Archive for March, 2009
Bracketed
I’m not a basketball fan, and the last time I filled in a NCAA bracket was probably in high school. But Obama’s bracket has been drawing a lot of attention, and I wouldn’t really be me if I didn’t post about it. Coach K: “Somebody said we’re not in President Obama’s Final Four,’’ coach Mike [...]
New Report Complicates Stimulus Money Rejection Games
Various Republican governors have recently discovered that they have principled objections to receiving significant portions of the stimulus money designated for their states: Led by Republican Governors Association chairman Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a group of conservative GOP governors has rejected or considered rejecting the unemployment money or other funding from the $787 billion [...]
Revisionist History From Team Obama
A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout – New York Times (3/14/09): The administration official said the Treasury Department did its own legal analysis and concluded that those contracts could not be broken. The official noted that even a provision recently pushed through Congress by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, had an [...]
Bonus Payments Need A New Name
Nobody has ever pretended that the $165 million AIG paid out in bonuses to employees of their London unit — the unit which caused all the losses which required the spectacular and ongoing bailout of the company — constitute a conventional performance bonus. What they did pretend — and this has been a common pretense [...]
The Idiots Are In Charge
Fed chief: Recession ‘probably’ will end this year – USA Today (3/15/09): America’s recession “probably” will end this year if the government succeeds in bolstering the banking system, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Sunday in a rare television interview. White House: Economy still has ‘strong’ underpinnings – USA Today (3/15/09) The economy is fundamentally [...]
Thoroughly Unexpected Mathematical Illiteracy
We are truly a mathematically illiterate nation. Here’s an example of a respected blogger and a national polling outfit both managing to make themselves look pretty silly (the latter much more than the former). Greg Sargent noted yesterday that a new Pew poll confirms an earlier Rasmussen poll that showed support for Republican leaders dropping [...]
Truth-in-Journalism
Here’s what passes for responsible journalism these days. The story says: But the revelations that billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars were funneled through AIG to Goldman Sachs — one of Wall Street’s most politically connected firms — and to European banks including Deutsche Bank, France’s Societe Generale and the UK’s Barclays could stoke further outrage [...]
Obstructionism Goes Bipartisan
It’s starting to look like our whole damn system of government is broken, and the best we can hope for is seriously imperfect legislative solutions to the most pressing issues of the day. And the blame seems to lie fairly and squarely with the written and unwritten rules under which the Senate operates. It is [...]
A New Terrorist Profile
James G. Cummings was a rich white man. Very rich; the trust fund established for him by his father “has an annual income of $10 million.” He was also a nasty piece of work, according to his wife, who shot and killed him last December (while their 9-year-old daughter was in the house). She said [...]
In Search Of Shovel Ready Projects
So now they’re starting to talk of another stimulus bill. Which is going to require more shovel-ready projects. But if the last stimulus bill had to contain a heavy dose of tax cuts because there weren’t enough shovel-ready projects, then it’s not clear how any more are going to be generated in short order. Unless [...]