"This will destroy the financial industry," warned Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who was the Labor Department's chief economist under President George W. Bush.
"If the CEOs of American financial institutions have to be worried about the diversity regulations, whereas those in other countries are worrying about their profits, we are going to fall behind," she said.
Indeed it will. The costs of the "White Man Tax" are likely to be: failure to fund worthy new companies through venture capital or IPOs, "zombie" companies soaking up federal and private investment, and continued wild swings in the financial sector plunging America into constant recessions and costly bail-outs. With regulators even more clueless and ham-handed than usual. Why?
Because of the hard fact that there just are not many qualified women, and non-Whites, able to fill financial management and decision making roles. One might argue about WHY this is true, from lack of interest, or desire for more "healing" professions (Women make up 50% of the admissions to medical schools according to the AMA), or even considerable Black and Hispanic reading comprehension gaps, compared to White and Asian students. Those who already have talents, and interests, and experience in making money, have been swooped up by Hedge Funds, the most lucrative part of Wall Street. The rest go to work at places like Goldman Sachs, and to a lesser extent the Fed, or SEC, or other regulatory agencies (after which they leave and go to work for Goldman Sachs or other Wall Street Firms, lobbying their old workmates).
The new law allows each director of the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion the authority to develop their own standards, at the companies they regulate as well as their own agencies, and those they contract with. Conceivably, we could see (and probably will) 30 different standards, with a "rapid race to the bottom" to see who can invoke the most heavy "White Man Tax" that penalizes White male employment.
Already, the US Government has an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization that encourages the Federal Government to use women and non-White owned businesses (instead of those owned by White Men), along with the EEOC and the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which also implement a "White Man Tax" on those wishing to do business with the Federal Government.
The House Financial Services Committee added the provision in 2009 at the urging of Waters and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Part of the motivation was the limited participation by firms owned by women or minorities in emergency programs undertaken by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve to address the financial crisis.
"The inclusion of minorities and women in our financial services programs is long overdue," Waters said, noting that only one of the 12 firms that the Treasury pre-qualified as fund managers for its Legacy Securities Public-Private Investment Program was minority-owned.
Waters also cited federal data showing that women made up 44.2% of the federal workforce in 2006, and minorities 28.3%. Some financial regulatory positions had lower figures: Just 35% of financial institution examiners were women and 18.7% were minorities, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
In 2008, white men held 64% of senior positions in the financial services industry, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office.
The new offices, according to the provision, must "to the extent consistent with applicable law" consider the diversity of companies seeking contract work and, in some cases, their subcontractors. The provision applies to "all contracts of an agency for services of any kind" but specifically cites financial services such as asset management and programs dealing with economic recovery.
...
It could be years before the provisions kick in. Similar language was added to a 2008 bill mandating new diversity offices at federal housing agencies, including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Those agencies have not yet approved final rules.
In Obama's America, a "White Man Tax" is a political winner. Agencies will compete to see who can construct the most punitive measures. But how will the mechanics work out?
First, Hedge Funds that are highly mobile, will move out of the US, to Switzerland or other jurisdictions outside US diversity mandates, but retaining the rule of law, contract enforceability, and decent living conditions. This will take the most talented people, managing the greatest amount of money, outside the US. The taxes they pay, will instead go to places like Switzerland. Pimco, based in Newport Beach, California, has $1 trillion in assets under management. They cannot afford (nor can any Hedge Fund afford) "diversity" hires who cannot do the job but have the correct skin color. Indeed they cannot afford anything but the best performance, since investors can yank out funds, if they perform poorly.
The "White Man Tax" will simply put the Hedge Fund business into Switzerland, or perhaps the Bahamas, or some other place outside the US.
Goldman Sachs and other investment banks, will simply move as many people and assets outside the US, to avoid the crushing penalty of the "White Man Tax."
As the Financial Times recently published, the "Intex" bond valuing computer software package ($1.5 million or so per company), allowed "simple" mortgage backed securities to be valued based on assumptions. This was the software used to value first corporate bonds, and then the mortgage backed securities.
In July a friendly banker showed me Intex in action. He chose a particular mortgage-backed security, entered its price and a figure for each of prepayment speed, default rate, and loss severity. In less than 30 seconds, back came not just the yield of the security, but the month-by-month future interest payments and principal repayments, including whether and when shortfalls and losses would be incurred. The psychological effect was striking: for the first time, I felt I could understand mortgage-backed securities.
Of course, my new-found confidence was spurious. The reliability of Intex’s output depends entirely on the validity of the user’s assumptions about prepayment, default and severity. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate whether some of the pre-crisis vogue for mortgage-backed securities resulted from having a system that enabled neophytes such as myself to feel they understood them. Certainly, like any language, Intex aided communication. If you were planning a mortgage-backed deal, you could construct an Intex file, make it available to potential investors, and use it to discuss the deal’s features, modify those features, and gauge investors’ interest.
The limits of the language came when mortgage-backed securities were repackaged into collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), complex debt securities based on pools of other assets. You could still run Intex, first for each of the securities and then for the CDO, but it could be a slow process. Often, CDOs included not just mortgage-backed securities, but tranches of other CDOs, each maybe incorporating further CDOs. This multiplied enormously the number of underlying mortgage pools, causing a single valuation run to take hours. (On occasion, each of a pair of CDOs would buy a tranche of the other, creating a “loop” that slowed analysis). Sometimes, users did little more than one run using the prepayment, default and severity rates judged most likely. Those (such as the rating agencies) that needed to do more nearly all took a fatal shortcut. Instead of analysing CDOs from the bottom (the underlying pools of mortgages) up, they shifted to a different mathematical language, which treated a CDO’s components (mortgage-backed securities and tranches of other CDOs), in effect, as if they were corporate bonds, with their properties inferred from their ratings. This often led to serious underestimation, especially by rating agencies, of correlation among these components.
The one bank I’ve found that did analyse CDOs based on mortgages from the bottom up was Goldman Sachs. It developed its own analytical techniques, and used a large “computer farm” in New Jersey to spread the analysis over multiple machines, so keeping the time each run took tolerable. Goldman’s Abacus CDOs – one of which was the flashpoint of the SEC’s recent investigations – were apparently analysed this way.
A bottom-up analysis was – and still is – expensive. It requires clever quantitative analysts, multiple computers and software developers able to “parallelise” a program so it runs efficiently on many machines at once. Nevertheless, if going beyond the limits of existing languages in this way helped Goldman take the crucial late-2006 decision to liquidate or hedge its positions in mortgage-backed securities (enabling it to survive the crisis almost unscathed), it was well worth it. I hope its competitors have learned the lesson: a limited language means a dangerously limited world.
While Goldman Sachs apparently makes a great deal of money on screwing its customers, detailed and rigorous quantitative analysis is what allows them to KNOW how to screw over their customers.
Can anyone see Goldman Sachs saying "aw hell with it, let's fire our White and Indian and Asian quant guys and hire Blacks and Hispanics off the street. What could go wrong?"
Instead, all the quantitative analysis, the trading desks, anything and everything at Goldman Sachs (and every other Wall Street Firm) connected with making money, will be moved to places beyond the Federal jurisdiction.
What will be left will be the dregs, the losers, the thinly capitalized, desperate for government contracts, barely ahead of the boiler room brigades, financial firms, loaded up with folks who cannot possibly do their jobs.
Meanwhile, the venture capitalist companies, that funded companies as diverse as Apple and Hewlitt Packard, will be hamstrung by the new rules that mandate, not the best analysts, but ones that are not White Men (or likely, Asian and Indian Men). This along with other measures hamstringing Venture Capital, removes an essential part of American economic advantage: easier capital for new companies with considerable upside. These companies are hard to recognize. For every Apple Computer in the rough, there is a Peapod, an e-Toys, a Pets.com, or a Commodore Computer. Companies with buzz and sizzle but little long-term upside.
What is likely, with the vast dilution of talent of Wall Street and Financial firms, is the herd mentality (already present) will follow those firms with most hype (and problems) and ignore firms that could create jobs and wealth and power. Zombie firms like, well GM, will be common (this already happened in Japan), not the least of which is this power extends to banks and bank loans. The "White Man Tax" is likely to penalize those firms that have the misfortune not to be owned or managed by non-White Men. Banks need Federal funds deposited, loans, and regulatory approval. Avoiding "the White Man Tax" is likely to be a key priority.
With regulators, already behind the curve because Hedge Funds pay the most talented people the most, the Investment Banks the next most, and regulatory agencies the least, the impact is likely to be catastrophic. The SEC clearly missed Goldman Sachs and other Investment Banks selling CDOs and other mortgage backed securities as investment grade while they were junk, on the basis of ratings by Moodys and others. The SEC allowed the ratings agencies to rate junk as gold. Because they lacked the people with the smarts to see that the bonds being rated as gold were indeed, junk. And provably junk.
If the financial crash was caused (rather than causing) the recession/depression, nevertheless the cost of the bailout was considerable. Preventing another one requires the best regulators that can be had, not the most politically correct ones. The talent pool of qualified Black and Hispanic and Female financial experts is very, very small. Akin to that of the qualified, experienced, and talented White or Asian NBA players. There are a few, but not many. The NBA is 80% Black, and no one calls for Affirmative Action for White players.
Maxine Waters is not proposing to replace Kobe Bryant, Ron Artest, and Lamar Odom of the Lakers with White guys, on the theory that only racial discrimination could account for the Lakers not being mostly White, and that athletic talent qualifying for championship caliber play in the NBA is evenly distributed among all races. If she did, Lakers fans, including White ones, would laugh her out of town.
Financial firms will not fight this — they will simply move abroad. Banks will not fight this, they will simply comply and wait for the next bailout. Venture Capital is likely to move abroad, and focus on firms overseas that they can fund without having to pay "the White Man Tax." The real costs are likely to be paid by the US Taxpayer (with bail out after bail out coming after regulators miss the obvious, and banks play PC games), and the consumer and job applicant. While the cost will largely be invisible, it will nevertheless be present. Fewer jobs from fewer dynamic new companies looking to build staff and expertise, as private as well as public resources are funneled to "zombie" companies that have the correct amount of White guys (as little as possible) and the favorable view of the herd.
If there is one thing that stands out in "the Big Short" by Michael Lewis, it is that the people who correctly called the insanity of the housing market, and the even greater insanity of the CDO's based on subprime mortgages (sold as investment grade), were nearly all White men. John Paulson, Mike Burry, Steve Eisman, Gregg Lippman, who got it right, early, before anyone else did. Meanwhile, the infamous Wing Chau, happily bets billions on housing prices continuing to rise. Bloomberg has the gory details of the spectacular default, and the seemingly Affirmative Action derived career, of Wing Chau.
This is not because of racial superiority. It turns out, the kind of man who likes to obsess about numbers, their meanings, and how to find winning strategies in them, from baseball statistics, "SABREMETRICS" and Bill James type insights, to the stock and bond markets, are mostly nerdy White guys. The same type of people who thought that the way you plowed a field could be adapted to transmit video pictures like Idaho spud farmer Philo T. Farnsworth, produce guys who have an insight on what produces wins in baseball (not making outs) or destroys value in bonds (subprime mortgages). The kind of guy who can produce a 4.36 forty yard dash at the NFL combine, is mostly Black. Neither is "better." Terrel Owens is not the avatar of the Super-Race because he's very, very fast and strong and big. Neither is Jim Chanos a Superman just because he called Enron correct (and shorted it) and seems to be right on China.
White willingness to cede athletic dominance (the NFL, NBA, MLB, were all exclusively White in the Jim Crow Era) was not born out of guilt, as much as desire to win. Winning, after all, is what sports is all about. Institution of the "White Man Tax" and exclusion of White men in the most lucrative job sector, and the only one that has any promise of recovery (manufacturing, resource extraction, and most services are not coming back) any time soon, is not going to happen without social cost. White guys are not going to be rioting in the streets, but the willingness to cut slack, for those of other races, or women, is likely to be greatly reduced. Its one thing to play the "White Guys Last" card in good times, when jobs are plenty and wages rising. It is another to play this right at the start of the double dip in the recession.
The "White Man Tax" is not going to produce social revolt. But it will be one more outrage that White guys will take into the voting booth, producing a tribal reaction (non White male candidates will suffer) and inevitable reaction once the current Democratic majority is out of office or power. If there is a "White Man Tax" to be paid, why not a "Non White Man Tax" when power swings that way?
You cannot uncross the Rubicon. We have already established the precedent that White Men Finish Last in government preferences, have to give up their positions:
This... there's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem.
We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power.
So... How many White men will step down, from the world of finance, so someone else can have power? Exactly. It is naked racial spoils politics, and like a bullet it cannot be called back. Already we can expect a purging of non-White guys when the pendulum swings. Since the rules have been established. Whoever has power purges the government and private sector of the "losing" race and gender. It is White men now. It will be (because it cannot be any other way), non-White men and women later.
This ends, that part of the American Experiment. The bullet just cannot be called back. In my considered opinion, we are about to find out, nothing less or more, than what an America looks like when the White population, particularly the White male part, has no racial guilt, nor aspirations of racial supremacy, nor even desire to rule over others, but is determined to be first in line for EVERYTHING. Because the only alternative is to be last in line. For everything.
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18 comments:
A "Commodore" computer?
What is your point besides historical ignorance?
For your information Commodore was in the computer business from 1977 (PET) until 1994. It had four top selling computers: PET, Commodore Vic 20, Commodore 64 (best selling individual machine of all time)and the Amiga which, while it was never very popular in the states was very popular in Europe and has the distinction of being the first true multimedia computer.
Quite a few millionaires were made off Commodore stock. Fact is, the only reason Apple, and not Commodore ended up being IBM's big competitor is that Commodore never had stable management from the time Jack Tramiel (1983 IIRC) left all the way to the very end. Thus no consistent ideas for how to use its considerable computer and human assets. You might know Commodore owned MOS, which gave them their own chip production facility. And it would have been good to invest in Commodore stock all the way from 1974 up until about 1985 or 86.
Here you have another useful post Whiskey, but I feel either you were hoping someone wouldn't care enough to notice about your backhanded attack on Commodore, or you are just too lazy to do in depth research when using examples to make your points.
Clarence
"While the cost will largely be invisible, it will nevertheless be present."
Indeed. The diversity racket is a tax, and corporations don't pay taxes, people do. The added costs are offset by (a) higher prices paid by a business' customers, (b) lower or no dividends paid to the stockholders, and/or (c) lower wages and benefits to the company's employees.
It doesn't apply in this sort of case, i.e. financial firms, but you've got to wonder, as Obama and his minions pile on regulations ad nauseum, how much of the economy is going to go "off the books." Here in L.A., the estimate is that 25% or so of the economy is what the L.A. Times euphemistically calls "the informal economy." Of course, they call it that because of who most of the participants are, i.e. Latino immigrants. If it were white men involved, it would be referred to as the "black market" or something similarly disapproving.
THis is nothing new. The I-banks have had diversity hires for a long time, and build in the cost as part of doing business. These are entities that make vast (stupendously, obscenely vast) amounts of money through what is basically legalized theft, and they make sure to spread the wealth around as much as they have to keep anybody from stopping the gravy train.
Here's the usual career path: a NAM is hired, put in some job where they can't do much damage, and works for a few years. The na lawyer approaches them, asking, "Now, are you sure, absolutely SURE, that you haven't expereienced any racism there?" They sue, the I-bank settles out of court, and the NAM walks away with a couple Mil. It's the wall street black retirement plan.
Are the I-Banks going to go all John Galt in response? No effing way. It doesn't matter where they are - their criminal organizations depend on the favors they get from the U.S. gov. They will keep put and keep paying for the best government money can buy.
Up to the present time, Democratic electoral victories result in rewarding its voter base with goodies...those goodies currently being race-based, as the voter base is anti-white.
The Repulicans don't currently operate the same way when they win...rewarding its base (whites) with pro-white goodies. But rather, they stab their base in the back while contiuing to placate and woo the non-white, who will never support the GOP.
Until the Republican Party rewards is base in victory, I don't see how whites will ever get to be first in line without the violence that you don't see in the future, as we'll have to overcome both Parties.
emarel
Clarence, while I have a great deal of affection for Commodore, and Amiga, and Be, the sad fact remains that they were not the successes of Apple and Microsoft.
A VC deciding to invest has to look at more than *just* the internal financials of a company. Both macro (will the company find customers, financing, meet regulatory hurdles, etc.) and management ability.
The latter is what made Apple a fantastic success, and Commodore, Amiga, and Be failures. Amiga was used in the early 1990's for the effects rendering for "Babylon 5" in the first two seasons. Yet it never caught on. Steve Jobs may be a jerk (he is) but his marketing and design genius is why Apple is a success and the other companies are dead.
Even more important -- VCs are not in it for the long haul. The ability to pick a winner, and cash out, quickly, is paramount.
Point being that this particular skill set, the ability to assess complex financial statements, macro environments, and management ability, is pretty rare, and found mostly in nerdy White guys (to a lesser extent nerdy Asian and Indian guys). If this is cultural or not (an outgrowth of sports fans arguing over the win contributions of football coaches and baseball managers) is beside the point.
The ability to mix those disparate skills is the difference between a winning and losing investment. Hence VCs will simply pack their bags for Zurich or Hong Kong or Melbourne and invest elsewhere.
Emarel -- My view is that the Prohibition Speak-Easy model is likely to prevail. I.E. lots of "off-books" or Black Market economic transactions, the "Craigs List Economy" done by trust, i.e. on racial boundaries.
Or if you prefer, the Greek Model of a guy coming round after hours offering to do a job for half the cost of the official quote, cash only, upon completion. That requires trust and thus ethnic nepotism, in effect.
The new rules as part of the ObamaCare law, require extensive 1099 filings, for pretty much everyone in private business (sole proprietor, LLC, etc.) as well as charities. You will have to keep extensive records of every purchase and file the 1099 to the vendor AND the US Government and file when you get to $600 or more. This applies to purchases at Staples as well as services. Its aimed directly at the "Craigs List Economy" to gotcha for guys working off the books.
This anti-White Male bias will spread throughout the entire public sector to include any institution Federal monies and regulation can reach: I am an artist and can see where such bias will affect grants to art groups and individual artists; it will also affect the granting of exhibitions to individuals: I have already seen the girrrl power supremacy bias advance the careers of female artists: this is at its worst in lesbian dominated areas.
I can see this White Man Tax atomizing the white male work world. Most work for white males will probably be with businesses that avoid government connected contracts: as the power and wealth will be with jobs on the Gov't teat, this alienation will create a subclass of dis-empowered and poorer white males. I suspect the professional class of white males will be decimated and squeezed into blue collar work: there won't be very much of that available.
So how long will White males tolerate this without exploding? Just for fun let's say 50% of the U.S. population is male and 80$ is White; rule of thumb: 40% of population is White male; how is the government in all its aspects going to control that many white males: there has to be an ethno-sexual genocide in the back of somebody's mind - this conclusion is inescapable: the genocide will be slow its initial steps but it will have to become more brutal and faster as it becomes apparent to the larger body of whites.
And where will the hypergamous White female be as this is happening? Increased lesbianism? Widespread marriage with minority males? Will the increasing Muslim, immigrant, male population find willing white wives?
Whiskey:The new rules as part of the ObamaCare law, require extensive 1099 filings, for pretty much everyone in private business (sole proprietor, LLC, etc.) as well as charities. You will have to keep extensive records of every purchase and file the 1099 to the vendor AND the US Government and file when you get to $600 or more. This applies to purchases at Staples as well as services. Its aimed directly at the "Craig's List Economy" to gotcha for guys working off the books.
Then somebody has already worked out the chess moves to the entho-sexual genocide: these rules will not be applied to the favored minorities. Period.
P.S: Businesses large and small are going to need to keep extensive databases for tracking all those $600 purchases, cumulative ones included; and if you remember, Obama has already indicated database professionals will need gov't certification: again, someone has thought way down the chessboard -- and that raises the question as to who and at what level of education and power: I am beginning to deep generational conspiracies on the level of Henry Makow's rants and I don't want to go there.
Correction: I am beginning to believe in deep generational conspiracies on the level of Henry Makow's rants and I didn't want to go there.
...file the 1099 to the vendor AND the US Government and file when you get to $600 or more....
This is how gun and ammo purchases are going to be tracked.
Again, someone has thought this through and it wasn't Obama or Van Jones.
Sorry to keep posting but things are becoming too obvious.
Whiskey:
Thank you for your respectful reply. This will be my last post on Commodore because I want to explain why I felt you slighted it and clear a few things up.
I felt you slighted it by comparing it to all those other internet start ups that gained tons of publicity but never produced a product or a profit.
Commodore was not an internet start up, it was originally a calculator and business machine company that branched into computers in the late 70's. For the first 7 years or so of this shift it grew rapidly and had many successes , destroyed TI and most of its other competitors in the burgeoning home computer market, and even scared Apple quite a bit as it was beating Apple in sales for a few years in the early 80's.
IBM wasn't scared, but IBM was mostly in a different market then, as you know -business pc's , mostly costing not hundreds but thousands of dollars. Commodore later did make some clones, like HP and the rest, but it was never a big competitor in the business computer market, partly because it never focused its efforts there.
Amiga first came out in 1985, had an operating system that was similar but better than the MAC and the Atari ST (which was its other competitor) and more to the point had separate processors for sound and graphics. It was far ahead of the Apples and IBM pcs of the time, and cost less partly because Commodore brought the technology and was able to fabricate the chips on its own. So by the time you mention the Amiga, that was a second or third generation Amiga, the computer had already been out for ten years.
I blame the demise of Commodore on the fact that the Amiga wasn't 64 compatible, and even more so that the succeeding ownership after Tramiel (lots of leveraged buyouts and all that fun 80's stuff) never really put money into pushing it in the US, indeed, they seemed surprised it caught on in Europe.
Financial people running a hardware company is never a good thing in my view.
Anyway, that's it for my defense of Commodore. Thank you for not taking offence, I'm just a geek who STILL occasionally runs a Commodore 64.
By the way, the way Merril Lynch handled its data analysis is both smart and fascinating. Too bad the others weren't really ready to look under the hood. Thanks for that fascinating explanation.
Clarence
FWIW, the EPA plans to ban lead-based ammunition, effectively ending Private Gun Ownership.
While Hot Air (Allahpundit) thinks Obama will sign any over-ride, he would have instructed the EPA not to make waves in the first place right before the Midterms. I fully expect the NRA to come out against almost all Dems on this issue, the EPA to issue the ruling, and Obama to veto any law over-riding it.
Obama either figures "something will turn up" or he will be worshipped as "awesome" by the media in 2012, or he does not plan to do anything than the full Jonestown. I.E. Martial Law, etc.
I don't know about generational conspiracies, I do sense that most White women find most White guys too effeminate and "nice" (they have a point, but they largely created it) if you watch TV advertising. Where the White guy is an idiot and the non-White guy cool and competent. NBC's "Outsourced" is a good example of that and look later this week for a column on NBC's loser schedule and what it says about the attitudes of elites.
"This is how gun and ammo purchases are going to be tracked."
Dude, the gummint already makes you fill out a form whenever you buy a gun. And I don't buy ammo in greater than $600 amounts at a time anyway.
"FWIW, the EPA plans to ban lead-based ammunition, effectively ending Private Gun Ownership."
Cor-Bon manufactures ammunition that is lead-free.
Let's not forget, fellows, that the industry that is now going to be (further) deluged by "affirmative action"/anti-white man hiring policies is already majority female in most fields. They also earn the majority of accounting degrees. Observe this link to hear it out of the horse's own mouth: http://www.catalyst.org/publication/245/women-in-financial-services
This is nothing more than female supremacist warfare. It cleanly reveals their agenda, shed of all its hypocritical and transparent babble about "equal rights". But who is going to challenge it? Almost no females will, that's for certain.
I have no problem with them making a "diversity" dept or what have you, so long as it's race and gender neutral. This way when women end up making up too much of an office, men can call them out on it and force their hand. Anything less is not equality and is actually just special privilege.
Whiskey,
The "Green Bullet ban was aborted by the EPA late Friday.
It made the guns rights e-mail chain lists Tuesday, the the gun rights blog sites Wednesday, the Investor's Business Daily and other op-eds Thursday, the talk radio in a big way Friday as the NRA came out and openly "dis-endorsed" Senate Majority Leader Reid.
In addition to Reid bitching to the Obama Administration about making Angle a "mistake proofed" opponent for gun huggers to part their votes with, I think here were two other factors at work.
First, I think someone poll tested a question about the EPA Lead Ban -- to gauge effect of the primal scream from the Gun-huggers -- for the DNC Thursday night.
Second, rural environmentalists all over the West were having heart attacks and screaming loudly about the ban.
Sports hunters are environmentalists biggest political allies in Western states. The Lead Bullet ban was going to turn sports hunters into their blood enemies. Especially since Lisa Jackson already had a very bad history with hunters:
http://www.nssfblog.com/tag/lead-ammunition/
With the fall hunting season fast approaching, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Lisa Jackson, who was responsible for banning bear hunting in New Jersey, is now considering a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) – a leading anti-hunting organization – to ban all traditional ammunition under the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976, a law in which Congress expressly exempted ammunition. If the EPA approves the petition, the result will be a total ban on all ammunition containing lead-core components, including hunting and target-shooting rounds. The EPA must decide to accept or reject this petition by November 1, 2010, the day before the midterm elections.
Losing sports hunters in rural majority states also kills Democratic Senate chances in the West, as Sen. Reid well appreciates.
The Obama Administration -- urban leftists all -- usually is stone post deaf such things and they acted very fast to stop it.
I suspect the Rural environmentalist crowd and Reid got to the EPA and not the Obama Administration.
I also think it does not matter at this point, if the talk I heard from friends who went out target shooting this a week end is any indication.
The Urban House Democratic caucus has been introducing bills to prohibitively tax & regulate bullets purchases and reloading equipment for the last 14 years. This EPA thing was straight out of the Gun-hugger's worst nightmares about Democrats.
Grass roots Gun-huggers have been activated in a very big, very angry, very scared, way, minus the fund raising opportunity for the NRA and other big established gun rights lobbies.
This will be apparent in the voting returns counted on Nov 2, 2010 (and later).
Have you noticed how some Republicans joke about how useless universities' ethnic/gender studies departments supposedly are? Guess who will staff these diversity offices.
Too bad it's impossible to determine how much the "diversity recession" was already underway because of mandatory hiring preferences. These are surely a drag on local government efficiency too.
It's possible that the eclipse of the white athlete is also due to the influence of Title IX regs. These closed down many uniquely male sports which attracted athletes who would later prove competitive cross-overs in the big spectator sports.
Since Title IX shut down their attractive options, instead of honing their bodies and social skills these potential athletes likely just stayed home and played video games.
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