The reform in question here is a change in the way cost-of-living adjustments are calculated. The COLAs employed are really cost-of-living plus, because the formula (it has long been maintained) overstates true COLAs and thus represents a constant escalation of benefits above COLA adjustments.

Of course, this reform sure would have done a lot more good 20 years ago, rather than as Baby Boomers are beginning their big draw from the system, escalated benefits already locked-in and sacrosanct.

As it stands, this change would only save between $100 billion and $200 billion over ten years. Not exactly a big-ticket item.

current measure of inflation overstates how quickly prices rise.
“There hasn’t been any economist anywhere that says we shouldn’t do that,” said Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who was one of the so-called Gang of Six lawmakers that tried to develop a long-term debt plan. “We need a CPI that truly reflects what’s happening in the economy, not what’s good for the politicians.”

Not at all surprisingly, Obama won't actually publicly mention this. Because he, um, "leads from behind" or something. Which is another way to say he is too cowardly and unstatesmanlike to propose this publicly himself, relying on underlings to leak it to the press, to make it seem as if this was cooked up by Republicans.

The idea, which was discussed both as part of a series of debt talks led by Vice President Joe Biden and by the Gang of Six, resurfaced yesterday during a meeting between Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and House Democrats, according to a congressional aide. Democrats pressed Geithner on the issue and he didnÂ’t rule it out, according to the aide.

Of course, given Obama's unpopularity, maybe we don't really want his dubious powers of persuasion on this.

With regard to Obama's poor poll numbers: The media continues to refuse to note that Obama is, officially, unpopular, because they would like to maintain the fiction that only a "fringe" disapproves of Obama.

You know, the 49-51% "fringe."

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (132)
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This is pretty tough stuff.

Really tough. Janice Hahn claims she never got any of her gangstas out of jail. An ADA is quoted as contradicting her.

So she's lying about it.

If you don't know the backstory: Janice Hahn is running to be Congressman from California District 36, in a special election (to replace outgoing Jane Harmann). A Republican named Craig Huey beat a Democrat in the run-off, so now opposes her in a vote to take place in a couple of weeks.

In the past, Janice Hahn served on the LA City Council and supported paying city money to gang-members like, um, gangbusters.

Oh, it gets better. Her attorneys sent Fox11 a cease an desist letter forbidding them from pursuing this story.

That, madame, is a large mistake.

Oh My: Did I just hear a single gangster sucked up one million dollars in city funds? And now is in jail for selling machine-guns?

I did.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (192)
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I like how he distinguishes between cases. He notes that many people ask him if this or that is impeachable, and he answers (scoffing) "No."

But this? This he says is "catastrophic."

Line in the sand.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (90)
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Ed thinks maybe Obama has laid down a marker -- $4 trillion in cuts -- that requires him to be on board with entitlement reforms.

I don't think so. Remember, Obama months ago claimed he had $4 trillion in cuts in mind... over a 12 year window (not the typical 10 year window used for long-term budgeting). And his method of getting to $4 trillion was in unspecified cuts to Medicare (funny how the media never seems to want to report how much Obama and the Democrats claim to want to cut Medicare) and general horseshit like increased tax revenues from the 4%+ growth we're apparently going to have for the next 12 years.

Oh, and of course "spending reductions in the tax code," in his not-felicitous phraseology. That is, increased taxes, which he prefers to call "spending reductions," by ending a welter of deductions for both businesses and individual filers.

So is Obama moving at all? Based on this made-up number of $4 trillion, no, I see no movement.

But Boehner thinks they might be close. Peter King says it's better than 50-50.

Ed speculates that there might be some deliberate expectations-raising going on here to pressure the Democrats to come to terms, an attempt to maybe change the Narrative about who exactly it is who won't compromise.

Alas, I haven't seen a lot of that sort of gamesmanship from Boehner.

We Could Easily Operate Within The Current Debt Ceiling For Some Time. So says Senator Ron Johnson.

“I’ve been on the unsecured creditor side of a customer going bankrupt,” he said. “If you come to me as an unsecured creditor in a bankruptcy situation where the customer is going through a reorganization and you say, ‘Secured creditors are getting dollar for dollar — that’s interest on the debt, that’s Social Security. The rest of you guys, until we get this figured out, will basically get 60 cents on the dollar. Once we go through the reorganization, once we get this figured out, you’ll probably get 98 cents on the dollar.’ I’d be going, ‘That’s a sweet deal.’ I’d do that in an instant.”

Here's something. Obama says that not reaching a deal will panic the markets.

It will.

But why will it?

Because Obama and his cronies are putting out the word every single day that no deal means a default.

And who, meanwhile, is attempting to reassure markets that a failure to broker a deal does not mean a default?

The Republicans.

So yes, the market will panic, because they're listening to the man who is deliberately attempting to panic them and possibly collapse the world economy... as a negotiating strategy.

More on that conference call from John McCormack. Johnson characterizes the secret nature of these negotiations as "disgusting" and "outrageous."

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (206)
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When President Obama and AG Holder decided that the government would no longer defend DOMA section 3 (the federal marriage definition, not the full faith and credit section, as has been erroneously reported in conservative media), I panned it as unjustifiable. It was obvious what the President was up to:

How is that a good plan? Well, it's a good plan if one wants to finally see the courts extend heightened scrutiny to cases of discrimination against gays and lesbians. To date the Supreme Court has been mum about just how much justification the federal government needs to have to discriminate against gays. Drew wrote about this issue in the context of the Prop 8 case; note that Gov. Schwarzenegger and AG Brown did the same thing as Obama and Holder: they continued to enforce Prop 8, even as they told the courts it was indefensible. How predictable then that the district judge concluded that discrimination against gays should be subjected to heightened scrutiny.

Let's review the past six days, shall we?

On July 1, DOJ filed a brief putatively on behalf of its client agency, the Office of Personnel Management, which had denied the request of a lawfully married federal employee to put her spouse, a woman, on her employer-provided insurance. The brief was "historic" in that not only did it advocate against its own client, it finally admitted that the "federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals."

On July 5, an Immigration Judge in Maryland reopened on her own authority a removal case she had previously concluded involving an alien lawfully married to a U.S. citizen of the same sex. There were two Obama Admin initiatives at work here. The first was DOMA: the judge noted that at the reopened hearing the parties should be ready to "address current policy and/or legal developments relating to the ability of same-sex spouses to benefit from visa petitions filed by United States citizen spouses." The second was ICE's new "prosecutorial discretion" memo.

Yesterday, the 9th Circuit granted Log Cabin Republicans' motion to lift the stay keeping Don't Ask, Don't Tell in place while that case proceeds on appeal. Log Cabin Republicans had argued that the Administration's DOMA position means DADT is also unconstitutional. Chief Judge Kozinski, the court's most outspoken conservative, agreed that given the government's new position it could not justify a stay. So, in case you missed it, DADT is dead as of yesterday, unless the Obama Administration appeals to the Supreme Court for a stay. I wouldn't hold my breath, guys.

Also yesterday, the U.S. Trustee, a statutorily-created "watchdog" within DOJ overseeing the bankruptcy process, withdrew the appeal from a Bankruptcy Court decision holding that DOMA sec. 3 unconstitutionally prohibits lawfully married same-sex spouses from filing joint bankruptcy. Apparently, the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group that Speaker Boehner set up to defend DOMA cases since DOJ won't declined to take the case. So the Trustee withdrew it. Meanwhile, the DOJ has notified all bankruptcy courts that it will no longer seek to dismiss bankruptcy petitions filed jointly by lawfully married same-sex debtors.

This won't be the end.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:37 AM | Comments (129)
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And, yes, Obama's been clobbered with reality, and, yes, the Left will mostly pretend it isn't an issue because, yes, they're all big fat phonies. Oh, and, yes, being clobbered with reality doesn't mean Obama's giving up all his retarded ideas, just the most inconvenient ones.

The story.

A Somali militant linked to Al Qaeda was held and interrogated for two months on a U.S. Navy ship — the first publicly known example of the Obama administration secretly detaining a new terrorism suspect outside the criminal justice system.

Senior administration officials revealed the case Tuesday after an indictment against the man, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, was unsealed in federal court in New York. The indictment, which does not mention Warsame's military detention, charges that he worked to broker a weapons deal between Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and the Somali militant group Shabab. It alleges that he fought on Shabab's behalf in Somalia in 2009, then went to Yemen in 2010 for explosives training and took part in terrorist activities there.

Secret detentions? Prison ship? Cue the outrage, I'll wait.

...

...

What do you mean there are no calls for impeachment, no cries of "ILLEGAL!", no Sense-of-the-Senate proposals condemning violations of treaty conventions? Because I'm pretty sure that Obama said detained terrorists are to be treated in accord with the Geneva Conventions, to which the United States is a signatory, and detaining and interrogating an alien on a naval vessel would be in violation of Article 22 of Geneva Convention (III). Didn't the President make a big to-do about complying with international law?

What a joke. If all our lives weren't at stake, it would be comical to see Obama stumble his way through each terrorism-related event, each time getting knocked further and further from anything like coherent, effective leadership.

Lemme see if I've got this right. The President acknowledges that we have to interrogate these guys. He's admitted that, finally. But he cannot send terrorists to U.S. detention sites on our allies' territory because he railed against that when Bush 43 did it. He cannot send terrorists to the major detention facility created for that purpose on territory we control because he similarly railed against that at a time when he had no real responsibilities and despite the fact that he has now conceded that it will remain in operation indefinitely. He cannot send them straight to the United States because then we couldn't interrogate them and he has surrendered to the fact that we need to interrogate them.

Solution: avoid this entire mess of his own creation by secretly detaining terrorists on naval vessels and as far as international (or domestic law) goes just fugedaboudit. Too. Much. Trouble. Presidentin'. Is. Hard.

Oh, here's another Obama snowball-into-avalanche mess:

Warsame was turned over to the FBI after extensive "humane" interrogation aboard ship by a unit known as a High-Value Interrogation Group, made up of FBI, CIA and Defense Department personnel, the officials said. But a U.S. official said CIA officers did not directly question Warsame. After the controversy surrounding George W. Bush-era interrogations of detainees, the CIA has consistently said it has kept its agents away from direct questioning.

I originally went through there bolding the important bits, but when I got to the end, practically the whole thing was bolded. Read it again, Sam. The CIA literally won't touch terrorist interrogations with a ten foot pole. Not even "humane" interrogations. And that's a direct result of Obama's and AG Holder's witchhunt. (See this must-read column on that issue.)

At the end of these interrogations, Warsame was Mirandized and then turned over to the FBI, which reportedly built its own independent and "untainted" case against him. Warsame will be tried in New York City for aiding Al Qaeda, assuming he doesn't take a plea deal first.

Slightly, but not really related: Early in the week, Gleen told me to seek a psychiatrist because I don't care about so-called "torture." I just. Don't. Care. that the pseudo-, not-even-real-torture that Obama won't even let us do anymore was used to retrieve valuable intelligence from some of the world's worst human beings. Don't. Care. And in fact, I'm positively gleeful that every court to consider lawsuits on the basis of that pseudo-torture has kicked those lawsuits to the curb. The judges don't care either, Gleen.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:01 AM | Comments (170)
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Joseph Stiglitz, as reliable a liberal dunce as America can produce, laments the rhetorical power of "free market ideologues". Stiglitz (like his idjit confrere Paul Krugman) is usually wrong but never in doubt. Come for the snide demagoguery; stay for the unintentional comedy.

This story pretty much reiterates what we all already know: the so-called "stimulus" mainly stimulated government growth. Private business? Not so much.

I often get the feeling that writers at The Nation think of the Tea Party as some supervillain cabal straight out of a James Bond novel. In some underground bunker in one of those Jesusland flyover states, a fat guy holds a purring white cat in his lap and directs the nefarious activities of Tea Party activists nationwide; and only the brave agents of The Nation can stop their dastardly plans! (Alternatively, you can put yourself into The Nation's mindset by simply imagining that real life works very much like a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Zoinks!)

Commenters have made this point many times, and now columnists are picking up on it: Deregulation is an essential ingredient of a revitalized private sector. Over-regulation is killing many small businesses.

Here's more "spinning bad news into good news", kids: "Private Sector Jobs Surge; Weekly Claims Post Decrease". I wouldn't call the anemic private-sector job-growth numbers a "surge" -- more like a "trickle". And many of those jobs are seasonal, part-time, or temporary positions.

Via Insty: President Obama wants a bigger deal on the debt. He wants a big deal because a temporary one will leave him open to further pummeling as the campaign season goes into the late innings, and he definitely doesn't want that. He wants to salvage something he can trumpet as a victory to his base. From the article, we read this rather ominous-sounding passage:

The move from Obama comes after a secret meeting the president held last weekend with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), as well as new signs of flexibility from Republicans on including new revenues as part of a package to reduce the deficit.

NOTE: I favor tax reform, and if that leads to higher taxes in some instances, I'd accept it. I would be in favor of eliminating loopholes and certain tax breaks (like the mortgage-interest deduction) if it were part of a tax-code overhaul -- to a flat tax, perferably, or an abolishment of income-taxes and a move to a consumption-based tax regime (though I don't like the VAT proposals I have seen because they are inaddition to rather than in place of the income tax). Income tax regimes don't work well in countries with aging populations and slow-growth economies, and that's the future we're going to be living in for some time.

For all the fireworks about the debt-cieling here at home, don't forget about the extreme sovereign-debt crisis in Europe. The Eurozone is teetering on the edge of a knife right now. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the collapse hasn't already happened in essence, and we're just waiting for the consequences to play out. I'm struck at the lack of contingency planning on the part of the ECB and the EU -- there really is no "Plan B". If the bailout of Greece (and Ireland, and Portugal) fails...that's it. And every indication seems to be that the bailouts have failed. So now what?

The compensation monster is eating American cities and towns. The burden of public-employee pensions and healthcare costs (especially for retirees) is going to literally destroy some municipalities as the decade wears on. A city can't support half or more of its total revenues going to pay for retiree benefits. It's just not -- shout it out loud, my children! -- sustainable.

Extortion, the Left, and the make-work fallacy. The take-away from this piece: you cannot consume something until it has been produced. As Kevin Williams says, "I can't eat an omelet made from theoretical eggs."

UPDATE: Larry Kudlow reminds us that in Washington-ese, a "cut" really means "a reduction in the rate of increase". Spending never actually decreases.
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Posted by: Monty at 05:28 AM | Comments (99)
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Yesterday the price of a barrel of crude topped the market price at the time the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release was announced. "Coincidentally", CNBC.com put up a piece up entitled Did Markets Know Obama Was Going to Tap Oil Reserve?

Dennis Gartman, a hedge fund manager and author of the widely followed “Gartman Letter,” constructs a timeline of how the oil release came to be and the trading action surrounding it.

He notes the most recent peak of oil on May 2, discussions with Gulf oil ministers on May 5 as the price started to decline, and the ultimate announcement seven weeks later, when oil was around its near-term bottom.

The price drop leading into the SPR release indicates that the market may have been anticipating the move and selling oil accordingly.

Now that's interesting. We posted on the SPR rumor on June 9th, a full month after the market top but right about the time the price really started contracting. It's not like this was any great secret.

Of course, the breathless reporting of the brilliance of the SPR release is looking pretty foolish right about now.

“Arguably the timing of the release is genius,” said Stephen Weiss of Short Hills Capital. “If the SPR had been released as crude worked higher, the effect would have been relatively momentary, but releasing it now, with the momentum on crude prices turning down, will add to the price decline as speculators hit their stops and margin limits more quickly forcing them to sell.”

Once again, for the Short Hills bus, the release of a couple of days' worth of US consumption from the SPR has a negligible effect on the price of oil. At best.

Meanwhile, presuming we got market price for the oil at the time of the release and replaced it today, we'd have sold low and bought high. If the government was a business, that would be really bad for its profits to earnings ratio. Or so I'm told.

Posted by: andy at 04:45 AM | Comments (68)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:14 AM | Comments (120)
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And welcome to the weakest ONT in the last 9 days.

If You Could Only Have One Child, Would You Prefer a Boy or a Girl?

Well here are the results of a recent Gallup poll. And it's not really surprising that men have a strong preference for sons while women are open to either sex.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:12 PM | Comments (714)
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