Turmoil In Thailand–Corruption As Catalyst

In February I put up a post about what was happening in Thailand from my perspective back at the beginning of February. I left it off with a sort of “here’s how we are, now how did things get here? To be continued” ending. Well, I’ve found someone who can lay it out far better than I could hope to. So, here is what you need to know about the history of the Thaksin regime: The Thaksin regime in perspective. A sample:

Thaksin was a divisive figure. To his opponents, he was a devil who greedily exploited his office and the trust of the people for personal gain, abused human rights mercilessly, and was rapidly becoming a dictator. To his admirers, he was an angel, a champion of the poor laid low by the forces of darkness and backwardness from which he had been trying to save his country. A more balanced perspective is needed.

Thaksin was a Thai variant of a type recognisable in the history of other countries – the tycoon capitalist emerging during the transformation of a pre-industrial world of small business into today’s world of large corporations and conglomerates. He took the obsessive, aggressive and ruthless attitudes of the business tycoon into politics. His outlook differed from that of the old robber barons principally in that it found expression through his ideas of “new management.” This ideology was centralist and authoritarian, and fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance. Hence the damage Thaksin did to the limits on executive power created by the 1997 reforms, and hence his aggressive attitude towards people who did not fit his vision. It was this attitude, which more than anything else, underpinned his mishandling of the crisis in the deep south.

Thaksin learned how to push the buttons of the Thai people, how to manipulate popular sentiment by telling people what they wanted to hear and making them believe it. All he needed for the stamp of legitimacy, or so he thought, was to win an election. He “won” his first election with only about 40% of the vote and bought off some of the lesser parties to form a government. He has never been able to honestly command a true majority of the Thai People.
Read the whole thing.

Afterburner with Bill Whittle–The Rule of Lawlessnes

Bill Whittle’s latest Afterburner video is up. In it he details the descent of our government into lawlessness and rule by decree.

 

Update:

Bill kind of skimmed over why Harry Reid will not allow the Senate to pass a budget.The reason Harry Reid has not passed a budget out of the Senate in nearly 4 years can be explained by two words: baseline spending. That is Washington’s way of doing budgets. They take all the services the government is currently providing, assume they will continue providing all of those, add a bit for inflation, say 5% and then if anyone proposes an increase of only 2% they start shrieking about how you’re cutting the budget, or taking credit for budget cutting depending on the optics you want. With no budget, Washington has been spending at the 2009 level which has all the “temporary” stimulus spending baked into it and operating on a series of continuing resolutions. If they were to pass a budget in line with 2007 our deficit would be nearly erased but it won’t happen because the stimulus spending is being used as a giant slush fund that Obama is using to reward his favored constituencies.

More on how baseline budgeting works here.

A Malignant, Failed President

I haven’t wanted to think of our president as an evil man, just a hopelessly naïve one too steeped in his leftist ideology that he is unable to recognize mistakes and change course when his policies turn out to be demonstrably wrong. In the wake of the Benghazi debacle I am now convinced that the man is evil to his core.

Barack Obama left four Americans to die and though he had the means to send help, help that was requested and denied three times. It may have already been too late for Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith but Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty could have been saved as they fought a desperate rear-guard action that saved at least twenty more consulate personel in a battle that lasted nearly 7 hours.

Writing at Canada Free Press, Kelly O’Connell takes the same view, that Obama is evil, in a post entitled “Biopsy From a Malignant, Failed Presidency.” You should definitely read the whole thing but this section summarizes the sentiment quite well:

Third, Obama’s loss of nerve and decision to call off a military strike that could have taken out the Benghazi insurgents, and instead—just letting Americans die an agonizing, lonely death—is the most quintessential aspect of the story. This is because it reveals Barack as he truly is inside—an immoral, gutless, unfeeling, selfish, hypocritical, overly ambitious and hideously uncaring person. Obama ONLY cares about what he personally finds valuable, which obviously does not include individual Americans, or any random human beings.

  This man must be voted out of office and if not voted out, impeached. Such evil cannot be trusted with the levers of power.

 

Related: Mark Steyn calls for an “act of urgent political hygiene.”

Words Matter–Obama’s Promises Versus Reality

Watch this video and then tell me again why anyone can seriously consider sending this guy back for a second term.

 

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Is It Time to Mandate SEC Filings by Companies Wishing to Receive Taxpayer Guaranteed Loans?

A Form S-1 is a document a company must file with the Securities and Exchange Commission before it company may offer securities for sale, either equity securities in an IPO or the issuance of public debt. While the online form is only 8 pages long, in reality an S-1 filing can run to hundreds of pages once it is filled out as it must cover several areas of interest to potential investors. This includes, among other things, a description of the company's business, its history, relevant risk factors, the use of the offering proceeds, capitalization and management's discussion and analysis of the business and the company's financial statements. These will include and opinion by an independent auditor as to whether the company's financial statements fairly represent the performance of the business and comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principals (GAAP) as well as any qualifications to the opinion. 

One of the potential qualifications is what is known as a "going concern" clause which is the audit firm's way of saying "assuming this company remains in business." By inserting that clause in their opinion they are saying that that may not be a safe assumption.  Apparently the auditor's opinion for Solyndra contained this clause and yet the Obama administration pressured the Department of Energy to rush through an approval of a $535 million taxpayer guaranteed loan, despite the Bush administration having turned it down only a couple of months before. There was even concern expressed by DOE analysts that the company was burning cash at such a rate that it would run out by this month. And sure enough, the company filed for bankruptcy, laid off all of its workers and closed its doors on August 31.

If a S-1 was ever filed for this company, I haven't found it and the reason is that the company didn't have to file one because it didn't intend to go public anytime soon. It was entirely funded by venture capital up until the time of the loan.

Yet here I am, an involuntary investor in a bankrupt company, like all the rest of the tax-paying public. I believe that an application for a government loan, guaranteed by the taxpayers, should require the filing of an S-1 or similar disclosure should be made in all cases and that a public comment period of not less than 90 days be mandated before the loan can be made. If the tax-payers can be put on the hook for the loan then they have a right to know what their government is getting them into. The comment period would allow an opprtunity for a crowd-sourced analysis of the company, the soundness of its business case and its financial viability. As long as the government is going to be in the venture capital business and picking winners and losere, and I don't think it should be, this would be a huge leap in transparency and accountability where government and private business intersect. 

Update:  I just went back to Edgar and searched again. I did find an S-1 for Solyndra. I think I probably searched as "Solyndra Corporation" the first time around and it is Solyndra, Inc. Sometimes less is better when searching. In any case, the financials are from pre-revenue 12/31/2006 and 2007 then nine months ended 9/27/2008 and 10/3/2009 and are every bit as ugly as any financial statements I've ever seen, and I do look at a lot of them.  If the company can't get any takers for an IPO, that should be all you need to know about the wisdom of granting a loan. If the market won't touch it, it's sheer idiocy to lend the company money on any terms.

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Will LightSquared be the Next Political Favoritism Scandal?

The Solyndra mess, involving $535 million in taxpayer guaranteed loans to a company that the Obama Administration favored and that just went bankrupt only a year after receiving the loan is dominating the headlines now. However, a new scandal may be brewing.

 

There’s a White House scandal involving favoritism towards a specific company high on President Obama’s political agenda — and it’s not Solyndra.

In this case, the company owner happens to be a big Democratic Party donor. And in the pursuit of giving preference to a specific company, the White House undercut a legendary four-star general and potentially undermined U.S. national security. Adding fuel to the explosive story: at one time President Obama was a personal investor, with $50,000 of his own money.

Are we starting to see a pattern here? Taxpayer funded largesse is being bestowed on politically favored companies whose heads and/or major investors just coincidentally happen to be major Democratic Party donors, whether the business is viable on its own or not, while established companies whose heads just coincidenatlly happen to favor Republicans (and are non-union)  are being raided by armed stormtroopers federal agents over the question of whether a certain kind of wood being used to manufacture guitars was obtained in compliance with the laws of another country.  Yet a competing company, which uses the same wood but just happens to be a union shop and whose head happens to donate money to Democrats is left alone. This doesn't look, feel or smell right.

The Obama investment in LightSquared is referred to in the past tense so he doesn't appear to be in a position to profit from any success the company might have, at least not directly. However, through campaign donations from the executives and investors in some of these companies he seems to be making out rather well indirectly.  

This kind of activity is the very definition of what crony capitalism is and these scandals, which seem to be multiplying and growing, is more worthy of some tinpot dictatorship than the once (and hopefully future) greatest country on Earth.

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Obamacare Conflict of Interest - Major Democrat Donor IT CEO Appointed to Health & Human Services Health Information Technology Policy Committee....

.... And her company stands to benefit from what it recommends. Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment has the story:

The Washington Examiner’s Lachlan Markay broke news this week about the appointment of a major liberal donor, Judith Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems Corporation, to the Health & Human Services Health Information Technology Policy Committee. Markay reports that Judy Faulkner was appointed to a stimulus-created board that is charged with disbursing billions of taxpayer dollars for health information technology adoption despite her opposition to the administration’s interoperability goals, which require that health records be shareable across platforms.

Faulkner and her company oppose the president’s vision for health IT, but Epic employees are massive Democratic donors. They’ve given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Faulkner is also the sole representative for the health IT industry on the committee, which has the power to set industry standards. Does anyone doubt that any adopted standards will work to the benefit of Epic Systems? This is a serious conflict of interest for Epic Systems and the Department of Health and Human Services. It is, however, a fairly predictable conflict of interest, highlighting one of the myriad objections to central planning known as regulatory capture. Simply put, regulatory capture is when government agencies work in the interest of specific commercial interests instead of their original charter, and is extremely common due to the fact that industry has the strongest incentive to assume control of the regulatory process. Given this, why should Americans trust any decision made by HHS on Health IT policy?

Sadly, this is not terribly surprising. Actually, with this corrupt an administration it's all too predictable.

Read the whole thing.

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GM Pays Its Loans Back - One of the More Brazen Prevarications We've Seen Lately

GM CEO Ed Whitacre claimed in widely aired ads this week and a guest column in the Wall Street Journal, that the company had paid back its loans from the government early and in full. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a flat-out lie. Even the New York Times isn't buying the claim. Not only that but the NYT reporter, Gretchen Morrison, goes so far as to accuse the Obama Administration, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in particular, of encouraging the claim and even actively echoing it.  In fact, the company paid back $6.7 billion in loans not from operating earnings, but from TARP funds placed into escrow for it to tap for working capital purposes. In other words, they paid the taxpayers back with money the taxpayers had provided. Reason's Nick Gillespie illustrates for us:

I went and took a look at the company's latest SEC filings. The 10K (annual financial statement) for the year ended 12/31/2009 was just filed on April 10 (late, it should have been filed on March 31) and for the period between the government takeover of the company in early July and December 31, the company had a negative EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amoritzation) of ($348 million). In other words, it didn't generate enough cash from operations to even cover interest expense incurred on the debt, $694 million,  let alone any principal. Also notable is the fact that the company filed a 10Q (quarterly report) on the same day, for the quarter ended 9/30/2009, so almost 5 months late. Its 10Q for 3/31/2010 is due on May 15th. So we don't really know how the company has done since the end of the year or if it will file on time.

Ed Morrissey has more over at Hot Air, as does Scott Johnson at Power Line.

It looks like the standard lefty MO is in play here. If the facts don't support you, lie. If called on the lie, attempt to brazen it out. If that doesn't work, question your interlocutor's motives and if all else fails, change the subject. We appear to be in the brazen-it-out stage still. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

EPA Covering Up Evidence Against Carbon Dioxide as Influence on Climate

Via Powerline: "The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained an EPA study of the "endangerment" to human well-being ostensibly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, together with a set of EPA emails indicating that the study, which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change, was suppressed by the EPA for political reasons. "

Read the whole thing. There are links to the report and to the emails in question.

Money, Money, Money. - Stephen Green Explains Speculaton and Investing

The inimitable Vodkapundit, Stephen Green, put up a post on investment and speculation yesterday. He makes two very important points:

1. All investment is speculation.
2. The secondary market makes the primary market possible.

The first point is easy. You invest, but there’s risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward sought. Everybody knows that one. You also should bear in mind that no matter how risky (or safe) an investment might be, you always always always seek to minimize that risk. That’s not just the invisible hand or whatever, that’s human nature. And it’s a good thing.

The second point is a little more subtle, but nothing difficult to understand. And it applies to both stocks and bonds. When you buy a newly-issued bond from GM, you’re the primary market. If I buy that bond from you, I’m the secondary market. And if I didn’t exist, you would never buy bonds from anyone.

He goes on to explain why the markets work the way they do, and why investors expect greater returns for greater risk.

If you have any money in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, pension funds, REITS or any other investment vehicle at all you are a speculator. If you ever buy a lottery ticket, you're a speculator (and not a very smart one).

Our president has taken to demonizing "speculators" and has justified turning established law on its head by depriving investors of their lawful rights to essentially confiscate their lawfully obtained property and redistribute it to his favored political constituencies, namely the United Auto Workers Union. This is a very slippery slope he has started us down and the people you would think would start taking him to task on this our esteemed fifth column fourth estate, the mainstream media are either silent or actively cheerleading for him. Until they decide to do their jobs, he's going to keep getting away with this and soon, we will have no property rights left. And property rights are the foundation of all our other rights.

Go read all of Steve's post.

Potential for TARP Fraud Astronomical

I'll let this post over at Powerline speak for itself, but here's the conclusion.

"What conclusions can we draw? 1) The government's $3 trillion and counting TARP program represents the greatest opportunity for sharp operators to profit at taxpayer expense in history. 2) The Obama administration is either in favor of giving Wall Street sharks this opportunity or, at a minimum, doesn't much mind doing so. (If this seems odd, remember where Obama got the biggest chunk of campaign contributions in 2008.) 3) It may be that the TARP complex of programs is the beginning of a national-socialist type takeover of the financial services industry by the federal government. Thus, 4) we can only hope that this turns out not to be the case, and TARP is only the biggest--and perhaps, by the end of the day, the crookedest--waste of taxpayer money in history. Finally, 5) so far the only person or organization who appears to be looking out for the taxpayers is the Special Inspector General. We will be reading his future reports with great interest."

This is very, very disturbing. Read the whole thing.