Bank of America: Balancing a $4 billion error in the checkbook

If you're like those of us who have trouble balancing  our checkbooks,  the news from Bank of America may help ease the pain of long hours of trying to figure out where you went wrong.  The bank announccd this week that it has $4 billion less than it had recorded.    What's more embarrassing, the bank's accounting error had gone on undetected "for several years," the New York Times reported.

"The error also raises questions about the quality of Bank of America's own accounting employes who are supposed to present an accurate financial picture of the bank's sprawling operations to the public and regulators each quarter," the Times said.

Now, about the matter of whether you remembered to subtract the $10 overdraft fee on your last bank statement...

Today's ever-vigilant press with Maureen Dowd thrown in

BROKEN NEWS!!!!!

Maureen Dowd,  she of the "liberal"  media, has become the New York Times' Op-ed version of Michele Bachmann.  Forever full of herself, she's been obsessing  against President Obama, most recently likening him to a "sad sack".  She's even gone so far as to say that Hillary might have to run in 2016 to "restore honor" in the White House.   Wow!   It all leads me to speculate on whether she might not have been included on the A-list of a White House dinner.

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A long piece in the Plain Dealer about the life and times of  crusading Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine quoted his soaring reason for wanting to hold office.   "I ran for attorney general not just to hold office, " he asserted. "I ran for attorney general because I wanted to do things."  Noble. Still shouldn't the story also have included  at least one word that among the biggest things that  he's wanted to do was to slap down Obamacare  and company insurance coverage of contraceptives as the lawyer for all Ohioans?  Even women.

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There they go again:  The Beacon Journal ran another op-ed piece by Richard Vedder, the conservative  Ohio University  economics professor emeritus who is being paid $150,000 a year to write his slants by an outfit named Donors Trust.  It is sort of a laundering operation that channels huge amounts of contributions to ideologically compatible "liberty-minded" charities.   Fine. But shouldn't the reader be told that? Vedder did disclose in his most recent column that a Forbes magazine ranking of college president salaries that he used for resource material was compiled by his own think tank.
I've long believed that if you want a strong college degree,  become a conservative economist.  There's money in it.

The NY Times falls for the carefully laid trap

SPEAKING OF NEWSPAPERS...

The omniscient New York Times fell for the non-debate Republican "debate" with a big Page One photo of the Team GOP bar code (see earlier post) and a frightfully long article on what it expansively called the "largest debate of the 2012 campaign." But the reality lies in the fact that the election is still 17 months away and these scrimmages are nothing more than an NFL exhibition game in August in which the rookies hope to show off their stuff to make the cut.

These are media-driven times in politics in which a single TV commentator chooses to cite the candidate who seems to have gained a point or two in a crowded field and is thereby elevated to front runner. My former boss Jack Knight regularly complained that the problem with the pundits is that they cover politics like horse races rather than spending much time examining the issues.

Seventeen months people! Anybody besides the candidates' immediate families want to swear that they will remember this parley a week from now?

When important news isn't that newsy around here

THE PRESIDENTIAL oil-spill commission has reported that Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, had used unstable cement on the deepwater platform that exploded in the Gulf and triggered the worst oil spill in history. Ho, hum. What else is new about Halliburton, which has enjoyed billions of dollars in government contracts for its less than reassuring work. Besides, Halliburton blames BP for not being more vigilant. How's that? If the big gorilla was aware of the weakness, shouldn't bells and whistles have gone off to alert everyone along the line ? Ho hum, again. But you don't call attention to soiled laundry.. Even reports in today's media in northern Ohio seemed to ho-hum the report from the commission. The Plain Dealer stuck a short piece on Pg. 4 and the Beacon Journal ran a single paragraph on Pg. 2. The only informative paper that arrived at my door (that leftist "rag", the NY Times) strung out two accounts on the front page, then jumped inside with the remainder , plus a photo and illustration. It is what it is these days, and I wouldn't look for it to get better.

Wolfowitz is back - and he still doesn't get it

JUST AS I believed that we had rid ourselves of Paul Wolfowitz's special insights into the invasion of Iraq, who should turn up on the NY Times' Op-ed page today but Paul Wolfowitz? . Wolfie was one of Donald Rumsfeld's honored tooth fairies in the Defense Department as we madly stumbled into Iraq. In today's column, he was full of advice on how to manage post-war Iraq. This is the same fellow who joined the Bush Administration in assuring all that the invasion was a walk in the park. While testifying in Congress in 2003 he promised that it would not be paid off in taxpayer dollars but rather by Iraq's huge supply of petro-dollars. It would be a relatively short war and we would be hailed as liberators. Did I say tooth fairies? Can't resist a rather belated but well-deserved Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award to Wolfie.

Boehner's failures in his attacks on the stimulus

WHAT'S THAT? John Boehner, that forever-dour House Minority Leader, is telling us that the stimulus bill is a whopping "failure"? You'd think that with new evidence of its success being reported these days , he would suspend his own whining opposition that seems to have begun on the day after George Bush left office.

You need only to look at some of the reports on the internet to realize that Boehner isn't a one-day wonder in leading the opposition to its lowly position in the public surveys.(Even below the befuddled congressonal Democrats.) If nothing else, he is icily consistent, having once called the stimulus plan "the worst idea ever." Here is what we should consider from the reports referring to Boehner's own words:

Sept. 29, 2008: The stimulus failed "because of Pelosi's partisan speech".

Jan. 27, 2009: "Boehner to GOP: Vote against stimulus".

July 9, 2009: "GOP declares stimulus a failure".

Aug. 31, 2009: Gingrich and Boehner declare the stimulus a "failure".

Feb. 17, 2010: The American people want Obama to "pivot to stopping the j0b-killing agenda."

Now here's a couple of paragraphs in David Leonhardt's Economic Scene in the New York Times (Ok, so we're quoting from a socialist newspaper, right?):

"Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody's Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative."

Oh? So who are you going to believe? Some impersonal research companies with strange names, or a politically inspired sidewalk economist with a household name like Boehner who simply wants to do what's best for his day job?

As the gurus often tell us: I report. You decide.

(P.S. The only job it appears to have killed is Evan Bayh's. And that was voluntary, for God's

sake.)

Yule shopping: Blue shirts vs. Winston diamonds

THE FULL PAGE AD from a diamond merchant in today's New York Times reminded us that there were only "three days till Christmas." As if we didn't know. Despite the ugly war of attrition on Capitol Hill (Please. When will the cavalry arrive?), I am trying to be merry. I am even making allowances for all of the gushing these days over Mike Holmgren, the former football coach who now will be the BMOC of the Cleveland Browns. His pensive profile, surely inspired by Rodin's Thinker, arrived massively on the front page of the Plain Dealer today as the paper's sports columnists and editors worked hard to convince the reader of the historic significance of the moment.

Meantime, there are still those three days till Christmas to reckon with and the Times , in its snooty fashion, paraded a number of last-minute luxury gift ads from dealers with names like Ulysse Nardin, Everlon and Rolex. I was particularly taken by Harry Winston's $12,800 four-row diamond ring with the ground-level trade name of "Traffic." Honest.

I recall another time with no more than a hometown weekly that dwelled on births and deaths right up to its pre-Christmas edition. My mother made her annual shopping visit to George Saloom's little "department store" facing the World War I monument on the town square. She defined her need for a shirt for my father, deeply into the details. Only a few shirts were ever exhibited at Saloom's. So the proprietor would listen attentively, turn to the shelves behind the counter and pull out a couple of boxes that would meet her need. "We have a nice blue one and a white one in the right size," he assured my Mom with a degree a satisfaction as he removed the quarry from the boxes for closer inspection.

"I think I'll take the blue one," she said finally, aware that further shopping was not an option. "It won't show the dirt so fast. He spills things."

It was an annual transaction, to the point, with not a lot of deep thinking. Afterwards she would take me to Sam Samer's Candyland for a banana split. That makes me more cheerful already.

Anti-health reform mobs: Nullification next?

THE WORD FROM OTHERS:

The New York Review of Books has an essay by Michael Tomasky, the editor of Democracy: a Journal of Ideas, that has a sobering look at the growing clout of the Tea Party mentality that is partly fueled by racism. Saying that it's unlikely that the reaction would be as hatefully demonstrated if the Democrats had elected a white president. He writes:

"We can't measure this, and I'm not sure what good it would do us to know even if we could. What we do know is that this movement is backed by corporate millions, powerful media organizations, such as Fox News, and votes in Congress, and that it will be around for some time, advancing new scandals and lies. The next phase in all this, if health care passes, might well be 'nullification' lawsuits or resolutions in states that don't want to have to implement Obama's reform."

Tomasky notes that South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty have "intimated" that nullification would be the best course of action. (Sounds to me like the kind of stuff that was going around in South Carolina in the years leading up to the Civil War.)

THE BONUS ONUS remains very much alive, no matter where you look today. Even the Tribune Company, the mega-media owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and TV stations, is arguing in bankruptcy court that its $66 billion in bonuses were important to

"incentivize"(God, how I hate the word!) its management. David Carr takes up this silliness in his The Media Equation column in the New York Times.

"Let's say that a group of corporate executives uses scads of debt to take over a struggling company, sells off some profitable assets, lays off thousands of employees while achieving miserable results. And then less than a year after saddling the company with $8 billion in debt, they opt for bankruptcy.

"You'd expect them to walk the plank, or at the least, spend a good stretch of time in the naughty corner. but you wouldn't expect the top 700 managers to collect $86 million in bonuses. But that's just what might happen at the Tribune Co.

(By the way the guy defending incentivization (!) is the Tribune Co.'s chief financial officer, Chandler Bigelow III. That's not the sort of name that would head a Laborers Union.)

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for alerting us to the judicial setback for the wacky California dentist/lawyer Orly Taitz, who has been one of the national ringleaders in challenging President Obama's birthplace. Taitz is a birther who has been challenging Obama's legitimacy wherever she could park her lawsuits. But U.S. District Judge Clay Land (Georgia Middle District) decided he had had enough of her nonsense and fined her $20,000 for misconduct. Should you question the logic behind the fine, here is, in part what he wrote:

When a lawyer files complaints and motions without a reasonable basis for believing that they are supported by existing law or a modification or extension of existing law, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer uses the courts as a platform for a political agenda disconnected from any legitimate legal cause of action, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer personally attacks opposing parties and disrespects the integrity of the judiciary, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer recklessly accuses a judge of violating the Judicial Code of Conduct with no supporting evidence beyond her dissatisfaction with the judge's rulings, that lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law. When a lawyer abuses her privilege to practice law, that lawyer ceases to advance her cause or the ends of justice.

Solidarity? Let's hope forever

WEEKEND WRAPPERS:  In a bouncy review of the past year in classical music, New York Times writer Daniel J. Wakin awarded  the Solidarity Gold Medal to the Plain Dealer's  Donald Rosenberg for the widespread professional support he received from the nation's other classical music critics after his demotion by the PD.  The paper, displeased by his criticism of the Cleveland Orchestra's conductor, Franz Welser-Most, restricted  him to lesser arts reporting  that denied him  his longtime beat of covering the Cleveland Orchestra....Speaking of the puzzling ways of newspaper front offices, I'm still trying to sort out the wisdom of the Detroit News and Free Press to limit the  home delivery of their   papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday, beginning in March.  The plan is the latest effort by newspapers to cut their losses.  In this instance, it appears to be a bridge to nowhere.   I don't see how it can possibly work to either the papers' or the readers' advantage.  Absence on the doorstep four days a week will not make the the reader's heart grow fonder.  

Clearing some debris from my desk, I chanced upon this stunning observation  by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

             "Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war." 

Good gracious! Who would have guessed?

Boo!   Once again, sports announcer Al Michaels' neocon handshakes were in evidence as he 

and his wife flew to a pro football game in the company of Rush Limbaugh and significant other.  Michaels, who has been heard on the air to make light of waterboarding, obviously is in sync with a guy like Limbaugh, who has made light of Parkinson's Disease and the recent mugging of TV talk show co-host Nika Brzinzski.  Guilt by association?  Naw.  Guilt by guilt.