Month: July 2017

Linkage

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A good essay on swords, though katana lovers might object to some of the characterizations:

    Not a Good Prognosis

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    This is a very aggressive cancer, and typical survival rate after diagnosis is around a year and a half:

    Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, his office said Wednesday, throwing into doubt when and if he will return to Washington to resume his duties in the Senate.

    The Mayo Clinic said doctors diagnosed a tumor called a glioblastoma after surgery to remove a blood clot above McCain’s left eye last week. The senator and his family are considering treatment options, including a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, according to the hospital.

    McCain, 80, has been away from the Senate this week, recovering from the surgery and undergoing tests. His office issued a statement describing him “in good spirits” and noting that his doctors say his underlying health is excellent — but not indicating when he will return to the Senate.

    Glioblastoma is an aggressive type of brain cancer, and the prognosis for this kind of cancer is generally poor. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) survived less than 15 months after his was found in 2008. McCain’s doctors said the “tissue of concern” was removed during the blood-clot procedure.

    In the best case, McCain is unlikely to be back in Washington for a while, which would make things even worse for Mitch McConnell in his attempts to corral votes.

    Damn

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    Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee said on Tuesday that Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan stripped her amendment, which would have repealed authorization for the use of military force against ISIS, from a defense-spending bill.

    “Ryan stripped my 01 AUMF repeal amdt from DOD Approps in the dead of night. This is underhanded & undemocratic. The people deserve a debate!” she tweeted Tuesday night.

    Lee’s amendment, which received bipartisan support, would have repealed the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and made Congress pass another one to continue the campaign against ISIS.

    You knew that this was going to happen.

    If the Republicans weren’t willing to repeal the AUMF under Obama, who they loathed,  they won’t do it now.

    It is cowardice.

    Because of the 2001 AUMF, they don’t have to vote to authorize the next war, and the members of Congress do not want to own that decision.

    Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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    Clearly a Conscientious Officer

    A police officer in Baltimore was filmed planting evidence on his body cam.

    He was unaware that the camera constantly recorded video, and saved the 30 seconds before the camera was turned on, and a sharp eyed public defender spotted this:

    ………

    Now there’s word of another such incident in Baltimore, related to video from a January drug arrest. The officer’s trickery was revealed by the fact that his body cam retained footage for 30 seconds before it was activated to begin recording. During that time, according to the footage and the Baltimore public defender’s office, officer Richard Pinheiro puts a bag of pills in a can in an alley and walks out of the alley.

    The Axon cam’s initial 30 seconds of footage, by default, doesn’t have sound. After 30 seconds, viewers of the video can both see and hear the officer looking for drugs in the alley. Lo and behold, he finds them in the same soup can that he placed them in, according to the footage, which was released Wednesday. Pinheiro can then be heard yelling “yo” to his fellow officers, telling them he found drugs in the alley.

    The Baltimore Police Department said Wednesday it was investigating the matter, and the three officers seen in the video. The Baltimore public defender’s office discovered the incident when reviewing body cam footage while preparing to defend an upcoming drug prosecution.

    The footage paved the way for the authorities to drop charges against the drug suspect, who had remained jailed since January on $50,000 bail he could not post. The Baltimore public defender’s office said the officer in question is a witness in as many as 53 other active cases, according to the Baltimore Sun.

    (emphasis mine)

    Why this officer, and the two other cops in the film, haven’t been charged is completely beyond me.

    There is clearly probable cause sufficient for the state’s attorney to get an arrest warrant by all three officers.

    Most likely the police commissioner and the state’s attorney are busy trying to figure out what the absolute minimum to deal with this issue, because covering up for bad cops is what the authorities do.

    If they are forced to prosecute by public pressure, I expect the case to be mismanaged, because they will play to lose.

    True

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    The founder of the Russian punk bank Pussy Riot, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, is saying that liberals are using Putin as a scapegoat to avoid looking at the problems of the Democratic party.

    Considering the fact that Putin had her thrown in jail for over a year for their protests of his regime, it is a remarkable statement:

    Sirota: Do you believe the American political class and media exaggerate the threat of Putin for its own ends?

     Tolokonnikova: Yeah. They’re just looking for a scapegoat and, you know, for Trump it’s Muslims and Mexican workers. And for liberal media in America it is Putin.

    I’ve been saying this for how long?

    I Have Heard This Story Before

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    Because what is going on in student loans looks a lot like the dodgy documentation that have been a feature of mortgages over the past few years.

    This all very similar to the clusterf%$# that is MERS that I have been writing about for years:

    Tens of thousands of people who took out private loans to pay for college but have not been able to keep up payments may get their debts wiped away because critical paperwork is missing.

    The troubled loans, which total at least $5 billion, are at the center of a protracted legal dispute between the student borrowers and a group of creditors who have aggressively pursued them in court after they fell behind on payments.

    Judges have already dismissed dozens of lawsuits against former students, essentially wiping out their debt, because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. A review of court records by The New York Times shows that many other collection cases are deeply flawed, with incomplete ownership records and mass-produced documentation.

    Some of the problems playing out now in the $108 billion private student loan market are reminiscent of those that arose from the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago, when billions of dollars in subprime mortgage loans were ruled uncollectible by courts because of missing or fake documentation. And like those troubled mortgages, private student loans — which come with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections than federal loans — are often targeted at the most vulnerable borrowers, like those attending for-profit schools.

    At the center of the storm is one of the nation’s largest owners of private student loans, the National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts. It is struggling to prove in court that it has the legal paperwork showing ownership of its loans, which were originally made by banks and then sold to investors. National Collegiate’s lawyers warned in a recent legal filing, “As news of the servicing issues and the trusts’ inability to produce the documents needed to foreclose on loans spreads, the likelihood of more defaults rises.”

    National Collegiate is an umbrella name for 15 trusts that hold 800,000 private student loans, totaling $12 billion. More than $5 billion of that debt is in default, according to court filings. The trusts aggressively pursue borrowers who fall behind on their bills. Across the country, they have brought at least four new collection cases each day, on average — more than 800 so far this year — and tens of thousands of lawsuits in the past five years.

    ………

    In her defense, Ms. Watson’s lawyer seized upon what he saw as the flaws in National Collegiate’s paperwork. Judge Eddie McShan of New York City’s Civil Court in the Bronx agreed and dismissed four lawsuits against Ms. Watson. The trusts “failed to establish the chain of title” on Ms. Watson’s loans, he wrote in one ruling.

    ………

    Judges throughout the country, including recently in cases in New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas, have tossed out lawsuits by National Collegiate, ruling that it did not prove it owned the debt on which it was trying to collect.

    ………

    National Collegiate’s beneficial owner, Mr. Uderitz, hired a contractor in 2015 to audit the servicing company that bills National Collegiate’s borrowers each month and is supposed to maintain custody of many loan documents critical for collection cases.

    A random sample of nearly 400 National Collegiate loans found not a single one had assignment paperwork documenting the chain of ownership, according to a report they had prepared.

    (emphasis mine)

    People who say that our financial industry must be free to innovate need to look at sh%$ like this.

    To quote Paul Volker, “The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.”

    *Saroff’s Rule: If a financial transaction is complex enough to require that a news organization use a cartoon to explain it, its purpose is to deceive.

    What a Delicate Snowflake

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    Donald Trump is refusing to make a state visit to the UK until he gets promises that he won’t see protestors.

    If he cannot handle some protestors carrying signs, how can he be expected to fight terrorists?

    Donald Trump reportedly told Theresa May he will not make a state visit to the UK until he is guaranteed a “better reception”.

    The US President asked the Prime Minister to prepare a “warm welcome” before he agrees to set a date, it has been claimed.

    The pair spoke on the phone to discuss the planned state visit, which has now been postponed until next year.

    “I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa,” Mr Trump told Ms May, according to a transcript of the conversation seen by The Sun.

    Ms May replied: “Well, you know what the British press are like.”

    But Mr Trump added: “I still want to come, but I’m in no rush.

    “So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier.

    “When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before.”

    Narcissistic cowardice is no way to run a foreign policy.

    FAIL

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    Two more Republicans have come out against the Senate version of Trumpcare, which means that even with the tie breaking vote of Mike Pence, they are two votes short to passing their healthcare clusterf%$#:

    Two more Senate Republicans have declared their opposition to the latest plan to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, potentially ending a months-long effort to make good on a GOP promise that has defined the party for nearly a decade and been a top priority for President Trump.

    Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) issued statements declaring that they would not vote for the revamped measure. The sudden breaks by Lee, a staunch conservative, and Moran, an ally of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), rocked the GOP leadership and effectively closed what already had been an increasingly narrow path to passage for the bill.

    They joined Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Susan Collins (Maine), who also oppose it. With just 52 seats, Republicans can afford to lose only two votes to pass their proposed rewrite of the Affordable Care Act. All 46 Democrats and two independents are expected to vote against it.

    Republicans, who have made rallying cries against President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care law a pillar of the party’s identity, may be forced to grapple with the law’s shift from a perennial GOP target to an accepted, even popular, provider of services and funding in many states, which could make further repeal revivals difficult.

    They are running into a classic problem from history:  Invading barbarians tear things down, but then find that they can neither build nor maintain things, and so they cannot maintain control.

    The Republicans are constrained by their philosophy, they have come to believe that government is an unalloyed evil, and as such they cannot propose something that might be seen as an improvement by all but the most delusional right wingers.

    Unfortunately, those, “Most delusional right wingers,” have large enough numbers within the party to swing a primary, but there aren’t enough to swing a general election. (They already vote ‘Phant in the general now)

    Mitch McConnell, meet the Kobayashi Maru.

    The Problem Was the Original Purchase

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    Austria will be removing the Eurofighter Typhoon from service ahead of schedule because they have found it too expensive to operate:

    It is a matter of concern for an aircraft manufacturer when one of the richest countries in the world declares its fighter is too expensive to operate.

    But then Austria is a something of a special case. Critics generally agree that the landlocked neutral state probably never really needed the 15 Eurofighter Typhoons it ordered in 2003.

    In Austrian hands, the advanced multirole fighter, originally designed to tackle the latest Russian threats, has been relegated to an interceptor role, with many of its advanced electronic warfare systems removed.

    I don’t get why they bought the aircraft in the first place.  It’s not like Slovenia is going to invade them any time soon.

    My suggestion would be to replace it with an inexpensive subsonic aircraft, something like the BAE Hawk, but if they feel compelled to go with a supersonic aircraft to deal with the threat from Switzerland or Italy, I would suggest the Chinese/Pakistani JF-16, which is less than half the purchase price of western aircraft.

    But even in this case, to quote Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

    Headline of the Day

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    Legal Arguments in “Monkey Selfie” Case Are Bananas at Hearing

    —Hollywood Reporter

    The nut-jobs at PETA are suing to assign copyright to the monkey because, well, QED.

    There are some legitimate copyright issues involved with this photo, the photographer is arguing that he holds copyright even though it was a crested black macaque that actually pressed the shutter button.

    He has lost to this point, and said crested black macaque, not being a human, has been deemed unable to hold a copyright, so it’s in the public domain.

    Of course, PETA saw fit to invite itself to this, and move a marginally interesting point of law into a freak shot, because ……… PETA.

    One of My Coping Mechanisms

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    The past week was not (and hasn’t been for my adult life) a good time for me.

    So, today, I decided to do something that I haven’t ever done before culinarily, home pickling. 

    It gets my head into a better place.

    I did the whole megillah, using Ball (mason type) jars, to create a pickle that does not need refrigeration.

    It’s a canned pickle.

    I used Romanesco “Fractal” broccoli, but I am also going to do carrots, green beans, normal broccoli, zucchini, yellow squash, and Brussels sprouts, because I have a sh%$ load of pickling brine left over.

    I used pickling spice, bay leaves, chipolte peppers, juniper berries, dill, salt, apple cider vinegar, and garlic in the brine, and in about 1/3 of the jars, I added some sugar for sweet pickles.

    Linkage

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    Morgan Freeman as you’ve never heard him before:

    Betsy Devos, War Profiteer ……… And Zombies

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    As you may be aware, Betsy Devos’ brother is Eric Prince, who runs the mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater.

    What you may not know is that the Trump administration is talking with Prince about increasing the mercenary involvement in Afghanistan, and that Betsy DeVos has invested in another mercenary firm run by her son in law:

    Department of Education Secretary and billionaire heiress Betsy DeVos invested in a defense contracting firm owned by her son-in-law at the same time her brother was helping the Trump administration craft a new Afghan war strategy — one that called on the military to use more private contractors.

    Betsy DeVos invested between $100,000 and $250,000 in LexTM3, LLC in May according to U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) disclosure reviewed by the International Business Times. (Disclosure forms give only a range for the value of purchases.) LexTM3 is a defense contractor led by CEO and co-founder Nate Lowery, DeVos’ son-in-law. The company has received 70 contracts worth $1,425,248 from the Defense Department since the company formed from the merger of Lex Products Corp and TM3 Systems Inc. in September 2015.

    DeVos has invested repeatedly in LexTM3 since Donald Trump became president. Disclosure forms show she invested between $250,001 and $500,000 in LexTM3 in February and in March, and between $100,001 and $250,000 in April. This is all after she disclosed that she owned a total of between $1,000,001 and $5,000,000 worth of the company in an initial disclosure form submitted the day before Trump took office in January.

    But DeVos’ most recent investment was filed with the OGE on May 30, the day before her brother Erik Prince published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for a new approach to the Afghan war and urging the U.S. military to use “cheaper private solutions.”

    It’s repulsive, but by the standards of the Trump family, members of the Trump administration, and her own family (Eric Prince and Nate Lowrey are renting out mercs for a living) she’s a piker.

    And zombies.

    Another Corporate Parasite On the Taxpayer Dole

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    It turns out that the US Post Office is subsidizing Amazon’s deliveries. Specifically, the USPS has been under-allocating fixed cost to its package delivery for years, and Amazon is the primary beneficiary:

    In my neighborhood, I frequently walk past “shop local” signs in the windows of struggling stores. Yet I don’t feel guilty ordering most of my family’s household goods on Amazon. In a world of fair competition, there will be winners and losers.

    But when a mail truck pulls up filled to the top with Amazon boxes for my neighbors and me, I do feel some guilt. Like many close observers of the shipping business, I know a secret about the federal government’s relationship with Amazon: The U.S. Postal Service delivers the company’s boxes well below its own costs. Like an accelerant added to a fire, this subsidy is speeding up the collapse of traditional retailers in the U.S. and providing an unfair advantage for Amazon.

    ………

    In 2001 the quantity of first-class mail in the U.S. began to decline thanks to the internet. Today it is down 40% from its peak levels, according to Postal Service data. But though there are fewer letters to put into each mailbox, the Postal Service still visits 150 million residences and businesses daily. With less traditional mail to deliver, the service has filled its spare capacity by delivering more boxes.

    Other companies, such as UPS and FedEx , compete with the Postal Service to deliver packages. Lawmakers, to their credit, wanted a level playing field between the post office and its private competitors. The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act made it illegal for the Postal Service to price parcel delivery below its cost.

    ………

    In 2007 the Postal Service and its regulator determined that, at a minimum, 5.5% of the agency’s fixed costs must be allocated to packages and similar products. A decade later, around 25% of its revenue comes from packages, but their share of fixed costs has not kept pace. First-class mail effectively subsidizes the national network, and the packages get a free ride. An April analysis from Citigroup estimates that if costs were fairly allocated, on average parcels would cost $1.46 more to deliver. It is as if every Amazon box comes with a dollar or two stapled to the packing slip—a gift card from Uncle Sam.

    Amazon is big enough to take full advantage of “postal injection,” and that has tipped the scales in the internet giant’s favor. Select high-volume shippers are able to drop off presorted packages at the local Postal Service depot for “last mile” delivery at cut-rate prices. With high volumes and warehouses near the local depots, Amazon enjoys low rates unavailable to its competitors. My analysis of available data suggests that around two-thirds of Amazon’s domestic deliveries are made by the Postal Service. It’s as if Amazon gets a subsidized space on every mail truck.

    The US Post Office has been subsidizing package delivery for decades, and it has continued to do so even though this was forbidden by Congress in 2006.

    This is not surprising.  It is a feature of the current economy that subsidies (copyright, patent, implicit bailouts, the Pentagon, stadium deals, etc.) are at the core of the businesses of the big players in almost any US industry.

    The fact that they are taking from the rest of us for their profits is a major driver of inequality.

    Call Your Congressmen and Senators, and Tell Them No

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    In rather unsurprising news there are some Democratic Senators looking to cut a deal with Republicans on healthcare.

    At the top of the list, of course, is Democrat in Name Only (DINO), and father of the price gouging CEO of Mylan Pharmaceuticals, Joe Manchin will give a bipartisan gloss to something aweful.  Primary him, and failing that vote republican

    With Senate Republicans struggling to cobble together the votes needed to pass an Obamacare replacement measure, bipartisan talks on health care legislation have picked up pace on Capitol Hill.

    Multiple lawmakers and high-level congressional aides have told The Daily Beast that moderates from each party have begun taking the temperature of the other side for a more modest approach to reforming the health care system. Aides and lawmakers insist that these talks are in their nascent stages. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), in an interview, odescribed them as both informal and ephemeral.

    Any Republican plan will kill tens of thousands of people a year, and engaging in some narcissistic strutting to polish your bipartisan street cred is intellectually, morally, and politically bankrupt.

    Obamacare sucks, but any Republican plan will make it far worse.

    Barring anything that directly moves a public healthcare solution, like adding a public option, the response to Republicans has to be no.

    The Real Trump-Russia Connection

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    Like pretty much every major player in the real estate market in New York City, Trump aggressively aided the Russian mob in laundering their proceeds through property purchases:

    In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.

    A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.

    If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.

    In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.

    ………

     The very nature of Trump’s businesses—all of which are privately held, with few reporting requirements—makes it difficult to root out the truth about his financial deals. And the world of Russian oligarchs and organized crime, by design, is shadowy and labyrinthine. For the past three decades, state and federal investigators, as well as some of America’s best investigative journalists, have sifted through mountains of real estate records, tax filings, civil lawsuits, criminal cases, and FBI and Interpol reports, unearthing ties between Trump and Russian mobsters like Mogilevich. To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin. So far, when it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, there is no smoking gun. 

     But even without an investigation by Congress or a special prosecutor, there is much we already know about the president’s debt to Russia. A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.

    (emphasis mine)
    Some observations:

    • You cannot be a major real estate developer in New York City and not have made some sort of  accommodation to the mob.
    • Much of the appreciation of real estate in NYC (and London and Miami) has occurred only because of money laundering operations.
    • Trump has deliberately structured his real estate operations (“anonymous buyers”) to benefit as much as possible from dirty money.
    • There is a f%$# load of dirty money in Russia looking for a safe home.

    This is something that an enterprising reporter could have covered during the election, but they were all to busy covering Trump’s latest tweets.

    Seriously, This ain’t rocket science,* this is just decent shoe leather reporting.

    I get that everyone goes to J-School imagines themselves meeting with Mark Felt (Deep Throat) in a parking garage, but most good reporting is an artifact of hard work, connecting the dots, and understanding the institutions that you are investigating.

    *Full Disclosure, in 1999-2000 and 1996-1998, I worked as a mechanical engineer for what is now Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, and I have some claim to actually having been a rocket scientist.