The Freedom Phile

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Federal Housing Agency Looking for an Associate Director of Minority and Inclusion--Only Paying $255K With Plenty of Benefits

Should you need additional proof that the Democrat-controlled federal government is completely and utterly out of control, may I present Exhibit 9 Bazillion?

...Through subordinate staff, you will assess and analyze the diversity policies and practices of FHFA and the regulated entities and the Office of Finance. Other responsibilities include: Directing the development and implementation of standards and procedures to ensure the fair inclusion and utilization of minorities, women, the disabled, veterans and minority-owned and women-owned businesses in all business and activities of FHFA at all levels, including in procurement and all types of contracts;

...The person selected as the Associate Director for Women and Minority Inclusion will lead this new office. Additional vacancies will be advertised in the near future...

That last paragraph is important: after all their regulations failed to avert the mortgage crisis (thanks especially to Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Maxine Waters), the Democrats are busy building up new agencies and new offices to oversee the same losers that failed the last time.

Democrats don't mind that the country is bankrupt. They've emptied the Treasury with trillions in failed spending programs. And still they spend, hiring new bureaucrats as greedily as Michael Moore hordes french fries at Johnny Rocket's.

By the way, if you want to apply for the job, please contact Marisa Harper, a Human Resources Specialist at Federal Housing Finance Agency in Washington, DC. Please be polite and tell her I sent you. Maybe I'll get a referral fee.

Hat tip: Brad.

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Warmal Colding Maps o' the Day

As of about 9:00am ET, these are the temperatures around the continental United States.

I'd like you to consider the following assertion:

No matter how many temperature stations they position to get extra heat, no matter how many manatees die of hypothermia, no matter how many respected scientists tell them that global warming is no more caused by humans than is the sun's heat, and no matter how many record low temperatures the U.S. experiences, you won't change the global warmists' opinions.

Because it has nothing to do with science. It has to do with money. Wealth redistribution, to be more precise.

The environmental movement is a crypto-Marxist movement. And everyone knows it now. Science is the last thing on their minds. Confiscating your wealth is their highest priority, and the EPA is their preferred mechanism to do so: an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy setting industrial policy without any checks or balances.

Some might call that kind of system a dictatorship. Whatever it is, it's certainly not the form of government our founders created.

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Gov. Jan Brewer vs. Phoenix Suns

What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into games without paying? What if they had a good idea who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their tickets stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn't be ejected. Furthermore, what if the Suns' ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drinks? And what if, on those days when a gatecrasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide fee medical care and shelter?

- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to the owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team, Robert Sarver, who opposes the new immigration law.

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Global Warming Strikes Minneapolis

Excess snow has collapsed the roof of the Metrodome. Today's NFL game between the Vikings and Giants has been rescheduled for Monday -- if the global warming melts in time and the roof wasn't severely damaged. Stay tuned.

Greg Pollowitz

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Saturday, December 11, 2010

Killing Obama’s “Build America Bonds” Is a Big Reason to Like the Tax Deal

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/killing-obamas-build-america-bonds-is-a-big-reason-to-like-the-tax-deal/

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Bill Clinton Was Against the Bush Tax Cuts Before He Was For Them

The Powers That Be

Last night over at Michelle's place I wrote about how President Obama met with Bill Clinton to discuss Clinton's support for the deal Obama made with Republicans that included continuing all Bush tax cuts at all levels.

Go here to read more about that generally odd scene that was an ill-advised move for Obama to call apparently on his own (in the NFL there's a reason rookie quarterbacks don't call their own plays — same goes for politics… usually).

President Clinton, who looked to be actively re-claiming that title, spoke of his support for Obama's compromise.

Here's what Clinton had to say about the "Bush tax cuts" at the 2004 Democratic Convention:

At home, the president and the Republican Congress have made equally fateful choices, which they also deeply believe in.

For the first time when America was in a war footing in our whole history, they gave two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top 1 percent of us.

Now, I'm in that group for the first time in my life.

And you might remember that when I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to me.

But as soon as I got out and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. It was amazing. I never thought I'd be so well cared for by the president and the Republicans in Congress. I almost sent them a thank you note for my tax cuts until I realized that the rest of you were paying the bill for it. And then I thought better of it.

There was a lot more tax-cut bashing from Clinton back then, but you get the point. At the presser yesterday he succeeded in pulling off his support for the Obama compromise and avoid any mention of his past stance on this issue. They don't call him "Slick" for nothing.

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@backyardconserv, 12/11/10 9:19 AM

Anne Leary (@backyardconserv)
12/11/10 9:19 AM
Did Obama Just Quit?: I'm still incredulous at that presidential presser yesterday. "Say what you want about Sar... http://bit.ly/hyZxFo

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@dkberman, 12/11/10 7:46 AM

Dennis K. Berman (@dkberman)
12/11/10 7:46 AM
Short-term, high-interest loans. WSJ reveals Illinois is so broke it's relying on payday-lender schemes. http://on.wsj.com/fnjy82 #illinois

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Friday, December 10, 2010

The Beauty of Flight

Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

For a short promotional film, GE Aviation captured all the takeoffs and landings in one day at Kelowna and Oakland airports, and then showed them as trains of planes. Gorgeous stuff. [-]

[via DataPointed]

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@instapundit, 12/10/10 9:00 PM

instapundit.com (@instapundit)
12/10/10 9:00 PM
JIM TREACHER: Did Obama Just Quit? "Say what you want about Sarah Palin quitting her job, but at l…: JIM TREAC... http://bit.ly/eo2RHf

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NYT: White House advisors totally surprised by Obama-Clinton press conference

Hot Air TV

Surprise!

Oh, I'll bet they were. Say what you will about Axe, Gibbsy, and the rest of the crew, but I'd like to think they have the basic political common sense to avoid photo ops where the president has to skip out after a minute or two to go eat gingerbread cookies. I'd like to think [...]

Read this post »

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ON THE ABILITY OF TREES TO GROW TO THE SKY

By Annaly Capital Management

Most of the headlines you'll see related to the Federal Reserve's Z.1 Flow of Funds report are focused on the change in household net worth. In the 3^rd quarter 2010 report, released yesterday, the change was a positive one: household net worth rose $1.2 trillion, driven primarily by $1.3 trillion gains in equities and mutual fund shares which offset a drop of $649 billion in owner occupied housing value (the first decline since the first quarter of 2009). This reversed most of the $1.4 trillion decline in household net worth from previous quarter. Despite gains in 5 out of the previous 6 quarters, net worth remains $10.8 trillion below its 2007 peak.

We also tend to spend our time in the Z.1 report analyzing total debt outstanding in the economy. As far as the debt trends go, we are here to report that nothing has changed. All trends remain the same.

Total credit market debt outstanding still stands at over 350% of GDP, but has fallen for 6 straight quarters. Were this ratio to return to 300%, where it stood only a few short years ago in 2003, that would suggest a decline in debt outstanding of $8 trillion (holding GDP constant).

The chart below shows the individual sectors that are driving this deleveraging (and the one sector that is working hard to offset it).

Federal government debt as a percentage of GDP is now at 61.1% of GDP, which is a tie for the highest level ever seen in the data series, recorded in the very first month that the Flow of Funds data was first measured: 1Q 1952. Given the recent fiscal measures proposed by the White House, expected to add somewhere between $800 and $900 billion dollars to the deficit, it's tough to see how a new record for government debt outstanding won't be set in the 4^th quarter of 2010.

Despite a ripping stock market, households continue to repair their balance sheets. As you see in the chart above, household debt as a percentage of GDP peaked out very near 100% before reversing course. In the chart below we look at household debt as a percentage of the organic and recurring income that is available to service it: disposable income less government transfer receipts.

In the chart, this ratio appears to be a trend variable. As new kinds of credit became more widely available to households, through the growth of credit cards and the development of the securitization machine, the household DTI ratio climbed. These kinds of financial innovation made debt easier to access, and households had the income to support it. However, debt-to-income ratios simply cannot be, by definition, a trend variable. There is an upper bound of debt that can be serviced. Were the household DTI ratio to return to 1.2, where it stood in 2002, the household would need to shed an additional $2.5 trillion of debt. Too loose underwriting standards during the housing boom may have helped the household explore for a short time the thin air above the top end of sustainable leverage.

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http://pragcap.com/on-the-ability-of-trees-to-grow-to-the-sky

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@NROcorner, 12/10/10 5:43 PM

National Review (@NROcorner)
12/10/10 5:43 PM
Who's Left to See the Patients Post-Obamacare?: Thanks to Obamacare, the medical landscape may be dramatically... http://bit.ly/haHBnz

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Thursday, December 9, 2010

@Bret_Baier, 12/9/10 10:48 AM

Bret Baier (@Bret_Baier)
12/9/10 10:48 AM
Senior House Democratic Leadership aide: "This vote shows how much the White House screwed this up."Also, Rep.... http://fb.me/NJq3C8yD

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

One Chart To Rule Us All

Using data from the Office of Personnel Management, I generated the following graph that depicts the number of federal employees, year by year, since 1940. I purposely omitted the Department of Defense, which it turns out is actually a legitimate function of the federal government.

Some striking observations:

• The raw growth in bureaucrats during Barack Obama's first year in office appears to be the largest since WWII.

• How did we ever survive before the Department of Transportation was created in the sixties?

• Are there really 100,000 Agriculture Department employees and, if so, what the hell are they doing?

• It would appear that we now have about 175,000 Homeland Security employees, yet we can't seem to secure the border with Mexico.

• Is anyone else curious about the roughly 300,000 employees marked "Other"?

A federal employee, fully loaded, runs about $100,000 annually -- more in the DC area. In rough terms, every 100,000 federal bureaucrats excised from the federal trough would cut $100 billion annually from the deficit. As Martin Lawrence used to say: "get to steppin'".

It's time to slash and privatize large swaths of this unaccountable bureaucracy that grows uncontrollably in good times and bad.

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/12/one-chart-to-rule-us-all.html

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