Housing Activists Fear Obama Will Choke Mortgages, Add $1,400 in Fees

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Top administration aides are pushing for President Obama to endorse a new mortgage scheme in his State of the Union address that housing advocates fear would kill mortgages to low income Americans and add up to $1,400 in fees to every new loan.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Obama economic aide Gene Sperling urged a key senator to press the president to support the plan that would replace mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with another organization, according to the activists.

The legislation, dubbed Corker-Warner, after sponsors Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Warner, R-Va., would replace the two mortgage outfits with a privately capitalized system. The duo believe that it would protect taxpayers from future economic downturns.

Sources say that Donovan and Sperling asked Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, to help get the president to back the Corker-Warner plan and mention it in his State of the Union address to Congress. Johnson has been skeptical of the Corker-Warner bill, saying he wants changes in it. A Republican House member has a dueling plan.

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NSA Collects Millions of Text Messages Daily in ‘Untargeted’ Global Sweep

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Photo Credit: Dave Thompson/PA

Photo Credit: Dave Thompson/PA

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.

The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.

The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.

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Who Read 1,582-Page $1.1T Spending Bill? Congressman: ‘Nobody Did’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

When asked whether he read the 1,528-page, $1.1 trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said, “Nobody did!”

On Capitol Hill on Thursday, CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer: “The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?”

Blumenauer laughed and said: “Nobody did!”

“Nobody did?” said the CNSNews.com reporter.

“Nope,” said Blumenauer.

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China Now Owns a Record $1.317T of U.S. Government Debt

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chinese-flag-nationalChina stepped up its purchases of U.S. government debt late last year, increasing its holdings of Treasurys to an all-time record of $1.317 trillion in November, government data released this week revealed.

The statistics underscore how reliant the U.S. and Chinese economies are on one another even as political tensions occasionally emerge.

According to figures inadvertently released Wednesday evening on the U.S. Treasury Department website, China’s holdings of Treasurys increased by 0.9% in November to $1.317 trillion, up from $1.305 trillion in October. Year-over-year, China’s holdings rose 11.3% from $1.183 trillion.

The $1.317 trillion figure exceeds China’s previous record high in July 2011 of $1.315 trillion, according to the government data.

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Shot Show: Police Officers Explain Why Millennials Make Terrible Cops

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

Police departments across the country are struggling with staffing shortages as a result of a weak economy, hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and cutbacks to salaries, benefits, and retirement incentives.

According to Police Chief Magazine, “Such difficulties spurred 7,272 applications to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program, requesting $8.3 billion to support more than 39,000 sworn-officer positions. Altogether, both the supply of and demand for qualified officers are changing in a time of increasing attrition, expanding law enforcement responsibilities, and decreasing resources.” The problem is not new, either. The Anniston Star reported in December 2013:

Since the late 1990s the nation has seen a decrease in the number of people interested in becoming police officers. A 2006 article on police officer recruitment published in Police Chief Magazine said an estimated 80 percent of the nation’s 17,000 law enforcement agencies had positions they could not fill. A separate report, Hiring and Keeping Police Officers, published in 2004 by the National Institute of Justice said 20 percent of agencies experienced officer weakness as a result of recruitment and fiscal problems.

One particular question being discussed by the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) at the annual National Shooting Sports Foundation’s SHOT Show in Las Vegas this year is how local law enforcement can recruit and retain quality individuals to their departments’ SWAT teams. An NTOA seminar on this question was well attended by SWAT team officers from all over the country, from cities including Chicago, Santa Barbara, Washington D.C., and Palm Beach.

As baby-boomers in departments look toward retirement, issues surrounding differences among officers who grew up as Generation X-ers or Millennials appear to be surfacing. Veteran SWAT officers within the group of attendees say that too many new recruits look at SWAT as a “stepping stone” or “résumé builder” to other areas of law enforcement, so finding new recruits who are willing to stay on SWAT teams for the long haul is becoming more difficult.

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Google Announces Contact Lens Glucose Monitor

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Google has announced that it is testing a prototype for a contact lens that would help people with diabetes manage their disease.

In a press release distributed Thursday, the company said that the lens it is designing would measure glucose in tears continuously using a wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor. Google says that using the lenses would be a less invasive method of measuring glucose levels than finger-pricking.

It also claims that the more frequent testing would consequently reduce the risks associated with infrequent glucose testing such as kidney failure and blindness.

The contact lenses were developed during the past 18 months in the clandestine Google X lab that also came up with a driverless car, Google’s Web-surfing eyeglasses and Project Loon, a network of large balloons designed to beam the Internet to unwired places.

“We wondered if miniaturized electronics — think chips and sensors so small they look like bits of glitter, and an antenna thinner than a human hair — might be a way to crack the mystery of tear glucose and measure it with greater accuracy,” Google said in its press release.

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Tom Coburn to Step Down at End of 113th Congress

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Photo Credit: Medill DC

Photo Credit: Medill DC

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., plans to give up his Senate seat at the end of this Congress, he said in a statement Thursday night.

“Serving as Oklahoma’s senator has been, and continues to be, one of the great privileges and blessings of my life,” said Coburn, 65. “But after much prayer and consideration, I have decided that I will leave my Senate seat at the end of this Congress.”

Coburn, a licensed physician who formerly specialized in family medicine, obstetrics and allergy treatment, has been battling prostate cancer, and has previously suffered from colon cancer and melanoma. But he said he was stepping down to honor his pledge to serve no more than two terms in the Senate, though he will be stepping down two years before his term expires.

He was first elected to the House in 1994, where he served three terms, and later was elected to the Senate in 2004.

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The Church of Global Warming Hearts Communism

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Photo Credit: UK Guardian

Photo Credit: UK Guardian

Quick show of hands: who’s surprised to learn the global warming fanatics think communism is super-awesome?

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, People Who Have Your Hands Down. You’ve seen what communist countries look like. They’re absolute environmental disasters, horrifying wastelands of garbage and toxic pollution. You’re wondering how anyone could possibly review the history of communism and come to the conclusion that it’s a political philosophy that leads to wise stewardship of the planet.

You need to switch off your critical thinking skills, People Who Have Your Hands Down, and master the crucial global warming skill of ignoring evidence that contradicts your ideology. That’s what this scam has been all about since the beginning. Ignore 70 percent of the data, declare what remains “science,” and treat anyone who disagrees as the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier. If you don’t actually look at communist China, whose capital is currently enveloped in a choking cloud of pollution that’s literally driving people off the streets, you can come to the ideologically motivated conclusion that they’re the best little global warming fighters on the whole planet.

That’s what the United Nations’ climate poobah just did, as related by Bloomberg News:

China, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, is also the country that’s “doing it right” when it comes to addressing global warming, the United Nations’ chief climate official said.

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Conservative Insurgents Strike Blow Against GOP Establishment

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Photo Credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Cold cash, together with control of institutions, is what makes the Establishment the Establishment. But in the current Republican civil war, the insurgents have secured their own money pipelines, and they control their own institutions – which means the GOP leadership and its allies in the business lobby have a hard fight in front of them.

The firing and hiring of conservative staffer Paul Teller makes it clear that the anti-establishment has built its own establishment.

Teller was a House staffer for more than a decade, and was longtime executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The RSC always exerted a rightward pull on party leadership, but it is nonetheless a subsidiary of the party.

After the 2012 election, the Republican Establishment captured the RSC, in effect, by getting Congressman Steve Scalise elected chairman. Scalise is a conservative, but he is also a close ally of the party leadership – much more so than his predecessors Jim Jordan and Tom Price. Scalise immediately swept out most of the RSC staff.

Last month, Teller was accused of working with outside groups such as Heritage Action to whip RSC members – and Scalise showed Teller the door.

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House Passes $1.1T Omnibus Spending Bill Implementing Murray-Ryan

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed with overwhelming support a massive $1.1 trillion “omnibus” spending bill to fund government operations until Sept. 30.

The bill passed 359-67. Sixty-four Republicans and three Democrats voted against the bill. The three Democrats were Reps. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), Rush Holt (N.J.) and Mike McIntyre (N.C.).

Approving the bill “is showing the American people we actually are capable of working in a bipartisan manner,” said Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole.

He added that the bill restrains spending, explaining that its passage would be “the responsible thing to do. It’s the thoughtful thing to do.”

The 1,582-page bill works out the details of the budget agreement struck by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) in December.

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