WASHINGTON -- More than four years after the financial crisis, not a single Wall Street executive has been jailed for playing a role in the creation of the toxic financial products that fueled the real-estate bubble, which were in some cases designed simply to fail.

That track record may make it difficult for the Department of Justice to earn the sympathy of the public as it warns that spending cuts will hamper its ability to investigate Wall Street fraud. The Federal Bureau of Investigations told lawmakers in a recent letter that across-the-board cuts resulting from sequestration "will cause current financial crimes investigations to slow as workload is spread among a reduced workforce. In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence."

Investigations yet unseen may also be harmed. "In some instances, such delays could affect the timely interviews of witnesses and collection of evidence. The capacity to undertake new major investigations will be constrained," FBI Director Robert Mueller III wrote in the letter, addressed to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/fbi-sequestration-wall-street_n_2807338.html


keep those pot busts going though...what a joke.

Study finds that legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. This includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/04/oneSsstudy-explains-why-its-tough-to-pass-liberal-laws/

Sometimes it like a war in here.

MSNBC's Martin Bashir invited Republican congressman Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) to discuss the looming sequester. Towards the end of the interview, Bashir questioned Huelskamp on why he (of course) voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief package.


Bashir: But sir, Hurricane Sandy was a once in a life time event. That's what the federal government exists to respond, a once in a life time event.

Huelskamp: That's nowhere in the constitution. The federal government exists for national defense.
Now, it's just my opinion, but I would think that one could make an argument that the federal government could say, defend us against natural disasters without running into any conflicts with the consitution. But whatever, let's try and go at it from another angle and see what the constitution actually says:


to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States;


socialist Thomas Jefferson:

For more than two centuries, U.S. lawmakers have recognized the need for a federal government that helps its citizens in times of disaster. The most significant and earliest instance of such federal involvement occurred in 1803. That was the year when a series of fires swept through the port city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

In response to the disaster, Congress passed legislation that provided relief for Portsmouth merchants. More importantly, the Congressional Act of 1803 contained the first piece of national disaster legislation ever to be passed by a United States Congress.




http://www.readingisforsnobs.com/2013/02/idiot-congressman-says-federal.html

Obama, Congress Must Reach Deal On Budget By March 1, And Then April 1, And Then April 20, And Then April 28, And Then May 1
And Then Twice A Week For Next Four Years



WASHINGTON—With the dramatic, across-the-board sequestration scheduled to occur this week, the nation’s leading economists have warned that President Obama and Congress must come to a compromise on the budget by Mar. 1, and then again by Apr. 1, and then Apr. 20, Apr. 28, and—after Congress is once again unable to come to a comprehensive agreement to fully stabilize the economy—May 1, along with agreements twice a week, every week, for the next four years.

Experts say that without reaching a deal this Friday, the automatic $85 billion reduction in government spending will immediately slow the U.S. economy and impact thousands of middle-class citizens. Officials said the same exact thing will happen next month, the month after that, and the month after that if Obama and Congress fail to meet deadlines created by the preceding, incomplete deals.

“If the president and Congress are unable to reach a grand bargain by Mar. 1, what they will likely do is reach a set of 100 or so smaller bargains, all with their own deadlines, and all of which could potentially plunge the U.S. economy into a recession,” said Princeton economics professor Marshall Kahn. “So, the Mar. 1 deadline is absolutely crucial. Just like the one next month will be. And the 12 deadlines in May. And the bi-daily deadlines that will kick in during the summer.”

“Based on the way the president and Congress deal with one another,” Kahn added, “in 2014, there will need to be 4,562 budget deals.”

According to leading economists, should negotiations between Obama and lawmakers stall this week, Congress could vote on a resolution to extend the current deadline to May 1, which would likely cause vital cuts to public programs, and also combine the projected negotiations scheduled for May 30, June 4, June 5, July 8, 2014, and Mar. 12, 2042 into one seven-day-long meeting.

Other experts noted that even in the event of a deal, a clause in the Budget Control Act would inevitably lead to a total of 64 additional meetings between June and July, as well as a potential deadline creation deadline that would automatically kick in on Oct. 4 and would create 20 more deadlines that must be agreed upon by a Nov. 5 deadline.

“The fact is, lawmakers will need to deal with the scheduled automatic tax increases, which Republicans will challenge by calling for cuts to education and health programs like Medicare and Medicaid,” Wall Street Journal analyst Will Case said. “All of this will require 12 straight years of intense talks.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-congress-must-reach-deal-on-budget-by-march,31460/

February 27, 2013, 1:27
Tomorrow Has Arrived

Tom Tomorrow, that is; he’s received the Herblock prize. Congratulations to Dan Perkins for a well-deserved honor, even if it required some violence to my cartoon alter ego:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/tomorrow-has-arrived/

The eminent University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences on Friday, citing his objections to its military partnerships and to its electing as a member Napoleon Chagnon, a long-controversial anthropologist who is back in the news thanks to the publication of his new book, Noble Savages.

Membership in the NAS is considered highly prestigious, and public resignations are rare. In an e-mail to a number of his colleagues, which was forwarded to Inside Higher Ed, Sahlins wrote, "I have submitted my resignation to the National Academy of Sciences (US) because of my objections to the election of Chagnon... and to the military research projects of the Academy."

Sahlins confirmed his resignation and the reasons behind it in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed.


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/25/prominent-anthropologist-resigns-protest-national-academy-sciences#ixzz2M82gh4FV
Inside Higher Ed


Marshall Sahlins’ resignation is an heroic stand against the subversion of science to those claiming an innate nature of human violence, and a stand opposing the increasing militarization of science. While Sahlins’ credentials as an activist opposing the militarization of knowledge are well established—he is widely recognized as the creator of the “teach-in,” organizing the February 1965 University of Michigan teach-in—it still must have been difficult for him to resign this prestigious position.

In late 1965 Sahlins traveled to Vietnam to learn firsthand about the war and the Americans fighting it, work that resulted in his seminal essay “The Destruction of Conscience in Vietnam.” He became one of the clearest and most forceful anthropological voices speaking out against efforts (in the 1960s and 70s, and in again in post-9/11 America) to militarize anthropology.

In 2009 I was part of a conference at the University of Chicago critically examining renewed efforts by U.S. military and intelligence agencies to use anthropological data for counterinsurgency projects. Sahlins’ paper at the conference argued that, “in Vietnam, the famous anti-insurgency strategy was search and destroy; here it is research and destroy. One might think it good news that the military’s appropriation of anthropological theory is incoherent, simplistic and outmoded – not to mention tedious – even as its ethnographic protocols for learning the local society and culture amount to unworkable fantasies. ”


http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/26/the-destruction-of-conscience-in-national-academy-of-sciences/

Liar,
Liar!
Pants are on fire!

(reply)
I don't care,
I don't care!
I can buy another pair!


From the Reagan era
which my daughter heardi
in school

Never head that way but I think the childhood genius
said it with the way things
are.


Anyway Blake explained it this way



It is a paraphrased version of the 1810 poem “The Liar” by William Blake, reprinted here in full.

Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Shall they dangle in the night?

When I asked of your career
Why did you have to kick my rear
With that stinking lie of thine
Proclaiming that you owned a mine?

When you asked to borrow my stallion
To visit a nearby-moored galleon
How could I ever know that you
Intended only to turn him into glue?

What red devil of mendacity
Grips your soul with such tenacity?
Will one you cruelly shower with lies
Put a pistol ball between your eyes?

What infernal serpent
Has lent you his forked tongue?
From what pit of foul deceit
Are all these whoppers sprung?

Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Do they dangle in the night?

Blake, a romantic known for his colorful use of supernatural and ballistic imagery, pretty much settled the question of whether or not honesty is the best policy with that poem.

&list=AL94UKMTqg-9BI4Khu85B7vUqj6VSZk1rt

Less known cut pretty good MP3 recording.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has been at the center of the molestation cover-up at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and subsequently relieved of his duties is praying for forgiveness. Not for himself, but for his accusers. Writing on his blog it is clear that the only person he feels pity for in this growing scandal is himself. Not the children who were molested nor their parents who entrusted them to their abusers.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/15/1187501/-Cardinal-Roger-Mahoney-is-praying-for-those-who-have-humiliated-him


Hey..... he sounds like the next Pope.