Remember, Mayor Bloomberg (and others) do not think or believe an investigation into who is funding the GZ mosque is needed or ‘appropriate’ …

NY Post – New York – The leader of the Ground Zero mosque got hugely valuable tax-exempt status for a Muslim organization he founded after claiming as many as 500 of its members prayed daily in a small, one-bedroom Upper West Side apartment also listed as his wife’s residence, The Post has learned.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf sought “church status” — an official IRS term for a house of worship of any religion — for the American Sufi Muslim Association, or ASMA, in 1998. The feds granted the request.

“Church status” is more than just an exemption — it means never having to pay taxes, file returns or reveal the sources of a congregation’s money or how it’s spent, according to the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, which discovered the group’s startling claims on the IRS form it filed seeking the special status.

On that form, the organization said it held services at 201 W. 85th St.

That’s a 17-story apartment building with no public space big enough to accommodate the 450 to 500 worshippers the group claimed regularly showed up five times a day to pray.

There’s no indication ASMA or any of its officers rented space in the building other than the apartment, which the Investigative Project says is only 800 square feet.

A year earlier, the imam’s wife, Daisy Kahn, had been named as an ASMA director in incorporation papers.

In those papers, she stated the 10th-floor apartment was her legal residence.

ASMA is still in existence — with the same tax exemption and the same initials, but a brand new name, the American Society for Muslim Advancement.

Since February 2008, it has given its address on federal forms as 475 Riverside Drive.

That’s an interfaith center which is home to many religious groups.

When ASMA was formed in 1997, its address was on 78th Street in North Bergen, NJ.

That was also Rauf’s official residence.

Forms show the organization switching its address several times among the Upper West Side and New Jersey buildings.

On its Web site, ASMA states that it has given money to the Cordoba Initiative, founded by Rauf, which supports the mosque near Ground Zero.

Kahn did not return telephone calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Business groups plan to go on offense against vulnerable Senate Democrats in their backyards to mark Monday’s Labor Day holiday.

Local groups will target Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Rep. Paul Hodes, the Democrat running for Senate in New Hampshire, and Kentucky Senate Democratic candidate Jack Conway in their states over their records on labor-related issues.

Local chapters of groups like the National Federation of Independent Business, state Associated Builders and Contractors and other commerce and retail groups will hold events on Monday targeting the incumbents and candidates, particularly on their stance on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or “card-check”).

The events are part of coordinated efforts by the business groups to put pressure on Democrats on Labor Day, a national holiday traditionally celebrated by the organized-labor community.

The events also serve as a rejoinder to the events unions have planned throughout the long weekend to bolster some of their candidates. Top AFL-CIO officials, for instance, will be in California and Florida, among other places, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will appear at a labor rally on Monday alongside President Obama and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.

Both business and labor groups are planning to be heavily involved — and to spend heavily — in this fall’s crucial midterm elections, especially after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year removed some restrictions on their spending on behalf of candidates. – The Hill

From PPP:

We’ll start rolling out our Ohio poll results tomorrow but there’s one finding on the poll that pretty much sums it up: by a 50-42 margin voters there say they’d rather have George W. Bush in the White House right now than Barack Obama.

Independents hold that view by a 44-37 margin and there are more Democrats who would take Bush back (11%) than there are Republicans who think Obama’s preferable (3%.)

A couple months ago I thought the Pennsylvanias and Missouris and Ohios of the world were the biggest battlegrounds for 2010 but when you see numbers like this it makes you think it’s probably actually the Californias and the Wisconsins and the Washingtons.

That’s gotta hurt. The Buckeye State this year features races for Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor, U.S. Senate, and at least five competitive House districts currently held by Democrats. – The Washington Examiner

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – You’d think that an All-Pro safety who missed 11 games in 2009 due to a knee injury would be most concerned about other body parts, but Pittsburgh Steelers superstar Troy Polamalu(notes) also has endorsements to consider. One of his endorsements is with the Head & Shoulders company, which makes sense when you consider Polamalu’s famed three-foot-long hair. It’s a tribute to his Samoan heritage, and it’s not something he plans to cut anytime soon.

Once in a great while, a Steelers opponent will try to use Polamalu’s hair against him in a game (as Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson(notes) did in 2006 as Polamalu returned an interception), and it’s quite possible that the concern over such matters was the catalyst needed by Head & Shoulders to insure Polamalu’s hair with Lloyd’s of London for $1 million, which was reported by the Associated Press.

Then again, it could be a publicity stunt. Lloyd’s is famous for unusual policies that can be turned into media gold; the company has insured Tina Turner’s legs, Keith Richards’ fingers, the legs of noted Riverdance ponce Michael Flatley, the bodies of several professional wrestlers (including Ric Flair — Woo!), Jimmy Durante’s nose, and Celine Dion’s vocal cords (they’re also talking with Virgin Galactic about insuring space travel, if that ever gets off the ground). Polamalu’s hair isn’t going anywhere, but it’s a nice press haul for company and endorsee.

And if you want to ask Polamalu why his hair is insured … well, just don’t ask with your eyes. He can pick that up pretty well.

FOX EXCLUSIVE: VA Spends Millions to Maintain Vacant and Hazardous Buildings

The Veterans Affairs Administration is spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year to maintain hundreds of buildings – most of them vacant – that have fallen into such a state of disrepair that many of them are considered health hazards, an investigation by FoxNews.com reveals.

Exactly how much it costs to maintain the run-down and abandoned buildings is a matter of dispute. The General Accountability Office estimates that the VA has spent $175 million every year since 2007. But the VA disputes that figure, saying it spent $85 million on the buildings in 2007 and only $37 million last year.

Whatever the figure, the timing couldn’t be worse for the VA, as tens of thousands of American troops, many of whom have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, prepare to return to the U.S. and will require the expensive medical, psychological and support services it provides.

From Augusta, Ga., to Menlo Park, Calif., from Milwaukee, Wis., to Perry Point, Md., the VA maintains 5,507 buildings across the country. But as many as 314 of them are currently vacant — and they require huge outlays of money just to remain standing.

Some veterans’ advocates have called for the structures to be renovated or razed and rebuilt to provide housing for homeless veterans — but demolishing them or making them habitable could cost even more money, because many of the buildings contain hazardous materials.

Others say the government should sell these buildings to developers or non-profits that can make use of the facilities. But the VA is restricted by complex federal property and historical building guidelines and sanctioned share lease agreement programs that require outside organizations to come up with big bucks — no small feat for cash-strapped municipalities and non-profits in the midst of a recession.

And some of these buildings are just too old or too bizarre — anyone looking for a 325-square-foot pink, octagonal monkey house in Dayton, Ohio? — to drum up interest.

A FoxNews.com investigation has uncovered scores of these decrepit or abandoned buildings across the country that are home to rats, vermin, bird’s nests, septic rainwater, exposed asbestos, lead paint, wall-to-wall fungal growth, mold, radon, fiberglass insulation, old clothes, spare tires, barrels of unidentified chemicals and even abandoned children’s dolls, according to documents and first-hand observations.

The VA owns a total of 145.6 million gross square feet, of which 6.6 million gross square feet are vacant. Add another 4 million gross square feet of underutilized space — areas that are occupied but not utilized most effectively — and 7 percent of VA property is wasting both space and money.

In 2007, according to a GAO report the following year, the VA spent $175 million annually to maintain vacant or underutilized buildings. The report noted that 5 percent of VA buildings were vacant — the same percentage of vacancy reported this year.

GAO officials told FoxNews.com that they believe the VA is still spending that same amount — $175 million a year — on vacant or underutilized buildings.

But the VA disputes the GAO’s calculations, saying it spent only $85 million in 2007 and spent only $37 million last year. (The VA’s current calculations are based on a national average of $2 per square foot of vacant space; GAO’s calculations take into account the specific costs associated with particular buildings and uses regional averages. GAO also says the VA underreported costs and excluded property, maintenance and operational expenses.)

Meanwhile, advocates for homeless veterans are urging the VA to find some way to utilize these structures to provide health and psychological services to veterans across the country — and to prepare for the thousands more who will return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“You got dormant buildings? You want to give them away? Refurbish them! Use them!” said Larry Van Kurant, spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars who is against VA’s divestment of property.

Bob Young, who served on President Bush’s advisory council for historic preservation and has testified before VA committees on adaptive reuse of historic properties, acknowledged that the “VA does not have enough housing for the veterans it treats.”

But, he said, “VA has limited funds and it must weigh the balance between spending money on patient care and infrastructure. If constructing a new building or leasing a building is less expensive than rehabilitating a historic structure, it’s easy to see why the historic building option would not be the choice to make.”

“It’s all about the money,” he said.

VA spokesman Drew Brookie gave FoxNews.com this statement:

“VA places its highest priority on the delivery of quality services and benefits to veterans and their families — first and foremost. Demolishing unneeded buildings is often costly and requires the careful balancing of priorities for resources, especially since our department’s mission is to care — often 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — for our nation’s veterans.”

“VA understands the importance and implications associated with an inventory of vacant and underutilized buildings. VA has been and continues to actively work on reducing its inventory of unneeded facilities.”

Many of the vacant VA buildings FoxNews.com visited have been declared health hazards, documents show.

Click here to see photos of the vacant buildings.

— An environmental site report prepared by Brilliant Lewis Environmental Services at the VA campus in Montrose, N.Y. found a risk of lead and radon contamination in the local drinking water supply; contamination also was suspected from lead-based pipes lining the water towers. Reports from VA sites elsewhere in the country suggest radon and lead seepage may have contaminated potable water supplies at health care facilities or in surrounding areas.

— Outside Chicago, at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Medical Center, the basement of a 58,000-square-foot former nurses’ residence is flooded with chemical-laden water. The VA spends an estimated $20,000 a year to maintain this building, which has been empty for at least 15 years. Demolition must be approved by the state historic agency and will cost $500,000; hazmat removal costs $426,000.

— In Menlo Park, Calif., FoxNews.com found Building 301, a 15,200-square-foot structure built in 1929, formerly outleased to Stanford University. It was slated for demolition in 2001 but is still standing, albeit barely, and is filled with garbage and old clothes. The state historic agency must approve demolition.

— At the Sepulveda branch of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, two former treatment buildings not used for patients since 1999 have been leased to a nonprofit with plans to build 147 temporary homeless residences. The 2010 taxpayer cost, records show, is $48 million. But construction is on hold while funding is sought.

— In Augusta, Ga., FoxNews.com found two boarded-up buildings at the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center, where property surveyors found 300 gallons of hazardous materials and antiseptic cleaners — some dangerously close to active electrical fuses, records say. The VA spends about $12,000 a year on both buildings.

But the Augusta buildings are success stories. A nonprofit has plans to turn them into housing facilities. At the end of 2009, the VA says, similar projects provided 1,015 beds for homeless veterans by leasing vacant VA buildings across the country to outside groups who turned the buildings into housing.

The VA concedes it has mismanaged historical properties and just awarded a $2.5 million contract to companies who will help it stop wasting millions on vacant buildings—and use that money elsewhere.

Mark Walker, deputy director of the American Legion’s economic division and an advocate for facilities to house homeless vets, has a few ideas on what to do with the money the VA will save. “We could really do a lot with that $175 million,” he said.

The Economy Is Getting Worse And Worse — And No One’s Doing A Thing About It
The economy is already down, and it can go lower. And no one seems willing to fix it.
by Danny Schechter
Alternet.org
August 22, 2010

We know we live in hard times that are on the verge of getting harder, with 500,000 new claims for unemployment last week, a recent record.

The stock market may be over for now as fear and panic drives small investors out. Big corporations hoard stashes of cash rather then hire workers. The D word (depression) is back in play.

Foreclosures are up, and the administration’s programs to stop them are down, well below their stated goals, only helping a sixth of those promised assistance.

And here’s a statistic for you: 300,000. That’s the number of foreclosure filings every month for the past 17 months. This year, 1.9 million homes will be lost, down from 2 million last year. Is that progress? In July alone, 92,858 homes were repossessed.

At the same time, the number of canceled mortgage modifications exceeded the number of successful ones. According to Ml-implode.com, last month, “the number of trial modification cancellations surged to 616,839, greatly outnumbering the 421,804 active permanent modifications.”

And don’t think this problem only affects those homeowners about to go homeless. According to the New York Times, Michael Feder, the chief executive of the real estate data firm Radar Logic, says we are all at risk.

“My concern is that if we have another protracted housing dip, it’s going to bring the economy down,” Mr. Feder said. “If consumers don’t think their houses are worth what they were six months ago, they’re not going to go out and spend money. I’m concerned this problem isn’t being addressed.”

The larger point is that even if you believe the economy is already down, it can go lower. No one knows how to “fix” it either, just as BP couldn’t plug the “leak” that, truth be told, is still oozing oil.

So what are we doing about it? Are we demanding debt relief or a moratorium on foreclosures? Are we shutting down the foreclosure factories? Nope.

Progressives are spending time and wasting passion this August debating the construction of an Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero, invariably responding to the provocations and agenda of adversaries. They are always on the defense, never taking the offense.

Who is beating the drum for job creation and a new economic policy? Maybe the unions, but their voices are muted and ignored in the electronic noise machine. Marches are planned for August 28 in Detroit and October 2 in Washington. But the expected war of words between Rev. Al Sharpton and Glenn Beck over the legacy of the March on Washington is expected to generate more heat.

Meanwhile, even as the administration seems to be finding signs of a “recovery,” a parade of failures march on from the discovery that there is an oil slick the size of Manhattan in the Gulf to the persistence of frauds in finance from state pension funds in New Jersey to the case against the head of the Bank of America. Even worse, ShoreBank, one of the banks that community activists considered a national model of social responsibility has gone down in Chicago, the 104th bank to fail this year, with 15 branches including some in Detroit and Cleveland. It was also active in 40 countries. In June, it reported over $2 billion in deposits. By August, it was gone.

In all, 349 U.S. banks have disappeared since 2007.

ShoreBank promoted itself as a community development and environmental bank. Based in Michelle Obama’s old neighborhood, it boasted the slogan “Let’s Change the World.” Now the world of Wall Street has changed the bank with a partnership of investors, including American Express, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, taking over under the name United Partnership.

Hundreds of other banks are on the FDIC hit parade and may be next.

There were many worse casualties in banking in the past according to Barry James Dyke’s informative book, Pirates of Manhattan. He notes that 10,000 banks failed during the Depression and 2,900 bit the dust in the S&L crisis. The current number might have been higher had Congress not bailed out the Banksters who used some of our money to play PacMan, gobbling up smaller institutions.

AP reported, “ShoreBank lost $39.5 million in the second quarter amid soured real estate loans. The bank had been under a so-called cease and desist order from the FDIC for more than a year, requiring it to boost its capital reserves. ShoreBank was able to raise more than $146 million in capital this spring from several big Wall Street institutions. It was unable, however, to secure federal bailout funds it sought from the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.”

Republicans are “investigating” alleged administration support for the Bank, AP explained:

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the senior Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to a White House legal adviser asking specific questions on possible contacts between administration officials and executives of ShoreBank or potential investors. The White House has said no administration officials met with ShoreBank concerning its rescue or requested help from financial institutions on its behalf.

Questions raised by Republicans, of course, seek to politicize the issue when it is the FDIC ‘s deal with the big banks that needs to be probed, as Zero Hedge explains:

As it stands, Goldman and 11 other banks are receiving a multimillion-dollar gift to conduct a portfolio liquidation run-off of ShoreBank’s assets, while merely making sure existing deposits are serviced.

(Note: the FDIC is led by a Republican. Hmm.)

Blogger Mike Shedlock concludes: “The FDIC’s handling of Shore Bank smells as bad as a pile of dead alewives on a Chicago beach in mid-July.”

My question is: Why didn’t the administration help shore up ShoreBank (if it could be shored up) as it did so many of the “too big to fail” banks? Its hands-off attitude, perhaps in fear of criticism, helped doom the bank and, by extension, the idea that we could have socially responsible lending institutions.

So much for the priorities and power of Obama’s “Chicago Mafia.”

If they don’t have the guts to save a bank in their own hometown, a bank they know has meant so much to so many, is it any wonder they won’t take on the crimes of Wall Street?

WASHINGTON — Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.

More than 50 million Americans are on Medicaid, the federal-state program aimed principally at the poor, a survey of state data by USA TODAY shows. That’s up at least 17% since the recession began in December 2007.

“Virtually every Medicaid director in the country would say that their current enrollment is the highest on record,” says Vernon Smith of Health Management Associates, which surveys states for Kaiser Family Foundation.

The program has grown even before the new health care law adds about 16 million people, beginning in 2014. That has strained doctors. “Private physicians are already indicating that they’re at their limit,” says Dan Hawkins of the National Association of Community Health Centers.

More than 40 million people get food stamps, an increase of nearly 50% during the economic downturn, according to government data through May. The program has grown steadily for three years.

Caseloads have risen as more people become eligible. The economic stimulus law signed by President Obama last year also boosted benefits.

“This program has proven to be incredibly responsive and effective,” says Ellin Vollinger of the Food Research and Action Center.

Close to 10 million receive unemployment insurance, nearly four times the number from 2007. Benefits have been extended by Congress eight times beyond the basic 26-week program, enabling the long-term unemployed to get up to 99 weeks of benefits. Caseloads peaked at nearly 12 million in January — “the highest numbers on record,” says Christine Riordan of the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for low-wage workers.

More than 4.4 million people are on welfare, an 18% increase during the recession. The program has grown slower than others, causing Brookings Institution expert Ron Haskins to question its effectiveness in the recession.

As caseloads for all the programs have soared, so have costs. The federal price tag for Medicaid has jumped 36% in two years, to $273 billion. Jobless benefits have soared from $43 billion to $160 billion. The food stamps program has risen 80%, to $70 billion. Welfare is up 24%, to $22 billion. Taken together, they cost more than Medicare.

The steady climb in safety-net program caseloads and costs has come as a result of two factors: The recession has boosted the number who qualify under existing rules. And the White House, Congress and states have expanded eligibility and benefits.

Conservatives fear expanded safety-net programs won’t contract after the economy recovers. “They’re much harder to unwind in the long term,” says Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Other anti-poverty experts say the record caseloads are a necessary response to economic hardship. “We should be there to support people when the economy can’t,” says LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank.

As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.

According to CBO numbers in its Budget and Economic Outlook published this month, the cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom was $709 billion for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations.

The projected cost of the stimulus, which passed in February 2009, and is expected to have a shelf life of two years, was $862 billion.

The U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2010 is expected to be $1.3 trillion, according to CBO. That compares to a 2007 deficit of $160.7 billion and a 2008 deficit of $458.6 billion, according to data provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

In 2007 and 2008, the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 1.2 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively.

“Relative to the size of the economy, this year’s deficit is expected to be the second largest shortfall in the past 65 years; 9.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), exceeded only by last year’s deficit of 9.9 percent of GDP,” CBO wrote.

The CBO figures show that the most expensive year of the Iraq war was in 2008, the year when the surge proposed by Gen. David Petraeus and approved by President Bush was in full swing and the turning point in the war. The total cost of Iraq operations in 2008 was $140 billion. In 2007, the cost of Iraq operations was $124 billion.

According to an analysis by the American Thinker’s Randall Hoven, the cost of the Iraq war from 2003-2008 — when Bush was in office — was $20 billion less than the cost of education spending and less than a quarter of the cost of Medicare spending during that same period. – FOX News

Watchdog Agency: U.S. Wasted Billions In Rebuilding Iraq
August 29, 2010

Aug. 26: An Iraqi man surveys the ruins of a collapsed building the day after a bombing in Baghdad, Iraq.

A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.

That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.

There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deep water port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.

Even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.

The European Union is dying — not a dramatic or sudden death, but one so slow and steady that we may look across the Atlantic one day soon and realize that the project of European integration that we’ve taken for granted over the past half-century is no more.

Europe’s decline is partly economic. The financial crisis has taken a painful toll on many E.U. members, and high national debts and the uncertain health of the continent’s banks may mean more trouble ahead. But these woes pale in comparison with a more serious malady: From London to Berlin to Warsaw, Europe is experiencing a renationalization of political life, with countries clawing back the sovereignty they once willingly sacrificed in pursuit of a collective ideal.

For many Europeans, that greater good no longer seems to matter. They wonder what the union is delivering for them, and they ask whether it is worth the trouble. If these trends continue, they could compromise one of the most significant and unlikely accomplishments of the 20th century: an integrated Europe, at peace with itself, seeking to project power as a cohesive whole. The result would be individual nations consigned to geopolitical irrelevance — and a United States bereft of a partner willing or able to shoulder global burdens.

The erosion of support for a unified Europe is infecting even Germany, whose obsession with banishing the national rivalries that long subjected the continent to great-power wars once made it the engine of integration. Berlin’s recent reluctance to rescue Greece during its financial tailspin — Chancellor Angela Merkel resisted the bailout for months — breached the spirit of common welfare that is the hallmark of a collective Europe. Only after the Greek crisis threatened to engulf the euro zone did Merkel override popular opposition and approve the loan. Voters in local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia promptly punished her party, delivering the Christian Democrats their most severe defeat of the postwar era.

Such stinginess reflects the bigger problem: Germany’s pursuit of its national interest is crowding out its enthusiasm for the E.U. In one of the few signs of life in the European project, member states last fall embraced the Lisbon Treaty, endowing the union with a presidential post, a foreign policy czar and a diplomatic service. But then Berlin helped select as the E.U.’s president and foreign policy chief Herman van Rompuy and Catherine Ashton, respectively, low-profile individuals who would not threaten the authority of national leaders. Even Germany’s courts are putting the brakes on the E.U., last year issuing a ruling that strengthened the national Parliament’s sway over European legislation.

This renationalization of politics has been occurring across the E.U. One of the starker signs of trouble came in 2005, when Dutch and French voters rejected a constitutional treaty that would have consolidated the E.U.’s legal and political character.

The Lisbon Treaty, its watered-down successor, was rejected by the Irish in 2008. They changed their minds in 2009, but only after ensuring that the treaty would not jeopardize national control of taxation and military neutrality.

And in Britain, May elections brought to power a coalition dominated by the Conservative Party, which is well known for its Europhobia.

Elsewhere, right-wing populism is on the upswing — a product, primarily, of a backlash against immigration. This hard-edged nationalism aims not only at minorities, but also at the loss of autonomy that accompanies political union. For example, Hungary’s Jobbik Party, which borders on xenophobic, won 47 seats in elections this year — up from none in 2006. Even in the historically tolerant Netherlands, the far-right Party for Freedom recently won more than 15 percent of the vote, giving it just seven fewer seats than the leading party.

If these obstacles to a stable union weren’t sobering enough, in July, the E.U.’s rotating presidency fell to Belgium — a country whose Dutch-speaking Flemish citizens and French-speaking Walloons are so divided that, long after elections in June, a workable governing coalition has yet to emerge. It speaks volumes that the country now guiding the European project suffers exactly the kind of nationalist antagonism that the E.U. was created to eliminate.

The renationalization of European politics is a product, first and foremost, of generational change. For Europeans who came of age during World War II or the Cold War, the E.U. is an escape route from a bloody past. Not so for younger Europeans: A recent poll revealed that French citizens over 55 are almost twice as likely to see the E.U. as a guarantee of peace as those under 36. No wonder new European leaders view the E.U.’s value through cold cost-benefit calculations, not as an article of faith.

Meanwhile, the demands of the global marketplace, coupled with the financial crisis, are straining Europe’s welfare state. As retirement ages rise and benefits dwindle, the E.U. is often presented as a scapegoat for new hardships. In France, for example, anti-Europe campaigns have focused ire on the E.U.’s “Anglo-Saxon” assault on social welfare and on the “Polish plumber” who takes local jobs because of the open European labor market.

The E.U.’s rapid enlargement to the east and south has further sapped it of life. Absent the cozy feel the smaller union had before the Berlin Wall came down, its original members have turned inward. The newer members from Central Europe, who have enjoyed full sovereignty only since communism’s collapse, are not keen to give it away. As Poland’s late president, Lech Kaczynski, put it soon after taking office in 2005, “What interests the Poles is the future of Poland and not that of the E.U.”

European participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has added to the weariness. In Germany, roughly two-thirds of the public opposes having German troops in Afghanistan — not good news for an E.U. intended to project a united voice on the global stage. Although giving Europe more geopolitical heft is one of the union’s raisons d’être, this task has no constituency; these distant wars, coupled with plunging defense expenditures mainly due to the economic downturn, are tempering the appetite for new burdens.

“The E.U. is now just trying to keep the machine going,” a member of the European Parliament told me recently. “The hope is to buy enough time for new leaders to emerge who will reclaim the project.”

Buying time may be the best the E.U. can do for now, but its slide is poised to continue, with costs even for those outside Europe. The Obama administration has already expressed frustration with an E.U. whose geopolitical profile is waning. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates complained in February to a gathering of NATO officials, “The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st.” As the United States tries to dig itself out of debt and give its armed forces a breather, it will increasingly judge its allies by what they bring to the table. In Europe’s case, the offering is small and shrinking.

Europe is hardly headed back to war; its nations have lost their taste for armed rivalries. Instead, less dramatically but no less definitively, European politics will become less European and more national, until the E.U. becomes a union in name only. This may seem no great loss to some, but in a world that sorely needs the E.U.’s aggregate will, wealth and muscle, a fragmented and introverted Europe would constitute a historical setback.

Six decades ago, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer were Europe’s founding fathers. Today, the E.U. needs a new generation of leaders who can breathe life into a project that is perilously close to expiring. For now, they are nowhere to be found. – WaPo

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. Apparently that is a lesson that Paul Allen believes in. In what may be one of the more inclusive lawsuits of recent memory, Allen has decided to sue pretty much everybody. In the world. Or at least everybody on the Internet that is using what he sees as technology that was patented by his now-defunct company, Interval Research, and that is almost everyone.

The suit specifically stems from four patents that make up the building blocks of online commerce, and are seen in almost every form of news-based website. According to the lawsuit obtained by Wired, one of the patents deals with the technology that allows companies to include recommendations to customers based on what they are looking at. A second patent covers similar technology for news stories that recommends and links stories based on the one readers are currently reading.

Almost every website now uses something similar. If you scroll down past this article you will see other stories listed under “related posts” (wait…please don’t sue us, Mr. Allen!). Two other patents relate to showing info on a Web page, including news and stock quotes.

The full list of defendants are: Aol, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, Officemax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

You might notice both Microsoft and Amazon missed the exclusive defendants list. Obviously Allen’s ties with Microsoft still run deep, and Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle are located in buildings owned by Allen.

One thing is for sure: Right now there are some extremely excited lawyers now on the clock. Perhaps the defendants will combine their resources and form one Voltron-like lawyer. -- Digital Trends

www.executivegov.com
by Michael Cheek
August 27, 2010

The national debt is the single biggest threat to national security, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit.

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending.

“We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”

He also called on the defense industry to hire veterans and become more robust in the future.

“I need the defense industry, in particular, to be robust,” he said. “My procurement budget is over $100 billion, [and] I need to be able to leverage that as much as possible with those [companies] who reach out [to veterans].”

Mullen highlighted the unity of purpose between the government and industry as well, in working to solve national security issues.

“I have found that universally, [private-sector workers] care every bit as much about our country, are every bit as patriotic and wanting to make a difference … as those who wear the uniform and are in harm’s way,” he said.

Economic Growth Rate Downgraded to Anemic 1.6 Percent in Second Quarter
August 27, 2010
FoxNews.com

Under Chairman Obamao the Cluless, the economy will get worse than it already is and a double-dip recession is in the making. And that is not hard to predict. Obamao is ruining the nation. He is Al Qaeda’s dream president. And POW! There it is; right between the eyes.

The Commerce Department is revising downward the economic growth from April to June to 1.6 percent — a decline from the original 2.4 percent forecast and much slower than the 3.7 percent of the first quarter 2010.

The barely-there number isn’t enough keep pace with population growth, which needs about 3 percent annualized growth just to break even each year and prevent unemployment, currently 9.5 percent, from rising.

The trade imbalance — the largest since 1947 — took away nearly 3.4 percent from second quarter growth, the Commerce Department said.

The current quarter isn’t expected to show much improvement, with many economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent.

Economists say the number could be a taste of weakness to come — and fears of a double-dip recession are growing.

The odds of the third quarter being negative look reasonably high,” said Kevin Hassett, senior fellow and director of economic policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “Fifty-50 chance.”

The economy has grown for four straight quarters, but that growth has averaged only 2.9 percent, a weak pace after such a steep recession.

Hassett put the blame squarely in President Obama’s lap.

“The policies have been so terrible that they sort of feel to me like the choices of an excessively arrogant, uninformed person, and his economic policy team doesn’t match that description, at least part of it,” he said.

“Addressing the challenge of our national debt requires bold leadership and tough choices from members of both parties. Our children and grandchildren are counting on us to chart an effective course toward responsible stewardship of the public purse.”- Speaker Nancy Pelosi, March 24, 2010

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, out-of-control spending by the Democrat controlled Congress has added an astounding $4.4 trillion in deficits to the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) ten year budget projection. And despite claims of fiscal responsibility from the Democrats, nothing changes. The harmful effects of the Democrats’ runaway spending on growth and prosperity are vast. Crowding out of private investment, growing interest payments, and dependence on foreign competitors are all consequences of the federal government’s profligate spending and debt. Additionally, the debt explosion created to fuel Washington’s recklessness has a personal impact on every American: it is ultimately borne by every man, woman and child in the nation. According to CBO and Census Bureau long-term estimates, the amount of debt placed on the backs of children born today is about to explode. If nothing is done, our generation will have the sad legacy of being the first to lower the standard of living of the next generation.

A TIMELINE OF THE PERSONAL PUBLIC DEBT BURDEN FOR A CHILD BORN IN 2010

2010: By the end of 2010, CBO predicts that the total U.S. debt held by the public (as opposed to the gross national debt which includes inter-governmental holdings) will be $9.05 trillion. That means that children born in 2010 will start life with a personal share of the public debt equaling $29,178.

2020: When children born today celebrate their tenth birthday, their share of the nation’s public debt will have already increased by 70 percent to reach $49,694 per child.

2023: By the time they are 13 years old, their share of public debt will have doubled to $58,971. This is also the first year that per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be surpassed by the per capita share of the public debt for every American.

2028: When those children born in 2010 reach their 18th birthdays, they will have inherited an individual debt responsibility of $80,650.

2032: As children born in 2010 begin to graduate from college and enter the work force, their public debt responsibility will have tripled. As they begin their adult lives, the next generation will already be saddled with $103,826 of the government’s debt. And, unfortunately, as interest payments and entitlement spending increase more rapidly, their share of the nation’s debt will begin to grow at an accelerated rate.

2040: At the age of 30, their public debt responsibility will be approximately $166,500—an increase of 471 percent from the time that they were born.

2050: If government spending is not immediately restrained, our nation’s public debt is projected to increase from $9.1 trillion in 2010 to $122.8 trillion by 2050. As a result, when children born today reach 40 years old, their share of the U.S. public debt will be $279,738—an increase of 859 percent above what it is today. For a family of four, the total household debt share would be approximately $1.119 million.

THE OUTLOOK FOR THE NEXT GENERATION: DEBT EXPLODES AND PROSPERITY STAGNATES

- According to estimates from CBO and the Census Bureau, per capita GDP in the U.S. is approximately $47,000 in 2010, which is $17,883 more than the current level of public debt per person ($29,178). Reckless Washington spending will soon send the individual public debt burden skyrocketing past per capita GDP as spending and debt replace private economic growth.

- In 2023, the amount of U.S. public debt shared by every man, woman, and child in the nation will exceed their share of our nation’s GDP as debt rapidly out paces growth.

- While the individual public debt burden is projected to increase by $250,560 over the next 40 years, the GDP per American is only estimated to grow by $34,258.

- Over the next 40 years, estimates predict that spending will cause the debt held by the public to increase by 859 percent for every U.S. citizen. By comparison, per capita GDP is projected to grow by only 73 percent over the same period.

- Unless drastic actions are taken to reduce spending now and in the future, debt will dwarf growth and future generations will be less prosperous than those that preceded them.

Larger version of chart @ GOP.gov

WASHINGTON – The good will tour of the Middle East by the imam behind the proposed mosque near ground zero is just part of the U.S. government’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world.

This year, the Obama administration will spend nearly $6 million to restore 63 historic and cultural sites, including mosques and minarets, in 55 nations, according to State Department documents.

Under a program established by Congress in 2001, the department will fund at least five projects in as many countries at a cost of more than $271,000.

The contributions include $76,135 for the 16th century Grand Mosque in Tongxin, China, and $67,500 for the 18th century Golden Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. An additional $62,169 will be spent on restoring a 19th century minaret in Mauritania’s ancient city of Tichitt; $50,437 for the Sundarwala Burj, a 16th century Islamic Monument in New Delhi, and $15,450 to restore the 18th century Gobarau Minaret in Katsina, Nigeria.

The amount spent on mosque restoration projects is a fraction of the total in the 2010 Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, which also will fund projects to restore Christian and Buddhist sites as well as museums, forts and palaces.

Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent almost $26 million on the program to fund about 640 cultural preservation projects in more than 100 countries.

“The fund has demonstrated America’s respect for the world’s cultural heritage,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last month in announcing the 2010 projects. “Cultural heritage serves as a reminder of historical experiences and achievements of humanity. Ancient structures and objects offer important lessons for us today.”

Existing home sales dive to 15-year low
by Lucia Mutikani
Yahoo.com

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes took a record plunge in July to their slowest pace in 15 years as the wind went out of the housing sector’s sails and underlined a struggling economy.

Tuesday’s report from the National Association of Realtors was the latest data series that indicated economic activity continued to slacken into the third quarter.

The NAR said overall sales were at their lowest since it started the existing-home sales data series in 1999, with single-family home sales that account for most business at their lowest since 1995. Association chief economist Lawrence Yun characterized sales as the softest since 1995.

The dismal sales report came as Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans warned the risk of a double-dip recession was higher than six months ago. He doubted that output will actually shrink but said recovery will be modest.

“It is becoming abundantly clear that the housing market is undermining the already faltering wider economic recovery. With the increasingly inevitable double-dip in prices yet to come, things could yet get a lot worse,” said Paul Dales, a U.S. economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.

Existing home sales dropped a record 27.2 percent from June to an annual rate of 3.83 million units, the lowest since the series began in 1999, the NAR said in a statement. NAR officials said sales were the lowest since 1995.

June sales were revised down to a 5.26 million-unit pace from a previously reported 5.37 million.

Financial markets had expected sales to fall only 12 percent to a 4.70 million-unit rate last month.

The dismal report sent U.S. stocks falling more than 1 percent as investors dumped riskier assets in favor of safe haven government debt. Prices for U.S. Treasuries rallied, with the yield on the two-year note tumbling to a record low.

The U.S. dollar fell to a 15-year high against the yen.

TAX CREDIT PARTIALLY TO BLAME

The housing market, which helped to push the economy into its worst recession since the Great Depression, has been mired in weakness following the end of a homebuyer tax credit in April. The incentive pulled forward sales and building activity, leaving a huge void that analysts said was also being exacerbated by a 9.5 percent unemployment rate.

The sour economy, especially the stubbornly high unemployment rate is hurting President Barack Obama’s popularity and putting in jeopardy the Democratic party’s control of Congress in November’s mid-term elections.

Almost three-quarters of Americans are very concerned about unemployment and more people now disapprove of President Barack Obama than approve of him, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The government on Friday is expected to revise down growth in second-quarter gross domestic product to an annual pace of 1.4 percent from 2.4 percent, according to a Reuters survey.
The recovery which started in the second half of 2009 has largely been driven by government stimulus and manufacturing as businesses replenish depleted inventories.

Some analysts said the drop in existing home sales had been exaggerated by the end of the housing tax credit.

“We are seeing a bit of an overcorrection from the end of the tax credit. We will probably see another month or two of this before we start the upward trend, later in the Fall we will probably be back to a more stable level,” said Eric Fox, vice president for statistical and economic modeling at Veros in Santa Ana, California.

“But at the same time, unemployment has remained stubbornly high and a lot of people are sitting on the side lines until they see that there is a sustained recovery before they pull the trigger and buy a home.”

With home sales tumbling, the inventory of previously owned homes for sale rose 2.5 percent to 3.98 million units from June, representing a supply of 12.5 months — the highest since at least 1999 and up from June’s 8.9 months.

The jump in the supply of homes was almost double the six to seven months’ supply considered that has been historically consistent with stable prices.

Last month foreclosed properties accounted for 22 percent of sales while short sales made up 10 percent. First-time buyers accounted for 38 percent of transactions, the lowest in 12 months.

I imagine some of you are old enough to remember a 1960 movie called “The Time Machine” from the H.G. Wells story. A ruggedly handsome Rod Taylor as the curious time-tripping scientist H. George Wells in Victorian England. The petitely sultry but hesitatingly demure Yvette Mimieux as Weena of the future, a pretty little juicy Eloi hors d’oeuvres-in-waiting for the next roar of the ghetto blaster call to the cannibal cave of the disgustingly smelly and unshaven socialist underground dwellers the Morlocks. Weena welcomes this disheveled but eager traveler from a world she has no possible concept or context of knowing, but he sparks her dormant imagination in a childlike manner. However, Wells will come to discover the whispery-spoken blonde as the only living human in the future with an ounce of brains. (Go figure.)

At first, Wells is intrigued by this overly simplistic collective of carefree youth in the deceptively comfortable distant future. He’s even a bit celebratory of it. Nothing to do. No work. Freedom to meander about life aimlessly with no want or need because some unseen entity provides all to the Eloi collective. No need to learn to read, write, figure mathematics, or cipher history and its relationship to the present and future. As a matter of fact, history lies decaying into oblivion on the shelves of a dusty and abandoned museum that at one point the “no alpha and omega” generations of Eloi just lost complete interest in. There is no concept of memory. No value of life or a measured cost of death. There was no elderly generation to learn from or reflect with, and no juvenile generation to share hopes and dreams and life-milestone experiences with. The foundations and accomplishments that the millenniums of civilization had built, destroyed, and documented had no purpose in the Eloi world. Wells’ intrigue turns to disdain and disgust for the welfare lazy and dependent Eloi. However, his anger then soon turns to astonishment at the Eloi’s abscense of concern, compassion, and chivalry as they idly sit-by while one of their own drowns during an afternoon swim. Human nature, and more importantly survival instincts, had been completely bred out of them. The misplaced man of science realizes he holds the only hunger for knowledge in all of mankind. It has been replaced by the hunger of the all powerful and controlling entity that has full charge over the designedly hapless and clueless commune of lovely kibbles `n bits. They fear the dark but have no mental means to create the light. Do herds of cattle, horses, sheep or goats have the need to acknowledge or even learn from their ancestors’ history and mistakes? Even our domestication of them leaves them subject to our acquiescence to their demands of feeding and breeding … as it suits our bellies. Wells is the only human in the future aware of his soul. He is an alien on his own planet.

The deafening siren wails the demand from the masters, and the Eloi drop what they are doing to march as a collective to the open hungry mouth of the Morlock cave. And when enough Eloi cattle have mindlessly filed inside the cave the heavy and ominous doors slam shut between the outside and inside worlds … all the while Wells is desperately trying to reason, alert, warn, and dissuade the collective to resist, realize, and react to save themselves from the total consumption awaiting them inside. He fails. The conditioning had taken generations, an indoctrination of enslavement so subtle so as never to have been resisted or refused, no doubt beginning with prior generations of the very young while the older generations filled the Morlock cooking pots first in order to silence any residual knowledge of fascism’s history they might hold and pass on to the young as forewarning and defense. Why, the Morlock must be benevolent despots. They provided everything equally that the Eloi could possibly need or want without a sweaty brow or a dirty fingernail under someone else’s employ. But they were without liberty, free will, and individual exceptionalism. Even Wells’ time machine, his means of escaping the nightmare, had been confiscated inside the cave. For all his bellowing against man’s conflicts and wars of the past Wells finds a need for such aggression in the future. False peace only creates slaves.

When Wells gets to his machine he returns to his own time and tries to warn his fellow thinkers of the dangerous path man is paving for the future. But he isn’t taken seriously. He’s ridiculed, doubted and abandoned. His mission and purpose in life is now clear. The paradox of trying to change the future by changing the past is futile at best, his fellow Victorians as lamebrained and self-consuming as the Eloi. He must return to the future and start over. He takes with him the weapons of knowledge in three books. Which three books of “too much information” would possibly be useful in rebuilding individual exceptionalism and liberty, and battling tyranny? It’s left to you to ponder. But what you do know is that they are still within reach in our time. But not for long.

Cross-Posted @ Babalu Blog

Boehner to Obama: Fire Geithner, Summers, Your Entire Economic Team
August 24, 2010
FoxNews.com

House Minority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday what we have been demanding for a while. As usual, politicians always need time to catch up with the people’s reality. At least Boehner has got it right. Better late than never.

President Obama should ask for and accept the resignations of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, National Economics Council chief Larry Summers and the rest of his economics team, House Minority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday.

In a speech to businessmen in Cleveland, Boehner, the man poised to replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker if Republicans win back the House majority in November, offered a scathing assessment of the president’s stewardship of the U.S. economy, which he said includes massive increases in spending combined with higher taxes and more rules and regulations.

Already budget director Peter Orszag and chief economist Christina Romer have returned to their previous lives. Boehner said Obama should clear the decks of the rest of his advisers.

“We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn’t worked. Our fresh start needs to begin now,” he said.

“We have been told that the president’s economic team is ‘exhausted’ … The worse things get, the more they circle the wagons and defend the indefensible,” he said.

Boehner claimed that the failure to see a revival of the economy is due to a “lack of real-world, hands-on experience” among the staff.

LOS ANGELES – Next month’s opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools will be auspicious for a reason other than its both storied and infamous history as the former Ambassador Hotel, where the Democratic presidential contender was assassinated in 1968.

With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation’s most expensive public school ever.

The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of “Taj Mahal” schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities.

“There’s no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the ’70s where kids felt, ‘Oh, back to jail,’” said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. “Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.”

Not everyone is similarly enthusiastic.

“New buildings are nice, but when they’re run by the same people who’ve given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they’re a big waste of taxpayer money,” said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. “Parents aren’t fooled.”

At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex’s namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.

Partly by circumstance and partly by design, the Los Angeles Unified School District has emerged as the mogul of Taj Mahals.

The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation’s second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation’s lowest performing.

Los Angeles is not alone, however, in building big. Some of the most expensive schools are found in low-performing districts — New York City has a $235 million campus; New Brunswick, N.J., opened a $185 million high school in January.

Nationwide, dozens of schools have surpassed $100 million with amenities including atriums, orchestra-pit auditoriums, food courts, even bamboo nooks. The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers.

“Architects and builders love this stuff, but there’s a little bit of a lack of discipline here,” said Mary Filardo, executive director of 21st Century School Fund in Washington, D.C., which promotes urban school construction.

Some experts say it’s not all flourish and that children learn better in more pleasant surroundings.

Many schools incorporate large windows to let in natural light and install energy-saving equipment, spending more upfront for reduced bills later. Cafeterias are getting fancier, seeking to retain students who venture off campus. Wireless Internet and other high-tech installations have become standard.

Some pricey projects have had political fallout.

After a firestorm over the $197.5 million Newton North High School in Massachusetts, Mayor David Cohen chose not to seek re-election and state Treasurer Timothy Cahill reined in school construction spending.

Now to get state funds for a new school, districts must choose among three designs costing $49 million to $64 million. “We had to bring some sense to this process,” Cahill said.

In Los Angeles, officials say the new schools were planned long before the economic pinch and are funded by $20 billion in voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget.

Still, even LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines derided some of the extravagance, noting that donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project’s talking benches commemorating the site’s history.

Connie Rice, member of the district’s School Bond Oversight Committee, noted the megaschools are only three of 131 that the district is building to alleviate overcrowding. RFK “is an amazing facility,” she said. “Is it a lot of money? Yes. We didn’t like it, but they got it done.”

Construction costs at LA Unified are the second-highest in the nation — something the district blames on skyrocketing material and land prices, rigorous seismic codes and unionized labor.

James Sohn, the district’s chief facilities executive, said the megaschools were built when global raw material shortages caused costs to skyrocket to an average of $600 per square foot in 2006 and 2007 — triple the price from 2002. Costs have since eased to $350 per square foot.

On top of that, each project had its own cost drivers.

After buildings were demolished at the site of the 2,400-student Roybal school, contaminated soil, a methane gas field and an earthquake fault were discovered. A gas mitigation system cost $17 million.

Over 20 years, the project grew to encompass a dance studio with cushioned maple floors, a modern kitchen with a restaurant-quality pizza oven, a 10-acre park and teacher planning rooms between classrooms.

The 1,700-student arts school was designed as a landmark, with a stainless steel, postmodernistic tower encircled by a rollercoaster-like swirl, while the RFK site involved 15 years of litigation with historic preservationists and Donald Trump, who wanted to build the world’s tallest building there. The wrangling cost $9 million.

Methane mitigation cost $33 million and the district paid another $15 million preserving historic features, including a wall of the famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub and turning the Paul Williams-designed coffee shop into a faculty lounge.

Sohn said LA Unified has reached the end of its Taj Mahal building spree. “These are definitely the exceptions,” he said. “We don’t anticipate schools costing hundreds of millions of dollars in the future.”

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects.

After his action, administration officials considered alternatives and weighed the economic costs, the newly released documents show. The Justice Department filed them in a New Orleans court this week, in response to the latest round of litigation over the moratorium.

Spanning more than 27,000 pages, they provide an unusually detailed look at the debate about how to respond to legal and political opposition to the moratorium.

They show the new top regulator or offshore oil exploration, Michael Bromwich, told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that a six-month deepwater-drilling halt would result in “lost direct employment” affecting approximately 9,450 workers and “lost jobs from indirect and induced effects” affecting about 13,797 more. The July 10 memo cited an analysis by Mr. Bromwich’s agency that assumed direct employment on affected rigs would “resume normally once the rigs resume operations.”

Asked to comment, a White House spokesman said the administration “well understood, and understands, the enormous importance of oil and gas to the region’s economy,” but the potential economic risks from another spill to other elements of the Gulf economy—such as fishing and tourism—also informed the administration’s deliberations, “especially as spill-response resources were fully engaged to address the BP Deepwater Horizon spill.” A spokesman for the Interior Department declined to comment on the documents. An American Petroleum Institute spokesman said the documents show “the government itself understood there would be significant impacts felt throughout the region.”

The newly released document trove shows that a top science adviser at Interior worried in late June that BP PLC, primary owner of the blown-out well, had an “unrealistically optimistic” corporate culture. After working with BP in Houston on spill response, Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, told Mr. Bromwich that BP officials “seem to hope for the best and plan for the best.”

A spokesman for BP said the firm wasn’t familiar with what she said but stated, “BP is committed to the highest engineering, operating and safety standards” and “continuously improving our operations and learning from this tragic accident.” Ms. McNutt didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In another document, William Hauser, chief of the regulations and standards branch of what was formerly called the Minerals Management Service, outlined the risks of various drilling activities in an email to colleagues and then wrote: “The more I write this stuff the more I believe we can/should/could regulate/stop activities through a prudent management process versus a moratoria scheme.”

He added, “I guess the moratoria approach is necessary because the MMS cannot be trusted to regulate.” Mr. Hauser couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

The administration has said in court filings that the economic effect of suspended drilling wasn’t as severe as the industry asserted. In a filing with federal court in eastern Louisiana June 23, the day after a judge overturned the initial six-month halt, Justice Department attorneys said it affected 33 deepwater wells, “less than 1% of the existing structures in the Gulf dedicated to oil exploration and production.”

A study by Louisiana State University economist Joseph Mason—published in July and commissioned by the American Energy Alliance, a group funded partly by oil and gas companies—concluded a six-month shutdown of the 33 deepwater rigs would result in a net loss of 12,000 jobs.

But while some have predicted the moratorium would cause a mass flight of drilling rigs to other parts of the world, so far, 31 of the 33 deepwater rigs that were operating in the Gulf when the Deepwater Horizon exploded remain.

Some industry experts say an exodus is unlikely because companies have few other promising reservoirs where they can immediately transfer rigs and because they want to be ready to resume drilling in the low-tax Gulf of Mexico when the moratorium ends.

In his July 10 memo, Mr. Bromwich, director of what’s now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said “some form of a temporary pause in drilling would be reasonable and appropriate,” to allow time for improvements in workplace and drilling safety, blowout-containment capability and the capacity to respond to a deepwater spill.

He outlined options for Mr. Salazar, including: allowing drilling to resume; issuing a new order to suspend drilling until Nov. 30; or prohibiting certain deepwater drilling while allowing companies “an early exit from the moratorium based on the achievement of specified requirements” on workplace and drilling safety, blowout containment and spill response.

Two days later, Mr. Salazar issued a new order banning most new deepwater drilling activities until Nov. 30, replacing the May 28 order struck down by federal Judge Martin Feldman in June. To address some of the judge’s concerns with the May order, Mr. Salazar cited new evidence about safety concerns, shortcomings in industry equipment to control blowouts, and spill-response capabilities strained by the BP spill.

Mr. Bromwich has said the administration hopes to be able to end the moratorium before Nov. 30. He said his recommendation would depend on what he learned from experts in a series of public hearings over the next few weeks, – WSJ