† Is This Any Way To Run A Transition?: Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. Trade lawyer Eric Hirschhorn - tapped by President Barack Hussein Obama to head a Commerce Dep’t division that monitors exports of technology, software and items that can be used for both commercial and military purposes - represented a U.S. client that made shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria. Two other clients were Hong Kong firms on the Commerce Department's "entity list" of companies subject to strict export licensing rules, because of their ties to a company in Dubai that manufactured parts found in roadside bombs that have killed and maimed American soldiers and civilians in Iraq, reports The Washington Times.

† The Keystone Kops Are Enforcing U.S. Immigration Laws: James Tomsheck, an assistant commissioner with U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Office of Internal Affairs, testified before a Senate subcommittee that the agency lacks funds and personnel to perform polygraph tests and background checks on new hires. As a result, corrupt agents are manning checkpoints along the southwest border. The Associated Press reports:

[O]nly about one in 10 of the new hires for agency jobs are given polygraph tests, and of those, 60 percent are deemed unsuitable for employment. …

"That 60 percent number is alarming to me," said U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who chaired the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration.

An AP investigation tallied corruption-related convictions against more than 80 enforcement officials at all levels - federal, state and local - along the southwest border since 2007.

Since 2003, 129 customs officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested on corruption charges, said Tom Frost, the Department of Homeland Security's assistant inspector general for investigations. That figure included the northern border and other ports of entry. …

The corruption activities "encompass almost every layer of the DHS border security strategy," including employees stationed away from the border, but with access to sensitive information.

They have used that access to "to [sic] vet drug trafficking organization members, track investigative activity, and identify individuals cooperating with the government," Frost said.

† Only The Little People Pay Taxes: According to U.S. Labor Department data, as the ax was falling at corporations from coast to coast, the public sector has been largely untouched. In addition, government workers earn significantly more on average than the taxpayers who are paying their salaries, reports The Washington Times:

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses. …

After shedding 3.8 million net jobs during 2008, private employers slashed an additional 4.7 million last year. During the same two-year period, the public sector, including the federal government, gained more than 100,000 jobs. The combined work forces of state and local governments added 35,000 jobs during the 2008-09 period.

While private-sector jobs declined in every state except North Dakota over the previous 12 months, public-sector employment increased in 23 states, the Labor Department report showed. Even in North Dakota, as the private work force gained 300 jobs over the past year, the government sector surged by 1,000 new workers.

† Putting The “Boo” In Boomer: Or, should that be getting the poo out of boomers? Prune juice purveyor Sunsweet Growers “wants to capture the growing ranks of boomers who may be increasingly in need of the the [sic] product's digestive properties” reports brandchannel:

“The timing is perfect” for a new marketing push behind prune juice, Stephanie Harralson, Sunsweet Juice product manager, told brandchannel, “because people are looking for natural solutions for their health, and prune juice is just prunes and water – so it’s a totally natural product that works."

Sunsweet published a freestanding insert in newspapers nationwide last summer and “had a really good response from it,” Harralson said. And now the brand plans to contemporize the packaging of its prune juice in a way that plays to its “taste appeal,” she said.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Always Remember And Don’t Ever Forget): The Swedish parliament has voted in favor of a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. The motion also calls the mass murders of Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks by Ottoman Turks a genocide – and rightly so (the Christians were killed off, which is why modern Turkey is 99.8 percent Muslim). Four center-right politicians voted with the opposition, and the resolution passed by one vote, reports The Local, an English-language news site based in Stockholm:

Left Party foreign policy spokesperson Hans Linde expressed his view that the time had come for Sweden to take a stand on the issue.

"Firstly, to hinder any repeat and to learn from history. Secondly, to encourage the development of democracy in Turkey - which includes dealing with their own history. Thirdly, to redress the wrongs committed against the victims and their descendants," Linde said. …

According to Sweden's Living History Forum, most researchers are now in agreement that the massacres constituted genocide according to the accepted 1948 UN definition. The exception to this is Turkish researchers. The Turkish government has never recognized the events as a genocide and it is illegal in Turkey to claim that it occurred.

The Living History Forum is a Swedish public authority which works with issues on tolerance, democracy and human rights from both a national and international perspective.

Predictably, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan canceled his visit to Stockholm next week for a summit between Sweden and Turkey.

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item, Mortgage Loan Modification Less Than Advertised): The Washington Post reports that the housing market will be hurting for years to come:

About 5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale. Some economists project it could take nearly three years before all these homes have been put on the market and purchased by new owners. And the number of pending foreclosures could grow much bigger over the coming year as more distressed borrowers become delinquent and then, if they can't obtain mortgage relief, wade through the foreclosure process, which often takes more than a year to complete. …

This "shadow market" reflects the increasing lag between defaults and foreclosures. Many lenders are struggling to keep up with the overwhelming number of borrowers who can't make their payments, and they're reluctant to rush repossessed homes onto the market when prices are depressed. …

The borrowers in trouble now are, for the most part, people who have better credit and safer loans and have become delinquent because they've lost their jobs or are dealing with other economic setbacks, economists said. More than 75 percent of the borrowers who are now seriously delinquent - meaning they have missed at least three monthly payments - have traditional prime loans, according to First American CoreLogic. …

It can take a borrower six to seven months to find out whether he or she qualifies for a permanent loan modification under the federal foreclosure relief program, Making Home Affordable, according to Barclays Capital. …

"Lenders are deluged by late-stage delinquencies. The pent-up foreclosure inventory is there," said Massoud Ahmadi, director of research for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.

The uptick in foreclosure sales is helping depress Maryland home prices, he said. "We have seen that home sales are on an upswing, but prices are on a downswing. That is the impact of the shadow inventory. It is keeping prices down," Ahmadi said. …

[T]he backlog will hang over some communities for years. By the end of 2012, 39 percent to 50 percent of home purchases in Phoenix will still be foreclosed properties, J.P. Morgan Chase has estimated. In Los Angeles, they'll account for 28 percent of home sales.

†Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Garbage In, Garbage Out: Part II): The Kansas City school board is closing down 28 of its 61 schools – and this time, the move is being welcomed by education experts and the local teachers’ union, reports The New York Times:

Students have been leaving the Kansas City public schools in droves. Close to 18,000 students exited to better suburban districts or charter schools in the last 10 years alone. The student enrollment is now 17,400 children, who are mostly black and impoverished. …

Fewer than a third of elementary students in the city schools read at or above grade level. And in most of the schools, fewer than a quarter of students are proficient at their grade levels.

Faced with a $50 million deficit in its $300 million budget, the district decided to close the schools. The plan also calls for the elimination of 700 of 3,000 jobs, including teaching positions.

Education experts praised the new schools superintendent, John Covington, who was hired in April from the Pueblo, Colo., school district where he was also superintendent, for pushing for change. A former principal and teacher, Dr. Covington spent months researching and writing the Right-Sizing plan, and managed to win a 5-to-4 majority from the board.

Previous superintendents had failed in similar efforts to downsize the district. …

“We have buildings that are half empty,” said Andrea Flinders, the union president. “We recognized that schools needed to be closed, but the board wasn’t willing. This board is different.”

If the schools had fallen into bankruptcy, as was predicted before the closings, the state would have seized control, and made changes as it saw fit.

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, The Right To Bear Arms Belongs To Us All: Part II): The Washington Times comments on all the heat that packing heat has generated:

If you want to have a nice, relaxing cup of coffee in a safe environment, try Starbucks. … Starbucks is letting customers openly carry guns in its stores. Americans thus can enjoy their rights and wash them down with a Frappuccino. …

The Brady Campaign warns businesses that allowing customers to carry guns will scare away other customers. Yet it seems pretty obvious that the businesses themselves - despite all the pressure they face from trial lawyers and bureaucrats to ban guns - are in a much better position to know what their customers want.

Hollywood and the liberal media have skewed public perceptions to such a degree that most Americans probably don't realize that not so long ago, people openly carried guns without a second thought all the time. Up until 1969, all but one of the public high schools in New York City had rifle teams. Thousands of students carried their rifles every day on subways, buses and streets on their way to school, when they went to practice in the afternoon and on their way home. The students would store their guns in homerooms in the morning and then pick them up in the afternoon. In more normal times, no one thought it was a big deal.