BabbleFest

In extracting the $20 billion dollar trust fund from BP for administration by the government, the Obama administration neglected to obtain an agreement from BP to forego the applicable tax credit, which amounts to roughly $10 billion. While BP will undoubtedly be cast as the villain for claiming a perfectly legal tax credit, blame for this fiasco rests squarely with the government.

BP PLC will reduce its contribution to U.S. coffers by roughly $10 billion due to a tax credit the company is claiming it incurred from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The oil giant said Tuesday that it is incurring a charge of $32.2 billion from the Deepwater Horizon disaster response, and as such, it is claiming a $9.9 billion taxation credit.

This is NOT some new issue that nobody could have anticipated. The recent settlement with Goldman Sachs included such a provision, and Congress has in the past complained about settlements that did not include such language. This is nothing more or less than complete ineptitude at the highest levels of the Obama administration.

I can’t help but picture BP’s lead counsel leaning in close to Tony Hayward after the agreement was reached and whispering “Amateurs.”

One can only assume that in their rush to get their hands on, and take credit for, the $20 billion fund the administration didn’t bother to do their homework.

Amateurs indeed.

More details are here.

Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha, 9, will be vacationing on Spain’s Costa Del Sol this August, on what has been described by the White House as “a private trip with long-time family friends.”

Thirty (yes, thirty) rooms have been reserved at a five-star hotel.

It is thought Mrs Obama has booked the rooms at the prestigious Villa Padierna, a golf and spa resort located along the coast from Marbella.

With a reputation as Spain’s most exclusive hotel, room prices start at 250 euros (£210) for a standard double and rise up to 5,000 euros (£4,175) for a private villa within the gardens.

At current exchange rates, that makes the starting price per room per night about $325.

Since most of the thirty rooms are undoubtedly for secret service and staff personnel, who will also have to travel and eat, it looks like the American taxpayers will fork over tens of thousands of dollars for Michelle and Sasha’s “private trip”.

More details are here

Wasn’t the idea behind big unions supposed to be equality and fairness in the workplace? Don’t they justify their very existence with the rationale that they prevent management from treating individual workers, or groups of workers, differently? I guess times have changed, and with a bit of paraphrasing, I submit that George Orwell pretty well sums up the current state of affairs.

Some union members are more equal than others.

“Fair share”. That’s a phrase Obama and his administration officials like to throw around. Everybody should pay their fair share. Everybody should get their fair share. Apparently, exactly what “share” is “fair” varies with the context. For example, among autoworkers at Chrysler and GM plants, after what the Washington Post describes as the “jury-rigged” labor agreement reached during the bailouts, new hires make exactly one-half the basic wage of those already employed, and have significantly curtailed benefits as well. All are card-carrying, dues-paying members of the United Auto Workers.

Among workers building the Jeep Grand Cherokee here, there are few obvious distinctions. Clutching lunch sacks and mini-coolers, they trudge together through the turnstiles at the plant’s main gate each day to tinker with the same vehicles, along the same assembly line, performing the same tasks.

Yet they fall into distinctly unequal classes: About half make $28 an hour or more, while the rest, the recently hired, make $14.

This oddity, which could become the norm in much of the domestic U.S. auto industry, arises from the jury-rigged labor agreement that the United Auto Workers, U.S. automakers and the federal government reached during the industry’s near-death experience last year.

Not mentioned in the Post’s article is the fact that retired Chrysler workers saw their existing retirement benefits slashed in order to facilitate retaining the status quo for current workers. These results, along with the transfer of assets from the actual investors in GM bonds, such as the Indiana teachers and policemen’s retirement funds, to the United Auto Workers, are dramatically different from the result that would have obtained had existing bankruptcy law been applied, instead of the hand-crafted “managed bankruptcy” by which the Obama administration circumvented the law and made the UAW, a powerful union supporter of the Democrat party, the big winner in the bailouts. All, of course, subsidized by the taxpayers.

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In an article about illegal aliens packing up and leaving Arizona, Reuters demonstrates the proper way to slant your “news” coverage.

Not content with trying to tug at the heartstrings with a tale of illegal aliens forced to sell their worldly possessions and flee Arizona for other states where they hope to live illegally without being “harassed” because they are here illegally, this Reuters article goes on to make the point that “legal residents”  also “scramble to leave.” While this may or may not be true, the “reporting” by Reuters is downright deceptive.

Here are the examples given by Reuters under the heading “Legal Residents Flee” . See if you can spot the slant:

While the law targets undocumented migrants, legal residents and their U.S.-born children are getting caught up in the rush to leave Arizona.

Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix.

“Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime,” she said as she sold children’s clothes at a yard sale with three other families. “They could arrest him for driving me to the shops.”

Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday.

“It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here,” said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.

So what’s the problem here? Well, ”Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez” is obviously in fact an illegal alien, not a legal resident. How do we know this? She is afraid her husband could be arrested for driving her around under a provision which prohibits “transporting illegal aliens”. So the “legal resident” fleeing Arizona is apparently her husband, who is leaving because he either married or imported his illegal alien wife. And their kids may or may not also be illegal aliens, depending upon place of birth.

As for high school graduate Lunaly Bustillos, “a legal resident” leaving with her family, Reuters is careful not to identify or describe the status of her family members. Reading between the lines, it seems pretty obvious that she is leaving with her parents… who are illegal aliens.

See? That’s how you effectively slant your news coverage. You have to be subtle. You claim that the law is driving out legal residents without ever mentioning that they are packing up and leaving with their illegal alien families.

The law does not affect legal residents in any way. But if they’ve chosen to live in illegal family arrangements, well, that’s their choice. And choices have consequences.

Federal budget deficit to exceed $1.4 trillion in 2010 and 2011

The White House budget office is now forecasting that the record $1.4 trillion deficit for 2009 will climb to $1.47 trillion this year. That means the government will be borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.  The White House projections also indicate no real reduction in the deficit for 2011, either.

And this, boys and girls, is the federal deficit, not the federal debt.

What that means is, this is not the total amount the government owes, this is the amount it will come up short for just this year alone. In other words, the Obama administration will spend, in 2010, $1.47 trillion more than the total amount of taxes, fees, and all other combined revenue it takes in.

According to these projections, from 2009 through 2011 the federal government will have spent over $4 trillion dollars it did not have.

This is not the “unfunded liabilities” for planned outlays in the future, this is the current actual deficit in annual spending.

That didn’t take long. Heads have begun to roll in Bell, California, the little town where the government officials get paid more than whole neighborhoods of the working stiffs they’re supposed serving.

We originally commented on this story a few days ago. Now comes word that in a closed-door city council meeting the three highest paid officials, the city manager, assistant city manager, and police chief have agreed to resign. Without severance packages. Looks like the Bell city council members have been studying somebody’s technique for tossing people under the bus to save your own hide. 

But alas, it may be too little too late to save the council members, themselves knocking down around $100,000 a year for their part-time council jobs.  The citizens apparently are not entirely satisfied with the ouster of the three officials:

The crowd erupted in applause after the announcement but immediately yelled out questions about what would happen to the council members. Four of the five are paid close to $100,000 annually. When their questions were not answered, they shouted, “Recall!”

And in another strange twist, it now turns out that while four of the five council members are making around $100,000 for their part-time council jobs, Councilman Lorenzo Velez, who moved to open the meeting to the public but was overruled by the city attorney, is making just a little bit less than the others:

Velez, who makes only $8,076, has expressed shock at the amount his fellow council members are paid. Vice Mayor Teresa Jacobo said Velez makes less than the others because he was appointed, not elected. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is looking at the salaries of council members to see whether they violate state law.

This has got to be one of the most corrupt and abusive groups of political hacks in the country. Or is it? Maybe citizens around the country had better start paying more attention to what their “leaders” are up to.

In any event, pass the popcorn. This is the best part of the movie. The angry citizens have just dispatched Igor the evil lab assistant, and now they’re after the monster and the mad scientist who created it.

P.S.   Kudos to the LA Times for exposing this cesspool. Now if only they’d spend a little time looking into the sewer in Washington, D.C.

Documents released by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.) reveal a startling pattern of “interaction” between sub-prime king Countrywide Bank (now absorbed by Bank of America) and officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

New documents released by Issa show 173 sweetheart deal loans from Countrywide Financial Corporation were given to 42 Fannie and Freddie employees as the company was negotiating exclusive agreement to sell Fannie Mae billions of dollars in questionable, sub-prime mortgages at a discounted rate.

Among those receiving the sweetheart deal loans were Jamie Gorelick, Vice Chair Fannie Mae, James Johnson, Chairman and CEO Fannie Mae, Daniel Mudd, Vice Chair and COO Fannie Mae and Franklin Raines, Chairman and CEO Fannie Mae.

173 loans to 42 officials. Somebody, maybe everybody, was getting sweetheart treatment on more than just their personal residence.

There’s much more here, including an email in which Coutrywide admits it is making a loan to an official at a loss, apparently in anticipation of benefitting in other ways.

I’m thinking the “Angry Mob Playset” may be a hot Christmas gift this year in Bell, California.

When residents of  that town, with a population of 38,000 and a per capita income under $25,000, found out from the LA Times that their city manager is making almost $800,000, their police chief makes more  than the Los Angeles police chief, and their part-time city council members were collecting $100,000 a year, the angry crowd that showed up at the next city council meeting overflowed out into the street, with those barred from the room banging on the door and shouting.

More details are here. It’s fun reading, if you like harrowing tales of government abusing the governed.

I’m guessing there may be some turnover in city government next election.

According to the National Enquirer, quite possibly the last bastion of non-partisan investigative journalism in America, two additional women, both apparently massage therapists, have come forward with allegations of improper behavior by the former vice president.

More details, if you can stomach them, are here.

So says Neal Barofsky, the special inspector general over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

You remember TARP, the emergency bank bailout intended to forestall a worl banking panic passed at the end of the Bush administration. Tarp was originally $700 billion, approximately $232 billion of which was left over after the world financial market had stabilized.

Yes, President Obama, that is the truth. While you like to claim you saved the world banking system, the fact is the banking collapse was averted, worldwide, by the Bush administration with approximately $500 billion.

The additional $3.2 trillion dollars is attributable solely to the Obama administration and the Democrats in congress. And we have what to show for it?

Anybody out there still think there’s no difference between a Bush or a McCain and the Democrats?

Big Lizards looks at the numbers behind the “Reid Surges in Nevada” headlines and finds that Reid didn’t so much surge as his big money ad campaign managed to suppress support for Angle:

But in reality, Reid did not “surge” at all; he remains mired in the low-forties, just about where he was in the last three Mason-Dixon polls. What happened was that a harsh series of anti-Angle adverts drove her support down, from 44% to 37%. Reid’s support ticked up slightly from 42% to 44% — statistically insignificant movement

At 44% Reid is well within the range at which incumbents are generally considered vulnerable, and the post contains a good discussion of Angle’s prospects for recovering lost ground and creating a surge of her own.

For what it’s worth, the Federal Elections Commission says the Biden for President campaign committee owes more than $219,000 because of campaign finance violations.

The report paints a picture of sloppy bookkeeping by Mr. Biden’s campaign. But aides to the vice president said the errors were relatively minor. The excess contributions were less than 1 percent of the total raised by the campaign, they said.

Truthfully, this really is mostly minor stuff resulting from “sloppy bookkeeping”, and mainly for accepting contributions over the legal limit from individual donors. In fact, some of the amount is for errors the campaign caught and refunded the over-limit contributions, but the donors never cashed the refund checks.

Still, an “Oops, we goofed” as opposed to “So what” would have been a nice response.

Barack Obama, who broke his pledge to accept public financing and ran an internet cash machine raising funds, will not be audited because his campaign did not accept public matching funds.

This despite the well-documented fact that his campaign reset default security settings on their payment processing software to allow untraceable foreign donations, accept donations from clearly fictitious donors (multiple “Adolf Hitler” donations, for example), and accept donations without verifying either the name or the zip code associated with the card, a basic security setting intended to block fraudulent payments.

We will never know how much foreign and otherwise illegal money flowed into the Obama campaign.  And since this fundraising chicanery was exposed by bloggers before the 2008 election took place and no media investigation  ensued, I guess we have to conclude that  it just doesn’t matter.

Why Did Obama’s DOJ Botch Roman Polanski’s Extradition?

The Weingarten angle is tantalizing; did Holder’s pal broker a Washington deal to keep Polanski free? Did Holder agree — he does have a history of killing prosecutions, doesn’t he? — in order to keep faith with Obama’s supporters and donors among the Hollywood Left?

Legal incompetence or corrupt backroom deal?

We suggest you go read the article and decide for yourself.

According to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the answer right now is “maybe”:

In Monday’s ruling, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered immigration judges to reconsider whether Guatemalan women constitute a “particular social group” that may be persecuted. Courts have granted such status to women who fear genital mutilation and victims of domestic abuse, but two lower courts had said Guatemalan women was too broad a category.

Lawyers for Lesly Yajayra Perdomo — a Medicaid account executive for a health care company in Reno, Nevada — argued that a high murder rate for women in her native Guatemala means that deporting her would constitute “a death sentence.”

By this logic, don’t we end up with pretty much any high crime rate as grounds for political asylum? When did the “political” in “political asylum” cease to have any meaning?

We can now expect a flood of applications for political asylum from third-world countries with high crime rates.

The original article is here.