Category: Corruption

Another Day, Another Uber Related Assault

No Comments

In this case, the Uber driver was off duty, and poached a fare from an on duty driver, and raped her:

When your business involves connecting real people in the offline world, there’s a lot more opportunity for things to get messy than in an online-only business. It’s a painful lesson that sharing (or on-demand) economy companies like Uber, AirBnB, and others have been forced to learn repeatedly in recent months and years.

Thanks to the sheer size, ubiquity, and frequency of usage of its platform, Uber has emerged as the poster boy for such atoms-versus-bits reality checks. In what is becoming a recurring theme for the company, yet another of its driver-partners has been accused of sexual assault.

This time, a Los Angeles driver, who was off duty at the time of the incident, is accused of picking up a female passenger in her 20s who was waiting for another of the company’s drivers in LA’s Mar Vista neighborhood late on Saturday night and assaulting her before dropping her off at her destination.

“He said, ‘I’m actually not working as an Uber driver right now, but I am an Uber driver,’” LAPD Det. Kimberly Porter tells ABC7. “She got in the front seat. He then took her to a location where he did sexually assault her.”

Police have identified the suspect, who they describe as cooperating, but have not yet made any arrests. An Uber spokesperson said in a statement, “The driver in question has been removed from the platform while we gather the facts.”

There remain far more questions than answers when it comes to Uber’s culpability in this situation. For example, did the suspect have a history of this type of behavior or other criminal activity that should have precluded him from passing Uber’s (often-suspect) background checks? If so, then the company has some explaining to do, but if not, then there’s seemingly little the company could have done to prevent such an attack. Also, did the visibility of passengers on the company’s in-app map play a role in the suspect targeting the alleged victim, or was this an unfortunate coincidence of a roving driver offering a waiting pedestrian a ride? We’ve seen the company’s maps used in the past by police and auto-thieves to locate and target drivers; could it be that in this case they were used to target a waiting passenger? It’s too early to say, but the possibility is troubling.

Uber’s business model is not about improving the cab hailing experience.

It is about creating a platform, and structuring the business such that all of the liability and risk fall on someone else.

It’s a fundamentally abusive model. It abuses the drivers, and it abuses the passengers, and it is meticulously structured so that the millionaire founders of the firm can wash their hands of any and a liability.

For conventional cab companies, at the very least, they know if they employ criminals, their insurance will become unaffordable, but for Uber, it’s all on the induhividual drivers.

Nice racket there.

I Think that the US Attorney Just Painted a Target on Hizzonner Cuomo

No Comments

With the indictment of Sheldon Silver, it is clear that the US Attorney is going to be turn over some rocks in Albany, but it now sounds as if he is drawing a bead on Governor Cuomo and the Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos:

One day after charging one of New York’s leading lawmakers with exploiting his office to obtain millions of dollars in kickbacks and bribes, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York delivered a stinging condemnation of the culture of corruption in Albany and said the system was set up to breed misdeeds.

The prosecutor, Preet Bharara, speaking at the New York Law School on Friday, castigated how deal-making has long been done in Albany — by “three men in a room” (the governor, the State Assembly speaker and the State Senate majority leader), who work in secret and without accountability to decide most vital issues.

For decades, state government has essentially been controlled by the three leaders. When they emerge from their private meetings, issues are usually settled, with no cause for public debate.

Mr. Bharara said this structure could lead to the kind of corruption outlined in the criminal complaint unveiled on Thursday against Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat who has been the Assembly speaker for two decades.

If the charges are proved true, he said, then “at least one of the proverbial three men in a room is compromised.”

If that is the case, he said, “then how can we trust that anything that gets decided in Albany is on the level

By concentrating power in the hands of so few, he said, good people are discouraged from running for office because they know they will have little influence on important matters.

“If you are one of the three people in the room, you have all the power and everyone knows it,” he said.

There is no need to brook dissent, encourage debate or explain yourself. “If you are one of the three men in the room you keep people in the dark because you can,” he said.

Mr. Bharara seemed to revel in mocking Albany and ridiculed the very concept of “three men in a room.”

………

As an example of such thinking, he cited the former leader of the State Senate who instructed his members to deliver their public disclosure forms by hand rather than mailing them so as to avoid any possible federal mail fraud charges — the unspoken assumption being that lawmakers might have lied on those forms.

………

But he urged voters to get angry, to demand change. “My hope is that in bringing the case,” he said, “there will be reform.”

“That almost happened with the Moreland Commission,” Mr. Bharara said, referring to the anticorruption panel established by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that was looking at lawmakers’ behavior when the governor shut it down. “But it turned out to be a little bit fleeting.”

It sounds to me like he’s looking at Cuomo very closely.

Yes, That Military Rape Problem is Being Handled………

No Comments

That’s why the Army put a rapist in charge of prosecuting rapes:

A former Army prosecutor has been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment after being convicted of several sexual assault charges, including rape and forcible sodomy, against multiple victims.

 A court-martial panel on Monday found Maj. Erik J. Burris guilty of two specifications of rape, four specifications of assault, forcible sodomy, and disobeying an officer, Fort Bragg said in a statement.

He was found not guilty of other sodomy and assault charges.

Burris had been serving as the chief of justice for the 82nd Airborne Division when the allegations against him came to light, a Fort Bragg spokeswoman told BuzzFeed News.

(Emphasis mine)

Seriously, you need to take this out of the chain of command.

If It’s a Blizzard, Uber will be Price Gouging

No Comments

Here in New York City and other parts of the Northeast, the snow has begun to fall and it likely won’t stop for the next 24 hours or longer. Some estimate the city will be buried in up to 30 inches of snow by late tomorrow.

For customers of Uber and Lyft, that should bring up nightmares of blizzards past when Uber’s surge prices hit seven to eight times the normal rates — or upwards of $30 a mile.

With that in mind, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio said in a press conference, “Price gouging in the context of an emergency is illegal.” In response, Uber and Lyft have capped their surge prices at 280% and 200% respectively.

The cap is a welcome gesture, but doesn’t that still constitute “price gouging in the context of an emergency”? Under New York State law, price gouging is defined as an “unconscionably excessive price” during an “abnormal disruption of the market.” Like many laws, there’s a bit of vagueness written into that language, and I’ve reached out to the Attorney General’s office to ask whether Uber’s and Lyft’s capped surge rates qualify as “unconscionably excessive” and will update the post if I hear back.

Seriously.  This is a company whose business model is, “We’re contemptible greed-head ratf%$#s.”

Why do people use this, and why do their massively underpaid drivers stay with them?

Pass the Popcorn

No Comments

Pass the Popcorn

The DoJ has opened an inquiry on Michelle and Marcus Bachmann for campaign finance violations in her 2012 run for President:

Representative Michele Bachmann’s presidential hopes ended 20 months ago, but her brief and chaotic campaign continues to be the focus of ethics investigations.

The latest is a federal inquiry into whether an outside “super PAC” improperly coordinated strategy with Mrs. Bachmann’s campaign staff, including her husband, in violation of election laws.

The Department of Justice demanded records from the super PAC last week of its finances and its communications with Mrs. Bachmann; Marcus Bachmann, her husband; and former staff members, according to a grand jury subpoena reviewed by The New York Times.

The investigation appears to stem from a complaint a former campaign staff member made to the Federal Election Commission and to the F.B.I. The staff member told of overhearing the president of the super PAC asking a Bachmann senior adviser about buying advertising on radio and TV stations in Des Moines ahead of the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3, 2012.

Her political career is already over, but some jail time would be a nice message to those who think that they are anointed by God to rule over us.

The message is, “Pride goeth before a fall.”

Well, Now We Know Why Andrew Cuomo Killed his Corruption Comission

No Comments
Sheldon Silver who has been speaker of the New York State Assembly, has been indicted by the Feds on corruption charges:

His power unbending, his whims often unexplained, Sheldon Silver, in his two decades as speaker of the State Assembly, became a seemingly indestructible presence at the nucleus of the New York political world, a steady advocate for liberal causes and a master tactician in Albany’s closed and entrenched way of governance.

But Mr. Silver’s arrest on Thursday on corruption charges has thrown into question that arrangement, in which the governor and the leaders of the two chambers of the Legislature privately decide the most crucial policies of the state. It is a potentially seismic shift in power whose reverberations may be felt throughout the state, from the speaker’s home district on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to the grounds of the State Capitol.

Until now, Albany lawmakers accustomed to what prosecutors called a “show-me-the-money culture” have taken comfort in knowing that their most powerful figure was unassailable — untouched despite years of inquiries, suspicions and rumors of impropriety.

It appears that the crux of the matter is that Silver was paid large sums by his law firm for work which either did not justify the payments, or for which he did no work.

In essence, he is accused of using this law firm to launder bribes.

Here is hoping that he sees the writing on the walls, and starts singing like a canary.

Clearing out the cesspool in Albany would be a good thing.

Scholars in Pakistan Say What I’ve Been Saying for Years

No Comments

That the prevalence of terrorism in the Muslim world is largely funded by the House of Saud:

Federal Minister for Inter-provincial Coordination (IPC) Riaz Hussain Pirzada has accused the Saudi government of creating instability across the Muslim world, including Pakistan, through distribution of money for promoting its ideology.

Addressing a two-day ‘Ideas Conclave’ organised by the “Jinnah Institute” think tank in Islamabad, the federal minister said ‘the time has come to stop the influx of Saudi money into Pakistan’.

Now if only someone like a US Senator were to issue a similar condemnation.

It is patently clear that the font from which international Jihad springs is the pocketbook of the House of Saud.

They fund the schools where Jihadis are created, the social welfare organizations which they fund are Islamist, and they make a concerted effort to export their home grown nut-jobs to other Arab and Muslim nations, where they are some else’s problem.

H/t Emptywheel

Not Enough………

No Comments

The SEC has fined Standard & Poor’s ratings agency and banned them from rating mortgage backed (MBS) securities for a year:

Financial companies are still paying the price for the crisis of 2009, as Standard & Poor’s showed when it agreed on Wednesday to pay the US government and two states more than $77m to settle charges that it inflated its ratings of mortgage-backed securities.

In its first enforcement action against a major rating agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused S&P of fraudulent misconduct, saying the company loosened standards on its ratings to drum up business in recent years.

The agreement requires S&P to pay more than $58m to the SEC, $12m to New York and $7m to Massachusetts.

As part of its agreement with the SEC, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, a division of McGraw Hill Financial, will take a “timeout” from rating certain types of mortgage-backed securities for a year.

“These settlements involve findings of intentional fraud in 2011 and 2012, well after the financial crisis,” said Andrew Ceresney, director of the SEC’s enforcement division, on a call with reporters. “The financial crisis may be behind us, but these cases are an important reminder that the race-to-the-bottom behavior exists even though the financial crisis has ended.”

S&P said in a statement that it did not admit or deny any of the charges.

It’s likely the first in a line of settlements between S&P and government agencies. In 2013, the Justice Department and attorneys general from other states filed civil lawsuits against the company for misrepresenting risks in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

“This is the first time a major credit rating agency has been subject to a timeout,” Ceresney said. “It’s unprecedented.”

It is only unprecedented because the Obama administration has been so deferential to the banksters.

It’s chump change for them, and they are a (relatively) small player in the MBS ratings game, so they will be crying to the bank.

What should have happened is a criminal indictment, which would have been immediately followed by an Arthur Andersen style implosion.

That would make the banksters sit up and notice.

Rahm Emanuel Takes Chicago Corruption to a New Level

No Comments

I’m not particularly surprised.

You see hizzoner Rahm Emanuel is declaring that the Chicago pension funds are not a part of city government so that he can ignore pay to play rules:

On its face, Chicago’s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city’s budget, it is directly funded by the city, and its various boards of trustees include city officials and mayoral appointees. Yet, when it comes to enforcing the city’s anti-corruption laws in advance of the Chicago’s closely watched 2015 municipal election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is suddenly arguing that the pension funds are not part of the city government at all.

The counterintuitive declaration came last month from the mayor-appointed ethics commission, responding to Chicago aldermen’s request for an investigation of campaign contributions to Emanuel from the financial industry. The request followed disclosures that executives at firms managing Chicago pension money have made more than $600,000 worth of donations to Emanuel. The contributions flowed to the mayor despite a city ordinance — and an executive order by Emanuel himself — restricting mayoral campaign contributions from city contractors.

Brushing off the lawmakers’ complaint about Emanuel’s donations from the financial industry, the mayor’s ethics commission issued a nonbinding legal opinion arguing that Chicago’s pension systems are “not agencies or departments of the city, and thus firms that contract with them are not doing or seeking to do business with the city.” The commission’s interpretation means financial firms’ business with Chicago pension funds should be considered exempt from city ethics laws.

Seriously?

You can take pay to play campaign donations for the pension fund because it isn’t really goverment?

This is pretty damn corrupt.

Technically, the SEC could rule on this:

With the mayor attempting to exempt the pension system from the city’s ethics rules, [Alderman Scott] Waguespack says the lawmakers are counting on the federal government to enforce a 2011 Securities and Exchange Commission rule aiming to restrict contributions to public officials from executives at financial firms that manage public pension money. To that end, Waguespack and two other lawmakers have filed a formal complaint with the SEC, which responded with a letter saying the agency will review their complaint “in connection with our statutory and regulatory responsibilities.”

Yeah, like that is going to happen.

Emanuel is a FOB (Friend of Barack), so nothing is going to happen to him, at least until after 2016.

Finally, Eric Holder Does Something Meaningful About Law Enforcement Overreach

No Comments

Eric Holder has massively curtailed the asset forfeiture program:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.

Any actions to curtail a procedure that can only be described as enforcement under the color of law is a good thing.

It it both corrupt and corrupting.

Fairy Tales is as Fairy Tales Does

No Comments

I’m not particularly concerned with the afterlife.

It’s never been a big part of Jewish theology.

I remember having a talk with a born-again Pentecostal, and my complete ambivalence toward the nature of the afterlife baffled her.

There is a consensus on the afterlife in Judiasm, but it is simply, “Yes”.

Some Jewish theologians have expressed a belief in a conventional sort of heaven, while others (particularly Kabbalists) favor reincarnation, and in either case, no one gets particularly exercised about it.

That being said, as my Pentecostal friend indicated, it is a big deal for Christians, which we frequently see aggressive attempts to prove the existence of heaven and hell. (I find these rather comical)

Well, it now appears that there is a “Heaven-Industrial” complex which is determined to sell heaven for profit:

UPDATE 1 ! According to sources, Lifeway intends to pull this book from it’s bookstore! Warren Throckmorton has the story, but the gist is that in response to  Throckmorton’s questions, “Martin King, Director of Communications at Lifeway issued a statement saying the stores are pulling the book:

“LifeWay was informed this week that Alex Malarkey has retracted his testimony about visiting heaven as told in the book “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven.” Therefore, we are returning to the publisher the few copies we have in our Stores.”

We have commentary on this and will be posting a fuller update tomorrow morning. 

UPDATE 2! The Washington Post confirms that Tyndale House will also stop selling this book

UPDATE 3! Emails Suggest Lifeway President Knew of Heaven Scam, Chose Not to Act

Lifeway has been selling The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven for many years now. It is part of the trifecta of books on “heavenly tourism” that Lifeway has sold and has promoted, along with 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven is for Real. The co-author of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven – the boy himself – has written an open letter to Lifeway and admonished them for not holding to the sufficiency of Scripture, and has recanted his tale. For those who may not be familiar with of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, the publisher’s description is as follows:

“In 2004, Kevin Malarkey and his six-year-old son, Alex, suffered an horrific car accident. The impact from the crash paralyzed Alex–and medically speaking, it was unlikely that he could survive. ‘I think Alex has gone to be with Jesus,’ a friend told the stricken dad. But two months later, Alex awoke from a coma with an incredible story to share. Of events at the accident scene and in the hospital while he was unconscious. Of the angels that took him through the gates of heaven itself. Of the unearthly music that sounded just ‘terrible’ to a six-year-old. And, most amazing of all . . . Of meeting and talking to Jesus. ‘The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven’ is the true story of an ordinary boy’s most extraordinary journey. As you see heaven and earth through Alex’s eyes, you’ll come away with new insights on miracles, life beyond this world, and the power of a father’s love.”

It’s in this context- the context of Lifeway selling this book and making money off of it for years- that Alex Malarkey, the co-author of the book, has reached out to us.  [Update: Many people have asked if this is the first time Alex has spoken out directly. Although Alex’s mother has tried to speak out and contacted book-sellers and has been flatly ignored, going back to at least December 2012, on her blog and in other places, I believe this is the first time Alex has himself spoken out in such a direct way in his own…except for posting a comment relaying this information on the Alex Malarkey fan page on Facebook, after which the comment was deleted by moderators and he was blocked from the group. It doesn’t matter that we are or are not the first. That point is utterly irrelevant. What is relevant is that God willing we will be the last, and that we’re able to provide Alex with a wider audience that he had received the first few go-arounds to get people’s attention.

Seriously.  I’m beginning to think that Tartuffe should be required for every school kid in the United States.

Seriously, the USAF Has Degenerated into a Shill for Defense Contractors

2 Comments
Case in point, Major General James Post, USAF, just said that praising the A-10 close support aircraft to Congress is treason:

A top U.S. Air Force general warned officers that praising the A-10 attack plane to lawmakers amounts to “treason,” according to a news report.

Maj. Gen. James Post, vice commander of Air Combat Command, was quoted as saying, “If anyone accuses me of saying this, I will deny it … anyone who is passing information to Congress about A-10 capabilities is committing treason,” in a report published Thursday on The Arizona Daily Independent.

This is all about making sure that Lockheed Martin gets it’s vig, and that retiring generals get their cut.

They just deployed the A-10 to fight ISIS because they don’t have anything else than can do the job, and an Air Force senior leader is telling his subordinates to conceal information.

Making the USAF an independent branch of the military was a seriously stupid thing to do.

This is the 2nd Most Schandenfreude I’ve Felt Today

No Comments

The judge overseeing the corruption case against Bob McDonnell has denied his motion to remain free while he appeals:

A federal judge on Tuesday denied former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell’s request to remain free while he appeals his corruption convictions, which means he could begin his two-year prison sentence by 9 February.

US district judge James Spencer in Richmond denied the request, unpersuaded by arguments from McDonnell’s lawyers before his 6 January sentencing. Prosecutors had opposed the request.

On Monday, McDonnell’s attorneys had reiterated the request and argued that the appeal could take almost as long as the sentence itself. They also said the appeal would raise substantial questions, including whether the government’s interpretation of an “official act” is correct.

But in his Tuesday decision, Spencer said it’s not a “close question” that justifies release pending appeal. He also noted that he previously concluded that “substantial evidence supports the jury’s finding of a quid and fairly specific, related quo”. And he dismissed arguments raising concerns over the jury selection process and deliberations.

One would hope that some time in the slam will give him a broader view of the diverse tapestry, but I rather imagine, like the Humbug from Norton Juster’s masterpiece The Phantom Tollbooth, he will, “Swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet.”

I could be wrong about his possibility of finding perspective or perhaps enlightenment in prison, but I do not expect this to happen.

Still, the fact that he is less than a month from going into the slam provides me a bit of (admittedly cruel) perverse satisfaction.

Let the Looting Begin

No Comments

The Gray Lady has noticed that Silicon Valley is looking to education as a new profit center.

The article itself is rather adulatory of such efforts, rather unsurprising given the New York Times‘ predilection for the financialization of pretty much everything, but I am not so sanguine:

The education technology business is chock-full of fledgling companies whose innovative ideas have not yet proved effective — or profitable. But that is not slowing investors, who are pouring money into ventures as diverse as free classroom-management apps for teachers and foreign language lessons for adult learners.

Venture and equity financing for ed tech companies soared to nearly $1.87 billion last year, up 55 percent from the year before, according to a new report from CB Insights, a venture capital database. The figures are the highest since CB Insights began covering the industry in 2009.

………

“Education is one of the last industries to be touched by Internet technology, and we’re seeing a lot of catch-up going on,” said Betsy Corcoran, the chief executive of EdSurge, an industry news service and research company. “We’re starting to see more classical investors — the Kleiner Perkinses, the Andreessen Horowitzes, the Sequoias — pay more attention to the marketplace than before.”

Translation: There’s public taxpayer money in them there hills.

And then we have this pearl:

“I think there are businesses that won’t be able to cross that bridge,” said Michael Moe, chief executive of GSV Capital, a venture capital firm. “But if you monetize 2 to 20 percent of the network, there’s no reason it can’t work in education.”

Yes, let’s all of us f%$# our children so that you can buy a vacation house in the Hamptons.

Not enough bullets.

American Healthcare in a Nutshell

1 Comment

Author, and Canadian, Douglas Coupland describes his experience with the American healthcare system.

The short version is that he had a cold that became bronchitis, and he went to a clinic, and got a prescription for an antibiotics and oxycodone(!) as a cough suppressant.

I do understand that opiods are effective cough suppressants, codeine used to be in half the cough syrups out there, but it does seem to me like hunting for an elephant with a microscope.

But here is the kicker, and it shows just how corrupting the profit motive is:

………

 My doctor vanished for a few minutes and I looked around. The clinic was pleasant enough, as were both the staff and my doctor, who returned a few minutes later with some filled-out prescription forms. “I’m going to give you a course of antibiotics. Take one a day in the morning with food. Just one.” [emphasis mine]

“OK.”

 “And here’s a prescription for oxycodone. Take two a day.”

 “Oxycodone?” It felt weirdly glamorous to be getting some oxy for the first time.

 “Yes. It’s a terrific cough suppressant.”

 “OK.” In my head I was thinking, “Oxy — woohoo!” . . . but in my body I was thinking, “But I also really would like to stop coughing up jelly-like deep-sea creatures into my dinner napkins.” So I walked three minutes to the pharmacist and picked up my antibiotics, and then my oxy. My pharmacist looked at me gravely: “You know, you’re very lucky your doctor gave me this discount coupon on your oxycodone prescription.”

 “Oh — why’s that?”

 “This drug [use drug name; get sued] is $900 a pop.”

 “What?!”

 “Yes, but for you, with a coupon this first time, it’s $90.”

 “For a cough suppressant?”

 “Not just any cough suppressant. This is oxycodone.”

 “I suppose so.”

 “And there’s a bit of decongestant added to it as well.”

 “Hard to argue with that.”

Well, the bronchitis does not clear up, and it turns into pneumonia, and our fearless protagonist finds that he has developed a physiological dependence on the Oxy.

He then gets back to his doctor in Canada:

So I stopped. [the Oxy] And I returned to Canada, where my doctor looked at my prescriptions, puzzled. First, my antibiotic: “Your Florida doctor prescribed you this? [Name drug; get lawsuit.] We used to give this to two-year-olds and, even then, for your body weight, this ought to have been at least three times a day at quadruple strength.” [emphasis mine]

 “OK, but what about oxycodone? You have to admit, it did stop me from coughing.”

 “Yes, but you also almost became addicted to a $900-a-pop drug.”

 “True.”

 “And just to be clear, you were deliberately underprescribed antibiotics to keep you from getting well so as to ensure that you’d keep going back for more visits and repeat oxy prescriptions. And your doctor was obviously in on some kind of racket with the pharmacist — all that coupon nonsense.” [emphasis mine]

 “All true.”

 Within 48 hours, my pneumonia essentially vanished thanks to two azithromycin tablets. But it took almost a week for The Hand to permanently unclasp itself from my skull. [Oxycodone dependency] Now that the experience is over, I feel as if I’d driven through a speed trap in a small Ozark town and had been at the mercy of the local Boss Hogg. All of this because of bronchitis. What if I’d had something bigger than mere bronchitis? What bigger and scarier speed traps would await me or you or anyone else down the US medical road?

The system does not just prey on Canadians, you know, it preys on all of us.

What’s more, my guess is that there was no (illegal) kickback arrangement, but rather that the pharmacy was either owned in whole or part by the doctor, or operating as a part of the clinic (my money is on the latter), so there were no illegal payments per se, just business.

To paraphrase Sal Tessio, “It’s nothing personal it’s only business.”

Yeah, Nothing Suspicious Here

No Comments

A grand juror for the Michael Brown shooting investigation is suing St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch so that he can talk about the grand jury proceedings.

The juror claims the the prosecutor lied about what happened in the grand jury, and wants to be allowed to refute his statements:

A grand juror is suing St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch in an effort to speak out on what happened in the Darren Wilson case. Under typical circumstances, grand jurors are prohibited by law from discussing cases they were involved in.

 The grand juror, referred to only as “Grand Juror Doe” in the lawsuit, takes issue with how McCulloch characterized the case. McCulloch released evidence presented to the grand jury and publicly discussed the case after the grand jury decided not to indict Wilson, then a Ferguson police officer, in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African American.

 “In [the grand juror]’s view, the current information available about the grand jurors’ views is not entirely accurate — especially the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges,” the lawsuit says. (A grand jury’s decision does not have to be unanimous.)

 “Moreover, the public characterization of the grand jurors’ view of witnesses and evidence does not accord with [Doe]’s own,” the lawsuit continued. “From [the grand juror]’s perspective, the investigation of Wilson had a stronger focus on the victim than in other cases presented to the grand jury.” Doe also believes the legal standards were conveyed in a “muddled” and “untimely” manner to the grand jury.

 In the lawsuit filed Monday in federal court, the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri argues that this case is unique and that the usual reasons for requiring the jurors to maintain secrecy should not apply.

This is a special case.

The juror is arguing  that there was deliberate prosecutorial misconduct, and that they should be allowed to publicly air these concerns.

I agree.

It is clear that McCulloch deliberately threw the case, and if this evidence is becomes, perhaps it might lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor, or the DoJ looking at the shenanigans at the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s office.

Naaah ……… I’m just kidding.

Silly rabbit, black lives do not matter.

Cuomo and Christie Find a New Way to F%$# the Poor

No Comments

As a part of the phony Port Authority plan to the proposed by Cuomo and Christie, they are looking to end overnight PATH service Irks Riders, which would have toe effect of making commuting to work for the night shift in “The City that Never Sleeps” less convenient and more expensive:

………

As if Mr. Parada’s commute were not grueling enough, he and thousands of his fellow riders found out there could be no commute whatsoever in the future. At the end of December, their Legislatures already adjourned, Governors Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, vetoed a sweeping bill that would have reformed the agency. The governors, who jointly control the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, then unveiled a report of their own calling for changes.

Buried among the proposals was one considering the elimination of service between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. on the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, known as PATH, the train linking Manhattan with nearby cities in New Jersey.

During this time, ridership plummets, with roughly 2,000 crossing the Hudson on weeknights. They account for just under 1 percent of daily passengers, and eliminating service would save the authority $10 million from its $330 million budget, according to the governors’ report.

The idea was universally rejected by those lonely souls crisscrossing the Hudson River in the early morning hours, including the bartenders and clubgoers, the swing-shift construction and postal workers, and the foreign-exchange traders heading in on Frankfurt time.

To them, the overnight PATH is a lifeline, the only one into or out of New York City when all other trains and buses have stopped and taxis, at $50 to $100, are too costly.

I guess that they need to free up some money for do nothing jobs for their political allies.

Ratf%$#s.

String Theory Taken to Its Logical Conclusion

1 Comment

Proponents of the controversial theory have taken to arguing that their theory is so elegant that it should require no experimental verification:

This year, debates in physics circles took a worrying turn. Faced with difficulties in applying fundamental theories to the observed Universe, some researchers called for a change in how theoretical physics is done. They began to argue — explicitly — that if a theory is sufficiently elegant and explanatory, it need not be tested experimentally, breaking with centuries of philosophical tradition of defining scientific knowledge as empirical. We disagree. As the philosopher of science Karl Popper argued: a theory must be falsifiable to be scientific.

I agree wholeheartedly.

BTW, that sound you hear is Richard Feynman spinning in his grave.

Chief among the ‘elegance will suffice’ advocates are some string theorists. Because string theory is supposedly the ‘only game in town’ capable of unifying the four fundamental forces, they believe that it must contain a grain of truth even though it relies on extra dimensions that we can never observe. Some cosmologists, too, are seeking to abandon experimental verification of grand hypotheses that invoke imperceptible domains such as the kaleidoscopic multiverse (comprising myriad universes), the ‘many worlds’ version of quantum reality (in which observations spawn parallel branches of reality) and pre-Big Bang concepts.

 These unprovable hypotheses are quite different from those that relate directly to the real world and that are testable through observations — such as the standard model of particle physics and the existence of dark matter and dark energy. As we see it, theoretical physics risks becoming a no-man’s-land between mathematics, physics and philosophy that does not truly meet the requirements of any.

My knowledge of string theory is minimal, coming from my (PhD in physics) brother who mocks it for its lack ability to make meaningful predictions. (There’s also the representation in pop culture in Big Bang Theory, but I do not take my lead from such)

On the other hand, I know bullsh%$ when I hear it, and the idea that an unprovable theory should be accepted on the basis of its aesthetics is definitely bovine scatology.

This is an indictment of those string theorists who are calling for its acceptance on pure faith, but it is more than that: It is a searing indictment of string theory by those who are its greatest proponents.

H/T DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

As if Christie and Cuomo Could not Get any Slimier………

No Comments

They both just vetoed reform of the Port Authority which had been passed unanimously by both legislatures.

It appears that they want to retain their patronage prerogatives:

In a joint press release on Saturday night, Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie unveiled their long-awaited plan for reforming the Port Authority, while at the same time vetoing a Port-reform bill passed unanimously by both the New York and New Jersey state legislatures.

In separate letters sent to the legislatures in their respective states, Cuomo and Christie said that the program recommended by their “Special Panel on the Future of the Port Authority” was superior to the one they passed.

“The governance structure and other accountability measures recommended by the Special Panel will do a better job of improving accountability,” wrote Cuomo.

The governors also agreed to sign a separate bill that would make the bistate authority subject to the states’ freedom of information laws.

………

The bills the governors vetoed would have subjected the Port to standards already imposed on other New York State authorities earlier this century.

More precisely, it would have required the Port Authority’s commissioners to certify in writing that their loyalty is to the authority (versus the governors who appointed them). It would have mandated that the authority write up policies for disposal and acquisition of authority property, establish a whistleblower program, require staff to report suspicions of fraud and corruption to the agency’s inspector general, require all commissioners to file annual financial disclosure statements, and more.

This stuff is governance 101, but they want to put their cronies in unaccountable positions of authority so that they can maintain patronage empires.