Category: Corruption

It’s Nice to Know that Someone Has a More F%$#ed Up Defense Procurement Process than the United States Does

No Comments

I am referring, of course, to the Republic of India, which has a long history of incompetent weapons development programs (Arjun tank, Kaveri engine, etc.) and corrupt foreign purchases.

We have one of the latter right now, with the India Ministry of Defense cancelling a helicopter purchase in response to a bribery scandal:

India has reacted to the scandal surrounding its purchase of 12 VVIP-roled AgustaWestland AW101 helicopters with the apparent cancellation of the €556 million ($776 million) deal.

In a statement posted late on 1 January on the Indian ministry of defence website, it says it has “terminated with immediate effect the agreement that was signed with AgustaWestland on 8 February 2010 for the supply of 12 VVIP/VIP helicopters on grounds of breach of the pre-contract integrity pact”.

Although the Anglo-Italian manufacturer had been pressing for arbitration talks to resolve the stalled deal, New Delhi has seemingly rejected this.

“Based on the opinion received earlier from the attorney general of India, it has been the view of the government that integrity-related issues are not subject to arbitration,” it says.

Nonetheless, there appears to be some ambiguity about its position until the country’s attorney general offers a fresh opinion. “However, [AgustaWestland] has since pressed for arbitration and appointed an arbitrator from its side. In view of this [the ministry of defence] sought afresh the opinion of the attorney general. With a view to safeguard the interests of the Government, [it has] nominated Mr Justice BP Jeevan Reddy as its arbitrator.”

………

A total of €51 million is alleged to have been paid as kickbacks by AgustaWestland to secure the order, an accusation strenuously denied by the company.

I have no clue why much smaller nations, like Israel and Sweden, manage to create sophisticated and effective weapons systems.

It is Called Price Gouging, You Moronic Free Market Mousketeer!

No Comments

The latest poster boys for techno-Libertarians is the taxi service Uber, which is a smartphone based car hire service.

At the core of their business model is the idea that there is no need for any pesky regulations, because ……… Internet.

Ignoring for the moment supply restrictions like New York City’s Medallion* system, there is a reason that cabs, and cabbies, are regulated.

There is a need to ensure that the cars are safe, that the cabbies are properly trained,† and that pricing is consistent and transparent, so, for example, we do not see price gouging, on New Year’s eve, or during a rain storm.

So, what does Uber do?  It triples rates for New Year’s Eve, and Randroid morons like Rob Leathern, the Chief Product Officer of Brand Networks, has this is not like price gouging at all, because ……… Internet:

Uber’s pricing isn’t price gouging. It’s just in an area we are deeply conflicted about, and missing some transparency that would increase consumer trust. They could certainly give all or some more of their excess surge profits to the drivers, or show us more of the extensive data their Math Team produces but doesn’t yet share– if their algorithms are as sophisticated as they claim then the benefit they get from sharing information with customers will outweigh any competitive concerns.

Bullsh%$.

This is price gouging, and it has been defined as such throughout the developed world for something over 80 years.

One of the reasons that we as a society make laws against this is because it is unethical, and dishonest.

I really hope that if he ever has a heart attack, that Mr. Leathern does not find an ambulance driver who jacks up the rate to take him to the hospital.

*Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? The medallion system sucks.
†Uber has already had at least 1 rape allegation attached to its service so far, and it turns out that rape by gypsy cab drivers is endemic.

Not Enough Bullets

No Comments

Image from Because Finance is Boring

If you look at direct and indirect subsidies to the big banks, it appears that taxpayers are paying for the Bankster’s bonuses:

Earlier this year, Bloomberg calculated that the top 10 U.S. banks receive a $83 billion a year in subsidies from the government, due to their cheap cost of funding & the preferential treatment creditors give them because they assume the government sees them as TBTF.

In November, a NYT analysis of a Johnson Associates survey found that the top eight U.S. banks set aside $91.44 billion for bonuses in 2013.

Note that this does not include other subsides (hello, Federal Reserve, etc.)

To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, I’m sick of these motherf%$#ing bonuses in this motherf%$#ing economy.

H/t Crooks & Liars.

Another Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Moment from the NSA

No Comments

In this case, it is reports that the, “NSA diverted computers and laptops from shipping facilities to install spyware.”

Seriously, how does this not constitute an unreasonable search and seizure?

Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the NSA’s “Tailored Access Operations” (TAO) has been diverting desktops and laptops shipped to U.S. consumers and installing spyware on them.

 According to the report, the process, which TAO calls “interdiction,” involves intercepting packages on their way from manufacturers like Dell, Cisco, and Seagate, and installing bugs or spyware on them at a “secret workshop.”

 The packages are then reintroduced into the delivery pipeline and arrive at their destination without the consumer ever realizing their machine has been compromised.

Our state security apparatus is completely out of control.

A Lot of People Wonder Why There Haven’t Been Any Wall Street Prosecutions, but ………

No Comments

This time it’s a United States District Judge on senior status for the Southern District of New York, and Judge Jed Rakoff is asking this question in the New York Review of Books:

One possibility, already mentioned, is that no fraud was committed. This possibility should not be discounted. Every case is different, and I, for one, have no opinion about whether criminal fraud was committed in any given instance.

But the stated opinion of those government entities asked to examine the financial crisis overall is not that no fraud was committed. Quite the contrary. For example, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, in its final report, uses variants of the word “fraud” no fewer than 157 times in describing what led to the crisis, concluding that there was a “systemic breakdown,” not just in accountability, but also in ethical behavior.

As the commission found, the signs of fraud were everywhere to be seen, with the number of reports of suspected mortgage fraud rising twenty-fold between 1996 and 2005 and then doubling again in the next four years. As early as 2004, FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker was publicly warning of the “pervasive problem” of mortgage fraud, driven by the voracious demand for mortgage-backed securities. Similar warnings, many from within the financial community, were disregarded, not because they were viewed as inaccurate, but because, as one high-level banker put it, “A decision was made that ‘We’re going to have to hold our nose and start buying the stated product if we want to stay in business.’”

Without giving further examples, the point is that, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the prevailing view of many government officials (as well as others) was that the crisis was in material respects the product of intentional fraud. In a nutshell, the fraud, they argued, was a simple one. Subprime mortgages, i.e., mortgages of dubious creditworthiness, increasingly provided the chief collateral for highly leveraged securities that were marketed as AAA, i.e., securities of very low risk. How could this transformation of a sow’s ear into a silk purse be accomplished unless someone dissembled along the way?

………

suggest that this is not the best way to proceed. Although it is supposedly justified because it prevents future crimes, I suggest that the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing internal compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing. Just going after the company is also both technically and morally suspect. It is technically suspect because, under the law, you should not indict or threaten to indict a company unless you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some managerial agent of the company committed the alleged crime; and if you can prove that, why not indict the manager? And from a moral standpoint, punishing a company and its many innocent employees and shareholders for the crimes committed by some unprosecuted individuals seems contrary to elementary notions of moral responsibility.

Coming from a federal judge, one of the first who refused to approve the standard, “No harm, no foul,” consent decrees from the SEC and the DoJ, this is fairly shocking to hear.

Where Useless Fascists Go to Die

No Comments

The Council on Foreign Relations.

Case in point racist stop and frisk former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly:

Outgoing New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly will join the Council on Foreign Relations in January as a distinguished visiting fellow, the organization announced Monday.

“Ray Kelly spearheaded the modernization of the New York Police Department. The result is that crime is down and the NYPD’s counterterrorism capabilities are second to none,” CFR President Richard N. Haass said in a statement. “We are excited and proud to have his experience, expertise, and judgment at the Council.”

Not a surprise, from the gang that made the incomparably awful Amity Shlaes a “senior fellow in economic history”.

Eric Arthur Blair is Once Again Spinning in His Grave

No Comments

Have you heard the latest from the Obama Administration? Susan Rice, the head of the NSC is now saying that lies of Clapper and Alexander are not lies, they “Inadvertently Made False Representations“:

STAHL: “Officials in the intelligence community have actually been untruthful both to the American public in hearings, in Congress, and to the FISA court.”

 RICE: “There have been cases where they have inadvertently made false representations, and they themselves have discovered it and corrected it.”

This is what happens when the government is operated for the benefit of the state security apparatus, rather than the other way around.

It is thoroughly corrupt, and completely un-American.

Things That Make Me Agree with Rand Paul, and Make me Want to Have My Head Examined

No Comments

In honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Reserve, PBS had a debate between 2 financial historians over the benefits of the central bank, and rather surprisingly, they both agreed that the Federal Reserve now sees one of its primary roles as supporting stock market prices:

Consuelo Mack’s Wealthtrack program on PBS had invited James Grant, Editor and Founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and Richard Sylla, the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets at NYU’s Stern School of Business. The opening scene for the program shows Sylla in a party hat lighting the candles on the Fed’s birthday cake while Grant snuffs them out – suggesting that Sylla would be making pro-Fed statements while Grant would take the opposing view.

 What happened during the program, however, was that both men made the candid and bold accusation that the Federal Reserve, for the first time in its history, has assigned itself the job of propping up the stock market.

 Grant had this to say: “New thing – it is in the business of talking up the stock market…The Fed is manipulating prices, especially on Wall Street.” To another question from Mack, Grant says: “The Fed has presided over the decay of finance.”

 Professor Sylla adds more fuel to the fire, stating: “The Fed seems to have, I think almost deliberately, is trying to push the stock market up. I’ve watched this stuff for 40, 50 years now and this is the first time in my memory when it seemed to be official U.S. government policy that the stock market goes up. And the Fed likes this because it thinks that when the stock market goes up, people who own stocks feel richer, they’ll go out and spend more money, and the unemployment rate will come down.” You can watch the full program here.

Is it possible that the Federal Reserve, with its economic wizards and differential equations, doesn’t know that the more it props up the stock market and Wall Street, the more it is undermining Main Street and exacerbating wealth inequality in America?

I see sh%$ like this, and I start to agree with Rand (and Ron) Paul about the need to reign in the Fed.

The show goes further, and talks about how the rather customary expense ratio of 2% on a 401(K) means that Wall Street ends up with ⅔ of your money.

It’s why we need to cut back on Wall Street.  It’s like f%$3ing Kudzu.

I Think that Chris Christie now has a “-Gate” Scandal on His Hands

No Comments

Pass the Popcorn

Christie’s two recently resigned political appointees to the Port Authority have lawyered up:

Two appointees of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who recently resigned amid a controversy over lane closures at the George Washington Bridge have retained private attorneys, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

 Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, former executives at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, have sought outside counsel amid an investigation into why traffic lanes leading to the nation’s busiest bridge were closed, the documents showed.

 The hirings came as correspondence and documents related to the bridge controversy are due to be delivered soon to a legislative inquiry of the state Assembly.

 The Democrat-led Transportation Committee subpoenaed documents from people involved in the incident, including Messrs. Baroni and Wildstein and leadership of the authority, seeking more information about how the lanes were closed and why.

 Mr. Wildstein recently hired Alan L. Zegas, a criminal lawyer from Chatham, N.J., to represent him, according to an email sent from Mr. Zegas to the state Legislature Tuesday.

 Mr. Zegas was co-counsel to former Newark Mayor Sharpe James in 2008 in response to federal corruption charges brought by Mr. Christie when he served as the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, according to Mr. Zegas’s biography.

 Mr. Baroni retained Michael Himmel, of Lowenstein Sandler LLP. Mr. Himmel works at the firm’s New York City and Roseland, N.J. offices, and specializes in white collar crime, according to his biography.

I figure that this will eventually degenerate into finger pointing, and the question is whether it will just involve Mssrs Baroni and Wildstein, or if it will go higher.

As Much as I Like Liz Warren, I Wish that Martha Coakley Had Beaten Scott Brown in the Senate Race in 2010

No Comments

She ran a truly horrible campaign, but her tenure as Massachusetts AG has generally been pretty positive.

Case in point, her most recent report showing that not-for-profits pay obscene remuneration to their top executives, and proposing changes in corporate governance:

Nonprofit groups in Massachusetts are paying their chief executives huge amounts of money and giving them lavish perks unavailable to most workers, according to a new report from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office that calls for reform in the way groups disclose executive compensation.

The 92-page study, which covered 25 large charitable organizations in Massachusetts, mainly hospitals, insurers and colleges, found all of them paid their leaders at least a half-million dollars a year in total compensation. And many of the organizations offered their executives an assortment of other benefits, including bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, financial planning, life insurance and other benefits that are more commonly associated with corporate leaders.

Even when executives retire, they often leave with hefty severance or consulting deals that allow them to earn millions more. The executives covered by the report each received between $487,000 and $8.8 million in total compensation each year between 2009 and 2011 — pay levels that Coakley’s office said should cause concern in some cases.

“It is not always clear that large compensation benefits packages are actually necessary to attract and retain talent,” the report argued.

Gee, you think?

Doubtless, there is some politics involved here, Coakley is looking to run for Governor, but when we are talking about tax-exempt organizations, there is a direct governmental interests, because it is the taxpayer who pays for these excesses.

Bush Used Phoney National Security Excuse to Cover Up For His Saudi Buddies

No Comments

I am so not surprised by this. There is a reason why Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr, is also known as “Bandar Bush” for his close ties to the Bush Crime Family.

We know that the Bush administration flew members of the Saudi royal family out of the US following 911, and now we know that they redacted all references to the House of Saud funding terrorism from the 911 report:

With relationships changing between the US and major actors in the Middle East, perhaps it is inevitable that the issue of Saudi Arabia’s funding of terrorism in the US is being revisited.
George W Bush in the Oval Office

Congressmembers Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass) recently got access to unredacted copies of the 2002 report of the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry (JICI) on 9/11. You may recall that 28 pages of that document had been redacted by George W. Bush for “national security purposes”. It has been widely reported that the 28 missing pages of the JICI report document a money trail from the Saudi Royal Family to the 9/11 hijackers.

‘I was absolutely shocked by what I read,’ Jones told International Business Times. ‘What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me. I cannot go into it any more than that. I had to sign an oath that what I read had to remain confidential. But the information I read disappointed me greatly.’

This is no new revelation. At the time of the JICI report’s initial release, there was controversy about the extensive redactions and the information that was being withheld. Fourty-six Senators (all Democrats but one) signed a letter asking Bush to release the 28 pages. Bush refused.

The Congressmen Jones and Lynch (The Dem, Lynch, is also pretty right-wing, FYI) are doing their level best to say that Bush covered up for the House of Saud without actually revealing technically classified data.

I do not expect Obama do declassify this.

First, his actions over the past 5 years indicate that he has no interest at all in transparency, and 2nd, he is not sutpid, and he understands taht there is an implicit contract between him, and George W. Bush, and whoever is Obama’s eventual successor, that dirty laundry will not be revealed.

Your Moment of Kafka, No-Fly List Edition

No Comments

There is now a distinct possibility in the lawsuit filed by Rahinah Ibrahim about her being on the no-fly list, the verdict might be kept secret. (My prior post on the trial is here.)

That’s right, win or lose, Rahinah Ibrahim, and the general public, may never know if she was on the list, if she is on the list, or whether her name has been removed from the list:

Is former Stanford University scholar Rahinah Ibrahim connected to Malaysian jihadists, as the FBI once suggested, or is she the victim of misguided U.S. bureaucrats who erroneously placed her on a U.S. terror watchlist? Is she even on a watchlist at all?

 Those are the lingering unanswered questions in the first-of-its kind federal trial challenging a traveler’s alleged placement on America’s notorious no-fly list. The 48-year-old Malaysian woman’s case against the U.S. government — in which she seeks solely to clear her name — is awaiting a judge’s verdict after a week of testimony, the bulk of it classified and given behind closed doors here in a San Francisco federal courtroom.

 But underscoring the Kafkaesque flavor of the trial, there’s a real possibility the verdict itself will be kept a secret, even from Ibrahim.

 “It is conceivable? If the government continues to keep this information secret from her and the public, and the judge sustains that objection, it is possible we can have a ruling in this case and she would not know the result,” Elizabeth Marie Pipkin, Ibrahim’s pro-bono attorney, said in a telephone interview.

You can call it Kafkaesque, or you can call it Orwellian, or you can call it police state tactics, but in any case, this really, really, wrong.

Because It is too Expensive, and the Side Effects are too Extreme

No Comments

Over at “Even the Liberal” New Republic, Eric Sasson finds a new drug that reduces the chance of HIV transmission by nearly 99%.

He is perplexed ans surprised that there has been little in the way of publicity or action regarding the now FDA approved drug, Truvada.

The answer to this question is simple. In addition to nasty , potentially lethal blood chemistry changes, osteoporosis, liver problems, hepatitis B infections getting worse, Neausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, joint pain, trouble sleeping, and back pain, this drug has an extremely high price, to the tune of over $1200 a month.

This is yet another example of how an over broad IP regime.

The retail price, set by the manufacturer by virtue of their monopoly rights under patent, is preventing it from having a meaningful impact on the AIDS epidemic

The solution here is to make patents, particularly those for drugs, less expansive (also, end evergreening), along with an aggressive regime of compulsory licensing.

Time for Another Blogger Ethics Panel………

No Comments

60 minutes just did a laudatory story on the NSA showing.

They show how this heroic group of people just want to protect us.

Well, now we know why.  It turns out that the host of that segment previously wrked for the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and was Looking at leaving journalism to take a job as spokesman for the NY Police intelligence unit:

“60 Minutes” received another round of criticism Sunday for what critics called soft coverage of the National Security Agency — and the next morning, the host of that segment was reported to be taking a job in intelligence or counterterrorism.

The news program was given “unprecedented access” to the agency and its employees, said host John Miller at the outset of the report — where he did note that he had formerly worked in the office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But the Daily Beast and Huffington Post have reported in recent days that Miller was under consideration for a job at the NYPD in an intelligence or counterterrorism role. On Monday, the New York Post’s Page Six reported that Miller was on the verge of taking such a job.

Revolving door journalism.

Yet one more way that certain members of the 4th betray their profession.

It Ain’t the F%$#-Up, It’s the Cover-Up

No Comments

 Remember yesterday, when I wrote about how a crony of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie closed entry lanes on the George Washington Bridge in what appeared to be retribution for the (Democratic) mayor of Fort Lee, NJ for not endorsing him?

Well, I figured that this was an instance of some underling deciding to take initiative, kind of like when Nixon was in the White House, when he would rant in private, and say something like, “Someone should shoot that SOB,” and aide Chuck Coleson would go and buy a gun.

It’s one of the problems that one can have with evil minions. Sometimes they are too enthusiastic.

Well, maybe not so much.  Because it has now been revealed that Governor Christie made a private call to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asking him to instruct the head of the Port Authority to quash the investigation:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to complain about a Cuomo appointee’s handling of a growing controversy over traffic pattern changes on the George Washington Bridge, a person familiar with the matter said.

 Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs.

 Messrs. Cuomo and Christie share control of the Port Authority, which oversees Hudson River bridges and tunnels and the region’s airports and is rebuilding the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan.

 Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have accused Christie appointees of ordering the lane closures to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, Democrat Mark Sokolich, for not endorsing the governor’s re-election campaign. Mr. Christie’s campaign has denied that, and his Port Authority team has said the lanes were closed to study traffic on the bridge.

 A spokesman for Mr. Christie said the governor talks to Mr. Cuomo regularly “on any number of mutual-interest topics. Those conversations are private.”

 A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment.

 The call between the governors was an illustration of how the controversy has mushroomed into a headache for Mr. Christie. One of his top representatives at the authority, David Wildstein, resigned last week, citing the bridge closures. Democratic calls for the resignation of another top authority aide, Bill Baroni, have escalated this week.

It wasn’t clear how Mr. Cuomo responded to Mr. Christie’s call or if it was the first time Mr. Christie had lodged a complaint.

 The exchange appears to stand in contrast to Mr. Christie’s public remarks on the bridge matter. At a briefing on Dec. 2, the governor mocked a legislative inquiry on the lane closures and joked that he himself had moved the traffic cones that winnowed local access to the bridge.

The perspective on this whole matter has just shifted.

Yesterday, the conventional wisdom was, “Why did Christie hire such a stupid motherF%$#er?”

Today, the question is, “What does Chris Christie have to hide?”

Why Chris Christie Will Not Be the Republican Nominee

No Comments

In many ways, Christie’s putative Presidential campaign reminds me a lot of Rudolph Giuliani’s in 2008.

Governor Christie  he suffers much the same problem as Guiliani,* which is that the better that people know him, the more that they will dislike him.

He is clearly too liberal for the nut-jobs who caucus in Iowa, and his actions in the rough and tumble of New Jersey Politics show that he is someone who people in New Hampshire will dislike when they see him in person.

Case in point, it now appears that one of his appointees shut lanes to the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the Democratic Mayor for not endorsing him:

It would seem a minor whodunit for a small suburb: On the first day of school in September, three access lanes leading from Fort Lee, N.J., streets to the George Washington Bridge were unexpectedly and mysteriously shut down. Cars backed up, the town turned into a parking lot, half-hour bridge commutes stretched into four hours, buses and children were late for school, and emergency workers could not respond quickly to the day’s events, which included a missing toddler, a cardiac arrest and a car driving into a building.

 But the George Washington Bridge is the world’s busiest, and New Jersey is led by one of the nation’s most pugnacious and prominent politicians, Gov. Chris Christie — who also happens to appoint the people who control the bridge.

 So the unfolding story of the lane closings has become something of a cause célèbre, resulting in a hearing before the New Jersey Legislature on Monday, as well as a window into the proudly aggressive and often secretive dealings of Mr. Christie’s team.

 The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, complained in a letter in September that the lane closings were “punitive” — Mr. Christie, a Republican, was leaning heavily on Democratic mayors to endorse him for re-election so he could present himself as a presidential candidate with bipartisan appeal, but the mayor was not going along.

 Mr. Christie laughed off the idea that he had been involved in a matter as small as closing bridge lanes, and his chief appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the bridge, insisted that the lane closings were simply part of a traffic study.

 But on Friday, the man who ordered the closings — a high school friend of the governor’s who was a small-town mayor and the founder of an anonymous political blog before Mr. Christie’s appointee created a job for him at the Port Authority — resigned, saying the issue had become “a distraction.”

The people of New Jersey might understand (though the indications are that they aren’t, because their commutes were f%$#ed with in a major way), the people of most of the rest of the country (pretty much everyone but New York and New Jersey) won’t.

*Also, Christie has not been zinged the way that Joe Biden zinged Rudy that, “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11,”

Rapists in the Pentagon win ……… For Now

No Comments

The Senate has passed the defense authorization bill, and caved to the pro-rape faction in the military by dropping Kristen Gillibrand’s proposal to remove such charges from the chain of command:

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said she will push legislation to remove sexual-assault allegations from the military’s chain of command after congressional leaders spurned her approach in crafting a compromise defense measure.

“I have an assurance that we will get a vote, just not when we will get a vote — before the end of the year or maybe right away in the new year,” Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, told reporters today. Leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees yesterday agreed on a $552.1 billion defense authorization bill for the current fiscal year.

Under the compromise, commanders would be stripped of the ability to dismiss a finding by a court martial and would be barred from reducing guilty findings. Retaliation against personnel reporting sexual assaults would become a military crime.

President Barack Obama has said the issue of sexual assault is undermining trust and readiness among members of the armed forces, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called attacks a “scourge” and a “blight” on the military.

While Hagel and uniformed leaders in the military have backed changes in the handling of such cases, they have resisted Gillibrand’s approach, saying commanding officers must be able to discipline their own troops.

The issue has crossed party and gender lines. Gillibrand has won support from Republicans including Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, while her proposal has been opposed by such Democrats as Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who heads the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

Just so you know, the military says that such crimes need to remain in the chain of command to preserve, “Good order and discipline,” even though other militaries, like, you know, the Israel Defense Forces.

After all, it’s not like the Israelis have been at war in existential struggles in the past 60 years, has it?

Our officer corps is profoundly dysfunctional, and we need to stop the inmates from running an asylum.