The Sunday 'Report;' 08/14/2011

What The National Pamphleteers Don't Report:
50% Favor Jobs Tax Credits for Hiring Young Veterans
August 09, 2011
Faced with continuing high unemployment, voters feel strongly that the government needs to launch a job-creating program, but they still have far more faith in business leaders to create new jobs. They give mixed reviews to [....]
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/jobs_employment/august_2011/50_favor_jobs_tax_credits_for_hiring_young_veterans

SEC Investigating S and P Employees for Insider Trading Over Downgrade of US Debt
Aug 12, 2011
By Forrest Jones
    The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked Standard and Poor’s to hand over a list of people who knew the agency was going to downgrade U.S. ratings before it was announced to see if possible insider trading took place.  Sources familiar with the issue tell the Financial Times that the SEC’s enforcement division isn't after the S&P nor do they have evidence of specific trading activity that would suggest a leak.  An examination department, which oversees ratings agencies, asked for names.  Should a formal investigation evolve, a bigger issue could arise – Standard and Poor’s license.
    The Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006 states that an agency could have its license revoked if it leaks information prior to disclosing a move on a rating public, MarketWatch reports.  The ratings agency must also have policies and procedures to prevent such a disclosure.
“If it is true that they told hedge funds and briefed banks and told a few people ahead of everyone else that would appear to be a clear violation 2006 Act,” says Consumer Federation of America director Barbara Roper, according to MarketWatch.  “Credit rating agencies have to have polices to prevent the dissemination of pending rating action on the Internet.”  Increasing the probe from an inquiry [....]
http://www.moneynews.com/Headline/SEC-S-P-Downgrade-US/2011/08/12/id/407058?s=al&promo_code=CD2C-1

Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy
August 9, 2011
By George Friedman
    Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. The two fields are certainly different but they are also intimately linked. The use of the term “economy” by itself did not begin until the late 19th century. Smith understood that while an efficient market would emerge from individual choices, those choices were framed by the political system in which they were made, just as the political system was shaped by economic realities. For classical economists, the political and economic systems were intertwined, each dependent on the other for its existence.  The current economic crisis is best understood as a crisis of political economy. Moreover, it has to be understood as a global crisis enveloping the United States, Europe and China that has different details but one overriding theme: the relationship between the political order and economic life. On a global scale, or at least for most of the world’s major economies, there is a crisis of political economy. Let’s consider how it evolved.
Origin of the Crisis
As we all know, the origin of the current financial crisis was the subprime mortgage meltdown in the United States. To be more precise, it originated in a financial system generating paper assets whose value depended on the price of housing. It assumed that the price of homes would always rise and, at the very [....]
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110808-global-economic-downturn-crisis-political-economy?utm_source=freelist-f&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20110809&utm_term=gweekly&utm_content=readmore&elq=6b2926a783b1490a973affbe06f983bc

Just Who, Exactly, Is Delusional?
August 9, 2011
by Robert Ringer
    The Tea Party sent Republicans to Washington for the express purpose of cutting government spending.Isn’t it remarkable how the left is railing on and on about how the Tea Party members of Congress held the debt-ceiling talks hostage by demanding that there be no tax hikes? They have even referred to them as terrorists and suicide bombers, malcontents who ignored the heartfelt pleas of that paragon of unity, Barack Obama, to tone down the rhetoric after the Tucson shootings.  But something doesn’t quite ring true here. If the Tea Party contingency sabotaged the debt-ceiling talks, why would a majority of Republicans be so mad at them?  Democratic nonsense aside, the truth is that Republicans:

1. Raised the debt ceiling enough to take the pressure off Obama until after the 2012 elections,

2. Were not able to assure that there will be no tax hikes in the near future (trust me, there will be),
3. And rather than cutting spending, merely slowed the growth of spending (as Republicans have been doing for decades) from an Obama baseline that would have been unheard of even in the George W. Bush years.

http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/government/just-who-exactly-is-delusional/?eiid=&rmid=2011_08_09_PLA_[E11343050]&rrid=387432349

Read This Speech
August 12, 2011
By Rich Lowry
There’s been a lot of discussion this week about rioting and who bears responsibility for it. In my mind, far and away the best entry in this debate is Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter’s speech last Sunday. In fact, it’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve heard from any politician in a long time. I wrote a column about it today. But don’t take my word for it. Read the whole thing, pasted below:

    Now I must say first: two things. One: Some of you may know that 30 Americans died overseas, an elite unit of our military. Whether you agree with our foreign policy or not, I certainly ask that you would pray for the men and women who risk their lives each and every day to make sure that we can enjoy the freedoms, as Americans, that some of us seem to take for granted. They’re serving their country. Other people make the decision about what they do and where they go, but they’re doing their job. And unfortunately, one of those 30 is the son of a Philadelphia police officer. So I would ask that you would keep all of them, but especially that Philadelphia family that’s been affected, in your hearts.
    Now, I’m gonna say some things this morning that I know, from time to time, many of you think but may not say. It will not be PC, but I told Reverend Campbell that I will recognize that I’m in church and I’m in his pulpit, so I will certainly be respectful. On the other hand there are some words that we know that are also found in the Bible, and I may use a few of those. Pastor mentioned that we’ve had some incidents in Philadelphia, the most recent of which was the Friday before last, 20, 30 kids running around Center City, and it’s happened in other parts of Philadelphia as well. A 16-, a 17-, a 19-year-old, and yes, an 11-year-old. And while I may have been out of my office, I was not out of communication. And I sent a message to Police Commissioner Ramsey first thing that morning, as soon as I heard that report, read that report, that we have to do something, and we put our team together that day, to start working on some things, and so I want to share my thoughts.
    The first is, this nonsense must stop. It must stop. If you want to act like a butthead, your butt is going to get locked up. And if you want to act like an idiot, move, move out of this city. We don’t want you here anymore. First, I want to [....]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/274393/read-speech-rich-lowry


The Wind-Energy Myth
The claims for this “green” source of energy wither in the Texas heat.
by Robert Bryce
August 12, 2011
    Hot? Don’t count on wind energy to cool you down. That’s the lesson emerging from the stifling heat wave that’s hammering Texas.  Over the past week or so, Texans have been consuming record-breaking quantities of electricity, and ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, has warned of rolling blackouts if customers don’t reduce their consumption.   Texas has 10,135 megawatts of installed wind-generation capacity. That’s nearly three times as much as any other state. But during three sweltering days last week, when the state set new records for electricity demand, the state’s vast herd of turbines proved incapable of producing any serious amount of power.
    Consider the afternoon of August 2, when electricity demand hit 67,929 megawatts. Although electricity demand and prices were peaking, output from the state’s wind turbines was just 1,500 megawatts, or about 15 percent of their total nameplate capacity. Put another way, wind energy was able to provide only about 2.2 percent of the total power demand even though the installed capacity of Texas’s wind turbines theoretically equals nearly 15 percent of peak demand. This was no anomaly. On four days in August 2010, when electricity demand set records, wind energy was able to contribute just 1, 2, 1, and 1 percent, respectively, of total demand.  Over the past few years, about $17 billion has been spent installing wind turbines in Texas. Another $8 billion has been allocated for transmission lines to carry the electricity generated by the turbines to distant cities. And now, Texas ratepayers are on the hook for much of that $25 billion, even though they can’t count on the wind to keep their air conditioners running when temperatures soar.
    That $25 billion could have been used to build about 5,000 megawatts of highly reliable nuclear generation capacity, or as much as 25,000 megawatts of natural-gas-fired capacity, all of which could have been reliably put to work during the hottest days of summer.  The wind-energy lobby has been masterly at garnering huge subsidies [....]http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274388/wind-energy-myth-robert-bryce#

This Year Keep Your Kids Home From College
8/8/2011
by Mike Adams
    I am frequently asked whether I would be willing to spend the money necessary to send my own kids to a four-year brick and mortar college. The answer used to be a qualified “yes.” But college isn’t what it used to be. So my answer is now a firm “probably not.”  While I once considered college to be a good investment for most high school graduates I have come to believe that it is a bad idea for most of them. Note that I am not saying that college simply doesn’t deliver the good things it once did. I am saying much more than that; namely that it often hurts young people. And it does so in at least four distinct ways:
1. Spiritually. Three out of four Christian teens walk away from church after they leave home. The fact that they do so is largely the result of what they encounter in college. Here in my department (Sociology and Criminology) at my university (UNC-Wilmington) the anti-Christian indoctrination begins in freshman survey courses. Feminist professors are seemingly incapable of discussing important issues like same-sex marriage without engaging in ad hominem attacks against Christians. For example, those who adhere to the majority view (in support of traditional marriage) are characterized by their feminist sociology professors as advancing “hetero-sexism” driven by “homo-phobia.” It is no wonder that in classroom discussions the students voice support for the professor’s opinion. They want to avoid being attacked personally. And so a false consensus emerges. Eventually the students abandon their worldview in a move based on the false premise that their views are somehow out of sync with social progress.  Just in case the student retains some of his religious upbringing an array of special programs and special offices – designed to indoctrinate on religious issues –is there to reinforce your child’s spiritual drift. Our own LGBTQIA Office organizes specific lectures teaching kids that their biblical views on sexuality are actually a form of mental illness, or phobia. This helps explain the second way kids are often harmed by college.
2.  Morally. I don’t know when it first hit me. Maybe it was when I saw our (former) Women’s Resource Center director handing out condoms to students during orientation. Or maybe it was when I read about the “sexual health expert” who gave a lecture (on a UNC campus) called “Safe Sodomy.” Or maybe it was the time they erected (sorry) a vibrator museum on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill. No, I think it was the time our [....]http://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2011/08/08/this_year_keep_your_kids_home_from_college/page/full/

The Debt Panel’s Patty Murray Problem
She is the symbol of Democratic intellectual bankruptcy on entitlements.
by Michelle Malkin
August 12, 2011
    Everything that’s wrong with the so-called debt super-committee can be summed up in the person, partisan hackery, and policy ignorance of Washington Democrat Sen. Patty Murray.  On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid named Murray co-chairman of the dog-and-pony deficit-reduction panel tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by late November. Murray, an unrepentant nanny-state cheerleader and patron saint of the Washington lobbyist, is a double exclamation point on the debt deal’s rotten joke.
    Charlie Brown had Peppermint Patty. America has U.S. Mint Patty. This is a career politician who has never met a special interest she thinks shouldn’t be supported by taxpayers. Derided for her earmark addiction by both conservative and liberal civic groups, she has cemented her position as the Senate Queen of Pork over 18 gluttonous years in office.  Murray takes perverse pride in increasing debt limits on pet projects in her home state. Her solution to our fiscal crisis: spend, borrow, spend and borrow some more! In 2009, she stuffed the Obama porkulus with a $3.25 billion provision benefiting the federal Bonneville Power Administration by massively [....]http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274392/debt-panel-s-patty-murray-problem-michelle-malkin

King Wants investigation of 'administration sanctioned' film on bin Laden killing.
By Caroline May
The Daily Caller
August 10, 2011 
    The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has called for an investigation into reports that the Obama administration is granting Sony Pictures and director Kathryn Bigelow “high-level access” for a film about the Navy SEAL operation which killed Osama Bin Laden. The movie is scheduled for release one month before the 2012 presidential election.  New York Republican Rep. Peter King sent a letter Tuesday to Defense Department Inspector General Gordon Heddell and CIA Inspector General David Buckley, expressing his concern about declassifying sensitive information for pure entertainment.  “The administration’s first duty in declassifying material is to provide full reporting to Congress and the American people, in an effort to [....]http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/10/king-requests-investigation-of-administration-sanctioned-film-on-classified-bin-laden-raid/#ixzz1UjJ96K00

 
Don’t go on vacation - just GO
Now that his incompetence is obvious, Obama should resign
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner
The Washington Times
August 11, 2011
    America’s economy is in free-fall. Growth is anemic. The stock market is collapsing. Real unemployment - combining the high jobless rate with rampant underemployment - is higher than 16 percent. Manufacturing is dead. Deficits, debt and government spending are at record levels. Our credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history. The trade deficit has exploded to the highest in years.A possible Great Depression haunts the land. Primarily one man is to blame: President Obama.
    Mr. Obama has racked up more than $4 trillion in debt. His massive spending stimulus has failed and made the jobless situation worse. Before his stimulus package was passed in February 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 7.8 percent. Today it is at 9.1 percent - and rising. Mr. Obama promised that his Keynesian borrow-and-spend policies would kick-start the economy. He has run up three consecutive trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits, an orgy of spending unrivaled in our history. The result: Nearly 2 million private-sector jobs [....]http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/11/dont-go-on-vacation-just-go/

New Obamacare Violations of Personal Liberty
8/8/2011
by Star Parker
    Who can forget that rare moment of honesty during the campaign to pass Obamacare when Nancy Pelosi said “We have to pass the bill in order for you to find out what’s in it”?  Now we have it and almost daily there are new revelations about the staggering extent to which our private lives and individual freedoms have been stomped on.  We learn now that free birth control in the form of contraceptives, morning after pills, and sterilization is part of the grand Obamacare socialist dream-come-true.  The health insurance that Obamacare mandates that all employers provide and that all citizens acquire must pay 100 percent for these birth control products and services, with no deductible or co-pays. Birth control gets more preferential treatment than cancer or heart disease.  Liberals say government should be kept out of your bedroom. What they mean by this is that it shouldn’t interfere with what you do there, not that it shouldn’t force taxpayers to pay for it.  The provision mandating [....]http://townhall.com/columnists/starparker/2011/08/08/new_obamacare_violations_of_personal_liberty

State deems future soldier unfit for football after basic training
By Cameron Smith
August 12, 2011
In a shocking decision, the Illinois High School Association board of directors has refused to issue a waiver to a high school football player seeking to play in his school's first game who missed the start of preseason training while away on Army basic training in Georgia.  According to the Paxton Record's Cody Westerlund, Paxton-Buckley-Loda star running back and linebacker Eddie Nuss, who is a rising senior at the school, has been forced to miss nearly all of PDL's preseason training because he is still in the midst of Army basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia. He won't return until August 19, which is only one week before the school's football season opener.  That seven day [....]http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/State-deems-future-soldier-unfit-for-football-af?urn=highschool-wp4590
Until Next Sunday....