For weeks the FRC Blog has been commenting on the growing prominence of CNBC as a national news outlet. We have also commented on the liberal counter-reaction against the network. Our point has been that even though the Left dominates the mainstream media (MSM), in a time of financial and economic crisis the MSM news organs are structurally ill-equipped to deal with stories of such complexity. CNBC has on-air staff with the smarts and the career training to discuss these matters at a sophisticated level. The MSM does not have people like this on their programs with a few exceptions (e.g., Lou Dobbs at CNN (who is not MSM)). Consequently, there has been a tremendous power shift toward CNBC.
CNBC is more conservative than the MSM, but it might be fairer to say CNBC is more libertarian and market-oriented. That being said there has always been a good mixture of liberals and conservatives on CNBC, and many Wall Street players were Obama supporters.
Well, the Left noticed the increasing prominence of CNBC and a campaign of mau mauing began quickly once Barack Obama became president. First, Rick Santelli was attacked; this effort was assisted by NBC's Today Show. Jim Cramer was next, and his assault by Jon Stewart soon followed. However, it appears that a larger effort to compromise CNBC is underway, and it may be working. There is now an entire Leftist-"progressive" website devoted to serving up ideological attacks on CNBC: it is called "Fix CNBC." (Go to the website and look at the long list of liberal big-wigs who have signed on. Amazing. This is quite an effort. I wonder who is paying for it?) Interestingly, Media Matters also presents an online petition at "Change CNBC," and the language looks pretty similar to Fix CNBC's petition.
You can't say the FRC blog isn't timely. Over the past two weeks my colleague Michael Fragoso and I have written on this blog about the emerging position of CNBC as a major, national news source and the adverse impact of that development on the Obama administration.
This state of affairs escalated enormously over the weekend after CNBC's Jim Cramer was slapped silly on Jon Stewart's Comedy Central program last Thursday. Stewart is part of the Democrat-Left-Borg collective that hurtles through space attempting to bludgeon those who oppose their agenda into abject submission. (For an excellent analysis of Stewart's completely dishonest attack on CNBC's Rick Santelli read this post by Dan Gifford on the Big Hollywood blog.)
Stewart has been on television for years, but I don't recall that he ever attacked the integrity of CNBC before. Of course, CNBC never before pointed out that the Obama economic program was failing miserably. Therein lies the difference. When was the last time Stewart viciously sandbagged a Lefty guest while declaring his righteous outrage? Answer: [Hear crickets chirping] Never happened.
In short, we have entered an unparalleled time in which the Hollywood-media-"news"-industrial-complex makes little or no attempt to pretend that it is not advancing the socialist, anti-family, anti-church agenda of the Left. Where will Barack Obama be tonight? On the Jay Leno show, I believe. The alliance begun during the presidential campaign appears to grow stronger daily.
In the last couple weeks The Politico (www.politico.com) has published a series of extraordinary stories describing planned attacks originating from the White House and Leftist activist groups targeting political enemies. Read this piece as an example. As such, it was not surprising that Tony Blankley observed here in today's Washington Times that the atmosphere in Washington has become incredibly poisonous and ugly.
Well, folks, about two months down and forty-six to go. It's going to get interesting.
A U.S. Senator talks of honorable suicide for well-heeled executives who have received company bonuses and then benefited from bailout money from the taxpayers. Armed guards are posted outside the insurance giant AIG to protect its employees from an angry public. The President declares himself outraged at corporate excess. Larry Summers, the Obama Administration's top economic adviser, says the same. Thus our national economy is fast transforming into a giant kabuki play, or more precisely a sewa-mono, a domestic drama in which theft and suicide are classic themes.
What is becoming of this nation if it is not the puppeteering of what should be an economy of risk and reward where, with reasonable regulation for health, consumer disclosure, and mitigation of monopolies, the government steps back and allows customers and investors to act on opportunity and react to failure? The greed of some private sector actors is real enough, but the umbrage of many political actors rings hollow. Can we recover the bonuses paid to executives who could not keep their businesses profitable? Why, government has made unprofitability the test of whether certain businesses, like certain mortgagees, get aid.
Here is a simpler idea: anyone who receives government bailout aid, direct or indirect, or benefits from a no-bid government contract of any kind, forfeits their right as individuals to donate to federal political campaigns for a period of five years. That would have some genuine impact on this Kabuki cycle
Watching Chris Wallace interviewing President Obama's economics advisor, Austan Goolsbee, yesterday, I was struck by a curious phrase Goolsbee used: "the commanding heights of our economy." Gosh, that phrase sounded familiar. Goolsbee was responding to Wallace's question about the President's 2010 budget message. That document is grandly titled: "An Era of Responsibility." Actually, "an era" is too modest for this President. His budget proposals will impose crushing debts not simply on the living, but on millions yet unborn, on generations yet to come, if they come. We should be thinking at least in terms of epoch, even perhaps an Obaman Age.
Wallace quoted from the President's budget message. "While middle class families have been playing by the rules...those at the commanding heights have not..." Goolsbee defended the use of that term: "The President is saying those at the commanding heights have not played by the rules." Clear enough. Rep. Barney Frank was next up. "I would go back to your conversation with Mr. Goolsbee," the chairman of the Financial Services Committee replied as Wallace pressed him for specifics. "This is an example of people at the commanding heights of the economy misbehaving, abusing the system," Frank said.
There it was again. I knew I'd heard that phrase before. Fortunately, we have Google so I didn't have to go rummaging through my cluttered basement--talk about torture--among my old Russian history books.
Jim Cramer went on The Daily Show last night to be grilled by Jon Stewart. Liberals everywhere are singing the praises of Stewart, who went in loaded for bear. (See video here-Stewart's language is saucy: you've been warned.) Stewart deftly illustrated the multitudes contained within Cramer-both a loudmouth performer, and a cool, savvy Wall Street operator-and excoriated CNBC, Cramer, and market capitalism in his characteristically self-righteous and crypto-Marxist way ("When are we going to realize in this country that our wealth is work? That we're workers..."). Apparently finance is serious business and Cramer's goofy "Mad Money" persona makes Stewart mad. Mad enough that he felt the need to embarrass Cramer for 3 segments in front of his audience of clapping New York sycophants.
And yet, Cramer has been at this for years (I recall watching Mad Money with my friends in college because Cramer's histrionics and questionable stock advice could be quite entertaining). Why did Jon Stewart decide to take Cramer to the woodshed on March 12, 2009? Why not a month ago-or six months ago, or a year ago, or four years ago? It turns out that Cramer and Stewart have been feuding ever since Stewart began taking shots at Rick Santelli for his "Chicago Tea Party" outburst. This feud, like Stewart's previous one with Tucker Carlson, is predicated on his infuriating bait-and-switch routine: 1.) Sanctimoniously deliver a sucker punch about a serious political or cultural matter in which there is substantive disagreement; 2.) Respond to counter attack by saying "I'm just a comedian, don't hold me to high standards! I make jokes! I'm no expert!" 3.) Behave like a smug expert and deliver more substantive criticism. 4.) Respond to next counter attack by saying "I'm just a clown! Watch me make funny faces!" 5.) Repeat until plaudits pour in from Gawker, Huffington Post, and other snark-mongers.
The New York Times jumped into the fray on Monday to help rescue President Obama's economic policy-making reputation. This was done in the guise of an analysis piece on the cable business channel, CNBC, that also served as a shot across the bow. The story by Brian Stelter and Tim Arango entitled, "CNBC Thrives as Hosts Deliver News with Attitude," lets the cat out of the bag when it intones: "CNBC is now a place for politics.... making the line between reporter and commentator almost indistinguishable at times."
What follows is a grab-bag of faux concern for CNBC's brand and its reputation for journalistic integrity. Some anonymous back-biting by three CNBC employees is added for good measure. Blah, blah, blah. But the rub comes down to this: "In recent weeks some have perceived the network to be leading the campaign against President Obama's economic agenda." BINGO.
Well, the folks in the mainstream media (MSM) are clearly irritated because CNBC is now the most important news organization driving the political-economic debate. The MSM is beginning to realize that it cannot control a news network populated by the brightest reporters on TV and accomplished guests who focus on the hard logic of the markets, interest rates, stock prices, currencies, etc.
After Rick Santelli, a CNBC reporter from Chicago's mercantile exchange, blasted the Obama Administration's mortgage rescue plan he was attacked by NBC's Matt Lauer on the Today Show. Similarly, Jim Cramer was dragged to the Today Show for a hazing by Lauer who had to be assisted by CNBC's Erin Burnett. Even she couldn't make it a fair fight. Cramer just brushed them off.
Unfortunately for the MSM the news broadcasts on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC are populated with reporters who know relatively little about economics and finance compared to their counter-parts at CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business Channel. So, when someone like Lauer tries to slime Santelli or Cramer he is totally mismatched.
This means that serious interviews on the economy now have to be conducted on CNBC. Yesterday's interview of Warren Buffet by CNBC's Becky Quick is a case in point. Aside from the two-hour length, that interview would not have been possible on the MSM networks. There are no broadcast TV analogs to Ms. Quick, Joe Kernen, and Carl Quintanilla who are all very, very bright and industry savvy.
This is not to say that CNBC is perfect. It has its flaws. Big Deal. However, between the network's excellent morning ("Squawk Box") and evening shows ("The Kudlow Report" hosted by Larry Kudlow) one becomes engaged in an ongoing conversation about our nation's political-economic-financial situation. The point isn't that CNBC hosts and guests don't make mistakes or erroneous predictions. Who hasn't in this market?
The point is that CNBC presents its viewers with a window into an ongoing high-level conversation between many of the best minds on "Wall Street" as they try to diagnose and solve the enormous problems we face. It has been fascinating to watch many themes developed and analyzed over an extended period of time on CNBC.
This is all to say, that the MSM is incapable of presenting the public with this type of sophisticated, repetitive "longitudinal" analysis that makes it possible to think through the various problems the markets face. And, with all due respect to the snooty journalism professors who love the Times, this is great journalism.
Finally, regarding the charges of being political, as Larry Kudlow said Tuesday night to Charlie Gasparino (another CNBC reporter under attack) - (paraphrasing) "I learned a long time ago that if the liberal pundits are coming after you, you must be doing something right." Amen, Brother Larry. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
An Open Letter to Larry Kudlow, the Nation's Irreplaceable CNBC Host
Dear Larry:
The Politico reported yesterday "it's rumored that [Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)] could face a challenge [in his 2010 Senate re-election race] from CNBC host Larry Kudlow, an opponent who would focus the coming election squarely on the economy."
Say it ain't so, Kudlow.
For those not familiar with you, Larry, I provide two links with some fair and balanced info: CNBC, Wikipedia. In short, you are a supply-side economist who served in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Reagan Administration's Treasury Department, and various Wall Street firms with distinction. You are a happy guy; an optimist. You are a conservative, and, as I have observed over the years, a much-needed media friend of the pro-life cause - something we at FRC appreciate greatly. And, since the financial meltdown you have been hosting a M-F 7:00 p.m. hour-long market analysis program on CNBC - now called The Kudlow Report.
How do you know that you know way too much about Washington bureaucracies and how they "work"? Here's how. When you hear CNBC's Rick Santelli calling for a Chicago Tea Party tax protest this summer, you immediately start to wonder whether he'll need to get permits from some government entity like the Environmental Protection Agency. And then you wonder whether Illinois permits will be needed also. Well, I plead guilty to having had such thoughts last Thursday.
Fortunately, I am not alone and not nearly as bad off as Scott Ott of the D.C. Examiner appears to be. Ott has written a brilliant, hilarious piece entitled, "EPA Arrests Rick Santelli, 'Chicago Tea Party' Cancelled." (See Feb. 24, 2009 ed., p. 14.) The satirical article contains the following slam from President Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, commenting on Santelli's arrest for threatening to pollute Lake Michigan: "I don't know where Mr. Santelli lives, but apparently, like most conservative critics, he has a callous disregard for the lives of the waterfowl, sturgeon and fresh-water mollusks that inhabit the Lake Michigan watershed."
That's funny, but I wouldn't be surprised if Santelli really could be arrested for dumping tea or "derivative securities" (paper) into the Great Lakes. Well done, Mr. Ott.
Andie Coller of The Politico observed today that Gibbs "dismissed [Santelli] as a know-nothing derivatives trader out of touch with Main Street." Coller then noted that "[a] Rasmussen poll released Monday found that 55 percent of those surveyed thought federal mortgage subsidies to those most at risk of losing their homes would be 'rewarding bad behavior.'" If I were the White House I would be very careful about trying to roll out a campaign of intimidation and bullying against journalists, in general, and a journalist, in particular, who is very much attuned to public sentiment, is an expert in the numerous cross-cutting markets traded in Chicago, and is the most popular figure on America's #1 financial news network.
"Some governors might reject funds," blared the headline in USAToday. The story detailed the fact that about $144 billion of the huge $787 billion "stimulus" package President Obama signed this week will go to the states.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) was not one of those governors, most of them Republicans, who were leery of the gift horse Washington was promising their states.
Still, Gov. Patrick said the $9 billion slated for the Bay State would "not be a panacea."
Not a panacea, but maybe a Pandora's Box. South Carolina's Gov. Mark Sanford is head of the Republican Governors Association. He warns about the impact of programs funded by this sudden windfall from Washington. "You get this huge slug of money. It funds programs for a couple of years, and then what? You get it started, you get a constituency established, and then we're supposed to yank the rug out from under people when the federal money runs out?" Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) echoed Sanford's concerns: "It's not fair to Alaskans," she said, "to create programs that won't be sustainable."
In a cedar chest at my home is a woolen thermal shirt. This is not just any thermal shirt; it is a part of history and a reminder. The shirt was a government issue, given to my grandfather. As a young man during the Great Depression, he worked with the Civilian Conservation Corps planting trees, building parks, and working on other public conservation projects. My grandfather earned a dollar a day.
The debate still continues among economists as to whether or not those vast public works projects that President Roosevelt launched through the CCC and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) along with other government spending helped end the nation's worst economic crisis.
Regardless, FDR's New Deal and the opportunities that it offered were significant to the many struggling families who were unemployed during a time when unemployment stood at almost 25%. Between 1935-1943 over 8 million Americans were on the payroll of the WPA alone.
FDR's actions were controversial as he took the counterintuitive approach promoted by English economist John Maynard Keynes to increase government spending during hard economic times. They called it "priming the pump." FDR's efforts led to a radical and lasting expansion of the power and reach of the federal government.
Parallels have been drawn between the New Deal and the present government response to the financial crisis - but there are vast differences. The stimulus measure signed by President Obama this week, which according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office will cost about $1.3 trillion, will, according to the President, preserve or create 3-4 million jobs. Keep in mind that adjusted for inflation this stimulus measure will probably cost 3 times what the New Deal cost.
The overall cost of government spending designed to revive the economy will go even higher as the President announced a mortgage bailout this week that could cost up to another $250 billion dollars.
There is a vast difference between spending government money to create short-lived public works jobs and expanding the size and scope of federal agencies and directly bailing out bad mortgages. It may sound simplistic, but a government inspired hand up is much different than a government handout, and the implications will be lasting and far reaching, not only on the size of government but also on the American ethic.
The effect of FDR's economic philosophy was so pronounced that 30 years later in 1971, President Richard Nixon said "We're all Keynesians now." The impact of this present economic approach is even more powerful -- so much so that before it has even been implemented, a recent cover story of Newsweek declared: "We are all Socialists Now."
Keep an eye out for an amazing documentary on CNBC called "House of Cards." (It will be showing numerous times this weekend.) David Faber narrates a two-hour program on the current financial-economic recession and its origins in mortgages, securitized debt instruments, the dishonest or incompetent rating of those instruments, and governmental incompetence. Greed, fraud, stupidity, and recklessness are all on display. It is an excellent program that is a nice introduction to what happened to our economy.
To me one person stood out above all the rest: "The Maestro," Alan Greenspan, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman. Watching Greenspan make excuses for his non-stop money printing in the early 2000s makes it clear that this guy had no business being in that job. He essentially admits that he made no effort to control the Fed's credit expansion because it wasn't what the political powers in Washington wanted. This is the problem with having a politician, like Greenspan, as Fed Chief. The Fed was designed to be insulated from political decision-making; his job was to make the tough choices and control credit. Instead, he threw up his hands and cranked up the presses. Disgraceful.
Economists from the Austrian School knew Greenspan's policies were dangerous. Read this before-the-crash assessment of his Fed tenure by Stefan Karlsson from the Ludwig von Mises Institute website. Greenspan's philosophy was not deregulatory. No group of economists is more deregulatory than the Austrian School, but they are also committed to price stability and tight money. Don't be fooled if someone tells you Greenspan was a conservative; he wasn't.
The House passed the Stimulus bill with all Republicans and 7 Democrats voting against it (except for two Republican absences who would have been NO and one Democrat, Rep. Lipinski, (D-Mich.) who voted PRESENT)
The Democrats voting yes (or switching from the last vote):
5 switched NO to YES: Reps. Boyd (D-Fla.), Cooper (D-Tenn.), Ellsworth (D-Ind.), Kanjorski (D-PA) and Kratovil (D-Md.)
6 stayed NO: Rep. Bright (D-Ala.), Griffith (D-Ala.), Minnick (D-Id.), Peterson (D-Minn.), Shuler (D-N.C.) and Taylor D-Miss.)
1 switched YES to NO: DeFazio (D-Or.)
Representative Boehner gave an impassioned speech (no crying though) on the House floor, you can watch it here
Senate update:
The Senate will vote at 5:30 pm tonight on the Stimulus Conference Report. The vote will be on a motion to waive the budget point of order (must achieve 60 votes) and under the order the vote on the motion to waive will count as final passage of the conference report.
Keep in mind this vote will be held open for a bit in order for all Members to have a chance to record their vote.
With great fanfare, President Barack Obama last week signed his first bill. The White House was the backdrop for a celebratory East Room signing ceremony. The bill, backers acknowledge, "overrules a Supreme Court ruling." The subject was a favorite of feminists: equal pay for equal work. Now, the sight of a roomful of liberals cheering when Congress and the President overrule the Supreme Court ought to make any of us happy. But I wish the President had not repeated that old feminist line: women make just seventy-eight cents to every one dollar men make.
The fact is true, but it is also misleading. Liberals claim that it is because of job discrimination that women are relatively disadvantaged. This is not the case. The reason that the average woman earns 78% of the what the average man earns is because the average woman spends part of her adult life outside of the paid workforce or working only part-time (generally while bearing and raising children), whereas the average man works full-time for all or nearly all of his adult life. And there is no injustice in paying workers (whether male or female) more money when they have more work experience.
The substitute "compromise" made cloture* tonight with a vote of 61-36. Beyond the Terrible Trio (Senators Collins (R-Me.), Snowe (R-Me.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.)) no Republicans voted for the measure. No Democrats voted against cloture. Senator Cornyn (R-Tex.) missed the vote, but one can safely assume he would have voted against it, and Senator Gregg abstained because he is going to be the next Commerce Secretary (I am assuming he is getting a head start on abstaining from all fiscal responsibility for the next four years.)
From the Senate: "Under the previous order, at 12:00pm tomorrow (Tuesday), the bill will be subject to another 60 vote hurdle by either waiving a budget point of order (if it is raised) or a 60 vote threshold on the amendment. If the amendment is agreed to, the Senate will then proceed to final passage of the Stimulus bill.
Majority Leader Reid also said this evening that additional votes on Executive Nominations may occur tomorrow."
I've talked to several offices and between this and the David Ogden nomination Senate offices are getting swamped with phone calls - so keep them coming. It inspires those on our side and sends a strong message to those who are not.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new estimate tonight on the "compromise." CBO estimates that the package will cost $838.2 billion (not including interest which puts it over a trillion dollars). This is $18.7 billion more than the House-passed bill.
I also updated the greatest quotes (HERE) with the help of some FRC and Senate staffers.
*Cloture is the process by which debate can be limited in the Senate without unanimous consent. When invoked by roll call vote - three-fifths of those present and voting - it limits each senator to one hour of debate.
On Saturday the Senate will be in session from 12:00 - 3:00 pm for members to speak and there will be no roll call votes. Also on Saturday cloture will be filed on the Collins/Nelson amendment and the cloture vote on the amendment will occur on Monday at 5:30 pm. If cloture is invoked on the amendment post cloture time will run until noon on Tuesday. At noon on Tuesday the bill will be subject to another 60 vote hurdle by either waiving a budget point of order or achieving 60 votes on final passage.
The Senate will not be in session on Sunday.
Why is Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in the Senate taking so long in building bipartisan support to pass the bill instead of just passing it without Republican support like Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats in the House did? Well one, the Democrats in the Senate do not yet have 60 Members to defeat any filibuster from the Republicans and secondly, as the blog Hot Air points out, a new CBS poll shows "eighty-one percent of Americans say the stimulus bill should be a bipartisan effort. Just 13 percent think it is okay for a bill to be passed with only the backing of the Democratic majority."
This new bill still has a good chance of passing, especially if liberal spending Republican Senators like Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), Susan Collins (R-Me.) and Olymia Snowe (R-Me.) vote for the bill. So please contact your Senators today. The phones have been lighting up so you might have to try a few times. Many of the problems we have documented (religious institutions, money to ACORN, etc.) remain in the new bill.
Some news reports are calling the new Senate legislation a streamlined bill. Mark Hemmingway over at the Corner has a list of a few of the cuts - however the bill is still full of pork and payoffs. Additionally the Senate Republican Policy Committee have sent around numbers disputing that this bill is more frugal:
Cost of deal: $780 billion
Cost of amendments added on the floor: $47 billion
Total cost of Senate bill: $827 billion
Total estimated cost with interest: $1.2 trillion
Senate bill is $7.5 billion higher than the House bill
Additionally, as Senate Minority Leader Mith McConnell (R-Ky.) points out "According to the figures I've been given, the House bill is about $820 billion. The Senate bill, under the compromise, we believe, would be about $827 billion. Bear in mind the interest costs on either of those proposals would be $348 billion. So we're really talking about a $1.1 trillion pending measure."
CBO estimates that the Senate version of the so-called stimulus plan will top at least $1.1 trillion. Trying to wrap my mind around that I found some interesting figures what you could get with a trillion dollars. Some examples:
If you stack up $1,000 bills, $1 trillion would need a pile that is 80 miles high.
$ 1 trillion is more than the combined gross revenues of Wal Mart, Exxon, General Motors and Ford Motors.
Assuming the United States consumes about 17 billion barrels of oil a year and assuming the cost of a barrel of oil is about $65, a trillion dollars will buy an entire year's worth of oil for the USA.
You could buy a thousand Queen Mary 2 with accommodations for 2,620 passengers
With a population of approximately 300 million people, you could give away $1 trillion by giving every man, woman and child in the U.S. $ 3,400 each.
We could buy everyone on Earth an iPod.
We could pave the entire U.S. interstate highway system with 23.5-karat gold leaf.
We could buy 16.6 million Habitat for Humanity houses
We could hire 1.9 million additional teachers
In my search I found a great website that helps you buy luxury and charitable items trying to add up to a trillion dollars. It was based on the spending involved with the Iraq War, but it works with out of control spending too. Here is the list I came up with:
You could buy:
8,700 Porsche 911 Turbos ($126,000 each): $1,097,940,000
New York Yankees: $1,200,000,000
New York Mets: $482,000,000
Every NFL Franchise: $8,600,000,000
Dracula's Romanian castle: $140,000,000
1,000 60SE Lear jets ($11,595,000 each): $11,595,000,000
Denver International Airport: $4,822,000,000
10 Picasso's (113,400,000 each): $1,134,000,000
Hard Rock Casino in Vegas: $770,000,000
Hong Kong Disneyland: $3,500,000,000
South Pacific Island of Katafanga: $38,900,000
Buy the whole world 100 cans of Coke: $650,000,000,000
Buy 50 Super bowl ads ($2,600,000 each): $130,000,000
Build 1,001 Habitat for Humanity houses (at $60,000 each): $600,060,000
Build 2,000 miles of Metro rail ($150,000,000 per a mile of track): $300,000,000,000
Build 250 hospitals in Third World nations ($41,300,000 each): $10,325,000,000
Produce your own Hollywood movie: $150,000,000
Buy the Maltese Falcon, the world's most expensive yacht: $100,000,000
Buy 2 Napa Valley wineries ($34,000,000 each): $68,000,000
Buy 26 McDonalds' franchises ($1,000,000 each): $26,000,000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total: $1,000,000,000,000
Speaker Pelosi's Pork and Payoff bill updated - That's not all folks!
When you have a huge bill like Hr. 1, the so-called stimulus bill, sometimes it takes a while for things to come out. I've found some updates on political pork being directed towards the author of the bill's, Rep. David Obey (D-Wisc.), son. Also the unions are given a sweet deal and, in what could possibly be called a bailout for the porn industry, the National Science Foundation gets $1.2 billion.
We have a new contender for my favorite Congressman of the 111th Congress, not sure if this is in time for Wesley Snipes though (my new nominee for Treasury Secretary):
New Bill Would Eliminate All IRS Penalties and Interest for U.S. Citizens
Congressman John Carter to introduce "Rangel Rule" Legislation Wednesday
(Washington, DC) - U.S. Rep. John Carter (R-TX) will introduce new legislation tomorrow to eliminate all penalty and interest charges by the Internal Revenue Service against U.S. citizens. The bill is designed to provide the same treatment for all U.S. taxpayers owing back taxes as that enjoyed by House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY).
A recent Los Angeles Times article makes clear that President Obama's enormous stimulus/spending plan may run into a huge GREEN roadblock - the nation's environmental laws and, in particular, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA was signed into law on January 1, 1970, and as Wikipedia puts it: "NEPA's most significant effect was to set up procedural requirements for all federal government agencies to prepare Environmental Assessments (EAs) and Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). EAs and EISs contain statements of the environmental effects of proposed federal agency actions." If significant environmental effects are found, the government has to propose adequate ways of mitigating the harms to be caused by the project. Spending vast sums on construction, roadway, and other infrastructure projects are certainly going trigger NEPA reviews.
To spur jobs Governor Schwazenegger is attempting to clear environmental hurdles to various road projects that he believes "would give the state a $1.2 billion economic boost and create 22,000 jobs over the next three years." The Governator wants to bypass environmental objections to get the projects moving. In doing so, he "has infuriated the Sierra Club and other groups with such proposals and with a letter he sent to President-elect Barack Obama last week asking that federal environmental reviews be waived on the highway projects." (my emphasis)
As I read this, Schawarzenegger wants the Obama administration to waive the NEPA requirements. California's request here is understandable, and if President Obama wants his stimulus explosion to effect the economy quickly, the Congress, the president, and the primary federal agencies for each "action" may need to waive these laws. Otherwise, each project could get bogged down. As Schwarzenegger noted, " 'What is important here is not to have projects ready [ ] three years from now, which can happen with the environmental approvals and other kind of red tape that you go through.'"
Having some familiarity with NEPA and related laws, I was beginning to wonder how its requirements were going to be met if the Obama Administration decided to seek a crash building & spending program. Well, the article from California makes it abundantly clear that environmental regulation of the stimulus spending is going to be a real problem that the Congress will probably have to address statutorily.
Jon Last has a fascinating article at the Weekly Standard on the depressingly sad state of the Icelandic economy-which historically hasn't done all that bad ever since Erik the Red and his Viking cohorts settled the place a thousand or so years ago. As one might expect, inept government interventions and political posturing played very large roles in the collapse. I, for one, hope it gets better, given that Icelanders with no work or money are going to be looking for something to do. When someone descended from Vikings named "Magnusson" is looking for something to do, it's time for some people to get worried-yes, I'm talking to you Newfoundland, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Normandy.
The FRC Action Values Voter Straw Poll has been making lots of news, but one of the poll questions that hasn't yet gained as much attention was question #3, which asked participants to rank the order of importance among a set of issues. Here are the results:
Here's the statistical breakdown:
ISSUE
VOTES
PERCENTAGE
Abortion
2398
41.52%
Same-sex "Marriage"
1141
19.76%
Tax Cuts
626
10.84%
Permanent tax relief for families
563
9.75%
Federal "hate crimes" legislation
331
5.73%
No vote on this question
181
3.13%
Taxpayer funding for abortions
151
2.61%
Prayer in schools
93
1.61%
Reinstatement of the "Fairness Doctrine"
88
1.52%
Public display of the Ten Commandments
57
0.99%
Enforced obscenity laws
54
0.94%
Embryonic stem cell experiments
48
0.83%
Voluntary, student-led prayer in schools
44
0.76%
Total
5,775
100%
Now that you've got the numbers, feel free to crunch away.
During the elections, Democrats warned about the increasing inequality in incomes. But a statistical test performed by the Census Bureau yesterday confirms that no statistically significant change in the inequality measure occurred between 2001 and 2005, the last year for which data are available.
The Census Bureau relied on the Gini coefficient, a standard gauge of income inequality, to make the determination. Perhaps they should use the Nancy coefficient – the salary for the Speaker of the House ($215,700) is 4.7 times more than the median household income ($46,326).
