It's good to have friends in high places, especially ones with a significant financial interest in your bank and a huge amount of federal money being handed out.

The bank, Central Pacific Financial, was an unlikely candidate for a program designed by the Treasury Department to bolster healthy banks. The firm's losses were depleting its capital reserves. Its primary regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., already had decided that it didn't meet the criteria for receiving a favorable recommendation and had forwarded the application to a council that reviewed marginal cases, according to agency documents.

Two weeks after the inquiry from Inouye's office, Central Pacific announced that the Treasury would inject $135 million.

Many lawmakers have worked to help home-state banks get federal money since the Treasury announced in October that it would invest up to $250 billion in healthy financial firms. But the Inouye inquiry stands apart because of the senator's ties to Central Pacific. While at least 33 senators own shares in banks that got federal aid, a review of financial disclosures and records obtained from regulatory agencies shows no other instance of the office of a senator intervening on behalf of a bank in which he owned shares.

Inouye denies any personal involvement or that his his staff was trying to influence anybody.

Most of Inouye's personal wealth is tied up in Central Pacific, I'm sure if he were here he'd want to thank each and everyone of you for backing his personal portfolio.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:16 AM | Comments (1)
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This story has been out awhile but is getting some new life because of the passage of Cap and Tax as well as a couple of Republican legislators taking an interest in the case.

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

...According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.

An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist -- not a scientist -- included "no original research" in his report. The official said that Carlin "has not been muzzled in the agency at all," but stressed that his report was entirely "unsolicited."

...Citing the internal e-mails, the Republican congressmen wrote that the EPA was exhibiting an "agency culture set in a predetermined course."

"It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed," they wrote.

In a written statement, Issa said the administration is "actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion."

First, allow me to head off our lefty friends...yeah Carlin is an economist not a climate scientist. What he did was a study of the work by experts in the field. You know who else isn't a climate scientist but uses other people's work...Al Gore (B.A., Government, Harvard University and two time drop out from divinity programs).

So moving on...one reason this is so important is the threat hanging over Congress that if they don't pass some sort of carbon program, the EPA will do it without any legislative input and simply destroy the economy via regulatory fiat. Obviously debunking the myth of Anthropomorphic Anthropogenic Global Warming would be, um, inconvenient to say the least.

Supporters of James Hansen were unavailable for comment.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:30 AM | Comments (1)
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July?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:22 AM | Add Comment
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