Category: Evil

And Once Again, Obama Bails out Crooked Banksters

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It looks like the Obama Administration has once again insured that there is no accountability for crooked banksters:

Three top Democrats are accusing the Department of Housing and Urban Development of quietly removing a key clause in its requirements for taxpayer-guaranteed mortgage insurance in order to spare two banks recently convicted of federal crimes from being frozen out of the lucrative market.

HUD’s action is the latest in a series of steps by federal agencies to eliminate real-world consequences for serial financial felons, even as the Obama administration has touted its efforts to hold banks accountable.

In this sense, the guilty plea has become as meaningless to banks as their other ways of resolving criminal charges: out-of-court settlements, or deferred prosecution agreements. “Too Big to Fail” has morphed into “Too Big to Jail” — and then again, into “Bank Lives Matter.”

Sens. Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Maxine Waters fired off a letter to HUD on Tuesday, saying they believe that the timing of the change was designed to clear the way for two banks recently convicted of federal crimes — JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup — to continue to make Federal Housing Administration-insured loans. Last year, JPMorgan Chase wrote $1.67 billion in FHA loans, and Citi wrote $342 million, according to data from the Congressional Research Service.

On May 20 of this year, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup both entered a guilty plea on one felony count of conspiring to rig foreign currency exchange trades, the largest market on the globe.

Five days earlier, on May 15, HUD slipped a notice into the Federal Register, seeking to alter its standard loan-level certification form, known as HUD-92900-A. This form must be filled out for lenders to receive FHA insurance, which reimburses them if the homeowner falls into foreclosure.

On the current HUD-92900-A form, lenders must certify that their firm and its principals “have not, within a three-year period … been convicted of or had a civil judgment rendered against them” for a variety of crimes, including “commission of fraud … violation of Federal or State antitrust statutes or commission of embezzlement, theft, forgery, bribery, falsification or destruction of records, making false statements or receiving stolen property.”

JPMorgan and Citi’s guilty plea would fall under the antitrust statute, and according to Brown, Warren and Waters’ reading of the certification, that would make them ineligible to obtain FHA insurance on their loans.

On the updated form, this language has been excised. The notice in the Federal Register did not even mention the removal, making it impossible to discover without comparing the old form and the proposed form side by side. The Wall Street Journal ran a story about the certification changes in May, but failed to notice that the new language would let law-breaking banks off scot-free.

The day before HUD released the notice in the Federal Register, the New York Times reported that the Justice Department sought to lessen the consequences of the guilty pleas in the foreign exchange rigging case, ensuring that federal regulators would not use the pleas to bar banks from certain business lines.

The Securities and Exchange Commission then granted waivers from disqualification to JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and the other guilty banks in the case, over the objections of one SEC Commissioner that the big banks had effectively become “Too Big to Bar.”

The HUD changes would similarly take away an automatic penalty for bank misbehavior. Per Brown, Warren and Waters, they “allow HUD to turn a blind eye to criminal violations — putting homebuyers and taxpayers at additional risk.”

HUD spokesperson Cameron French said the agency was not providing comment on the Democratic letter. He said HUD would review it and respond accordingly.

………

The Democratic lawmakers believe removing the certification language results in a change in policy rather than simply a change to the form. They requested that HUD withdraw the notice and issue it again under the Administrative Procedures Act, giving an explicit rationale for the change, and how it would affect JPMorgan and Citigroup’s FHA loan status. The public would then have an additional 60-day comment period.

This sort of crap needs to end.

The Product of a Mentality of Lawlessness and Impunity

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Are we the baddies?

I do understand that, historically at least, the primary purpose of a military pistol is for officers to shoot deserters.

These days, in addition to marking a bag of rank, they do have uses for people like rear echelon troops and tankers.

They will never be a major force on the battlefield, but the fact that the blithe way in which the US Army is considering introducing Dumdum bullets in its new pistol:

The Army is considering the use of expanding and fragmenting ammunition, such as hollow point bullets, to increase its next-generation handgun’s ability to stop an enemy.

 This bit of news was revealed Tuesday, during the service’s fourth industry day for its Modular Handgun System.

 After a recent legal review within the Pentagon, the Army can consider adopting “special purpose ammunition,” said Richard Jackson, special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War, according to an Army news release. This marks a departure from battlefield practices over a century old.

 Jackson told Army Times that while this isn’t the first approved use of such bullets in the military, the stance represented “a significant re-interpretation of the legal standard” for ammunition. He also said a lot has changed since the initial movements against the round, especially with the increased prevalence of asymmetric warfare.

 “There’s a myth that [expanding/fragmenting bullets] are prohibited in international armed conflict, but that doesn’t make any sense now,” Jackson said.

 ………

 On the battlefield, the U.S. has generally observed the 1899 Hague Convention rule barring expanding and fragmenting rounds, despite the fact that it never has been signatory to that particular agreement, Russell said.

 The U.S. reserved the right to use different ammunition where it saw a need. For example, Criminal Investigations Command and military police use hollow points — as do law enforcement agencies around the country — in part to minimize collateral damage of bullets passing through the target. Special Forces also uses expanding/fragmenting rounds in counter-terrorism missions.

 “The use of this ammunition supports the international law principles of preventing excessive collateral effects and safeguarding civilian lives,” an Army statement said.

So, not only are they choosing to ignore a bit of international which has been observed by basically everyone since the early 1900s, but they are declaring that a direct violation of the convention is actually just fine, because. ……… Well, just because.

The US state security apparatus y did the same thing with the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, despite the fact that the Third Geneva Convention specifically requires that signatories apply the standards to non-signatories.

Even if one dismisses the humanitarian considerations,  the fact that this sort of breakdown in professional ethics frequently presages the end stage of a declining empire.

How the Germans Have Yet Again F%$#ed Up a Signature Foreign Policy Initiative

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First, the hash tag: #ThisIsACoup , which is trending on Twitter.

Rather unsurprising, given that now that Greece has capitulated to the insane and sadistic demands of the Troika, but there is still no deal because the so-called hawks still want another pound of flesh:

Greece’s final attempt to avoid being kicked out of the euro by securing a new three-year bailout worth up to €80bn ran into a wall of resistance from the eurozone’s fiscal hawks on Saturday.

Finland rejected any more funding for the country and Germany called for Greece to be turfed out of the currency bloc for at least five years.

All of this means that not only will Greece have to leave the Euro, but it means that there will be poverty, epidemics, and starvation that has not been seen on the European continent since the end of World War II.

It also means that Greece will be exiting the Euro Zone, because all of its banks will be shuttered in the next few days.

This could have turned out better, but it now appears that the current Greek government has made no plans at all for the eventuality of leaving the Euro:

Here are just a few of their concerns – focused in particular on the idea, put forward by the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, that there perhaps could and should be a temporary exit of Greece from the euro.

So the first rather chilling thing I’ve learned, from well-placed bankers, is there have been no conversations between the Bank of Greece, the government or regulators and Greece’s commercial banks about the technicalities of leaving the euro and adopting a new currency.

(emphasis mine)

The “hawks”, in particular the Germans, and most particularly Wolfgang Schäuble, are eager to make an example of Greece, thinking that this will cow the other members of the Euro Zone will see what happens to the Greek people and fall into Germany’s hegemonic line.

I think that this is a gross miscalcculation.

Any nation in the Euro zone that is seeing what is being done to Greece has to be drawing contingency plans for a rapid flight from the monetary union.

The lesson of this disaster is that a plan be that can be implemented in a few days must be ready to go, and I expect  that plans are being drawn up in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland.

If any of these countries has their ducks in a row, then in the event of a Euro exit, it means that this action will in fairly short order be followed by economic growth.

Once this happens, it is likely that the others will follow, seeing that an exit can be managed gracefully.

If either Italy or Spain leaves, the Euro would soar, because the effects of Germany’s predatory export state on the currency would be less diluted, which would likely make countries like France, the Netherlands, and Belgium (particularly with the possibility of an ethnic split between Flemish and Walloon) look for the exit as their exports become prohibitively expensive.

Assuming the gradual dissolution of the Euro, or as I like to think of it, the New Reichsmark, Germany sees its currency become much stronger, and its export driven economy looks a less successful.

I expect this to happen for two reasons:

First, because I do not see how the Euro can survive in the face of the German insistence on economics as a morality play.

Second, it is clear that the creation of the Euro, and its management over the past decade have been a major foreign policy initiative by the Germans, and all of the “bold” German foreign policy initiatives since reunification (there were none prior to reunification) have been a disaster, with Germany’s premature recognition of Slovenia, hastening the brakup of Yugoslavia, which prevented a negotiated separation, and guaranteed a bloody civil war being only the first of such disasters.

The Euro was structured by the Germans for the benefit of Germany, and the rest of the people of Europe are reaping a bitter harvest as a result.

Obama Just Whitewashed Malaysian Slave Trafficking

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The Obama administration has just upgraded Maylaysia’s human trafficking tier, despite the absence of any evidence of improvement:

The United States is upgrading Malaysia from the lowest tier on its list of worst human trafficking centres, US sources said on Wednesday, a move that could smooth the way for an ambitious US-led free-trade deal with the south-east Asian nation and 11 other countries.

The upgrade to so-called “tier two watch list” status removes a potential barrier to President Barack Obama’s signature global trade deal.

A provision in a related trade bill passed by Congress last month barred from fast-tracked trade deals Malaysia and other countries that earn the worst US human trafficking ranking in the eyes of the US State Department.

The upgrade follows international scrutiny and outcry over Malaysian efforts to combat human trafficking after the discovery this year of scores of graves in people-smuggling camps near its northern border with Thailand.

The State Department last year downgraded Malaysia in its annual “Trafficking in Persons” report to tier three, alongside North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe, citing “limited efforts to improve its flawed victim protection regime” and other problems.

But a congressional source with knowledge of the decision told Reuters the administration had approved the upgraded status. A second source familiar with the matter confirmed the decision.

Some US lawmakers and human-rights advocates had expected Malaysia to remain on tier three this year given its slow pace of convictions in human-trafficking cases and pervasive trafficking in industries such as electronics and palm oil.

………

In its report last year, the State Department said Malaysia had reported 89 human-trafficking investigations in the 12 months to March 2014, down from 190 the previous year, and nine convictions compared to 21 the previous year.

In the latest year to March, Malaysia’s conviction rate is believed to have fallen further, according to human-rights advocates, despite a rise in the number of investigations. That reinforced speculation Malaysia would remain on tier three.

“I would be stunned if they are upgraded. They have done very little to improve the protection from abuse that migrant workers face,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division.

This decision has the effect of condoning slavery in Malaysia, and throughout the world.

Of course, this does not matter to Barack Obama, because is looking at the TPP in the Pacific, the TTIP with Europe, and TiSA* world wide.

*The TiSA is arguably far worse than the other two deals, and has as one of its goals to make financial, insurance, and investment regulation next to impossible.

What Wonkette Said

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Let’s Dig Up The Rotting Bones Of Confederate Traitor (And KKK Founder) Nathan Bedford Forrest!

Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest, by most accounts except the white supremacist ones, was quite the murderous, racist shithead. He was a wealthy slave trader, and he presided over one of the bloodiest massacres of the Civil War at Fort Pillow, where hundreds of black and white Union soldiers, and also black civilians, were murdered in cold blood after they had surrendered. The historian Richard Fuchs wrote that “The affair at Fort Pillow was simply an orgy of death, a mass lynching to satisfy the basest of conduct — intentional murder — for the vilest of reasons — racism and personal enmity.” Oh, and he was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, so HE SEEMS NICE.

And in Memphis, the city which adopted Forrest so long ago as its own, there’s a big-ass statue of him in Health Sciences Park, in a racially diverse neighborhood that includes a world class medical center, dire poverty, gentrifying liberals, Victorian mansions, yummy restaurants, and the occasional murder problem. Buried underneath that statue are the rotting bigot bones of Forrest and his wife. And there’s a push to move the statue and dig up the bones, but, though that push is PART of the aftermath of the Charleston murders which left nine dead and millions of Confederate flags tossed aside in shame, this fight’s been going on a lot longer.

If there was a Confederate who deserved to end his days at the end of a rope with his remains fed to the dogs, it was Forrest.

Take down that f%$#ing statue, and put his remains in the town dump.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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At The Intercept, Lee Fang notes that Eric Holder has returns to his former law firm, which lobbies for corporate criminals on Wall Street.

Notwithstanding Einstein’s laws, the revolving door is spinning faster than the speed of light:

Eric Holder Returns as Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

 The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

 The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

 Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

 The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

For insiders, the Holder decision to return to Covington was never a mystery. Timothy Hester, the chairman of Covington, told the National Law Journal that Holder’s return to the firm had been “a project” of his ever since Holder left to the join the administration in 2009. When the firm moved to a new building last year, it kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for Holder.

Well, now we know why the Obama DoJ prosecuted fewer financial wrongdoers than did the Bush DoJ.

It’s why I have always called him “Place” Holder.

If True, Then the Germans Are up to Their Old Tricks, but One Must Consider the Source

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Somehow or Other, this got deleted from my blog, and so I am reposting:

Andrew Ross Sorkin (of all people) teases an interesting tidbit out of Timothy Geithners self-serving and factually challenged memoir, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, specifically that in discussions with German FM Wolfgang Schäuble, Angela Merkel’s go to guy on finance had as his goal maximizing pain for the Greeks with the hope that they would be compelled to leave the Euro:

In July 2012, Timothy F. Geithner, the United States Treasury secretary at the time, traveled to Sylt, an island off Germany in the North Sea.

 Mr. Geithner was there for a meeting with Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, who would spend his summers at his vacation home on the tiny island.

 The topic was Greece.

 In the home’s library, the two men spoke about Greece’s prospects and begun discussing ways for the European Union to keep the country in the eurozone.

 To Mr. Geithner’s dismay, however, Mr. Schäuble took the conversation in a different direction.

 “He told me there were many in Europe who still thought kicking the Greeks out of the eurozone was a plausible — even desirable — strategy,” Mr. Geithner later recounted in his memoir, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” “The idea was that with Greece out, Germany would be more likely to provide the financial support the eurozone needed because the German people would no longer perceive aid to Europe as a bailout for the Greeks,” he says in the memoir.

 “At the same time, a Grexit would be traumatic enough that it would help scare the rest of Europe into giving up more sovereignty to a stronger banking and fiscal union,” Mr. Geithner wrote. “The argument was that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall.”

 Fast-forward three years. What Mr. Schäuble articulated that summer afternoon to Mr. Geithner is finally taking shape.

 ………

 A crucial decision made over the weekend had largely gone unremarked upon but is telling. The European Central Bank decided to halt an expansion of its emergency lending facility to Greek banks. That facility could have allowed the banks to continue operating without as much panic and helped avoid some of the capital controls by providing additional liquidity.

 ………

 By closing the cash spigot, the E.C.B. managed to instill additional fear and panic into the day-to-day lives of the Greek people, ahead of the vote on the referendum.

 That panic could cut two ways. The Greeks could look at the lines around the banks as a warning of what’s about to come, which would undoubtedly be worse in the short term, and vote in favor of the latest bailout agreement.

 Of course, they could also view the lines as further evidence of their subjugation to the eurozone and the continued austerity they would experience under the bailout, pushing them to vote against it.

 The E.C.B.’s decision also has another important purpose outside of Greece: It might be a warning to countries like Spain and Italy, should they ever consider following Greece out of the eurozone — if that comes to pass.

 It may seem counterintuitive, but rather than make a Greece exit easy and seamless to avoid dislocations in financial markets, the E.C.B. has the perverse incentive to make it messy and difficult to deter others.

 None of this is to suggest that the E.C.B. is the source of Greece’s problems. They were largely self-inflicted. Regardless of whether you think that the creation of the euro was a terrible mistake, Europe has severely mishandled the situation in Greece.

 “The economics behind the program that the ‘troika’ (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the country’s G.D.P.,” Joseph Stiglitz, an economist and professor at Columbia University, wrote on Monday. “I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate.”

 In his book, Mr. Geithner reflected on his conversations with European leaders about the measures they sought to take. “The desire to impose losses on reckless borrowers and lenders is completely understandable, but it is terribly counterproductive in a financial crisis,” Mr. Geithner said.

 At one point, he told Mr. Schäuble: “You know you sound a bit like Herbert Hoover in the 1930s. You need to be thinking about growth.”

(emphasis mine)
If this report is true, and note that I do not consider Geithner’s memoir to be much more than an exercise in self-hagiography, then much of the pain of the that Greece has experienced over the past 6 years has largely been an exercise in sadism for its own sake by the Germans.

If there is a flaw at the heart of the European Union, it is Germany hegemony, which allows them to enforce their chauvinism on the other members.

Anti-Vaxxers Can Go Cheney Themselves

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We just had the first measles death in the U.S. in a dozen years:

Well, anti-vaxxers Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey should really feel like sh%$ right now.

For 12 years, not a single American has died because of the measles virus. But because of the anti-vaxxer movement, death by measles is once again a stark reality in the United States.

On Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health confirmed that a woman succumbed to the disease after discovering the cause of death via an autopsy.

In a statement released by the agency, the woman apparently contracted the disease unknowingly while at a hospital during a measles outbreak in the spring. And she was even more vulnerable to the disease because the medication she had been taking weakened her immune system.

………

The woman who died caught a disease that should have remained wiped out within our shores and it would have remained that way had it not been for anti-vaccination nut jobs who refuse to vaccinate their kids out of some ridiculous notion that the MMR vaccine causes autism. This death was preventable and shows why it is time to require vaccinations by law and eliminate the exemptions that allowed the measles to have a comeback in the first place.

It gets even worse, because this woman had been vaccinated for the disease:

A woman who became the first person to die of the measles in the U.S. in 12 years had been vaccinated against the disease, it has been revealed.

Health officials said she had the injection as a child but succumbed because she had a compromised immune system.

Dr. Jeanette Stehr-Green, the Clallam County health officer, told KOMO-TV the woman had been vaccinated as a child, but because she had other health problems and was taking medications that interfered with her response to an infection ‘she was not protected.’

The anti-vaxxers are morally responsible for the death of this woman.

Their actions are unsupported by the facts, selfish, and evil, and I am pleased as punch that California has tightened up its vaccination criteria.

Óχι!*

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Not only did the no vote win the referendum vote on further austerity for Greece, it absolutely crushed:

Greek voters gave their government a desperately needed victory Sunday in its showdown with European creditors as the country decisively rejected a bailout proposal that officials here had scorned as “blackmail.”

 With nearly all of the votes counted, “no” had won a landslide 61 percent — a bigger figure than nearly anyone had predicted. The result sent thousands of government supporters streaming into central Athens’s Syntagma Square to wave blue-and-white Greek flags, dance to traditional folk songs, and revel in their collective defiance of dire European warnings.

 But even as they celebrated, an angry reaction from European officials suggested that Greece’s profound economic struggles may be only beginning. With Greek banks on the verge of in­solvency, analysts immediately raised the odds that Greece will be ejected from the euro zone. Government opponents despaired that the country may have taken a dark turn.

 ………

 Several top European officials suggested that there would be no new leeway for Greece, and that in fact the vote had made a deal less likely.

 Germany’s deputy chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said Greece had “destroyed the last bridges across which Europe and Greece could have moved toward a compromise.”

 “Tsipras and his government are leading the Greek people onto a path of bitter sacrifice and hopelessness,” he told the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel.

 Julia Klöckner, deputy chairwoman of Germany’s ruling party, tweeted: “The E.U. is not a make-a-wish club in which a single member sets the rules and the others pay the bill.”

Nice words from the Krauts, but it is also a bald faced and pernicious lie, as the latest IMF report has revealed that the Troika has been negotiating in bad faith:

On July 2, the IMF released its analysis of whether Greek debt was sustainable or not. The report said that Greek debt was not sustainable and deep debt relief along with substantial new financing were needed to stabilize Greece. In reaching this new assessment, the IMF stated it had learned many lessons. Among them: Greeks would not take adequate structural reforms to spur growth, they would not sell enough of their assets to repay their debt, and they were unable to undertake sufficient fiscal austerity. That left no choice but to grant Greece greater debt relief and to provide new financing to tide Greece over till it could stand on its own feet. The relief, the IMF, says must be provided by European creditors while the IMF is repaid in whole.

The IMF’s report is important because it reveals that the creditors negotiated with Greece in bad faith. For months, a haze was allowed to settle over the question of Greek debt sustainability. The timing of the report’s release—on the eve of a historic Greek referendum, well after the technical negotiations have broken down—suggests that there was no intention to allow a sober analysis of the Greek debt burden. Paul Taylor of Reuters tells us that the European authorities worked hard to suppress it and Landon Thomas of the New York Times reports that, until a few days ago, the IMF had played along.

As a result, the entire burden of adjustment was to fall on the Greeks before any debt reduction could even be contemplated. This conclusion was based on indefensible economic logic and the absence of the IMF’s debt sustainability analysis intentionally biased the negotiations.

As an international organization responsible for global financial stability, it is the IMF’s role to explain clearly and honestly the economic parameters of a bailout negotiation. The Greeks, many said, benefited from low interest rates and repayments stretched out over many years. Therefore, no debt relief was needed. But, of course, as the IMF now makes clear, if a country has to repay about 4 percent of its income each year over the next 40 years and that country has poor growth prospects precisely because repaying that debt will lower growth, then debt is not sustainable. If this report had been made public earlier, the tone of the public debate and the media’s boorish stereotyping of Greeks and its government would have been balanced by greater clarity on the Greek position.

………

The creditors’ serial errors are well documented, including by the staff of the IMF. Continuing deliberately to suppress past errors is an act of bad faith but continuing to repeat those errors in making future projections of the Greek debt burden is a willful abuse of the trust that the international community has placed in an organization set up to serve the best interests of all nations. If the IMF’s latest numbers are properly reconstructed, the Greek debt burden is much greater than portrayed—and the policy measures proposed to reduce that burden will make matters worse.

………

Here is how this principle applies today to Greece. Recall that prices in Greece have been falling for about two years now. Since debt repayment obligations do not change when businesses sell at lower prices or when wages fall, businesses and households struggle to repay their debt in that deflationary environment. Investment and consumption are held back, the government receives less revenue, making its debt repayment harder. If fiscal austerity is imposed in such a deflationary setting, prices and wages are forced down faster, making debt repayment even harder. This is Fisher’s debt-deflation cycle. Greece is in a debt-deflation cycle. It is the medical equivalent of a trauma patient: the blood flow does not stop on its own and, in such a condition, austerity is like asking the patient to run around the block to demonstrate good faith.

The IMF’s latest numbers bear out this diagnosis. In November 2012, the IMF tentatively concluded that Greek debt was borderline sustainable if it would undertake austerity to reduce its debt burden and structural reforms to spur growth. The primary surplus (the budget surplus without interest payments) was to rise from -1½ percent in 2012 to 4½ by 2016—an extraordinary additional austerity on top of the extraordinary austerity that had already been undertaken since 2010. The Greek government actually delivered on the austerity through 2014, bringing the primary budget in balance, as per the proposed timeline.

But look what happened along the way—and this is the debt deflation cycle. In 2012, prices were expected to be broadly stable over the coming years. Instead, prices fell by over 5 percent just in 2013 and 2014. True, it is important for Greek wages and prices to eventually fall. But because of the Irving Fisher theorem, when prices fall, the debt burden increases. To reduce the debt burden, Fisher says, not only must austerity stop, but the economy must be “reflated.” He emphasizes that it was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy of reflation that ultimately stopped the Great Depression. In an analogy similar to the trauma patient, Fisher says that when tipped beyond a point, the boat continues to tilt further until it has capsized. In a deflationary economy, the bankruptcies and distress can go on in a vicious spiral for years.

………

We may not like the conclusion, but it is quite simple. Greece has not grown and prices have fallen because that was to be expected when persistent austerity is laid on top of an unsustainable debt. The debt-deflation spiral always outpaces the returns from structural reforms. As certainly as these things can be predicted, on the path set out by the creditors, the stakes will continue to be escalated: the debt-to-GDP ratio will continue to rise, the calls for more austerity will grow, and, as the pattern repeats, more debt relief will needed.

The IMF report is very specific, it says that Greece needs billions in debt forgiveness or the debt will remain unsustainable: (See also here)

The International Monetary Fund, a big Greek creditor, conceded a point on Thursday that the Athens government has long been making: Without some reduction in the country’s staggering debt load, Greece has little hope of a sustained economic recovery.

 It was a significant acknowledgment, and an indication that if or when bailout negotiations resume, Greece might win some relief from its debt of 300 billion euros, or about $330 billion. It just might not be relief granted to the leftist government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

It should be noted that the EU bureaucracy aggressively tried to suppress this report:

Euro zone countries tried in vain to stop the IMF publishing a gloomy analysis of Greece’s debt burden which the leftist government says vindicates its call to voters to reject bailout terms, sources familiar with the situation said on Friday.

 The document released in Washington on Thursday said Greece’s public finances will not be sustainable without substantial debt relief, possibly including write-offs by European partners of loans guaranteed by taxpayers.

 It also said Greece will need at least 50 billion euros in additional aid over the next three years to keep itself afloat.

 Publication of the draft Debt Sustainability Analysis laid bare a dispute between Brussels and the Washington-based global lender that has been simmering behind closed doors for months.

This may be the reason for the lopsided vote: Any Greek voter who understood these dynamics could help but conclude that the Troika have no interest in Greece beyond making an example of the country.

My guess is that Germany, with the acquiescence of the EU bureaucracy, will attempt to expel Greece from the Euro Zone, since the alternative is to rip the mask off their attempt at regime change, but Greece could tie this up in legal proceedings for months, if not years:

“The Greek government will make use of all our legal rights,” proclaimed the finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, according to The Daily Telegraph.

We are taking advice and will certainly consider an injunction at the European Court of Justice. The EU treaties make no provision for euro exit and we refuse to accept it. Our membership is not negotiable.

But, can a hypothetical Grexit decision adopted by the EU institutions be legally challenged?

………

So, what decision would Greece be challenging? It would be a decision adopted by the EU institutions and the Eurogroup finance ministers to force a Greek exit of the eurozone due to its default on fulfilling the obligations attached to its participation in the monetary union (criteria laid down in Article 140.1 of the Treaty of the Function of the European Union) and the conditions attached to Greece’s bailout program.

Greece would then still be an EU member state but it will have to revert to the drachma or adopt a new currency. Nevertheless, as mentioned, there is no explicit legal basis for such a decision. One can argue that the failure to fulfil the eurozone commitments would amount to a serious violation of the founding treaties, and that it is possible to adopt the decision based on the principles embodied in the treaties. But the fact is that the treaties would need to be amended in order to provide for this.

I would note that throughout all of this, someone is spreading a rumor that the Greek government is working on a program of depositor bail-ins, where depositor accounts would be raided to pay off the EU lenders, as happened in Cyprus.  (My money is that these rumors are coming from Brussels)

One hopes that the confluence of all these events will result in something other than the moral and economic bankruptcy that we have seen from the EU, IMF, and Germany, but I doubt it.

*Greek for no.

The Clown Car Gets Bigger, a Lot Bigger

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Jabba the Governor, AKA Chris Christie, has announced his candidacy for the Presidency:

Gov. Chris Christie declared an uphill candidacy for president on Tuesday with New Jersey-style swagger, unconcealed disgust for Washington and a high regard for his own candor, vowing that “there is one thing you will know for sure: I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”

 Relying on his biggest, and perhaps his last, remaining advantage in a field of better-financed and better-liked rivals — his personality — Mr. Christie portrayed himself as the only candidate in the Republican field who is forthright and forceful enough to run the country.

 “We need strength and decision-making and authority back in the Oval Office,” he said.

 Pacing the stage without a prepared text and raising his voice to a shout at times, he vowed to campaign and govern as a colorful teller of difficult truths, even if “it makes you cringe every once in a while.”

The unfortunate part about his role as self-proclaimed truth teller, is that no one buys it any more:

After 14 years of watching Christie, a warning: He lies

 Tom Moran | Star-Ledger Editorial Board

 Most Americans don’t know Chris Christie like I do, so it’s only natural to wonder what testimony I might offer after covering his every move for the last 14 years.

 Is it his raw political talent? No, they can see that.

 Is it his measurable failure to fix the economy, solve the budget crisis or even repair the crumbling bridges? No, his opponents will cover that if he ever gets traction.

 My testimony amounts to a warning: Don’t believe a word the man says.

 If you have the stomach for it, this column offers some greatest hits in Christie’s catalog of lies.

 Don’t misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that. But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.

 He’s been lying on steroids lately, on core issues like Bridgegate, guns and that cozy personal friendship with his buddy, the King of Jordan. I’ll get to all that.

 But let’s start with my personal favorite. It dates back to the 2009 campaign, when the public workers unions asked him if he intended to cut their benefits.

 He told them their pensions were “sacred” to him.

 “The notion that I would eliminate, change, or alter your pension is not only a lie, but cannot be further from the truth,” he wrote them. “Your pension and benefits will be protected when I am elected governor.”

 He then proceeded to make cutting those benefits the centerpiece of his first year in office.

 This, we know now, was vintage Christie. Other lying politicians tend to waffle, to leave themselves some escape hatch. You can almost smell it.

 But Christie lies with conviction. His hands don’t shake, and his eyes don’t wander. I can hardly blame the union leaders who met with him for believing him.

 ………

 And that’s my warning to America. When Christie picks up the microphone, he speaks so clearly and forcefully that you assume genuine conviction is behind it.

 Be careful, though. It’s a kind of spell.

 He is a remarkable talent with a silver tongue. But if you look closely, you can see that it is forked like a serpent’s.

Admittedly, this is just The Largest Newspaper in the State of New Jersey saying this, and who reads the papers these days.

However, the New York Times, which is where the Sunday morning gasbags get their talking points, said the same thing, though they did not use the word “Lie” because they are such delicate flowers:

On his new website, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey portrays himself as a guy who gets attacked for “telling it like it is,” but that’s what his mom told him to do from her deathbed.

It is part of the legend Mr. Christie has carefully cultivated for many years, with startling success. He is described as “brash” and “bold,” with a certain rough charisma that his political opponents just cannot handle. “I get accused a lot of times of being too blunt and too direct and saying what’s on my mind just a little bit too loudly,” he says in the first video for his presidential campaign, showing him with a selected group of adoring voters.

It’s fundamentally nonsense. There are lines between brash and belligerent, between open and obnoxious, and, most important, between “telling it like it is” and not telling the truth. Mr. Christie crosses those lines all the time, as Tom Moran, the editorial page editor of The Star-Ledger of Newark, documented in a blistering column about Mr. Christie’s “catalog of lies.”

………

Expect to see a lot of Mr. Christie at those phony “town hall” meetings, staged with selected supporters. You will hear a lot about his common touch, his “straight talk” and his love for Bruce Springsteen.

It’s a smoke screen. Look behind it at the governor whose own constituents say by an overwhelming majority that he has done a bad job, should not run for the White House and would make a bad president.

I don’t think that I’ve ever seen the New York Times editorial board gone after an American with such vehemence.

The media’s man crush on Chris Christie is over.

His brand of “straight talk” has gone from an asset to a joke line.

And So the Dissolution of the EU Begins

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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will be calling for a referendum on the Troika’s proposal:

In a dramatic move that will put Europe on tenterhooks, the Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras told his fellow citizens last night he would call a referendum on the bailout accord that international creditors have proposed to keep the debt-stricken country afloat.

Following an emergency meeting of his cabinet, Tsipras said his leftist-led government had decided a package of austerity measures proposed by the country’s creditors – made in a last-ditch effort to avert default – would be put to popular vote. The referendum will take place on Sunday 5 July.

“After five months of hard negotiations our partners, unfortunately, ended up making a proposal that was an ultimatum towards Greek democracy and the Greek people,” he said in a national address, “an ultimatum at odds with the founding principles and values of Europe, the values of our common European construction.”

The leader, who only hours earlier had rejected the proposed reforms after several days of high-stakes talks in Brussels, said Greeks now faced a “historic responsibility” to respond to the ultimatum.

He said the reforms were “blackmail for the acceptance on our part of severe and humiliating austerity without end and without the prospect of ever prospering socially and economically”.

This is actually the intention.

This is politically motivated sadism.

The Germans want it because the want to demonstrate their power and virtue, and because of memories of  a period of hyperinflation that was caused by the triumphalism of the victors in the First World War.

The French want to be sure that they are not on the losing side of this alone.

The other northern tier EU countries have been relegated to spectator status.

What would seem to be Greece’s natural allies, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, are desperate for Greece to fail, because if Syriza succeeds, it bolsters the anti-austerity parties in their countries, which threatens their political elites’ hold on power.

So I expect that Greece will be crushed under what is largely a German boot, and that various neo-facist parties, particularly New Dawn in Greece, will gain power as the center delivers misery, and the left is systematically excluded from meaningful governance.

Tell me that this does not look like 1932.

(on edit)

I read something similar to this, but had neglected to bookmark it.

I have now found who it was who explained the politics of this, it was Paul Krugman:

As a political matter, the big losers from this process have been the parties of the center-left, whose acquiescence in harsh austerity — and hence abandonment of whatever they supposedly stood for — does them far more damage than similar policies do to the center-right.As a political matter, the big losers from this process have been the parties of the center-left, whose acquiescence in harsh austerity — and hence abandonment of whatever they supposedly stood for — does them far more damage than similar policies do to the center-right.

Clarence Thomas Is a Miserable Excuse for a Human Being

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First, in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, he suggested that racist impact of government policy might be a good thing, because ……… the NBA:

In a less headline grabbing decision today, the Supreme Court ruled that those affected by discriminatory housing decisions can sue even if they can’t prove the discrimination was intentional.

Civil rights groups were handed an unexpected victory when in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court endorsed the consideration of disparate impact to establish racial discrimination in housing cases under the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

The otherwise pro-business Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion but one of the other noteworthy opinions came from conservative Justice Thomas’ dissent, in which he wrote, “the fact that a practice has a disparate impact is not conclusive evidence that a practice is discriminatory.”

A well enough point, but it was the example he used to illustrate this point that proved most curious.

“Over 70 percent of National Basketball Association (NBA) players have been black,” Thomas pointed out, arguing that “racial imbalances do not always disfavor minorities.”

“If, for instance, white basketball players cannot bring disparate-impact suits— then we as a Court have constructed a scheme that parcels out legal privileges to individuals on the basis of skin color,” he continued.

Thomas went on to cite examples of minorities who “have owned or directed more than half of whole industries in particular nations” including “Jews in Poland” and “the Chinese in Malaysia” to argue that not all disproportional representation is bad.

Seriously?

Bigotry is OK because of the percentage of blacks in the NBA? Or the because of the relative prosperity of the Chinese in Malaysia?*

And then, in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges, the gay marriage case, he suggests that slavery did not cause any loss of dignity in its subjects:

Clarence Thomas slammed the majority that ruled in favor of marriage equality, saying the five U.S. Supreme Court justices had engaged in misguided efforts to advance dignity for same-sex couples.

Thomas – who wrote his own opinion, along with the court’s three other dissenters – argued that the Constitution contained no “dignity” clause.

………

“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved,” Thomas said. “Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

This is pure crap, and I say it as someone who is required to thank God on a yearly basis because of, “What he did for me when I went forth from Egypt,” on Passover.

Not only is this a failure as a human being, it is a miserable failure as a legal dissent.

Yale Law School needs to apologize to the nation.

*Which was largely a result of the British Empire using ethnically divisive policies in order to maintain control.

If He Doesn’t Get Impeached, Paul LePage Should Be Horsewhipped in the Public Square

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In the Maine State House, Speaker Speaker Mark Eves has been a consistent thorn in the side in the side of Governor, and Teabagger Supremo, Paul LePage.

Because of this, LePage threatened to pull funding a the school that had recently hired him:

The board of Good Will-Hinckley School withdrew its job offer to House Speaker Mark Eves just days before he was to become the school’s new president, making the decision after Gov. Paul LePage apparently threatened to withhold state funding for the school.

The school said Wednesday that the board of directors had “voted to seek a new direction for the institution’s leadership” in order to avoid “political controversy.” But Eves’ attorney said the state legislator had been “terminated … without cause” and hinted at legal action against the governor.

Eves, meanwhile, released a statement accusing LePage of “blackmailing” the school for at-risk youths by threatening to cut $500,000 in state funding. He said that could potentially cause the loss of another $2 million in private funding for the school, which has an annual budget of $4.5 million.

“The governor knows that these financial losses would put the school out of business, but he has refused to back down,” said Eves, D-North Berwick. “This is an abuse of power that jeopardizes Maine children. The governor’s actions represent the worst kind of vendetta politics Maine has ever seen. If it goes unchecked, no legislator will feel safe in voting his conscience for fear that the governor will go after the legislator’s family and livelihood.”

Good Will-Hinckley, in Fairfield, announced June 9 that it had hired Eves as the school’s new president despite a last-minute intercession by LePage. On Wednesday, board Chairman Jack Moore announced the decision to withdraw the offer to Eves, who was scheduled to begin work next Wednesday.

“The basis for this decision is grounded in the institution’s desire not to be involved in political controversy that will divert attention away from our core mission of serving children and has the potential to jeopardize the future of our school,” Moore said in a prepared statement. “Good Will-Hinckley has a very dedicated staff. The board’s first priority is to act in the best interest of students and educators alike and the board’s actions reflect its unwavering commitment to them.”

Eves is seriously considering suing LePage, and it appears that “Hizzoner” made his threats in writing.

The Maine Attorney General is also, “Very troubled,” by the Governor’s behavior, though she has issued no further comment.

My first question was, “Where is the impeachment investigation?”

Well, here it is:

Six lawmakers said Thursday they will attempt to launch impeachment proceedings against Republican Gov. Paul LePage for his alleged role in pushing Democratic House Speaker Mark Eves out of a new job at Good Will-Hinckley School.

Independent Reps. Jeffrey Evangelos of Friendship and Ben Chipman of Portland and Democratic Reps. Pinny Beebe-Center of Rockland, Lydia Blume of York, Roberta Beavers of South Berwick and Charlotte Warren of Hallowell said Thursday they are exploring disciplinary action against LePage, including impeachment.

“I’m asking my fellow legislators to study abuse of authority, conduct unbecoming and possible misuse of public assets,” said Evangelos, who is leading the effort. “I believe that Gov. LePage has violated his authority by intimidating a private entity with the end objective of violating speaker Eves’ civil rights, his ability to seek outside employment and provide for his family.”

The House of Representatives has “sole power of impeachment” according to Article 4 of the Maine Constitution. The Senate has the “sole authority to try all impeachments.” Impeachment requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

Unfortunately, the leadership in the House are going all wobbly on this:

Democratic leaders on Friday said they are reviewing all options to deal with what they describe as a disturbing pattern of behavior by Republican Gov. Paul LePage. At the same time, they have asked their colleagues to not act rashly and to stay focused on legislative work – especially an override of an expected LePage budget veto that will require a bipartisan, two-thirds vote.

House majority leader Rep. Jeff McCabe, D-Skowhegan, and assistant leader Rep. Sara Gideon, D-Freeport, said that “nothing is off the table,” when it comes to possible actions against LePage, but they urged restraint among activists and rank-and-file lawmakers.

The two spoke a day after House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, said that LePage threatened to yank state funding from the Good Will-Hinckley school unless it broke its contract to hire Eves as its next president. The story has dominated discussion at the state Capitol, where attention had been focused on getting a state budget passed, with members of both parties expressing concern that LePage overstepped his executive power by using funding for the school as a weapon against a political foe.

………

The Eves controversy has prompted a call for impeachment – unprecedented in Maine gubernatorial history – among some liberal lawmakers and activists. On Friday, McCabe and Gideon didn’t rule out such a proceeding, but focused more on the possibility of an investigation, by either state or federal authorities.

“Based on some of the comments that the governor has had recently, as well as his actions with Speaker Eves and impeding Speaker Eves from obtaining a job, I think there’s a lot of research that’s going to go on,” McCabe said. “There’s also some pending legal matters. So there’s nothing that’s off the table, but there’s a lot of research that needs to be done.”

Too many weasel words from the leadership.

This sort of sh%$ has former Texas Governor Rick Perry under indictment in Texas.  Do the people of Maine really want to be on the wrong side of abuse of power and Texas?

In that case, Perry had the fig leaf of a  DUI arrest for the DA, but here, the Governor is claiming that his threats are only as a result of the political stances of an opponent.

I hope not.

F%$# Me, I Agree with that Bigot Jeff Sessions*

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Yesterday, the Senate voted for cloture on Fast Track authority (TPA), and today, they voted to pass the measure, which will require the House and Senate to vote on any trade agreements within 60 days, and prohibit any amendments or meaningful discussion, which would include including the noxious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):

Barack Obama was given the authority he has long sought to expedite negotiations for a massive trade deal with countries on the Pacific rim, propelling the US toward a landmark agreement that, both proponents and critics agree, will reshape the global economy.

The Republican-controlled Senate finally passed legislation on Wednesday that gives the president the power to “fast-track” negotiations with the 11 other countries party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The vote, which passed 60-38, was a significant victory for multinational corporations which have been lobbying hard for a trade agreement expected to lower tariffs and create new regulations for sectors as diverse as agriculture, banking and the pharmaceutical industry.

Let’s note that the tariffs among the largest economies in the deal are already around 1%.

What this is really about is aiding rent seeking industries, primarily pharma and finance, by creating new “rights” and forestalling meaningful regulation, because 7 figure lobbying salaries following retirement from politics don’t grow on trees.

It is the very apotheosis of rent seeking, and I oppose this bill.

BTW, here is a list of Vichy Democrats who voted for cloture, They should not be supported in ay primary, nor should they be supported in a general election.

In the long run, and in the medium run as well, this would be a good thing, one need only remember how the 1994 electoral debacle, which was driven by NAFTA.

  1. Bennet (D-CO)
  2. Cantwell (D-WA)
  3. Carper (D-DE)
  4. Coons (D-DE)
  5. Feinstein (D-CA)
  6. Heitkamp (D-ND)
  7. Kaine (D-VA)
  8. McCaskill (D-MO)
  9. Murray (D-WA)
  10. Nelson (D-FL)
  11. Shaheen (D-NH)
  12. Warner (D-VA)
  13. Wyden (D-OR)

I would also note that those Democrats who voted for cloture who are up for reelection in 2016, Patty Murray, Michael Bennet, and Ron Wyden are dead men walking anyway, because they have given their opponents such a heavy club..

My Senator, Ben Cardin, would probably have voted for cloture if they needed another vote, but I’ll leave him for a later discussion.

As to my agreeing with Jeff Sessions on this (God Help Me), when he says, “President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people, I have to honestly agree. (His full statement after break)

This is a bad deal, and a bad thing, and much like in 1994, the Republicans are going to spot weld this on the Democratic Party, which will probably lead to their keeping the Senate.

*Before his Senate career, he was a US attorney, and then he was nominated by Reagan to the Federal Judgeship, but he was rejected by the Senate because of credible allegations of bigotry.

Sessions Comments On Senate Vote To Advance Fast-Track Authority For Executive – News Releases


Senator Jeff Sessions

“President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people.”  


WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued the following statement today after the Senate voted to advance six-year fast-track executive authority:

“Americans increasingly believe that their country isn’t serving its own citizens. They need look no further than a bipartisan vote of Congress that will transfer congressional power to the Executive Branch and, in turn, to a transnational Pacific Union and the global interests who will help write its rules.

The same routine plays out over and again. We are told a massive bill must be passed, all the business lobbyists and leaders tell us how grand it will be, but that it must be rushed through before the voters spoil the plan. As with Obamacare and the Gang of Eight, the politicians meet with the consultants to craft the talking points—not based on what the bill actually does, but what they hope people will believe it does. And when ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension.

Washington broke arms and heads to get that 60th vote—not one to spare—to impose on the American people a plan which imperils their jobs, wages, and control over their own affairs. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.

For instance: thousands of loyal Americans have been laid off and forced to train the foreign workers brought in to fill their jobs—at Disney, at Southern California Edison, across the country. Does Washington rush to their defense? No, the politicians and the lobbyists rush to move legislation that would double or triple the very program responsible for replacing them.

This ‘econometarian’ ideology holds that if a company can increase its bottom line—whether by insourcing foreign workers or outsourcing production—then it’s always a win, never a downside.

President Obama, and allies in Congress, have won this fast-track vote. But, in exchange, they may find that they are losing something far greater: the trust of the American people. Americans have a fundamental, decent, and just demand: that the people they elect defend their interests. And every issue to come before us in the coming months will have to pass this test: does it strengthen, or weaken, the position of the everyday, loyal American citizen?”

More Cable Company F%$#ery

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Major internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities across the country, according to a study released on Monday.
The study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households across the US.

The findings come weeks after the Federal Communications Commission introduced new rules meant to protect “net neutrality” – the principle that all data is equal online – and keep ISPs from holding traffic speeds for ransom.

Tim Karr of Free Press, one of the groups that makes up BattlefortheNet, said the finding show ISPs are not providing content to users at the speeds they’re paying for.

“For too long, internet access providers and their lobbyists have characterized net neutrality protections as a solution in search of a problem,” said Karr. “Data compiled using the Internet Health Test show us otherwise – that there is widespread and systemic abuse across the network. The irony is that this trove of evidence is becoming public just as many in Congress are trying to strip away the open internet protections that would prevent such bad behavior.”

Once again, call your congresscritter, and ask them not to support cable company f%$#ery.

Google’s New Motto: “Be Evil”

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The search company is now hiring private goons to harass homeless on public streets near their new offices in Los Angeles: (link temporarily public)

How does Google, one of the most cash-rich and innovative companies in the world, propose to deal with the issue of homelessness in America? What’s its 21st century, New Economy solution to disrupt and solve this difficult socio-economic problem once and for all?

 In Los Angeles, the company’s fix is brilliantly simple: Hire private security to harass and push the homeless out of sight, and then make sure that the smelly bastards and their tents and carts never come back.

 I have seen this solution in action myself. I live just around the corner from Google’s new campus in Venice, LA — two big properties located right off the beach, smack in the middle of Venice’s tiny Skid Row. Los Angeles is in the grips of a homeless population explosion, with an increase of 12 percent just in the last year. And this small two-square-block area used to be one of the last places where homeless people were somewhat tolerated around these parts.

 But not any more — not after Google decided to claim sidewalks for itself and cranked up aggressive security patrols in order to drive away the local homeless population.

 “Me and my girlfriend got maced by doing nothing,” a man named “Cory” [not his real name] tells me. He has steely blue eyes and shaggy hair, and looks more like an aging surfer than someone who sleeps rough on the streets. He recounts a recent experience he claims to have had with a Google security guard while sitting on a public sidewalk near the company’s campus.

 “He wanted us to leave. I had water in both hands so I couldn’t attack. And we’re like, ‘what the f%$#, man?’ And he was just like, pshhhhh,” he continues, reenacting the hissing sound of the mace spray can and explaining that they were given no time to leave or react in any way. “My girlfriend didn’t want to be there. Actually she was terrified of them. Every time Google security came, she said ‘we gotta go, we gotta go.’ We’re not allowed to be on public sidewalks, even though we’re the public.”

 I’m talking to him on a sidewalk in the shade of a small tree on 3rd Avenue, which runs between a self-storage business and the backside of Google’s newest property, a giant warehouse that’s currently being remodeled into an expansive new Google office space.

 ………

 “We running a business here. Can’t have homeless people out here like that. We got geeks. They’re scaring folks.”

 That’s what I was told — firsthand, no hearsay — by a Google security guard who was patrolling the perimeter. It was a chilly Los Angeles evening in mid-February, and the security guard wore a fleece and baseball cap emblazoned with the cheery Google logo. A Google employee badge dangled at his belt.

 The reason he was speaking so freely is that I hadn’t mentioned I was a member of the press — largely because, that evening at least, I wasn’t. I was just another Venice area local, on my way home from the gym, who had stopped to chat to the guard. I certainly hadn’t expected him to so candidly explain how Google employees — and especially Google executives — were freaked out by the homeless people outside its walls. So freaked out that he was hired on as part of a beefed up security presence aimed at clearing the public street that bisects Google’s two properties of any homeless presence.

 ………

 Google’s no homeless on the sidewalk policy may make sense for the company. The catch is that the sidewalks don’t belong to Google: they’re public property, and a federal court had mandated that Los Angeles allow people to sleep there between the hours of 9 pm and 6 am, as long as they leave a little room for foot traffic and don’t block any doors or driveways. This restriction is part of a settlement that has been in place since 2007, and neither police nor a corporate giant like Google has the legal right to determine who can or cannot sleep on any given chunk of sidewalk in LA.

 ………

 “From the point of view of low-income, African-American, and Latino residents of Venice — what does Google mean to us? Pretty much all bad news,” said Bill Przylucki, who heads People Organized for Westside Renewal (POWER), a community organization in West Los Angeles. “They are gonna displace other type of businesses that do pay taxes — they are gonna get tax breaks. That means less money for the local park, the library, the public services that we rely on. They are not gonna provide jobs to our folks. Our folks are not the people they are gonna be hiring. They are gonna drive up rents, put more pressure on our folks, and put more pressure on landlords to displace our members through evictions and demolitions.”

 Przylucki says POWER approached Google to see if the company would use its influence and sheer star power to push for low-income housing in Venice and Los Angeles, and to fight against the criminalization of poverty in their neighborhood. But their attempts at cooperation went nowhere.

 “They have a shitload of power,” says Przylucki. “But they didn’t show any interest whatsoever in working with that side of the community. And that silence is deafening in terms of their position.”

 Google was more than just silent: Community organizations discovered that Google was almost impossible to reach or talk to in any meaningful way on a local level. The company was so centralized and opaque — and so deaf to local requests — that activists say they’ve had more success in getting giant banks and subprime lenders like Countrywide Financial to address community concerns than they’ve had in talking to Google.

This last bit is not surprising, actually.

Google has, as a matter of policy, has made it impossible to reach an actual human being in all of its other endeavors, so being unresponsive to community groups is not a surprise.

The last two paragraphs say it all:

Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin like to talk about how they want to leverage their company’s resources and immense talent pool to change the world for the better. The company wants to bring Internet connections to the poorest communities around the world and funds efforts to combat human trafficking and gender inequality.

 But when confronted at its doorstep with a real societal challenge like homelessness — an issue that truly requires innovation, investment, public service, and political maneuvering — the company simply reverts to the cheapest and meanest solution on the books: hire thugs to push the problem out of sight and force other people deal with it.

Cable Company F%$#ery, Fiber Edition

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Rather unsurprisingly, much like its cable competitors, Verizon* is steadfastly refusing to do infrastructure build-outs that in promised in exchange for its getting a cable franchise:

New York City officials today ordered Verizon to complete fiber builds that the company was supposed to finish a year ago. If Verizon doesn’t comply, the city can seek financial damages.

 “In a 2008 agreement with New York City, Verizon committed to extend its FiOS network to every household across the five boroughs by June 30, 2014,” said the announcement of an audit released today by the city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT).

 Verizon’s FiOS fiber network delivers Internet, TV, and phone service to areas traditionally served by Verizon’s copper landlines and DSL Internet.

 “Through a thorough and comprehensive audit, we have determined that Verizon substantially failed to meet its commitment to the people of New York City,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “As I’ve said time and again, Verizon must deliver on its obligation to the City of New York and we will hold them accountable.”

 The agreement, which gave Verizon a cable television franchise, says NYC may “seek and/or pursue money damages” from Verizon if it fails to deliver on its promises.

 Verizon also failed to meet broadband promises in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but those states let the company off the hook.

 Verizon is disputing New York City’s findings. Verizon met the requirement to pass all households with fiber, though not all residents can actually buy fiber service, the company says. Verizon last year blamed landlords for delays. It also blamed Hurricane Sandy from October 2012, even though Verizon was still claiming to be “ahead of schedule” in April 2013.

………

 Verizon further said that “it is important to note that it’s not a mere coincidence that the report is made public today, and labor negotiations with our largest union begin on Monday. It’s well known the union has ties to the city administration, and things like this are a familiar union tactic we have seen before.” The Communications Workers of America union has blamed Verizon’s fiber shortcomings on job cuts.

 Verizon has also called complaints about its landline maintenance “meaningless rhetoric and hyperbole from the unions.”

 The city’s audit report said refusal of access by landlords cannot explain the full extent of Verizon’s failure to bring fiber to all residents. Property managers interviewed by the city said Verizon has refused to extend service to buildings unless the company was granted exclusive agreements that would shut out other providers.

If the contract allows for pulling the franchise, I would like to see that.

If it doesn’t, use eminent domain to purchase the fiber infrastructure, and get the money for it from Verizon’s fines.

In a perfect world, of course, Verizon executives would be invited (compelled) to participate on that classic game show, Ow! My Balls!, but I will take what I can get.

What the free market mousketeers refuse to understand about this crap is that companies make more money from maintaining a monopoly and shutting out other competitors, so the free market will not lead to competition and lower prices.

*Full disclosure, I am a relatively satisfied (monopoly rents make them too expensive) Verizon FIOS® customer.