Stupid and Dangerous

Life panels

One aspect of the crypto-socialist fasi-communist Obama administration's attempt to take over Americans' bodies (and, perforce, Americans' precious bodily fluids) has been totally overlooked.  Sure, there are death panels to make sure granny kicks the bucket before she costs the taxpayers too much money.  But there are also life panels to make sure that rich people live long enough so that they can be adequately taxed upon their death.  The real, secret, eyes only, health plan requires that anyone with more than $10 million in assets be kept alive until 2011, no matter what it takes and no matter what the family thinks.  The estate tax (better known as the "death tax") expires in 2010.  The estate of anyone dying in 2010 will pay no federal tax whatsoever.  But, under current law, the estate tax kicks back in starting in 2011, when even the modestly rich can be required to fork over as much as 50 per cent of their estate to the communo-cryptic socio-fascistic Feds.  So, a secret cadre of bureaucrats and doctors has been formed to keep even the sickest plutocrats alive--at least barely--until 2010.  Real Americans believe that this is an outrage, and that even rich people are entitled to die when they want to, and not when the government says they can. 

Kabul on the Hudson

President Obama has trouble persuading himself to support a government that has little electoral legitimacy, is corrupt, and cannot deliver services to its constituents.

No doubt that is why he asked New York Governor David Paterson not to stand for election again.

A Heartwarming Decision

The banks and brokerages will almost certainly outspend or outlast Obama, so that nothing significant will come from his efforts to reform the "system" of financial regulation.  But every now and then in the midst (and mist) of this recurring futility, someone takes a small step that just warms your heart.

In this case, it is Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff, of the Southern District of New York.  He disapproved a proposed consent judgment that would have settled an action brought by the Securities Exchange Commission against Bank of America. 

The action involved Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch when Merrill Lynch was facing bankruptcy.  Bank of America proposed to buy Merrill for $50 billion.  It could not complete the deal without its shareholders' approval.  In seeking its shareholders' approval, Bank of America told its shareholders that Merrill had agreed not to pay Merrills' executives year-end bonuses.  The Securities Exchange Commission alleged that Bank of America had in fact agreed that Merrill would pay its executives what amounted to $5.8 billion in bonuses.  The payment of this $5.8 billion meant that Bank of America's shareholders got about than 10 per cent less than they were told they would get for their $50 billion.

Earlier this year, the SEC simultaneously filed in federal court a complaint against Bank of America for lying to its shareholders, and a consent decree that would settle the complaint for payment of $33 million by Bank of America to the SEC.

The judge rejected the settlement and pointed out the following facts:

--The complaint alleged that Bank of America lied to its shareholders.  The settlement would have the Bank of America--that is, the shareholders, not the management--pay the government to settle the case.  In other words, the shareholders, having been defrauded by their own management to the tune of $5.8 billion, would pay another $33 million to make the government's case go away.

--The government provided the Bank of America with $40 billion in bail-out funds in connection with the purchase.  So if it wasn't the shareholders paying the government to protect the allegedly dishonest management, then it was the government paying itself to settle the case it brought.

The Court concludes:

The proposed Consent Judgment suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties:  the SEC get to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger; the Bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.  And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but of the truth. 

At the end of his order, the judge notes that the Bank of America said that if the judge did not approve the consent judgment, it would litigate the case.  He notes that the SEC, having brought the case, presumably will not simply drop it.  He orders the parties to get the case ready for trial by February 1, 2010. 

Stay tuned. 

A Necessary War?

In what appears to be the first draft of an essay that the Wall Street Journal nonetheless published on September 11, 2009, Fouad Ajami asserts that the "distinction between a war of choice (Iraq) and a war of necessity (Aghanistan) . . . is both morally false and intellectually muddled."  The war in Iraq, he asserts, was a war of necessity.  Actually, he does not quite say that it was necessary for the United States to make war on and in Iraq.  What was necessary was that in response to the 9/11 attack, the United States attack "the Arab world."   Iraq was the place where this attack was staged, he says, because Saddam Hussein "had drawn the short straw." 

When something disagreeable must be done, and no one in the group of people who potentially may do it wants to do it, one way to pick the person to do it is to procure a number of straws of the same length, cut one of them so that it is shorter than the rest, and have one of the group--or, for that matter, a neutral party--hold them in his hand so that one end of each straw is visible, but it is not possible to see which is the short straw.  Each person in the group then draws one straw, and the one who draws the short straw has to do the dirty deed.  To say that Saddam Hussein drew the short straw is to say that he was chosen at random from among a group.  To some, this seems a fair description of the Bush administration's decision making process.  However, Ajami contradicts himself in the very next sentence of his essay.

Saddam, he says, "had been brazen and defiant at a time of genuine American concern, and a lesson was made of him."  So, the choice of Iraq as the site of American retaliation against Arabs was not totally random.  Saddam was chosen because he was an uppity Arab. 

What exactly was the lesson that was made of Saddam Hussein?  Ajami explains,  "The decapitation of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren."  George W. Bush "drew a line when the world of Arabs was truly in the wind and played upon by powerful temptations." 

Want a more specific explication of the lesson the Arabs are to learn from the American invasion of Iraq?  Tough luck.  Ajami switches topics--he goes back to the other "war of necessity," Afghanistan.

Before we also switch topics, let us reflect briefly on the lessons of Iraq for those other uppity Arabs, Osama bin Laden and wannabe Osamas.  The first lesson is: You can attack the United States and get away with it.  Osama was never caught.  Soon after 9/11 (the day after, according to some accounts), the United States turned its attention to a bigger, easier target.

The second lesson is, Not only can you get away with attacking the United States, you can get exactly the reaction from the United States that you want.  What does a terrorist want to cause?   Terror.  Certainly, an Arab who noticed that an attack on the United States by a bunch of Saudis operating out of Afghanistan provoked an attack on Iraq could conclude that the United States was simply looking for an excuse to attack Arabs, and that the United States is the enemy of all Arabs.  Could Osama bin Laden ask for more?

Meanwhile, back to Afghanistan.  Ajami seems to agree that Afghanistan is a war of necessity.  But is it?  Certainly it was eight years ago.  The 911 attacks originated there.  Osama bin Laden was there.  Osama's protectors, the Taliban, were there.  Osama is gone.  The United States has given Afghanistan its shot at elections and Western-style government.  What is left?  Ajami writes that Obama "fears failure in Afghanistan, and nothing more."  Is this not a perfectly rational approach to Afghanistan?  There is nothing for the United States to gain in Afghanistan.  The United States can't catch Osama there--he's long gone.  With Osama gone, Afghanistan has nothing that the United States wants.  What the United States wants is not to fail.  What the United States wants is not to have Afghanistan revert to a failed state dominated by a heroin-financed Taliban.  What the United States wants is not to have eastern Afghanistan turn once again into a sanctuary for al Qaeda terrorists.  The only interest the United States now has in Afghanistan is not to fail.  A policy directed toward the goal of not failing is a correct one. 

Betsey McCaughey, Nut Job

Former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsey McCaughey is getting plenty of undeserved publicity without my adding to it.  She has been called "sincere" and "an irrational person" in one New York Times article on September 4.  Sincere, perhaps.  A nut job, no doubt.