Why Won’t Obama Rein in the N.S.A.?
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
Category: Corruption
Shoot Me I Agree with James Sensenbrenner
He is calling for James Clapper to be prosecuted for lying to Congress:
Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.
“Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill.
He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.
During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does “not wittingly” — collect information on Americans in bulk.
After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment.
The intelligence director said he tried to give the “least untruthful” answer he could without revealing classified information.
Sensenbrenner said that explanation doesn’t hold water and argued the courts and Congress depend on accurate testimony to do their jobs.
“The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced,” Sensenbrenner said. “If it’s a criminal offense — and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job.”
He’s right.
This was clearly a case of perjury, particularly since he got the questions in advance as well as being given the opportunity to clarify.
Even if there is not a case for his being prosecuted (there is), his behavior clearly justifies the removal of his security clearance.
It’s not going to happen under this administration, though.
The Department of Homeland Security Outdoes Orwell And Kafka
In the first case to make it to court over the no-fly list, DHS has taken abuse of power to a whole new level.
The case, Rahinah Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security.
The claim of DHS is that the list is a state secret, so they won’t even acknowledge that there is a list, much less if someone is on the list, until of course the airlines refuse you a boarding pass, but even then they cannot tell you why they are:
Airlines aren’t told why they have been forbidden to transport any particular person, and are forbidden from telling anyone that they are on the “no-fly” list — although of course that eventually becomes obvious when the airline refuses to issue a boarding pass to an otherwise qualified fare-paying would-be passenger. The U.S. government’s policy is never to confirm or deny the existence of a no-fly order. That is considered a “state secret”.
Needless to say, all this makes a mockery of due process and has, until now, frustrated judicial review of no-fly decisions and orders. Despite numerous attempts to challenge the system of “no-fly” lists and orders, Rahinah Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security, et al. (docket and more recent documents) is the first such case to make it to trial.
Dr. Ibrahim, a Malaysian citizen, was a doctoral candidate at Stanford University, in the U.S. on a valid student visa, when she tried to fly home to Malaysia with her daughter in 2005. She was refused passage on a United Airlines flight from San Francisco International Airport, detained, and interrogated by SFO airport police. Although she was ultimately bound for Malaysia, she had planned to stop over in Hawaii to present a research paper at a conference there. She was denied boarding on a domestic flight from San Francisco to Kona. She was allowed to fly to Kona the next day, and on to Malaysia after the conference a few days late, but her U.S. visa was then revoked (although she wasn’t notified, and didn’t learn this until she was at the airport in K.L. trying to check in for a flight back to SFO a couple of months later). She hasn’t been able to return to the U.S. since, even though she had lived legally in the U.S. for many years, had met and married her husband in the U.S., and one of children was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. She completed her dissertation remotely, received her Stanford Ph.D. in absentia, and is now a professor at a major Malaysian public university, with an extensive list of academic publications.
Several other “no-fly” lawsuits have been dismissed without getting far enough to have a judge, much less a jury, review the challenged “no-fly” orders on their merits. Others that haven’t yet made it to trial, but haven’t yet been dismissed, include that of Gulet Mohamed in Northern Virgina and Latif et al. v. Holder in Portland, OR. Both of these cases involve U.S. citizens who were effectively banished from the U.S. by having their names being placed on the “no-fly” list while they were abroad, preventing them from coming home.
The city and county of San Francisco paid Dr. Ibrahim $225,000 to settle her claims against the airport police, but the Federal government agencies and employees have opposed Dr. Ibrahim’s right to even have the court review the legality of their actions.
But wait there’s more.
You see, after the lawyers for Dr. Ibrahim put her daughter on the witness list, DHS put that daughter on their no fly list:
The Federal civil rights trial in Ibrahim v. DHS — the first lawsuit seeking judicial review of a government “no-fly” order to make it to trial — began this morning in San Francisco with a surprise:
When the case was called at 7:30 a.m., Elizabeth Pipkin and Christine Peek, pro bono lawyers for the plaintiff Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim, began by informing U.S. District Judge William Alsup that Dr. Ibrahim’s oldest daughter Raihan Mustafa Kamal was denied boarding in Kuala Lumpur yesterday when she tried to board a flight to San Francisco to observe and testify at the trial in her mother’s lawsuit.
Ms. Mustafa Kamal, an attorney licensed to practice law in Malaysia, was born in the U.S. and is a U.S. citizen. Ms. Mustafa Kamal was with her mother when Dr. Ibrahim was denied boarding on a flight from K.L. to San Francisco in 2005 (after having been told that her name had been removed from the “no-fly” list) under what now seem eerily similar circumstances. The DHS had been given notice that Ms. Mustafa Kamal would testify at the trial as an eyewitness to those events she witnessed in 2005.
………
“We may have to have a separate evidentiary hearing about this,” Judge Alsup said, and ordered the defendants to provide further information tomorrow (Tuesday). “I want to know whether the government did something to obstruct a witness, a U.S. citizen.”
(emphasis original)
So, they put a witness, and an American citizen at that, on the no fly list in order to prevent them from testifying, and then, they lied to the judge about it:
Ms. Pipkin reminded the court of what government counsel Paul Freeborne of the Department of Justice told the court before the trial recessed on Monday:
Freeborne: Your Honor, we’ve confirmed that the defendants did nothing to deny plaintiff’s daughter boarding. It’s our understanding that she just simply missed her flight. She has been re-booked on a flight tomorrow. She should arrive tomorrow.
“None of that was true,” Ms. Pipkin told the court this morning. “She didn’t miss the flight. She was there in time to check in. She has not been rebooked on another flight.” And most importantly, it was because of actions by the DHS — one of the defendants in Dr. Ibrahim’s lawsuit — that Ms. Mustafa Kamal was not allowed to board her flight to SFO to attend and testify at her mother’s trial.
Ms. Pipkin said that Ms. Mustafa Kamal had sent her a copy of the “no-board” instructions which the DHS gave to Malaysia Airlines, and which the airline gave to Ms. Mustafa Kamal to explain as much as it knew about why it was not being allowed to transport her. Ms. Pipkin handed Judge William Alsup a copy of the DHS “no-board” instructions to Malaysia Airlines regarding Ms. Mustafa Kamal.
At least now, we may have a reason as to why she is on the no fly list:
The FBI agents also asked about whether Dr. Ibrahim was familiar with Jemaah Islamiyyah in Malaysia. She said she had heard of it only from reading online newspapers, but that from what she had read, it was an un-Muslim terrorist organization.
Later in her deposition, Dr. Ibrahim noted that since returning to Malaysia in 2005, she has become active in Jamaah Islah Malaysia, a non-profit professional networking group for Muslims who have returned to Malaysia after post-secondary schooling in the U.S. and Europe. The two groups have names that could easily be confused by non-Malays, and are sometimes referred to by the same acronym, “JIM”. But both are well-known and readily distinguishable to Malaysians. And the FBI agents who visited her in 2004 didn’t ask about “Jamaah Isla Malaysia”, the entirely innocent organization with which Dr. Ibrahim is now involved. This potential confusion is the only hint in the public record to date about any possible explanation, legitimate or not, for FBI “Special Agent” Kelly’s nomination of Dr. Ibrahim for inclusion on the “no-fly” list.
I fully expect the US Attorney to f%$#ing turn into a f%$#ing cockroach at this point.
The full sordid story, over the past few years is here.
There are a whole bunch of people at DHS, the FBI, and the DoJ who really need to have their security clearances pulled as arbitrarily as Dr. Ibrahim’s right to travel was.
Here is a suggestion for Barack “Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever™” Obama. Realize that your state security apparatus has as much interest in fairness, or civil rights, or basic American values as much as Richard Bruce Cheney is interested in discussing who authorized the leaking Valerie Plame’s CIA covert operative status.
Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee Take Down the Financial Press
On a number of occasions, I have noted that it has been illegal to take out insurance on something in which one does not have an interest in its continued existence.
So, it’s illegal to take out a policy on your neighbor’s house, because otherwise, you would have an interested in burning it down.
This problem was first addressed, in the UK at least in the by the Marine Insurance Act of 1746.
The proximate cause was people who would buy insurance on a merchant ship, and then leak the manifests and schedules to the French, who were at war with the British at the time, and they would collect the insurance payouts.
It has been the law for longer then there has been the United States.
Only in the late 1990s, they decided that it did not apply to credit default swaps, and so the ripe-for-abuse “naked” CDS was born.
Well, the Daily Show found a story on Bloomberg about how the private equity firm Blackstone Group purchased a naked CDS on a 3rd party loan to the Spanish gaming company Codere.
Blackstone then made a loan to Codere that was conditional to their making their making a payment late on the aforementioned 3rd party loan, which was a “credit event” which netted the investment firm a $15,000,000.00 payout.
What I do not understand how this isn’t insurance fraud, except, of course, a CDS isn’t insurance, except, of course, that it is.
But besides the Bloomberg article there has been crickets from the financial press, which Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee discussed last night.
Brutal
The Libertarian Paradise in Just One Story
A couple in Utah was billed $3500.00 for a negative review of a vendor who never shipped what they ordered:
A Utah couple is facing an uphill legal battle after being slapped with a $3,500 fine by an online retailer for posting a negative review of the company years after it failed to ship the products they ordered.
CNN reported on Friday that John and Jen Palmer’s problems with Klear Gear began in 2008, when John canceled a purchase he made through the company after it failed to deliver his order within 30 days. The Palmers then panned the company in a review on the consumer-complaint site Ripoff Review, saying, in part, that it was impossible to reach someone at Klear Gear by phone.
But earlier this year, Klear Gear contacted the Palmers in writing, saying they violated the company’s “non-disparagement clause” and threatening them with the fine if they did not remove the negative review.
“This is fraud,” Jen Palmer told KUTV-TV. “They’re blackmailing us for telling the truth.”
KUTV also reported that the company’s terms of service stated, “To prevent the publishing of libelous content in any form, your acceptance of this sales contract prohibits you from taking any action that negatively impacts Kleargear.com, its reputation, products, services, management or employees.”
However, Yahoo News reported that the clause seemingly only went into effect this year, only for the language to be removed from the website.
When Ripoff Report refused to remove the review, Klear Gear contacted major credit agencies and listed the $3,500 fine as a “failure to pay,” hampering the couples’ credit rating. The company told KUTV via email that its request that the Palmers erase their negative comment was “a diligent effort to help them avoid the fine.”
So, first, the provision of the contract is illegal, second, it wasn’t in force at the time that they made an order, and all the private entities involved, Klear Gear, Ripoff Report (which demanded a large payment to pull the post), and the credit rating agencies (’nuff said), have decided to f%$# the customer.
This is what happens when the contracts achieve primacy over basic human rights.
My only suggestion to the Palmers would be four letters, RICO, but I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
Bye Bye Silvio
Berlusconi has been expelled from the Italian parliament following his conviction for tax fraud:
The Italian Senate has voted to expel ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from parliament with immediate effect over his conviction for tax fraud.
Berlusconi, who has dominated politics for 20 years, could now face arrest over other criminal cases as he has lost his immunity from prosecution.
He told supporters in Rome it was a “day of mourning” for democracy.
Ahead of the vote, he vowed to remain in politics to lead his Forza Italia in a “fight for the good of Italy”.
A defiant Berlusconi told supporters gathered outside his Rome residence that “no political leader has suffered a persecution such as I have lived through”.
He said: “It is a bitter day, a day of mourning.”
Central to Berlusconi’s success has always been his near monopoly on commercial TV in Italy, particularly when juxtaposed with his control of the state TV networks after he was first elected.
What the need to do now is to pass regulations preventing this ghastly intersection of monopoly media ownership and electoral politics from recurring.
Any Guess as to Which SEC Senior Official is About to Jump to the Private Sector
Because the Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed a revolving door regulation:
Months ago, bowing to concern about regulators who leave government and then work their former colleagues on behalf of industry, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it was tightening restrictions on the revolving door.
Specifically, the SEC decided to close a loophole in the ethics rules that allowed some “senior” SEC personnel to lobby the agency immediately after leaving instead of staying on the sidelines for a year or more, as employees at other federal agencies must do. The change in the rules—revoking a longstanding exemption for some SEC officials—appeared to be a rare stand against the revolving door at an agency that has long blurred the lines between the regulators and the regulated.
But not so fast.
A notice published in Monday’s edition of the Federal Register said that the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) was withdrawing the new rule at “the request of the SEC” so that the agency could have more time to “effectively educate affected employees before the exemption revocation takes effect.”
The rule, which was published as “final” on October 3, had been scheduled to take effect on January 2.
The ethics office said it expects to republish the rule in January 2014, but it then would take another 90 days for the rule to go into effect, according to Monday’s announcement. As a result, SEC employees who would be affected by the rule change—including supervisory accountants, attorneys, economists, analysts, and administrative specialists—will have even more time to take advantage of the loophole. As long as they leave before the rule change takes effect, they’ll still be able to lobby the agency during their first year out.
For the ethics office to withdraw a rule after it had been adopted but before it could take effect appeared to be an unusual event. POGO searched the Federal Register going back to 1994 (the earliest year available in the Government Printing Office’s online archives) and found no other OGE notice containing the phrase “Withdrawal of Final Rule.” We asked an OGE spokesman how frequently this has happened, but he declined to comment.
Not feeling hope and change here.
Somewhere in Hell, J. Edgar Hoover is Laughing
Because Glenn Greenwald’s latest scoop is that the NSA has been running the equivalent of Hoover’s COINTELPRO program of spying and blackmail:
The National Security Agency has been gathering records of online sexual activity and evidence of visits to pornographic websites as part of a proposed plan to harm the reputations of those whom the agency believes are radicalizing others through incendiary speeches, according to a top-secret NSA document. The document, provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, identifies six targets, all Muslims, as “exemplars” of how “personal vulnerabilities” can be learned through electronic surveillance, and then exploited to undermine a target’s credibility, reputation and authority.
The NSA document, dated Oct. 3, 2012, repeatedly refers to the power of charges of hypocrisy to undermine such a messenger. “A previous SIGINT” — or signals intelligence, the interception of communications — “assessment report on radicalization indicated that radicalizers appear to be particularly vulnerable in the area of authority when their private and public behaviors are not consistent,” the document argues.
Among the vulnerabilities listed by the NSA that can be effectively exploited are “viewing sexually explicit material online” and “using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls.”
Note that notwithstanding the claims from an NSA spokes bot that, “Without discussing specific individuals, it should not be surprising that the US Government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence,” these people are not accused of being terrorists, planning terrorism, or offering material support of terrorism.
They are simply called, “Radicalizers,” people who say things that they don’t like. People who hold up a mirror to the actions of the United States, and show that we as a society do not comport to our stated ordeals.
In other words, people like Martin Luther King, who was a major target of COINTELPRO.
They went through his sex life, and, after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, attempted to convince him to commit suicide.
Note also, that at least one of the targets was a, “US Person”.
So, we are now targeting citizens or legal residents for blackmail from the state security apparatus with No Finding of Wrongdoing or Support for Terrorism.
Our state security apparatus is completely out of control.
Today’s Must Read
It’s, “Here’s why Wall Street has a hard time being ethical,” in the Guardian, and here is the money quote:
That’s the paradox at the core of the settlements we’re seeing: where is the real responsibility? Others were doing it, yes. Banks should be fined, yes. But somebody should be charged. Yet the people who really should be held accountable have not. They are the bosses, the managers and CEOs of the businesses. They set the standard, they shaped the culture. The Chuck Princes, Dick Fulds, and Fred Goodwins of the world. They happily shepherded and profited from a Wall Street that spun out of control.
A precedent needs to be set, to slow down Wall Street’s wild behavior. A reminder that rules are there to be followed, not exploited. The managers knew what was going on. Ask anyone who works at a bank and they will tell you that.
The excuse we have long accepted is ignorance: that these leaders couldn’t have known what was happening. That doesn’t suffice. If they didn’t know, it’s an even larger sin.
Go read the rest.
Why Internet Rage is a Good Thing
Because with out it, these people would have gotten away with trying to cover up a rape to protect their high school football program, but instead, the Steubenville school superintendent, a principal, and two coaches have been indicted.
This is in addition to the indictment of an IT guy at the school district about 6 weeks ago.
This would not have happened but for if not for the sh%$-storm on the internet, and the bravery of Alexandria Goddard for getting it out there and staying on the story.
Yes, Arne Duncan is a Bigot
We all are on some level, but his latest comment where he complains that white suburban moms complaining about Common Core testing shows that this attitude permeates his attitude on education:
Education Secretary Arne Duncan tried Monday to quell the outrage sparked by his comments that injected race and class into the debate about the Common Core academic standards taking root in classrooms across the country.
Duncan said Friday that he was fascinated by the fact that some opposition to the standards was coming from “white suburban moms” who fear that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.”
The remark lit up social-media sites, prompting pointed responses from bloggers, an open letter from a school superintendent, digital images of Duncan’s official federal portrait with the word “bigot” emblazoned across it, and one congressman’s call for Duncan’s firing.
Duncan, whose office declined interview requests Monday, posted a statement late in the day on his agency’s Web site.
“I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret — particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about how to better prepare all of America’s students for success,” he wrote. “I want to encourage a difficult conversation and challenge the underlying assumption that when we talk about the need to improve our nation’s schools, we are talking only about poor minority students in inner cities. This is simply not true. Research demonstrates that as a country, every demographic group has room for improvement.”
The subtext here is profoundly racist, and I do not mean that it is “racist against whites”, as the clowns on the right are insisting.
Please follow what was clearly his line of reasoning on this.
Basically he is saying, , “I understand how poor/minority/otherwise disadvantaged people can oppose my policies, after they are ill equipped (too stupid) to understand my brilliance, but white suburban moms, they are my peeps. They are smart enough to know better.”
Duncan is very much a creature of the Wall Street entities who wish to create a for-profit educational industrial complex, and he simply cannot imagine that other “people like him” disagree with his goals.
Here is a clue: Most suburban moms are not overpaid Harvard educated creatures of the finance industry. They aren’t “people like you.”
Additionally, the push-back against NCLB and Race to the Top, is becoming increasingly stronger broader, and the opposition is moving up the socioeconomic pyramid.
No Child Left Behind is a failed program,which is no surprise, since the Bush adminiatration was at the heart of creating this legislation.
Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:
But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.
Remember When I Wrote that High Frequency Trading was Front-Running?
Well, Yves Smith has found a whistleblower video that is a must watch: (Background on front-running here):
Yes, it’s almost an hour long but the short version:
Mr. Bodek had been using common “limit orders,” which specify a price limit at which to buy or sell. Mr. Davidovich, according to Mr. Bodek, suggested that he instead use an order type called Hide Not Slide, which Direct Edge had introduced in early 2009, about the same time Trading Machines’ performance started to suffer.
Mr. Bodek says Mr. Davidovich told him Direct Edge had created this order type—which lets traders avoid having their orders displayed to the rest of the market—to attract high-frequency trading firms…
Mr. Bodek says he realized the orders he was using were disadvantaged, compared with Hide Not Slide orders. He says he found that in certain situations, the fact that a Hide Not Slide order was hidden allowed it to slip in ahead of some one-day limit orders that had been entered earlier. He also learned that other stock exchanges had order types somewhat like Hide Not Slide, with different twists.
“Man I feel like an idiot. Never grasped the full negative alpha embedded in a normal day limit,” Mr. Bodek emailed Mr.
We really need to start prosecuting these rat-f%$#s.
So Not a Surprise
Geithner defended Wall Street and prevented any real consequences for their actions, and now he gets his back end bribe for doing this:
Timothy F. Geithner will join the private equity firm Warburg Pincus as president, the firm announced on Saturday. It would be his first prominent position since leaving office as Treasury secretary this year.
The unusually low-key announcement — made with little fanfare on a Saturday morning — is Mr. Geithner’s first foray into the private sector in 25 years, after serving in the Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
As president of the New York Fed in 2008, Mr. Geithner helped lead the federal government’s response to the financial crisis, including the sale of Bear Stearns and the bailout of the American International Group.
………
Mr. Geithner follows in the path of past Treasury secretaries who, after leaving government, have accepted lucrative Wall Street posts. After leaving the Clinton administration, Robert E. Rubin joined Citigroup. And John W. Snow, a Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, joined the private equity firm Cerberus.
Note that Geithner has never worked as an investment banker or stock broker, and he’s president of a private equity firm.
This is a payment for not rocking the boat, and f%$#ing the average American in the mortgage crisis.
And any future regulator knows that if they do right by the banksters, the banksters can throw them some multimillion dollar crumbs when they leave government service.
Rob Ford Just Stopped Being Funny
Everyone’s (Or at least Jon Stewart and his writing team’s) favorite Chris Farley tribute band, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has put on quite a show over the past few months.
I’ve not written about him, because I had nothing to add that The Daily Show has already covered.
Well, we now have credible reports that he was beating his wife:
New details from a months-old police report revealed on Friday indicated that Mayor Rob Ford’s wife, Renata, displayed bruises indicative of domestic violence and was possibly inebriated, according to a Toronto Star story published by columnist Rosie DiManno.
“The mayor’s wife was slurring her words and belligerent with the driver. She either refused to pay the fare or did not have the money,” DiManno wrote. “Their argument became so heated that the cabbie called for police assistance.” The columnist said the incident occurred “nearly a year ago” and began with a dispute between Renata Ford and a cab driver outside her parents’ home.
When police arrived, DiManno wrote that they “observed that Mrs. Ford appeared to have bruising on her limbs.”
“When asked about it, she refused to say how the injuries had been suffered. She was, in fact, too incoherent to say much of anything — either inebriated or on drugs,” explained DiManno.
According to DiManno, no one was charged after the argument between Renata Ford and the driver. However, DiManno said police “tried following up” with Renata Ford afterward because they were concerned “domestic abuse may be involved.” DiManno described Renata Ford as having been “not cooperative” with the police.
This is not the first time there have been questions about domestic violence in the Ford household. In 2008, Ford, then a member of the City Council, was charged with assault and making a death threat against his wife. Those charges were dropped after prosecutors found inconsistencies in Renata Ford’s allegations that they said raised “credibility issues.”
The Toronto Star has pulled the story, saying that it wasn’t ready for release, but is serves to reinforce something we should all be aware of when we are tempted to make jokes: There are people who are collateral damage to this sort of bullsh%$, and I am not referring to the embarrassment suffered by the citizens of Toronto.
I’m no particularly surprised by this. Ford is a product of the sort of nihilistic self-destructive hostile populism that was detailed in Mark Ames’ magnificent essay, Spite the Vote.
What he is, and what he does, is not motivated by a desire to fix things, but by a hatred by the other, which in his case are mass transit users and bicyclists. (?!?)
It is an illustration of the old Chinese adage, “If you are out for revenge, dig two graves.
Here is Jon Stewart is weighing in on the distinguished Mr. Ford:
These Rat-F%$#s Keep Failing Up
Now that education privatization advocate (and general failure) Paul Vallas appears to be on the way out in Bridgeport (background here), it looks like he will land on his feet.
It appears that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn will have Vallas on the ticket as his Lieutenant Governor:
The nation’s largest union panned the Friday afternoon announcement that Illinois’ Democratic governor is tapping an education reform lightning rod to join his reelection ticket.
“We are less than thrilled by the selection of Mr. Vallas,” Illinois Education Association president Cinda Klickna told Salon in a Friday email. “As head of the Chicago Public School System, he was known as a top-down administrator who routinely chose confrontation with the Chicago Teachers Union over collaboration.” Klickna’s comments came in response to an inquiry to the IEA’s parent union, the National Education Association. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who leads the country’s other top teachers’ union, sent Salon a three-word comment on Vallas’ selection: “We were surprised.”
As I’ve reported, Vallas is currently serving as superintendent of Bridgeport, Conn., schools, following past stints helming school districts in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Chicago – each marked by conflict with critics of the bipartisan education reform consensus. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2006 that Vallas was “blasted” by the majority of the School Reform Commission, the agency overseeing city schools, for “his handling of a deficit that will force midyear cuts in the school system.” In New Orleans, PBS noted in 2010, “charters have exploded” from 2 percent to a majority of city schools. In Tuesday school board elections framed by activists as a referendum on the education agenda of Vallas and Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, a dissident faction grew to a bare majority of the board’s nine seats, putting Vallas’ future there in jeopardy.
People of Illinois, missing Rod Blagojevich yet?
You Must Read This
Digby explains how allowing torturers and over-aggressive prosecutors and cops to walk away from their crimes corrupts our entire society:
I think the rationale for this is the same one they use for failing to punish the CIA torturers — if we prosecute them they will be unwilling to take chances in the future and then criminals/terrorists will kill us all in our beds. This has always struck me as a fairly insulting indictment of public servants who take oaths to our constitution. It implies that unless they are given immunity in advance from any accountability they will refuse to do their job to protect and serve. And frankly, I don’t think that’s fair to them. Indeed, what’s happened is the opposite: there’s no advantage to being a straight arrow and following the rules so the incentives go the other way.
This is a sickness throughout our culture. Government authorities at all levels, from the cops who overuse the taser because they know there will be no ramifications if their torture leaves no mark to the top Justice Department torture advocates who are now feted as “experts” and heroes, there is little accountability. And it tars all the ones who do follow the rules of the constitution and just plain human decency with the same taint.
Read the whole thing.
Well, they Did Get Capone for Tax Evasion
So I am amused that AT&T might be liable for violation of telemarketing rules over its data sharing with the CIA:
It’s like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The CIA and AT&T figured out how to get around legal restrictions on giving the CIA access to domestic phone call information, but in doing so they violated a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule that protects you against telemarketing.
According to this story in the New York Times, the CIA paid AT&T to provide them with information on calls passing through its international telephone system. Because federal law prevents the CIA from spying inside the United States, the CIA could not legally get info on calls terminating in the U.S. But, of course, calls from suspected foreign terrorists (aka “anyone outside the United States”) that terminate in the United States are the most interesting to the CIA.
So what’cha gonna do if you’re a poor spy agency or a patriotic mega-corp who understand that sometimes you have to break few privacy eggs to make a freedom omelet? According to the article, when a call originated or terminated in the United States, AT&T would “mask” the person’s identity by revealing only some of the digits of their phone number. The CIA could then refer this information to the FBI, which can get a court order and require AT&T to provide the rest of the phone number and all other relevant identifying information. Then the FBI can kick that information back to the CIA.
Unfortunately for the CIA and AT&T, while this might work to get around the limits Congress imposed on the CIA, it looks like it violates the law requiring phone companies like AT&T to protect your privacy. Section 222 of the Communications Act, also known as the rule on “customer proprietary network information” (CPNI), prohibits AT&T from selling anyone information on who you call or who calls you without your consent. Nor does this contract with the CIA fit into any of the law’s exemptions for information sharing. This is a private contract, just the same as if AT&T had contracted with Blue Cross to let them know if anyone Blue Cross insured sent out too many times for pizza and other unhealthy food.
The fact that AT&T did not fully disclose the full phone number or the name of the subscriber associated with the call does not make it any less of a violation. Under the law, AT&T violates the CPNI rules just by looking at any records associated with the phone number for any purpose other than actually providing service, billing, 9-1-1, or other exemptions found in the statute. The phone company doesn’t even have to disclose the information to anyone else (which, of course, it did, and which, of course, is also illegal) to violate the law.
If you have AT&T, you might want to call them and opt out of this program, which is your right under federal regulations.
Better yet, get a lawyer, and get a class action on.
Why any Healthcare Reform Should Start With the Goal of F%$#ing the Insurance Companies
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!Who could have imagined that Anthem Blue Cross and Wellpoint would used Obamacare as a mechanism to cheat their customers:
Anthem Blue Cross tricked tens of thousands of Calfornia policyholders into giving up health insurance plans from which they could not be dropped and pushing them into policies that Anthem knew would be cancelled, according to two lawsuits filed in Los Angeles.
The lawsuits, filed Monday in Superior Court, may signal an emerging customer pushback against the approximately 900,000 cancellations in California alone of individual health insurance policies that will take effect Dec. 31.
Before the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was passed March 23, 2010, California policyholders who bought individual insurance policies and kept up with premiums were grandfathered in, meaning the insurer cannot drop them. However, policy holders who purchased their insurance after March 23, 2010, or who switched out of plans purchased before the law was enacted, are not grandfathered and must, by Jan. 1, 2014, pay for a policy that is compliant with Obamacare. In some cases that means premium increases, especially for those who don’t qualify for federal subsidies. Others will lose access to their personal physicians or trusted specialists.
The two lawsuits allege that Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest insurer and a unit of insurance giant WellPoint Inc., deceptively enticed tens of thousands of Californians to switch out of their grandfathered plans, a practice known as “twisting,” in violation of a state law and to cut its own costs.
This is why Obama’s initiative to bring in the insurance companies as “Stakeholders” was a disastrous decision.
They were not stakeholders, they were among healthcare’s worst offenders. Bringing them into the decision making process is akin to bringing in Willie Sutton as a bank security consultant while he was still robbing banks.*
*It should be noted that after he left the slam, Sutton did serve as a security consultant for banks, but that was after he stopped robbing banks.
Deep Thought
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Yes, the folks who gave you complex financial instruments based on mortgage backed securities that nearly destroyed the world, are looking to apply their special genius to the rental market:
You’d think that investors would run away from a new Wall Street innovation as fast as Congress runs away from a good idea.………
Ummmm, no. Wall Street’s primary model is to convince a potential investor is that there is another idiot further down the chain that they sell this crap to.
So, no, I do not think that investors would run away.
………But instead, they’re flocking to the latest product peddled by large banking interests, even though they look almost exactly like the mortgage-backed securities that were a primary driver of the financial crisis. These new securities, backed by rental payments, also have real-world implications for millions of renters, who could end up turning in their monthly checks to Wall Street-based absentee slumlords.
Over the past couple years, private equity firms and hedge funds have bought up over 200,000 single-family homes, mostly discounted foreclosed properties in communities wrecked by the housing crash, such as Phoenix, Atlanta, Tampa, Sacramento, Los Angeles and Riverside, California. They have spent billions to scoop up these vacant homes at fire-sale prices, renovate them, and rent them out, promising investors double-digit annual returns on the rental revenue. Private equity firms like Blackstone, which owns more than 40,000 single-family homes, think they can build an entirely new asset class out of this scheme, controlling the rental market for single-family homes. The irony is rich: Wall Street created the conditions for millions of foreclosures, then they sweep in to buy up the homes and rent them out, often to the same people they kicked onto the street.
………
Like mortgage-backed securities, the bonds would get sold in tranches, with the senior levels getting rental revenue first, and the junior tranches taking the rest. Rating agencies like Kroll, Morningstar and Moody’s have blessed the deal, presenting the senior tranches with a triple-A rating, essentially labeling it as perfectly safe for investors. You’ll remember that mortgage-backed securities were bestowed triple-A ratings during the housing bubble, and that this spurred massive purchases, fueling demand for more and more home loans to create more securities. You can see the same thing happening in the rental market if these securities catch on. In fact, while the most attractive foreclosed properties have already been snapped up, homebuilders are constructing new properties specifically for single-family rentals. Some analysts are concerned that this gold rush will create a new housing bubble in the communities where Wall Street firms are purchasing homes.
………
But securitizing rental revenue is beset with unknowns. The rating agency Fitch underscored many of these concerns when they justified their opposition to rating the Blackstone bond.
So, this sh%$ is so toxic that even the massively corrupt ratings agencies won’t touch it.
The consequences for 14 million single-family renters in America could be worse. Fears that Wall Street firms would try to trim costs by ignoring maintenance and upkeep have so far been realized. As Ben Hallman at The Huffington Post recently detailed, Wall Street-owned rental homes are riddled with mechanical and plumbing problems. The firms basically freshened up foreclosed properties with a coat of paint and rented them out, ignoring serious deficiencies like broken toilets and even vermin infestations. And predictably, the landlords are impossible to reach to get repairs done. “I’ve been renting homes for 15 years and I’ve never had a landlord be this ridiculous about getting stuff repaired,” said one renter of Invitation Homes, Blackstone’s single-family rental subsidiary.
………
Plus there’s the concern that securitization of rental payments will lead to the same kind of risky, illegal practices we saw with securitization of mortgages. Nobody should welcome a return of innovations like CDOs (where the riskiest tranches get sliced up and repackaged as “safe” securities) or adjustable payments (what if renters were sold “teaser” rates on their monthly payments that reset to prices they couldn’t afford?). And nobody wants to think about the strong-arm tactics that would be applied to force payments out of tenants, regardless of the circumstances. This is a rerun, and the first movie ended rather badly.
We know how the banks handled managing mortgages. They sucked. They screwed it up even when all they needed to do was sit back and collect the money.
Their response to tenants demanding that their homes be maintained will be a hearty f%$# you, followed by an aggressive use of bribes political donations so that they can continue to extract rents completely without consequence.
If this sort of bribery worked in DC to emasculate financial regulations, it will work on Teaneck New Jersey zoning board.
Rinse, lather, repeat.