Seriously, why cannot we see this on real news programs?
(10:39)
If I could write half as well as Stewart and his crew, hell, I’d be a f%$#ing amazing writer.
Year: 2010
The House Vote Can Occur Sunday
Because, as per Pelosi’s promise, there is 72 hours from the CBO report, and the unveiling of the bill, and when the vote is taken.
Well, the report is out: $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years.
Personally, I’m dubious, simply because either this is an end, which means that insurers find loopholes to screw us, or it’s a path to something more akin to European style healthcare, in which case, it gets a lot better.
In any case, it looks like a vote will occur after 2:00pm on Sunday.
Dennis Kucinich to Votefor Healthcare Bill
He announced it yesterday afternoon.
Of course, we haven’t seen the pressure that he got applied to the Blue Dogs, once again proving that you don’t count if you are a liberal.
Your JSF Update
Just the landing
The short take off & vertical landing & cheesy music.
F136 at full reheat using JSF nozzle
The aircraft appears to have performed well in this maneuver, though it was conducted at a lighter weight than would be used in combat.
They will be taking the weight up to around 5,000 lbs of fuel and weapons as they expand the envelope.
From the video, there is no evidence of problems with things like spalling the tarmac, but this is at Pax River, and the airfield there is rather robust.
Of course, this technical success does not make the program any better run, as shown by the latest Pentagon price estimates which show the cost of the plane increasing by 90%, to $135 million each, up from the original $69 million ( inflation adjusted, it was $50m in 2001 dollars) promised in 2001.
Additionally, because of cost and weight issues, the F-35 will be eliminating fire extinguishers and “shutoff fuses for engine fueldraulics lines,” which will increase vulnerability to ground fire, and make the aircraft more vulnerable to things like light AAA and small arms fire, which makes it less attractive to operate in a close air support.
All in all, this reminds me of the death throws of the Naval F-111B, where they were literally pulling glass off the gauges and replacing it with plastic, in an attempt to get the weight low enough to make a carrier landing feasible.
Finally, the GE/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine has hit full thrust in reheat (paid subscription required) on the test stand, and results indicate a thrust margin above that of P&W’s F135:
With all the improvements in place, DiLibero says Engine 006 test results so far indicate performance and durability is exceeding design expectations and turbine inlet temperatures are cooler than planned. “So that’s more margin for durability, or power,” he adds. GE/Rolls-Royce declines to comment on the top thrust levels achieved in maximum afterburner, but the team previously said it anticipated an estimated 5% margin over the F-35’s baseline Pratt & Whitney F135 powerplant.
“Both engine developers are working to the same specifications, and our customer has made it clear it is not in anybody’s interests to be over. However, we’re on firm ground by saying we have margin,” says F136 marketing manager Tim Morison. GE/Rolls-Royce says the additional thrust may be particularly valuable for increasing weapons bring-back capability and hover performance for the F-35B Stovl version. “We think the three-stage low-pressure turbine is what drives the margin in Stovl,” Morison says.
Considering the cost increases that appear to be in the pipe for the F135, as well as the ongoing issues with bringback weight with the STOVL version, it does seem to me that continued development of the F136 is prudent.
Our Overpaid Elites Are Incompetent, Corrupt, and Worthless
Christopher Hayes nails it:
In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.
The downfall of empires has always been the replacement of meritocracies with nepotism, because as people become entitled, they become stupid.
Get your pitchforks and torches, get your pitchforks and torches here!
Go read.
H/t Atrios.
Well, Now We Know Why They Closed Park Avenue Bank on Thursday
As opposed to the normal Friday.
Because Charles Antonucci, the president of the bank, was just arrested for defrauding the TARP:
The former president of New York’s privately held Park Avenue Bank was arrested on Monday on fraud charges, the first person accused of attempting to steal U.S. government bailout funds in the financial crisis.
The charges came just three days after regulators seized the bank, which had $520 million in assets.
A 10-count criminal complaint said Charles Antonucci devised “an elaborate round-trip loan transaction” that he told others was his own $6.5 million investment in Park Avenue Bank, misleading bank regulators. Antonucci made false statements in the bank’s application for $11.2 million from TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the complaint.
I gotta figure that there is some more TARP fraud among the banksters, but time will tell.
If the Supreme Court Says that They are People
Can we throw Assurant Health in jail for attempted murder:
In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.
Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, [now Assurant] revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.
…………
Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell’s case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.
…………
In the motions, [presiding judge, Michael G. ] Nettles not only strongly denied Fortis‘ claims but condemned the corporation’s conduct.
“There was evidence that Fortis‘ general counsel insisted years ago that members of the rescission committee not record the identity of the persons present and involved in the process of making a decision to rescind a Fortis health insurance policy,” Nettles wrote.
Elsewhere in his order, Nettles noted that there were no “minutes of actions, votes, or any business conducted during the rescission committee’s meeting.”
The South Carolina Supreme Court, in upholding the jury’s verdict in the case in a unanimous 5-0 opinion, said that it agreed with the lower court’s finding that Fortis destroyed records to hide the corporation’s misconduct. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal wrote: “The lack of written rescission policies, the lack of information available regarding appealing rights or procedures, the separate policies for rescission documents” as well as the “omission” of other records regarding the decision to revoke Mitchell’s insurance, constituted “evidence that Fortis tried to conceal the actions it took in rescinding his policy.”
They were engaging in actions in which they knew that they were defrauding their customers, a felony, and they knew that there was a significant livelihood of death resulting, which makes this felony murder, and perhaps 1st degree murder .
It’s nice that Mr. Mitchell got his money, but the company and its agents need to go to jail.
BTW, this is Murray Waas reporting this, and I would argue that he is one of the 5 best investigative reporters out there.
OK, I’m Depressed
Well, the New York Times interviewed Mickey Kaus* on the occasion of his run for Senate, which seems to be driven by his need to cock punch DFH’s, though his primary opponent Barbara Boxer is a woman, which kinds of screws up the metaphor.
In any case, he was asked the following:
NYT: How much do they pay you?
Kaus: I had been making in the mid-90s, and then I had to take a pay cut along with everyone else, and I was making in the 80s. I’m fortunate to make any money as a blogger. There are some who make more. Most of them work for The Atlantic.
Well, Brad Delong runs the numbers, and comes up with the following:
Mickey Kaus has written 54 posts in the past ten weeks–that’s an average of 5.4 posts for each week in which he makes $1,800, or $333 a weblog post. This seems to me to be way out of line–suggesting some major source of labor-market monopoly is preventing Slate from rationalizing its labor costs.
(emphasis original)
Well, remember when I commented that I had made 10,625 Posts over the past 2¾ Years, and the first time that anyone asked to run an ad specifically on my content, it was for that bung dropper video?†
The sum total of my creative value is two checks, each for a bit over $100, and a 3rd one should be coming shortly, probably this month as I am less than a dollar away from the check cutting threshold.
This here is post number 10,710 so let’s figure that I will have gotten $315 for about 10,900 posts, or about 2.9¢ a post.
If I figured it on a per word basis, I think that I’d retire to a monastery in Tibet, and I hate Yak butter.
Still, who reads Kaus? Seriously.
*Who has still not denied that he blows goats.
†I was turned down, because I could not demonstrate ownership, it ain’t mine, and because they were concerned that butchering a carcass was not “family safe”.
I’m quoting American Conservative Magazine?
Why yes, I am quoting American Conservative Magazine.
You see, Daniel Larison, reads Ross Douthat’s most recent New York Times screed (no link to the Times, I don’t want to encourage them, but his wankitude is here on my blog).
Ross, it seems, felt offended because people were using insufficient nuance when describing Bush and His Evil Minions™, particularly with regard to the architects of the invasion of Iraq, and Mr. Larison responds:
Yes, the problem might be that we do not have artists capable of rendering contemporary architects of a war of aggression that was based on shoddy intelligence, ideological fervor and deceit in a sufficiently subtle, even-handed manner. If only Hollywood were better at portraying the depth and complexity of people who unleashed hell on a nation of 24 million people out of an absurd fear of a non-existent threat! Life is so unfair to warmongers, is it not? Then again, the reason our debates are so poisonous and our nation so divided might have something to do with the existence of utterly unaccountable members of the political class that can launch such a war, suffer no real consequences, and then reliably expect to be defended as “decent” and “well-intentioned” people who made understandable mistakes. The unfortunate truth of our existence is that villains do not have to come out of central casting for comic book movies. They are ordinary, “decent” people who commit grave errors and terrible crimes for any number of reasons. Many great evils have found their origins in a group’s belief that they were doing the right thing and were therefore entitled and permitted to use extraordinary means.
………
(emphasis mine)
That is a righteous rant.
Jon Stewart is a F%$#ing Genius: Pro Wrestling Edition
Do not have anything in your mouth before clicking “play”.
Anti-Vaxxers Handed Another Well Deserved Defeat
A 3 judge panel has ruled that there is no scientific basis for claims of a link between thimerosal and autism:
In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, does not cause autism.
The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding begun in 2002 in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The proceeding combines the cases of 5,000 families with autistic children seeking compensation from the federal vaccine injury fund, which comes from a 75-cent tax on every dose of vaccine.
Understand that there is a fund, which can, and does pay out for things like allergic reactions, and judges ruled that there is no factual basis for this at all:
In the three cases brought against the government, by the parents of Jordan King, Colin R. Dwyer and William Mead, all three special masters used strong language in dismissing the expert evidence from the families’ lawyers.
The master in the King ruling emphasized that it was “not a close case” and “extremely unlikely” that Jordan’s autism was connected to his vaccines. The master in the Dwyer case wrote that many parents “relied upon practitioners and researchers who peddled hope, not opinions grounded in science and medicine.”
This is judge speak for, “Get out of here, you nut jobs.”
Now, if only we could get Jenny McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. off of Huff Po before they do any more damage.
Your Moment of Schadenfreude
Because I love it when Rachel takes someone down hard
J.D. Hayworth was defeated in 2006 largely because he was one of the most, if not the most, compromised candidates by his ties to Jack Abramhoff.
Well, now he’s on Maddow, and claiming that John McCain’s investigations of the Abramhoff affair in 2004 exonerated him.
What actually happened was that McCain did his best to cover up all the dirt in 2004, because he wanted to run for President in 2008, which meant getting the Republican nomination.
So, now that Hayworth has had his ass kept out of jail by McCain, Hayworth is running a scorched earth primary challenge against him.
Heh.
BTW, Dennis G. at Balloon Juice has the full story, and McCain’s cover-up is a remarkably sordid tale.
Heh.
I wonder when McCain starts leaking stuff from his files tot he press about this.
Heh. Heh.
OK, I Understand You Have to Hire a Right Winger
But do you have to hire a really stupid right winger?
Forget Erickson’s politics and whether you agree with them. It’s not whether he’s on the left or the right that matters — it’s the way he expresses his beliefs that’s the problem. Among other things, he’s had readers send fake dog poop to Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., because of the congressman’s support for his party’s healthcare reform proposals, he’s celebrated Chicago’s losing the 2016 Summer Olympics by writing, “Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world,” he’s said that “leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right.”
I’m not asking that they find a smart wingnut, but at the very least, they should find someone who does not need help to cut his own meat, you know, someone who can at least pretend to have two brain cells on the teevee, see Will, George.
Greek Crisis Appears to be Moderating
The EU has an as yet undisclosed bailout plan, and S&P reaffirmed Greece’s BBB bond rating.
As I have said before, the problem was that the governments were too eager for integration, so they used unrealistic exchange rates to bring in the less well off EU members into the Euro, basically payoffs, and so you now have imbalances that need to sort themselves out.
Still if I were a betting man, I’d bet on the Germans being complete dicks about all of this, because it’s how they roll.
Hiram Monserrate Loses Election Bid
As you may recall Mr. Monseratte was expelled from the New York Senate after assaulting his girl friend, and now he has lost the election bid to José Peralta in a special election in which he took gay baiting to very ugly places.
Monseratte was running as an independent, because there was no way that the Democratic party would put him on the ticket after he was one of the two State Senators who switched to the Republicans, flipping the chamber briefly, and I’m wondering if it was over gay marriage now.
Hopefully, this is the end of his political career.
More Lehman, the Press, and Why Timmeh Should Go Now
Click for full size
A Repo 105 transaction: if it looks confusing, that’s because it’s intended to confuse
As I noted a few days ago, Lehman used what any normal human being would have called, “accounting fraud.”
Well, we have some more details, and it appears that the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve, and its president, current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, knew it, and did nothing about it.
Basically, this was all about what is called “Repo” transactions.
Essentially, it’s a way to get short term cash by turning over assets as collateral, which is normal and ordinary. It’s a lot like pawning your wedding ring, only the amounts are much larger, and typically the periods of the loan are typically shorter.
So, what is the problem?
Well, ignoring the fact that the assets were in reality absolute crap, which is really a matter of due diligence for the lender, if you remain responsible for any losses in value of these assets, and you structure the transaction so that it does not show up on your balance sheet, because they booked the transaction as a sale of assets, as opposed to borrowing money.
The thing is, that this is illegal, or at least without precedent, in the United States, so they justified the activities, which took place in the United States, by claiming that they operated under UK law:
When Lehman first designed Repo 105 in 2001, however, there was one catch. The firm couldn’t get any American law firms to sign off on the aggressive accounting, namely that these transactions were true sales instead of what amounted to the parking of assets. From the firm’s own Repo 105 accounting policy document, according to the report:
Repos generally cannot be treated as sales in the United States because lawyers cannot provide a true sale opinion under U.S. law.
Enter Linklaters, [a “magic circle” law firm, the US equivalent is a “white shoe” law firm] which grounded its legal brief in English, rather than American, law. The firm explicitly said: “This opinion is limited to English law as applied by the English courts and is given on the basis that it will be governed by and construed in accordance with English law.”
The full legal opinion is after the break.
In any case, other investment banks are denying that they use this accounting gimmick, to which I reply, “Yes, and you will respect me in the morning, the check is in the mail, and you won’t cum in my mouth.”
It’s no wonder that the bankruptcy examiner described the behavior as, “grossly negligent.”
Let me make this clear, I have not read the report, it’s 1053 pages long not counting appendices, but Yves Smith did, and she finds that the NY Fed did not exercise due diligence, and cites the footnotes:
Liquidity was an important factor in the stress testing that Lehman was required to run under the CSE Program. After March 2008 when the SEC and FRBNY began onsite daily monitoring of Lehman, the SEC deferred to the FRBNY to devise more rigorous stress‐testing scenarios to test Lehman’s ability to withstand a run or potential run on the bank.5753 The FRBNY developed two new stress scenarios: “Bear Stearns” and “Bear Stearns Light.”5754 Lehman failed both tests.5755 The FRBNY then developed a new set of assumptions for an additional round of stress tests, which Lehman also failed.5756 However, Lehman ran stress tests of its own, modeled on similar assumptions, and passed.5757 It does not appear that any agency required any action of Lehman in response to the results of the stress testing.
(emphasis mine)
So it appears that little Timmy Geithner allowed Lehman to game the stress tests so as to pass, which makes one wonder about the stress tests of the remaining financial institutions last year?
Geithner is either incompetent, or completely captured by the finance industry, or corrupt.
In any of these cases, he should have been given the boot long ago.
You know the one where Geithner negotiated the results with the banks?
A final note on all this, for some reason, the blogs are doing a good job of covering all of this, but the papers are burying the story on inside pages, with the WSJ placing it on page C7, and the NYT placing it on B2.
Legal opinion after the break:
Linklaters Letter to Lehman Brothers re Repo 105
Breaking: Pelosi Says Dems Have the Votes
I think that the bill really sucks, though not as much as the status quo, and I doubt the “Camel’s nose under the tent” argument, but still from a purely political calculus, this is good news.
I just hope that she’s twisted Blue Dog arms hard, they always seem to the carrot, and never the stick.
Economics Update
OK, the FOMC released its report today, and when the Federal Reserve speaks, people listen.
What the Fed said is that it intends to keep rates low for an, “Extended Period,”.
The Fed speak is that economic conditions, “warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period,” this means that they will not raise rates at their next meeting or probably the one after that.
Most likely you will see at least, and possibly 2 statement changes from the Fed before they raise rates, but they are closing the taps a bit by, “closing the special liquidity facilities that it created to support markets during the crisis,” and it reaffirmed that it will be closing the TALF will on June 30.
In real estate, home starts fell in February, though doubtless a lot of that was the Snowpocalypse.
The Fed’s statement pushed oil up by $1.80/bbl and similarly pushed the dollar down.
Full FOMC statement after break.
Press Release
Federal Reserve Press ReleaseRelease Date: March 16, 2010
For immediate releaseInformation received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in January suggests that economic activity has continued to strengthen and that the labor market is stabilizing. Household spending is expanding at a moderate rate but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Business spending on equipment and software has risen significantly. However, investment in nonresidential structures is declining, housing starts have been flat at a depressed level, and employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls. While bank lending continues to contract, financial market conditions remain supportive of economic growth. Although the pace of economic recovery is likely to be moderate for a time, the Committee anticipates a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.
With substantial resource slack continuing to restrain cost pressures and longer-term inflation expectations stable, inflation is likely to be subdued for some time.
The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve has been purchasing $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt; those purchases are nearing completion, and the remaining transactions will be executed by the end of this month. The Committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and will employ its policy tools as necessary to promote economic recovery and price stability.
In light of improved functioning of financial markets, the Federal Reserve has been closing the special liquidity facilities that it created to support markets during the crisis. The only remaining such program, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, is scheduled to close on June 30 for loans backed by new-issue commercial mortgage-backed securities and on March 31 for loans backed by all other types of collateral.
Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; James Bullard; Elizabeth A. Duke; Donald L. Kohn; Sandra Pianalto; Eric S. Rosengren; Daniel K. Tarullo; and Kevin M. Warsh. Voting against the policy action was Thomas M. Hoenig, who believed that continuing to express the expectation of exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period was no longer warranted because it could lead to the buildup of financial imbalances and increase risks to longer-run macroeconomic and financial stability.
2010 Monetary Policy Releases
What Miserable Excuses for Human Beings
The usual suspects, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and News Busters (Scott Whitlock & Tim Graham), who decided that it was somehow ethically good to smear an 11 year old boy who simply said, that he did not want other little boys to lose their mothers because of a lack of health insurance.
Why anyone buys any products from people who advertise with them is beyond me.
These are evil people, and not only should we not patronize their sponsors, we shouldn’t piss on them if they are on fire.
</rant>
Who Says That Irony is Dead
David Malpass, a former Bear Stearns economist is running for US Senate seat from New York against Kirsten Gillibrand.
I guess that he had to run, because serial killer Theodore Bundy is dead.
What is his pitch? That, “We need jobs and growth,” and that taxes are too high.
Seriously dude, you used to work for Bear Stearns. The idea that you are going to somehow create jobs, when you were at the epicenter of an epic collapse that you were in part responsible for is simply ludicrous, but he finishes up with this:
We need financial reform legislation but one that gets us toward more jobs and growth, not one that gets us toward more Washington
Does he really think that the voters are stupid enough to hand him the keys to financial reform?
You know, a campaign slogan of, “I know how to stop crime, because I was a criminal,” might sell in Louisiana, but not in New York.
H/t Americablog.