Category: Journalism

1000 Leona Helmsleys, Writ Small

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The not-for-profit news org Pro Publica has come into IRS records for some of the wealthiest people in America, and it turns out that the richest people in the United States pay little or no taxes.  They are claiming that they do not know the identity of their source.)

This has gotten notice from major mainstream news sources.

There has been some push-back from the usual suspects demanding, while the usual douche bags are demanding an aggressive criminal investigation.  Said douche bags include US Attorney General Merrick Garland.  (Multiple officials in the Biden administration has given every indication that it will extend the Jihad against whistle-blowers to the IRS leaker.)

We find a similar pattern in the tax filings of private equity (PE) firms, with the things like the carried interest loophole, the “fee waiver,” an under resourced IRS, and a revolving door of senior officials.

I kind of filed this under, “Same old, Same old,” until Pro Publica revealed that one of the leading candidates for Manhattan District Attorney was mentioned in the files as having paid little or no taxes on her husband’s multi-million dollar pay.

So, if these files become public, there is a pretty good chance that one of the go to sources for crappy candidates who stand for nothing that is routinely tapped by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), hedge fund managers, and PE types, who have lots of money, and spend profligately to get elected.

Now, it the people who are looking to cash in will have to go though a trove of tax data to make sure that THEY are not on that list:

The leading candidate to take over the investigation relating to former President Donald Trump’s taxes paid virtually no federal income taxes in four of six recent years.

Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who is married to hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein, is running for Manhattan district attorney in the Democratic primary, in which early voting has already begun. She and her husband reported income as high as $107 million in 2011, and she recently donated $8.2 million to her campaign — more than her seven Democratic rivals have raised in total.

But in 2017, according to a trove of tax data obtained by ProPublica, she and her husband paid no federal income tax. In 2015 and 2013, they also paid no federal income tax. In 2014, she and her husband paid $6,584.

………

In two of the years in which the Weinsteins paid no federal income taxes, they reported negative income, losses that appear to be driven by the volatile performance of Boaz Weinstein’s hedge fund. They also claimed and received a refundable tax credit — a total of $5,000 over those two years — designed to help middle- and lower-income families with the costs of raising children.

In the other two years in which they paid little or no federal income taxes, they reported adjusted gross income of about a million dollars each year. They were able to reduce their income tax bill in those years by using a variety of deductions.

There’s no indication the Weinsteins did anything illegal.

That last bit is the REAL problem.

The fact that these sort of shenanigans are completely legal is a national embarrassment.

Headline of the Day

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Political Reporters Are Hurting America, So How about Getting Rid Of Most Of Them?

—Dan Froomkin

He’s completely right.

The coverage of politics in isolation from actually doing stuff produces hack journalism focusing on, “The Game.”

Political reporters know nothing about anything BUT politics, and hold this as a badge of honor, and because their beat gives them license to write about everything, because politics is more often than not a triviality, it touches on everything.

Time for a Blogger Ethics Panel

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(As Atrios would say)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Facebook is Freaking Out Over Apple

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About 7 months ago, I mentioned that a Dutch broadcaster turned off tracking ads, and went with simple contextual ads, and earned more money.

Contextual ads are, for example, you read a story and the ads are based on what you are reading, so if you were looking as sports, you would get ads for beer, and if you were looking at barbecue recipes, you would get ads for beer, and if you were reading a story about a heat wave, you would get ads for beer. 

Tracking ads, on the other hand will look at everything that you have done in the past 18 months, and determine that because you looked at sports, barbecue, and the weather, you get served an add for beer. (all ads lead to beer, but that is another post)

The reason that tracking ads are more popular these days is because they are supposed to get higher response rates..

Certainly, that is what the incumbents, like Facebook and Google want you to think, because if contextual ads work just as well, then pretty much anyone can go into the online ad business, and Google and Facebook can no longer slurp up most of the revenue

This is why Facebook is going nuclear about Apple’s new privacy policies, which will require an explicit opt-in for tracking.

It’s not because they would lose a whole lot of money with this, they would still sell ads, but because this is a massive A/B test on the internet giant’s business model.

If advertisers find that non tracking ads work just as well, or nearly so for less money, they will switch to non-tracking ads.

This is why we have leaked emails in which Mark Zuckerberg states that, “We need to inflict pain,” on Apple.

I’m inclined to believe that Mark Zuckerberg already knows that the ad tech he sells is a lie, and the emperor does not wish to reveal his sartorial choices.

All this is a long way around to seeing that we now have another data-point in addition to the Dutch broadcaster NPO, we also have the New Zealand news site Stuff, which has abandoned Facebook to no effect. (They did so because of Facebook’s irresponsibility both before and after the Christchurch shootings)

The short version, (video below) is that Stuff cut advertising spending on Facebook with, “No traffic impact at all,” and since they stopped posting on Facebook, they have been unable to tease out any impact on traffic.

Video below:

This Reminds Me of the Railroad Industry

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I worked at GE Transportation System in the early 1990s aas a locomotive systems engineer.

After years of contraction and decay, they were recapitalizing.

Standard line was that they had gotten to the point where they had to recapitalize, but it was something more basic: The Wall Street types who believed that railroads were dying had finally looted all they could, and they had been replaced by management that actually believed in railroads.

Freight rail in the Us has been on a generally upward path since.

Well, we are seeing the same thing in the newspaper business these days, with the jargon of the official launch of Tronc, formerly Tribune Publishing being a particularly egregious example.

As Allison Hantschel observes, “Media Companies Hate News, the Internet, Employees and their Own Customers:

Or, as the Hip Happening Kids Today call it, #Tronc:

CasSelle: We produce tons of great content every single day. We’re really focused on how we we deliver it to people in a way they want to consume it more and more. 


Vasquez: One of the key ways we’re going to harness the power of our journalism is to have an optimization group. This Tronc team, will work with all of the local markets, to harness the power of our local journalism, feed it into a funnel, and then optimize it so we reach the biggest global audience possible.
Yes, Tronc shall take the corn feed of journalism and funnel it into the optimization-group goose, to make delicious foie gras that will be consumed by the digital natives.

It arguably gets worse from there. And what’s genuinely sad is that people who talk like this typically don’t understand how the internet actually works—that’s why they lean on buzzwords—or have any notion of how to communicate with journalists, who tend to bristle at this stuff.

These are internal employee videos designed to PUMP YOU UP about your newfound place not at Tribune Publishing, a recognizable name that at least still sounded impressive, but at Tronc, which sounds like you stepped on a duck.

I understand that conventional journalism in general, and the newspaper business in particular, faces challenges, but the bigger problem is that upper management does not believe in the product: Journalism.  (Of course, there is also the fact that Sam Zell ran the company into the ground).

Our MBA/Wall Street/Private Equity management “Culture” does nothing but loot.

Not Your Call

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Well, after a freakout from the right wing, the DOJ has agreed to release the full transcripts from the Orlando shooter during his rampage:

The Orlando killer pledged allegiance to the Islamic State while in the midst of murdering 49 people at a gay nightclub last weekend. But for a few hours Monday, we couldn’t read that part of Omar Mateen’s phone conversations with dispatchers and police because the FBI took it out of transcripts of 911 calls it released.

To Republicans, the redacted transcripts were yet another example of how the Obama administration is mishandling this whole war on terror by ducking every opportunity to avoid talking about the real issues behind it — and specifically, Islam.

………

The pressure worked. The FBI reversed course Monday afternoon and released the redacted parts of the transcript in which Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, saying the political debate over the redaction had become a distraction.

It’s more than that, it’s public records, and the Department of Justice wanted to suppress these records because they did not approve of that message:

[FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Ron] Hopper Hopper said authorities also did not want to “give credence to individuals who have done terrorist acts in the past.”

“We’re not going to propagate their violent rhetoric,” he said.

Mr. Hopper, that decision is is not your call, nor should it be.

Your job is not to determine what news is available to the general public.

Why Billionaires are a Plague on the World

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Well, we now know that Hulk Hoagan’s lawsuit against Gawker was bankrolled by PayPal founder and billionaire Peter Thiel.

It appears that he was incensed about Gawker outing him almost 9 years ago in what was actually a rather adulatory article. He had been out in all but press release at the time.

It turns out that this incensed him because he literally made his fortune off of gay bashing when at Stanford University:

………

 On the Gawker site, the most popular—I don’t say best–defense appears to be that “outing” Thiel was beyond the pale—so the suit accomplishes belated justice (that’s dubious in itself). Setting aside whether an outing actually happened or what prevailing ethical/journalistic standards are, I think Thiel’s time at Stanford (overlapping mine) bears renewed scrutiny.

 Keeping it brief: Thiel essentially got his public start by founding the Stanford Review. That publication quickly, if not at its inception, was devoted mainly to “anti-PC” arguments, defending in particular fellow reviewer Keith Rabois, another future PayPal zillionare who, as a Stanford Law student was involved in “screaming ‘Faggot! Hope you die of AIDS!’ and ‘Can’t wait until you die, faggot,’ in the direction of the resident fellow cottage of lecturer Dennis Matthies.”

According to a Stanford news release at the time: “first-year law student Keith Rabois … sent a letter to the Stanford Daily confirming the allegations.”

“Admittedly, the comments made were not very articulate, not very intellectual nor profound,” Rabois wrote, according to the news release. “The intention was for the speech to be outrageous enough to provoke a thought of ‘Wow, if he can say that, I guess I can say a little more than I thought.’ “

 Both Thiel and Rabois were/are gay.

 This wasn’t just a youthful indiscretion. … Thiel rode the incident to a book deal and publication in the Wall Street Journal. I assume his conservative bona fides, rooted here, played a serious role in his public profile and early business network? They also weren’t straightforwardly voicing some political/religious position: they were rather rancidly scapegoating other gay men as part of some closeted psychodynamic.

So his declaration of outrage is fueled by rank hypocrisy.

Will Bunch has the most succinct description of what is going on here, “Thiel’s Gawker gambit lifts the veil on how the American kleptocracy hopes to control the American media in the 21st Century — by buying and controlling some key news sites…and using their endlessly deep pockets to destroy journalists who are non-compliant.”

I would also direct you to essays from Feliz Salmon and Bob Lefsetz.

I would also note that Theil is a reactionary nut-job, (scroll down toward the bottom) who opposes women’s suffrage, supports the establishment of floating cities exempt from law, and funded James O’Keefe’s successful jihad against ACORN.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being a rich nut-job.  Our history is filled with this.

But when that rich nut-job begins to think of themselves as a God, whether the Randian Übermensch in the case of Thiel or the brothers Koch, or an actual denizen of Olympus in the case Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Caligula), it’s the rest of us who bear the cost of their delusional excess.

They are Full of Crap

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The Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) is now refusing to release footage from Mondawmin at the start of the Freddie Gray riots because they claim that it would increase the risk of terrorism.

I have not seen such a transparent load of bullsh%$ since Hillary Clinton started making excuses for not releasing her speeches at Goldman Sachs:

The Maryland Transit Administration has once again denied a Public Information Act request by The Baltimore Sun for surveillance footage from the Mondawmin Metro station on the day last April that riots broke out in Baltimore, saying that releasing the video would “facilitate the planning of a terrorist attack.”

On April 27, 2015, large numbers of police officers staged in the area around the Metro station and adjacent mall based on intelligence they said they had received that large numbers of students planned to gather in the area en masse to protest the police-custody death of Freddie Gray.

Many in the city, including teachers at nearby Frederick Douglass High School, have blamed the police for provoking students and stranding others by canceling bus service at the transportation hub just as they were getting out of school.

The Sun has sought the footage from the MTA station for nearly a year in order to glean more information about how the clashes that began there, grew, and ultimately turned into rioting, looting and arson in the city that night.

In denying the Sun’s first PIA request last year, the MTA said that the office of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had asked it not to release the footage because it was still being used in criminal investigations.

………

The Sun sent the MTA another PIA request for the footage last month, noting that there is a statute of limitations of one year for misdemeanor charges, and that it had been a year since the incident in question — limiting the number of pending investigations there could be.

………

When the MTA responded last week, it made no mention of pending investigations in the state’s attorney’s office. It said instead that the footage could not be released because of Homeland Security concerns.

………

The MTA responded Friday, explaining that The Sun would have to ask the federal Transportation Security Administration for written permission to review any of the footage from the cameras, because they were funded through Homeland Security grants.

But if The Sun were to get that permission, it said, the MTA still would deny the footage based on its belief that the footage “would reveal the facility’s safety and support systems, surveillance techniques, and security systems and technologies,” as well as “jeopardize the security of the facility; facilitate the planning of a terrorist attack; and endanger the life or physical safety of the public.”

Please, take them to court.  Because their arument is 6 pounds of sh%$ in a 5 pound bag.

The only question is whether the MTA is protecting itself, or if the Baltimore PD strong armed into the coverup.

Legal Exchange of the Day

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If someone threatens me with a libel suit, I have to remember to cite Arkell v. Pressdram.

It involved an English magazine, Private Eye, which had a uncovered that a man named James Arkell had been taking kickbacks to throw debt collection business to some firms.

Arkell’s solicitor demanded a retraction:

9th April 1971

Dear Sir,

We act for Mr Arkell who is Retail Credit Manager of Granada TV Rental Ltd. His attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the issue of Private Eye dated 9th April 1971 on page 4. The statements made about Mr Arkell are entirely untrue and clearly highly defamatory. We are therefore instructed to require from you immediately your proposals for dealing with the matter.

Mr Arkell’s first concern is that there should be a full retraction at the earliest possible date in Private Eye and he will also want his costs paid. His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.

Yours,

(Signed)

Goodman Derrick & Co.

Private Eye, published by Pressdram, Ltd., made this response:

Dear Sirs,

We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr. J. Arkell.

We note that Mr Arkell’s attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: f%$# off.

Yours,

Private Eye

(%$# mine)

I’m going to have to remember the legal citation.

Something to Hide

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Purdue Pharma, best known as the manufacturer of the opiate Oxycontin, has been fighting tooth and nail to keep their marketing tactics from the public, but today a judge ordered those records unsealed:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, lost a legal battle Wednesday to keep records and testimony about its bestselling and widely abused painkiller secret.

A judge in Pike County, Kentucky, a region hard-hit by prescription painkiller abuse, granted a motion by a news outlet to unseal records from a lawsuit by the state accusing the company of fraud, conspiracy and negligence in the development and marketing of the drug.

Purdue settled that suit in December for $24 million without any admission of wrongdoing.

Circuit Judge Steven Combs granted the request of Boston Globe-affiliated investigative health news outlet STAT to unseal the documents, writing: “The Court sees no higher value than the public (via the media) having access to these discovery materials so that the public can see the facts for themselves.”

The judge said the order would not take effect for 32 days, allowing Purdue time to appeal.

Let’s be here:  Purdue has been aware of its potential for abuse and its addictive properties for a very long time, and it is clear that they used these to increase sales.

They are no different from the corner drug pusher, and seeing their marketing exposed to the light of day, with the resulting social pressure and prosecutions, would please me no end.

Ted Cruz Makes Geraldo Rivera Make Sense

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Rivera has observed that Ted Cruz’ attack on “New York Values” is actually an anti-Semitic code:

Geraldo Rivera appeared on Fox & Friends this morning to defend his statement on The O’Reilly Factor Thursday night that Ted Cruz is an anti-Semite, and that his words to the voters of Iowa proved him to be such.

 Steve Doocy began by asking, plainly, “Geraldo, why do you think Ted Cruz is antisemitic?”
“First of all, Steve, good morning,” Rivera replied. “In terms of this Ted Cruz situation and this ‘New York values’ situation, when you say ‘New York, money, and media,’ what do you need really before you get to the caricature — the dog-whistle — the code-word, of what this man is trying to say?”

 “What do you need? A cartoon of someone with a big nose from another era?” he asked. “This was designed to bring to the heartland the negative impression of greedy New Yorkers trying to take money out of people’s pockets.”

 “The association is indelible, and undeniable, and you can’t explain it [away],” Rivera continued. “There are a million ways to put down socialism and liberalism and excessive government spending and the welfare state — a million ways without suggesting that you’re talking about a particular group of people.”

 When pressed about Cruz’s later appearances in Jewish community centers, River replied that “what you say in the matzah ball factory is different from what you say in Iowa.”

Of course, I noted this 4 months ago, but Geraldo is kind of slow.

Your Panama Papers Update

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Bernie Sanders Predicted this in 2011


There appears to be a dearth of US money launderers reported

Rather unsurprisingly, Bernie Sanders is noting his opposition, and Hillary Clinton’s support for the trade deal in his campaign:

Responding to the 11.5 million documents leaked this week showing how a Panama law firm helped some of the world’s wealthiest people establish offshore tax havens on the Central American country — the so-called Panama Papers — Bernie Sanders on Tuesday vowed to end the Panama Free Trade Agreement, tying Hillary Clinton to the same policies that he claimed fostered the practice.

 “The Panama Free Trade Agreement put a stamp of approval on Panama, a world leader when it comes to allowing the wealthy and the powerful to avoid taxes,” the Vermont senator said in a statement released through his campaign, adding that he has been opposed to it “from day one.”

 Vowing to use his authority as president to “terminate the Panama Free Trade Agreement within six months,” Sanders said his administration would “conduct an immediate investigation into U.S. banks, corporations and wealthy individuals who have been stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.”

 “If any of them have violated U.S. law, my administration will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.

 Sanders also said that he had correctly predicted that the passage of the trade deal “would make it easier, not harder, for the wealthy and large corporations to evade taxes by sheltering billions of dollars offshore.”

 “I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said, before pivoting to Clinton. “My opponent, on the other hand, opposed this trade agreement when she was running against Barack Obama for president in 2008. But when it really mattered she quickly reversed course and helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster.”

It is not an unreasonable indictment of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s record on so called free trade agreements.

In what might be a perfect example of Chutzpah, the state of Wyoming, a shell corporation factory that has one corporation for every 4½ residents, has initiated an investigation of a Wyoming based law firm at the center of the scandal:

The Wyoming arm of the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers global scandal is under investigation by Wyoming state officials for failing to maintain required statutory information about companies registering there, Secretary of State Ed Murray said Wednesday.

 Upon learning of the Panama Papers, a massive leak of secret offshore company data reported on by McClatchy and more than 100 other media partners around the globe, Wyoming initiated an audit of 24 companies registered in the state by the law firm Mossack Fonseca and its partners, he said.

 “The audit concluded around noon on Monday, April 4th, and determined that M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC failed to maintain the required statutory information for performing the duties of a registered agent under Wyoming law,” Murray said in a statement.

 The state followed immediately with administrative action, demanding that required information be provided.

 “Subsequently, M.F. Corporate Services did provide the information,” the secretary of state’s office said, adding that Murray also briefed law enforcement that day. “This investigation of this matter is ongoing.”

This is near toxic levels of hypocrisy.

In an interesting twist of fate, Ken Silverstien, then a reporter at The Intercept was all over the story of Mossack Fonseca 14 months ago, though his employer refused to publish it, so he published on Vice.com.

And then Pierre Omidyar, the publisher of The Intercept, got in his face.

.@MarkAmesExiled FYI @pierre wouldn’t pub story but demanded my fee from VICE. Oh well, at least I’m not in Moscow https://t.co/pZT7qr14yt

— Ken Silverstein (@KenSilverstein1) April 4, 2016

I wonder if perhaps the eBay founder (Omidyar) might have some “interesting” corporate structures for his billions.

The reporting this far seems to be what Yves Smith calls, “The Intercept model, not [the] Wikileaks model“.  See also Craig Murray’s critique of the coverage thus far.

Almost all the reporting thus far, with the exception of Icelands now former PM, has been directed primarily at regimes hostile to the west, with most of the coverage being screaming about Vladimir Putin.

Also note that Suddeutsche Zeitung brought in International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
Not also the picture in the tweet.

The selective nature of releases to this point also raises the issue that those in the files but not yet exposed may be likely targets for blackmail: (Moon of Alabama)

A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted “leak” of such data to several NATO supporting news organization and a US government financed “Non Government Organization” is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor.

Both Murray and MoA are implying that the US/NATO state security apparatus are somehow involved in the release of this data.

I have not made up my mind, but if we don’t see some prominent western names in the releases in the next few weeks, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson doesn’t count, then I will be much more inclined to take their view.

Pass the Popcorn

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It appears that someone has hacked into the files of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, and found a treasure trove of evidence of international corruption:

A massive leak of documents has blown open a window on the vast, murky world of shell companies, providing an extraordinary look at how the wealthy and powerful conceal their money.

Twelve current and former world leaders maintain offshore shell companies. Close friends of Russian leader Vladimir Putin have funneled as much as $2 billion through banks and offshore companies.

Those exposed in the leak include the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, an alleged bagman for Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close pal of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and companies linked to the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Add to those the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, enough Middle Eastern royalty to fill a palace, honchos in the troubled body known as FIFA that controls international soccer and 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s 500 richest people.

Also mentioned are 61 relatives and associates of current country leaders, and another 128 current or former politicians and public officials.

The documents within the leak also expose how secretive offshore companies at times subvert U.S. foreign policy and mock U.S. regulators. When drug traffickers, money launderers or other crooks control companies, they undermine national security, and the trail of dark money flowing through them strips national treasuries everywhere of tax revenues.

………


The firm is one of the world’s top five creators of shell companies, which can have legitimate business uses, but can also be used to dodge taxes and launder money.

More than 11.5 million emails, financial spreadsheets, client records, passports and corporate registries were obtained in the leak, which was delivered to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich, Germany. In turn, the newspaper shared the data with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

It would be nice if we actually saw some action by they criminal and tax authorities in response to the leaks, but I doubt it.

I Did Not Expect This from The Boston Globe

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It’s not the editorial board, but they just published an OP/ED calling out our incoherent and contradictory and ineffective policy in Syria:

Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.

This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending.

Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS — so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?”

This does not fit with Washington’s narrative. As a result, much of the American press is reporting the opposite of what is actually happening. Many news reports suggest that Aleppo has been a “liberated zone” for three years but is now being pulled back into misery.

………

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.

………

Politicians may be forgiven for distorting their past actions. Governments may also be excused for promoting whatever narrative they believe best suits them. Journalism, however, is supposed to remain apart from the power elite and its inbred mendacity. In this crisis it has failed miserably.

Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.

This is the sort of thing I would expect to see in the Guardian or the BBC, not in a major US paper with a closet full of Pulitzers.

Our incoherent policies, and our “allies” who work for terrorists are generally terra incognita for our mainstream media.

Remember When I Wrote About a College President Who Described Shooting His Student and Drowning Them Like Bunnies?

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Basically, it was his plan to game the college ratings.

Well, as I mentioned in the above link, the President of Mount St. Marys University used these analogies for his plan to artificially boost the retention numbers throwing out higher risk students in the first 3 weeks of class, when they don’t count:

You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.

It made the national news, and the college, and its President, former bankster Simon Newman, were held up for condemnation.

Unsurprisingly, President Newman is handling this like the guardian of capitalism that he is: killing he messenger:

When student reporters at Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Catholic institution in Maryland, published an article in January that quoted the university’s president likening struggling freshmen to bunnies that should be drowned, they knew it might get a big reaction.

 It finally came this week, it appears — in the form of a pink slip for the faculty adviser of the campus newspaper.

 The university informed the adviser, Ed Egan, that he had been disloyal and was now fired, a move seen by many on the campus in Emmitsburg as a retaliatory strike.

 The decision, along with other recent punishments of faculty members at Mount St. Mary’s, has triggered outrage well beyond its rural campus in northern Maryland, earning condemnation from thousands of academics across the country as well as national monitors of academic and journalistic freedom.

 The article, by Rebecca Schisler and Ryan Golden, was published in The Mountain Echo under Mr. Egan’s tutelage on Jan. 19 and presented two explosive pieces of news.

 ………

 The report said that the administration was planning to cull struggling freshmen from the institution as part of an effort to improve retention numbers — a big factor in rankings published in outlets like U.S. News & World Report — and that the university’s president, Simon Newman, had used disturbing language to sell the idea to a skeptical professor last fall.

 “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t,” Mr. Newman is quoted as saying. “You just have to drown the bunnies.”

 He added, “Put a Glock to their heads.”

 ………

 “Ed, as the faculty adviser, could really frame the battlefield, if you will, around what the issue was,” Mr. Coyne said. “We had a president in a private conversation with a colleague says the bad-metaphor-hall-of-fame statement, and that was the story. And the position behind it about a retention program that was never enacted, was suddenly lost in the conversation.”

 Mr. Egan and both student reporters, who said they had spent weeks investigating their article, rejected Mr. Coyne’s depiction of editorial manipulation. (The private conversation, the students reported, was relayed by two professors who were there.)

 “There was no pressure at all,” Ms. Schisler, a junior, said. “We are a student-run paper. All of the articles are the ideas of students, and all of them are written by students.”

 Mr. Golden, a senior who is also The Echo’s managing editor, said the newspaper’s staff members had been blindsided by the administration’s move to fire Mr. Egan, who, he said, had been a staunch advocate of their work.

 “We were really appalled by it,” Mr. Golden said. “He’s really a good mentor for a lot of students at this school. He absolutely encouraged us to pursue journalistic integrity, absolutely encouraged us to be ethical, to be fair, to be thorough, to be objective and to do the best work that we could.”

 Mr. Newman, a former private equity chief executive, was hired last spring to help raise the college’s national profile and increase its endowment. Some faculty members have since pushed back against what they see as his sharp-elbowed business approach.

 Mr. Egan’s dismissal was the third case in less than a week of faculty members’ facing censure from Mr. Newman’s administration. The cases were being portrayed by some professors and alumni as a concerted effort to purge the faculty of those with dissenting views.

There have been two other people fired, including a tenured faculty member, and get a load this bit from his dismissal letter:

“As an employee of Mount St. Mary’s University, you owe a duty of loyalty to this university and to act in a manner consistent with the duty,” read the letter addressed to Dr. Naberhaus and signed by Mr. Newman. “However, your recent actions, in my opinion and that of others, have violated that duty and clearly justify your termination.”

Between potential lawsuits, bad PR, and what I am sure is quite a few enraged alumni, Egan is a 2nd generation alumnus, it does appear that I was being prophetic, and not just sarcastic, when I suggested that when Simon Newman wanted to run the University like a business, it meant, “Burning it down for insurance money.”

This is what happens when you hire finance types to do real jobs, BTW.

The Overton Window has Shifted

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The editorial board of the New York Times has come out in favor of a financial transaction tax.

It does not get any more establishment than that:

A financial transaction tax — a per-trade charge on the buying and selling of stocks, bonds and derivatives — is an idea whose time has finally come. It has begun percolating in the Democratic presidential campaign, with all three candidates offering proposals.

 Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley have proposed a worthy but narrow tax on certain high-frequency trades, which generate windfall profits on small and fleeting differences in prices at the expense of ordinary investors and market stability. Bernie Sanders supports a hefty tax on a broader range of transactions to raise revenue from Wall Street, also a worthy goal, but his proposal would be likely to squeeze investors too hard. Republicans have not engaged the debate, except to say no to taxes no matter what.

 A well-designed financial transaction tax — one that applies a tiny tax rate to an array of transactions and is split between buyers and sellers — would be a progressive way to raise substantial revenue without damaging the markets. A new study by researchers at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has found that a 0.1 percent tax rate could bring in $66 billion a year, with 40 percent coming from the top 1 percent of income earners and 75 percent from the top 20 percent. As the rate rises, however, traders would most likely curtail their activity. The tax could bring in $76 billion a year if it was set at 0.3 percent, but above that rate, trading would probably decrease and the total revenue raised would start to fall.

 The burden of this tax would be concentrated at the top, because that’s where the ownership of financial assets is concentrated. However, individuals who buy and hold investments, including those who invest in index funds that trade infrequently, would be largely unaffected. Pension funds that devote a portion of their portfolios to speculative trading, often through hedge funds, would be hit, but some pension funds have already stopped using hedge funds because the returns do not justify the costs. A financial transaction tax that encouraged other pension funds to follow suit could actually benefit pension participants in the long run.

 Such a tax would also bring the United States more in line with other countries. There are already financial transaction taxes in Britain, Switzerland and South Korea as well as in Hong Kong and other developed markets and emerging nations, generally at rates of 0.1 percent to 0.5 percent on stock transfers. In addition, 10 countries in the European Union, including Germany and France, have agreed to apply a common financial transaction tax starting in 2017, though relentless lobbying by investment banks and hedge funds threatens to delay and even derail the effort.

There are a number of arguments against this.

The strongest one is that it will collect less revenue than expected, because it would disincentivize speculation.

As if that were a bad thing.

And Police Wonder Why Some People Call Them “Pigs”

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The sense of self-entitled hostility directed toward the public for whom they nominally work is clear when they pull this sort of sh%$:

In April 2015, the New York City television station NY1 filed a open-records request for “unedited video files from the NYPD’s body camera program” captured during five specific weeks in 2014 and 2015. Four months later, the New York City Police Department agreed to review and release the footage—but only after NY1 paid a $36,000 “copying fee.” NY1 appealed the N.Y.P.D.’s decision and, in a letter dated September 16 of last year, was once again denied by the N.Y.P.D.’s deputy commissioner of legal matters.

As the New York Post reported yesterday, the details of the N.Y.P.D.’s response, including the exorbitant fee (charged by a public agency with a budget of $4.8 billion*), were revealed in a lawsuit NY1 filed against the N.Y.P.D. in the Supreme Court of New York County on Wednesday. In it, the channel accuses the department of violating New York State’s Freedom of Information Law by inflating the cost of producing the requested body camera footage—a process that, according to the N.Y.P.D., involves copying video segments that could be withheld under certain privacy and security exemptions.

The fee does indeed come from a curious calculation of labor costs. In a letter to NY1 explaining the administrative denial of the channel’s appeal, a police official explained:

The [record access officer]’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the [body camera footage] was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and that in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the [body camera footage], for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the cost of compensating a police officer is $120.00 per hour. Multiplying $120.00 by 304 hours equals $36,480, which closely approximates the amount estimated by the [records access officer].

It’s unclear where exactly these figures came from. A police officer is the third-lowest rank within the N.Y.P.D.’s rank structure; individuals holding that title make nowhere near $120 per hour, which is the equivalent of $249,600 per year (assuming a 40-hour workweek).

This is, of course, complete bullsh%$.

A sledge hammer needs to be taken wall that the police place between themselves and the general public.

It breeds contempt, and corruption, and abuse.

Our NATO “Ally”

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Journalists in Turkey uncovered arms shipments from the Turkish Military to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever.

Of course, the response of Ankara was to charge those journalists with espionage and treason:

A court in Istanbul has charged two journalists from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper with spying after they alleged Turkey’s secret services had sent arms to Islamist rebels in Syria.

Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief, and Erdem Gul, the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, are accused of spying and “divulging state secrets”, Turkish media reported. Both men were placed in pre-trial detention.

According to Cumhuriyet, Turkish security forces in January 2014 intercepted a convoy of trucks near the Syrian border and discovered boxes of what the daily described as weapons and ammunition to be sent to rebels fighting against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

It linked the seized trucks to the Turkish national intelligence organisation (MIT).

The revelations, published in May, caused a political storm in Turkey, and enraged president Recep Tayyip Erdogan who vowed Dundar would pay a “heavy price”.

He personally filed a criminal complaint against Dundar, 54, demanding he serve multiple life sentences.

Turkey has vehemently denied aiding Islamist rebels in Syria, such as the Islamic State group, although it wants to see Assad toppled.

“Don’t worry, this ruling is nothing but a badge of honour to us,” Dundar told reporters and civil society representatives at the court before he was taken into custody.

Understand, the very fact that they were charged with, “divulging state secrets” means constitutes an admission on the part of the Turks that they did sent arms to ISIS.

This is not a surprise.

Erdogan is looking to establish an Islamic state in Turkey, so it’s no surprise that he is supporting the Islamic state in Syria.

It does put that shoot-down of the Russian in perspective, though.

Entitled Idiots Who Should Not Have Your Money

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Nobody likes to be questioned.

But lately, some of Silicon Valley’s big tech investors seem to be particularly upset that journalists are questioning some of the valley’s hottest startups.

There’s a fundamental difference in point of view here. The funders see first-hand how hard it is to build something and sympathize with the struggle. The journalists are supposed to be as objective and careful as possible and report what they find — even if some people don’t like it.

The latest example is Theranos, whose science was called into question by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was quick to defend her company, as you’d expect from a CEO.

But some VCs also seemed genuinely upset. Not at the substance of the allegations, but for not giving founders the benefit of the doubt when it comes to building something.

………

Startup founders have a really hard job. They are trying to do something new and drive society forward. The tech press doesn’t know all the facts so you should give them a break.

The first sentence is indisputably true — it’s hard (and lonesome) to found a tech startup.

………

The second sentence is where things get sticky.

A lot of tech founders are trying to do something new and drive society forward. But some of them are not.

………

The third sentence is where they completely miss the point.

Journalists don’t set out to write takedowns of companies. But when a journalist begins investigating a company and finds something is amiss, and the story is well vetted and fairly reported, the venture community should welcome that reporting.

I’m beginning to think that of all the problems facing the business culture of the United States , it is the Ayn Rand inspired corrosive narcissism which is worst of all.

If you look at Theranos, for example, the facts are fairly clear.

The company has misrepresented the scope of its technology, and there have been repeated reports that the at least some of the tests are significantly less accurate.

This technology may, or may not, be successful at a later date, but it is clear that its valuation, one which makes its CEO a billionaire is Silicon Valley “Unicorn” bullsh%$.