Negative equity reaches new heights in UK

Credit excesses aren't just an American problem. Other parts of western Europe are radically different but the UK credit policies have had a lot in common with the US. It looked flashy during the upside years but now that we're in the downside, it looks like a tough hurdle. Reuters:

More than one in ten British households may have fallen into negative equity, the Bank of England said on Friday, similar to levels seen in the mid-1990s.

The central bank estimated in the first quarter of 2009 between 700,000 and 1.1 million homes were in negative equity -- where homeowners owe more on their outstanding mortgage than their property is worth.

House prices have fallen sharply following increases in borrowing costs during the credit crunch and then a loss of confidence and spending power during the recession.

Despite some who suggest signs of recovery are showing in the UK, they seem to be confusing slowing of bad news with actual positive, sustained recovery. Read the rest of this post...

AIG: Yes to bonuses, no to paying claims on US Air crash

Despicable until the very end. It's companies like this that Obama thinks will kindly go along with "say on pay" votes that aren't really votes but simple suggestions. They have no shame. They don't care what anyone thinks about them or how they treat themselves versus customers or shareholders. It's always all about customers paying and them avoiding payment for as long as possible. Great business, when you can get away with it.

“I wish I had a hammer to get them to do the right thing,” said Andrew J. Maloney, a partner in the New York firm of Kreindler & Kreindler, which specializes in aviation litigation. He is representing some of the US Airways passengers but has not filed any lawsuits. “They’re riding a wave of feel-good opinion about how well the flight crew handled the bird strike.”

A spokesman for US Airways, Morgan Durrant, said the airline issued each passenger a check for $5,000 shortly after the accident to cover their immediate needs; it had no legal obligation to do so. He declined to discuss the airline’s liability insurance policy or claims processes, saying the matter was pending and he did not want to jeopardize it.

Those familiar with industry practices said it would be many months before the issue of liability was resolved.

So for passengers and staff of the US Air flight that survived an incredible crash, they're going to have to wait. Their medical bills and personal bills for lost items won't stop arriving so for them, it's tough luck.

The health insurance industry is not going to be much different as Democrats try to make progress on health care. Brace yourself for an even more brutal fight with that industry and their many friends, Democrats and Republicans alike. Read the rest of this post...

Doug from Vancouver writes...

A reader, Doug, an expat in Vancouver BC, writes:

I am an American writing this letter from Vancouver, British Columbia. I grew up in Ohio, lived in DC for 10 years and Miami for 10 years. In 2007 I had to move to Canada due to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. My Canadian husband could not live in the US, so I had to move to Canada.

I voted for Barrack Obama. I did not have 'Obamamania' as many in my homeland seemed to. Something about him bothered me but I was not sure what it was. Today I found out with his atrocious defense of DOMA, that he will throw any group under the bus if it suits his needs.

Read the rest of this post...

Joe Lieberman has had tax-payer financed health care for most of his adult life. But, he doesn't want us to have options.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Funny, I thought President Obama saved Joe Lieberman's ass last December, and saved his seat in the Democratic caucus, because now Obama was going to own Lieberman. Instead, Lieberman is screwing Obama on Obama's number one issue of his entire presidency. Joe Lieberman knows how to get what he wants from President Obama. Threaten something dear to the President, and then see what he's willing to offer you to call off the dogs. A lesson for us all.

Via Think Progress, we learned that Joe Lieberman is opposed to the public health option:

On Obama’s domestic agenda, Lieberman announced his opposition to a public health insurance option. “I don’t favor a public option, and I don’t favor a public option because I think there’s plenty of competition in the private insurance market,” he argued. (He’s wrong.) Lieberman warned that political pressure in favor of the public option may thwart efforts at achieving health care reform. “Let’s get something done instead of having a debate,” he said.

So, Joe thinks there is plenty of competition out there -- and this is all just a debating exercise. Lieberman has no idea how people in the real world live. How could he. From what I can garner, he's been living off taxpayer financed benefits for most of the past forty-two years.

From various sources, including his Senate website, it appears Lieberman graduated from college in 1964 and went straight to law school. He worked at a law firm til 1970, when he became a member of the Connecticut State Senate. I hear the health care benefits for elected officials in Connecticut are pretty good. He lost his Senate seat in 1980, but quickly returned to public life by winning the state's Attorney General race in 1982. He served as AG til 1988 when he became a U.S. Senator. He's been a Senator since then. Based on his latest financial disclosure report, Lieberman is already getting a pension from the state of Connecticut.

So, for almost his entire adult life, taxpayers have been paying for Joe Lieberman's health care benefits. He's not worried about co-pays and limits or not being able to afford coverage. Like so many of his colleagues, including Mary Landrieu, Lieberman has no real world perspective. He's spoiled -- at our expense. So, it's easy for Lieberman to side with the insurance companies.

Oh, it probably doesn't hurt that Lieberman's wife, Hadassah, worked for awhile at Hill and Knowlton doing work on as "'senior counselor' in the firm's 'health care and pharmaceuticals practice.'" I'm sure that gave her great insight into how health insurance companies were screwing over their customers.

Joe Lieberman is loathsome for many reasons. But, the fact that he's living on publicly paid benefits while trying to prevent the rest of us from having a public option is pretty disgusting. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman exposed the ties between extremists and their allies in the GOP, both politicians and media

This is a very important column from Krugman yesterday. He exposed the links between the extremists, the right-wing media and GOP leaders. They share rhetoric and lunatic fringe ideas. The media and politicians parrot the talking points of the crazies, giving them legitimacy:

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren’t very different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the “main person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” putting him in a three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh peddles conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that fears over swine flu were being hyped “to get people to respond to government orders” — that’s a case of the conservative media establishment joining hands with the lunatic fringe.

It’s not surprising, then, that politicians are doing the same thing. The R.N.C. says that “the Democratic Party is dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals.” And when Jon Voight, the actor, told the audience at a Republican fund-raiser this week that the president is a “false prophet” and that “we and we alone are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, thanked him, saying that he “really enjoyed” the remarks.

The rest of the traditional media is slowly beginning to wake up to this pattern. I think the teabagging events opened some eyes. And, the virulent hatred spewed at Sonia Sotomayor, from hate groups, Rush, Newt and others, also seemed to genuinely bother many reporters and pundits. The right wing media and Republican polticians are complicit in fomenting the hate. And, the rest of the media and sane polticians should be calling them out on it.

Also, Joe Scarborough freaked out on the air about Krugman's column. Greg Sargent, who noted Morning Joes's "markedly defensive tone," hss the video. Methinks Joe protests too much. Probably spending too much time with Pat Buchanan. Read the rest of this post...

If gay rights were war crimes, Obama would be our fierce advocate

A commenter to Joe's earlier post made an interesting observation. We heard a lot of talk yesterday from the Obama administration about how they simply had to follow the rule of law and defend DOMA, lest they be no better than the lawless Bush administration before them. It's funny, therefore, that our oh-so-ethical President felt no such fealty to the law, but rather let politics and expediency be his guide, when it came time to prosecute the war crimes of his predecessor.

Then again, Barack Obama fears the Republicans. He doesn't fear us. Read the rest of this post...

A word about Barack Obama and the lawyers in our midst

I remember sitting in my Federal Courts class during my third year of law school when my professor, Mel Zarr, describing a string of cases on some issue or another, asked me why the court rulings started to change over time. I said it was because there was an election and the new conservative judges were starting to implement their judicial philosophy.

Some of my classmates (future inside-the-beltway smartypants) were appalled that I had suggested that judges were "political." I was appalled at their naivete. And I'm just as appalled at how some of our friends reacted yesterday to the Obama administration's brief in support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Lawyers get very sanctimonious about the law, and the need to obey the law and legal precedent, above all else. But, the law can be very fluid -- and lawyers are taught in law school to find new ways to interpret words. Lawyers who craft new legal strategies and theories that sway courts are venerated in history as civil rights heroes (we even name buildings and airports after them). So, the notion that the Obama administration had only one recourse yesterday -- to file a brief in support of DOMA -- is very narrow legal thinking. Sure, the brief was a legal document, but it was also very much a political document. It had the backing of the President of the United States. And anyone who says that Republican and Democratic presidents alike don't let their politics influence their arguments before the courts is either a liar or terribly naive.

For some, the decision whether to defend or oppose DOMA is purely a legal exercise. For many of us, it's our lives. I'm sure, along the way, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP were told to back off on their challenge to Topeka's segregation law. After all, that law had been unsuccessfully challenged already, and there was that very clear Supreme Court precedent on "separate, but equal." The law is the law. Who was this political activist Thurgood Marshall to suggest it should be overturned?

It's shocking how many people viewed yesterday's DOMA discussion through their own purely intellectual, legal lens. The condescending tone from some of the legal types, both straight and gay - all Democrat - was insulting, demeaning, and horribly out of touch (with their own humanity). Gay Americans lost rights last November in California. We had fundamental rights taken away by an election. Think about that. When was the last time that happened in this country?

Yesterday, a Democratic President of the United States of America, in the year 2009, and an African-American child of inter-racial parents no less, gave his lawyers the go ahead to compare our marriages to incest on the same day that 42 years ago the Supreme Court ruled in his parents' favor in Loving v. Virginia. And these people, along with our President, are suggesting that the appropriate response is to shrug our shoulders and go home, since, after all, the law is the law?

So, yes, I am advocating that we push the envelope and demand new and creative thinking on legal issues, on our civil and human rights. That's how change happens (there's that pesky word again). That's what we expect from our President who promised change, who promised to be a "fierce advocate" for our rights. Yesterday's homophobic brief would have met the expectations we had from George Bush (or Jerry Falwell). From President Barack Obama, it was an appalling betrayal of our humanity, and his own.

I'm sick of being separate, but equal. And it's now clear that many of you agree. We demand our rights, and we expect this President, who promised them in exchange for millions of our votes and millions of our donations, to deliver. And so help me God, we will continue to hold this President accountable for his broken promises and his betrayals, to hell with the lawyers. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

This has been a wild week -- and it didn't end all that well yesterday.

So, I'm a little confused by the Iranian election. I know I was distracted yesterday, but the way people were acting, it looked like change was coming. That included Obama, who gave an impromptu answer to a shouted question from a reporter:

We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. And obviously, after the speech that I made in Cairo, we tried to send a clear message that we think there is the possibility of change. And ultimately, the election is for the Iranians to decide, but just as has been true in Lebanon, what can be true in Iran as well is that you’re seeing people looking at new possibilities. And whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact that there’s been a robust debate hopefully will help advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

Sounded like he'd seen some exit polling or had some intel that Iran was going to have a new president. But, that's not what happened, maybe. It was either a blowout or massive, massive fraud.

Check out the poem of week, Lesson, by Ellen Bryant Voigt. It's about mothers and their questions that are really already answered. Here's the first stanza:

Whenever my mother, who taught
small children forty years,
asked a question, she
already knew the answer.
"Would you like to" meant
you would. "Shall we" was
another, and "Don't you think."
As in "Don't you think
it's time you cut your hair."

It gets a litte intense from there. Very intense with not many words. I really admire writers who can do say much with few words.

What's going on this weekend? Read the rest of this post...

Hank Williams, Jambalaya

CCR recorded this a few decades later but this remains my favorite. Of course it now has me thinking about Cajun cooking so I'm dreaming of jambalaya and now trying to figure out how to get my hands on some Louisiana andouille sausage. It's different here and not spicy. The French generally do not like spicy and I adore spicy. When I cook hot food the guests tend to be fuzzy foreigners like myself or else the meal gets pushed around on the plate and they drink a lot of water to cool off. Anyone out there have any idea how Cajun food evolved? It doesn't resemble anything that I'm aware of in France so it would be interesting to learn about that process. Read the rest of this post...

Ahmadinejad leading by significant margin in Iranian election

Regardless of the outcome, it's difficult to see a significant difference in core policy though at least the interaction would be less controversial as it is today. The bizarre rants and Holocaust denying would be set aside. Many western newspapers are reporting the election to be too close to call but the official results suggest a strong victory for Ahmadinejad. The opposition is charging that those results are false and distorted due to allies of Ahmadinejad. CNN is reporting a strong victory for the current Iranian president, making a run-off unlikely.

Final results in Iran's hotly contested presidential race were expected soon, election officials said Saturday morning, as hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a commanding lead.

With 78 percent of ballot boxes counted, Ahmedinejad had 64.9 percent of the vote while his chief rival Mir Hossein Moussavi had 32 percent, election officials said.

Analysts expected Moussavi, widely regarded as a reformist, to do well as his campaign caught fire in recent days, triggering massive street rallies in Tehran.

The Washington Post:

A pivotal presidential election in Iran ended in confusion and confrontation early Saturday as both sides claimed victory and plainclothes officers fired tear gas to disperse a cheering crowd outside the campaign headquarters of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.

With votes still being counted in many cities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was leading by a 2-1 ratio in early returns, according to Iranian Interior Ministry officials. But Mousavi's supporters dismissed those numbers, saying the ministry was effectively under Ahmadinejad's control.

"I am the winner of these elections," Mousavi declared late Friday, after heavy turnout resulted in a two-hour extension of voting across the Islamic republic. "The people have voted for me."

The Guardian reports near record highs for turnout.

The official result is due to be announced today. Interior ministry sources predicted a turnout of 70% or more, approaching the nearly 80% when the reformist ­Muhammad Khatami – now backing Mousavi – won the 1997 election and ushered in a more relaxed period at home and in Iran's relations abroad.

If no candidate gets 50%, the two top contenders go forward to a run off next week. Two other candidates would drop out.

Read the rest of this post...

Beijing stops two hydroelectric projects due to environmental concerns

Positive news but it would be even better if they would scrap their destructive plans to damn the Mekong. That project will have negative consequences for other countries below China, all of whom rely on the mighty river.

China's environment ministry has suspended construction of two ambitious hydropower dams in the upper Yangtze River region, saying the projects were illegal because they were started without necessary environmental assessments.

The announcement, carried widely in state media Friday, is an unusually aggressive move by the ministry, whose local bureaus answer to local governments, despite it being upgraded to a full ministry last year.

Read the rest of this post...

Last minute Bush signings gave gas leases near parks

Who ever would have guessed? It's all very shocking news about the Big Oil president, really.

Bush administration officials pushed aside the National Park Service and sought to lease public lands for drilling on the borders of Utah's most famous redrock parks during their final days in power, a special report to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar says.

Salazar was condemned by the oil industry for scrapping 77 of the leases weeks after taking office, but all of the drilling parcels had already been delayed by a federal lawsuit that still hasn't been resolved.

Salazar defended his decision in a telephone interview Thursday, saying that leasing parcels on or near borders of national parks is highly unusual.

Read the rest of this post...