I wonder if this is one of the things Gingrich was paid to advise them to do?

Freddie Mac, the taxpayer-owned mortgage giant, has placed multibillion-dollar bets that pay off if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.

Freddie began increasing these bets dramatically in late 2010, the same time that the company was making it harder for homeowners to get out of such high-interest mortgages.
[...]
Freddie’s charter calls for the company to make home loans more accessible. Its chief executive, Charles Haldeman Jr., recently told Congress that his company is “helping financially strapped families reduce their mortgage costs through refinancing their mortgages.”

But the trades, uncovered for the first time in an investigation by ProPublica and NPR, give Freddie a powerful incentive to do the opposite, highlighting a conflict of interest at the heart of the company. In addition to being an instrument of government policy dedicated to making home loans more accessible, Freddie also has giant investment portfolios and could lose substantial amounts of money if too many borrowers refinance.

Americans have traditionally been the most enthusiastic champions of capitalism. Yet a recent American public opinion survey found that just 50 per cent of people had a positive opinion of capitalism while 40 per cent did not. The disillusionment was particularly marked among young people 18-29, African Americans and Hispanics, those with incomes under $30,000 and self-described Democrats.
[...]
So how justified is disillusionment with market capitalism? This depends on the answer to two critical questions. Do today’s problems inhere in today’s form of market capitalism or are they subject to more direct solution? Are there imaginable better alternatives?

There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here’s one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you’re gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you’re gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world — just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can’t bear to tell themselves isn’t real. It’s the most dangerous lie the country tells itself.
[...]
In the United States, the emerging aristocracy remains staunchly convinced that it is not an aristocracy, that it’s the result of hard work and talent. The permanent working poor refuse to accept that their poverty is permanent. The class system is clandestine.

Given the state of the economy, the unwillingness of our politicians to do anything about pretty much anything, the realization by business at all levels that they just don’t need as many people as before, manufacturing jobs moving to other countries that are never coming back, computerized equipment requires less people for the remaining manufacturing jobs, etc., is there any real hope for reversing what the article talks about?

BONN, Germany — As dozens of nations and organizations met here on Monday to plan a transition beyond the withdrawal of American and other international forces from Afghanistan in 2014, the Afghan government had a new deadline in mind: 2024.

President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials here called for political and military support for at least another decade — and financial assistance that would not end until 2030. That would be nearly three decades after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 that led to the international intervention in Afghanistan…

Instead, as the months have passed, the tempo of the war has shown little sign of winding down, despite an optimistic assessment from NATO that it had reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgents…

Even though President Obama and other NATO leaders created a timetable for withdrawal by 2014, few officials now expect any reconciliation talks to even begin by then. That has raised questions about security and the stability of Mr. Karzai’s government once international troops steadily begin to withdraw.

Mr. Karzai’s government presented a paper to the conference outlining Afghanistan’s plans for developing an economy now almost entirely dependent on international military and development spending…

…Just meeting the cost of Afghanistan’s military forces — which by 2014 are expected to total 400,000 soldiers — is estimated to cost $3.5 billion to $6 billion a year. By then, Afghanistan, the world’s 40th largest country, would have the world’s 12th largest military.

Thanks, George.

And let us offer up thanks to all the Republicans and Democrats who rubber stamped every foreign adventure of the Bush/Cheney years. Let us offer up thanks to Barack Obama who campaigned to bring the troops home – not over a vague and changeable schedule – but, as soon as he was inaugurated.

Support for the Tea Party — and with it, the Republican Party — has fallen sharply even in places considered Tea Party strongholds, according to a new survey.

In Congressional districts represented by Tea Party lawmakers, the number of people saying they disagree with the Tea Party has risen sharply over the year since the movement powered a Republican sweep in midterm elections, so that almost as many people disagree with the Tea Party as agree with it, according to the poll by the Pew Research Center.

Support for the Republican Party has fallen more sharply in those places than it has in the country as a whole. In the 60 districts represented in Congress by a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, Republicans are viewed about as negatively as Democrats.

The survey suggests that the Tea Party may be dragging down the Republican Party heading into a presidential election year, even as it ushered in a new Republican majority in the House of Representatives just a year ago.

Other polls have shown a decline in support for the Tea Party and its positions, particularly because its hard line during the debate over the debt ceiling and deficit reduction made the Tea Party less an abstraction. In earlier polls, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to offer an opinion…

How much this affects Republican chances in the presidential contest next year, Mr. Kohut said, probably depends on which candidate wins the nomination. “If the candidate is of a more conservative bent, he or she will have to deal with this complaint about the Tea Party among the general public, of being too extreme and not willing to compromise,” he said.

“The focus has been very much on the candidate and not on the party, but going into this election the party has problems,” he said. “Which isn’t to say that people are wildly enthusiastic about the Democratic Party, but it hasn’t lost the kind of favor the G.O.P. has.”

Which really shouldn’t surprise anyone – but, still does.

Newt Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from two contracts with mortgage company Freddie Mac, according to two people familiar with the arrangement.

The total amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment from Freddie Mac that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9 sponsored by CNBC, and more than was disclosed in the middle of congressional investigations into the housing industry collapse.

Gingrich’s business relationship with Freddie Mac spanned a period of eight years…

Gingrich said this morning that the payments were for “strategic advice over a long period of time.” His fees were sent to his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, not to him personally…

Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage lender was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker…His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

During that period, Gingrich consulted with Freddie Mac executives on a program to expand home ownership, an idea Delk said he pitched to President George W. Bush’s White House.

A reflection of the cesspool that is Congressional ethics.

Remember the good old days when the ‘govern’ part of government actually meant our elected reps actually ‘govern’ed rather than just spew no compromise, take-no-prisoners blowhard rhetoric? Good times, good times…

It’s one week from a drop-dead moment for the supercommittee, and the powerful panel is at risk of failing, adding yet another black mark on what is already the most unpopular Congress in modern history.

There isn’t a shred of bill language circulating publicly and no scent of a bipartisan deal before a Nov. 23 deadline to show the public how a panel granted such sweeping authority is trying to solve America’s great fiscal crisis.

Even worse for Republicans, there seems to be a growing civil war on the right over the idea of tax revenues. Rank-and-file conservatives have always been suspicious of the supercommittee, and they’ve started to go public with their complaints, warning against the tax revenue proposals coming from their own party.
[...]
Supercommittee co-chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), speaking bluntly to a closed House Republican meeting Tuesday said any deal that the panel produces will either be an “abject [failure] or a ‘kiss your sister agreement.’”

Oddly enough, a wide majority of Americans expect them to fail.

Atlas Productions LLC announced today its plan to replace more than 100,000 title sheets appearing on the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 DVD and Blu-ray versions sold through major retail outlets. These retail versions were packaged with an inaccurate synopsis of Atlas Shrugged. [...] The 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged, is known in philosophical and political circles for presenting a cogent argument advocating a society driven by rational self-interest. On the back of the film’s retail DVD and Blu-ray however, the movie’s synopsis contradictorily states “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of courage and self-sacrifice comes to life…”
[...]
Harmon Kaslow, CEO of Atlas Productions and Producer of the film stated “As we all well know, the ideas brought to life in Atlas Shrugged are entirely antithetical to the idea of ‘self-sacrifice’ as a virtue. Atlas is quite literally a story about the dangers of self-sacrifice. The error was an unfortunate one and fans of Ayn Rand and Atlas have every right to be upset… and we have every intention of making it right.”
[...]
The new title sheet will more accurately read “AYN RAND’s timeless novel of rational self-interest comes to life…”

“Your firm reprocesses moldy applesauce product … using a method that is not effective against all toxic metabolites,” read the FDA letter sent Oct. 20 to Jimmie L. Davis, Snokist’s president. “Several foodborne molds may be hazardous to human health.”

Why is this state tax issue a federal concern? Unless it’s preparation for a national sales tax…

CNET has learned that two Republican senators are preparing to introduce new legislation that would allow states to force Amazon.com and other out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes.

Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are currently putting the final touches on their bill, which is backed by Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, Home Depot, and other companies that are currently required to collect sales taxes.