JACK LEW: PRE-CORRUPTED

Jack Lew got a $1 million dollar bonus from CitiGroup for landing a job with the Government. That's one whirling revolving door! He took over the internal management of the U.S. State Department.

And CitiGroup was getting corporate welfare at the time, of course. This was spilled at his recent confirmation hearing for U.S. Treasury Secretary by Orrin Hatch, of all people, guardian of the public interest that he is.

Lew dodged the question badly, hemming and hawing about complexity, the first refuge of the scoundrel.

Expect him to shake up the cozy relations between Wall Street and their supposed regulators. Or not.

Enjoy the article for some other absurd excuses of the four-year-old variety.

And you have to laugh when the moss-encrusted Wall Street Journal runs an editorial against crony capitalism with Lew as the whipping-boy. The outrage, the outrage!

Copper Supply to be Choked?

This is interesting, and perhaps alarmist. It looks like the SEC is greenlighting financial instruments that buy up and hoard physical copper, which is a big change. The article says it could happen to grain or any other vital supply.

A lot of people scream for a free market, but they don't usually mean cornering markets, hoarding commodities, or any other traditionally destructive practice. It looks like something to be aware of as this one gets slipped through with no law in back of it.

Regulate Stuff?

Naw, not really. Our bureaucrats are too busy getting "massages" in Vegas.

Filmed: Bribe Pitch From UK Conservative Party Co-treasurer

Can't wait until the film gets posted somewhere without a paywall:

Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas has resigned after secretly filmed footage showed him apparently offering access to the prime minister for a donation of £250,000 a year.

Via BBC News.

I find it refreshing that the Conservative co-treasurer simply presents a price, and explains just what amount of access it buys you. This approach cuts out all that SuperDuperPac nonsense we have here.

Why can't America be as efficient as the UK Conservatives? We wonder why the country's lead has been slipping globally!

JOBS, OUR BIGGEST EXPORT. FREE TRADE FOR ALL!

Headlining the keynote speakers at the forum was renowned economist Dr. Lawrence Summers, former director of the White House National Economic Council under Barack Obama. Summers, who served as president of Harvard University from 2001-2006, said in his speech that global sourcing is a key to economic success.
“There are those today who would resist the process of international integration; that is a prescription for a more contentious and less prosperous world,” stated Summers. “We should not oppose offshoring or outsourcing.”

Jobs, our biggest export!

OBAMA'S (AND DEMS') BAD MESSAGING. INTENTIONAL OR STUPID?

Okay, hurricane Irene and Obama's Huge Speech have now blown over. Let's examine the wreckage and damage caused by the latter.

I realized in a phone conversation that the Dems in general, and Prez O in particular, have a gigantic problem with messaging. Take this snippet from the New York Times:

Mr. Obama went before Congress in September to push for a $447 billion package of tax cuts and new government spending.

The centerpiece of the bill, known as the American Jobs Act, is an extension and expansion of the cut in payroll taxes, worth $240 billion, under which the tax paid by employees would be cut in half through 2012.

Opinesters are opining away over whether these tax cuts will create any jobs at all. Consumer confidence is extremely low. So, the misnamed payroll tax cut (really a cut to contributions to Social Security) might not stimulate much.

But a point is being missed by anyone I can see: When Pres. G.W. Bush eased the heavy burden on the pitiable and downtrodden wealthy, he and his amen-chorus Repubs called it a TAX CUT. When Prez O and the Dems put forth the same plan, albeit for greedy and overprivileged working people, they happily call it SPENDING which has to be PAID FOR. That's not a subtle distinction, that's an encapsulation of the last 30 years of conservative framing of the argument! The Democrats spend. Spend, spend, spend. Even when they cut taxes, that's spending. And you wonder why it's a no-win every time. The Dems are playing uphill with this brainless messaging.

Worse, in this case, it could be intentionally put that way in order to puff up a jobs bill that really spends far less than half of its total on putting anyone to work. At the center of the bill is a vacuum that must be now filled with other CUTS. Cut, cut cut. Is this a never-ending rerun?

Not an Onion headline:

"REGISTERING THE POOR TO VOTE IS UN-AMERICAN"

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.  It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote.

In which alleged human Mathew Vadum lashes out at the unfortunate, a favorite punching bag of the right.

The man needs to get out of his cave more.

Obama: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Regulations

Obama overrules the EPA's clean-air regulations.

President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration's controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency — and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers — and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog's main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

That last line is a verbatim quote of the recent Republican line. Don't believe me? Try this NY Times piece:

On Monday, Mr. Perry called on Mr. Obama to halt all regulations because, Mr. Perry said, “his E.P.A. regulations are killing jobs all across America.

Wait, before you say "pre-emptive strike," read the article. Even the more moderate Republicans quoted seem to think Perry is off his rocker on this one, although I'm not sure he is on his rocker about much of anything.

So, if the Obama Administration gives in to every extreme Republican demand, the crazies won't have a platform to run on? In what world is that even close to logical?

How Reality TV Eats Its Own

Fairly good piece up on Reuters about the reality tv genre, making the claim that it killed the Real Housewives guy who committed suicide.

When I heard that Russell Armstrong, the estranged husband of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Taylor Armstrong, committed suicide, the first thing that came into my head was “the show killed him.”

I was discussing this issue with a pal, who pointed out that perhaps a majority of the Housewives (who I've given up watching) have been through some sort of financial ruin, whether bankruptcy or foreclosure, and another huge number have had their marriages ruined.

She wanted to understand who would put themselves up on tv, break the bank to show off imagined wealth, to prove exactly what?

I think it's a pure snapshot of America, where the American Delusion replaces the American Dream. The real estate bubble is mirrored here. People finally reach some height, have a fame-whore wish to show it all off to the world, and then roll back down the hill like a stalled car. Most of these people don't get their own shows, however.

We revel in watching the delusions of others, branded as real.

SEC Shreds, Burns, and Zaps Evidence of Past "Non-Investigations"

Matt Taibbi reveals a whistleblower's case of dark doings at the SEC, where cover-ups are job one, and no evil deed goes unrewarded.

Flynn discovered a directive on the enforcement division's internal website ordering staff to destroy "any records obtained in connection" with closed MUIs. The directive appeared to violate federal law, which gives responsibility for maintaining and destroying all records to the National Archives and Records Administration. Over a decade earlier, in fact, the SEC had struck a deal with NARA stipulating that investigative records were to be maintained for 25 years – and that if any files were to be destroyed after that, the shredding was to be done by NARA, not the SEC.

But Flynn soon learned that the records for thousands of preliminary investigations no longer existed. In his letter to Congress, Flynn estimates that the practice of destroying MUIs had begun as early as 1993, and has resulted in at least 9,000 case files being destroyed. For all the thousands of tips that had come in to the SEC, and the thousands of interviews that had been conducted by the agency's staff, all that remained were a few perfunctory lines for each case. The mountains of evidence gathered were no longer in existence.

There's a good list of some buried cases, but it looks like there was a whole lotta greasing of wheels and other objects involved.

Shocking, but not surprising. I predict a full inquiry, and try not to laugh too loud.

Obama Plans to Put Pentagon on a Diet of Growth Hormones

An old Soviet tank rusts away in Afghanistan.

(Nothing to do with today.)

Missed this one, amidst all the austerity and shared sacrifice. From Army Times (which I've never heard of, honestly, but assume is something).

 "The Obama administration’s five-year defense plan is putting the Defense Department on a path toward serious budget problems in the future, according to new Congressional Budget Office estimates of long-term defense costs.

"Citing increased costs for operations, support and weapons, a new analysis from the nonpartisan budget office predicts the Defense Department will need a $631 billion base budget in 2015 and a $735 billion budget by 2021. The administration’s five-year defense plan proposes a $611 billion budget in 2015, growing to $694 billion by 2021."

I must research this more. If it's true, this is my vote for most under-reported.

I suppose one can say this is just a report, but then, during all the deficit hysteria, the House voted a Pentagon budget of $649B, up $17B. That was in early July, and almost completely unreported!

The recent "debate" and talk of the family budget would make sense if your family had an arsenal in the back yard while the garage and porch were falling in, the house's plumbing and heating needed fixing, and the wiring was frayed and sparking away.

Washington Post Understatement of the Year: Possible Conflict of Interest at the Fed

Read it and steam.

Obama Steps on Third Rail Without a Parachute

Oh yes he did! Unless there's a denial of the plain wording of the Washington Post article by Lori Montgomery:

“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

Rather than roughly $2 trillion in savings, the White House is now seeking a plan that would slash more than $4 trillion from annual budget deficits over the next decade . . .

Privately, some congressional Democrats were alarmed by the president’s proposal, which could include adjusting the measure of inflation used to determine Social Security payouts.

Stephen Ohlemacher via AP seems to confirm this:

One option includes a new inflation measure for Social Security that could produce savings close to $200 billion through a combination of reduced benefits and higher taxes, White House officials said Thursday.

 Low- and middle-income families could be hit.

The proposal would represent a reversal for Obama. In contrast to his pledge to target tax increases at the wealthy, high-income families would largely be spared from tax increases that would result from changing the way inflation is measured.

Looks like it's time for some magic book-cooking to will away that pesky inflation. Reversal? I've seen milder reversals in skateboard championships.

At which Nancy Pelosi goes mildly ballistic:

“You want to take a look at Social Security then look at it on its own table, but do not consider Social Security a piggy bank for giving tax cuts to the wealthiest people in our country.”

I don't know what else you'd call what's described above but that! But we've had clues for a year and a half that this has been Obama's intention all along, all the while saying the opposite over and over again. I don't know if this outrage is truly outrage, or just a bit of a dust-up so we'll think the Dems give a damn. Why is there a Democratic Party at all at this point, when all they can seem to accomplish is Stealth Republicanism(TM)?