Naturally, the indicators are gerrymandered to take the heat off Congress. Thus, if you do not eat, have a job, heat your home or drive to work there has been no inflation.
On the other hand, if you even breathe then there has been a lot of inflation. (See 1 below.)
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Chicago is the U.S.A death capital and no one seems to care or do anything meaningful.
Yet, the prospect of a jury decision that a man may be innocent could cause a riot.
Something wrong with this model? You decide. (See 2 below.)
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Try as Obama has to thwart this in order to appease Greens, seems it might become a reality. (See 3 below.)
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In an interview on CNBC today, Chairman Bernanke made another effort to calm the market's fears regarding Fed easing.
No doubt his response to questions can produce results but the more he does this the less effect it will have and, in fact, the reverse effect could begin to take hold, 'methinks thou duth protest too much.'. Time will tell.
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Syrian naval base explosion where Russian missiles stored looks as if Israel was involved and was accomplished through a landing party launched from submarines etc. (See 4 below.)
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Yes, Obama would love more people to sign up for his health care program but the fact that they are not also plays into the hands of those 'progressives' whose long term objectives remain, ie. single payor, government control of our health care and crushing personal choice and free market opportunities. (See 5 below.)
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The Egyptian Military and Obama have one thing in common. Both wish to rule but not govern!
Though I graduated from law school and even was on the law review as an editor, I never practiced. That said, it seems I know more law than our president who has been touted as a constitutional genius, or at least when it comes to understanding when our monarchial president chooses to disregard that scarp of paper called the constitution. (see 6 below.)
This is what my Congressman, Jack Kingston, thinks of 'Obamascare.'
Jack is a pragmatist and knows 'Obamascare' will not be overturned but he hopes, as most sane people do, it will die of its own weight and failed implementation.
The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it! (See 6a below.)
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Is oil and gas that goes through a pipeline more polluting than when a train spills its inflammable oil load onto a city? That seems to be the case if you measure media coverage and screams from the Greens and silence from Obama! (See 7 below.)
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1)This Chart Will Show Me When Inflation Really Heats Up
By Jeff Clark
Inflation is heating up…
The Consumer Price Index (the "CPI") – a widely accepted measure of inflation – has been increasing at about 2% annually for the past few years. The Fed has been using that slow rate of inflation to justify keeping short-term interest rates low and pumping billions of dollars into the markets every month. But as you can see from the following chart, even a small annual increase in the CPI can add up to a big move over time…
We don't really feel the pain as prices increase slowly. We're like the proverbial frog in the simmering pot of water. But it looks like things are about to heat up… Interest rates have spiked higher over the past few weeks. Rising long-term rates is an early warning sign the market is concerned about inflation. Here's an updated chart of the 30-year Treasury Bond Yield I first showed you last month…
The 30-year rate has broken out above the first resistance line and is now headed toward the next resistance line near 4.4%. It's 30% higher than where it was in May. And it's up 50% from its bottom last August. Rates don't rise like this if the market is comfortable with inflation. Now take a look at this chart of the Baltic Dry Index (the "BDI")…
The BDI reflects the cost of shipping dry goods overseas. It's a good measure of economic activity. But it's an even better measure of pent-up inflationary pressures. The cost of shipping dry goods gets worked into the final cost of those commodities. After a three-year downtrend, the chart is poised to reverse to the upside. The BDI has already rallied more than 50% so far in 2013. If it can break above resistance at about 1,200, it will be poised to make a run at the next resistance level near 2,000. That will be one heck of a move for the BDI.
And it will be a sure sign that inflation is heating up.
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2)Florida Sheriff Ready for Riots After Zimmerman Verdict
By Tom Topousis
The sheriff of Broward County, Fla., is moving to head off riots following a verdict in the George Zimmerman murder trial. His effort includes a video with teenagers urging people to raise their voice andnot their hands.
Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black youth. Martin was visiting his father in Sanford, Fla., where Zimmerman was a member of a community patrol, when the two crossed paths on Feb. 26, 2012. They got into a fight and Zimmerman's gun went off, killing Martin.
Zimmerman's racially charged trial, which began June 24, has prompted a national debate over the use of deadly force and whether race played a role in the shooting.
"We don't have information about a specific event that might take place at the conclusion of the trial, but we encourage everyone to keep any protests peaceful," Sheriff Scott Israel said in a prepared statement unveiling the video and his anti-violence outreach.
The video released Monday encourages people to speak out peacefully, while steering clear of violence.
"Raise your voice," a teenage girl says, "and not your hands," adds a teenage boy, with Israel, several sheriff's deputies, and other teens standing behind them.
"We need to stand together as one, no cuffs, no guns," the girl says. "Let's give violence a rest, because we can easily end up arrested," the boy says.
"I know your patience will be tested," the girl says, before the two teens say in unison: “but law enforcement has your back.”
With a verdict expected this week or next, the Sheriff’s Office said its Strategic Investigation Division has been “monitoring the pulse of the situation, maintaining open lines of communication with community leaders, civic activists, members of the clergy, as well as local, state and federal agencies.”
The Sheriff’s Office said it is working closely with Sanford police and other local police agencies to coordinate a response plan ahead of the verdict. Broward County, which encompasses Fort Lauderdale, is about 200 miles from Sanford, where the trial is being held.
"Freedom of expression is a constitutional right. While raising your voice is encouraged, using your hands is not," the Sheriff’s Office said.
Zimmerman's racially charged trial, which began June 24, has prompted a national debate over the use of deadly force and whether race played a role in the shooting.
"We don't have information about a specific event that might take place at the conclusion of the trial, but we encourage everyone to keep any protests peaceful," Sheriff Scott Israel said in a prepared statement unveiling the video and his anti-violence outreach.
The video released Monday encourages people to speak out peacefully, while steering clear of violence.
"Raise your voice," a teenage girl says, "and not your hands," adds a teenage boy, with Israel, several sheriff's deputies, and other teens standing behind them.
"We need to stand together as one, no cuffs, no guns," the girl says. "Let's give violence a rest, because we can easily end up arrested," the boy says.
"I know your patience will be tested," the girl says, before the two teens say in unison: “but law enforcement has your back.”
With a verdict expected this week or next, the Sheriff’s Office said its Strategic Investigation Division has been “monitoring the pulse of the situation, maintaining open lines of communication with community leaders, civic activists, members of the clergy, as well as local, state and federal agencies.”
The Sheriff’s Office said it is working closely with Sanford police and other local police agencies to coordinate a response plan ahead of the verdict. Broward County, which encompasses Fort Lauderdale, is about 200 miles from Sanford, where the trial is being held.
"Freedom of expression is a constitutional right. While raising your voice is encouraged, using your hands is not," the Sheriff’s Office said.
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3)OPEC to Lose Market Share to Shale Oil in 2014
OPEC's share of the world market will shrink in 2014 as rising supply of U.S. shale oil gives the exporter group little comfort from the fastest growth in world demand in four years.
In a monthly report, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries forecast demand for its oil in 2014 would average 29.61 million barrels per day, down 250,000 bpd from 2013 and 770,000 bpd less than it produced in June.
"This would imply a further build in global crude inventories, which currently stand at high levels," OPEC said in reference to the market outlook for next year.
The report is a further illustration that technology for extracting oil and gas from shale is reducing dependence on OPEC. Rising output will make it harder for the 12-member group to keep its own output at high rates without risking a drop in prices below $100 a barrel, its preferred level.
OPEC also forecast a recovery in demand next year as economic growth gathers pace. World oil use will expand by 1.04 million bpd in 2014, the strongest growth since 2010, it said.
But non-OPEC supply, the source of two in every three barrels, is expected to increase by 1.14 million bpd, more than demand, led by further growth in the United States.
The U.S. shale boom has already curbed imports from OPEC members such as Nigeria and Algeria. OPEC expects U.S. oil output to rise by 560,000 bpd next year, the biggest rise among non-OPEC countries, to 11.33 million bpd.
"The outlook in 2014 is supported by anticipated healthy onshore tight oil developments, aided by rising investment," OPEC's report said. "In 2013, oil drilling activities continue to improve."
After initially downplaying shale, OPEC is looking more closely at its impact. At its last meeting, on May 31 in Vienna, the group's oil ministers spent some time discussing the issue and set up a committee to study it.
OPEC's report is the second of this month's trio of oil supply and demand forecasts to emerge. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, as usual more bullish on demand than OPEC, in a report on Tuesday raised its 2014 demand growth estimate by 50,000 bpd to 1.24 million bpd.
The International Energy Agency, adviser to 28 industrialized countries, issues its report on Thursday
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4) Syria naval base blast.Hamas cautiously watching Egypt. Israel
denies involvement in Lebanon blast. Foreign forces destroyed advanced Russian anti-ship
missiles in Syria last week, rebels said on Tuesday[9 July] — a disclosure
that appeared to point to an Israeli raid.
that appeared to point to an Israeli raid.
Qassem Saadeddine, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s Supreme Military
Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday[ 5 July] hit a Syrian navy
barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces’
intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being
stored there.
Council, said a pre-dawn strike on Friday[ 5 July] hit a Syrian navy
barracks at Safira, near the port of Latakia. He said that the rebel forces’
intelligence network had identified newly supplied Yakhont missiles being
stored there.
“It was not the FSA that targeted this,” Saadeddine told Reuters. “It is not
an attack that was carried out by rebels.
an attack that was carried out by rebels.
“This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats
in the Mediterranean,” he said.
in the Mediterranean,” he said.
Rebels described huge blasts — the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond
the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern
military like Israel’s.
the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern
military like Israel’s.
Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has
not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a
“series of explosions” at the site.
not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a
“series of explosions” at the site.
According to regional intelligence sources, the Israelis previously struck
in Syria at least three times this year to prevent the transfer of advanced
weaponry from President Bashar Assad’s army to Iranian-backed Hizbollah
fighters in Lebanon.
in Syria at least three times this year to prevent the transfer of advanced
weaponry from President Bashar Assad’s army to Iranian-backed Hizbollah
fighters in Lebanon.
Such weaponry, Israeli officials have made clear, would include the
long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hizbollah repel Israel’s navy and
endanger its offshore gas rigs. In May, Israel and its US ally complained
about Moscow sending the missiles to Syria. Israel said they would likely
end up with Hizbollah. The Lebanese group has said it does not need them.
long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hizbollah repel Israel’s navy and
endanger its offshore gas rigs. In May, Israel and its US ally complained
about Moscow sending the missiles to Syria. Israel said they would likely
end up with Hizbollah. The Lebanese group has said it does not need them.
Asked about the Latakia blasts, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon told
reporters: “We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we
keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions —
in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most.”
reporters: “We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we
keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions —
in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most.”
A former senior Israeli security official, who declined to be named, told
Reuters that the area of Latakia in question was known to have been used to
store Yakhont missiles.
Reuters that the area of Latakia in question was known to have been used to
store Yakhont missiles.
Technically at war with Syria, Israel spent decades in a stable standoff
with Damascus while the Assad family ruled unchallenged. It has been
reluctant to intervene openly in the two-year-old, Islamist-dominated
insurgency rocking Syria.
with Damascus while the Assad family ruled unchallenged. It has been
reluctant to intervene openly in the two-year-old, Islamist-dominated
insurgency rocking Syria.
But previous air strikes near Damascus, on January 30, May 3 and May 5, made
little attempt to conceal Israel’s involvement.
little attempt to conceal Israel’s involvement.
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5)Why The White House Is Panicking About ObamaCare
Actors. Actresses. NFL football players. Baseball players. Librarians. Mayors. City councilmen. Members of AARP.
The Obama administration is looking far and wide, leaving no stone unturned in a relentless search for…well…for help.
Help with what? Help with getting people to enroll in health insurance plans this fall.
And why is that? Because the administration is facing the very real possibility that its signature piece of legislation may fall flat on its face.
Last week’s announcement that the employer mandate will be delayed for a year and that income verification for people getting subsidies will also be delayed are the latest signs of trouble. The next shoe to drop may be the failure for people to obtain (ObamaCare) insurance — even if it’s free or highly subsidized.
Consider this:
· About one in every four individuals who are eligible for Medicaid in this country has not bothered to enroll.
· About one in five employees who are offered employer-provided health insurance turns it down; among workers under 30 years of age, the refusal rate is almost one in three.
Think about that for a moment. Millions of people are turning down (Medicaid) health insurance, even though it’s free! Millions of others are turning down their employers’ offers. Since employees pay about 27% of the cost of their health insurance, on the average, millions of workers are passing up the opportunity to buy health insurance for 27 cents on the dollar.
You almost never read statistics like these in the mainstream media. Why? Because they completely undermine health policy orthodoxy: the belief that health insurance (even Medicaid) is economically very valuable, that it improves health and saves lives, and that the main reason why people don’t have it is that they can’t afford it.
Welcome to the huge disconnect in health reform. On the one hand there are the people who are supposed to benefit from health reform. On the other hand there are the people who talk about it and write about it. I think it’s fair to say these two groups almost never meet.
Study after study has purported to have found that health insurance improves health, saves lives, makes people happier, etc., etc. But these studies almost always ignore two cardinal facts:
· We have made it increasingly easy in this country for the uninsured to obtain health care after they get sick.
· We have also made it increasingly easy for people to get health insurance after they get sick.
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6)Michael McConnell: Obama Suspends the Law
Like King James II, the president decides not to enforce laws he doesn't like. That's an abuse of power.
President Obama's decision last week to suspend the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act may be welcome relief to businesses affected by this provision, but it raises grave concerns about his understanding of the role of the executive in our system of government.
Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution states that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This is a duty, not a discretionary power. While the president does have substantial discretion about how to enforce a law, he has no discretion about whether to do so.
This matter—the limits of executive power—has deep historical roots. During the period of royal absolutism, English monarchs asserted a right to dispense with parliamentary statutes they disliked. King James II's use of the prerogative was a key grievance that lead to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The very first provision of the English Bill of Rights of 1689—the most important precursor to the U.S. Constitution—declared that "the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of parliament, is illegal."
To make sure that American presidents could not resurrect a similar prerogative, the Framers of the Constitution made the faithful enforcement of the law a constitutional duty.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president on legal and constitutional issues, has repeatedly opined that the president may decline to enforce laws he believes are unconstitutional. But these opinions have always insisted that the president has no authority, as one such memo put it in 1990, to "refuse to enforce a statute he opposes for policy reasons."
Attorneys general under Presidents Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Clinton all agreed on this point. With the exception of Richard Nixon, whose refusals to spend money appropriated by Congress were struck down by the courts, no prior president has claimed the power to negate a law that is concededly constitutional.
In 1998, the Supreme Court struck down a congressional grant of line-item veto authority to the president to cancel spending items in appropriations. The reason? The only constitutional power the president has to suspend or repeal statutes is to veto a bill or propose new legislation. Writing for the court in Clinton v. City of New York, Justice John Paul Stevens noted: "There is no provision in the Constitution that authorizes the president to enact, to amend, or to repeal statutes."
The employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act contains no provision allowing the president to suspend, delay or repeal it. Section 1513(d) states in no uncertain terms that "The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." Imagine the outcry if Mitt Romney had been elected president and simply refused to enforce the whole of ObamaCare.
This is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act, which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.
The president defended his suspension of the immigration laws as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. He defended his amending of No Child Left Behind as an exercise of authority in the statute to waive certain requirements. The administration has yet to offer a legal justification for last week's suspension of the employer mandate.
Republican opponents of ObamaCare might say that the suspension of the employer mandate is such good policy that there's no need to worry about constitutionality. But if the president can dispense with laws, and parts of laws, when he disagrees with them, the implications for constitutional government are dire.
Democrats too may acquiesce in Mr. Obama's action, as they have his other aggressive assertions of executive power. Yet what will they say when a Republican president decides that the tax rate on capital gains is a drag on economic growth and instructs the IRS not to enforce it?
And what of immigration reform? Why bother debating the details of a compromise if future presidents will feel free to disregard those parts of the statute that they don't like?
The courts cannot be counted on to intervene in cases like this. As the Supreme Court recently held in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the same-sex marriage case involving California's Proposition 8, private citizens do not have standing in court to challenge the executive's refusal to enforce laws, unless they have a personal stake in the matter. If a president declines to enforce tax laws, immigration laws, or restrictions on spending—to name a few plausible examples—it is very likely that no one will have standing to sue.
Of all the stretches of executive power Americans have seen in the past few years, the president's unilateral suspension of statutes may have the most disturbing long-term effects. As the Supreme Court said long ago (Kendall v. United States, 1838), allowing the president to refuse to enforce statutes passed by Congress "would be clothing the president with a power to control the legislation of congress, and paralyze the administration of justice."
Mr. McConnell, a former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
6a)
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7)
Can Environmentalists Think?
Think of the Keystone XL pipeline as an IQ test for greens.
By Bret Stephens
As environmental disasters go, the explosion Saturday of a runaway train that destroyed much of the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, about 20 miles from the Maine border, will probably go down the memory hole.
It lacks the correct moral and contains an inconvenient truth.
Not that the disaster lacks the usual ingredients of such a moral. The derailed 72-car train belonged to a subsidiary of Illinois-based multinational Rail World, whose self-declared aim is to "promote rail industry privatization." The train was carrying North Dakota shale oil (likely extracted by fracking) to the massive Irving Oil refinery in the port city of Saint John, to be shipped to the global market. At least five people were killed in the blast (a number that's likely to rise) and 1,000 people were forced to evacuate. Quebec's environment minister reports that some 100,000 liters (26,000 gallons) of crude have spilled into the Chaudière River, meaning it could reach Quebec City and the St. Lawrence River before too long.
Environmentalists should be howling. But this brings us to the inconvenient truth.
The reason oil is moved on trains from places like North Dakota and Alberta is because there aren't enough pipelines to carry it. The provincial governments of Alberta and New Brunswick are talking about building a pipeline to cover the 3,000-odd mile distance. But last month President Obama put the future of the Keystone XL pipeline again in doubt, telling a Georgetown University audience "our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."
Did the explosion at Lac-Mégantic not significantly exacerbate the problem of pollution, carbon or otherwise? Why do environmentalists routinely frame political choices in the language of moral absolutes—save/destroy the planet; "don't be mean, go green," and so on—rather than as complex questions involving trade-offs that are best dealt with pragmatically?
When it comes to the question of how best to transport oil, environmentalists tend to act like rabbis being asked for advice on how best to roast a pig: The thing should not be done in the first place. So opposition to Keystone XL becomes an assertion of virtue, indifferent to such lesser considerations as efficiency (or succulence).
But the pig will be roasted. The oil will be pumped. What happens then?
Like water, business has a way of tracing a course of least resistance. Pipelines are a hyper-regulated industry but rail transport isn't, so that's how we now move oil. As the Wall Street Journal's Tom Fowler reported in March, in 2008 the U.S. rail system moved 9,500 carloads of oil. In 2012, the figure surged to 233,811. During the same period, the total number of spills went from eight to 69. In March, a derailed train spilled 714 barrels of oil in western Minnesota.
Predictable, you would think. And ameliorable: Pipelines account for about half as much spillage as railways on a gallon-per-mile basis. Pipelines also tend not to go straight through exposed population centers like Lac-Mégantic. Nobody suggests that pipelines are perfectly reliable or safe, but what is? To think is to weigh alternatives. The habit of too many environmentalists is to evade them.
Perhaps this explains why the environmental movement has excelled ideologically and failed politically. As in fashion, green is a nice color that rarely wears well. So the whole world (minus your correspondent) agrees that climate change is an urgent threat to life as we know it, yet every U.N. megasummit to save the planet ends on a whimpering note. So all Americans are convinced that the threat of climate change is real, but President Obama had to use executive fiat to impose regulations on the coal industry that Congress would have rejected out of hand.
Perhaps this is also the reason climate science is so prone to scientific embarrassment. In 2001, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change insisted that "global average surface temperatures [will rise] at rates very likely without precedent during the last 10,000 years," and that they would rise sharply and continuously.
Yet in the 15 years since 1998, surface air temperatures have held flat, a fact now grudgingly conceded by the climate-science establishment, despite more than 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide having been pumped into the atmosphere over the same period. "Nature is far more imaginative than we are," Stamatios Krimigis, the eminent Johns Hopkins physicist, said last month when readings from the Voyager spacecraft failed to match expectations for what it would find at the far edge of the solar system. That kind of humility in the face of data is tough for today's environmentalists, who have staked so much on their own models, predictions and certitudes.
It's a pity. The world needs a credible environmental movement. Conservation matters. So does the quality of water and air. In China and Russia today environmentalists have mounted the most effective (and often the most courageous) critique of the toxic combination of coercive states and corrupt businesses. In the developed world, urban life has been massively improved thanks to a keener environmental awareness.
But all that depends on an environmental movement that isn't just another fire-and-brimstone religion, that wants to be part of a solution without castigating everyone else as part of the problem. In other words, a movement that is capable of reasoned thought.
The first application for a Keystone XL pipeline permit was filed with the U.S. State Department in 2008. Since then, the amount of oil being shipped on rails has risen 24-fold. Environmentalists enraged by this column should look at the photo of Lac-Mégantic that goes with it, and think it over.
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