuclear reactor in Syria, based on the design of its own reactor at Yongbyon. North Korean officials traveled regularly to the site.
Yet the United States was ignorant about it until Meir Dagan, then the head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, visited President George W. Bush’s national security adviser and dropped photographs of the reactor on his coffee table. It was destroyed by Israel in an airstrike in 2007 after the United States turned down Israeli requests to carry out the strike.
While the C.I.A. long suspected that North Korea was working on a second pathway to a bomb — uranium enrichment — it never found the facilities. Then, last year, a Stanford University scientist was given a tour of a plant, in the middle of the Yongbyon complex, which American satellites monitor constantly. It is not clear why satellite surveillance failed to detect construction on a large scale at the complex.
The failure to pick up signs of turmoil are especially disconcerting for people in South Korea. The South’s capital, Seoul, is only 35 miles from the North Korean border, and the military is on constant alert for a surprise attack.
Yet in the 51 hours from the apparent time of Mr. Kim’s death until the official announcement of it, South Korean officials appeared to detect nothing unusual.
During that time, President Lee Myung-bak traveled to Tokyo, met with the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, returned home and was honored at a party for his 70th birthday.
At 10 a.m. local time on Monday, even as North Korean media reported that there would be a “special announcement” at noon, South Korean officials shrugged when asked whether something was afoot. The last time Pyongyang gave advance warning of a special announcement was in 1994, when they reported the death of Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, who also died of a heart failure. (South Korea was caught completely off guard by the elder Mr. Kim’s death, which was not disclosed for 22 hours.)
“ ‘Oh, my God!’ was the first word that came to my mind when I saw the North Korean anchorwoman’s black dress and mournful look,” said a government official who monitored the North Korean announcement.
“This shows a big loophole in our intelligence-gathering network on North Korea,” Kwon Seon-taek, an opposition South Korean lawmaker, told reporters.
Kwon Young-se, a ruling party legislator and head of the intelligence committee at the National Assembly, said the National Intelligence Service, the main government spy agency, appeared to have been caught off guard by the North Korean announcement. “We will hold them responsible,” he said.
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.
Washington Post Editorial on Obama economic policy
Read the original here.
Obama’s simplistic view of income inequality
By Charles Lane, Published: December 19
Maybe Americans are Okunites — as in Arthur Okun, the late Yale economist and author of the 1975 book, “Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff.”
Okun saw free markets as a source of unparalleled human progress — and of big gaps between rich and poor. Indeed, he argued, markets are efficient partly because they distribute economic rewards unevenly. Government should try to smooth out income stratification, but such efforts risk undermining incentives to work and invest.
Hence the “big trade-off”: channeling income from rich to poor, Okun wrote, was like trying to carry water in a leaky bucket. He wanted to move money from rich to poor without “leaking” so much economic growth that the whole process became self-defeating.
The American public intuitively shares Okun’s concerns. Consider the responses to another question in the Gallup poll. Asked to rate the importance of alternative federal policies, the public saw both economic growth and redistribution as worthy objectives — but put the former well ahead of the latter. Some 82 percent said growth was either “extremely” or “very” important; only 46 percent said “reduc[ing] the income and wealth gap between rich and poor” was “extremely” or “very” important.
In short, the public wants fairness but retains a healthy skepticism about the federal government’s ability to achieve it.
As such, Gallup’s numbers do not bode well for President Obama’s effort, launched in a Dec. 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kan., to win reelection as a soak-the-rich populist.
The president, like Okun, acknowledged that the free market created “prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.” But he explained the recent rise in inequality too simplistically, as the result of financial deregulation and the “breathtaking greed” it enabled.
And rather than tackle the big trade-off directly, Obama tried to sidestep it. Rising inequality “hurts us all,” he argued, implying that more widely distributed income would essentially pay for itself through higher growth. He alluded to a recent study showing “that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.”
It’s true that International Monetary Fund researchers Andrew Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry reported in September that egalitarian developing countries grow faster than less egalitarian ones. But the lesson for mature industrial economies is unclear. Western Europe’s recent history suggests that flat income distribution accompanies flat economic growth. Which European country recorded the biggest decrease in inequality between 1985 and 2008? That would be Greece.
The president argued, as he has before, that more government spending on education and training is key to greater equality. No doubt education has been a source of social mobility in the past. Obama has taken some steps in the right direction, notably his “Race to the Top” program that conditions some federal educational aid on reform.
But lack of reform — not resources — remains the problem with U.S. education and with many other public-sector institutions, from housing to agriculture. The president has taken only modest steps to deal with this problem, which is not surprising given his party’s dependence on public-sector labor unions.
Public-sector unions and other interest groups wrap their causes in the rhetoric of equality. Often, what they’re really protecting are privileges that raise the cost of public services to everyone else — including citizens who earn a lot less than civil servants. Yes, Wall Street’s bonuses are stratospheric. But the New York Times recently reported that Medicaid was paying nine executives $500,000or more per year to operate nonprofit homes for the mentally disabled.
Okun’s message is that equality is a public good, whose benefits — social cohesion, political stability and the like — are worth paying for. The trick is not to overpay.
lanec@washpost.com
Obama’s simplistic view of income inequality
By Charles Lane, Published: December 19
Maybe Americans are Okunites — as in Arthur Okun, the late Yale economist and author of the 1975 book, “Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff.”
Okun saw free markets as a source of unparalleled human progress — and of big gaps between rich and poor. Indeed, he argued, markets are efficient partly because they distribute economic rewards unevenly. Government should try to smooth out income stratification, but such efforts risk undermining incentives to work and invest.
Hence the “big trade-off”: channeling income from rich to poor, Okun wrote, was like trying to carry water in a leaky bucket. He wanted to move money from rich to poor without “leaking” so much economic growth that the whole process became self-defeating.
The American public intuitively shares Okun’s concerns. Consider the responses to another question in the Gallup poll. Asked to rate the importance of alternative federal policies, the public saw both economic growth and redistribution as worthy objectives — but put the former well ahead of the latter. Some 82 percent said growth was either “extremely” or “very” important; only 46 percent said “reduc[ing] the income and wealth gap between rich and poor” was “extremely” or “very” important.
In short, the public wants fairness but retains a healthy skepticism about the federal government’s ability to achieve it.
As such, Gallup’s numbers do not bode well for President Obama’s effort, launched in a Dec. 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kan., to win reelection as a soak-the-rich populist.
The president, like Okun, acknowledged that the free market created “prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.” But he explained the recent rise in inequality too simplistically, as the result of financial deregulation and the “breathtaking greed” it enabled.
And rather than tackle the big trade-off directly, Obama tried to sidestep it. Rising inequality “hurts us all,” he argued, implying that more widely distributed income would essentially pay for itself through higher growth. He alluded to a recent study showing “that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.”
It’s true that International Monetary Fund researchers Andrew Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry reported in September that egalitarian developing countries grow faster than less egalitarian ones. But the lesson for mature industrial economies is unclear. Western Europe’s recent history suggests that flat income distribution accompanies flat economic growth. Which European country recorded the biggest decrease in inequality between 1985 and 2008? That would be Greece.
The president argued, as he has before, that more government spending on education and training is key to greater equality. No doubt education has been a source of social mobility in the past. Obama has taken some steps in the right direction, notably his “Race to the Top” program that conditions some federal educational aid on reform.
But lack of reform — not resources — remains the problem with U.S. education and with many other public-sector institutions, from housing to agriculture. The president has taken only modest steps to deal with this problem, which is not surprising given his party’s dependence on public-sector labor unions.
Public-sector unions and other interest groups wrap their causes in the rhetoric of equality. Often, what they’re really protecting are privileges that raise the cost of public services to everyone else — including citizens who earn a lot less than civil servants. Yes, Wall Street’s bonuses are stratospheric. But the New York Times recently reported that Medicaid was paying nine executives $500,000or more per year to operate nonprofit homes for the mentally disabled.
Okun’s message is that equality is a public good, whose benefits — social cohesion, political stability and the like — are worth paying for. The trick is not to overpay.
lanec@washpost.com
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Cable Company cap policies don't work?
Read the original here.
Data caps a "crude and unfair tool" for easing online congestion
By Nate Anderson | Published 12 days ago
Data caps a "crude and unfair tool" for easing online congestion
Internet providers argue that they need to impose monthly data caps on their users in order to slay the "bandwidth hogs" running wild and free through their networks, goring ordinary users with their tusks when all those users want to do is view some funny cat pictures online after a tough day at the office. The idea is that a monthly quota can reduce the amount of network congestion during peak hours throughout the month. Fact or fiction?
One piece of new research argues that it's fiction. "Our analysis confirms that data consumption is at best a poor proxy for bandwidth usage," writes Benoît Felten, chief research officer of Diffraction Analysis.
Two years ago, Felten and Herman Wagter (the man who spearheaded Amsterdam's fiber rollout and wrote about it for Ars) issued a challenge to Internet providers: show us the evidence.
"Any telco willing to actually understand what's happening there and to answer the question on the existence of hogs once and for all can extract that data and send it over to me, I will analyse it for free, on my spare time," Felten wrote in 2009. "All I ask is that they let me publish the results of said research (even though their names need not be mentioned if they don't wish it to be). Of course, if I find myself to be wrong and if indeed I manage to identify users that systematically degrade the experience for other users, I will say so publicly. If, as I suspect, there are no such users, I will also say so publicly. The data will back either of these assertions."
A midsized American DSL provider finally stepped up to the plate, offering fine-grained detail over the course of a single day from one aggregation link that served 5,138 users. Felten and Wagter broke down the daily data consumption into five-minute increments and went to work.
You're doing it wrong
Their detailed analysis is available as a paid report, but Felten did make his conclusions public this week. He found that 48 percent of active Internet customers "are amongst the top 10 percent of bandwidth users at one point or another during peak hours." Controlling real-time congestion by going after just a few high-data monthly users, then, is unlikely to be effective.
"Data caps, therefore, are a very crude and unfair tool when it comes to targeting potentially disruptive users," writes Felten. "The correlation between real-time bandwidth usage and data downloaded over time is weak, and the net cast by data caps captures users that cannot possibly be responsible for congestion."
His solution: look only at those causing actual congestion during periods of peak use—generally four to five hours in the evening. (Comcast has employed such a system, though it also uses data caps.)
What Internet users do outside that time should have little effect on other network users (because the aggregation links aren't even close to saturation) or on the Internet provider (because the marginal cost of additional traffic on one's own network is essentially zero, and peering and transit arrangements with other ISPs and backbone providers generally involve paying for bandwidth rather than data). So data caps serve as a general warning to subscribers against excessive use—whatever that is—while doing very little to address actual congestion problems.
Data caps a "crude and unfair tool" for easing online congestion
By Nate Anderson | Published 12 days ago
Data caps a "crude and unfair tool" for easing online congestion
Internet providers argue that they need to impose monthly data caps on their users in order to slay the "bandwidth hogs" running wild and free through their networks, goring ordinary users with their tusks when all those users want to do is view some funny cat pictures online after a tough day at the office. The idea is that a monthly quota can reduce the amount of network congestion during peak hours throughout the month. Fact or fiction?
One piece of new research argues that it's fiction. "Our analysis confirms that data consumption is at best a poor proxy for bandwidth usage," writes Benoît Felten, chief research officer of Diffraction Analysis.
Two years ago, Felten and Herman Wagter (the man who spearheaded Amsterdam's fiber rollout and wrote about it for Ars) issued a challenge to Internet providers: show us the evidence.
"Any telco willing to actually understand what's happening there and to answer the question on the existence of hogs once and for all can extract that data and send it over to me, I will analyse it for free, on my spare time," Felten wrote in 2009. "All I ask is that they let me publish the results of said research (even though their names need not be mentioned if they don't wish it to be). Of course, if I find myself to be wrong and if indeed I manage to identify users that systematically degrade the experience for other users, I will say so publicly. If, as I suspect, there are no such users, I will also say so publicly. The data will back either of these assertions."
A midsized American DSL provider finally stepped up to the plate, offering fine-grained detail over the course of a single day from one aggregation link that served 5,138 users. Felten and Wagter broke down the daily data consumption into five-minute increments and went to work.
You're doing it wrong
Their detailed analysis is available as a paid report, but Felten did make his conclusions public this week. He found that 48 percent of active Internet customers "are amongst the top 10 percent of bandwidth users at one point or another during peak hours." Controlling real-time congestion by going after just a few high-data monthly users, then, is unlikely to be effective.
"Data caps, therefore, are a very crude and unfair tool when it comes to targeting potentially disruptive users," writes Felten. "The correlation between real-time bandwidth usage and data downloaded over time is weak, and the net cast by data caps captures users that cannot possibly be responsible for congestion."
His solution: look only at those causing actual congestion during periods of peak use—generally four to five hours in the evening. (Comcast has employed such a system, though it also uses data caps.)
What Internet users do outside that time should have little effect on other network users (because the aggregation links aren't even close to saturation) or on the Internet provider (because the marginal cost of additional traffic on one's own network is essentially zero, and peering and transit arrangements with other ISPs and backbone providers generally involve paying for bandwidth rather than data). So data caps serve as a general warning to subscribers against excessive use—whatever that is—while doing very little to address actual congestion problems.
Even media in other countries are taking notice. The quote of the day: "...As a former constitutional law professor, the President should know better.” -Raha Wala of Human Rights First
Seriously, all I hear is crickets from the people who complained that George Bush stomped on everyone's civil rights, and waterboarding. I'm not saying he was completely in the clear; more so that Obama should not be held to a different standard. In my opinion, from the language in this bill, and the targeted assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki (I'm not saying he was a good guy, but it set a precedent for indefinite detention via hellfire missile of an American citizen who had not been arrested or charged with anything yet), and SOPA, somewhere George Orwell is in a grave, saying "I told you so."
Read the original here.
Americans face Guantánamo detention after Obama climbdown | World news
Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011 23.34 EST
Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.
Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".
The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.
The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.
"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."
There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.
The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".
Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.
"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."
Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.
But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".
"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."
Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.
"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."
Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.
"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"
Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.
The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.
But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.
Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.
Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.
"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."
In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.
The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.
"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.
Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".
Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.
Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. "The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.
Seriously, all I hear is crickets from the people who complained that George Bush stomped on everyone's civil rights, and waterboarding. I'm not saying he was completely in the clear; more so that Obama should not be held to a different standard. In my opinion, from the language in this bill, and the targeted assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki (I'm not saying he was a good guy, but it set a precedent for indefinite detention via hellfire missile of an American citizen who had not been arrested or charged with anything yet), and SOPA, somewhere George Orwell is in a grave, saying "I told you so."
Read the original here.
Americans face Guantánamo detention after Obama climbdown | World news
Chris McGreal in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011 23.34 EST
Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.
Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".
The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.
The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.
"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."
There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.
The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".
Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.
"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."
Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.
But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".
"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."
Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.
"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."
Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.
"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"
Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.
The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.
But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.
Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.
Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.
"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."
In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.
The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.
"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.
Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".
Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.
Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed. "The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.
WH OKs indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects
Here's the big story for the day. Read the original here.
December 14, 2011 9:22 PM
WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
By Phil Hirschkorn
December 14, 2011 9:22 PM
WH OKs military detention of terrorism suspects
By Phil Hirschkorn
(CBS News) The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.
As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.
The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been “softened.” The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.
“We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” the White House statement said.
The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year.
While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare “enemy combatants,” as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved.
“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals.
“My concern is that you don’t want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty” as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: “A case that we’re investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?”
Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees.
“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill.”
Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower.
By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain.
© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.
The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been “softened.” The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.
“We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” the White House statement said.
The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year.
While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare “enemy combatants,” as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved.
“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals.
“My concern is that you don’t want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty” as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: “A case that we’re investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?”
Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees.
“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill.”
Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower.
By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain.
© 2011 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Whose fault is it? The minority rich or the minority powerful?
Is it the fault of the people who have been successful, or the people who set the rules. How many morality tales are there about individuals who acquire the power to legislate over others, set the rules, etc? "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who should the "99%" really be looking at protesting?
Read the orginal here.
Opinion: Federal government created the mess we’re in, not those who are wealthy
Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2011 : 8:02 a.m.
Guest Column | Ben H. Colmery III
It is clear to me that the “Wall Street Occupiers” are going after the symptoms of our problems, not the disease. Being rich is not an evil thing — it is how you become rich that is at issue. The naive protestors do not seem to understand that the federal government is the problem and has created the mess with which we are in.
Federal spending, such as the $700 billion “stimulus package,” does not generate wealth - it only transfers money from one pocket to another. While it is nice to have a new bicycle bridge over U.S. 23 next to Geddes Road. the bridge is not worth anything because no one will buy it.
Wealth is created by establishing a business that makes something or provides a service. Making something to sell is easy to understand. The item has value and if produced for a profit the business has value to an investor or buyer. The service industry, even a hamburger stand, develops wealth if it is run properly and generates a profit. When the owner sells the business part of its value is the “blue sky” or “goodwill’ it has created. People are employed and continue to be employed when wealth is created. Simply paying for infrastructure repair robs Peter to pay Paul — and both are out of a job when the money dries up.
Crony capitalism is a major problem perpetuated by the federal government. Investing our tax dollars in favored companies under the philosophic argument that it will be good for our country is simply wrong. Of course, Solyndra is the current classic example. Two years ago the federal government invested in a South Korean company (L.G.) that makes car batteries for hybrid vehicles located near Kalamazoo. The list is endless. These practices simply must stop.
It is the well intentioned legislation with unintended consequences created by federal legislation that is even a larger problem. The “Affordable Housing Act” generated by President Carter is the genesis of the recent housing market meltdown contributing to the resulting recession. The money made by “Wall Street” resulted from this legislation and the illusion of the housing market boom. “Wall Street” merely reacted to the gold mine presented to them by the federal government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are equally guilty of contributing to the meltdown by underwriting worthless mortgages — all in the name of a federal “feel good” program to make home ownership accessible to people who couldn’t afford the mortgages.
Taxing the rich is a romantic thought — the Robin Hood approach, but it doesn’t solve the problem. As per Forbes magazine, the top 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States are worth 1.5 trillion dollars. Even if the federal government taxed them at 100 percent of worth, this money would not even cover half of this year’s budget, let alone make a dent in the 14+ trillion dollar national debt. There are approximately 1,400,000 people in the top 1 percent of wage earners. This one percent paid 38% of the income tax revenue in 2008. To generate a trillion dollars more this group would be required to each pay an additional $715,000 in taxes. The bottom 50% of wage earners paid 2.59% of the income tax revenue. So, who is carrying the load?
And as for corporations — they don’t pay taxes, you do for them. Taxes are imbedded in the cost of doing business and are included in the cost of goods and services. As previously stated — the federal government doesn’t create wealth, it transfers existing wealth.
The creation of the Federal Reserve — a private bank that controls our money supply was and is a bad idea. There simply are too many connections between banks, investment firms, and the Federal Reserve — without a glimmer of transparency. We must return to the banking system prior to Jekyll Island and place the money supply back in the hands of Congress and “the people.”
If the “Wall Street Occupiers” and those in our own Liberty Square really want to have an impact they must focus on Washington and ask for accountability from our government. But wait, the Tea Party has already done this — without the violence.
Ben H. Colmery III is a veterinarian and a long-time resident of Ann Arbor. He is in private practice and has been on the faculty at Michigan State University and on staff at veterinary specialty practices.
Read the orginal here.
Opinion: Federal government created the mess we’re in, not those who are wealthy
Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2011 : 8:02 a.m.
Guest Column | Ben H. Colmery III
It is clear to me that the “Wall Street Occupiers” are going after the symptoms of our problems, not the disease. Being rich is not an evil thing — it is how you become rich that is at issue. The naive protestors do not seem to understand that the federal government is the problem and has created the mess with which we are in.
Federal spending, such as the $700 billion “stimulus package,” does not generate wealth - it only transfers money from one pocket to another. While it is nice to have a new bicycle bridge over U.S. 23 next to Geddes Road. the bridge is not worth anything because no one will buy it.
Wealth is created by establishing a business that makes something or provides a service. Making something to sell is easy to understand. The item has value and if produced for a profit the business has value to an investor or buyer. The service industry, even a hamburger stand, develops wealth if it is run properly and generates a profit. When the owner sells the business part of its value is the “blue sky” or “goodwill’ it has created. People are employed and continue to be employed when wealth is created. Simply paying for infrastructure repair robs Peter to pay Paul — and both are out of a job when the money dries up.
Crony capitalism is a major problem perpetuated by the federal government. Investing our tax dollars in favored companies under the philosophic argument that it will be good for our country is simply wrong. Of course, Solyndra is the current classic example. Two years ago the federal government invested in a South Korean company (L.G.) that makes car batteries for hybrid vehicles located near Kalamazoo. The list is endless. These practices simply must stop.
It is the well intentioned legislation with unintended consequences created by federal legislation that is even a larger problem. The “Affordable Housing Act” generated by President Carter is the genesis of the recent housing market meltdown contributing to the resulting recession. The money made by “Wall Street” resulted from this legislation and the illusion of the housing market boom. “Wall Street” merely reacted to the gold mine presented to them by the federal government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are equally guilty of contributing to the meltdown by underwriting worthless mortgages — all in the name of a federal “feel good” program to make home ownership accessible to people who couldn’t afford the mortgages.
Taxing the rich is a romantic thought — the Robin Hood approach, but it doesn’t solve the problem. As per Forbes magazine, the top 400 wealthiest individuals in the United States are worth 1.5 trillion dollars. Even if the federal government taxed them at 100 percent of worth, this money would not even cover half of this year’s budget, let alone make a dent in the 14+ trillion dollar national debt. There are approximately 1,400,000 people in the top 1 percent of wage earners. This one percent paid 38% of the income tax revenue in 2008. To generate a trillion dollars more this group would be required to each pay an additional $715,000 in taxes. The bottom 50% of wage earners paid 2.59% of the income tax revenue. So, who is carrying the load?
And as for corporations — they don’t pay taxes, you do for them. Taxes are imbedded in the cost of doing business and are included in the cost of goods and services. As previously stated — the federal government doesn’t create wealth, it transfers existing wealth.
The creation of the Federal Reserve — a private bank that controls our money supply was and is a bad idea. There simply are too many connections between banks, investment firms, and the Federal Reserve — without a glimmer of transparency. We must return to the banking system prior to Jekyll Island and place the money supply back in the hands of Congress and “the people.”
If the “Wall Street Occupiers” and those in our own Liberty Square really want to have an impact they must focus on Washington and ask for accountability from our government. But wait, the Tea Party has already done this — without the violence.
Ben H. Colmery III is a veterinarian and a long-time resident of Ann Arbor. He is in private practice and has been on the faculty at Michigan State University and on staff at veterinary specialty practices.
Quote of the Day
Regarding the secret drone lost in Iran:
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
I'm going to go out on a limb, and say Iran will respond much like this episode of The Simpsons:
Read the original here.
Obama calls on Iran to give back downed US drone
By MATTHEW LEE | AP – 20 mins ago
Obama calls on Iran to give back downed US drone
By MATTHEW LEE | AP – 20 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.
"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."
Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."
He added, "Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country."
On Tuesday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said authorities have shrugged off the U.S. request. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for the return of the unmanned aircraft.
Obama wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know "just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday called the downing of the drone "a significant intelligence loss."
"For us to go in and take out the drone that crashed, I think, would have been a fairly simple operation," he said on CBS's "The Early Show." But Cheney said the administration "basically limited itself to saying please give it back." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behavior that Clinton said indicated "that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region."
"We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world," Clinton told reporters at a State Department news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
"Given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners," she said.
Panetta said the request to return the drone was appropriate. "I don't expect that that will happen," he said. "But I think it's important to make that request."
Neither Obama nor Clinton would provide details of the drone request, but diplomatic exchanges between Washington to Tehran are often handled by Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran. The State Department said Monday that the Swiss ambassador to Iran met with Iranian foreign ministry officials last week but refused to say what they discussed.
Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month. Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.
Despite the incident, Clinton said the administration and its allies would continue to push Iran to engage over its nuclear program while at the same time increasing pressure on the regime with new, enhanced sanctions.
"We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it," she said.
Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.
"We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world," he said. "We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime."
Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
___
Associated Press writers Ian James and Fabiola Sanchez in Venezuela contributed to this report.
President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.
"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."
Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."
He added, "Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country."
On Tuesday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said authorities have shrugged off the U.S. request. Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi said the United States should apologize for invading Iranian air space instead of asking for the return of the unmanned aircraft.
Obama wouldn't comment on what the Iranians might learn from studying the downed aircraft. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it's difficult to know "just frankly how much they're going to be able to get from having obtained those parts."
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday called the downing of the drone "a significant intelligence loss."
"For us to go in and take out the drone that crashed, I think, would have been a fairly simple operation," he said on CBS's "The Early Show." But Cheney said the administration "basically limited itself to saying please give it back." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Panetta said they're not optimistic about getting the drone back because of recent Iranian behavior that Clinton said indicated "that the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region."
"We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world," Clinton told reporters at a State Department news conference with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
"Given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners," she said.
Panetta said the request to return the drone was appropriate. "I don't expect that that will happen," he said. "But I think it's important to make that request."
Neither Obama nor Clinton would provide details of the drone request, but diplomatic exchanges between Washington to Tehran are often handled by Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Iran. The State Department said Monday that the Swiss ambassador to Iran met with Iranian foreign ministry officials last week but refused to say what they discussed.
Iran TV reported earlier Monday that Iranian experts were in the final stages of recovering data from the RQ-170 Sentinel, which went down in Iran earlier this month. Tehran has cited the capture as a victory for Iran and displayed the nearly intact drone on state TV. U.S. officials say the aircraft malfunctioned and was not brought down by Iran.
Despite the incident, Clinton said the administration and its allies would continue to push Iran to engage over its nuclear program while at the same time increasing pressure on the regime with new, enhanced sanctions.
"We obviously believe strongly in a diplomatic approach. We want to see the Iranians engage and, as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective, but we are not giving up on it," she said.
Standing beside Clinton, Hague agreed.
"We're not giving up on engagement with Iran, but on a number of occasions Iran has behaved in a way in recent weeks and months which has intensified confrontation with the rest of the world," he said. "We have seen an increasing predilection for dangerous and illegal adventures on the part of at least parts of the Iranian regime."
Clinton and Hague referred to the storming of British diplomatic compounds in Tehran, allegations that Iran tried to arrange the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Iran's ongoing support for militant groups and its continued defiance of demands to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.
___
Associated Press writers Ian James and Fabiola Sanchez in Venezuela contributed to this report.
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