I was never a big John Edwards fan, but Jeffrey Toobin has the right take on the indictment. Namely, these types of “speaking indictments” should be banned. Vindictive prosecutors use them to defame a defendent in the court of public opinion. Even if there’s a plea agreement, the inflammatory accusations still live forever on the internet, unanswered.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/03/toobin-edwards-indictment-meant-to-embarrass-him/?hpt=us_c2

• Diane Ravitch writes an op-ed based on legitimate research and analysis about school reform, and Jonathan Alter called her a biased liar because… well, because Arne Duncan told him to call her a biased liar.

And as we all know, volunteering in Mumsy’s little after school project and playing professional basketball overseas definitely trumps Diane Ravitch’s actual educational experience.

Add J.Alter to my new collection of political bobbleheads…

• CAFE standards that could rise to as much as 62 mpg by 2025 will get a major fight from the car companies.

yeah, they’re still stupid.

- They (together with the unions) fought off and stopped fuel efficiency standards thirty five years ago, and got nailed for it a couple of years ago when nobody wanted their gas guzzlers;

- now, having been saved by the gubmint, they can’t build the fuel efficient cars fast enough to keep up with demand;

- we are at or past peak oil;

- the price of gas will go up up up

- they do not want to make increasingly fuel efficient cars.

- they are still stupid.

• Asset management specialist Mark Mobius says the next financial crisis is coming, because the same banksters are engaging in the same risky practices. If you read the incredible story of Goldman Sachs offering an equity stake to Moammar Gadhafi a few years ago, you’ll agree.

• Tim Geithner and his European colleagues are having a slap fight about regulations. Neither side comes out looking very good, and the real losers are those who would be protected by financial reform regulations. Because the industry is well in command.

I guess my question is, what does Mark Mobius say will happen, if there is another collapse?

what will the outcome be? can they be bailed out again? is there some point when it will not be possible to keep it afloat? and then what? does anybody know?

I don’t think anybody really knows.

thanks dave, I don’t have anything to post, there’s way too much already anyway. need a beer. a homemade beer.

Thanks for the heads up about “Keep an eye out on this major school funding legislation in California. It would return some power to the legislature.”
From the link:
“Brownley, however, thinks that this is precisely the best time to introduce reforms. She noted that her legislation will only go into effect in 2015-16, at a time when more funds should be available for schools.

We have made deep cuts to education, and I want to restore those cuts, and invest more in education.As we begin the recovery, and new monies come into the system, those monies should be distributed in a more efficient and effective way. If we continue to invest new revenues into a broken system we will never achieve the outcomes we are all looking for, which is that all children will be successful in school.”

Can I get some of what she is smoking?

“In California, the strategy is similar. S&P has given California the single lowest rating of all 50 states, prompting investors to demand higher yield from the state and also from its local governments. No bonds have been sold at the state level so far this year, when typically there would have been a spring sale, said Tom Dresslar, a California Treasury spokesman.”

Update on those two studies that showed new House and Senate members’ investments were significantly more productive than average. Also, mentions the 2006 bill to remedy the situation by Louise Slaughter & Timothy J. Walz, the bill that is languishing in that august body.

Congress’ Culture of Wealth: How Insider Information Enriches Members of the House LINK.

Anonymous claims control of Iranian gov’t servers LINK.

Heh heh.

[NC] Republicans mistakenly broadcast private meeting, leak strategy LINK.

Uh-oh.

China Has Divested 97 Percent of Its Holdings in U.S. Treasury Bills LINK.

Friend of mine in the mid-’70s bought a small US-made car shortly after I had bought a small Japanese-made car. She fussed at me terribly about buying a foreign-made car and I replied I’d love to buy a US-made car, but they had to make them a whole lot better before I’d do so.

During the first two months that she owned her US-made car, it was usually in the shop. Instead, we drove around in my Japanese-made car in order to get her to and from work and necessary shopping.

They pretty much completely remade her car. She didn’t keep it too long, though. I drove my Japanese-made car into the ground.

This was during the period when people were occasionally putting on a big show of taking sledgehammers to foreign-made cars. I was sure I could find one of those old grainy photos to show you, but couldn’t.

Oh, and I’ll be glad to be of help this summer, David.

Hahahahaha. Maybe this’ll start a trend.

Bank of America Gets Pad Locked After Homeowner Forecloses On It LINK.

That is funny.

On one point, I only want David Lewis to talk,” Stam said, an Apex Republican. “The talk about redistricting and this thing in the budget is extremely sensitive to the other people not in this room who are voting with us. No one but David talk. David can obfuscate more than anybody I know.”

obfuscation. that’s what we need. a lot more obfuscation.

good article fatster at 8

At the end of August 2008, before the financial bailout and the stimulus, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt was 4.88 trillion.

Of that, $2.56 trillion was in the intermediate-term Treasury notes, $1.22 trillion was in short-term Treasury bills, $582.8 billion was in long-term Treasury bonds, and $521.3 billion was in TIPS.

At the end of March 2011, by which time the Chinese had dropped their Treasury bill holdings 97 percent from their peak, the publicly marketable segment of the U.S. national debt had almost doubled from August 2008, hitting $9.11 trillion

.

so there’s a number…… five trillion dollars gone. intentionally.

Some great graphs here:

20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know LINK.

Thank you for that Diane Ravitch link.

Families are children’s most important educators. Our society must invest in parental education, prenatal care and preschool. Of course, schools must improve; every one should have a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources and a balanced curriculum including the arts, foreign languages, history and science.

If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved. And that would be a miracle.

The famous Coleman report in the 1960s that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn. Reasons why this is so include frequent illness and stress poor students suffer, to the fact that they don’t hear the large vocabularies that middle-class children hear at home.
from an email sent by a teacher to Ravitch (from a speech):

“Here is the kicker: 50 percent of my students have set foot in the jail or prison to visit a family member. Do you and your Secretary of Education Arne Duncan understand the significance of that? I’m afraid not. It’s not bad teaching that got things to the current state of affairs, its pure raw poverty. We don’t teach in failing schools, we teach in failing communities. It’s called the zip code quandary, if the kids live in a wealthy zip code they have high scores, if they live in a zip code that’s entwined with poverty, guess how they do.”

This should take the wind out the sails about those who worried about China dumping it’s U.S. holdings AND make it harder to finance the wars.

It gets even funnier, right at the end of this video.

And I had a 1982 toyota pu that was always being worked on. It was a pieace of crap.

Hadn’t heard about this dude Jesse Lee who was just appointed the White House Director of Progressive Media & Online Response.

Sounds like the propaganda ministry. Does he actually do anything for us?

And from Idaho, we have the snake house!

Foreclosing on a bunch of snakes
Commentary: Oh, serpents! Thought you said it had servants

LINK.