Cheap Oil Fuels The Booms

Mexican on Death Row Since 1994 Brutal Murder Finally Executed, Despite Obama

The AP has the story here:

A Mexican national was executed Thursday for the rape-slaying of a San Antonio teenager after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a White House-supported appeal to spare him in a death penalty case where Texas justice triumphed over international treaty concerns.

Humberto Leal, 38, received lethal injection for the 1994 murder of Adria Sauceda. She was fatally bludgeoned with a piece of asphalt.

In Saudi Arabia he would have been bludgeoned with a piece of asphalt, in 1994.

TSA Agent Stole From Your Luggage, Fenced The Stuff Online

$50K worth at FLL.

Story here.

Republican Governor of Tennessee Wants To Spearhead Internet Tax Initiative

The RINO's name is Bill Haslam. Rhymes with Has-Been.

Story here.

Conservatism Has Always Been Counter-Revolutionary

A frequent MO of the left is to substitute its own definition of something for the real thing, and then argue against it. Otherwise called setting up a straw man. Words mean whatever they say they mean.

That's what Michael Lind has done to Russell Kirk over at Salon.com.

A commenter on his "The three fundamentalisms of the American right: How conservatism went from orthodox and traditional to radical and counter-revolutionary" here gets it exactly right:

The stupidity is also amusing for the way Lind telegraphs his punch in the title, since Russell Kirk, channeler of Burke, consistently advocated for the counter-revolutionary interpretation of the American Revolution throughout his career. More than that, he thought that his own interpretation of the American Revolution as a revolution not made but prevented was entirely consistent with E.J. Payne's interpretation of the Burke who famously loathed what became of France's revolution. Kirk lays out his interpretation in this famous essay, stating from the start his indebtedness to Payne for the idea:

The most learned editor of Burke’s works, E. J. Payne, summarizes Burke’s account of the events of 1688-89 as “a revolution not made but prevented.” Let us see how that theory may be applicable to North American events nine decades later.

On this interpretation, the King of England was the revolutionary, against whose red-coated infringers on the chartered rights of Englishmen the American colonists reluctantly and at length opened fire with more than just words.

Lind would like things to be as they once were, when conservatism was still inchoate, unsure of itself, and above all, politically ineffectual:

Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed.

But now that conservatism is a genuine threat to the revolutionary left which has taken control of America, it's time to sound the alarms:

Sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide, and it is not reality that will crumple like tinfoil. The only question is how much damage will be done to the American polity before the revolution of the saints fizzles out.

"Collide." "Crumple." "Damage." Sounds more like an invitation to a train wreck than to a battle, but I could be wrong.

Round one to the right last November. More skirmishes to follow. 

The Liberal Attack on Bill Clinton Continues, This Time From Joe Stiglitz

As picked up by Slate, here, which especially savors a straw man when mixed with a delusion:

[A] powerful ideology—the belief in free and unfettered markets—brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its heyday, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest of the richest country of the world. ...

A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the United States faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. 

Here Come The Mexican Trucks

Unless Congress stops them by not ratifying the agreement.

Story here.

Defining a Depression

"Some point to the success of Latvia in managing its so-called internal devaluation. But its GDP is 23 percent below its pre-crisis peak. That is a depression."

-- Martin Wolf, here

Rare Earth Mineral Finds on Pacific Floor Dwarf Known Land Reserves

The new discoveries near Hawaii and Tahiti in international waters by the Japanese are said to be on the order of perhaps 100 billion tons, while known land reserves are in the vicinity of 100 million tons.

Looks like the Chinese may soon discover they've been paying way too much in their attempt to corner this market.

The article, here, makes no mention of the implications of the Law of the Sea for the discovery.

 

Updated link here.

Everything You Need To Know About TX Gov. Rick Perry, George W., and Karl Rove In One Sentence

"In 1989, Mr. Rove, already a powerful Texas political consultant, helped persuade Mr. Perry to join the Republican Party and run as agriculture commissioner."

The New York Times, here.

Walter Williams Skewers Democracy, and Time Magazine's Richard Stengel

Just one of the bons mots:

Stengel says, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so." That statement is beyond ignorance. The 10th Amendment reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Stengel apparently has not read The Federalist No. 45, in which James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, said:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

Stengel's article is five pages online, and I've only commented on the first.

Read the whole thing here.

Fight The Will-Try-ANYTHING Fed

From Bill Julian, making the contrarian case here that it's already winter:

M3, the broadest definition of money that includes credit creation, is still well off its peak of 2008 and is no higher than it was when QE2 was instituted. ... This is unprecedented and is consistent with the current flurry of poor economic data. It is almost certainly a huge disappointment to the FED.

The meaning of this is that the asset prices which have been inflated by Federal Reserve policies look less and less sustainable. 

'Money is the Lifeblood of the Nation'

"Money, the lifeblood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains."

-- Jonathan Swift

End Obama's Big Fat 'Tax Break' For Air Force One: $35 Million a Year

From Rich Karlgaard, here:

[T]he annual carrying costs and fuel costs of Obama’s big fat jet comes to $100 million, give or take. My round number is supported by the National Taxpayer’s Union finding that Air Force One costs $181,000 an hour to operate, all in.  Obama would have to fly 552 hours to hit $100 million-a-year by this calculation. However you analyze it, the cost of Air Force One comes in at around $100 million.

Gee, wouldn’t you call that a form of compensation? The president of the U.S. makes $400,000 in salary but he gets a perk that is worth $100 million a year. Cool! I’m not even counting the annual costs of his other perks — ground transportation in limos, free digs at the White House, the parties, the First Lady’s trips, and so on.

Just one perk, Air Force One, is worth $100 million a year.

You are right, Mr. President. Let’s end this tax break for corporate jets. Which means, you pay up, Big Guy! You owe the IRS roughly $35 million a year for your personal jet.

Rethinking 2008: Panic Number Fifteen

From The Chicago Tribune:

There are remarkable similarities in the events that trigger panics. A century-old economic text, "A Brief History of Panics and their Periodical Occurrence" noted, "The symptoms of an approaching panic… are wonderful prosperity… a rise in the price of all commodities, of land, of houses, etc, etc…, by the gullibility of the public, by a general taste for speculating in order to grow rich at once, by a growing luxury leading to excessive expenditures…." The book further cited excessive leverage in the financial system, a point taken up by [Roger] Babson, who likened the creation of new financial institutions to "putting out a flame by pouring oil over it." How easily all this could have described the years preceding the Panic of 2008!

Read more from Jeff Korzenik's fascinating op-ed, here.

Risk-Taking Capital is Fleeing the US

From The Wall Street Journal here:

Americans are taking their investment dollars abroad at a faster pace than foreigners are bringing capital to these shores. In 2010, for example, U.S. investment abroad was $351 billion—$115 billion higher than foreign investment here. Economic recoveries are periods when investment capital usually surges into a country, but since this weakling rebound began in the middle of 2009 the U.S. has lost more than $200 billion in investment capital. That is the equivalent of about two million jobs that don't exist on these shores and are now located in places like China, Germany and India.

This is a recent and dramatic reversal of fortune. Huge net inflows of productive capital into the U.S. in the 1980s and '90s helped finance the 25-year boom in jobs and broad-based prosperity from 1982-2007. Over that period, foreigners invested just over $6 trillion more in the U.S. (in total capital) than Americans invested abroad, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, with most of it going into businesses.

Minnesota Governor Flip Flops on Government Shutdown

Seen here:

[D]uring the 2010 gube[r]natorial election ... governor Dayton said he would not shut down state government in order to get his way on a tax increase.

Anonymous Eyewitness Fukushima Workers Allege Quake Caused Meltdowns, Not Tsunami

The Atlanticwire.com has the long story here, including testimony from three different workers:

 “I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.”

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.” (first worker)

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

“There were holes in them [the walls of Unit 1]. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.” (worker two)

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion that was almost deafening. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’” (worker three)

Worker three, quoting a supervisor: “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.”

It's a little odd that the story concludes with this statement:

[S]haking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s [sic] approved design specifications.

Three readings from TEPCO's own report of the seismic data, updated June 16, 2011, contradict this statement for Units 2, 3, and 5, and Unit 1 got very close to not just its E-W limit, but also its N-S, which would cohere with its geographic position at the plant, bearing the brunt of the forces from the north, and sharing in the record-setting forces from the east:

Workers fleeing west before the tsunami hit were reported here to have heard a radiation alarm sounding at a point 1.5 km distant from reactor Unit 1.

White House Staff: 454 People. Total Compensation? $37.1 Million.

As reported here:

141 White House staffers make six figures. ...

In total, the 454 White House staffers earn a payroll of $37,121,463.

Poverty Lines 2010 US Census

(source)