Category: Corruption

Couldn’t We Send Him to Guantánamo?

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This has to be the best headline of the day:

To Send a Message, Judge Sentences David Petraeus to 75% of One Speaking Fee

David PetraeusFormer CIA Director David Petraeus just got sentenced to two years of probation for leaking highly sensitive information to his mistress and then lying to the FBI about it.

………

The only “surprise” of the hearing is that, rather than getting slapped with a $40,000 fine, Judge David Keesler more than doubled the fine to send a message.

To $100,000.

According to SpeakerPedia, Petraeus makes upwards of $132,750 for each speech.

Needless to say, this is disgraceful.

This guy mishandled secure information, he then deliberately leaked it to his lover, and then he lied to the FBI about it, and he can make enough to pay the fine in about 70 minutes.

BTW, the Obama administration is using him as a consultant now, so it appears that he still has a security clearance.

That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?

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When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.

About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.

Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.

………

The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.

And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.

Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.

This really is kind of mind boggling.

I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.

Is it Just Me, or Does Jabba the Governor Seem to be on a Path to the Pokey?

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The pattern of self dealing continues.

This time it’s Chris Christie cutting a sweetheart deal for his brother’s law firm:

As one of its first moves in its state takeover of financially strapped Atlantic City, Chris Christie’s administration has awarded a lucrative government contract to the financial services firm that employs the Republican governor’s brother, Todd Christie. The deal followed an even bigger contract given to the firm by Christie officials only weeks after the governor’s brother began working there.

In January, Chris Christie signed an executive order installing an emergency management team to develop “a plan to place the finances of Atlantic City in stable condition on a long-term basis.” Two months later, Reuters obtained documents showing that Christie administration officials signed a contract with Ernst & Young, which hired Todd Christie as a New Jersey-based director in March 2013. Todd Christie is listed as working on the firm’s “business development” in campaign finance records.

The Christie administration contract will pay Ernst and Young more than $250,000 to provide financial analysis of Atlantic City. As the casino town faces a $101 million deficit and hotel closures, the deal cemented by Christie’s Department of Law also will allow Ernst & Young to bill taxpayers $455 per hour for other services, according to Reuters. The Christie administration gave the contract to Todd Christie’s firm at a time when New Jersey’s executive branch ethics code says that public officials may not use their positions “to secure a job, contract, governmental approval or special benefit for yourself, a friend or family member.”

“I hope the governor’s advocacy for the state takeover of Atlantic City was not simply to repay a favor to his brother, Todd Christie, for all of the support Todd has given him over the years,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s investigative committee. “It is fair to ask questions any time you have the executive branch taking actions that at least on the surface appear to uniquely benefit somebody very close to the governor.”

………

The Christie administration’s Atlantic City-related contract to Todd Christie’s firm follows Todd Christie delivering more than $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which backed his brother’s election campaigns. The governor’s brother also delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to his brother’s reelection campaign after he started at Ernst & Young.

This is not the first time Todd Christie’s business has intersected with the government business his brother oversees.

Only weeks after Todd Christie started at Ernst & Young, Christie administration officials awarded the firm separate contracts worth more than $550,000 for auditing services in connection with the state’s expenditures on Hurricane Sandy recovery. Ernst & Young has said Todd Christie was not involved in the deal, and noted that Ernst & Young is a large company with many employees.

Todd Christie also was part of a group of investors who purchased and sold properties near public transit facilities that his brother’s appointees redeveloped, according to the Bergen Record. At an event touting the redevelopment, the governor joked that his father was the “lobbyist in the Christie family for this project.”

So totally not corrupt, right?

This is not the sort of sh%$ that goes unnoticed in a Presidential race, even if it is business as usual in New Jersey, and even if Christie is a Republican.

Props to the People who Complained

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Newsweek published an anti-wind power OP/ED, and after an outpouring of outrage from informed readers, the magazine was forced to publish a clarification admitting that the author was literally an employee of the Koch brothers:

Editor’s note: The author of this piece, Randy Simmons, is the Charles G. Koch professor of political economy at Utah State University. He’s also a senior fellow at the Koch– and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center. These ties to the oil industry weren’t originally disclosed in this piece.

It’s still buried at the bottom or the article, but this sort of push-back is important.

Well, I Guess Giving Rides to Blind Folks is Restrictive Government Regulations as Well

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Uber is at it again.

This time, they are refusing to give rides to people with service animals:

A federal judge in San Francisco has allowed a civil lawsuit filed against Uber by an advocacy group for the blind to proceed.

The case was initially filed in September 2014 by the National Federation of the Blind of California and one individual plaintiff, who alleged that the quasi-taxi company is in violation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), along with other state disabilities laws.

Uber had initially filed to have the case dismissed, but the judge’s ruling last Friday means the case will proceed.

According to the initial civil complaint, UberX drivers routinely refused to serve blind riders who travel with service animals:

Further, UberX drivers across the United States are likewise refusing to transport blind individuals, including identified UberX drivers who repeatedly denied rides to one blind woman on twelve separate occasions, charged blind riders cancellation fees, and abandoned blind travelers in extreme weather, all because of guide dogs.

In total, Plaintiffs are aware of more than thirty instances where drivers of UberX vehicles refused to transport blind individuals with service animals. UberX drivers that refused to transport these blind individuals did so after they initially agreed to transport the riders. The UberX drivers denied the requested transportation service after the drivers had arrived and discovered that the riders used service animals.

In addition, some UberX drivers seriously mishandle guide dogs or harass blind customers with guide dogs even when they do not outright deny the provision of taxi service. For example, Leena Dawes is blind and uses a guide dog. An UberX driver forced Ms. Dawes’ guide dog into the closed trunk of the UberX sedan before transporting Ms. Dawes. When Ms. Dawes realized where the driver had placed her dog, she pleaded with the driver to pull over so that she could retrieve her dog from the trunk, but the driver refused her request. Other blind customers with guide dogs have been yelled at by Uber drivers who are hostile toward their guide dogs.

In its motion to dismiss, Uber argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that as a private company, it is not bound by the provisions of the ADA—an argument that United States Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Cousins found did not hold water.

If they think that Title III of the ADA (public accommodations and commercial facilities) doesn’t apply to them, they are desperately trying to avoid treating their employees as employees, why should they give a damn about things like Sarbanes-Oxley?

Investing with Objectivist psychopaths who think they are supermen who are above the laws of mere mortals who does not appear to me to be a sensible thing.

Remember the Brief Kidnapping of Richard Engel by Assad’s Forces in Syria? Not so Much.

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It turns out that he was kidnapped by the Syrian opposition, and then freed by the same militias as a part of a false flag operation: (See also here and here.)

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

In a statement posted on the NBC News website Wednesday evening, Mr. Engel said that a review of the episode — prompted by reporting from The New York Times — had led him to conclude that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia.” He also wrote that the abductors had “put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen.”

Mr. Engel and his team were kidnapped in December 2012 while reporting in Syria. They were held for five days. Just hours after emerging, they appeared on the “Today” show.

“This was a group known as the shabiha, this was the government militia, these are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Engel said on “Today,” citing information he had gathered from the group. In that and other appearances on NBC, and in a Vanity Fair magazine article, he said that he had been rescued by Sunni rebels. At least two people died during the course of the captivity, he said in some versions of the account.

Interviews by The Times with several dozen people — including many of those involved in the search for NBC’s team, rebel fighters and activists in Syria and current and former NBC News employees — suggested that Mr. Engel’s team was almost certainly taken by a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.

The group, known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade, was led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj, who had a history of smuggling and other crimes. The kidnapping ended, the people involved in the search said, when the team was freed by another rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, which had a relationship with Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj.

Mr. Engel and his team underwent a harrowing ordeal, and it is a common tactic for kidnappers in war zones to intentionally mislead hostages as to their identity.

NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals. Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events.

Of course they, “Did not present the other possible version of events,” they couldn’t present other possible versions, because Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia..

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens………

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A private bill collector and police conspired to use the threat of immediate arrest to extort cash from poor defendants:

Minutes after a court sentenced Adel Edwards to pay a $500 fine for burning leaves in his yard without a permit, the private probation company tasked with supervising his monthly payments told him he actually owed more than $1,000 and demanded $250 up front. Because Edwards couldn’t pay the full amount on the spot, the company had him thrown in jail for several days until a friend came up with the money, according to a new federal lawsuit.

The suit, filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights, charges that Red Hills Community Probation conspired with local police in two small Georgia towns to jail poor people without any court approval or legal authority, effectively holding them for ransom.

The plaintiffs, who live in Bainbridge and Pelham, GA, were ordered by the court to pay exorbitant fees for misdemeanor offenses. Edwards pleaded guilty to burning leaves, while others were told they needed to pay hundreds of dollars for speeding, failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and driving with a suspended registration.

At this point, these stories are reminiscent of reports coming out of Ferguson and the surrounding area, where municipalities exploit a murky labyrinth of court fees and traffic tickets to make money off poor defendants. But private probation companies like Red Hills, which are used by more than 1,000 court systems in ten states, further feed on these moneymaking schemes by tacking on their own share of fees. In Pelham and Bainbridge, the suit alleges, the probation firm went even further, committing false imprisonment and fraud, among other charges.

Like Edwards, the other plaintiffs met with Red Hills probation officers, who told each of them they could not leave the courthouse until they paid a certain amount of money that same day. Even though they weren’t legally required to pay the company the same day as their sentencing, the lawsuit states that police officers were stationed at the doors to keep them from leaving. One woman says she was detained in the courthouse while her fiance pawned her engagement ring to come up with the funds the company demanded.

Why am I not surprised that this is going on in what was once a part of the Confederacy?

Silly black folks, justice is for whites.

Things are Getting Very Interesting in New York State Politics

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As you may recall, the Speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon “Shelly” Silver was indicted for corruption, and it looks like the prosecutors have a pretty good case. (See here)

Basically, Sheldon Silver has been one of the “3 Guys in a Room,” (Governor, the State Assembly speaker and the State Senate majority leader) who have made pretty much all the decisions in Albany for a very long time, over 20 years, and it is pretty clear that he knows where the bodies are buried.

What’s more, it appears that the prosecutor, US Attorney Preet Bharara, is upping the pressure, specifically by indicting his son-in-law for financial fraud:

A son-in-law of the former State Assembly speaker was arrested on Monday and accused of defrauding investors out of $7 million, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court.

The defendant, Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, told investors that he would use their money to trade in securities through his investment fund, and promised them double-digit returns with very low risk, according to a statement from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Mr. Trebitsch’s wife, Michelle Trebitsch, is the daughter of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, the former speaker who has been indicted on corruption charges.

Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mr. Trebitsch, and he appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud.

The complaint said that Ms. Trebitsch, a certified public accountant, was a co-owner and managing partner of the investment fund, Allese Capital. She has not been charged.

They don’t need to charge her. (Yet)

The US Attorney can seize Silver’s daughter’s family assets under RICO, and that would have the effect of impoverishing his daughter and his grandchildren.

Also note that Michelle Trebitsch was not just the “Co-Owner” of the firm, she is a CPA, and she did the books, so you can be sure that Shelly is under a lot of pressure to roll over right now.

If Silver rolls on someone to protect himself, his daughter, and his grandchildren, it has to be someone big, i.e. one of the two other “Gusy in a room”, the Senate Majority Leader or the Governor.

We are now getting reports that evidence against Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is being presented to a federal grand jury.

What’s more, it appears that Skelos’ son is being targeted as well.

So, it appears that the Feds are trying to turn Skelos into a cooperating witness as well.

This would imply that they are after Cuomo as well, and that he may be their ultimate goal.

This is what makes the reports that Andrew Cuomo made a tidy $180 for every copy of his memoir that was sold, interesting:

In the first week after its release in October, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s memoir, “All Things Possible,” sold almost impossibly poorly. According to Nielsen Bookscan, fewer than 1,000 people picked up a copy that week. And as of last month, the grand total of all sales was at 3,008. (Plus 13 audiobooks.)

But before you go complaining that being a writer is unrewarding work, know that Cuomo’s time and effort was worth it — financially, at least.

According to his tax release, made public on Wednesday, Cuomo reported earning $377,000 in income on the book in 2014. That’s apparently on top of the $188,333 he got as an advance that was reported in his 2013 filing, meaning that Cuomo seems to have made north of $565,000 for his book though last month.

Or: Nearly $188 per hardcover book.

While I have no doubt that reporter Philip Bump did his homework on the above story, I have a feeling that someone pointed him in the general direction.

I strongly suspect that whoever it was, they had a close relationship to US Attorney Preet Bharara.

If Cuomo gets indicted, it would amuse me no end.

Call Your Congresscritter

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It looks like the Obama administration is planning to submit a fast track bill next week.

If this passes, expect the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and (TTIP) Trans-atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to follow soon after, and it both deals will pass under fast track, because there will be no meaningful public discussion:

Senators will introduce trade promotion authority legislation next week, a top Obama administration official said Thursday.

 Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker expects a “fast-track” bill to be introduced early next week in the Senate and said in a call with reporters that she is “anxiously awaiting to see the language.”

 Pritzker is the first administration official to suggest a firm timeline for legislation that would grant President Obama “fast-track” powers for negotiating trade deals.

 Speculation has been swirling about when the Senate Finance Committee would start moving on a bill.

 Senate aides have said negotiations between Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) are making progress but that no deal had been struck.

The TPP and the TTIP suck.

They favor big big banks, big pharma, and big content over ordinary people, labor rights, environmental protection, and democracy.

As a bonus, it also appears that it would make state owned banks like the Bank of North Dakota, which has saved taxpayers millions, illegal. (It would probably make a US Post Office bank, which would serve to rescue poor Americans from predatory check cashing operations, illegal as well).

Background here.

Call, and tell them to vote no, and tell them that if they vote yes, you will not vote for them ever, in any election, primary or general.

This is particularly important if your Congressmen are Democrats, because there will be a full court press from the Obama administration, which supports fast track, and has negotiated the TPP and TTIP on this. They will argue that the credibility of the President depends on this.

If your Congressmen are Republicans, call and sound like a wingnut who will never forgive them for supporting that Kenyan Muslim Marxist Atheist Tyrant.  (The more unhinged you sound, the better)

You can make email contact from here, but a phone call (The Congressional switchboard number is (202) 224-3121), or a letter sent through the mail probably have more impact.

Someone Finally Found a Way to Beat the Lottery

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Las Vegas makes billions in its casinos with the house have a house edge of 3% to 5%.

State lotteries typically have a house edge of 40% to 50%, so it is a sucker bet, and, as I have told Sharon*, only a fool plays the lottery.†

Well my hats off to Eddie Ray Tipton, who has devised a winning strategy for the lottery:


Prosecutors say they have evidence indicating the former head of computer security for a state lottery association tampered with lottery computers prior to him buying a ticket that won a $14.3 million jackpot, according to a media report.

Eddie Raymond Tipton, 51, may have inserted a thumbdrive into a highly locked-down computer that’s supposed to generate the random numbers used to determine lottery winners, The Des Moines Register reported, citing court documents filed by prosecutors. At the time, Tipton was the information security director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, and he was later videotaped purchasing a Hot Lotto ticket that went on to fetch the winning $14.3 million payout.

In court documents filed last week, prosecutors said there is evidence to support the theory Tipton used his privileged position inside the lottery association to enter a locked room that housed the random number generating computers and infect them with software that allowed him to control the winning numbers. The room was enclosed in glass, could only be entered by two people at a time, and was monitored by a video camera. To prevent outside attacks, the computers aren’t connected to the Internet. Prosecutors said Tipton entered the so-called draw room on November 20, 2010, ostensibly to change the time on the computers. The cameras on that date recorded only one second per minute rather than running continuously like normal.

“Four of the five individuals who have access to control the camera’s settings will testify they did not change the cameras’ recording instructions,” prosecutors wrote. “The fifth person is defendant. It is a reasonable deduction to infer that defendant tampered with the camera equipment to have an opportunity to insert a thumbdrive into the RNG tower without detection.”

Tipton has pleaded not guilty to all charges, and his attorney has said the theory about computer tampering isn’t “factually viable.”

On December 23, a little more than a month after Tipton allegedly tampered with the computers, a man at a convenience store was video taped buying a Hot Lotto ticket that later won the $14.3 million payout. Authorities identified the man as Tipton, but as an employee of the association that administered the lottery, he was barred by law from buying lotto tickets or claiming lottery prizes. The winning ticket went unclaimed for almost a year. Hours before it was scheduled to expire, a company incorporated in Belize tried to claim the prize through a New York attorney. In January, Tipton was charged with two counts of fraud. The allegations that he used his insider access to tamper with the RNG were first made in the court documents filed last week.

Seriously, absent a TARDIS, this is about the only way to beat the lottery.

Like I said, it is a sucker bet.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†To paraphrase Bret Maverick, I do not approve of gambling, I prefer poker.

The Worst Democrat North of the Manson Nixon Line Wins Reelection

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I am referring, of course, to Rahm Emanuel, who won a double digit victory over challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel soundly defeated challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia on Tuesday, capturing a second term in Chicago’s first-ever runoff election and striking a note of humility by thanking voters for “a second term and a second chance.”

The win followed six weeks of a hard-fought, nationally watched second round in which Garcia tried to cast the contest as the latest proxy battle between establishment Democrats and the party’s progressive wing. Emanuel’s overwhelming financial advantage ultimately helped save the mayor as he fought for his political life.

………

With 98 percent of the city’s precincts reporting, Emanuel had 55.7 percent of the unofficial vote to 44.3 percent for Garcia.

It was closer than I expected, but money, and the self defeating bigotry of a significant portion of the Chicago African American community was too big a hill to climb.

I may be a political Little Orphan Annie here, but I do think that Rahm’s mantle has been pierced, and so when the creative accounting that has been obscuring the true state of Chicago’s finances, much of which appear to be in the form of sweetheart deals for his Bankster buddies for complex (and high fee) derivatives of the sort that f%$#ed Greece, collapses, the knives should come out.

At least, I hope that this is what will happen.

I’m bummed.

Election for Chicago Mayor are Tomorrow

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All indications are that he will win handily, though the abnormally high early voter turnout might give Jesus Garcia a slim chance, but polling indicates that it is a very slim chance, even with the endorsement of Garcia by many liberal organizations, including Howard Dean and Democracy for America.

One of the big problems is that the black community appears to be unwilling to vote for a Hispanic candidate, even if this candidate was a strong supporter of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington:

Jesus G. Garcia, candidate for mayor, strode down the sidewalk on Monday evening, trailed by a giddy pack of supporters, volunteers and passers-by. They snapped pictures and chanted his nickname: “Chu-y! Chu-y!”

 One man did not join in. An African-American who wore a knit Blackhawks hat, he glared at Mr. Garcia from the curb.

 “I’m voting,” he said, when asked if he would take part in Tuesday’s election. “But I ain’t voting for no Chuy. I ain’t voting for a Mexican.”

 Pressed to explain, he said he was tired of competing with Latinos for jobs. Then he walked away.

 The scene exposed a fault line in Mr. Garcia’s campaign to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Tuesday’s runoff election. Mr. Garcia’s strategy was to build a coalition of white liberals, blacks and Latinos — angered by Mr. Emanuel’s closing of dozens of schools and supportive of a plan to shift development from its wealthy downtown to poorer neighborhoods.

 But a Chicago Tribune poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Emanuel with a commanding lead. He not only has large margins among white voters, but a nearly two-to-one margin among black voters, 53 percent to 28 percent. Mr. Garcia has not been able to increase his share of the black vote.

 ………

 Mr. Garcia, 58, who has won election to the City Council, the state Senate and the county board of commissioners, has been one of the most prominent Latinos in elected office here, beginning in the 1980s. If elected, he would be the city’s first Latino mayor.

 From the start of his campaign, he spoke of building a multicultural coalition in the spirit of Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, on whose campaign Mr. Garcia worked.

 He has reached out to black leaders, collecting endorsements, campaign donations and promises of votes. And he has focused his campaign on concerns Chicagoans share, including improving public education, a higher minimum wage, reducing gun violence and modernizing mass transit.

(emphasis mine)

Once again, we see that when bigotry to drives the vote, hate voters vote against their own interests. (It kind of explains about 95% of the Republican electoral success in the past few decades)

We already have indications that Rahm Emanuel will double down on those policies which led to this runoff in the first place. It’s why one of Rahm’s big donors is squawking that Emanuel should shut down even more public schools:

The Chicago Teachers Union predicts more school closings if Tahm is re-elected. A major campaign contributor said he should have closed 125 schools, not just 50. This donor, Ken Griffin, is a Republican who also has given to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

………

Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.

Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.

This is a pretty big tell that Rahm wants to continue to privatize public schools, much like his predecessor privatized parking for pennies on the dollar.

Meanwhile Rahm is aggressively fighting the release of emails between him and his big ticket donors.  (see also here)

Of course, given the history of elections in Illinois, it may all be moot, as the chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners appears to have gotten lucrative lobbying contracts for his lawfirm, and it appears that he has already pulled strings for Rahm Emanuel allies down the ticket:

If Chicago’s first mayoral runoff in history ends up razor close on April 7, the city will be relying on a purportedly independent arbiter to oversee any recount. But that arbiter, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, is chaired by a politically-connected lawyer whose firm has received secret city lobbying contracts from incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration. After receiving those contracts, the chairman has already used his power to boost the mayor’s allies against anti-Emanuel challengers in other municipal elections.

Board chairman Langdon Neal was appointed to his position by the Cook County Circuit Court, not by any city official — a structure that is supposed to preserve the board’s independence from candidates for municipal office. However, the laws establishing the election commission do not prohibit Neal from getting contracts from the mayor, whose election he will oversee. How much he has made from those contracts remains a closely guarded secret: the Emanuel administration has denied an open records request for the terms of the deals, refusing to respond to International Business Times within the timeframe mandated by Illinois law.

What’s that Josef Stalin quote again?

I remember, it’s, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

That Sound You Hear is the Revolving Door Spinning Fast Enough to Generate a Sonic Boom

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US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he’s going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis’ courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

………

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump’s Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court’s heavy load and was Ward’s permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John “Johnny” Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis’ son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.

Republican Family Values………

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New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte’s state director (her 2nd most senior staffer) just got busted for prostitution and has resigned:

A senior aide to New Hampshire US Senator Kelly Ayotte resigned his position after he was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, Ayotte’s office announced late Saturday night.

 David Wihby, 61, served for the past year as Ayotte’s state director, the number two staffer behind her chief of staff. Wihby is also an elected member of the Manchester (N.H.) school board. He is a former longtime Manchester city alderman and the former deputy commissioner and interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor.

 Wihby was arrested Friday evening in Nashua on a misdemeanor charge for solicitation of prostitution, Ayotte’s office confirmed.

This isn’t the auto-asphyxia death of a Jerry Falwell confidant in 2 wet suits with a dildo up his butt, but  I notice a pattern here.

The Scandal is that this is Normal for Prosecutors and Courts

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In one of the more prominent cyber crime trials of the year, it has been revealed that
some of the government agents who infiltrated the Silk Road underground site stole from the Site:

After a jury in February found Ross Ulbricht guilty of narcotics and money laundering conspiracies among other charges, in conjunction with his role as the mastermind behind the Silk Road online drug marketplace, even most long-time Ulbricht supporters looked at the preponderance of evidence against him and assumed the case was resoundingly closed. Yesterday, the door to that conviction may have cracked open a tiny bit.

 The US Department of Justice has charged US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV with money laundering and wire fraud in conjunction with their roles leading the Silk Road investigation. (Force was also charged with theft of government property). The pair of federal officers stand accused of diverting $800,000 in bitcoin from Silk Road to their own personal wallet accounts.

 [Aside: Is it just me or aren’t Bridges and Force the two most perfect Hollywood cop names you could ever think of?]

 Even crazier, the two are accused of posing as hitmen on the darknet website and subsequently ensnaring Ulbricht in a murder-for-hire plot against one of his Silk Road employees, whose death they later faked while collecting $80,000 for their services. Later Bridges and Force allegedly extorted 770 bitcoins – then worth approximately $100,000 – and had sought even more, by threatening to reveal his role in the employee’s disappearance.

 ………

 Judging by a tweet from Ublricht counsel Joshua Dratel yesterday, this is not the first time the defense had heard of these accusations:

Major Silk Road govt corruption scandal revelation today that we’ve had to sit on for four months and were not permitted to use at trial.
— Joshua Dratel (@JDratel) March 30, 2015


 The question is, why was this information inadmissible at trial and what, if any impact, did that have on Ulbricht’s conviction? If the defense can prove to an appellate judge that the defense was wrongly handicapped by this decision – a fact that may be more likely given the new information brought to light by the DOJ indictment – then it could be enough to merit a new trial. In such an event, it’s certainly conceivable that some of the evidence collected by Bridges and Force could be thrown out as a result. A report by Wired suggests that the most crucial evidence related to Ulbricht’s conviction was collected by the New York division of the FBI and the Chicago Department of Homeland Security, meaning it still may be enough to put him away.

It turns out that these revelations will figure prominently in an appeal of his conviction:

………

Late yesterday, Ulbricht’s attorney Joshua Dratel posted a statement to Tumblr answering many of these questions and clarifying that the defense is in fact seeking a new trial. Dratel also notes that the defense was aware of the ongoing investigation against US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV during the Ulbricht trial, but was denied the ability to enter this information into evidence.

According to Dratel, the defense has already filed a post-trial motion seeking a new trial, to which the government’s response is due by this Friday, April 3 – with a subsequent defense response scheduled to be filed April 15. Dratel adds that should these motions fail to obtain a new trial, Ulbricht will appeal the existing verdict, citing the Bridges-Force indictment among its arguments.

………

Below is the full statement posted to Dratel’s Tumblr. (Note: Dratel’s original post was entirely devoid of paragraphing. Pando has added the below paragraphing to aid in readability. The content remains otherwise unchanged.)

The government’s considerable efforts at keeping this monumental scandal from being aired at Ross Ulbricht’s trial is itself scandalous. In addition to keeping any information about the investigation from the defense for nearly nine months, then revealing it only five weeks prior to trial, and then moving to keep sealed and secret the general underlying information so that Mr. Ulbricht could not use it in his defense at trial, and then stymying the defense at every turn during trial when the defense tried to introduce favorable evidence, the government had also refused to agree to the defense’s request to adjourn the trial until after the indictment was returned and made public – a modest adjournment of a couple of months, since it was apparent that the investigation was nearing a conclusion.

Throughout Mr. Ulbricht’s trial the government repeatedly used the secret nature of the grand jury investigation as an excuse to preclude valuable defense evidence that was not only produced in discovery, independent of the investigation of Mr. Force, but also which was only at best tenuously related to that investigation. In that manner the government deprived the jury of essential facts, and Mr. Ulbricht of due process. In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt.

It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside. Also, it is clear that Mr. Force and others within the government obtained access to the administrative platforms of the Silk Road site, where they were able to commandeer accounts and had the capacity to change PIN numbers and other aspects of the site – all without the government’s knowledge of what precisely they did with that access.

In light of the information provided in the Complaint, it is now apparent to all just how relevant some of the issues raised by the defense at trial were, including the payment by Dread Pirate Roberts to a law enforcement agent for information about the investigation, the ramping up of the investigation of Mr. Ulbricht in mid-2013, soon after that paid information began flowing, and the creation of certain evidence at trial, such as the 2013 journal that conveniently begins – again – in Spring 2013, after the corruption alleged in this Complaint ripened. As the evidence at trial – particularly from the government’s law enforcement witnesses – demonstrated, the Baltimore investigation and agents were inextricably involved in the evolution of the case and the evidence, as well as with alerting Mark Karpeles that he was under investigation, and meeting with his lawyers and exchanging information.

At Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, knowing full well the corruption alleged in the Complaint made public today, the government still aggressively precluded much of that evidence, and kept it from the jury (and had other similar evidence stricken from the record). Consequently, the government improperly used the ongoing grand jury process in San Francisco as both a sword and a shield to deny Mr. Ulbricht access to and use of important evidence, and a fair trial. In addition, the government not only precluded use of the information at trial, even if it emanated from independent sources, such as discovery, but the government also prevented the defense from conducting any independent investigation, including subpoenaing Mr. Force to testify at trial. The defense also filed numerous discovery requests, to which the government refused to respond.

Regarding the government’s claim that the information was not relevant, the government notified the defense of the investigation of Mr. Force December 1, 2014. Two days later, the government provided its trial exhibits. Among those exhibits were several that referred to Mr. Force in his various internet personas, including “Nob” (his authorized undercover alias), as well as his rogue identities on Silk Road, including alpacino, french maid, and Death From Above (all of which were providing, or attempting to provide, Dread Pirate Roberts with confidential information about the government’s investigation of Silk Road). Thus, according to the government, even after it disclosed the fact of the investigation, it believed Mr. Force was indeed quite relevant. However, in the course of the ensuing litigation regarding whether the defense would be allowed to use the information about the investigation of Mr. Force at Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, by the time trial began the government either eliminated those exhibits or redacted them. During trial, the government successfully objected to the defense’s attempts to introduce the unredacted documents the government had initially designated as its exhibits.

While I will not claim that it is normal for investigators to be this larcenous, this sort of behavior by the prosecutors is normal.

It’s clear to my non-lawyer mind that the fact that a significant portion of the investigation of Ross Ulbricht (allegedly the Dread Pirate Roberts) was being conducted by corrupt agents is a material fact for the jury to evaluate, but the prosecutors managed to wave the secrecy magic wand, and to hide this information from the jury.

This is why you should never talk to a prosecutor of cop without a lawyer in the room.

US Senator from New Jersey Indicted ……… Why am I not Surprised?

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This indictment has been telegraphed for months, but the balloon has finally gone up, and New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has been indicted on corruption charges:

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was indicted on bribery charges on Wednesday in what prosecutors said was a scheme to trade political favors for luxury vacations, golf outings, campaign donations and expensive flights.

The indictment, the first federal bribery charges against a sitting senator in a generation, puts Mr. Menendez’s political future in jeopardy. He faces a possible sentence of 15 years in prison for each of the eight bribery counts.

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, angrily denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight the charges. “This is not how my career is going to end,” he said at a news conference in Newark, where supporters cheered him. “Today contradicts my public service career and my entire life.”

The federal investigation into Mr. Menendez, 61, was well known, and charges had been expected. But the accusations in the 68-page indictment are much broader and more severe than had been publicly known. The senator was also charged with conspiracy and making false statements.

The charges revolve around Mr. Menendez’s relationship with Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye surgeon and political benefactor. Dr. Melgen resisted entreaties by the Justice Department to testify against Mr. Menendez and was ultimately charged alongside him.

Prosecutors described Mr. Menendez’s offices on Capitol Hill as a hub of corrupt dealings, a place where the senator used his chief of staff to solicit gifts from Dr. Melgen, find out what he wanted in return and make sure it got done.

The indictment also reveals how the rise of super PACs, unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and subsequent legal changes, have opened a new channel for the wealthy to trade campaign cash for official favors.

Through his company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, Mr. Melgen directed $700,000 in corporate contributions to Majority PAC, a super PAC intended to help Democrats retain control of the Senate. Mr. Melgen instructed the group to use those contributions to aid Mr. Menendez’s 2012 re-election campaign.

………

Mr. Menendez is the first senator to face federal bribery charges since another New Jersey Democrat, Harrison A. Williams Jr., was indicted in 1980 as part of the federal corruption investigation known as Abscam. In 2002, an ethics scandal deterred Senator Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, from a re-election bid.

Honestly, if Menendez leaves the Senate, I will shed no tears.

His thing is primarily foreign policy, he is the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and he is almost as hawkish as McCain and Graham, which makes him a raving lunatic.

Clearly, Regulatory Capture is a Myth

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What a regulator fellating the industry looks like

Matt Taibbi weighs in on comments made by Andrew Bowden, the SEC’s Director of the agency’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, at a Stanford Conference of private equity.

Bowdon’s comments are best described as obsequious, and unfortunately for him, it was caught on video:

This is courtesy of Yves Smith over at Naked Capitalism, who’s been following the strange story of SEC Examination chief Andrew Bowden’s evolving position on financial corruption for a while.
That story blew up recently in a remarkable public appearance by Bowden, in which the would-be enforcement official cravenly compliments the industry he supposedly polices and then — get this — jokingly puts forward his own son as a candidate for a job in private equity. On video. You won’t see a more brazen example of regulatory capture anywhere.

Some brief backstory. Just a little under a year ago, Bowden, the SEC’s Director of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, gave a speech that was remarkably, unusually critical of the Private Equity field. Bowden had conducted a study of the Private Equity business and found that over half of the companies they looked at were guilty of ripping off their clients:

By far, the most common observation our examiners have made when examining private equity firms has to do with the adviser’s collection of fees and allocation of expenses. When we have examined how fees and expenses are handled by advisers to private equity funds, we have identified what we believe are violations of law or material weaknesses in controls over 50 percent of the time.

To fully explain what Bowden is talking about here would require a much longer article, but the basics go something like this.

Private Equity reptiles like Mitt Romney make their living borrowing huge sums of money, millions and billions, from investors called “limited partners.” They then take that borrowed money and acquire companies with that cash, sometimes with the company’s consent, sometimes without it.

The ostensible object of the exercise (at least, this is the way folks in the Private Equity business would describe it) is to make money for the limited partners by acquiring flawed firms, turning them around, and channeling the profits from the reborn target firm back to the investors.

However, from another point of view, the more immediate object of the exercise is to make money for the Private Equity firm. This can be achieved in virtually countless ways once these takeover parasite-pirates have latched on to their target. But the most reliable way of making cash is to soak the acquired company for huge masses of fees, both legit and not.

………

Anyway, last year, Andrew Bowden at the SEC found that over half of the PE/LBO firms he looked at were doing something wrong with fees.

………

The scam here, as Yves Smith points out, is that the investors think that the Private Equity firm is paying for these managers, while in fact they’re being paid for by the acquired company. As Smith says, this scheme essentially robs the investors:

From an economic perspective, every dollar that comes out of a portfolio company this way is effectively stolen from the limited partner investors, since they would otherwise have the first claim on the portfolio companies’ cash flows.

All of which is a complicated way of saying the following: Takeover Artist Jerks use hidden fees to rip investors off.

Last May, Bowden, a senior SEC official, described this problem as almost epidemic. The SEC looked at 150 companies and over half were guilty of something.

A year later? They’re not so worried.

It raised some eyebrows over the course of last summer and fall when the SEC did not follow up on Bowden’s remarks.

Even some Private Equity trade publications began to wonder aloud where the beef was, noting that “there hasn’t been much additional commentary” from the SEC since Bowden’s aggressive speech last May.

Bowden himself seemed to walk back some of his comments in an interview last September. “Anecdotally,” he said, “I would say there have been some changes in the behavior on the part of funds and investors and that’s all for the good.”

Anecdotally? It is a very odd thing to hear a regulator in the middle of a granular, industry-wide examination say that he’s heard that things are getting better. Regulation by rumor is not your typical enforcement MO.

By this month, Bowden had achieved a complete 180, telling a conference of PE professionals that their business was just “the greatest.”

This is Bowden on March 5th, on a panel for PE and Venture Capital issues at Stanford. Check out how he pooh-poohs the fact that his SEC has seen “some misconduct,” before he goes on to grovel before his audience:

………

Not the usual posture you’d expect from an enforcement official. He likes the Private Equity business! They make a lot of money! They help people! And that thing about half of those businesses committing fee abuses, that’s just “some misconduct” we found last year. No big deal!

It got worse, though:

Bowden: And so my view on the small ones is, I still think this is one of…I tell my son, I have a teenaged son, I tell him, “Cole, you want to be in private equity. That’s where to go, that’s a great business, that’s a really good business. That’ll be good for you.”

So for me personally, as we share our opinions…

Questioner [interrupting] I’d love to hire your son, by the way. That’s a deal.

Bowden’s comments certainly raised a few eyebrows. The LA Times wrote quite critically about them, as did a few other outlets.

There are some people who will say it’s easy to overreact to something like this. If you listen to the tape, Bowden makes his comments in a joking manner, and everyone laughs. It’s not like he brought his son onstage and had him hand out resumes after the speech.

But no government regulator with his or her head screwed on correctly would ever go near a joke like that in public. Even if it’s not what it very much appears to be, it sounds incredibly bad.

And, worse, it reveals an attitude that’s absolutely poisonous among regulators, this fawning worship of people on Wall Street who maybe break a few rules, but that’s okay, because they make tons of money! Can you imagine Elliott Ness giving a speech gushing over what nice cars Al Capone drives? It’s revolting.

It’s not necessary for regulators to hate the greedy bottom-liners who go around toying with peoples’ jobs and livelihoods using borrowed money.

It’s not even necessary for regulators to hate those same rich takeover artists for paying half the taxes of most ordinary people, because our bought-off government refuses to close the loophole that allows Mitt Romney to call the money he makes “carried interest” instead of income.

We don’t need regulators to be out to get anyone. But is a healthy indifference too much to ask? Do we really need for even the regulators to slobber over these people?

Even if what he said was a joke, the fact that he could make this statement in a room full of potential targets for his investigations, it is a slam dunk for regulatory capture.

I don’t know if Andrew Bowden is particularly good at his job.

At this point, I don’t care.

His head needs to be metaphorically put on the end of a pike as a warning to others.

Fire him now.

Why We Need to Clean House at the State Department

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If you have to conceal substantive negotiations from your foreign policy bureaucracy, it means that it’s time to fire a bunch of people in that bureaucracy:

The December breakthrough that upended a half-century of U.S.-Cuba enmity has been portrayed as the fruit of 18 months of secret diplomacy.

But Reuters interviews with more than a dozen people with direct knowledge of the process reveal a longer, painstakingly cautious quest by U.S. President Barack Obama and veteran Cuba specialists to forge the historic rapprochement.

As now-overt U.S.-Cuban negotiations continue this month, Reuters also has uncovered new details of how talks began and how they stalled in late 2013 during secret sessions in Canada. Senior administration officials and others also revealed how both countries sidelined their foreign policy bureaucracies and how Obama sought the Vatican’s blessing to pacify opponents.


………

Obama at first froze out the State Department in part due to concern that “vested interests” there were bent on perpetuating a confrontational approach, said a former senior U.S. official. Secretary of State John Kerry was informed of the talks only after it appeared they might be fruitful, officials said.

Cuban President Raul Castro operated secretly too. Josefina Vidal, head of U.S. affairs at Cuba’s foreign ministry, was cut out, two Americans close to the process said. Vidal could not be reached for comment.

Sorry, but if your senior members of a bureaucracy, of any bureaucracy,  have to be kept out of the loop by elected leaders in order to avoid possible sabotage of policy, then it’s time for them not to be senior members of that bureaucracy.

Unfortunately the legacy of a competent non-partisan civil service has been undermined by decades of burrowing by Republicans.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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It appears that the acting as the private security firm for TransCanada:

Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members.

 The visitors are federal agents.

 Opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands.

 A lawyer working with the protesters says he’s personally aware of a dozen people having been contacted in the northwestern U.S. and says the actual number is probably higher.

 Larry Hildes says it’s been happening the last few months in Washington State, Oregon and Idaho. He says one person got a visit at work, after having already refused to answer questions.

 “They appear to be interested in actions around the tarsands and the Keystone XL pipeline,” Hildes said in an interview.

 “It’s always the same line: ‘We’re not doing criminal investigations, you’re not accused of any crime. But we’re trying to learn more about the movement.“’

 He’s advised activists not to talk — and they mostly haven’t. That lack of communication has made it a little complicated to figure out what, exactly, the FBI is looking for.

 The bureau hasn’t offered too many clues.

 ………

 Is anti-oilsands activity an actual focus of the FBI investigation, or is it merely incidental? The bureau won’t say.

 What it will say is that it only investigates potential crimes, not political movements.

 “The FBI has the authority to conduct an investigation when it has reasonable grounds to believe that an individual has engaged in criminal activity or is planning to do so,” said FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich.

 “This authority is based on the illegal activity, not on the individual’s political views.”

 But activists say oil sands opposition appears to be the common thread among people being contacted. Police have been in touch with people from different groups, who in some cases don’t agree on much, but one thing they share is mutual participation in the so-called megaload protests.

Why is the FBI acting as TransCanada’s Pinkertons?

At what level is this being authorized?

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.