Category: Crimes

Tease

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People are crowing about the arrest of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg for tax fraud.

A lot of people think that this is the beginning of the end for Trump, but that it just wishful thinking.  It is not even the end of the beginning.

I’ve seen this scenario too many times before.  The bad guys walk:

New York prosecutors on Thursday unveiled a 15-count indictment charging the Trump Organization and its finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, with a wide-ranging conspiracy to avoid paying taxes, launching the first criminal case resulting from a multiyear investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business affairs.

In a Manhattan courtroom, prosecutors described a 15-year-long tax-fraud scheme involving off-the-books payments to employees at the Trump Organization. Executives took perks such as car leases and Manhattan apartments without the company or the recipient paying taxes, prosecutors said.

………

“There’s no clearer example of a company that should be held to account,” said prosecutor Carey Dunne in court. “It’s not about politics.” He said the investigation was ongoing.

Mr. Weisselberg, appearing in handcuffs, pleaded not guilty. He was released pending trial, though he was required to surrender his passport after prosecutors said he was a flight risk. His lawyers said he would fight the charges.

The top charge for Mr. Weisselberg—grand larceny in the second degree—is a felony that, upon conviction, carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. Mr. Weisselberg was charged with 15 counts. In addition to grand larceny, prosecutors charged him with scheme to defraud, conspiracy, four counts of criminal tax fraud and other crimes.

The Trump Organization, through its attorneys, also pleaded not guilty. The company was charged with 10 counts, including scheme to defraud, conspiracy and four counts of criminal tax fraud.

………

The charges could ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Weisselberg to turn on Mr. Trump, who wasn’t charged Thursday. Mr. Weisselberg has so far declined to cooperate, but some defendants change course when faced with the possibility of prison time, former prosecutors said.

He’s not going to flip.

………

Prosecutors would need to show three things to charge Mr. Trump: knowledge, intent and participation, said Daniel Horwitz, chairman of the white-collar defense and investigation practice at McLaughlin & Stern.

And they will not get that if Weisselberg does not flip.

………

A case solely focused on fringe benefits is unusual, former prosecutors said. Charging an individual or company for failure to pay taxes on employee benefits alone is rare, though such charges are used as part of larger cases.

Which is one reason why I think that we will not see anything reaching Trump.  The case, at least until the DA adds charges, is not going to put Trump in jail.

………

………

In a possible bid to escalate pressure on Mr. Weisselberg and other executives to cooperate, the indictment mentions—though doesn’t name—Mr. Weisselberg’s son, who paid $1,000 a month on one Trump Organization-owned apartment for seven years and then paid no rent on another Trump-owned apartment in 2018. The rental payments weren’t reported as income to tax authorities, prosecutors said. The Wall Street Journal has reported that his son, Barry Weisselberg, lived in Trump-owned apartments. A lawyer for Barry Weisselberg didn’t respond to a request for comment

This case is not a nothing-burger, but the chance that it will place Donald Trump appear to be quite small, though it does appear to be a threat to the Trump organization, as it is likely to make lenders skittish about extending additional credit.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

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A leaked audio of a Senator Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) call with rich donors has revealed, among other things, that he asked donors at the group, “No Labels,” to bribe fellow Senator Roy Blunt.

Joe Manchin is not just a conservative Democrat, he is a disloyal one, and given that a recording of his call was leaked, one who who has people close to him looking to give him a well deserved shiv between his shoulder blades:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, in a private call on Monday with a group of major donors, provided a revealing look at his political approach to some of the thorniest issues confronting lawmakers.

The remarks were given on a Zoom teleconference session that was obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. Among the gathering’s newsworthy revelations: Manchin described an openness to filibuster reform at odds with his most recent position that will buoy some Democrats’ hopes for enacting their agenda.

………

The wide-ranging conversation went into depth on the fate of the filibuster, infrastructure negotiations, and the failed effort to create a bipartisan commission to explore the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, and offers a frank glimpse into the thinking of the conservative Democrat who holds the party’s fate in his hands.

Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines. 

OK, this is not an invalid comment, though a US Senator asking high dollar donors to act as his enforcers is pretty damn skeevy.

………

When it came to Sen. Roy Blunt, a moderate Missouri Republican who voted no on the commission, Manchin offered a creative solution. “Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”

That is flat out corrupt.  He is asking, in an open Zoom call with big donors, that they condition any future employment for Roy Blunt on his current votes.

He is actively calling for a bribe, or at least extortion based on the threat of withholding a bribe, which is pretty much the same thing.

Karma, Neh?

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Postmaster, and Trump Evil Minion™ Louis DeJoy is being investigated for campaign finance violations.

It appears that he was using straw donors to launder his campaign donations.

I so hope that he goes away for a long, long, long time: 

The FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in connection with campaign fundraising activity involving his former business, according to people familiar with the matter and a spokesman for DeJoy.

FBI agents in recent weeks interviewed current and former employees of DeJoy and the business, asking questions about political contributions and company activities, these people said. Prosecutors also issued a subpoena to DeJoy himself for information, one of the people said.

………

DeJoy — who was appointed to run the Postal Service by its board of governors last May — has been dogged by controversy for almost his entire time in office. Soon after starting in the job, he imposed cost-cutting moves that led to a reduction in overtime and limits on mail trips that mail carriers blamed for creating backlogs across the country.

Democrats accused the prominent GOP fundraiser, who personally gave more than $1.1 million to the joint fundraising vehicle of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of trying to undermine his own organization because of Trump’s distrust of mail-in voting. Two Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), sent a letter to the FBI asking agents to investigate whether DeJoy or the Postal Service’s governing board “committed any crimes” in stalling mail.

………

In early September, The Washington Post published an extensive examination of how employees at DeJoy’s former company, North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics, alleged they were pressured by DeJoy or his aides to attend political fundraisers or make contributions to Republican candidates, and then were paid back through bonuses.

Such reimbursements could run afoul of state or federal laws, which prohibit “straw-donor” schemes meant to allow wealthy donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscure the source of a candidate’s money. In April, though, Wake County, N.C., District Attorney Lorrin Freeman (D) said that she would not pursue an investigation of DeJoy and that the matter was better left to federal authorities.

This behavior by Republican donors has a precedent, it’s what Dinesh D’Souza was convicted of a few years ago.  (Pardoned by Trump)

An extended stay at Club Fed should be in his future,

Not Enough Bullets

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After engaging in one of the most brazen and delusional frauds in the history of history, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann will get even more money as payment for leaving the criminal enterprise that he founded.

Whoever said that crime doesn’t pay has clearly never been funded by Softbank: 

Nearly two years ago, SoftBank Group Corp. sought to part ways with WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann when it bailed out the shared-office company. It hasn’t been an easy divorce.

Securities filings from earlier this month show WeWork in February gave Mr. Neumann an enhanced stock award worth roughly $245 million, a benefit that wasn’t extended to other early shareholders and hasn’t been previously reported.

The deal was part of a renegotiation of the former chief executive’s giant 2019 exit package meant to end a long-running dispute between him and SoftBank and help clear the way for a public listing for WeWork, according to people familiar with the matter.

In addition, the final package gave him nearly $200 million in cash, let him refinance $432 million in debt on favorable terms and allowed an entity Mr. Neumann controls to sell $578 million in WeWork stock.

………

The filings also show how, after Mr. Neumann’s exit in the fall of 2019, WeWork took big losses as it sold off a number of companies acquired at his direction. It garnered just $164 million on 10 investments that were initially purchased for $759 million in cash and WeWork stock.

………

Executive-severance experts said the package stands out not only for its enormous size, but also given Mr. Neumann’s record. The valuation of WeWork, which he co-founded in 2010, fell to around $8 billion when he left from $47 billion in early 2019. In all, WeWork has raised more than $11 billion to build a company worth $7.9 billion, not including debt.

This guy should be sharing a cell with Martin Shkreli, not getting hundreds of millions more dollars in remuneration.

The man looted the company, and has been rewarded for this.

Something is very wrong with our society’s incentives.

Took Long Enough

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Oregon state Representative Mike Nearman, who allowed right wing terrorists into the state house, has been charged with first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass.

I’m surprised that he got charged at all:

An Oregon lawmaker who let violent far-right demonstrators into the state Capitol during a Dec. 21 special session was criminally charged on Friday with first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass.

Rep. Mike Nearman, R-Independence, was caught on security videos opening a door and allowing demonstrators to enter the building. He had been under investigation since at least January for enabling the breach.

He was caught on tape, and it took them 4 months to charge this mook?

What is up with that?

………

The first-degree official misconduct charge is for allegedly knowingly taking action that constituted an unauthorized exercise of his official duties to benefit someone else, according to court filings. The second charge is for allegedly abetting another person to enter and remain in the Capitol.

………

Oregon’s Capitol has been closed to the public for the last year due to the pandemic. On Dec. 21, lawmakers were in the building for the third special session of 2020, which Gov. Kate Brown called to extend the state’s eviction moratorium, create a relief fund for landlords and pass wildfire and COVID-19 related funding.

As House lawmakers debated rules for the one-day proceeding around 8:30 a.m., Nearman left the chamber and exited a door near where right-wing demonstrators had gathered to protest the state’s coronavirus restrictions. Demonstrators, including some carrying rifles, were circulating outside the north face of the Capitol and one man carrying a large flag waited just outside the door that Nearman opened, according to security footage obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request. Nearman exited and walked around the man with the flag, making no effort to keep him from entering the Capitol.

Surveillance video showed that once Nearman allowed demonstrators into the northwest Capitol vestibule, the group clashed with Oregon State Police and Salem police who tried to keep them out of the building. Demonstrators attempted to push past police, who rushed to eject the initial insurgents and physically block the doorway Nearman had just opened.

They have him on at least 4 cameras.  He’s been cut way too much slack by law enforcement.

He should have been frog marched out of his office in handcuffs months ago.

Lock Him UP!! Lock Him UP!! Lock Him UP!!

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The FBI just raided Rudolph Giuliani’s apartment in connection with his unregistered lobbying for the Ukraine.

Federal investigators on Wednesday seized cellphones and computers from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who became President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the investigation said.

F.B.I. agents executed search warrants around 6 a.m. at Mr. Giuliani’s apartment on Madison Avenue and his Park Avenue office in Manhattan, carting away the electronic devices, Mr. Giuliani confirmed in a statement.

The execution of search warrants is an extraordinary action for prosecutors to take against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer for a former president. The move marked a major development in the long-running investigation into Mr. Giuliani, which examines some of the same people and conduct that were at the center of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.

………

The investigative actions on Wednesday were expansive, with agents also serving a grand jury subpoena on Mr. Giuliani’s executive assistant, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

One of the warrants for Mr. Giuliani’s devices indicated that the federal investigators were searching for communications between him and several Ukrainian officials, including the former president, Petro Poroshenko, and two former prosecutors who had helped Mr. Giuliani collect information about the Bidens in Ukraine, one of the people said.

F.B.I. agents also executed a search warrant on Wednesday morning at the Washington-area home of Victoria Toensing, a lawyer close to Mr. Giuliani who had dealings with several Ukrainians involved in the hunt for information on the Bidens, according to people with knowledge of that warrant. The warrant was for her cellphone.

………

The federal authorities have largely focused on whether Mr. Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who were helping Mr. Giuliani’s dirt-digging campaign. At the time, Mr. Biden was a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The United States attorney’s office in Manhattan and the F.B.I. had sought for months to secure Justice Department approval to request search warrants for Mr. Giuliani’s phones and electronic devices.

And William Barr almost certainly corruptly intervened to quash those subpoenas while he was still Attorney General. 

Even more than Giuliani, Barr needs to face consequences for his actions, because the Attorney General of the United States of America needs to meet a higher standard.

The culture of impunity in Washington, DC needs to end.

 

It’s the Fraud, Stupid

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woah exhibit 16. more Facebook docs quietly unsealed yesterday – it gets worse. A full, damning senior execs’ email thread (CFO, COO) unsealed. Facebook slowed unsealings in this fraud case and spun it as “cherrypicking.”
Top marketing exec, Carolyn Everson, weighs in here. /1 pic.twitter.com/Zn51XNcKxn

— Jason Kint (@jason_kint) April 25, 2021

It’s Called Fraud

As I have noted a few times, any in depth examination of Facebook would reveal systematic fraud. 

Recently revealed emails uncovered in the fraud lawsuit against the social media network show Facebook was deeply aware that it was providing false information to advertisers, which seems to be a slam-dunk case of fraud.

Both Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandburg are famously “Hands On”, and this is at the core of their business.

They knew that they were defrauding advertisers, and they took their money anyway:

Carolyn Everson, one of Facebook’s most senior advertising executives, said the company had to “prepare for the worst” over claims that it overstated the potential reach of its advertisements, according to newly released court filings.

The world’s largest social network has been fighting a class-action lawsuit in California since 2018 over claims that its figure for its “potential reach”, which told advertisers how many people saw their ads, included duplicate and fake accounts.

Facebook has argued that the numbers were only estimates and that advertisers are charged for actual clicks and impressions, rather than for the potential reach of an ad.

But according to filings in the lawsuit that were unredacted over the weekend, Everson, the vice-president of Facebook’s global business group, wrote an email in 2017 that said the metric “clearly impacted [advertisers’] planning”.

“We are going to get really criticized for that (and justifiably so),” she said. “If we overstated how many actual real people we have in certain demos, there is no question that impacted budget allocations. We have to prepare for the worst here.”

………

The lawsuit, which was filed in northern California in 2018 by a small-business owner, alleges that Facebook executives knew the potential reach figure was “misleading” and took no action to correct it in order to “preserve its own bottom line”.

It points to research showing Facebook had suggested potential reach in certain US states and demographics that was greater than the actual populations in those geographies.
A Financial Times investigation in 2019 found similar discrepancies in Facebook’s ads manager, an online tool to help advertisers build campaigns, even though the company made some changes to its potential reach definition earlier that year.

They knew that the metrics were complete crap, and they tried to bury the information and continued to use the bad data to get paid.

Break out the cuffs, Ponch.

Interesting Thesis

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In a (sort of) obituary for Bernie Madoff, we learn that in interviews following his conviction for runing a Ponzi scheme, Madoff believed that everyone on Wall Street knew what he was doing.

Certainly, the pattern of financial players of cashing out early before the game of musical chairs stopped is suspicions:

Bernie Madoff died today, and he leaves behind a legacy of financial wreckage that stretched around the globe. His Ponzi scheme was the largest in history, wiping out some $65 billion in gains, albeit paper gains. The longevity of his scheme — decades — was breathtaking. He was without a doubt one of the most accomplished liars in history. Yet perhaps it takes a con man to know how the system cons us all. And Madoff understood the financial system as only a financial crook can. One thing he was certain of: They all knew.

………

I spent hours talking to Madoff during his years behind bars, and more hours listening to tape of his depositions from prison, exclusive material which offered insight into his crimes for my podcast. To the extent one can get into the mind of the greatest con artist of the age, I felt I knew him, or at least certain things about him. And I came to believe that Bernie Madoff was, in his way, a truth-teller. Madoff understood the workings of the financial system as few others did. Clearly he used that knowledge to sustain his con. The financial system’s attitude toward him was “willful blindness,” he said in one deposition.

When he was caught in 2008, as the financial crisis gripped America ever tighter, Madoff became a poster child for the misdeeds of that entire universe. The banks had pushed us to the brink of national ruin. But theirs was a complicated fraud, including such arcana as securitized bonds and overleverage. Their crimes weren’t easy to understand. Madoff, on the other hand, looked you in the eye, shook your hand, and then cut the shirt off your back. That was straightforward.

And so a narrative evolved. The systems, financial and to some extent judicial, cast Madoff as a rogue operator, a lone bad apple in an otherwise forthright arrangement. We were all hoodwinked, was the going line. He was that good.

Nonsense. The financial system enabled, weaponized, and profited handsomely from Madoff. Some hedge funds he did business with were nothing more than sales operations. They lured in clients with promises of due diligence and exclusive access. “I made them hundreds of millions,” Madoff said. It was true. And for doing what? Some simply took money from investors and handed it to him. For their trouble, they took a percentage off the top. They promised that they examined the details, but that simply wasn’t true.

………

Did the small investors know? Most of them didn’t. They trusted their financial advisors, those connected with institutions such as Banco Santander, who promised to keep an eye on Madoff’s operations.

………

Of course, he bears a large share of the responsibility for defrauding investors, although he liked to shrug that off. No doubt the notion of Madoff as another victim of the system is repulsive. But without the cold-blooded support of large financial players, Madoff would have been a local phenomenon, a tragedy limited in time and scope.

We need to make it easier to prosecute Wall Street malefactors, and we need to make it easier to claw back their ill gotten gains from them when it all goes pear shaped.

Why Welfare?

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Because if you take proper care of children growing up, they are far less likely to commit crimes later in life. (More details and numbers at the link)

Economists love to say “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. We often use it to describe the opportunity cost of scarce resources, but it is also literally true, and therefore hunger and poverty are usually positively correlated. This is because without income and work, there can be no trips to the grocer. And without ingredients, there can be no meals. And without regular meals, children eke out a level of consumption so small, they grow up malnourished and live below the biological minimum level needed for child development. Poverty, through malnourishment and stunted child development, can can make life feel hopeless, and hopelessness can make desperate choices appear best.

Andrew Barr and Alexander Smith have produced an exemplar study that plausibly shows that the Food Stamp program, by dramatically improving the development of cohorts through increased nutrition, caused a sizable decline in birth cohort crime at the onset of early adulthood. This paper adds to a growing body of research that shows early childhood interventions can have developmental ramifications so large, they may change a person’s entire life trajectory and in so doing, society itself.

………

But a separate literature explored whether childhood environments might be responsible for changing crime in adulthood. In a famous study by John Donohue and Steven Levitt, abortion legalization was suggested as at least partly responsible for the large, secular declines in crime that began in the early 1990s. But this theory was questioned and has since been more or less dropped by social scientists as an explanation for shifts in American crime rates. More promising explanations have focused on lead exposure and removal. But very little work, save a couple of small RCTs, have suggested that nutrition might be responsible for adult crime.

That has changed recently, though, in the last few years. Jill Carr and Analisa Packham, in a series of papers, present evidence that SNAP benefits can impact adult crime and domestic violence, but their work has tended to emphasize the program’s scheduling characteristics, not in utero and childhood development itself. Barr and Smith are unique in this pantheon of crime papers because of their focus on the Food Stamp Program’s nutritional benefits as opposed to the rational calculation of crime itself by adults. By providing nourishment and alleviating the sharp negative effects of poverty on the body’s development which can increase broadly defined human capital stock, something like a Food Stamp Program might reduce adult crime, not by changing the incentives adults face, but rather by changing the adult altogether.

This along with evidence of the effects of lead exposure, particularly through tetraethyl lead in gasoline, have had long term effects on crime rates. (See here, here, and here)

Spending money on policing, rather than treating making sure that children grow up with proper nutrition, healthcare and education is more than a cruelty, it is a stupidity.

Your Daily Schadenfreude

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The DoJ has sued Roger Stone for $2 million in unpaid taxes.

That’s what they got Al Capone for: 

The Justice Department sued Roger Stone on Friday, accusing him of failing to pay more than $2 million in taxes.

The suit, filed in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, alleges Stone, 67, and his wife, Nydia, dodged $1,590,361 in taxes between 2007 and 2011 and stiffed the IRS of $407,036 in 2018 alone. The couple used a company, Drake Ventures, to “shield their personal income from enforced collection and fund a lavish lifestyle,” according to the Justice Department.

The DOJ calls Drake Ventures “an alter ego of the Stones,” alleging that despite appearances of separation between the couple and the company, “the Stones dominated and controlled Drake Ventures to such an extent that it does not exist as an independent entity.” The mailing address of the company is the Stone’s house, and the husband and wife each own 50 percent of the LLC, according to the suit. The Florida Secretary of State has twice dissolved the company.

The Stones allegedly sent checks that listed Roger Stone as the payee to Drake Ventures, upwards of $1 million in total for 2018 and 2019. The company would pay for most of the Stones’ purchases and financial liabilities, including $500,000 in taxes in 2018 and 2019 and the $140,000 down payment on their condominium in February 2019. The company did all this, the DOJ alleges, without keeping necessary documentation. The financial arrangement “evaded and frustrated the IRS’s collection efforts,” DOJ lawyers wrote.

“[The Stones] used Drake Ventures to receive payments payable to Roger Stone personally, pay their personal expenses, shield their assets, and avoid reporting taxable income to the IRS,” the DOJ alleges.

In addition to the Stones and Drake Ventures, the Justice Department is also suing the company that owns the Stones’ condominium, Bertran Family Revocable Trust, alleging that the transfer of ownership was a fraudulent transaction meant to further hide the Stones from financial liability. Nydia Stone is sole grantor and sole trustee, the suit says, giving her complete control over it.

How sweet.  The lovely couple is dodging taxes together, just like Carlo Ponti and Sofia Loren, only, of course, we don’t generally associate Ponti and Loren with ineluctable evil.

Back to Normal

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In yet another indication that we are returning to a post-pandemic new normal, a mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx warehouse has killed at least 8 people. 

The situation was made even worse because FedEx has a policy of requiring employees to turn over their cell phones at the beginning of a shift, which means that loved ones could not contact them, and they could not call the police.

Officials with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department identified the eight victims of the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis on Friday night, more than 20 hours after the gunman opened fire on Thursday.

Families of people who worked at the warehouse were gathered at a hotel in the hours after the shooting, waiting for news. FedEx employees are not allowed to use their phones on the floor of the warehouse, complicating the reuniting of employees and their loved ones.

The victims were identified by the police as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74. Some family members of victims who were Sikh provided different spellings and ages: Jasvinder Kaur, 50; Amarjit Sekhon, 49; and Jaswinder Singh, 70.

Officials said the gunman, a 19-year-old, was a former employee of the company whose mother had warned law enforcement officials last year that he might try to attempt “suicide by cop.” An F.B.I. special agent confirmed that the gunman had been interviewed by federal agents in April 2020, and that he was put on an “immediate detention mental health temporary hold.”

He was not charged with a crime, and the agent said that a shotgun was not returned to him.

………

The violence in Indianapolis comes only weeks after mass shootings last month at spas in the Atlanta area and at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., renewing pressure on lawmakers in Washington to address America’s deep-seated problem with gun violence.

Officials used a common word — “another” — to define the tragedy.

………

The atmosphere was fraught at a nearby hotel on Friday as families of workers at the facility waited for word about loved ones, many of whom were not allowed to have their cellphones at work.

(emphasis mine) 

There are many things that I missed from the before times: Restaurants, movie theaters, bars, and theater immediately come to mind.

There are also things that I really do not miss, in person meetings, commuting, and especially mass shootings.

At the very least, I had hoped that the pace of mass shootings would not return to their pre-pandemic levels so quickly.

Support Your Local Police?

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Have you heard the on how the Boston Police Department protected and promoted a child rapist in their ranks for decades?

Not a joke, and thoroughly appalling.  The thin blue line must be shattered: 

A father and his teenage daughter walked into the Hyde Park police station last August and reported a heinous crime.

The girl said she had been repeatedly molested from age 7 through 12 by former Boston police union president Patrick M. Rose Sr. Five more people soon came forward, accusing Rose of molesting them as children over the span of three decades, including the girl’s own father.

Rose being tagged as a child sexual abuser was news to the city when he was arrested and charged last summer. But it wasn’t news to the Boston Police Department where Rose served for two decades as a patrolman.

A Globe investigation has found that the Boston Police Department in 1995 filed a criminal complaint against him for sexual assault on a 12-year-old, and, even after the complaint was dropped, proceeded with an internal investigation that concluded that he likely committed a crime. Despite that finding, Rose kept his badge, remained on patrol for another 21 years, and rose to power in the union that represents patrol officers.

Today Boston police are fighting to keep secret how the department handled the allegations against Rose, and what, if any, penalty he faced. Over the years, this horrific case has come full circle: The father who brought his daughter in last summer to report abuse by Rose was the boy allegedly abused at age 12 in the 1995 case. The department’s lack of administrative action back then may have left Rose free to offend again and again, from one generation to the next.

(emphasis mine)

………

Boston police won’t say what, if any, disciplinary action was taken against Rose. But it is clear the department did little or nothing to limit his contact with children, and allowed him to salvage a career that led to the union presidency, where he became the public face of the city’s 1,500 patrol officers.

The Globe investigation raises significant questions about how the department handled Rose, whose broader history of alleged molestation has only become clear now that he is jailed facing 33 counts of sexual abuse of six victims from age 7 to 16 in Suffolk Superior Court. For security reasons, he is being held in the Berkshire County Jail on $200,000 cash bail.

(emphasis mine)

I’m beginning to think that the best indicator someone is the worst kind of cop is that they are a the president of the Union.

This appears to be the case in Boston, as well as in Minneapolis. (My guess is that bad cops realize  that as a senior union official, taking action against them is far less likely.)

Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel

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(As Atrios would say)

It turns out that a reporter at Bloomberg news was feeding insider information to a speculator. Hoocoodanode?

Basically, there was a pattern of suspicious trades in the hours before a story from Bloomberg hit the web, and one reporter had a byline on all of the stories:

For more than six months, federal prosecutors say, a New York man used inside information to make illegal profits in the stock market—and a core element of his alleged scheme was his interaction with Bloomberg News, which published several stories shortly after the trader arranged to make significant purchases of the companies’ shares.

Last month, a federal grand jury indicted Jason Peltz on multiple counts of securities fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and lying to the FBI. Peltz, 38, is accused of working with over a half-dozen unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators to learn about impending takeovers and other market-moving news, and to move money between accounts as a way to hide his role and profits.

The indictment notes that Peltz’s moves were timed closely to stories that ran at “a financial news organization.” While the newsroom isn’t named, federal officials cite five stories and their timestamps— all of which match precisely to pieces that ran on Bloomberg News’ website. Each of those stories had shared bylines, but only one reporter is identified as an author for all of the articles: Ed Hammond, who worked at the Financial Times before coming to Bloomberg more than six years ago to cover mergers and acquisitions. In 2017, Hammond was named Bloomberg’s senior deals reporter in New York — a highly prestigious post in that newsroom.

Hmm, I wonder just who could be the source of the insider information?

The feds allege that Peltz used disposable “burner” phones and encrypted apps to communicate with a journalist, and that the reporter provided “material nonpublic information about forthcoming articles” which Peltz used to trade in the market “just prior to publication of an article about each company written by the reporter.” The indictment describes “numerous contacts” between Peltz and a reporter, including at least one in-person meeting.

I might be inclined to dismiss this as an a unfortunate social interaction, except for the fact that Mr. Peltz was using a burner phone.

Assuming that the Bloomberg source was not actively profiting from the transactions, it means that either Peltz was using him to manipulate the timing of the public release M&A information, or using the Bloomberg source to get information regarding future M&A information, or both.

In either case, the reporter still got something of value, a scoop, and while this should not be actionable from a criminal perspective, one would hope that his editor is crawling so far up his ass about this that he can see his tonsils.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Just when you thought we were done with this crap, some knife weilding maniac crashes a barrier in front of the Congress, killing a Capitol Policeman.

To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson, “I’m sick of these motherf%$#ing nuts, attacking the motherf%$#ing Congress.”

There needs to be an intense focus by law enforcement on the violent movements in the United States, and it needs to start with an aggressive effort to get said violent extremists out of law enforcement in the United States:

The band of razor wire-topped fencing around the Capitol had recently come down. The heavy National Guard presence had begun to thin.

But on Friday, not quite three months after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, a car came careening midday onto the Capitol grounds, slamming into two Capitol Police officers and leaving one of them dead and the other injured.

This time, the source of the violence was not an angry pro-Trump mob, but a lone driver, armed with a knife, who had recently told friends he had left his job and had “afflictions.” After crashing his car and menacing officers, he was shot and killed.

“It is with a very, very heavy heart that I announce one of our officers has succumbed to his injuries,” Yogananda D. Pittman, the acting Capitol Police chief, said during a news conference near the scene. “This has been an extremely difficult time for U.S. Capitol Police, after the events of Jan. 6 and now the events that have occurred here today.”

The attacker “exited the vehicle with a knife in hand” and began “lunging” at the officers, Ms. Pittman said. The suspect was subsequently identified by a senior law enforcement official as Noah R. Green, 25.

It appears that Mr. Green was NOI, and not a right wing nationalist, but the increasing violence related to various extremest movements needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.  (I will not be offering an opinion as to the right-left positioning on NOI, it’s confusing)

Former Officer, of the Year, Huh?

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Michael Lee Hardin was just arrested by the FBI for his role in the Capitol insurrection. He was also the Salt Lake City Police Department’s “Officer of the Year” in 2012.

A Kaysville man who formerly worked as a Salt Lake City police officer has been arrested by the FBI for allegedly taking part in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Michael Lee Hardin, 50, was taken into custody without incident by members of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, with assistance from the Utah’s State Bureau of Investigation, for “crimes committed at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.,” according to a news release from the FBI’s Utah office.

A spokeswoman for the Salt Lake City Police Department confirmed that Hardin was an officer there until his retirement in 2017. He served with the city police for about two decades and was named the department’s Officer of the Year in 2012 for solving a 25-year-old murder case.

The FBI caught Hardin by following up on tips from two people who know him, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. The first tipster, a friend of Hardin who used him as a financial adviser, said Hardin called Jan. 4 to say he was heading to Washington to fight for the United States.

Spoiler, the person Hardin arrested for the 25 year old murder, had an alibi, and was exonerated.

I would note that Hardin retired in 2017, which would have made him 47.  My compliments to the Salt Lake Police association for securing such a generous contract for the officers.

There were way too many police involved in the Capitol riots.

What, Elon Broke the Law? Pshaw!

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The NLRB has ruled that Tesla has openly and repeatedly broken labor law in its anti-union drives.

Seeing as how the car company has been killing and injuring its workers while offering them free frozen yogurt, they pretty much have to break the law to keep the unions out:

Tesla has been ordered to correct its unlawful labor practices, and its supremo Elon Musk must delete a related tweet from three years ago.

In a ruling issued on Thursday, the US National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) concluded that Tesla violated federal labor law in its efforts to discourage workers from unionizing. It directed the company to cease various anti-union actions and policies like claiming workers would lose benefits if they vote for union representation.

The NLRB found that Tesla violated labor law by coercively interrogating employees, threatening them with the loss of stock options if they supported unionization, and enacting unlawful policies like a confidentiality agreement that banned speaking to the press.

The ruling directs the vehicle maker to offer to rehire plaintiff and former employee Richard Ortiz and pay him lost wages, and to strike unlawful disciplinary information from the record of both Ortiz and another employee, Jose Moran.

It further requires Tesla to rescind portions of its 2016 confidentiality agreement that disallow lawful union-related activity under Sections 7 and 8 of the National Labor Relations Act, which the NLRB acknowledged “protects employees when they speak with the media about working conditions, labor disputes, or other terms and conditions of employment.”

The decision also directs self-styled “Technoking” Musk to delete a May 20, 2018, tweet because it implies workers must give up their stock options if they unionize.

I still think that the only to get the lawbreaking to stop is to frog-march Elon Musk out of his offices in handcuffs.

 

A Return to Normalcy

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I am referring, of course to the the mass shooting in Boulder Colorado today. 

Of course it was in Colorado, you had Columbine, Aurora, Aravada, Aurora again, and now Boulder.

It appears that mass shooters are to Colorado what Florida Man is to Florida.

Please, let’s set about to prying their guns from their cold dead hands.

Almost forgot, thoughts and prayers:

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

………

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

It’s Colorado, so my guess is that their response will be to ……… loosen gun laws even further.

Seriously, just f%$# the NRA.

Not Enough Bullets

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Peter Diamandis, a tech entrepreneur who seems to won every single game of bullsh%$ bingo that he has ever played, just topped himself.

He held a conference that doubled ad a Covid-19 superspreader event, and then he tried to convince people to buy his quack cures. 

No charges, of course, because nothing is a crime any more if you are rich:

In late January, tech impresario Peter Diamandis hosted an exclusive, indoor conference for a group of ultra-wealthy patrons in Los Angeles. As MIT Technology Review reported last month, the get-together, where no masks were required, became a covid-19 superspreader event.

Four days later, as staff, speakers, and attendees began testing positive for the virus, an email went out to those who had taken part. It invited them to join an “informational webinar” featuring a doctor who had been at the event—an attempt to put their minds at ease.

Diamandis had held the Abundance 360 Summit, or A360, in violation of a ban on private gatherings during a covid surge. At least 86 people were present, some having flown in from around the world; many had paid $30,000 in assorted fees for the privilege of attending in person. Everyone was tested daily, but the virus took hold nonetheless, and at least 32 people contracted covid either directly or indirectly as a result of the four-day program.

The webinar on January 30 featured Matt Cook, a trained anesthesiologist from the San Francisco Bay Area who had started a medical practice using alternative therapies. A follow-up email sharing the URL to view a recording of the call was accompanied by an order form for products from Fountain Life, a company focused on longevity treatments, of which Diamandis is a cofounder and director.

Between the webinar and the Fountain Life order form, attendees were told about a range of products that were claimed to either treat covid-19 or prevent it outright. What they were not told was that seven of the recommended products were also classified by the US Food and Drug Administration as “covid-19 fraudulent.”

The fraudulent cures included amniotic fluid, the liquid that surrounds a baby in utero and is rich in stem cells, and colloidal silver, a suspension of metal particles often touted as having antimicrobial effects, but which the FDA has said “is not safe or effective for treating any disease or condition.” Cook recommended taking both of them as an inhaled mist using a nebulizer, an electric machine similar to an asthma inhaler.

In a more enlightened time, this guy would be in jail awaiting trial. 

If it were just the rich people who were exposed, I would not be outraged, but you have to figure that a lot of people who caught this were ordinary Joes who were bartending, serving canapes, and generally submitting to the whims of said rich folks.

Not Surprised, but Amused

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Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been found guilty of corruption, and sentenced to prison.

It’s always been clear that he was pond scum, and now he is convicted pond scum:

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling on Monday and sentenced to one year in prison, marking a historic defeat for the 66-year-old, who has remained popular among conservative voters even as his legal woes mount.

The verdict included a two-year suspended sentence, but Sarkozy’s attorney said her client would appeal, delaying the sentence from taking effect. Given that short prison sentences in France can typically be waived, it is unclear whether Sarkozy would have to spend any time in prison even if the appeal were to fail. He could also request to serve the sentence at home, subject to electronic monitoring.

The ruling followed years of parallel investigations against the former president, and some others are ongoing. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, will face another trial later this month over accusations that his party falsified accounts during his unsuccessful reelection bid in 2012.

The charges over which Sarkozy was sentenced Monday were centered on whether he was behind a deal with a magistrate to illegally receive information on an inquiry linked to him, using false names and unofficial phone lines.

According to the prosecution, Sarkozy and his then-attorney and longtime friend Thierry Herzog attempted to bribe the magistrate, Gilbert Azibert, by offering him a high-profile position in return for information. The incident occurred after Sarkozy had left office.

The inquiry related to claims that Sarkozy and others had accepted illegal contributions from business executive Liliane Bettencourt, the late heiress of French cosmetics giant L’Oréal, ahead of the 2007 presidential campaign. Sarkozy was later cleared of those illegal-funding charges.

………

Sarkozy is the second former French president in a decade to be sentenced. Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy’s predecessor and initial patron, was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for handing nonexistent jobs to political allies during his time as Paris mayor. 

It comes as no surprise that the Gaullists are rife with corruption.