Category: Justice

That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?

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When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.

But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.

About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.

“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.

But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.

Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.

………

The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.

And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.

Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.

This really is kind of mind boggling.

I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.

Well, I Guess Giving Rides to Blind Folks is Restrictive Government Regulations as Well

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Uber is at it again.

This time, they are refusing to give rides to people with service animals:

A federal judge in San Francisco has allowed a civil lawsuit filed against Uber by an advocacy group for the blind to proceed.

The case was initially filed in September 2014 by the National Federation of the Blind of California and one individual plaintiff, who alleged that the quasi-taxi company is in violation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), along with other state disabilities laws.

Uber had initially filed to have the case dismissed, but the judge’s ruling last Friday means the case will proceed.

According to the initial civil complaint, UberX drivers routinely refused to serve blind riders who travel with service animals:

Further, UberX drivers across the United States are likewise refusing to transport blind individuals, including identified UberX drivers who repeatedly denied rides to one blind woman on twelve separate occasions, charged blind riders cancellation fees, and abandoned blind travelers in extreme weather, all because of guide dogs.

In total, Plaintiffs are aware of more than thirty instances where drivers of UberX vehicles refused to transport blind individuals with service animals. UberX drivers that refused to transport these blind individuals did so after they initially agreed to transport the riders. The UberX drivers denied the requested transportation service after the drivers had arrived and discovered that the riders used service animals.

In addition, some UberX drivers seriously mishandle guide dogs or harass blind customers with guide dogs even when they do not outright deny the provision of taxi service. For example, Leena Dawes is blind and uses a guide dog. An UberX driver forced Ms. Dawes’ guide dog into the closed trunk of the UberX sedan before transporting Ms. Dawes. When Ms. Dawes realized where the driver had placed her dog, she pleaded with the driver to pull over so that she could retrieve her dog from the trunk, but the driver refused her request. Other blind customers with guide dogs have been yelled at by Uber drivers who are hostile toward their guide dogs.

In its motion to dismiss, Uber argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that as a private company, it is not bound by the provisions of the ADA—an argument that United States Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Cousins found did not hold water.

If they think that Title III of the ADA (public accommodations and commercial facilities) doesn’t apply to them, they are desperately trying to avoid treating their employees as employees, why should they give a damn about things like Sarbanes-Oxley?

Investing with Objectivist psychopaths who think they are supermen who are above the laws of mere mortals who does not appear to me to be a sensible thing.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens………

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A private bill collector and police conspired to use the threat of immediate arrest to extort cash from poor defendants:

Minutes after a court sentenced Adel Edwards to pay a $500 fine for burning leaves in his yard without a permit, the private probation company tasked with supervising his monthly payments told him he actually owed more than $1,000 and demanded $250 up front. Because Edwards couldn’t pay the full amount on the spot, the company had him thrown in jail for several days until a friend came up with the money, according to a new federal lawsuit.

The suit, filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights, charges that Red Hills Community Probation conspired with local police in two small Georgia towns to jail poor people without any court approval or legal authority, effectively holding them for ransom.

The plaintiffs, who live in Bainbridge and Pelham, GA, were ordered by the court to pay exorbitant fees for misdemeanor offenses. Edwards pleaded guilty to burning leaves, while others were told they needed to pay hundreds of dollars for speeding, failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and driving with a suspended registration.

At this point, these stories are reminiscent of reports coming out of Ferguson and the surrounding area, where municipalities exploit a murky labyrinth of court fees and traffic tickets to make money off poor defendants. But private probation companies like Red Hills, which are used by more than 1,000 court systems in ten states, further feed on these moneymaking schemes by tacking on their own share of fees. In Pelham and Bainbridge, the suit alleges, the probation firm went even further, committing false imprisonment and fraud, among other charges.

Like Edwards, the other plaintiffs met with Red Hills probation officers, who told each of them they could not leave the courthouse until they paid a certain amount of money that same day. Even though they weren’t legally required to pay the company the same day as their sentencing, the lawsuit states that police officers were stationed at the doors to keep them from leaving. One woman says she was detained in the courthouse while her fiance pawned her engagement ring to come up with the funds the company demanded.

Why am I not surprised that this is going on in what was once a part of the Confederacy?

Silly black folks, justice is for whites.

New Jersey Lawmaker Proposes Upping Penalties for Swatting ……… Is Promptly Swatted

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

No, I am not kidding here.

It just happened to State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty:

A New Jersey lawmaker who is pushing legislation to combat the trend of swatting — a prank in which anonymous callers phone-in false emergency reports to provoke a large police response — was a victim of the practice himself this weekend.

 State Assemblyman Paul Moriarty (D-Gloucester) said he was watching the Masters golf tournament and doing his taxes at home on Saturday afternoon in Washington Township when he got a call from the police.

 “The person on the phone says they were calling from police dispatch and wanted to know if everything is OK at my house,” Moriarty said. “I said ‘Yeah, why? They said ‘we have a report of a shooting at your home.'”

 The dispatcher then asked Moriarty to describe what he was wearing and step outside.

 “I look out my front door. There’s six cop cars. They have the street closed off. They have helmets, flak jackets and rifles,” Moriarty said. “I walk out and walk towards them. They motion me to keep walking towards them. The minute I walked out the door, I was still on the phone with the dispatch person, I said ‘I think I’ve just been swatted.’ It just then occurred to me what happened.”

 ………

 Swatting has its roots in online video game culture. Callers anonymously phone in emergencies to authorities to send them to an unsuspecting gamer’s house — often while the gamer is streaming video of himself playing online.

………

 Moriarty’s bill (A3877), introduced in November, would increase penalties for “false public alarm,” upgrading the crime from third degree to second degree, punishable by five to ten year in prison and a fine of up to $150,000.

 “I’m thinking someone read about the bill and some sick, evil person thought it would be funny to send the police to my house on one of these false reports,” Moriarty said.

 Moriarty is the former mayor of Washington Township and said he knew most of the police at the scene, including the chief. It turned out the department had dealt with at least one similar call in the previous 24 hours, Moriarty said.

 “If this is a practical joke, it’s not funny because someone is going to get seriously hurt or perhaps killed in one of these engagements that can go very, very wrong,” Moriarty said. “It’s never fun to walk out your front door and have shotguns aimed at your house.”

 Moriarty said it could have gone a lot worse because while doing his taxes he “wasn’t in a good mood to begin with.”

 “If the phone wasn’t ringing next to me, I might not have answered it. … And had I not, they probably would have beat down the front door,” he said.

I will note that what Moriarty has proposed is a half measure.

The real problem here is that local law enforcement has become increasingly militarized, and so they tend to respond to this excessively.

Additionally, if “false alarm” gets upgraded, you can be sure that prosecutors will go Aaron Swartz on defendants with this law, in an attempt to extort guilty pleas.

Any time you ad a tool like this to a DA’s arsenal, you can be sure that it will be abused in ways that were never intended.

Things are Getting Very Interesting in New York State Politics

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As you may recall, the Speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon “Shelly” Silver was indicted for corruption, and it looks like the prosecutors have a pretty good case. (See here)

Basically, Sheldon Silver has been one of the “3 Guys in a Room,” (Governor, the State Assembly speaker and the State Senate majority leader) who have made pretty much all the decisions in Albany for a very long time, over 20 years, and it is pretty clear that he knows where the bodies are buried.

What’s more, it appears that the prosecutor, US Attorney Preet Bharara, is upping the pressure, specifically by indicting his son-in-law for financial fraud:

A son-in-law of the former State Assembly speaker was arrested on Monday and accused of defrauding investors out of $7 million, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court.

The defendant, Marcello Trebitsch, 37, of Brooklyn, told investors that he would use their money to trade in securities through his investment fund, and promised them double-digit returns with very low risk, according to a statement from the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Mr. Trebitsch’s wife, Michelle Trebitsch, is the daughter of Assemblyman Sheldon Silver, the former speaker who has been indicted on corruption charges.

Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Mr. Trebitsch, and he appeared before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. He was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud.

The complaint said that Ms. Trebitsch, a certified public accountant, was a co-owner and managing partner of the investment fund, Allese Capital. She has not been charged.

They don’t need to charge her. (Yet)

The US Attorney can seize Silver’s daughter’s family assets under RICO, and that would have the effect of impoverishing his daughter and his grandchildren.

Also note that Michelle Trebitsch was not just the “Co-Owner” of the firm, she is a CPA, and she did the books, so you can be sure that Shelly is under a lot of pressure to roll over right now.

If Silver rolls on someone to protect himself, his daughter, and his grandchildren, it has to be someone big, i.e. one of the two other “Gusy in a room”, the Senate Majority Leader or the Governor.

We are now getting reports that evidence against Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is being presented to a federal grand jury.

What’s more, it appears that Skelos’ son is being targeted as well.

So, it appears that the Feds are trying to turn Skelos into a cooperating witness as well.

This would imply that they are after Cuomo as well, and that he may be their ultimate goal.

This is what makes the reports that Andrew Cuomo made a tidy $180 for every copy of his memoir that was sold, interesting:

In the first week after its release in October, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s memoir, “All Things Possible,” sold almost impossibly poorly. According to Nielsen Bookscan, fewer than 1,000 people picked up a copy that week. And as of last month, the grand total of all sales was at 3,008. (Plus 13 audiobooks.)

But before you go complaining that being a writer is unrewarding work, know that Cuomo’s time and effort was worth it — financially, at least.

According to his tax release, made public on Wednesday, Cuomo reported earning $377,000 in income on the book in 2014. That’s apparently on top of the $188,333 he got as an advance that was reported in his 2013 filing, meaning that Cuomo seems to have made north of $565,000 for his book though last month.

Or: Nearly $188 per hardcover book.

While I have no doubt that reporter Philip Bump did his homework on the above story, I have a feeling that someone pointed him in the general direction.

I strongly suspect that whoever it was, they had a close relationship to US Attorney Preet Bharara.

If Cuomo gets indicted, it would amuse me no end.

FCC Publishes Net Neutrality Rules, Lawsuit Filed Immediately

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This is not a surprise.

The two most common types of broadband providers in the United States, telcos and cable companies, have predicated their business models on monopoly power and the extraction of rents.

Net neutrality closes off a potential sources of rent, hence the lawsuit:

While the Federal Communications Commission passed its net neutrality rules on February 26, they weren’t published in the Federal Register until today.

The publication means a couple of things: the rules go into effect 60 days from today, and parties that oppose the rules have 10 days to file lawsuits against the FCC. Almost immediately after publication, a trade group representing ISPs called USTelecom filed suit in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

USTelecom’s petition said the FCC’s ruling is “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion” and “violates federal law, including, but not limited to, the Constitution, the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, and FCC regulations promulgated thereunder.”

You may recall that this same group sued the FCC over the net neutrality rules last month. That was done just in case the 10-day deadline could be applied after the rules were posted to the FCC’s website, which happened before publication to the Federal Register. In either case, the initial challenge is mostly a procedural matter; detailed briefs laying out a legal argument against the FCC’s rules will probably come this summer.

Thankfully, the DC Court of Appeals, (technically the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit), the most likely venue for a suit, has become significantly less right wing with recent judicial appointments.

I expect this to end up at the Supreme Court though.

That Sound You Hear is the Revolving Door Spinning Fast Enough to Generate a Sonic Boom

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US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he’s going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis’ courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

………

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump’s Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court’s heavy load and was Ward’s permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John “Johnny” Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis’ son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.

US Senator from New Jersey Indicted ……… Why am I not Surprised?

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This indictment has been telegraphed for months, but the balloon has finally gone up, and New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez has been indicted on corruption charges:

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey was indicted on bribery charges on Wednesday in what prosecutors said was a scheme to trade political favors for luxury vacations, golf outings, campaign donations and expensive flights.

The indictment, the first federal bribery charges against a sitting senator in a generation, puts Mr. Menendez’s political future in jeopardy. He faces a possible sentence of 15 years in prison for each of the eight bribery counts.

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, angrily denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight the charges. “This is not how my career is going to end,” he said at a news conference in Newark, where supporters cheered him. “Today contradicts my public service career and my entire life.”

The federal investigation into Mr. Menendez, 61, was well known, and charges had been expected. But the accusations in the 68-page indictment are much broader and more severe than had been publicly known. The senator was also charged with conspiracy and making false statements.

The charges revolve around Mr. Menendez’s relationship with Dr. Salomon E. Melgen, a wealthy Florida eye surgeon and political benefactor. Dr. Melgen resisted entreaties by the Justice Department to testify against Mr. Menendez and was ultimately charged alongside him.

Prosecutors described Mr. Menendez’s offices on Capitol Hill as a hub of corrupt dealings, a place where the senator used his chief of staff to solicit gifts from Dr. Melgen, find out what he wanted in return and make sure it got done.

The indictment also reveals how the rise of super PACs, unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and subsequent legal changes, have opened a new channel for the wealthy to trade campaign cash for official favors.

Through his company, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants, Mr. Melgen directed $700,000 in corporate contributions to Majority PAC, a super PAC intended to help Democrats retain control of the Senate. Mr. Melgen instructed the group to use those contributions to aid Mr. Menendez’s 2012 re-election campaign.

………

Mr. Menendez is the first senator to face federal bribery charges since another New Jersey Democrat, Harrison A. Williams Jr., was indicted in 1980 as part of the federal corruption investigation known as Abscam. In 2002, an ethics scandal deterred Senator Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, from a re-election bid.

Honestly, if Menendez leaves the Senate, I will shed no tears.

His thing is primarily foreign policy, he is the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and he is almost as hawkish as McCain and Graham, which makes him a raving lunatic.

Remember the Attempted Coup in Turkey? Not So Much…

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In 2003, then Prime Minister, now President, of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan had over 200 military officers arrested on the charge that they were plotting a coup.

Every single one of them have now been acquitted:

A Turkish court acquitted all 236 military officers in a retrial over an alleged 2003 plot to unseat then-prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, after the prosecutor said key evidence was inadmissible, a defense lawyer told Reuters.

In 2012 a court sentenced the officers to jail over the “Sledgehammer” conspiracy dating back to 2003, a year after now-President Erdogan’s AK Party came to power.

However, the constitutional court subsequently ruled that the mishandling of evidence central to the prosecution case — computer files containing alleged conspiratorial documents — had violated the defendants’ rights, and a retrial began in November last year.

“At the end of the retrial, the judges ruled to annul the previous court decision in favor of acquittal for all defendants,” lawyer Celal Ulgen told Reuters.

The alleged plot was said to include plans to bomb mosques and trigger a conflict with Greece by shooting down one of Turkey’s own warplanes, paving the way for a military takeover.

Turkish officials suggested evidence in the case had been manipulated by supporters of an Islamic cleric who had been using his influence in the police and judiciary to help Erdogan break the army’s power.

When the court is saying that the evidence is “Mishandled”, I think that this is a polite way of saying that prosecutors made sh%$ up.

Erdogan certainly had reason to be concerned in 2003, there is a long history of coups in Turkey, but these charges appear to be trumped up.

Seriously, bombing mosques and shooting down their own airplanes?

Now that Erdogan appears to be taking an increasingly anti-democratic stance toward governance, it is significant that the court still acquitted these officers.

The power of the army is still broken, which is a good thing, but Turkey does seem to be headed down a troubling path.

Godwin’s Law* Notwithstanding, How can this Not Evoke Nazi Germany

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It turns out that for a number of years, the Nashville District Attorney’s office has been demanding sterilizations as a part of a plea bargain:

The district attorney in Nashville, Tennessee, recently ordered prosecutors to stop making sterilization part of a plea bargain. “The bottom line is the government can’t be ordering a forced sterilization,” Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk told the Associated Press in a story published Saturday.

Funk said a better alternative is to order people to stay away from children.

The most recent example of a court-ordered sterilization requirement in Tennessee came in the case of Jasmine Randers, 36, who suffers from depression and paranoia. The Nashville Tennessean reported Randers’ 4-day-old daughter died during a bus trip to Nashville from West Memphis, Arkansas, where she gave birth at Crittenden Regional Hospital. At the time, Randers was on the lam from a treatment center in Minnesota, one of 20 hospitalizations for her mental illness, the Tennessean reported earlier this month.

Though no cause of death was established, Randers was charged with aggravated child neglect. She had boarded the bus without any bottles of formula because they were too heavy to carry, the Tennessean said.

Assistant Public Defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe told the Tennessean that Assistant District Attorney Brian Holmgren would not even discuss a plea deal unless Randers agreed to have her tubes tied. Harcombe went over his head to Funk.

“I have let my office know that that is not an appropriate condition of a plea,” Funk said. “It is now policy that sterilization will never be a condition of deal-making in the district attorney’s office.”

Randers currently is committed to a mental health facility in western Tennessee.

David LaBahn, president of the national organization the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said his organization urges prosecutors to look for alternatives to prison, and in child abuse cases, birth control often is a condition for probation.

But the concept of forced sterilization evokes a time in U.S. history when the mentally ill often were subjected to the procedure.

“The history of sterilization in this country is that it is applied to the most despised people — criminals and the people we’re most afraid of, the mentally ill — and the one thing that these two groups usually share is that they are the most poor. That is what we’ve done in the past, and that’s a good reason not to do it now,” Georgia State University law Professor Paul Lombardo told the AP.

The AP cited cases in which sterilization was made a condition for eliminating or reducing prison time in West Virginia and Virginia. In California, Gov. Jerry Brown last year signed legislation preventing state prisons from forcing female inmates to undergo the procedure after an audit found some of the 150 sterilizations performed were done without inmate consent.

As is shown from the picture in this article, Ms. Randers is black.

Anyone want to guess what proportion of the other defendants so coerced were black?

This is so wrong on so many levels.

H/t Atrios.

*Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches One.”

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen!

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It appears that the acting as the private security firm for TransCanada:

Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members.

 The visitors are federal agents.

 Opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands.

 A lawyer working with the protesters says he’s personally aware of a dozen people having been contacted in the northwestern U.S. and says the actual number is probably higher.

 Larry Hildes says it’s been happening the last few months in Washington State, Oregon and Idaho. He says one person got a visit at work, after having already refused to answer questions.

 “They appear to be interested in actions around the tarsands and the Keystone XL pipeline,” Hildes said in an interview.

 “It’s always the same line: ‘We’re not doing criminal investigations, you’re not accused of any crime. But we’re trying to learn more about the movement.“’

 He’s advised activists not to talk — and they mostly haven’t. That lack of communication has made it a little complicated to figure out what, exactly, the FBI is looking for.

 The bureau hasn’t offered too many clues.

 ………

 Is anti-oilsands activity an actual focus of the FBI investigation, or is it merely incidental? The bureau won’t say.

 What it will say is that it only investigates potential crimes, not political movements.

 “The FBI has the authority to conduct an investigation when it has reasonable grounds to believe that an individual has engaged in criminal activity or is planning to do so,” said FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich.

 “This authority is based on the illegal activity, not on the individual’s political views.”

 But activists say oil sands opposition appears to be the common thread among people being contacted. Police have been in touch with people from different groups, who in some cases don’t agree on much, but one thing they share is mutual participation in the so-called megaload protests.

Why is the FBI acting as TransCanada’s Pinkertons?

At what level is this being authorized?

How the Creators of Bitcoin Blew It, Part LXIX

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The good folks come up with yet another problem with Bitcoin, this one deriving from a complete lack of understanding of hundreds of jurisprudence.

This could mean that if a Bitcoin holder has a claim against them, and makes a purchase or a money transfer with Bitcoin, whoever received the funds may be legally required to return the money, even if the person is many transfers down the chain of custody:

At cryptocurrency and fintech conferences, FT Alphaville often hears Bitcoin enthusiasts make the assertion that Bitcoin is superior to fiat currency because it eliminates debt from the monetary system.

But this, of course, is a fallacy.

Bitcoin may have the potential to create a fully-funded reserve system, but it certainly doesn’t eliminate debt from any system.

At best, Bitcoin’s public ledger records a transfer of digital access rights in the eyes of the clearing network. It does not, however, record or see the terms and conditions of that transfer.

Indeed, as far as the clearing network is concerned all it knows is that a transfer has occurred. Party A’s wallet has been debited while party B’s wallet has been credited.

This is something akin to witnessing a physical coin being passed from one hand to the other. Yet what the process doesn’t do is log the conditionality of the transfer — which is still the subject of private agreement and contract law.

……… [snipped a Soprano’s based loan sharking example]

As far as contract law is concerned, even if Satoshi Dice received the bitcoin in good faith from Soprano’s debtor, Soprano himself (despite his unorthodox shake-down tactics) retains a right to seize his property back. And if they passed it on, he can pursue the next party. And so on. Especially since the bitcoin network makes it so easy to follow the trail due to the public nature of the ledger. Eventually, if the coin ends up with a high-value investor or institutional account whose identity is known to the system a formal claim can be made by means of the judicial system.

It’s these sorts of preceding property claims that the bitcoin system not only fails to eliminate, but arguably empowers by making the paper trail so incredibly transparent. But to what degree is the law really on Tony Soprano’s side when it comes to his claim? (And we’re not referring to his violent retrieval methods, which obviously remain illegal.)

George K Fogg at law firm Perkins Coie has been thinking about the problem of past claims (or liens) on bitcoins for nearly 14 months now.

His conclusion: under the United States’ UCC code (uniform commercial code) as long as bitcoins are treated as general intangibles, no high value investor can be sure that an angry Tony Soprano won’t show up one day to claim that the bitcoins they thought they received in a completely unencumbered manner are actually his. In fact, it’s only if and when Tony Soprano publicly renounces his claim to the underlying bitcoin collateral he is owed that the bitcoins stand a chance of being treated as unencumbered. Until then, a hot potato claim risk exists for every future acquirer of Soprano’s bitcoin.

Indeed, given the high volume of fraud and default in the bitcoin network, chances are most bitcoins have competing claims over them by now. Put another way, there are probably more people with legitimate claims over bitcoins than there are bitcoins. And if they can prove the trail, they can make a legal case for reclamation.

………

The irony of all this for anti-government minded Bitcoin investors is that it’s only by transferring bitcoins into the established financial system that they can be sure to be protected from outstanding Tony Soprano claims on their bitcoin.

As Fogg notes:

My libertarian friends have a belief they have created something that is outside of any statutory governance, and my response is you have created something novel that can help in transferring value across borders but you can’t pretend that the UCC doesn’t exist and because it does exist it affects bitcoin. Bitcoin is governed by the UCC. You can be an ostrich and pretend that it’s not covered by it, or you can address that it is in fact covered by the statute and find a way to solve the problem.

What a surprise.

A security is created by some libertarian idiot who thought that it could be used to leave our society for Galt’s Gulch.

Not so much.

Shoot Me! I Agree with Rand Paul………

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In a speech at HBCU Bowie State, Rand Paul has declared that the current criminal justice is structured to keep the poor and minorities down:

………

The content more than made up for that.* Paul has sharpened his pitch to black audiences over many visits and roundtables, some well-covered and some more private; he’s also re-introduced sentencing reform bills that give him more to talk about.

“Those of us who have jobs and have lived fairly privileged lives don’t know what it’s like to pay fines and penalties on top of other fines, and how someone’s life can spiral out of control,” said Paul, leaning on a podium and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. “As I’ve learned more about criminal justice system, I’ve come to believe it’s something that’s going to keep the two Americas separate.”

Paul ran through data and examples, from Ferguson to the novels of Tom Wolfe, to demonstrate the tragedy of over-criminalization. Some of his examples had clunked when he debuted them on TV or radio appearances. “What reason do we have for telling the police that they have to take someone down for selling cigarettes that aren’t taxed?,” asked Paul. “Couldn’t we give them a ticket?”

He was referring (though not by name) to the Eric Garner killing in New York, and while that analysis had been a brief outrage last year, it made no ripple in the Bowie State auditorium. That was likely because he put everything in the context of laws discriminating against non-whites and the poor. The effect of current de jure criminal codes, said Paul, was “somewhat like segregation.”

I guess that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but I really feel profoundly uncomfortable agreeing with him.

I would also note that I am far more sanguine regarding Paul’s putative Presidential campaign.

I cannot imagine another Republican out there who could make these sorts of statements.

I still think that Senator “Aqua-Buddha” is a nut case, but the ability to depart from Republican dogma when required, and this gives him the opportunity to make adjustments to his campaign message that his rivals cannot.

We Really Need More Effective Anti-SLAPP Laws

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Until recently, the Laundry Workers Center United’s claim to fame was a rabble-rousing protest encampment on Times Square, a self-fashioned “Worker Justice Café” erected by workers as part of a unionization campaign at a Hot and Crusty bakery. Back in 2012, their foolishly brave, Occupy-inspired tactics proved successful in challenging their employer’s power. Now the LWC is facing its own challenge in court, accused of illegally “conspiring” to protest against a boss.

According to a complaint brought by the LWC’s latest campaign target, the Liberato restaurant in the Bronx, the LWC isn’t a humble worker center, agitating on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers, but a racketeering enterprise, waging class warfare against a local business.

The allegations of gangsterism stem from a basic labor dispute: a group of current and former workers have partnered with the LWC to campaign against the restaurant over alleged labor violations and mistreatment. After the conflict escalated and the LWC took legal action last year—with a class action lawsuit and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint now pending—the restaurant responded with a classic New York tactic: the countersuit. Liberato has variously charged the LWC with slander and harassment, as well as violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This federal law, a curious hybrid of reactionary politics and organized-crime fighting, has historically been used to nab both mob bosses and union organizers. The suit seems to follow a rich tradition of corporations seeking to criminalize collective action as labor’s “extortion” of capital.

So Liberato Restaurant is claiming filing a complaint about wage theft, retaliation, and sexual harassment with  the NLRB, and engaging in actions specifically allowed under the National Labor Relations Act is somehow racketeering.

I hope that the owners and management of this dining establishment end up in jail over this bullsh%$.

FCC Net Neutrality Order Rolls Out

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Seriously. What can I do but point you to the telecommunications regulatory deity Harold Feld comments regarding the final rule.

The short version of this is:

  • The rules go to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for a review under the paperwork reduction act, but this likely just a formality, taking 1-2 weeks.
  • The rule should be published in the Federal Register in the next 2-6 weeks.
  • It will technically go into effect 60 days after publication.
  • Law suits will almost certainly be filed after publication in the Federal Register and before it takes effect, and it is also likely that litigants against the FCC would request an injunction.
  • The court hearing this will likely be the DC Circuit.

My guess is that would end up at the Supreme Court, though SCOTUS might simply refuse to hear the case, and let the district or appellate court decision stand.

It Ain’t Treason. It Does Not Come Close

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So, someone has set up a petition at Whitehouse.gov asking for the 47 Senators* be charged with treason:

More than 155,000 people by Wednesday had signed a petition to the White House urging charges be filed against 47 Republican senators who they say committed “treasonous” offenses by writing Iran’s leaders about ongoing nuclear negotiations.

Lawmakers caused a political furor with their controversial letter Monday that warned an international nuclear deal with Iran could be scrapped by the next US president, particularly if Congress does not give its seal of approval.

The White House has said it responds to such petitions when they reach the 100,000-signature threshold, providing President Barack Obama’s administration with another opportunity to slam a letter that it considers inflammatory.

According to the petition, the 47 senators “committed a treasonous offense when they decided to violate the Logan Act, a 1799 law which forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments.”

Critics argue that the lawmakers, including at least three potential Republican 2016 presidential candidates, broke the law, or at least violated the traditions of Congress, by directly engaging a foreign power on US foreign policy.

This is a pet peeve of mine.

Because of hundreds of years of abuse of the treason charge by the British Crown, treason is the ONLY crime defined in the constitution, specifically Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

The letter to Iran is stupid, and is clearly a case of placing sensibilities the Republican primary voter above the interests of the United States, but this is not treason, under US law.

Treason charges, and the abuse of treason charges by the sovereign, has a long and ignominious history, and calling for treason charges runs directly counter to US values and the founding beliefs of our republic.

*People keep saying, “47 Senators,” and I keep hearing, “47 Ronin”. There is something profoundly wrong in my head

Not Just Ferguson

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In Wittier, California, police officers have sued over retaliation for reporting illegal quotas:

Six Whittier police officers are suing the city, saying they faced retaliation when they complained and refused to meet alleged ticket and arrest quotas.

Officers Jim Azpilicueta, Anthony Gonzalez, Mike Rosario, Nancy Ogle, Steve Johnson and Cpl. Joseph Rivera say they spoke out against the quotas, which they claim were imposed by the Whittier Police Department in 2008, according to a suit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The officers said their “careers have been materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed” by the city.

City Manager Jim Collier and Whittier police spokesman Officer John Scoggins declined to comment and said they had not seen the lawsuit.

“The lawsuit is unfortunate and the city will determine the best course of action once an analysis of the lawsuit is completed,” Collier said.

The officers say the alleged ticket and arrest quotas continue to this day.

The alleged retaliation started after the officers said they complained to their supervisors and the police department’s Internal Affairs Division, the suit claims.

After complaining about quotas, the officers faced a series of disciplinary actions including counseling sessions, unwarranted transfers, increased scrutiny and disparaging comments, the lawsuit said.

………

Imposing arrest and ticket quotas on police officers violates California Vehicle Codes section 41600. The codes makes it illegal for any state or local agency to force officers to meet a certain number of citations or arrests for promotion or disciplinary purposes.

Here’s a thought for initiative petition crazy California:  Someone start collecting signatures for a ballot measure that takes all the proceeds from these sort of offenses, and transfers it to a scholarship program for state schools.

Once municipalities no longer from pulling this sh%$, they will stop pulling this sh%$.

This is the Least Surprising News Since ……… Ever

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The US Department of Justice has determined that the entire justice system of Ferguson, Missouri discriminates against minorities:

Ferguson, Mo., is a third white, but the crime statistics compiled in the city over the past two years seemed to suggest that only black people were breaking the law. They accounted for 85 percent of traffic stops, 90 percent of tickets and 93 percent of arrests. In cases like jaywalking, which often hinge on police discretion, blacks accounted for 95 percent of all arrests.

The racial disparity in those statistics was so stark that the Justice Department has concluded in a report scheduled for release on Wednesday that there was only one explanation: The Ferguson Police Department was routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.

The report, based on a six-month investigation, provides a glimpse into the roots of the racial tensions that boiled over in Ferguson last summer after a black teenager, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer, making it a worldwide flash point in the debate over race and policing in America. It describes a city where the police used force almost exclusively on blacks and regularly stopped people without probable cause. Racial bias is so ingrained, the report said, that Ferguson officials circulated racist jokes on their government email accounts.

I’m not sure what a final resolution to this should be, but as a start, I would suggest that all fines and court costs in the municipality be placed under the control of a special master and not allowed to accrue to the town treasury.

The town will continue to discriminate so long as it makes a profit from doing so.

People should not hate their own police, but it is the God given right of any free citizen to hate the tax collector, even though it is an essential function.

By turning the Ferguson courts and police into a revenue source it creates a toxic environment.

The people hate the cops. 

The cops hate them back, and come to believe that they are surrounded by the enemy, and not familiar citizens.

Then you get a kid shot and left to lie in the street for hours in plain view as a warning to the community.

I’d also like to see some criminal prosecutions, perhaps under RICO, against those who created, promulgated, and maintained such a system.

Seriously, Pocket Change and a Meaningless Probation?

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David Petraeus has pled guilty to to leaking top secret information, and his deal includes a two point “enhancement” for obstructing justice by lying to the FBI, and the DoJ is asking foir a $40,000.oo fine and 2 years probation:

………DOJ quietly announced it had reached a plea deal with former CIA Director David Petraeus for leaking Top Secret/Secure Compartmented Information materials to his mistress, Paula Broadwell.
Among the materials in the eight “Black Books” Petraeus shared with Broadwell were:

…classified information regarding the identities of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings, and defendant DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS’s discussions with the President of the United States of America.

The Black Books contained national defense information, including Top Secret/SCI and code word information.

Petraeus kept those Black Books full of code word information including covert identities and conversations with the President “in a rucksack up there somewhere.”

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

For mishandling some of the most important secrets the nation has, Petraeus will plead guilty to a misdemeanor. Petraeus, now an employee of a top private equity firm, will be fined $40,000 and serve two years of probation.

He will not, however, be asked to plead guilty at all for lying to FBI investigators. In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI,

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

This is a guy whose record seems to be more of an exercise in self-promotion than anything else, and it’s pretty clear that he deliberately mishandled classified information because he wanted to help his girl friend, and it also clear that he lied to the FBI with the specific intent of obstructing an investigation, and the Department of Justice doesn’t want any jail time.

I hope that the judge goes a bit further than the Department of Justice.

Supreme Court Rules that Industry Dominated Regulatory Panels Can Be Sued for Antitrust Violations

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In North Carolina, the State Board of Dental Examiners is pretty much run by and for dentists.

When non-dentists started offering cheaper tooth whitening services, the board shut them down.

The Supreme Court has allowed state governments to engage in anti-competitive actions for over 70 years, and the question here was whether a something like the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners, where the inmates were running the asylum, deserved deserved immunity from antitrust enforcement.

The Supreme Court, and the answer was no:

State licensing boards composed of market participants do not enjoy automatic immunity from antitrust laws, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday. The decision in North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v. Federal Trade Commission affirms the Fourth Circuit and deals a setback to an increasingly common form of regulation.

 State action antitrust immunity

 Since 1943, certain forms of state action have been immune from the antitrust laws. Accordingly, state legislatures may pass laws with anticompetitive effects. Several important Supreme Court cases since then have addressed the doctrine of state action immunity and helped to define its contours, particularly as it applies to actions outside state legislatures.

 Antitrust immunity generally covers non-state actors only if the state both (1) clearly articulates the anticompetitive policy, and (2) actively supervises the policy. This case deals with the second requirement. If a professional licensing board is a state agency, must another state actor supervise the agency in order for the agency to be immune from the antitrust laws?

 The dental board

In North Carolina, the legislature delegated regulation of dentists to a dental board. By state law, practicing dentists must fill a majority of the seats on the dental board.

This type of “self-regulation” is common among state licensing boards. But it has the natural tendency to become anticompetitive. Members of a guild frequently want to keep insiders in, keep outsiders out, and prop up the profession. A broad range of modern professions fall under professional licensing boards, including not just doctors, lawyers, and dentists, but also interior designers, real estate agents, floral designers, and hair braiders.

 In this case, the dental board tried to exclude non-dentists from the market for teeth-whitening services after dentists complained about the low prices non-dentists charged for teeth whitening. It sent threatening letters to non-dentists who offered teeth-whitening services and even encouraged mall operators to kick out kiosks used for teeth whitening.

The dental board’s actions were not supervised by any state officials from North Carolina other than the members of the dental board itself. On these facts, the FTC took action against the dental board. The FTC and the Fourth Circuit both rejected the dental board’s attempt to invoke the defense of state action immunity.

 No immunity for the dental board controlled by dentists

In a six-to-three opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, today the Supreme Court affirmed the Fourth Circuit, holding that the dental board is not immune from the antitrust laws.

The Court’s opinion explains that even though the dental board is an agency of the state, its actions must still be supervised by the state in order to enjoy antitrust immunity. The “formal designation given by the States” does not itself create immunity. Here, the board is controlled by market participants in the same occupation that the board regulates. “When a State empowers a group of active market participants to decide who can participate in its market, and on what terms, the need for supervision is manifest.”

Where this might be most significant is in boards for doctors and state bars.

I am reminded of the case of Closings, Inc. in Massachusetts, which attempted to offer low cost closings for house sales in the commonwealth.

The state bar banned them, even though they employed lawyers to do the work, nominally because they were a corporation, rather than a partnership, and the state courts agreed.

What is was really about was that they were offering services for less than half what the law firms were charging, and as a result, they had achieved a 40% market share, and the lawyers did not want to lose what was easy money for what was a routine operation that should never have required a law degree.

These days, with a plethora of services that offer assistance for routine legal services online, I hope that we see a number of complaints filed against state bars.