Unbelievable.
Can you imagine the reaction if a Republican had tried this?
Top aides to Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called a last-minute, pre-emptive strike on Wednesday with a group of prominent Democratic lobbyists, warning them to advise their clients not to attend a meeting with Senate Republicans set for Thursday. (more…)
Noting that people “criticize me for harping on the obvious,” Calvin Coolidge justified that practice by saying, “If all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.” Consider what individual Americans know they ought to do, and what their government should know not to do.
WSJ:
While the price of gasoline has risen 50% in the past five months, Democrats in Congress nevertheless seem determined to make our energy situation even worse. Case in point: Legislation sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey to establish a cap-and-trade system that will sharply limit carbon-dioxide emissions and increase energy prices. (more…)
June 10 (Bloomberg) – Edward E. Whitacre Jr. built AT&T Inc. into the biggest U.S. provider of telephone service over a 43-year-career. By his own admission, he becomes chairman of General Motors Corp. knowing nothing about the auto industry.
The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed “Big Ed” said steering the nation’s largest automaker after bankruptcy is “a public service.” People who know him say he can meet GM’s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.
“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor once described herself as “a product of affirmative action” who was admitted to two Ivy League schools despite scoring lower on standardized tests than many classmates, which she attributed to “cultural biases” that are “built into testing.”
AFP:
Over five years, researchers saw a remarkable link between tropical storms and “slow” earthquakes, a seismic beast first identified three decades ago.
Slow quakes entail a slippage in the fault that unfolds progressively over hours or days, rather than a sudden, violent release of the kind that destroys buildings and lives.
The sensors noted 20 such slow earthquakes, 11 of which coincided with typhoons, during the study period.
The 11 quakes were all stronger and characterised by more complex seismic waveforms than other “slow” events.
“These data are unequivocal in identifying typhoons as triggers of these slow quakes. The probability that they coincide by chance is vanishingly small,” said co-author Alan Linde of the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States.
France’s highest court has inflicted an embarrassing blow to President Sarkozy by cutting the heart out of a law that was supposed to put France in the forefront of the fight against piracy on the internet.
The Constitutional Council declared access to the internet to be a basic human right, directly opposing the key points of Mr Sarkozy’s law, passed in April, which created the first internet police agency in the democratic world.
The strongly-worded decision means that Mr Sarkozy’s scheme has backfired and inadvertently boosted those who defend the free-for-all culture of the web.
Mr Sarkozy and Christine Albanel, his Culture Minister, forced the law through parliament despite misgivings from many of the President’s centre-right MPs. It was rejected in its first passage through Parliament.
“The Government is effectively saying to us, ‘Ignore other crime types’,” Australian Federal Police Association chief Jim Torr said.
The group had been trying for months, without success, to discuss the issue with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, he said.
Interpol has warned the carbon market will be irresistible to criminal gangs because of the vast amounts of cash to be made. Possible rorts include under-reporting of carbon emissions by firms and bogus carbon offset schemes.
“If someone is rorting it by even 1 per cent a year, we’re talking about many, many millions of dollars,” Mr Torr said.
FT:
Todd Stern, President Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change, tried to sound optimistic when the US delegation ended its China visit but could hardly conceal that little had been achieved. Mr Stern, who before leaving for China had said, “Let’s get this damn thing started [between the US and China]“, did his best to paper over the lack of progress. “In our meetings, we deepened our dialogue with our Chinese counterparts through a candid discussion of the challenges we must overcome and the opportunities we must seize if we and the world are to reach an international climate agreement,” the US delegation said in a leaving statement. (more…)
AP:
Net worth represents total assets such as homes and checking accounts, minus liabilities like mortgages and credit card debt.
The damage to wealth in the first quarter came from the sinking stock market. The value of Americans’ stock holdings dropped 5.8 percent from the final quarter of last year.
Another hit came from falling house prices. The value of household real-estate holdings fell 2.4 percent. Collectively, homeowners had 41.4 percent equity in their homes in the first quarter. That was down from 42.9 percent in the fourth quarter.
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Thursday spurned an offer from the United States to participate closely in its planned European anti-missile system, instead urging Washington to drop its proposals and start afresh.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday he was hopeful Moscow might consider hosting either radars or a data exchange center as it recognized the growing threat from Iran.
Creigh Deeds — fresh off his runaway victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for governor of Virginia — has moved out to a slight lead over Republican Bob McDonnell, his opponent in the Nov. 3 general election.
A Rasmussen Reports poll taken Wednesday had Deeds at 47 percent and McDonnell, a former state Attorney General, at 41 percent. The survey was conducted as Deeds, a state senator, was basking in the media spotlight after easily defeating primary foes Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, and former state Rep. Brian Moran.
WSJ:
Recent drafts can’t provide a definitive answer because most picks haven’t yet reached the major leagues. Earlier drafts generally indicate that teams with early picks get more value from college players. Writing for ESPN in 2004, Keith Scherercompared high-school and college players drafted between 1982 and 1994. He paired players of roughly the same age, so he was matching one year’s college draft class with the high-school class from three years earlier. Scherer concluded, “In almost every category, the collegians are the better bet.” (more…)
WSJ:
“Somebody needs to tell Denzel, Jack and the boys in Hollywood to put their brooms away,” Mike Bianchi exults in the Orlando Sentinel. “The Lakers aren’t sweeping; they’re sweating. The Magic have closed to within 2-1 and they’re actually within a missed alley-oop of being up 2-1. This series is far from over.”
Something makes Orlando an easy team to embrace. “The Magic is like a small-college team with a rumpled coach and an antiquated arena, and I mean that in the best way possible,” John Romano writes in the St. Petersburg Times.
ABC:
Letterman responded last night by saying that the joke was aimed at 18-year-old Bristol Palin, not Willow: “We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman said. (more…)
Business groups are daring President Barack Obama to impose pay caps on labor union bosses in light of indications the White House will limit how much corporate executives can be paid.
President Obama has argued “corporate greed” has contributed to the economic crisis and appointed a “compensation czar” to review executive pay for several companies receiving taxpayer bailout money Wednesday. Now White House officials have told the press legislation should be enacted to limit executive pay in private companies through nonbinding shareholders votes.
