Slashdot Mirror

False. Until such a time as future SS payouts are revised to reflect reality, it is a future obligation of the US government. As noted here, once the fund runs out the current income will not be able to pay 100% of the defined benefits.

As to your very weak analogy, the current broohaha over a whopping $44B "cut" is to be half in defense. The bottom line is you, like the vast majority of Americans, are hooked on government handouts be they federal, state or local. And you can toss in US corporations as well.

Here's a recent article talking about how the US Mainstream Media (MSM) are ignoring facts (Britain's media is also particularly bad in this regard, the once impartial BBC has a horrific anti-Israel pro-Islamist bias these days, no wonder, its journalists are all graduates of Lefty-dominated Liberal Arts universities): http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/020713-643641-islamists-gagging-americans-through-religious-speech-code.htm?p=full

Political Correctness is the *enemy* of Free Speech and Liberty. Don't be fooled by the MSM ! Escape The Matrix and do your own research - the media is lying to you by omitting critical facts that don't fit their "narrative". Islam and its enabler 'political correctness' are the enemies of every free person and every Enlightenment liberty.

A recent study by the preestigous National Bureau of Economic Research found the Community Reinvestment Act was the initial cause for banks to lose their bearings. They were intimidated intimidated into making bad loans on one hand and relaxed into doing so by gov promises to back up losses. The private/public partnership removed barriers to sound financial practice.

"NBER: "There is a clear pattern of increased defaults for loans made by these banks in quarters around the (CRA) exam. Moreover, the effects are larger for loans made within CRA tracts," or predominantly low-income and minority areas.

To satisfy CRA examiners, "flexible" lending by large banks rose an average 5% and those loans defaulted about 15% more often, the 43-page study found.

The strongest link between CRA lending and defaults took place in the runup to the crisis — 2004 to 2006 — when banks rapidly sold CRA mortgages for securitization by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Wall Street.

CRA regulations are at the core of Fannie's and Freddie's so-called affordable housing mission. In the early 1990s, a Democrat Congress gave HUD the authority to set and enforce (through fines) CRA-grade loan quotas at Fannie and Freddie.

It passed a law requiring the government-backed agencies to "assist insured depository institutions to meet their obligations under the (CRA)." The goal was to help banks meet lending quotas by buying their CRA loans.

But they had to loosen underwriting standards to do it. And that's what they did...

"We want your CRA loans because they help us meet our housing goals," Fannie Vice Chair Jamie Gorelick beseeched lenders gathered at a banking conference in 2000, just after HUD hiked the mortgage giant's affordable housing quotas to 50% and pressed it to buy more CRA-eligible loans to help meet those new targets. "We will buy them from your portfolios or package them into securities."

Its pretty funny to see Federal Housing Finance Agency suing banks like Chase (who was actually one of the banks least caught up in the sub-prime fiasco)

New Study Finds CRA 'Clearly' Did Lead To Risky Lending"
  http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/122012-637924-faults-community-reinvestment-act-cra-mortgage-defaults.htm#ixzz2KKE5CMwm

Is she for hire? I'm envisioning a Kickstarter project, unleashing M-i-L on Harry Reid, who ends up looking like a Ramirez cartoon.

Except that's strictly a right-wing fantasy. Obama actually LOWERED taxes and CUT regulations.

Psst, hey AC, better check this out...

Incomes are down: http://news.investors.com/092512-626958-household-income-down-82-under-president-obama.aspx

Obamacare regulations for 2013 are going to be less than optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gracemarieturner/2012/10/28/the-avalanche-of-new-obamacare-rules-will-come-in-january-2013/

Obama EPA regulations also sub-optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/11/04/epas-insanely-ambitious-agenda-if-obama-is-reelected/

Here's another tip- stop getting your news from NPR and MSNBC. that's a left wing fantasy.

OK, even if we assume that those are all 100% accurate, WTF do any of those have to do with whether taxes are higher or lower? Here's a hint: NOTHING!!!!

Except that's strictly a right-wing fantasy. Obama actually LOWERED taxes and CUT regulations.

Psst, hey AC, better check this out...

Incomes are down: http://news.investors.com/092512-626958-household-income-down-82-under-president-obama.aspx

Obamacare regulations for 2013 are going to be less than optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gracemarieturner/2012/10/28/the-avalanche-of-new-obamacare-rules-will-come-in-january-2013/

Obama EPA regulations also sub-optimal: http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/11/04/epas-insanely-ambitious-agenda-if-obama-is-reelected/

Here's another tip- stop getting your news from NPR and MSNBC. that's a left wing fantasy.

here I am 3 years later wondering what to do

More people are going on disability than are finding jobs. No reason to think it's going to get any better for the next few years.

I'm more concerned with the Obama aides in the White House who owe back taxes. They all have security clearances, and an adversary could use that as leverage to extract intelligence or other favors.

You can't be blackmailed with public knowledge. "We'll tell your friends about you back taxes if you don't give us this document!"

"Uh... that's on my website. What next, you're going to threaten to spill the beans on my porn collection?"

Murdoch's NewsCorp makes Billions of Dollars in Profit/Revenues a year, and is one of the largest media companies in the world. Yet NewsCorp only pays about 4% in Taxes on all this income, thanks to an intricate network of hundreds of shell-companies in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

So you're saying they are 100% in compliance with the law and are paying all their taxes?

I'm more concerned with the Obama aides in the White House who owe back taxes. They all have security clearances, and an adversary could use that as leverage to extract intelligence or other favors.

Romney is surrounded by yes men? I think you somehow missed picking up on Obama's cult of personality.

Dude. Red-baiting ceased being fashionable at least 20 years ago.

In any case, you have got to be fucking kidding me. That article is so slanted, the text just about falls off the page. It's impossible to take seriously.

As for the charity thing, it may be true, but I doubt all that's just because he's a nice guy:

1. He's a Mormon. A big chunk of that is required by his church.

2. Taxes.

3. PR win.

The weak opponent doesn't have that benefit already being weak. Mitt Romney had it too easy, surrounded by yes men or suckers not used to taking on really skilled opponents if Obama pushes him hard Romney could lose it and expose his vicious self serving nature

Romney is the weak one? Romney, who had to fight for the nomination against a large field of challengers versus President Obama who walked through the primaries? I don't think that makes sense.

Romney is surrounded by yes men? I think you somehow missed picking up on Obama's cult of personality.

Romney: weak, but also vicious and self serving? You seem a bit conflicted there. I'm not sure that will hold up either.

In 2011, the Romneys donated about 29% of their income to charity – $4 million out of their total $13.7 million in income. For 2010, they donated about 13.8% of their income, $2.98 million out of $21.6 million. Over a 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income, according to an accountants’ letter they provided on Friday. -- Romney’s Taxes: A Window Into Charitable Giving

The real media ever touched this story. Wouldn't want to make any Democrat appear to ever have flaws.

Quite the opppsite.

The problem areas in the American fiscal environment are pretty well known. I don't think anyone would seriously try to blame Muslims for them as it would be obvious nonsense.

FDR knew that the funding mechanism for Social Security had to change long term, and it has never been done. And please spare us from nonsense about wars and defense spending being the problem, because they aren't. Rapidly increasing social welfare spending mixed with soaring debts, and an economy that is frozen by government meddling (such as helped create the housing and mortgage meltdown) and unable to produce jobs, growth, and income, is what will push the United States over the edge, if anything.

Chart of the Week: Federal Spending on Defense vs. Entitlements

What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund?
Who doesn’t pay taxes, in eight charts
Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild,
The Path to Economic Disaster

And lets not forget the Euro crisis - if Europe collapses, it might very well drag down the US. Once again, it would be pretty clear what happened.

If there is a new "Hitler", he is very unlikely to come from conservative America.

Bad socialist habits coming to America: Obama's Creepy Cult of Personality

America's 'Fascist Moment'

. . . . contemporary liberalism descended from the ranks of 20th-century progressivism, and "shares intellectual roots with European fascism."

When Mr. Goldberg uses the term "liberal fascism," he is not offering a right-wing version of the left's smears. He knows it is a loaded term. What he is talking about is the historical idea of fascism: a corporatist and statist social structure that creates a deep reliance of its subjects on the government and engenders a sense of community and purpose. In American politics, this tendency toward statism has always been much more at home on the left than on the right.

It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the rich intellectual history of American liberalism that Mr. Goldberg offers to his readers. He has read widely and thoroughly, not only in the primary sources of fascism, but in the political and intellectual history written by the major historians of the subject.

Readers will learn that the very term "liberal fascism" came from the pen of H.G. Wells, the famed socialist author who delivered a speech at Oxford University in 1932 that included hosannas to both Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. "I am asking," Wells told the students, "for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis." Democracy, he argued, had to be replaced with new forms of government that would save mankind, producing a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of liberalism" that would be called "Liberal Fascism." Like the activism, experimentation, and discipline that made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany new dynamic societies, the West too could reach such a plateau by adopting the new soft fascism that suited it best.. . . .

Indeed, America, as Mr. Goldberg writes, certainly had a "Fascist moment." It was not, however, during the current presidency, but one that extended from progressivism through the New Deal. Mr. Goldberg traces the American roots of liberal fascism to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who saw i

Now, we might see another Charismatic Dangerous Leader, yes.

The desired habits are being installed even now.

I.e. Samsung alone shipped almost twice as many smartphones as Apple.

Apple makes over 70% of industry profit. And Samsung is the only other phone maker making any significant profit at all in the smartphone. (HTC apparently makes a small operating profit) Pretty much every other phone maker including Research In Motion, Nokia, Motorola and Sony all posted losses. Because Samsung ships a lot more units (feature phones + smart phones) but still only has half the profit of Apple over the same period, that means that Samsung is competing with Apple primarily on price. Yes they are selling a lot of units but people (mostly) aren't buying them for the features - they are buying Samsung because of the price. It's unclear if Samsung will be able to continue its price leadership since there isn't all that much much to differentiate Samsung's Android phone from anyone else's.

Yeah, those 10 million odd people who jumped on the SGSIII were only doing it because it was cheaper than the iPhone. No other reason is possible, right?

I.e. Samsung alone shipped almost twice as many smartphones as Apple.

Apple makes over 70% of industry profit. And Samsung is the only other phone maker making any significant profit at all in the smartphone. (HTC apparently makes a small operating profit) Pretty much every other phone maker including Research In Motion, Nokia, Motorola and Sony all posted losses. Because Samsung ships a lot more units (feature phones + smart phones) but still only has half the profit of Apple over the same period, that means that Samsung is competing with Apple primarily on price. Yes they are selling a lot of units but people (mostly) aren't buying them for the features - they are buying Samsung because of the price. It's unclear if Samsung will be able to continue its price leadership since there isn't all that much much to differentiate Samsung's Android phone from anyone else's.

The problem with plugins, for the consumer, is not all of the usual equivocation between gas-driven vehicles. The problem with plugins is actually that they are not hybrids. There are some very real technical limitations that consumers very easily understand - mechanical problems, new technology, performance, and, at a simple level, no juice. Just look at Consumer Reports highly publicized review of the Fiskar Karma all-electric: http://news.investors.com/article/604114/201203121905/broken-fisker-karma-towed-by-consumer-reports.htm?p=full The $100K Karma with a K (which was supposed to be the all-electric sports car) died on arrival. Why would I buy a Leaf / Karma / etc., if I can do all take care of those social responsibility do-gooder things with a hybrid.

Really? So, let's compare. You take the choice of a massive power grab which is going to more than likely collapse the economy when businesses fall under due the taxes. Or you do it right, and let states decide what, when and how they should do it. Instead of faceless bureaucrats in washington.

Tough one indeed. You're trading depressed economy with no healthcare, for no healthcare. Especially when that more recent poll says 83% of doctors have considered quitting over obamacare. Yeah, good luck finding a doctor. Well maybe there won't be a doctor shortage in Canada anymore.

I wrote about ACA and how this is actually an Unaffordable care act, not 'affordable care act', it's in my sig.

Practically speaking what ACA has done already - it introduced the single payer system, because at this point the insurance companies are no longer in business of insurance, they are not allowed to deny new clients with pre-existing conditions (among other obligations), and this means that people will be cancelling their insurance and companies will be cancelling group policies as well, the only people who will stay on insurance plans will be those, that need it to pay their bills right now, so the people who need treatment right now will stay on.

Also insurance companies will have some new clients, those will be people you are describing, those without insurance, they will have subsidies, so it's the tax payers (lenders and everybody who holds US dollars due to inflation) that will be paying for this.

The premiums will be rising, because insurance companies won't have the savings to make the treatment payments, and thus more and more companies will be looking for ways to cancel their employee group insurance plans, even if it means some taxes (penalties) will be applied.

Healthy people will opt out and will pay for minor doctor visits out of pocket and will wait until they really need insurance for major coverage to get back on a plan (they can't be denied), and so all insurance companies will fail.

As all insurance companies will fail, the government will be bailing them out with taxed, borrowed and printed money.

So this IS a single payer system already, you just don't understand it.

--

As to 'paying by your means', people already pay by their means. Those with more money pay for more stuff, they pay for better hospital rooms and service and they buy the most expensive care they can afford, while those with modest means go for cheaper options.

But that's not what you are talking about, you want something else, which of-course is a price and wage control on a totally different level. You want people's wealth or incomes to be measured and you want to use their bills to cover everybody's visits, is that it?

As I said, you are not intelligent enough, to make such preposterous proposals and to think that this would not automatically stop all the rich people from visiting the hospitals that would engage in such behaviour is so short sighted, it's nearly funny.

The rich would simply buy completely private health care from doctors that you won't see in those public hospitals. There won't be any 'rich' people in the hospitals where you want to bilk them out of all of their money.

Those hospitals would be completely unfunded again, as being 'free' for the poor is something that will be completely abused, everybody will somehow be reclassified into the category of 'poor'.

Don't believe me?

Look at the food stamps, 1 in 7 is using them, so the program has more and more people in it, not because they can't afford food but because the administration wants more people to be on the program so they would keep voting for the same thing.

Same thing with disability claims, that are way up these months, not because of more disabled people but because people are able to use those benefits because they are easily available.

But again, your ideology is completely contrary to the principles upon which the free society was founded in USA and obviously that's the current tidal shift that is propelled by the ever expanding government, which wants the people to be dependent, because that is ex

I wrote about ACA and how this is actually an Unaffordable care act, not 'affordable care act', it's in my sig.

Practically speaking what ACA has done already - it introduced the single payer system, because at this point the insurance companies are no longer in business of insurance, they are not allowed to deny new clients with pre-existing conditions (among other obligations), and this means that people will be cancelling their insurance and companies will be cancelling group policies as well, the only people who will stay on insurance plans will be those, that need it to pay their bills right now, so the people who need treatment right now will stay on.

Also insurance companies will have some new clients, those will be people you are describing, those without insurance, they will have subsidies, so it's the tax payers (lenders and everybody who holds US dollars due to inflation) that will be paying for this.

The premiums will be rising, because insurance companies won't have the savings to make the treatment payments, and thus more and more companies will be looking for ways to cancel their employee group insurance plans, even if it means some taxes (penalties) will be applied.

Healthy people will opt out and will pay for minor doctor visits out of pocket and will wait until they really need insurance for major coverage to get back on a plan (they can't be denied), and so all insurance companies will fail.

As all insurance companies will fail, the government will be bailing them out with taxed, borrowed and printed money.

So this IS a single payer system already, you just don't understand it.

--

As to 'paying by your means', people already pay by their means. Those with more money pay for more stuff, they pay for better hospital rooms and service and they buy the most expensive care they can afford, while those with modest means go for cheaper options.

But that's not what you are talking about, you want something else, which of-course is a price and wage control on a totally different level. You want people's wealth or incomes to be measured and you want to use their bills to cover everybody's visits, is that it?

As I said, you are not intelligent enough, to make such preposterous proposals and to think that this would not automatically stop all the rich people from visiting the hospitals that would engage in such behaviour is so short sighted, it's nearly funny.

The rich would simply buy completely private health care from doctors that you won't see in those public hospitals. There won't be any 'rich' people in the hospitals where you want to bilk them out of all of their money.

Those hospitals would be completely unfunded again, as being 'free' for the poor is something that will be completely abused, everybody will somehow be reclassified into the category of 'poor'.

Don't believe me?

Look at the food stamps, 1 in 7 is using them, so the program has more and more people in it, not because they can't afford food but because the administration wants more people to be on the program so they would keep voting for the same thing.

Same thing with disability claims, that are way up these months, not because of more disabled people but because people are able to use those benefits because they are easily available.

But again, your ideology is completely contrary to the principles upon which the free society was founded in USA and obviously that's the current tidal shift that is propelled by the ever expanding government, which wants the people to be dependent, because that is ex

Ho ho ho! I'm thinking Goldman Sachs ability to repay in such a timely manner might have a little something to do with the $182B bailout to AIG, seeing as GS was AIG's biggest customer of its credit default swaps, and those AIG stakeholders were made entirely whole, whereas as of earlier this month, AIG still owes about $45B to the US taxpayers.

You think you are joking, but Pelosi (house minority leader) just propsed amending the constitution to repeal the first amendment. She wants to ammend the constitution to allow Congress to regulate political speech.
http://news.investors.com/article/608865/201204231915/pelosi-says-supreme-court-wrong-on-citizens-united-.htm

Citizens United was the infamous decision which essentially decided that since Corporations Are People, they can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. I'm beginning to think that the court believes corporations are more "People" than actual human persons are.

http://news.investors.com/Article/575363/201106141840/Beatable-And-He-Knows-It.htm Just did a quick search... although I'm not sure if he said it in jest or not.

"What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different - 2,429 to 6,846.

Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1."

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/585302/201109191844/By-The-Way-We-Teach-A-Little-Too.htm

That seems strange - somehow even though the number of managers only went up by a factor of about 3 (from 2400 to 8100) the manager-student ratio when down by a factor of 31? (from 62-to-1 for 2-to-1 ?) Are there really half as many managers at UC as there are students? And yet there are more tenure-track faculty than managers by their numbers - shouldn't the teacher-student ratio be (if only marginally) larger than the manager-student ratio?

They are double counting. A lot of those managers are also professors.

"What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different - 2,429 to 6,846.

Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1."

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/585302/201109191844/By-The-Way-We-Teach-A-Little-Too.htm

That seems strange - somehow even though the number of managers only went up by a factor of about 3 (from 2400 to 8100) the manager-student ratio when down by a factor of 31? (from 62-to-1 for 2-to-1 ?) Are there really half as many managers at UC as there are students? And yet there are more tenure-track faculty than managers by their numbers - shouldn't the teacher-student ratio be (if only marginally) larger than the manager-student ratio?

"What happened, for instance, to swell the bureaucracy at the UC over the past two decades? There now are nearly as many senior managers (8,144) as tenured and tenure-track faculty (8,521). As recently as 1993, the ratio between these groups was much different - 2,429 to 6,846.

Put another way, 18 years ago the student-to-upper management ratio was 62-to-1. Now it's all the way down to 2-to-1. The ratio of students to regular faculty, meanwhile, has risen from 22-to-1 in 1993 to 26-to-1."

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/585302/201109191844/By-The-Way-We-Teach-A-Little-Too.htm

Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

The USGS pushes gas fracking with wild tales of vast reserves. Until it admits it overestimated by 400%. Fracking doesn't create the jobs, either.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed many species and habitats to be extincted and ruined, either by sportspeople themselves or by the industries the F&WS is charged with protecting them from.

And then there's the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was at the center of the way Republicans were selling casino franchises to mobsters through their Christian Coalition mafia, through Jack Abramoff. At least in that criminal enterprise people went to jail.

That's just off the top of my head, and from what's been reported. I'm sure there are people and perhaps whole offices that are not corrupt - it's a big department. But if we're rounding off, it's fair to say "totally corrupt".

In a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amazon said, "a simple nationwide system of state and local sales-tax collection, evenhandedly applied to all sellers no matter their business model, location of level of remote sales," would be acceptable, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Amazon wants to avoid it because they profit of off their customers preferentially buying online to avoid state taxes.

Not quite. They want to avoid it because if they have to charge California sales tax and a smaller online retailer (without affiliates) doesn't, that puts Amazon at a disadvantage. What they're proposing with this deal is that California will hold off while congress works on federal legislation that applies to every online retailer:

In a letter to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Amazon said, "a simple nationwide system of state and local sales-tax collection, evenhandedly applied to all sellers no matter their business model, location of level of remote sales," would be acceptable, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

It turns out that "the rich" pay the majority of the taxes. Thus any meaningful tax cut, for any purpose, will cut taxes for "the rich" more than it will cut taxes for "the poor".

There have been several times in the history of the USA where the overall tax rate was lowered, and tax revenues went up. This is because "the rich" moved money out of tax shelters and started investing it, which grew GNP. In other words, tax revenue went up because government was collecting a lower rate on a much larger amount of money. And "the rich" paid more taxes than they paid before.

There are some people who view the above as a problem; this problem is called "the rich get richer". Even if the poor get richer also, which confuses me. How will you increase jobs without someone who is rich getting richer? And how does that rich person hurt the poor by getting richer?

Historically, the US government has not managed to collect more than 19 or 20 percent of GNP in tax revenue. Even when the highest tax bracket was 70% or even higher, revenues as a percent of GNP were not higher than when the highest tax bracket was under 40%. If you think you can fix the USA's financial problems by taxing the rich, you need to explain one of these: (a) why this time it will be different, and the government will collect over 20% of GNP; (b) why GNP will grow faster with higher tax rates; or (c) why the high tax rates will limit the growth of GNP and collect less tax revenue, but it's worth it because it is important to keep the rich from getting richer.

My own view is that if 19% is what the US government can realistically collect, we should be trying to grow the GNP of the US so that the government is collecting 19% of a larger GNP. That means reducing taxes, regulatory burden, and uncertainty.

But don't take my word for this; see some references:

Thomas Sowell: Dissecting The Demagoguery About 'Tax Cuts For The Rich'

Nick Gillespie and Veronique de Rugy: The 19 Percent Solution

Disclaimer: I'm either middle class or posibly upper-middle-class, but I am not remotely "the rich" and tax cuts for "the rich" would not directly benefit me.

steveha

Dude (or Dudette), let you not forget that unions, who, for exampe, pushed for Obama care and now have promptly petitioned to not be included in the provisions foisted upon everyone else.

Apparently not, after all.

Silly me. Of course, I only speak of some hypothetical dystopian future. I'm not saying there's any observed tendency of things like making unelected bureaucrats the arbiters of fairness, or enabling them to collect millions for indecency violations. And of course this is America, not some dictatorship like Canada where they might ban a song from the airwaves for sarcastically quoting a politically incorrect statement as a way of criticizing it. And the American government would never try to extend its broadcast control into paid content mediums like XM radio or cable tv either. I guess I'm just being paranoid. People who seek and attain authority are usually content with it; at least they don't continually try to expand it. I mean, when a government starts out just establishing official weights and measures, it is nice that they stick with just that, and they don't go expanding their purview to include food labeling, cigarette packaging (and even what can and can't be used as a brand name) or fat content. I'm also glad nobody tries to enact outright bans on fast food.

I'm sure someday excessive regulatory authority could lead to officials engaging in crony capitalism and abusing their authority in ways that happen to favor political allies, exempt favored groups from the more onerous requirements of their regulations, and/or handicap their friends' competitors, but you're right, that's not the kind of thing that regulatory authority has been known to open the door to in the past.

Sorry for bringing my tinfoil hattery into this.

One problem is CFL's production costs far exceed what normal light bulbs cost to make (easily a factor 10). In return you get somewhere near 40% savings on the power required for lighting (40%, as lots of things aren't fixed merely by changing the light bulb).

So they only become good for the environment after a number of hours of light, and that's over a year for better models, up to 3 years for sucky bulbs. Obviously the large majority fall at least halfway on the "sucky" scale.

In reality therefore, CFL's are only good for the environment in the places where the assumption that they burn a lot more than a year holds true. They won't survive much longer than 5 years in any case (burning or not), so any CFL burning less than 20% of the time (which is most every lamp in the house except those in the living room in my house) are a net-negative for the environment.

But it's a massive subsidy for firms who claim to be green, but obviously aren't. So politicians are happy : money for cronies. Lunatic lefties are happy : another government supported industry, heavily regulated. Loony greens are happy : "green" companies "do well". Socialists are happy : "jobs are created". And everyone suffers yet again to make lunatics feel good.

Of course, real jobs are lost. The environment has to bear the increased fossil fuel usage, the athmosphere has to swallow even more CO2 (but don't worry : it's mostly emitted in China, and thus Obama can look good while destroying the environment even more), and by forcing these companies out of America, gaia can find fewer polluted creeks : they can't report on those in China or Indonesia at all.

The result is of course, very predictable. The environment does bad so "more intervention is clearly needed". CO2 increases so "it's yet again even more worse than we thought !". Jobs are lost so "more regulation/stimulus is needed". And government cronies, "surprisingly" do well so "it's all really the fault of the rich Jewish bankers in wall street !".

Lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

In reality things are simple : energy costs money. Transport cost money. Mining costs (lots and lots) of money. People cost money. All these things are bad for the environment. So you want to do what's best for the environment ? Really ? It's simple : save every last penny you have and DON'T BUY STUFF YOU DON'T NEED. Of course, greenies have become exactly what they accuse their "enemies" to be : they're little more than deluded spoiled rich kids, who feel an irresistible need to take other's toys to feel big, and throw a tantrum if they're asked to go a single day with an last year's model of the iphone. (because apple really is the worst brand you can buy for the environment, or labor laws, ...).

As long as people prefer deluding themselves to facing the truth, things won't change, and obviously lunatics are attracted by fringe parties that want to change everything to their design. Nothing new there. Forcing others is all leftist greens have left. Green policy intents have been reduced over the years to amassing power, and destroying the environment in order to justify putting more power in their hands. Furthermore : lunatics only find fault in others, and not in their own behavior. That's why they needed 3 full airports, with expanded parking space, to put all the private jets at the latest "anti-co2" conference.

If we were to put a huge import tax on lightbulbs (and smartphones, perhaps ?), they would have to be produced cheaply inside America, under our stringent environmental laws. Now *that*

Ignorance is not an excuse to the realities of the world.

49% of Egyptians say Islam plays only a "small role" in public affairs under President Hosni Mubarak, while 95% prefer the religion play a "large role in politics."

  84% favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim faith.

  82% support stoning adulterers.

  77% think thieves should have their hands cut off.

  54% support a law segregating women from men in the workplace.

  54% believe suicide bombings that kill civilians can be justified.

  Nearly half support the terrorist group Hamas.

  30% have a favorable opinion of Hezbollah.

  20% maintain positive views of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden.

  82% of Egyptians dislike the U.S. â" the highest unfavorable rating among the 18 Muslim nations Pew surveyed.

And every place where 'islam is on the rise' including moderate indonesia, you'll see: repression, repression, repression. It's not the new communism, it's a push towards the dark ages.

In an obvious point to myself, I should have posted this but I guess it doesn't matter. I'll expect the usual partisan hacks to start trolling now. But you can read some reality right here: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/562840/201102101920/What-Egyptians-Really-Do-Want.htm

The worst crime in history is allowing DHS to exist in violation with the constitution in the first place,, which has now digressed to the crimes (each one is separate) committed by banksters with no oversight. While reading, keep this fact about DHS vs Constitution in the top of your mind, everything comes from 911 and DHS and the missing 2.3 trillion the day before

(From that pdf let's just get right to it then)
STATEMENT OF
JASON WEINSTEIN
DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ENTITLED
“DATA RETENTION AS A TOOL FOR INVESTIGATING INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY AND OTHER INTERNET CRIMES”
PRESENTED
JANUARY 25, 2011

My opinion is this all has gone too far back when the nsa fios splitters were found out. This is another attempt at an "Internet ID" , a man in the middle attack. It's another cog in the end game, which is to shut up the truth while tyranny reins in. Clearly they need this cog to build lists to round people up.

... Hand me the taser, I smell that nasty camel nose in the tent again.

What? Doctors have to be convinced to follow evidence-based medicine? What were they practicing before? And why are they against it?

You know, there's never been a randomized control trial of the effectiveness of parachutes versus placebo when jumping out of planes at high altitude. Would you care to volunteer?

Some things are just obvious or can be deduced from retrospective analysis or theoretical modeling. And some times it would be unethical or impractical to conduct a randomized control trial of a treatment (e.g., testing an AIDS drug versus placebo).

I'm saying people should use evidence-based medicine and you're saying that sometimes you can't collect evidence. You're missing the point.

Evidence-based medicine: where there's evidence of effective treatment, you should use it in the practice of medicine.

Whatever you're talking about is off point. And also wrong. The trials of the FIRST AIDS drug was versus a placebo because it was not obviously safe or effective. The phase 2 trials for most truly novel drugs are randomized, controlled for safety. There are instances when a study is cut short because of overwhelming efficacy (cut short because it would be unethical to keep an obviously effective treatment from the control group). But it's rare. And people do die while in the control group.

After an existing drug become the standard of care, then it's less likely for new drugs to be compared against placebo, but rather compared to standard care.

But I, like you, digress.

The idea that doctors are ALLOWED to prescribe drugs for off-label use horrifies me (it's off-label because there's no proof it works for the off-label condition).

No, there is often tons of proof. Off-label just means that the manufacturer hasn't gone through the (expensive, time-consuming) process of proving its effectiveness to the FDA. If the patent has expired there's often no financial incentive to go through the trouble.

That's begging the question. There's rarely any proof. And by proof, I mean scientific (randomized, controlled) proof. That's because it's easier and cheaper to NOT do the studies and just say it's obviously/intuitively correct. Or do a 8 person "study" and call it proof.

The FDA frowns on off-label marketing: Pfizer, based in New York, struck the largest off-label promotion settlement to date in September 2009, agreeing to pay $2.3 billion for unauthorized marketing of its recalled painkiller Bextra and three other drugs

And there's evidence that there's often lots of financial incentive to go through the trouble:
Botox approved to treat migraines

Firstly, do you not think Obama has shown the relevant documents to the relevant people? He does not have to release them.

Secondly, all the GOP has to do is come out and say "these claims have no credence whatsoever", instead they have been saying things like "he has a lot of questions to answer". Proof has been provided, and claimed to be false, so the production of some other document, whatever it is, will be claimed to be false also.

The Stephen Hawking story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_alive/

The original article here:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=503058
has had a "correction" posted where they state "Editor's Note: This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK." - which is not quite fully accurate, they actually stated that the UK would have considered his life worthless and would be dead. The register's article contains the original quotes.

This is the sort of propaganda and unverified "news" that is used to torpedo healthcare debate and pretty much anything related to Obama. It's the same quality of grandstanding where speakers like to emphasise his middle name "Hussein" to make him seem a) less Christian (and thus, less American), and b) "not like you [audience of speech]".

  Whether Obama releases his medical records or not will not make any difference. It certainly didn't help John Kerry - if the facts don't suit the cause, simply get people to make them up.

wiki, so ymmv, but it's relatively concise based on news reports I have seen and read from several sources:

Frequent arguments of those questioning Obama's eligibility are that he has not released a photocopy of his "original" birth certificate, and that the use of the term "certification of live birth" on the document means it is not equivalent to one's "birth certificate". These arguments have been debunked numerous times by media investigations, every judicial forum that has addressed the matter, and Hawaiian government officials. Every reliable source to date has concluded that the certificate released by the Obama campaign is Barack Obama's official birth certificate. [8] Asked about this, Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that Hawaii "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate."[9] Moreover, the director of her Department has confirmed that the state "has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."[10][11]
Nevertheless, some Republican elected officials have expressed skepticism about Obama's citizenship or have displayed a lack of willingness to acknowledge it,[12] while a few Republican members of the U.S. Congress have proposed legislation that they state would prevent future occurrences of such issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_birth_certificate

Even if they release another document, they'll just swap to the "he has dual citizenship so is also disqualified" angle, which I have also heard.

The problem is that gullible idiots like you make unwarranted assumptions about the quality of the scientific evidence based on no more than faith. And every piece of evidence to the contrary is summarily ignored.

No-one is ignoring the problems with this piece of evidence. The problem with this piece of evidence is that it can't be called that; it doesn't meet the necessary standards of scientific evidence. It wasn't peer-reviewed, and it wasn't from a primary source. It shouldn't have been in there. No similar problems have been found in the peer-reviewed portions of the IPCC report, so we're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And, yes, I know you're going to mention articles that challenge the conclusions in those areas, but challenge is not the same as succeed. Unless you're going to mention an article that has been peer-reviewed, or one that has not been rebutted, or has a counter-rebuttal that has not been answered, then I'd ask you not to bother, please.

The problem isn't with the "deniers" who are pointing all of these problems out. The "deniers" don't deny climate change or even global warming.

You must talk to different opponents of AGW than myself. I meet lots of people online who even go so far as to dispute a warming trend.

They just deny the right of censorious assholes like you to claim that climate change is a) unprecedented and b) caused by man-made fossil fuels without actual engineering-quality reports showing either of these things to be true or even likely. They aren't the ones in denial - it's you.

I'm assuming don't know this person, so I feel your insults are hasty and based on scant evidence. What were you saying about evidence again?

The smell from underneath the IPCC bandages is pretty bad. The proxy reconstructions of past climate have been shown to be heavily cherry-picked and badly done statistics

Sorry, you appear to have posted a link to Climate Audit's front page. Seeing as they've made lots of claims in the past for which rebuttals exist, it's a little hard to know where to start answering this.

the measurement of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA appears been heavily manipulated to show warming

No. Data is not being deleted by NOAA or NASA. It is not being supplied to them. The suggested reading is Peterson and Vose 1997 which explains where the data comes from. As for the interpolation claim, if coastal temperatures were being used to estimate mountain temperature anomalies, the anomalies would be larger than reported. You don't believe it? Get the data and work it out for yourself.

as has the temperature records from the Climate Research Unit relied upon for the calibration of climate models - and is the subject of several independent investigations for possible scientific fraud in the US and the UK.

There is no evidence in the emails from CRU for data fraud. If there were data fraud, this could be determined by cross-checking it against the GISS dataset. Unless you believe that everyone's "in on the conspiracy", and are collaborating to fake data. I find such a conspiracy (which, of necessity, would include not only CRU and NASA, but everyone who supplies them with data) highly unlikely.

But you'll ignore it all because it comes from "deniers" and you'll invoke preposterous conspiracy theories involving fossil fuel companies while ignoring the cosying up of nearly entire fossil fuel industry with the alarmists.

I'm hoping

The problem is, the deniers believe that even one error in a summary report means that the science is wrong, while the scientists are all aware that, yes, it's a bitch, but indeed, sometimes typos creep through.

The problem is that gullible idiots like you make unwarranted assumptions about the quality of the scientific evidence based on no more than faith. And every piece of evidence to the contrary is summarily ignored.

The problem isn't with the "deniers" who are pointing all of these problems out. The "deniers" don't deny climate change or even global warming. They just deny the right of censorious assholes like you to claim that climate change is a) unprecedented and b) caused by man-made fossil fuels without actual engineering-quality reports showing either of these things to be true or even likely. They aren't the ones in denial - it's you.

The smell from underneath the IPCC bandages is pretty bad. The proxy reconstructions of past climate have been shown to be heavily cherry-picked and badly done statistics, the measurement of surface temperatures by NOAA and NASA appears been heavily manipulated to show warming, as has the temperature records from the Climate Research Unit relied upon for the calibration of climate models - and is the subject of several independent investigations for possible scientific fraud in the US and the UK.

But you'll ignore it all because it comes from "deniers" and you'll invoke preposterous conspiracy theories involving fossil fuel companies while ignoring the cosying up of nearly entire fossil fuel industry with the alarmists.You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of the scientist who made the original bad claim on Himalayan Glaciers claiming millions from the European Union to investigate the problem that he knows doesn't exist. You'll ignore the clear conflict of interest of Rajendra Pachauri and his willingness to fill his pockets with cash all the while exhorting everyone else to embrace the New Poverty of enforced energy rationing to Save the Earth from Global Warming that no-one knows is even happening to any great extent nor even a serious problem that can be "fixed".

Those aren't typos. The entire climate science story is falling apart as scientists investigate clear evidence of fraud, conscious manipulation of evidence in order to deceive and junk science.

The "deniers" are not the problem - its the neo-creationists like you who keep waving away that "there's nothing to be seen here - move along" while the Global Warming Hysteria explodes behind you.

And yes, I'm a liberal. A very angry liberal.

The data of stations located in areas not listed in the Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature UK (HadCRUT) survey often does not show any substantial warming in the late 20th century and the early 21st century.

There is the key word: often. That does not mean that all, or even the majority, of the stations shows this. Is the percentage of stations not getting much warmer the same as the percentage in the officially used data? They just leave that point dangling in the hope that we will infer that it is not the same.

Already people have taken this to say more that it does. Some blogs have already claimed that ALL of the stations used did not show warming. For example, here is a blatent bit of misquoting from a randomly googled blog:

The data from the unused stations reportedly did not show any substantial warming trends.

Oh dear. It is just a slight change, but it completely changes the meaning. And where is that skepticism that is supposed to be at work here? Why assume that the economic think tank is correct?

I will wait to find what the selection criteria was before taking this to be any proof of a global conspiracy.

To all the wooshees - the reference was to an Investor's Business Daily editorial. The original article has unfortunately disappeared:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/IBDEditorials.aspx

More jollity at IBD's expense here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_alive/

How timely! This article was just published a few minutes ago:

45% Of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul

These fines are peanuts compared to the E.U. and E.U. member states budgets, and you know it because the U.S. of A. is a comparable '1st world' economy with comparable government spending (although it might lay emphasis on different topics) ... We're talking about multiple hundreds of billions of euros here, per larger country of the E.U. (U.K., France, Germany) and 120 billion euro (in 2007) of budget for the E.U. itself. Combined it could be a few trillions, allthough I'm guessing here... So to see the 1 billion euro fine for iNtel and what's to come for Microsoft as a significant 'monopoly tax' or '"Let the Americans pay our bills" tax' is a bit of an exaggeration.

Now for companies fined by E.U. anti-trust laws; We are talking about the multinationals out here. Local companies breaking these laws are punished nationally (like, in recent history, half the building sector in the Netherlands, the 'Bouwfraude' scandal which triggered a parliamentary inquiry)
This is a list of some of the more significant cases:

iNtel: 1.06 billion euros. (Illegal sales practices)
Otis, Kone, Schindler, ThyssenKrupp: 992 million euros. (Cartel of installation and maintaining elevators)
Hoffman-La Roche (and others): 790 million euros. (Price fixing of vitamin products)
Siemens, Toshiba (and others): 750 million euros. (Cartel of gas insulator switches)
(nine oil companies): 676 million euros. (Price fixing of parafine wax)
Bayer, Shell, Dow (and others): 519 million euros. (Price fixing of synthetic rubber)
Microsoft: 497 million euros. (Monopoly abuse)
Saint Gobain (and others): 486 million euros. (price fixing of flat glass)
Akzo Nobel, Solvay (and others): 388 million euros. (price fixing of hydrogen peroxide)
(five producers): 344 million euros. (price fixing of acryllic glass)
Heineken, Grolsch, Bavaria: 273 million euros. (Dutch beer market cartel)

Sources are all over the web, but I used this one because it had a nice list with fined amounts and company names and checked the data here.

This is a log of recent (this year) cases As you can see, the list is quite diverse but indeed does include both iNtel and Microsoft. Quite a few cases involve whole industrial sectors, not individual companies. Understandable if you know that anti-trust includes discussing set prices with your competitors. A link at the bottom of that page points to earlier cases.

In the end, this is the risk of doing business in the E.U.. You should play by the E.U. anti-trust rules. If you don't, you can be caught, and just like me when I'd be speeding or ignore a red traffic light you can be fined an amount appropriate to the offense.

I don't know what portion of their income comes from print and what from online, but Investor's Business Daily http://www.investors.com/ provides news, comment, and proprietary rankings.
It's my understanding that the Wall Street Journal also charges.

I know it must be hard for you to bear, having a responsible centrist president. But fortunately THESE election results were valid, unlike your Mr. Chimp's first election by judge. It shows your real character, that winning is more important to you than democracy. So I don't feel too sorry for you. In fact, I'm glad the Republicans have become the marginalized party of the deep south, religious fanatics, and wingnuts everywhere. Please, please run Palin for president! That would guarantee another four years of Obama. Seriously, you guys just need to form a new conservative party. Your current one is deceased.

Centrist!=responsible any more than left/right-wing==irresponsible.

You want responsible? Don't look at BHO. He just ballooned your personal debt to $42521.12 (individual share = total debt/population). That's debt you can't escape by filing bankruptcy. And if you don't pay it, <hyperbole>Dog the bounty hunter will come to your door with a Swat team of</hyperbole> IRS agents and take your freedom.

Bush wasn't particularly responsible in a lot of ways. I most certainly didn't agree with his actions regarding my freedoms enumerated in the constitution. I didn't agree with a lot of his fiscal policy, either. Especially towards the end. He wasn't the worst president, but he aslo wasn't the best. However, this isn't about him. He can never be president again. I wash my hands of him as much as I can.

Now, let's address your messiah, Obama. Noted in various sources to have been one of the most liberal senators in office (when he showed up for a vote), he arose out of nowhere in the political landscape and won his elections by invalidating his opponents' candidacies (not challenging the election counts, or mudslinging, he literally made himself the only choice).

He promised Hope(tm) and Change(tm) and to Clean Up Washington(tm). And how does he Change(tm) things? Hmmm, let's see. Looks like a more liberal version of the Clinton administration (complete with insiders from the original Clinton administration!). Obama also seems to have a distinct preference for nominating people for his cabinet who have tax issues. Definitely a Change(tm) we can all Believe(tm) in.

He promised responsibility, but we got a pork-laden "stimulus" package with such gems as more funding for ACORN and MoveOn.org. Certainly these wonderful organizations simply want to empower you! What's that? You went to ACORN and asked them to help you get out the vote for Ron Paul? Oh, right. They want to empower you only so long as you vote for their approved candidate. I knew there was a catch in there.

"But...", I hear you say, "he's upstanding and honest, a real bang up guy who wants to stand up for me!" O`Rly? That's why his VP is one Joeseph Biden, a known copyright hound. That's why three of his top appointments to the justice dept were lawyers for the RIAA. You know, the RIAA that seems to think suing children, grandmothers, disabled people, state universities, and laser printers is a good business model. That's why he stands up for more regulation and law like Roe v Wade which purports a right to privacy, but in reality just usurps state control for the federal government. That must be why he wants to send your money to other countries to support abortion. Surely that's out of the goodness of his heart.

I could go o

That's interesting because James Hansen of the NASA global warming fame wrote his first paper on the global temperatures in the 1970's and it actually called for global cooling.

Anyways, the paper itself said that Co2 effects surface temperature but it's effect don't scale well where aerosol increase by a factor of 4 and "If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease over the whole globe is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

This supposedly came directly From Mr. Hansen's work. I'm sire the media outlets rant the story but they didn't make anything up. This investors.com story seems to have a couple of good questions on it.

Looks like I missed the link.

HERE it is.

Do Obama and the Democrats deserve a lift in the polls as a result of the financial and mortgage problems? The answer from history is a clear NO. Here's the lead of a New York Times story on September 30, 1999:

"Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending" [link below]. That's 1999 folks. Clinton Administration, I believe.

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003:

"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. "[see link below] The Democrats killed the reforms.

McCain said in co-sponsoring the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190:

"If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole. The Democrats killed the Bill.

What was Barney Frank and fellow Democrats saying at the time of these attempted reforms? According to reports, Representative Barney Frank(D-MA) claimed of the thrifts :

"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) added of the reforms "I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing." [ See Community Reinvestment Act, link below ]

Even Bill Clinton points to Congressional Democrats failure to deal with Fannie and Freddie as a primary cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE

The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

Then there is the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd who allegedly got special mortgage deals from Countrywide, who gave preferential rates to 'friends' of company's chairman.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25140560/

For an interesting article purporting to detail the House Financial Services Committee Chairs long history with Fannie Mae, See:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

"House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive."

The link below describes how some in Congress tried to use the original version of the bailout bill to divert money eventually recovered to groups like ACORN, a group Obama has a long association with. See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And then there is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who allegedly has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm.

http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/oct/01/pelosis-pac-pays-bills-for-spouses-firm.

See also:

Do Obama and the Democrats deserve a lift in the polls as a result of the financial and mortgage problems? The answer from history is a clear NO. Here's the lead of a New York Times story on September 30, 1999:

"Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending" [link below]. That's 1999 folks. Clinton Administration, I believe.

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003:

"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. "[see link below] The Democrats killed the reforms.

McCain said in co-sponsoring the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190:

"If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole. The Democrats killed the Bill.

What was Barney Frank and fellow Democrats saying at the time of these attempted reforms? According to reports, Representative Barney Frank(D-MA) claimed of the thrifts :

"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) added of the reforms "I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing." [ See Community Reinvestment Act, link below ]

Even Bill Clinton points to Congressional Democrats failure to deal with Fannie and Freddie as a primary cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE

The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

Then there is the Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd who allegedly got special mortgage deals from Countrywide, who gave preferential rates to 'friends' of company's chairman.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25140560/

For an interesting article purporting to detail the House Financial Services Committee Chairs long history with Fannie Mae, See:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

"House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive."

The link below describes how some in Congress tried to use the original version of the bailout bill to divert money eventually recovered to groups like ACORN, a group Obama has a long association with. See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And then there is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who allegedly has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm.

http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/oct/01/pelosis-pac-pays-bills-for-spouses-firm.

See also: