Freedomshift

Once again it seems cash is king if the housing recovery is to continue. Despite the surge in prices that we saw yesterday that reflected the long-forgotten days before mortgage rates exploded, the housing recovery meme remains loud and proud. But, mortgage applications are now down for 7 of the last 8 weeks and have collapsed a stunning 29% over that time. - the biggest plunge in 30 months . It appears that the 'rational' buyer has decided that higher rates are not the factor that drives them to snap up that surging priced home? Is it any wonder, as we noted here, in spite of being told every day how 'affordable' housing is with rates this low, their real purchasing power ( given a limited budget as opposed to free money-based finance) has plunged by 16% (for now) . Read more: here

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said a “continuing litany of lies” from senior U.S. leaders prompted his public uncovering of widespread surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and alleged data sharing between large technology companies and the government. In a two-hour online question-and-answer session on the Guardian website, Snowden was asked about a variety of topics that have surfaced since a June 6 article by the UK newspaper that revealed the extent of data collection against Americans . Snowden, a former NSA contractor in Hawaii working for Booz Allen, re-asserted a number of claims including that NSA analysts have the authority and access to wiretap anyone, that he has had no contact with the Chinese government regardless of his self-imposed exile in Hong Kong, and accused the U.S. government of eroding any chance he had a getting a fair trial by labeling him a traitor. Read more: here

by Walter E. Williams Last week a federal judge ordered Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, to be moved to the adult lung transplant list. That gives her a better chance of receiving a potentially lifesaving transplant. Sarah Murnaghan's fate should force us to examine our organ transplant policy. There are more than 88,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list. Roughly 10 percent of them will die before receiving an organ. These lost lives are not so much an act of God as they are an act of Congress because of its 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, as amended, which prohibits payment to organ donors. Reliance on voluntary donations has been an abject policy failure. The mindless ...

A West Side resident and Iraq War veteran with no criminal record is mourning the loss of his rescue dog who was fatally shot during a Buffalo police narcotics raid that apparently targeted the wrong apartment Monday night. Cindy, a chocolate-brown 2½-year-old pit bull, was shot multiple times while chained up in the kitchen of Adam Arroyo’s apartment on Breckenridge Street near Grant Street, he said in a phone interview. The search warrant that police left for Arroyo, who was not at home at the time of the raid, lists the upper apartment at the Breckenridge Street address, but there are two upstairs apartments at that address, and Arroyo insists that police targeted the wrong apartment. Read more: here

David Francis The Fiscal Times Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00 CDT © AP Photo/Gervasio Sanchez    The number of contractors working in Afghanistan now vastly outnumbers American troops stationed there, according to a Congressional Research Service report . CRS, along with the Government Accountability Office , also determined that the Pentagon is unable to properly document the work these contractors are doing. And the information DOD is receiving is often unreliable and inaccurate. According to CRS, there are now 108,000 private workers in Afghanistan, a workforce that dwarfs the 65,700 American troops still stationed there. That means there are 1.6 contractors for every American soldier in Afghanistan. This is an increase from last month, when The Fiscal Times reported that there were 1.4 contractors per American soldier . Given the size of the private forces, it's not surprising that CRS found that in recent years, the Defense Department spent more than any other a...