Let’s decipher coal’s job impact. And let’s assume everything Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul say about coal and the environment is off by two-thirds. [H-L]
This is what we call the grocery shrink ray. It’s been going on for a couple years at a fevered pace. It’s how food inflation is kept hidden in smaller and smaller packaging. [NY Times]
I hear through the gayvine that a progressive blogger and a couple younger pals have a new Fake Jake Twitter account and website to go along with the dozen or so others. How cute. Always trying to make me more money while they’re unemployed. [Deep Twitter Thoughts]
Moody’s has YET AGAIN lowered Kentucky’s bond rating. Welcome to 2011, everybody! [WSJ]
Mitch McConnell is dedicating every waking moment to killing the Environmental Protection Agency. Because he gets his pockets lined? Because he doesn’t care about reality? [Bluegrass Politics]
Are we about to see another war of words between Steve Beshear and the legislature? [WFPL]
Thank goodness the Commonwealth of Kentucky isn’t on this list of five scary religious refusal bills. Finally, a list we didn’t make. [MoJo]
Haley Barbour is finally admitting that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. After how many years of ignorance? [The Economist]
Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks from the bench, gladly read a decision against an innocent black man who spent 14 years on death row. [Wonkette]
President Barack Obama’s treasury is celebrating the bailout’s profits while ignoring its costs and legacy. [HuffPo]
It is hilarious watching mouth-breathers go after people who mention Rachel Maddow’s name in email. Because no one should be allowed to have non-mouth-breather political thoughts, obviously. [TPM]
The Kentucky Small Business Development Center got a $100,000 federal grant to build a website. Yes, a website. For $100,000. [H-L]
Yes, legislators are getting paid for not showing up to work. This state is literally flushing money away on nothing. [FOX41]
5 responses so far ↓
1 Novena // Mar 31, 2011 at 8:47 am
“Bad Bidness”
Reporter: “How is it, Senator, that you’re now talking jobs so much on the EPA debate?”
Mitch: “Because it’s important that bidness carry the day. Without bidness, there is no Amurka and therefore no jobs.”
Reporter: “So you don’t care much about fouling the air, destroying habitats both human and animal?”
Mitch: “That’s God’s bidness. My bidness is keeping bidness strong for the bidness of Amurka.”
2 spinnikerca // Mar 31, 2011 at 10:06 am
Smaller packages isn’t the only way food inflation is hidden. There is a reason Ron Paul just had a hearing on inflation in his subcommittee- and a reason such a mundane topic was so controversial NO Democrats attended the hearing. The definition of the Consumer Price Index has been repeatedly changed to take out those items most showing inflation, so that when the government tracks ‘inflation’, it will look low.
Food is no longer even in the definition.
If you use the old definition of the CPI, inflation is running at 8%.
3 spinnikerca // Mar 31, 2011 at 10:06 am
P.S. Not suggesting that food wasn’t taken out of the definition under Bush, it was. Bernanke is following Greenspan’s policies as Obama is following Bush’s.
4 spinnikerca // Mar 31, 2011 at 10:12 am
Huff Po misses a key fact on the cost of the bailouts: the discount window.
The banks bailed out were given ‘loans’ under the discount window by the federal reserve, meaning they were given money at 1% interest, say. They then took this money, and instead of loaning it out to jump start the economy, invested it in US bonds at say 3%. Instant money machine of 2% return at the expense of taxpayers. Only the 1% is paid back, the rest is a ‘gift’ and never went into stimulating anything.
5 E // Apr 1, 2011 at 2:48 pm
It’s called a ‘carry trade’, and I’ve been railing against it for years.
The actual return is much higher, as an example;
Borrow 100K at 1%, with no real asset backing, the interest or cost of borrowing that money to term is 1K, since the current system does little to verify the assets pledged for the loan, it is entirely reasonable to say the banks have no real capital invested, and therefore the only true net ‘cost’ is the 1K.
They loan it back via Treasury purchases and get (example) 3%, for a net gain of 2K.
With only 1K in actual costs, and a net of 2K return…they are effectively doubling their money…much better than the supposed 2%.
They wouldn’t be showing the profits they show currently if they were only pulling 2%.
Hence my anti-corporatist disposition…
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