Thousands more people are set to be thrown out of work by one of the banks that played a key role in the mortgage mess. Bank of America is going to shed 3,500 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reports. And as part of a broader restructuring, it could cut another 10,000 or more–around 3.5 percent
Continue reading …NYT’s Bill Keller Questions Faith of G.O.P. Candidates, Compares Belief in God to Belief in Aliens
August 25, 2011 No CommentBill Keller’s upcoming column for the New York Times’s Sunday magazine, “ Asking Candidates Tougher Questions About Faith ,” raised familiar liberal paranoia about the conservative religious views of Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry. The official headline for the upcoming print edition: “Not Just Between Them and Their God.” Keller had no time for respectful criticism: “Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a 'cult' and that many others think is just weird.” Keller, the outgoing executive editor for the Times, got off on the wrong foot by mockingly comparing the candidates’ Christian beliefs to belief in space aliens. Then he made the latest in his impressive string of column factual errors , identifying the Catholic politician Rick Santorum as an evangelical Christian. If a candidate for president said he believed that space aliens dwell among us, would that affect your willingness to vote for him? Personally, I might not disqualify him out of hand; one out of three Americans believe we have had Visitors and, hey, who knows? But I would certainly want to ask a few questions. Like, where does he get his information? Does he talk to the aliens? Do they have an economic plan? Yet when it comes to the religious beliefs of our would-be presidents, we are a little squeamish about probing too aggressively… … This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.
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Bugaboo is from the archaic term bogy boo — a term for a hobgoblin or anything that haunts, bothers, bugs, harasses, irks, annoys, or frightens, like the bogeyman. “The Bugaboo Review” is a lighthearted examination of usage, grammar, and spelling mistakes, the bugaboos of the English language. It is meant for those who love language, for those who “know what they don’t know” (or don’t remember!), and for those in the process of learning English. My sources for this work range from errors made by my students, to suggestions by colleagues and friends who asked me to include errors that “bug” them, to discourses found in many other books, dictionaries, and articles on the subject. I’ve left out the copious regulations that govern spellings and word usage and instead have given simple ideas to assist you with what is generally accepted among the well informed.
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A senior couple in Pasco County, Florida is facing the prospect of foreclosure. But the reason doesn’t have to do with missed mortgage payments. This time, it’s reportedly because they paid too early one month, and used the wrong routing number the next. Only three months after Sharon Bullington, 70, negotiated a mortgage modification under the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), Bank of America informed her and her husband that they had been ejected from the trial plan for improper payments, St. Petersburg Times reports. (h/t The Daily What.) The problem was that Sharon has made her January payment in December, instead of the required “month in which it [was] due.” She then allegedly incorrectly wrote her routing number on her February payment, leading the bank to cancel the modification. The Bullington’s explanations and pleas for help have reportedly been to no avail. The episode is only the latest in a series of oddball foreclosure stories that have included a homeowner being asked to pay $0.00 in order to avoid foreclosure and JPMorgan repurchasing a soldier’s home on the same day he returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. But in many ways, the Bullington’s story goes against the typical narrative of a post-recession American homeowner’s struggle. Instead of paying too early, most of those threatened with foreclosure are struggling to make payments on time. Indeed, the number of mortgages which are overdue by a month rose to the highest level in a year in the second quarter of this year, according to Bloomberg. Consequently, the jobs crisis is largely being blamed for the percentage of home loans overdue by 30 days, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. Also a rarity is the Bullington’s ability to successfully negotiate a mortgage modification in the first place. Despite the continued existence of the Obama administration’s anti-foreclosure initiative HAMP, the number of preliminary mortgage modifications approved in June was the lowest since April 2009, at 15,000, according to government data reported by The Huffington Post. Read the entire story here
Continue reading …Yes, you heard it here first. Programs that have lifted the poverty rate, empowered people to live independently – saving lives have made us “weaker” according to VP wannabe, Marco Rubio. Speaking at the Reagan Library Tuesday night, Rubio said this : These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job. Such a big lie Rubio tells. Before Social Security, one in four senior citizens lived in poverty. Now that number is 14 percent . The Social Security Act also precipitated adoption of far more employer-sponsored pension plans, and the union movement pushed those plans to be competitive and provide retirement security for employees. These are things that didn’t happen before Social Security and Medicare. The same is true of health insurance. Health insurance did not have wide traction as an employee benefit until Medicare was in effect and unions negotiated health benefits for their members. Neither of these things weakened this nation. They strengthened it by keeping senior citizens out of poverty and giving families some breathing room. And of course, those dollars, such as they are, increase the number of consumer dollars available to stimulate the economy. But perhaps the biggest lie of all is Rubio’s lie about how the churches and synagogues cared for the poor. Here’s an excerpt from testimony before Congress back in 1959 from one senior citizen ( PDF ): I am one of your old retired teachers that has been forgotten. I am 80 years old and for 10 years I have been living on a bare nothing, two meals a day, one egg, a soup, because I want to be independent. I am of Scotch ancestry, my father fought in the Civil War to the end of the war, therefore,I have it in my blood to be independent and my dignity would not let me go down and be on welfare. And I worked so hard that I have pernicious anemia, $9.95 for a little bottle of liquid for shots, wholesale, I couldn’t pay for it. Where were her churches – her synagogues? And note her own pride, not wanting to accept charity but willing to *work* for the right to access the medicine she needed for the anemia she contracted out of her hard work and poverty. What our social safety net did more than anything else was create something people had ownership in, that they’d paid for. I’ve heard all the stories about how they take more out than they put in, but that isn’t their fault. That’s the fault of a flawed attitude on the part of lawmakers, who demonize and butcher the intent of these programs in order to claim they harm “free markets” and “weaken us as a nation.” It’s such a hollow argument. It suggests, as Rubio has done in the past, that we are all predestined for one of two baskets: those who have, and those who do not have. It suggests that there is no way out of the “have-not” basket if one is not chosen to step out by a golden benefactor, and it further suggests that deep and harsh income equality are simply the realities of life, that government does not exist for the greater good of its people, but only to serve those who have been tapped as deserving. I would like for these Randian idiots like Rubio to actually live what they preach. Marco Rubio got to college on a football scholarship , though it’s unclear whether scholarships took him all the way through school. And even Rubio walks the fine line, still caught up in the bigger lie. Toward the end of his speech, this: Now, I personally believe that you cannot make changes to these programs for the people that are currently in them right now. My mother just – well she gets mad when I say this. She is in her eighth decade of life and she is on both of these programs. I can’t ask my mom to go out and get another job. She paid into the system. But the truth is that Social Security and Medicare, as important as they are, cannot look for me how they look for her. [ full transcript ] My generation must fully accept, the sooner the better, that if we want there to be a Social Security and a Medicare when we retire, and if we want America as we know it to continue when we retire, then we must accept and begin to make changes to those programs now, for us. In Rubio’s world there is his mother’s generation, and his. Nothing in between. None of us who have also paid for his mother to have those benefits because the promise was that we, too, would enjoy similar benefits. No acknowledgement that much of what he has been able to accomplish rested on the knowledge that his mother was cared for, at least at a minimum level. No acknowledgement. Just the selfish declaration that rather than pay for a future where we value the lives of everyone, we must accept a weaker, more unequal America.
Continue reading …MSNBC Blames Conservative Israelis for No Peace, Frets Over ‘Dangerous’ Christian Right
August 25, 2011 No Comment
On Wednesday's Last Word on MSNBC, substitute host Chris Hayes of the left-wing Nation magazine used conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck's rally in Israel as an occasion to blame conservative Israelis like Prime Minister Netanyahu for the absence of a peace agreement with the Palestinians and asserted that it was “dangerous” for such Israelis to ally with America's Christian Zionist movement. Hayes – who will soon be host of his own MSNBC show – brought aboard Jeremy Ben-Ami,
Continue reading …CNN’s Cafferty: Perry, Bachmann, Palin Supporters Seem ‘Allergic to Brains’
August 24, 2011 No Comment
CNN's Jack Cafferty slammed the “intellectual lightweights” leading the Republican presidential field on Wednesday, wondering why their supporters “seem to be allergic to brains.” The CNN contributor labeled the candidates “Curly, Moe, and Larry” and sarcastically dubbed Palin a “MENSA candidate,” a term reserved for smart people. Recently he also bemoaned a possible Palin run and gave credence to the conspiratorial theory that Bachmann and Perry are serious members of a theocratic fringe sect of Christianity. [Video below the break.] However, he reserved Wednesday for attacking the intelligence level of the three, providing no more evidence than some loopy soundbites. He hit Bachmann for promising $2-a-gallon gasoline and Perry for hinting it would be “treasonous” for Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to print more money. He added that “we already watched Sarah Palin ruin whatever chance John McCain had four years ago, and she's – I mean she's just beyond the pail.” He also lumped them into the same ballpark with fringe Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio). “I think there's a few more whackjobs out there this time,” he said of the present field, before adding “Although last time around we had Kucinich, and there – I mean, there's always a few fireflies buzzing around.” And just who are Cafferty's intellectual heavyweights in the GOP? Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and Newt Gingrich. “I venture to say none of the three has a prayer against Curly, Moe and Larry,” Cafferty quipped, “[a]nd that's a sad commentary on the state of our politics, isn't it? A transcript of the segment, which aired on August 24 at 5:18 p.m. EDT, is as follows: JACK CAFFERTY: In an election where the Republican candidate actually stands a chance against a weakened incumbent president, so far it is a couple of intellectual lightweights who are stealing the show. Since Michele Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll and Rick Perry entered the race, these two have been sucking up most of the media's attention, mostly for saying stupid stuff. Like Bachmann's claim that as president she'll bring gasoline down to $2 a gallon. Or Perry's highly inappropriate shot at Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke saying that his actions could be “treasonous.” Meanwhile, some Republicans, including Karl Rove, are suggesting that the former half-term dropout governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, is going to join the race as well. Swell. Palin's people are pushing back against the speculation, saying that anyone who claims to know about her plans is misleading the American people. But Palin has certainly been acting like a candidate, now hasn't she? Showing up in Iowa during the straw poll voting, and (Unintelligible) Iowa-themed political video released ahead of her Labor Day speech which is also scheduled to take place in Iowa. If Palin runs, we'll have yet another MENSA candidate to join Bachmann and Perry. There is no doubt this three-some would consume the lion's share of the media coverage. At the other end of the intellectual spectrum, there's Ron Paul, who placed a very close second in the Iowa straw poll. He continues to talk sense – whether or not enough people are listening. There's Newt Gingrich – love him or hate him, he's a very bright man. There's also Jon Huntsman, who says candidates like Bachmann and Perry are too far to the right and have “zero substance.” Testimony to his intellect right there. He may be right, but I venture to say none of the three has a prayer against Curly, Moe and Larry. And that's a sad commentary on the state of our politics, isn't it? Here’s the question: When it comes to presidential politics, why does America seem to be allergic to brains? (…) JOE JOHNS: You've got the whole studio laughing here, Jack. But do you really think the crazy talk is worse this year than previous election years? CAFFERTY: Uh, yeah. I mean we've already – we already watched Sarah Palin ruin whatever chance John McCain had four years ago, and she's – I mean she's just beyond the pail. Michele Bachmann – I'm going to have $2 gas, this guy Perry saying – you know, I think there's a few more whackjobs out there this time. Although last time around we had Kucinich, and there – I mean, there's always a few fireflies buzzing around. But these guys are getting all the attention. Perry's out in some poll today getting 29 percent of the support in some poll – double-digit lead over Bachmann, he's burying Mitt Romney, and he's way in front. I mean, it's a little scary. It's early, but it's scary.
Continue reading …Hardball guest host Ron Reagan Jr. On Wednesday assailed Rick Santroum as a ” lonely, homophobic voice shrieking in the wilderness. ” The liberal MSNBC anchor attacked the Republican presidential candidate for his opposition to gay rights, wondering if Santorum wanted to return to the days husbands could beat their wives. Reagan mocked Santorum for defending “traditional” marriage, scolding, “Marriage has, in various times and places throughout history, been treated as a property arrangement with husbands, in effect, owning their wives as they would cattle. Is that the tradition Santorum seeks to revive?” The son of former President Ronald Reagan continued, “In late 19th century America, men were entitled to beat their wives, as long as they used a stick with a circumference no larger than their thumb, the so-called rule of thumb. Does Santorum harbor a yen for corporal punishment?” A transcript of Reagan's closing commentary can be found below: 08/24/11 5:58 RON REAGAN JR.: Let me finish tonight with Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Santorum is lately taken to comparing marriage equality to a choice of paper products. According to his whimsical logic, gay people mustn't be allowed the same opportunity to wed that straight couples enjoy, because, well, a paper towel is not a napkin. If only Santorum was a lonely, homophobic voice shrieking in the wilderness. But all the other Republican candidates, whether they choose Bounty or Brawny, have likewise signed on to defend the inappropriately-named Defense of Marriage Act, a law designed to solely disenfranchise gay couples. Even leaving aside the fact that some of us have been known on occasion to employ a paper towel as a napkin, it is an odd, nonsensical comparison. Santorum's larger point seems to reflect his discomfort with so-called traditional marriage being redefined. But what tradition does he have in mind? Marriage has, in various times and places throughout history, been treated as a property arrangement with husbands, in effect, owning their wives as they would cattle. Is that the tradition Santorum seeks to revive? In late 19th century America, men were entitled to beat their wives, as long as they used a stick with a circumference no larger than their thumb, the so-called rule of thumb. Does Santorum harbor a yen for corporal punishment? Of course, Santorum and many of his anti-gay colleagues can do a lot better than paper towels. They're found of claiming that if gay people would be allowed to wed, we would have to allow polygamy, incest and bestiality. This is so absurd some people find it difficult to argue against. If you find yourself similarly flummoxed, just point out this very simple distinction. Laws against polygamy are non-exclusionary. Whether you are gay or straight, black or white, Christian or Muslim, you can't be married to more than one person at a time. Preventing gay people from exercising the same rights creates a separate, unequal class of people. It is exclusionary. That is the only meaningful distinction you need to keep in mind with- when arguing with people like Santorum. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is impossible to believe that marriage to the person of one's mutual choosing doesn't fall into one or more of those categories. Santorum and his friends might want to consider the meaning of the word unalienable.
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• Mining group gloomy over world economic situation • Debt crisis could last 10 years, says chief executive Kloppers The world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, has issued a warning on the state of the world economy despite reporting record-breaking profits of more than $31bn (£19bn). The Melbourne-based group cited booming business in developing economies – including “another strong year of growth” in Chinese steel production – as a key factor behind its 60% surge in pre-tax profits and 36% rise in revenues. However, chief executive Marius Kloppers struck a gloomy note about the world economic situation, saying: The world has had a growth decrease, it’s got poor demographics and it’s got high debt. That depresses growth – you can’t just make debt disappear. “So far all we’ve done is shovelled it from the balance sheet of the consumer to the balance sheet of the government. No debt has actually been paid off. There is a lot more to come and this is not a one-year, two-year thing – this is a decade.” The company warned: “Global imbalances and high levels of sovereign debt continue to create uncertainty and a protracted recovery remains our base case assumption for the developed world … Across the important growth economies of China and India, recent economic data suggests monetary policy is having the intended effect [of slowing growth].” Income from iron ore, BHP’s biggest division, rose a better than expected 122% to $13.3bn, spurred by strong demand from Chinese steel producers. Iron ore is currently trading at $178 a tonne and has more than tripled in cost since 2008. The story was the same in other divisions. Earnings from base metals such as copper, which has risen in price by almost 30% in 12 months, soared 47%. Profits from oil grew 38%, thanks to rising prices. However, BHP repeated concerns expressed by rivals that materials and operating costs were rising rapidly in the mining industry and making it more difficult to open up new supply. Kloppers used an example to illustrate the problem: “You want [giant truck] tyres for three years out, 57-inch tyres, and you think you have a project for which you haven’t ordered them? Then they are not to be had at any price.” Its biggest hit came from the weakness of the US dollar against the Australian dollar, which, together with inflation, took $3.2bn bite out of full-year operating profit, but BHP insisted it was “congenitally” opposed to currency hedging. The company is the last of the big miners to report its results, and they were generally well received by market watchers. In a note to clients, Investec mining analyst Mark Heyhoe wrote: “Unlike peers, BHP was marginally ahead of consensus figures due to strong iron ore and petroleum results … Although we expect prices and earnings will be volatile, BHP looks strongly positioned for 2012 with gearing below peers at 9% and generating $30.1bn of operational cash flow.” Shares in the group, which have risen by about a third since the onset of the financial crisis, edged up 42.5p to £19.32, as the company also sought to please investors with a 22% rise in dividend, having completed a $10bn share buyback ahead of expectations. “We see buybacks really as the deployment of surplus capital after other priorities have been completed,” Kloppers said. Despite admitting to $314m of costs associated with its aborted bid for Canada’s Potash Corp at the end of last year, Kloppers hinted that the company may pay out more in investment banking and legal fees as it seeks out deals to expand its shale gas interests outside the US. “From a medium and long-term strategy, our view is that shale gas will play into the world’s total energy mix and it would be our anticipation that over time we hope to participate in other areas of the world as well.” BHP moved into US shale gas this year, making its largest ever acquisition by snapping up independent prospector Petrohawk for $12.1bn as well as paying $4.75bn for Chesapeake Energy Corp’s Fayetteville shale assets. Having become an important source of natural gas in America over the past decade, interest in shale has now spread to Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It has been promoted as a source of energy that emits fewer greenhouse gases than other fossil fuels, though those claims are controversial and often disputed. Environmentalists have also raised concerns that the process used to extract shale gas – called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” – can contaminate drinking water. America’s Environmental Protection Agency is examining those claims. In total, BHP’s pre-tax profits for the year ending June 2011 rose from $19.6bn to $31.3bn, on the back of a rise in revenues from $52.8bn to $71.7bn. Soaring prices for iron ore, copper and oil boosted attributable profit before exceptional items to $10.98bn for the six months to June, up from $6.77bn a year ago, but missing an average forecast of $11.7bn according to Thomson Reuters. Glencore move Glencore has launched a A$268m (£170m) cash bid to acquire the 27% of an Australia-based nickel miner it does not own, in an opportunistic move taking advantage of recent plunges in natural resources shares. The commodities trader is offering A$0.87 for the rump of Sydney-listed Minara Resources, a 36% premium on Tuesday’s closing price but still a 15% discount on the shares’ 2011 high. The acquisition is the second since Glencore’s initial public offering in May, which catapulted the Swiss group straight into the FTSE 100. However its shares, which were widely predicting to become Glencore’s acquisition currency after a six-month lock up period, have since lost 30%. BHP Billiton Mining Global economy Financial crisis Credit crunch Australia Simon Goodley guardian.co.uk
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One of the greatest perversions of statism is the use of taxpayer money to push for ever more government spending and more government intervention. A casual listener to the far-left end of the FM dial, National Public Radio, will quickly conclude that NPR is one of America's leading offenders in this perversion. Let's just take one show, the August 22 evening newscast “All Things Considered,” perhaps one of the most ill-named programs in the history of radio. Conservatism is never considered. It is only besmirched, assaulted, and rhetorically dismembered. NPR anchor Robert Siegel was covering the new Martin Luther King memorial statue on the Washington Mall. So in order to consider all things, he asked black wacko-leftist Julian Bond if Tea Party activists were racist. Siegel threw this softball at Bond: “Some people read into the Tea Party's almost neuralgic reaction to government spending, a sense that white people figure black people benefit disproportionately from federal programs. Do you suspect a racial subtext to that whole argument?” Bond said “absolutely,” that “there is a racial animus there.” This was actually a little well-behaved for Bond. In the past, Bond has denounced the Tea Party as the the “Taliban wing” of the GOP. Speaking of Republicans, Bond sated afdter the 1994 revolution that the “running dogs of the wacky radical right” insured “white supremacy” was “everywhere in America,” and insisted then that in the Reagan years, the Republicans were a “crazed swarm of right-wing locusts.” That's who NPR turns to for sober analysis. Later in the same program, NPR offered a profile of Democrat Sen. Max Baucus, a member of the new “super committee” that will somehow magically reduce the deficit in a way the larger Congress cannot. Only liberals are allowed to analyze. Liberal number one: “Pat Williams was Montana's Democratic congressman through the 1980s and '90s. While he considers Baucus a friend, he doesn't agree with many of his fiscal policies.” Williams said “most notably, I've been disappointed in that he was the leading Democrat who engineered the passage of George W. Bush's tax cuts, which have been disastrous for the country.” (NPR has no time for anyone who thinks the Bush tax cuts were not “disastrous” for America.) Liberal number two: University of Montana professor Christopher Muste, who put Baucus on the right-wing fringe. Muste “says while Baucus is considered a progressive on many social and environmental issues, he's become a conservative anchor for the Democratic party on fiscal issues.” To suggest there is a “conservative anchor” in the Democrat Party is to flirt with a mental walk on the wild side. That's like suggesting there's a conservative anchor at…NPR. Muste warned Baucus is “very cautious” and “cautiousness makes him even more moderate in a lot of his policy actions.” NPR suggested on health care, “Baucus angered many liberal Democrats when he took the public option off the table in a failed attempt to bring more conservative Republicans onboard.” Muste added, “So I think he's got to view this bipartisan commission as one of his few chances to actually really come back and reestablish his credibility as one of the key players in deficit reduction in Congress.” Did you catch that? Baucus has to “reestablish his credibility” on deficit reduction by pleasing liberal Democrats. That would mean by increasing taxes and refusing to touch Obamacare, Medicare, and Social Security – anything. Right after this came another statism story: the endless rerun of billionaire Warren Buffett beating his breast and insisting he's dramatically undertaxed. I'm bored just writing that. NPR anchor Melissa Block interviewed Joseph Thorndike so he could denounce the under-taxation of the rich. Buffett can pontificate ad infinitum on this, perhaps because he knows NPR will not point out the obvious: Buffett doesn't live by his own credo. He could, but won't, write out his own check to the government. In fact, he does just the opposite, pouring more and more into the (liberal) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, thus protecting his money from federal taxation. In July he parked another $1.5 billion there, bringing his total to $9.5 billion. Buffett and Gates have both argued for a stiffer estate tax, which this foundation craftily avoids. To real journalists, this would be a story. But not at NPR.
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