Month: June 2007

Baltimore Metro House Prices Drop YoY.

No Comments
The price increase in this area is mostly from people fleeing from DC’s overpriced market.

Also, despite the “hordes” of people who are supposed to be coming here as a result of the military base re-alignment, prices still dropped.

Also, add 2-4% for incentives.

Area home prices fall for first time in 6 years

By Lorraine Mirabella

Sun Reporter

Originally published June 8, 2007, 4:03 PM EDT

The average home price in the Baltimore metro area fell 1.11 percent last month, the first decline in six years, according to statistics released today by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.

The average price of a house in Baltimore City and the five surrounding counties was $312,617 in May, down from $316,123 in May 2006, the statistics showed.

Prices fell in Anne Arundel, Carroll and Baltimore counties. Prices rose the most in Baltimore City, followed by Harford County, with Howard up less than 1 percent, MRIS said.

The falloff in average price came as sales volume plunged nearly 17 percent. In total, 3,030 homes were sold through the multiple listing service last month, compared to 3,648 last year, MRIS said.

The number of homes sold declined in every jurisdiction. Sales were off more than 20 percent in the two priciest counties — Anne Arundel and Howard. The smallest decline was in Harford County.

May’s price decline — which reflects contracts generally signed in March and April — comes at the start of the crucial spring selling season, when more people typically put their homes up for sale. The newer home listings, combined with the excess housing inventory that has been taking longer to sell, has likely hurt price growth, economists said.

The Yen-Carry Trades Has a Real Possibility of a Global Meltdown

No Comments

The idea is that you borrow Yen at less than 2%, and invest it elsewhere at 4+%, and the difference is pure profit.

The problem? If the dollar, or Euro, or Yuan, falls relative to the Yen, you can end up way in the hole.

This is another problematic feature of the current world trade and currency system. To much speculation, not enough trade and investment, creating volatility and costs.

The increasingly leveraged monetary system is an act of keeping hundreds of balls in the air at the same time, and one day, they will come down.

Dollar Rises in Asia on Yen-Carry Trades
Friday June 8, 4:02 am ET
Dollar Rises in Asian Trading as Investors Swap Yen for Higher Yield Overseas Assets

TOKYO (AP) — The dollar rose in Asia Friday as investors swapped the yen for higher yield overseas assets to take advantage of low Japanese interest rates.

The dollar was trading at 121.16 yen midafternoon, up from 121.11 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro fell to $1.3422 from $1.3432.

Traders said the dollar’s climb likely wouldn’t last, with a global stock fall expected to hurt sentiment for the dollar and the euro.”

CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry

No Comments

Whoopie. We have gulags. I want my country back.

Impeach Dick Cheney Now. Impeach George Bush Tomorrow.

CIA ran secret prisons for detainees in Europe, says inquiry
Stephen Grey
Friday June 8, 2007
The Guardian

The CIA operated secret prisons in Europe where terrorism suspects could be interrogated and were allegedly tortured, an official inquiry will conclude today.

Despite denials by their governments, senior Polish and Romanian security officials have confirmed to the Council of Europe that their countries were used to hold some of America’s most important prisoners captured after 9/11 in secret.

None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subject to what George Bush has called the CIA’s ‘enhanced’ interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture. Although suspicions about the secret CIA prisons have existed for more than a year, the council’s report, seen by the Guardian, appears to offer the first concrete evidence. It also details the prisons’ operations and the identities of some of the prisoners.”

….


Christofascist/Talibaptist Creation Museum Hires Man Who Did Sexually Explicit Vids

No Comments

Let me repeat: HA HA!!!!

Fundies, this is God’s way of saying that you are blithering idiots.

Actor’s Risque Past Halts ‘Adam’ Film By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press Writer

Thursday, June 7, 2007

(06-07) 17:50 PDT Columbus, Ohio (AP) —

The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.

After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.

“We are currently investigating the veracity of these serious claims of his participation in projects that don’t align with the biblical standards and moral code upon which the ministry was founded,” Answers for Genesis spokesman Mark Looy said in a written statement.

The actor, Eric Linden, owns a graphic Web site called Bedroom Acrobat, where he has been pictured, smiling alongside a drag queen, in a T-shirt brandishing the site’s sexually suggestive logo. The Web site, which has a network of members, allows users to post explicit stories and photos.

He also sells clothing for SFX International, whose initials appear on clothing to spell “SEX” from afar. It promotes “free love,””pleasure” and “thrillz.”

Linden, a graphic designer, model and actor who grew up in Columbus, said he is no longer affiliated with the Bedroom Acrobat site, and had handed the domain name off to somebody. Ownership records available through the NetworkSolutions database show Linden registered the site 18 months ago.

Bush Admin Seeks Changes to Patent System

No Comments

Ordinarly, I’d be encouraged, but I think that this HAS to be some sort of sweetheart deal to a supporter.

The following quote comes from the D-Squared Digest. I consider this to be the wisest thing yet written this century.

I believe that the following should apply any Bush admin initiative.

But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:

  1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
  2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
  3. It wasn’t in some important way completely Fucked Up during the execution.

So while this patent overhaul sounds like a bad thing, I think that I can wait for 18 months until adults are in charge.

Bush administration seeks overhaul of patent system | CNET News.com

By Steve Lohr

Story last modified Wed Jun 06 19:55:16 PDT 2007

The Bush administration wants to reform the nation’s patent system by requiring better information from inventors and allowing public scrutiny of applications, according to the director of the government’s patent office.

The goal, said Jon W. Dudas, director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, is to improve the quality of patents, which should curb the rising wave of patent disputes and lawsuits. The legal wrangling is often over broad descriptions of ideas or activities, so-called business methods, or software that contains only incremental changes over prior work.

“There ought to be a shared responsibility for patent quality among the patent office, the applicants and the public,” Dudas said in an interview yesterday. “If everything is done right at the front end, we’ll have to worry a lot less about litigation later.”

Some steps to improve patent quality will require changes in the law, said Dudas, who will present his views to the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Both the Senate and the House have introduced patent-reform legislation this year, amid concerns that the current overburdened, litigation-choked system is hampering innovation rather than encouraging it.

One key change, Dudas said, would be a legal clarification of what is required of patent applicants. Under current law, an inventor is required to explain why a new product is sufficiently original to deserve the exclusive rights that patent protection conveys. But the applicants have a lot of discretion. The supporting information, Dudas said, ranges from “almost nothing” to what he called “malicious compliance,” which he described as boxes and boxes of background information intended mainly to obscure the nugget of an invention in the patent application.

Reform legislation, he said, should require the applicants to conduct a thorough search of related patents and technical journals, and then explain why the patent being sought represents a significant innovation beyond previous ideas in the field.

Dudas said the reform legislation should also make sure the search and information disclosures do not put an unfair burden on inventors who are not wealthy. Personal income, number of patents filed and other measures, he said, could be used to determine who would be exempt from certain requirements. “For the truly small inventor, we might do the search for them,” he said.

…..

Last Time, The Result Was the Mirage 5

No Comments

Seriously. The Mirage 5, a Mirage 5 variant with simplified avionics and higher system reliability was basically co-designed by IAI and Dassault.

The French canceled the Israeli order, so they created the Nesher, which was a copy, which led to the Kfir.

Dassault and IAI in talks on future project partnerships

Israeli company keen to leverage experience with Gulfstream and other business jets

Dassault is talking to Israel Aerospace Industries about co-operation on future business jet programmes, as the French airframer looks to extend its risk-sharing partnerships.

The Israeli business – which builds rival Gulfstream’s smaller aircraft, the G150 and G200 – is keen to leveerage its experience in designing and manufacturing fuselage sections to a wider market, and sees business aviation as a big opportunity. IAI has been building business jets since the late 1960s, and past products include the Jet Commander and Westwind. Before its 2001 partnership with Gulfstream, it sold the G200 as the Galaxy and built the G150’s predecessor, the G100, as the Astra.

…

Instead of An Injunction, How about Just Sending them To Texas to Be Executed?

No Comments

It’s clear that this stuff needs to be eliminated.

The most valuable asset of the IRS is the fact that Americans as a rule pay their taxes, and the more the big players get away with stuff like this, the more ordinary tax payers will find the system unfair, and so will be tempted to cheat themselves.

IRS moves to close tax shelter used by IBM | CNET News.com

By David Cay Johnston Story last modified Wed Jun 06 22:06:46 PDT 2007

For the second time in 12 months, the government has moved to block a tax shelter that had been aimed at converting billions of dollars of corporate profits, on which taxes have yet to be paid, into profits that will never be taxed.

The move by the Internal Revenue Service came two days after IBM said that it used the technique to avoid paying $1.6 billion in income taxes.

As part of a $12.5 billion stock repurchase, IBM used a foreign subsidiary to buy back shares through foreign exchanges. The subsidiary then used the shares to pay its corporate parent in America for goods and services.

“It’s just a way to bring the profits into the United States without paying taxes by using the stock as currency,” said H. David Rosenbloom, an international tax lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale and director of the international tax program at New York University Law School.

On May 31, the Internal Revenue Service issued a notice declaring that the technique could not be used to eliminate taxes. The notice said it would disallow any transactions beginning on that day.

The technique “raises significant policy concerns,” the IRS said. The IRS shut down a simpler version of the same shelter in September.

Under a 1962 law, corporations can defer paying taxes on most profits earned abroad as long as the money remains outside the country. The taxes come due, however, if the money is returned to the United States.

The technique was believed to be in wide use by corporations that have substantial profits offshore and are also buying back large amounts of their own shares to return value to investors. IBM appears to be the only company that publicly disclosed its use of the tax shelter.

The tax shelter is known as “Killer B,” after the letter used to designate a provision in the tax code governing certain corporate reorganizations.

By avoiding the 35 percent federal tax on profit, a company can buy three shares for every two it would be able to acquire with profits that had been taxed.

…

Damned Frivelous Lawsuits

No Comments

Once again, the right wing shows how it’s all about rules for thee, but not for me.

Suing over a bruise on your butt? Hypocrite.

Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Bork Files Slip-and-Fall Lawsuit

Our colleagues at WSJ.com’s Law Blog report on a lawsuit filed by Robert H. Bork against the Yale Club: One-time Supreme Court nominee Bork is suing New York’s Yale Club for $1 million, alleging he was injured when he fell at an event there last June. “When it was his turn to deliver remarks to the audience, Mr. Bork approached the dais,” the lawsuit said. “Because of the unreasonable height of the dais, without stairs or a handrail, Mr. Bork fell backwards as he attempted to mount the dais, striking his left leg on the side of the dais and striking his head on a heat register.” Bork, 80 years old, suffered a large hematoma in his lower left leg as a result of the fall, according to the lawsuit. Read more and comment at Law Blog.

This is a Paris Free Zone

No Comments

I am not referring to the city of lights, neither am I referring to the similarly named town in Texas.

Rather, I am referring to the hotel heiress.

Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or her attempting to assassinate someone, she will not be mentioned here.

That is all.

I’m not a Woman, but I find this a bit condescending.

No Comments

If this was being marketed to my 9 year old daughter, I’d be amused, but they are marketing it to adult professional women. WTF?

SiliconValley.com – Hello Kitty dons new pink laptop to woo working women

TOKYO (AP) – Japan’s cutest cat in glittering crystal decorates NEC Corp.’s new pink laptop in the Japanese electronics maker’s latest effort to woo working women.

The La Vie G Hello Kitty model, available for $1,650 by Internet order only in Japan, went on sale Wednesday, and has gotten off to a good start, company spokesman Shinya Hashizume said Thursday, while declining to give numbers.

‘PC users now tend to be men, but we’re hoping to attract women with this product,’ he said.

The laptop, developed in collaboration with Sanrio Co., the Tokyo-based company behind Hello Kitty, uses 299 Swarovski crystals to depict four hearts and the bubbly feline head wearing a pink bow and crown.

NEC is hoping to sell several hundred of the Hello Kitty laptops in the next few months, targeting the summertime when Japanese workers receive their twice-a-year bonuses, Hashizume said.”

…

It’s really pretty hideous.

Fraudulent Appraisals, Part One of Many.

No Comments

People who have bought houses since 2000 or so, myself included, have bought houses with phony money generated by Alan Greenspan for houses with phony valuations.

Ohio Sues Real Estate Firms for Pressuring Appraisers

By Brian Louis and Sharon L. Crenson

June 7 (Bloomberg) — Ohio, the state with the third highest number of foreclosures, sued 10 real estate companies for improperly pressuring appraisers to inflate home values.

The companies, based in Ohio, California, Arizona and New York, set specific estimated values on properties and communicated a desired price to appraisers, according to the lawsuits filed by Attorney General Marc Dann today. In Ohio, it’s illegal to influence an appraiser. Those sued include seven mortgage brokers, two lenders and an appraiser.

Foreclosure filings in Ohio jumped 135 percent in April from a year ago, pushing the state’s rate to almost two times the national average, according to RealtyTrac Inc. States have opened investigations of mortgage brokers, lenders and appraisers as delinquencies rise across the U.S., led by subprime borrowers.”

…

Bandar, aka Bandar Bush, Saudi Prince ‘Received Arms Cash’

No Comments

It should be noted that he is so close to the Bush family that he’s called “Bandar Bush”.

BBC NEWS | Business | Saudi prince ‘received arms cash’: “A Saudi prince who negotiated a £40bn arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia received secret payments for over a decade, a BBC probe has found.

The UK’s biggest arms dealer, BAE Systems, paid hundreds of millions of pounds to the ex-Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

The payments were made with the full knowledge of the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Bandar would not comment on the investigation and BAE Systems said it acted lawfully at all times.

The MoD said information about the Al Yamamah deal was confidential.

Sir Raymond Lygo, a former chief executive of BAE, told the BBC’s World Business Report that there had been ‘nothing untoward’ about the arms deal.

‘I was the one who won the contract,’ he said. ‘I don’t know anything about him (the prince) at all. I would have remembered that name.’

When asked about the secret payments, Sir Lygo said that it was not going on when the deal was signed.

‘I would have known if it was going on at the time. I was not aware of it, so as far as I am concerned it was not occuring.

‘Yes, we paid agents. Nothing illegal about that. It was absolutely in accordance with the law at the time… there was nothing untoward about the deal whatsoever.”

Private plane

The investigation found that up to £120m a year was sent by BAE Systems from the UK into two Saudi embassy accounts in Washington.

…

£120m/year. At current exchange rates, that’s about $240 million.

High priced agent. He’s getting more a year than A-Rod, whose agent gets even less than that.

Why We Need A Bill of Rights.

No Comments
I’m not suggesting that all, or most, peace officers do this, but this guy busted someone for looking at his dog, and he won’t even get a suspension for this.

The blue wall of silence needs to be eliminated.

This is how people act when they can act with impunity.

Animal cruelty case yields ‘doggone’ dismissal: Rutland Herald Online
June 6, 2007

By Peter Hirschfeld Times Argus Staff

CHELSEA – A woman facing jail time for “staring” at a police dog had charges against her dropped Monday after an Orange County prosecutor viewed videotape of the alleged crime.

Jayna Hutchinson, now of Lebanon, N.H., was scheduled for a jury trial this week on a misdemeanor charge of cruelty to animals.

A Vermont State Police sergeant said Hutchinson was intoxicated and stared at his police dog in a “taunting/harassing manner” last July while officers were in the process of investigating a reported melee outside a West Fairlee establishment.

“Prosecuting a woman for staring at a police dog is absurd,” said Kelly Green, a public defender appointed by Vermont District Court in Orange County to represent Hutchinson. She likened the act to giving a police officer the finger – a form of expression protected by rights accorded under the First Amendment.

“After looking at the video, I did not think it was worthwhile proceeding,” Orange County State’s Attorney Will Porter said Tuesday.

He said it would be difficult to prove that Hutchinson’s behavior met the statutory standard for cruelty to animals, which in this case would have required that Hutchinson “intentionally torment(ed) or harass(ed) an animal owned … by a police department.”

According to an affidavit, Hutchinson approached Sgt. Todd Protzman on the night of July 31 as he and at least three other officers were investigating a fight. Hutchinson, who later registered a .218 blood-alcohol content, told Protzman she wanted to report that she had been beat up the night before by one of the men involved in the fight, according to Green.

Green said the video showed Protzman mocking Hutchinson’s appearance.

“I think his comment about Jayna’s looks revealed the real reason he arrested her,” Green said. “I’d venture a guess to say that if she’d been small and pretty and had been complaining of being assaulted, he may have done more to investigate her claims.”

Porter said he saw no indication of improper behavior by Protzman and that he was doing his best to deal with a very intoxicated person.

“Ms. Hutchinson was very intoxicated. Did he have some abrupt comments toward her? Yeah,” Porter said. “He had some curt responses to get her out of his hair so he could attend to what he was there for.”

Is Bill Clinton a Closet Homophobe?

No Comments

Pams House Blend has a number of articles on this.

When you look at the advice he gave the Kerry in 2004 (from Politico):

A version of this story is already in print. In 2004, Newsweek reported, without a named source, that Bill Clinton had suggested Kerry “to back local bans on gay marriage.”

Shrum has more, and different, detail:

…”Kerry, Clinton ventured, should consider defying Democratic interest groups by endorsing the Bush proposal for a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.” Shrum reports that “this was a flip-flop too far for Kerry.”

You also have a report from Newsweek in 2004:

Clinton Advice Spurned. Looking for a way to pick up swing voters in the Red States, former President Bill Clinton, in a phone call with Kerry, urged the Senator to back local bans on gay marriage. Kerry respectfully listened, then told his aides, “I’m not going to ever do that.”

You also have his spinelessness on the Military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

And you have him actively campaigning in the back rooms in 2004 against Howard Dean, because he felt that Dr. Dean’s signature of civil unions in VT would “kill his campaign”.

I don’t think that this from a Sistah Soljah type sense of politics, but rather from a deep seated discomfort with gays.

Why Identity Theft Should Not Be Left to the Private Market

No Comments

Because if it is, this will be the rule, not the exception.

Call your congressman and tell him that you should be able to have a credit freeze on demand.

Lifelock Founder a Shady Identity Thief?

By Kim Zetter

The Phoenix New Times has published an investigative piece showing that Robert J. Maynard, Jr., one of the founders of Lifelock, a company offering a service to protect people from identity theft, is himself a suspected identity thief who may have stolen his own father’s identity, has a troubled financial past (including at least two bankruptcies), and was jailed in 2003 for defaulting on a $16,000 Las Vegas casino loan — an incident that the New Times says Maynard has lied about repeatedly to customers and reporters.”

…..

Tech Companies Want Their Slave Labor

No Comments

What this is about is workers being free to tell them to “take this job and shove it”, and not leave the US.

Any visa in which losing your job with a specific employer requires you to leave is a step above slavery.

H1b, L1, and the proposed guest worker program are an attempt to create an underclass of cheap labor.

Tech seeing red over green-card proposal
By Anne Broache
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 6, 2007, 4:00 AM PDT

Silicon Valley companies would be forced to compete with fast food joints, shops at the mall and truck-driving outfits for the same pool of legalized foreign hires under a controversial proposal that the U.S. Senate is debating this week.

The prospect of unpredictable competition for a fixed number of immigrant visas based on an applicant’s educational background and work history, which would replace the current employer-sponsored green card system, is drawing stiff opposition from technology lobbying groups that are pressing senators to preserve the current system.”

…