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Since my place is paid for maybe I should get a new home loan for the max value of the property, pocket the money, skip enough payments to qualify then pay off the reduced principal and pocket the difference with no tax liabaiilty - great way to game the system at the expense of the biggest sucker in the world - The US Taxpayer! You damn well know folks are gaming this thing for all it's worth, just like they will game the "ObamaCare" health system!
Just my 2 cents
[QUOTE=Esten]Unemployment is a big wildcard. Let's check back on this next year and see how it plays out.[/QUOTE]All the other things (modification, etc) are window dressing to the main issue jobs. If people have jobs, they pay the mortgage, if they don't.
The fact that we get 'free' healthcare in six years ain't helping on the jobs front, in fact Obamacare is a jobs killer (if you increase cost of adding employees, employers will add less or reduce the number of employees) That said, the US economy will recover, in spite of the efforts of congress and administration to [destroy / resuscitate (pick one)] it. On its own strength and resiliency, the economy will improve. The rate at which jobs are added is, in my mind, the big question.
[QUOTE=El Alamo]Esten.
I think the only people who would have more problems with less government are the people working for the government.
These people would have to give up their 10 weeks of annual sick leave, 15 weeks of annual vacation, their daily 6 hour coffee breaks and a completely funded retirement after 3 months of work - all paid for by guess who - people with real jobs.[/QUOTE]Very true statement, and probably belongs more on this thread.
Here's another one I'll throw out to the masses:
Why do we have unionized government workers?
I understand the historical reasons for the rise of unions. Unions allowed workers, collectively, to negotiate with powerful capitalists and companies over things like wages, work safety and work conditions. There was a time when the country needed that.
Frankly, I think unions have served their purpose and do far more harm than good now.
But why do we have unionized government workers? So that they can collectively negotiate over safety, wages and work rules with who? The government? In other words, us.
This issue is the largest problem U. S. States need to grapple with. For the past 40-50 years, unions such as CALPERS, the teachers' unions, police and fire unions, have collectively negotiated with who? Other government workers, who frequently are unionized themselves, over pay and benefits packages that are now simply obscene. It is the equivalent of the wolf and fox negotiating with each other over who gets rights to the sheep and the hen house. We're the sheep and hen house. The result is defined benefit pension plans, fully funded early retirement plans that pay 20-year employees six figure salaries for life, massively underfunded retirement plans, work rules that can easily be exploited by the workers to significant financial advantage (ask any cop) and a system that will collapse under its own weight.
I'd say that the solution is easy: Some of these states should declare bankruptcy and just negotiate new contracts, like GM and Chrysler. The only problem is, states are constitutionally forbidden from filing for bankruptcy. As a consequence, these issues are the elephant in the room that no one talks about. This is because the public employee unions are so powerful that any dissent from politicians is immediately met with a huge union war chest allocated to unseating anyone with the temerity to address this obvious issue.
In the end, we're the folks footing the tab. But sooner or later -- likely sooner -- something has to give. It won't happen under the current administration, but a starting place would be to simply ban unions from representing public employees. Union necessity can be debated where the private sector is concerned, but why are they the least bit necessary for government workers?
[quote=The New York Times]Unanswered Questions on the Spill.
Published: April 30, 2010
President Obama has ordered a freeze on new offshore drilling leases as well as a "thorough review" into what is almost sure to be the worst oil spill in this country's history — exceeding in size and environmental damage the calamitous Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
There are many avenues to pursue. Here are two: the oil company's response, and Mr. Obama's. The company, BP, seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.
A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country's richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush's hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.
Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving.
The timetable is damning. The blowout occurred on April 20. In short order, fire broke out on the rig, taking 11 lives, the rig collapsed and oil began leaking at a rate of 40,000 gallons a day. BP tried but failed to plug the well. Even so, BP appears to have remained confident that it could handle the situation with private resources (as did the administration) until Wednesday night, when, at a hastily called news conference, the Coast Guard quintupled its estimate of the leak to 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons a day.
Only then did the administration move into high gear.
In addition to a series of media events designed to convey urgency — including a Rose Garden appearance by the president — the administration ordered the Air Force to help with chemical spraying of the oil slick and the Navy to help lay down oil-resistant booms. It dispatched every cabinet officer with the remotest interest in the disaster to a command center in Louisiana and set up a second command post to manage potential coastal damage in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
There are, of course, other questions to be asked. We do not know what caused the blowout or the fire, or why the valves that are supposed to shut off the oil flow in an emergency did not work.
We do not know whether there were other steps BP — and Transocean, the rig's owner and operator — could have taken to prevent the blowout, and what steps, including new technologies, that can be taken to prevent such accidents in the future.
What we do know is that we now face a huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action.[/quote]Looks like Obama and the boys really stepped in it this time. The responsibility for failing to take action sooner falls directly on Obama, no matter how hard he tries to dump it on BP.
[quote=The New York Times]Unanswered Questions on the Spill.
Published: April 30, 2010
President Obama has ordered a freeze on new offshore drilling leases as well as a "thorough review" into what is almost sure to be the worst oil spill in this country's history — exceeding in size and environmental damage the calamitous Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
There are many avenues to pursue. Here are two: the oil company's response, and Mr. Obama's. The company, BP, seems to have been slow to ask for help, and, on Friday, both federal and state officials accused it of not moving aggressively or swiftly enough. Yet the administration should not have waited, and should have intervened much more quickly on its own initiative.
A White House as politically attuned as this one should have been conscious of two obvious historical lessons. One was the Exxon Valdez, where a late and lame response by both industry and the federal government all but destroyed one of the country's richest fishing grounds and ended up costing billions of dollars. The other was President George W. Bush's hapless response to Hurricane Katrina.
Now we have another disaster in more or less the same neck of the woods, and it takes the administration more than a week to really get moving.
The timetable is damning. The blowout occurred on April 20. In short order, fire broke out on the rig, taking 11 lives, the rig collapsed and oil began leaking at a rate of 40,000 gallons a day. BP tried but failed to plug the well. Even so, BP appears to have remained confident that it could handle the situation with private resources (as did the administration) until Wednesday night, when, at a hastily called news conference, the Coast Guard quintupled its estimate of the leak to 5,000 barrels, or more than 200,000 gallons a day.
Only then did the administration move into high gear.
In addition to a series of media events designed to convey urgency — including a Rose Garden appearance by the president — the administration ordered the Air Force to help with chemical spraying of the oil slick and the Navy to help lay down oil-resistant booms. It dispatched every cabinet officer with the remotest interest in the disaster to a command center in Louisiana and set up a second command post to manage potential coastal damage in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.
There are, of course, other questions to be asked. We do not know what caused the blowout or the fire, or why the valves that are supposed to shut off the oil flow in an emergency did not work.
We do not know whether there were other steps BP — and Transocean, the rig's owner and operator — could have taken to prevent the blowout, and what steps, including new technologies, that can be taken to prevent such accidents in the future.
What we do know is that we now face a huge disaster whose consequences might have been minimized with swifter action.[/quote][quote]Looks like Obama and the boys really stepped in it this time. The responsibility for failing to take action sooner falls directly on Obama, no matter how hard he tries to dump it on BP.[/quote]It's George Bush's fault!
From an engineering point of view it was totally reckless of BP to not have a plan for a blow out in deep water. BP has no idea what is going on a mile under the water at this point but continue to give leak rate estimates from the low end.
This will make Valdez look small.
If you drill in deep water you will eventually spill in deep water. Murphy is a CockSucker, but will eventually find a way to win.
What could Obama do to help? The military, nor anyone else really has any clue how to close this off in a timely manner, or the equipment on site. It was never planned for or was not supposed to be possible (according to BP)
We don't have elite navy seals or subs that can go down that far, unless your Charlie Sheen in a bad movie.
This is way beyond Bush, or Obama. The root cause is trying to drill our way out of our oil fix for the past 50 years.
Of course it is Bush's fault. Haliburton was cementing the casing when all hell busted loose. No other suspect, my view of course.
It is a major fuck-up. Blow out preventer failed. Lawyers have hit the mother load.
We know Jackson likes to blame Obama for everything - probably including chica price inflation - but trying to pin this disaster on Obama by Jackson, conservative press reports and right-wing flacks is nothing but the Bush guys trying to run a retroactive apologia for Katrina.
The facts are that the spill was caused by shoddy work by that old standby for fuck-ups - Halliburton. And the former Halliburton CEO - Tricky Dick Cheney - in order to let Halliburton make more profit from its off-shore oil operations set the stage for the debacle that is going on in the Gulf.
BP hired Halliburton - a leading supplier of service in off-shore drilling -to be responsible for the safety of the pumping mechanisms. An 'acoustic switch' - a failsafe device that safely cuts off the flow of oil at the source in the event of an accident would have prevented this catastrophe. They cost about half a million dollars and are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world. Except for the United States. Thank you Dick Cheney - who as VP pushed through looser regulation of off-shore drilling after his secret meetings with the oil industry at the beginning of Bush's first term.
So the catastrophe is another classic example of Bush / Cheney Era deregulation wreaking havoc on the planet.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting about the Halliburton system lacking any remote-control shut-off switch they acknowledge is used in other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.
When Halliburton tried to cement the pipe last week it triggered the blast that caused the mega-spill now under way. When the rig blew up, BP lied about the extent of the potential damage. They now admit they have no back-up plan in place.
Even if Obama had donned his Superman outfit and flown down to the Gulf with a big wad of bubble-gum and dove into the ocean to cap the leak, it would have been too late.
The political blame game is actually beside the point. The point is in the future, if anyone is going to drill, baby drill, the strictest imaginable regulation to assure safety of the operations must be required and enforced.
In the meantime, BP and Halliburton have a lot to answer for, and if their answers cost so much as to put them out of business and a few of their top guys in jail, I'll say about fucking time!
Amend my statement "lawyers have hit the mother load". Think we are fucked, tax payer.
[quote] off shore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government[/quote] [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02liability.html[/url]
[QUOTE=Jackson]It's George Bush's fault![/QUOTE]Actually Jackson, you are half right. It is actually believed to have been Cheney's fault. :)
[QUOTE=]There is a device called an " Acoustic Switch " it's a failsafe that shuts the flow of oil off at the source - they cost only about half a million dollars each, and are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world. Except for the United States. This was one of the new deregulations devised by Dick Cheney during his secret meetings with the oil industry at the beginning of Bush's first term.[/QUOTE]The Wall Street Journal (damn liberal mouth piece) has a very nice article on the subject.
[url]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html[/url]
This all has to do with the deregulating of the oil industry between 2000-2008 during the Bush-Cheney Administration ( Yes the same guys knee deep in Haliburton, the ones damman explained were doing the cementing when the explosion was said to have happened. ). And just to note, out of the 39 blow outs in the Gulf of Mexico in the last 14 years, 18 of them have been at least partially caused by cementing.
[QUOTE=WSJ]A 2007 study by three U.S. Minerals Management Service officials found that cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. That was the single largest factor, ahead of equipment failure and pipe failure..[/QUOTE][url]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214593564769072.html[/url]
Maybe people should study the facts, before they make reactionary politically charged comments.
I personally don't care who did it right now (although deregulation during the last decade is obviously at least partially to blame) I just want to know who's gonna pay for the clean up and the BILLIONS it's going to cost our economy. All the residents in the Gulf Coasts States should be pissed as hell right now regardless of political affiliation.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot.
DRILL BABY DRILL.
This is fucking hilarious.
[url]http://gawker.com/5528978/obama-jabs-at-biden-leno-birthers-and-more-at-white-house-correspondents-dinner[/url]
[url]http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/05/01/HP/A/32352/2010+White+House+Correspondents+Dinner.aspx[/url]
First let's look at what a BOP is. ("Blowout preventer") [Quote]A downhole device that isolates wellbore pressure and fluids in the event of an emergency or catastrophic failure of surface equipment. The control systems associated with safety valves are generally set in a fail-safe mode, such that any interruption or malfunction of the system will result in the safety valve closing to render the well safe. Downhole safety valves are fitted in almost all wells and are typically subject to rigorous local or regional legislative requirements.
Normally, hydraulic equipment controlled by engineers up on the oil rig can close the BOP. As a backup, most BOPs have automatic shutoff valves known as "Dead Man" switches that cause the BOPs to close automatically if there is loss of communication from the oil rig. [/quote] [Quote]According to BP, workers attempted to activate the BOP manually from the top of the rig before they were evacuated, but nothing happened. (As the website ScienceInsider points out, the BOP should have automatically activated anyway. After the rig sank, BP and the Coast Guard resorted to using robotic submarines to try to trigger the BOP underwater, to no avail. [/quote] Considering these valves are normally set up in a fail safe mode and yet they couldn't be triggered from the rig or by robotic submarines, why would any intelligent individual think an "Acoustic Switch" would have made any difference, especially considering an "Acoustic Switches" function is to send the same signal as the switch on the rig only remotely.
I see three possible causes,
1. The valves failed mechanically, which is not likely due to being redundant, but if they did then we need to talk to the valve manufacturer.
2. The valves were never really installed or improperly installed, in which case I would not want to be in the shoes of BP and Transocean, or the government agencies in charge of inspecting such things for that matter.
3. Third party intervention, sabotage or terrorism. Not impossible, most of the terrorist groups come from oil producing countries, and I suspect the have ample knowledge of oil rigs.
[Quote]Maybe people should study the facts, before they make reactionary politically charged comments. [/quote]This is the Obama thread and not the "what caused the oil spill thread", so maybe some people should take their own advice, and also stop the reactionary defensive spinning away from the real question, which is; [b] Why did Obama not take any serious action for nine days?
[/b] Someone ask what could Obama do?
Well he could have taken the same action he took nine days after the spill started, and if he had he could have [u]possibly[/u] kept the spill from reaching our shorelines!
For Obama to blame BP for his slow response is like Bush blaming God for his alleged slow response to Katrina!
[quote] Let's at least acknowledge the obvious opposite, that if we were currently in a Republican administration that had just okayed offshore drilling in America, and they had gone eight days without serious action, they'd be getting absolutely pilloried in the press. [/quote]
LOL.
Wow.
Just wow
[QUOTE=BadMan]Oh yeah. Almost forgot.
DRILL BABY DRILL.
Smh.
Retards.[/QUOTE]The "billions" you mention are going to be paid by BP, Halliburton and Transocean. Based on what happened with the Exxon Valdez, the total amount they will pay, to plaintiffs' attorneys, the government, and victims, will exceed the damage.
There is no large-scale economic alternative at present to oil as a feedstock for liquid fuels.
The only large-scale economic alternatives at present to natural gas for electricity generation are coal and nuclear. Coal is environmentally unfriendly and causes many more deaths from both production and its use than natural gas. Nuclear is off limits because of environmental loonies.
Do you drive a car? Ride in taxis or airplanes? Consume merchandise that was transported in trucks? Use natural gas in your home? Have air conditioning or heating or electric lights? Use computers? Television? Assuming you live in the US were you one of the ones bitching when gasoline hit $4.00/ gallon or when your monthly electricity / heating bill hit $500?
Hypocrite.
[QUOTE=Punter 127]Third party intervention, sabotage or terrorism. Not impossible, most of the terrorist groups come from oil producing countries, and I suspect the have ample knowledge of oil rigs.
Why did Obama not take any serious action for nine days?
Someone ask what could Obama do? [/QUOTE]Your raising the specter of terrorism makes me worry that you know something none of the rest of us do.
Halliburton - who operated the rig under a BP contract - had its crew working on capping the pipes right before they exploded. That work was the exigent cause of the failure of the fail-safe mechanism according to all the reporting to-date.
Gee, do you think maybe the Halliburton guys were really members of an al Qaeda sleeper cell? Wow!
Hey, maybe Cheney - not Bush - was the Manchurian candidate. After all he was the prime mover for the Iraq War. Now, after almost eight years, a more powerful Iran is the most significant outcome for W's grand adventure that over the next few decades will cost US taxpayers upwards of $5 trillion before it is paid for in full. Could "Tricky Dicky" have been secretly working for those slimy Persians?
"Not impossible" as you might say!
As for you dissing the response of the Obama Administration to the evolving crisis, I am not very persuaded.
A guy with his finger on the pulse like you should have been able to back up your claim of Presidential misfeasance with a detailed chronology of the escalation of conditions, along with the steps the various federal agencies did or did not take in response to the changing circumstances.
It might be instructive to your fellow AP members if you could illuminate for us what you might have done differently if you were President!
You confuse me with the claim that Obama's late response could have kept the slick from reaching US shores if the Administration had acted sooner, while at the same time you describe the failure of the technicians using their state-of-the art technology to curtail or stop the flow of oil from the damaged wellhead. If nothing is working, nothing would have been working any earlier.
As for BP's role in the fiasco, it had a responsibility to operate the rig safely and to have plans along with personnel and equipment at the ready to deal with any accident regardless of its magnitude. It didn't.
In case you have forgotten, in our grand capitalist country, private businesses produce our energy resources. Therefore the federal government - including the Pentagon - doesn't have warehouses full of up-to-date equipment for off-shore drilling or to cap any underwater oil wells that explode.
And as far as the feds deploying resources and personnel to begin the effort to contain the slick as it spreads, I am persuaded your knowledge or experience in large-scale logistics is non-existent.
The involved agencies - including the Pentagon - didn't have thousands of excess staff sitting around or hundred of vessels sitting at docks waiting for the shit to hit the fan or acres of oil absorbing materials piled up in old sheds across Alabama. Deploying what resources they did actually took a little time, don't you think?
This latest cock-up is just another examples of how everyone insists that when corporations fuck up, the government they hate must come to the rescue - and damn the taxpayer expense. Of course, when instant solutions don't miraculously emerge, then everyone pisses about how the government can't do anything. If it weren't so important, it would almost be funny!
Given the shallow nature of your critique and your inability to fairly analyze this terrible tragedy, it seems clear to me your real reason for posting was to add another lame attack on Obama on the forum.
Sidney might be proud of you! Or to be fair to old Sid, maybe he sees this one more realistically.
Hope you do better next time.