Well Duh!

Gee, as a result of Bill Clinton's "Reinventing Governmnent" initiative, basic functions of government were outsourced, things like supervising contractors.

The common sense descrption of this is letting the fox run the henhouse.

Case in point, the FAA :

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration isn’t properly monitoring costs and potential ethical violations in contracts related to improvements in the nation’s air-traffic systems, an audit found.

Practices for selecting and overseeing contracts awarded since 2010 for work related to the so-called NextGen project are “not sufficient,” the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General said in a report released today.

The seven contracts examined, awarded to companies including Boeing Co., CSSI Inc., ITT Corp. and General Dynamics Corp., are valued at as much as $7.3 billion, the largest cumulative award in FAA history, according to the report. The contracts are for technical and professional support of new systems to let the FAA track aircraft using satellite navigation instead of radar.

The agency didn’t verify labor rates charged in five of seven contracts, according to the report. The FAA overestimated the labor hours required, the auditors found.

Basically, if you use contractors, and you don't watch them like a hawk, they will do whatever they legally can to maximize profits.

The you can call this "capitalism", or you can call it "maximizing shareholder value", but it's what managers are supposed to do.

What Was It that Anatole France Said?

Oh, yes, he said that, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

Well Duh!

This just in, a new study has shown that homophobes are likely to be self deluded closet cases:

Homophobes are a group of people who have a negative feeling towards homosexuality, but new research claims that people who express hatred of gays are secretly more likely to be attracted to the same sex.

Researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex and the University of California in Santa Barbara have discovered that homophobes are actually attracted to the same sex but they do not admit it because they grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires. They found this when they conducted a series of psychology studies.

The researchers assert that people who define themselves as straight and who hate homosexuality are often attracted to the same sex. They believe that homosexual people remind them of similar tendencies within themselves.

"Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves," said Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex, in a statement.

The Obvious Answer is Because They Don't Care

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times looks at the parts of the TARP that were intended to help ordinary homeowners, and it ain't pretty:

A fund to support homeowners in the communities hit hardest by the collapse of the housing bubble has disbursed just 3 percent of its budget and aided only 30,640 homeowners in the two years since its creation, according to a report released on Thursday by a federal watchdog office.

The Hardest Hit Fund, which was created in the spring of 2010, grants money to state housing finance agencies for efforts to help families that are facing foreclosure. It has “experienced significant delay” because of “a lack of comprehensive planning” by the Treasury Department and limited participation by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the large mortgage servicers, said the report by the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

“TARP wasn’t supposed to be just a bank bailout,” said Christy L. Romero, the special inspector general for TARP, in an interview. “It was specifically designed with the goal of helping homeowners, and our concern is that that goal may not be met.”

As of the end of 2011, the Hardest Hit Fund had spent $217.4 million out of its $7.6 billion budget, the report found. The program is intended to reach homeowners who are unemployed, or living in areas with high unemployment rates or steeply falling home values.

The report is just the latest to criticize the Obama administration’s efforts to relieve homeowners battered by the nationwide drop in housing prices and the broader recession. The office of the special inspector general has repeatedly criticized Treasury’s management of the Home Affordable Modification Program, Washington’s main initiative to prevent foreclosures.

By this point, they were supposed to have helped 2-3 million, so they are low by a factor of almost 100.

Think about it.  They had $7.6 billion to spend, without any meaningful oversight, but they couldn't be bothered to spend it.

This was not just an economic opportunity, it was a political one, because when they saved people, they would most likely get their votes, but it just didn't matter.

This is going on because the Obama administration in the person of Timothy Geithner, the last man standing of Obama's original economic team, simply don't care.

The Treasury has already admitted that the homeowner protection programs was primarily about allowing banks to buy time, and extract fees, from desperate homeowners before they wrote down the loans.

Helping homeowners was in the TARP because they needed it to get the votes, but if it ain't protecting the big banks and big banking, Geithner/Obama ain't interested.

My Conclusion is that Obama is Homophobic

I don't mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.

Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don't discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it's a bridge too far:

A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.

The Center for American Progress, which is Obama's bitch among the think tanks called this "Disappointing", and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.

It appears that Obama does not remember the, "Don't ask, Don't Give," efforts, but my guess is that he will:

And, just to confirm that it's not going to go away, we got this via press release;

Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.

Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:

“This isn't a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership."

“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling -- more than has been done for any similar executive order -- and now the only impediment is President Obama."

“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”

Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.

Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.

But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.

Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that "more study is needed".  I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.

Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:

Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.

It's Jobless Thursday

And the news is not good, 380K initial claims, up 13K, from last weeks numbers, which were revised up 10K, with the less volatile 4-week moving average rising by 4,250 to 368,500, continuing claims falling 98K to 3.25 m, and emergency claims falling by 20.5K to 2.79m.

We've had some pretty good numbers since the beginning of the year, but we've also had an unprecedentedly mild winter, which has pushed a lot of "spring time" activities months earlier. See (Anthropogenic Climate Change)

The question now is how much did the good numbers in the first quarter of the year eat the economic activity now.

Could They Both Lose?

Well, it looks like the Republican primary is well and truly over, and we are into the general election silly season, case in point, he Ann Romney - Hillary Rosen contretemps:

Now, it's Republicans pretending there's a big national fight over a subject that most women basically agree on – the decision to work or stay home. Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen unintentionally set off this fake firestorm when she commented on CNN Wednesday night that Ann Romney – whom Mitt Romney has been referring to as his top adviser on women's issues – has "never worked a day in her life." Here's the full quote:

“What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country, saying, 'Well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.' Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing, in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

The Romney campaign pounced, with Ann Romney putting out her first-ever tweet: “I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.”

So, we have Mitt Romney saying that his wife, who's never had to worry about providing the necessities to her kids, would be his source for insight into women who have to work in this country, versus Hillary Rosen, who used to be chief counsel for the RIAA, where she viciously opposed fair use, and has spent her life selling her skills to the various corporate faces evil as a lobbyist.

To quote Henry Kissinger, “It's a pity they can't both lose."

Please, just make it stop.