C’mon, C’mon Listen To The Money Talk

Bill Maher Interviews Robin Wright | February 27, 2009

New Rules For February 27, 2009 | Bill Maher

Bill Maher | Panel Discussion | February 27, 2009

Real Time With Bill Maher | Opening Monologue | February 27, 2009

Dan Snyder and The ‘Skins Get Fatboy Albert Haynesworth in Quick Free Agent Move

(Feb. 27)

Moving swiftly in the first hours of free agency, the Washington Redskins opened their deep pockets and snagged the biggest name available: Albert Haynesworth.

State of the Union | Barack Obama | February 24, 2009 [Complete Video]

Parts Two through Seven:

Fleet Foxes @ Letterman (HQ)

Fleet Foxes @ Letterman (HQ)

Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains

Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains

Fleet Foxes – Blue Ridge Mountains

Stay Classy Politico….

“…They strike a desperate, high – school like “everybody love me” “centrist” pose”

-Tullycast viewer on The New Republic

John Tully | Tullycast Memo

New Rules For February 20, 2009 | Real Time With Bill Maher

Bill Maher With Ron Paul | Real Time | February 20, 2009

Real Time With Bill Maher | Opening Monologue | February 20, 2009

Bizarre Rick Sanchez + Nutty Amy Holmes = Delicious Bush Legacy Project

Six Homeless Men In Florida Accused of Plot to Blow Up Sears Tower on Trial For Third Time

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

By RASHA MADKOUR

Associated Press Writer

1:50 PM EST, February 18, 2009

MIAMI (AP) — A group of Miami men accused of plotting to destroy Chicago’s Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices sold out their country for money, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday at the start of the men’s third trial.

Prosecutors are trying to convict the so-called “Liberty City Six” on four terrorism-related charges after two previous trials ended in hung juries. The men are accused of plotting terror attacks with an FBI informant they thought was an al-Qaida operative.

A defense attorney for the group’s leader, Narseal Batiste, 34, said the government’s sting operation was a setup. The FBI’s paid informants were motivated by money to manipulate the men and encourage them to take actions that could later be used against them, attorney Ana M. Jhones said.

“This case is a 100 percent setup. This is a manufactured crime,” she said.

The men took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden — captured by the FBI on videotape — led by a man claiming to be an al-Qaida operative who was an informant posing as a terror financier.

Batiste has previously testified he was never serious about any terror plots and was only playing along in hopes of getting $50,000.

There has been no evidence the men ever took any steps toward pulling off an attack. When they were arrested in 2006, the Bush administration trumpeted the case as an example of heading off terrorists early.

“What’s relevant is their intention — what they wanted to do,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Arango said.

Prosecutors said the men took photographs and video of possible targets in Miami, including the FBI building, a courthouse complex and a synagogue. In exchange, they wanted money to build what Arango described as their paramilitary group.

“They all agreed to sell out their country for money,” Arango said. “The fact that they did so for the mighty U.S. dollar is no excuse.”

Jhones said one of the informants tricked Batiste into taking the oath and encouraged him to make a list of weapons and equipment. She said video and audio captured by authorities will show two informants were in control and calling the shots, not Batiste.

The defense attorney said Batiste, a construction worker and father of four, was repeatedly asking about the money on the recordings, not talking about blowing up buildings.

“You cannot buy your way to a conviction,” Jhones said.

The men each face 70 years in prison if convicted of four terrorism-related counts, including conspiracy to support al-Qaida and conspiracy to levy war against the U.S.

The trial is expected to last at least two months.

The group of men were named after their hometown of Liberty City, an impoverished area of Miami.

FCC, TV, Internet Set For Big Changes in 2009

David Ho

Cox News

via SF GATE

January 28 New York –

From an Obama administration plan to give all Americans broadband to the nation’s looming switch to digital television, the communications landscape is expected to see big shifts in 2009.

At the heart of much of the change is the Federal Communications Commission, which soon faces its own shake-up as at least one commissioner departs and Democrats take charge.

That could mean policy changes at an agency that oversees everything from cable providers and radio airwaves to public safety communications and broadcast indecency rules.

Overall, experts say, President-elect Barack Obama’s tech-savvy team will be more involved in telecommunications issues than the Bush administration was.

“Obama looks at these issues as part of the solution to unemployment challenges and as an economic stimulant,” said Andy Lipman, who leads the telecom-media practice at the Bingham McCutchen law firm in Washington.

The FCC

The new FCC will begin taking shape in early January as the term of Republican Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate ends. The president appoints commissioners for limited terms, with the party in power getting three of five spots, including the chairmanship.

Republican Chairman Kevin Martin will likely leave the agency when the new administration takes office, and Obama is expected to appoint one of the commission’s two Democrats – Michael Copps or Jonathan Adelstein – as interim chairman. One of them could get the long-term job, but many names have circulated as potential candidates.

While Senate confirmation could take months, Obama’s FCC chairman will arrive with a well-defined agenda, said Ben Scott, policy director for the advocacy group Free Press.

“The president-elect has been so clear and detailed about what he wants to do in telecom and media policy, whoever becomes chairman is going to inherit that set of expectations,” he said.

Broadband

Perhaps the biggest expectation involves improving the availability of high-speed Internet access. That goal is likely to be a part of the huge stimulus package that Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress ambitiously want to enact soon after he takes office Jan. 20.

“It is unacceptable that the United States ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption,” Obama said this month. “Here, in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online. … That’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”

Figuring out how to make that happen has prompted considerable debate, with lawmakers, consumer groups and tech companies chiming in.

“They need to create some kind of mechanism that encourages industry to quickly start deploying faster and farther,” said David Kaut, an analyst with the Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. investment firm. “There’s going to be a lot of scrutiny that it produces jobs in the near term and not just jobs already scheduled.”

The Telecommunications Industry Association and other players favor tax breaks and grants to encourage network building.

One floated proposal involves supporting a broadband rollout through a $7 billion fund that draws on monthly phone bill fees to subsidize calling service in rural and poor communities.

Digital TV

As wrangling over broadband plays out, another mammoth change takes center stage on Feb. 17 as the nation’s TV broadcasters cut off analog signals. The goal is to offer new digital channels with improved picture and sound quality while freeing up radio airwaves for uses such as wireless broadband.

To watch digital programming on older analog sets, consumers need converter boxes. The government is offering coupons to help pay for them.

But when the digital deadline comes, “inevitably you’re going to have lots of people with problems,” Scott said. Recent surveys indicate many consumers remain confused about how it will work.

Key lawmakers told the FCC’s Martin this month that his agency should make smoothing the digital transition the No. 1 priority in the weeks before the inauguration. Martin promptly canceled a meeting on other issues.

The digital changeover has “sucked the oxygen” out of every other telecom topic before the FCC and will dwarf everything else in the first few months of 2009, Lipman said.

Net neutrality

One issue facing a priority shift is net neutrality, or the idea of an open Internet where network providers don’t interfere with Web content and treat all traffic the same.

In August, a precedent-setting FCC decision found that cable giant Comcast Corp. violated federal policies when it blocked customers from sharing online videos and other large files.

Obama has made net neutrality a top communications priority and some lawmakers would like it to be part of a national broadband strategy.

However, the urgency behind government action has faded in recent months as the online content and network sides have come closer together, Lipman said.

He said the issue could flare up if Comcast wins a legal challenge to the FCC ruling, but that decision is a year or two away.

Mergers

The Obama FCC also is expected to apply more scrutiny to mergers while resisting telecom deregulation and weaker media ownership rules.

The new commission may swing back toward President Bill Clinton’s FCC, which exerted tighter control over industry, said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst in Atlanta. He said companies complained then that regulations could not keep pace with changing technology.

“When the Bush administration took over, the pendulum swung all the way to other side,” resulting in enormous consolidation, Kagan said. He said the challenge for the Obama administration is finding a middle ground.

Cable

One industry looking forward to change at the FCC is cable, which has battled with Martin over a variety of issues including ownership limits and his push for “a la carte” programming, where cable subscribers buy only the individual channels they want.

Some in the industry worry about new net neutrality restrictions, but many FCC watchers expect pressure on cable to ease and the a la carte issue to fade as broadband becomes the top priority.

Lipman said cable companies typically do better with Republicans in power, but without Martin “paradoxically cable will probably end up doing better in the Obama administration.”

Hamburgers Are Hummers of Food in Global Warming

AFP
Feb 16, 2009

When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food, scientists say.

Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as leaving the car at home a couple days a week.

That’s because beef is such an incredibly inefficient food to produce and cows release so much harmful methane into the atmosphere, said Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada.

Pelletier is one of a growing number of scientists studying the environmental costs of food from field to plate.

By looking at everything from how much grain a cow eats before it is ready for slaughter to the emissions released by manure, they are getting a clearer idea of the true costs of food.

The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.

Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in the developed world it’s responsible for 78 percent of the emissions, Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

That’s because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.

If people were to simply switch from beef to chicken, emissions would be cut by 70 percent, Pelletier said.

Another part of the problem is people are eating far more meat than they need to.

“Meat once was a luxury in our diet,” Pelletier said. “We used to eat it once a week. Now we eat it every day.”

If meat consumption in the developed world was cut from the current level of about 90 kilograms a year to the recommended level of 53 kilograms a year, livestock related emissions would fall by 44 percent.

“Given the projected doubling of (global) meat production by 2050, we’re going to have to cut our emissions by half just to maintain current levels,” Pelletier said.

“Technical improvements are not going to get us there.”

That’s why changing the kinds of food people eat is so important, said Chris Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

Food is the third largest contributor to the average US household’s carbon footprint after driving and utilities, and in Europe – where people drive less and have smaller homes – it has an even greater impact.

“Food is of particular importance to a consumer’s impact because it’s a daily choice that is, at least in theory, easy to change,” Weber said.

“You make your choice every day about what to eat, but once you have a house and a car you’re locked into that for a while.”

The average US household contributes about five tons of carbon dioxide a year by driving and about 3.5 tons of equivalent emissions with what they eat, he said.

“Switching to no red meat and no dairy products is the equivalent of (cutting out) 8,100 miles driven in a car … that gets 25 miles to the gallon,” Weber said in an interview following the symposium.

Buying local meat and produce will not have nearly the same effect, he cautioned.

That’s because only five percent of the emissions related to food come from transporting food to market.

“You can have a much bigger impact by shifting just one day a week from meat and dairy to anything else than going local every day of the year,” Weber said.

For more information on how to eat a low carbon diet, visit www.eatlowcarbon.org.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Northwest Airlines Serving Penis on All Domestic Flights

Apparently, Georgia is number one penis producer in the United States.

Fairness Doctrine or Media Control Doctrine? | An In-Depth Discussion

Karl Rove Discusses His Second Subpoena From House Judiciary Committee

Inside the Mind of the G.O.P. | J.D. Hayworth Blames Soros and Schumer For Financial Meltdown

Government Bailout Hits $8.5 trillion

Kathleen Pender

The San Francisco Chronicle

November 26, 2008

The federal government committed an additional $800 billion to two new loan programs on Tuesday, bringing its cumulative commitment to financial rescue initiatives to a staggering $8.5 trillion, according to Bloomberg News.

That sum represents almost 60 percent of the nation’s estimated gross domestic product.

Given the unprecedented size and complexity of these programs and the fact that many have never been tried before, it’s impossible to predict how much they will cost taxpayers. The final cost won’t be known for many years.

The money has been committed to a wide array of programs, including loans and loan guarantees, asset purchases, equity investments in financial companies, tax breaks for banks, help for struggling homeowners and a currency stabilization fund.

Most of the money, about $5.5 trillion, comes from the Federal Reserve, which as an independent entity does not need congressional approval to lend money to banks or, in “unusual and exigent circumstances,” to other financial institutions.

To stimulate lending, the Fed said on Tuesday it will purchase up to $600 billion in mortgage debt issued or backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and government housing agencies. It also will lend up to $200 billion to holders of securities backed by consumer and small-business loans. All but $20 billion of that $800 billion represents new commitments, a Fed spokeswoman said.

About $1.1 trillion of the $8.5 trillion is coming from the Treasury Department, including $700 billion approved by Congress in dramatic fashion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The rest of the commitments are coming from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Housing Administration.

Only about $3.2 trillion of the $8.5 trillion has been tapped so far, according to Bloomberg. Some of it might never be.

Relatively little of the money represents direct outlays of cash with no strings attached, such as the $168 billion in stimulus checks mailed last spring.

Where it’s going

Most of the money is going into loans or loan guarantees, asset purchases or stock investments on which the government could see some return.

“If the economy were to miraculously recover, the taxpayer could make money. That’s not my best guess or even a likely scenario,” but it’s not inconceivable, says Anil Kashyap, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

The risk/reward ratio for taxpayers varies greatly from program to program.

For example, the first deal the government made when it bailed out insurance giant AIG had little risk and a lot of potential upside for taxpayers, Kashyap said. “Then it turned out the situation (at AIG) was worse than realized, and the terms were so brutal (to AIG) that we had to renegotiate. Now we have given them a lot more credit on more generous terms.”

Kashyap says the worst deal for taxpayers could be the Citigroup deal announced late Sunday. The government agreed to buy an additional $20 billion in preferred stock and absorb up to $249 billion in losses on troubled assets owned by Citi.

Given that Citigroup’s entire market value on Friday was $20.5 billion, “instead of taking that $20 billion in preferred shares we could have bought the company,” he says.

It’s hard to say how much the overall rescue attempt will add to the annual deficit or the national debt because the government accounts for each program differently.

If the Treasury borrows money to finance a program, that money adds to the federal debt and must eventually be paid off, with interest, says Diane Lim Rogers, chief economist with the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that aims to eliminate federal deficits.

The federal debt held by the public has risen to $6.4 trillion from $5.5 trillion at the end of August. (Total debt, including that owed to Social Security and other government agencies, stands at more than $10 trillion.)

However, a $1 billion increase in the federal debt does not necessarily increase the annual budget deficit by $1 billion because it is expected to be repaid over time, Rogers said.

Annual deficit

A deficit arises when the government’s expenditures exceed its revenues in a particular year. Some estimate that the federal deficit will exceed $1 trillion this fiscal year as a result of the economic slowdown and efforts to revive it.

The Fed’s activities to shore up the financial system do not show up directly on the federal budget, although they can have an impact. The Fed lends money from its own balance sheet or by essentially creating new money. It has been doing both this year.

The problem is, “if you print money all the time, the money becomes worth less,” Rogers says. This usually leads to higher inflation and higher interest rates. The value of the dollar also falls because foreign investors become less willing to invest in the United States.

Today, interest rates are relatively low and the dollar has been mostly strengthening this year because U.S. Treasury securities “are still for the moment a very safe thing to be investing in because the financial market is so unstable,” Rogers said. “Once we stabilize the stock market, people will not be so enamored of clutching onto Treasurys.”

At that point, interest rates and inflation will rise. Increased borrowing by the Treasury will also put upward pressure on interest rates.

Deflation a big concern

Today, however, the Fed is more worried about deflation than inflation and is willing to flood the market with money if necessary to prevent an economic collapse.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “has ordered the helicopters to get ready,” said Axel Merk, president of Merk Investments. “The helicopters are hovering and the first cash is making it through the seams. Soon, a door may be opened.”

Rogers says her biggest fear is not hyperinflation and the social unrest it could unleash. “I’m more worried about a lot of federal dollars being committed and not having much to show for it. My worst fear is we are leaving our children with a huge debt burden and not much left to pay it back.”

Economic rescue

Key dates in the federal government’s campaign to alleviate the economic crisis.

March 11: The Federal Reserve announces a rescue package to provide up to $200 billion in loans to banks and investment houses and let them put up risky mortgage-backed securities as collateral.

March 16: The Fed provides a $29 billion loan to JPMorgan Chase & Co. as part of its purchase of investment bank Bear Stearns.

July 30: President Bush signs a housing bill including $300 billion in new loan authority for the government to back cheaper mortgages for troubled homeowners.

Sept. 7: The Treasury takes over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, putting them into a conservatorship and pledging up to $200 billion to back their assets.

Sept. 16: The Fed injects $85 billion into the failing American International Group, one of the world’s largest insurance companies.

Sept. 16: The Fed pumps $70 billion more into the nation’s financial system to help ease credit stresses.

Sept. 19: The Treasury temporarily guarantees money market funds against losses up to $50 billion.

Oct. 3: President Bush signs the $700 billion economic bailout package. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the money will be used to buy distressed mortgage-related securities from banks.

Oct. 6: The Fed increases a short-term loan program, saying it is boosting short-term lending to banks to $150 billion.

Oct. 7: The Fed says it will start buying unsecured short-term debt from companies, and says that up to $1.3 trillion of the debt may qualify for the program.

Oct. 8: The Fed agrees to lend AIG $37.8 billion more, bringing total to about $123 billion.

Oct. 14: The Treasury says it will use $250 billion of the $700 billion bailout to inject capital into the banks, with $125 billion provided to nine of the largest.

Oct. 14: The FDIC says it will temporarily guarantee up to a total of $1.4 trillion in loans between banks.

Oct. 21: The Fed says it will provide up to $540 billion in financing to provide liquidity for money market mutual funds.

Nov. 10: The Treasury and Fed replace the two loans provided to AIG with a $150 billion aid package that includes an infusion of $40 billion from the government’s bailout fund.

Nov. 12: Paulson says the government will not buy distressed mortgage-related assets, but instead will concentrate on injecting capital into banks.

Nov. 17: Treasury says it has provided $33.6 billion in capital to another 21 banks. So far, the government has invested $158.6 billion in 30 banks.

Sunday: The Treasury says it will invest $20 billion in Citigroup Inc., on top of $25 billion provided Oct. 14. The Treasury, Fed and FDIC also pledge to backstop large losses Citigroup might absorb on $306 billion in real estate-related assets.

Tuesday: The Fed says it will purchase up to $600 billion more in mortgage-related assets and will lend up to $200 billion to the holders of securities backed by various types of consumer loans.

Source: Associated Press

Net Worth runs Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail Kathleen Pender at kpender@sfchronicle.com.

Former Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico Has His Records Subpoenaed in David Iglesias, U.S. Attorneys Scandal

Ex-lawmaker’s records subpoenaed in firings probe

Associated Press – February 11, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal grand jury has subpoenaed records of former Republican Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

Career federal prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy is looking into whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges in the dismissals of U.S. Attorneys.

The grand jury subpoena for some of Domenici’s records has been confirmed by two private attorneys who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not representing the former senator.

Domenici’s attorney, K. Lee Blalack, has declined to comment.

Domenici made three phone calls to Gonzales in 2005 and 2006 complaining about the performance of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Iglesias was fired for what the Justice Department’s inspector general said were political reasons.

Judd Gregg Withdraws as Commerce Secretary Nominee

February 12, 2009, 4:25 pm

By Jeff Zeleny

THE CAUCUS BLOG – NEW YORK TIMES

President Obama’s choice for Commerce Secretary, Senator Judd Gregg, withdrew his nomination on Thursday. He said there were “irresolvable conflicts” between him and the administration.

“It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me,” Mr. Gregg said in a statement. “Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”

The withdrawal comes one week after Mr. Gregg was named to become the third Republican member of the Obama Cabinet. It is the second time that the Commerce Secretary position has been vacant within the last month.

Mr. Gregg, a Republican of New Hampshire, had not resigned his seat in the Senate. He has been away from the Senate floor this week, presumably preparing for his confirmation, and did not vote on the administration’s economic stimulus plan.

In announcing his selection as Commerce Secretary last Tuesday, Mr. Gregg stood at Mr. Obama’s side during a brief White House ceremony. The president touted his nominee as a fiscal conservative who could help “shore up our financial system and revitalize our economy.”

The president selected Mr. Gregg exactly two months after he nominated his first choice for commerce secretary, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He withdrew his name from consideration because of a federal investigation into state contracts, the first of several controversies surrounding the president’s top nominees.

In announcing his withdrawal, Mr. Gregg released a statement through his Senate office. It was not announced by the White House, though aides said the president had been informed of Mr. Gregg’s decision.

“Obviously the President requires a team that is fully supportive of all his initiatives,” Mr. Gregg said in a statement. “I greatly admire President Obama and know our country will benefit from his leadership, but at this time I must withdraw my name from consideration for this position.”

He added, “As a further matter of clarification, nothing about the vetting process played any role in this decision. I will continue to represent the people of New Hampshire in the United States Senate.”

It was another blow for the White House, which has seen three Cabinet nominees withdraw from consideration. Tom Daschle pulled his name from consideration to lead the Health and Human Services Department amid questions about his tax returns.

Kicking Ass and Taking Names: Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald Call Bullshit on the White House Stenographers

The Grand Dame of Blogs, Jane Hamsher and the Tough, Smart Glenn Greenwald Are Getting it Done

Access Journalism — Business As Usual?

By: Jane Hamsher Wednesday February 11

F I R E D O G L A K E

Glenn Greenwald has been rightfully indignant about the Obama DoJ’s use of Bush’s “state secrets” argument to cover up charges of rendition and torture.  The NY Times this morning says “It was as if last month’s inauguration had never occurred…..Voters have good reason to feel betrayed if they took Mr. Obama seriously on the campaign trail when he criticized the Bush administration’s tactic of stretching the state-secrets privilege to get lawsuits tossed out of court.”

But Bush’s “state secrets” claims aren’t the only White House holdovers. Glenn also singles out Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic today for being a DC stenographer whose idea of “reporting” is calling up administration sources, granting them anonymity without cause, and then writing it up mindlessly without critique or context:

What possible justification is there for granting administration officials anonymity to explain why they are embracing a Bush-era weapon that they have long criticized?  And why does an administration swearing great levels of transparency and accountability — and vowing to use secrecy only when absolutely necessary — need to hide behind a wall of anonymity in order to explain why they did what they did here?  Why can’t they attach their names to this explanation, so that they can be questioned about it and held accountable?

Why would he do that?  Well, possibly because that’s the only way they’ll talk to him — or anyone else.  New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston has also written about this “business as usual” quality of White House press relations:

My questions to LaBolt and Singh prompted a return phone call the next day from Nick Shapiro, who spelled his name, but had to be prodded several times to give his job title: assistant press secretary.

During our brief conversation, Shapiro, like LaBolt (whose name Shapiro did not recognize), started one sentence with “off the record.” Told that the journalist grants the privilege, and that none would be granted here, Shapiro expressed surprise. His surprise was double-barreled, at both the idea that the reporter issues any privilege and that any reporter would decline to talk “off the record.”

The reportorial practice of letting government officials speak without taking responsibility for their words has been an issue with the public and is being questioned now by some journalists, as shown by this article from Slate’s Jack Shafer.

Questions about whether Shapiro knows the difference between off-the-record, background, deep background, and on-the-record did not get asked, because Shapiro made it clear he had no interest in answering anything about how the Obama press secretary’s office is operating and what its tone will be. He said questions should be submitted in writing by e-mail to nshapiro@who.eop.gov. I sent Shapiro an e-mail outlining the contours of what would be covered in an interview, but have not received a response as of this writing, the following day.

Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter whose book, Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense [and Stick You with the Bill] is indispensible for anyone wanting to understand how the taxation and legislative system has been gamed to favor the rich.  He’s a superb journalist and sometimes it’s hard to believe he’s still employed at the Times.  (note:  Johnston has left the NYT.) An administration interested in transparency should be ecstatic about working with him.

But what is going on right now in the world of DC journalism finds its most naked expression in Ambinder’s piece, though I’ve seen other glaring examples of late — journalists are scrambling for who gets “access” to the White House.  So there’s no end to the bullshit they’ll write to ingratiate themselves to potential sources, or the inconvenient facts they’ll edit out in order to be the new Bob Woodward. (Though Ambinder does deserve some praise on this front — he wrote what everyone else knows but isn’t saying about White House plans:   “encouragement of moderate Democrats,” “entitlement reform” and “standing up to Speaker Pelosi.”)

You can see it in the horror with which the traditional media is responding to Sam Stein getting called on at the President’s press conference — there are rules, there is a pecking order, and This Is Not How It’s Done. While it’s great Sam got recognized — he’s a really good journalist and he asked a critical question — it’s not much more than “window dressing” if the day-to-day interaction with the press stays the same as it did during the Bush years.  And with Rahm managing the relations between the White House and the media these days, it looks like that’s exactly what’s happening.

Update: And the stenography continues: Ambinder calls back his “administration sources” so they can respond to Glenn but neither names him nor links to him.  “They’re sensitive to the politics of the case, but they’re not motivated by what civil libertarians may write on their blogs.“  The administration people don’t want you at the slumber party Glenn Greenwald, and they don’t give anonymous quotes to you, Glenn Greenwald, and they certainly aren’t going to RESPOND to you, Glenn Greenwald, well okay they DID and Ambinder just wrote PARAGRAPHS about it but they are going to just turn their backs and pretend you’re not there.  Feh.

Stimulus: How to Know If It’s Working

February 11, 2009

BUSINESS WEEK

Consumer confidence and job creation may be slow to emerge and hard to measure, but boosts in umemployment benefits and food stamps will be fast acting

By Moira Herbst

At his first prime-time press conference, President Obama was asked a central question about the $800 billion-plus economic stimulus package: How will Americans know if it’s working? “My initial measure of success is creating or saving 4 million jobs,” Obama answered.

That was on Feb. 9, a day before the Senate passed an $838 billion version of the bill by a vote of 61-37, following the Jan. 28 passage of an $819 billion version in the House. The House and Senate have begun negotiations to reconcile the measures, which Obama would like to sign into law by Feb. 16, the federal Presidents’ Day holiday. When people have a job, Obama explained, they purchase and invest, allowing companies to do the same and, in turn, to hire more workers as business expands.

Indicators of Success

Yet while job creation is arguably the most important goal of the stimulus package, other parts of the bill will have a much more immediate and visible impact. Food stamp increases and extensions of unemployment benefits will be among the first noticeable effects of the package. Tax credit payments for individuals and families would follow, along with other tax breaks and incentives. Rising consumer confidence and lower unemployment will be far more gradual, and aren’t likely to surface until late 2009 at the earliest.

There’s an understanding among many economists that the sooner a government intervenes in an economic crisis, the more effective it tends to be in getting the economy back on track. That doesn’t mean that precise measurement of success is easy, however. “The problem is, we don’t know what trajectory the economy would take without the stimulus package,” says J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. “We can’t enter a Star Trek-like divided universe in which we compare what’s happening with the stimulus versus without it. It’s hard to precisely judge its impact.”

DeLong says that looking at interest rates will provide a clearer idea of whether the stimulus plan is working. “If interest rates stay extremely low, the plan is definitely working,” he says. “If Treasury interest rates do start to rise by more than normal levels, then we worry that [the spending] is crowding out private economic activity and discouraging investment.” Specifically, he says that if medium- to long-term Treasury bond interest rates climb two or three percentage points higher in the next year and inflation sets in, the stimulus package is not having its intended effect.

Swift Help for the Neediest

Of course, how one benefits from the stimulus package depends on several factors, including income, professional skills, and where you live. “What you’ll see [in benefit] and when you see it depends on who you are,” says Steve Ellis, vice-president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a taxpayer advocacy group. “If you are living hand-to-mouth, you should have greater access to food stamps and other assistance right away. If you’re employed and not doing as well but hanging on, you won’t see much change unless a [federally funded] construction project starts up nearby. For them, the government hand will be less visible and less direct.”

Direct assistance for the poor and unemployed, considered as among the most effective stimulus measures, will be the first to take effect. Both the House and Senate bills offer an additional $20.2 billion to extend emergency unemployment benefits for more than 3 million people whose state benefits are set to run out after March. They also offer an extra $25 a week in jobless benefits to millions of workers through the end of the year; the current average weekly benefit is $293.

The packages also would give $7 billion to states that adopt reforms that make it easier for part-time workers, low-wage earners, and women to qualify for benefits. The proposals vary in the amounts by which they would increase food stamp benefits and additional medical assistance for low-income, unemployed workers under Medicaid, but both include spending for these items. An additional $17 billion in the stimulus bills would boost the maximum Pell Grant for higher education by $400 per applicant and provide other financial aid. Along with extended benefits, the unemployed may start to see shorter lines at the unemployment office. Both stimulus bills give states $500 million to help process unemployment applications, which have been overwhelming state systems across the country.

Tax Credits and State Aid

Working and middle-income Americans will benefit from the $82.1 billion in tax credit payments the plans offer. The House plan would give individuals earning up to $75,000 a year a tax credit of $500 and couples earning up to $150,000 a year a tax credit of $1,000. (The Senate bill lowers the income cap to $70,000 for individuals and $140,000 for couples, which critics say would reduce the stimulus effect.) Taxpayers can receive this credit either by claiming a credit on their 2009 and 2010 tax returns or by reducing their withholding from their paychecks. Other tax incentives to encourage auto and home purchases, included in the Senate bill, would be experienced by consumers at the time of purchase.

Later this year, the effects of other spending will become more visible. The bills offer states tens of billions in “state stabilization” money, to fund grants for education and to patch holes that have emerged in many state budgets. (The House bill sets aside $79 billion in state stabilization funds, the Senate bill cuts that to $39 billion.) Another $3 billion is earmarked for state and local law enforcement.

In the meantime, the stimulus plans are expected to create or save jobs in various sectors of the economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the House version of the bill would create between 1.3 million and 3.9 million jobs by the end of 2010. While police officers and teachers might feel the effect immediately, other workers would find jobs later this year on such projects as modernizing electrical grids, building highways, and weatherizing federal buildings.

Metrics May Prove Elusive

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys.com (MCO), says that if the package works according to Washington’s plan, unemployment insurance claims should start to drop in the summer and continue through the fall. He warns, however, that the unemployment rate will be slower to fall because layoffs will offset some of the gains. Some economists say that even as the unemployment rate does begin to fall, it will be hard to measure what would have happened without the economic stimulus plan.

The stimulus is likely to provoke heated “Did it work?” debates for years to come among politicians, economists, and the public. “We are throwing a rock into our nation’s economic pond, and the ripple effects will spread throughout the economy,” says Ellis of the taxpayer group. Still, he says the impact might be more muted than many would hope: the annual U.S. gross domestic product is $13 trillion, while the stimulus package is about $900 billion over several years. Says Ellis: “It’s a big rock, but it’s a very big pond.”

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek in New York.

Merrill Lynch Made 700 People Millionaires in 3.6 Billion Dollar Bonus Spree

Merrill bonuses made 696 millionaires: probe

02/12/2009 @ 8:28 am

Agence France-Presse

via RAW STORY

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Merrill Lynch quietly paid out at least one million dollars bonus each to about 700 top executive even when the investment house was bleeding with losses last year, a probe has revealed.

They were part of 3.6 billion dollars in the firm’s bonus payments in December before the announcement of its fourth quarterly losses and takeover by Bank of America, the investigation by the New York state Attorney General’s office showed.

“696 individuals received bonuses of one million dollars or more,” New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of the Merrill scandal in a letter to a lawmaker heading the House of Representatives financial services committee.

Cuomo said “these payments and their curious timing raise serious questions as to whether the Merrill Lynch and Bank of America boards of directors were derelict in their duties and violated their fiduciary obligations,” according to a copy of the letter.

Bank of America said recently it was aware of the amounts and timing of the bonuses even though previous reports had suggested the top bank was surprised by the payout.

Cuomo said in his letter to Democratic lawmaker Barney Frank that his office was also examining whether senior officials at both companies “violated their own fiduciary obligations to shareholders.

“If they did, this raises additional serious issues with regard to the inappropriate use of taxpayer funds,” he said.

“Merrill Lynch’s decision to secretly and prematurely award approximately 3.6 billion dollars in bonuses, and Bank of America’s apparent complicity in it, raise serious and disturbing questions,” he said.

Shareholders and experts had expressed concern over Merrill’s 15.3 billion fourth-quarter loss, which caused Bank of America to request a second round of government bailout on January 16.

Bank of America’s shareholders voted to approve Merrill’s takeover on December 5.

Former Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain, Bank of America chief administrative officer J. Steele Alphin and other top executives have been summoned to provide testimony in the probe.

“One disturbing question that must be answered is whether Merrill Lynch and Bank of America timed the bonuses in such a way as to force taxpayers to pay for them through the deal funding,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo said the Merrill Lynch bonus payment was “nothing short of staggering.”

While more than 39,000 Merrill employees received bonuses from the pool, the vast majority of these funds were “disproportionately distributed to a small number of individuals.”

“Indeed, Merrill chose to make millionaires out of a select group of 700 employees.”

Beautiful But It Helps; Pet Shop Boys | Love, etc.

Beautiful but it helps….

The Complete and Utter Douchebaggery of Bernard Goldberg

A man needs a humorless feminist like a fish needs a bicycle

Jim Rogers Says Geithner Caused Crisis; Must Let Banks Fail

Progressives in a Tizzy Over D-Bag Eric Cantor’s Email of AFSCME Video

GOP leader’s office rips unions with profane video parody

SF GATE

Eric Cantor is the GOP’s House whip and revered by GOPers as an up-and-comer. But an aide in his office pulled a Boehner Wednesday by sending Greg Sargent at talkingpointsmemo.com a profane video response to a union ad campaign pushing the stimulus package. Cantor aide Brad Dayspring stressed to Sargent that the video was meant as a joke. You know, parody. Ha-ha. Ho-ho … millions of people losing their jobs … hee-hee …

This thing is so profane that if we’d post the f-bomb laden clip here, we’d get a tap on the shoulder from somebody in a glass office and a call from Mom. Use the Internets to find it somewhere in the tubes. The delicious irony here is that Cantor wanted to up the fines for naughty language when he was supporting the Broadcast Deceny Enforcement Act. Said Yes E. Cant(or): “The use of obscenity … should not and cannot be tolerated.”

Two lessons here, kids: Don’t try satire at home. And f-bombs don’t usually work in transmitting political messages to the masses

Let’s back up. On Wednesday, the public workers’ union AFSCME launched a major ad campaign, targeting Republicans — like Cantor — who oppose the stimulus.

So an aide in Cantor’s office thought they’d have a few laughs by passing along a video that mashes-up an old 1970s era ad with a new voiceover featuring a voice that sounds like — and we say this as a proud Italian-American — one of Tony Soprano’s top aides, Paulie Walnuts.

“On your way to work tomorrow, instead of sittin’ around with your finger up your a-, look around,” the voice-over says. “There’s a union out there called AFSCME and they’re bustin’ their balls doing a lot of s- work you take for granted. For example, we pick up your f- garbage.”

“We don’t take s- from nobody,” the video’s narrator says. “You got that, a-? AFSCME — the f- union that works for you.”

HBO

Yeah, it’s Paulie. Gotta a problem with that?

Dayspring initially told TPM that it was intended as a “lighthearted” response to the ads directed at his boss. Soon, after getting a blogosphere/union beat-down, Dayspring realized what he had done and apologized.

“I would like to apologize for a joke that was in no way an official response from Congressman Cantor, but instead an inappropriate email. I apologize to AFSCME for my inappropriate email containing an old video. Let me be clear, we know people are hurting in these trying times and House Republicans completely agree that we must pass an economic recovery bill that preserves, protects and create jobs for Americans facing these economic challenges.”

Needless to say, the unions are f- pissed. (Sorry, we’ve been watching too many “lighthearted” videos from Cantor’s office.) AFSCME chief Gerald McEntee’s minions told Sargent:

“Eric Cantor may think the greatest economic crisis in seventy years is a joke, but we don’t. He should talk to the people in Virginia who are losing their jobs, health care and homes.”

Sigh. Remember the days when Republicans touted themselves as the party of family values? And who said conservatives didn’t know how to use online tools?

Thomas Ricks Plays Propaganda Point-Man on Pentagon Plan for Permanent U.S. Bases in Iraq

The Crimes of George W. Bush [Video]

Former White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer Conveniently Forgets About George W. Bush’s Favorite Gay Escort : Jeff Gannon / James Dale Guckert

THINK PROGRESS has  this piece up today mentioning the elusive and shadowy figure- Jeff Gannon..

Here’s an excerpt:

If Bush was relying on Fleischer to screen the “dotcoms and oddballs,” he was poorly served. Take, for example, case of Jeff Gannon, the male escort-turned-White House correspondent for the right-wing news outlet Talon News. The White House press office granted Gannon access to the White House under an assumed name and with no background check. Once Gannon got in the door under Fleischer’s watch in 2003, he was called on by Bush at a press conference in January 2005. Gannon lobbed Bush a softball:

GANNON: Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. … Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. … [H]ow are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Here’s my piece from 2005:

BY JOHN TULLY
THE LOS ANGELES SUN
FEB 23 2005

A weekend journalism-school reporter, using a fake name, was given access to the President of the United States at White House press briefings before he even worked for any news organization.

He claims that he has seen a confidential, so-called C.I.A. document which reveals the name of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife and shows her recommending him for the trip to Niger to investigate yellowcake uranium sales to the Iraqis.

It turns out that Secret Service has been waving James Guckert by the guardhouse for two and a half years and once inside, he became Jeff Gannon. He wrote for a fake website, Talon News, run by Republican strategist Bobby Eberle and the organization GOPUSA.

To understand how something like this could Not be a story, that this could happen to begin with, is to understand how The District of Columbia really runs. However, one can only watch and wait as the laws of physics begin to rear their ugly head. Try as they might and for whatever reason, The Mainstream Media (as good of a description as any) just can’t keep this monster down.

Howard Kurtz, the longtime and wise sage media critic with The Washington Post, trusted by little old Quaker ladies in Cleveland Park D.C. and lobbyists alike, just could not figure out what the big fuss was all about and immediately chalked it up to over-eager WWW types and their preoccupation with the salacious part of the story.
Oh that.

The Great Diversion and the reason why non-political junkies in America are apparently not talking about this story is that this fella’ publicly advertised his services as a male prostitute on numerous sites on the Internet and registered and launched numerous gay male pornographic websites.

Really.

CNN’s Aaron Brown, so brilliant in his earlier years on the old ABC overnight news program, pooh-poohed the scandal as a bit of “so what”. On Wolf Blitzer’s “Hard News” program, Mr. Guckert/Gannon was treated almost softly, as if not to upset.

The New York Times finally ran the story, deep in the back pages on Friday, Feb 11th, more than a week after website journalists began to fully reveal this fake journalist’s deceptions.The shockjock mentality came out instantly in the groupthink mainstream media with a curious mix of apathy and frat-boy jokes.

There was no outrage to be outraged over. Meanwhile, writers on web sites like The Daily Kos, David Brock’s Media Matters and John Aravosis’s America Blog, among others, had been doing their own journalism and found out that Mr. Guckert was not who or what he appeared to be. They started their dig after witnessing a press briefing by the President back in late January. A strange reporter asked a clearly partisan question / pronouncement that, among other things, stated that the Democrats were “divorced from reality”.

They got dirt all right.

Columnists Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd finally had to write cute pieces about the mess nearing the end of last week. Katie, Matt, and The Today Show eventually did a quick three- minute story in the first hour last Wednesday. Radio man Don Imus couldn’t get anyone to bite and wondered aloud about the titillating aspect of the thing.

This was now more than ten days since the story had broken, or hadn’t broken. No one was even discussing, outside of the Web, the nasty business of the C.I.A. memo that Mr.Guckert had claimed to have seen or knew about right there on Mr. Blitzer’s show.
Links to web sites where Mr. Guckert solicited clients for sex were widely available at the very same time Mr. Blitzer was tripping all over himself to give Mr. Guckert an Easypass.

Ultimate Washington insider Mary Matalin, Vice President Cheney’s sometimes consultant, told Imus that she just wished Ms. Dowd would just come in from the cold and get with the program.

Why did President Bush and Scott McClellan, the President’s spokesman, call on Mr. Guckert/Gannon so often in those two and a half years and how could other reporters not write about Talon News and GOPUSA’s illegitimacy? Veterans of the White House beat sometimes don’t see a question for years. Was he a plant?

But just like the high school sophomores that they are, the Washington Press Corps have hemmed and hawed and giggled their way for weeks now through a real-live genuine scandal unfurling at the White House. Waving their collective finger, they dismissed the whole affair in full. It was simply The Bloggers and their liberal retribution for the Rather/CBS assassination and a lurid fascination with the X-rated angle thrown in for good measure.

Now the simply idiotic Bush-Tapes story, along with a long weekend and a brilliant fake-outrage campaign over a congressman’s comments about Karl Rove, is threatening to bury forever a story that the entire profession of journalism would like to pretend was never born to begin with.

Everyone seems to be looking around at each other and tsk-tsking the lack of outrage on each other’s part, as if to say “This is terrible -someone do some real reporting”.

“Someone did – as Mr. Bush would say, on the “Internets”.

Stay Tuned.

© 2005 THE LOS ANGELES SUN

ALSO IN:

DISSIDENT VOICE

SMIRKING CHIMP

NEIL ROGERS SHOW

PULSE TWIN CITIES

BARTCOP

More Tully:

“Howard Kurtz, the longtime and wise sage media critic for The Washington Post, trusted by little old Quaker ladies in Cleveland Park D.C. and lobbyists alike, just could not figure out what the big fuss was all about and immediately chalked it up to over-eager WWW types and their preoccupation with the salacious part of the story”

Before Larry Was The Cable Guy

Abandoned Horses Are On The Rise

By Jeff DeLong, USA TODAY

Jack Noble was pretty sure what he would see when he arrived to check out reports of horses abandoned on a rural road in Oregon’s Willamette Valley in September.

Noble, field operations manager for the state’s Department of Agriculture, found 11 filthy, sickly and starving horses. “They were just let loose, and they were severely malnourished,” he said.

Horse abandonment is on the rise across the USA, livestock and agricultural officials say. As the economy worsens and the cost of feeding and caring for horses rises, more people are abandoning their animals into the wild, where many starve and die.

No national numbers are available, but there are “definitely thousands of them out there,” said Dave Duquette, an Oregon horse trainer and president of the United Horsemen’s Front.

“Folks have to decide whether to feed the kids or feed the horses,” said Dr. Kerry Rood, a veterinarian at Utah State University.

In Wyoming, there have been “huge increases” in the number of domestic horses abandoned, said Jim Schwartz, director of the Wyoming Livestock Board.

“It used to be six or eight per year. This year so far we’ve had at least 41,” said Lee Romsa, Wyoming’s brand commissioner. In Nevada, officials have found 63 abandoned horses in the northern part of the state alone in 2008 — an unprecedented situation, said Ed Foster, spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture.

The horses Noble found were sold at auction, surprising considering their condition, he said.

The responsibility for dealing with abandoned domestic horses generally falls to a state’s department of agriculture or a local animal control organization, Rood said. Private animal rescue organizations often become involved, he said.

The sale of horses is becoming “less and less” of an option, said Patricia Evans, equine specialist at Utah State. Auctioneers screening horses are turning them away if they don’t think they will bring enough money, she said.

Rood said another part of the abandonment problem is the closure of the USA’s last horse slaughterhouse last year in Illinois. Slaughtering provided owners with a final option, he said.

Bruce Friedrich of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said closure of American horse slaughterhouses was a necessary end to a “horrifically abusive” practice.

Many horse owners believe their animals, if released into the wild, will be adopted by wild herds. But “the wild horse herd will reject them in the most violent manner,” Foster said. “It ends up being a bad ending for that horse.”

DeLong reports for the Reno Gazette-Journal

Yahoo to Shorten Logs of User Activity to Three Months

WASHINGTON (AP) – Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) (YHOO) said Wednesday that it will shorten the amount of time that it retains data about its users’ online behavior – including Internet search records – to three months from 13 months and expand the range of data that it “anonymizes” after that period.

The company’s new privacy policy comes amid mounting concerns among regulators and lawmakers from Washington to Europe about how much data big Internet companies are collecting on their users and how that information is being used. Yahoo’s announcement also ratchets up the pressure on rivals Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) (MSFT) to follow its lead.

In September, Google said it would “anonymize,” or mask, the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on its server logs after nine months, down from a previous retention period of 18 months. And Microsoft, which currently keeps user data for 18 months, said last week it would support an industry standard of six months.

Under Yahoo’s new policy, the company will strip out portions of users’ IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as “cookies” and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo also said it will expand the scope of data that it anonymizes to encompass not only search engine logs, but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. That information is used to personalize online content and advertising.

Yahoo will begin implementing the new policy next month and says it will be effective across all the company’s services by mid-2010.

Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy for Yahoo, said the company is adopting the new policy to build trust with users and differentiate it from its competitors. Yahoo also hopes to take the issue of data retention “off the table” by showing that Internet companies can regulate themselves, Toth said.

European Union regulators have pressured Yahoo, Google and Microsoft over the past year to shorten the amount of time that they hold onto user data. And Congress has begun asking questions about the extent to which Internet and telecommunications companies track where their users go online and use that information to target personalized advertising.

Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, praised Yahoo for setting a new standard on privacy protection and said Google, Microsoft and other companies will now be compared against that standard.

Ari Schwartz, vice president of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group, agreed that Yahoo’s new policy is “step in the right direction.” He added, however, that he would like to see more clarity – and more standardization – from the industry about what it does with Internet users’ data. He noted, for instance, that while some companies delete full IP addresses, other delete only parts of IP addresses or simply encrypt them.

British Troops Are Like: “We’re Out of Iraq, Cheerio”

(CNN) — British troops will begin leaving Iraq in May, more than six years after joining the U.S.-led invasion that ousted former dictator Saddam Hussein, Britain and Iraq announced Wednesday.

The British mission will wrap up by the end of May, with the last troops withdrawing over the next two months, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Iraqi counterpart, Nuri al-Maliki, said in a joint statement during Brown’s visit Wednesday to Baghdad.

The pair said the partnership between the two countries would continue. Brown — on his fourth trip to Iraq as prime minister — said British troops had made a huge contribution and given people an economic stake in the future of Iraq.

Brown’s previously unannounced visit comes three days after a similar trip by President Bush, who was forced to duck when an Iraqi journalist threw a pair of shoes at him during an appearance Sunday with al-Maliki.

Britain was the leading U.S. ally during the invasion of Iraq, and still has about 4,000 troops based outside the southern city of Basra. About 140,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq.

Besides the U.S. and Britain, five nations — Albania, Australia, El Salvador, Estonia and Romania — maintain fewer than 2,000 troops total in Iraq, according to the Multi-National Force-Iraq Web site.

In their statement, Brown and al-Maliki said: “The role played by the UK combat forces is drawing to a close. These forces will have completed their tasks in the first half of 2009 and will then leave Iraq.”

On Tuesday, the Iraqi council of ministers agreed to a new resolution allowing troops to remain in the country until the end of July. It sets the end of May as the final date for combat operations.

Speaking at a press conference after the talks, Brown said: “We have agreed today that the mission will end no later than May 31 next year. Our troops will be coming home within the next two months [after that].

“The biggest reduction will be at the end part of the period we are talking about.”

Brown added: “It is important to remember we have been engaged in the most difficult and challenging of work: the tasks of overthrowing a dictatorship, the task of building a democracy for the future and defending it against terrorism.

“We have made a huge contribution and of course given people an economic stake in the future of Iraq. We leave Iraq a better place.

“I am proud of the contribution British forces have made. They are the pride of Britain and the best in the world.”

Al-Maliki confirmed that the agreement included a provision for the Iraqi government to request an extension of the British military presence. However, both leaders indicated that it was not expected to be used.

Like the United States, Britain has been negotiating with the Iraqi government on the future of its military presence there. Ahead of Brown’s arrival, Britain’s Ministry of Defense said those talks were making “good progress.”

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defense staff, is accompanying Brown on the visit.

Also Wednesday in Baghdad, a double bombing in a commercial district killed 18 people and wounded dozens of others, with police officers among the casualties, an Iraqi Interior Ministry official said.

The first explosion was a car bomb, followed by a roadside bomb that targeted traffic police responding to the initial blast, the official said. Three of the dead were police officers, the official said. Another 52 people, including eight police, were wounded.

Banks Keeping Mum on TARP Bailout Funds; Only Morgan Stanley Coming Clean

Morgan Stanley Is One Bank That Cites a Loan From TARP Money

Other Financial Banks Including Goldman Sachs and CitiGroup Keep Mum on How They Are Using TARP Cash

By CHARLES HERMAN, DAN ARNALL, LAUREN PEARLE and ZUNAIRA ZAKI

ABC NEWS

Dec. 17, 2008—

Banks that were rescued with billions of dollars in public funds have, in most cases, refused to provide specifics about how they have used or intend to use the money.

ABC News asked 16 of the banks that have received money from the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Trouble Asset Relief Program the same two questions: How has your financial institution used the money, and how much has your financial institution allocated to bonuses and incentives this year?

To read the banks’ responses, click here.

Goldman Sachs reported Tuesday that it paid $10.93 billion in compensation for the year, which includes salaries and bonuses, payroll taxes and benefits. That is down 46 percent from a year ago. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion from the Treasury.

“Bonuses across Goldman Sachs will be down significantly this year,” a bank representative told ABC News. The spokesman refused to disclose the size of the bonus pool or how much of the compensation fund of $10.93 billion was planned for bonuses.

“We do not break down the components of compensation; however, most of that number was not bonuses,” he said. Goldman Sachs added, “TARP money is not being paid to employee compensation. It’s been and will continue to be used to facilitate client activity in the capital markets.”

Goldman Sachs has pointed out that seven of its senior executives were forgoing bonuses this year. The company also reported Tuesday that it lost $2.1 billion in the last quarter.

“It looks like Goldman Sachs is treating this as business as usual,” said compensation expert James Reda. “They are taking our taxpayer money. They should be able to account for that money.

“What’s missing from this report is the exact amount of bonuses that were paid,” said Reda. He later added, “They’re hiding the ball.”

Fred Cannon, chief equity strategist with Keefe Bruyette and & Woods, an investment bank that specializes exclusively in financial services, said, “It is difficult to say what the TARP funds are directly used for. In terms of compensation, while TARP funds may not directly pay for compensation, the funds do provide additional overall cash to the companies.”

When pressed for what the TARP money was being used for, Goldman Sachs replied that it is spent to “facilitate client activity in the capital markets.”

Only One Bank Cited a Loan It Made

Of the 16 banks that were contacted by ABC News and asked how they were spending the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, only one bank pointed to a specific loan that it made with the cash. That was a $17 billion loan that Morgan Stanley made to Verizon Wireless.

Morgan Stanley, which received $10 billion from TARP, released its quarterly finances today. The bank announced a dramatic and larger-than-predicted $2.37 billion quarterly loss but an overall year-end profit of $1.59 billion. That was down 49 percent from last year. The bank’s stock price dropped 72 percent this year.

In response to an ABC News email request, Morgan Stanley public information officer Mark Lake confirmed that bonuses are down “approximately 50 percent.”

Besides the Verizon loan cited by Morgan Stanley, the banks declined to detail how they were using the federal funds.

“Tarp money doesn’t go into bonuses,” Lake said, in an email to ABC News.

Wells Fargo said that of the $25 billion it received, it “cannot provide any foward-looking guidance on lending for this quarter [and] Intend[s] to use the Capital Purchase Program funds to make more loans to credit-worthy customers.”

More typical was the generic response by the Bank of New York Mellon, which said of the fortune it had banked in public moneys: “Using the $3 billion to provide liquidity to the credit markets.”

Congress and fiscal watchdogs have been frustrated and upset that the banks do not have to account for the way they are spending these publicly financed bonanzas.

The U.S. Treasury has spent or committed $335 billion of the $700 billion in the TARP fund in an attempt to get banks back in the lending business and to unfreeze the nation’s credit markets.

Last week Congress was angered to learn that giant insurance company American Insurance Group, which received $150 billion in TARP cash to stay afloat, was paying more than $100 million in “retention bonuses” to 168 employees.

That revelation prompted Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., to complain, “It’s absolutely and incredibly wrong that we don’t have more transparency.”

All the Banks That Got TARP Cash Indicate They Are Paying Bonuses

While several banks said that its top executives would skip bonuses this year or its compensation pool was smaller this year than in past years, all indicated that some end-of-year compensation was in the works.

When asked how much the banks were paying out in bonuses and whether TARP funds would be used to finance them, most of the banks did not make such a declaration.

“Incentive compensation not yet allocated,” was as far as JP Morgan Chase, which received $25 billion from TARP, would go.

Bank of America, which got $15 billion from TARP, said only, “Have reduced the incentive targets by more than half. Final awards have not been determined.”

State Street Bank ruled out using TARP to reward its top officers.

“Will not use any of the proceeds from the TARP Capital Purchase Program to fund our bonus pool or executive compensation,” the bank insisted.

Cannon said the banks are being very conservative with their money.

After reviewing the statements the banks provided to ABC News he said, “The banks are expressing good intention in line with the good intention of the program. However, the answers from the bank belie the current challenge; the economy is deteriorating rapidly and making good loans, with strong underwriting into an economy that is falling apart is very difficult.”

ABC News’ MaryKate Burke contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

–>

Casinos Not Feeling So Lucky These Days

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – Juan Jimenez’s job at the casino wasn’t the most glamorous one in the place.

But picking up cigarette butts, vacuuming dirt from carpets and shampooing stains from spilled drinks (and other, much worse substances) allowed him to bring his family from the Dominican Republic, buy a small house and claim a tiny slice of the American Dream.

In October, his luck ran out.

After 15 years at Bally’s, Jimenez was laid off, joining thousands of other casino employees in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and other hotspots around the country whose jobs have been eliminated in recent months because people are gambling less in this recession.

“This Christmas is going to be a lot like the first Christmas I had in this country,” said the 62-year-old Jimenez. “I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any money, no anything. The only difference is now I have a mortgage and bills.”

Atlantic City has been hit particularly hard; this will be the second straight year of declining casino revenue after 28 consecutive years of increases. The industry’s woes began when slots parlors opened in the Philadelphia suburbs two years ago, stealing many of Atlantic City’s customers, and worsened in recent months, first when gas prices shot up, then when the economy nose-dived.

For the first 11 months of this year, Atlantic City casinos won $4.2 billion from gamblers, down 6.7 percent from the same period last year.

That has forced casinos to slash payrolls. As of Nov. 30, there were 39,137 people working at the city’s 11 casinos, down nearly 1,500 from the same period in 2007. Not all those cuts were due to layoffs; they include resignations and seasonal jobs.

Last month, the city’s most successful casino, the Borgata, laid off 400 employees. The four casinos run here by Harrah’s Entertainment laid off several hundred earlier this year, and still more layoffs took place at Resorts Atlantic City.

“We’ve had downturns before, but we’ve never seen anything like this,” said Donna DeCaprio, secretary-treasurer of UNITE-HERE Local 54, the union that represents casino cleaning staffs, food-and-drink workers and other employees.

The union held a two-day seminar this week for laid-off workers, giving them information on job training and the network of public and private services available to them. The neediest got diapers, infant formula, winter coats and supermarket debit cards.

Steve Norton, a gambling industry veteran who helped open New Jersey’s first casino in 1978, said the casinos have learned they are subject to the same business cycles as other industries.

“We’re starting to see that we’re not bulletproof,” he said. “In the early days, we didn’t think that could ever happen. It definitely is a new reality.”

In Las Vegas, about 6,000 union employees have been laid off or had hours reduced, according to the culinary workers union, which is bracing for more cutbacks.

Harrah’s, which runs eight Las Vegas casinos, has laid off nearly 1,800 workers this year. Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) cut more than 200 employees last week from its work force of 10,000 at the Venetian and Palazzo hotel-casinos on the Strip, after shedding 50 workers three weeks before.

Mississippi’s 30 casinos on the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River are coping not only with the national recession, but with the effects of hurricane-related closings in September. They have laid off workers amid a 3 percent decline in revenue this year.

Connecticut’s two huge Indian-run casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, have seen slot machine revenue fall 5 to 7 percent, and have eliminated more than 1,300 jobs through layoffs and attrition over the past year.

James Howard spent 14 years as a food and beverage worker at the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort before being laid off last week.

“I didn’t have any idea this was coming,” said the 54-year-old Howard. “It’s very upsetting. Each year at Christmas, we would have parties to celebrate the season. This year, we’re trying to figure out where our next meal is coming from. It’s like this all over the city.”

In between trips to the unemployment office, Howard has looked – unsuccessfully – for jobs stocking shelves at stores in between trips to the unemployment office. He and his wife have already burned through their meager savings and are grateful their landlord has been understanding about late rent. But they know that won’t last forever.

Howard will be giving his wife only one present for Christmas this year.

“My love,” he said. “That’s about it. They can’t take that from me.”

Richard Nixon Discovers That Archie Bunker is a TV Show and CBS is Glorifying Homosexuality

The Per Capita Growth of Breakfast is Largely Gone for the Near-Term

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) — Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc. is trading French toast sticks for breakfast wraps. Starbucks Corp. is introducing its first value meals. Panera Corp. spent two years developing a new coffee blend.

The restaurant chains are taking another run at more profitable morning meals as customers trim spending on lunch and dinner. Across the industry, sales during early hours have grown faster than other segments in the past five years, according to data from NPD Group, a consumer-research company.

Starbucks is “clearly in catch-up mode,” said Jeffrey Bernstein, a restaurant analyst with Barclays Capital in New York. “People weren’t happy with their breakfast. They do not want to lose significant morning traffic.”

Starbucks Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz is introducing a $3.95 combination meal as the world’s largest chain of coffee shops competes with breakfast value menus at other restaurants. The Seattle-based company said today it will offer coffee and a choice of egg sandwiches or a caffe latte and coffee cake or oatmeal. Wendy’s is revisiting its breakfast menu ahead of a 2011 national roll-out after past offerings failed to win favor with customers.

Panera, which operates 1,300 bakery cafes, introduced a new coffee blend last month and added a yogurt parfait. Burger King Holdings Inc. added miniature breakfast sandwiches last week.

Starbucks declined 21 cents to $10.33 at 9:56 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, and Panera dropped 66 cents to $46.88. Wendy’s fell 11 cents to $5.39 on the New York Stock Exchange, and Burger King lost 45 cents to $19.46.

Wendy’s may need six to nine months before the new menu gains traction with buyers, Bernstein said. The fast-food chain may lift its morning sales to as much as 10 percent of its total revenue within five years, he said, from 2.2 percent now. David Palmer, an analyst with UBS AG in New York, projects the new menu could account for 15 percent of revenue.

‘A Standout’

“You need to have longevity in the breakfast business because people don’t immediately notice,” Bernstein said.

Breakfast foods are about 25 percent more profitable than lunch and dinner items, based on the cost of ingredients, said Bob Goldin, an executive vice president with Technomic Inc., a restaurant consulting firm in Chicago.

After a failed attempt in the 1980s that centered on fresh- made omelets, Wendy’s focused its efforts on growing late-night sales instead, said spokesman Bob Bertini.

“We’re not in breakfast in a big way,” Bertini said. “This is a significant opportunity for us. We’re looking to grab more of that market.”

Starbucks’ Schultz told cafe employees today that value meals were “the right thing to do” for customers, about six months after he vowed not to offer bundled meals. The “pairings” will be available starting March 3, and add two new egg sandwiches to the line-up. Last year, the company added oatmeal and reworked its egg offerings because their aroma overpowered the scent of coffee in stores.

Breakfast Shots

Burger King said on Feb. 4 it will add mini-breakfast sandwiches to its menu. The BK Breakfast Shots, which feature eggs, cheese and a choice of ham, sausage or bacon, will be available for $1.49 for two or $2.39 for four. The Miami-based company gets about 15 percent of sales from breakfast.

“Breakfast has been a standout” for growth as customers look for ways to make mornings easier, said Malcolm Knapp, a New York-based restaurant consultant. “It’s an area that’s still under-penetrated and still the most skipped meal of the day.”

Egg McMuffins

McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant chain, credits orders for Egg McMuffins, coffee and hash browns with lifting sales at stores open at least 13 months, and last year started opening some stores an hour earlier to attract more customers. The Oak Brook, Illinois-based company gets about 25 percent of sales and 40 percent of profit from breakfast sales, Bernstein said.

Panera offered free coffee to customers a couple of weeks ago to debut its new blend and yogurt parfaits. Stores are brewing pots every hour, twice as fast as before, to maintain freshness.

Last year, breakfast traffic climbed 2 percent, compared with traffic in the restaurant industry during other times of the day that was little changed, said Harry Balzer, vice president at Port Washington, New York-based NPD. Restaurants accounted for 8.2 percent of all breakfast options in 2008, up from 6.2 percent in 1996, while about three-quarters of all morning meals are still eaten at home, he said.

“It’s a structural change, not just a fad,” Balzer said. “For years, a hearty bowl of cereal was the most convenient food, but with drive-thrus and restaurant meals increasingly available, that’s not the case anymore.”

Without providing a specific forecast, Balzer said he expects breakfast growth to continue.

Creatures of Habit

Declining spending may crimp growth as job losses limit the number of commuters looking for a quick breakfast and pinch consumers’ wallets, Palmer and Bernstein said. Consumers who are already loyal to a particular chain are less likely to spend money to try a new product, especially during a recession, Palmer said.

“The per capita growth of breakfast is largely gone for the near-term,” Palmer said in a Jan. 30 phone interview. “It would be an awkward time to get the consumer to try something new.”

Evelyn Cortez, 47, a Manhattan video-store clerk, has been eating at the same McDonald’s on the Lower East Side nearly every weekday for the past 10 years.

“I always get the pancakes, the same thing every day,” Cortez said as she swirled her fork in leftover syrup. “I usually think about going somewhere else, but I end up coming back here.”

Paul Krugman: “On the Edge”

February 6, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

THE NEW YORK TIMES

On the Edge

By PAUL KRUGMAN

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

Consumers, their wealth decimated and their optimism shattered by collapsing home prices and a sliding stock market, have cut back their spending and sharply increased their saving — a good thing in the long run, but a huge blow to the economy right now. Developers of commercial real estate, watching rents fall and financing costs soar, are slashing their investment plans. Businesses are canceling plans to expand capacity, since they aren’t selling enough to use the capacity they have. And exports, which were one of the U.S. economy’s few areas of strength over the past couple of years, are now plunging as the financial crisis hits our trading partners.

Meanwhile, our main line of defense against recessions — the Federal Reserve’s usual ability to support the economy by cutting interest rates — has already been overrun. The Fed has cut the rates it controls basically to zero, yet the economy is still in free fall.

It’s no wonder, then, that most economic forecasts warn that in the absence of government action we’re headed for a deep, prolonged slump. Some private analysts predict double-digit unemployment. The Congressional Budget Office is slightly more sanguine, but its director, nonetheless, recently warned that “absent a change in fiscal policy … the shortfall in the nation’s output relative to potential levels will be the largest — in duration and depth — since the Depression of the 1930s.”

Worst of all is the possibility that the economy will, as it did in the ’30s, end up stuck in a prolonged deflationary trap.

We’re already closer to outright deflation than at any point since the Great Depression. In particular, the private sector is experiencing widespread wage cuts for the first time since the 1930s, and there will be much more of that if the economy continues to weaken.

As the great American economist Irving Fisher pointed out almost 80 years ago, deflation, once started, tends to feed on itself. As dollar incomes fall in the face of a depressed economy, the burden of debt becomes harder to bear, while the expectation of further price declines discourages investment spending. These effects of deflation depress the economy further, which leads to more deflation, and so on.

And deflationary traps can go on for a long time. Japan experienced a “lost decade” of deflation and stagnation in the 1990s — and the only thing that let Japan escape from its trap was a global boom that boosted the nation’s exports. Who will rescue America from a similar trap now that the whole world is slumping at the same time?

Would the Obama economic plan, if enacted, ensure that America won’t have its own lost decade? Not necessarily: a number of economists, myself included, think the plan falls short and should be substantially bigger. But the Obama plan would certainly improve our odds. And that’s why the efforts of Republicans to make the plan smaller and less effective — to turn it into little more than another round of Bush-style tax cuts — are so destructive.

So what should Mr. Obama do? Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. What matters now, however, is what he does next.

It’s time for Mr. Obama to go on the offensive. Above all, he must not shy away from pointing out that those who stand in the way of his plan, in the name of a discredited economic philosophy, are putting the nation’s future at risk. The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

Numerous Myths and Falsehoods Advanced by the Media in Their Coverage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Media Matters for America previously identified numerous myths and falsehoods advanced by the media in their coverage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As debate on the bill continues in Congress, other myths and falsehoods advanced by the media about the recovery package have risen to prominence. These myths and falsehoods include: the assertion that the bill will not stimulate the economy — including the false assertion that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said the bill will not stimulate the economy; that spending in the bill is not stimulus; that there is no reason for stimulus after an economic turnaround begins; that corporate tax rate cuts and capital gains tax rate cuts would provide substantial stimulus; and that undocumented immigrants without Social Security numbers could receive the “Making Work Pay” tax credit provided in the bill.

1. The bill will not stimulate the economy

In a February 1 article, The Associated Press reported an assertion by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that the recovery bill will not stimulate the economy without noting that the CBO disagrees. ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson echoed this assertion during his February 3 interview with President Obama, stating: “And as you know, there’s a lot of people in the public, a lot of members of Congress who think this is pork-stuffed and that it really doesn’t stimulate.” Additionally, on the January 28 edition of his show, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh allowed Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) to falsely claim of the bill: “Even the Congressional Budget Office, controlled by the Democrats now, says it is not a stimulative bill.” Fox News host Sean Hannity repeated this claim on the February 2 broadcast of Fox News’ Hannity, asserting that the CBO “say[s] it’s not a stimulus bill.”

In fact, in analyzing the House version of the bill, H.R. 1, and the proposed Senate version, the CBO stated that it expects both measures to “have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years.” Additionally, in his January 27 written testimony before the House Budget Committee, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said that H.R. 1 would “provide massive fiscal stimulus that includes a combination of government spending increases and revenue reductions.” Elmendorf further stated: “In CBO’s judgment, H.R. 1 would provide a substantial boost to economic activity over the next several years relative to what would occur without any legislation.”

2. Government spending in the bill is not stimulus

Several media figures, including CNN correspondent Carol Costello, CBS Evening News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, and ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson, have all uncritically reported or aired the Republican claim that, in Gibson’s words, “it’s a spending bill and not a stimulus,” without noting that economists have said that government spending is stimulus. Indeed, in his January 27 testimony, Elmendorf explicitly refuted the suggestion that some of the spending provisions in the bill would not have a stimulative effect, stating: “[I]n our estimation — and I think the estimation of most economists — all of the increase in government spending and all of the reduction in tax revenue provides some stimulative effect. People are put to work, receive income, spend that on something else. That puts somebody else to work.” Additionally, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has said, “[S]pending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple.”

3. There is no reason for stimulus after a turnaround begins

Fairness Doctrine Hearings Sought by Congress

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) says it’s increasingly likely that there will be congressional hearings into whether a new Constitutionally-acceptable version can be crafted. She tells the Bill Press Show, “There needs to be some accountability and standards put in place.”

LISTEN

98% of Cities in America Report Unemployment Rise

By David Goldman

CNNMoney.com staff writer

Feb 4, 2009

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — In a sign that job losses are felt in every corner of the nation, unemployment rates rose in 98% of metropolitan areas across the country in December, according to a recent government report.

The Labor Department reported that the unemployment rates in 363 of 369 metropolitan areas rose in December 2008, compared with the same month in the prior year. In November, 364 of 369 areas reported higher unemployment rates.

According to the report, 168 areas reported jobless rates of at least 7%, compared with just 33 a year ago, and 40 areas reported rates that were higher than 10%. Just 22 metropolitan regions had unemployment rates that were under 4%, down from 112 last year.

A total of 95 regions registered unemployment rates that were at least 3 percentage points higher than a year ago. Not one region had a jobless rate decrease of more than 0.2 percentage point during that period.

Though the rise in unemployment rates depicts the rampant job losses facing the country, the Labor Department does not adjust the rates in its metropolitan unemployment report for typical seasonal changes in employment.

Furthermore, smaller cities are usually dependent on a fewer number of employers, so layoffs can exacerbate those areas’ unemployment rates.

El Centro, Calif. continued to hold the highest rate of unemployment at 22.6%. The town on the border of Mexico is highly reliant on agricultural employment, according to economists. The unemployment rate has a tendency to rise and fall in the area depending on the farming season.

Morgantown, W.Va., had a rate of just 2.7%, the lowest in the country. Morgantown houses West Virginia University, which is the town’s largest employer. The University has a large hospital and pharmaceutical manufacturing component – areas of the economy that are actually adding jobs.

Of the 49 metropolitan areas with a population of at least 1 million, Detroit had the largest unemployment rate, at 10.6%, followed by San Bernadino, Calif., with 10.1%. Detroit’s labor force has been slammed by dreadful auto sales, and the sinking California housing market has dragged down construction jobs in that area.

Oklahoma City had the lowest unemployment rate of large metropolitan regions, at 4.6%, followed by Washington at 4.7%. Oklahoma City is benefiting from the still-booming energy industry, especially through the several large natural gas companies in the city. Washington’s employment is largely based on federal government jobs in the district.

The report comes on the same day as two independent reports showed job cut announcements and payroll reductions continued to rise in January.

The Labor Department is expected to report Friday that the economy lost another 500,000 jobs, according to a consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Briefing.com. The national unemployment rate is expected to rise to 7.5% from its current level of 7.2%, its highest rate since January 1993

Obama’s Campaign Manager and Elizabeth Edwards Get Book Deals

CBS NEWS’ HOTSHEET

David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, and Elizabeth Edwards, whose husband John ran for president last year and later admitted an extramarital affair, have both secured book deals, the Associated Press reports.

Plouffe’s seven-figure deal is for a book on the presidential election entitled “The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory.”

In a statement, publisher Viking said it would examine “the deliberations about whether to run against long odds, the epic primary battle with Hillary Clinton, the drama of the general election campaign against John McCain and the strategic roads taken — and not taken.”

It will “also detail the business lessons to be learned from the formation and the functioning of an unprecedented $1 billion start-up — use of technology, crisis management, grass roots, and personnel management.”

Edwards’ book, entitled “Resilience,” will be released in May. The publisher is not releasing details about what Edwards covers in the book, but she has plenty to work with: Her continuing fight against breast cancer, her experiences during her husband’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination, and the fallout from John Edwards’ admission of an affair with a video producer.

“She has always been a kind of candid and honest writer, and people can expect that of her in her new book,” said her publisher’s publicity director.

Edwards published a book in 2006 called “Saving Graces” in which she discussed her fight against cancer and the death of her son 10 years earlier. She has not discussed her husband’s affair in detail since it was revealed last August.

Bank of England Cuts Rate to Year 1694 Levels

BLOOMBERG

Feb. 5  — The Bank of England lowered the benchmark interest rate to 1 percent, extending the most aggressive round of cuts in its three-century history as officials try to limit fallout from the deepening recession.

The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee, led by Governor Mervyn King, cut the bank rate to 1 percent from 1.5 percent. That’s the lowest since the central bank was founding in 1694 by William III to fund a war against France. The move matched the median estimate of 61 economists of a Bloomberg News survey.

The U.K. economy will shrink the most since 1946 this year and faster than any other industrialized country, International Monetary Fund forecasts show. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government has given the central bank powers to spend up to 50 billion pounds ($73 billion) on bonds and commercial paper as interest rates lose their potency to aid economic growth.

“The global economy is in the throes of a severe and synchronized downturn,” the central bank said in a statement. “Business and household sentiment in many countries has deteriorated. The supply of credit remains constrained.” In Britain, “credit conditions faced by companies and households have tightened further,” it said.

King will present the bank’s updated economic forecasts on Feb. 11. Minutes of this month’s meeting, showing how the members voted, will be published on Feb. 18.

The pound rose against the dollar and the euro, trading at $1.4635 and 87.36 pence per euro as of 3:10 p.m. in London.

Global Rate Cuts

The Bank of England has now lowered its rate by 4 percentage points since October. The U.S. Federal Reserve has reduced its key rate to a range between zero and 0.25 percent. The European Central Bank kept its rate at 2 percent today.

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, speaking to reporters in Frankfurt, said he “doesn’t exclude” a half-point interest- rate cut for the 16-country euro area in March.

Central banks in South Africa and the Czech Republic joined the U.K. in cutting interest rates today to fight the global slump. South Africa’s central bank cut its benchmark rate by 1 percentage point, the biggest reduction in more than five years, to 10.5 percent. The Czech central bank lowered the key rate for the third consecutive time, by half a point to 1.75 percent.

“We have a deep recession and a credit crunch,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. “Why wait? The debate is about how the economy can ever recover, and the Bank of England has the answer to that in its hands.”

Undershoot Risk

The bank said there is “a substantial risk” that inflation will fall too far below the 2 percent target even though rate cuts since October, a 20 billion-pound package of tax cuts, cheaper commodities and a sharp drop in the value of the pound are likely to provide “a considerable stimulus.”

“The key is the line that credit conditions have tightened further,” Brian Hilliard, chief U.K. economist at Societe Generale SA in London, said on Bloomberg Television. “That’s the key emphasis for the government and the bank. They’ve got to continue to do things about it. And the asset purchase facility is the next button to press.”

King’s next step may be to pump additional money into the financial system. He said Jan. 20 that the central bank will buy “high-quality” assets within “weeks and not months” to ease market strains, a policy in line with similar measures pursued by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

Brown and King are trying to rescue an economy that will contract 2.8 percent in 2009, according to IMF forecasts. House prices fell an annual 16.4 percent in January, mortgage lender Halifax said today.

Job Cuts

Ford Motor Co. said today it plans to cut up to 850 jobs in the U.K. as demand for autos and commercial vans slumps. As many as 5,000 British companies may file for bankruptcy this year, a report by accounting and insolvency firm KPMG showed.

The downturn is cooling inflation. Consumer prices rose 3.1 percent from a year earlier in December, compared with 4.1 percent the previous month, the biggest drop in the annual rate since records began in 1997. The central bank’s target is to keep inflation at 2 percent.

Brown said yesterday that the world is suffering a “depression,” suggesting he may increase measures to stimulate the economy. The government has already pledged hundred of billions of pounds to prop up banks, and the pound has fallen 26 percent against the dollar and 16 percent against the euro in the past year, making British exports cheaper.

‘Stimulus Factors’

“There are many stimulus factors in place, cuts in interest rates, various fiscal packages will help,” said Nick Bate, an economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in London and a former Treasury official. “But given that we’re in a world where many central banks are cutting severely, the ability to fine tune the economy has passed.”

The Federation of Small Businesses said yesterday that recent interest rate cuts aren’t helping companies because they cannot get access to loans. More than two-thirds of small businesses wanted the central bank to keep the rate unchanged, according to an FSB poll. The Building Societies Association, representing customer-owned lenders, also called for no change.

For now, the central bank may still have little choice but to keep cutting.

“The fundamentals are still weak and there is still some scope for orthodox policy easing,” said Ross Walker, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “It’s preferable to nudge rates further now than to turn to the printing presses.”

Republicans Storming the Airwaves to Promote Message of Doom

NPR CHECK

Are We Stimulated Yet?

There is a Santa Claus! NPR is in the gifting mode, handing out airtime to yackers from the Grand Old Party (Republicans that is) – and a reader of this blog, “Grumpy Demo” from Dallas, was so kind as to do a bit of analysis of NPR’s big tilt toward Republican talking heads in it’s economic coverage of late. Here’s what Grumpy sent me:

In Reporting On White House Economic Stimulus Package, NPR Interviews Six GOP Congressmen For Every Democrat.

Based on NPR’s own data, NPR demonstrated a preference for Republican members of Congress in its reporting on President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Package. A review of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” broadcast records for the month ending February 3, 2008 indicates in the 50 stories on the stimulus, NPR interviewed and quoted 12 GOP Congresspersons, while only quoting 2 Democrats. Numerous polls show that a majority of Americas support the White House’s stimulus package.

When viewed in context – that NPR’s sole Washington news analyst is FOX News’ employee and O’Reilly Factor guest host, Juan Williams, combined with numerous interviews with Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and National Review pundits, with no members of the progressive movement given equal time – NPR demonstrates a clear and unambiguous conservative bias in its reporting. Additionally, during this same period no White House spokesperson was interviewed or quoted by NPR.

Search Data listed below:

Month Ending February 3,2008

Total Stories: 50

Congressmen Interviewed, Quoted: 14

GOP Congressmen: 12

Democratic Congressmen: 2

White House Spokesmen: 0

Morning Edition

• 01/07/09 Oakley D-WI
• 01/19/09 Gingrich D-GAx
• 01/22/09 Roehmer R-TN
• 01/25/09 Cantor R-VA
• 01/20/09 Pence R-I

All Things Considered

• 01/06/09 Hoyer D-MD
• 01/15/09 Cantor R-VA
• 01/20/09 Pence R-IN
• 01/26/09 Grassley R-IW
• 01/27/09 Camp R-MI,Simpson R-ID01/29/09 Gerlach R-PA,Davis RNC,Camp R-MI

Search Links:

• http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=congressman+economic+stimulus&sort=DREDATE%3Anumberdecreasing&aggId=0&prgId=3&topicId=0&how_long_ago=30
• http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=senate+economic+stimulus&sort=DREDATE%3Anumberdecreasing&aggId=0&prgId=3&topicId=0&how_long_ago=30
• http://www.npr.org/search.php?text=congressman+economic+stimulus&sort=DREDATE%3Anumberdecreasing&aggId=0&prgId=2&topicId=0&how_long_ago=30
• http://www.npr.org/search.php?sort=DREDATE:numberdecreasing&start=20&topicId=0&prgId=2&how_long_ago=30&matchany=false&aggId=0&stopwords=false&soundex=false&text=senator economic stimulus

Posted by Mytwords at 4:47 PM

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POLITICO

By: Michael Calderone
February 5, 2009 04:31 AM ESTRachel Maddow seemed pleasantly surprised when Republican Rep. Donald A. Manzullo turned up on her show last week to talk about his vote against the Democrats’ stimulus plan.

“I can’t tell you how many times a day Republicans say no to invitations to be on this show,” said the liberal MSNBC host. “So we’re very grateful to him for saying yes tonight.” Maddow may have to get used to the experience.

If she had been monitoring MSNBC last week, she would have noticed that more congressional Republicans than Democrats appeared on the network to discuss the stimulus — by a tally of 15-9.

In fact, more congressional Republicans than Democrats appeared on all of the major cable news networks — CNN, Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC — during three days last week surrounding the House vote on the stimulus plan. That’s according to a report by Think Progress, a project of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, which added up congressional TV hits related to the stimulus bill.

The study found that Fox News struck the most balance, with eight Republicans to six Democrats; on CNN, there were two Democrats to seven Republicans.

Now out of power, congressional Republicans are turning to the power of the press, it seems.

“I think this is one of the models that we’re going to use going forward,” said Michael Steel, press secretary for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “Our votes generally don’t matter anymore, but our voices do. Our job is to win the argument, day in and day out.”

And the Republican message offensive didn’t go unnoticed on the other side of the aisle, either.

“What happened with cable last week is that Republican House members were the only show in town,” said a House Democratic leadership aide, who similarly acknowledged that there’s a daily “battle” getting the party’s message to viewers.

Of course, it’s not as if the networks are cutting out the Democrats. But with so much network attention being paid to the Obama administration — including roughly 40 minutes a day devoted to Robert Gibbs’ press briefing — it’s understandable that bookers would seek out House Republicans to provide a counterbalance, even if it means leaving House Democrats out in the process.

CNN political director Sam Feist said simply tallying up appearances of members of Congress only — and specifically when discussing the stimulus — doesn’t offer a complete picture of a network’s coverage, he said.

“As I have looked at what CNN has done the past couple weeks over the stimulus debate, I’ve found the balance is there,” Feist said, adding that it’s never going to be a “perfect balance, minute to minute.”

Doug Thornell, communications director for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, said that while it’s important to make the rounds nationally via cable news, Democratic House members have been reaching out on a local level, too.

“Republicans are hoping to keep the debate in a national partisan box, disseminating their talking points and message through cable or conservative talk radio,” Thornell said.

“Van Hollen has been urging recently elected Democrats to aggressively make the case for the recovery package to their constituents who are hurting as well as to local media,” he said. “I think at the end of the day, it’s easier for Republicans to explain their opposition to an anchor on Fox News than to a worker in their district who just lost their job.”

But it’s not only Fox News, with cable’s most conservative stable of commentators, that Republicans have visited lately. While the rank and file beats the drum over media bias, some elected Republican leaders have hit up the oft-maligned networks among conservatives: MSNBC and CNN.

“You get left out of the story more because you weren’t effectively responding than [because of] any bias,” said Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, who serves as chairman of the House Republican Conference.

Since becoming conference chairman, Pence — who has a background in television and radio — has beefed up the press shop with additional bookers and is in the process of adding a deputy press secretary to deal specifically with Hispanic media outlets.

Pence said that because the “Republican conference exists to promote Republican members,” he’s been closely watching the morning’s headlines and then having staff reach out to media outlets with those members who can speak authoritatively on specific subjects — subjects that include the stimulus, national security and trade. About 70 members are now in the rapid response groups, which Pence has dubbed “tiger teams.”

Ron Bonjean, a former top Republican spokesman for the House and Senate leadership, drew parallels to the early days of the Clinton administration, when “the Speaker’s Lobby was packed with reporters trying to get Republicans, to get the other side of story.”

Bonjean said that while in the minority, Republicans will have less responsibility in Congress, such as management meetings, thus freeing them up in greater numbers to speak with the press.

“I think that will be a standard template going forward,” Bonjean said, “as long as Obama keeps making news and dominating the media space.”

Billions in Drug and Organized Crime ‘Dirty Money’ Funneled Into Bernie Madoff’s Operation

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4, 2009

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(CBS) By CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and Investigative Producer Laura Stricker.

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On Capitol Hill Wednesday, the financial analyst who first blew the whistle on Bernie Madoff back in 2000 went public for the first time, stunning lawmakers with the full scope of the $50 billion fraud. CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

In two hours of riveting, no-holds barred testimony, Harry Markopolos revealed the depth – and danger – of his nine-year fight to expose the Madoff scandal.

Markopolos said at one point he feared for his life.

“He would have known my name and, he knew he had a team tracking him. I didn’t think I was long for this world,” he said.

One reason: Bernie Madoff was among the “most powerful men” on Wall Street.

Another: In 2002 Markopolos said he discovered billions of dollars in “dirty money” was being funneled into Madoff Securities through a series of off-shore accounts.

“When you’re that big and that secretive, you’re going to attract a lot of organized crime money, and which we … now know came from the Russian mob and the Latin-American drug cartel,” Markopolos said.

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A 162-page document filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan late Wednesday lists several thousand of the people and entities that handed money over to Madoff to “invest”. Among the victims are some very well-known personalities – and Madoff’s own defense lawyer. Click here to read more.

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Markopolos said he began his crusade back in late 1999, when he was asked by his employer to see if he could match an investment strategy that produced unusually steady returns – like Madoff’s.

“It took me about five minutes to figure out that he was a fraud,” Markopolos said.

Despite “gift wrapping” evidence of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, Markopolos ran into a stone wall at the SEC. It was an agency, he charged, was unwilling and incapable of following his leads.

“I gave them a road map and a flashlight to find the fraud, and they didn’t go where I told them to go,” Markopolos said.

And he wasn’t the only one warning the feds.

This anonymous letter sent in April 2006 to the head of the SEC was obtained exclusively by CBS News.

In it, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox is told that Madoff keeps two “sets of records. The most interesting of which is on his computer which is always on his person.”

The letter was sent to Cox once on Dec. 6, 2006, and then again on April 26, 2006. The second letter has a note at the top saying, “Dear Sir, this is sent in the event you did not receive the original.”

The letter is also stamped, “Received: 2006 March 31, Chairman’s Correspondence Unit.” The anonymous writer says Madoff is perpetrating a “scandal of major proportion …”

But again, nothing happened.

Hardly surprising to former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, who told CBS News “higher ups” pushed investigators into cases that made headlines and careers.

“They were actively discouraged from going after Ponzi schemes, pump-and-dump schemes, and things that were considered small cases,” Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner, said. “Actively discouraged by their superiors.”

As to the question of whether Bernie Madoff pulled off $50 billion worth of fraud all by himself?

Markopolos had a very simple answer: “No.”

© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

White House: Priority Is Legislation That “Doesn’t Signal A Change In Our Overall Stance on Trade

Campaign For America’s Future

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By David Sirota

02/04/2009

Whether or not you are among the tiny minority of Americans who thinks our trade and globalization policies are good for our country, it is undeniable that Barack Obama campaigned on very explicit pledges to radically change those policies [1]. He not only campaigned on an implicit promise to support Buy America laws [2], but with regards to existing trade agreements and their provisions dealing with procurement, he said he does “not support trade efforts that undermine important federal, state and local policies.”

Clearly, his move to water-down the Buy America laws he campaigned on violate the spirit – if not the letter – of his campaign promises, especially because he is justifying the move by citing the trade agreement restrictions he said he opposed. But today, the White House went even further, saying that the administration’s overarching goal is actually no wholesale change of trade policy whatsoever. Check this out [3] from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ briefing today:

The lawmakers are reacting to a demand by the White House that the provisions satisfy U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organization. President Barack Obama “wants to ensure that any legislation that passes is consistent with trade agreements and doesn’t signal a change in our overall stance on trade,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said at a news briefing today.

As the AFL-CIO’s Bob Baugh notes – and as Public Citizen ably details [4] – Buy America laws (ie. laws that let the government target its procurement to American companies) are completely consistent with our international trade agreements. Indeed, both the “protectionist” [5] fearmongering and the “violation of trade pacts” nonsense are canards on the substance.

But that’s less important than the White House’s meta statement here. After winning free-trade-decimated swing states like Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin on very clear promises to change America’s overall stance on trade policy, the White House has made an official declaration that one of the president’s biggest objectives in the debate over the stimulus bill is that the legislation “doesn’t signal a change in our overall stance on trade.” Yes, the administration that came in on a promise of “change” is explicitly saying it doesn’t want to even “signal a change.”

Between this, and Larry Summers’ letter [6] insisting that the Obama administration will avoid any “industrial policy” at all cost, I don’t know how much more clear the Obama administration can really make things. It is going before cameras specifically saying its objective is to prevent change on one of the most important economic issues that Obama campaigned on.

Daschle Withdraws His Nomination to Health and Human Services

(CNN) — Former Sen. Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a statement Tuesday from the White House.

Daschle had been fighting to save his nomination as HHS secretary following controversy over his tax records and questions over his work in a field that some consider lobbying.

In a statement announcing his withdrawal, Daschle said it was an honor to be chosen to lead the reform of America’s health care system.

“But if 30 years of exposure to the challenges inherent in our system has taught me anything, it has taught me that this work will require a leader who can operate with the full faith of Congress and the American people, and without distraction,” he said.

“Right now, I am not that leader, and will not be a distraction. The focus of Congress should be on the urgent business of moving the president’s economic agenda forward, including affordable health care for every American.”

The Obama administration had stood by his side, and fellow Democrats lined up behind him, but Daschle’s problems, coupled with other nominees’ issues, gave critics ammunition to question President Obama’s call for a “new era of responsibility.”

The president said Tuesday he accepts Daschle’s decision “with sadness and regret.”

“Tom made a mistake, which he has openly acknowledged. He has not excused it, nor do I. But that mistake, and this decision, cannot diminish the many contributions Tom has made to this country, from his years in the military to his decades of public service. Now we must move forward, with our plan to lift this economy and put people back to work,” Obama said in a statement.

Daschle’s resignation came hours after Nancy Killefer’s withdrawal as Obama’s chief performance officer, a new post in the administration.

Officials said privately the reason for Killefer’s withdrawal was unspecified tax issues. The much-touted post was designed to scrub the federal budget.

Daschle, the former Senate majority leader, apologized Monday for failing to pay his taxes in full. He said earlier he was “deeply embarrassed” for a series of errors that included failing to report $15,000 in charitable donations, unreported car service and more than $80,000 in unreported income from consulting.

Daschle recently filed amended tax returns and paid more than $140,000 in back taxes and interest for 2005-2007.

A New York Times editorial on Tuesday called for Daschle to withdraw.

The paper’s editorial board particularly took issue with Daschle saying he identified the unpaid taxes in June but did not pay them until his nomination for the top post at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The editorial also criticized Daschle for generating a sizable income from health-related industries while working in the private sector.

“Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry. We don’t know that his industry ties would influence his judgments on health issues, but they could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform,” the editorial said.

Shortly after news of the tax quandary broke, a number of Democratic senators released statements expressing their support for Daschle, including Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Charles Schumer of New York, Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. In their opinions, Daschle identified the problem and corrected it.

Daschle’s supporters said that given his record of three decades of public service, he was still the right man for the job.

“One cannot underestimate how widely admired Tom Daschle is in Washington for his integrity, for his public service. And many, many Democrats look to him as one of the favorite people. He’s got a lot of support in this White House, starting with the president,” said David Gergen, a senior political analyst for CNN.

Obama and Daschle have a longstanding relationship. Daschle endorsed Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination in February 2007 — nearly 11 months before the first contest. Daschle was also considered to be a contender for Obama’s No. 2 spot.

Daschle also has a history with members of Congress. He represented South Dakota in the House of Representatives for four terms, and he served in the Senate for three terms. He was the Senate majority leader from June 2001 to January 2003, and was the minority leader before losing his re-election bid in 2004.

Daschle’s work in his post-Senate years was also a point of contention on his path to confirmation.

After leaving the Senate, Daschle went on to serve as a special public policy adviser at the law firm Alston & Bird.

According to the firm’s Web site, Daschle advised clients on “issues related to financial services, health care, energy, telecommunications and taxes.”

His work, for which he reportedly made millions, seemed to contradict Obama’s strict rules on lobbyists working in his administration.

Promising “a new era of openness in our country,” Obama signed executive orders relating to ethics guidelines for staff members as one of his first acts in office.

“If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on, or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years,” the president said.

The administration had defended its choice of Daschle, pointing out that he was not technically a lobbyist.

“If you’re not registered to lobby, you can’t be a lobbyist,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, according to Time.com. Time.com: When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist?

Daschle and Kellifer were not the first of Obama’s nominees to come under scrutiny.

Before Tim Geithner was confirmed as treasury secretary, he was questioned over concerns involving his personal taxes and the immigration status of a former housekeeper.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also withdrew his nomination to be commerce secretary, citing the distraction of a federal investigation into ties to a company that has done business with his state.

Given Obama’s pledge for “unprecedented transparency, rigorous oversight and clear accountability,” some said the controversy surrounding Obama’s appointments are calling into question the president’s vetting process.

“Mr. President, your picks to help run the federal government don’t have to be perfect, but is it too much to ask that they pay like everyone else, to keep that same government functioning? And more importantly, that they don’t wait until everyone, including you, is watching?” CNN’s Campbell Brown wrote in a commentary. Read the commentary

Asked if the president is embarrassed by the slew of appointment problems, Gibbs was quick to negate that idea.

“No, I don’t think that — that we believe there’s any problem in the vetting,” Gibbs said Monday.

Hillary Kicking Arse and Taking Names at State Department

Clinton moves to widen role of State Department

By Mark Landler and Helene Cooper

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

WASHINGTON: Even before taking office, Hillary Rodham Clinton is seeking to build a more powerful State Department, with a bigger budget, high-profile special envoys to trouble spots and an expanded role in dealing with global economic issues at a time of crisis.

Clinton is recruiting Jacob Lew, the budget director under President Bill Clinton, as one of two deputies, according to people close to the Obama transition team. Lew’s focus, they said, would be on increasing the share of financing that goes to the diplomatic corps.

He and James Steinberg, a deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, are to be Hillary Clinton’s chief lieutenants.

Nominations of deputy secretaries, like Clinton’s, would be subject to confirmation by the Senate.

The incoming administration is also likely to name several envoys, officials said, reviving a practice of the Clinton administration, when Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross and other diplomats played a central role in mediating disputes in the Balkans and the Middle East.

As Clinton puts together her senior team, officials said, she is also trying to carve out a bigger role for the State Department in economic affairs, where the Treasury has dominated during the Bush years. She has sought advice from Laura D’Andrea Tyson, an economist who headed Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers.

The steps seem intended to strengthen the role of diplomacy after a long stretch, particularly under Secretary of State Colin Powell, in which the Pentagon, the vice president’s office and even the intelligence agencies held considerable sway over U.S. foreign policy.

Given Hillary Clinton’s prominence, expanding the department’s portfolio could bring on conflict with other powerful cabinet members.

Clinton and President-elect Barack Obama have not settled on specific envoys or missions, although Ross’s name has been mentioned as a possible Middle East envoy, as have those of Holbrooke and Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The Bush administration has made relatively little use of special envoys. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has personally handled most peacemaking initiatives, which has meant a punishing schedule of Middle East missions, often with meager results.

“There’s no question that there is a reinvention of the wheel here,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “But it’s geared not so much as a reaction to Bush as to a fairly astute analysis of what’s going to work in foreign policy.”

With so many problems, including Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, Miller said it made sense for the White House to farm out some of the diplomatic heavy lifting.

In addition to the Middle East, one Democratic foreign policy adviser said, Holbrooke might be considered for an appointment as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and possibly Iran. The adviser said the decision had not been made.

A transition official dismissed as “speculation” reports in Indian newspapers that Obama was considering appointing Bill Clinton as a special envoy to deal with Kashmir issues.

But another transition official confirmed that Obama’s foreign policy advisers were discussing the possibility of appointing a special envoy to India. Steinberg, who is the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, would probably coordinate the work of any special envoys, the official said.

The recruitment of Lew – for a position that was not filled in the Bush administration – suggests that Hillary Clinton is determined to win a larger share of financial resources for the department. Lew, a well-connected figure who was once an aide to the House speaker Thomas O’Neill, now works for Citigroup in a unit that oversees hedge funds.

“If we’re going to re-establish diplomacy as the critical tool in America’s arsenal,” a senior transition official said, “you need someone who can work both the budget and management side. He has very strong relations on the Hill; he knows the inner workings of how to manage a big enterprise.”

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private, said Clinton was being supported in her push for more resources by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and by Obama’s incoming national security adviser, General James Jones Jr.

For years, some Pentagon officials have complained that jobs like the economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq have been added to the military’s burden when they could have been handled by a robust foreign service.

“The Pentagon would like to turn functionality over to civilian resources, but the resources are not there,” the official said. “We’re looking to have a State Department that has what it needs.”

Clinton’s push for a more vigorous economic team, one of her advisers said, stems from her conviction that the State Department needs to play a part in the recovery from the global financial crisis.

Economic issues also underpin some of the most important diplomatic relationships, notably with China.

In recent years, the Treasury Department, led by Henry Paulson Jr., has dominated policy toward China. Paulson leads a “strategic economic dialogue” with China that involves several agencies. It is not yet clear who will pick up that role in the Obama administration, although Vice President-elect Joseph Biden Jr. is frequently mentioned as a possibility.

Israel Threatens ‘Disproportionate’ Response to Rockets

The Associated Press

Sunday, February 1, 2009

JERUSALEM: Gaza militants launched two rockets into southern Israel early Sunday, drawing a threat of “disproportionate” military retaliation from Israel’s prime minister and further straining a cease-fire that ended Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive two weeks ago.

There were no casualties from the rockets, though one projectile landed near a kindergarten in a community near Gaza, said a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld.

The recent Israeli offensive was aimed at halting years of rocket attacks, and the military declared a cease-fire on Jan. 18 after declaring its goals had been achieved.

But on Sunday the rockets, which followed sporadic rocket fire and the killing of an Israeli soldier in a border bombing attack last week, illustrated the difficulties of achieving a complete end to the attacks. Despite years of efforts, Israel’s high-tech military still has not found a solution to stopping the projectiles.

Speaking to his cabinet on Sunday, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israel would respond “when and where we choose.”

The government’s position, Olmert said, is that “if there is shooting at residents of the south, there will be an Israeli response that will be harsh and disproportionate by its nature to the shooting at residents of Israel and at our forces.”

Hamas has not taken responsibility for any of the new attacks, which have been claimed by smaller militant groups. But Israel says it holds Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since seizing power in June 2007, responsible for all attacks emanating from Gaza.

The rocket strikes come just over a week before Israel holds a parliamentary election. Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister and one of the leaders behind the operation, has replaced Olmert as head of the centrist Kadima party and is the only serious challenger to the front-runner, the hard-line Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, according to recent opinion polls.

Netanyahu has been campaigning on a platform that calls for a tough stance against Hamas, and he stands to benefit if Israelis conclude that the offensive failed to achieve its goal of making residents of southern Israel safer.

Since ending the offensive, Israel has conducted retaliatory strikes and pounded tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons from Egypt. Israeli forces have also shot and killed three men whom Palestinians identified as farmers along the Gaza-Israel border.

One of Israel’s main concerns is that Hamas could continue smuggling weapons into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border. Israel is pushing Egypt to do more to crack down on the flow of weapons, and internationally backed anti-smuggling efforts are at the center of attempts to win a lasting cease-fire in Gaza.

Gaza is still struggling to recover from the punishing three-week offensive, which left swaths of the territory damaged and nearly 1,300 people dead, more than half of them civilians, according to Gaza officials. Thirteen Israelis were killed, including three civilians.

Hamas officials in Cairo were set to meet with Egyptian mediators on Sunday. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will meet Egyptian officials in Cairo on Monday. The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said that a visit by Abbas to the Czech Republic planned for Monday would have to be rescheduled.

Stiglitz Calls Bad Bank Idea “Cash For Trash”

BLOOMBERG

Feb. 1 (Bloomberg) — Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said any decision by President Barack Obama to establish a so-called bad bank to rid financial companies of toxic assets risks swelling the national debt.

Obama’s administration is moving closer to buying the illiquid assets currently clogging bank’s balance sheets and preventing them from boosting lending, people familiar with the matter said this week.

That amounts to swapping taxpayers’ “cash for trash,” Stiglitz said yesterday in a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “You shouldn’t chase good money after bad. We’re talking about a national debt that’s very hard to manage.”

Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia University in New York and a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, says the plan would leave taxpayers paying for years of excess lending by banks. It would also deprive the government of money that would have been better spent shoring up Social Security, he said.

Whether a bad bank would accelerate an end to the financial crisis split delegates attending the Davos talks. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said such an operation would help if “executed well.” Billionaire investor George Soros said in an interview that “it’s not the measure that would turn the situation around and enable banks to lend.”

Obama Plan

Obama said yesterday he’s readying a plan to unlock credit markets and lower mortgage rates. Under the initiative, the government would buy some tainted securities and insure the banks against losses on the rest.

“Soon my Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will announce a new strategy for reviving our financial system that gets credit flowing to businesses and families,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

Stiglitz drew criticism from panel participant Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, who says a bad bank is necessary for lending to resume.

“I agree about the moral, ethical fallout, but you’ve got to face the music and someone has to take the loss,” said Gurria, Mexico’s former finance minister. “It’s the only way to jumpstart the economy.”

Bank losses worldwide from toxic U.S.-originated assets may double to $2.2 trillion, the International Monetary Fund said in a report released Jan. 28.

John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, told the same audience that governments are getting “close to straining the patience of the public and voters” by repeatedly extending lifelines to banks.

Philippines President Gloria Arroyo urged Obama to make a quick decision on his plan.

“We want Americans to do something,” she said at the session, which was called “Rebooting the Global Economy.” “We can discuss what to do but the worst thing is to do nothing.”

Is There a White House Baby on the Way?

CBS NEWS

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has rarely let facts get in the way of gossip. Still, his latest and apparently baseless speculation about Michelle Obama has generated international baby buzz.

On Wednesday, an item appeared on PerezHilton.com (filed under Baby Blabber – Conspiracy Corner) with the headline: “White House Baby???”

“We’re hearing talk in D.C. that Michelle Obama is pregnant,” the post read.

Despite Hilton’s blunt disclaimer (“this is completely unconfirmed”), the rumor has picked up steam. A Google search for the words “Michelle Obama” and “pregnant” churns out 826,000 results. Meanwhile, Gawker has begun scrutinizing recent photos of the First Lady for signs of pregnancy.

The speculation has also spread overseas. News outlets from England to Australia pounced on the news.

So did the gambling world. In the wake of the rumor, Ireland’s biggest bookmaker Paddy Power slashed the odds on Michelle Obama giving birth this year from 10-1 to 2-1. You can also wager on the sex of the baby and even if the birth will produce multiple babies (it’s 20-1 that Michelle Obama will have twins and 10,000-1 that she will have octuplets).

Paddy Power’s Ken Robertson tells CBSNews.com that at this very moment, there are 166 bets on “Yes, there will be a new first baby” (for a total stake of 2412 Euros) and 222 bets on “No, there will not be a new first baby” (for a total stake of €3996).

Of course, the baby bets also include what the Obamas would name their third child, after Sasha and Malia. Barack Jr. is the favorite at 3-1; Michelle is 10-1; and the 250-1 long shots include Paris, Perez and Jesus.

Roberston says so far the most widely backed name for the new baby is Barack Jr., which has 98 bets for a total stake of €784.

If the dubious rumor does prove to be true, the baby would be only the second born in the White House. That sole distinction now belongs to the daughter of President Grover Cleveland, who was born in 1893. Her name? Esther.

England Gets Slammed With Worst Snowstorm in 18 Years

Large swaths of Britain came to a standstill in the grip of the worst snowstorms for 18 years.

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
02 Feb 2009

Despite five days of severe weather warnings, transport bosses still appeared to have been completely caught out as up to a foot of snow fell across the country, bringing rail, air and road networks to a halt.

They faced a growing public backlash as one in five workers was left stranded at home, at an estimated cost to the economy of £1.2billion.

In London, all bus services were cancelled for the first time in living memory, as a network which had carried on running during the Blitz – and during much worse conditions in 1963 – proved unable to deal with six inches of snow. Cancelled Tube trains added to the chaos in the capital.

Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Stansted, Southampton and Birmingham airports were closed for all or part of the day, causing knock-on delays at most regional airports. At Heathrow, a Cyprus Air passenger jet skidded off the taxiway, coming to rest with its front wheel on the grass.

Debates in the Houses of Parliament finished early while some parts of the building did not open as staff could not get in. As hundreds of train services and flights were stopped and drivers faced treacherous conditions on ungritted roads, angry commuters demanded to know why the severe weather warnings had not been properly heeded.

Nigel Humphries, of the Association of British Drivers, said there could be no excuse for the failure of transport authorities to prepare for “entirely predictable weather conditions”.

The British Chambers of Commerce said a “clear lack of preparation” had cost business dearly.

With more snow predicted today and further flurries expected later in the week, Britain’s battered economy could suffer up to £3billion in lost productivity by the end of the week.Snowstorms which swept the country overnight and during the day had first been forecast by the Met Office last Wednesday, when it issued a severe weather warning accurately predicting the blizzards.

Yet local councils and transport authorities were still accused of failing to put adequate plans in place to deal with the weather.

The nature of the response was summed up in London, where main roads had been gritted by Transport for London, keeping them clear, but suburban roads leading to bus depots had not been gritted, stranding the city’s entire bus fleet, which is used by six million people a day.Tens of thousands of commuters braved the cold to walk to work instead, with some even skiing through the capital.

The Highways Agency and local councils were also heavily criticised by motorists for failing to put down enough grit on major roads, including the M25, where a 53-mile tailback built up yesterday morning between junction 19 at Watford and junction 8 at Reigate.

At one stage, it was estimated that there were 1,000 miles of tailbacks across the country.

The Local Government Association said councils had been overwhelmed by the relentless snowfalls, which had covered roads as quickly as they could be cleared, meaning the grit had less impact.

The Highways Agency blamed lorry drivers for clogging up major routes after ignoring advice to stay off the roads.

But David Frost, the director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the collapse of the transport network was unacceptable.

He said: “People of my generation saw much worse winters than this in the 1960s and 1970s, yet things kept going. Why can’t we cope now?

“This weather was forecast five days ago – it’s not as if we suddenly woke up to find six inches of snow outside, and it’s clear that not enough preparation has been done.”

Susie Squire, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance pressure group, said the excuses simply wouldn’t wash with the public.

“Recent conditions do not merit total shutdown, and rail companies, councils and other authorities should have been able to cope,” she said.

“Many other first-world countries keep going in much worse conditions. People see their fares go up and up, and yet services seem to remain at the same sub-standard level.”

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, blamed “some of the most challenging weather conditions” for two decades for the disruption.

He said: “The difficulty really has been that the volume of snow has been so huge that you can put down the grit but then it simply snows over it again and you run the risk of unleashing a 12-ton bus on to heavily packed snow or ice and turning it into a lethal weapon.”

But his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, said Londoners had a right to ask why buses had stopped running and 10 of the 11 Tube lines had been crippled. “Boris should have been on the phone from Thursday, when the warnings first started, making sure everyone was prepared for the snowfall,” he said.

“Every few years in the early 1980s we had chaos with the weather but the buses always came out. It’s quite clear the borough councils, either because they wouldn’t pay overtime on a Sunday or because they have cut everything back to the bone, didn’t grit properly, even though there was plenty of advance warning.”

Two brothers died on Snowdon in North Wales after becoming stranded on the mountain as the weather closed in on Sunday night. They are thought to have fallen 700ft. Motoring organisations, meanwhile, said accidents on the roads were “too numerous” to catalogue.

Emergency services were so stretched by the number of road accidents and weather-related emergencies that London Ambulance service said it could only deal with life-threatening incidents.

More than 2,000 schools closed nationwide, operations had to be cancelled at hospitals and many courts and other public buildings shut down. The Federation of Small Businesses estimated that six million people – a fifth of the workforce – had stayed home, costing the economy £1.2 billion in wages and lost sales.

Conditions are unlikely to improve before the weekend, as temperatures are expected to remain below freezing in most parts of the country, turning snow and slush to ice, with yet more snow expected during the rest of the week.

The AA is telling drivers to keep warm clothes in their cars in case of breakdowns. A spokesman said attendants had seen stranded motorists “flirting with hypothermia” by going out unprepared.

Bank of America Throws Ten Million Dollar Super Bowl Party

T H I N K  P R O G R E S S

Just weeks ago, the federal government extended $20 billion to Bank of America to keep it afloat, bringing its total in federal bailout dollars received to $45 billion. ABC News reports, however, that the bank managed to scrounge up millions of dollars to be an NFL sponsor and for “a five day carnival-like” Super Bowl party just outside the stadium:

The event — known as the NFL Experience — was 850,000 square feet of sports games and interactive entertainment attractions for football fans and was blanketed in Bank of America logos and marketing calls to sign up for football-themed banking products. […]

The bank refused to tell ABC News how much it is spending as an NFL corporate sponsor, but insiders have put the figure at close to $10 million. The NFL Experience was on top of that and was inked last summer, according to the bank.

The NFL said it was a “multi-million dollar” event and that it was also spending money to put on the event. A Super Bowl insider said the tents alone cost over $800,000.

The Huffington Post notes that this is the latest in a series of bailed-out banks that continue to spend lavishly on sports sponsorships.

Totally Unofficial Daytona 500 Entry List

From the great  JAYSKI’S SILLYSEASON

updated on 2/2/2009

NASCAR Sprint Cup Series
TOTALLY UNOFFICIAL Entry List
Daytona 500
Daytona International Speedway

<!– From NASCAR.com
–>

	Car#	Driver	Manu	Sponsor	Owner
1	00	David Reutimann	Toyota	Aaron’s Dream Machine	Robert Kauffman
2	1	Martin Truex Jr.	Chevy	Bass Pro Shops / Tracker	Teresa Earnhardt
3	2	Kurt Busch	Dodge	Miller Lite	Walter Czarnecki
4	5	Mark Martin	Chevy	Kellogg’s / CARQUEST	Mary Hendrick
5	6	David Ragan	Ford	UPS	Mike Dee
6	07	Casey Mears	Chevy	Jack Daniel’s	Richard Childress
7	7	Robby Gordon	Toyota	Jim Beam	Robby Gordon
8	08	Boris Said	Ford	TBA	John Carter
9	8	Aric Almirola	Chevy	TBA	Teresa Earnhardt
10	09	Brad Keselowski	Chevy	Miccosukee Resort & Gaming	James Finch
11	9	Kasey Kahne	Dodge	Budweiser	George Gillett, Jr
12	11	Denny Hamlin	Toyota	FedEx	J D Gibbs
13	12	David Stremme	Dodge	Penske Racing	Roger Penske
14	14	Tony Stewart Past Champ 1 (2005)	Chevy	Old Spice/Office Depot	Tony Stewart
15	16	Greg Biffle	Ford	3M	Jack Roush
16	17	Matt Kenseth	Ford	DEWALT	John Henry
17	18	Kyle Busch	Toyota	M&M’s	Joe Gibbs
18	19	Elliott Sadler	Dodge	Stanley Tools	Ray Evernham
19	20	Joey Logano #	Toyota	Home Depot	Joe Gibbs
20	21	Bill Elliott Past Champ 3 (1988)	Ford	Motorcraft	Glen Wood
21	23	Mike Skinner	Chevy	TBA	Robert Richardson Sr.
22	24	Jeff Gordon	Chevy	DuPont	Rick Hendrick
23	26	Jamie McMurray	Ford	Crown Royal	Geoff Smith
24	27	Kirk Shelmerdine	Toyota	TBA	Kirk Shelmerdine
25	28	Travis Kvapil	Ford	TBA	Doug Yates
26	29	Kevin Harvick	Chevy	Shell / Pennzoil	Richard Childress
27	31	Jeff Burton	Chevy	Caterpillar	Richard Childress
28	33	Clint Bowyer	Chevy	Cheerios	Richard Childress
29	34	John Andretti	Chevy	TBA	Bob Jenkins Chip Ganassi
30	36	Scott Riggs	Toyota	TBA	Tommy Baldwin
31	39	Ryan Newman	Chevy	US Army	Tony Stewart
32	41	Jeremy Mayfield	Toyota	?	Jeremy Mayfield
33	42	Juan Montoya	Chevy	Target	Chip Ganassi
34	43	Reed Sorenson	Dodge	Air Force	Richard Petty
35	44	A.J. Allmendinger	Dodge	Valvoline	George Gillett, Jr
36	46	Carl Long	Dodge	Romeo Guest	Danielle Long
37	47	Marcos Ambrose	Toyota	Little Debbie	Tad Geschickter
38	48	Jimmie Johnson	Chevy	Lowe’s	Jeff Gordon
39	51	Kelly Bires	Dodge	TBA	David Bean
40	55	Michael Waltrip	Toyota	NAPA Auto Parts	Michael Waltrip
41	57?	Norm Benning	Chevy	TBA	Norm Benning
42	60	James Hylton	Dodge	?	Mark Simo
43	64	Geoff Bodine	Toyota	?	Todd Bodine Geoff Bodine Larry Gunselman
44	66	Terry Labonte Past Champ 2 (1996)	Toyota	Window World	Prism Motorsports Phil Parsons Randy Humphrey
45	71	Mike Wallace	Chevy	TBA	Kevin Buckler
46	75	Derrike Cope	Dodge	TBA	Derrike Cope
47	77	Sam Hornish Jr.	Dodge	Mobil 1	Roger Penske
48	78	Regan Smith	Chevy	Furniture Row	Barney Visser
49	82	Scott Speed #	Toyota	Red Bull	Dietrich Mateschitz
50	83	Brian Vickers	Toyota	Red Bull	Dietrich Mateschitz
51	87	Joe Nemechek	Toyota	?	Joe Nemechek
52	88	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	Chevy	AMP Energy / National Guard	Rick Hendrick
53	96	Bobby Labonte	Ford	Ask.com	Max Jones
54	98	Paul Menard	Ford	Menards	Doug Yates
55	99	Carl Edwards	Ford	Afflac	Jack Roush
Could to be added
	22	?	Toyota	?	Maury Guant
	37	Tony Raines	?Chevy	?	Brad Jenkins

Goldman Sachs Tax Rate Drops to 1%- From 6 Billion to 14 Million

By Christine Harper Dec. 16

(Bloomberg)

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the U.S. government in October, expects to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion in 2007. The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement. The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9 billion in employee compensation and benefits.

Goldman Sachs, which today reported its first quarterly loss since going public in 1999, lowered its rate with more tax credits as a percentage of earnings and because of “changes in geographic earnings mix,” the company said. The rate decline looks “a little extreme,” said Robert Willens, president and chief executive officer of tax and accounting advisory firm Robert Willens LLC. “I was definitely taken aback,” Willens said. “Clearly they have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.” U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern. “This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said. “With the right hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.” In the first nine months of the fiscal year, Goldman had planned to pay taxes at a 25.1 percent rate, the company said today. A fourth-quarter tax credit of $1.48 billion was 41 percent of the company’s pretax loss in the period, higher than many analysts expected. David Trone, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller, expected the fourth-quarter tax credit to be 28 percent. The tax-rate decline may raise some eyebrows because of the support the U.S. government has provided to Goldman Sachs and other companies this year, Willens said. “It’s not very good public relations,” he said.

Politico Becomes Official Shit-Stirrer of Obama Administration

Pelosi lays down the law with Rahm By: John Bresnahan December 16, 2008

In a recent conversation with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel offered some advice on a Democratic House leadership race. Pelosi’s response, according to several Democratic sources: It is “an internal House Democratic Caucus matter, and we’ll handle it.” Democratic insiders say there’s no animosity between Pelosi and Emanuel, who’s leaving his post as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus to become the next White House chief of staff. But the speaker is laying down the law nonetheless. In talks with Emanuel and others, sources say, Pelosi has “set parameters” for what she wants from Barack Obama and his White House staff — no surprises, and no backdoor efforts to go around her and other Democratic leaders by cutting deals with moderate New Democrats or conservative Blue Dogs. Specifically, Pelosi has told Emanuel that she wants to know when representatives of the incoming administration have any contact with her rank-and-file Democrats — and why, sources say. During the Bush years, the White House set policy, and Republicans on Capitol Hill were expected to follow it. Former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) occasionally lashed out at former White House chief of staff Andy Card or other senior administration aides when he felt they had gone too far. But in general, Republican lawmakers followed Bush’s lead on every major legislative battle, from Iraq to tax and spending bills to anti-terror policies. With the exception of immigration reform, the House fight over the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package and last week’s meltdown over a bailout for the Big Three automakers, Bush got what he wanted from Congress, especially within his own party. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) are signaling that they won’t tolerate a repeat with a Democrat in the White House and Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate. Pelosi “is not going to allow Obama to triangulate her,” said a Democratic source close to the leadership. “It’s not going to happen to her.” Pelosi’s mantra, in a way, is “no surprises.” The speaker wants to be told when Reid is communicating with the Blue Dogs or other factions with her caucus, and she expects the same from Obama when he arrives in the Oval Office, said Democratic sources. “We certainly are in frequent communication with the [Obama] transition team,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s communications director. Daly noted that Pelosi and Emanuel have long-standing ties — she appointed him to head up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at the start of 2005 — and added that Emanuel often speaks directly with John Lawrence, Pelosi’s chief of staff. Daly said Pelosi will work closely with Obama and Reid to craft an economic stimulus package early next year, as well as other economic recovery legislation. “She and President-elect Obama have the same goals,” Daly added. “It’s a matter of working together to get things done.” Pelosi herself said the same about Obama in an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt last week, stating that “our priorities are the same about creating good-paying jobs.” But it won’t always be that easy. Capitol Hill veterans predict that, no matter how much goodwill there is at the start of a new administration, there are always battles over policy and legislative priorities between the White House and Congress. “There is tension. There is going to be tension,” said a Democratic veteran of Capitol Hill. “This is not Hastert. She wants to know what they are up to.” The Emanuel-Pelosi relationship is a complex one that defies easy explanation. Emanuel was a rising star inside the Democratic Caucus — with many members convinced he would be speaker one day — until Obama tapped him for the West Wing job. In large part, Emanuel owed his rise to Pelosi, who put him in charge of the DCCC, where he helped lead the Democrats back to the House majority after 12 years out of power. From the DCCC, Emanuel moved up to the chairmanship of the caucus. But both he and Pelosi had stocked the DCCC with their own loyalists after the 2006 election, and they both tried to influence campaign strategy as subtly as possible through these surrogates. At the same time, Emanuel was often jockeying with other members on major legislation, including immigration reform and the Wall Street bailout, but rarely without the speaker’s blessing. Pelosi sometimes resisted Emanuel’s desire to always be on the attack, but she did respect his insight and his willingness to work hard to achieve legislative and political goals. She refused to back Emanuel when he made noises about running for majority whip, the post now held by Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). But when Obama approached him about the chief of staff job, Emanuel consulted Pelosi first. Yet the two will find themselves on different ends of Pennsylvania Avenue next year, and that will change the nature of their current relationship profoundly. “Look, they have different goals now,” said an aide to one top Democrat. “Her job is to protect her members; his job is protect Obama. Those can’t always be the same thing.” This source added: “I think they will do what they can to work together, but these are two strong-willed people who are used to getting their way. There’s bound to be some areas of disagreement. We’ll just have to see how they handle it.”

Madoff Records Are “Utterly Unreliable”

Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) — Bernard Madoff’s ability to avoid scrutiny from U.S. regulators for years shows that the monitoring system is “broken and has to be fixed,” former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt said.

Levitt, a senior adviser to Carlyle Group, said today in a Bloomberg Radio interview that the SEC must respond to allegations that it failed to act on tips of wrongdoing by Madoff that it had received since the 1990s.

“The system is obviously flawed and it’s got to be rethought in terms of how investors can be protected,” Levitt said. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox “is doing the right thing” by calling for a probe of the agency’s role, Levitt said.

Madoff was arrested Dec. 11 after telling his two sons and federal investigators that he’d been using money from new investors to pay off old ones in a Ponzi scheme. He said clients of his New York-based investment-advisory firm lost $50 billion.

Levitt said Madoff may have run a conventional business for a while and “shifted gears,” when the market turned against him. Madoff “clearly lied” to avoid registering with the SEC, which has shrunk as the financial industry has grown, Levitt said.

In 2004, the agency had 477 people in its inspection office, overseeing about 8,000 investment advisers, Levitt said. Today, 430 people regulate 11,300 advisers, along with about 16,000 mutual funds, he said.

Cox said yesterday the SEC failed to act for almost a decade on “credible and specific allegations” against Madoff. He announced an internal probe to review the “deeply troubling” revelations.

Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

US Anti-Kidnap Expert Kidnapped in Mexico

US anti-kidnap expert kidnapped

A US anti-kidnapping expert who has negotiated the release of dozens of hostages in Latin America has been abducted by gunmen in Mexico.

Felix Batista, a Cuban-American from Miami, was kidnapped as he stepped outside a restaurant to answer a phone call in the northern city of Saltillo.

Drug gangs are blamed for hundreds of kidnappings in Mexico each year.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence between rival cartels this year.

Mr Batista is credited with negotiating the release of many kidnap victims.

He was in Saltillo, in Coahuila state, to offer advice on how to deal with kidnaps for ransom when he himself was seized last Wednesday, local authorities revealed on Monday.

Support for family

Charlie LeBlanc, president of Houston-based security firm ASI Global LLC, where Mr Batista is a consultant, said: “We have notified the FBI and Mexican authorities, and they are working on the case.

“We are offering our support to the family and hoping for the best.”

He declined to say whether the kidnappers had demanded a ransom.

The US embassy in Mexico City said it was investigating and would not comment further.

Hundreds of people are kidnapped in Mexico every year.

The number of victims has increased sharply following an army-backed crackdown on drug gangs, which has forced cartels to seek new ways of making money to fund their operations.

What Really Happened in Ashcroft’s Hospital Room: The Battle For Secret Surveillance

Daniel Klaidman

NEWSWEEK

Issue dated Dec 22, 2008

It is one of the darkly iconic scenes of the Bush Administration. In March 2004, two of the president’s most senior advisers rushed to a Washington hospital room where they confronted a bedridden John Ashcroft. White House chief of staff Andy Card and counsel Alberto Gonzales pressured the attorney general to renew a massive domestic-spying program that would lapse in a matter of days. But others hurried to the hospital room, too. Ashcroft’s deputy, James Comey, later joined by FBI Director Robert Mueller, stood over Ashcroft’s bed to make sure the White House aides didn’t coax their drugged and bleary colleague into signing something unwittingly. The attorney general, sick and pain-racked from a rare pancreatic disease, rose up from his bed, gathering what little strength he had, and firmly told the president’s emissaries that he would not sign their papers.

White House hard-liners would make one more effort—getting the president to recertify the program on his own, relying on his powers as commander in chief. But in the end, with an election looming and the entire political leadership of the Justice Department poised to resign rather than carry out orders they thought to be illegal, Bush backed down. The rebels prevailed.

But that is only part of the story—because Bush, even though he made concessions to the rebels, kept other aspects of the program intact. Even after The New York Times revealed the existence of the secret surveillance two years later—and despite outrage in Congress and among civil libertarians—monitoring of calls and e-mails between the United States and overseas without court approval continues. Much has been written about the Justice Department rebellion, including, most recently, the account in Barton Gellman’s groundbreaking book “Angler.” But a mystery remains: What did the Justice Department rebels object to, and what concessions did Bush make to appease them? What, precisely, was canceled?

Two knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that the clash erupted over a part of Bush’s espionage program that had nothing to do with the wiretapping of individual suspects. Rather, Comey and others threatened to resign because of the vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data. These sources, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence matters, describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004. The program’s classified code name was “Stellar Wind,” though when officials needed to refer to it on the phone, they called it “SW.” (The NSA says it has “no information or comment”; a Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.)

The NSA’s powerful computers became vast storehouses of “metadata.” They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients. By one estimate, the amount of data the NSA could suck up in close to real time was equivalent to one quarter of the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica per second. (The actual content of calls and e-mails was not being monitored as part of this aspect of the program, the sources say.) All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity.

The secret collection and data-mining program had begun with a blessing by John Yoo, an ultraconservative lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo was a close ally of hard-line lawyers in the White House and worked closely with David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyer. (Addington is now Cheney’s chief of staff.) But by 2003, Yoo had moved on, and a new head of the OLC, Jack Goldsmith, began reviewing his work. Goldsmith found Yoo’s legal opinions justifying the program flawed. His reasons are based on a mind-numbingly complex area of federal law, but the basic analysis comes down to this: the systematic collection and digital transmission of huge amounts of telephone and e-mail data by the government constitutes “electronic surveillance” under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the exclusive law governing domestic spying in national-security cases. For such activities, FISA requires a court-approved warrant. Therefore, the program was illegal. The White House lawyers countered that the president’s constitutional powers as commander in chief trumped FISA. Goldsmith and his colleagues rejected that argument, and won. Days after the hospital clash, Bush shut down the massive data-collection program and stopped searches of the data that had already been stored. (It’s unclear whether the administration has since found new legal justification to return to at least some of these activities.)

This updated version of events helps explain exactly what motivated stalwart Republican lawyers like Comey to defy their Republican president. The Justice lawyers were not fuming about an Orwellian invasion of the privacy of American citizens. Though all the rebellious lawyers agreed that the program was illegal, some favored its goals while others questioned its efficacy. “At the end of the day, the dispute was a legal one, not a policy one,” says one participant. “It was about upholding the rule of law, not about what was appropriate from a civil-libertarian standpoint or any other standpoint.”

One of the most consequential government rebellions in memory may be regarded as an act of heroism by civil libertarians. But the rebels were conservatives who might have been willing to—and in some cases did—approve policies that would not sit well with many Americans. They just weren’t willing to break the law. Which is how the president’s men ended up in John Ashcroft’s hospital room on a cool March evening.

Rezco Sentencing Indefinately Postponed

December 16, 2008

BY NATASHA KORECKI

Federal Courts Reporter

A federal judge has indefinitely postponed the Jan. 6 sentencing for Tony Rezko, the prominent political fund-raiser and former adviser to Gov. Blagojevich.

The move this morning came after Rezko lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve last week to throw out the sentencing date.

Rezko’s request comes as he restarts talks with federal prosecutors. Those talks hit a stumbling block as Rezko asked to be let out of solitary confinement at the downtown federal lockup. He asked for a rushed sentencing in January.

But last week’s revelation that the government has recordings in the governor’s case, appeared to change Rezko’s mind about cooperating.

Rezko’s lawyers did not ask for a new sentencing date at this morning’s hearing

SEC Under Scrutiny in Madoff Case

Senator: The SEC “Letting Down the American People”

ABC NEWS

By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO

Dec. 15, 2008—

As the list of victims continues to grow and investigators examine how Bernard Madoff allegedly ran his massive scam, some are questioning how Madoff avoided detection for so long. As a registered investment advisor since 2006, he was subject to scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, yet he managed to maintain a clean record even after complaints from whistleblowers started nine years ago.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission is letting down the American people,” Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said of the SEC. “They failed. This person was registered as a broker dealer, they should have known what he was doing all the time, and particularly if you have whistleblowers.”

The head of enforcement at the SEC attempted to duck questions about the failure of the agency to detect what may be the biggest investment fraud in history.

“It is hard to directly respond given the fact that so much of what we have done historically is non-public and needs to remain non-public until someone decides otherwise,” said Linda Thomsen.

Meanwhile, the list of Madoff’s victims keeps growing. European banks have lost billions, as have charities run by Elie Wiesel, director Steven Spielberg, and New York billionaire Mort Zuckerman, whose charitable trust lost $30 million.

Authorities say Madoff didn’t hesitate to scam even close friends and fellow members of the Palm Beach Country Club.

“They’re going to have to sell their 20, 30 million dollar mansions,” said Larry Leamer, author of “Madness Under the Royal Palms”. “It’s all over. Some of these people crazily put all their money with him so they’re finished.”

Some Were Sent a Warning Sign on Madoff

While many trusted Madoff with their life savings, others were sending out a warning signal. The research firm Aksia, which also provides advice to pensions, endowments, foundations and insurance companies, says it has long been steering clients away from Madoff’s hedge fund based on a “host of red flags.”

According to a letter to its clients, Aksia “published extensive reports on several of the ‘feeder funds’ which allocated their capital to Madoff Securities … Our judgment was swift, given the extensive list of red flags.”

Aksia said in its letter that when the firm checked the auditor of Madoff’s fund they found the operation was quite small, given the amount of money being handled.

The accounting firm, says Aksia, had just three employees, “of which one was 78 years old and living in Florida, one was a secretary, and one was an active 47-year-old accountant (and the office in Rockland County, N.Y., was only 13 ft x 18 ft large).”

George Michael’s Final Broadcast at WRC-TV 4 Washington D.C.

New Yorkers Popping Pills Like Skittles

Anxious New Yorkers popping more pills

CRAINS NEW YORK BUSINESS

By Daniel Massey

Published: December 12, 2008

Prescriptions filled for anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants and sleep aids have surged in the city as New Yorkers struggle to cope with uncertainties brought on by the financial crisis.

The spike was particularly evident in September, when an economic tsunami bankrupted Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., forced Washington to bail out insurer American Insurance Group Inc., prompted Bank of America Corp. to rescue Merrill Lynch & Co., and led Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley to reorganize as bank holding companies.

“If we looked to diagnose the city, I would say it has an anxiety disorder,” said Mel Schwartz, a psychotherapist with practices in the city and in Westport, Conn.

In September and October, prescriptions filled for sleep aids rose more than 7% to 366,870 compared to the same two-month period last year, according to data provided to Crain’s by Wolters Kluwer Health, a global provider of medical information. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 5% to 317,268, and anti-depressants were also up 5% to 926,654 in the two months in the city.

Taken alone, the September rise was sharper. As the financial world collapsed that month, New Yorkers filled 11% more sleep aid prescriptions and 9% more prescriptions for anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs than they had in the same period in 2007.

The increases come at a time when spending on all classes of prescription drugs has fallen across the country, as patients deal with tighter budgets. In the city, prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs, anti-depressants and sleep aids had all dropped in August on a year-over-year basis before shooting up in September, according to the Wolters Kluwer Health data.

There’s no way to say with certainty that the increases are directly tied to the financial crisis. But anecdotal evidence from psychiatrists, psychologists and sleep doctors suggests that patient volume is up and that rarely does a session go by without discussion of anxiety over the faltering economy.

“It’s unusual for somebody to come in at this point and for the economic environment not to be on the list of things affecting them,” said Dr. Neil Kavey, director of the Sleep Disorder Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital Columbia University Medical Center. “It’s on everybody’s mind.”

Experts say it’s too soon to tell whether the trend will continue, but with news of layoffs and consumer spending worsening by the day, the psyche of the city remains fragile.

“There’s a sense of foreboding that what’s been going on in recent months is just the beginning,” said Dr. Charles Goodstein, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University Langone Medical Center.

Chief Iraq War Cheerleader and D.C.’s Favorite Idiot Savant Plays Dress-Up in Afghanistan

ASSOCIATED PRESS

DECEMBER 14 2008

By JASON STRAZIUSO

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – The men around Lindsey Graham ignored his powerful political title – U.S. senator – and their own douchechills -instead addressing him by rank – colonel.

Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and the only U.S. senator in the military’s Guard or Reserves, donned the Air Force’s camouflaged uniform for five days last week to serve in Kabul.

The senator enrolled in the ROTC in 1973 and has been in the Air Force Guard or Reserves as a military lawyer ever since. In Kabul, he worked with the staff of military lawyers at the U.S. base Camp Eggers. The office is helping to train military judges and defense lawyers, and to write Afghanistan’s uniform code of military justice.

Graham said his experiences in the military taught him how difficult wartime deployments can be on families.

“One thing I learned is that when a soldier, airman or a Marine is away, the more we can take care of the family, the better they’re going to be able to do their job because there’s nothing worse than being deployed and having family problems,” said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Graham said that when the military mobilized for the war in Iraq, about 20 percent of Guard and Reserve forces were medically disqualified. He said it wasn’t smart to have “20 percent of your force out of the fight without a shot being fired.” About 25 percent of the Guard and Reserves were uninsured.

In response, Graham worked with Sen. Hillary Clinton in 2005 to allow members of the Guard and Reserve to purchase health insurance for themselves and their families through TRICARE, the military’s health care system.

Seven years after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban for hosting al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, the United States has a record level of some 32,000 forces in the country, and American commanders have asked for 20,000 more. Violence has soared over the last two years.

Graham, who was in the capital from Sunday through Thursday, called the challenges in Afghanistan “enormous,” and said the U.S. “let some time get by” without enough focus on the country.

“It’s going to get tougher before it gets better. But we have a new strategy in place. Gen. (David) Petreaus understands how to win wars,” Graham said, referring to the chief of U.S. Central Command. “So I want the people of America to know we’re here to make our own national security better.”

The Taliban appears to be making gains in Afghanistan’s provinces, and more U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan in 2008 than in any year since the invasion, but Graham said history shows that the momentum in conflicts can turn quickly.

In 1987, Graham said, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the U.S. was “vigorous.” By 1990, he pointed out, it was over.

“Momentum for evil or good can be powerful. Things can really deteriorate fast, but things can change and I’ve learned that in Iraq,” Graham said of the country, where violence has dropped quickly over the last year. Graham has also served time in Iraq in the Air Force Reserves.

The politician said his service in the military has made him a better senator.

“You don’t need to be in the military to be a good senator or president, but every experience you have helps you,” Graham said.

A Second Mortgage Meltdown

Good piece.

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McCain Not So Much in Support of Palin For 2012

(CNN) — Sen. John McCain said Sunday he would not necessarily support his former running mate if she chose to run for president.

Speaking to ABC’s “This Week,” McCain was asked whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin could count on his support.

“I can’t say something like that. We’ve got some great other young governors. I think you’re going to see the governors assume a greater leadership role in our Republican Party,” he said.

He then mentioned governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Jon Huntsman of Utah.

McCain said he has “the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family, and it was a great joy to know them.”

“She invigorated our campaign” against Barack Obama for the presidency, he said.

McCain was pressed on why he can’t promise support for the woman who, just months ago, he named as the second best person to lead the nation.

“Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and my view of her viability, but at this stage, again … my corpse is still warm, you know?” he replied.

In his first Sunday political TV appearance since November 4, McCain also promised to work to build consensus in tackling America’s challenges, and criticized his own party for its latest attack on Obama.

McCain rejected complaints from the Republican National Committee that Obama has not been transparent about his contacts with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary,” McCain told ABC’s “This Week.”

“You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody — right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy, stimulus package, reforms that are necessary.”

McCain’s answer came in response to a question about comments from RNC Chairman Mike Duncan. The RNC also released an Internet ad last week, titled “Questions Remain,” suggesting Obama is failing to provide important information about potential links between his associates and Blagojevich.

Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday and charged with trying to trade Obama’s Senate seat for campaign contributions and other favors.

“I don’t know all the details of the relationship between President-elect Obama’s campaign or his people and the governor of Illinois,” McCain told ABC. “But I have some confidence that all the information will come out. It always does, it seems to me.”

McCain said he, like Obama and many other lawmakers, believes Blagojevich should resign.

Despite the heated nature of the race and attacks both former candidates lobbed at each other, McCain emphasized that he plans to focus on pushing lawmakers past partisan politics.

“I think my job is, of course, to be a part of, and hopefully exert some leadership, in the loyal opposition. But I emphasize the word loyal,” McCain said.

“We haven’t seen economic times like this in my lifetime. We haven’t seen challenges abroad at the level that we are experiencing, certainly since the end of the Cold War, and you could argue in some respects that they’re certainly more complex, many of these challenges. So let’s have our first priority where we can work together…

“Will there be areas of disagreement? Of course. We are different parties and different philosophy. But the nation wants us to unite and work together.”

McCain said he wouldn’t comment on whether he thought he had a good chance of winning the presidency, given the Bush administration and the GOP were perceived to be responsible for the economy’s problems. McCain said he would “leave that question” for others “to make that kind of judgment.”

He pointed out that his poll numbers dropped along with the Dow.

“That would sound like I am detracting from President-elect Obama’s campaign. I don’t want to do that… Nobody likes a sore loser.”

The key to moving past the stinging defeat, he said, is to, “Get busy and move on. That’s the best cure for it. I spent a period of time feeling sorry for myself. It’s wonderful. It’s one of the most enjoyable experiences that you can have.

“But the point is: You’ve got to move on… I’m still a senator from the state of Arizona. I still have the privilege and honor of serving this country, which I’ve done all my life, and it’s a great honor to do so.”