From the New York Fed's web site, part of an FAQ explaining the central bank's new program to buy mortgage-backed securities:Does the agency MBS program expose the Federal Reserve to increased risk of losses?Assets purchased under this program are fully guaranteed as to principal and interest by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, so the Federal Reserve's exposure to the credit risk of the underlying mortgages is minimal.
"As of right now, Americans are left with more questions than answers about this unprecedented government spending, and I believe the taxpayers deserve to know a lot more about where it will be spent before we consider passing it," McConnell said in a statement, which will be publicly issued later today.
State and local government defined-benefit employee retirement systems paid $168 billion to 7.5 million retirees and survivors in fiscal year 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This is a $12 billion increase from the previous year when 7.3 million received payments.There were 2,547 retirement systems in 2007, with memberships of 18.6 million people who could be eligible for regular benefit payments in the future.
about her personal, private property, not rich developers or politicians or the opinions of others. What a great legacy of independence and courage she leaves for us all. HT: Mike
| YEAR | RATIO |
| 2008 | 29.8 |
| 2007 | 29.0 |
| 2006 | 28.5 |
| 2005 | 27.1 |
| 2004 | 25.1 |
| 2003 | 24.6 |
| 2002 | 23.1 |
| 2001 | 22.6 |
| 2000 | 23.9 |
| 1999 | 25.1 |
| 1998 | 20.0 |
The most dangerous job in America?
Underground coal miner? Foundry worker?
How about patronage worker at Chicago's City Hall.
City workers with political clout claim to be injured at a rate that far exceeds any occupation tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times that raises questions about whether all those city workers really were injured, and whether the city adequately investigates workplace accidents.
Which means that financially speaking, the spectacularly high dropout rate boils down to a spectacularly bad investment. Though there’s no specific data, one can imagine the countless millions that are wasted financing educations that never come to fruition. We could try to predict which students would be part of the 46% who don’t finish, then encourage those students not to go to college. But to do this would mean a lot of students who might graduate never get to give it a shot. That wouldn’t be fair. So what we can do instead is identify the 5% or 10% of students who are the least likely to graduate, and not send them to college.
The problem is, the current system provides no way, and no incentive, for doing that. In fact, the Free Application For Student Aid (FAFSA) doesn’t take into account an applicant’s academic record at all. The rationale behind this is reasonable and admirable: we don't want federal student aid to be restricted only to the best and the brightest, many of whom come from backgrounds that made it easy for them to excel. But doesn't it make sense, on some level, to withhold aid from the students who have shown during high school that they’re clearly not equipped to make it through four years of college? Doing so would be a big step toward recouping some of that wasted 46% of lost financing.
Lighter Cars and Electrification will Reduce Oil Demand
Toyota and others are working on 600kg cars instead of 1000kg. Cheaper titanium, more carbon fiber and other materials.
Steel accounts for about three-quarters of the average car weight in Japan of around 1,350 kg (2,976 lbs). Using carbon fiber to replace steel in key parts could cut vehicle weight by up to 40%, to slightly above an average 800 kg (1,800 lbs). This could improve fuel efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide by approximately 30% per car.
China's BYD has started selling its plugin hybrid electric car in
China for US$21,000.
EEStor's ultracapacitor patent details. They are supposed to be having commercial rollout in 2009.
A lot of better battery and ultracapacitor tech...sufficient for many planned needs for storage it is a matter of cost and scaling up for sufficient industrial impact.
WASHINGTON — More than a third of top congressional staffers who left their public service jobs this year went to work for private lobbying firms or other groups seeking to influence the government, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
Under an ethics law passed last year, the House and Senate for the first time must list the names of departing staffers earning $127,000 or more per year. So far this year, 32 of the 193 top staffers who left government registered as lobbyists and an additional 42 went to work for consulting firms, law offices, interest groups and trade associations, the analysis showed.
Publicizing names of departing staffers gives the public notice that "they're cashing in on their expertise," says James Thurber, an American University lobbying expert.
Former congressional staffers are free to become lobbyists or otherwise work to influence the government as long as they follow ethics laws, including a cooling-off period. The new rules prohibit former Senate aides from lobbying anyone in the Senate for a year after they leave.
In the House, the one-year lobbying ban only applies to the House office or committee where the staffer worked.
Congress tightened the rules as part of a broader package of ethics proposals backed by Democratic leaders after they took control in 2007.
Madoff made a fortune, and he played politics with some of that money. In total, he and his wife, Ruth, have given $238,200 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, with Democrats getting 88 percent of that. Overall, Madoff and other individuals at his company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, gave $372,100 in campaign contributions since 1991, with 89 percent to Democrats. The firm spent $590,000 on lobbying in the last 11 years, all but $10,000 of it with the lobbying firm of Lent, Scrivner & Roth. A search for funds with "Madoff" in their title in lawmakers' personal investments did not find any members of Congress with their own funds invested with him.
The following party committees, PACs and current members of Congress have received contributions from Madoff and his wife since the 1992 election cycle:
Name
Party
Total
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte
D
$102,000
Securities Industry Assn
$31,000
Wyden, Ron
D
$13,000
Schumer, Charles E
D
$12,000
Markey, Edward J
D
$10,000
Securities Industry & Financial Mkt Assn
$10,000
Lautenberg, Frank R
D
$8,600
Merkley, Jeff
D
$2,300
Clinton, Hillary
D
$2,000
Rangel, Charles B
D
$2,000
Towns, Edolphus
D
$2,000
Dodd, Christopher J
D
$1,500
Ackerman, Gary
D
$1,200
Dingell, John D
D
$1,000
Obey, David R
D
$1,000
Matheson, Jim
D
$250
National Abortion Rights Action League
$250
You might guess environmental groups would be glad timber prices have collapsed to where loggers' chain saws have fallen silent and sawmills are shutting down.
Instead, they're nervous. If logging doesn't pay, the same timber companies some environmentalists have blamed for ruining the forest may get rid of the forest -- selling off their prime real estate. Then subdivisions could grow instead of trees, absent the wildlife, clean water and other benefits forests typically present.
is now available HERE. This is audited financial report for Tennessee for the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 2008.
Kelly said when she asked a (Amtrak) customer service employee what to do, she was told: "Sometimes life puts you in a situation, where you need to learn a lesson. I would figure out what that lesson is supposed to be."
Polling Data
How serious a problem is global warming?
| Dec. 2008 | Apr. 2008 | |
| Very serious | 41% | 47% |
| Somewhat serious | 24% | 26% |
| Not very serious | 17% | 16% |
| Not at all serious | 16% | 8% |
| Not sure | 3% | 4% |
Is global warming caused primarily by human activity or by long term planetary trends?
| Dec. 2008 | Apr. 2008 | |
| Human activity | 43% | 47% |
| Long term planetary trends | 43% | 34% |
| Some other reason | 6% | 8% |
| Not sure | 8% | 11% |
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted on Dec. 13 and Dec. 14, 2008. Margin of error is 3 per cent.
The income drain has been most pronounced within Shelby County. During a 10-year period ending in 2007, the county sustained a net loss of $1.83 billion in incomes among residents moving in and those leaving.
Not only did the number of wage-earners leaving (173,601) outnumber those coming in (155,660), but the average income of the outgoing residents was greater than those arriving -- $46,880, compared with $40,544.
The bleeding, however, hasn't been restricted to Shelby's confines. The entire eight-county Memphis metropolitan area suffered net income losses during eight of the 10 years, with the total deficit for the period exceeding $398 million.
Link with videoAbout 500 people had gathered in the city's central square to demonstrate against a new tax on imported cars.
Witnesses said police officers kicked protesters, damaged journalists' equipment and made dozens of arrests.
Vladivostok, one of several cities holding protests, depends heavily on car imports from Japan and critics say the tax could push prices up by 50%.
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere.
We have 700+ videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, and finance which have been recorded by Salman Khan.
One novel feature of the BDS is that business startups (new firms) can be tracked on a comprehensive basis for U.S. private, non-agricultural businesses. The fraction of employment accounted for by business startups in the U.S. private sector over the 1980-2005 period is about 3 percent per year. This measure is interpretable as the employment-weighted business startup rate for the U.S. While this is a small fraction of overall employment, all of this employment from startups reflects new jobs. As such, 3 percent is large compared to the average annual net employment growth of the U.S. private sector for the same period (about 1.8 percent). This pattern implies that, excluding the jobs from new firms, the net employment growth rate for the U.S. is negative on average. This simple comparison highlights the importance of business startups to job creation in the U.S.
Even in the best economic times, thousands of small businesses fail and we do not bail them out. I have been concerned all along with the unfairness of what we have been doing, primarily for the financial companies, and for what we attempted to do for the automobile manufacturers.
No company should be considered by our government as being “too big to fail.” And I realize that if everyone had voted the way I have, some very big companies would have gone under.
However, socialism has not worked anyplace in the world. In my opinion, the pain, as great as it would be, would be a lot less and our economy would recover a lot sooner if we would simply let the free market work.
Current lobbying contracts end Dec. 31.
O'Connor told members Wednesday that outside contracts should be cut before city services are reduced.
For several years the city has contracted with Bill Nolan and Associates of Oak Ridge and The Ferguson Group of Washington, D.C., to advance the city's agenda to state and federal lawmakers.
Nolan and Associates is paid $55,800 a year. The Ferguson Group receives $96,000 annually.
| Rank | District | Direct Payment - Corn PY 2003-2005* (# beneficiaries) | Pct of Total | Running Percentage |
| 1 | 8th district of Tennessee (Rep. John S. Tanner) | $20,816,108 (10,312) | 48.0% | 48.0% |
| 2 | 4th district of Tennessee (Rep. Lincoln Davis) | $6,892,772 (4,604) | 15.9% | 63.9% |
| 3 | 7th district of Tennessee (Rep. Marsha Blackburn) | $5,780,538 (5,247) | 13.3% | 77.2% |
| 4 | 6th district of Tennessee (Rep. Bart Gordon) | $5,509,543 (4,493) | 12.7% | 89.9% |
| 5 | 1st district of Tennessee (Rep. David Davis) | $1,415,757 (1,891) | 3.3% | 93.2% |
| 6 | 2nd district of Tennessee (Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr.) | $962,132 (832) | 2.2% | 95.4% |
| 7 | 3rd district of Tennessee (Rep. Zach Wamp) | $848,357 (840) | 2.0% | 97.3% |
| 8 | 5th district of Tennessee (Rep. Jim Cooper) | $76,209 (178) | 0.2% | 97.5% |
| 9 | 9th district of Tennessee (Rep. Steve Cohen) | $49,127 (120) | 0.1% | 97.6% |
On December 18, the 10th circuit struck down Oklahoma’s ban on out-of-state circulators for initiatives. Yes on Term Limits v Savage, no. 07-6233. The decision is here. It is 16 pages long and says that there is no strong evidence that out-of-state circulators are more likely to engage in fraud than in-state circulators. Also it says that if Oklahoma needs to question circulators after the petition has been submitted, the state is free to pass a law saying that circulators must agree to return for questioning.
There are now four circuits that have invalidated bans on out-of-state circulators (the 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th), and only one circuit, the 8th, that has upheld them. Furthermore, the 8th circuit decision was from North Dakota, a state that has no voter registration, and therefore the 8th circuit decision can be said not to apply to the other 49 states that do have voter registration.
This decision is good news for Paul Jacob and his associates, who have been in jeopardy of a criminal prosecution for conspiring to bring out-of-state circulators into Oklahoma.
Reporting from Sacramento -- California's Democratic leaders were planning a vote today on a brazen proposal to raise gas, sales and income taxes through a series of legal maneuvers that would bypass the Legislature's minority Republicans.
The Democratic gambit, announced Wednesday, would raise $9.3 billion to ease the state's fiscal crisis by increasing sales taxes by three-fourths of a cent and gas taxes by 13 cents a gallon, starting in February. The plan would add a surcharge of 2.5% to everyone's 2009 state income tax bill.
Once again, the contract that the Treasury Department posted on its web site conceals the hourly rate that the government is paying Thacher Proffitt's lawyers, and omits most other information about the financial terms of the deal.
knew that the payee was, in fact, dead.Inside was a $238 economic stimulus check issued to her sister, who had died more than a year before.
The real stunner: The government knew Durrant's sister was in no position to spend the money.
The first line of the check listed "Donabea M. Baker Decd" — as in deceased — followed by Durrant's own name as her sister's trustee.
"I thought, it's strange that they should be sending an economic stimulus check to a person who is deceased," said Durrant, 83, a retired pharmacist. "I don't know what they're thinking."
dollars. YEA, we negotiated the deal in complete and total secrecy so the press and OUR elected officials and taxpaying citizens have no idea what the final bill will be. YEA, we created 500 jobs (in an area of 78,000) but realistically many of those jobs will be filled by Kentucky residents who bear no tax burden for the deal.
Brain at Flashpoint points to an article that shows a $2 trillion decrease in US home values in 2008. But some areas like Nashville are doing better than most, mainly due to greater market stability.
Comptroller of the Treasury
Treasurer Candidates
Barry Davis
D.W. 'Bill' McGaughey
David Lillard
Ira Brody
Vance Cheek, Jr
Secretary of State
David Shirley
A Treasury report out today pegs the U.S. government's operating cost at approximately $1 trillion, excluding transfer payments, which amounts to a trebling since 2007.
Most of the increase can be attributed to nearly $550b worth of "post-employment liabilities" -- pensions, health benefits -- for government employees, mostly veterans, liaibilities that, for some reason, either weren't estimated properly in 2007 or were simply ignored.
According to the report, the government spent a total of $3.0 trillion dollars and took in $2.5 trillion, and borrowed about $455 billion.
The U.S. government has approximately $1.9 trillion in assets; as liabilities, it counts $5.8 trillion in debt held by the public and $5.3 trillion in what the government owes to its employees. (I hadn't realized the government owed so much to its employees relative to other liabilities. Apparently, the government has deferred expenses for DoD pensions, the OPM pension plan).
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to indefinitely suspend the production start at its newest plant in Blue Springs, Miss., the Associated Press reported Monday.Production on Toyota’s hybrid Prius was to begin in 2010 but the company said it will delay installing equipment and machinery indefinitely due to a slowdown in consumer demand, the Associated Press reported.
Construction on the $1.3 billion plant northwest of Tupelo began in April 2007 with a plan to build 150,000 Highlander SUVs annually.
LinkThe Internet has shown the biggest increase in popularity as a news source, with 31% of Americans saying it is a daily news source. This marks a nearly 50% increase since 2006 and a more than 100% increase since 2002.
The audit, which looked at the agency's operations between mid-2005 and mid-2007, also found other instances where lax policies opened the door for employees to steal or cheat.
Safety officials concurred with each of the audit's four findings and responded that the problems are being corrected, the report shows.
The unnamed fiscal director who worked on the $2.7 million contract for "services relating to the processing of commercial vehicle licensing and tax administration" didn't correctly handle the bidding process, the audit states. She allegedly circumvented the process through a series of steps that included "creating a bogus contract document, forging required signatures" and facilitating the flow of a half-million dollars in contract disbursements by coding the payments incorrectly. The company that received the contract wasn't named in the audit.
Auditors also found other instances where charges were handled incorrectly, such as "payments to a local government data processing company under a sole source contract and payments to a university," the report states.
According to confidential company documents obtained by The Associated Press, Reps. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., spent the evening in hard-to-obtain seats near the Nationals dugout with Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin and four of Freddie Mac's in-house lobbyists.
Kanjorski declined comment through a spokeswoman. Ney ultimately served a federal prison term after pleading guilty to trading political favors for a golf trip to Scotland, other gifts and campaign donations in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
The Nationals tickets were bargains for Freddie Mac, part of a well-orchestrated, multimillion-dollar campaign to preserve its largely regulatory-free environment, with particular pressure exerted on Republicans who controlled Congress at the time.
Internal Freddie Mac budget records show $11.7 million was paid to 52 outside lobbyists and consultants in 2006. Power brokers such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich were recruited with six-figure contracts. Freddie Mac paid the following amounts to the firms of former Republican lawmakers or ex-GOP staffers in 2006:
_Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York, at Park Strategies, $240,000.
_Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, at Clark & Weinstock, $360,297.
_Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, at Washington Group, $300,062.
_Susan Hirschmann at Williams & Jensen, former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, $240,790.
The ADA-AA rejects prior Supreme Court guidance that the ADA requires a "demanding standard" for establishing coverage and that "substantially limits" should be read to mean that an impairment must "severely restrict" a major life activity. P.L. 110-325, §2(b). The ADA-AA also expresses Congress's expectation that the EEOC will revise its regulation defining "substantially limits" as "significantly restricted." Id. In the absence of these exacting standards, the bar for establishing coverage under the ADA has been greatly reduced, allowing for a wider pool of potential complainants. Until the EEOC publishes new regulations, it remains unclear what the new definition of "substantially limits" will be under the ADA-AA, but it is apparent from the language of the statute that Congress's intent was to establish a definition of disability that did not serve as an insurmountable obstacle to coverage. Further, Congress expressly states that "the question of whether an individual's impairment qualifies as a disability should not demand extensive analysis." Id.
[...]
Though the ADA is silent on issues such as reasonable accommodation and "direct threat," the expanded definition of disability created by the ADA-AA will no doubt impact how employers, including federal agencies, treat these issues. With the sweeping revisions of the ADA-AA, it is certainly likely that an increase in litigation under the ADA will occur. Given direct instruction from Congress to ensure the broadest coverage possible, courts will now attempt to redefine the boundaries of disability discrimination.
a so-called obesity tax on non-diet soda to raise $404 million. The governor also is contemplating requiring new license plates to raise cash, reviving sales tax on clothing purchases, removing the tax cap on gasoline and threatening to require Indian retailers to collect taxes on sales to non-Indians by signing into law a bill passed earlier this year by the Legislature.
Very nice, free globe designs from Logo designer, Siah Design. Click HERE for postscript file.
Instant democracy is getting closer. In 2011, Estonians will be able to elect their representatives using cellphones. How would it work and, more importantly, will it actually work?Raul Kaidro, who is the spokesman of the SK Certification Center in Estonia, says that it will be easy and secure: The voters will just need to previously obtain a free authorized chip. This chip will have an encrypted digital signature, which will allow them to identify themselves and vote using a text message.
The mobile voting will not be the only way to vote: It will be an additional method to online and on-site voting, all of them connected to a central database for instant identification and registration of the vote.
Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.
“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.
James Hirni admitted to allegations that he had conspired to commit honest services fraud in 2003, when, while lobbying on behalf of a construction equipment rental company, he plied two congressional staffers with a free trip to the World Series.
Hirni’s clients were attempting to tack amendments on to the federal highway bill that would push states to rent, rather than buy, construction equipment and force them to hire companies with high liability insurance coverage.
Of the two staffers, one, Trevor Blackann, was a legislative aide to Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) who on the highway bill’s committee. The other, unnamed staffer worked on the House committee overseeing the bill. Blackann plead guilty in November to failing to report thousands of dollars in gifts on his tax returns.
According to Hirini’s plea, the two staffers traveled to New York, where they were chaufered around the city in a sport utility vehicle and were treated to everything from the game tickets to a $600 evening excursion at a gentleman’s club. The bill was discussed during the trip, and the amendments were later added. Later, both Blackann and the other staffer both worked to keep the amendments intact.
In a school replete with children of the near-famous, the Obama girls will be in classes with other well-known progeny, including, in Sasha's second-grade class, a grandchild of Vice President-elect Jr. Elsewhere in the school are the children of other well-known Washington figures, such as former recording industry lobbying head and CNN contributor Hilary Rosen, Democratic strategist Nick Baldick, former transportation secretary Rodney E. Slater, and incoming White House staff secretary Lisa Brown, as well as Kurt Campbell, a respected defense expert, and his wife, Lael Brainard, a former White House deputy economic adviser.
The roster also includes many, many journalists, including Gregory's Sunday morning rival, George Stephanopoulos, and two other ABC colleagues, Claire Shipman and Terry Moran; Newsweek's Howard Fineman; Time's Jay Carney (who is married to Shipman); the BBC's Katty Kay; the Wall Street Journal's Monica Langley; the New York Times' Adam Liptak; Assistant Treasury Secretary Anthony Ryan; and more than half a dozen parents who work at The Washington Post, including columnist E.J. Dionne and Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A lawmaker has proposed using the anticipated cigarette tax increase to provide incentives for Mississippi's ailing furniture industry.
Sen. Alan Nunnelee, R-Tupelo, says part of increase could be used to provide a $2,000 tax credit to furniture companies for each of their cut & sew employees. Those jobs are being lost to foreign countries that pay much lower wages, he said.
The Senate Finance Committee met Thursday in Jackson with the Mississippi Furniture Association.
The Legislature, with the blessing of Gov. Haley Barbour, is expected to increase the tax on cigarettes. The debate now is centered on what to do with the revenue.
Ken Pruett, president of the Mississippi Furniture Association, said the state has lost 1,100 jobs in the furniture industry this year.
| Cohen | D | (TN-9) | Yes | $40,750 | (details…) |
| Gordon | D | (TN-6) | not voting | $113,350 | (details…) |
| Tanner | D | (TN-8) | Yes | $43,500 | (details…) |
| Davis | D | (TN-4) | Yes | $117,600 | (details…) |
| Davis | R | (TN-1) | No | $19,750 | (details…) |
| Wamp | R | (TN-3) | No | $67,026 | (details…) |
| Blackburn | R | (TN-7) | No | $58,850 | (details…) |
| Cooper | D | (TN-5) | No | $41,000 | (details…) |
| Duncan | R | (TN-2) | No | $29,300 | (details…) |
The lawsuit, Martinez vs. Regents of the University of California, was brought by dozens of U.S. citizens who pay out-of-state tuition at California schools who want the state to stop giving undocumented students in-state rates. They also want reimbursement for the extra tuition they have paid.A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeals ruled (PDF) in September that the practice violated the federal law and determined the case should go forward."Although (the lower court ruling) is not strictly binding, it is very powerful precedent," said Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who represents the plaintiffs. The ruling, which courts outside of California aren't obligated to follow, was the first time any court in the country determined whether the policy violated federal law.
Where natural disasters strike, political corruption is soon to follow, say the authors of a study in the Journal of Law and Economics. But it’s not the wind and rain that turns good folks bad; it’s the money that floods in afterwards from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We find each $100 of FEMA-provided disaster relief increases the average state’s corruption by nearly 102 percent,” write Peter Leeson (George Mason) and Russell Sobel (West Virginia U.). “Our findings suggest that notoriously corrupt regions of the United States, such as the Gulf Coast, are in part notoriously corrupt because natural disasters frequently strike them. They attract more disaster relief, which makes them more corrupt.”
Leeson and Sobel base their conclusions on a statistical model that measured the relationship between FEMA allocations and corruption in each U.S. state. The researchers quantified corruption as the number of per capita convictions of public officials for crimes such as embezzlement, accepting bribes or kickbacks, extortion and unlawful dealings with private vendors or contractors.
Hurricane-prone states like Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana, which receive large amounts of FEMA money, tend to have more corruption convictions per capita. States like Nebraska and Colorado, which receive almost no FEMA dollars, have least corruption.
Leeson and Sobel also found notable spikes in corruption convictions in the year following influxes of FEMA money in a given area. For example, in 1997 Minnesota received around $300 million from FEMA after the Red River Flood. In 1998, corruption convictions in Minnesota spiked to 14 per 100,000 citizens from less than two per 100,000 the year before.
Amazing if True.
DETROIT -- How bad are things around the Motor City? So bad that even Jon Jon's Cabaret is offering half-off deals.
The topless club in the suburb of Warren -- where General Motors and Chrysler employ upwards of 20,000 people -- cut the cost of a table dance in half, from $20 to $10, in mid-November. The dancer gets all the money plus any tips, while food and drinks generate the club's income, general manager Kelly Sander said Tuesday.
Jon Jon's has lowered prices on drinks, but business is still down 50 percent from a year ago, Sander said. She now opens the club at 6 p.m. instead of 11 a.m.
While IOM did not correct for income differences in the populations (insured vs. uninsured), it had available a proxy for income. Many of the studies it looked at did separate out the Medicaid population from the uninsured and the privately insured populations. Lacking other income information, IOM might have studied people on Medicaid as being both low-income and fully-insured. But this result did not suit its predisposition, so it chose to downplay it. Deep in the report it acknowledges that, “study results for overall health status, cancer outcomes, and hospital-based care, (find that) adults with Medicaid frequently fare no better and sometimes far worse than uninsured patients in their health-related outcomes….” One might conclude that it is better to be uninsured than to be fully-insured on Medicaid. But IOM says such a conclusion would be “facile.” Why? Because Medicaid is a lousy insurance program that doesn’t pay doctors enough. Ah! But that still doesn’t explain why, if having insurance is the most important factor in health, people with no insurance fare better than people with poor insurance.
"We will not let taxpayers spend their hard-earned money on ailing carmakers unless these companies are forced to reform their bad habits—either inside or outside of bankruptcy," the Republican from Kentucky said from the Senate floor. "This means that workers won't be paid not to work. This means a final bill would not interfere with pending environmental lawsuits in a one-sided manner. And it means that struggling car companies will have to rationalize their cost structures—because a company that does not respond to market conditions is a company that is doomed to failure anyway."
- What is Treasury's Strategy?
- Is the Strategy Working to Stabilize Markets?
- Is the Strategy Helping to Reduce Foreclosures?
- What Have Financial Institutions Done With the Taxpayers' Money Received So Far?
- Is the Public Receiving a Fair Deal?
- What is Treasury Doing to Help the American Family?
- Is Treasury Imposing Reforms on Financial Institutions that are taking Taxpayer Money?
- How is Treasury Deciding Which Institutions Receive the Money?
- What is the Scope of Treasury's Statutory Authority?
- Is Treasury Looking Ahead?
The publication Corporate Crime Reporter crunched Department of Justice statistics in 2007 to rank the 35 most populous states of the nation by corruption. The publication calculated a corruption rate, which it defined as the total number of public corruption convictions from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.
1. Louisiana(7.67)
2. Mississippi (6.66)
3. Kentucky (5.18)
4. Alabama (4.76)
5. Ohio(4.69)
6. Illinois (4.68)
7. Pennsylvania (4.55)
8. Florida (4.47)
9. New Jersey (4.32)
10. New York (3.95)
11. Tennessee (3.68)
Even deleted e-mail messages are public records if they deal with official business, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday.In a unanimous ruling, justices ordered commissioners in Seneca County to scour their computer hard drives for e-mail messages requested by a Toledo newspaper last year that had been deleted.
On Monday, the U.S. Conference of Mayors went to Capitol Hill to ask for a handout, or as they put it: "We are reporting that in 427 cities of all sizes in all regions of the country, a total of 11,391 infrastructure projects are 'ready to go.' These projects represent an infrastructure investment of $73,163,299,303 that would be capable of producing an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010."
A wish list that is 11,391 projects strong! What vital infrastructure projects would cash-strapped taxpayers get for their $73 billion? Here's a sampling:
- Hercules, Calif., wants $2.5 million in hard-earned taxpayer money for a "Waterfront Duck Pond Park," and another $200,000 for a dog park.
- Euless, Texas, wants $15 million for the Midway Park Family Life Center, which, you'll be glad to note, includes both a senior center and aquatic facility.
- Natchez, Miss., "needs" a new $9.5 million sports complex "which would allow our city to host major regional and national sports tournaments."
- Henderson, Nev., is asking for $20 million to help "develop a 60 acre multi-use sports field complex."
- Brigham City, Utah, wants $15 million for a sports park.
- Arlington, Texas, needs $4 million to expand its tennis center.
- Miami, Fla., needs $15 million for a "Moore Park Community Center, Tennis Center and Day Care" facility. The city is also desperate for $3.6 million to build a covered basketball court and a new tennis court at Robert King High Park. Then there's the $94 million Orange Bowl parking garage you are being asked to pay for.
- La Porte, Texas, wants $7.6 million for a "Life Style Center." And Oakland, Calif., needs $1 million for Fruitvale Latino Cultural and Performing Arts Center.
There are several things that make this legislation all kinds of awesome. First, it would lower your federal tax burden, keeping more money in your pocket. If you live in one of the nine states without a state income tax, you'd save an average of $650 per year. That's real money in some very difficult times.
Second, it would treat states with income and sales tax equally. Current law only allows for the deduction of state income taxes paid, so if you live in a state with a sales tax, you can't deduct any of those payments.
Third, it would be retroactive to the beginning of this year, meaning you wouldn't miss out on the benefits come next Tax Day.
Fourth, this is a bit wonky, but it would eliminate the debate over one of the tax "extenders" that Congress seems to fight over every single year. By putting the deduction into permanent law, we'd no longer have to fight over the deductibility of state income taxes as a part of the big extenders package.
Daschle maintains the efforts to bring about universal health coverage in the first two years of the Clinton presidency took too long. In a book published this year, he urged the next president to act immediately to capitalize on the good will that greets any incoming administration. His speech and recent behind-the-scenes meetings with lawmakers and consumer groups address that point.
"We need to be on the offense," Daschle said.
He cited other lessons, too. This time around, lawmakers cannot try to address every detail when it comes to legislation.
"Details kill," Daschle said. "If we get too far into the weeds, if we produce a 1,500- or 1,600-page bill, we're going to get hung up on all the details and we're never going to get to the principles."
"HELP"? Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Harry Reid will do a great job running American auto companies.
FORT WORTH, Texas — A Tarrant Appraisal District review board ruled Monday that Kenneth Copeland Ministries' $3.6 million jet does not have tax-exempt status.
The district denied a protest filed by the televangelist's attorneys because the ministry refused to release salaries of its directors, including Copeland, his wife and others ministers.
David Middlebrook, an attorney for Copeland, said the ministry, also known as Eagle Mountain International Church, will consider its legal options but declined to elaborate. The jet is a 1998 Cessna Bravo 550, which seats nine.
Another Copeland attorney, Rick Duncan, said revealing ministers' salaries should be a concern to all churches in the county.
But Tarrant Appraisal District employees started asking for the salary information from churches this year and said others have complied, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported in its Monday online edition.
As if you couldn’t see this one coming a mile away: more than half of the loans modified in the first quarter of 2008 had redefaulted within six months of modification, according to statistics released Monday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
“After three months, nearly 36 percent of the borrowers had re-defaulted by being more than 30 days past due,” Comptroller John Dugan said in a statement. “After six months, the rate was nearly 53 percent, and after eight months, 58 percent.”
In other words, recidivism rates are right where they historically have been, despite growing pressure to “do something” about a growing number of foreclosures. Dugan characterized the results, however, as “surprising” for regulators.
Newly signed Medicaid patients may have a tough time finding a doctor. Only about half of all physicians will accept new Medicaid enrollees, far less than the number of doctors taking on new Medicare patients or the privately insured. The reason? Medicaid reimbursement rates are low and the payment is slow. A study [gated but with abstract] in Health Affairs finds that the average Medicaid pay cycle ranges from a low of 37 days in Kansas to a high of 115 days in Pennsylvania.
Sommet Center's general manager said he has withdrawn a proposal for a Metro board to set up a committee that would decide in secret if the Nashville Predators' owners qualify for a taxpayer-funded incentive worth up to $2 million a year.The process originally recommended by Hugh Lombardi, executive vice president of Powers Management, would have kept financial records from certain events at the city-owned arena out of public view, according to a letter obtained by The Tennessean
Vanderbilt University is examining whether one of its senior officials has a conflict of interest as a member of the Metro Sports Authority in light of the university's new relationship with the Nashville Predators.
Lauren Brisky, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for administration and chief financial officer, has served on the sports authority since 2005. Vanderbilt's medical center signed on in September as the Predators' official health-care provider and a team sponsor.
During my two-year tenure on the “government money” payroll, I learned the foundational error that now greatly accounts for the financial meltdown of America and a public debt of nearly a trillion dollars.
This ain’t rocket science, and one need not be named Friedman or Bernanke to get it.
Our civil engineering department had a yearly budget, paid for by “government money.” The object of the budget writers was to get more money in the coming year than they had gotten in the last year. To this end, whenever the fiscal year’s end approached, there was a mad dash — fully sanctioned by every university employee, from the president to the deans to the department heads to the lowliest secretary — to spend, spend, spend until not a single penny was left in the budget unspent.
Frivolous, wasteful, purely gluttonous spending on completely unnecessary things was the order of the day and every employee got quickly into the hang of it. Imagine an outlandishly high credit limit on a credit card for which the bills never arrive at one’s own door. No luxury was considered too luxurious in the mad dash to spend every penny of allocated “government money.” The theory was that if a budget wasn’t spent out, then the higher-up bureaucrats would cut next year’s budget instead of increasing it.
I never again worked on any government payroll, but I’ve known lots of others who have. I’ve heard tales from career government workers that have nearly made my head spin.
What’s been so carelessly sown must now be reaped. We are the only source of “government money.” The laugh’s on us.
And the medicine we’ll be forced to take will not be easily swallowed — no matter how much sugar we add to the spoon.
Using a unique combination of new computer vision and fast computation methods, VideoSurf has taught computers to “see” inside videos to find content in a fast, efficient, and scalable way. Basing its search on visual identification, rather than text only, VideoSurf’s computer vision video search engine provides more relevant results and a better experience to let users find and discover the videos they really want to watch.
Few local school board members want the power to levy taxes for education even though their state association is urging lawmakers to give them that authority.
“We don’t need two or three taxing authorities in each county,” Hamilton County Board of Education Chairman Kenny Smith said. “Who would be next? The sheriff’s department? The health department? The recreation department?”
Five of nine school board members, and several Hamilton County Commissioners, said they are happy with the way the budget process works now — with the school board requesting funding from the commission.
To draw more players, the Tennessee Education Lottery will add new features to its Cash 3 and Cash 4 games this Sunday, she said. There will also will be bigger Powerball jackpots in January, and in February, it will add a new game called the Tennessee Millionaires Club, an instant game with 20 prizes of $1 million.
“We believe that will bring new players and lapsed players,” Mrs. Hargrove said.
With new games and features, she said officials hope to grow the lottery’s profits by $3 million in the next fiscal year.
created. Thanks but no thanks. If OUR Congress falls for this scam then they are hopelessly stupid or corrupt or both.
In 2007, it cost taxpayers $562 million. That's is an average annual increase of 14.5%. I am not aware of any other State Budget item that has grown as fast.
According to the government's latest statistics, it hired 264,000 workers and "separated" 251,000 in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2007. Many of those separations were retirements: The government work force is substantially older than that of the private industry.
But too many others are young eager beavers "who throw up their hands in despair" after two or three years, says New York University's Paul Light, an expert on the federal bureaucracy.
Ms. Kamarck recently co-wrote a study for the progressive think tank Third Way that found that 17% of Americans trust the federal government, the lowest number since pollsters first asked the question in 1958. Twice as many people said they trusted the government during the Reagan administration than now, even though the former president famously declared government "the problem" rather than "the solution to our problem" in his 1981 inaugural address.
The perception of government ineptitude is a turnoff to young people considering working for the government -- and the response to Hurricane Katrina and Pentagon-contracting scandals didn't help.
But a greater turnoff is the sluggishness of an employer with 2.7 million civilian workers world-wide, says Prof. Light. "It's not the mission, it's the job," he says.
Many agencies won't hire outsiders for top jobs. It takes years to remove ineffective coworkers, and political appointees may get the best postings. Hiring one employee can involve 110 steps, and pay and promotion are set by time on the job, not performance. And almost everyone needs to take a test to get in.
Yes, Volkswagen will create some jobs, but the question we must ask is this: What if Gov. Bredesen had acted like he was governor of ALL Tennesseans and gave ALL Tennessee taxpayers a $577 million tax break? How could he do this? There are a number of ways. The franchise and excise business tax could have been lowered by $577 million, or the state sales tax lowered by $577 million. Would either reduction have created more jobs than the Volkswagen deal? Yes, a thousand times YES.
Every Tennessee business would have benefited. The result would have been far more than 2,000 new jobs and, even more important, a more diversified and stable Tennessee economy.
So, why are politicians so anxious to secretly negotiate mega-tax breaks for huge corporations?
The answer is simple: political capital. They are able to claim on the campaign trail that they created jobs when, in fact, their only talent was to give away more taxpayer money than other politicians were willing to give away.
DETROIT — The United Automobile Workers union will suspend its jobs bank and consider changes to its contract as a way to help Detroit companies avoid a collapse, the union’s president, Ron Gettelfinger, said Wednesday.
At the news conference, Mr. Gettelfinger said that the U.A.W. would be open to modifications to the contracts but not to completely reopening it for new negotiations.
The union agreed, Mr. Gettelfinger said, to revise the payment required of carmakers to the health care fund called a Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association or VEBA.
“We’re willing to take an extra step here,” he said.
Queensland's Deputy Opposition Leader Mark McArdle told parliament today that teachers were being advised to reconsider their pen choice because it may offend children.
Mr McArdle tabled a Queensland Health document proposing "strategies for addressing mental health wellbeing in any classroom".
It says: "Don't mark in a red pen (which can be seen as aggressive) - use a different colour."
"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true."
Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of the oversight panel, said in an interview Monday that the government instead seemed to be lurching from one tactic to the next without clarifying how each step fits into an overall plan.
“You can’t just say, ‘Credit isn’t moving through the system,’ ” she said in her first public comments since being named to the panel. “You have to ask why.”
If the answer is that banks do not have money to lend, it would make sense to push capital into their hands, as the Treasury has been doing over the last two months, she continued. But if the answer is that their potential borrowers are getting less creditworthy with each passing day, “pouring money into banks isn’t going to fix that problem,” she said.
The new panel has held only a few briefings with Treasury officials so far, and Ms. Warren acknowledged that she and the other panel members were still in the early stages of their research.
According to Wright, the EPA proposal would establish a greenhouse gas "tax" of $87.50 on each head of beef cattle produced and $175 per head on each dairy animal and $20 for each hog.
The proposal is essentially a tax on livestock operations, Wright said.
"Most livestock and dairy farmers would not be able to pass along this tax," Wright said. "The proposal would put producers out of business and would certainly result in much higher consumer costs for beef, milk, pork, and milk products."
Wright said EPA is seeking public comments until Nov. 28. He said ICON is urging its members to oppose the measure by contacting EPA officials. Comment information is available on the ICON Web site at www.independentcattlemenofNebraska.com. Wright said that according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, any farm or ranch with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs emits more than 100 tons of carbon equivalent per year, and thus would need to obtain a permit under the proposed rules.
Market capitalization of General Motors: $3.2 billion.
Market capitalization of Mattel, Inc.: $4.9 billion.
While I applaud the change to a creative commons license as a step in the right direction, I still believe that change.gov -- and all .gov sites -- need to be explicitly in the public domain (which as you remember is a statutory requirement According to Copyright Law 17 U.S.C. § 105). If site administrators wanted the geek street cred that comes with creative commons, why didn't they choose the creative commons public domain dedication?
