Month: September 2014

Finally!

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The FTC is suing brand name drug makers over their payments to generic drug manufacturers to delay their production:

For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that so-called pay-to-delay deals may be subject to greater antitrust scrutiny, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit charging drug makers with violating anti-trust laws and hurting consumers in their collective pocketbooks.

Specifically, the agency charged several drug makers – including AbbVie ; Abbott Laboratories , which spun off AbbVie, and Teva Pharmaceuticals – for striking deals that delayed the availability of the widely promoted AndroGel testosterone replacement therapy, a $1 billion seller.

“We believe the defendants’ anticompetitive conduct has forced consumers to overpay hundreds of millions of dollars for this medication,” FTC chairwoman Edith Ramirez told the media in a briefing, in which she noted the agency hopes to force the drug makers to disgorge “their ill-gotten gains.”

In these deals, a brand-name drug maker settles with a generic rival in exchange for ending patent litigation and launching a copycat medicine at a future date. The pharmaceutical industry contends the deals are not only legal, but actually allow drugs to reach consumers faster than if litigation continued.

Also known as reverse payment settlements, the deals emerged as an unintended consequence of the Hatch-Waxman Act that was designed to accelerate access to lower-cost generics. An FTC report in 2012 found there 40 potential pay-to-deals, up from 28 the year before.

The Supreme Court ruling, which reviewed a lawsuit brought by the FTC against Actavis, was a boost to the agency, because it supported the contention that pay-to-delay deals may violate antitrust laws and, effectively, allowed the FTC to pursue lawsuits against drug makers.

………

In its lawsuit, the FTC charges that AbbVie, Abbott and Bevins Healthcare filed “sham” patent litigation against potential generic rivals, including Teva, and then entered into an allegedly illegal patent settlement in order to thwart competition.

I’ve said it before (like the post just before this one):  Our current model of capitalism is a harmful and corrupt system that resembles nothing more than the book Lord of the Flies.

Welcome to Amazon, Washington Post Employees

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Now that he has the Washington Post, he is getting ready to treat them like his Amazon employees:

The Washington Post announced large cuts in retirement benefits on Tuesday, declaring that it would eliminate future retirement medical benefits and freeze defined-benefit pensions for nonunion employees.

The company also said that in negotiations that started Tuesday, it will seek to impose the same conditions on employees covered by the union — one of the first indications of how The Post’s new owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, will manage relations with the staff of the news organization.

The changes will hit hardest at employees hired before 2009 who could plan on receiving pension payments based on their income and years of service. Each of those employees could see scores — or hundreds — of thousands of dollars less over the course of a retirement. More recent hires do not have traditional pension plans.

Here is the kicker:

The Post’s existing pension plan was about $50 million, or approximately 20 percent overfunded, last Oct. 1 when Bezos bought The Post.

No money problems, he just wants to loot the WaPo pension fund, because that’s what capitalists do.

Anglo-Saxon hypercapitalism is a truly nasty piece of work.

Nope. Not at All Like a Brush War in Indochina.

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The inimitable Charlie Pierce pulls some quotes from the early 1960s:

My Esky colleague John H. Richardson whiles away the slow days by immersing himself in recently declassified CIA documents. (Buy his book to find out why, dammit.) This is a very valuable habit he has, at least to those of John’s friends who write political blogs for a living. So, the other day, he hipped me to some recently declassified CIA material, specifically National Intelligence Estimates dated April 17, 1963 and titled “Prospects In South Vietnam.” These concerned, among other things, the CIA’s assessment of the relative strength of the Viet Cong in our adopted Indochinese client state. There’s some material that seems almost unbearably sad in retrospect:

We believe that Communist progress has been blunted and that the situation is improving. Strengthened South Vietnamese capabilities and effectiveness, and particularly US involvement, are causing the Viet Cong great difficulty, although there are as yet no persuasive indications that the Communists have been grievously hurt.

………

For weapons, ammunition, and related supplies, the Viet Cong rely primarily upon capture from government forces.

………

Nevertheless, the heavy US involvement and close working relationships between US and Vietnamese personnel have fundamentally altered the outlook…Developments in the past year or two have gone some distance in establishing a basis for winning over the peasantry and in improving the efficiency and the civilian bureaucracy…

………

Developments during the last year or two also show some promise of resolving the political weaknesses, particularly that of insecurity in the countryside, upon which the insurgency has fed. However, the government’s capacity to embark on the broader measures required to translate military success into lasting political stability is questionable.

History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

We are so f%$#ed.

Nope, no Racism Here

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A Wisconsin militia group is planning send armed representatives to target black voters on election day:

A visit to the group’s Facebook page features makes it clear exactly who they are targeting. All of the pictures on the page feature African-Americans. The group is trying to get African-Americans who may have outstanding warrants arrested in order to keep them from voting. The group wants people to report those they suspect of having warrants out on them to the police on election day, “Do the community a favor and keep an eye out for people wanted on warrants and report them to the police on election day.”

The “poll watchers” also plan on harassing and following people who they suspect of being wanted on warrants to their homes. The plan seems to be to use the police to intimidate African-Americans into not voting in November’s election.

The group admits that they are targeting Democrats. They aren’t exactly subtle in making it clear that they are targeting African-American voters. The scheme is an attempt to intimidate African-American voters while getting around the Voting Rights Act. The point of this campaign isn’t to get felons off the streets. The “poll watchers” are trying to keep African-Americans away from the polls.

The party of Abraham Lincoln is now the party of Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest.

My first thought was that there ought to be a law against this.

My second thought was Google it and see if there is a law against this.

It turns out that there is, 18 U.S. Code § 594:

Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose, or of causing such other person to vote for, or not to vote for, any candidate for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner, at any election held solely or in part for the purpose of electing such candidate, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

 I might suggest that these guys might need some scrutiny from Federal authorities.

I’m just saying.

(BTW, I did Google this story, and the word “Hoax” and got nothing but right wingers kvetching)

Oh Crap, the Balloon has Gone Up

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We are now bombing ISIS targets in Syria:

The United States stepped up its war against the Islamic State militant group, launching air strikes on targets in Syria for the first time.

The Pentagon press secretary, rear admiral John Kirby, confirmed that the US and allied nations sent fighter jets, bomber aircraft and Tomahawk missiles in an operation against Isis that he described as “ongoing”.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated that Raqqa, a Syrian stronghold of Isis, was among the targets of the operation, which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning local time.

The first wave of strikes finished about 90 minutes later at around 10pm EDT (2am GMT), but the operation was expected to continue for several more hours,

Airstrikes against Isis targets in Iraq, which began on 7 August, now occur daily. Of Syria, the official said: “If we need to go daily, we will.”

The US was joined in the Syria operation by Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, an official said.

This will be going on for months before we see any meaningful impact in Iraq.

(Update)

It appears that F-22s were used in a combat role for the first time, which means one or two things:

  • The USAF is itching to show off their latest bling.
  • The Syrian Foreign Ministry’s claims that they were notified about the strikes (no link, I heard it on Maddow) is not true, and the F-22s were used because of their radar evading capabilities.

I’m pretty certain about the first point, and less so about the second.  Basic physics would have the F-22 more vulnerable to longer wave (VHF) radars than the B-2, which does not appear to have flown sortees, and the Syrians do have VHF radars.

Also, despite the USAF trying to kill the aircraft for the past 30+ years,  A-10s Warthog close support aircraft are being deployed to the Middle East. (So not a surprise)

Not Enough Bullets………

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Disgraceful

Various regulators tell us that there is no t need to send the banksters to jail, because the fines are deterrence enough.

Guess what? Those same regulators end up never collecting those fines:

On a plane earlier this week, I watched The Wolf of Wall Street. The film’s outsized antics—public masturbation, the tossing of little people, lots and lots of Quaaludes—seemed too big for a seatback screen, or, for that matter, reality. As despicable as some of Jordan Belfort’s behavior was, I was able to occasionally laugh at Leonardo DiCaprio’s version of him knowing that, by now, more than 10 years after his real-life sentencing, Belfort has been sufficiently punished.

But in fact, that’s hardly the case: After pleading guilty to fraud and money laundering, Belfort was ordered in 2003 to pay out about $110 million to those he wronged. Since then, he’s only paid $11.8 million. He was also sentenced to four years in federal prison, but he only ended up serving just shy of two years.

………

Belfort’s relatively consequence-free story is only one of the more prominent ones in a parade of aggravating numbers reported on earlier this week by The Wall Street Journal. There’s still $97 billion out there in penalties that the Justice Department has failed to recover, and between September 2012 and September 2013, the department collected only 22 percent of penalties doled out. One particularly demoralizing figure was that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had collected about a tenth of a percent of the $3.7 billion owed to wronged investors.

So how do convicted felons go about avoiding their payments? Take the case of Paul Bilzerian, who owed the Securities and Exchange Commission $62 million and paid only $3.7 million over the course of 25 years. (The Journal reported a few days ago that the SEC was officially giving up on getting any more money from him, after having spent $8.6 million to get the meager amount that they did obtain.)

Bilzerian has systematically thwarted federal prosecutors by building a web of trusts, partnerships, and corporations established in sketchy tropical locales. He has passed on cash and assets to his sons. He delayed prosecutors for years with a bankruptcy filing. And he has transferred ownership of his 28,000 square-foot home to trusts that were owned by, at various times, his in-laws and his neighbor’s mom. “Do you think I’d be stupid enough to have a bank account?” Bilzerian told a Journal reporter.

So, someone gets caught selling a dime bag, they take everything through asset forfeiture, but this guy is living in the lap of luxury.

You know, these guys are economic terrorists.

Why can’t we drone them?

My Mom Once Threatened This

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Only it was the threat to hand out a Marxist tract on Atheism, not Church of Satan children’s activity book:

The Satanic Temple has responded to an Orange County, Florida decision to disseminate religious materials in public school by creating complementary materials that espouse the philosophy and practice of Satanism.

Last month, a Florida judge ruled that if the Orange County school district allowed Christian groups to disseminate Bibles and Christian-oriented religious materials in its schools, it would also have to allow atheist groups to do the same.

David Williamson of the Central Florida Free Thought Community — who recently fought against Brevard County’s attempt to ban atheists from offering invocations at public meetings — sued the district over its initial unwillingness to allow atheist literature with titles like “Jesus Is Dead” and “Why I Am Not a Muslim” in the schools.

A judge dismissed that case after the school board decided to allow the materials.

The Satanic Temple took advantage of this decision, deciding to flood Orange County schools with a pamphlet entitled The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities [as an aside, it is far less interesting than I had hoped] that contains kid-friendly Satanic lessons.

My mom had a similar experience dealing with the Charlottesville school system, when my little big brother refused to take a bible, he was called a “Heathen,” my mom complained, and was told that recent court decisions allowed this.

My mom replied that this would require similar access to hand out the aforementioned Marxist tracts, and superintendent decided that, in the future, no one should hand out religious literature at school.

Concept of the Day

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Edifice Complex:

Term coined by the lawyer and historian Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London (John Murray 1958, Houghton Mifflin, 1962) referring to the tendency of successful organizations to build new headquarters just before they begin to decline. See New Headquarters/Office Syndrome, Shiny; Business Week, Curse of.

I’m beginning to think that this has the germ of an investment strategy.

More Feet of Clay from the American “Educational Reform” Establishment

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What a surprise, the favorite project of corporate schooling advocate, and Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is an abject failure:

The Obama administration’s signature $4 billion Race to the Top initiative, designed to spur far-reaching education reforms across the country and raise student achievement, is largely a failure, an analysis released Thursday concludes.

Most winning states made what the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education labeled “unrealistic and impossible” promises to boost student achievement in exchange for prizes that were ultimately paltry in comparison with their pledges.

But three years in, Race to the Top hasn’t spurred states to address what really is behind students’ poor academic performance: poverty and the associated lack of opportunities that accompany it, said Elaine Weiss, national coordinator of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Her group advocates for a more targeted focus on poverty over the current slate of education reforms involving testing and accountability.

The Department of Education rejected the report’s conclusions, saying it’s seeing promising signs of improvement in student achievement in Race to the Top states and warning that it’s too early to draw sweeping conclusions. Some state officials also said they are finding the competition useful.

Of course, this assumes that the real goal of the corporate driven education reform is actually to improve education, and not simply an excuse to allow Wall Street to asset strip yet another segment of our society.

I do not share the optimism of  Broader, Bolder Approach to Education.  I have concluded that it is about private profits, and not an honest desire to improve American education.

I Finally Know Where it Comes From!

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The first chopping motion is at 1:18

I’ve always wondered where the chopping motion on his arm that David Byrne uses in the video for Once in a Lifetime.

I just came across an interview where the Talking Heads front-man explains the meaning:

Pitchfork: I just had one last question. A friend of mine played a show in Providence and went to a hot dog stand. They’re in a band, so the hot dog stand guy says, “Oh, David Byrne used to work here. We’ve been here 30 years and he worked at this hot dog stand.” And at this place, when they do the hot dogs, they line them up on their arm and they take the condiments and they go like this [I make a chopping gesture along my arm, as seen in the video for “Once in a Lifetime”]. “That’s where he got that!”

DB: I did work at a hot dog stand, a place called New York System, where you put the hot dogs on your arm like that. But I got that thing from, I saw these Japanese kids dancing in the park in Tokyo, these kind of rockabilly dancers, and then there were these kind of space cadet kids that had a completely different set of movements. I videotaped a bunch of them, and that’s where I got that.

So, now you know too.

Normally, I do not Give a Rats Ass About Miss America, but ………

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The fact that the right wing Christofascists are freaking out because the new Miss America worked for Planned Parenthood is positively delicious:

If you thought her less than mind-blowing performance of “Happy” had Miss America fans in a snit, wait till they find out where Kira Kazantsev used to work.

The newly crowned beauty queen has opponents of reproductive choice up in arms this week over revelations that her résumé includes a stint with Planned Parenthood. LifeNews’ Steven Ertelt fumed Monday, “The woman representing the nation as the new Miss America interned for the very organization that has killed millions of Americans in abortions.” Other conservative sites have also quickly found themselves up in arms over Kazantsev’s past – Truth Revolt gasps that “Our new Miss America once interned for Planned Parenthood and she displays it proudly for all the world to see,” while Live Action News notes that “The new Miss America is an abortion supporter who worked for Planned Parenthood” and lists “her job duties at the company that snuffs out of the lives of young baby girls.” Right on cue, the outrage has now spilled over onto social media, with various patriotic Americans declaring sentiments like, “She should’ve been disqualified for Miss America.” Because the only choice for Miss America is an anti-choice Miss America.

In her LinkedIn profile, Kazantsev mentions a three-month internship with a Hempstead branch of the organization last year. She says she “Assisted delivery of programs in local public schools, teaching children about mutual respect & self-esteem” and “Conducted research on Planned Parenthood Education.” Sounds like baby killing to me! More damningly still, she’s also interned for Kirsten Gillibrand, who notoriously holds the public position that “a woman’s medical decisions should always be made between her, her family, and her doctor – not by politicians.” And as an intern for Solidarity Strategies, Kazantsev worked on political campaigns including that of pro-choice congresswoman Annie Kuster.

Awww ……… The poor little Talibaptist’s feelings are hurt.

You like a hot cup of f%$# you with that?

Ah Hell!

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Despite the International Whaling Commission ruling to the contrary, the Japanese are going back to hunting whales:

Japan announced Thursday that it will restart its scientific whaling program next year in response to a new resolution adopted by the International Whaling Commission placing stricter regulations on scientific whaling.

This new nonbinding resolution—proposed by New Zealand—adopts the criteria used by the UN’s International Court of Justice earlier this year when it ruled that Japan’s current whaling program was not scientific. (See “Japan Halts Whaling Program in Response to International Court Ruling.”)

The new guidelines establish criteria for the International Whaling Commission’s (IWC) scientific committee to consider when it reviews whaling plans submitted by member countries. The criteria include consideration of whether a program needs to lethally sample whales to obtain data, how many whales a scientific program will take, and whether the number to be taken is justified.

At this week’s IWC meeting, Japan’s representatives stated the country’s intention to revamp its scientific program based on “international law and scientific evidence.” They planned to submit their proposed program to the IWC’s scientific committee this fall, with the aim of conducting scientific whaling next year.

The Japanese have years worth of whale meat stockpiled, because Japanese tastes have changed, but they insist on whaling, because ……… Well, just because.

And people wonder why the hell that everyone else in Asia has never forgiven them for their war crimes in WWII.

I’m thinking that the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society should start mounting guns and torpedo tubes on their ships.

Air Force TaliBaptist Leadership Caves Over Oath

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After spending nearly a month threatening people who refused to swear to God to reinlist, the USAF has reversed itself:

The Air Force has withdrawn a requirement that all airmen who take the oath of enlistment and officer appointment conclude with “so help me God,” the service announced Wednesday.

 The Air Force previously allowed airmen to omit those words, but removed that option in October based on its interpretation of 10 U.S.C. 502, 5 U.S.C. 3331 and Title 32, which contain the oaths of office. The Navy, Army and Marine Corps allow their service members to omit “so help me God,” spokesmen for all three services told Air Force Times last week.

 The Air Force sought a legal review of the rule by the Defense Department’s General Counsel on Sept. 9, five days after the American Humanist Association announced it was representing an unnamed atheist airman, stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, who was denied reenlistment for refusing to say, or sign a form, stating “so help me God.”

 Monica Miller, an attorney with the AHA’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center said the association would give the Air Force until Sept. 19 to reverse course.

 On Tuesday, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the service was “making the appropriate adjustments to ensure our Airmen’s rights are protected.”

“We take any instance in which Airmen report concerns regarding religious freedom seriously,” James said in the release announcing the change, which is effective immediately.

Translation: We never thought that anyone would notice our attempt to go all Taliban on the Air Force, and we are very sorry that we got caught.

Whichever General Officer signed off on this abomination should be fired, as in no pension.

Kansas Supreme Court Slaps Down Kris Korbach’s Election Shenanigans

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The court ruled unanimously that Democrat Chad Taylor’s name has to be dropped from the ballot as he requested:

The Kansas Supreme Court on Thursday sided with the Democratic candidate for Senate in his attempt to drop off the November ballot, creating a tougher contest for the Republican incumbent, Pat Roberts, in a race with a strong independent candidate.

But the Kansas secretary of state, Kris Kobach, a Republican who had fought the withdrawal, said afterward that Democrats would have to pick another candidate, adding to the uncertainty about whose names would appear on the ballot.

Noticed the last bit?

Where Korbach is now insisting that the Democrats will have to nominate a replacement, something he never brought up during arguments?

I understand the electoral dynamics. 

The current polls show that Pat Roberts wins in a 3-way race,  and gets demolished in a 2-way race, but this is not an excuse for the secretary of state to be so blatantly corrupt.

Here is hoping that Kris Korbach ends up like disgraced former Kansas AG Phill Kline, who was disbarred.

What Barack Obama Says About Isis is Nothing Like What LBJ Said About Vietnam

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With both the House and Senate approving funds to train “moderates” in Syria:

President Obama’s plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels exposed a deep rift Thursday among Democrats over waging war, with a large bloc of liberals staunchly opposed to the modest mission, fearing another long-term engagement in Iraq.

 While the Senate sent the measure Thursday to the White House for Obama’s signature, votes this week demonstrated the tenuous support he has from his own party in carrying out the mission to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State forces. Several of the party’s rising stars, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, rejected the proposal, while in the House, Obama’s proposal won approval only because a vast majority of Republicans backed him.

 Many rank-and-file Democrats who did support Obama said they expect a broad debate in November and December, after the midterm elections, so that legislation can be approved to place broad constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to carry out the operation and set a specific deadline for the mission’s end.

 After the votes, Obama thanked Congress “for the speed and seriousness with which they approached this issue” and noted that “a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate” had voted to train and equip the rebels.

Note that 10 Democrats, and 12 Republicans voted against, and most of them did because they do not think that arming the rebels will work.

The history of the Syrian civil wars that you can characterize the participants as follows:

  • The murderous Assad Regime
  • Radical Islamic Jihadis bent of a sectarian war. (Jabhat al-Nusra, Jaysh al-Islam, etc.)
  • People who scare the crap out of Radical Islamic Jihadis bent of a sectarian war. (ISIS/ISIL/IS/Dawlah l-ʾIslāmiyyah/Whatever the f%$# they want to be called)
  • The completely ineffective Free Syrian Army.
  • Exiles, who, as Machiavelli predicted, have no clue as to what is going on in country, and will saying to get support.

The union of “moderate” and “functional military force” is a null set.

The New York Times editorial board feels the same way, calling this strategy a “risky bet“.

But we will train them, because Obama has strenuously insisted that there will be no boots on the ground.

Of course, LBJ said something very similar on October 21, 1964, “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

The historical echos are not reassuring.

I would bet dollars to Navy beans that we will have troops on the ground and in combat in Iraq by the end of the Obama administration.

Bullsh%$

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Eric holder is now saying that the DoJ will finally start prosecuting bankers:

The Justice Department has launched criminal fraud investigations of individuals at Wall Street firms, with the hopes of filing formal charges in the coming months, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday.

“We are making good progress in these cases, which involve conduct that has undermined the integrity of our markets,” Holder said at New York University Law School.

The nation’s top prosecutor did not go into detail about the inquiries, but people familiar with the cases say the probes involve the possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion global foreign-exchange markets.

At least seven banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Barclays, disclosed in regulatory filings last year that “various government authorities” had requested information about their trading activities. Bank employees have turned over information to U.S. authorities about the trading scheme, according to people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigations.

If any person is criminally prosecuted, it will be the little fish, and any settlement will be small enough to be dismissed as a cost of doing business, and any admission will be minor enough that no bank will lose their dollar clearing privileges.

This is theater.

Lucy will pull away the football, again.

If Eric “Place” Holder or Barack Obama were interested in prosecuting law breakers on Wall Street, they would already have done it.

There is no interest in this administration in prosecuting the general criminality that is the US financial industry.

H/t CT at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

The Prosecutor for the Ferguson Shooting is Throwing the Grand Jury Investigation

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It has become patently transparent that even inside the beltway know-nothing Dana Milbank feels compelled to call this out:

What happened in Ferguson, Mo., last month was a tragedy. What’s on course to happen there next month will be a farce.

October is when a grand jury is expected to decide whether to indict the white police officer, Darren Wilson, who killed an unarmed black teenager by firing at least six bullets into him. It’s a good bet the grand jurors won’t charge him, because all signs indicate that the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert McCulloch, doesn’t want them to.

The latest evidence that the fix is in came this week from The Post’s Kimberly Kindy and Carol Leonnig, who discovered that McCulloch’s office has declined so far to recommend any charges to the grand jury. Instead, McCulloch’s prosecutors handling the case are taking the highly unusual course of dumping all evidence on the jurors and leaving them to make sense of it.

McCulloch’s office claims that this is a way to give more authority to the grand jurors, but it looks more like a way to avoid charging Wilson at all — and to use the grand jury as cover for the outrage that will ensue. It is often said that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it to. But the opposite is also true. A grand jury is less likely to deliver an indictment — even a much deserved one — if a prosecutor doesn’t ask for it.

McCulloch has done this before:

……… During his tenure, there have been at least a dozen fatal shootings by police in his jurisdiction (the roughly 90 municipalities in the county other than St. Louis itself), and probably many more than that, but McCulloch’s office has not prosecuted a single police shooting in all those years. At least four times he presented evidence to a grand jury but — wouldn’t you know it? — didn’t get an indictment.

This is rather unsurprising.

DA’s don’t want to prosecute cops in the first place, they have to work with them, and McCulloch has a particularly bad record in terms of prosecuting police misconduct .

The fix is in.

Kraptacular Kris Korbach Kaves Kravenly

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I don’t know who got pictures having sex with a billie goat, but the Kansas secretary of state has capitulated on the withdrawal of the Democratic candidate for Senate, and will send out absentee ballots without a Dem in that race:

In an apparent reversal, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office is instructing election officials in the state to send out overseas military ballots without Democratic Senate nominee Chad Taylor or any other Democratic Senate candidate listed.

Kobach spokeswoman Samantha Poetter confirmed to TPM that the ballots would be sent out by Saturday, the deadline under state and federal law.

“Our ballots are going out without Chad Taylor (or any Democratic candidate) for U.S. Senate,” Poetter said. “They’ve been ordered to send them out as soon as possible.”

TPM obtained a copy of the official order sent to local election officials.

“The list does NOT contain the name of a Democratic nominee for United States Senate,” the order said. “There are three candidates, Randall Batson, Libertarian, Greg Orman, independent, Pat Roberts, Republican.”

They will be going out with some sort of disclaimer about the courts possibly ordering a new ballot, but this I really don’t see this particularly likely.

Here is hoping that this entire mishugas will serve to turn off the voters, Korbach is up for reelection, and the race is close.