Author: Matthew G. Saroff

We are F%$#ed

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The Gulf Stream


Warmest year ever, but northeast, and the ocean just off of Greenland coast hit the coldest ever

A recent study shows that the Gulf Stream flow has decreased more in the past 100 years than at any time in the past 1000+ years:

Possible changes in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) provide a key source of uncertainty regarding future climate change. Maps of temperature trends over the twentieth century show a conspicuous region of cooling in the northern Atlantic. Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered. This time evolution is consistently suggested by an AMOC index based on sea surface temperatures, by the hemispheric temperature difference, by coral-based proxies and by oceanic measurements. We discuss a possible contribution of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet to the slowdown. Using a multi-proxy temperature reconstruction for the AMOC index suggests that the AMOC weakness after 1975 is an unprecedented event in the past millennium (p > 0.99). Further melting of Greenland in the coming decades could contribute to further weakening of the AMOC.

All I can see is the abstract, the article requires cash, but a number of locations have written about in a somewhat more accessible format:

Welcome to this week’s installment of “Don’t Mess with Geophysics.”

Last week, we learned about the possible destabilization of the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica, which could unleash over 11 feet of sea level rise in coming centuries.

And now this week brings news of another potential mega-scale perturbation. According to a new study just out in Nature Climate Change by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a group of co-authors, we’re now seeing a slowdown of the great ocean circulation that, among other planetary roles, helps to partly drive the Gulf Stream off the U.S. east coast. The consequences could be dire – including significant extra sea level rise for coastal cities like New York and Boston.

A vast, powerful, and warm current, the Gulf Stream transports more water than “all the world’s rivers combined,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But it’s just one part of a larger regional ocean conveyor system – scientists technically call it the “Atlantic meridional overturning circulation” — which, in turn, is just one part of the larger global “thermohaline” circulation (“thermohaline” conjoins terms meaning “temperature” and “salty”).

For the whole system, a key driver occurs in the North Atlantic ocean. Here, the warm Gulf Stream flows northward into cooler waters and splits into what is called the North Atlantic Current. This stream flows still further toward northern latitudes — until it reaches points where colder, salty water sinks due to its greater density, and then travels back southward at depth.

This “overturning circulation” plays a major role in the climate because it brings warm water northward, thereby helping to warm Europe’s climate, and also sends cold water back towards the tropics. Here’s a helpful visualization, from Rahmstorf and the Potsdam Institute, of how it works: ……… (see top pic)

………

The system above has a key vulnerability. What keeps everything churning in the North Atlantic is the fact that cold salt water is more dense than warm water — so it sinks. However, if too much ice melts in the region — from, say Greenland — a freshening of the cold salt water could occur. If the water is less salty it will also be less dense, reducing its tendency to sink below the surface.

………

Rahmstorf points to a recent release by the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, finding that the winter of December 2014 through February 2015 was the warmest on record for the globe as a whole. However, there were several anomalies — not just a cold winter for the eastern U.S., but also record cold temperatures in the middle of the North Atlantic: ……… (see bottom pic)

………

However, there are many other effects, ranging from dramatic impacts on fisheries to, perhaps most troubling of all, the potential for extra sea level rise in the North Atlantic region.

That may sound surprising, but here’s how it works. We’re starting out from a situation in which sea level is “anomalously low” off the U.S. east coast due to the motion of the Gulf Stream. This is for at least two reasons. First, explains Rahmstorf’s co-author Michael Mann of Penn State University, there’s the matter of temperature contrast: Waters to the right or east of the Gulf Stream, in the direction of Europe, are warmer than those on its left or west. Warm water expands and takes up more area than denser cold water, so sea level is also higher to the right side of the current, and lower off our coast.

“So if you weaken the ‘Gulf Stream’ and weaken that temperature contrast…sea level off the U.S. east coast will actually rise!” explains Mann by e-mail.

This is going to get amazingly ugly.

I Bet Jon Stewart is Having 2nd Thoughts About Retiring Now

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This really is TedCruz.com

Ted “Tailgunner” Cruz, has become the first candidate to formally announce that he is running for President:

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas announced on Monday morning that he would run for president in 2016, becoming the first Republican candidate to declare himself officially in the race.

 Linking the determination of his immigrant father with the resolve of the founding fathers and his own faith in “the promise of America,” Mr. Cruz spoke at length about his family and his faith as he laid out a case for his candidacy.

 “God’s blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn’t done with America yet,” Mr. Cruz said before thousands of cheering students here at Liberty University. “I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to re-ignite the promise of America.”

 “Today, I am announcing that I am running for president of the United States,” Mr. Cruz added. “It is a time for truth, it is a time for liberty, it is a time to reclaim the Constitution of the United States.”

First, there is the internet hilarity, with tedcruz.com being registered by a liberal, and his website, tedcruz.org, is using a Nigerian Prince SSL token on its donation page:

This morning, as Senator Ted Cruz launched his bid to become president of the United States, some people who visited his site thought he might also want to become a Nigerian prince. At least, that’s what his site’s certificate said.

It turns out that Cruz’ campaign had registered to use CloudFlare as the content delivery network for its WordPress-based tedcruz.org site, anticipating a flood of traffic from would be supporters. But because the Cruz campaign hadn’t yet uploaded a certificate to identify the site for secure visits, CloudFlare’s systems automatically assigned the site one of its own certificates, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince told Ars. “The Cruz campaign didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “It was an automated process on CloudFlare’s part.” The certificate that the Cruz campaign’s site got assigned to was also assigned to nigerian-prince.com.

But it gets better:


The certificate, however, is probably the least of the Cruz campaign’s Internet problems. The domain tedcruz.com is currently hosting a site that urges people to support President Obama and immigration reform. And while the tedcruz.org site is intended to take donation information, it doesn’t use SSL by default—so donors’ credit card data could potentially be exposed.

And Donald Trump jumped on the Republican presidential clown car, forming an explaroatory committee for the 2016 campaign, and then “The Donald” went full birther on the Canadian born Cruz:*

Real estate tycoon Donald Trump cast doubt Monday on whether Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) can run for president, because Cruz was born in Canada.

“It’s a hurdle; somebody could certainly look at it very seriously,” Trump said during a phone interview Monday on My Fox New York.“He was born in Canada. If you know and when we all studied our history lessons, you are supposed to be born in this country, so I just don’t know how the courts will rule on this.”

Trump, who says he is exploring a bid for president in 2016, was part of the “birther” movement that questioned President Obama’s birth place, as well as the veracity of his birth certificate. He recently took credit for getting Obama to release his birth certificate while speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

After flirting with a 2012 presidential bid, Trump has announced an exploratory committee for 2016 and says he will not renew his contract for his TV show, “The Apprentice” on NBC.

Anyone who writes topical comedy has to be rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

*The consensus amongst Constitutional scholars is that natural born US citizen is one who was a citizen at birth, even if they are born in a foreign nation, so Cruz qualifies.

Exactly the Wrong Idea

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JCS Chairman Ray Odierno says that the problem with US defense procurement is that the Uniformed military has insufficient authority, and the civilians have too much authority:

The U.S. Army’s top officer said service chiefs rather than civilians should play a bigger role in deciding what kinds of weapons the military buys.

Army Chief of Staff Raymond Odierno this week called on lawmakers to consider the move while debating ways to reform the Defense Department’s acquisition process.

“There’s a message that gets sent throughout the acquisition force that they don’t work for the uniformed military, they work for the civilians,” he said on Wednesday during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “That’s a dangerous message because I think our experience in support of the process is very important.”

He added, “We should play a bigger role in approving where we’re going, milestones, how the requirements meet with what’s being done by the acquisition. I think an oversight by the military would be more important and could add some potential positive energy towards building better acquisition programs.”

While the service’s top civilian, Army Secretary John McHugh, offered mild support for the idea, saying it “makes some sense,” it’s unclear whether lawmakers would back the proposal. The Army, arguably more than any other service, has a long and troubled history of procurement efforts gone awry.

A government report released in 2011 concluded that since 1996, the Army spent more than $1 billion annually on programs that were ultimately canceled — and that since 2004, the figure climbed to between $3.3 billion and $3.8 billion a year.

While the Army has since implemented a slew of the report’s recommendations, it continues to spend billions of dollars on systems that never enter production. In recent years, for example, the service canceled the Ground Combat Vehicle, or GCV, designed to replace a portion of the fleet of Bradley fighting vehicles, and the Armed Aerial Scout, meant to replace the OH-58 Kiowa helicopter.

The GCV, or more accurately, the FCS, a family of manned and unmanned vehicles, was arguably the most expensive clusterf%$# yet canceled by the military.

The biggest problem was the uniformed military.

A new military program manager would rotate in every 3 years or so, the priorities were changed, and the program suffered more delays and cost growth.

What’s more, as a matter of policy, the army, the lead service on the program, had (and perhaps has) a policy of not stating what they want.  They will only say when they don’t like something.

So we had interminable meetings about dominated about questions from senior army officers talking about how how disappointed they were that the the colors of models produced by various divisions of BAE and GD did not match up.  (I am not kidding here)

If anything, the evidence is that the uniformed military needs to be further removed from the procurement process.

More Evidence That Conservative Christianity Has Degenerated Into a Vehicle for Hate

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This is beyond contemptible

Once Again I need to invoke Shelby Spong‘s question, “I have quoted the controversial theologian’s question, “Has religion in general and Christianity in particular degenerated to the level that it has become little more than a veil under which anger can be legitimatized?”

In Tennessee, a Talibaptist cleric has equated equal rights to Satan:

A Tennessee pastor said this week that his church was “not trying to offend anyone” when it put up a sign linking “equal rights” to Satan.

 Members of the community expressed outrage over the weekend after photos of marquee outside the Knoxville Baptist Tabernacle Church were circulated online. The sign read, “Remember, Satan was the first to demand equal rights.”

 “Who was your target audience? Who were you speaking to when you put it up there?” Knoxville resident Rick Staples, asked, according to WBIR. “And when you say you’re asking for your equal rights, who’s asking for their equal rights and who are you comparing to Satan? That was very strong language.”

 Andy Henry said that the church was trying to make a statement about gay rights.

 “It’s clearly a sign that was meant to offend a particular community – the LGBT community. Because of (the church’s) lack of foresight, they ended up offending everybody who had ever fought for equality or civil rights in general,” Henry observed.

But Pastor Tony Greene insisted that everyone misunderstood the message.

 “Our sign referencing Satan demanding his equal rights to ascend into the heavens and be God was simply ‘I’ and all about that individual,” Greene told WATE. “It was not a statement against any one group in particular, you know what about the rights of the unborn babies, the rights of children, the rights of everyone?”

 He added: “My heart breaks in the dividedness of our country.”

No, Rev. Greene is not calling for unity, he is expressing a world view for which faith is indistinguishable from hate.

At its core, this is the same spirituality that we see from Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban.

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

STEM Shortage, My Ass!

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For years, various industries have claimed that there is a shortage of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) employees in asking for training subsidies and visas (H-1B and L-1).

People on the other side have observed that colleges and universities are pumping out more than enough graduates, and that the lobbying for subsidies for companies to hire STEM workers in order to drive the cost (wages) of technical employees down.

Well, it appears that notwithstanding the claims of a worker shortage STEM graduates cannot find jobs:

All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields.

In the face of these stark facts, we now see several studies that seem to be desperate Hail Mary passes, using rather unconventional means to find “shortages.” Some analysts do this by expanding the definition of STEM jobs – traditionally those involved in innovation, discovery and development – to include air conditioning technicians and even some retail jobs to make the case that this workforce is large and growing. Without any coherent meaning, such analyses now serve only rhetorical purposes to advance particular legislation.

Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guestworkers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guestworkers for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees, holding down wages for both them and new hires.

The problem is not that there is a shortage of tech workers, it’s that employers want them on the cheap, so they can spend the money of obscene bonuses for upper management, stock buybacks, and lobbying Congress.

F%$# that.

Charter Schools and Common Core in a Nut Shell

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I can do no more than quote America’s Finest News Source, “Department Of Education Study Finds Teaching These Little Sh%$s No Longer Worth It:

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Education released a comprehensive, nationwide evaluation of American schools Monday indicating that attempts to teach absolutely anything to these little shits is just a huge waste of everybody’s time.

“We remain committed to providing every student in the country with access to a high-quality education,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan, adding that good schools are a key component to the success of American democracy. “But to be honest, none of that matters. We’re not talking about promising young scholars here—we’re talking about a bunch of f%$#ing animals.”

“We’ve basically flushed $11,000 down the toilet for every single one of these little bastards,” Duncan continued. “Not to mention 18 years of my life.”

This is perhaps the most prescient article that The Onion has published since January, 2001, when it wrote, “Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’.

Microflaccid, Go Cheney Yourself

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Click Image for Larger Popup

In Windows 8, Microsoft implemented UEFI secure boot, which was nominally a system to prevent malicious software from loading a low level, but also has the effect of making it very difficult alternate operating systems.
With Win 8, Microsoft required that the hardware vendors include an option to disable the secure mode, though it was buried in the “BIOS”* setup screen.

It appears that Microsoft will no longer require a switch to disable the lockdown, which means that it could lock out many alternate operating systems:

Those of you with long memories will recall a barrage of complaints in the run up to Windows 8’s launch that concerned the ability to install other operating systems—whether they be older versions of Windows, or alternatives such as Linux or FreeBSD—on hardware that sported a “Designed for Windows 8” logo.

To get that logo, hardware manufacturers had to fulfil a range of requirements for the systems they built, and one of those requirements had people worried. Windows 8 required machines to support a feature called UEFI Secure Boot. Secure Boot protects against malware that interferes with the boot process in order to inject itself into the operating system at a low level. When Secure Boot is enabled, the core components used to boot the machine must have correct cryptographic signatures, and the UEFI firmware verifies this before it lets the machine start. If any files have been tampered with, breaking their signature, the system won’t boot.

This is a desirable security feature, but it has an issue for alternative operating systems: if, for example, you prefer to compile your own operating system, your boot files won’t include a signature that Secure Boot will recognize and authorize, and so you won’t be able to boot your PC.

However, Microsoft’s rules for the Designed for Windows 8 logo included a solution to the problem they would cause: Microsoft also mandated that every system must have a user-accessible switch to turn Secure Boot off, thereby ensuring that computers would be compatible with other operating systems. Microsoft’s rules also required that users be able to add their own signatures and cryptographic certificates to the firmware, so that they could still have the protection that Secure Boot provides, while still having the freedom to compile their own software.

This all seemed to work, and the concerns that Linux and other operating systems would be locked out proved unfounded.

This time, however, they’re not.

At its WinHEC hardware conference in Shenzhen, China, Microsoft talked about the hardware requirements for Windows 10. The precise final specs are not available yet, so all this is somewhat subject to change, but right now, Microsoft says that the switch to allow Secure Boot to be turned off is now optional. Hardware can be Designed for Windows 10 and can offer no way to opt out of the Secure Boot lock down.

If I am a mass market computer maker, there is no upside to allowing a user to disable UEFI secure boot unless you are specifically are targeting power users.

While this may not be a big deal, for anyone who, for example, wants to retask a old or used PC as a firewall, or a print server, etc., it is likely that the choice of operating systems will be severely constrained.

It’s good for the business of PC manufacturers, it means that used machines are less likely to be repurposed or resold, and it is good for Microsoft, because it means that installing many flavors of Linux on an old box becomes problematic.

For the rest of us, it sucks like a thousand Hoovers all going at once.

*Technically, UEFI is not BIOS, it replaces the exclusively 16 bit BIOS, but “BIOS Setup Screen” is a good shorthand for that screen you get when you hold down the F2 key while booting.

Damn! Out of Stock!

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Brilliant!

I’ve found the ultimate Passover Seder accessory, the 10 Plagues in all  their disturbing chocolate glory.

Clockwise from upper left:

  1. Blood
  2. Frogs
  3. Lice
  4. Wild Beasts
  5. Livestock Disease
  6. Boils (with a little white chocolate pustule for authenticity)
  7. Hail
  8. Locusts
  9. Darkness
  10. Death of the 1st born

All with a dark chocolate bar (it’s pareve) in the middle.

I just discovered it, and they are out of stock.

Damn!

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Good Move by Syriza

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With an increase in poverty, and hunger, and lack of basic medical care, the Greek Parliament has thumbed its nose at the Troika, and has passed a new anti-poverty law:

The Greek parliament has approved a package of social measures, despite warnings from the European Commission against “proceeding unilaterally”.

In parliament, the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras defended what he called a “humanitarian crisis” law.

The law – the first to be introduced since Mr Tsipras’s party won elections in January – offers food stamps and free electricity to the very poorest.

The total amount of assistance is worth about €200m ($213m; £144m).

It is the kind of anti-austerity measure that Mr Tsipras had promised before his election victory in January.

In a 30-minute speech he defended the legislation, which he described as the first bill in five years to be drawn up in Athens, rather than ordered by EU technocrats.

Soured relations

He also criticised a leaked letter from an EU official, which had advised Greece to consult with its international creditors before proceeding with the legislation.

“If they’re doing it to frighten us, the answer is: we will not be frightened,” Mr Tsipras told parliament. “What else can one say to those who have the audacity to say that dealing with a humanitarian crisis is a ‘unilateral action’?”

The new law, and Mr Tsipras’s defiant speech, come ahead of an expected meeting with Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels this week.

This is a good thing.

With over 40% of the Greek population below the poverty line, it’s clear that there is a humanitarian crisis in Greece, and what the Troika, and the rest of the EU, don’t get is that if they manage to crush Syriza, the alternative is not the usual suspects, Pasok and ND, who have mismanaged the countries for decades, but the Fascist right wing Golden Dawn party.

Golden Dawn coming to power would not bode well for the future, either in Greece, or across Europe.

Time to Panic!!!!!!!!

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The finance world is freaking out because the latest Federal Reserve statement has dropped the word, “Patient,” from the text. (See here, here, and here)

It’s not a change in policy, it’s simply making a bit more likely that will make a statement that they might change policy some time in the future, or, as Fed Chair Janet Yellen said, “Just because we removed the word ‘patient’ doesn’t mean we’re going to be impatient.”

It’s kind of a tempest in a teapot.

Your Periodic Chris Christie Corruption and Hypocrisy Dump

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First, we have the gift that keeps on giving, Bridgate, where we now learn that David Wildstein, the architect of the bridge closure, who Christie said that he barely knew, turned out to have extensive and frequent contacts with the Governor’s office:

The political operative who helped mastermind the notorious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge – and is now cooperating with a federal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal – had more extensive contact with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s inner circle than the governor has acknowledged.

 That is the conclusion of a WNYC examination of calendars maintained by David Wildstein during his four years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, along with a review of more than 1,000 photographs provided by the Port Authority and thousands of pages of documents released by the governor’s own legal team and the New Jersey Legislature.

Christie has insisted he had little to do with Wildstein, his former $150,000-a-year appointee at the Port Authority with whom he attended Livingston High School in the 1970s.

 “I don’t even remember in the last four years even having a meeting in my office with David Wildstein,” Christie said at his marathon two-hour press conference in January 2014, after the legislature released Bridgegate records including the now infamous email to Wildstein declaring, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Christie told reporters: “I may have, but I don’t remember it.”

 But the documents, corroborated by current and former Port Authority and Trenton staffers who requested anonymity because of the ongoing federal investigation, paint a new picture of Wildstein’s role in the Christie Administration. That view chips away at Christie’s and his lawyers’ portrayal of Wildstein as a rogue employee largely isolated from the governor who acted with one staffer in closing lanes and causing epic traffic jams on the roadways of Fort Lee for four morning commutes in September 2013.

Well that guy that Christie barely know also appears to be singing like a canary to investigators:

The political operative who helped mastermind the notorious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge – and is now cooperating with a federal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal – had more extensive contact with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s inner circle than the governor has acknowledged.

(emphasis mine)

And then we have his shenanigans on pensions, which, if anything are even more egregiously awful.

First it appears that Chris Christie routinely steered pension money to campaign contributors firms:

Two years ago, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pursued re-election, his administration found itself mulling investment options for the state’s $80 billion pension fund. In one deal in May 2013, officials settled on a subsidiary of U.K.-based foreign financial conglomerate Prudential plc. With little fanfare, state pension overseers quickly endorsed the deal.

Weeks later, a Hong Kong–based executive director and board member of Prudential plc delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to Christie’s gubernatorial campaign, followed by a maximum $32,400 donation to the Republican National Committee, which was about to launch a get-out-the-vote effort for Christie. Two months after that, New Jersey began moving public employees’ retirement savings into two funds managed by the Prudential subsidiary as part of the state’s new $300 million investment commitment to the company.

State and federal rules are designed to prevent firms that manage public pension money from contributing to the campaigns of public officials who have the authority to influence pension investments. The sequence of transactions in New Jersey, campaign finance experts say, is troubling.

“Pay-to-play laws are intended to stop the potential conflicts of interest and appearance of corruption that arises whenever executives at a financial firm make large political contributions to a governor and his political party around the time the state is picking the firm to handle pension system investments,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission who now works for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, a research group in Washington, D.C. “These situations undermine the public’s confidence in the integrity of government contracting.”

………

Pension investment experts interviewed by IBTimes were disturbed by the chronology of New Jersey’s Prudential deal, and the fact that Stowe’s donations closely followed the Christie administration awarding pension contracts to Prudential’s subsidiaries.

“This is about as blatant as I think I’ve ever seen in terms of timing,” Andrew Silton, who served as the chief investment officer of the $90 billion North Carolina Retirement System, said. “Forgetting whether or not it violates New Jersey’s state rules or the SEC’s rules, just from the perception of public integrity, it is just such an obvious quid pro quo that the political organizations are working Prudential plc for contributions and simultaneously the New Jersey pension division is processing the paperwork on a major investment.”

It’s gotten so bad that New Jersey state house Democrats have finally stopped fellating Jabba the Governor, and passed a law against allowing campaign contributors to his Presidential campaign to manage pension money: (A well deserved knifing)

Chris Christie may have to change the way he does business. New Jersey lawmakers have sent a bill to the Republican governor’s desk that would keep state pension money from going to firms whose executives make donations to federal political organizations — including, potentially, Christie’s presidential campaign.

The Christie administration has invested millions of dollars of New Jersey pension money with firms whose executives donated to the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee, both of which spent heavily in New Jersey in support of Christie’s gubernatorial campaigns. The bill, which would effectively deter such campaign contributions from those firms’ executives, passed both legislative chambers by large majorities.

More significantly from a political perspective is the recent judicial ruling that Christie broke his own law by underfunding pensions:

In a major blow to Gov. Chris Christie, a New Jersey judge ruled on Monday that he violated state law when he declined to make the full payment into the state’s pension system for public employees last year and ordered him to find a way to fund it now.

The decision further complicates Mr. Christie’s hopes of reviving his presidential ambitions, which have suffered in recent weeks as his approval ratings in New Jersey have sunk to the lowest point of his tenure, and Republican donors have moved to other contenders for the party’s nomination.

It came on the eve of his annual budget proposal to the Legislature, which already presented him with the challenge of finding $2.9 billion to make next year’s pension payment. The challenge is steep, with the state’s economy lagging well behind its neighbors’ and the nation’s, the state surplus dried up, and the governor loath to raise taxes.

Mr. Christie will now be scrambling also to find the $1.57 billion the judge ordered him to pay.

This might be the most politically damaging part, as his Presidential campaign.  Fiscal probity, and cutting taxes, along with that whole shouting at people bit, are supposed to be at the core of his appeal.

And then there is the Exxon pollution deal, where it appears that he settled for pennies on the dollar, because of a section of a law that he pushed that would allow him to use the money for the general fund rather than cleanup:

For more than a decade, the New Jersey attorney general’s office conducted a hard-fought legal battle to hold Exxon Mobil Corporation responsible for decades of environmental contamination in northern New Jersey.

But when the news came that the state had reached a deal to settle its $8.9 billion claim for about $250 million, the driving force behind the settlement was not the attorney general’s office — it was Gov. Chris Christie’s chief counsel, Christopher S. Porrino, two people familiar with the negotiations said.

One of those people, Bradley M. Campbell, was the commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection in 2004 when the lawsuits against Exxon were filed. Mr. Campbell, in an Op-Ed article appearing in The New York Times on Thursday, wrote that “even more troubling” than the decision to settle the lawsuit were “the circumstances surrounding the decision.”

He goes on to say that former colleagues of his in the state government told him that Mr. Porrino “inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had developed and prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal favorable to Exxon.”

………

Much of the criticism has focused on the lack of a public rationale for why the state would choose to settle a lawsuit that it had invested so much effort and time in trying to win; environmentalists fear that Mr. Christie, a Republican, wants to use the money for other budgetary needs. Indeed, a state appropriations law, proposed by Mr. Christie last year, says that any funds beyond the first $50 million collected in damages or other environmental recoveries shall go to the state’s general fund.

When state lawmakers tried to amend the proposal to steer more money back toward environmental restoration, Mr. Christie vetoed the effort.

And then we have what appears to be a coverup of the details of a deal with Jerry Jones following the Dallas Cowboys owner flying him out to a playoff game and hosting him in the owner’s private box:

After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently accepted free football tickets and travel from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, two key questions emerged at the center of the controversy: Did the gifts have anything to do with Christie’s appointees to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey giving Jones’ firm a contract to manage operations at the new One World Trade Center in New York City? And how did Christie arrive at his decision to endorse that contract?

Christie officials have publicly denied any connection between the gifts from Jones and Jones getting the contact, but there is no way to verify those denials. That’s because on Monday, Port Authority officials formally blocked the release of correspondence — if it exists — between themselves and Christie’s office about the transaction with Legends Hospitality, the Jones-owned firm in question.

Finally, we have the metastasizing scandal about how the Governor’s office intervened against a corruption investigation in Hunterdon County that implicated political allies, and the disasterous privitization of the management of the New Jersey lottery. (No surprise, the company managing the NJ Lottery has made donations to Christie run organizations.)

When is this guy going to be doing the perp walk into federal court?

Astonishingly Chickensh%$

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Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico reported on Tuesday.

………

“Today, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of the United States House of Representatives effective March 31,” Schock said in a statement to Politico. “I do this with a heavy heart. Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. I have given them my all over the last six years. I have traveled to all corners of the District to meet with the people I’ve been fortunate to be able to call my friends and neighbors.”

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Schock’s fall from grace began with a seemingly harmless report in the Washington Post that his office on Capitol Hill was decorated in the likeness of a room in the PBS drama Downton Abbey.

But when Schock refused to answer questions about the office, questions quickly surfaced over whether he had violated congressional ethics rules.

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The final blow appeared to occur on Monday, when details surfaced of a sweetheart property deal Schock purportedly received from a group of his campaign donors. The report claimed that a shell company linked to Schock paid $300,000 to a political donor for a warehouse in Peoria, Illinois, and subsequently took out a $600,000 mortgage on the property from a local bank also run by Schock donors.

His downfall was dropping 40 grand on an Edwardian interior decorating?

Seriously. You cannot make this up.

It Looks Like the Blowback from Patent Overreach Continues………

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We are now seeing venture capitalists and other movers and shakers coming down hard on patent trolls:

What’s the biggest difference between the letter about patent trolls that prominent VCs sent to Congress in 2013 and the letter (PDF) they sent out today? Four times as many names.

In total, 140 investors in startup companies have signed a letter to Congress asking them to implement changes to patent laws that have been debated for more than two years now. The move looks to keep one important fact front-and-center: “patent trolls,” companies in the business of suing over patents, aren’t just a plague for tech giants—they are a huge problem for medium- and small-sized companies as well.

“When a troll sues, or even threatens, a small startup, the results can be disastrous,” the letter states. “Many of us have seen young companies fail in the face of such threats.”

Among venture capital investors, 70 percent say their portfolio companies have been hit with patent threats, mostly from trolls. It’s a situation which the letter calls “not sustainable.” The letter continues:

Our Constitution favored a patent system to incentivize innovation and benefit all Americans. Unfortunately that system has been hijacked by some intent on exploiting Patent Office weakness, and all too frequently it now hinders innovation and chills investment, harming the new companies it was designed to foster and imposing a patent troll tax on new technologies.

The letter asks for patent reform legislation that includes provisions for easier fee-shifting, protections for end users of technology, limits on the scope of discovery, and increased transparency requirements. Under such circumstances, the group hopes patent owners would have to include more information in any lawsuits or demand letters they might send.

IP in general, and patents in particular, are a rent seeking behavior that we as a society approve of because of the the effect, as defined by the Constitution, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” is considered to be a societal benefit.

This makes IP law public interest law, and until we reevaluate our copyright and patent regimes through this lens, we are going to end up with parasites like NTP and Intellectual Ventures sapping innovation and vitality ad infinitum.

Roger Goodell’s Worst Nightmare

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Breakout star rookie linebacker Chris Borland has retired out of concerns for his neurological health:

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, one of the NFL’s top rookies this past season, told “Outside the Lines” on Monday that he is retiring because of concerns about the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma.

Borland, 24, said he notified the 49ers on Friday. He said he made his decision after consulting with family members, concussion researchers, friends and current and former teammates, as well as studying what is known about the relationship between football and neurodegenerative disease.

“I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health,” Borland told “Outside the Lines.” “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

Borland becomes the most prominent NFL player to leave the game in his prime because of concerns about brain injuries. More than 70 former players have been diagnosed with progressive neurological disease after their deaths, and numerous studies have shown connections between the repetitive head trauma associated with football, brain damage and issues such as depression and memory loss.

“I feel largely the same, as sharp as I’ve ever been. For me, it’s wanting to be proactive,” Borland said. “I’m concerned that if you wait ’til you have symptoms, it’s too late. … There are a lot of unknowns. I can’t claim that X will happen. I just want to live a long, healthy life, and I don’t want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.”

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 Borland was expected to be a key part of the 49ers’ defense this season, after the retirement of All-Pro linebacker Patrick Willis last week. Borland replaced Willis, 30, after six games last season; Willis had sustained a toe injury.

Willis’ retirement had no role in his decision, Borland said.

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 Borland, who is listed at 5-foot-11, 248 pounds, earned accolades for his aggressiveness and instincts at inside linebacker. He had 107 tackles and a sack in 14 games, eight of them starts. He was the NFC’s defensive player of the week for his performance against the New York Giants in Week 11. He led the 49ers with 13 tackles in that game and became the team’s first rookie linebacker with two interceptions in one game. He received one vote for NFL defensive rookie of the year.

His success this past season did not make his decision more difficult, Borland said: “I’ve thought about what I could accomplish in football, but for me, personally, when you read about Mike Webster and Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling, you read all these stories, and to be the type of player I want to be in football, I think I’d have to take on some risks that, as a person, I don’t want to take on.”

Borland was referring to former NFL greats who were diagnosed with the devastating brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, after their deaths. Duerson and Easterling committed suicide.

This guy has one season in the NFL, and he was arguably on a path to a multimillion dollar pay day, and he decided that it was not worth dementia in his late 40s.

You gotta figure that the current generation of teenage jocks, and their parents, are becoming less likely to take up football, and news like this will make them less likely.

The pipeline of new players has to be drying up a bit.

I’m not sure what the solution is to the CTE problem in the NFL, or if there is a solution, but a good start would be accelerometers in helmets and set them at an appropriate level (not sure of the level, I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*).

Once the sensor trips, the player gets a mandatory few weeks off on injured reserves and treatment.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!