The train carrying vice-president Charles G. Dawes and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover wrecked near Heads, Miss., on the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley railroad. The engine went into 40 feet of water, killing the engineer, during the flooding in the Mississippi Delta on July 29, 1927. (The Commercial Appeal files / Harmon Barlow Collection)
Photo by NOAA
The levee break at Mound Landing, near Greenville, April, 1927. (Courtesy:National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration)
Photo by Handout
The Mississippi River disaster of 1927, when levees broke and flood waters displaced 700,000 people. Greenville, Miss., was inundated by water 10 feet deep.
Red Cross camps for refugees, such as this one at Vicksburg, Miss., were established in dry areas in a number of towns and villages during the flood of 1927. (The Commercial Appeal files / copied from book, “The Flood of 1927”, published in 1927)
Barges loaded with refugees and everything they had been able to save were pushed toward Memphis in the great flood of 1927, which took more than 200 lives in the Mid-South. Photograph was made in late April or early May, probably near Greenville, Miss. (The Commercial Appeal files)
Many people think of former President Bill Clinton when they think of Arkansas, and they think of Elvis when they think of Memphis. However, the great Mississippi River separates both Arkansas and Tennessee. It’s history is worth looking into.
CNN’s David Mattingly describes how high and wide the Mississippi River is in Memphis, Tennessee.
Everybody is now educating themselves on the great flood of 1927. The 1927 Great Mississippi Flood was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States, causing over $400million in damages and killing 246 people in seven states and displaced 700,000 people.
My grandfather moved to Memphis in 1927 and he told me about this flood. There was a lady named Memphis Minnie and she wrote about this flood. I always heard that there was lots of great blues music that had come out of Memphis, but I always thought that was overstated and that the Blues was not a significant form of music. (Live and learn, the Blues music out of Memphis had a GREAT AFFECT ON MUSIC WORLDWIDE!!!)
However, at the same time I was listening to groups like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, I had no idea that many of their songs were based on old Blues songs out of Memphis.
One of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs was “When the Levee breaks.” It was based on a song by Memphis Minnie.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is being honored with a star in a music sidewalk in Memphis, Tenn.
Plant was presented Monday with a star that will be placed on the Orpheum Theater Sidewalk of Stars on Beale Street.
The Commercial Appeal reports that the award honors Plant for what are described as tireless efforts to preserve the blues.
During the presentation ceremony, Plant spoke of blues pioneers like Sonny Boy Williamson, Sleepy John Estes and W.C. Handy in acknowledging that a generation of British musicians owe a debt to early Southern blues artists.
Marooned: An aerial view of the town of Sledge, inundated to a depth of 17 feet, after Mississippi floods in 1927
Floods: Experts have warned that the Mississippi could rise to levels not seen in the country since the devastation on The Great Flood of 1927
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As the Mississippi River continues to rise to near-record cresting, residents in Memphis are paring for the worst. Randall Pinkston reports on the latest of the city’s flood alert.
Documentary about the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and the flood control lakes built because of it. Produced by Katrina Kinder
Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
U.S. Corps of Engineers reservation at Memphis on February 14, 1937. Downtown can be seen at upper left. (Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis District)
Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
A levee wall at Memphis during the flooding of 1937. (Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis District)
The view upstream from the Columbia Mutual Tower in Memphis on Feb. 9, 1937. The swollen Mississippi River rose to a record 48.7 feet in 1937. Before it was confined by levees, the Mississippi overflow from the runoff of 31 states regularly created a lake almost as large as Ireland. (Courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis District)
The White House, May 1, 2011
Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, along with members of the national-security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House on May 1, 2011. Please note: a classified document seen in this photograph has been obscured.
The president also revealed that prior to issuing the order for the special operations to move on the bin Laden compound, his national security team was still uncertainty about whether to proceed with the military operation. “This was still a 55-45 situation,” Obama said. “I mean, we could not say definitively that bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been some significant consequences.”
Obama also told Kroft that the safety of the individuals carrying out the mission was foremost on his mind.
He conceded that, given the risks some members of his team counseled against proceeding with the raid. Obama explained to Kroft that he made a point of taking these dissenting views into account as he approved the mission.
“The fact that there were some who voiced doubts about this approach was invaluable, because it meant the plan was sharper, it meant that we had thought through all of our options, it meant that when I finally did make the decision, I was making it based on the very best information.”
Ultimately, Obama said, “I concluded that it was worth it.”
“And the reason that I concluded it was worth it was that we have devoted enormous blood and treasure in fighting back against al Qaeda, ever since 2001. And even before, with the embassy bombing in Kenya … I said to myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly disabling al Qaeda, then it was worth both the political risks as well as the risks to our men.”
Sunday’s interview also included now widely circulated comments from the president regarding photos of bin Laden’s corpse.
Obama explained why the administration is not planning to release the images:
It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence– as a propaganda tool. You know, that’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies… we don’t need to spike the football. And I think that given the graphic nature of these photos, it would create some national security risk. And I’ve discussed this with Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton and my intelligence teams and they all agree.
He added that there is no question bin Laden is dead:Â “The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walking on this earth again.”
Inside the White House during bin Laden raid
Pete Souza / The White House
President Obama listens during one of a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against bin Laden on May 1, 2011. For 40 minutes, the President and his senior aides could do nothing but watch the video screens and listen to the operation and ensuing firefight on the other side of the world.
The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory
The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows the middle ground between those who claim “all tax cuts pay for themselves” and those who claim tax policy has no impact on economic performance. This video, focusing on the theory of the Laffer Curve, is Part I of a three-part series. Part II reviews evidence of Laffer-Curve responses. Part III discusses how the revenue-estimating process in Washington can be improved. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: www.freedomandprosperity.org
Before coming to Heritage in 2001, Riedl worked for then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, former Rep. Mark Green (R-WI)., and the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. Riedl holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin, and a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University..
Myth #2: Future deficits are “the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”
Fact: These policies play a relatively minor role in the growth of future deficits.
During his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama asserted:
At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.[7]
In other words, according to President Obama, the massive budget deficits are President Bush’s fault, but the data do not support this assertion. President Bush implemented the three policies mentioned by President Obama in the early 2000s. Yet by 2007—the last year before the recession— the budget deficit had stabilized at $161 billion. Since the combined annual cost of these three Bush-era policies is now relatively stable, they cannot have suddenly caused a trillion-dollar leap in budget deficits beginning in 2009.[8]
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However, the larger problem is that the President’s entire methodology fails basic statistics. With Washington set to collect $33 trillion in taxes and spend $46 trillion over the next decade, how does one determine which spending programs “caused” the $13 trillion deficit? By the President’s methodology, one could blame any $13 trillion group of spending programs (or tax cuts) for the entire budget deficit. For example, the President could have blamed much of the 10-year budget deficit on Social Security (10-year cost of $9.2 trillion), antipoverty programs ($7 trillion), net interest on the debt ($6.1 trillion), or non-defense discretionary spending ($7.5 trillion).[12] (See Chart 3.) There is no legitimate, mathematical reason for President Obama to ignore all of these more expensive policies and single out the $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Medicare drug entitlement. A better methodology would focus on which program costs are actually growing and pushing the deficit up.
Finally, there is some hypocrisy at work. President Obama criticizes President Bush for “not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.” Yet he would extend $4 trillion of these policies (while repealing $700 billion in tax cuts) without paying for them either. By his own faulty logic, he is almost as irresponsible as President Bush.
Can Washington Return to the 2001 Balanced Budget Levels?
Many lawmakers and commentators have stated that the budget was balanced as recently as 2001 and have asked why it cannot be brought back into balance at those levels. Of course, lawmakers are free to alter any policy to achieve such a budget, although significantly reducing net interest costs would require major deficit reduction.
Virtually all deficit reduction in the 1990s originated from just three sources:
Higher revenues, mostly from a temporary stock and economic bubble.
Lower defense spending following the end of the Cold War, and
Net interest savings resulting from less borrowing, a result of the other two factors.
The rest of the federal budget merely remained level as a share of the GDP throughout the decade, which itself may be considered an accomplishment for lawmakers.
Returning to those budget levels would not be easy. The stock market bubble is unlikely to return, nor would that be desirable. The 9/11 attacks ended the era of massive defense spending cuts, higher debt has brought higher net interest costs, and 10,000 baby boomers per day are retiring into Social Security and Medicare. Overall, the difference between 2001 and 2020 can be explained as follows:
The 2001 tax revenues were bubble-inflated (down 1.6 percent of GDP),
2001 defense spending was as at prewar levels (up 0.8 percent of GDP),
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs are growing (up 3.3 percent of GDP),
Presidents Bush and Obama hiked domestic discretionary spending (up 0.5 percent of GDP),
Other entitlement spending is rising (up 0.8 percent of GDP), and
Rising debt means rising net interest costs (up 2.6 percent of GDP).1.
As a result, a budget surplus of 1.3 percent of GDP in 2001 is set to become a deficit of 8.3 percent by 2020. (See Table 1.)
1.Historical data from Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables,Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2010), pp. 24–25, Table 1.2, and p. 146, Table 8.4, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2011/assets/hist.pdf (June 14, 2010). Current and future projections based on Heritage Foundation calculations of the current-policy budget baseline, using Congressional Budget Office data. See the Appendix for the calculations.
The Laffer Curve, Part II: Reviewing the Evidence
This video reviews real-world evidence showing that changes in marginal tax rates can have a significant impact on taxable income, thus leading to substantial amounts of revenue feedback. In a few cases, tax-rate reductions even “pay for themselves,” though the key lesson is the more modest point that pro-growth changes in tax policy will have a positive impact on economic performance and that good tax cuts therefore do not “cost” the government much in terms of foregone tax revenue.
This video is second installment of a three-part series. Part I reviews theoretical relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. Part III discusses how the revenue-estimating process in Washington can be improved. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: www.freedomandprosperity.org.
The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring
A video by CF&P Foundation that builds on the discussion of theory in Part I and evidence in Part II, this concluding video in the series on the Laffer Curve explains how the Joint Committee on Taxation’s revenue-estimating process is based on the absurd theory that changes in tax policy – even dramatic reforms such as a flat tax – do not effect economic growth. In other words, the current system assumes the Laffer Curve does not exist. Because of congressional budget rules, this leads to a bias for tax increases and against tax cuts. The video explains that “static scoring” should be replaced with “dynamic scoring” so that lawmakers will have more accurate information when making decisions about tax policy. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org
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I am doing a series on famous Arkansans and today we come to Ronnie Hawkins.
(b. 1935) – Born in Huntsville and raised in Fayetteville, his mother was a teacher and his father a barber. After graduating from high school, he studied physical education at the University of Arkansas, where he formed his first band, The Hawks. Hawkins owned and operated the Rockwood Club in Fayetteville where some of rock music’s earliest pioneers came to play, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Conway Twitty. Upon the recommendation of Conway Twitty in 1958, who thought Canada to be the promised land for a rock n’ roll singer, Hawkins went to Hamilton, Ontario to play a club called The Grange and never left Canada. Over a period of time, the members of the The Hawks, except for Levon Helm, were replaced with Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson. This was the line-up that was to later become known as The Band. In 1989, Hawkins was reunited with The Band at the concert marking the destruction of the Berlin Wall, and in 1992 he performed at the inaugural party for President Bill Clinton. He has been known over the years as “Mr. Dynamo,” “Sir Ronnie,” “Rompin’ Ronnie” Hawkins or “The Hawk.” He was a key player in the 1960s rock scene and for over 40 years has performed all over North America, recording more than 25 albums. His best-known hits are “Forty Days” and “Mary Lou.”
40 Days, performed live on Lake Minnetonka with legendary Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks
Eric Schurenberg is Editor-in-Chief of BNET.com and Editorial Director of CBS MoneyWatch.com. Previously, Eric was managing editor of MONEY. As managing editor, he expanded the editorial focus to new interests including real estate, family finance, health, retirement, and the workplace. Prior to MONEY, Eric was deputy editor of Business 2.0. He was also the managing editor of goldman.com, a Web site for Goldman Sachs Group’s personal wealth management business, and an assistant managing editor at Fortune magazine. Schurenberg has won a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism, a National Magazine Award, and a Page One Award.
Social Security isn’t the only cause of America’s fiscal problems, but it is Exhibit A in why it is so hard to fix them. No serious solution to our debt can ignore a program that will tax and spend about 4.8% of GDP this year and account for about 20% of all federal spending-and that within a few decades will count almost a third of the population as beneficiaries. But whenever I write about Social Security here at CBS MoneyWatch, I’m always struck by how much disagreement there is about how the system really works.
A handful of misconceptions tend to crop up repeatedly-often having to do with that fiscal fun-house mirror, the Social Security trust fund. And despite the efforts of writers like Allan Sloan and experts like the Urban Institute’s Eugene Steuerle, the myths won’t die. This column won’t kill them either, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take a whack. Here goes:
Myth: Social Security didn’t create the deficit and shouldn’t be cut to fix it
This is a much loved progressive slogan. “Blaming Social Security for the deficit is like blaming Iraq for 9/11,” writes Dave Johnson of OurFuture.org in one of the cleverer examples of the genre.
Technically, the first part of the myth is true-or rather, used to be true. From 1983 until last year, Social Security revenues actually lowered the Treasury’s need to borrow in the public markets, as excess payroll taxes collected under Social Security’s flag helped fund other government programs.
The surplus years are over, however. The Social Security trustees’ report estimates that last year payroll taxes fell short of the sums paid out to beneficiaries. Small surpluses will return for a few years; then the red ink will return for good in 2015. To make up the annual shortfall, Social Security will have to draw on revenues from the general budget. In other words, from here on out, year after year, Social Security only makes the deficit larger.
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Milton Friedman
Using Social Security as his prime example, Professor Friedman explodes the myth that the major expansions in government resulted from popular demand. In a speech delivered more than 30 years ago, he directly relates this dynamic to today’s health care debate.
Bin Laden was born in 1957, reportedly the 17th of the 57 children of Mohammed bin Laden, the owner of the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia. He was raised under conservative Wahhabi tenets and, while enrolled at King Abdel Aziz University in Jidda, developed a belief in pan-Islamicism, a philosophy that stresses a united Islamic world. This photo was taken in 1988.
It seemed an innocuous, catch-up phone call. Last year Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the pseudonym for a Pakistani known to U.S. intelligence as the main courier for Osama bin Laden, took a call from an old friend.
Where have you been? inquired the friend. We’ve missed you. What’s going on in your life? And what are you doing now?
Kuwaiti’s response was vague but heavy with portent: “I’m back with the people I was with before.”
There was a pause, as if the friend knew that Kuwaiti’s words meant he had returned to bin Laden’s inner circle, and was perhaps at the side of the al-Qaeda leader himself.
“This is where you start the movie about the hunt for bin Laden,” said one U.S. official briefed on the intelligence-gathering leading up to the raid on the compound early Monday.
The exchange and several other pieces of information, other officials said, gave President Obama the confidence to launch a politically risky mission to capture or kill bin Laden, a decision he took despite dissension among his key national security advisers and varying estimates of the likelihood that bin Laden was in the compound. The officials would speak about the collection of intelligence and White House decision making only on the condition that they not be named.
U.S. intelligence agencies had been searching for Kuwaiti for at least four years; the call with the friend gave them the number of the courier’s cellphone. Using a vast number of human and technical sources, they tracked Kuwaiti to the compound.
The main three-story building, which had no telephone lines or Internet service, was impenetrable to eavesdropping technology deployed by the National Security Agency.
U.S. officials were stunned to realize that whenever Kuwaiti or others left the compound to make a call, they drove some 90 minutes away before even placing a battery in a cellphone. Turning on the phone made it susceptible to the kind of electronic surveillance that the residents of the compound clearly wished to avoid.
As intelligence officials scrutinized images of the compound, they saw that a man emerged most days to stroll the grounds of the courtyard for an hour or two. The man walked back and forth, day after day, and soon analysts began calling him “the pacer.” The imagery never provided a clear view of his face.
Intelligence officials were reluctant to bring in other means of technical or human surveillance that might offer a positive identification but would risk detection by those in the compound. The pacer never left the compound. His routine suggested he was not just a shut-in but almost a prisoner.
Was the pacer bin Laden? A decoy? A hoax? A setup?
Bin Laden was at least 6-foot-4, and the pacer seemed to have the gait of a tall man. The White House asked the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides and analyzes satellite imagery, to determine the pacer’s height. The agency said the man’s height was somewhere between 5-foot-8 and 6-foot-8, according to one official.
Another official said the agency provided a narrower range for the pacer’s height, but the estimate was still of limited reliability because of the lack of information about the size of the building’s windows or the thickness of the compound’s walls, which would have served as reference points.
In one White House meeting, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Obama and other top national security officials that the general rule in gathering intelligence was to keep going until a target such as the Abbottabad compound ran dry.
Panetta said that point had been reached, arguing that those tracking the compound were seeing the pacer nearly every day but could not conclude with certainty that it was bin Laden, officials said. Panetta noted that there was no signals intelligence available and contended that it was too risky to send in a human spy or move any closer with electronic devices.
Obama and his advisers debated the options, officials said. One option was to fire a missile from a Predator or Reaper aerial drone. Such a strike would be low-risk, but if the result was a direct hit, the pacer might be vaporized and officials would never be certain they had killed bin Laden. If the drone attack missed, as had happened in attacks on high-value targets, bin Laden or whoever was living in the compound would flee and the United States would have to start the hunt from scratch.
Panetta designated Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, who had headed the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly three years, to devise a boots-on-the ground plan for the special forces that became known as “the McRaven option.”
McRaven had increased the intensity of Special Operations raids, especially in Afghanistan. During his first two years as head of JSOC, the “jackpot rate” — when the strikes got their intended target — jumped from 35 percent to more than 80 percent.
His decision to assign the operation to the Navy SEALs, a Special Operations unit with extensive experience in raids on high-value targets, was critical. SEALs have a tradition of moving in and out fast, often killing everyone they encounter at a target site. Most members of the SEAL team in the bin Laden raid had been deployed to war zones a dozen or more times.
A “pattern of life” study of the compound by intelligence agencies showed that about a dozen women and children periodically frequented it.
Specific orders were issued to the SEALs not to shoot the women or children unless they were clearly threatening or had weapons. (During the mission, one woman was killed and a wife of bin Laden was shot in the leg.) Bin Laden was to be captured, one official said, if he “conspicuously surrendered.”
The longer such raids take, the greater the risk to the SEALs. One senior official said the general philosophy of the SEALs is: “If you see it, shoot it. It is a house full of bad guys.”
Several assessments concluded there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that bin Laden was in the compound. Michael Leiter, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, was much more conservative. During one White House meeting, he put the probability at about 40 percent.
When a participant suggested that was a low chance of success, Leiter said, “Yes, but what we’ve got is 38 percent better than we have ever had before.”
The assault
Officials said Obama’s national security advisers were not unanimous in recommending he go ahead with the McRaven option. The president approved the raid at 8:20 a.m. Friday.
During the assault, one of the Black Hawk helicopters stalled, but the pilot was able to land safely. The hard landing, which disabled the helicopter, forced the SEALs to abandon a plan to have one team rope down from a Black Hawk and come into the main building from the roof. Instead, both teams assaulted the compound from the ground.
The White House initially said bin Laden was shot and killed because he was engaged in a firefight and resisted. Later, White House press secretary Jay Carney said bin Laden was not armed, but Carney insisted he resisted in some form. He and others have declined to specify the exact nature of his alleged resistance, though there reportedly were weapons in the room where bin Laden was killed.
A senior Special Operations official said that SEALs would avoid providing more details about the raid, to prevent the disclosure of methods central to their success. The individuals who took part in the raid, the official said, would not grant interviews and had signed nondisclosure agreements about their classified work.
“They are interested in closing ranks and getting on with business,” he said.
SEALs scooped up dozens of thumb drives and several computer hard drives that are now being scrutinized for information about al-Qaeda, especially an address, location or cellphone number for Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s second in command.
But officials said the delicate process of sifting this intelligence bonanza is made more challenging because of worries that using the wrong passwords could trigger a pre-planned erasure of digital information.
In the White House Situation Room on Sunday night, the president and his national security team watched a soundless video feed of the raid.
When bin Laden’s corpse was laid out, one of the Navy SEALs was asked to stretch out next to it to compare heights. The SEAL was 6 feet tall. The body was several inches taller.
After the information was relayed to Obama, he turned to his advisers and said: “We donated a $60 million helicopter to this operation. Could we not afford to buy a tape measure?”
Evelyn M. Duffy contributed to this report.
(Pictures below from Time Magazine)
The U.S.S. Cole
In October 2000, a boat filled with explosives crashed into an American warship in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack, which was widely attributed to al-Qaeda.
9/11
The most devastating of all al-Qaeda attacks claimed the lives of almost 3,000 people.
Leaders Group
Bin Laden, second from left, sits with, from left, al-Qaeda spokesman Suleiman Abu Ghaith; Ayman al-Zawahiri, who, at the time this photo was taken in late 2001, was regarded as al-Qaeda’s No. 2 operative; and Muhammad Atef, who allegedly was, until his death in 2001, the military chief of the organization.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 12pm on May 9, 2011.
Rather than providing a one-time stop for families on their way out of poverty, public housing has largely been a failure. Public housing projects have become havens of crime and dysfunction, driving away the very business investment and homeowners that would revitalize a city block.
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which subsidizes construction or rehabilitation of low-income housing, is a perfect example of market manipulation that does nothing to further the mission of public housing.
· The structure of the credit encourages projects to focus on particularly low-income areas, exacerbating
the concentration of poverty within cities.
· The tax credit is also allocated to areas where few housing affordability problems exist.
· Finally, the program does nothing to facilitate its goal of lower rents – developers pocket $4 billion in
annual tax credits while the rents in the buildings constructed under the program are generally no lower than they would have been in the absence of the program.
Replacing public housing with Section 8 vouchers has not improved upon delivery of services – in a landmark story by Atlantic Monthly on the rise of community crime rates associated with Section 8 vouchers, Urban Institute expert Susan Popkin said that the voucher program “has not lived up to its promise. It has not lifted people out of poverty, it has not made them self-sufficient, and it has left a lot of people behind.”
Furthermore, Section 8 vouchers remain an open-ended benefit that recipients can remain on permanently. There are no mandatory time limits and no work requirements. Families or individuals can stay as long as they want. And since the Section 8 voucher is linked to income, Section 8 recipients have very little incentive to expand their income or seek personal advancement. And why would they? The Section 8 benefit is large – the value of a New York City Housing Authority voucher for a two-bedroom apartment in 2010 was $1,543 a month.
As a result, subsidized tenants remain stuck in public housing and Section 8 buildings for years, even decades. They remain tied to a low-income area, preventing the community from enjoying the natural changes and upgrading over time, and preventing themselves from improving and advancing their lives.
Contributions to the Housing Crisis
Policies perpetuated by HUD and its related agencies played a key role fostering subprime lending that brought the financial system to its knees in 2008. By implementing policies that expanded risky mortgages to under qualified borrowers, HUD is directly implicated in the loss of over 1 million homes in 2008. Three of HUD’s policies had a direct impact on the housing crisis that still plagues many parts of the country today:
Loosening down-payment standards on mortgages guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration
(FHA).
FHA was originally founded to provide liquidity in the mortgage market by insuring mortgage loans made by private firms to qualified borrowers. Their standards for qualification continued to relax – by 2004, the required down payment on the FHA’s most popular mortgage program had fallen to only 3 percent. Mortgages with very low down payments have historically had very high default rates.
In its rush to meet affordable housing goals, FHA was putting unqualified borrowers into mortgages they couldn’t afford. In September, 2010, a report by the HUD inspector general revealed that in FY 2009, serious flaws in the FHA’s automated underwriting process resulted in more than $6.1 billion in loans winning automatic approval for FHA insurance even though these borrowers had too much debt and posed a greater risk of default.
Strengthening the Community Reinvestment Act
The Community Reinvestment Act requires commercial banks to report the extent to which they lend funds back into the neighborhoods where they gather deposit. In 1995, regulators were allowed to deny a bank the ability to merge with another bank if their CRA ratings were low. This implicit pressure to lend resulted in some banks distributing mortgages to low-income borrowers previously considered non credit-worthy.
HUD’s Pressure to Lend
Congress exerted pressure on HUD to put more low-income families into their own homes. As a result HUD required that the two government-chartered mortgage finance firms – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – purchase far more “affordable” loans made to these borrowers.
For 1996, HUD required that 42 percent of Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage financing had to go to borrowers with income below the median in their area. The target increased to 50 percent in 2000 and 52 percent in 2005.
However, the agency neglected to examine whether borrowers could make the payments on the loans that Fannie and Freddie classified as affordable. From 2004 to 2006, the two GSE’s purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans, creating a market for more lending of the same.
Catherine Middleton, accompanied by her father, Michael Middleton, makes her way to Westminster Abbey for her wedding to Prince William, 29 April 2011.
The Duchess of Cambridge
The Duchess of Cambridge waves to wellwishers as she makes her way in the carriage procession to Buckingham Palace after her wedding to Prince William William at Westminster Abbey, 29 April 2011.
The Royal Wedding Ceremony of William and Kate Live part 1/4
I really do wish Kate and William success in their marriage. I hope they truly are committed to each other, and if they are then the result will be a marriage that lasts their whole lifetime. Nevertheless, I do not think it is best to live together before marriage like they did, and I am writing this series to help couples see how best to prepare for marriage.
“Hi, Hon, I just wanted to let you know I’ll be home late. I’m going to hang out with the guys after work,” Derek said.
As I hung up the phone, I swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment. Why doesn’t he want to come home and be with me? So much for security once we moved in together.
The Lie That Living Together Offers
After dating on and off for three years, Derek and I were serious about our relationship. We agreed that living together was the next step. It sounded as natural as riding a tricycle before a bicycle and as practical as packing before taking a long trip.
And, we had other reasons:
No more roommates interrupting our candlelight dinners.
No more wasted time or gas driving back and forth to see each other.
No more overnight packing.
No more wondering if we were committed. We’d be sharing a place, after all, and could see where living together leads.
Weekend To Remember Conference Testimony
Inappropriate Wedding Songs
Revelation (Biblical Numbers 2 of 4)-Dr Adrian Rogers
Pakistani policemen walk past a compound, surrounded in red fabric, where locals reported a firefight took place overnight in Abbotabad, located in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province May 2, 2011. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan on Sunday, ending a nearly 10-year worldwide hunt for the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Obama said U.S. forces led a targeted operation that killed bin Laden in Abbotabad north of Islamabad
Yahoo News reported today:
Osama bin Laden likely had “some sort” of a support network inside Pakistan, President Barack Obama said on Sunday, but added it will take investigations by Pakistan and the United States to find out the nature of that support.
Obama’s interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” program comes a week after bin Laden was killed by U.S. commandos in a garrison town a short drive from Islamabad, raising questions about whether Pakistan’s government had known of the al Qaeda leader’s whereabouts.
“We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don’t know who or what that support network was,” Obama said.
“We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that’s something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he added.
Asked whether he did not warn the Pakistani government or the military, or even the Pakistani intelligence community, of the impending raid, because he did not trust them, Obama replied:
“I didn’t tell most people here in the White House. I didn’t tell my own family. It was that important for us to maintain operational security. If I’m not revealing to some of my closest aides what we’re doing, then I sure as heck am not going to be revealing it to folks who I don’t know.”
Obama said he agonized over the decision to go ahead with the mission for fear of the loss of American life and because it was inside sovereign Pakistan.
“And so if it turns out that it’s a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who’s in this compound and, you know, we’ve sent special forces in — we’ve got problems,” he said.
But he added: “The one thing I didn’t lose sleep over was the possibility of taking bin Laden out. Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil — didn’t deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.”
Pakistan’s government has “indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had,” Obama said. “But … it’s going to take some time for us to be able to exploit the intelligence that we were able to gather on site.”
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider in Chak Shah Mohammad and Chris Allbritton in Islamabad; Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by John Chalmers; Editing by Sandra Maler)
George Bennett in his article “Waterboarding and the trail to lin Laden: CIA chief acknowledges, West supports,: May 3, 2011, PostOnPolitics.com , notes:
Panetta said it’s an “open question” whether the same intelligence could have been obtained through other means.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, said he favors “any means that ensures that the American people are protected.” West’s 22-year Army career ended after a 2003 incident in which he fired a pistol near the head of an Iraqi detainee to get him to talk about a suspected ambush.
West
In an interview Tuesday with online PJTV, West was asked about the harsh interrogation techniques that were approved by former PresidentGeorge W. Bush and criticized byPresident Obama.
Said West: “Any means that ensures that the American people are protected, they are safe, as well as our allies are safe, I’m all for that. And I don’t see anything wrong with waterboarding. I think that when you look at these non-state, non-uniform belligerents that we are capturing on the battlefield, we need to prosecute every means possible that we can ensure that we are protecting the American people.
“I think that this administration needs to stand up and understand this is not about appeasing their left-wing liberal base. He’s the president of the United States of America, not just the president of the liberals.”
Marooned: An aerial view of the town of Sledge, inundated to a depth of 17 feet, after Mississippi floods in 1927
Floods: Experts have warned that the Mississippi could rise to levels not seen in the country since the devastation on The Great Flood of 1927
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