Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Punk’d

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Former Miss America, That Explains It

Well, it looks like the Gretchen Carlson got punked by an aspiring COMEDIAN:

Fox News host Gretchen Carlson cut an interview short on Monday morning after her guest, a so-called “former Obama supporter” and recent college graduate, didn’t seem to comprehend her questions or his reason for being on the show.

 While it’s not clear what was going on with the man, identified as Max Rice, he didn’t seem to understand how television interviews work, offered insincere answers to Carlson’s questions, and even awkwardly hit on her.

 “Hello Miss USA,” he said after being introduced. “It’s an honor. I wish I could see you.”

 “Miss America, but close enough,” she corrected him.

 “Miss America,” Rice said. “Miss Universe in my book, in my book.”

 “Now, tell me your story,” Carlson prompted. “You believed in the hope and change of President Obama until you voted for him. Now, tell me the next…”

 “Oh, I was a huge Obama supporter in 2008,” he replied. “I met him in third grade. I met him when I was little. What’s your question?”

 “And why now are you supporting Mitt Romney?” she asked.

 “Why am I supporting Mitt Romney? Well, it’s actually a funny story,” he began. “I lost a basketball game to a friend of mine… he’s a huge supporter of this show.”

 Several seconds of silence followed. “Okay, so it sounds like you’re not being very serious about…” Carlson began.

 “Oh, I’m also disappointed in the direction Obama has taken this nation,” Rice injected. “I will be casting my ballot for Mitt Romney.”

 ………

 “They were just casting a part in a show,” Rice told the progressive website RawStory.com. “The first thing that shocked me is that they were that desperate to find someone that fit that category. What they were seeking is someone who voted for Obama in 2008, then somewhere in the last four years got disenfranchised and now is a huge Romney supporter. But I feel like anyone who fits that mold would also dis Romney at the same time. So, they just couldn’t find anyone. They’re in New York City, so they had to go find a kid in Chicago.”

 Earlier this year, “Fox & Friends” aired a nearly-four-minute video about President Obama’s first term, drawing the ire of critics who say it looked, felt and sounded like a political attack ad.

I am very amused.

Additionally, I actually learned something here.

It always seemed to me that there was a “fish out of water” aspect to Ms. Carlson that seemed familiar, and now I get it.

It’s the Phyllis George all over again.

One final note, see Max Rice’s speech as president of his senior high school class.  It’s prize

For those of you who don’t remember Ms. George, she was a sportscaster for a number of years with CBS sports after winning the 1971 Miss America pageant.

She had the broadcasting thing down, but she was always a bit off.

In particular I remember her wondering on air why they kept talking about a big NFL trade rumor.

She knew broadcasting, but she just didn’t get sports, or at least Football.

Carlson is the same way. She is thoroughly competent at presenting herself on camera, but she simply does not get news.

h/t cz

Least Surprising Data Point: Of The Day

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Using OCC data, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Columbia Business School, Ohio State University, and the University of Chicago crunched the numbers to find the number of unnecessary foreclosures, and 800,000 homes were foreclosed on that should not have been:

But while evidence of these problems was pervasive, it was always hard to quantify the damage. Just how many more people could have qualified under the administration’s mortgage modification program if the banks had done a better job? In other words, how many people have been pushed toward foreclosure unnecessarily?

A thorough study released last week provides one number, and it’s a big one: about 800,000 homeowners.

 The study’s authors — from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the government’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Ohio State University, Columbia Business School, and the University of Chicago — arrived at this conclusion by analyzing a vast data set available to the OCC. They wanted to measure the impact of HAMP, the government’s main foreclosure prevention program.

What they found was that certain banks were far better at modifying loans than others. The reasons for the difference, they established, were pretty predictable: The banks that were better at helping homeowners avoid foreclosure had staff who were both more numerous and better trained.

 Unfortunately for homeowners, most mortgages are handled by banks that haven’t been properly staffed and thus have modified far fewer loans. If these worse-performing banks had simply modified loans at the same pace as their better performing peers, then HAMP would have produced about 800,000 more modifications. Instead of about 1.2 million modifications by the end of this year, HAMP would have resulted in about 2 million.

 That’s still well short of the 3-4 million modifications President Obama promised when he announced the program back in early 2009. But it’s a big difference, and a reasonable, basic benchmark against which to compare the program’s failings.

………

 The report does not identify these poor performing banks, but it’s not hard to ID them. A “few large servicers [have offered] modifications at half the rate of others,” the authors say. The largest mortgage servicers are Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citi.

 Bank of America in particular (the largest of all the servicers when HAMP launched) has been far slower to modify loans than even the other large servicers, as other analyses we’ve cited have shown.

These are the banks that we bailed out, either directly, or by bailing out their counter parties, and they responded by f%$#ing home owners, and by extension, the the real estate market and the entire country.

This is why not prosecuting the banksters was such a bad thing.  People who know that they have impunity, and know it, it does not produce ethical, or competent, behavior.

This Ain’t About the Free Market

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The news that BAE and EADS are in merger discussions has very little to do with the market or market efficiencies.

It’s about EADS purchasing an entry in the the US market, one which BAE purchased when it bought United Defense,  Tracor,  LMCS, LMAES, etc.

Ironically, BAE sold its 20% share in EADS about 6 years ago.

The reality is that the defense market is essentially a monopsony, with governments in general, and the US government in particular serving as a single buyer, though with this merger the other end of the dynamic is heading more towards monopoly as well.

Thus, I find the protestations by BAE management that the French and German governments must not have the ability to exert realistic shareholder rights, together they own about 45% of EADS, to ring a bit hollow:

BAE Systems has insisted it will walk away from talks with EADS unless the combined European champion in aerospace and defence was allowed to operate as a normal company without political interference.

 BAE is also insisting that the combined entity’s defence business would have to be based in the UK if the plan, news of which was leaked on Wednesday before the structure was finalised, is to go ahead.

Gee, a defense contractor must be kept free of political influence?

This deal is all about creating an entity that can manipulate the politics to its own advantage.

The insistence that the French and German governments sell out, if they didn’t they would have about a 27% stake in the merged firm, is all about the company being able to whipsaw governments with  promises, or threats, about defense jobs.

They are Still Flying Camberras?

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And it appears that they are crucial to the efforts in Afghanistan:

They’re 49 years old, ugly and owned by NASA, not the Pentagon. But two modified WB-57F Canberras are now among America’s most important warplanes. With anonymous-looking white paint jobs, the Canberras have been taking turns deploying to Afghanistan carrying a high-tech new radio translator designed to connect pretty much any fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio to, well, pretty much any other fighter, bomber, spy plane and ground radio. That makes the former Air Force reconnaissance planes, originally transferred to the space agency for science missions, essential hubs of the American-led war effort.

 With the Battlefield Airborne Communications Node system, or BACN, the WB-57s act as Star Trek-style universal translators, passing data between planes and troops and finally bringing to life the Pentagon’s decades-old dream of speedy, information-propelled, networked warfare. “It orbits high up and basically receives various platforms’ datalink data, then translates all that data and redistributes it in a fused manner back to different platforms in the operating area,” Aviationintel’s Tyler Rogoway told ace aerospace blogger David Cenciotti.

 “BACN bridges the gaps,” manufacturer Northrop Grumman boasted.

This is an artifact of how the Pentagon buys stuff.

You see, instead of trying to deal with a serious problem, lack of proper interoperability between systems, they come up with a ridiculously over ambitious system, the now canceled JTRS, that never had a realistic possibility of meeting its overambitious requirements.

So now we are resorting to cobbled together electronics on an airframe that first flew almost 70 years ago.

Doctors: Someone Else Who Did it All By Themselves

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Except for the inconvenient fact that the federal government covers about 90% of the cost of medical residencies:

So let me get this straight. Currently, the Federal government fund about 90% of the cost of training new doctors at a cost of $12 billion per year? The health care industry itself only picks up 10% of the cost?

I would love to know how this state of affairs got to where it is. I can’t think of another major profession – other than those that are exclusively government professions (military, police, firemen, etc.) where the government pays such a huge amount of training costs for its key personnel. It’s actually kind of mind-boggling.

Yet another case of Randian Übermenschen who simply picked themselves up by their own bootstraps, I guess.

H/t Atrios.

And Torture Becomes the New Norm in the Classroom

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One of the problems with “looking forward” on torture and not prosecuting peopel is that it makes torture a normative activity more generally.

Now we are seeing it being used on our children in our schools:

In my public school 40 years ago, teachers didn’t lay their hands on students for bad behavior. They sent them to the principal’s office. But in today’s often overcrowded and underfunded schools, where one in eight students receive help for special learning needs, the use of physical restraints and seclusion rooms has become a common way to maintain order.

 It’s a dangerous development, as I know from my daughter’s experience. At the age of 5, she was kept in a seclusion room for up to an hour at a time over the course of three months, until we discovered what was happening. The trauma was severe.

 According to national Department of Education data, most of the nearly 40,000 students who were restrained or isolated in seclusion rooms during the 2009-10 school year had learning, behavioral, physical or developmental needs, even though students with those issues represented just 12 percent of the student population. African-American and Hispanic students were also disproportionately isolated or restrained.

 Joseph Ryan, an expert on the use of restraints who teaches at Clemson University, told me that the practice of isolating and restraining problematic children originated in schools for children with special needs. It migrated to public schools in the 1970s as federal laws mainstreamed special education students, but without the necessary oversight or staff training. “It’s a quick way to respond but it’s not effective in changing behaviors,” he said.

 State laws on disciplining students vary widely, and there are no federal laws restricting these practices, although earlier this year Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote, in a federal guide for schools, that there was “no evidence that using restraint or seclusion is effective.” He recommended evidence-based behavioral interventions and de-escalation techniques instead.

 The use of restraints and seclusion has become far more routine than it should be. “They’re the last resort too often being used as the first resort,” said Jessica Butler, a lawyer in Washington who has written about seclusion in public schools.

We did experience this with Charlie on occasion, though not to this degree.

When you look at this, or the relentless use of Tasers by police departments, when the circumstances do not involve any need to protection of either the target of the public, but rather inconvenience.

It’s More than Just Jobless Thursday

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But let’s start with the fact that initial jobless claims jumped to 380,000, though tropical storm Isaac may have contributed to those numbers.

The bigger news is that the Federal Reserve has officially begun the 3rd round of quantitative easing (QE3):

The Federal Reserve opened a new chapter Thursday in its efforts to stimulate the economy, saying that it intends to buy large quantities of mortgage bonds, and potentially other assets, until the job market improves substantially.

 This is the first time that the Fed has tied the duration of an aid program to its economic objectives. And, in announcing the change, the central bank made clear that its primary reason was not a deterioration in its economic outlook, but a determination to respond more forcefully — in effect, an acknowledgment that its incremental approach until now had been flawed.

 The concern about unemployment also reflects a significant shift in the priorities of the nation’s central bank, which has long focused on inflation. Inflation is now running below the Fed’s 2 percent annual target. But with the unemployment rate above 8 percent, the Fed’s policy-making committee suggested Thursday that it might tolerate a period of somewhat higher inflation, promising to maintain stimulus efforts “for a considerable time after the economic recovery strengthens.”

 “The weak job market should concern every American,” the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said at a news conference. The goal of the new policies, he added, “is to quicken the recovery, to help the economy begin to grow quickly enough to generate new jobs.”

 The need for new stimulus reflects the disappointing condition of the American economy, which continues to struggle between crisis and prosperity three years after the official end of the recession. More than 20 million Americans cannot find full-time jobs. Median household income has declined. The housing market remains depressed.

You know, you guys should have been running around with your hair on fire a few years ago.

Of course, with interest rates at the zero bound, the people who are supposed to do this is the Congress, because fiscal stimulus works better under these situation, but between the gutlessness of the Democrats, and the active sabotage of the economy by the Republicans, it’s not like there is going to be any help from that end.

This is Pathetic

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Doctor Pepper puts out an evolution themed ad on Facebook, and the inbred morons go nuts:

Here are some of the responses:

I don’t always drink soda, but when I do, I avoid drinking it with inbred brain damaged fundamentalist ratf%$#s
 /

Seriously, there are way too many, “whacko, my parents are first cousins, X-Files wannabe, black helicopter, tinfoil hat wearing, stupid, dim-witted, thinks pro wrestling is real,” nut jobs out there in the world.

I weep for the future of out country.

Rob Zerban is on My ActBlue Page

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The latest internal poll from Paul Ryan’s normally blood red Congressional district shows Democrat Rob Zerban down only by 7, and Ryan below 50%:

Rob Zerban, the Democrat running against Rep. Paul Ryan, has been trying to make the case that he has a real shot at taking down one of the GOP’s most visible leaders, and his campaign is now touting a new poll showing the race is closer than most expected.

 The internal poll, provided to Salon ahead of its release, shows Zerban behind by just 8 points among likely voters when respondents were read a “profile statement” about the candidate. FM3 Research, which conducted the survey, wrote in a memo, “Paul Ryan is not the overwhelming favorite in the 1st Congressional District race … Rob Zerban remains a credible challenger.” After respondents were read the statement, 39 percent indicate they will vote for Zerban, while 47 say they will vote for Ryan. Another 4 percent went for a third-party candidate while 11 percent were undecided.

If you have a few bucks, you might want to throw it his way.

Even if it’s a long shot, it will put Paul Ryan off of his game as Mitt’s running mate, so it’s a win-win.

Certainly it’s better than giving to the DCCC, where (nominally) former Blue Dog Steve Israel is doing his level best to load up the Congress with Blue Dogs and New Dems.

OK, This Could Be Big

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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has vacated the lower court ruling which upheld the law.

While this is not an injunction, it does appear that the court is very dubious of the claims by state government:

Signaling that it will tolerate “no voter disenfranchisement,” a divided state Supreme Court is sending the dispute over Pennsylvania’s new voting law back to a lower court to decide whether the state is doing enough to get photo ID cards to voters who need them.

 In a 4-2 ruling issued Tuesday, the high court ordered Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr., who upheld the law in August, to file a supplemental opinion on whether the alternate-ID programs set up by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and state election officials are providing the “liberal access” to ID cards that the legislature intended.

 “If they do not, or if Commonwealth Court is not still convinced in its predictive judgment that there will be no voter disenfranchisement arising out of the commonwealth’s implementation of a voter identification requirement . . . that court is obligated to enter a preliminary injunction,” the majority said in an unsigned opinion.

The justices gave Simpson until Oct. 2 – just five weeks before the presidential election – to decide.

So, it appears that they are demanding affirmative proof that the state has set up its voter ID program properly.

I find it highly unlikely that they will be able to show this.

Of course, it is concerning that they basically kicked it down the road until October 2.

It’s a clusterf%$#, and I would argue that this is by design. The goal is to keep blacks and Hispanics from voting.

Dodd Frank is Working

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Not.

Case in point, the new clearinghouses are allowing for “collateral transformation” which serves to once again misstate counter-party risk to the detriment of society and the markets:

More obviously troubling was a Bloomberg story on how major financial firms are going to undermine the effectiveness of clearinghouses by engaging in “collateral transformation”:

Starting next year, new rules designed to prevent another meltdown will force traders to post U.S. Treasury bonds or other top-rated holdings to guarantee more of their bets. The change takes effect as the $10.8 trillion market for Treasuries is already stretched thin by banks rebuilding balance sheets and investors seeking safety, leaving fewer bonds available to backstop the $648 trillion derivatives market.

The solution: At least seven banks plan to let customers swap lower-rated securities that don’t meet standards in return for a loan of Treasuries or similar holdings that do qualify, a process dubbed “collateral transformation.” That’s raising concerns among investors, bank executives and academics that measures intended to avert risk are hiding it instead.

Understand what is happening here: clearinghouses are one of the major elements of Dodd Frank to reduce counterparty risks. But the banks are proposing to vitiate that via this “collateral transformation” which will simply create new, large volume counterparty exposures to deal with fictive clearinghouse risk reduction program. And get a load of this:

U.S. regulators implementing the rules haven’t said how the collateral demands for derivatives trades will be met. Nor have they run their own analyses of risks that might be created by the banks’ bond-lending programs, people with knowledge of the matter said. Steve Adamske, a spokesman for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Barbara Hagenbaugh at the Federal Reserve declined to comment

Translation: the regulators are aware of the banks’ plans to finesse the clearinghouse requirements, and they neither intend to put a kebosh on it (which could easily be done by taking the position that any collateral transformation to meet clearinghouse requirements was an integrated part of the clearinghouse posting and could not be done separately on bank balance sheets) nor understand the impact of their flatfootedness.

The problem is that with complexity (“Innovation”) does not create benefits as much as it creates opportunities for fraud. (Saroff’s rule restated)

The problem is that finance lends itself to the selling of snake oil even more than does the sale of patent medicine, and the excesses of patent medicine, most notably Radithor, led to the requirement that medications be proven safe and effective before being foisted off on the public.

We need the same policy for financial instruments.

Rahm, Switch Parties

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So Rahm’s vision for education in Chicago is to break the unions and turn the schools over to his rich campaign contributors, and it’s gotten Randroid Paul Ryan positively giddy:

Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan has twisted the knife just a bit more in an attempt to draw out President Obama on the Chicago Teachers Union strike, now entering its second day. He told a fundraiser in Portland, OR yesterday that he endorsed the position in the strike of the former chief of staff of Barack Obama:………

 I think the most important by-product of this strike is that it will show how deeply embedded the Students First/Waiting for Superman frame has become, in the traditional media, in the cultural firmament among elites, and in the Democratic Party. I’ve heard people on social media wondering what this strike is about. Narrowly speaking, Chicago teachers aren’t supposed to be able to strike over anything but pay and benefits. And certainly, they’re trying to retain their health care. But it’s not that hard to see what this is about. Significant sections of the Chicago Public Schools system are starved for funds. They are putting 40-50 students in classrooms without air conditioning. The kids don’t have books or materials weeks into the term. And ultimately, the goal is to make those schools so poorly maintained, staffed and administered that they “fail,” allowing Rahm Emanuel and his hedge fund buddies to essentially privatize them: ………

Seriously, all this guy has is his ability to suck up to rich people.

I have no clue as to why he is a Democrat.

As to what Obama will do, I expect crickets as a best outcome.

Sanity Breaks Out In IP

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A federal judge just ruled that there is no legal obligation to secure your WiFi signal in order to prevent file sharing:

It looks like it might be hard for rights holders in various entertainment industries to sue individuals who have open Wi-Fi networks for copyright infringement done by guests, if the following court case is any indication. A California man whose open network was allegedly used to download a copyrighted video cannot be sued, according to a ruling by a federal judge.

The complaint filed in April of this year alleged that Hatfield was negligent because he didn’t secure his network, and therefore liable.

AF Holdings, who admitted in its case that it does not know the identity of the user who downloaded its video using BitTorrent, targeted Josh Hatfield with a lawsuit in federal court because it was downloaded via his unsecured home Internet connection. Hatfield moved for a dismissal on the grounds that the plaintiff failed “to state a claim” and that the claim “is barred by Section 301 of the Copyright Act and by immunity under the Communications Decency Act.”

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton dismissed the claim last week. The Electronic Frontier Foundation planned on submitting an amicus brief on behalf of Hatfield if the case had gone forward.

I’m not surprised by the ruling, but I am surprised that it happened this early in the process.

I think that people are beginning to recognize just how f%$#ed up the current IP regime is, and they are no longer willing to treat potential offenders like they’ve robbed a gas station.