On Wednesday evening in Europe (12:31 p.m. Eastern Time), in what it was already describing as “the world’s deadliest known outbreak of E. coli,” the Associated Press reported that “No cause for the outbreak has yet been found,” while farmers on the continent were petitioning the EU for hundreds of million of dollars in compensation.

By midday European time (6:27 a.m. ET) on Friday, June 10, it was known (“Sprouts are cause of E. coli outbreak”) that the contaminated food had come from Germany, when investigators “linked separate clusters of patients who had fallen sick to 26 restaurants and cafeterias that had received produce from the organic farm.”

It is not my intention to get involved in a debate on farming techniques. But it seems obvious that if the outbreak came from an “organic” farming enterprise, follow-up stories should continue to mention that origin. Failures to mention organic farming have occurred often enough at the AP that one begins to wonder if those omissions are deliberate — especially when coupled with the wire service’s complete lack of coverage identifying skepticism, of which there is plenty, about the safety of organic farming practices.

Here’s a rundown of the AP’s E. coli stories since Friday’s discovery which do and do not bring up the outbreak’s organic farm source (dates and times are as when last read by yours truly at about 5 p.m. ET).

(more…)

A 2008 campaign lowlight:

Text:

News reporter: Peggy Joseph took her daughter out of school early Wednesday for this. Her emotions ran high following Obama’s speech.

Peggy Joseph: It was the most memorable time of my life. I … I … it was a touching moment. Because I never thought this day would ever happen. I won’t have to worry about puttin’ gas in my car, I won’t have to worry about payin’ my mortgage. You know, if I help them, they’ll help me.

Someone ought to find her and do a follow-up report.

Maybe not, but you can bet that every Chinese firm of consequence is state-controlled, and that the state usually knows which ones are indeed scams.

At the Wall Street Journal on Friday, Holman Jenkins described the problem well, but is too cavalier about the implications:

… The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says more than 150 Chinese firms have recently put their shares in reach of American investors through the backdoor, “without any of the vetting from underwriters and investors that companies undergo when they perform a traditional IPO,” to borrow a line from a speech in April by Commissioner Luis Aguilar.

He went on to suggest that not all these companies are frauds. Alas, that distinction has not weighed heavily with investors in recent weeks as a small circle of research shops with short-selling connections has poked holes in one Chinese success story after another.

Sino-Forest Corp., a Toronto-listed timber company backed by hedge funder John Paulson, plummeted 72% this month on accusations of inflated assets and sales. At China MediaExpress, an advertising play backed by former AIG chief Hank Greenberg, its outside auditing firm resigned in mid-March, saying it could no longer “rely on the representations of management.”

By the SEC’s account, in March and April alone, more than two dozen Chinese firms listed in the U.S. announced auditor resignations or other major accounting travails.

An instigator of this rout is Carson Block, whose outfit Muddy Waters Research is based in Hong Kong. Mr. Block told CNBC this week that Chinese firms aim their frauds exclusively at overseas investors: “For the most part, they keep their noses clean in China. If these guys were pulling the same thing in China, the punishment is a bullet to the head.”

As never fails when accusations of fraud hit the newswires, up has gone a cry, “Where are the regulators?” Huh? When have regulators ever exposed or prevented fraud? Market scrutiny exposes fraud, and thereby prevents fraud by giving business managers a constant stream of object lessons about what behaviors to avoid since scamming investors is usually an unremunerative strategy.

This may not be the most ringing declaration of the system’s virtues, but the system has worked pretty well.

The system has worked pretty well, Mr. Jenkins — when it has involved countries based on free markets, the rule of law, and a low tolerance for corruption. China has none of those. Thus, the system doesn’t work very well, and I think we’re going to ultimately learn that “scamming investors” is a remunerative strategy orchestrated or at least sanctioned by the Peoples Army.

Scamming naive Western investors would appear to be a way of collecting a premium on certain very large debt obligations.

From Braintree, Massachusetts:

Jun 10, 2011 / 02:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On June 2, the Archdiocese of Boston opened the canonization cause of Father Joseph Muzquiz, a priest who helped establish Opus Dei in the United States.

“The spirit he lived was precisely the spirit of Opus Dei,” said John Coverdale, who wrote a biography of Muzquiz entitled “Putting Down Roots: Fr. Joseph Muzquiz and the Growth of Opus Dei,” and is himself a member of Opus Dei. “That message which comes across very strongly in his life is one that’s very important for our society.”

Opus Dei is a Catholic organization founded by St. Josemaria Escriva, a Spanish priest whom Blessed John Paul II referred to as a “saint of ordinary life.”

The organization promotes spiritual growth and discipleship among Catholic laypersons, teaching them to use work and ordinary activities as a means of encountering God.

Fr. Muzquiz met St. Josemaria in 1934, at the insistence of a friend, when he was a 22 year-old engineering student in Spain.

“There was talk about this priest that was particularly dynamic and a great preacher and doing interesting things,” Coverdale recalled. “(Fr. Muzquiz) mostly went out of courtesy and curiosity.”

Josemaria Escriva, the future saint who had established Opus Dei in 1928, made a strong impression on the engineering student. Very early into their meeting, he told Fr. Muzquiz: “There is no greater love than the love of God.”

Fr. Muzquiz began attending St. Josemaria’s formation classes while continuing his engineering studies. A top student, he graduated in 1936 and began work as a railroad engineer.

Even as he was working, he “sought to sanctify his work … and carried out an extensive apostolate among his peers,” said Rev. David Cavanagh, the postulator of Fr. Muzquiz’s cause, in the June 2 tribunal’s opening remarks.

The Spanish Civil War broke out six months after his graduation, and Fr. Muzquiz spent the next three years in the army as an engineering officer.

His conviction to dedicate his life to God and the Church grew during these years, and he joined Opus Dei shortly after his demobilization.

Fr. Muzquiz became the one of the first men to be ordained a priest of Opus Dei in 1944.

Fr. Cavanagh said it was his “human and supernatural maturity, and the sincerity and generosity of his response to God’s call” that led to St. Josemaria “relying heavily on him.”

In 1949, the Opus Dei founder commissioned Fr. Muzquiz to bring Opus Dei to the United States. When he and two other members arrived, they had no money, knew no one, and could hardly speak any English.

“It was quite an uphill battle,” Coverdale said.

The message of the universal call to holiness that he came to spread was also unfamiliar to the United States.

Despite the difficulties he faced, Fr. Muzquiz had “complete confidence that Opus Dei was a work of God and that therefore it would succeed,” said Coverdale.

Fr. Muzquiz worked to jump-start the U.S. branch of the organization that now boasts nearly 3,000 members across the nation. Within 10 years, he had established Opus Dei centers in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Boston and Washington.

He also laid the foundations for the organization in Japan and Canada.

Opus Dei has become a well-established part of the global Church since Fr. Muzquiz’s death in 1983.

Its focus remains the same, giving lay Catholics spiritual and practical support in the quest to become saints. Members strive to live out a prayer-filled plan of life that includes daily Mass, recitation of the Rosary, times of prayer and meditation, and regular confession. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

… predictable (links to all stories are at the just-identified Drudge Archive link):

The guys at Weapons of Mass Discussion reminded me of this development during last night’s radio show. It should be seen as a significant business opportunity for Ohio.

It’s described in a Friday evening Investors Business Daily editorial, with IBD’s characteristic caustic critique of Illinois’ default position that raising taxes is the answer to its serious fiscal problems:

Will The Chicago Merc Flee Illinois Taxes?

The company that owns Chicago’s two largest futures exchanges is thinking about moving operations out of state to flee oppressive business taxes. Worried about climate change? How about the business climate?

The days when Chicago was the “hog butcher to the world” have long since passed, replaced by its role as a leading financial trading center that is home to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, also known as the Merc, and the Chicago Board of Trade.

On Wednesday, Terence Duffy, chairman of CME Group Inc., which owns the two institutions as well as the New York Mercantile Exchange, and Chief Financial Officer James Parisi announced the financial giant is considering moving operations and jobs out of the state in response to massive increases in state taxes.

Parisi told the company’s annual meeting of shareholders that the state legislature’s tax hike on corporations from 4.8% to 7% costs CME an extra $50 million a year. Corporations in Illinois also pay 2.5% tax on income, called a personal property replacement tax, which is collected by the state and flows to local governments.

The two rates taken together come to 9.5%, the third highest corporate tax rate in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation. In February, CME reported a 3% drop in fourth-quarter earnings partly because of expenses it booked related to the tax hike.

“I’m going to do what’s in the best interests of the shareholders,” Duffy said, adding that “if that means opportunities are greater elsewhere, then we’re going to look at those opportunities.” CME joins other Illinois companies such as Caterpillar and Sears Holdings who have talked about leaving town. …

In terms of Ohio, it’s a good news, potentially bad news situation:

• The good news (I know, a little corny) is that CME wouldn’t have to change the logo seen at the top right if it moved to Cincinnati, Columbus, or Cleveland.
• The somewhat bad news is that Ohio’s Commercial Activities Tax (CAT) and the named cities’ income taxes (Cincinnati, 2.1%; Columbus, recently raised to 2.5%; Cleveland, 2.0%) may be stumbling blocks.

The income taxes, if applicable to all CME income (if HQ’d in those cities, I believe they would be) would amount to about $34-$41 million.

It’s not clear to me whether the CAT would really apply to CME’s revenues (it’s hard to tell from the rules; would CME be seen as an exempt “financial institution”?). If it does, it looks like it would amount to about $7.8 million (0.26% on CME’s revenues of $3 billion), or about .5% of its income before income taxes. The CAT doesn’t hurt high-margin businesses such as CME anywhere near as badly as companies which operate on much thinner margins.

The sum of the two taxes would be in the neighborhood of the $42 – $50 million, which looks to be far less than the total CME is paying in Illinois (the $50 mil mentioned in the editorial is the increment due to the Illinois tax increase, not the total corporate income tax burden, which appears to be more like perhaps $150 million). Additionally, Illinois has been known for awfully high property taxes for a long time, so Ohio would probably also be a relatively good bargain on that front.

If it didn’t worry about what the “C” stands for, CME could solve the municipal income tax problem by locating in an income tax-free township.

Getting CME would be a business coup beyond the ordinary because of its high profile. Team Kasich needs to go after this one aggressively.

____________________________________

UPDATE: A possible fringe benefit — If CME moves, so might CNBCer/Tea Party hero (here and here) Rick Santelli. How cool would that be?

Maybe Santelli could find the time to do evening tutorials on how capitalism works at Progress Ohio.

UPDATE 2: Also worth noting, thanks to a tip on the topic from a reader, via Your Doubting Thomas at ChicagoNow.com —

Pat Quinn doles out over $230 million in tax breaks to big business, putting more burden on individual Illinois taxpayers

Another Illinois company has threatened to leave to state because of Governor Quinn’s tax increase. Over the last six months, our state’s giant companies, including, Caterpillar, Sears Holdings, Motorola Mobility, and Navistar International, all threatened to leave the state because the corporate tax increase would cost the companies millions more to do business in Illinois.

This week sees the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade seeking to move their operations out of state to New Jersey, Indiana or another state in an effort to save an estimated $50 million in taxes a year.

Remember, in January, Illinois raised the corporate tax income from 4.8% to 7%. Illinois corporations also pay 2.5% in additional taxes in income called the personal property replacement tax. Taken together, the two rates are 9.5% which is the third highest rate on the United States.

As our state’s big businesses threatened to leave, Governor Quinn talks big, but ultimately backs down. Thru May 2011, he has handed out an estimated $230 million in tax breaks, called “financial incentive packages” to these big businesses.

So Quinn is having to engage in massive levels of what should correctly be seen as corporate welfare just to keep large companies — supposedly the progressives’ villains — in the state. More crony capitalism. It’s getting old. Gosh, wouldn’t it be easier to have a reasonable level of taxation for everyone?

From Greenville, Rhode Island (HT Catholic News Agency):

June 9, 2011 / 01:57 pm

With quiet confidence Sydney Khoury climbs each step of a metal ladder as she positions herself to place a crown of flowers atop a statue of the Blessed Mother at St. Philip Church in Greenville, R.I.

It’s a bit of a reach for Sydney, but with determination, the nine-year-old extends her arms, carefully placing her tribute atop the head of the Mother of Jesus.

A short distance away, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, R.I. watches admiringly as the St. Philip School second-grader successfully overcomes yet another obstacle in her young life. Three years ago, Bishop Tobin also witnessed Sydney overcome one her greatest challenges. At that time, as she lay in the Intensive Care Unit of Hasbro Children’s Hospital with her life hanging in the balance, the bishop prayed over her with a relic of Mother Teresa.

Sydney’s parents say the prayerful intervention yielded results nothing short of miraculous.

In November 2007, Sydney was diagnosed with a Stage 3 malignant tumor on her kidney. Two days later, doctors removed her kidney and started her on a treatment regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. The overall success rate of the treatment was only 42 percent they were told.

For nearly three months, her condition was stable. Then, a robust round of chemotherapy quickly took its toll on her.

“She started five days of chemo. It hit her so hard,” recalls her mother, Michele.

Sydney went into what is known as a neutropenic state, as her white blood cell count dropped to zero, severely limiting her body’s ability to fight off infections.

“She was home for three days; on the fourth, she caught a fever,” Michele said.

Sydney was immediately brought into the hospital where she spent nearly all of February 2008 in the Intensive Care Unit.

She was intubated twice to maintain an open airway, and also became paralyzed for 12 hours during that time.

On Feb. 20, Michele and Ken Khoury received news that no parent ever wants to hear.

“They couldn’t tell me if she’d make it,” Michele said. “The doctor said, ‘I can’t guarantee anything over the next 48 hours’.”

Two days later, Sydney received the sacrament of the anointing of the sick from Father Peter J. Sheahan, the assistant pastor at St. Philip Church.

On Feb. 27, with Sydney’s condition not improving, doctors performed a lung biopsy.

“Her lungs were just collapsing,” her mother recalls.

The next day, with doctors about to have a discussion with the family about their wish to fit Sydney with a tracheal tube to help her breathing, Bishop Tobin visited Sydney in the hospital.

As he prayed over her, he held in his hand a relic of Blessed Mother Teresa. It was a gift from a priest friend back in his native Pittsburgh who had obtained it in Rome where he worked with the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Blessed Mother Teresa.

What happened next was remarkable.

Both of Sydney’s parents and Bishop Tobin witnessed the young girl’s body convulse during the prayers for her recovery.

“Very quickly after that, she got well,” Michele said of her daughter’s health. “He did the blessing and she didn’t need the tracheotomy.”

While he is cautious about attributing Sydney’s recovery solely to divine intervention, Bishop Tobin says the day he visited her in the hospital was a powerful day indeed.

“I always tend to be skeptical of these divine interventions, but it is very clear to me that something very special happened that day,” Bishop Tobin said.

“When she was blessed with the relic, her body reacted and she opened her eyes,” the bishop recalls.

In order to ensure any possible recurrence of cancer is treated immediately, Sydney must undergo an MRI every three months. Her most recent test showed that she is still in remission.

“Her spirits are great,” Sydney’s dad, Ken, said of his daughter.

In addition to the unwavering support of family and friends throughout, the Khourys say they cannot thank the St. Philip school and parish community enough for helping the family navigate through their crisis, as well as the continual support they give.

“Our family and friends had one of Sydney’s hands, and the school and the church had the other,” Michele said.

“The way they got involved, it was like they were doing it for their own families,” Ken said of the St. Philip community.

Students and teachers held a 24-hour vigil for Sydney.

“It brought the whole community so close,” said kindergarten teacher Diane Ahern. “She’s a gift from God.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Remember, promising during their presidential and congressional campaigns to starve the nation of the energy it needs for its economy to continue functioning effectively, let alone continue growing, is one of the key items I identified which created the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy three years ago. That investors, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs saw what these promises implied, reacted with horror, and battened down the hatches, which have largely stayed that way for the past three years, is a matter of historical record.

In July 2008, I detailed what the Terrible Triumvirate wanted. In April 2009 (“‘Going Galt’ Got Going Last Summer”), I looked at the carnage of the previous 10-plus months, and assigned a major part of the blame to their energy agenda (the rest went to promises of punitive taxation and the decades in the making, Democratic Party-driven housing and mortgage-lending messes):

Starting in June and all the way through to Election Day, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid repeatedly told the country that they were ready, willing, and would soon be able to starve the country of the conventional sources of energy it needs to keep its economic engines running, regardless of the consequences, bowing before what may be the greatest hoax in human history. Enough high producers to make a difference believed them, and abandoned their previous guarded optimism.

In an editorial last night, Investors Business Daily noted that the Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have essentially gotten their way, i.e., we’re starving:

The Environmental Protection Agency has two new rules it wants to impose on utilities that use coal. But the rules make sense only if you want less energy, higher prices and fewer jobs.

Remember then-candidate Barack Obama’s comment in January 2008 that the price of electricity would “necessarily skyrocket” once his policies went into effect?

It’s now coming to pass — just as OPEC has decided it doesn’t want to pump more oil. Get the picture? We’re being systematically starved of energy, and our economy is suffering. Just don’t ask the White House to help.

… According to a study the economic consulting firm National Economic Research Associates conducted for the coal industry, the two new rules mentioned above will by themselves cost electric utilities $184 billion by 2030 and kill 1.4 million jobs.

… But if these EPA rules go into effect, the cost of energy will shoot up 11% to 23% in just a few years.

In the pipeline, according to a study by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the agency has 30 major regulations and more than 170 new major policy rules that will create massive new costs for utilities.

With this regulatory siege, Obama’s EPA is trying to get “cap-and-trade through the back door,” ALEC says, referring to a Democrat-backed but business-opposed approach to controlling pollution with economic incentives. The EPA “has pushed ahead in its regulatory onslaught without regard to economic realities or democratic accountability,” ALEC says.

… Contrary to peak-oil promoters and other pooh-pooh-ers of American potential, our country is rich in energy resources. These include 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, 2,500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 486 billion short tons of coal — plenty to power millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic output for hundreds of years. Policies that prevent their extraction defy logic.

That’s true unless the “logic” is driven by a set of values that is not based in looking to do what is best for one’s country and its citizens. Energy policy is one of many reasons why, when asked based on that definition whether Barack Obama is a patriot, GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain gave the only answer he could: “No.”

At 11:05 a.m. PT yesterday, Rand Simberg at Pajamas Media asked:

Hey Democrats: Why Does Weiner Have To Go, but Bill Clinton Didn’t?
Where was the outrage from Dems when Bill was committing actual federal felonies to cover up his actual sex scandal?”

Good questions. But the answer appears to be that Weiner shouldn’t have to go either. In a 7:21 p.m. ET Thursday Associated Press item, Laurie Kellman reported: “On Wednesday, Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., became the first of a half-dozen Democrats to say he should leave office.”

Wow, counting congresspersons, Senators, and prominent others, that’s maybe 2%-3%. Democrats aren’t saying that Weiner has to go, and the lesson is obvious.

______________________________________

As Austan Goolsbee leaves the White House, Michelle Malkin reminds her readers:

Apparently, Obama is tired of hearing from them, too. The Hill newspaper reports that he has stopped receiving daily economic briefings that were once treated with the same emergency status as national security briefings. So, the central planners continue to be paid to fail — while their boss looks the other way at the destruction, whistling into what he calls America’s temporary “head winds.”

There may be an exception, but this seems to be the quickest decimation of an economic team of a president in his first term that I’ve seen in my lifetime. The linked Washington Post item notes that after the departures of Romer, Orszag, Summers, Bernstein, and now Goolsbee, the White House is left “with no economist in a prominent position.”

That leaves Treasury Secretary Geithner. The country is in the best of hands (not).

______________________________________

Mickey Kaus sees indications that the quality of Ford Motor Company’s products is becoming suspect, with a troubling precedent: “Didn’t Boeing’s innovative 787 Dreamliner have troublesome quality problems when (Alan) Mulally ran that company?” The answer is “yes.”

______________________________________

Last line of defense: “Obama defaults to economic blame game.” It’s the fault of Bush (“challenges that have been unaddressed over the course of the previous decade”), and, as correctly interpreted by the Daily Caller, “investors, consumers and even the media.”

It’s never Obama’s fault.

______________________________________

Related to the previous item, in an Associated Press report which seems to have disappeared from its main home page:

Gov’t faults 3 lenders over mortgage-aid efforts

The Obama administration is blaming the three largest U.S. mortgage lenders for the failures of its foreclosure-prevention program. It says they’ve done little to help people at risk of losing their homes.

Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have failed to help enough people permanently lower their mortgage payments so they can stay in their homes, the Treasury Department said Thursday.

Based on those lenders’ lackluster success for the first three months of 2011, the government is withholding financial incentives that amounted to up to $1,000 per permanent loan modification. Treasury said the three lenders incorrectly determined that many people were ineligible for the program.

The lenders are disputing the data. They say the findings are based on old reports, not audits from the first quarter of the year as Treasury claimed. One of them, Wells Fargo, is formally appealing the government’s decision to cut off its incentives.

… More than 1.6 million troubled homeowners received trial modifications over the past two years. Roughly 44 percent of those who applied, or about 700,000, have had their mortgage permanently lowered as of April. A majority of the applicants, or about 843,000 homeowners, have dropped out of the program.

… The Treasury Department said that when the program began, most of the lenders did not have the needed staff or resources to help the many homeowners seeking lower mortgage payments.

So Treasury’s “answer” was to pile on mountains of paperwork and arbitrary, capricious, and ever-changing regs while assuming that the already understaffed banks would be able to instantly respond. Since they couldn’t, and didn’t, it’s all the banks’ fault. Horse manure.

______________________________________

Walter Russell Mead at the American Interest, about a book (“Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon”) on the true origins of the housing and and mortgage-lending messes:

If (NY Times Business reporters Gretchen) Morgenstern and (noted financial analyst Joshua) Rosner are to be believed, the American dream didn’t die of old age; it was murdered and most of the fingerprints on the corpse come from Democratic insiders. Democratic power brokers stoked the housing bubble and turned a blind eye to the increasingly rampant corruption and incompetence at Fannie Mae and the associated predatory lenders who sheltered under its umbrella; core Democratic ideas may well be at fault.

This is catnip to Republicans, arsenic to Dems. If Morgenson and Rosner are right, there is someone the American people can blame for our current economic woes and it is exactly the cast of characters that a lot of Americans love to hate. Big government, affirmative action and influence peddling among Democratic insiders came within inches of smashing the US economy.

“Some of us” have been saying these things all along, because the evidence has always been there, but it’s welcome to see the case made in a comprehensive fashion.

From Rolling Meadows, Illinois:

Story Published: Jun 9, 2011 at 12:10 PM PDT

Robert Adams craved an ice-cold drink and a burrito after finishing his shift on a sweltering workday, but not having enough money left him with two obvious choices: Stop at the ATM, or find a bag containing more than $17,000 in cash.

“I wanted to get a large horchata, which is almost like a rice or coconut milk,” Adams told the Daily Herald (Arlington Heights) for a story published Wednesday. “I would have grabbed a chorizo burrito, too, but I didn’t have enough money.”

That changed Monday when the Chicago-area man stood at a Chase ATM in Rolling Meadows, looked down and discovered on the sidewalk near a newspaper box a clear plastic bag containing receipts, checks and $17,021 in cash – mostly $20 and $100 bills bound by a rubber band.

“I see this plastic bag. It’s clear plastic and it’s half full of money,” Adams said. “I figure this is a joke. Somebody took some napkins and made it look like money. This has to be a setup. People are going to look at me and start laughing.”

Adams said he never had the urge to keep any of the money.

“It’s not my money. I shouldn’t take it. I don’t care if you put another zero on there, I wasn’t raised to take money that isn’t mine,” said Adams, a 54-year-old single man who lives in Arlington Heights and credits his deceased parents for teaching him right from wrong. “If I saw you drop it, I’d say, `Excuse me, sir. I think you dropped something.”‘

The word “Chase” was printed on the bag, so Adams carried it inside the nearby branch.

“I walk up to the teller and say, `I think you might have left this outside,”‘ said Adams, figuring an employee left it behind after restocking the ATM. But employees told him the machine is filled from inside and the money didn’t belong to the bank.

Adams then called police, who along with bank officials later determined the money was meant for an ATM in Midlothian and had been under the care of Loomis, an armored truck company. Rolling Meadows police took the money to the station, where it was picked up by a Loomis official.

Go here for the rest of the story.

From the Associated Press’s coverage of the days economic news:

“There is a significant slowdown going on,” said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “The economy is unlikely to grow at a decent rate anytime in the next year or two.”

(Wow, how did that one slip through? Mere days ago, establishment press reports were saying that growth was supposed to get to an annualized 3% during the second half of 2011 and stay there.)

Well, if growth isn’t going to part of the deficit reduction/debt control equation until after the presidential nominees are decided (which will almost definitely be by April or May of next year), the November 2012 elections will largely turn on who can get the economy going again.

So the choice will be between the guy who had three years do so (starting in June 2009, when the recession ended) and didn’t, or someone who can make the case that they can. It’s hard to imagine that Obama’s opponent — whoever he or she is — can do worse.

Kirsten Powers, yesterday at The Daily Beast:

We are all flawed human beings, and this is not about meting out judgment. It’s about having some sort of standard for what the Democratic Party stands for—especially regarding treating women with dignity and respect—and Congressman Weiner has fallen far short of even the low standard to which we generally hold our elected officials. It’s time for him to go.

Following Ms. Powers’s unimpeachable logic, unless and until Anthony Weiner resigns, citizens of the United States have no real choice. They must operate under the otherwise immutable assumption that the Democratic Party has no standards — “especially regarding treating women with dignity and respect” — and react, and vote, accordingly.