#2
Get rid of Sarbanes Oxley (which cripples competitiveness of US companies), cut corporate taxes (cut capital gains and allow them to be indexed for inflation) and clean up the tax code to eliminate the Swiss cheese of loopholes for privileged companies versus competitors (level playing field), and the growth -- and thus jobs -- will come back.
#3
..and drill like mad to drop the cost of energy, specifically transportation, and you'll see a much faster recovery to the benefit of nearly everyone but the usual suspects [regulatory and greenie].
#4
Procopius2k Ditto that. Drill baby drill. Food and energy. Open new coal mines. Drill more gas wells.
Quickest way out of this and put the highest number of people back to work quickly. OS is correct also free business from so much regulation. Then you can deal with your problems with money in the bank rather than borrow from the future.
Sources familiar with the congressional investigation into the Gunwalker Plot say that investigators are homing in on early conversations -- and meetings -- between ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division William Newell and his self-described "long-time friend," Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee then on the National Security Council.
In Issa's last hearing, this relationship between Newell and O'Reilly was first presented. Since then, with that Friday night dump of emails, they had a month's worth of lots of communications. There was something in this for everyone, wasn't there. Next we'll hear that the Department of Education and the Mining Inspection Service were involved...
This is reflected, say the sources, in the subpoena issued this week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee seeking, among other things, "All communications to or from William Newell, former Special agent in Charge for ATF's Phoenix Field Division, between . . . March 16, 2009 to March 19, 2009."
The sources also say that Newell met personally with O'Reilly during this early period in the Obama administration and they believe that Newell may have "weaponized" the desire for more better statistics on the part of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others to support the "90 Percent" meme -- that 90% of weapons seized in Mexico from the drug cartels actually came from American civilian market sources. This 90% was quoted by Holder, Obama, Hillary and even Feinstein. Was later proven wrong, but was their buzz words.
Newell, who the sources say was familiar with the tactic of "gun walking" from the previous failed Operation Wide Receiver in Tuscon where Newell had participated in it, probably provided the germ of the idea that "walked" weapons could be used to "boost the statistics" of weapons found at crime scenes in Mexico, in the words of an early whiistleblower in this case.
If this is true, it places Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee responsible to Hillary Clinton, as the critical potential witness in the early history of the Gunwalker Scandal. Issa and Grassley had asked to interview O'Reilly before the end of September, but the White House says he's on assignment in the Mideast and thus unavailable. O'Reilly seeming can't testify as he has been transferred to Iraq.
[Dawn] "After being humiliated and looted by the courts, revenue officials and the police, one wishes to welcome the Taliban back," said Aftab Ahmad wearily. Ahmad, a social development worker living in Bahrain Swat, had a forest revenue case pending with the district officer of Revenue and Estate. He further said that the aforementioned officer, an apparently pious man with a white long beard, wearing "Islamic" clothing, demanded a 20 per cent share in the forest royalty that Aftab would get from the revenue from the forests.
"The situation in the education department, especially with the management, is no different. I am a teacher and know first hand of the corruption these education officials do. We are supposed to be the 'builders' of this nation but in reality the opposite is happening," Noor Khan, a teacher and resident of Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... said wryly.
Once on my way back from Islamabad just before the Baqr Eid of 2009, I was stuck in Mingora due to a curfew. I stayed with an acquaintance who was a principal posted at a high school in the nearby district Shangla. He told me about his experience; of the ill treatment by the junior clerks in the district education office.
He had applied for a transfer from Shangla to Swat back in 2006. He has since then regularly been following up on his application, but to no avail. The clerk bullies him; his application lies pending since. He added that during the Taliban's high days in Swat, he had visited the district office one day and was pleasantly surprised at the politer treatment he got by the junior officials. Stunned, he inquired from a junior officer and was told that the previous day a Talib had visited the office with his gun.
This is not to glorify the Taliban in Swat but to lament the sorry affairs of governance before and after the Taliban. It is often asked by many Paks why some of the local people joined the Taliban in Swat; and why things went from bad to worse like an kaboom. This question has many dimensions.
The dirty strategy aside, the ignorant, simple people -- mostly youth from the poor and socially weak families in Swat -- joined the Taliban as a reaction against the corrupt police, courts and governance. The Police was the worst victim of the insurgency. Every morning slaughtered bodies of coppers were seen strung on trees, on road sides and in the fields.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the rise of Taliban in Swat was solely due to the above factors, neither can it be categorised as a class war based on social injustices. But our observation is that the social injustices, bad governance and corruption in the courts, police and other departments provided spaces for the Taliban to fill and accelerate their movement by attracting the ignorant, young angry men.
After a so-far-successful military operation it was duly expected that the said departments would behave upright as they had seen the worst under the Taliban. The government was expected to be more diligent and meticulous through its representatives and officials. It is said that the provincial government decided to spend the rehabilitation funds provided by the international community through the provincial assembly members in Swat but what we see is a total failure. Neither was the governance issue reformed, nor the representatives -- who had been the most wanted targets by cut-thoats; of which few have also been killed -- became vigilant and more responsible, with some exceptions.
The Swati people deserve special treatment because they have undergone extremely trying times either being in Swat or leaving it for the displaced persons' camps in the blazing hot plains of Mardan, Swabi and Charsada in the summer of 2009, this they did to give the army legroom to take the gunnies head-on under the operation Raah-e-Raast, which started in May 2009.
Alas. Nobody at the helm of affairs here learnt a lesson after the worst ever years. It seems corruption along with sloth has mingled in the blood of the police, district officials in every department including the district courts.
Peace is the only option for us all. It cannot be jeopardised by corruption, ineligibility and bad governance in Pakistain, particularly in the scenic valley of Swat.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/13/2011 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
The dirty strategy aside, the ignorant, simple people -- mostly youth from the poor and socially weak families in Swat -- joined the Taliban as a reaction against the corrupt police, courts and governance. The Police was the worst victim of the insurgency. Every morning slaughtered bodies of 
