Banks are now cancelling or freezing existing home equity lines in areas with formerly frothy markets, because they believe that the homeowners owe more than they can pay.
Month: February 2008
McCain Sleaze Update
So, the FEC has said that McCain has opted in for the primary, and that unless the FEC approves his petion to pull out, which it cannot because it lacks quorum, he cannot opt out. (here and here)
The WaPo story has the money quote’
This is serious,’ agreed Republican election lawyer Jan Baran. Ignoring the matter on the grounds that the FEC lacks a quorum, Baran said, ‘is like saying you’re going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town.’
As I’ve said before, if Barack Obama wants an out for the general election, all he has to do is explain that McCain is already violating campaign finance law.
In the matter of inappropriate dealings with lobbyists and their clients, we have broadcast station owner Lowell “Bud” Paxson directly contradicting McCains “no meetings’ statement, and we have letters from McCain threatening the FCC regarding a loophole in regulations that benefited Glencairn Ltd. and Sinclair communications. Glencairn’s lobbyist? Vicki Iseman.
I do not believe that John McCain screwed Vicki Iseman, but I do believe that McCain and Iseman did screw the American public.
Finally, we are starting to see coverage regarding how the national media is in the tank for McCain.
It’s only been 9 years for someone to recognize that.
Shoot me now!
Nader to run again.
Has this self centered, sanctimonious, rat-f&^% done anything useful over the past 8 years?
It’s all about him, I guess.
Adventures in Innovative Labor Organizing
The SEIU-UHW has, over the past 10 years, negociated contracts with nearly 200 hospitals and nursing homes in california so that they expire all at the same time.
This means that they can negotiate with all the institutions at once, and that if any one of them cut a contract, they can use it for pattern bargaining, and that in the event of a strike, the institutions in question cannot simply shift resources to institutions that are not struck.
This is a very savvy move.
Full press release follows:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 11, 2007WORKERS PREPARE FOR LARGEST COORDINATED HEALTHCARE BARGAINING CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY
Event Bringing Together Caregivers from Several States to be Covered by Blogger
OAKLAND — A delegation of 700 healthcare workers from six states will gather in Oakland on Saturday to plan for a coordinated bargaining campaign in 2008, when contracts at more than 200 hospitals and nursing homes will expire, creating an opportunity for caregivers to achieve unprecedented victories for working people across the United States.
The convention in California, to be hosted by SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West, represents the first time that healthcare workers will coordinate their bargaining campaigns on such a massive scale. Caregivers from California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota and Connecticut will participate in the event.
“This meeting represents an unprecedented opportunity for healthcare workers from around the country to work together for improved standards such as the right to stand up for our patients and residents,” said Sal Rosselli, president of SEIU UHW. “Healthcare workers do the same work everywhere in the country, and it only makes sense that we come together to work toward our common goal.”
Healthcare workers at several SEIU local unions plan to coordinate their bargaining campaigns next year, in order to maximize their ability to improve quality care for their patients, raise industry standards and win a voice on the job. More than 150,000 caregivers will benefit from this coordination by achieving the ability to advocate for improved patient care through their union.
Adding a unique twist to the proceedings will be the presence of netroots blogger Elliott Petty of the progressive online California group Courage Campaign, who plans to post live updates to his site, http://couragecampaign.org/page/community/blog/elliottpetty, as the meeting progresses through the day. He will also post at MyDD and Open Left, two major national political blogs.
“I am delighted to have the opportunity to observe, participate, and interact with UHW’s members at this meeting,” Petty said. “The best way to build bridges between labor and the online communities is to engage in actions with each other. Progressives win when we are united, which this effort will help us to be.”
Petty’s participation is an outgrowth of UHW’s involvement with the YearlyKos convention earlier this month, in which UHW leaders met with numerous members of the progressive blogosphere to discuss ways that their online activism can dovetail with the grassroots worker and political organizing of labor unions. The union plans to hold a retreat for progressive bloggers in the fall.
“Our values of member democracy, openness, and dialogue and debate are mirrored by those of the netroots community,” Rosselli said. “We look forward to continuing to work with online activists who share our goals and values.”
Rosselli and several healthcare workers will be available for interview throughout the week and on Saturday.
The 140,000-member SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West is the largest hospital and healthcare union in the western United States and represents every type of healthcare worker, including nurses, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high-quality healthcare for all.
######
SEIU United Healthcare Workers—West, with more than 152,000 members, is the largest and most powerful hospital and healthcare union in the Western U.S. We represent every type of healthcare worker, including nursing, professional, technical and service classifications. Our mission is to achieve high quality healthcare for all.
More on the Siegelman Political Prosecution
Video, with ads, courtesy of 60 Minutes.
$1.2 Billion Gone in Seconds
A B-2 bomber crashed on takeoff at Guam today. Both pilots have ejected safely, though one is still in hospital, listed as “stable”.
$1.2 billion, and 1 of only 21 of the stealth bombers in an instant.
This is why the Air Force’s fascination with silver bullets is so counter productive. You could get 95% of the performance, and many times the numbers, for less than half the price.
Telco Immunity At a Glance
Too true. Too Funny.
Cat Ownership Reduces Heart Attack and Stroke Risk
A University of Minnesota study indicates that cat owners are less likely to die from heart attacks or strokes.
Non-cat owners, including people who kept dogs as pets, were 30-40% more likely to die of these conditions.
I, for one, appreciate the benefits of my feline overlords.
Neat Astronomical Pic
According to El Reg, New Scientist descriped it as looking like the great eye of Sauron
Clico image for big honking version (2400 x 3000, around 1 meg)
Senator Barbara Mikulski Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass
A week or so ago, I sent an email to my Senators regarding the FISA update and Telco immunity.
I congratulated Ben Cardin, and castigated Senator Barbara Mikulski for their votes on telco immunity, which is really all about covering up the misdeeds of the Bush administration.
Here is her response, and my comments, which I’m not sending, because it won’t do any good:
Thank you for getting in touch with me to express your concerns about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). I appreciate learning of your views about this important matter.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am very aware that terrorists plan and intend to harm the United States and the American people. I hear about these threats every day – and I take them very seriously. Yet I agree with you – that even as our nation faces new threats, Constitutional protections must be safeguarded.
Which is why she decided to allow the phone companies to Hoover the records of every call in the US and all the internet traffic.
To quote Keith Olbermann:
Mark Klein is the AT&T whistleblower who appeared on this newscast last November, who explained, in the placid, dull terms of your local neighborhood I-T desk, how he personally attached all of AT&T’s circuits — everything carrying every phone call, every e-mail, every bit of web browsing — into a secure room…
…Room Number 641-A, at the Folsom Street facility in San Francisco — where it was all copied so the government could look at it.
Not some of it; not just the international part of it; certainly not just the stuff some truly patriotic and telepathic spy might be able to divine had been sent or spoken by or to a terrorist.
Everything.
Every time you looked at a naked picture, every time you bid on eBay, every time you phoned-in a donation to a Democrat.
“My thought was ‘George Orwell’s 1984,’” Mr. Klein told me, reflecting back, “and here I am, being forced to… connect the Big Brother machine.”
You know, Mr. Bush, if Mr. Klein’s “Big Brother Machine” — the one the Vice President conveniently just confirmed for us — if it was of any damn use at all at actually finding anything, you could probably program it to find out who started that slanderous e-mail about Barack Obama.
Your actions are inexcusable and unforgivable.
The FISA Act was created in 1978 to regulate how electronic surveillance was conducted in the United States . This law needs to be updated to account for changes in communications technology over the last thirty years.
I’ve yet to see any reason for this. What FISA says is, “if you think that there is an issue with foreign communications, you get the tap, but a judge has to approve it within 72 hours.
That’s why I voted for a bipartisan bill that updates a number of problems with the existing law. This new legislation (S. 2248) strengthens national security while protecting civil liberties. The bill also strengthens the role of the FISA Court by requiring greater judicial review and improves oversight and accountability of the entire FISA process. The Senate passed S. 2248 by a vote of 68 – 29 on February 12, 2008. One key provision I fought to include in this bill was a requirement that a warrant must be approved by the FISA Court to monitor a U.S. person anywhere in the world. This new protection means that the Constitution travels with you – even beyond the borders of the United States.
Under FISA, you need a warrant within 72 hours for anyone. How is this “stronger”.
I understand your concerns about providing limited liability protection to telecommunication companies who assisted the government’s efforts to disrupt terrorist plots in the days following the attacks on September 11, 2001. While the Bush Administration wanted full retroactive immunity for these companies and any White House employee or government official involved in the warrantless wiretapping program, S. 2248 provides a more narrow, focused, and limited liability protection . I strongly supported an amendment offered by Senator Feinstein that would have required the FISA Court to determine if liability protection should be afforded to these telecommunications companies. Unfortunately, that amendment failed to get enough votes to become part of the bill.
Your ignorance astonishes me. This program did not start, “the days following the attacks on September 11, 2001”, it started in February, 2001, a full 7 months before the attacks, and it is clear now that the administration used threats of retribution on government contracts, as in the case of Qwest to get compliance.
When the Senate debated this bill, I supported this protection because those companies were acting in good faith under assurances from the President and the Attorney General that what they were being asked to do was legal. You should know that I also support holding accountable those Bush Administration officials who disregarded the law under the President’s secret wiretapping program.
These companies have legal departments. They know the law. And they are already protected when they follow the law. If they were told that a FISA warrant was in process, they would be indemnified.
Your claim that you, “support holding accountable those Bush Administration officials who disregarded the law under the President’s secret wiretapping program”, is a lie.
Whats more, in your capacity as a member of the intelligence committee, YOU are one of those people who allowed him to disregard the law.
I have heard from many Marylanders on this important issue and I appreciate hearing of your concerns. While we may disagree on some parts of this reform, we both share the same goal of strengthening national security while protecting our civil liberties.
No, you are interested in covering your ass, in one of the bluest states in the nation against Republican attack ads. That;s why you, and about 1/3 of the Democratic Senatorial caucus folded like broccoli to George W. Bush, who is less popular than hemorrhoids.
Again, thanks for keeping in touch with me. Please let me know if I may be of assistance to you in the future.
Sincerely,
Barbara A. Mikulski
United States Senator
Just so you know, I will never vote for you in a primary or general ever again, nor will I give to an organization that endorses you.
Economics Update
In local finance, we have King County, Washington potentially losing all of a $207 investment, the county claims that they will “only” lose 83 million, the state says all of it.
This will be repeated, and given that the auction rate bond market has collapsed, and localities are fleeing that instrument, their ability to issue bonds will be significantly diminished.
Don’t expect any new money to spent on roads, schools, water, sewer, fire, or police for the next 5-10 years.
In real estate we should note that 8.8 million homeowners, or 10.3% of all home owner are under water. They owe more than they can sell their houses for.
Gas prices hit are way up, which is an ill wind for consumer spending, which counts for 70% of the US economy.
Analysts are warning of risks to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which makes the decision to allow them to finance even larger mortgages appear even stupider.
Fitch Ratings is saying that life insurance companies may take an $8 billion dollar hit on subprime and alt-A real estate investments.
It also looks like we will be seeing downgrades on the monoline insurers within a week or so.
And in hedge funds, we have D.B. Zwirn & Co. seemingly on the path to shutting down. It has shuttered its Special Opportunities Fund, a $4 billion hedge fund. Once it unwinds this, and it may take a while, they have less than $1 billion under management.
We also have Clifford Asness’ AQR Capital Management showing that mathematics based strategies are not working:
Asness’ AQR Capital Management has notified investors that its Absolute Return Fund, long one of Wall Street’s most stellar performing quantitative hedge funds, lost 15 percent of its value through mid-February. The slide follows an 11.9 percent drop through the end of November.
Bloomberg reported Friday that AQR flagship hedge fund now manages $2.9 billion, down from $4 billion.
I think that its clear, and should have been clear after LTCM went belly up nearly a decade ago, that these model based hedge funds don’t work.
The models break down when you get significant swings.
Warners’ $400 Million To Dump HD-DVD
I’m so totally not surprised. Sill makes me wrong on my prediction though.
Economicindicators.gov to Stay Open
it looks like they got a firestorm of criticism, so they have reversed their earlier decision to close the economic stats site.
McCains Denials are False, So Says….John McCain
Michael Isikoff has the goods: McCain’s claims of never talking to anyone from Paxson Communications is false:
A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.
On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.
Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response……
But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”
…
McCain’s subsequent letters to the FCC—coming around the same time that Paxson’s firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign—first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as “highly unusual.”
So, what we have here at best is what he did with Charles Keating, and now he is lying about it.
You have more details on his ties to lobbyists and wealthy pay-to-play campaign contributors here and here.
The Washington Post notes that McCain’s paid campaign staff is full of lobbyists, which kind of means that when AP Reporter Glen Johnson heckled Mitt Romney about not having lobbyist on staff, he was being unfair and unprofessional.
There May Be Tapes of Gitmo Torture
This is very interesting:
Last week, a team of faculty and students from Seton Hall Law School—the folks who’ve worked tirelessly for years to document the government’s best evidence (PDF) against the Guantanamo prisoners—released a new report suggesting that the government has recorded all of the interrogations at Guantanamo. Using documents prepared by the government and obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the team established that all of the 24,000 interrogations conducted at the camp since 2002 were taped. This jibes with reports from the detainees themselves, who came forward to dispute CIA Director Michael Hayden’s claim last winter that the videotaping had been halted in 2002.
Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ 1) Indicted on Charges of Conspiracy, Wire Fraud, Money Laundering, Extortion, and Insurance Fraud
Ricky has been a very busy boy.
He is not running for reelection.
Ex-Gitmo Prosecutor Offers to Testify for Defense
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned from his position as Guantanamo Chief Prosecutor, is offering to testify on behalf of the defense. (here and here)
The defense is arguing that political interference violates the Military Commissions Act, and I expect that Col. Davis will be offering evidence to confirm this.
This is a very brave thing to do.
“I think the rules are fair,” he said. “I think the problem is having political appointees injected into the system. They are looking for a political outcome, not justice.”
He alleges, for example, that senior officials pushed for a plea bargain in March 2007 for Australian David Hicks, allowing him to serve a nine-month sentence in his homeland for aiding the Taliban.
Davis said the sentence was too lenient and was orchestrated to help Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was under criticism domestically for his support of President Bush and U.S. policies.
I hope that his testimony is public, but given the fact that the military has already forbidden him from appearing before congress on this matter.
If I were the defense, I’d get a subpoena, which would make any order for him not to appear illegal.
FEC Chairman Warns that McCain May Be Breaking Campaign Finance Law
FEC Chairman David Mason is saying that his February 6 request to withdraw from the public financing system for the primaries had not been granted.
Technically, the FEC cannot rule on his request to exit the system (he has not technically received any payments), because the Republicans are insisting on appointing electoral terrorist Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC.
Additionally, he agreed to go back into the system if he flamed out in the primaries in order to secure a loan, which may qualify as using FEC money as collateral, which means that he would be bound by the limits, and could not pull out.
One wonders if perhaps the Senate can approve the other three FEC nominees now that McCain is caught up in all this.
Heh.
The MicroFlaccid Clown Show that Is Vista
Yep, their update, Vista SP 1, breaks antivirus and firewall programs, in addition to putting some machines into an endless reboot loop.
A major update to Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system could leave computers vulnerable to hackers and malware as the service pack prevents several widely used antivirus programs from operating, the company said.
The list of security products that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 blocks includes Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008, and BitDefender 10. It also blocks the 2008 version of the Jiangmin antivirus product.
I don’t know of anyone who is using Vista who does not regret it.
Turkey Launches Incursion into Kurdistan
Not good, and the insertion of ground troops into Northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK fighters is likely to destabilize the region, and possibly lead to ethnic reprisals against the local Turkomen.