On Thursday, I noted (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that the Associated Press’s Marty Crutsinger and Chris Rugaber worked very hard to gloss over October’s horrid housing market news as reflected in the Census Bureau’s reports on housing starts and building permits.

That’s bad enough. But a Tuesday report covering the latest release of the Housing Market Index (HMI) by the National Association of Home Builders demonstrates how utterly determined the wire service is to put gobs of lipstick on a very ugly pig.

For context, I’ll show readers the complete 25-year history of said index (scroll down to the Table 2 link here to download the Excel file):

Given the history, can anyone reasonably claim that an index increase from 15 to 16 justifies anything resembling positive coverage–especially when you realize that September’s original reading of 16 was revised down to 15 in October? It is, if you’re the AP’s Alex Veiga, who also conveniently saved his subject matter expert’s quote for the last paragraph, perhaps so it would end up on the cutting room floor in most subscribers’ relays of the story (bolds are mine):

Homebuilder sentiment index rises in November

U.S. homebuilders battered by the worst summer for home sales in a decade are already looking ahead to spring, saying they feel somewhat more optimistic about the prospect for an uptick in sales.

The National Association of Home Builders said Tuesday its monthly index of builders’ sentiment edged up in November to 16, the highest reading since June.

The index sank to 13 in August and September, the lowest level since March 2009. It rose to a revised reading of 15 last month, but continues to reflect an overall grim industry outlook.

Readings below 50 indicate negative sentiment about the market.

… Many builders are not seeing a dramatic improvement in the number of potential buyers visiting their model homes, but those who do drop by appear to be more serious about buying in the near future, said Bob Jones, the NAHB’s chairman.

“Though the gains have been incremental, the fact that builder confidence has improved over the past two months is encouraging,” he said.

… The index measuring current sales conditions was unchanged this month from October at 16, while the reading for foot traffic from prospective buyers rose one point to 12. But the index for sales expectations over the next six months inched up two points to 25 after improving from September to October by five points.

(final two paragraphs)

The index’s reading for improved sales expectations over the next six months is subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt, said Ticonderoga Securities analyst Paul Przybylski.

“The market is not going to have a significant improvement going into next year,” he said. “It’ll probably be 2012 before we get off the bottom.”

“Grain of salt”? Try a truckload.

The AP’s Veiga “somehow” forgot to tell readers that the NAHB’s “highest since June” reading was really “the same as June.” In historical context, saying something good about October’s result is like getting excited when an 0-12 NFL team finally wins a game — in overtime, because the refs blew a call that cost the other team the game.

What the history chart above shows is that builder sentiment has never really gotten up off the mat since its trough in late 2008 and early 2009. Instead of letting the market recover relatively quickly on its own (see early 1991 by comparison), the Obama administration has extended the pain through government-led attempts at artificial stimulation, with all too predictable poor results. As seen above, once the homebuyers’ credit ended in April (after some extensions into the next several months to allow for deal closures), builder sentiment went straight into the tank again.

Other than to carry out its apparent unspoken mission to prop up the administration’s pathetic economic performance at any cost, including its own credibility, how can the AP possibly justify blowing 570 words on a one-point increase in an economic index that is still near rock bottom, while trying its best make it appear as if it means anything other than the housing industry is still in the deepest of doldrums?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Westminster, England:

Nov 19, 2010 / 02:41 pm

Five Anglican bishops who announced earlier this month that they are quitting the Church of England, will be the first to join a new “personal ordinariate” established by the bishops of England and Wales this coming January.

The bishops unveiled their plans for the new ordinariate, or jurisdiction, in a Nov. 19 statement.

They said that Pope Benedict XVI will formally establish the ordinariate and name a bishop to lead it in early January 2011.

Pope Benedict invited Anglicans to join the Church last year under special provisions that would enable them to retain their own forms of worship and their tradition of permitting married priests.

In their announcement, the English and Welsh bishops said the new procedures for accepting Anglican converts have been worked out over the past year in cooperation with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Under the timetable they laid out, the three former Anglican bishops who are not retired will be ordained to serve as priests in the new ordinariate. The other two bishops, who are retired, will be ordained by Lent 2011.

“This will enable them, together with the ordinary and the other former Anglican Bishops, to assist with the preparation and reception of former Anglican clergy and their faithful into full communion with the Catholic Church during Holy Week,” the bishops said.

In addition, the statement envisions that Anglican clergy who have decided to convert will begin “a period of intense formation for ordination as Catholic priests.”

At the same time, individual Anglicans and congregations together with their pastors will be enrolled as candidates for the ordinariate.

It is likely, the bishops said, that they will be received into the Church and confirmed either during Holy Week, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday or during the Easter Vigil. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

I owe Ottmar Edenhofer thanks for two things.

First, I am grateful that Edenhofer, a German economist who is “co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change,” has a last name on which searching is easy. I quickly determined that his name last name doesn’t currently come up in searches at the Associated Press’s main web site, the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Los Angeles Times.

That’s because he hasn’t said or done anything newsworthy, right? Wrong. What’s newsworthy is my second reason for thanking him. First covered at NewsBusters yesterday by Noel Sheppard, and described this evening in an Investors Business Daily editorial, Mr. Edenhofer has proffered the principal motivation behind the “climate change movement” — redistribution of wealth (bolds are mine):

The Climate Cash Cow

A high-ranking member of the U.N.’s Panel on Climate Change admits the group’s primary goal is the redistribution of wealth and not environmental protection or saving the Earth.

Money, they say, is the root of all evil. It’s also the motivating force behind what is left of the climate change movement after the devastating Climategate and IPCC scandals that saw the deliberate manipulation of scientific data to spur the world into taking draconian regulatory action.

Left for dead, global warm-mongers are busy planning their next move, which should occur at a climate conference in relatively balmy Cancun at month’s end. Certainly it should provide a more appropriate venue for discussing global warming than the site of the last failed climate conference — chilly Copenhagen.

Ottmar Edenhofer … told the Neue Zurcher Zeitung last week: “The climate summit in Cancun at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.” After all, redistributing global wealth is no small matter.

Edenhofer let the environmental cat out of the bag when he said “climate policy is redistributing the world’s wealth” and that “it’s a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.”

… Edenhofer claims “developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community” and so they must have their wealth expropriated and redistributed to the victims of their alleged crimes, the postage stamp countries of the world. He admits this “has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole.”

It has everything to do with a different kind of green.

… Given this administration’s willingness to compromise American sovereignty, we could soon see Americans taxed to fund a global scam — the ultimate form of taxation without representation.

So science has been abused as a vehicle for justifying worldwide wealth redistribution. Gosh, that’s what many of us have been saying for years. That’s what the Climategate e-mails clearly demonstrated. It’s nice to see that Mr. Edenhofer from his position of influence at the IPCC agrees, and I thank him for his frankness.

Those who wish to brush up on their German can go to the original NZZ interview here. Google’s English translation of the article is here. The money quote, as translated, is “But one must say clearly that we distribute by climate policy de facto the world’s wealth.”

Regardless of whether they do anything with the story, it must not be easy being green at the news outlets mentioned in the second paragraph of this post, or anywhere else in the establishment press where they’ve been swallowing the human-caused global warning propaganda all these years. It shouldn’t be easy being a green collaborator either; someone should ask GE’s Jeff Inmelt what he makes of Edenhofer’s remark. In the pre-New Media days, all of these folks could have gotten away with ignoring mistakes like Edenhofer’s. Now they all just look like fools, as they watch their credibility continue to sink into the not-rising ocean.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Persistent pursuit of a story by journalists has in all too many cases been replaced by a dogged determination to keep politically incorrect facts out of important stories.

An Associated Press item out of Grand Island, Nebraska this morning illustrates this point. It’s not very difficult to identify aspects of the story reporter Josh Funk worked mightily to leave out (bolded items hinting at what’s not there and related number tags are mine):

Neb. gang raids yield 14 arrests, promises of more

A massive central Nebraska raid may have decapitated a violent gang, but officials say they have no plans to let up and allow the group to thrive again in the Plains manufacturing and retail hub of Grand Island.

The arrest of a dozen suspected gang members was trumpeted Thursday after 120 officers from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security [1] and local law enforcement agencies conducted simultaneous raids in the 50,000-resident city 125 miles west of Omaha. Two more arrests were made Thursday evening to complete the gang roundup.

Local officials welcomed the effort to rein in gang activity but law enforcement offered few details about their continuing investigation into the East Side Locos, which has ties to the international Surenos gang based in southern California [2]. Officials refused to discuss specifics of the gang’s activities and origins Thursday.

On Wednesday, an FBI SWAT team captured a 24-year-old Grand Island man indicted on 11 federal weapons charges and three federal drug charges. [3] Eleven more suspects were captured between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. Thursday as teams of officers served arrest warrants throughout the area. Two suspects that eluded capture in the morning raid were arrested Thursday evening after Grand Island police received a tip.

… Mike Feinberg, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations within ICE [4],aid the East Side Locos is one of the largest criminal organizations Grand Island has ever seen and “one of the most violent criminal street organizations in Nebraska.”

Feinberg’s agents help track international aspects of gangs, and over the past two years Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 80 gang members, including some in Grand Island. [4] But Feinberg refused to detail the East Side Locos’ international ties or say how many of those 80 arrests were made in Grand Island.

On Wednesday, an FBI SWAT team captured a 24-year-old Grand Island man indicted on 11 federal weapons charges and three federal drug charges. Eleven more suspects were captured between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. Thursday as teams of officers served arrest warrants throughout the area. Two suspects that eluded capture in the morning raid were arrested Thursday evening after Grand Island police received a tip.

… The 14 indicted men face a combination of federal weapons and drug charges or state drug and gang recruitment charges. They all lived in Grand Island and were either U.S. citizens or legal residents. [4]

Notes:

• [1] — So the FBI and Homeland Security were involved. This must relate to a domestic street gang in the lily-white heartland, right?
• [2] — Oh, wait a minute, these guys had ties to an “international” gang. Gosh, I wonder what other “nation(s)” might be involved?
• [3] — Funk seems to have singled out this “24-year-old Grand Island man” because he was considered a ringleader or the ringleader. He has a name, right? In a 750-word story, Mr. Funk somehow didn’t think we needed a to know it. Well, here’s a complete rundown of those arrested and two who were still at large at the time from local-area reporter Sara Geake, in descending order by age at 1011Now.com: “Gilbert Ontivernos, 33; Jose Hernandez, 32; Jose Espinoza, 31; Luis Cruz, 30; Herman Pacheco, 26; Joseph Pecor, 24; Eddy Cervantes, 24; Hugo Galaviz, 22; Anthony Holroyd, 20; Jose Alcorta, 20; Raymond Caseres, 18; and Ricky Amador, 18 were arrested between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. Two fugitives remain – 18-year-old Adrian Casares and 22-year-old Andrew Esquitin.” Gosh, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that the Eastside Locos are (or maybe were) a H-H-H … Hispanic gang (per this link, they are), and perhaps even M-M-M … Mexican in origin (per this link, they aren’t, at least directly). The word “Hispanic” and no form of a word relating to “Mexico” can be found in either Funk’s or Geake’s stories. But Geake named names. Funk’s omission of the 24 year-old Cervantes’ name (he’s the only 24 year-old in the group) seems deliberately designed to avoid identifying the ethnic origins of the Eastside Locos and their parent gang in Southern California.
• [4] — Hold on; ICE was involved? Why? That may be because, despite Funk’s last excerpted sentence, some gang members might be ill-ill-ill … illegal immigrants. While assuring us (How does he know? Shouldn’t there be a quote from someone?) that those arrested “were either U.S. citizens or legal residents,” Funk doesn’t tell us why ICE is even involved, or why its spokesman Feinberg is the guy getting lots of microphone and camera time. Funk also seems not to know and/or not to be curious about the immigration status of the “80 gang members” arrested by ICE (the “I” stands for “Immigration,” Mr. Funk) in the past two years.

As I stated at this post’s opening, it’s not about getting the facts, it’s about filtering them. The AP’s Funk has definitely done his “duty.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Two-tiered economy update:

Fewer new businesses are getting off the ground in the U.S., available data suggest, a development that could cloud the prospects for job growth and innovation.

In the early months of the economic recovery, start-ups of job-creating companies have failed to keep pace with closings, and even those concerns that do get launched are hiring less than in the past. The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy continues to break all kinds of records, doesn’t it?

Of course, big existing businesses don’t mind the lack of new competition too much. And they’ve got the accountants, lawyers, and political influence to navigate at least some of the problems posed by this “It’s the Uncertainty, Stupid” economy. Start-ups and little guys? Not so much. That’s why fewer are trying.

There’s more; those who are trying aren’t hiring:

Research shows that new businesses are the most important source of jobs and a key driver of the innovation and productivity gains that raise long-term living standards. Without them there would be no net job growth at all, say economists John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland and Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda of the Census Bureau.

“Historically, it’s the young, small businesses that take off that add lots of jobs,” says Mr. Haltiwanger. “That process isn’t working very well now.”

… Some entrepreneurs say it’s not all about financing, though. They express concern about taxes, health-care costs and the impact that wrangling in Washington over the federal budget deficit will have on them. “I can’t determine what the cost of providing health care for employees would be,” says Kevin Berman, 47, who is starting a local-produce company in Orion Township, Mich., called Harvest Michigan. Starting a company “is harder than it was at any time I can remember.”

Unless and until ObamaCare goes away, it’s hard to imagine this changing. Making the tax system we’ve had for the past eight years (2003-2010) permanent and preventing President Obama’s passively induced tax increases scheduled for January 1, 2011 from taking effect would also be immensely helpful.

The people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics who run the Birth/Death Model, which claims that 921,000 net jobs have been created by start-up and tiny businesses flying under the radar since February, need to start incorporating, so to speak, what’s really going on into account. If you go to the link, you’ll note that BLS shows more Birth/Death jobs created in every month from April through October of this year compared to the same months in 2009. Given what’s really going on, I think the correct response would be: “You cannot be serious.”

__________________________________________

Rahm Emanuel does not meet the legal residency requirements to run for Mayor of Chicago.*

That is not arguable, because “a candidate must live in the city for one year before election.” Emanuel hasn’t done so.

Chicago Trib columnist John Kass reported earlier this week that Emanuel has been purged from the voter rolls using ordinary administrative procedures twice in the past 13 months, only to be stealthily reinstated each time.

If Emanuel is allowed to run, it will be because he has been anointed as a person who is above the law. He’ll be the figurative Leona Helmsley of Windy City politics. Helmsley allegedly (emphasis “allegedly”) said that “taxes are for the little people.” Rahmbo and his apparatchiks believe that the law only applies to the little people — and that statement doesn’t required an “allegedly” qualification.

* – Also known known as “Democratic Dictator for Life or Until I Get Tired of the Job”

____________________________________

Washington Examiner: “After (Ahmed Ghailani) terror trial fiasco, Holder should go”

Captain Ed Morrissey at Hot Air: “Time for Holder to Go”

Holder, one of the chief enablers of Elian Gonzalez’s Cuban kidnapping (that was the term Andrew Napalitano used in 2000), is the linchpin of the Department of (Democratic Party) Justice. Under Holder, it has become a rogue agency. Sadly, he’s not going anywhere.

Captain Ed elaborates:

The administration is left with three choices in regards to Ghailani: announce that they will release him at the appointed date whenever his sentence ends, announce that they will hold him indefinitely without regard to the court’s ruling on the matter while referring the case back to a military commission despite his acquittals, or refuse to state which they will do and hope the issue falls to the next administration. The first will mean that the US will knowingly release a master al-Qaeda terrorist with more than two hundred murders under his belt; the second will mean that the trial they staged was nothing but a sham. And the third will be a cowardly dodge.

This administration’s track record tends to lead you to Door Number 3.

____________________________________

Regarding Iran, as the Green Revolution was germinating in June 2009, Victor Davis Hanson wrote:

Does not Obama see that the world has been given a rare chance, thanks to brave Iranians—as if the German people had risen up in 1938 in fear of what was on the horizon?

Also in June, former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar pleaded with the world, particularly the U.S.:

It would be a shame …. if our passivity gave carte blanche to a tyrannical regime to finish off the dissidents and persist with its revolutionary plans.

A year ago in October, the U.S. State Department pulled funding from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.

In May of this year, Charles Krauthammer ripped the Obama administration for its passivity:

American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.

This week, Michael Ledeen gave an update at Pajamas Media. His home page subheadline: “We still don’t hear any vigorous support for the democratic opposition from this administration.” In his post, Ledeen writes:

The regime knows it has failed to win the support of most Iranians, and like good totalitarians they are trying to recapture the culture and force it into a Shi’ite strait jacket before the people bring them to justice for their many crimes.

… We could have been the catalyst for revolution many times in the past years, especially the years after 9/11. But we chose to blind ourselves to the reality of an Islamic Republic that kills Americans with the same zeal it directs against its own people. The sanctions are at least a positive move, because they show the Iranian people that we are not totally supine. But the sanctions are not enough. We need to support the forces of revolution in Iran.

Someone should tell Bob Gates. And his colleague at State, Mrs. Clinton. And their president, who is totally absent from this gripping drama.

Better late than never, guys. Where are you? And where have you been?

From Natick, Massachusetts:

Nov 19, 2010 / 06:02 am

The six winners of the Gerard Health Foundation’s annual Life Prizes have been announced. The awards honor leaders who uphold the sanctity of life through their work.

Raymond B. Ruddy, president of the Massachusetts-based Gerard Health Foundation, said the six winners have done some of the “most important work” of the pro-life movement and are an example to follow. The awards will be presented in a Washington, D.C. ceremony on Saturday, Jan 22, 2011, organizers say.

Awardee Dr. Alveda King is a board member of Georgia Right to Life who sees the pro-life movement as the heir to the civil rights work of her father, Rev. A.D. King, and her uncle, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She herself underwent two abortions but was deeply affected by an ultrasound of a child’s beating heart.

Ruddy praised her change of heart as “awe inspiring.”

“She is more than a contribution to pro-life efforts, she is a blessing and an encouragement. We are honored to know her as a fellow laborer for life and to present her with this award.”

King responded to the award with gratitude, saying:

“I had to look at death in abortion to appreciate the life of the unborn child, and my prayer is that Life Prizes will be a beacon to stir those across the nation to celebrate life and recognize the important battle we face to protect it.”

Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, was another honoree. Since 2006, her organization has helped double the number of campus pro-life groups in the U.S. and has trained more than 5,000 student activists.

Hawkins said she was “humbled” to receive the award and praised the “trailblazers” of the pro-life movement. …

Go there for the rest of the story.

In a Tuesday item, the Politico’s David Catanese reported on the results of an interview he had (HT to Third Base Politics) with outgoing Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who was defeated by Republican John Kasich earlier this month.

It was billed as “his first one-on-one interview since his loss,” the first for a sitting Ohio governor in 36 years, so you would think anything particularly controversial Strickland might have to say would be news elseswhere.

Well, here’s an obviously newsworthy comment (in bold), especially considering what came just before and after it:

“We have to keep our team together to see how to keep the Ohio Democratic Party the best-organized, best-funded party in the country,” he said, adding that part of his role would be to monitor the new administration “really, really closely.”

“I wouldn’t call what we’re contemplating a shadow government, but you might,” he said with a laugh.

“I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me. I think we all do. We’re going to make sure the incoming administration adheres to high ethical standards. We’re going to continue to fight.”

3BP reacted in a follow-up post:

I can’t think of any time where a sitting Governor has gone so far as to state his willingness to set-up a shadow government after he left office.

Neither can I, and I’ve been around a few years — make that quite a few years — longer than the recently married 3BP.

Given what he said just before and after the “shadow government” statement and how he conducted himself in the final months of his campaign, it seems highly likely that Strickland wasn’t merely blowing off bitter electoral steam.

Recall that on Labor Day, in a story the Ohio and national media almost totally ignored, Strickland said the following in a speech to a union picnic audience (blanks are present because audio at the link is difficult to hear):

The Republican Party has been overtaken by the zealots, by the extremists, by the radicals, by the _____, and they don’t seem to like Ohio very much, and quite frankly, they act as if they don’t like America very much.

They want to change our Constitution, they want to change Medicare, they want to change ___, they want to change this country …. and we say to them, “Hell no, we won’t …”

And so I ask you: Are you read to fight …. against the extremists? Are you ready to fight the Tea Party radicals? … Are you ready to fight John Kasich?

So someone’s going to have to explain to me why Strickland’s statement isn’t news at the following Ohio newspapers, at least based on the non-results of searches on “Strickland shadow government” (not in quotes) at each paper’s web site:

• The Akron Beacon Journal
• The Cincinnati Enquirer
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer
• The Columbus Dispatch
• The Dayton Daily News
• The Toledo Blade

No search at any of the six papers returned anything relevant to Strickland’s comment at the Politico.

Oddly enough, the Politico item does not show up in a search on “Strickland shadow government” (again, not in quotes) at Google News or Yahoo! News (though it does appear in regular Yahoo! and regular Google web searches).

Somehow, I think that if a losing Republican governor promised to set up a “shadow government” after leaving office, it would be making just a little bit more news right about now.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Political Calculations has done some brilliant work on the so-called “decline of corporate tax revenues,” which I wish to supplement.

PoliCalc quotes a 2003 report from the leftist thought-free “think tank” known as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

… corporate revenues will remain at historically low levels even after the economy recovers, and even if the large new corporate tax breaks enacted in 2002 and 2003 are allowed to expire on schedule.

It didn’t exactly turn out that way.

Here is how corporate income tax receipts have come in during the past nine fiscal years, along with their respective percentages of all government receipts, graphically illustrated for the benefit of commenter dscott and other “must have charts” devotees (from Table 3 at about the fourth page of the September Monthly Treasury Statement for each year involved):

The collections numbers for 2005, 2006, and 2007 were all-time records for corporate income-tax collections. The previous record was $207.3 billion in 2000.

PoliCalc also points out that the leftists conveniently ignore the fact that all kinds of other taxes have been imposed on corporations during the past decades (state income, local income, excise, gross receipts, etc.) that have swelled government coffers (which they have proceeded to empty with reckless abandon) and which have made the corporate income tax, despite its substantial haul during good times, a less important element of overall government receipts than it used to be.

Readers will note that in the middle of calendar 2008 (the final 3-4 months of the fiscal year that ended on September 30), something happened that caused corporate income tax receipts to begin a steep decline that has only partially been recovered. That event, of course, was the inception of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, in whose statist-oriented grip we remain.

Death for blasphemy? Sounds like something those dastardly “Christianists” would do if they had half a chance. (/sarc)

Death for blasphemy is a state-supported sentence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

From the Catholic News Agency:

Pope appeals for release of Pakistani Christian mother facing death for blasphemy

Nov 17, 2010 / 05:47 pm

Rarely does Pope Benedict XVI make appeals on behalf of individuals. But the Pope broke from custom Nov. 17, when he ended his weekly general audience with a plea for Pakistani officials to free a Christian mother recently sentenced to death.

Asia Bibi, a 45-year-old mother of four, was convicted of blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad and sentenced to death by hanging in the town of Sheikhupura, near the capital city, Lahore.

Bibi has said she is being persecuted for defending her faith to Muslim co-workers who claimed that Christianity was a “false religion.” She was jailed days later, brought to trial and convicted for blasphemy, a crime punishable by death in Pakistan, which is a self-professed Islamic Republic where the rights of religious minorities are sharply restricted.

The Pope said Pakistan should grant Bibi “complete freedom … as soon as possible.” He added a pointed reference to the lack of religious freedom in the country. He also expressed “great concern” for Christians there, “who are often victims of violence or discrimination.”

In his appeal, Pope Benedict expressed his “spiritual closesness” to Bibi and her family.

Bishop Andrew Francis of Multan, Pakistan was quick to respond to the Pope’s appeal.

He expressed gratitude for the Pope’s support of Bibi and for his recognition of the “sufferings of Christians in Pakistan and our rights,” he told the Vatican missionary news agency Fides.

The Pope also prayed for all peoples in situations similar to Bibi’s, urging that “their human dignity and fundamental rights may be fully respected.”

… (a signature) campaign has generated more than 75,000 signatures demanding repeal of the country’s blasphemy laws.

Pakistan is a nation of 173 million people, 95%-97% of whom are Muslims. The estimated worldwide Muslim population is 1.57 billion.

The breezy mantra that “The vast majority of Muslims are moderate and tolerant” may need a little work.

From Ocean City, Maryland:

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Police say a 23-year-old Fenwick Island woman who was driving drunk careened into a bayside canal, sinking her car, and would have drowned if a bystander hadn’t rescued her.

“He no doubt, in my mind, saved her life,” said Ocean City Police spokeswoman Jessica Waters. “When you look up hero in the dictionary, that’s what you find. Thank goodness he was there.”

Police said it was about 2 a.m. on Nov. 15 when Taylor Cole Vanderhook drove across the parking lot of Macky’s Bayside Grill at 54th Street, bumped a pontoon boat on blocks, then drove into a canal behind a Candy Kitchen and Chauncey’s Surf Shop.

Coming to her rescue was Chris Sullivan, the general manager of the adjacent Yang’s Palace restaurant, who said he suffered a sleepless night after pulling her from her sinking car.

“I felt like the girl had died,” he said. “She came so close. I wonder if she knew; she was pretty drunk. I wonder how close to death she came. It haunts me even now. It’s surreal.”

In an interview, Sullivan said he was staying in an apartment above the restaurant when he was awoken by the grating sound of a rimless tire on her Toyota Camry. He looked out the window because she made so much noise pulling in, and watched her drive into the canal.

He came down to the ground in an effort to help. He said he could hear Vanderhook talking to someone on a phone, and that she was not coherent enough to open her passenger windows to escape. He watched as the water filled the cabin, leaving 6-10 inches of air, and sought an object large enough to break the glass. He dove three times into the water, looking for ways to get her out.

Finding nothing, he ran back toward his restaurant for help — and tripped on a wooden plank. That’s what he finally used to bust open the vehicle’s rear windshield, giving Vanderhook an opening to escape the sinking car.

“She said, ‘Dude, I’m gonna kill you — you broke my car!’ I said, ‘Darling, you gotta get out, or you’re going to die,” Sullivan said. “Once I got her up on the shoreline and the car sank… she said, ‘Where’s my car?’ I said, it’s gone!” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Gosh, what’s a bigger story — that to the extent it was ever happening at all the housing recovery “seems to have been aborted,” or that according to the government there was very little inflation in October?

Readers probably didn’t hear much about the Census Bureau’s terrible reports Wednesday about what happened in the U.S. housing market in October. There’s a reason for that, which is that the Associated Press, on which the nation over-relies for business news, paid very little heed to the Bureau’s reports, and in fact co-opted their awfulness to pat Ben Bernanke on the back for his quantitative easing efforts.

The AP might counter with the excuse that the news about inflation was (supposedly) more important. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today that prices rose 0.2% in October, and were flat except for food and energy. Even if we concede its relative significance (which I don’t), are we supposed to believe that the Essential Global News Network’s business reporters can’t provide detailed coverage of more than one big story at a time?

There is no story specifically dedicated to the housing news at the AP’s main site, as illustrated in the graphic that follows. It shows the results of a search on “housing,” and lists all stories that have appeared or have been updated since 8:30 this morning, when the Census Bureau issued its report about housing starts and building permits:

Here is what Marty Crutsinger and Chris Rugaber had to say about inflation and the housing news in the “Tame inflation gives Fed ammo for bond-buying plan” listed above:

Consumer prices barely changed for the third straight month, strengthening the Federal Reserve’s hand at a time when it is defending a plan to boost the economy by buying more government debt.

Extraordinarily low inflation was a major impetus for the Fed program to spend $600 billion buying Treasury bonds. A report Wednesday from the Labor Department showed that inflation remains super-low.

A steep rise in gasoline prices drove the consumer price index up 0.2 percent in October, the fourth straight monthly increase. But excluding volatile food and energy costs, core consumer prices were unchanged for the third straight month.

… the Commerce Department said construction of new homes and apartments sank 11.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 519,000 units. That was mainly because apartment construction, which represents less than 20 percent of the housing market, fell by more than 40 percent. The much larger single-family home category fell 1.1 percent.

Still, the drop reduced the pace of home construction to its weakest point since April 2009, when it reached the lowest level on records dating to 1959.

… “The data is definitely in the Fed’s camp today and should help keep the Fed’s critics at bay,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubish. “There is nothing in this data that would push the Fed off its course of continuing to buy government securities. Inflation is getting closer to becoming deflation and the recovery in housing seems to have been aborted.”

A troublesome sign in the October report were price declines on new cars and clothing.

While flat prices may seem like a good thing for shoppers, the Fed would like to see prices rise more quickly to keep deflation at bay.

Crutsinger and Rugaber really wrote that inflation isn’t just low, it’s “super-low.” I guess if next month’s CPI adjustment is near zero, it will be “super-duper low.” Zheesh.

As to housing, here is how bad it really is, using not seasonally adjusted, or NSA, numbers (i.e., what really happened):

• The number of NSA housing starts (long PDF here) in October 2010 (44,300) was the lowest on record for any October since records have been kept. October 2009, a terrible month, was barely higher (44,500). October 2008 (68,200) was the third-worst. No other October going back to 1959 came in below 75,000, and the vast majority have been well over 100,000.
• The NSA number of single-family housing starts in October 2010 (36,400) was down 7.6% from October 2009 (39,400), and is another all-time low since records have been kept.
• Meanwhile, actual starts for dwellings of 5 units or more jumped over 50% from October of last year (4,700) to this year (7,100). These are still historically poor numbers, but even worse they may be an indication that there may be a possibly permanent move towards multi-unit dwellings and away from single-family units.
• The news in building permits is just as bad (long PDF here). The October 2010 NSA total (43,700) came in almost 9% lower than October 2009 (47,900); the single-family decline was worse (from 38,600 to 31,900, or -17%). Both numbers are all-time October lows since records have been kept. The mix of permits also leaned more towards 5-plus unit dwellings.

Actual housing starts on the whole have trailed last year’s awful levels in four of the past five months; as far as single-family homes are concerned, the current losing streak compared to last year is five months in a row. The re-collapse in housing is far more significant news than the fact that inflation came in as expected.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Note: This post went up at the Washington Examiner’s OpinionZone Blog and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Monday.

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“We aim to increase our vehicle profitability by maintaining competitive incentive levels with our strengthened product portfolio and by actively managing our production levels through monitoring of our dealer inventory levels.”

– From Page 5 of General Motors’ S-1 Prospectus (bold is mine)

The initial public offering (IPO) of Government/General Motors is apparently ready to roll.

Why hasn’t anyone asked the company or its federal minders why they have from all appearances artificially created over $1 billion in U.S.-based EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) through October by overstuffing its dealers with excessive levels of inventory?

According to the Wall Street Journal’s cheerleading Andrew Bary, the IPO is generating a great deal of fanfare. The Associated Press’s Sharon Silke Carty is decidedly less enthusiastic (“the world’s most charming used car salesman couldn’t cover up major concerns”), identifying four good reasons to for investors to sit the IPO out. One of them is that “Years of fuzzy math (are) still not fixed.”

From here, it seems that the company has created a unique category of fuzzy math: shipped-ahead profit.

The opportunity for manipulation arises in how vehicle manufacturers recognize sales. The related policy is identified in GM’s S-1 prospectus (a very large document accessible at the SEC’s web site), Page F-31:

Revenue Recognition … Vehicle sales are recorded when title and risks and rewards of ownership have passed, which is generally when a vehicle is released to the carrier responsible for transporting it to a dealer and when collectability is reasonably assured.

In other words, once a vehicle is on the truck and leaves the factory, it’s a sale. There’s nothing wrong with this; as noted, it’s common industry practice. But it also gives a company trying to make its books look better than the underlying reality an opportunity to do just that.

As of the end of October, GM dealers in the U.S. were sitting on inventories of almost three months’ worth of sales, up from the low-60s only five months earlier:

The dealer inventory build-up has occurred despite at least two factors that would normally dictate lower inventory levels. First, after eliminating Saturn, Pontiac, and Hummer, GM is down to four brands (Chevy, GMAC, Buick, and Cadillac). Second, the company has substantially reduced its dealership roster. Yes, the company did offer to reinstate 661 dealers earlier this year. But while the rebound in the number of outlets could explain an increase in absolute inventory levels, it doesn’t explain why vehicles are sitting on dealers’ lots 23-24 days longer than they were in May.

Is 86 days of inventory an abnormally high level? In ordinary circumstances, I would say so. Guidance found at SafeCarGuide.com explains why (bold is mine):

Dealers must pay the manufacturers when they order a vehicle, not when it is sold. To provide adequate numbers of new vehicles whose options satisfy most customers, dealers finance this excess inventory through the financial arm of their manufacturer or through a local bank. This financing procedure is called a floor plan. To help their dealers keep up their inventory, manufacturers return the interest the dealer has to pay on those loans (floor plan) for the first 90 days by issuing them a “holdback” check every 90 days.

If a car has been sitting on the lot for 90 days or more, all of the potential holdback profits have been wasted on interest payments that the dealer makes to floor plan (finance) the vehicle. After 90 days, the dealership has to dip into its own profits to keep the car in inventory. So on vehicles that the dealer has had for over 90 days, holdback won’t help you at all.

Other guidance I have read indicates that dealers ordinarily try to keep their inventory levels at 45 or fewer days.

Thus, you would think that GM’s thousands of dealers would be squawking about holding so much inventory. But the circumstances of the company’s high-pressure, high-stakes IPO are certainly not ordinary.

You might be surprised at how much maximizing product shipped out the door — to heck with the long-term consequences — enhances reported profits. That’s because the variable costs associated with producing a vehicle are fairly low when compared to its selling price.

The only truly direct costs involved in vehicle production are materials, direct labor, and directly-consumed energy. Virtually everything else is at least in the short run essentially fixed, i.e., they are costs that will be incurred anyway regardless of the level of production. For example, you’re going to have a certain level of supervision no matter what; the costs of supervision don’t increase much, if at all, if production increases within a certain range. Pretty much the same number of workers will be involved with maintenance whether you’re producing 60 cars an hour or 80. Many fringe benefits, particularly health care costs, aren’t affected by production levels. You’re going to have to keep your factories’ lights on no matter how many cars they produce. Property taxes don’t change. Depreciation charges are fixed in the short run.

Companies justifiably guard the related cost data carefully, and you ordinarily won’t find information at the level necessary to nail down variable profit in a company’s financial statements or regulatory filings. Thus, specific data relating to variable profit is elusive.

But in 2007, Forbes Magazine carried this interesting tidbit:

Strategy consultant AlixPartners estimates a manufacturer earns $8,000 to $14,000 variable profit on each pickup it sells, but zero to $6,000 on each car.

Thanks to cost reductions achieved in its encounter with bankruptcy, GM’s variable profit is probably near the high end of both ranges; it wouldn’t surprise me if its variable profits are even higher. But to be conservative in the accounting sense, let’s assume that the variable profit numbers are $12,000 each for pickups (light trucks) and $5,000 for cars. If so, here is how GM benefited during the first three quarters of 2010 by putting 93,000 more vehicles onto dealer lots (478,000 minus 385,000 above).

• Using sales data from the third quarter, GM’s domestic product mix is currently about 36% cars and 64% light trucks.
• If dealer inventory is similarly proportioned, dealers had about 33,500 more domestic cars on hand on September 30 than they did on January 1, and about 59,500 more trucks.
• That represents $167 million (33,500 x $5,000) in sent-ahead profits on cars and $714 million (59,500 x $12,000) for light trucks, for a total of $881 million.

That $881 million would represent about 18% of GM’s EBIT from its North American operations of $4.935 billion during the first three quarters of 2010 (from Page 75 of the Notes to Financial Statements in the company’s third-quarter 10-Q filing).

About $663 million of that sent-ahead profit has occurred since May’s trough in dealers’ days sales in inventory (70,000 of the 93,000 total increase x $881 million). Serious talk of the company going public began at about that time. Coincidence?

Early indications are that GM isn’t interested in taking chances on whether or not its closely-watched fourth quarter will be profitable. During October alone, it shipped ahead roughly $350 million in EBIT on a 37,000-unit dealer inventory increase that seems totally devoid of any ordinary business justification. That brings the company’s year-to-date shipped-ahead total to $1.23 billion ($881 mil + $350 mil), and the since-May total to just over $1 billion ($660 mil + $350 mil).

So is GM “actively managing its production levels” as described in the opening quote above by forcing its dealers to in essence give up their holdback profits as described in the name of a “successful” IPO? Or has the company made some kind of a special arrangement with its dealers — perhaps an extraordinarily long interest-free holding period — to make holding excessive inventories more palatable until the IPO is out of the way? Will it embark on a campaign to reduce dealer inventories — and reduce reported sales and profits — in 2011, after the hoopla surrounding the IPO and its immediate aftermath die down?

Has anyone involved in underwriting or promoting GM’s IPO even asked these questions, or about other potential “clever” profit enhancers the company might have employed?