Category: Corruption

What Danielle Brian and Pete Sepp Said

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Specifically, they said that, “To Safeguard the Military, Congress Must Protect Whistleblowers:

This year the Department of Defense requested $585.3 billion from taxpayers, but it is no secret that Pentagon spending is rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

As Congress considers raising the debt ceiling yet again this fall, it’s essential for taxpayers to know that this money will be spent responsibly and that leaders are setting budgetary priorities instead of rubber-stamping wish lists.

Necessary oversight depends upon the ability of those on the front lines to blow the whistle on waste and mismanagement of funds without fear of reprisal. However these courageous military whistleblowers are endangered, not by some far-flung enemy, but by their own superiors.

The Department of Defense is the only federal agency unable to pass a single audit since the government began the practice over 20 years ago. Congress’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, has identified more than 1,000 recommendations for reforms to save taxpayer dollars that the Department of Defense has yet to implement.

………

The former Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction told the Center for Public Integrity that he largely credits tips from whistleblowers for his ability to uncover crimes on overseas government contracts in Iraq. However, most of those whistleblowers were not willing to be identified in court documents due to their fear of retaliation.

Military whistleblowers are vital to managing our enormous investment in the Pentagon. Even more important, they are key to protecting our national security and the lives of our service members.

However, these brave Americans face a unique set of challenges when they come forward to report fraud, waste, abuse and illegality within the armed services. Congress addressed many of the most significant shortfalls for civilian whistleblowers when it passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act in 2012. But the safeguards for members of the military to exercise their constitutional rights remain hopelessly antiquated.

One expert told a Senate committee last month that such provisions remain “the lowest common denominator in the U.S. code for accountability.”

The Pentagon is arguably the worst run bureaucracy in in the Federal government, and it desperately needs to be fixed.

I am not sure here whether “Fixed” means mended, or if it means spayed or neutered, but either would be an improvement.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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It turns out that the DHS no fly list is basically based on hunches with a pseudo-scientific gloss:

The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court.

In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping US and other citizens from travelling on airplanes is a matter of “predictive assessments about potential threats”, the government asserted in May.

“By its very nature, identifying individuals who ‘may be a threat to civil aviation or national security’ is a predictive judgment intended to prevent future acts of terrorism in an uncertain context,” Justice Department officials Benjamin C Mizer and Anthony J Coppolino told the court on 28 May.

“Judgments concerning such potential threats to aviation and national security call upon the unique prerogatives of the Executive in assessing such threats.”

It is believed to be the government’s most direct acknowledgement to date that people are not allowed to fly because of what the government believes they might do and not what they have already done.

………

On Friday, the ACLU asked Judge Anna Brown to conduct her own review of the error rate in the government’s predictions modeling – a process the ACLU likens to the “pre-crime” of Philip K Dick’s science fiction.

“I believe this is the first case in which a court is being asked to review the basis for the government’s predictive model for blacklisting people who have never even been charged, let alone convicted, of a violent crime,” said ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi.

In March, as a result of the lawsuit, the Department of Homeland Security began informing people of their inclusion on a flight blacklist and permitting them to file a “redress inquiry”. The resulting non-adversarial process has the government perform “careful consideration” of its reasons for blacklisting, with the Transportation Security Agency director as final arbiter. The ACLU considers the new process insufficient.

But the Obama administration is seeking to block the release of further information about how the predictions are made, for the same reason it opposes providing greater information for challenging watchlist inclusion: damage to national security.

………

In April 2014, five people, all of whom are Muslim, claimed that they were suddenly forbidden from flying after declining FBI pressure to become informants or in order to place pressure upon them to do so. Informants, along with social media postings, have become a driving factor in the FBI’s uptick in arrests of people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and the Islamic State.

In July 2014, the Intercept published an internal watchlisting guidance indicating that nominations to government watchlists were growing, with few rejections. Social media posts were among acceptable criteria, and acquittals in court did not necessarily lead to removals from the list, the Intercept’s document showed.

We are living in an era where the state security apparatus, and the executive that is supposed to ensure that they work in accordance with our interests and our values are thoroughly corrupted by power and fear.

Obama’s message is to tell us not to worry, because he is a good and trustworthy man.

The whole point of our system, with its separation of powers, is that we are not supposed to rely on the the good nature of our leaders.

Obama has taken the worst excesses of the Bush administration, and normalized them.

This will Obama’s most important legacy, and it is not a positive one.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!™

Can We Please Given Texas Back to Mexico?

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Some cracker judge in the Lone Star State just sentenced a man to marry his girlfriend and write down bible verses:

A Texas man was sentenced to marry his 19-year-old girlfriend, write down Bible verses and attend counseling by a judge as punishment for punching another man in the jaw, according to local television station KLTV.

The court case stemmed from a February altercation between Josten Bundy, 20, and the ex-partner of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Jaynes. He told the TV station he hit the man twice.

During his sentencing, Judge Randall Rogers told Bundy he would have to marry his girlfriend within 30 days as a condition of his probation. Bundy said that Rogers gave him the option to sit behind bars for 15 days.

Bundy asked if he could call his employers to tell them he was going to jail, but the judge declined. Bundy and Jaynes said they feared Bundy would lose his job, so they applied for their marriage license and scheduled a date with the justice of the peace.

In a state where the body politic was not congenitally insane, this judge would be suspended pending a judicial review, a state bar review, and a 24-hour psychological evaluation.

It’s a Good Start

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This is kind down in the weeds finance, but the fact that the EU is requiring a central facility for clearing all derivatives:

The European Commission adopted new rules Thursday mandating central clearing of certain over-the-counter interest rate derivatives contracts. Phased in over three years, the mandate, which can begin in April of next year at the earliest, covers interest rate swaps with certain features denominated in euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen or U.S. dollars.

Central clearing of derivatives was first agreed to by world leaders at the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit in 2009. It began in the US in 2013, followed by a requirement in 2014 that certain swaps begin trading on swaps execution facilities (SEFs).

The lack of coordination in the way derivatives markets reforms have been implemented in different jurisdictions has long led to complaints about cross-border fragmentation. As far back as January 2014, when the US has implemented central clearing but before US mandates for trading on SEFs had kicked in, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) had already published a research note titled “Cross-Border Fragmentation of Global OTC Derivatives: An Empirical Analysis.”

In September of last year, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner J. Christopher Giancarlo sounded alarms that uncoordinated cross-border regulations in the swaps market had the potential to degenerate into a regulatory “trade war” that could further fragment cross-border swaps trading.

“Rather than controlling systemic risk, the fragmentation of global swaps markets into regional ones is increasing risk by Balkanizing pools of trading liquidity and market pricing,” he said at the time.

This is important for a number of reasons:

  • It means that we are closer to get meaningful data as to the volume of what Warren Buffet called, “Financial weapons of mass destruction.”
  • It will allow for irregular trades to be flagged more easily, because they will stand out in comparison to the rest of the market.
  • It will allow for effective taxation of these instruments.

It is some rare good news in the financial regulation front.

If You Cannot Make Charter Schools in Sweden, You Cannot Make Them Work at All

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It turns out that when you take well funded and competently run public schools, and decide to sh%$ can that and throw public monies at privately run schools, it all turns into crap:

Sweden’s education system has often been cited by Michael Gove as a role model, especially for its policy of state-sponsored free schools providing increased choice for parents. In 2008 Gove told the Conservative party conference that Sweden’s school reforms would be introduced if he was in government – and in 2010 promptly did so, with the advent of free schools.

A few years later and Sweden’s star has dimmed. The 2012 Pisa results show Sweden’s exam results falling abruptly across all three measures of reading, maths and science – with the country recording the largest drop in maths performance over 10 years. Anna Ekström, head of Sweden’s National Education Agency, said in response: “The bleak picture has become bleaker with the Pisa review that was presented today.”

………

In recent months a number of for-profit companies running free schools in Sweden have been in financial difficulties, while a recent TV exposé revealed that the state-funded privately-run schools were prepared to bend selection rules to admit bright pupils.

Sweden’s education minister, Jan Björklund, said the Pisa results were “the final nail in the coffin for the old school reform,” and speculated that the central government could take over running schools from Sweden’s municipalities.

This is not a surprise.

The way to fix public schools is to actually fix public schools.

The charter school movement is based on the twin goals of destroying teachers’ unions and transferring public funds to the parasites on Wall Street.

Charters have not, nor has they ever been about our kids learning.

H/T Angry Bear.

What Does a Cop Have to Do to Get Fired?

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A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned.

Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly referred to him as “that nigger”, after becoming frustrated that the man was not punished more harshly over a prior run-in.

The payment was made to the black resident, Vincent Bias, after a secret recording of Middlebrooks’s remarks was played to the city’s police chiefs and the mayor. Elected city councillors said they were not consulted. A copy of the recording was obtained by the Guardian.

………

“This town is ridiculous,” Bias, 49, said in an interview. “The police here feel they can do what they want, and often they do.” Alexander City police chief Willie Robinson defended Middlebrooks. “He was just talking. He didn’t really mean that,” he said in an interview.

………

Middlebrooks, 33, made the threatening comments to Bias’s brother-in-law during a May 2013 encounter at his home, which Bias was visiting. Police came to the home after they discovered an unleashed dog.

A lawsuit from Bias that the city paid to settle before it reached court stated that while Bias remained inside the house and out of earshot, the officer remarked to Bias’s brother-in-law, who is white, that he was tired of “that nigger” being released from jail.

………

The officer did say he had been cleared by a state inquiry into the incident and referred the Guardian to the state bureau of investigation (SBI) and Larkin Radney, the city attorney for Alexander City. A spokesman for the SBI, however, said: “We have no record of us investigating this case.” Radney said: “I really don’t know what he’s talking about.”


During the interview at his office, Robinson said Middlebrooks “was disciplined” when the recording came to light, but declined to elaborate. Asked if the officer was ever suspended from patrols, Robinson repeated: “He got disciplined.” When it was put to him that some agencies might have terminated the officer’s job, the police chief said: “I don’t know what other departments do, but I made that call, and I’m going to live with that.”

Robinson tried to stress that Middlebrooks was in fact proposing that the brother-in-law carry out the killing. “He wasn’t saying that he was going to do that,” said the police chief. “He was talking about the man doing it himself.”

So a criminal conspiracy to commit murder under the color of law is not a grounds to fire this thug?

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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In Denver, a man started handing out fliers to people entering the courthouse explaining their rights as a juror.

It turns out that, even though a judge will not allow it to be argued in court, that jurors are free to vote their own conscience, invalidating unjust laws and ignoring judge’s instructions.* (See here)

Prosecutors just charged him with 7 felony counts of jury tampering:

A Denver man has been charged with multiple felonies after he was caught distributing fliers to educate potential jurors about the practice of “jury nullification.”

The Denver Post reported that 56-year-old Mark Iannicelli set up a small booth with a sign reading “Juror Info” outside the Lindsay-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver last week. The Denver District Attorney’s Office charged Iannicelli with seven counts of jury tampering after members of the jury pool were found to be in possession of fliers describing jury nullification.

Jury nullification allows juries to acquit a defendant who they may believe is guilty if they also believe that the law is unjust. The practice has been used by juries in the United States since the 1800s to nullify anti-free speech laws and laws punishing northerners for helping runaway slaves. It has most recently been used in drug cases when juries have viewed laws as discriminatory.

A copy of the criminal complaint obtained by Kirsten Tynan of the Fully Informed Jury Association says that Iannicelli “unlawfully and feloniously attempted directly and indirectly to communicate with” seven jurors.

A probable cause statement added that Iannicelli was accused of “handing out information to potential jurors.”

Tynan pointed out that the complaint “does not accuse Mr. Iannicelli of advocating for or against any case in progress” and “it does not accuse Mr. Iannicelli even of targeting individuals for sharing information with them.”

This is complete bullsh%$, and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.

Any Colorado lawyers out there who wants to throw a complaint to the Bar Association?

*See the John Peter Zenger libel case from 1735, where the jury ignored the law and said that the truth is an absolute defense against libel, and William Penn’s acquittal for unlawful assembly (even though the judge threatened the jury when they refused to acquit).

Bummer of a Birth Mark, Rand

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The Department of Justice has just unsealed a criminal indictment naming three close Rand Paul aides conspiracy for fraud and bribery relating to the 2012 Republican primary:

Two top allies of presidential candidate and US Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) were charged with violating campaign finance laws during the 2012 presidential campaign, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

Jesse Benton, who worked on the presidential bid of Paul’s father, Ron, was named as one of three political operatives in the alleged scheme to conceal payments to an Iowa state senator.

According to a National Journal report last April, Benton was tapped to run a Paul-sanctioned super PAC, America’s Liberty PAC, supporting the senator’s 2016 presidential bid.

John Tate, who is listed as the group’s founder and president, was also named in the charges. The other operative named was Dimitrios Kesari, a former deputy campaign manager on Ron Paul’s campaign.

The indictment was based on six counts, including conspiracy, filing false records, false statements, and obstruction of justice.

Though the indictment did not name which 2012 presidential candidate Benton, Tate, and Kesari worked on, there is little doubt that it is referring to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Rand Paul’s father.

Note that one of these people, Jesse Benton, is married to Rand Paul’s niece, so it is all in the family.

At the rate that this is going, the Republicans are going to nominate Donald Trump.

Put a Fork in Jabba the Governor, He’s Done………

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At the Monmouth Park racetrack in New Jersey, Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh won the Haskell Invitational.

The trophy was presented in the winner’s circle, and as soon as Chris Christie, and as soon as he appeared, a deafening chorus of boos erupted from the crowd of more than sixty thousand.

They continued for as long as he was before the crowd, and returned whenever someone mentioned his name:

It was one long happy celebration at Monmouth Park for the great American Pharoah’s latest victory. At least, that is, until Gov. Chris Christie stepped into the Winner’s Circle to present the trophy.

 And then, the record crowd of 60,983 booed.

 Long.

 Loud.

 Sustained.

Maybe he should have hung around Bill Murray.

The cheering resumed as trainer Bob Baffert and owner Ahmed Zayat addressed the crowd and talking about their famous horse. Then Christie’s name was mentioned again, and the booing started anew.

So not even the popular Triple Crown winner, which went off as such a heavy favorite that a $2 bet won 20 cents, could improve the popularity of the Republican presidential candidate in his home state.

Christie still believes that he can become President.

He should be figuring out how to stay out of jail, because someone is going to roll over him to the US Attorney, and he is going to be under significant legal jeopardy.

It’s over dude.

You won’t be President, and you won’t win another election ……… Ever,

Your Evening Schadenfreude

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This is the skeeviest mugshot that I’ve seen in a Long time

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been indicted on multiple counts of fraud and financial shenanigans, some of which carry the possibility of life in prison:

Facing three felony counts of securities law violations, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was arrested, fingerprinted and photographed Monday morning for alleged violations that took place when he was a state legislator.

 Indicted by a Collin County grand jury last week, Paxton surrendered at the county jail in his hometown of McKinney, avoiding assembled reporters by entering through a side door.

 ………

 The grand jury indictments against Paxton, unsealed shortly after noon, revealed that two first-degree fraud charges were based on Paxton’s efforts in July 2011 — when he was a member of the Texas House — to sell stock on behalf of Servergy Inc., a privately held, McKinney-based tech company.

 According to the indictments, Paxton failed to tell stock buyers — including state Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, and Florida businessman Joel Hochberg, who each purchased more than $100,000 in Servergy stock and were listed as complainants on the fraud charges — that he had been compensated with 100,000 shares of Servergy. Paxton also said he was an investor in Servergy when he had not invested his own money in the company, the charges indicated.

 ………

 Paxton encouraged investors to put more than $600,000 into Servergy, special prosecutor Kent Schaffer told The New York Times last week. Paxton’s role was discovered as part of a Texas Rangers investigation, Schaffer said.

 First-degree felonies can be punished by up to life in prison.

Paxton is a wingnut’s wingnut, even by the standards of Texas, which is saying a lot.


Pass the popcorn

The fact that he has been caught red-handed defrauding fellow Republican members of the state legislature makes this whole affair quite ……… entertaining.

I am amused.

Yes

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Is the Supposed STEM Shortage a Myth Used to Serve Tech Companies Labor Policies?

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

The slightly longer version of this, as Erik Loomis notes, is that when companies like Qualcomm are calling for a massive expansion in the H1B Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program because of an alleged shortage of skilled workers, while at the same time laying out thousands of skilled workers with US citizen or Green Card status, it is clear that they are trying to engage in labor arbitrage to drive wages down.

There is no STEM shortage.

It has never showed up in any data, and when you talk to tech firms, it becomes clear that they see the Gastarbeiter programs as a way of ensuring that an endless stream of low wage and compliant workers don’t require them to pay a fair market price for skilled workers.

H/T Atrios.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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The Obama administration’s central strategy against strong encryption seems to be waging war on the companies that are providing and popularizing it: most notably Apple and Google.

The intimidation campaign got a boost Thursday when a blog that frequently promotes the interests of the national security establishment raised the prospect of Apple being found liable for providing material support to a terrorist.

Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of the LawFare blog, suggested that Apple could in fact face that liability if it continued to provide encryption services to a suspected terrorist. He noted that the post was in response to an idea raised by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., in a hearing earlier this month.

“In the facts we considered,” wrote Wittes and his co-author, Harvard law student Zoe Bedell, “a court might — believe it or not — consider Apple as having violated the criminal prohibition against material support for terrorism.”

Our state security apparatus is truly lawless, and this is an inherent feature of these instutions.

In order to prevent them from doing this, there needs to be meaningful civilian oversight, and transparency.

Unfortunately, very few people in the civilian power structure want anything to do with meaningful oversight or transparency.

Finally, a White Prosecutor Indicts a Cop for Murder under the Color of Law

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Warning: This is a video of a police officer shooting a man in the head without provocation

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been indicted for felony murder:

A white police officer who gunned down an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been indicted for murder by a grand jury, as the county prosecutor described the shooting as the “most asinine act” he had ever seen committed by a police officer.

Samuel DuBose, 43, was killed on 19 July by a single shot to the head fired by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a routine traffic stop, in which DuBose was pulled over for not having a front license plate.

Tensing had maintained he was “dragged” by Dubose’s vehicle after the two entered into a physical altercation and was forced to shoot, but Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said body-camera evidence completely contradicted this account.

In a frank assessment of the officer’s conduct, Deters said Tensing had “purposely killed” DuBose and that he “should never have been a police officer”.

………

Deters, who was visibly angered at points during the press conference, continued: “He [Tensing] wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, OK? He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop, all right? And – I could use harsher words.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he added. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.” Deters also said the death reflected poorly on the university police department and had advised Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell that the force be disbanded and replaced with a new city police precinct on campus.

If the university police department, it would be a good thing, because it’s not just this guy, two of his fellow officers obstructed justice to protect him:

Police officers in Cincinnati appear to have corroborated a false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a detailed analysis of body-camera video released on Wednesday shows.

………

A Guardian analysis of the nearly 28 minutes worth of Tensing’s body-camera footage released by the prosecutor’s office also shows the aftermath of the shooting and reveals that on three occasions, two other police officers repeat Tensing’s account that he was dragged by DuBose, and one of these officers claims to have witnessed it occurring.

Tensing repeats, multiple times throughout the footage, the claim that he was dragged by DuBose’s vehicle. But at five minutes and 44 seconds into the video, he states: “I think I’m OK. He was just dragging me.”

To which a second officer, who stands out of the frame, replies: “Yeah, I saw that.”

Tensing continues: “I thought I was going to get run over. I was trying to stop him.”

Then, at six minutes and 54 seconds into the footage, while Tensing is seemingly conversing with the same officer, he states: “He was dragging me, man.”

The officer replies, “Yeah.” To which Tensing continues: “I got my hand and my arm caught inside.” The officer then replies, “Yeah, I saw that.”

………

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office did not reply to a question from the Guardian after Deter’s press conference over whether any other officers were being investigated in relation the incident.

The officers engaged in felony conspiracy, indict them as well.

We need to go zero-tolerance/broken window on this sh%$.

Why Alabama is a Punch Line

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Alabama is seeking to terminate the parental rights of a woman incarcerated in Lauderdale County, Alabama so has to force her to carry a child to term that she wants to abort:

Alabama officials are currently seeking to prevent a pregnant prison inmate from obtaining a legal abortion by stripping her of her parental rights, in a case where a lawyer has been appointed to represent the interests of her fetus.

An unnamed woman, who is referred to in court documents only as Jane Doe, is asking for permission to travel to Huntsville to end her pregnancy. She says she was unable to get an abortion before she was taken into custody and is now feeling desperate. “I am very distraught, and do not want to be forced to carry this pregnancy to term,” she wrote.

Jane Doe — who has to get permission from the court to be transported to the nearest clinic because prison officials consider abortion to be a non-emergency procedure — is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that it would be “cruel and unusual punishment” for the state of Alabama to deny her constitutional right to abortion.

Now, as Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly prepares to argue against this request, he is asking the court to strip Doe of her parental rights so that she will no longer have the right to end her pregnancy. In a hearing to determine the outcome of the case, which is expected to be decided by Friday, the state court appointed an attorney — known as a “guardian ad litem” — to serve on behalf of Doe’s fetus.

“It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to give birth to a baby, which she has decided she does not want to do,” Randall Marshall, one of Doe’s attorneys, told the Huffington Post. “The case has certainly moved to this new dimension, but welcome to Alabama.”

Yeah, welcome to Alabama.

The kind of gleeful evil doing by the District Attorney here is of biblical proportions.  We are talking Amalek and Sodom and Gemorra here.

This ratf%$# is trying to destroy a helpless (she is pregnant and in jail) woman to inflict his warped morality.

Why doesn’t DA Connolly go to Syria and fight for ISIS, they are clearly his ideological bedfellows.

Eric Arthur Blair Has to Be Spinning in His Grave over This………

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Eric Arthur Blair
Aka George Orwell

It appears that while the Department of Justice saw no need to call Dylan Roof, who targeted a black church with the explicit goal of keeping black people down, is not a terrorist, while animal rights activists who leg minks out of cages are terrorists:

The FBI on Friday announced the arrests in Oakland of two animal rights activists, Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane, and accused the pair of engaging in “domestic terrorism.” This comes less than a month after the FBI director said he does not consider Charleston Church murderer Dylann Roof a “terrorist.” The activists’ alleged crimes: “They released thousands of minks from farms around the country and vandalized various properties.” That’s it. Now they’re being prosecuted and explicitly vilified as “terrorists,” facing 10-year prison terms.

To call this “Orwellian” is an understatement, and I am coming from the perspective of being hostile to most of the goals of the PETA and its ilk.

These folks, are assholes, and they should be charged, but charging them with terrorism is nucking futs.

F%$# Me, I Agree with Donald Trump

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On Monday, Trump fired off a tweet telling Rattner: “I think you should have gone to prison for what you did, I guess Obama saved you.”

He ended the tweet telling Rattner to watch: “I will win!”

It was unclear what activity Trump was referring to that should have landed Rattner in jail. Trump did not respond to CNNMoney’s request for comment.

In 2010, Rattner did pay $10 million in fines when he settled with the New York state attorney general for his alleged involvement in a pension fund scheme. While Rattner was never charged criminally, some others who were involved in the same scheme, such as former New York comptroller Alan Hevesi, did not.

Yes, he should have gone to jail.

Much like a stopped calendar, Donald Trump is right once a year.

Good. Now How About Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon Too?

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In response to his knowingly shipping Salmonella tainted peanut butter, prosecutors are asking for a life sentence for former president and CEO of Peanut Corporation of America:

Stewart Parnell–the former Peanut Corporation of America owner that was convicted last year for knowingly shipping Salmonella-contaminated peanut butter from his Georgia plant–may be sentenced to life in prison if prosecutors have their way. The U.S. Probation Office concluded that the scope of Parnell’s crimes–including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and wire fraud– “results in a life sentence Guidelines range.”

 After a two month trial, Parnell was found guilty of knowingly shipping the contaminated products to food processors across the U.S. This is reportedly the first federal felony conviction of its kind in relation to food safety, making it an unprecedented case.

In 2008 and 2009, the peanut butter outbreak spread throughout 46 states, ultimately leading the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to announce one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history. Nine people died and more than 700 fell ill. Parnell nor any co-defendants were ever charged in relation to any consumer illnesses or deaths resulting from the tainted peanut butter.

 ………

 Parnell–age 61–is scheduled to be sentenced on September 21 by a federal judge in Albany, GA. Although prosecutors are recommending a life sentence, the judge is free to impose a lighter sentence.

 A 17 to 21 year sentence was recommended for brother Michael Parnell. Mary Wilkerson–the plant quality control manager–may get 8 to 10 years in prison based on prosecutors’ recommendation.

Here is a suggestion for the judge: Imagine that Mr. Parnell is a black man caught dealing crack, and that he had 3 priors, all of them non-violent drug offenses.

 That should be good for about 60 years.

Or, perhaps you could imagine that he is a black man accused of selling loose cigarettes in New York City. 

That carries the death penalty these days.

An Outbreak of Sanity. Now Get the Drivers Some Anti-Psychotic Drugs………

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Boston has dropped their Olympic bid:

Deep skepticism here about whether taxpayers would be stuck footing the bill for the Olympics has doomed Boston’s bid to host the 2024 Summer Games and raised questions about whether any other major American city might be willing to take on the risk.

The United States Olympic Committee said Monday that it was withdrawing Boston as its proposed bid city because resistance among residents was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15.

“We have not been able to get a majority of the citizens of Boston to support hosting the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S.O.C., said in a statement as he raised the white flag. “Therefore, the U.S.O.C. does not think that the level of support enjoyed by Boston’s bid would allow it to prevail over great bids from Paris, Rome, Hamburg, Budapest or Toronto.”

Here is the sticking point:

Voters told pollsters that they were most concerned about having to pay for cost overruns. But they were also dismayed by what they considered as Boston 2024’s lack of transparency and the sense that a small cabal of business leaders who stood to profit seemed to be running the show in secrecy. And they questioned whether much-need improvements in transportation, housing and education would get done if the city were so focused on the Olympics.

Mr. Wallechinsky, the historian, said that the U.S.O.C. should “take a good hard look at themselves” and conduct an investigation into “how they could have picked Boston in the first place.” He said one of the worst moments came when the U.S.O.C. watched as Boston 2024 said that its bid, which was not initially disclosed to the public, called for no public financing; the U.S.O.C. knew that was not true, he said, as the public found out later after news outlets obtained the bid.

So, they lied to the people of Boston, and the USOC wanted Boston to guarantee to cover the costs of any f%$#-ups that the looters, “Small cabal of business leaders who stood to profit,” managed to extract from the process.

They are now looking at LA, but the last time that LA hosted, they ignored the bling, and reused existing facilities, and that eliminates the possibilities for graft that drive the International Olympic Committee since Juan Antonio Samaranch (An actual card-carrying fascist, he served in the Franco regime in Spain) took over the presidency of the organization in 1980.

The 2024 Olympics will not be in the US.  Most likely, it will be in a totalitarian state, since the financially ruinous exercises in narcissistic self-aggrandizement seems to built into the DNA of that form of government.

My guess is that the 2024 Olympics will be held in Pyongyang. (Just kidding, but my last joke in this vein was Arisia)

So Not a Surprise

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The Pension Trustees of New Jersey decided that the huge private equity fees being paid to Christie supporters needed to be investigated.

Now we discover that the Christie administration is slow walking the investigation:

When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was preparing to launch his presidential campaign this spring, he faced a big potential headache: New Jersey pension officials had voted to investigate secret taxpayer fees that the Republican governor’s administration paid to Wall Street firms. But Christie’s administration may have found a stopgap solution: stall.

Four months after state pension trustees’ vote, the retirement system’s chairman told International Business Times that Christie’s aides have so far prevented the probe from getting off the ground.

“They are throwing up obstacles, as many as they can find,” said Tom Bruno, who leads the N.J. Public Employees’ Retirement System’s board of trustees. Bruno says Christie’s Treasury Department has prevented the probe from going forward until Christie’s appointees on the State Investment Council give their blessing.

The investigation was supposed to evaluate the higher fees that have accompanied the administration’s shift of billions of dollars of pension money into hedge funds, private equity and other so-called “alternative” investments. Despite federal and New Jersey “pay to play” rules, some of those fees have been paid to firms whose executives donated to GOP groups affiliated with Christie. But with New Jersey having no independently elected auditor, treasurer or attorney general, pensioners must ultimately rely on the Christie administration to approve an investigation of its own decisions affecting thousands of retirees.

………

Pension trustees demanded the audit in April following a series of reports from International Business Times spotlighting a massive increase in pension fees paid to private financial firms — some of whose executives have made campaign contributions to Republican groups affiliated with Christie. In March, IBTimes reported that the Christie administration had failed to disclose potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in fees the state had been paying since Christie took office in January 2010.

………

Last year, after the initial disclosures, Christie’s then-State Investment Council Chairman Robert Grady resigned amid questions about political favoritism in awarding pension contracts. This year, Christie’s state treasurer, Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff, resigned in June, a month after a testy legislative hearing in which state lawmakers raised questions about the undisclosed fees paid by the pension system under Christie.

The pension trustees’ push for a full audit of the pension system follows moves by the Christie administration that appeared to obscure or conceal details of the system’s finances and oversight decisions.

After financial experts raised questions about the accuracy of the pension performance data in 2014, Christie’s administration rejected repeated open records requests for documents that would show how it calculated the figures. When in the same year it was revealed that Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker donated $10,000 to the New Jersey Republican Party months before his financial firm received a New Jersey pension deal, Christie’s aides blocked the release of the findings of the government’s pay-to-play investigation until after Baker’s closely fought election.

Meanwhile, in the pension system’s most recent annual report, Christie’s aides changed the way they tabulated pension management fees to make it seem as if the fees had decreased — when, in fact, they had jumped to $600 million.

………

The state’s investment strategy has not, however, generated higher returns for taxpayers and retirees. Last year, a study by Wilshire Associates found that the New Jersey pension fund’s investment return has trailed the median for pension funds throughout the country.

………

On Wednesday, however, the State Investment Council said the pension’s returns have been lower than expected so far this year.  

I so hope that he ends up in jail, but given his background as a former US Attorney, I fear that he has surrounded himself with plausible deniability.

Not this Sh%$ Again!

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Interest-only mortgages: They’re baaack:

They were the villains of the housing crash. Federal regulators called them toxic. Now interest-only mortgages are making a comeback, but these are not the loans of yesteryear or yester-housing booms.

“I think it’s opening the door back to responsible lending, giving people choices,” said Mat Ishbia, president and CEO of Michigan-based United Wholesale Mortgage, the second-largest lender through brokers in the nation.

The company announced Monday it is now offering interest-only loans through brokers, with significant safeguards. Borrowers must put 20 percent down, ensuring that they have the “skin in the game” that so many did not during the heady days of the housing boom. They must have at least a 720 FICO credit score, which is well above average, and they must qualify on what the payments will be once they’re adjusted higher, not at the starter rate.

“These people can afford these mortgages. They’re savvy homeowners,” said Ishbia. “We’re giving them the choice. It is no more risk to us. We actually think it’s less risk.”

United Wholesale Mortgage does not hold the loans but sells them to investors. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage giants, do not buy these types of loans.

Yeah, This Time, It Will Be Different!

Notwithstanding the myths of the housing crash, the GSE, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, actually had a smaller role in mortgage securitization as the housing bubble came expanded like a supernova.

It was the private loan investors that were at the core of the last real estate collapse, and now they are back, and investing in insane mortgage products.

It’s déjà vu all over again.