Monthly Archives: July 2013
Obama’s doomed attempt to save his legacy
The White House adopts a strategy of deception by distraction
By Emily Miller
President Obama’s approval ratings are falling faster than skydiver Felix Baumgartner during his record-setting jump from outer space.
In a desperate move to salvage his second term, Mr. Obama threw out his top liberal agenda items — immigration, gun control and race relations — and pivoted to the economy. The problem is that the only one to blame for the five-year malaise is the current resident of the Oval Office.
The president fueled up Air Force One on Wednesday to fly to the heartland for two stops in an attempt to physically distance himself from Washington.
“It may seem hard right now, but if we’re willing to take a few bold steps — if Washington will just shake off its complacency, set aside the kind of slash-and-burn partisanship that we’ve seen over the past few years — I promise you, our economy will be stronger a year from now,” Mr. Obama said at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.
The president acts like he just arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue last week. He’s had four years, yet his policies have failed to create jobs and restore economic growth.
“There are days I think he forgets that he is actually president,” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, told me Thursday. “He wants to blame everyone but himself and his failure to join bipartisan efforts to create jobs, like the Keystone pipeline, is the reason we are not in a better place.”
The economy has never grown much more than by minuscule amounts during the Obama administration. Gross domestic product has grown at an anemic pace since he’s been in the White House, barely sputtering at 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013. Unemployment under Mr. Obama has averaged a discouraging 8.8 percent and still tops out at 7.6 percent.
Gas prices are rising again, but Mr. Obama spent a long stretch of these speeches touting the doubling of “clean energy” production on his watch. He claimed to have “saved the auto industry,” but didn’t mention that Detroit has gone bankrupt.
Most absurdly, he cited as a point of pride that “our deficits are falling at the fastest rate in 60 years.” He left out two key points: The congressional Republicans demanded spending cuts for increasing the debt ceiling, and the rate of decrease is high because the deficits themselves have been the largest red ink in U.S. history. Spending was $1.4 trillion more than revenue in 2009 and $1 trillion more in 2012.
The Congressional Budget Office projects a $642 billion deficit for this fiscal year, but that’s mostly because Mr. Obama hiked taxes on Jan. 1 to pay for his spending habits.
The president takes almost as little responsibility for his own actions as Anthony D. Weiner, the disgraced sexting addict and former congressman running for New York City mayor.
“With this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball. And I am here to say this needs to stop,” the president said in a 64-minute speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. “Our focus has to be on the basic economic issues that matter most to you, the people we represent.”
By “phony scandals,” Mr. Obama is referring to the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservatives and then concealing the evidence and refusing to provide testimony to a congressional committee. He is also referring to his Justice Department sneaking into the emails and phone calls of reporters who don’t support the Obama administration’s agenda.
The president’s “endless parade of distractions” would also include exposing the National Security Agency’s secret Prism program that has been spying on innocent Americans’ Internet searches, phone calls and emails.
It has also been distracting to have Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. launch an investigation into whether George Zimmerman broke federal racial discrimination laws when he killed Trayvon Martin in self-defense.
Tax writers promise 50 years of secrecy for senators’ suggestions
By Bernie Becker
The Senate’s top tax writers have promised their colleagues 50 years worth of secrecy in exchange for suggestions on what deductions and credits to preserve in tax reform.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the panel’s top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), assured lawmakers that any submission they receive will be kept under lock and key by the committee and the National Archives until the end of 2064.
Deeming the submissions confidential, the Senate’s top tax writers have said only certain staff members — 10 in all — will get direct access to a senator’s written suggestions. Each submission will also be given its own ID number and be kept on password-protected servers, with printed versions kept in locked safes.
The promise of confidentiality was revealed just two days before the deadline for senators to participate in the Finance Committee’s “blank slate” process, which puts the onus on lawmakers to argue for what credits and deductions should be kept in a streamlined tax code.
A Finance Committee aide said Baucus and Hatch were trying to prove to colleagues that they were making secrecy a priority. Officials on the panel circulated the news to senators in a memo that was dated last Friday.
“The letter was done at the request of offices to provide some assurance that the committee would not make their submissions public,” the aide said. “Sens. Baucus and Hatch are going out of their way to assure their colleagues they will keep the submissions in confidence.”
Keeping the submissions confidential for a half century, the aide added, was “standard operating procedure for sensitive materials, including investigation materials.”
The lengths Baucus and Hatch have gone to reassure their colleagues underscores the importance the tax writers are placing on the blank-slate plan, and it shows they are working hard to ensure that all 100 senators engage in the process.
Baucus told The Hill he fully expects more senators to participate in writing because of the secrecy guarantee.
“Several senators have said to me how important that is to them,” Baucus said. “It’s quite significant.”
It also illustrates the enormous pressure being brought to bear by K Street lobbyists, who are working furiously to protect their clients and the tax provisions that benefit them.
The move raises the stakes for Baucus and Hatch, who stand to lose credibility if the submissions start to leak out despite their vow to keep them in the vault.
Baucus announced this week that the Finance panel would mark up a tax reform bill this fall, after he has a chance during the August recess to consider his colleagues’ submissions. He suggested that the senators who take part in the blank-slate process would have greater influence.
From the start of the process, senators have expressed concerns that Baucus and Hatch wouldn’t be able to keep their proposals private. Given the enormous amount of money on the line — more than $1 trillion a year in tax expenditures are up for possible elimination — blowback from interest groups and businesses could easily derail the process.
The blank slate, some senators argue, forces them to choose sides on tax breaks that can have fervent backers back home and make them appear to be favoring special interests.
Hatch stressed that he still expects a fair number of GOP senators to give him oral suggestions, and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told The Hill that he thought all Republicans would decide against putting ideas down on paper.
“We’re getting a lot of input regardless,” Hatch said. “All I want is input. I don’t care how they do it, whether it’s in writing or whether it’s personally.”
Under the confidential procedures set by the Finance panel, other committee staffers will only be allowed to handle senators’ suggestions if supervised by at least of the 10 authorized staffers.
Both the Democratic and Republican sides will receive a copy of a submission, and authorized staffers are supposed to log when copies of those proposals are made, who made them and how many.
The submissions can be released publicly, the memo says, if they’re scrubbed of any way of identifying the senator behind them.
But the confidentiality agreement might not be enough to get some senators off the sidelines.
Many have questioned whether it makes sense to move forward on the blank-slate approach when Democrats and Republicans have yet to resolve their long-standing differences about revenue.
While Republicans want the additional revenue from a simplified code to be used solely for lowering tax rates, Democrats want some of the windfall to go toward paying down the deficit.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) stressed that he didn’t think any leaks would come out of the committee, even as he said he didn’t think it would have much impact on what senators actually write.
“If anything comes out, it’s certainly not going to be attributable to the leadership of the committee or the staff,” Cardin said. “It’ll be some other way it comes out, which is always possible.”
Still, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who said that all Republicans were meeting one-on-one with Hatch, added that the two top tax writers were taking a chance.
“I think that, unfortunately for them, people around here tend to believe that anything in Washington — there are no secrets,” Thune said. “But they’re doing their best.”
“That should be somewhat reassuring,” Thune added. “I think people will feel a little bit more freedom.”
About That US Recession…
by Tyler Durden
Whenever the annual change in core capex, also known as Non-Defense Capital Goods excluding Aircraft shipments goes negative, the US has traditionally entered a recession. Where is this number now: +0.8%, and declining fast. Feeling lucky?
Of course, in no other previous recession, was the US Fed holding $3.5 trillion in securities and increasing at a pace of $85 billion per month.
Source: Dept of Commerce
134 House Republicans Vote Against Our Unalienable Rights
On a long enough timeline,
the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
**********
The above is the tagline for the blog, Zero Hedge, where I found two articles related to the now infamous National Security Agency (NSA). From the first article, I share this partial quote:
When it comes to the conversion of the US into a totalitarian state, few things are quite as symbolic as the construction of the NSA’s Bluffdale, Utah Data Canter,…
I agree with that sentiment. But, it was the second article the got my blood boiling when I read the following:
Moments ago, an unlikely grouping between a 33-year old Republican, Rep-Justin Amash, and an 84-year old Democrat, Rep-John Conyers, resulted in a House vote, that if passed, would have suspended the NSA’s “indiscriminate collection of phone records” and effectively ended the program’s statutory authority. Yet despite significant lobbying by the White…
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Gulf of Mexico: W&T Offshore Makes Discovery at Mahogany Field
W&T Offshore, Inc. announced that it has made a subsalt discovery in a deep shelf exploratory target beneath its Ship Shoal 349 “Mahogany” Field.
The SS 359 A-14 well has exceeded the Company’s expectations and is currently producing from the targeted T-Sand (in excess of 17,200′ total vertical depth), at an initial flow back rate of 3,030 barrels of oil per day and 5.6 million cubic feet of gas per day, for a total of approximately 4,000 barrels of oil equivalent (Boe) per day (3,310 Boe per day net of royalty to W&T) with a flowing tubing pressure of approximately 9,400 psi surface pressure. The T-Sand is the deepest sand discovered in this field, as there is additional pay identified in the M-Sand, N-Sand, and O-Sand, all of which represent future reserve additions to the Company. The well also penetrated a thicker than expected P-sand interval (the main field pay sand) which will also serve as a future recompletion. In total, the A-14 well logged over 370 feet of net oil pay, with the T-Sand accounting for 108 feet of the total net pay. Success from the A-14 T-sand will stimulate additional drilling in 2014 to exploit the four newly discovered oil sands that were encountered in the A-14 well. W&T holds a 100% working interest in the field.
Tracy Krohn, W&T Offshore’s Chairman and CEO, stated, “Our exploration team utilized our subsalt imaging technology to identify and deliver this subsalt discovery which is a deep shelf exploration extension to our producing Mahogany Field. This new oil discovery is part of our organic growth plan and adds substantial value to the Company. We found a very high quality oil sand in the T-sand reservoir with great flow characteristics. Another key value driver on this project is our ability to produce this discovery immediately through our existing infrastructure at Mahogany. We are evaluating additional targets in this highly prolific field based upon our continuing success and look forward to our next exploratory well at Mahogany, the A-15 well, which should begin drilling in in September.”
The platform rig at Mahogany is currently working on a major recompletion in the A-4 well, designed to bring a behind pipe P-Sand interval into production at an expected rate of 1,000 Boe per day, net of royalties to W&T with an anticipated production date of August or September. Following the A-4 recomplete the Company expects to spud the A-15 subsalt exploratory well, a multi-horizon target that is anticipated to encounter multiple stacked oil sand targets. The A-15 well is scheduled to reach total depth near the end of 2013 or early 2014 with a target IP rate of 1,390 Boe per day, net of royalty to W&T. The unrisked reserve potential associated with the A-15 well is anticipated to be in the range of 1.8 to 6.2 million Boe.
Statoil Signs LoI for AGR’s EC-Drill Managed Pressure Drilling System
Offshore technology provider AGR Enhanced Drilling, via its subsidiary Ocean Riser Systems, has entered into a NOK120m (USD20m) Letter of Intent (LOI) together with Statoil to deliver the next-generation EC-Drill® Managed Pressure Drilling system.
This latest contract will replace a purchase order made last year, when Statoil joined with Norway-based Enhanced Drilling to further develop its EC-Drill® Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) solution for floating rigs. The initial phase of the project was worth US$5.1m.
The next-generation EC-Drill® system incorporates state-of-the-art control system capability, enhanced riser integration and multiple other features. Testing of the system is due to commence in the autumn and it will eventually be used on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
EC-Drill® is a step-change MPD solution, solving a challenge commonly encountered in deep-water wells: drilling within a Narrow Pressure Window. EC-Drill® manipulates bottom-hole pressure by changing the level of drilling mud in the riser, enabling the operator to ‘walk the line’ between pore and fracture pressures. It provides a far greater degree of control than conventional drilling while enhancing safety, plus it is possible to cost-effectively hit deep targets that are simply impractical to reach with more traditional drilling techniques.
David Hine, Executive Vice President at Enhanced Drilling, said from the company’s head office in Straume: “This further commitment by Statoil is another significant endorsement of EC-Drill® as a game-changing technology and the benefits that it brings. This next-generation system is a further step in taking Enhanced Drilling towards the forefront of the MPD market.”
Forensic Document Expert Could Topple the Obama Administration
Forensic Document Expert Could Topple the Obama Administration
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Wants To Track All Of Your Financial Activities
Remember the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act? After the financial crisis of 2008, Senators Dodd and Frank went to work to make sure their fellow Americans would never have to bail out the Too Big To Fail banks again. How ie that working out? Well, the TBTF banks are bigger than ever and the derivatives market is anybody’s guess as to how big it has become. I’ve seen figures ranging from 299 trillion dollars to 400 trillion dollars. If that bubble ever breaks there will be no survivors. But, that will be the subject of a future post. Today I want to focus on the Consumer Protect part of the Act.
Included in the Dodd-Frank masterpiece was the creation of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Their mission statement reads:
Our mission is to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for…
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Continents of the World
Mb50's "Liquid Mud" Rant 