The Treasury Department today is patting itself on the back for finally selling some of the government’s shares in American International Group, with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner breathlessly praising the action as an “important milestone.”
But hold on there, Mr. Secretary. This sale of shares doesn’t come close to what taxpayers have put into AIG, and the government will still have a supermajority stake. The sale of shares should raise $5.8 billion for the federal government — out of $173 billion spent propping it up.
And when this stock sale is over, the government will have reduced its ownership stake in AIG from 92 percent to 77 percent. A company is going from being nine-tenths government-owned to three-fourths government-owned. Big wow!
But even if AIG were somehow to pay every dollar back, that still wouldn’t justify the bailout and takeover. There are a number of “hidden costs” which I have gone over before and will revisit in later posts
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Thanks to New Jersey’s Supreme Court, that state’s hopelessly-mismanaged (and sometimes corrupt) urban school districts will be getting even more money. In a 3-to-2 ruling today in Abbott v. Burke, it ordered New Jersey’s legislature and governor to increase spending on these money-wasting school districts by $500 million, blocking Governor Chris Christie’s attempts to reduce the rate of increase in state spending. The state supreme court’s order to increase spending on the so-called “Abbott” districts flouted both constitutional separation of powers principles barring judicially-imposed spending, and the fact that the state constitution only requires a “thorough and efficient” system of public schools.
It is anything but “efficient” to throw more money at dysfunctional school districts that already have more money to spend per student than the average school district in the state — or country. New Jersey already spends $17,800 per student, among the highest in America, and spending in Newark, a supposedly “disadvantaged” Abbott district, is far higher, at $23,000. Audits found that these districts waste 29 percent of their money. If the New Jersey Supreme Court really cared about the state constitutional guarantee of “efficient” schools, it would root out wasteful spending in the schools, instead of ordering even more such spending.
The Court’s 3-to-2 vote was the result of the New Jersey Senate blocking Gov. Christie from appointing a new justice to the Supreme Court to fill a vacancy, resulting in a temporary vacancy on the Court. The liberal Chief Justice then temporarily assigned a liberal judge, Judge Stern, to fill the resulting vacancy. (One of the state supreme court justices, Justice Rivera-Soto, says that temporary assignment violates New Jersey’s Constitution.)
The card check bill soon to be sitting on California Governor Jerry Brown’s desk is another attempt by labor unions to take away worker rights. Discussion of Senate Bill 104 has contained little to remind us exactly how labor organizers use card check to violate worker’s privacy.
The proposed legislation goes beyond the effective abolition of a worker’s right to a secret ballot in elections for union representation. The bill requires employers to provide unions with detailed information about their employees. The text of the legislation stipulates:
[T]he employer shall provide a complete and accurate list of the full names, current street addresses, job classifications, and crew or department of all currently employed employees in the bargaining unit. The employer shall organize the employees’ names and addresses and other information by crew or department and shall provide the list to the board and petitioning labor organization in hard copy and electronic format. The employees’ first name, middle name or initial, last name, address, city, state, ZIP Code, classification, and crew or department shall be organized into separate columns.
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Today, President Obama issued a memorandum that directed executive agencies to develop purchasing and deployment plans for replacing the entire federal vehicle fleet with alternative energy vehicles by 2015. This includes both hybrids and coal-powered electric plug-in vehicles.
The problem with such a gung-ho approach is that it ignores important facts, such as that the price premium for all-electric vehicles, and thus the fleet replacement costs faced by agencies, greatly outweighs the environmental benefits. See this 2009 GAO report on the topic. Basically, the Obama plan will drastically increase government vehicle costs in order to secure trivial environmental benefits. But as this administration has repeatedly demonstrated, pretending to be “green” while rewarding your friends and actually being “green” are entirely different things.
Today’s Washington Post has an article about a new study confirming that the lifetime earning power of a college degree in science or engineering far outweighs that of a humanities or liberal arts degree. The article begins with an old joke:
The scientist asks, “Why does it work?”
The engineer asks, “How does it work?”
The English major asks, “Would you like fries with that?”
The observation may seem a bit cheeky, coming from me, a guy who double-majored in history and political science — not a REAL science, as my sister the geo-chemist likes to remind me. But I’ve always questioned the reasoning skills of humanities majors, particularly a certain type of humanities major: those who wind up in journalism. Now, even the Washington Post backs me up on this:
[S]ome defenders of the humanities have said that their students are endowed with “critical thinking” and other skills that could enable them to catch up to other students in earnings.
Turns out, on average, they were wrong.
I was thinking exactly that last night — vis-a-vis the lack of critical thinking skills – as I read this article (“10 Things Fast-Food Companies Won’t Say“) on SmartMoney.com by Jilian Mincer and Catie Hill.
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This week thousands of poker fans and players will gather at the Rio Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas for the much anticipated 42nd Annual World Series of Poker (WSoP). Despite the April 15 federal crackdown, what is solemnly referred to in the online poker world as “Black Friday,” it appears that this year’s championship game will draw as many and possibly more professionals and viewers than last year’s event to the Rio Casino and Hotel where the tournament is taking place.
“This is the year people are going to see how big poker has become around the world and what a juggernaut the modern World Series of Poker has become,” said Jack Effel, the tournament’s director. According to Effel, attendance will be up by 20 percent.
Yet, even as players arrive in Vegas and settle up to the green felt in an attempt to focus on playing for a while, instead of legal matter, federal prosecutors are at it again for black Friday, round two.
Eleven bank accounts located in the U.S. and abroad were seized along with 10 online gambling domains as part of the indictment that was unsealed on May 23, 2011, by Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein of Baltimore. The indictments allege that the defendants own and operate illegal gambling businesses serving American customers.
“We cannot allow foreign website operators to flout the law simply because their headquarters are based outside the country,” Rosenstein said.
One of the domains seized in the indictment was DoylesRoom.com, the popular site which uses the name and likeness of Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson — a veteran player and poker strategist who publicly distanced himself from DoylesRoom after Black Friday and requested that the site discontinue the use of his name and image.
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Tech:
Key Internet summit to discuss online:
“The world’s most powerful Internet and media barons gathered in Paris on Tuesday in a show of strength to leaders at the G8 summit, amid rows over online copyright, regulation and human rights.”
Senate debates president’s power during cyber-attack:
“Senators squared off with Obama administration officials Monday about plans to give the president emergency powers to protect vital U.S. electronic networks from attacks by hackers, cyberterrorists and foreign governments.”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Tornado Took Direct Aim at Joplin:
“Weather experts said it’s unusual for deadly tornadoes to develop a few weeks apart in the U.S. But what made the two storm systems that barreled through a Missouri city and the South within the last month so rare is that tornadoes took direct aim at populated areas.”
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204 more waivers of Obamacare’s onerous mandates have been issued over the past month, bringing the total to at least 1,372. As I explain in the Washington Examiner, the waivers are going to the biggest supporters of Obamacare, and allies of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, other, less politically-connected applicants have had their requests for waivers rejected. AARP, whose support for Obamacare mystified many seniors, has now received lucrative exemptions worth millions that put it at a competitive advantage over its rivals in the health insurance market.
Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger argues that the arbitrary waiver process makes Obamacare unconstitutional (see his National Review columns on the subject here, here, and here). Moreover, the unpredictable and standardless nature of the waivers are one way in which Obamacare violates the clear-statement rule contained in the Supreme Court’s Spending-Clause decisions, argue the leaders of the Minnesota and North Carolina legislatures. Obamacare also contains racial discrimination and race-based preferences that were criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Thanks to Obamacare, 22,000 seniors lost their high-quality healthcare plan in New England. AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere, and Verizon reported massive cost increases, while insurance premiums rose massively in some states. The new healthcare law also harms medical innovation.
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