Today’s Civilian Victims in Yemen Will be Ignored Because U.S. and its Allies Are Responsible
Category: Hypocrisy
After 6 Years of Prosecutorial Excess on Behalf of the Vampire Squid, We Finally See Aleynikov’s Total Exoneration
After multiple prosecutions, by multiple prosecutors, at the behest of Goldman Sachs, Sergey Aleynikov is a free man, for a while, at least:
Kevin H. Marino pumped his fist in the air in celebration. Then Mr. Marino, a New Jersey lawyer with a linebacker’s build, turned to his longtime client, Sergey Aleynikov, and gave Mr. Aleynikov, a former Goldman Sachs programmer, a bear hug and a hearty pat on the back.
Just moments earlier, a clerk in State Supreme Court in Manhattan had given Mr. Marino a copy of the judicial ruling that overturned Mr. Aleynikov’s conviction on a charge that he stole confidential computer code for Goldman Sachs’s high-speed trading business.
The clerk, saving Mr. Marino from having to thumb through the 72 pages to learn what Justice Daniel P. Conviser had ruled, simply whispered congratulations to the lawyer. For Mr. Aleynikov, 45, and Mr. Marino, it appeared to be the end of a six-year legal odyssey through the federal and state court systems in New York.
But the celebration may not last long. State prosecutors in Manhattan have already indicated they may appeal the decision issued Monday, which threw out a jury’s verdict.
Once before, Mr. Aleynikov had believed he was in the clear, when a federal appeals court overturned his conviction under a federal corporate espionage law in 2012. The appellate court ruled that federal prosecutors in Manhattan had misapplied the law, and it ordered Mr. Aleynikov to be immediately released from a federal prison.
Less than a year later, however, Mr. Aleynikov was back in court defending himself, after state prosecutors in Manhattan charged him with violating state computer-theft-related laws.
Now Justice Conviser — much like the federal appellate court before him — ruled that the decades-old state law that Mr. Aleynikov was convicted of violating did not apply to the accusations against him.
………
But Mr. Marino was at no loss for words in criticizing Goldman.
“Goldman Sachs is powerful enough to provoke two failed criminal prosecutions to settle a private score,” Mr. Marino said. “Goldman Sachs has also spent millions in shareholder dollars to evade their obligation to pay Mr. Aleynikov’s legal fees for winning two criminal cases.”
I rather expect Vance to appeal, since the Manhattan district attorney is clearly bought and paid for by Wall Street.
At the time, I was hoping that this would turn over the rock that is the illegal front running high frequency trading conducting by the biggest brokerage firms, but the prosecutors were determined to keep that covered up, and to continue to avoid prosecutions that might bot reveal Goldman’s skullduggery, and follow up with prosecutions grounded in bizarre legal theories.
Background here.
The Clown Car Gets Bigger, a Lot Bigger
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.
Worst ……… Abstinence ……… Advocate ……… Ever
Bristol Palin, who I must congratulate both on her upcoming out-of-wedlock bundle of joy, and her addition to the most distinguished order of They Who Must Not Be Named.
I’m kind of surprised that I had not already added her to the list, but absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or their attempting to assassinate someone, she will not be mentioned here again.
F%$# Me, I Agree with that Bigot Jeff Sessions*
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.
- Bennet (D-CO)
- Cantwell (D-WA)
- Carper (D-DE)
- Coons (D-DE)
- Feinstein (D-CA)
- Heitkamp (D-ND)
- Kaine (D-VA)
- McCaskill (D-MO)
- Murray (D-WA)
- Nelson (D-FL)
- Shaheen (D-NH)
- Warner (D-VA)
- 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?”
Google’s New Motto: “Be Evil”
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.
Blue Dog Democrat Comes Home
Former Democratic Congressman Joe Baca has become a Republican:
Joe Baca, a longtime Democrat who represented San Bernardino County citizens for more than 30 years as a trustee for the San Bernardino Community College District, an assemblyman, state senator and congressman, is now a registered Republican.
Baca, 68, of Fontana, changed his party affiliation on June 2, said Melissa Eickman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Elections Office.
Prior to making the switch, Baca had been a registered Democrat in San Bernardino County since January 1976, Eickman said.
Baca said Friday he and his wife thought long and hard about the decision, which he said reflects his “core Christian values” and his pro-growth, pro-business philosophy.
As a legislator, Baca said he often voted conservatively on many issues. He said he secured funding for transportation and infrastructure projects in his district, and fought to delist from the endangered species list the kangaroo rat, the Delhi Sands flower-loving fly and the Santa Ana sucker fish, all of which he said were hindering commercial development and growth in his district.
“I’ve always been very conservative in nature,” Baca said, adding that in the House of Representatives he was often accused of being a Republican and asked why he didn’t change his political party.
Baca is a former member of the Blue Dog Coalition, a congressional caucus of moderate and conservative Democrats whose members are referred to as “Blue Dogs.”
Baca said he was a Blue Dog during his entire seven-term stint as a ongressman.
Good.
The ‘Phants can keep him.
H/T, Down with Tyranny.
Obama’s Lawless Behavior in Support of the Security State
You may recall that the NSA bulk data collection of phone records were ruled by an Federal appellate court.
It not turns out that the Obama administration tried to get a ruling from the FISA court saying that they could ignore this ruling.
The interesting bit here is that the FISA court is technically a district court, and so is subordinate to an appellate court.
This shows a complete contempt for the rule of law:
The Obama administration has asked a secret surveillance court to ignore a federal court that found bulk surveillance illegal and to once again grant the National Security Agency the power to collect the phone records of millions of Americans for six months.
The legal request, filed nearly four hours after Barack Obama vowed to sign a new law banning precisely the bulk collection he asks the secret court to approve, also suggests that the administration may not necessarily comply with any potential court order demanding that the collection stop.
US officials confirmed last week that they would ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court – better known as the Fisa court, a panel that meets in secret as a step in the surveillance process and thus far has only ever had the government argue before it – to turn the domestic bulk collection spigot back on.
Justice Department national security chief John A Carlin cited a six-month transition period provided in the USA Freedom Act – passed by the Senate last week to ban the bulk collection – as a reason to permit an “orderly transition” of the NSA’s domestic dragnet. Carlin did not address whether the transition clause of the Freedom Act still applies now that a congressional deadlock meant the program shut down on 31 May.
But Carlin asked the Fisa court to set aside a landmark declaration by the second circuit court of appeals. Decided on 7 May, the appeals court ruled that the government had erroneously interpreted the Patriot Act’s authorization of data collection as “relevant” to an ongoing investigation to permit bulk collection.
Carlin, in his filing, wrote that the Patriot Act provision remained “in effect” during the transition period.
“This court may certainly consider ACLU v Clapper as part of its evaluation of the government’s application, but second circuit rulings do not constitute controlling precedent for this court,” Carlin wrote in the 2 June application. Instead, the government asked the court to rely on its own body of once-secret precedent stretching back to 2006, which Carlin called “the better interpretation of the statute”.
While it is true that the FISA court is not technically under the 2nd court of appeals, which ruled the program illegal, because they are not in the 2nd district, (technically, they are not in any district) but blithely asking the court to overrule an appeals court shows a complete contempt for due process and the rule of law.
Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever!™
Oh, Snap!
In arguments before the Supreme Court, Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia presented the case of convicted murderer Henry Lee McCollum as a perfect justification for the death penalty.
It turns out that McCollum was innocent:
A little over two decades ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was dismissive of then-Justice Harry Blackmun’s concerns about the death penalty. In fact, Scalia had a case study in mind that demonstrated exactly why the system of capital punishment has value.
As regular readers may recall, Scalia specifically pointed to a convicted killer named Henry Lee McCollum as an obvious example of a man who deserved to be put to death. “For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat,” Scalia wrote in a 1994 ruling. [Callins v. Collins, which involved Texas, not North Carolina] “How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”
For Scalia, McCollum was the perfect example – a murderer whose actions were so heinous that his crimes stood as a testament to the merit of capital punishment itself.
Yesterday, McCollum was pardoned. Scalia’s perfect example of a man who deserved to be killed by the state was innocent. North Carolina’s News & Observer reported:Gov. Pat McCrory on Thursday pardoned two half-brothers who were exonerated of murder after spending three decades in prison.
The governor took nine months to make the decision, saying he thoroughly reviewed the pardons sought by Henry McCollum and Leon Brown. Both men are intellectually disabled.
If this story sounds at all familiar, it was last fall when a judge ordered the men released. The confessions appeared to have been coerced 30 years ago and new DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been overlooked at the time.
As recently as 2010, the North Carolina Republican Party used a McCollum photo on campaign fliers to attack a Democratic candidate as “soft on crime.”
McCollum hadn’t done anything wrong.
(emphasis mine)
Scalia’s habit of assuming facts not in evidence is really starting to wear thin.
This is something that judges, at least judges outside of Texas, should never do.
Deliberate Destruction of Public Schools in East Ramapo by Orthodox Jewish Community Hits the New York Times
The NPR program This American Life covered this a few months ago, but it is nice that the concerted effort to destroy and asset strip the public schools in East Ramapo has found its way into an editorial in the New York Times: (Full disclosure, Sharon* graduated from a public high school in the East Ramapo school district)
New York State has a proud tradition of local decision making in public education. However, students in the public schools in East Ramapo, about 30 miles north of Manhattan, in Rockland County, are being denied their state constitutional right to a sound basic education by a board that has grossly mismanaged the district’s finances and educational programs.
When there is overwhelming evidence that a local school board has persistently failed to act in the best interests of its public school students, the state must act. The Legislature will adjourn on June 17, so time is running out.
East Ramapo is a divided community. Of the roughly 32,000 school-age children enrolled in schools in the district, about 24,000 attend private schools, nearly all of them Orthodox Jewish yeshivas. Of the more than 8,000 children in the public schools, 43 percent are African-American and 46 percent are Latino; 83 percent are poor and 27 percent are English-language learners.
The East Ramapo school board, dominated by private-school parents since 2005, has utterly failed them. Faced with a fiscal and educational crisis, the State Education Department last June appointed a former federal prosecutor, Henry M. Greenberg, to investigate the district’s finances.
Mr. Greenberg’s report, released in November, documented the impact of the board’s gross mismanagement and neglect. Since 2009, the board has eliminated hundreds of staff members, including over 100 teachers, dozens of teaching assistants, guidance counselors and social workers, and many key administrators. Full-day kindergarten, and high-school electives have been eliminated or scaled back. Music, athletics, professional development and extracurricular activities were cut.
………
While slashing resources in its public schools, the school board vastly increased public spending on private schools. The cost of transporting children, including gender-segregated busing, rose to $27.3 million in 2013-14 from $22 million in 2009-10, a 24 percent increase. Public spending on private school placement for special education students grew by 33 percent between 2010-11 and 2013-14, and the district placed students in private schools when appropriate spaces were available in public ones.
The report also exposed disturbing practices by board members. The board conducts 60 to 70 percent of its meetings in closed-door executive session. It does not tolerate, and is overtly hostile to, the complaints of public school parents, students and community members. Public protests against the board are now commonplace.
The report proposed the appointment of a state fiscal monitor, who would oversee all of the board’s financial and educational decisions and have the authority to override the board, when necessary, to protect the interests of the public-school community and improve education outcomes for public-school students. The report also recommended additional state funding to restore essential staff and services, but only if a monitor was in place to make certain the money was used effectively and efficiently to benefit all of the students.
A bill in Albany — introduced in the Assembly by Ellen C. Jaffee and Kenneth P. Zebrowski and in the Senate by David Carlucci, who all represent parts of the school district — would implement a fiscal monitor for at least five years. It is a crucial step toward reversing the district’s disastrous decline and repairing the deep rifts in the community. The New York State School Boards Association has found that the measure “respects the democratic electoral process by leaving the elected board of education in place.”
………
In recent weeks, in response to a lobbying campaign by the school board, momentum for the bill appears to have slowed. Advocates for the local school board and some leaders in the Orthodox community have accused supporters of state oversight of having anti-Semitic motives.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The legislation is not about punishing one group because of its religious beliefs; it is about acting to make sure that the civil rights of a community of overwhelmingly low-income minority children are not denied and that their constitutional right to a sound basic education is enforced.
Note that, in response to claims of antisemitism, the ADL has come out in favor of appointing a state monitor.
The context here, particularly when reviewing the This American Life coverage, is that the East Ramapo school board (יש”ו) is attempting a genteel form of ethnic cleansing directed at the poorest and least powerful amongst them, with the board chairman literally telling non-Jews to leave town.
It is disgusting, and it is against Halacha.†
The members of the school school board are both miserable excuses for human beings, and bad Jews.
As an aside, this also is not, “Good for the Jews.”
Any plans to expand or build a Yeshiva in any other town will likely be viewed with the same enthusiasm as constructing a toxic waste dump next to a town reservoir, and the longer that this goes on, the worse this will get.
One reform that is not mentioned, and should be considered, is to move the dates of the school board elections to the same time as the Congressional elections. (Currently they are held in the spring of odd numbered years).
Higher turnout would mitigate against sh%$ like this.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†Jewish religious law.
Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen
In yet another case of prosecutorial overreach, we have motions by the prosecutors in another of the FBI’s entrapment efforts forbid defense counsel from putting forward their case:
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has become such a powerful symbol of government overreach that federal prosecutors in a terror case in Chicago are asking the judge to forbid defense attorneys from even mentioning his name during trial, for fear that it would lead the jury to disregard their evidence.
The upcoming trial is of Adel Daoud, a slow-witted Chicagoland teenager caught in yet another FBI terror sting aimed at someone vulnerable to manipulation. An undercover federal agent provided Daoud with a fake car bomb parked outside a downtown Chicago bar, and then let him push the detonator.
Much of the evidence in the case — involving Daoud’s online explorations into Islam and jihad — was gathered through surveillance conducted using secret warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.
Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago asked Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman on Wednesday to prohibit the defense from mentioning Snowden’s name — along with a number of other things, such as the existence of the National Security Agency, or a speech by Senator Dianne Feinstein in which she cited “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” as an example of one that was thwarted thanks to FISA authorities.
Their concern: Those topics “are irrelevant and would tend to elicit jury nullification, so the defendant should be barred from inquiring of witnesses, presenting evidence, or arguing to the jury about them.”
A key issue in the case has already been extensively litigated. Judge Coleman in January 2014 ruled that Daoud’s security-cleared lawyers should be allowed to see all the classified materials the government submitted in order to get their FISA warrants.
………
For good measure, the prosecutors also don’t want the defense to claim entrapment, either:
[T]he defendant should be precluded from arguing or suggesting that the undercover technique the government used in the underlying investigation was improper. Any argument attacking the government’s investigative techniques would not only be improper, but it should also trigger an instruction that such investigative techniques are entirely proper.
This is crap.
It is corrosive to concept of a fair trial that has developed in the US, and England before it, over the past thousand years.
People Who Should Have Been Drowned at Birth
The Los Angeles Times editorial board, who are calling for the prosecution of Edward Snowden:
They praise the fact that his leaks created some reforms in our state security apparatus, and then they say that he should go to jail, because, (I guess) confidential press sources and whistle blowers are bad people who should be tortured.
It is an incontrovertible fact that if Snowden returns, and if he is tried, he will be placed in solitary confinement for years, even if just while awaiting trial. One need only look at the case of (innocent) Wen Ho Lee, who was held in solitary for over a year in an attempt to extort a confession.
It has been the universal conclusion of all civil society organization that have chosen to study this issue have declared extended solitary to be torture.
The LA Times which covered the Lee matter extensively knows this, but even knowing this, they are calling for Snowden to be prosecuted for under an archaic law, and tortured in the process, even if he is eventually found not guilty:
Yet there are serious arguments against a pardon. One is that, in a society of laws, someone who engages in civil disobedience in a higher cause should be prepared to accept the consequences. A stronger objection, in our view, is that Snowden didn’t limit his disclosures to information about violations of Americans’ privacy. He divulged other sensitive information about traditional foreign intelligence activities, including a document showing that the NSA had intercepted the communications of then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a Group of 20 summit in London in 2009. A government contractor who discloses details of U.S. spying on another country is not most Americans’ idea of a whistleblower.
A pardon for Snowden now would be premature. But if he were to return to this country to face the charges against him, the fact that he revealed the existence of a program that has now been repudiated by all three branches of government would constitute a strong argument for leniency. Snowden should come home and make that case.
Otis Chandler would be spinning in his brave.
I’m Shocked! Shocked! To Find That Gambling Is Going on This Establishment!
Scott Walker is under investigation for possible illegal coordination between his campaign, and so-called “independent” campaign groups.
Well, the prosecutor who is investigating the matter, it is called a “John Doe” proceeding under Wisconsin law, but this is being challenged in court.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is to here this challenge, but it now appears that some of the judges in question appear to be involved in the scheme:
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is facing an investigation into whether his 2012 recall campaign illegally coordinated with nonprofit groups that spent money to support him. Campaign finance laws prohibit “coordination” because they would allow candidates to run shadow campaigns outside of campaign finance law. The Center for Media & Democracy’s PRWatch said, “Prosecutors gathered evidence of Walker secretly raising millions of dollars for the supposedly ‘independent’ nonprofit Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG), with the express purpose of bypassing campaign finance disclosure laws.” The secret donations were revealed to include money from a mining company that received permission to open a mine soon after Walker won reelection.
The investigation is at a preliminary stage, called a John Doe proceeding under Wisconsin law, which determines whether charges are filed. PRWatch said that “Walker and his allies have fought the probe not by denying coordination, but by claiming the rules don’t apply to so-called ‘issue ads’ that stop short of expressly telling viewers how to vote.” The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering one of the many lawsuits filed to stop the investigation.
In a newly released court filing, the prosecutor in the case raised the question of whether one or two of the justices hearing the case are implicated in the same kind of scheme. Two groups suspected of coordinating with Walker’s campaign have also spent $10 million to elect the four-justice conservative majority. The prosecutor’s heavily redacted brief also suggests that two justices, or, at least, their campaigns, may have committed the same offense that is at the heart of the Walker investigation—coordinating with dark money groups to get reelected.
Special prosecutor Francis Schmitz—a Republican who voted for Walker in 2012—noted that the groups “had significant involvement in the election of particular justices,” though the document redacts the names of the justices and the groups. (The suspects in a grand jury or John Doe proceeding remain anonymous, unless and until charges are filed.) While the justices are not named, the brief refers to the justices benefiting from money spent by John Doe groups to support the reelection of the justices, and the groups have spent money to support the election of all four members of the court’s conservative majority.
Schmitz’s brief also referred to a “history of control, collaboration and coordination” between the groups and “political campaign committees that may potentially include judicial candidates.” The brief describes persons who worked for both a supreme court campaign and the John Doe groups. A redacted portion quotes an email that seems to provide evidence that a group was “actively involved” in a justice’s reelection campaign. Other redacted portions seem to describe contacts and “close connections” between the justice’s campaign and John Doe groups, before concluding:
Justice David Prosser was up for reelection in 2011, when Walker faced a recall election. At the time, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was hearing a legal challenge to Walker’s controversial law restricting collective bargaining rights. Both sides in the debate—unions and big business—spent big in the supreme court election. Two of the John Doe groups spent around $2.5 million to reelect Justice Prosser—much more than the justice’s own campaign.
Anyone wanna take money on whether David Prosser, who has been alleged to have physically assaulted a fellow justice in the court offices, is going to recuse himself?
I’ll take 5:1 odds that he won’t recuse himself.
This is So Unsurprising
So, the other shoe has dropped on the former speaker, and we learn that Denny Hastert sexually abused a student:
J. Dennis Hastert stumbled into political power amid a Republican sex scandal in 1998 that unexpectedly elevated the husky Illinoisan to a position just two heartbeats away from the presidency.
He became the longest-serving Republican House speaker in U.S. history, but remained so proud of his days as a small-town high school teacher and wrestling coach that he relished the Capitol Hill nickname “Coach.”
But this week those once-idolized small-town roots caught up with the 73-year-old Hastert, who in recent years has worked behind the scenes as a Washington power broker.
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert indicted
Federal prosecutors have announced bank-related charges against former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
On Friday, federal law enforcement officials said Hastert had paid $1.7 million over the last four years to conceal sexual abuse against a former male student he knew during his days as a teacher in Yorkville, Ill., where Hastert worked until 1981.
A top federal law enforcement official, who would not be identified speaking about the ongoing federal case, said investigators also spoke with a second man who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the former student said. The second person was not being paid by Hastert, the official said.
The disclosures followed Thursday’s federal indictment against Hastert on charges of lying to the FBI about the reasons for large cash withdrawals he is accused of making to buy the man’s silence.
Currently, the age of consent in Illinois 17, but it is 18 if the person is in a position of authority, for example, being a teacher and coach. (Link)
This law appears to me to be something relatively recent, the whole “position of authority” thing really started in the 1990s, and I know that the age of consent in the 1920s was 16, so it is entirely likely that this did not constitute statutory rape.
Still, it is remarkable that the best Republicans could find for Speaker after Gingrich and Livingston had been driven from office at least in part for adultery.
I’m hoping that Larry Flynt offers another bounty on wandering Republican penises running for President..
And Yes, the TTIP, in All Its Bee Killing Glory, Sucks Too
The US, acting on behalf of Monsanto and its ilk, pressured the EU into revoking its common sense pesticide regulations using the TTIP to coerce regulatory forbearance:
EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from US trade officials over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, newly released documents show.
Draft EU criteria could have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). But these were dumped amid fears of a trade backlash stoked by an aggressive US lobby push, access to information documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe show.
On 26 June 2013, a high-level delegation from the American Chambers of Commerce (AmCham) visited EU trade officials to insist that the bloc drop its planned criteria for identifying EDCs in favour of a new impact study.
Minutes of the meeting show commission officials pleading that “although they want the TTIP to be successful, they would not like to be seen as lowering the EU standards”.
The TTIP is a trade deal being agreed by the EU and US to remove barriers to commerce and promote free trade.
Responding to the EU officials, AmCham representatives “complained about the uselessness of creating categories and thus, lists” of prohibited substances, the minutes show.
The US trade representatives insisted that a risk-based approach be taken to regulation, and “emphasised the need for an impact assessment” instead.
On 2 July 2013, officials from the US Mission to Europe visited the EU to reinforce the message. Later that day, the secretary-general of the commission, Catherine Day, sent a letter to the environment department’s director Karl Falkenberg, telling him to stand down the draft criteria.
“We suggest that as other DGs [directorate-generals] have done, you consider making a joint single impact assessment to cover all the proposals,” Day wrote. “We do not think it is necessary to prepare a commission recommendation on the criteria to identify endocrine disrupting substances.”
The result was that legislation planned for 2014 was kicked back until at least 2016, despite estimated health costs of €150bn per year in Europe from endocrine-related illnesses such as IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism – a condition affecting the genitals of baby boys.
A month before the meeting, AmCham had warned the EU of “wide-reaching implications” if the draft criteria were approved. The trade body wanted an EU impact study to set looser thresholds for acceptable exposure to endocrines, based on a substance’s potency.
“We are worried to see that this decision, which is the source of many scientific debates, might be taken on political grounds, without first assessing what its impacts will be on the European market,” the chair of AmCham’s environment committee wrote in a letter to the commission.
These could be “dramatic” the letter said.
In a high-level internal note sent to the health commissioner, Tonio Borg, shortly afterwards, his departmental director-general warned that the EU’s endocrines policy “will have substantial impacts for the economy, agriculture and trade”.
The heavily redacted letter, sent a week before the EU’s plans were scrapped continued: “The US, Canada, and Brazil [have] already voiced concerns on the criteria which might lead to important repercussions on trade.”
The series of events was described as “incredible” by the the Green MEP Bas Eickhout. “These documents offer convincing evidence that TTIP not only presents a danger for the future lowering of European standards, but that this is happening as we speak,” he told the Guardian.
Even without a signed deal, it appears that the two big “Free Trade” deals being negotiated have already been used to subvert consumer and environmental safeguards.
Of course, this is precisely what Obama said wouldn’t happen, but I guess that he’s looking forward, not back.
The British Have Their Own Version of the Cadillac Driving Welfare Queen
One of the oft repeated claims in UK politics, are that there are families for whom three generations that have never worked. The quotes have been made by any number of politicians, most commonly Tories, but also Tony “Bush’s Poodle” Blaire.
It turns out that no one can find any evidence that even one such family ever existed:
This month I ran a workshop with a group of first year undergraduate sociology students at Teesside University (in the North East of England). Our students tend to be from working-class or lower-middle class backgrounds and often the first in their families to go to university. I’d been invited to give an insight into a ‘real life’ research project, and I began by asking for responses and thoughts about some quotations:
‘Behind the statistics lie households where three generations have never had a job’ (ex-British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, 1997).
‘…on some deprived estates…often three generations of the same family have never worked’ (Iain Duncan Smith, 2009; now British government Minister for Work and Pensions).
‘To reintroduce the culture of work in households where it may have been absent for generations’ (Universal Credit, Department of Work and Pensions, 2010; this is a document that introduces a very major overhaul of UK welfare payments).
‘…there are four generations of families where no-one has ever had a job’ (Chris Grayling, ex-Minister for Work and Pensions, 2011).
The idea that there are families in the UK with three (or four, or five and even six have been claimed) generations where no one has ever had a job is a particularly powerful orthodoxy. It is often repeated, rarely questioned, becoming part of a taken for granted vernacular. I was struck by the students’ comments. One said, ‘well, it must be true if all these [people] are saying it’. Another felt the same because ‘they wouldn’t say it unless there was loads of data to back it up’. Simple ideas boldly spoken (and repeated) by people in authority can carry real weight.
………
But my colleagues and I are social scientists, so instead of relying on ‘personal observations’, Tracy Shildrick, Andy Furlong, Johann Roden, Rob Crow, and I began rigorous research to see if there really were families like this. We have continued thinking, analysing, writing about, and presenting the complexities of the research material that we gathered since then. The research generated other questions, but, unusually for a sociological study, we found a clear and unequivocal answer to this first question: the existence of families where ‘no one had worked for three generations’ is highly unlikely.
We searched very hard to find such families. We chose two extremely deprived working-class neighbourhoods – in Glasgow and Middlesbrough, because we assumed that they were the sorts of places most likely to reveal this phenomenon. Despite deploying all the strategies and tactics we could think of (including financial inducements), we were unable to find any. This does not mean that they do not exist. Some people believe in fairies or Yetis, and one cannot prove they do not exist. We can say, however, that it is highly improbable that they do. Or, if they do, their numbers are infinitesimally small. Other research drew upon the best available secondary statistics and concluded that less than half of one per cent of all workless households in the UK might have two generations where no one had ever had a job. Households with three generations that have never worked are, logically, going to be far, far fewer in number than even this tiny fraction.
This was, actually, a quite predictable conclusion. A little socio-economic history helps. How long is ‘three generations’? Maybe sixty years, so back to the 1950s, or earlier. The proposition is that there are families where no one has had a job since the 1950s. The UK welfare state has become tougher and tougher over this period, particularly in the last few years. We have very tight ‘conditionality rules’ and ‘activation tests’; recipients of unemployment benefits must provide evidence of their worthiness for these on a weekly basis. It is difficult to imagine a person being able to defraud the state for the whole of his/ her working life – and then his/ her son or daughter doing the same and then his/ her son or daughter after them, for sixty years.
So this family appears to never have existed, but that didn’t stop various people, including the Smiler (Blair) from using it on the stump.
To be fair to Ronald Reagan, (I f%$#ing cannot f%$#ing believe that I f%$#ing just said that) in his case, he was referring to one individual, Linda Taylor ((AKA Connie Walker, AKA Linda Bennett, AKA Linda Jones, AKA Connie Jarvis, AKA Martha Louise Miller, AKA Martha Louise White), who did use a number of aliases to defraud social welfare programs, though it appears this was only one of many criminal endeavors.
Ms. Taylor appeared to be a veritable criminality, with allegations of a lot of other crimes, including kidnapping, baby trafficking, and murder.
Seriously, Nike? I Think That Obama Is Trolling TPP Opponents Now
Obama spoke at a Nike plant to promote the Trans Pacific Partnershio (TPP).
This is an interesting choice, considering that the show manufacturer is patient zero in shipping jobs overseas to contractors who practice abusive worker policiew.
Bernie Sanders is not unaware of the irony of the choise of venue:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling upon President Obama to cancel his plans to visit Nike’s corporate headquarters this week as part of the White House’s push to drum up support for a major new trade agreement.
Sanders said the shoe giant, which has moved many of its manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets overseas, only epitomizes how previous trade deals “have failed American workers.”
In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike’s profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.
“While manufacturing may not be the most glamorous job, I’m sure that there are workers across America, from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Vermont to Ferguson, who would be more than happy to be paid $15-$20 an hour to manufacture the Nike products they buy,” Sanders wrote.
………
Obama plans to visit Nike’s Portland-area headquarters Friday morning as he takes his sales pitch outside Washington for both the 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the so-called “fast track” authority he has said is vital to finalizing negotiations with Japan and other partners.
Obama’s fellow Democrats are proving to be the main obstacle to passing both in Congress, but he has been ramping up his appeals in recent weeks.
………
But Sanders said TPP would “do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country,” and would only boost its executives’ compensation.
He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.
Nike has been the subject of protests for its use of foreign sweat shop labor for over a decade, and Obama thinks that it is a good idea to extol the virtues of the TPP there.
I am not sure if Barak is just f%$#ing with us, or if he just believes that no one could possibly have a fulfilling life living on shop floor.
In either case though, his decision to speak there oozes contempt for people on the other side of the issue.
Some People Use The Handmaiden’s Tale as a Manual
And they seem to be overwhelmingly Republicans:
Late Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted in favor of “H.J.Res. 43: Disapproving the action of the District of Columbia Council in approving the Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2014.” If enacted, the legislation would make using employer-based health insurance for in vitro fertilization or birth control pills a fireable offense in Washington, D.C.
Planned Parenthood has been mobilizing its network against the bill. “Your boss shouldn’t be able to fire you for using birth control,” the organization states.
………
Also on the floor last night, Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dubbed H.J.Res. 43 “Hobby Lobby on steroids,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) called for D.C. statehood from the house floor, and numerous Republicans defended “religious freedom.”
………
With support from 225 Republicans and 3 Democrats, the U.S. Congress moved to overturn a democratically enacted law in the District of Columbia for the first time in more than 20 years.
As an FYI, the Democrats voting for this are:
- Dan Lipinski (IL-3)
- Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
- Colin Peterson (MN-7)
The distinguished gentleman from Minnesota is one of the founders of the Blue Dogs, Cuellar was Rick Perry’s and George W. Bush’s “Democrat” BFF, and Dan Lipinski is a right wing nut-job who got his job by nepotism when the Illinois Democratic party cleared the primary for him.
These are folks that the Democrats would be better off without, even if these seats were taken by Republicans.
They all need aggressive primary challenges, because there needs to be a certain level of party discipline, even in the Democratic party.
And in the Justice Department………
Teresa Sheehan was alone in her apartment at a mental health center, clutching what her lawyers said was a small bread knife and demanding to be left alone. San Francisco police officers, responding to a call from a social worker, forced open the door, blinded her with pepper spray and shot her.
It was the kind of violent police confrontation that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has frequently criticized in Cleveland; Albuquerque; Ferguson, Mo.; and beyond. But last month, when Ms. Sheehan’s civil rights lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, the Justice Department backed the police, saying that a lower court should have given more weight to the risks that the officers faced.
At the Supreme Court, where the limits of police power are established, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has supported police officers every time an excessive-force case has made its way to arguments. Even as it has opened more than 20 civil rights investigations into local law enforcement practices, the Justice Department has staked out positions that make it harder for people to sue the police and that give officers more discretion about when to fire their guns.
Police groups see Mr. Holder as an ally in that regard, and that pattern has rankled civil rights lawyers, who say the government can have a far greater effect on policing by interpreting law at the Supreme Court than through investigations of individual departments.
“There is an inherent conflict between people at the Justice Department trying to stop police abuses and other people at the Justice Department convincing the Supreme Court that police abuses should be excused,” said Ronald L. Kuby, a Manhattan civil rights lawyer.
The department should not be routinely defending cops against allegations of excessive force before the Supreme Court. It should be evaluating each case on its own merits, and making the decision only then.
It’s current path is does not serve the citizenry.
Republican Family Values
It’s the hypocrisy, stupid:
Anti-Gay North Dakota State Rep Caught Sending Dick Pics On The Grindr, Surprise LOL
by Evan Hurst, Apr 28 2:00 pm 2015
America, meet your newest closet case anti-gay Republican lawmaker! He’s a North Dakota state representative, and he is not in the closet anymore, due to the fact that he’s been outed for voting against SB 2279, a routine bill designed to protect gays and lesbians, among others, from discrimination (which failed, for the third time). The representative’s name is “Randy Boehning,” and while we are tempted to just finish the post right there, we will tell you the story instead:State Rep. Randy Boehning, a 52-year-old Republican legislator from Fargo, says a Capitol employee told him a fellow lawmaker vowed to out him as gay if he continued to vote against bills granting gays legal protections against discrimination. […]
The exchange came to light when Dustin Smith, a 21-year-old Bismarck man with no known connections to the Capitol, contacted The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead earlier this month, saying he recognized Boehning from a gay dating smartphone app called Grindr. Chatting under the user name Top Man!, Boehning sent Smith sexually suggestive messages and, in the early morning hours of March 12, an unsolicited photo of his penis, according to exchanges reviewed by The Forum.
Smith added, “how can you discriminate against the person you’re trying to pick up?” Good point, sir! It’s very rude, to want to f%$# the gays in a good way in your off time, and then go to work the next day and f%$# the gays in a bad way, by voting against their (AND YOUR OWN) rights. This is why we have the Barney Frank rule, which says that if a politician is known to be gay, and also votes and campaigns against LGBT people, then they are fair game for outing and stuff.
Has anyone told Jon Stewart?
Think of the children!!!!