Sully on K-Lo

Kathryn-Jean Lopez is an editor-at-large for the National Review Online and is no rocket scientist. Sadly, the National Review, a once bastion of intellectual thought on the right, is now pretty much lockstep with what passes for political philosophy on the American right — that is, it doesn’t exist. Plenty of me-tooism and anger at paper tigers, but not so much on the fronts that make any difference.

Andrew Sullivan, blogger of the Daily Dish, and an actual philosophical conservative, totally nails Lopez here:

… this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start … and now we’re left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore …

 

House of Representatives passes health care reform bill

Final tally of 220-215 for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Now the show is off to the Senate.

Overdraft fees — consumer banks v. consumers

Consumer banking has largely been about screwing the customer for a long time — at least as far as the large, national, impersonal banks (you know, the ones that advertise on television) go. Long ago, something like 15 years ago, I wrote an article for a business magazine on some of the underhanded techniques consumer banks were using to gouge customers.

Back then one of the growing trends was charging a premium for what was called a “meatspace transaction.” Although it sounds vaguely pornographic, a meatspace transaction was anything that involved a living teller, either face-to-face or through drive-up banking. Happily that bit of foolishness didn’t have any legs. One troubling practice that did, and still does, is overdraft fees and how they are processed.

They are almost unavoidable in terms of the bank will happily let you go below your balance instead of declining the transaction.

From the link:

Ever write a check thinking you had plenty in your account to cover it? Make a debit card purchase before your paycheck cleared? How about the time you withdrew $5 too much from the ATM?

Sure, your bank was happy to cover the amount. Why not? Although touted as a customer “convenience,” overdraft fees have been soaring. Last year, overdraft charges generated nearly $24 billion dollars for banks and credit unions. That’s 35% more than just two years earlier, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

Warning! No Warning

The first problem with overdraft fees is that you don’t receive any notice that the transaction you’re about to make will exceed the balance in your account. If you did, at least you’d be able to choose whether you want to continue with it or not.

In some cases you can trigger overdraft charges even if your online statement shows you have plenty in yourchecking account! That’s because your balance is “theoretical” and doesn’t reflect the fact that a recent deposit may not have been in your account long enough for the funds to “clear.”

But the really dirty part of the process is how your incoming transactions are handled:

The Re-ordering Trick

Another criticism is that financial institutions can play games with your transactions in order to trigger a cascade of overdrafts.

For instance, say you make four debit card purchases in a day. Your available balance was $90. The first three transactions were for $25, $20, and $40. The last one was for $100. If taken in chronological order, there is adequate money in your account to cover the first three purchases. Only the last one would result in an overdraft charge.

But that’s not the way your bank computer system is programmed. Instead, it will change the order of your purchases in order to deplete your account sooner by subtracting the largest transactions first.

In the above example, your $100 purchase would come out of your account ahead of the other three. Since it exceeds your balance by $10, it generates a $35 charge. Next, with your account already under water (according to the bank’s math), your other three purchases are posted. You end up paying $140 (4 x $35) for the “convenience” of overdraft protection.

Quite the trick there. Consumer banks have been playing so dirty for so long, and were on the receiving end of so much government bailout money Congress is stepping up to the plate for the consumer at long last.

We’ll see where this ends up, but I think it’s about time Main Street was given a little protection from practices that should have been illegal from the get-go. I guess we ought to be happy consumer banks didn’t go around breaking kneecaps like Vinny from the corner might have. Because really, that’s about the only difference between usury and a typical consumer bank.

Also from the link:

Kathleen Day, a spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, calls the current state of overdraft fees “ridiculous” and an “outrage.” The Center and other consumer protection organizations place the blame squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve, which regulates most large financial institutions in this country.

“The Fed has known for years these practices are hurting customers and they’ve failed to act,” charges Day. The Senate Finance Committee has drafted the “Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act,” or the FAIR Act, which would limit overdraft fees banks can impose.

China fears microblogging

Doesn’t the leadership know information wants to be free — even at 140 Modern English alphabet characters a pop.

Jokes aside, here’s a bit from the first link:

A Chinese government watchdog plans to push Twitter-style Web sites to censor their content, the country’s latest move to block Internet users from posting certain politically sensitive information online.The government-linked Internet Society of China plans to compose “self-discipline standards” for microblogging services, a group representative said in an e-mail. The representative declined to give details, but the group has released similar guidelines for other Web sites before. A document the group released for blog providers calls for them to delete “illegal or harmful information” as it appears on their sites, or simply to cease blog service for infringing users. Chinese authorities have used the term “harmful information” to describe online content including pornography and discussion of politically sensitive topics such as Falun Gong, a spiritual group banned in the country.

Twitter and Facebook have been blocked in all of China since July, when deadly ethnic riots in the country’s western Xinjiang region led it to crack down on communication tools that could be used to gather people at a given location. Authorities also blocked all Internet service and text messaging in Xinjiang after the rioting, which state-run media say killed nearly 200 people.

Some Chinese-language Twitter rivals also went offline after the rioting. One of the bigger sites, Digu, came online again last month, but rival service Fanfou is still down.

No more Sarb-Ox for small business?

This should be welcome news.

From the link:

Small businesses would be granted a permanent reprieve from complying with part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform laws, under a draft U.S. House of Representatives bill discussed on Tuesday.

Small companies have not had to comply fully with the rules since the Sarbanes-Oxley law was approved in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals.

Companies with a market capitalization below $75 million have argued that they faced disproportionately higher costs compared with larger companies and have convinced regulators to delay compliance at least five times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is now requiring small companies to report on the effectiveness of their internal controls as of June 15, 2010.

But Republicans, hoping to thwart this SEC requirement, introduced an amendment on Tuesday to a House Financial Services Committee draft bill to do just that.

Fed sees overnight lending rates remaining around nil …

… for an “extended period.”

NewMajority.com has rebranded …

… to FrumForum.com.

From the link, David Frum’s take on the move:

From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.

The best solution seemed to be: a change of name. But to what?

New York-23

I’m of a split mind on this race and what it portends. Once a third-party (Conservative Party no less) entered the race and actually got enough traction to boot Scozzafava, the GOP candidate with New York state moderate Republican bona fides, I immediate thought this is beginning of the end of the GOP. The three-legged stool has been broken for a while and the 2008 election cycle busted it for good. The question has been how will the GOP regroup. The response so far has been a reduction to a theocratic, angry, white rump of a party with around a quarter of of the voting population willing to admit to even being a member of the Republican Party.

My second mind on this race is I see some sanity from different pundits around the blogosphere who argue not to make too much out of an off-year election in a tiny district.

The issue, now that the election is done, and has been won by a Democrat for the first time in more than 150 years. It’s just one vote in the House, but the national GOP leaders — and sadly that group doesn’t really contain any office holders and is largely comprised of entertainers — happily lost a Republican vote that was going to be a little squishy (and thus a RINO) for a Democratic vote that potentially will never cross the aisle.

The end result is the Democratic leadership has little to fear from a new Conservative Party leaving the GOP and a lot to gain from just that occurrence. The entertainers-in-chiefs leading the current GOP have been proven to be quite toothless in swinging elections and the angry rump of the GOP has been shown they can be quite effective in ridding the party of those less-than-pure RINOs. This group will trade ideology for elections any day believing that as the GOP becomes more “pure” — that is, pure to their thinking — it’ll start winning elections again.

This does not make for a winning combination. It’s telling the big GOP wins yesterday in governor elections did not come from the frothy edge of the right. Sadly for the GOP the frothy edge of the right owns the national spotlight, and as long as entertainers set the Republican standards that will remain the status quo. Money for the entertainers, Democrats in elected office.

The Green Wave continues

The revolution against Iran’s despotic ruling faction is far from over and there have been a multitude of reports of “Death to the Dictator” shout and defacing and stomping on posters of Khamenei.

From the link:

1902 GMT: Josh Shahryar, having gone through the videos and reports of today’s events, estimates that 25,000 to 30,000 opposition demonstrators were on the streets of Tehran at some point during 13 Aban. An estimated 2000-3000 were marching in Isfahan, but there is not enough information yet to project the numbers in other cities.

Is New York 23 a microcosm of the GOP’s future?

If so I see a dead party.

Finding small business grants

All you need to know about this linked article is in the subhead:

‘Small business grants are rare, but they do exist. Here’s how to find them.”

A cloud computing primer

I’ve done plenty of blogging about cloud computing, but as the buzzword gets more and more mainstream, more people become curious. This article lays out the basics, pros and cons of cloud computing for anyone looking for a quick primer.

From the second link:

What exactly are we talking about? The “cloud” is an IT term for the Internet, and cloud computing, or cloud integration, means storing and having access to your computer data and software on the Internet, rather than running it on your personal computer or office server. In fact, if you use programs such as Gmail or Google docs (GOOG), you may not realize you are already doing cloud computing.

Part of the confusion is that the terminology is rather vaporous, particularly for non-tech-savvy types, including many small business owners. And it does represent a major shift in how businesses and individuals use and store digital information. We’ll go through some pros and cons that may help you decide whether this is right for your firm.

The public plan is in play

And if the GOP is honestly against it I really wonder why the party took itself out of the sausage-making from day one.

From the link:

U.S. House leaders today plan to unveil legislation that would create a government-run health- insurance program, require employers to offer coverage to their workers and impose a new tax on the wealthiest Americans.

The legislation comes after three months of negotiations by House Democrats and represents the most sweeping changes to the nation’s health-care system since the 1965 creation of the federal Medicare program for the elderly. The measure would overhaul the insurance market, encourage greater use of preventive medicine and help Americans buy coverage.

“We think we’ll have the votes,” said California Representative George Miller, who runs the House Education and Labor Committee, after meeting with fellow Democrats yesterday. Formal debate is planned for next week, Miller said.

Lawmakers said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to a compromise over one of the most divisive issues facing Congress — the establishment of the government insurance program to compete with private insurers try to and drive down costs.

Stimulus money going to the power grid

Almost three and half billion dollars of stimulus money in fact. This ARRA cash will be stretched by a requirement for matching private investment.

From the link:

President Obama on Tuesday announced a $3.4 billion federal investment to modernize the country’s outdated power grid.

The money will go to 100 projects in 49 states to add automated substations, digital transformers, electric meters in homes and other high-tech equipment to create a “smart” grid.

“We’re going to create an energy superhighway,” Mr. Obama said when making the announcement at Florida Power & Light Co.’s DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla., one of the country’s biggest solar-power facilities.

ARPA-E

Government funded skunk works for energy.

From the link:

Its mission is to identify “revolutionary advances in fundamental sciences,” then translate these advances into “technological innovations,” particularly in areas where industry won’t do this on its own because the technology is considered too risky. In some ways ARPA-E is supposed to be for energy technologies what DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is for the military. That agency had its hand in the development of a number of revolutionary new technologies, including Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet.

The first batch of ARPA-E projects is certainly fascinating. It includes projects that could improve the performance of current energy technologies by many times, slashing the cost of solar panels and batteries, for example. If they succeed, the world could be a different place. Renewable energy could out-compete fossil fuels without the help of subsidies and long-range electric cars could become widely affordable, challenging the dominance of the internal combustion engine.

 

The latest in military robots

Anyone remember BigDog, the four-legged military robot from Boston Dynamics that many found a bit creepy?  Meet Petman, the two-legged cousin of BigDog.

From the Technology Review link:

The company that created BigDog–a headless robotic pack mule with an impressively realistic gait–recently released a video of another robot, Petman.

This bipedal bot walks on two legs and can recover from a push, using the same balancing technology that allows BigDog to recover from a kick or keep its balance when walking on ice.

While BigDog was designed to carry payloads for soldiers in the field, Petman will be used for military chemical suit research. In the final version, which should be ready in 2011, Petman will have a range of motions. According to the company:

Unlike previous suit testers, which had to be supported mechanically and had a limited repertoire of motion, PETMAN will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents.

Bruce Bartlett comes out in favor of VAT

Bartlett is an interesting read these days. One of the major supply-siders back in the day, his economic positions seem to have shifted a  bit. He says, and I tend to agree with him, he’s only reacting to the conditions on the ground and his fundamental economic beliefs are no different than when Reagan held the White House. Of course a value added tax was one tax vehicle in the supply-side economic toolbox.

In a move that probably makes the heads of his old pals in the GOP explode, Bartlett writes in Forbes an extended defense of, and recommendation for, a national value added tax.

From the middle link:

few years ago, I concluded that the magnitude of our looming fiscal problem was so enormous that higher taxes were inevitable–and that was long before the recent crisis made matters vastly worse. Moreover, I concluded that the magnitude of this tax increase is so great that it would seriously cripple the economy if accomplished through higher rates on an already dysfunctional income tax system. Reluctantly, I concluded that a value-added tax (VAT) is the best way to raise the revenue that would, in any case, be raised.

When I first made this suggestion in a Los Angeles Timesarticle in 2004, I was building on a large body of tax analysis showing that the VAT is the best known way of raising revenue. When I say “best” I mean that it raises large revenues from low rates and has minimal disincentive effects. In economists’ speak, it has a very small dead weight or welfare cost–the economic output lost by the tax over and above the revenue collected.

Based on the experience in other countries, I estimate that a U.S. VAT could realistically tax about a third of the gross domestic product (GDP), which would raise close to $50 billion per percentage point. If we adopted Europe’s average VAT rate of 20%, we could raise $1 trillion per year in 2009 dollars.

Cato v. Heritage

On the topic of the Patriot Act two right leaning think tanks pair off. This she says/he says is a nice, succinct illustration of one key difference between the right-wing hawkishness/pro-military industrial complex and libertarian schools of thought.

In a nutshell, the Heritage Foundation is all for the Patriot Act and its civil liberties trampling totality. The Cato Institute is for protecting the hard-won freedoms of American citizens while continuing to work at keeping the U.S. safe from terrorism.

The point further boils down to: do you trust handing the government total control over your civil liberties and right to privacy, or not. Personally I’m 100 percent behind the Cato approach, and honestly the Heritage position strikes me as profoundly un-American. The founding fathers would certainly not recognize the Heritage stance as having anything to do with their noble ideals.

John McCain v. net neutrality

Disappointing news from the Arizona senator.

I’ve never felt McCain was in the pocket of corporate America, but unless he signed off on a bill he doesn’t understand that’s the only conclusion for this move. And the name — the Internet Freedom Act?  That’s some Orwellian obfuscation worthy of well, standard GOP talking points which is exactly where it probably came from.

It is interesting to see the various sides lining up for and against net neutrality now that the FCC has brought the regulation argument to the actual table.

From the first link:

U.S. Senator John McCain has introduced legislation that would block the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from creating new net neutrality rules, on the same day that the FCC took the first step toward doing so.

McCain on Thursday introduced the Internet Freedom Act, which would keep the FCC from enacting rules prohibiting broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Internet content and applications. Net neutrality rules would create “onerous federal regulation,” McCain said in a written statement.

The FCC on Thursday voted to begin a rulemaking process to formalize net neutrality rules. The rules, as proposed, would allow Web users to run the legal applications and access the legal Web sites of their choice. Providers could use “reasonable” network management to reduce congestion and maintain quality of service, but the rules would require them to be transparent with consumers about their efforts.

The new rules would formalize a set of net neutrality principles in place at the FCC since 2005.

McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the proposed net neutrality rules a “government takeover” of the Internet that will stifle innovation and depress an “already anemic” job market in the U.S. McCain was the Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and Obama has said net neutrality rules are among his top tech priorities.

TARP recipients to get White House mandated pay cut

I’m no fan of the government telling a business how much it’s going to pay executives, but you have to say the major TARP recipients brought this on themselves. After the forced bailout (most of these players had no choice but to go along with the bailout) the situation became no longer business as usual. Somehow that point was lost on the C-level at Citigroup, BoA, GM, Chrysler, GMAC, Chrysler Financial, and especially AIG. The end result? The pay packages of 175 top executives are going to start seeing much lighter pay checks.

Cue an entire chorus of nanoscale violins.

From the link:

The Obama administration will soon order the nation’s biggest bailed-out companies to drastically cut the pay packages of 175 top executives, a senior administration official confirmed to CNN Wednesday.

Kenneth Feinberg, who was named the White House’s pay czar in June, will demand that each of the seven largest bailout recipients lower the total compensation for their top 25 highest paid employees by 50%, on average, the official told CNN.

And here’s the big number:

Under the plan, which is expected to be officially released by the Treasury Department next week, annual salaries for executives at those seven firms are expected to fall 90%, on average, the official said.

FCC releases proposed net neutrality rules

I’m putting the FCC’s net neutrality press release from today in this post and you can hit this link (go to the entries from 10/22/09 to find the links) to find more statements. Here’s a link to the PDF of the “official notice of proposed rulemaking.”

Here’s the FCC’s net neutrality press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

October 22, 2009

COMMISSION SEEKS PUBLIC INPUT ON DRAFT RULES

TO PRESERVE THE FREE AND OPEN INTERNET

Washington, D.C. — In the next chapter of a longstanding effort to preserve the free and open Internet, the Federal Communications Commission is seeking public input on draft rules that would codify and supplement existing Internet openness principles.

In addition to providing greater predictability for all stakeholders, the Notice is aimed at securing the many economic and social benefits that an open Internet has historically provided. It seeks to do so in a manner that will promote and protect the legitimate needs of consumers, broadband Internet access service providers, entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses of all sizes that make use of the Internet.

The Commission has addressed openness issues in a variety of contexts and proceedings, including: a unanimous policy statement in 2005, a notice of inquiry on broadband industry practices in 2007, public comment on several petitions for rulemaking, conditions associated with significant communications industry mergers, the rules for the 700 MHz spectrum auction in 2007, specific enforcement actions, and public en banc hearings. During this time period, opportunities for public participation have generated over 100,000 pages of input in approximately 40,000 filings from interested parties and members of the public.

The process today’s Notice initiates will build upon the existing record at the Commission to identify the best means to achieve the goal of preserving and promoting the open Internet.

Recognizing that the proposed framework needs to balance potentially competing interests while helping to ensure an open, safe, and secure Internet, the draft rules would permit broadband Internet access service providers to engage in reasonable network management, including but not limited to reasonable practices to reduce or mitigate the effects of network congestion.

Under the draft proposed rules, subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service:

1.   would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet;

2.   would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice;

3.   would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network;

4.   would not be allowed to deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers;

5.   would be required to treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner; and

6.   would be required to disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking.

The draft rules make clear that providers would also be permitted to address harmful traffic and traffic unwanted by users, such as spam, and prevent both the transfer of unlawful content, such as child pornography, and the unlawful transfer of content, such as a transfer that would infringe copyright. Further, nothing in the draft rules supersedes any obligation a broadband Internet access service provider may have — or limits its ability — to deliver emergency communications, or to address the needs of law enforcement, public safety, or national or homeland security authorities, consistent with applicable law.

The Commission is also seeking comment on how it should address “managed” or “specialized” services, which are Internet-Protocol-based offerings provided over the same networks used for broadband Internet access services. While the proceeding will seek input on how best to define and treat such services, managed services could include voice, video, and enterprise business services, or specialized applications like telemedicine, smart grid, or eLearning offerings. These services may provide consumer benefits and lead to increased deployment of broadband networks.

The Notice asks how the Commission should define the category of managed or specialized services, what policies should apply to them, and how to ensure that broadband providers’ ability to innovate, develop valuable new services, and experiment with new technologies and business models can co-exist with the preservation of the free and open Internet on which consumers and businesses of all sizes depend.

The Notice affirms that the six principles it proposes to codify would apply to all platforms for broadband Internet access, including mobile wireless broadband, while recognizing that different access platforms involve significantly different technologies, market structures, patterns of consumer usage, and regulatory history. To that end, the Notice seeks comment on how, in what time frames or phases, and to what extent the principles should apply to non-wireline forms of broadband Internet access, including mobile wireless.

Recognizing that the Commission’s decisions in this rulemaking must reflect a thorough understanding of current technology and future technological trends, the Chief of the Commission’s Office of Engineering & Technology will create an inclusive, open, and transparent process for obtaining the best technical advice and information from a broad range of engineers.

The adoption of this Notice will open a window for submitting comments to the FCC. Comments can be filed through the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System, and are due on Thursday, January 14. Reply comments are due on Friday, March 5.  In addition, the rulemaking process will include many other avenues for public input, including open workshops on key issues;  providing feedback through openinternet.gov, which will include regular blog posts by Commission staff; and other new media tools, including IdeaScale, an online platform for brainstorming and rating solutions to policy challenges.

Action by the Commission, October 22, 2009, by Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 09-93).  Chairman Genachowski, Commissioners Copps and Clyburn; Commissioner McDowell and Commissioner Baker concurring in part, dissenting in part.  Separate statements issued by Chairman Genachowski, Commissioners Copps, McDowell, Clyburn and Baker.

GN Docket No.: 09-191

WC Docket No.: 07-52

-FCC-

News about the Federal Communications Commission can also be found

on the Commission’s web site www.fcc.gov.

The rump keeps shrinking

Not good numbers for the GOP. Particularly that green line (independents) that is probably made up of quite a few voters who formerly self-identified as Republican.

Party affiliation 9/2008 to 10/2009

(Hat tip: the Daily Dish)

Kay Bailey puttin’ the screws to Perry

And protecting Texan’s property rights at the same time.

It’s a nakedly political move, but kudos to Hutchison for taking a stand for Texans. Something Rick Perry quit doing years ago in fealty to the bleeding far-right of the GOP.

From the link:

Gov. Rick Perry’s plan to build a massive tollway system through the heart of Texas may be dead, but it lives on as a political issue.

Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s challenger in the March Republican primary, discussed the failed Trans-Texas Corridor repeatedly Monday during an appearance urging voters to support a proposition to limit the state’s power of eminent domain. She said the concept for Perry’s massive network of toll roads and rail lines is still alive.

“So that’s why it’s so important that we pass this constitutional provision, which will give the extra measure of protection,” said Hutchison, a longtime critic of Perry’s project. “The Trans-Texas Corridor was a massive land grab, and that certainly heightened the awareness of Texans everywhere.”

TARP banks not lending to Main Street

I’ve already blogged on the upside of this issue — that is, the Obama administration is helping Main Street through expanding the lending capacity of the Small Business Administration and letting smaller banks in on some TARP action. The downside of this issue is eight of the top ten TARP recipient banks have cut small business loans since May. And that is disgusting.

From the second link:

The TARP program was set up to recapitalize banks so that they would bolster their lending to consumers and small businesses. In March, as the administration and the SBA took steps to stimulate small business lending, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ordered the top TARP recipients to begin sending the Treasury monthly reports on their small business lending activity.

“We need every bank in the country to do everything in their power to provide the credit that small businesses need to operate, expand and add jobs,” Geithner said as he announced the new requirements. “Given the role many banks played in causing this crisis, you bear a special responsibility for helping America get out of it.”

But in the five months they’ve been sending in those reports, the 22 biggest TARP recipients haven’t increased their small business lending. Instead, they’ve cut their outstanding balances by $8 billion. As of Aug. 31, the 22 reporting banks held a collective small business loan balance of $261.3 billion, down 3% from when they began reporting in April.

Check out this list of shame:

Treasury blasted on TARP transparency

And rightly so. When the government hands out $700 billion with essentially no debate as was the case a  little over a year ago, the public deserves to know where that money went and the government damn sure better be able to account for every cent. Or at least every $100,000.

From the link:

In a scathing report out Wednesday, a government watchdog blasts the Treasury Department for its handling of a $700 billion bailout program and for not adopting all of its earlier recommendations.

Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky, who is in charge of overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), said Treasury’s failure to provide more details about the use of TARP funds has helped damage “the credibility of the program and of the government itself, and the anger, cynicism, and distrust created must be chalked up as one of the substantial, albeit unnecessary, costs of TARP.”

Barofsky has made 41 recommendations to better implement the program, of which Treasury has executed 18 and partially adopted seven.

One proposal calls for Treasury to require all of the hundreds of TARP recipients to report how they use the funds, which the Treasury has applied to only three of the largest recipients —American International Group,Citigroup and Bank of America.

Barofsky also describes at least nine unimplemented proposals, saying their adoption “could help bring greater transparency to TARP and answer some of the criticisms of the program.”

A stimulus by any other name …

… still spends public money.

All jokes and complaints aside, Obama does have an impressive economic team in place working hard to solve a massive and ongoing problem. I may not like the way things are going, but I will defer to experts implementing their plan.

From the link:

You won’t see it all in one neat package. And you won’t hear the White House call it stimulus.

But there’s a good chance lawmakers will decide to extend some of the stimulus measures included in the $787 billion economic recovery package passed in February and possibly create some new ones as well.

On Wednesday, House Democrats are convening a forum of economists to debate the state of the economy, with a specific focus on job creation. And lawmakers are convening hearings on Capitol Hill this week to discuss the economic outlook and the state of the housing market.

A number of ideas on the table are lifeline measures, while some are flat-out incentives to spur economic activity.

Big Brother puts money and eyeballs into web 2.0

Via KurzweilAI.net — Something to think about before you go masquerading as an international terrorist again …

U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets

Wired Danger Room, Oct. 19, 2009 In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the widerintelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media, part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using open-sourceintelligence. Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. Read Original Article>>

Pat Buchanan at it again

Buchanan is a wildcard as a pundit. He has a lot of very good, very serious ideas — and then he drops a load like this WorldNetDaily piece. Buchanan’s extreme prejudice (undeniable and very public) comes to the surface on a fairly regular basis and essentially undermines any serious points he adds to the overall political circus. Even people who agree with Pat on nine-out-of-ten topics are forced to shut their eyes and hold their noses when he cuts loose with the beleaguered white man act.

The title for the linked piece? “Traditional Americans are losing their nation.” And to make certain you don’t get confused about who these “traditional Americans” are Pat gives you this, “Neither they nor their kids ever benefited from affirmative action, unlike Barack and Michelle Obama.”

And a column like this does the GOP no favors. The party really doesn’t need any more help being defined as that old, white and cranky.

About those Oath Keepers? I truly hope they are just one more marginal group the right wing media is fluffing, because if a large number of ex-military and law enforcement are ready to take up arms against the United States of America however many hinges the crazies have to work with just lost a few supporting  posts.

From the link:

In the brief age of Obama, we have had “truthers,” “birthers,” tea party activists and town-hall dissenters.

Comes now, the “Oath Keepers.” And who might they be?

Writes Alan Maimon in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Oath Keepers, depending on where one stands, are “either strident defenders of liberty or dangerous peddlers of paranoia.”

Formed in March, they are ex-military and police who repledge themselves to defend the Constitution, even if it means disobeying orders. If the U.S. government ordered law enforcement agencies to violate Second Amendment rights by disarming the people, Oath Keepers will not obey.

“The whole point of Oath Keepers is to stop a dictatorship from ever happening here,” says founding father Stewart Rhodes, an ex-Army paratrooper and Yale-trained lawyer. “My focus is on the guys with the guns, because they can’t do it without them.

“We say if the American people decide it’s time for a revolution, we’ll fight with you.”

Small business stimulus

The stimulus plan finally comes to Main Street. This is something that should have happened months ago. Better late than never, I guess.

From the link:

President Obama will visit a Maryland business on Wednesday afternoon to announce initiatives to encourage lending to small businesses. According to an administration official, the proposal will increase the caps for existing Small Business Administration loans and give smaller banks better access to funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

An industry official involved in S.B.A. lending said the White House would propose raising the cap on the agency’s flagship 7(a) loan from $2 million to $5 million. But other programs are likely to see increases, too, including the 504 program.

There is one caveat, though:

Changing S.B.A. programs would be subject to Congressional approval.

Why FISA never needed reform in the first place

I’ve already done a post today on this excellent article by Julian Sanchez on the Obama administration and how it’s retaining some of the Bush administration’s overreaching tools for use in the “global war on terror.” So far the Obama administration has been a disappointment in not rolling back the beating U.S. civil liberties took in the Bush administration’s  panicked response to 9/11.

And as it turns out — and that I’ve argued repeatedly — the tools to fight international terrorists were firmly in place before 9/11, they were just implemented with Keystone Kop level competence.

From the second link:

The FISA Amendments Act is the successor to an even broader bill called the Protect America Act, which similarly gave the attorney general and director of national intelligence extraordinary power to authorize sweeping interception of Americans’ international communications. It was hastily passed in 2007 amid claims that the secret FISA Court had issued a ruling that prevented investigators from intercepting wholly foreign communications that traveled across US wires. Former Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell even claimed that FISA’s restrictions had rendered it impossible to immediately eavesdrop on Iraqi insurgents who had captured several American soldiers. The New York Post quoted tearful parents of the captured men expressing their horror at the situation and a senior Congressional staffer who alleged that “the intelligence community was forced to abandon our soldiers because of the law.”

Yet as a Justice Department official later admitted, the FISA law clearly placed no such broad restriction on foreign wire communications passing through the United States; rather, there had been a far more narrow problem involving e-mails for which the recipient’s location could not be determined. And as James Bamford explained in his essential 2008 book, The Shadow Factory, the delay in getting wiretaps running on the suspected kidnappers was the result of a series of missteps at the Justice Department, not the limits of FISA — no surprise, since even when FISA does require a warrant, surveillance may begin immediately in emergencies if a warrant is sought later. (The suspected kidnappers, by the way, turned out not to have been the actual kidnappers.) Yet on the basis of such claims, a panicked Congress signed off on almost limitless authority to vacuum up international communications — authority that we already know has resulted in systematic “overcollection” of purely domestic conversations, and even resulted in the interception of former President Bill Clinton’s e-mails.