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Open thread October 1, 2010

Dan Crawford | October 1, 2010 6:02 pm

Comments (29) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
29 Comments
  • rjs says:
    October 1, 2010 at 7:34 pm

    a few updates on the foreclosure fiasco:

    Wrongful Foreclosures and Clouded Title – credit slips -I think there’s a much bigger problem lurking in the shadows behind the GMAC/JPMChase foreclosures freezes due to concerns about faulty foreclosures:  clouded title. Consider also what this means for homeowners who are current on their mortgages and want to sell their house.  Are we sure who actually owns their mortgage?
    …
    Foreclosure Flaws May Cloud US Homeownership as `Blighted Titles’ Emerge – BLM – U.S. courts are clogged with a record number of foreclosures. Next, they may be jammed with suits contesting property rights as procedural mistakes in those cases cloud titles establishing ownership. Defective documentation has created millions of blighted titles that will plague the nation for the next decade.

    …
    Bank of America Halts Foreclosures in 23 States; Connecticut AG Asks State Courts to Suspend Foreclosures for 60 Days – yves – A bank official acknowledged in a legal proceeding in February that she signed up to 8,000 foreclosure documents a month and typically didn’t read them. The Associated Press obtained the document Friday.

  • CoRev says:
    October 1, 2010 at 7:40 pm

    The most disgusting ad campaign seen yet.  Greenies, Global Warming “True Believers”, and the usual lot of ignoranti produced this video.  “No Pressure”

    http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/checker.aspx?v=hdkU6U2GqG

  • ilsm says:
    October 1, 2010 at 7:48 pm

    As buffpilot pointed out, who should buy residential RE, either???

    Without about 10 hours of legal advice?

  • Jimi says:
    October 1, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    That add inspires me to leave my lights on all night, burn my trash and old tires, and buy a new Ford gas guzzler 4×4, and punch the next “progressive” I see in the face!

    Excuse me while I go spit shine my new M-4! 

  • ilsm says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:10 pm

    jimi,

    What kind of M-4,

    Don’t hurt yourself!

    You’d be safer with the old tank designated M-4.

  • ilsm says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:17 pm

    Budding Cold War with China, see italics below for US militarism’s future as a growth industry.  

    Washington Post 26 Sep 10,  Robert D. Kaplan (senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, one of the think tanks contriving to justify a trillion dollars a year for war) 
     
    “China has the world’s second-largest naval service [sorry Royal Navy], after only the United States. Rather than purchase warships across the board, it is developing niche capacities in sub-surface warfare [not to mention here a bunch of old destroyers] and missile technology designed to hit moving targets at sea [Sci Fi, if you look at the flank speed of any US navy ship]. At some point, the U.S. Navy is likely to be denied unimpeded access to the waters off East Asia. China’s 66 submarines constitute roughly twice as many warships as the entire British Royal Navy. If China expands its submarine fleet to 78 by 2020 as planned, it would be on par with the U.S. Navy’s undersea fleet in quantity, if not in quality. If our economy remains wobbly while China’s continues to rise — China’s defense budget is growing nearly 10 percent annually — this will have repercussions for each nation’s sea power. And with 90 percent of commercial goods worldwide still transported by ship, sea control is critical.” 
     
    “The geographical heart of America’s hard-power competition with China will be the South China Sea [5,000 miles west of Honolulu], through which passes a third of all commercial maritime traffic worldwide and half of the hydrocarbons destined for Japan, the Korean Peninsula and northeastern China…………..”  

    Second largest navy with $60B a year in money for the entire PLA (the Navy is run by the Army?).  12 US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups, multi- billion dollar Virginia class subs or 18 Tridents in the US navy order of battle.  To say nothing of a odd dozen amphibious assault groups.  To tilt around the Chinese littorals, in range of land based air and missiles!  Let China run their subs to the US Virgin Islands.  
    Will the $3-5B a pop Zumwalt destroyer handle the diesel U-boats China has?  

    The US Navy is egregiously over sized for any North Atlantic and Central Pacific war.  It makes no sense to compare it to China’s littoral People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN as they say at Armed […]

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:18 pm

    At first I thought they were advocating reducing population by 10% to reduce carbon by 10%. I thought, ya, that’s one way. But then they slipped in a little spoken sentence between the cool special effects that said an unspecified amount of taxes are going to reduce carbon by 10%.

    So I think I’ll just keep watching Monty Python clips on YouTube.

    BTW: I already did all the things they recommended, so I figure I’m safe from the Red Button People. It’s the tax people I worry about still.

  • Nancy Ortiz says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:21 pm

    Jimi–Be careful saying that stuff. You are well worth suing and in some states all you have to do is say something threatening. Speaking of which, “Oh, I am so ASKEEEERRRDDD!”
    😉 NancyO

  • CoRev says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:23 pm

    CR, the tax people’s button’s color is BLUE!

  • Nancy Ortiz says:
    October 1, 2010 at 8:27 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-_RHRAzUHM

    Though you guys might like something completely, really, totally different. Ilsm, the guys from the DOD should see this flyer. Top Gun, indeed. NancyO

  • ilsm says:
    October 1, 2010 at 9:57 pm

    Nice flying!!

    Thanks

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    October 1, 2010 at 9:59 pm

    Mercantilism ala, Germany, China, Japan, etc is not a new phenomena. The Europeans spent centuries warring over who gets to be the best merc. The US took the title in the 20’s and then had the cheek, like China is about to do, of passing the Smoot-Hawley tariff, shooting ourselves in the foot. Duh !

    Of course the Smoot-Hawley has no relevence to our current position as the patsy. We are the importers not the exporters and Smoot-Hawley may now make sense. It is interesting that Germany is still playing it’s age old game of mercantilist extraordinare. Even after their tribulations in two world wars, if we listen to those that suggest war is always about economics.

    Anyway, the game we should not join is the race to the bottom for the cheapest currency. It will import stagflation. Perhaps we should maintain a strong dollar policy with an excise tax imposed on all imports in proportion to their trade imbalance with the US. They buy our goods and level the imbalance, or pay the tax.

    I’m sure that the silent hand, Walmart, will bitch like crazy, but who gives a shit.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 1, 2010 at 10:30 pm

    I too think tariffs are the least worst way down the path we will be forced to go. No smarts in pissing off Arabs again just so we will get GD 3. And if I want to avoid the tax, I can stop buying the stupid stuff, Walmart price levels will rise to what rich people like to pay, rich people end up paying taxes, and mission accomplished anyway.

    Since we sometimes touch on the subject of US finances, and whether the USG does and should DESTROY our wealth and currency, here’s a good post at econbrowser from a guy that actually knows how it works. Probably nothing new for many here, but repetition is reinforcement.
    http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2010/09/frank_warnock_o.html

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    October 1, 2010 at 10:32 pm

    PS: Lest we forget who the political heroes of our great rise to [no word avaiable] ( wealth, acceptance, empathy, strength, cruelty, etc) in addition to FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and yes, Richard Nixon. Two others come to mind: Marriner Eccles and Mike Mansfield.

    Mike Mansfield was elected in 1961 as Senate Majority Leader. He served in that capacity until his retirement from the Senate in 1977, longer than any other Majority Leader in history. Ans I dare say, guided the greatest expansion of our nations consciousness, the time we progressives celebrate as the “golden age”.

    After enlisting in the US Navy at 14 and serving for the duration of WW1, Mike Mansfield returned to Montana. Lacking a high school education, he worked as a “mucker” in the copper mines of Butte, shoveling rock and ore half a mile underground, and attended the Montana School of Mines. While in Butte he met Maureen Hayes, a young school teacher who encouraged Mike to further his education. Butte is the home of Miners Union Local #1. Pretty fascinating story and a father of our former progressive society.

    All the best, Sandi.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    October 1, 2010 at 11:01 pm

    PSS: I forgot IKE, a great Republican President. Made no move to reduce the marginal tax rate from 92%, pushed through the interstae system, and warned us about the shit he knew: the Military Industrial Complex.

  • Sandi Rubinspan says:
    October 1, 2010 at 11:18 pm

    Cedric:

    Thanks for your insight. However, I agree that we should not piss of our Arab friends in the petroleum producing countries. They are our allies and friends.

    I respectfully disagree with your ascertion that what we decide about energy is their business. It is a decision that we must make in our favor. I believe that we should impose a tax on imported petroleum sufficient to encourage the domestic production of energy. As an opening gambit, I suggest $2.00 per gallon.

    In my mind, there is absolutely no reason for the US to be wasting the scarce resource of petroleum by combustion. The low cost of oil is a political thing, not a conscious decision. The problem is that the US oil president (GWB duh!) allowed the Japanese mercs to expand their market into the US and capture the market. The Japanese were forced to produce fuel efficient vehicles by their domestic market so expansion into the US was a no brainer. Meanwhile, the Bushes negotiated $10.00 oil as the price of protection in Mid-East, until the nit-whit GW took out the heavy, Saddam Hussein.

    We should not be burning firewood for our energy.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 2, 2010 at 12:03 am

    Sandi “I respectfully disagree with your assertion that what we decide about energy is their business.”

    If I did assert that, I certainly will officially retract it immediately.

    I’ve studied our energy situation more than most people. Being a post Arab Oil Embargo BSME from Boilermaker U. , I even had courses in alternative energy in college. Spent my first two years of employment as a equipment supplier to the power plant industry. This decade I re-visited the issue with the motivation of looking for investment opportunities.

    I’ve decided that energy independence and GHW need to be addressed together, and this makes things tougher than if we only had to worry about domestic energy supply. It also makes efficiency and conservation even more important.

    I’m part of the tiny crowd that thinks we need a “space program” type of approach to problem. (yes, don’t say the idea has been tried already and that’s why we have the DOE. I mean really try.) I’m not a big fan of the idea that “taxes make everything better”. Part of the problem in domestic energy is regulation, waste disposal and factors that keep price-supply-demand from working efficiently, even if you believe this would get us the goal we wanted anyway.

    What they are considering now is like advising Kennedy he has two choices to get to the moon.

    1) Start up cap and trade so the market will find the industries that do that, and redirect capital from somewhere else. We don’t have to worry about what all happens, because markets and investors are always right about these things, and things have been working swimmingly so far.

    2)Tax something that is keeping us from getting us to the moon and fund something else with the taxes.
      
    So that’s my philosophy. The details of “how” take too long to type, would only be a part of what a real, paid, full time staff could come up with, and lacks more data and the necessary consultation with industry.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 2, 2010 at 12:35 am

    Since I’m not completely worn out typing yet…

    I read the $10 oil price estimate too, adding in costs of “defending” the middle east.

    I just remembered I did another way, back when I was a Sasol stockholder, pre global warming, and thought I’d found the answer in coal to diesel conversion plants (CTL – means coal to liquid). Using Iraq war cost figures available in 2004, I calculated we could have built enough CTL plants in the US to equal the entire oil output of Saudi Arabia for what we expected to spend on Iraq back then.

    But then global warming came along.  

    Also, I use the term Arabs figuratively. I know some of them are Persians and Mexican too, like that Chivaz guy. 

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 2, 2010 at 1:32 am

    Ok, one more.

    ” The problem is that the US oil president (GWB duh!) allowed the Japanese mercs to expand their market into the US and capture the market. The Japanese were forced to produce fuel efficient vehicles by their domestic market so expansion into the US was a no brainer.”

    The problem started earlier than that. The US auto industry got something like a 30% import tariff on SUVs and light trucks in the mid nineties. The Japanese followed the money and created their SUV and light truck production in the US. I’m sure they are careful to match market pricing.

    But is is difficult to keep track of which big toes and in what order we shoot them off in.

  • Cedric Regula says:
    October 2, 2010 at 2:32 am

    The problem with US domestic oil production is there isn’t that much onshore at any price. Deepwater costs going 1 mile down is $45, and $70 makes a fine selling price. We are still trying to figure out if the BP blowout was just their bad management, or if deepwater will be banned in general. 

    But T Boone Pickens thinks big rig trucks should be converted to natural gas, and that makes a lot of sense, for the ones we can’t get rid of with rail. It’s a lot of money for the operator to spend, so he thinks some assistance is necessary there. So I would think taxing oil to pay for something like that would make good sense, if we could insure it gets there instead of being hijacked for something else.

    You’re one of the minority in trashing Civics. I am kind of impressed by the Ford Fiesta w/40mpg. However, at the 4k-5K annual mileage I put on a car, I plan to drive my 2006 a long time. 

  • CoRev says:
    October 2, 2010 at 7:30 am

    Here are a couple of comments about the “No Pressure” video from folks I often visit.

    “The question was: with Communism dead and hard-Socialism discredited, what will happen to all the Leftists?

    The commenter from the center-right said something to the effect, “Well, we have already seen the transition over the last few years. The old Reds will become Green. Their goals have not changed, they just need another ideology which will let them exercise power over other and force their will on society. “We know the Red of both the Communist and Fascist variety had/have no problem feeding their ideology with blood. Sure, you have had the Greenesque zero-population growth and animal rights wacko’s get bloody-minded now and then – but when have they let their true nature show, the Greens that is?”
    And
    “

    True Believers—whether they follow Jim Jones, David Koresh, Che, or Mao— are one of mankind’s greatest threats. When idealism is stripped of humanity and becomes zealotry, no number of lives is too many to purge to “embrace the change.”
    BTW, there is a political party here in the U.S. chock-full of eco-nuts just like these, and they are coming up for re-election in almost exactly a month, and will pursue economy-killing eco-fascism for the next two years if you don’t show up Nov. 2 and vote them out.
    No pressure.”

    No Pressure!

  • CoRev says:
    October 2, 2010 at 7:50 am

    And even another comment:

    “Our reaction is irrelevant. They are not talking to us. They are talking to our children.

    What are they saying? That it’s okay to ostracize, bully and dismiss those who don’t agree that climate change is uber alles (Oops! Godwin alert, Godwin alert) and that skeptics or the children of skeptics are fair game for… whatever.

    As there is no real attempt at humour in the video, there’s no point in pretending it’s a parody. It’s instructional. It’s not even aimed at helping children work towards reducing emissions. It’s about helping children take aim at those who do not.”

    Some here have taken that message to heart.

  • ilsm says:
    October 2, 2010 at 9:03 am

    “Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the military is facing a suicide crisis. “The emergency issue right now is suicides. We had five suicides in the Army last weekend,” he told reporters.”

     

    I am seeing issues with the Army and Marine Corps similar to what I saw in the early 1970’s, moral decline due to interminable war.

     

  • ilsm says:
    October 2, 2010 at 9:07 am

    Seen Elsewhere:

     

    So…it turns out President Eisenhower wasn’t making up all that stuff about the military-industrial complex.

    That’s what you’ll conclude if you read Bob Woodward’s new book, Obama’s War. (You can read excerpts of it here, here and here.) You thought you voted for change when you cast a ballot for Barack Obama? Um, not when it comes to America occupying countries that don’t begin with a “U” and an “S.”

    In fact, after you read Woodward’s book, you’ll split a gut every time you hear a politician or a government teacher talk about “civilian control over the military.” The only people really making the decisions about America’s wars are across the river from Washington in the Pentagon. They wear uniforms. They have lots of weapons they bought from the corporations they will work for when they retire.

    http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/30-10

  • jazzbumpa says:
    October 2, 2010 at 10:14 am

    BTW, there is a political party here in the U.S. chock-full of eco-nuts just like these, and they are coming up for re-election in almost exactly a month, and will pursue economy-killing eco-fascism for the next two years if you don’t show up Nov. 2 and vote them out.  

    This is insanity.  If this sounds anything like reality to you, you are delusional.  

    Sadly, I think you actually believe it.

    Wow — just . . . WOW!
    JzB

  • CoRev says:
    October 2, 2010 at 2:01 pm

    JzB, said: “If this sounds anything like reality to you, you are delusional.    
     
    Sadly, I think you actually believe it.  
     
    Wow — just . . . WOW! 
    “

    Worse, a majority of voters believe it, and that’s what bugs you folks.

  • run75441 says:
    October 2, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    And of course the Cato Institute or Foundation is truly interested in feeding the poor and helping poor farmers globally?

    “estimate by Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute), however, US non-farm households, but extends to the farmers in poor, developing countries who lose out in world markets.”.

    Prof. Yeeoman Noon at Seton Hall goes on to say:

    “History amply demonstrates that freer international trade is the single most important and fastest route for economic development.”

    Which is why oil is less than what it is today than what it was previously. Which is why many people are still employed in the US. Why would one wish to give over food oproduction to the global cartels? It sounds great in theory but the reality is not so true.

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86a7715c-cdbe-11df-9c82-00144feab49a.html End to Farm Subsidies . . .

    ~50% of the agricultural products are immported into the US.

  • sammy says:
    October 2, 2010 at 6:43 pm

    Government Health Care  
     
    The State of Oregon has set up their public health care plan.  A friend of mine went through a lottery system and was accepted.  She pays $18 a month for her health insurance.  What a deal!  
     
    Only problem is:  no doctor will accept it.  Call after call to doctors Q:”Do you take the Oregon health plan?”  A:  “No”   
     
    Apparently there is some problem with reimbursement – either it is too low or nonexistant.  As one Doctor (who is a big lib)  put it: “I accept it, but they just don’t pay me.  They are crooks.”  Even the state run hospital, OHSU, refused it.
     
    Finally she called the OR Health Plan, and was referred to some public clinic.  They accepted the appointment, and have scheduled additional tests and followups once a week for the next two weeks.  (Apparently) the clinic seems to be making up low reimbursements with volume

  • ilsm says:
    October 3, 2010 at 9:15 am

    Time for the Tea Party to get into anti trust.  Break the monopolies.

    The problem is the AMA.  
     
    They are ticked about the teachers’ union and UAW.  
     
    But no worry with the insurance cabals, wall st, AMA and big pharma!!!  
     
    Lots of little clinics and public support may break the AMA et al cabal called US health care.

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