Category: Corruption

New York Governor David Paterson Will Not Stand for Reelection

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One of his top aides, David Johnson, has had repeated accusations of physical violence women acquaintances.

Most recently, a woman was seeking a protective order against him, and state police who were members of the governor’s personal security detail pressured her to drop the proceedings, and the day before the hearing, Governor Paterson talked with her on the phone to convince her to drop the matter:

In the ensuing months, she returned to court twice to press her case, complaining that the State Police had been harassing her to drop it. The State Police, which had no jurisdiction in the matter, confirmed that the woman was visited by a member of the governor’s personal security detail.

Then, just before she was due to return to court to seek a final protective order, the woman got a phone call from the governor, according to her lawyer. She failed to appear for her next hearing on Feb. 8, and as a result her case was dismissed.

………

Through a spokesman, Mr. Paterson said the call actually took place the day before the scheduled court hearing and maintained that the woman had initiated it. He declined to answer further questions about his role in the matter.

That last paragraph sounds suspicious: How does someone get the phone number of the Governor?

Also note that the State Police have no jurisdiction, and ordinarily do not do this.

So the fat lady has sung, and he is not running for reelection.

Truth be told, the fat lady sung over a year ago, when he was polling behind Dick Cheney, but reality has finally smacked him in the face.

This is a good thing, since the next governor will be hip deep in redistricting, and perhaps New York can make things more fair, particularly in the State Senate, which has been Gerrymandered in favor of Republicans for generations.

This is Why You Clear the Bush Toadies Out of the Military

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Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld put their toadies in power, and Barack Obama has decided that it’s A-OK with him to keep them in place.

A natural result of this is that General Ray Odierno has officially and publicly requested an increase in the number of combat forces in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline:

In a move that could force President Obama to break his vow to get all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year, his top commander in Iraq recently officially requested keeping a combat brigade in the northern part of the country beyond that deadline, three people close to the situation said Wednesday.

Gen. Raymond Odierno asked for a brigade to try to keep the peace in the disputed city of Kirkuk, but only got a polite nod from the president when the issue was raised during his recent meetings in Washington, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. If the brigade in northern Iraq is indeed kept in Iraq past the deadline, there will be a fan dance under which it no longer will be called a combat unit, but like the six other combat brigades being kept past the deadline, will be called an advisory unit. I can imagine the press releases that will follow-“Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed last night in an advisory operation . . . .”

Enough is enough. It’s time to take an action which is reported in the press as “effectively ending his career.”

Charles Rangel ‘Admonished’ by House Ethics Committee

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I think that the facts are beginning to catch up with him, which is a pity, because he’s right on the issues:

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, has been admonished by the chamber’s ethics panel for trips he made to the Caribbean.

The committee determined he violated House gift rules when he accepted the trips to conferences in 2007 and 2008 sponsored by the Carib News Foundation. The foundation received contributions from corporations specifically to fund the conferences, the panel said in a statement.

The committee said yesterday that while it didn’t find evidence Rangel was aware of the funding, members of his staff did and “Representative Rangel was responsible for the knowledge and actions of his staff in the performance of their official duties.”

We are going to be seeing more of this, and I do not expect Rangel to run for reelection in 2012, because by that point, the pile of sleaze will be too high.

I expect a new eruption every few months for the next 2 years or so.

Another Day, Another Obama Administration Capitulation

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Yep, this time it’s the CFPA:

The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.

In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources.

President Obama’s economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency. In either case, they are insisting on a regulator with political autonomy and real teeth so it can effectively enforce rules designed to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s be clear on this: No one has any concern about a new bureaucracy. The banks want impunity to screw consumers, and members of Congress who want campaign donations from Wall Street, and White House officials completely captured by the finance industry, **cough** Geithner and Summers **cough**, are more than willing to do this.

If the CFPA is not independent, which means that they have the ability to craft their own budget, they will be subject to the tender mercies of someone like Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner or Hank “Why the f%$# isn’t he in Jail” Paulson, and so will be largely ineffective.

Haiti Will Shortly Free Last Two American Kidnappers Missionaries

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This is not an exoneration. It’s an acknowledgment that the courts in Haiti are a shambles, and that they are getting a lot of pressure from the US.

It’s clear from the back story that something very wrong was going on:

A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.

Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.

A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.

Eight fellow missionaries were released last week but their leader and her assistant were kept in custody.

The other 8 are claiming that they had been scammed by Silsby and Coulter, and I am inclined to believe that something more than inattention to the finer points of Haitian immigration law is involved.

Geithner Knifes Volker Rule

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Surprise, Geithner and his Treasury Department is giving the green light for Congress to gut the Volker rule, and allow federally insured institutions to gamble with our money.

Well, he never like Volker anyway:

The Obama administration lowered expectations Tuesday for the “Volcker rule” to curb risky trading by banks, emphasizing “limits” rather than an outright ban, as Congress shied from the original proposal.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that it supports “mandatory limits” on banks’ proprietary trading, in which they trade for their own accounts. The administration last month had called for an outright ban on such trading.

Seriously, the combination or regulatory capture and cowardice by the Obama administration is beginning to get to me.

Quote of the Day

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Roger Ehrenberg, looks at a number of financial transactions, including the rather mundane one known as leasing nails what should be the core of any reform of the financial markets:

Both cash-market and derivative instruments should be put to the “business purpose” test. Accounting rule-makers, with support of the SEC, should move towards a “principles-based” system where common sense, and not black-and-white rules around which myriad loopholes can be found, should become the new paradigm. But let’s be clear. The issue isn’t derivatives; it’s all financial transactions whose objective is to deceive or to weaken financial transparency.

(emphasis mine)

He notes that a very old transaction, leasing, has been used for the same purpose for years:

Consider leasing, a transaction that has been popular for over 50 years. As the industry has evolved, transactions such as sale/leasebacks and “asset defeasance” have been used to synthetically borrow money without the obligation being reflected as debt on the balance sheet. The form of the transaction: a lease. The substance of the transaction: a borrowing. The multi-trillion dollar securitization industry has the same motivation: moving assets (and liabilities) off the balance sheet, while economic recourse still exists should asset values and/or debt ratings drop. This is what the market discovered when Citigroup’s multi-billion structured investment vehicles (SIVs) began to fail and the assets and liabilities came back onto its financial statements. What is the proper characterization of a contractually obligated stream of payments? Debt. How should a portfolio of assets and associated liabilities be treated if the risks and rewards of ownership haven’t been completely transferred? As never having left the balance sheet. Yet the accounting profession, with the SEC’s support, has enabled this charade to continue.

The idea of a business purpose rule is a very good one.

Someone Needs to Go to Jail for a Very Long Time

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Photo H/t boing boing

And I don’t mean a sysop.

The Lower Merion School District has issued laptops to its high school students, and someone has been activating the webcams to spy on children.

This came to a head, when Harriton High School Assistant Principal Lindy Matsko confronted sophomore Blake Robbins about his suspicious consumption of Mike & Ike candies, they look like pills.

What’s more that Mr. Robbins experience appears not to be unique:

If the allegations of spying prove to be true, Blake may not be the only victim. Other students claim they’ve seen their webcam go live while off school grounds and worry they’ve been spied on too.

“Occasionally a green light would go on, on your computer which would kind of give you the feeling that somebody’s watching you,” Harriton High School student Drew Scheier told NBC Philadelphia Thursday.

Subpoenas have been issued by the US Attorney, and the FBI is investigating the matter as a potential criminal act.

If anyone activated those cameras, there was a possibility that the children who had them might have been in front of the camera, and that they might have been a state of undress, which makes one of the charges something along the lines of soliciting child pr0n.

It doesn’t matter whether it was a pedophile looking for young bodies, or someone looking for funny pix for the office Christmas party, anyone involved in this, and anyone who knew of this and did not go to police, should go to jail.

Vulture Capitalists Need to be Slapped down

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I would suggest prosecutions of the folks who are pursuing Russia regarding bonds issued by the Czar:

The Russian government vowed to “defend our rights” after French holders of czarist bonds valued at as much as 100 billion euros ($137 billion) threatened to sue the Kremlin and seize property it owns in Paris.

“May God help them,” Viktor Khrekov, a spokesman for the Kremlin Property Department, said by phone today from Moscow, after the Paris-based International Federative Association for Russian Bond Holders, or AFIPER, pledged to sue to recoup part of the century-old debt.

The empire of Russia has not existed since 1917.

That country was liquidated, along with Czar Nicholas and his family.

People are buying this stuff at cents on the dollar, and then attempting to get be enough of an annoyance to coerce some payments out of sovereign nations.

It’s particularly egregious behavior because France and Russia had a final settlement since 1996.

Surely, if terrorism statutes can be used against the reserves of Icelandic banks, it can be used against these extortionists.

More on Bybee and Yoo, and the Lessons Learned Therein

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Courtesy of Chris Floyd:

“Children, the law is nothing but a rag smeared with blood and sh%$.

“It is only for suckers, rubes and losers.

“Claw your way to the top — by any means necessary — and the law can never touch you.

“This is the American way.”

This is the message of Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ determination not to prosecute, nor review in the smallest way by the bar association, the contemptible actions of the worst of the wrong doers amongst Bush and His Evil Minions™.

With the CPAC* Conference Going On

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The first rule of Investment Banking Club is,
you do not talk about Investment Banking Club.

You generally know where to look for selfishness and an immature sense of entitlement, but Moe Tkacik finds something that makes the folks at CPAC looking like Mahatma Ghandi.

Rather unsurprisingly, she finds it on wall street, where the bankers are, “As mad as hell,” about all the nasty things that people say about them ……… All while sucking down 7 figure salaries and bonuses.

You see, the bankers had a get together, and they invited her:

Still, I had heard of no plan for any sort of public up-close-and-personal plutocrat-on-plutocrat spectacle to give voice to the inchoate counterrevolution, no Millionaire’s March offering group catharsis to the angry wealthy white. But on Tuesday, Jan. 26, I received a mass e-mail from Schwartz Communications with the subject: “Wall Street Strikes Back at White House.”

It was held the trading floor of John Thomas† Financial, and (yet again) it defies belief, but suffice it to say that there was a Republican candidate for the US Senate, the bald guy is the head of the firm, Anastasios (Thomas) Belesis, who is a piece of work all on his own:

Belesis’s FINRA profile is similarly alarming. Investors have accused him of churning, fraud, excessive trading, breach of contract and other violations. Regulators have ordered him to repay investors more than a million dollars.

So, he’s mad as hell, and he’s not going to take it any more.

Of course, in a just world, he would be banned from the securities industry for life.

This story continues with epic tails of sexual harassment and the disposal whipped cream.

Just go read it.

*Conservative Political Action Comittee
†Yes, “John Thomas” is a bit of slang in Britain for a portion of the male anatomy, and it’s very apt here, and yes, there is a real investment bank by that name.

Sergey Aleynikov Pleads Not Guilty on Charges of High Frequency Trading Software Theft

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So, he is going to trial.

I’m surprised.

In my earlier examinations of this matter, it appeared that Goldman Sachs was considering letting it slide, because Mr. Aleynikov was requesting something that they did not want to provide.

The basics are fairly simple: High Frequency Trading (HFT) is basically a way to front run the entire market, and this guy was their head software guy in the process, so the trial should be interesting.

Taibbi On Wall Street (Again)

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I really cannot do justice to it.

He pens another gem, titled, “Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle,” where he juxtaposes Wall Street and street bunco games, and finds startling similarities:

The only reason such apathy exists, however, is because there’s still a widespread misunderstanding of how exactly Wall Street “earns” its money, with emphasis on the quotation marks around “earns.” The question everyone should be asking, as one bailout recipient after another posts massive profits — Goldman reported $13.4 billion in profits last year, after paying out that $16.2 billion in bonuses and compensation — is this: In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street’s eye-popping profits come from, exactly? Did Goldman go from bailout city to $13.4 billion in the black because, as Blankfein suggests, its “performance” was just that awesome? A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these assholes not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?

The answer to that question is basically twofold: They raped the taxpayer, and they raped their clients.

Just go read it.

Not Enough Bullets: PC Edition

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Because what billy wants, Billy gets.

And I don’t mean politically correct. I mean companies involved in the personal computer business, most notably Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and Dell, who are aggressively lobbying against a proposal to prevent tax evasion through transfer pricing:

Software and computer companies such as Microsoft Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. are gearing up to fight an Obama administration plan to curb offshore tax avoidance.

The $15.5 billion proposal in President Barack Obama’s 2011 budget targets what the Internal Revenue Service calls the growing problem of so-called transfer pricing. The technique allows companies to reduce their tax bills by transferring intangible property such as patents, trademarks and licenses to offshore subsidiaries.

They use our courts and our law enforcement and our regulators to enforce their IP licenses, and they want to assign that IP to dummy corporations

Additionally, Microsoft has evaded Washington state taxes over the past 13 years, to the tune of $1.27 billion, with a similar shift by opening up a store front in Nevada. (see vid)

But don’t you worry about Microsoft, they are lobbying to have the tax gutted, as well as getting an amnesty in the lege, so they won’t owe anything, and the state will find some way to deal with their $2.8 billion deficit over the next few years.

Silly voter, taxes is for plebes.

8 of 10 Jailed Haitians Released

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The two apparent ring leaders remain in custody, and as a condition of their release, they must return later to Haiti to answer investigator questions:

While Judge Saint-Vil’s ruling allows eight of the Americans to leave Haiti on the condition that they return to the country to answer further questions in the case, it requires that Laura Silsby, the Idaho businesswoman who led the group, and her live-in nanny, Charisa Coulter, remain in jail to answer questions about traveling to Haiti before the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.

“We are disappointed that all in the group are not being released,” said Terry Michaelson, a lawyer for Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, where five of the detainees, including Ms. Silsby and Ms. Coulter, attended church.

The church mission’s lawyer had put forward about $7,000 to help pay for the first month’s rent for the orphanage that Ms. Silsby planned to establish in the Dominican Republic.

…………

Some of the freed Americans had already contended this month that they were misled by Ms. Silsby, who had faced more than a dozen legal complaints connected to her online shopping business before she persuaded fellow Baptists from Idaho to assist her in setting up an orphanage for Haitian children.”

(emphasis mine)

This is beginning to sound like something written by Dashiell Hammett.