The theory behind this whole shebang is that banks are so pervasively regulated, the federal government can basically tell them what to do even though they're privately-owned businesses. Keep this story in mind when you hear that Obama's DHHS is issuing tighter regulations for hospitals...

Perkins, Oklahoma is a tiny place just south of my hometown that we basically regard as a speedbump on US Route 177. It's so small, the whole population could fit on just the home team side of my high school's stadium. I went through Perkins on my way from Los Angeles to D.C. this past fall and they were just as friendly as I remember.

Last week they got a visit from a Federal Reserve examiner.

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the tellerÂ’s counter and buttons that say "Merry Christmas, God With Us." were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank's Internet site also had to be taken down.

Among the regulations enforced by the Federal Reserve inspectors is 12 C.F.R. sec. 202, also known as "Regulation B". It prohibits banks from discriminating in lending or advertising on account of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract)."

Sounds reasonable, but the "Official Staff Interpretation" of the regulation has this gem of generalizations:

"The use of words, symbols, models or other forms of communication in advertising that express, imply, or suggest a discriminatory preference or a policy of exclusion in violation of the Act."

The feds told the bank that crosses, Merry Christmas buttons, and Bible verses "imply" discrimination or exclusion. According to the feds, Jews or Muslims or atheists might believe they would be discriminated against at this bank because of the overt presence of so many Christians. As a result, the Christian symbols and words must come down or the Federal Reserve will withhold certification.

It's hard to know where to begin with something so mind-stoppingly stupid, but two things come immediately to mind. First, more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:39 PM | Comments (197)
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He signed on the line that is dotted.

President Obama signed into law the most significant tax bill in nearly a decade Friday, a day after overcoming liberal resistance in Congress to continue for two more years tax breaks enacted under president George W. Bush and to provide a fresh federal boost for the tepid economic recovery.

The downsides: There is still pork in the deal that must be cut out as well as funds to implement ObamaCare. (It's possible that won't be an issue at some point this year.) And now that the tax deal is done and the Omnibus spending bill is defeated, to be replaced by a one-page continuing resolution for a month, that frees up the Senators, including our very own Brown, McCain, Collins, and Snowe, to start working their mischief on other matters.

Like the Dream Act -- a vote which may come tomorrow, and may pass.

DREAM is in fact amnesty, and, as Kaus argues, a deliberately complex amnesty which will create, by design, all sorts of corner-cases and hard cases that will push people towards a simpler solution (i.e., full and total amnesty).

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (168)
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I'm making up that last part but they did offer that as a reason for Carla Bruni's discomfort in Michelle Obama's presence. Only a matter of time.

In this case, there may be some truth to it, as the Obamas continue to get celebrity-treatment from the world press and I'm pretty sure every bride wants to be the biggest celebrity at her own wedding.

The official reason cited for the snub is that it's not a "state matter," but a personal one, so heads of state aren't invited.

Except for Sarkozy and Carla Bruni. Whoops.

Ah well. Maybe Bruni made her appearance contingent on not being close enough to Michelle Obama to be unfavorably compared to her.

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (223)
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Via Hot Air, which also quotes a piece stating that she should have been Time's Person of the Year. I disagree with that part (should have been the Tea Party).

Is this the rollout?

[I]n recent weeks, Palin and her staff have adopted elements of a more traditional media strategy, cooperating with a host of neutral media outlets, notably The New York Times, TIME and ABC News, all of which, at one time or another, have drawn fire from Palin backers for allegedly biased coverage.

That cooperation has resulted in mostly flattering features that broke little new critical ground. The latest MSM piece for which Palin consented to be interviewed is scheduled to air Friday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which sent co-anchor Robin Roberts to Alaska to interview Palin and follow her around.

The strategic shift, which also included a decision to allow a handful of top staffers to talk on the record to other media outlets, was approved by Palin herself after discussions within her inner circle following some uncomfortable stories this fall.

This is an obligatory post because I've frequently criticized Palin for narrowcasting only to the 20% of the country that's rock-ribbed conservative, which simply is not anything like a majority, and insisted that if she wants to be taken seriously, she needs to start putting herself at risk in possibly (likely) hostile interviews with the media.

I think hostile interviews are important for her for one big reason: She needs to convince people she's capable of handling them. It's relatively easy to answer questions about your ideology from a friendly interviewer; it's tougher to answer them from a hostile interrogator. The public has the idea that Palin is unqualified, thanks to shaky answers during the 2008 campaign, and a withdraw into friendly territory since then; if she wants to cure this, she's going to have to engage the hostiles.

This GMA interviewer was a bit warm and fuzzy with Palin, probably because she didn't want it to look like the media's just slavering to crucify Palin. Which it is. So Palin didn't get rough treatment here, but that's not her fault. That'll come. It's important that she starts rolling out this campaign for the middle if she really does have presidential aspirations.

A start to the process. Nowhere near the end of it.

Oh, and Meggie Mac demands to be heard on Palin's hunting abilities. On MSNBC, of course.

Because that's where Republicans go, MSNBC.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (214)
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The downside of letting the Genie out of the bottle. But then, this Genie did an awful lot of good.

Blowback:

If retooled slightly, Stuxnet could be directed to target a wide swath of critical infrastructure facilities, rather than a narrow target such as Iran's nuclear fuel-enrichment facilities and nuclear power plant, the eight-page CRS synopsis warns, quoting researchers and other analysts.

"Depending on the severity of the attack, the interconnected nature of the affected critical infrastructure facilities, and government preparation and response plans, entities and individuals relying on these facilities could be without life sustaining or comforting services for a long period of time," the study's summary states. "The resulting damage to the nationÂ’s critical infrastructure could threaten many aspects of life, including the governmentÂ’s ability to safeguard national security interests."

...

The report quotes Dr. Udo Helmbrecht, executive director of the European Network and Information Security Agency, as saying in October that “Stuxnet is really a paradigm shift, as Stuxnet is a new class and dimension of malware." He went on to call it a "first strike" weapon that is "one of the first organized, well prepared attacks against major industrial resources. This has tremendous effect on how to protect national (critical infrastructure) in the future.”

For those who can't get enough of Stuxnet speculation, a writer of Forbes finds his own pet likely culprit -- China, oddly enough.

On one hand, they have the interest in such attacks and the talent to pull them off, as demonstrated by their Google hack. On the other hand, I don't see China as acting heroically to save the world community against one of its biggest trading partners and allies.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (285)
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"Progress!," says Hot Air. Who knew the Bush Tax Cuts were so absurdly popular among liberals?

Voting Yes: Dennis Kucinich.

The estate tax amendment offered by liberals, which would have ratcheted up the tax to 2009 levels:

Pomeroy's amendment would have adjusted the estate tax to exempt the first $3.5 million ($7 million for couples) of an estate and tax any amount above that at 45 percent – the same levels of the estate tax in effect in 2009.

IIRC the version that passed is $5 million exempt, 35% after that. Some people may say this isn't a victory on this score, but I think it is: even though the estate tax lapsed in 2010, it was nevertheless scheduled to return in 2011, and had some unintended consequences to boot. I've seen the one-year lapse called a "demonstration" -- it wasn't a permanently-enacted thing. Zero percent still may be the goal for some (though I still don't understand why this is such a high priority among conservatives) but the version that just passed the House does represent a reduction in rates (excluding 2010's lapse in taxation).

Then and Now: The Bush Tax Cuts passed with only 230 votes in a Republican-dominated Congress. Now, in a Democratic-dominated one, it passes with 277 votes.

And 36 Republicans voted against the bill this time as being not tax-cutty enough!

That's winning a political argument to the point where I don't even know if the argument even remains anything but moot.

Monty says that he has a man-crush on Paul Ryan over this clip. Basic point: This isn't Washington's money, it's the people's money.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 AM | Comments (278)
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One billion is still a lot, but it has to be said the GOP has greatly curbed, if not completely ended, its appetite for pork.

Byron York notes that the media is presenting this as a bipartisan problem and therefore a betrayal by the GOP. It's not true, at least not as the MFM is claiming.

Press coverage of the budget frenzy on Capitol Hill has suggested that pork-barrel earmark spending is still a bipartisan problem, that after months of self-righteous rhetoric about fiscal discipline, Republicans and Democrats remain equal-opportunity earmarkers.

It's not true. A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether -- while Democrats roll on.

...

In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.

Where did those GOP earmark requests come from? Just four Republican lawmakers: South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who did not run for re-election this year; Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, who lost his bid for re-election; maverick Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and spending king Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The other Republican members of the House -- 174 of them -- requested a total of zero earmarks.

By the way, a commnenter wrote that Emmanuel Cleaver's $48 billion earmark request for redistributing money to the inner cities was a typo in early reportage -- it's $48 million, not billion. Still.

At Hot Air, Harry Reid is making an odd argument in favor of earmarks. Congress needs to pork up bills, he contends, in order to check the power of the imperial presidency of Barack Obama.

The White House, he claims, is trying to "steal power" from Congress.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (63)
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This is an interesting study coming from a plainly left tilting organization.

Key takeaways:

1) Mechanisms for people to reenter the workforce have collapsed.

2) "it has never been more likely than it is now for the unemployed to leave the
labor force over finding a job in the labor market. This is a brand new phenomenon in this recession."

2) The authors argue the NAIRU rate for the USA should be raised from ~5.2% up to 8%. The NAIRU analysis is an attempt to estimate the point where employment declining below a given percentage triggers inflation. NAIRU appears to be roughly related to what was commonly referred to as the "structural unemployment rate".

Back in the Carter era, "structural unemployment" was pretty close to that 5.2% figure. Boosting that to 8%, may indeed reflect the "new reality" since the situation we're in right now is far worse, in terms of long term outlook, and possible "fixes", than the Carter era. We're out of options. All the sleazy accounting tricks have been pulled already. All the trust funds have been looted. As the old pilots saying goes, we're out of altitude, out of options, and out of time.

If the author's NAIRU rate conclusions are correct, we could expect a healthy dose of inflation (beyond the Fed's loopy currency devaluation QE crap) to ensue as the unemployment rate approaches 8%.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:35 AM | Comments (245)
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Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:43 AM | Comments (139)
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They got though their speed bump from earlier today by allowing the Democrats to vote separately on an amendment that would have raised the Death Tax and then on final passage. This gave liberals the chance to vote yes on raising the Death Tax and then no on the deal as a whole. It was a crazy procedural thing.

They are now voting on the whole deal as the Senate passed it. It's in the bag.

Update: They already have over 230 votes for it, so that's that.

Here's the full story.

The "debate" was like Primal Scream Therapy for the Democrats. They are on their way out of power and they are getting rolled by the Republicans and Obama (for whom they carried so much water for two years and have a lost majority to show for it). They wanted to vent a bit.

Side note: Thank God for technology. Before, I'd watch this stuff because I'm a political junkie but I did it quietly and out of sight of my friends. It was embarrassing. Now thanks to blogs and Twitter, I can share my secret shame with other like minded geeks.

Fun factoid: From Dave Weigel via Brian Faughnan (who follows Weigel on Twitter so you don't have too).

262 votes so far for tax deal. Bush tax cuts passed House in 2001 with 230 votes

What can you say to that other than, "Thanks Nancy"?

Posted by: DrewM at 07:47 PM | Comments (105)
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