Bits & Pieces (Monday Night Open Mic)

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

BTW: I’m out for the rest of the week. I may comment here or there, but posting is going to be out of the question, probably until next Monday. So, any Bits & Pieces are going to have to come from Michigoose, lmscina, Okie, Scott, QB, Mark, or somebody. Not trying to suggest that some of you 99% are mooching off as top 1%, but . . . you know what’s going on.

“That armors to thick for our blasters!” Empire Strikes Back fail:

Name a Man’s name that begins with “K”:

Have you ever seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog with Neil Patrick Harris, and Nathan Fillion as Captain Hammer? It’s awesome. There are several parts, here’s one:

It features Geek Goddess Felicia Day. See more Felicia Day on The Guild, and in her video, Do You Want to Date My Avatar:
***
This Bits and Pieces Brought to you by Mr Sparkle™. He’s disrespectful to dirt! Can you do any less? For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle!
There;s your answer, Fish-bulb!

— KW

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My Saturday morning

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Mike

I forgot to write a post this weekend about our Saturday morning. There’s a charity that builds houses for wounded veterans and they had one built by a developer in our community for Army Sgt. Joel Tavera. His “homecoming” was this weekend, complete with a flag-lined parade route, police/fire escort, and several members of Rolling Thunder. A big to-do, with some top brass present as well (no doubt due to the proximity of MacDill and JSOC, since Gen. McRaven was there). I didn’t know about it until Sat. morning when I saw the flags lining the street and asked my neighbor what was going on. Sgt. Tavera now lives about 1.5 miles from me.

Pix and the story are here:

Home for Sgt. Tavera

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Statement from the UC President

Posted on November 21, 2011 by lmsinca

Students across the UC campus system are protesting in solidarity with the UC Davis students, all of whom are protesting yet another 9% hike in tuition/fees after a 32% hike in 2009 across the 10 campus university.  The image of a police officer emptying a canister of pepper spray directly into the faces of sitting students has caused quite a stir out here.

University of California President Mark G. Yudof today (Nov. 20) announced the actions he is taking in response to recent campus protest issues:

I am appalled by images of University of California students being doused with pepper spray and jabbed with police batons on our campuses.


I intend to do everything in my power as president of this university to protect the rights of our students, faculty and staff to engage in non-violent protest.


Chancellors at the UC Davis and UC Berkeley campuses already have initiated reviews of incidents that occurred on their campuses. I applaud this rapid response and eagerly await the results.


The University of California, however, is a single university with 10 campuses, and the incidents in recent days cry out for a systemwide response.


Therefore I will be taking immediate steps to set that response in motion.


I intend to convene all 10 chancellors, either in person or by telephone, to engage in a full and unfettered discussion about how to ensure proportional law enforcement response to non-violent protest.


To that end, I will be asking the chancellors to forward to me at once all relevant protocols and policies already in place on their individual campuses, as well as those that apply to the engagement of non-campus police agencies through mutual aid agreements.


Further, I already have taken steps to assemble experts and stakeholders to conduct a thorough, far-reaching and urgent assessment of campus police procedures involving use of force, including post-incident review processes.


My intention is not to micromanage our campus police forces. The sworn officers who serve on our campuses are professionals dedicated to the protection of the UC community.


Nor do I wish to micromanage the chancellors. They are the leaders of our campuses and they have my full trust and confidence.


Nonetheless, the recent incidents make clear the time has come to take strong action to recommit to the ideal of peaceful protest.
As I have said before, free speech is part of the DNA of this university, and non-violent protest has long been central to our history. It is a value we must protect with vigilance. I implore students who wish to demonstrate to do so in a peaceful and lawful fashion. I expect campus authorities to honor that right.

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Patriotic Millionaires Want to Raise Taxes On "The Rich"

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

But none of them is willing to make even a token gesture in order to demonstrate the sincerity of their position.

I hope the video embed works. Behind the firewall, I can’t check it:

If not, view it at The Daily Caller, where they say:

Two dozen “patriotic millionaires” traveled to the Capitol on Wednesday to demand that Congress raise taxes on wealthy Americans. 

The Daily Caller attended their press conference with an iPad, which displayed the Treasury Department’s donation page, to find out if any of the “patriotic millionaires” were willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Hot Air also covers the video, where they say :

So what’s the lesson here? True patriots won’t volunteer, but insist on being drafted before coming to this nation’s service? That’s certainly a unique view of “patriotism,” isn’t it? That’s because “patriotism” isn’t what drives this message — it’s ideology. It would be equally “patriotic” to demand that the federal government return to a level of spending that we had just a few years ago, when the federal government spent one out of every five dollars rather than one out of every four in the American economy.

Listening to it, I don’t think these people are very serious about their cause, or they are all remarkably tone deaf. If they are super rich, they couldn’t be bothered to toss off a grand or two (at least while the cameras were rolling) in order to make a show of putting their money where their mouth is? I can’t listen to it now, but I recall one of them saying that everybody needs to pitch in, including the middle class (that will go over well) and another excusing themselves from making any sort of donation because they do “significant” private charity. Uh-huh.

Didn’t hear anything about what they were proposing. We’re they proposing pumping up capital gains, or personal income tax? And I’d be curious how hard any of these folks, who couldn’t even toss of some pocket change just to set a good example toward their cause, actually be impacted by the increased taxes. If they were arguing for increased income taxes, while they themselves profit mostly from capital gains, they could have all been entirely full of shiznits.

While I understand the argument that a correct policy prescription is collective, and that to make a difference the effort needs to be collective, as a layperson with no axe to grind against the super-wealty, all these rich guys come off (perhaps it’s the video editing, but it does not feel like that) as completely full of crap, and out to swindle regular old working joes like me, busy living the American dream of just getting by.

Whether the arguments themselves are inherently hypocritical, the unwillingness, to a man, for any of them to part with what would, quite honestly, be for them the equivalent of pocket change for you or me, just to make a point—that’s speaks volumes to me. And what it says is that this isn’t what they claim, that these people are full of crap, and this so-called tax on the rich is going to leave them largely untouched while funneling cash out of the pockets of the Kevins, Marks, Scotts, QBs, and lmsincas and even yellojkts of the world.

My sense of just their reactions in the video, and I can’t imagine how additional context would help, is that these folks are being dishonest or duplicitous. The most charitable interpretation I can imagine is that they are simply not serious, and posing for fun and for a war story to take back to their friends at the next cocktail party.

Patriotic millionaires. Hmmph.

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Morning Report

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change Percent
S&P Futures 1195.9 -18 -1.48%
Eurostoxx Index 2180 -56.650 -2.53%
Oil (WTI) 96.42 -1.250 -1.28%
US Dollar Index (DXY) 78.465 0.442 0.57%
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.96% -0.06%

US futures are down on the failure of the super committee to reach a deal. FWIW, I am surprised at the reaction – I don’t think anyone expected much anyway. Euro sovereigns are relatively stable this morning. Merger Monday is back, with a $10 billion deal in the pharma space and a deal in the insurance space. Corporations are sitting on a mountain of cash and valuations are low. We should be seeing a lot more of this.

So was Jon Corzine a crook, or just someone who made a bad trade? It seems some of the biggest distressed investors are betting the latter. Of course all assets are good investments at a price, and MF Global bonds are trading at 36 cents on the the dollar, and the bank debt is around 50 cents. These investors are betting that the missing 600 million of customer funds is out there, and will be found. If that is the case, you can make a case that the equity is actually worth something. Which means a full recovery on the bonds and a double or triple as the case may be.

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Nov. 21st.- The Day the Super Committee Died

Posted on November 21, 2011 by lmsinca

In order to vote on any proposal of the Super Committee by Wed. Nov. 23rd. the proposal needs to come before the committee members by tonight at midnight.  Apparently, the Sunday shows were full of committee members and other members of Congress discussing it’s failure but more importantly pointing fingers at the other side for the inability to reach a compromise.  Do they think the American people ever believed they would reach some decision regarding the future budget of the country?  Congressional approval hovers at 9%, that should tell you all you need to know.

Here’s a little from the WaPo regarding Super Committee failure:

“If the supercommittee fails, I think there will be a stark realization by every member of the U.S. Senate that we’re at the end of the year and these complex challenges have not been dealt with,” Sessions said. “It’s likely to be a really difficult period.”

The policy battle comes as the parties are gearing up for a high-stakes election season dominated by economic concerns, with both the White House and Congress in play. The political pressure that has helped keep the 12-member supercommittee from compromising on hot-button issues such as taxes is sure to grow more intense.

If the supercommittee does not finish on time, it would lose special procedural powers to push a tax-and-spending plan through a bitterly divided House and Senate, leaving congressional leaders without an easy path to compromise on the expiring provisions — and a potentially nasty holiday-season fight on their hands.
“We don’t have the answers,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, conceded recently as it became evident that the panel’s effort had stalled. “The supercommittee was put in place” to develop “a strategy to take us through the election” by resolving the toughest outstanding budget problems, he said. “If they don’t succeed, then we have to address these issues.”

David Dayen suggests burial for the super committee.

This does raise a set of key issues going forward as we reach the end of the year, however. The Super Committee is a dead letter. They are exceedingly likely not to recommend anything at all. Jon Kyl talked about the committee in the past tense on the morning shows today. It’s all over except for the finger-pointing, which will be as meaningless as it is intense.

But there are all these loose ends out there, and all of them would actually increase the deficit, just to show you what a joke fiscal responsibility has always been. First, there are the aforementioned payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits extension. Those expire at the end of the year. So do two other notable measures: the patch that avoids a cut to Medicare reimbursement for providers by over 20%, colloquially known as the “doc fix,” and the adjustment to the alternative minimum tax that helps the upper middle class avoid the additional levy. Then there are a host of other expiring tax breaks, many for businesses, that usually get lumped in and called “tax extenders.” The thumbnail cost for extending every single one of the above-mentioned items is $300 billion. By the same token, that’s the amount you would take out of the economy if you failed to extend any of these measures. And that would, as noted above, be a significant fiscal drag on the economy.

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