South Africa has filed a formal objection, based, it appears, on the balloting procedure, which it calls “flawed”, and on the technical issues, which it felt were not properly resolved.
Year: 2008
GSE’s Eliminate Declining Market Category
Previously, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac required larger down payments (5% vs 3%) for areas that they designated “declining markets”, but they are dropping this classification, claiming that their improves underwriting systems make it unnecessary.
As a cynic, my guess what really happened is that they’ve discovered that most of the US is now a “declining market”.
More Food Safety Problems
It turns out that the private food labs that we depend on to test imports may be colluding with the importers who pay them to do the test in order to allow suspect food into the US.
Imagine that. You outsource food safety to private companies who are paid by the people that they are supposed to test, and they bend over backwards to please their real customers, as opposed to the American people.
Senate Considers Bill to Reign In Contractors
Should go further though….They are a problem throughout the government, not just in Iraq.
Senate Poll Numbers
All are from Rasmussen Reports™.
Election 2008: Kentucky Senate: Lunsford (D) 49% McConnell (R) 44%
This surprises me….I’d love to see Mitch McConnell get bounced, and this is a very bad number for him
Election 2008: Minnesota Senate: Coleman (R) 47% Franken (D) 45%
Franken took a hit over his tax issues, but most undecideds break against the incumbent, so I still think that there is a good chance for a pickup. If there is a debate, I think that Franken will clean Coleman’s clock.
Election 2008: Kansas Senate: Roberts 52% Slattery 40%
I’m stunned that this one is so close. Kansas doesn’t send Democrats to the Senate. Slattery could win this, but he has to get everything right.
Corruption Among Border Patrol on Rise
This is not a surprise. As enforcement efforts increase, smugglers will naturally turn to corrupting enforcement officers as a way to do business.
Note that this isn’t all just that though:
When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003, the internal affairs unit was dissolved and its functions spread among other agencies. Since the unit was reborn last year, it has grown from five investigators to a projected 200 by the end of the year.
Once again Bush and His Evil Minions™ manage to completely f^%$ up the execution.
Note that the best way to reduce corruption is to make sure that the border guards are well paid and have good working conditions. Underpaid and abused employees are more receptive to graft.
Wake Forest drops SAT Requirement
Speaking as someone who did fairly well on my SAT, I find the increasing number of schools who have dropped the SAT (and ACT) to be a welcome development.
Filling in little bubbles with a number 2 pencil has very little to do with the quality of one’s mind, and the Kaplan prep courses mean that rich kids whose parents can drop a grand are basically gaming the test, and the system, to their own advantage.
Not Good News
The IAEA is saying that Iran is not coming clean on its nuclear weapons research program that it terminated a few years back.
I’m beginning to wonder if the Mullahs want a US attack, because it would secure their position for the next 20 years.
Acid Seawater as a Result of Globan Warming
One of the issues with most of the models of global warming is that they have been wrong most of the time.
The problem is that they have been wrong because they’ve been too conservative, and each time new data comes out, it’s worse than predictions.
Now we are seeing Acidified seawater showing up in Pacific coastal waters about a century ahead of schedule.
Basically, as ocean water heats, it absorbs more CO2, and this turns the water more acid.
The measurements found a pH of 7.6, as opposed to the normal 8.1
Right to Resell Software Reaffirmed
The court case, Timothy Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc., was fairly simple: Mr. Vernor bought old copies of Autocad, one at a garage sale, and three from an architectural firm, and Autodesk sued, claiming that he violated the terms of the license.
Mr. Vernor asserted the right of first sale, which allows a person who has purchased a copyright work to resell it, but Autodesk claimed that it was not a sale, but a license.
The judge was having none of it, see here, here, and here, and ruled on behalf of Timothy Vernor, noting that Autodesk does not require an annual payment, or to return it when done.
Additionally, Autodesk was done in by their own sales literature and web site, which referred to purchase options for buying the sortware.
Note that this is bigger than it sounds:
If Jones’s ruling is upheld on appeal, it will have important consequences for the software industry, where the legal fiction that software is merely licensed is widely employed. In addition to discouraging the market for used software, software firms have also attempted to use the “licensed, not sold” theory to enforce restrictions on reverse engineering that would otherwise be fair use under copyright law. If software is sold, rather than licensed, then no license is required to install and use the software, and the terms of shrink-wrap licenses may not be legally binding.
Of course, the vendors could get around this by going with a real annual license, but in the real world of PC software, with a very few exceptions, you would eliminate 90+% of your customers if you did that.
I Guess You Can’t Help Anyone Without Stomping on Civil Rights These Days
Case in point, the housing bailout bill that just passed the Senate creates national fingerprint registry:
Buried in the text of the revised legislation, approved by the Senate Banking Committee by a 19-2 vote this week, is a plan to create a new national fingerprint registry. It covers just about everyone involved in the mortgage business, including lenders, “loan originators,” and some real estate agents.
Lovely.
McClellan’s New Tell-All Actually Tells All
Or at least a lot more than you would expect from the guy who job was to Bush’s liar in chief*.
To be fair, at least from the excerpts on Politico, he does a lot more blaming of Bush’s staff than Bush himself, but still, the allegations are explosive:
- He accuses Bush of relying on propaganda to sell the war.
- Basically calls the press a bunch of lap dogs.
- Admits that the administration was clueless on Katrina
- That Rove, Libby, and possibly Cheney lied to him about l’affaire Plame.
I’m not going to buy the book, paying Republicans only creates more Republicans, but I’m definitely going to borrow it at some point.
*To be fair, this is the job description of every press secretary.
I’d Like To Think That This Would Have Made Him Happy
Martin Luther King, Jr’s only grand child was just born, Yolanda Denise King, daughter of Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King.
Kapo*
So, Joe Lieberman has decided to headline Pastor John Hagee’s next “Christians United For Israel” summit on July 22.
He is gladly sharing the stage with a man (Hagee) who in addition to calling Catholicism as being “the Great Whore” said that Hitler, and the Holocaust, were heaven sent, and Joe Lieberman has called him a man of God and compares him to Moses (see video below).
Joe Lieberman is so wrapped up in his twisted vision of his own sanctimony and his own revenge fantasies against those who he thinks have wronged (most recently the Democrats for not nominating him for President or renominating him for Senate.)
There appears to be nothing beyond Joseph Lieberman’s (yimach shmo) small and petty goal of self-aggrandizement.
*Kapo, not to be confused with Capo†. They were Jewish trustees in the prison camp, and did the Nazi’s dirty work there, frequently with a level of brutality and sadism that stunned even their Nazi warders.
†Capo is short for Caporegime, which, to quote the Wiki means , “The head of a branch of an organized crime syndicate who commands a crew of soldiers and reports directly to a boss or an underboss.”
Carlyle Group to Buy/Split Booz Allen (Yep, I Worked for Them*)
It looks like Carlyle group will buy Booz Allen and spin off their commercial business.
About 75% of their staff, and so I would assume business is in government services, and they thought that the two groups were going in different directions, particularly after 911, when government work ramped up rapidly.
Assuming that a Democrat gets into the white house, my guess is that they will one day rue this decision, as the privatization of is a racket, and if it is reviewed by anyone other than right wing ideologues, it’s going to be cut back significantly.
Then again, we all know about my predictive powers.
*I worked at United Defense for two years, which was owned by the Carlyle Group, and then a year more at BAE Systems, which bought them out.
Brought to You By the Japanese Ministry of Tourism
Due to a screw up by Japanese customs agents 142g (about 5 oz) of Marijuana was placed in a passenger’s bag at Narita Airport.
They were running tests on the dogs, and used a real suitcase instead of a dummy one….oops….
UN Climate Program Scammed by Big Oil
It appears that the UN’s clean development mechanism is being gamed by energy companies top the tune of billions of pounds.
Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN’s main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify. The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made, undermining assurances by the UK government and others that carbon markets are dramatically reducing greenhouse gases, the researchers say.
The criticism centres on the UN’s clean development mechanism (CDM), an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.
People love market based solutions on emissions because they claim that it forces money back into more energy saving technology.
It doesn’t. It pushes the actors toward cheating and market manipulation, both of which are cheaper. Taxes are easier to administer, and harder to cheat on.
The real reason that all these people favor carbon trading is because they people who drew up the regulations went to Harvard or Oxford or some other elite school, and a trading scheme allows people like them, who went to the same schools, to make money.
Really and truly, when you look at these schools, it raises a question, which is how much are they about education, and how much are they, as Maynard Handley says, “That the primary value of a Harvard undergrad education is perceived by most of the people involved to be networking — it’s how you get to meet the future great and good, and thus substantially increase your chances of being hired by Bill Gates when he starts his new company, or by some future president.”
It’s all about insiders dealing to insiders.
Economics Update
Well, the Oracle of Omaha very bearish on the economy. Warren Buffett is predicting a long and deep recessions.
This is not all that surprising a conclusion seeing as how consumer confidence index fell to 57.2, well below the prediction of 60, and the lowest number since October 1992.
On the brighter side, the dollar has strengthened a bit, and crude prices have fallen, though Gas prices hit a new all time high for the 20th time in 20 days.
Even if oil prices moderate, the bond prices are falling because of inflation fears.
Basically, if you expect inflation, you don’t want to hold a bond with a fixed interest rate, and so if you want to sell your bond, the buyer wants a bigger discount.
In real estate, we have home prices falling an eye popping 14.1% year over year:
The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 2.2 percent in March from February and plummeted a record 14.4 percent from March 2007.
Economists expected prices for the 20-city index to fall 2.0 percent on month and 14.0 percent from a year earlier, according to the median forecast in a Reuters survey.
This is ugly for anyone who wants to buy a home, and the fact that we are seeing skyrocketing property tax delinquencies means that people who want to stay in their houses may find that municipal services are shrinking.
In banking, we have UBS saying that the mortgage bloodletting is not over, and US savings & loans setting aside $7.6 billion against potential losses in the home market, so if anyone is telling you that this has bottomed out, don’t believe them.
A330 MRTT Winning on World Market
This article (Paid Subscription Required) notes that the A330 is racking some very impressive sales, even when not considering the US tanker buy, with purchases by Australia (5 tankers), the UK (14 tankers), the UAE (3 tankers), and Saudi Arabia (3 tankers).
For the last two, it is the UAE’s first foray into tankers, and a major move away from US equipment for the House of Saud.
It looks like the Japanese and Italians, who bet on the US selecting the 767, may be the odd men out on all this.
They would be anyway, as the Boeing tanker proposal was significantly different from that they bought.
Poppy Cultivation Makes for Tough Choices in Afghanistan
Found in a rather odd place, specifically an Aviation Week defense blog, is the realization by experts that the poppy eradication program is bolstering the Taliban.
Seeing as how the current plan is to threaten people and burn their crops if they are caught with poppies again, I can’t imagine why this would be a problem.
This really needs to be addressed on the demand end, but with the biggest market for Heroine, the USA, hopelessly mired in a punitive “war on drugs”, that ain’t happening in the foreseeable future.