Banks generating even more profits from TARP assitance

It's understandable if banks want to try to make more profits but in these circumstances it's a slap in the face to the taxpayers who rescued them from insolvency. It also creates an environment of deeper mistrust which is going to make it challenging to help the banks in the future if more problems arise. It's also going to sour the public on helping spur (or save) the economy with the second stimulus plan but maybe that's the plan or maybe they simply don't care. Either way, this is shameful behavior on the part of the banks. Not that they have any sense of shame though.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, which is charged with overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, said in a report that a group of 11 small banks that have repurchased government warrants in exchange for taxpayer-funded assistance, have bought-out the stakes at 66% of their face value.

The C.O.P., which employed three Harvard University valuation experts to conduct the analysis, said that taxpayers would have received $10 million more had the warrants been sold back to the banks at their face value.

The report argues that liquidity discounts are a key factor for why the warrants were purchased at such low prices. Should a similar discount be a major factor for warrant repurchases at larger institutions buying out government stakes, the shortfall to taxpayers could be as much as $2.1 billion, the report said.

Read the rest of this post...

General: Billions more than planned needed if we want to win in Afghanistan

I've been sympathetic to continuing efforts to win the war in Afghanistan, but this kind of news sounds an awful lot like the sinkhole we got ourselves into in Iraq.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the newly arrived top commander in Afghanistan, has concluded that Afghan security forces will have to expand far beyond currently planned levels if President Obama's strategy for winning the war there is to succeed, according to senior military officials.

Such an expansion would require additional billions beyond the $7.5 billion the administration has budgeted annually to build up the Afghan army and police over the next several years, and the likely deployment of thousands more U.S. troops as trainers and advisers, officials said.

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Mormons arrest gay couple for kissing

It's not like they were stealing the souls of the dead or something. Read the rest of this post...

Promise Keepers

Why is it that when you're promised something by a candidate for office in exchange for your vote, and then you demand the now-elected official follow through on their promise, you're the bad guy?

This is a weird phenomenon that happens in Washington, D.C. and state capitols around the country. Throughout a campaign, we're often asked to donate time and money and votes to politicians because they support us and the issues we care about. Candidates make a big deal about caring for those issues during the political campaign season. Yet, once the politician is in office, keeping those promises somehow becomes bad politics.

We're told that the time isn't right. That our promise might use up political chits better devoted to more important promises. Or that our promise is controversial and might damage the politician in the public eye. When we ask politicians to keep their promise, when we criticize politicians for actively undermining their promise, when we demand that politicians not water down their promise, we are accused of undermining the politician's agenda.

Weren't we told that our issues were their agenda? Read the rest of this post...

Georgia Republican House member: "The savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price is gonna kill people."

Seriously, why are they always from the south? Media Matters Action has the carnage.

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David Brooks: A Republican senator put ‘his hand on my inner thigh’ for a ‘whole’ dinner party

Name that Senator - go!

And now to the matter of why David Brooks let the Senator keep his hand near Brooks' crotch for an entire dinner. Anyone else reminded of this Onion piece? Read the rest of this post...

Podesta: ‘We Just Can’t Settle’ For Excuses From The Democratic Leadership

John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama's transition co-chair, talks about how the Democratic leadership in the Congress, and the Obama administration, need to lead more. From ThinkProgress:

PODESTA: [W]e should put pressure on the members of their caucus to push back on their leadership. You just cannot settle for “What am I supposed to do? I’ve got one outlier who won’t vote for cloture.” We’ve got to both put pressure on the members who are not supporting a progressive agenda, but we’ve also have to put pressure on the leadership to come up with a strategy to find the votes to kind of get these things and move them forward. And we just can’t settle for less than that....

[T]here are places where I think [President Obama has] fallen short of the mark. We’ve been pushing, at CAP, for him to use his executive authority to stop separating service men and women who are gay or lesbian under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. We think he’s got that authority; there’s some question in the White House whether he does or he doesn’t. I won’t make Daniella offer a legal opinion here on that question. But we think he can go further on that. He can push hard and sort of get in front, and not wait for a political consensus on Capitol Hill to resolve this question.

He says in order to do it he needs permanent legislation, but we think that he’s got a lot of executive authority which he can move the ball forward.

I just talked to Joe about this, and he said it's like the head of the Heritage Foundation in 2001 implicitly criticizing George Bush and the Republican Congress. It would take a lot for that to happen. And yes, Podesta's group was putatively for Hillary Clinton (at least that was the conventional wisdom in town), but then he was chosen as the co-chair of Obama's transition. This is a very interesting development. Time will tell if more Democratic leaders speak out or not. Read the rest of this post...

Marriage opponents in Maine have the signatures for a referendum to repeal the state's new mariage equality law

The opponents of marriage equality in Maine are claiming they've got the signatures to put a referendum repealing the new law on the ballot in November:

The group that wants to repeal Maine's new gay marriage law with a referendum vote says it has gathered enough signatures to put it on the ballot in November.

Stand for Maine Marriage is a coalition of several groups that includes Maine's Catholic diocese.

Spokesman Marc Mutty says, in just four weeks, the group has collected more than the 55,000 signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot. Those signatures still have to be validated by the Secretary of State's office. Mutty says Stand for Maine Marriage will continue to gather signatures to make sure there are enough valid ones on the petitions.

We can win this one, but it won't be easy.

Maine Freedom to Marry, the campaign to save the marriage law, has put together a top-notch political operation. (In other words, this won't be a repeat of the disastrous effort in California last fall.) Of course, our side needs financial help. Compared to California, Maine is an inexpensive state to run a campaign. So, everything and anything you contribute will help.

And, just to reinforce how aggressively the Catholic Church in Maine is engaging in this battle, check out the website of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. This church is on the peninsula of Portland, one of the most liberal neighborhoods in the country:

Maine Marriage Initiative

We are pleased to announce the launching of a new web site devoted exclusively to the issue of same-sex marriage. Go to Maine Marriage Initiatives today to learn more about same-sex marriage legislation to be introduced in Maine this year, learn the facts and hear about the myths, click to contact your representative in Augusta, and see what the various faith groups have to say about this issue, including our own Bishop Malone.

Pastors and lay leaders please inform the faithful about this valuable resource by mentioning it from the pulpit and/or putting this announcement in your weekly bulletin.

For more information contact:
Marc R. Mutty
Office of Public Affairs
Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland

Mr. Mutty, from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine, is also the spokesman for the anti-marriage campaign. The Catholic Church in Maine doesn't have much money. There's a dearth of priests and the diocese has been shutting down parishes. We've heard rumors of a $2 million commitment from the Catholics. So, one wonders, where will the money for the anti-marriage come from? Has the bishop of Maine called Salt Lake City yet. That's what the Archbishop of San Francisco did last year on Prop 8.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), led by the ever painful Maggie Gallagher, will be pumping money into Maine. Where will NOM get its money? I'm thinking all roads lead to Salt Lake City. NOM did name an extremist from the Mormon Church to its board. That guy is Orson Scott Card:

Orson Scott Card, a Mormon leader of the religious right's top anti-gay marriage organization, National Organization for Marriage, advocated the criminalization of homosexuality, labeled the US government "our mortal enemy," talked about the "insane Constitution" dying, and then appeared to advocate the overthrow of the US government "by whatever means is made possible or necessary."

If we've learned one thing over the past few months, we've learned that the Mormons really don't like publicity. They don't want people talking about their practice of baptizing dead people, which is what they did to Obama's mother last year. This time, the Mormons will be pushing money through front groups like NOM. I know a lot of Catholics in Maine. I don't think a lot of them would appreciate their bishop sidling up to the Mormon church, which wants to baptize their dead relatives. That doesn't sit well with Catholics...or at least the ones I know.

So, the game is on. We can win on a marriage equality referendum, which will have national implications. Help make that happen by donating to the campaign. Read the rest of this post...

Banks seeing 'new' toxic assets as economy stumbles

Raising yet again the wisdom of paying back the TARP money in order to get around the pay restrictions. Paulson started a poor process that lacked transparency or fairness and it doesn't appear to be radically improving under Geithner either. Clearly the launch of the program didn't help though asking for progress and more transparency sounds like a fair request. The "new" toxic assets?

With that on the back burner, the big threat to the economy is now believed to be troubled credit card, commercial real estate and commercial industrial debt.

These bad loans, made worse by the severity of the recession, could be responsible for two-thirds of banks' losses.

"The commercial real estate time bomb is ticking," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said Thursday at a congressional hearing.

The entire banking world has been built on cheap and flimsy credit plus gambles based on that credit. Without more high risk gambles it's highly unlikely they can see a return to the profits they had come to expect along with the pay that they have come to expect. Read the rest of this post...

DOD considering banning smoking, regardless of social experiment's effect on morale and cohesion

I thought we were a nation at war? Can you imagine our soldiers shooting straight when they're going through nicotine withdrawal? Ah, but no fears - according to a reader who just heard a report on CBS News radio, we're being told that our men and women in the military know how to follow orders, and if they're told do accept a drastic change in policy, they'll do it, daggumit.

I'm all for smoking bans. But don't for a minute think that with one in three US service members using tobacco that the smoking ban currently being considered by the administration wouldn't have a serious impact on unit morale and cohesion, and our military's overall readiness. Because it would. At least temporarily.

Maybe the administration should spend more time building public support for the smoking ban so that they can do this by the end of the next term. But only if Congress takes the lead.

/snark Read the rest of this post...

Joe Scarborough's about face on Nancy Pelosi. He accused her of lying. Now he admits she was right all along.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to Congress, and she was mercilessly attacked by the pundits, including MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. A couple of months ago, Morning Joe said "everyone" knew that the Speaker was"lying." He also said that she needed to "shut up." Now Joe Scarborough, in the wake of CIA Director Leon Panetta's admission that the CIA did, in fact, lie to Congress, calls Pelosi his good friend. And he's concerned about the grief she caught. Grief that he helped pile on.

Media Matters has the video.

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NASA's chief climate scientist: Obama's climate bill "less than worthless" (health care reform is unraveling too)

This on the news that the climate change bill and the health care reform bill are both facing setbacks in the Democratic Congress, and Chris' post this morning that the majority of Americans are unsure whether humans are responsible for global warming.

I don't claim to be an expert on global warming. But when NASA's top guy on the subject says that the current House bill, endorsed by the administration, is a joke, that's troubling. From Dr. James Hansen, writing at Huff Post:

Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.

The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years....

Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.

The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.

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AIG preparing to pay millions in bonuses, again

As the unemployment rate increases, and Wall Street goes back to it's traditional bonus model, this is not going to be well received. Bush is long gone, so the public is naturally going to look at Obama's team who is negotiating with AIG on the issue. At times like this it's hard to imagine how average Americans can accept "retention bonuses" for one of the most incompetent businesses in the country that represents everything that went wrong during the crisis. The AIG team may very well leave if they don't receive their bonuses, though good luck finding new employment in this environment. When does everyone else get their retention bonus?

AIG has been talking with Washington's newly-appointed compensation czar Kenneth Feinberg about the bonuses, which are due to be paid on July 15, said the source.

The company is reviewing its compensation plans with Washington as it tries to avoid the national furor set off by $165 million in retention bonuses paid to employees of a financial products unit in March.

Much of AIG's $99 billion in losses last year stemmed from derivatives written by that unit.

Feinberg was appointed last month to oversee the compensation of top executives at seven firms that have received large federal bailouts.

And to think we have a long way to go before this crisis is over. How many more bonuses are coming from this black hole? Read the rest of this post...

House committee to vote on lifting needle exchange ban today

UPDATE: The GOP is also coming up with amendments to short-circuit the lifting of the ban.

This really came out of nowhere. Yesterday, we had AIDS activists quite literally close down the US Capitol Rotunda to protest President Obama's request to Congress to keep the federal ban on needle exchange in place (Obama had promised during the election to help lift the ban, but in his budget this year asked Congress to keep it). Today, we have the mark-up of the House Labor-HHS Appropriations bill, and in it is a repeal of the needle exchange ban. (The CDC, WHO, NIH and President Clinton's Surgeon General all found that needle exchange programs decrease the spread of HIV.)

Was this in response to the protests yesterday? I suspect a bit of yes and a bit of no. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been dogging this issue (for the good guys) for 14 years now. So this is a priority for the Speaker. But this news, coming on the heels of the protests, sure suggests that they had an impact. And good for them. And good for the Speaker. A lesser politician would say "you know, I want to include needle exchange in the mark-up, but because of the protests we have to take it out, or else we'll look like we caved to public pressure." Pelosi, on the other hand, just went ahead with the policy change because it's the right thing to do.

The House has now presented the Obama administration with a perfect opportunity to show leadership. In explaining why the president asked Congress to continue the ban in his most recent budget, an administration spokesman said:

"We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said.

I'm happy to take that statement at face value. What's the administration's plan for working with Congress to get the votes in the full House, and to get the needle exchange ban on the docket, and passed, in the Senate?

Here's that protest again:

Read the rest of this post...

Worried House Republicans to Palin: Stay in Wasilla

Sarah Palin isn't seen as an asset by all Republicans. She'a actually a liability:

Republicans facing tough elections in 2010 don’t want Sarah Palin campaigning with them.

Though the soon-to-be-former Alaska governor is seen as popular with the conservative grass roots, several Republicans said she’d help them by staying home in Wasilla.

What's most interesting here is that several of the Republicans, including Lee Terry (R-NE), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Mike Castle (R-DE), went on-the-record to tell Palin to stay away. For members to say publicly what they'd usually say off-the-record or anonymously says a lot about Sarah Palin's status. She's a damaged brand. For Republicans, "Pullin a Palin" isn't viewed as a winning strategy.

An exception is Rep. Roy Blunt, who is running for the Senate in Missouri. He wants Palin to campaign for him. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Obama has his first meeting with Pope Benedict the 16th Century today. Various news reports indicate this is a chance for the president to show American Catholics just how much he likes Catholics. (Note to Obama administration: Most Catholics pay no heed to the Vatican, particularly on social issue. Just an FYI.)

In DC, there's a big scandal swirling around Councilmember Marion Barry, our former mayor, who apparently put his girlfriend on his payroll (taxpayer funded payroll.) Barry, who has been married four times, has become the leading opponent of same-sex marriage in the District. One need only see the front page of the City Paper to get the sense of this scandal. The top photo is that front page, which is causing quite a stir. But as City Paper Editor Erik Wemple told the Washington Post, "Sometimes the truth is vulgar."

Let's get started.. Read the rest of this post...

Slight majority of Americans unconvinced on climate change

Greenpeace raised a valid point yesterday and we should expect leadership on climate change, it's clear that a lot of work remains to be done. The numbers show an urgent need to discuss the message and combat the strong misconception that continue to believe there is any controversy to this subject. The Republicans have scored political points amongst themselves dismissing the issue though for the health of the world, it's less impressive.

Even as the president pressed the G8 and the world's major polluters to resist cynicism and the pressure of the economic recession to act against global warming, a majority of Americans remain unconvinced that humans are responsible for climate change, or that there is an urgent need to act.

About 49% of Americans believe the Earth is getting warmer because of the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity, the survey by the Pew Research Centre and the American Association for the Advancement of Science said. Some 36% attributed global warming to natural changes in the atmosphere and another 10% said there was no clear evidence that the earth was indeed undergoing climate change.

Scientists in contrast are overwhelmingly persuaded that global warming is caused by humans - some 84% blame human activity. A strong majority - some 70% - also believe it is a very serious problem. Despite that degree of consensus, some 35% of Americans continues to believe - wrongly it turns out - that climate change remains a matter of scientific controversy. Only about 47% of the public views climate change as a very serious problem, a finding that has remained stable over the years, the survey said. In other public opinion polls over the years, climate change has ranked near the bottom of the list of pressing problems.

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Wolf hunts to re-start following Obama decision

Yes, Obama confirmed a Bush administration position that will make it open season on wolf populations in Montana and Idaho. Having populations in the hundreds is hardly what most would consider strong numbers in such large areas. Siding with the ranchers and game hunting operations over the environment is a major disappointment.

The states of Montana and Idaho are going ahead with plans for an open-season hunt against wolves in September, in which licensed members of the public can take part.

The decisions follow a ruling earlier this year by the Obama administration, widely criticised by environmentalists, to remove wolves from the list of endangered species in the Rocky Mountain states. The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, was endorsing a decision by the Bush adminstration.

Montana wildlife commissioners voted yesterday to allow hunters to kill about 75 wolves, which is about 15% of the state's population. Officials in Idaho will meet later this month to decide on their quota. But earlier plans called for hunting of up to 250 wolves.

Federal and state government biologists claim the wolf population in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has grown so rapidly since the species was re-introduced to the region in the mid-1990s that it has become a choice between ranchers' family pets and livestock, and wolves.

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Hacking victims review legal action against Murdoch's News Corp

Something tells me the people with deep pockets who had their phones hacked might not sit back quietly. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has to be bracing for expensive lawsuits and rightly so. How much more bad news can his brand take? It's not what it used to be.

Victims of the phone-hacking scandal were last night taking legal advice following the Guardian's revelations over News Group's secret £1m payout.

The football agent Sky Andrew said: "After being told certain individuals have taken legal action, I will take advice."

Speaking from Barcelona, on business, he said he was surprised by the apparent scale of the hacking. He suspected his phone had been tampered with when his pin number no longer worked. "When you are in an industry like mine, you suspect this type of thing could go on, but you don't actually expect it to happen to you."

Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator working for News International, was jailed in 2007 for accessing Andrew's voicemails after a trial that also saw a former royal editor of the News of the World, Clive Goodman, jailed for hacking into the voicemails of royal aides.

But News Group has never publicly admitted any responsibility for Mulcaire's actions, which also saw the hacking of phones belonging to the model Elle Macpherson, the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, publicist Max Clifford, and the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor.

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Obama to the Catholic Press on abortion and gays

From USNews:

Obama cast the decision to have an abortion in a decidedly negative light. "I don't know any circumstance in which abortion is a happy circumstance or decision," Obama said, "and to the extent that we can help women avoid being confronted with a circumstance in which that's even a consideration, I think that's a good thing."

It will be interesting to see how abortion-rights advocates react to this....

Obama said he's struggling to reconcile his religious faith with his acceptance of gays and lesbians:

For the gay and lesbian community in this country, I think it's clear that they feel victimized in fairly powerful ways and they're often hurt by not just certain teachings of the Catholic Church, but the Christian faith generally. And as a Christian, I'm constantly wrestling with my faith and my solicitude and regard and concern for gays and lesbians.

Reaffirming his support for a conscience clause for medical workers who object to abortion or other procedures, the president knocked critics who alleged that he'd undo such a clause:

There have been some who keep on anticipating the worst from us, and it's not based on anything I've said or done, but is rather just a perception somehow that we have some hard-line agenda that we're seeking to push.

Of course, what social conservatives fear will be "the worst" from the Obama administration is what many liberals would consider "the best." The president suggests that enacting liberal policies around abortion would constitute a "hard-line agenda." Abortion-rights groups aren't going to be happy with that kind of framing.

Read the rest of this post...