A report out this week finds that the proportion of US homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than the properties are worth has swelled to about 23 percent nationwide. Some 10.7 million households households had negative equity in their homes as of the end of the third quarter of 2009. Homeowners in Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California are more likely to be deeply under water, according to the analysis. In Nevada, for example, nearly 30 percent of borrowers owe 50 percent or more on their mortgage than their home is worth. In Las Vegas, a home purchased for $530,000 in 2004 is now worth just $300,000.

To put this in context, consider this: the Global Property Guide's quarterly house price report was published today offering some sobering statistics on global real-estate prices in the third quarter. Worse off is Latvia, where homes prices have collapsed this year alone by 59.7 percent. Other hard hit areas include the United Arab Emirates (down -48.1% YTD), Bulgaria (-28.7%), Iceland (-21.2%), Russia (-19.5%) and Slovakia (-15.3%).

Here are the steepest declines in the US Housing Market y/y for 2009:

The Obama Administration announced late today that it will not sign an international convention banning landmines but would send observers to a review conference on the treaty in Cartagena, Colombia. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday that the Administration recently completed a review and had decided not to change the Bush-era policy.

"We decided that our land mine policy remains in effect," he said. "As a global provider of security, we have an interest in the discussions there," Kelly said. "But we will be there as an observer, obviously, because we haven't signed the convention, nor do we plan to sign the convention."

While the United States generally abides by the provisions of the treaty - the US has not used antipersonnel mines since the 1991 Gulf War, has not exported any since 1992 and has not produced them since 1997 - but rather under a 2004 Bush directive reserves the right to use and develop non-persistent (self-destructing/self-deactivating) landmines primarily for use on the Korean peninsula. Additionally, the United States stockpiles some 10 million antipersonnel mines and retains the option to use them.

"This is a default of U.S. leadership and a detour from the clear path of history," Vermont Senator Pat Leahy said in a statement. "The United States is the most powerful nation on earth. We don't need these weapons and most of our allies have long ago abandoned them. It is a lost opportunity for the United States to show leadership instead of joining with China and Russia and impeding progress. The United States took some of the earliest and most effective steps to restrict the use of landmines. We should be leading this effort, not sitting on the sidelines."

More than 150 countries have agreed to the Mine Ban Treaty's provisions to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in mines. Apart from the United States, other holdouts include: China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia. The meeting in Cartagena next week is to assess compliance with the now ten year old ban.

According to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), landmines caused at least 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children. A United Nations report on the impact of armed conflict on children, by Graça Machel, the UN Secretary-General's Expert on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children called landmines "an insidious and persistent danger" to children. An estimated 110 million land-mines of various types remain hidden and unexploded. Once laid, a mine may remain active for up to 50 years.

Three countries - Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia - account for 85 percent of the world's landmine casualties. Angola alone has an estimated 10 million landmines and an amputee population of 70,000, of whom 8,000 are children. Since May 1995 children have made up about half the victims of the 50,000-100,000 anti-personnel mines laid in Rwanda. In Cambodia, an average of 20 percent of children injured by mines and unexploded ordnance die from their injuries. In Afghanistan, there are at least seven million landmines. Landmines remain a problem in at least 68 countries. The cost to remove all 110 million active mines is estimated at approximately $33 billion. Experts believe that under current conditions it would take more than 1,100 years to clear the entire world of mines—provided that no additional mines are planted.

The decision by the Administration is bitterly disappointing.

The self-proclaimed "Mr. Independent" and now twice former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has told a Washington radio station that he is pondering a political future saying that "being in the public arena means you've got to be part of the solution." Don't flatter yourself there Lou. Once a respected business reporter, Dobbs upon his return to CNN transformed himself into an unabashed populist and unrepentant nativist with a new found love for the Middle Class abusing his podium to spread nonsense and flat-out lies. His program devolved into an on-going sideshow that was little more than a forum to bash immigrants of Hispanic descent.

On a number of occasions from 2005 on, Dobbs on his program bemoaned that illegal immigrants were one-third of federal prison population. But the actual number of those born on foreign soil whether here legally or without documentation was 27 percent of the federal prison population. Moreover because immigration violations are federal crimes, Federal prison have a higher percentage of immigrants than state or local prisons. There are some 111,000 illegal immigrants serving time in state and local prisons and jails in the US out of a prison population of over 1.8 million. That's more like six percent.

And there were the outrageous charges of immigrants spreading leprosy. In 2005, during an segment on threats to public health from illegal immigration, one of Mr. Dobbs’s correspondents said there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years. Exposed as a lie by Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes, Mr. Dobbs chose to simply double down. The night after the Stahl profile, back on his own program, the same CNN correspondent who had done the earlier report, Christine Romans, repeated the 7,000 number, and Mr. Dobbs added that, if anything, it was probably an underestimate. Well leprosy, technically called Hansen's Disease, peaked in 1983, when there were 456 cases. After that, reported cases dropped steadily, falling to just 76 in 2000. In the year of his report there were 137 cases. To get to that 7,000 number, one would have to add up all the cases since 1975, a span of over 30 years, not three. It was demagogy at its most blatant worse.

Still it appears that Mr. Dobbs is seriously considering a 2012 run against Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey as "an intermediary step" towards the Presidency. Lou Dobbs, ¿el presidente? Ay ya yay.

There's more at the New York Times.

Police have determined that the Kentucky census worker whose death became a national news story in September took his own life.

According to the Associated Press, a news release from Kentucky State Police says investigators believe [Bill] Sparkman acted alone in setting the scene. They also say he had recently taken out two life insurance policies.

Because of the way Sparkman's body was found, I wrongly assumed he had been murdered. Apologies for jumping the gun on that one.

I stand by my view that conservatives should stop making paranoid allegations about the census and avoid the rhetoric of armed rebellion when talking about political opponents.

Approximately 1 million temporary workers will be hired next year to conduct the census. They will be trained to deal calmly with people who express hatred for the government.

Update [2009-11-24 21:00:02 by Nathan Empsall]: Well this is big news. And I'll echo what desmoinesdem said: mea culpa and apologies for jumping the gun myself as well. I too stand by my point that the behavior of the fringe can lead to violence, but thankfully this was not, as we had each assumed, an example of such. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.

The Judiciary subcommittee of the South Carolina House began its hearings today on the resolution to impeach Governor Marshall (Mark) Sanford, which was introduced last week. The resolution seeks to remove the two-term Republican governor, whose term expires in January 2011 and is ineligible for re-election, for disappearing from the state for five days in June to visit his Argentine mistress in Buenos Aires.

The Judiciary subcommittee hopes to finish its work before Christmas. Its recommendation then would go to the full House Judiciary Committee. If that committee votes to impeach Sanford, the resolution would go to the full House. If the full House passes the resolution, it would go to the South Carolina Senate, which would try Sanford. If convicted, he would be removed from office.

Most observers believe that Governor Sanford's impeachment is unlikely.

Separately, the State Ethics Commission has charged Governor Sanford with breaking state ethics laws 37 times, including using state planes for family trips, spending campaign funds on a hunting trip and flying first class, instead of coach, while on state travel. The State Ethics Commission released its findings on Monday after a three-month investigation. In January, a panel of the State Ethics Commission will hear charges against the Governor on these ethics violations charges, which carry a possible fine of $74,000.  The Ethics Commission charges allege that:

- Sanford flew business or first class 18 times between 2005 and 2009 while on state business. Those trips included travel to Europe, Asia and South America. State law requires officials to choose the most economical fare unless there is an urgent reason to do otherwise.

- Sanford used state aircraft for personal travel nine times between 2005 and 2008, including a book signing, a birthday party for a contributor, a son's sporting event and a family getaway to Georgia.

- On 10 occasions, Sanford took money from his campaign account, donated by supporters, and improperly spent it on personal uses, including an Irish hunting trip and a GOP governors meeting in Miami. The money in question, a total of $2,940.68, was spent between 2006 and 2009.

More on this story at The State. The full complaint in pdf form is here.

Just over a week after unconceding the race in the NY-23 and after charging electoral fraud, the Conservative Party candidate and Tea Party darling Doug Hoffman has again conceded the race. It's enough to give one whiplash. From Politico:

"Yesterday, the remaining ballots were counted in the 23rd Congressional District special election. The results re-affirm the fact that Bill Owens won," Hoffman said in a statement this afternoon.

"Since, the morning of November 4th, many of my supporters have asked me to challenge the outcome of this race. Their concerns centered on the veracity of the new voting machines used, for the first time, in the majority of the eleven counties that make up the Congressional District. Over the past three weeks, we nearly cut Bill Owens' lead in half. Sadly, that is not enough."

As of Monday, Democrat William Owens leads the race by 3,397 votes, with 628 absentee ballots left to be counted. Mr. Owens led, according to unofficial election night results, by 5,335 votes, but a recheck of the machine vote in the 11-county district put the gap at 2,864 votes. The Democrat has added 533 votes during counting of absentee, emergency and affidavit ballots, which started November 17th. That's right, Hoffman actually lost ground as the absentees were tallied.

Congressman Owens now has 72,711 total votes, or 48.3 percent, while Hoffman has 69,314 votes, or 46 percent. Republican Dede Scozzafava, who suspended her campaign three days before Election Day after being hounded by the Tea Party set, has 8,619 votes, or 5.7 percent.

In his written concession, Hoffman made no mention of the electoral fraud charges that he leveled last week.

PPP polled the 2010 Wisconsin Senate race (Nov. 20-22, MoE: ±3.5%), and the results show Feingold strongly leading not only declared candidates (Wall, Westlake) but also winning against a potential candidacy from former Wisconsin governor and HHS secretary Tommy Thompson. SSP breaks it down:

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 50
Tommy Thompson (R): 41
Undecided: 10

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 48
Terrence Wall (R): 34
Undecided: 19

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 47
Dave Westlake (R): 32
Undecided: 21

Against Thompson, Feingold leads among independents 47-41. And even though Obama's approval has fallen to 47-47 in Wisconsin, Feingold still enjoys an 8-point, 45-37 percent approval margin.

And while Wall and Westlake are still largely unknown entities to Wisconsin voters, Feingold's relationship with his constituency is unusually strong, especially for a Senator (he solidly exceeded Kerry's Wisconsin margin of victory in 2004). Any challenger will need a silver bullet to even make a dent.

Update [2009-11-24 13:24:23 by Josh Orton]: As a local footnote, it's relevant to call attention to a poll conducted in late September showing Thompson actually leading Feingold in a hypothetical match.

The poll enjoyed a veneer of credibility since UW-Madison professor Ken Goldstein sponsored the poll. The problem? The UW's co-sponsor was the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a conservative, free-market think tank (its magazine features such headlines as "How Teachers Learn to be Radicals" and "Under Fire: How Should Conservatives Respond to a Hostile Liberal Takeover?").

While an ideological co-sponsor isn't necessarily proof of a poll's bias (i.e. Markos' polls are airtight), the results in this case are problematic - both because it's unclear who actually conducted the poll (WPRI says only that Goldstein "directed" it) and because, unlike Markos, neither entity released the full poll results.

Why Professor Goldstein would agree to such an un-academic practice is beyond me, especially when he's coupling the UW's name with such a clearly ideological co-sponsor.

Update [2009-11-24 16:16:30 by Josh Orton]: Looks like September's UW/WPRI poll blatantly neglected to screen for likely voters. Why is the University of Wisconsin's Political Science department enabling conservative propaganda? This was a hit poll.

The Commerce Department has revised its original estimate for GDP growth downwards from 3.5 percent to 2.8 percent. From the New York Times:

The nation's gross domestic product -- the total value of goods and services in the economy -- rose at an annual rate of 2.8 percent from July through September, the Commerce Department said, falling short of the 3.5 percent originally reported last month. The revised number, based on more complete data, was in line with analyst expectations.

But even though growth was slower, the third quarter still marked the end of the longest economic contraction since World War II, with the economy expanding for the first time in a year.

Much of the growth can be attributed to the billions of dollars the federal government has pumped into the economy as it seeks to mitigate the effects of a deep recession.

Popular government-financed initiatives, like a credit for first-time home buyers and the cash-for-clunkers program, have helped prop up spending in crucial sectors. But the nation is still grappling with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years, hampering efforts to persuade consumers to open their wallets again.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that consumer spending in the third quarter increased 2.9 percent, falling short of the 3.4 percent it reported last month. That number worried some economists, who said it was below healthy margins and lower than the levels seen in 1983, when unemployment was equally high. Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of the economy.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the initial fiscal stimulus was insufficient, the labor markets remain weak and though the rate of bleed has slowed the economy continues to shed jobs. Moreover, the average length of unemployment is at a record high. Thirty-eight percent of the unemployed have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.