Category: regulation

It’s a Start………

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The IRS has revoked the 501(c)3 tax exempt status of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a right wing group that has routinely engaged in illegal electioneering.

The kicker is that Center is in part a political advocacy group formed by Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas:

Under the tax code, it’s illegal for a charity to engage in electoral politics. In its response to the IRS, the Patrick Henry Center said its statements could be interpreted differently by different people, and that many of them did not advocate voting for or against a candidate.

The center’s most recent tax return disclosed $343,503 in revenue for tax year 2012. In recent years, it’s become aligned with the Tea Party movement, contributing to at least one of the groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS beginning in 2010. Also in 2010, the Patrick Henry Center merged with Liberty Central, an advocacy group headed by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese serves on the center’s board.

The IRS’s revocation means contributions to the Patrick Henry Center are no longer tax deductible.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization in the early 1990s, and I recall the sh%$ I had to go through to incorporate.

I was originally turned down, because the examiner thought that the organization was better suited to 501(c)7 status, a membership organization, as opposed to a charity, which would lose tax exempt status and (more importantly to us) a special low postal rate. (Had to explain some terminology we used in my appeal,k and it worked)

In retrospect, I believe that the examiner morally right on this, though my application was was within the parameters of existing law and regulation.

It’s just that and the rules that the IRS is not enforcing are way too lax, and more observed in the breach than in actual enforcement.

It’s nice to see that this is changing.

Would You Like a Loss of Civil Rights with Your Breakfast Cereal?

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General Mills is looking to make binding arbitration mandatory for people who take their lives into their hands when they eat their food:

Might downloading a 50-cent coupon for Cheerios cost you legal rights?

General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.

Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.

In language added on Tuesday after The New York Times contacted it about the changes, General Mills seemed to go even further, suggesting that buying its products would bind consumers to those terms.

“We’ve updated our privacy policy,” the company wrote in a thin, gray bar across the top of its home page. “Please note we also have new legal terms which require all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration.”

………

The change in legal terms, which occurred shortly after a judge refused to dismiss a case brought against the company by consumers in California, made General Mills one of the first, if not the first, major food companies to seek to impose what legal experts call “forced arbitration” on consumers.

“Although this is the first case I’ve seen of a food company moving in this direction, others will follow — why wouldn’t you?” said Julia Duncan, director of federal programs and an arbitration expert at the American Association for Justice, a trade group representing plaintiff trial lawyers. “It’s essentially trying to protect the company from all accountability, even when it lies, or say, an employee deliberately adds broken glass to a product.”

You have problem with Corporate Capitalist ™®©, comrade?*

We really need to pass Al Franken’s Arbitration Fairness Act, and put an end to this bullsh%$.

*H/t CZ at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for this quote.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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I missed one last week, I didn’t scroll down, and it was local, Oldham Family Alliance Federal Credit Union, of Baltimore, MD.

It is the 7th 6th failure of the year.

I had been miscounting the information from the NCUA closings page, and I have missed those credit unions “Merged with NCUA assistance.”  (see below, click for popup)

So we actually have 1 more credit union failure this year than we have bank failures, which is kind of weird.

Welfare Cheat Has a Sad, Threatens Violence

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I am referring to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who is doing his level best to create a violent confrontation with federal authorities after refusing to obey the regulations, and pay the rent, required for maintaining a grazing permit:

Wielding signs and slogans, several hundred demonstrators rallied Monday to support beleaguered Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy after authorities began to seize his cattle from federal land.

 Protesters had responded to an alert that promised: “Range war begins at the Bundy ranch at 9:30 a.m. We’re going to get the job done!”

 Federal officials say Bundy is illegally running cattle in the 600,000-acre Gold Butte area, habitat of the federally protected desert tortoise. A federal judge ruled last year that if Bundy did not remove his cattle, they could be seized by the Bureau of Land Management. That seizure began Saturday.

 Bundy and his supporters remain unbowed.

 “We have hundreds of people here standing behind us,” said Bundy’s daughter Bailey Logue, 22, during a telephone interview Monday from the family ranch, as a rooster crowed in the background. “We’re letting these federal people know that the Bundy family is not the only ones who care what happens to this land.”

 Bundy, 68, has refused to pay BLM grazing fees since 1993, arguing in court filings that his Mormon ancestors worked the land long before the BLM was formed, giving him rights that predate federal involvement. His back fees exceed $300,000, he says. The government puts the tab above $1 million.

 Federal authorities have closed off the Gold Butte area and are rounding up what they call “trespass cattle,” many of which belong to Bundy. By Monday, 134 cattle had been impounded, according to the BLM website.

 “Cattle have been in trespass on public lands in southern Nevada for more than two decades. This is unfair to the thousands of other ranchers who graze livestock in compliance with federal laws and regulations throughout the West,” the BLM said on its website.

 ………

 For years Bundy has insisted that his cattle aren’t going anywhere. He acknowledges that he keeps firearms at his ranch, 90 minutes north of Las Vegas, and has vowed to do “whatever it takes” to defend his animals from seizure.

 ………

 Kirsten Cannon, a spokeswoman for the BLM in southern Nevada, said Bundy “owes the BLM and American taxpayers more than $1 million in grazing fees and trespass fines.”

 “He has been running more than 900 cattle while he only has the authority to graze 150,” she said Monday. “He has also made a number of inflammatory statements, saying that he will do what he needs to do to protect his livestock. When such threats are made, the federal government has the responsibility to protect public safety.”

So in addition to regular federal subsidies available to farmers, he’s also been squatting on federal land, and destroying it through overgrazing, and somehow he’s become a hero for the militia movement, because ……… Freedumb!!!

Shave the Whales

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The International Court of Justice in The Hague has just made formal the blatantly obvious and ruled that Japan’s so-called “research” whaling has nothing to do with research, and so is illegal:

The decision to ban Japan’s annual whaling drive off Antarctica, handed down by the United Nations’ highest court on Monday, was a hard-won victory for conservationists who long argued that Tokyo’s whaling research was a cover for commercial whaling.

The ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague halts a Japanese program that has captured more than 10,000 minke and other whales in the Southern Ocean each year since 1988 in the name of biological research.

Japan may not be ready to lay down its harpoons entirely. Though the ruling is final, it allows the Japanese to continue to hunt whales under a redesigned program, said Nanami Kurasawa, who heads a marine conservation group in Tokyo.

And the court’s decision does not affect smaller hunts that Japan carries out in the northern Pacific, or coastal whaling carried out on a smaller scale by local fishermen.

“It’s an important decision, but it also leaves the Japanese government a lot of leeway,” Ms. Kurasawa said. “The Japanese government could start research whaling again but under a different name, and it would be out of the ruling’s purview.”

In a 12-to-4 judgment, the court found that Japan was in breach of its international obligations by catching and killing minke whales and issuing permits for hunting humpback and fin whales within the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, established by the International Whaling Commission.

Reading a summary of the judgment, the presiding judge, Peter Tomka of Slovakia, said that the latest Japanese program, which was expanded in 2005, had involved the killing of thousands of minke whales and a number of fin whales, but that its “scientific output to date appears limited.” The ruling suggested that Japan’s whaling hunt was based on politics and logistics, rather than science.

The driving force behind Japanese whaling is stupid, brutal, and mindlessly destructive nationalism, something which the residents of Nanking may recall.

And they will continue to butcher porpoises in local waters.

But it is a start.

Here is Hoping That This Holds Up on Appeal

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The regional director of the NLRB has just ruled that Northwestern football players are employees, and so are allowed to unionize:

In a stunning ruling that has the potential to revolutionize college athletics, a federal agency said Wednesday that football players at Northwestern University can create the nation’s first college athletes union.

The decision by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board means the board agrees that football players at the Big Ten school qualify as employees under federal law and therefore can legally unionize.

The Evanston, Ill-based university argued that college athletes, as students, do not fit in the same category as factory workers, truck drivers and other unionized workers. The school plans to appeal to labor authorities in Washington.

Outgoing Wildcats quarterback Kain Colter took a leading role in establishing the College Athletes Players Association (CAPA), which would take the lead in organizing the players. The United Steelworkers union has been footing the legal bills.

Colter, whose eligibility has been exhausted and who has entered the NFL draft, said that nearly all of the 85 scholarship players on the Wildcats roster backed the union bid, though only he expressed his support publicly.

CAPA attorneys argued that college football is, for all practical purposes, a commercial enterprise that relies on players’ labor to generate billions of dollars in profits. That, they contend, makes the relationship of schools to players one of employers to employees.

The top level of college sport is thoroughly corrupt and exploitative of “Student Athletes”, and it time for the cartel that keeps those students in peonage to pay the piper.

At the very least, one hopes that the students get insurance coverage of their chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Going after Induhviduals?* Be Still My Beating Heart!

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Benjamin Lawskey, head of New York’s Department of Financial Services is now saying that he will be looking at criminal filings against individuals:

Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s aggressive banking regulator who is campaigning to clean up Wall Street, is turning his sights on the individuals as well as the institutions who squeeze struggling homeowners or help banks violate US sanctions.

“Corporations are a legal fiction. You have to deter bad individual conduct within corporations,” said Mr Lawsky, superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, in an interview with the Financial Times. “People who did the conduct are going to be held accountable.”

Mr Lawsky’s name-and-shame strategy taps into a wave of popular discontent in the US and Europe over the fact that few individual bankers have been personally sanctioned for the bad decisions that led to the global financial crisis. Taxpayers have been forced to stump up hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue banks brought low by reckless behaviour.

Mr Lawsky, who has ruffled the feathers of other US regulators by jumping ahead of them to accuse Standard Chartered of breaking sanctions on Iran, has already begun to take a tougher approach to individual behaviour.

As part of Royal Bank of Scotland’s settlement in December over sanctions violations, the bank was asked to let go of four RBS employees, including the head of Asia, the Middle East and Africa in the global banking unit, and claw back the bonuses of eight other employees. Mr Lawsky’s office is now investigating the rapid growth of non-bank mortgage servicing companies Ocwen and Nationstar. He is also looking into possible sanctions violations by several banks and the consultants that advise them. He recently requested information from a dozen banks over potential currency manipulation.

As the DFS does not have criminal authority all actions against individuals will have to be pursued through civil remedies such as fines.

“We think about it most in the area where there has been some sort of intentional misconduct as opposed to a systemic industry wide problem,” Mr Lawsky said. In addition to suspensions, industry bans and clawbacks, Mr Lawsky said he is also considering laying out the allegations in more detail to expose bad actors, which he hopes will deter people from getting into trouble.

The Department of Justice and other regulators have been criticised for not bringing charges against individuals and instead extracting large fines from banks to resolve allegations of misconduct.

Here’s hoping that this will eventually result in senior people (and I don’t just mean the usual non-white suspects like Raj Rajaratnam) ending up behind bars.

When former Senator and Goldman “Vampire Squid” Sachs CEO Jon Corzine and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin are sentenced to a few years in the hoosegow, I’ll throw a f%$#ing party.

*It’s the DNRC, man.

Yes, the Consumer Financial Protection Board is Doing Things: For Profit Colllege Edition

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The CFPB has filed suit against ITT Technical alleging that it behaves more like a payday lender than an institute of learning.

It’s not just the CFPB, 32 state Attorneys General have filed suit as well, but the CFPB’s involvement makes it far less likely that other federal agencies, most notably the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, will attempt to preempt the investigation:

Honest, well-run for-profit colleges can be helpful to students who do not qualify for traditional schools. But the robber barons in the for-profit sector represent a menace that requires more federal oversight. They saddle students with crushing debt while furnishing them useless degrees – or no degrees at all. These schools have been known to push students who are eligible for low-cost, federal loans into ruinously priced private loans that have fewer consumer protections and that give borrowers who get in trouble little choice but to default. That in turn makes it difficult for them to find jobs, get credit or rent apartments. And because private student loans are difficult to escape through bankruptcy, the stricken borrower might never recover.

Attorneys general in 32 states are actively pursuing this problem . This week the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finally got into the act. On Wednesday it filed suit against an Indiana-based for-profit chain, ITT Educational Services, Inc., which has tens of thousands of students enrolled online or at one of roughly 150 institutions in nearly 40 states. The bureau, which paints a damning portrait of the company’s policies, accuses the chain of practicing “predatory student lending.”

………

The suit makes the company look very much like a storefront payday lender that ropes borrowers into loans that they cannot repay, then hammers them with fees and interest. In this case, the bureau asserts that the company rushed students through the application process without giving them a chance to understand what was happening. In some cases “ students did not even know they had a private student loan until they started getting collection calls.” Moreover, it says: “ITT knew that most of its students would ultimately default on their private student loans; it projected a default rate for its students of 64 percent.”

I really hope that this results in meaningful change.

The for profit college industry is full of parasites and predators who make their money off of federally guaranteed loans.

Full CFPB release after break:

CFPB Sues For-Profit College Chain ITT For Predatory Lending

ITT Pushed Consumers into High-Cost Student Loans Likely to Fail

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) filed a lawsuit against ITT Educational Services, Inc., accusing the for-profit college chain of predatory student lending. The CFPB alleges that ITT exploited its students and pushed them into high-cost private student loans that were very likely to end in default. The CFPB is seeking restitution for victims, a civil fine, and an injunction against the company.

“ITT marketed itself as improving consumers’ lives but it was really just improving its bottom line,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “We believe ITT used high-pressure tactics to push many consumers into expensive loans destined to default. Today’s action should serve as a warning to the for-profit college industry that we will be vigilant about protecting students against predatory lending tactics.”

Like the mortgage market in the lead-up to the financial crisis, the for-profit college industry may be experiencing misaligned incentives. These colleges benefit when students take out large amounts of loans, regardless of the students’ long-term success. The CFPB is concerned that some of these corporations may be employing practices to coax consumers into taking out more federal and private student loans. Today’s announcement is the Bureau’s first public enforcement action against a company in the for-profit college industry.

ITT Educational Services, Inc. is an Indiana-based for-profit provider of post-secondary technical education. Tens of thousands of students are enrolled online or at one of ITT’s roughly 150 institutions in nearly 40 states. ITT’s tuition costs are among the highest in the country in the for-profit industry. Earning an associate’s degree at ITT can cost more than $44,000. Bachelor’s degree programs can cost $88,000. That is significantly higher than the cost of similar degrees at a community college or a public four-year institution.

Most of ITT’s students borrow large sums to pay the high tuition costs and the majority of this money is borrowed from federal student loan programs. But private student loans also provide critical revenue for ITT. Because most ITT students’ federal aid does not cover the full cost of an ITT program, most students face a “tuition gap” requiring them to find other sources of funding.

The CFPB’s lawsuit alleges that ITT encouraged new students to enroll at ITT by providing them funding for this tuition gap with a zero-interest loan called “Temporary Credit.” This loan typically had to be paid in full at the end of the student’s first academic year. But ITT knew from the outset that many students would not be able to repay their Temporary Credit balances or fund their next year’s tuition gap.

The CFPB lawsuit alleges that between July 2011 and December 2011, ITT pushed its students into repaying their Temporary Credit and funding their second-year tuition gaps through high-cost private student loan programs. Students were left in the dark about the fact that taking out these high-cost loans would be required to continue their studies. However, ITT’s CEO revealed in investor calls that converting the temporary loans to long-term loans was the company’s “plan all along.”

Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. Specifically, in today’s lawsuit, the Bureau alleges the following conduct by ITT:

  • Pressured into predatory loans: ITT used its financial aid staff to rush students through an automated application process without affording them a fair opportunity to understand the loan obligations involved. In some cases, students did not even know they had a private student loan until they started getting collection calls. The loans were high-cost. For borrowers with credit scores under 600, for example, the costs of the private student loans included 10 percent origination fees and interest rates as high as 16.25 percent.
  • Credits not transferable: ITT was accredited by a national organization that accredits many for-profit schools, but the credits that students earned typically did not transfer to local community colleges or other nonprofit schools such as public or private colleges. ITT used the prospect of expulsion and the loss of the money already spent during the student’s first year to coerce students into taking out the private loans.
  • Misleading future job prospects: The Bureau believes that ITT’s representations led students to think that when they graduated they were likely to land good jobs and enough salary to repay their private student loans. In this way, ITT exploited student expectations while it knew that a majority of students would default.
  • Loans likely to fail: ITT knew that most of its students would ultimately default on their private student loans; it projected a default rate for its students of 64 percent. Defaulting on private student loans can have grave consequences for consumers. It can make it difficult to get any kind of loan for years and even affect a borrower’s job prospects. And, because private student loans are difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, the debt can be very difficult to recover from.

The complaint against ITT can be found at: http://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/201402_cfpb_complaint_ITT.pdf

The Bureau’s complaint is not a finding or ruling that the defendant has actually violated the law.
To assist student loan borrowers who may be in delinquency or default, the CFPB recently launched an updated version of the Repay Student Debt interactive tool.

The CFPB also recently finalized a rule allowing it to supervise certain nonbank servicers of federal and private student loans. The rule takes effect on March 1.

CFPB takes complaints about student loans. To submit a complaint, consumers can:

  • Go online at consumerfinance.gov/complaint
  • Call the toll-free phone number at 1-855-411-CFPB (2372) or TTY/TDD phone number at 1-855-729-CFPB (2372)
  • Fax the CFPB at 1-855-237-2392
  • Mail a letter to: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, P.O. Box 4503, Iowa City, Iowa 52244

###
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. For more information, visit consumerfinance.gov.

Bitcoin Has Had a Disasterous Week

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We’ve just had 3rd Bitcoin exchange robbery in a week, the suspicious death of the CEO of another exchange, the discovery the mysterious founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is actually a guy named Satoshi Nakamoto, and Japan has decided not to regulate it as currency.

I know what you are wondering why is Japan deciding not to regulate Bitcoin a bad thing?

Well, because if it is not currency, then it is subject to the VAT (sales tax) and the capital gains tax:

The Japanese government officially said Friday that it doesn’t consider bitcoin to be a currency and has no plans at present to regulate it as a financial product.

As it tries to cope with the fallout from the bankruptcy of the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange, the government said that the crypto-currency would be treated like other goods and services, with commercial sales of bitcoin itself and bitcoin-based transactions subject to sales tax. In addition, any gains on exchange rates will be taxed as well.

“Any bitcoin transactions are taxable when they fulfill requisitions stated by laws on income tax, corporate tax and consumption tax,” the government said in its statement, which came in response to questions over how bitcoins will be regulated.

At the same time, the statement ruled out treatment of bitcoin as a currency or a financial instrument.

“Bitcoin are neither Japanese nor foreign currencies and its trading is different from deals stated by Japan’s bank act as well as financial instruments and exchange act,” according to a document released by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet.

(emphasis mine)

I don’t know if Bitcoin is done, but I think that a stake has been driven though the heart of the Randroid libertarian dream of completely unregulated and untraceable crypto currency.

Heh.

I Called for Amputating the Financial Sector Years Ago

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See here.

JD Alt at New Economic Perspectives has just called for the same thing:

All this talk about the 99% versus the 1%? I say the easiest—and likely the most useful—thing to do is just forget the 1%. Write them off. Let them have their gated communities, their mega-yachts, their island retreats and off-shore bank accounts. What do we need them for?

 For one thing, we DON’T need their money. Even if we could get it—which we can’t because they steadfastly refuse to use it for anything other than casino gambling in their private and secretive financial networks. We wonder why we have a “jobless recovery”? Does it have anything to do with the fact that such a large percentage of our “capital” has, for all practical purposes, been removed from the economy?

 Even when the 1% decides to invest some of their Dollars to manufacture or build something, they rarely decide to manufacture or build anything we really need—only things we really don’t need. Like strip-mines in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery, or pipe-lines across Nebraska’s freshwater aquifers, or rocket-planes for space-tourism. Thanks, but we really don’t need—or want—any of it. We’d much rather have fresh wild salmon (rather than the artificially colored hatchery-stuff) than more copper and gold, fresh water instead of tar-sands oil, and the good-old week-at-the-beach is just fine for a vacation.

He then gives the example of the huge transformers that are essential to our electrical grid.

We do not, and can not, make them in the United States, because the casino finance class doesn’t care, because they can always get them from Korea, with a a 2 year lead time.

If that’s a problem, they can always move to their summer house on a Greek island.

Here is how he poresents it going:

This little tale is made even more interesting by the fact that these very-large transformers—usually situated inside a compound protected by chain-link fencing—are easily destroyed with a few rounds of fire from a semi-automatic assault rifle. Thankfully, semi-automatic assault rifles are difficult to come by in the U.S., otherwise there might be cause for concern. The seventeen transformers recently shot to death in California (we can’t explain how this actually happened, since the NRA is only marginally active on the West Coast) are a cautionary tale: If this were repeated on just a little bit larger scale, the Department of Homeland Security has determined, our entire electric grid could be down for months—or even longer. (Come on South Korea, hurry it up…. We’re waiting!)

 So my example is this: Why doesn’t President Obama propose that since the 1% have no interest in doing it, the U.S. sovereign government build a plant to manufacture very-large transformers, hire engineers to train unemployed people to do the labor, pay those unemployed trainees for making the effort to learn how to make a giant-sized transformer, then hire those newly trained workers to run the manufacturing process? We could build a backup supply of these critical electric grid components so that in the (increasingly likely) event some crazy, anti-government sociopath seizes the opportunity to turn out America’s lights, we could turn them back on in fairly short order.

It’s an interesting mental exercise, and I am not sure how serious this proposal is,it has a Jonathan Swift — A Modest Proposal snarky feel to it.

Still, breaking the lock of the “Washington Consensus” of so-called free trade and the continuing financialization of our economy is a non trivial task.

That’s why my calls for amputation involve a zero tolerance criminal prosecution policy. 

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! (on Thursday)

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I missed a credit union failure last week, I was busy battling the elements to get to my Eugenia’s Bat Mitzvah.

While I was battling the elements, the NCUA was closing the St. Francis Campus Credit Union of Little Falls, Minnesota (Full NCUA list), the 3rd closing of the year.

Given that there were 24 failures of banks, and 13 credit unions closed in 2013, it appears that we are slightly ahead of last year’s trend.

Reconstruction Was Ended Way Too Soon

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And now the s%$4 has hit the fan coal ash has hit the drinking water ………

Maddow is all over how NC Governor Pat McCrory’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources Department of Environment and Natural Resources is aggressively protecting lawbreaking polluters like Duke Energy, by aggressively preventing private actions against the firm, as opposed to actually enforcing the law:

North Carolina regulators’ penchant for seemingly protecting Gov. Pat McCrory’s (R) former employers from repeated lawsuits over their environmental practices was only stopped following a devastatingly toxic spill, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported on Monday.

 On two prior occasions, Maddow said, officials at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) invoked a provision in the federal Clean Water Act allowing them to step in as plaintiffs against Duke Energy when Duke was being sued by environmental activists over the toxic coal ash ponds at its facilities. The state reached settlements worth a collective $99,000 for those incidents.

 But Monday night, she explained, a third such settlement was delayed in the wake of a pond spill that produced up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water — the third-biggest spill of its’ kind in U.S. history.

 And despite not making any statement about the Feb. 3 disaster until four days after it happened, McCrory — who worked with the company for 28 years — used the first two DENR settlements to boast that his administration took “legal action” against Duke Energy.

 “Right,” Maddow said skeptically. “By stepping in and blocking other peoples’ lawsuits against the company, and then settling with the company for nearly no money, and, importantly, [requiring] no promise from Duke Energy that they would fix what they were doing wrong.”

Talk about a cheap date.  Even the Department of Justice requests a lie from the offenders to refrain from future wrongdoing.

Not Enough Bullets………

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To no one’s surprise, this involves real estate developers, a scurvy lot who depend on the kindness of taxpayers while extolling the virtue of “free market heroes” like themselves.

Case in point, Seattle developers are suing because they think that the city is charging too much for them to break zoning laws:

A coalition of several developers filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court on January 15 that would make Seattle, already booming with construction cranes, more friendly for developers. Their issue? One of the city’s affordable-housing programs.

Since 2006, the city has struck a deal with developers in the downtown core: In exchange for setting aside a few modestly affordable units or paying fees toward a city housing fund, developers get to build taller buildings. For example, developers could build a 400-foot tower where they’d otherwise have to keep it under 300 feet. The Seattle City Council raised those fees by about one-third in December 2013. In their lawsuit, which cites three Supreme Court decisions, the developers claim that fee hike is “an out-and-out extortion.”

So they’re asking a judge to invalidate that higher fee, making it cheaper and easier to build the tallest buildings allowed downtown—while throwing even fewer scraps to the city’s growing affordable-housing needs.

“This just shows developers are not willing to do their fair share,” says Rebecca Saldaña of Puget Sound Sage, an affordable-housing advocacy group. She says Seattle’s taxpayers fund a housing levy, and politicians have eased other development requirements. This latest uptick in fees, Saldaña says, is “really just asking developers to come up to speed.”

………

For example, Smith’s Second and Pike project is a proposed 400-foot tower, with 290 residential units above retail and restaurant space. Normally, the height limit there is 290 feet. Under the new fee regulations, in exchange for that extra height, Smith would have to pay a one-time fee of around $2.5 million into the city’s housing fund. The lawsuit says the city should revert to the former requirements, which require paying only $1.8 million. (In an odd twist, Smith will pay the $1.8 million either way, because he applied for a permit under the old rules.)

“My hope is that most people won’t actually pay the fees,” says O’Brien. “They’ll just provide the housing” inside the new construction. In Smith’s building, that would mean setting aside 20 or so moderately affordable units—around $1,300 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.

Clearly, even that isn’t particularly affordable, and 20 apartments don’t amount to much housing. And the city knows its program isn’t good enough. Which is why housing advocates, developers, and lawmakers have been meeting since last summer to overhaul the program.

$1300/month.

If you figure that 25% of pre-tax income should go to housing, that translated to about $62K a year.

For a one bedroom apartment.

And this is too much for the developers to tolerate.

You know, when Mao came to power in China, he executed the landlords, basically the real estate developers of China of the time.

I’ve always found it hard to condemn this act.

Pushback on Drug Pricing

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The AIDS Healthcare Foundation is lobbying to keep the $1000.00 a pill Sovaldi out of Medicaid formularies.

I wholeheartedly agree enough is enough:

In a series of letters to be sent to state Medicaid directors starting today, AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) President Michael Weinstein will ask the state directors to block Gilead Sciences’ new $1,000-per-pill Hepatitis C drug Sovaldi (sofosbuvir) from inclusion on their respective state Medicaid and other drug formularies. The drug was approved by the F.D.A. on December 6, 2013 and Gilead immediately announced that it would price the drug at $84,000 for a twelve-week course of treatment—or $1,000 per tablet—making it one of the most expensive drugs ever marketed. Suggested treatment guidelines also require that Sovaldi be used with another drug, ribavirin (a nucleoside inhibitor), further adding to the cost of the prohibitively expensive course of treatment.

 “When is enough, enough? At $1,000-per-pill, Sovaldi is priced 1,100% more than Gilead’s most expensive AIDS drug, Stribild, its four-in-one AIDS drug combination, which was priced at $80 per pill a year ago when it came to market,” said Michael Weinstein , President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “At that time, Stribild’s price was 35% more than Atripla, the company’s best selling combination HIV/AIDS treatment, and made Stribild the highest priced first-line combination AIDS therapy. Now, Gilead has set a new benchmark for unbridled greed with its outrageous price for Sovaldi—a price that some pharmacy industry sources suggest represents a retail markup of 279,000% over the cost of actually producing the drug.”

 In his letter to state Medicaid directors, Weinstein wrote, “Gilead is charging a higher price for this drug even though the cost to produce it is small. According to industry reports, Gilead produces Sovaldi for approximately $1.00 per gram (with only 10 to 30 grams needed to successfully treat patients with Hepatitis C).1 This represents a retail markup of over 279,000%.

Enough is f%$#ing enough.

This sh%$ needs to stop.

The FCC Gets Lemons, and Makes An Antifreeze Cocktail

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I have a plan so cunning that you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel………Not!!!!

Because the FCC is unwilling (not unable, just unwillint) to properly classify broadband providers as common carriers, because they are a bunch of wimps have been cowed by, and have bought into, the bankrupt philosophy of the free market Mousketeers, so they have come up with a plan that makes Baldrick from Blackadder look like a genius:

The nation’s top telecom regulator is tipping his hand a bit more on network neutrality.

While FCC chairman Tom Wheeler wouldn’t say outright how he intends to respond to a recent court decision overturning his agency’s rule barring Internet providers from blocking Web traffic, he appears to be leaning increasingly toward using the FCC’s existing legal authority to regulate broadband providers.

Industry watchers say this approach would likely turn on a part of the Communications Act known as Section 706, which gives the FCC authority to promote broadband deployment. Moving in that direction would put more distance between Wheeler and another alternative that’s been floated, which is to reclassify Internet service provders (ISPs) as a kind of utility (making them much more like the phone companies the FCC already regulates strongly).

You see the problem here, don’t you?

What happens when the next Michael Powell, a corporate tool nonpareille ends up running the FCC, and they decide, much as Powell did, that eliminating regulation will magically promote broadband.

This is what has given the United States the slowest and most expensive Internet access in the developed world.