Hundreds marched through downtown Hong Kong on Sunday to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of China's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989. It was one of the few public commemorations on Chinese soil.
Many of the nation's important metropolitan corridors manage to have unbearably congested highways and airports. In the few places where intercity rail has the capacity and speed to be competitive with alternatives, Amtrak has no problem filling its trains.
Rail construction obviously has high upfront capital costs, but they're likely to prove worth it in the long run, particularly given that trains can run on electric power, which will grow steadily greener and become increasingly attractive in a world of rising oil prices (check).
And of course, airline service has not only become miserable and unreliable as the system has become overburdened and unprofitable, but it's also pretty dirty, in terms of carbon emissions. The standard approximation has planes emitting as much per mile as cars, but of course planes travel much longer distances and at higher altitudes, where emissions have a more significant effect.
Word is, the president really wants to leave office with a high-speed rail network as part of his legacy. Sounds good to me.
While the international naval presence off the east African coast gets most of the attention, the problems in the Gulf of Guinea remain a serious problem that can spill over into a problem impacting your wallet.
General Motors Corp and the U.S. government finalized plans for the battered company to reorganize, setting the stage for America's largest-ever industrial bankruptcy filing before markets open on Monday.More thoughts here: Protecting Black PanthersThe charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force -- one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.
The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he "supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews."
The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.
A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960's and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen
I am constantly surprised by the number of people, who in the face of all history, facts, experience, and reason, remained enamoured with socialism.Every government action in the economic sphere has been devised to progressively undermine private economic activity, with a view to installing Hugo Chávez’s “Twenty-First Century Socialism.” Convinced his brand of state control and ownership is only possible after effectively erasing virtually all private-sector activity, he has followed a policy of price controls, punitive tax schemes and discretionary legal changes since becoming president in 1999.
When coupled with his nationalization of numerous manufacturing and commercial operations—typically paying a fraction of a company’s worth, or nothing at all—there has been a catastrophic shrinkage of Venezuela’s private sector. The industrial base has been halved from more than fourteen thousand factories ten years ago to some seven thousand today.
Foreign investment has diminished to negligible amounts during the Chávez regime, resulting from a frontal assault on foreign corporate interests, which have included propaganda attacks, obstacles to dividend repatriation, whimsical nationalizations and physical intimidation of expatriate executives.
In short, the Chávez regime is not interested in promoting production and efficiency, let alone competitiveness. The goal is to achieve as much control as possible of all economic activities. To try to explain the government’s plight, Planning Minister Jorge Giordani openly acknowledged in April “socialism can only be achieved through scarcity.”
The transcending tragedy for Venezuela and all Latin America is that by destroying the country’s economy, Hugo Chávez is critically, perhaps fatally, undermining the nation’s fifty-year democratic history as he pursues his distorted, malevolent dream.
The GOP's purity problemRepublicans are in a debate pitting ideological purity versus big-tent inclusiveness. The dust-up between Rush Limbaugh and Colin L. Powell over whether Powell is still a Republican is more than the political equivalent of a show-business feud. It reflects the perennial -- but for Republicans in 2009, painfully pertinent -- question of whether it's good for a major political party to be a big tent or whether too much inclusiveness turns it into a three-ring circus.
To the delight of Democrats, Limbaugh -- described by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger the other day as the 650-pound gorilla in the Republican Party -- has become the leader of the party's purity police.
The number of Americans who identify as Republicans is on a steep decline, and the party's demographics are increasingly unreflective of the nation's. Republicans are an endangered species in the congressional delegations of the Northeastern states and have suffered reverses even in traditionally Republican strongholds. (Virginia now has two Democratic senators.) Whatever the lessons of 1994, Democrats have been successful in recent years by recruiting candidates for the House and Senate who didn't pass liberal litmus tests on abortion or gun control.
In politics, like in religion, there is a problem in trying to compete to be the most pure. Because you can always be more pure, and there is always someone who thinks they can get ahead by pointing out your impurities, so you have to respond be being even more pure. So it never ends, until everyone is driven mad by trying to be the purest of all.
Examples can be found in revolutionary France and Russia, the Puritans, some Muslims today, the McCarthy era, the environmental and animal-rights movements, and the impulse behind "political correctness."
The Republicans are the latest to succumb to this impulse. In the 1980s, it was the Democrats who were caught in the purity trap, until Clinton with his "triangulation" broke free of the litmus tests of the progressive left.
Friends, classmates, and Judge Sotomayor herself say that sense of racial identity as a central political category — and of her own place on the stage as not just a wise judge, but as a wise Latina — were formed in the unlikely crucible of Princeton.Further reinforcing my take on her that Princeton/Yale are the most important keys to her beliefs.
One of the commentators to the post above asks if it is 2009 or 1984 in Texas.[T]he Texas Senate approved an amendment authorizing the damn license-plate readers after TXDoT denied a request by the DEA last year, discussed previously on Grits here and here.
In their blog post on the story, the San Antonio Current lets us know that "Texans who are concerned about Article 33’s Orwellian implications can use a form set up by the ACLU to ask their representatives to call for it to be taken out of the bill.
"Potential for significant unintended consequences lie in these devices' deployment, particularly in Texas, where high traffic fines, sometimes with absurdist "civil" fees larded on top, have combined to leave more than one in 10 drivers with outstanding arrest warrants - mostly for traffic tickets - widespread use of license plate readers would make theoretically possible a dragnet that would overwhelm the jails and courts in a heartbeat if it were ever implemented to even a fraction of its full potential.
Texas Senate passes new top-10 admissions rule for UT-AustinA new top 10 percent admissions rule for the University of Texas at Austin is on its way to the governor after a reluctant Senate sponsor literally held her nose and voted for the bill.
It provides that the UT-Austin campus can limit automatic admissions to 75 percent of the spots in its 2011 freshman class. The bill Shapiro authored initially would have limited students in the top 10 percent of their graduating high school class to 60 percent of a freshman class at any public university.
The 12-year-old rule was designed to boost diversity on campuses after a court banned the use of race and ethnicity in admissions, a ruling since overturned.
But UT-Austin, along with Texas A&M University and UT-Dallas to a lesser extent, have been overwhelmed with the must-take students, leaving little discretion to consider other talented students. This fall, UT estimates, as much as 86 percent of the freshman will have come from top-10 admissions.
At Texas A&M, those admissions are expected to take up half of its freshman class.
Because the other colleges are not yet strapped for spaces to offer exceptional and out-of-state students, the House carved out the exception for only the UT-Austin campus.
Texas Legislature moves to give small business a tax break
More bills and changes to Texas law here: Measures before Texas Legislature may affect Texans' daily routines and a summary is also here.Small businesses would see their state taxes cut for two years under legislation passed by the Texas Senate this week.
Companies with $1 million or less in annual revenue would be exempt from paying the state franchise tax, up from the current exemption of $300,000, under the bill sponsored by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston. The Texas House has passed a similar bill.
Texas businesses filed 730,000 reports for 2008 under the state’s revised franchise tax. About 140,000 had to pay the tax, based on the exemption for businesses with less than $300,000 in revenue or with a tax liability of $1,000 or less. Excluding businesses that asked for more time, the tax generated $4.3 billion for general revenue and the state’s Property Tax Relief Fund, which is designed to help pay for education.
An estimated 451,000 businesses didn’t owe any franchise tax last year. Raising the exemption to $1 million would let 132,000 more businesses avoid the tax, DeSilva said.
The Senate and House bills have differences that the two bodies must iron out before a final version can go to Gov. Rick Perry for signing. The Senate’s $1 million revenue exemption would expire Dec. 31, 2011, and be replaced by a permanent $600,000 exemption. In the House version, the $1 million exemption would revert to $300,000 after Jan. 1, 2012.
Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos announced plans Friday for a program that allows first-time DWI and drug offenders to avoid conviction, an idea she acknowledged could be a hard sell to the public.
The plan, referred to as pretrial diversion and scheduled to begin in August, was heartily endorsed by the county’s defense attorneys, supported by the sheriff deputies’ and the Houston police officers’ unions, but strongly opposed by the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
“What we’re trying to do is prevent recidivism. So, it’s a carrot-stick approach,” Lykos said. “With respect to DWI, that’s an absolute plague in Harris County. If we can get first offenders, get them into treatment … and divert them so they don’t become repeat offenders, that’s going to have enormous dividends. And the same thing for first-time drug possession.”
Calling it a “risky proposition in this day and age,” Lykos asked for support for the driving-while-intoxicated policy Friday morning at Rice University during a meeting of the Houston-Harris County Office of Drug Policy, garnering rousing applause from those present.
CNN: Treasury chief to meet with Chinese leadersTreasury Secretary Tim Geithner is set to meet with several high-ranking members of the Chinese leadership this week, marking the Obama administration's first major overture to the powerhouse nation.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will push for better relations with China.
Geithner left Saturday for meetings in Beijing, where he'll discuss ways to strengthen relations between China and the United States, according to the Treasury Department.
Sixty-three percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they would favor an increase in the federal government's influence over their own health care plans in an attempt to lower costs and provide coverage to more Americans; 36 percent were opposed.
The poll also suggests that slightly more than six out of 10 think the government should guarantee health care for all Americans, with 38 percent opposed.
The vast majority of American Muslims are not radicals. But, leaving aside debates about whether there is something in the Muslim religion that inherently and uniquely lends itself to a violent, extremist interpretation, the reality is that an extremist and violent strain is present in modern-day Islam to a far greater extent than in other major religions.
A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center two years ago found that about 13% of American Muslims—and a quarter of those under 30—felt that suicide bombings in defense of Islam were justified in at least some cases. The poll also found that in some ways, native-born African-American Muslims are more radicalized than immigrants. Radical Islamism may be an attractive ideology for those who feel disenfranchised.
To ignore or downplay these alarming facts is myopic. If the mainstream media continue to do so out of misguided sensitivity, it will only undermine their credibility when it comes to battling real bigotry.
According to the Pew Research Group, fully 39 percent of the American people identify themselves as political independents, the highest percentage in 70 years.
As Andrew Kohut of Pew put it, "Centrism has emerged as a dominant factor in public opinion as the Obama era begins. ... Republicans and Democrats are even more divided than in the past, while the growing political middle is steadfastly mixed in its beliefs about government, the free market and other values that underlie views on contemporary issues and policies."
So, who represents the middle of the road?
Why is it that while centrists make up the majority of the country, they don't have a seat at the table when it comes to running the country? Why do both parties put their leaders through an ideological litmus test before they give them the keys to the car?
So the question that comes to mind is, if moderates can't get any respect from either party, why don't they form their own? Isn't it time to form a third party?
America has been throughout its history living a kind of Hegelian dialectic. One party represents the thesis, the other the antithesis, and from that springs a grand synthesis. It has been that way with our court system, which is adversarial, with a prosecution and a defense. It has been that with our politics, with a majority and a minority. It has been that with race, frankly, with the stark division between black and white.
But as we are finding with race, things aren't always as easy as black and white. And it might be time for our politics to evolve to include a third party.
The next election, like the last one, won't be decided by liberal or conservatives. It will be decided by the vast middle, those centrist voters who see the complexities in life and are unimpressed by ideological absolutists.
Another day in the life of the most ethical Congress, ever.A Pennsylvania defense contractor who got millions of dollars in congressional earmarks from Rep. John Murtha has been blocked from doing business with the Navy amid allegations of fraud.
During a brief news conference Friday at the Johnstown event, Murtha turned aside questions about the suspension of Kuchera Defense Systems Inc., a family-run business that has supported him with $60,000 to his campaign and to his political action committee since 2002.
Over the past two years, Murtha has secured $14.7 million in congressionally directed funds known as "earmarks" for Kuchera to perform work for the military, a tiny slice of Murtha's earmarks overall.Kuchera is one of two firms with longtime ties to Murtha that were raided by the FBI in recent months in a Justice Department criminal investigation of campaign fundraising involving defense contractors.
In the last two years alone, Murtha has directed $78 million in earmarks to clients of a Washington-area lobbying firm, PMA, the second business that the FBI recently raided. A former staffer on Murtha's subcommittee, Paul Magliocchetti, left Capitol Hill to start the lobbying firm in 1989, the same year Murtha became chairman of the subcommittee.
From 2005 through 2007, more than one out of every five dollars Murtha collected in campaign contributions came from PMA lobbyists or their clients — over a million dollars in all, according to Federal Election Commission records.
In a 15-month span ending March 31, employees of the seven defense contractors sponsoring the Johnstown show this week put over $200,000 into Murtha's campaign account. The seven are Lockheed Martin Corp., the Boeing Co., BAE Systems PLC, Northrop Grumman Corp., General Dynamics Corp., Raytheon Co. and DRS Technologies Inc.
Next Wednesday, Murtha has scheduled a fundraiser in a Washington, D.C., town house next door to Democratic Party headquarters.
Murtha hasn't had a close re-election race in decades, routinely getting nearly 70 percent of the vote.Last year, he stumbled and had to publicly apologize for saying his home base of western Pennsylvania is racist in talking about Barack Obama's prospects for winning the state, which Obama was able to do. A deluge of campaign contributions from defense contractors and congressional Democrats rescued Murtha in time for election day.
Eight of the current nine are graduates of either Harvard or Yale, and all nine will have been out of the appellate courts.She continues to be lauded as a fresh voice by most of the media. But her skin color or ethnic background will not be as influential as the Princeton/Yale education she received, her poltical background, or her time on the federal bench. She appears to have internalized the same old elite, politically correct thinking that permeates our colleges and law schools.
Now, don't get me wrong -- it is great that she is so successful. Good for her for getting ahead and making money, and more power to her. It is what being American is all about. It also speaks volumes about our society that someone who suspects racism at every turn experienced so little of it on her rise into the elite. Being a Puerto Rican woman didn't seem to exactly hurt her, did it?There are two sides to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America's power elite.
Yet Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx — she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale.
And Sotomayor's life and lifestyle after law school largely resemble the background of many lawyers who rise to powerful positions in Washington.
She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years — Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That's the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a kid from the South Bronx.
She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes. Her brother, Dr. Juan Sotomayor, is a physician in North Syracuse, N.Y., whose practice doesn't accept Medicaid or Medicare — programs for the poor and elderly — according to its Web site.
The "riches" part of Sotomayor's rags-to-riches story began when she left her low-paying job in that prosecutor's office and joined the Pavia & Harcourt law firm. Her clients included Fendi, maker of luxury purses that she was unlikely to have seen as a child in the Bronx.
Mr. Obama announced his selections for 12 ambassador posts on Wednesday, on top of six announced previously. Of the 18 nominees to date, just five are career diplomats, tapped for Iraq, Kosovo, Iceland, Brazil and Sri Lanka. The rest are a mix of fund-raisers, political figures, scholars and others from the private sector assigned desirable posts in places like Britain, France, Japan, China, Argentina, Ireland and Vatican City.
The practice of sending top fund-raisers to prestigious embassies is nothing new for presidents of either party. But that is what makes Mr. Obama’s nominations so noteworthy. For a candidate who made grand promises to bring change to a capital where power and position are greased by money, the latest selections are a reminder that there are limits to just how much change the new president intends to bring.
Thirteen-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kansas, spelled "laodicean," Thursday night to take top honors in the 82nd annual Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The eighth-grader won $40,000 in cash and prizes for nailing the final word. Pronounced lay-odd-uh-see-an, the word means lukewarm or indifferent, particularly in matters of politics or religion.
Rep. Murtha inserted a total of $166.5 million worth of earmarks in last year's defense appropriations bill, $73.6 million of which went to some of his biggest contributors. The recipients of those earmarks donated a total of $313,150 to Rep. Murtha's reelection campaign or his leadership PAC during the 2008 election.
"Jack Murtha is the poster boy for pay-to-play politics," said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, which has asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate Mr. Murtha and two of his colleagues, Rep. James Moran (D-VA) and Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-IN), on the defense appropriations panel for allegedly steering in exchange for hefty campaign contributions millions of dollars worth of earmarks to a now-defunct lobbying firm staffed by former Murtha aides.
"But we must end the widespread practice of what appears to be trading earmarks for campaign cash. This game distorts our nation's spending priorities and erodes public trust in our government."
Right now, the United States has responded to a lack of demand for its Treasuries through a questionable and disturbing method: we're buying our own debt. That allows the yields to remain low, but buying our own debt is somewhat akin to creating your own credit card. Eventually, you have to acknowledge that the money you create on the books never really existed, unless the United States plans to simply print money to pay off all the bonds.
That would create a level of inflation not seen in the West since the Weimar Republic, and will effectively force the rest of the world to avoid U.S. currency and investments as unsound. It would, for the first time in decades, put the United States on the financial sideline.
We need to demonstrate responsibility for investors to retain their confidence in the United States as a guarantor of stability, economic and otherwise. The downgrade in the United Kingdom's bond rating is a signal flare to the United States that we will be next – and that our ready source of bondholders will look elsewhere for that stability. Will we wake up before the United States gets sidelined?
California to U.S.: Back us up for new loansSo California wants us to cosign a loan. Well, well, well.In a move with only one modern-day precedent, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration and members of Congress for federal loan guarantees to help the state out of a desperate, multibillion-dollar jam.
California is not asking for cash, like the tens of billions given to AIG, General Motors or Morgan Stanley. Instead, the state with the worst credit rating in the nation is asking that Washington act as a sort of co-signer on the state's borrowing, to be backed up with money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Come this summer, California will need to borrow money simply to pay for day-to-day operations. The state does that routinely every year. But this time, the amount California must borrow is a lot higher. And the tight credit market and questions about California's ability to repay are likely to make borrowing extremely expensive for the state.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a House committee last week that he did not have authority to use financial rescue money to help state governments. But he did not rule out assistance. He said California's request would have to be decided in Congress.
The idea's prospects in Congress are uncertain. But California has far more clout in Washington than any other state, with the nation's largest congressional delegation and a San Franciscan, Nancy Pelosi, as speaker of the House.
Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Committee on Financial Services, said he supports legislation to help California and other cash-strapped cities.
I hope so, too.In his first attempt to steer clear of the Blagojevich pay-to-play scandal, Mr. Burris swore before state legislators that he had not talked to anyone from the governor’s fund-raising machine before he was offered the seat vacated by President Obama.
That flat denial, which successfully secured the seat with Senate Democratic leaders, was later amended piecemeal by the senator into the grudging admission that, well yes, he did talk privately several times with the governor’s brother, Robert, who was intent on political fund-raising. The senator’s shifting accounts properly caused the Senate to open an ethics inquiry and an Illinois prosecutor to look into possible perjury.
The governor was arrested soon after, and Mr. Burris never did make a donation before he was nominated as Mr. Blagojevich fought impeachment. With the scandal raging, Mr. Burris should have had enough sense to decline the post.
But he wanted to be a senator, and now he insists that the wiretap backs his (current) version of events and he never paid to play.
Only in Illinois might a politician claim a clean bill of health from a wiretap that flatly contradicts his initial claim under oath of a clean bill of health. We hope Senate ethics investigators stick to the task of tracking Senator Burris’s unraveling tale.
U.S. taxpayers soon may own 72.5 percent of a General Motors that's no longer a publicly traded company, according to regulatory filings by the carmaker and details released by the Obama administration.
Bakon Vodka is a superior quality potato vodka with a savory bacon flavor. It’s clean, crisp, and delicious.
With the ability to incur additional debts coming to an end, and under orders from China to straighten up, and wanting to spend even more money, the ever-hungry Congress is to consider a national sales tax. They are considering rates from 10% to 25% on all goods and services.With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.
[L]ast month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama's policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.
A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American -- a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.
The surge of interest in a VAT is testament to the extraordinary depth of the nation's money troubles. While some conservatives have long argued that a consumption tax would provide a simpler and more efficient alternative to the byzantine U.S. income tax code, this time it's all about the money.
The federal budget deficit is projected to approach $1.3 trillion next year, the highest ever except for this year, when the deficit is forecast to exceed $1.8 trillion. The Treasury is borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, largely from China and other foreign creditors, who are growing increasingly uneasy about the security of their investments. Unless Congress comes up with some serious cash, expanding the nation's health-care system will only add to the problem.
Obama wants to raise income taxes for high earners and impose new levies on business, but those moves would not generate enough cash to cover the cost of health care, much less balance the budget, and they have not been fully embraced by Congress. Obama's plan to tax greenhouse-gas emissions could raise trillions of dollars, but again, Congress is balking.
Key lawmakers are considering other ways to pay for health reform, including new taxes on sugary soda, alcohol and employer-provided health insurance. The last proposal could raise a lot of money -- nearly $1 trillion over the next five years, according to White House budget documents.
But options on the table would raise a fraction of that sum. And while it might pay for health care, it would barely dent deficits projected to total nearly $4 trillion over the next five years and to grow rapidly in the future, as baby boomers draw on Social Security and Medicare.
Owned by the government and the union. Wow. That is a recipe for disaster. The politicos will continue to pump billions into the wheezing operation, all paid for by you and me. And very soon, the board will be stocked by former Congressmen, who will using GM to hire their relatives. Kind of like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.Now G.M. may stand for something else: Government Motors.
The latest plan for the troubled automaker, which is expected to file for bankruptcy by Monday, calls for the Treasury Department to receive about 70 percent of a restructured G.M.
Including the more than $20 billion that has already been spent to prop up G.M., the government will provide G.M. at least $50 billion to get the company through Chapter 11, people with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. By some estimates in Detroit, tens of billions beyond that amount may be required.
The United Automobile Workers, meanwhile, will hold up to 20 percent through its retiree health care fund, and bondholders and other parties will get the remaining share. Shareholders would be virtually wiped out.
In a letter to TVA Board members, Leonard Muzyn said the shortfall to cover promised benefits to TVA employees could be as much as $5.1 billion.Great.
The head of U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, has told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty he thinks that "on balance" the expected closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and abandonment of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques will "help" U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the struggle against transnational extremist violence.
Petraeus says that closing Guantanamo "in a responsible manner...sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."
"I have long been on record as having testified and also in helping write doctrine for interrogation techniques that are completely in line with the Geneva Convention," Petraeus says.
The specifics of closing Guantanamo are proving contentious, including questions over how to prosecute and where to incarcerate some of the roughly 240 remaining detainees.
So for the moment, Obama should keep the Asian allies secure and calm, try to lure China onboard, squeeze the North Koreans as hard as U.N. resolutions allow, and forget about the six-party talks, which have outlived their purpose. (If diplomacy gets serious again, it will be in the form of U.S.-North Korean bilaterals.)
Above all, Obama should put the whole subject of North Korea on the back burner, at least in terms of public statements. Don't react to Pyongyang's screams and threats, which will be as hollow as they are torrential. Don't play North Korea's game.
Small businesses would get a $172 million tax cut over the next two years under legislation that has passed the Texas Senate.
Under current law, companies making less than $300,000 in annual revenue are exempt from paying the state franchise tax.
The bill approved Wednesday by the Texas Senate would boost the exemption to $1 million for the next two years, taking about 40,000 businesses off the tax rolls.
5 men from defunct Muslim charity get long sentencesFive leaders of what was once the nation's largest Muslim charity were given long prison sentences Wednesday by a federal judge, months after they were found guilty of aiding a militant Palestinian organization.
Five leaders of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development were convicted in November by a federal jury for providing money and resources to the Palestinian group Hamas, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization.
Before it was shut down, the group, based in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, was hailed as the largest Muslim charity in America. The Justice Department accused it of funneling $12.4 million to Hamas in the guise of humanitarian donations.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is pressing for new answers about funding for a counter-narcotics center that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) has supported for more than two decades.
Coburn sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder late last week reiterating charges that the center in Johnstown, Pa., previously known as the National Defense Intelligence Center (NDIC) is a duplicative boondoggle and asking for the explanation behind a recently proposed name change.
“The NDIC was a boondoggle at its inception 16 years ago and it continues to be a monument to congressional incompetence,” Hart said.
Murtha’s earmarks have received increased scrutiny in recent weeks and months. The FBI has been investigating a now-defunct lobbying firm and at least two defense contractors with close ties to Murtha. The powerful Pennsylvania appropriator has directed millions of dollars in earmarks to the contractors, as well as the lobbying firm’s clients.
Financial Times: Exploding debt threatens AmericaChina has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed's direct purchase of US Treasury bonds.
The Oxford-educated Mr Fisher, an outspoken free-marketer and believer in the Schumpeterian process of "creative destruction", has been running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the "very big hole" in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities built up by a careless political class over the years.
"We at the Dallas Fed believe the total is over $99 trillion," he said in February.
"This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are really berating yourself. You elect them," he said.
His warning comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.
Under President Barack Obama’s budget plan, the federal debt is exploding. To be precise, it is rising – and will continue to rise – much faster than gross domestic product, a measure of America’s ability to service it. The federal debt was equivalent to 41 per cent of GDP at the end of 2008; the Congressional Budget Office projects it will increase to 82 per cent of GDP in 10 years. With no change in policy, it could hit 100 per cent of GDP in just another five years.The Atlantic: Sovereign Woes
If the longer-yield debt again registers weak demand, the administration is going to have to address this problem.NY Times: Geithner Prepares to Meet With Chinese LeadersUp until now, most of the debate over the administration's spending plans has focused on the political problem: will the American public accept higher spending? But the problem isn't the spending; it's how to pay for it.
If the spending were attached to tax hikes, this would cut into its popularity (though I don't know by how much). That's one of the reasons that administrations like to fund their new spending with borrowing.
But you can't long do this on a scale that freaks out the bond markets--just ask Argentina. And these days, the bond markets are easily freaked.
If you had told me ten years ago that our economic future was dependent on the decisions made by the Chinese government, I would have told you that you were crazy.Perhaps the chief issue facing global markets is the extent to which China will continue investing heavily in Treasury bills.
If China believes the dollar is going to decline in the future, given the ballooning United States debt, it could reduce its purchases. Investors worry that a spat over currency issues could push China to reduce its investments in Treasuries, putting the American economy at risk.
Star-Telegram: At deadline, legislators lament bills doomed by House impasseHouse members have been locked in a standoff since Friday, when Democrats began a parliamentary slowdown aimed at killing the voter ID bill, which they say could disenfranchise poor, minority and elderly voters. Republicans have made passage of the bill one of their top priorities, saying their constituents demand it to strengthen security at the ballot box.
Democrats have applied a delaying tactic known as "chubbing" by talking extensively on minor local bills that normally receive quick passage. The goal was to keep the House from reaching the voter ID bill. But bills behind it on the calendar were also in danger as lawmakers moved toward the midnight deadline for preliminary passage of Senate bills.
Hundreds of Senate-passed bills endangered by a partisan dispute in the state House of Representatives faced death as the clock passed midnight this morning and the Legislature passed a critical deadline.
The imperiled legislation included toughened voter identification requirements, expanded health insurance for children, an overhaul of the Texas Department of Insurance and funding of a windstorm insurance pool for the Gulf Coast.
"Two years of work fulltime by the 31 senators and myself will go down in flames," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate’s presiding officer, referring to key bills that began taking shape after the 2007 Legislature.
The collateral damage inflicted on other bills raised the possibility that lawmakers will be called back to the Capitol after the session ends Monday.
It was a deft move, leaking those CIA documents about Pelosi being briefed.If at any time in the last eight years Nancy Pelosi had telephoned the CIA about being lied to in a briefing, heads would roll and careers would be broken as soon as she hung up the phone.
But if Pelosi admits lying to her own voters for eight long years, the unavoidable implication is that all the other Democrats also lied about the evil Bush administration, along with those wellsprings of truth and integrity like the New York Times and the Washington Post. So Nancy’s lie drags down the entire Leftist sucker narrative.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. -- U.S. Constitution, Tenth Amendment
Tenth Amendment Movement Aims to Give Power Back to the States
Fed up with Washington's involvement in everything from land use to gun control to education spending, states across the country are fighting back against what they say is the federal government's growing intrusion on their rights.
Fed up with Washington's involvement in everything from land use to gun control to education spending, states across the country are fighting back against what they say is the federal government's growing intrusion on their rights.
At least 35 states have introduced legislation this year asserting their power under the Tenth Amendment to regulate all matters not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.
"This has been boiling for years, and it's finally come to a head," said Utah State Rep. Carl Wimmer. "With TARP and No Child Left Behind, these things that continue to give the federal government more authority, our rights as states and individuals are being turned on their head."
The power struggle between the states and Washington has cropped up periodically ever since the country was founded. But now some states are sending a simple, forceful message:
The government has gone too far. Enough is enough.
McLeroy opposed as board of ed leaderSenate Democrats say they have more than enough votes to remove Don McLeroy as chairman of the State Board of Education Tuesday when McLeroy’s confirmation reaches the Senate floor.
The Bryan dentist has presided over a contentious 15-member State Board of Education that fought over curriculum standards for science earlier this year and English language arts and reading last year. Critics faulted McLeroy for applying his strong religious beliefs in shaping new science standards.
McLeroy believes in creationism and that the Earth is about 6,000 years old.
There is speculation in the Capitol and within the Texas Education Agency that Gov. Rick Perry might elevate Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, to lead the board.
Just four months in office, President Barack Obama and his White House are taking steps to shore up Democratic Congressional majorities in next year's midterm elections.
No one anticipates the Democrats losing control of Congress. Indeed, in the Senate, the Republicans are the ones on the defense, with endangered seats in Missouri, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Ohio. Only one Democratic seat, Sen. Christopher Dodd's in Connecticut, currently is considered a toss-up.
Are the Chinese finally getting serious about loosening their ties to the dollar—and even replacing the greenback with the yuan as the global economy's reserve currency? The evidence is mounting that they are.
And here's the Big Trouble.The Obama administration needs to raise $2 trillion this year to cover the fiscal stimulus plan and the bank bail-outs. It has to fund $900bn by September.
The US Treasury is selling $40bn of two-year notes on Tuesday, $35bn of five-year bonds on Wednesday, and $25bn of seven-year debt on Thursday. While the US has not yet suffered the indignity of a failed auction – unlike Britain and Germany – traders are watching closely to see what share is being purchased by US government itself in pure "monetisation" of the deficit.
"There isn't enough capital in the world to buy the new sovereign issuance required to finance the giant fiscal deficits that countries are so intent on running. There is simply not enough money out there," he said.
"If the US loses control of long rates, they will not be able to arrest asset price declines. If they print too much money, they will debase the dollar and cause stagflation. The bottom line is that there is no global 'get out of jail free' card for anyone", he said.
The US is acutely vulnerable because it relies heavily on foreign goodwill. China and Japan alone hold 23pc of America's $6,369bn federal debt. Suspicions that Washington is trying to engineer a stealth default by letting the dollar slide could cause patience to snap, even if Asian exporters would themselves suffer if they harmed their chief market.
The dollar has fallen 11% against a basket of currencies since early March.
Mutterings of a "dollar crisis" may now constrain the Fed as it tries to shore up the bond market. It has so far bought $116bn of Treasuries as part of its "credit easing" blitz, out of a $300bn pool.
The long Memorial Day weekend may be as good a time as any to ponder the question of whether the gap is widening between those who serve in the military and those in the political sector who help determine what the military does.
Certainly the number of Washington decision-makers with military experience continues to decline. In its profile of the Congress that convened at the beginning of the year, the Congressional Research Service notes that it continues a long-term slide in the number of lawmakers in Washington who have served in the military.
Quadrupling the deficit in one year has consequences.
NY Times: As Dollars Pile Up, Uneasy Traders Lower the Currency’s Value
The dollar skidded to its lowest point in five months this week, battered by creeping fears that Washington’s costly efforts to stimulate the economy are growing harder to finance and may set off an unwelcome bout of inflation. Analysts are increasingly concerned that a rise in prices could hurt consumer spending, deepening the recession.
The Federal Reserve is printing money from thin air, and the government is issuing trillions of dollars in new debt as it tries to spend its way out of the recession with a huge stimulus package, new lending programs, health care overhauls and automotive rescues.
Experts warned there might not be enough demand to sop up all those new dollars and dollar-denominated Treasury securities. That led investors to fret about the sustainability of the United States government’s AAA sovereign credit rating after the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency warned this week that the sovereign rating of Britain — which is spending hundreds of billions of pounds to engineer a recovery — is under threat.
The dollar’s sharp slide has renewed concern that investors worldwide were beginning to favor other currencies, foreign economies and commodities like oil and metals.
Academic types have noticed that fewer young men are attending college, and those that do attend get into a lot of trouble. So they had a conference to talk about doing something about it. Here was their conclusion:Edwards and Harris also recommended providing opportunities for critical self-reflection about what it means to be a man – “to disrupt the functioning of hegemonic masculinity” – including through facilitated student affairs programming and academic courses (a course in women’s studies, for instance). They recommended a need to build "cultural competence" for faculty and staff in issues of gender. While many in the audience lauded the transformative impact of small group discussions among men, one common point was the need for a facilitator who really understands gender dynamics.
People keep saying NO! but no one is listening. The people have one opinion, the political elites are of a different opinion. All of these bailouts were a bad idea. I guess the industries involved have more lobbyists that regular taxpayers do.Twenty-four percent (24%) of voters nationwide favor federal bailout funds for states like California that are encountering “serious financial problems.”
Forty-eight percent (48%) say it would be better for the economy to let California go bankrupt rather than provide federal bailouts. Just 38% said it would be better to provide federal subsidies so the state can continue to pay its bills and provide services.
Voters from outside the Golden State oppose federal loan guarantees by a 69% to 20% margin.
Voters have consistently opposed federal bailout funds for the auto industry, the banking industry and insurance companies. Looking back on the bailouts that were provided, most continue to believe they were a bad idea.
Fed Open to Buying More SecuritiesFederal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said prices may rise 2.5 percent in 2011, a rate well above central bankers’ preferred range, and cautioned against complacency on inflation.
Reiterating his call for an inflation target, the regional bank chief also said the Fed has potentially put its independence at risk with its responses to the crisis, by directly lending to non-financial institutions and buying asset- backed securities.
“We need to draw a bright line once again between monetary policy and fiscal policy,” Plosser said. “The recent crisis has muddied that separation considerably and we must restore it. The Fed must not be seen by the public or the Congress as a piggy bank that can substitute for difficult fiscal policy decisions.”
Some Federal Reserve officials are open to raising the amounts of mortgage and Treasury securities purchase programs beyond the $1.75 trillion that they have already committed to buying, according to minutes from the Fed’s April meeting.
Officials, meanwhile, projected an even deeper recession than they expected three months earlier and a more sluggish recovery over the next two years as labor markets remain under pressure.
Fed officials see the economy contracting between 1.3% and 2% this year, versus forecasts for only a 0.5%-1.3% decline in January.
Gross domestic product is only expected to advance 2% to 3% next year, which is below what officials thought in January. They also downgraded their 2011 forecasts, though they are still centered around a solid 3.5% to 4.8% rate of growth.
The unemployment rate is expected to end 2009 between 9.2% and 9.6%, significantly higher than what officials expected in January. One official expects it to reach 10% this year. It’s expected to stay above 9% in 2010, too.
What is being described as a full-scale Islamist insurgency is building in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan.
Russia recently ended its decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" against separatist rebels in the neighbouring republic of Chechnya, but the fighting has spilled into other regions.
Over the past five years, a local defense contractor with close ties to Rep. John P. Murtha, a Democrat who has represented southwestern Pennsylvania for three decades, has selected several small police departments in the region to receive $10 million in Justice Department grants.
The company, Mountaintop Technologies, was selected by the lawmaker in a series of earmarks to hand out and monitor the grants. As it distributed the money to the departments, the firm would explain each time that it was arriving through the largess of Murtha -- often just before fall elections.
The Justice Department investigation stems from an effort by Murtha's office to use earmarks to steer money to local police in 2002 and its choice of Mountaintop to oversee the funds. Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the department, under a new presidential order, will block this kind of earmark in the future. The order bars earmarks that lawmakers do not publicly detail.
California, it has long been claimed, is where the future happens first. But is that still true? If it is, God help America.
America’s projected deficits may sound large, yet it would take only a modest tax increase to cover the expected rise in interest payments — and right now American taxes are well below those in most other wealthy countries. The fiscal consequences of the current crisis, in other words, should be manageable.
But that presumes that we’ll be able, as a political matter, to act responsibly. The example of California shows that this is by no means guaranteed. And the political problems that have plagued California for years are now increasingly apparent at a national level.
To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What’s left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are “dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore.
And that party still has 40 senators.
So will America follow California into ungovernability? Well, California has some special weaknesses that aren’t shared by the federal government. In particular, tax increases at the federal level don’t require a two-thirds majority, and can in some cases bypass the filibuster. So acting responsibly should be easier in Washington than in Sacramento.
But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic?
On the other hand, the problems that plague California politics apply at the national level too.
