This is a good thing for democracy in Columbia.
12 years is too long.
Interestingly enough, they stopped a plebiscite on this not for broad constitutional reasons, but on narrow procedural ones, “on the grounds that a referendum approved by congress ignored checks and balances and because supporters exceeded financing limits during a petition drive”.
The campaign finance violations are no surprise; he is a darling of the moneyed class in Columbia.
She’s had a regular column, “The Party,” which was basically about throwing parties, in the print edition of the WaPo, but it’s going online only, or, as Gawker so evocatively states it, “Sally Quinn Relegated to WaPo Ghetto.”
Basically, she devoted an entire article to the horror that is a scheduling conflict between two weddings, and it crossed line between accommodating whatever affection that Posties might have her husband, Ex Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradley, and projectile vomit risking revulsion, so she’s gone, hopefully for good. (No link to Sally, you can get the link at the first link, look for, “enormous turd,” but I don’t link to Sally Quinn)
In any case, one wag had fun with it in an online chat with a Wapo columnist:
Burke, Va.: I’m so confused!
Our ex-boss’ wife (HIS third wife) still writes for the company newsletter. Last week, she wrote a column about how her son’s wedding is on the same day as her husband’s granddaughter’s wedding, on opposite coasts, and nobody can figure out why we’re supposed to care. I guess everybody likes the old man so much that everybody’s afraid to tell his wife that her column is absurd and makes the company newsletter look stupid.
Any suggestions?
Lily Garcia: It sounds like the column, although inappropriate, is basically harmless. You could try suggesting topics that you would like to see covered in the newsletter, but you should stop short of proposing that the ex-boss’ wife be excluded.
In any case, this means that the level of discourse in Washington, DC has improved by a small amount.
So, now it’s time to look at the mess that is Greece.
Greece has been a mess for a very long time, and of the Nato members who joined the Euro, it’s probably the one that should not have joined.
John Mauldin notes, correctly, that the core of the problem is that the terms of joining the Euro block were excessively generous for the less well off nations, basically Germany and France successfully created a mechanism which over valued their national currencies.
This served to both minimize their labor cost advantages with regard to Northern Europe and to provide a market for northern European products:
First, we need to go back to the creation of the euro. Most of the Mediterranean countries that are now in trouble were allowed into the union with an exchange rate that overvalued their currencies relative to the northern countries, but especially to Germany. That meant that Greek consumers could buy products and services that previously may have been out of their reach. Plus, with government debt at low rates, the Greek government could borrow more to finance deficit spending, without the threat of higher interest rates. And Greece began to increase its debt with abandon.
Of course, there was the problem that the debt, and deficits, were exceeding the Euro Zone mandates, but with the use of some clever financial instruments it traded with about 15 banks, most notably that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs, it concealed this debt from regulators:
The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards.
It had worked before. In 2001, just after Greece was admitted to Europe’s monetary union, Goldman helped the government quietly borrow billions, people familiar with the transaction said. That deal, hidden from public view because it was treated as a currency trade rather than a loan, helped Athens to meet Europe’s deficit rules while continuing to spend beyond its means.
Athens did not pursue the latest Goldman proposal, but with Greece groaning under the weight of its debts and with its richer neighbors vowing to come to its aid, the deals over the last decade are raising questions about Wall Street’s role in the world’s latest financial drama.
Note also that this was a mess that the Panhellenic Socialist Movement inherited from the right wing New Democracy party:
George Alogoskoufis, who became Greece’s finance minister in a political party shift after the Goldman deal, criticized the transaction in the Parliament in 2005. The deal, Mr. Alogoskoufis argued, would saddle the government with big payments to Goldman until 2019.
Mr. Alogoskoufis, who stepped down a year ago, said in an e-mail message last week that Goldman later agreed to reconfigure the deal “to restore its good will with the republic.” He said the new design was better for Greece than the old one.
It sounds a lot like the mess that Bush and His Evil Minions™ left for us.
One of the problems in dealing with this is that the Germans, remembering the hyper-inflation of Wiemar Germany as if it were yesterday, are suggesting that austerity measures are the way to go, and there are rumblings from them that they want Greece expelled from the Euro and losing voting rights in the EU Parliament.
In response, Greece is accusing Germany of not providing compensation for the stuff that they stole from Greece in WWII:
Athens has accused Germany of failing to meet its World War II compensation obligations following the Nazi occupation of Greece in 1941, a claim Berlin has firmly rejected.
In a radio interview on Wednesday (24 February), Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos criticised Germany’s attitude towards the ongoing Greek debt crisis, adding that Athens had never received adequate war reparations.
“They took away the Greek gold that was at the Bank of Greece, they took away the Greek money and they never gave it back. This is an issue that has to be faced sometime in the future,” Mr Pangalos told the BBC World Service.
<sarcasm>It’s so nice when you have mature people solving problems.</sarcasm>
One of the problems here is that the prescription by the central bankers is more austerity for Greece, but the reality is that Greece has among the most austere social safety net, and spending in the Euro zone.
The real problem is that because of endemic tax evasion and systemic corruption throughout the bureaucracy, their tax collections are truly pathetic.
One bright side to all this is that a number of people are starting to realize that Goldman Sachs is not simply a banker, but that all roads on most of this corruption lead to the Squid*, most notably those in the European Commission, who are, if Simon Johnson is correct, going to execute a detailed audit of Goldman’s dealings in Europe.
It doesn’t help that Goldman Sachs engaged in similar maneuvers with other European governments:
Greece’s 2001 deal to swap some of its debt using currency derivatives was in line with what other euro-zone countries were doing, Yiannos Papantoniou, the country’s finance and economy minister when the deal was made, told CNBC.com Wednesday.
………
“We took a loan that was to be repaid in 2019,” he said in a telephone interview. “It was public. I know that what we’ve done then was consistent with what was done by many euro zone countries.”
………
Italy, France and Spain were among the euro zone members doing such swaps at the time, he added. Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, has asked Greece for explanations on these debt swaps by Feb. 19.
What’s more it appears that these transactions may have been a part of a fraud perpetrated by the banks on these governments, which is why law enforcement officials in Milan have frozen accounts of a number of banks, “UBS AG, Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Depfa Bank Plc,” as a part of an investigation.
BTW, while we are at it, it should be noted that Bank of Italy Governor, and dark horse candidate for ECB president, Mario Draghi used to work with the Vampire Squid.*
As it stands right now though, it appears that Greece should be able to do its required borrowing for the next 2-3 weeks.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
One of his top aides, David Johnson, has had repeated accusations of physical violence women acquaintances.
Most recently, a woman was seeking a protective order against him, and state police who were members of the governor’s personal security detail pressured her to drop the proceedings, and the day before the hearing, Governor Paterson talked with her on the phone to convince her to drop the matter:
In the ensuing months, she returned to court twice to press her case, complaining that the State Police had been harassing her to drop it. The State Police, which had no jurisdiction in the matter, confirmed that the woman was visited by a member of the governor’s personal security detail.
Then, just before she was due to return to court to seek a final protective order, the woman got a phone call from the governor, according to her lawyer. She failed to appear for her next hearing on Feb. 8, and as a result her case was dismissed.
………
Through a spokesman, Mr. Paterson said the call actually took place the day before the scheduled court hearing and maintained that the woman had initiated it. He declined to answer further questions about his role in the matter.
That last paragraph sounds suspicious: How does someone get the phone number of the Governor?
Also note that the State Police have no jurisdiction, and ordinarily do not do this.
So the fat lady has sung, and he is not running for reelection.
Truth be told, the fat lady sung over a year ago, when he was polling behind Dick Cheney, but reality has finally smacked him in the face.
This is a good thing, since the next governor will be hip deep in redistricting, and perhaps New York can make things more fair, particularly in the State Senate, which has been Gerrymandered in favor of Republicans for generations.
For that matter, don’t buy anything from an operation in the state.
The state lege has just passed a bill which provides criminal penalties for miscarriages:
A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor’s signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances.
…………
The bill passed by legislators amends Utah’s criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion. The basis for the law was a recent case in which a 17-year-old girl, who was seven months pregnant, paid a man $150 to beat her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage. Although the girl gave birth to a baby later given up for adoption, she was initially charged with attempted murder. However the charges were dropped because, at the time, under Utah state law a woman could not be prosecuted for attempting to arrange an abortion, lawful or unlawful.
The bill passed by the Utah legislature would change that. While the bill does not affect legally obtained abortions, it criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor’s care, with penalties including up to life in prison.
“What is really radical and different about this statute is that all of the other states’ feticide laws are directed to third party attackers,” Paltrow explained. “[Other states’ feticide laws] were passed in response to a pregnant woman who has been beaten up by a husband or boyfriend. Utah’s law is directed to the woman herself and that’s what makes it different and dangerous.”
In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.
Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.
If the politicians of Utah hate women this much, maybe they should stop breeding.
Better yet, maybe their partners should stop having sex with them, see Lysistrata.
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld put their toadies in power, and Barack Obama has decided that it’s A-OK with him to keep them in place.
A natural result of this is that General Ray Odierno has officially and publicly requested an increase in the number of combat forces in Iraq after the withdrawal deadline:
In a move that could force President Obama to break his vow to get all combat troops out of Iraq by August of this year, his top commander in Iraq recently officially requested keeping a combat brigade in the northern part of the country beyond that deadline, three people close to the situation said Wednesday.
Gen. Raymond Odierno asked for a brigade to try to keep the peace in the disputed city of Kirkuk, but only got a polite nod from the president when the issue was raised during his recent meetings in Washington, according to two of the people familiar with the discussions. If the brigade in northern Iraq is indeed kept in Iraq past the deadline, there will be a fan dance under which it no longer will be called a combat unit, but like the six other combat brigades being kept past the deadline, will be called an advisory unit. I can imagine the press releases that will follow-“Three U.S. Army soldiers were killed last night in an advisory operation . . . .”
Enough is enough. It’s time to take an action which is reported in the press as “effectively ending his career.”
I am stunned, because when cops shoot poor people, they generally get away with it, but with Retired New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman pleading guilty to obstruction of justice, it looks like these cops will not get away with murder:
Retired New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman has pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which left two people dead and four others injured after police fired on a group of civilians trapped in the submerged city days after Hurricane Katrina.
Two men — Ronald Madison, 40, who was mentally challenged, and James Brissette, 19 — were killed. The survivors included a husband and wife, their two teenage children and a nephew.
Lohman, who helped orchestrate an elaborate cover-up of the crime, supervised the investigation and was at the scene on Sept. 4, 2005, according to an 11-page bill of information unsealed today.
According to the document, Lohman was aware that a subordinate planted a gun at the scene. He also wrote a 17-page police report full of lies about the incident and encouraged officers at the scene to remove shell casings.
I am stunned, and pleased, that the “thin blue line” has been broken, and the truth appears to be coming out any day now.
*Pun not intended.
Just go read WallStreetJackass.
Do it now, it makes everything clear ……… And makes me feel the need for arrests.
I think that the facts are beginning to catch up with him, which is a pity, because he’s right on the issues:
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, has been admonished by the chamber’s ethics panel for trips he made to the Caribbean.
The committee determined he violated House gift rules when he accepted the trips to conferences in 2007 and 2008 sponsored by the Carib News Foundation. The foundation received contributions from corporations specifically to fund the conferences, the panel said in a statement.
The committee said yesterday that while it didn’t find evidence Rangel was aware of the funding, members of his staff did and “Representative Rangel was responsible for the knowledge and actions of his staff in the performance of their official duties.”
We are going to be seeing more of this, and I do not expect Rangel to run for reelection in 2012, because by that point, the pile of sleaze will be too high.
I expect a new eruption every few months for the next 2 years or so.
H/t the Big Picture
It’s jobless Thursday, and the new numbers suck wet farts from dead pigeons, specifically, they are up 12% over the past 2 weeks,to 496,000, up 22,000, and well over the consensus estimate 460,000.
Ouch.
Meanwhile, both the The 4-week moving average and the continuing claims rose by 6K, to 473,750 and 4.617 million.
Note however, that he Snowpocalypse may have had something to do with this.
Note also that that the durable goods orders number sucked too, it was up only because of aircraft orders, and as the picture on the right shows, there really is no increase at all once you take out spending on military items going back a very long time.
Meanwhile, in Japan, their consumer prices fell by 1.3% year over year, which is triggering a shouting match between the Finance Ministry, who want QE, and the Bank of Japan, who are still inflation hawks.
Meanwhile in currency, the dollar rose, largely on concerns about Greece and Euro Zone.
And yes, I know, I need to post something about the Greek problem, but it’s sprawling, and I’m still trying to make a synthesis.
In energy, the crappy jobs numbers drove oil down.
It is clearly a tragedy that a SeaWorld trainer was killed by an Orca.
This is a reminder that when you see someone working with a large predator, whether it is Sigfried and Roy and their tigers, or if it’s SeaWorld’s killer whales, these are still wild animals, and there is danger whenever you interact with a large predator.
The whale, Tilikum, after all, weighs over 6 tons.
One report (at link) has the whale grabbing the trainer, Dawn Brancheau, by pony tail, and the initial coroner’s report lists drowning as the primary cause of death.
That being said, all cetaceans are highly intelligent, social creatures, and it is possible that the death was as a result of a purely social interaction that it did not realize was harmful.
He could simply have been playing the game with a…
…wait for it…
…wait for it…
…wait for it…
…wait for it…
Chum
I am a very bad person.
Well, I guess this makes Paul Blart: Mall Cop, look cool, but 2 Collier County sheriff’s deputies doing their patrols on Segways collided, with one deputy breaking his ankle as a result.
I kind of wonder about any law enforcement entity that relies on the Segway to patrol though.
Much like Jim Romenesko, I really hope that a security camera caught the action.
See his entry into the Twitterverse:
Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.
I am reverring to Kent Conrad (DINO-ND) who is saying that he’ll kill any attempt to use reconciliation to pass a fix to Senate’s awful healthcare reform bill unless the House passes that bill first:
The Senate Democrats’ top budget guy told reporters today that the Senate can’t pass a reconciliation package tweaking a comprehensive health care bill unless the House passes the Senate bill first. And if the House won’t do that, he says health care reform is “dead.”
“The only way this works is for the House to pass the Senate bill and then, depending on what the package is, the reconciliation provision that moves first through the House and then comes here,” said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) outside the upper chamber this morning. “That’s the only way that works.”
I guess that someone hurt his feelings.
Here is a message to almost everyone in the White House and Congress:
<Rant>
</Rant>
I don’t intend to ban Italian IP numbers
… … … Yet
An Italian court has convicted 3 Google executives on criminal privacy violations because someone posted a nasty video to Google Video:
A judge in Milan, Italy, on Wednesday convicted three Google executives — chief legal officer David Drummond, global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and former CFO George Reyes — of violating Italy’s privacy laws, a decision that Google is characterizing as an attack on Internet freedom.
The charges stem from a video that was uploaded to YouTube in Italy, back in September 2006, that depicts four high school boys in a classroom in Turin, Italy, taunting another boy with a mental disability.
Google received two requests to remove the video in early November, one from a user and one from the Italian Interior Ministry, and did so within 24 hours.
Nonetheless, Francesco Cajani, a prosecutor in Milan, filed suit against four Google employees for violating Italian privacy laws. All four were found not guilty of criminal defamation. The fourth, Arvind Desikan, formerly the head of Google Video in London, was acquitted of the privacy violation charges, unlike Drummond, Fleischer, and Reyes.
If I was running a service with user generated content, I would start denying access to Italian IPs.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this might have been driven in some manner or another by Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has control of something like 80% of the broadcast media in Italy, and might be unhappy with the competition for ad revenue and news.
Yep, this time it’s the CFPA:
The Obama administration is no longer insisting on the creation of a stand-alone consumer protection agency as a central element of the plan to remake regulation of the financial system.
In hopes of quick congressional approval of a reform bill, White House officials are opening the door to compromise with lawmakers concerned about creating a new bureaucracy, according to congressional and some administration sources.
President Obama’s economic team is now open to housing the consumer regulator inside another agency, such as the Treasury Department, though they still prefer a stand-alone agency. In either case, they are insisting on a regulator with political autonomy and real teeth so it can effectively enforce rules designed to protect consumers of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products.
(emphasis mine)
Let’s be clear on this: No one has any concern about a new bureaucracy. The banks want impunity to screw consumers, and members of Congress who want campaign donations from Wall Street, and White House officials completely captured by the finance industry, **cough** Geithner and Summers **cough**, are more than willing to do this.
If the CFPA is not independent, which means that they have the ability to craft their own budget, they will be subject to the tender mercies of someone like Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner or Hank “Why the f%$# isn’t he in Jail” Paulson, and so will be largely ineffective.
The protest sign is properly spelled, so Canadian education does not produce “morans“.
OK, the Canucks win in the bigger scheme of things.
It would be nice not living in a country with the politics and attitudes of a 3rd world nation.
But we have … We have … We have … We have … We won that damn hockey game.
This is not an exoneration. It’s an acknowledgment that the courts in Haiti are a shambles, and that they are getting a lot of pressure from the US.
It’s clear from the back story that something very wrong was going on:
A judge in Haiti has said the last two Christian US missionaries being held on suspicion of abducting children after the earthquake may be freed in days.
Bernard Sainvil told Reuters the case, which involves 33 children, should be closed this week because there were no criminal grounds to pursue it.
A lawyer for the two said he thought they would be freed by Thursday.
Eight fellow missionaries were released last week but their leader and her assistant were kept in custody.
The other 8 are claiming that they had been scammed by Silsby and Coulter, and I am inclined to believe that something more than inattention to the finer points of Haitian immigration law is involved.
We got the lightest of dustings last night, which is good, because I had an interview this morning, for a level tech writer position, which ain’t engineering but it beats sitting on my butt collecting unemployment.
In any case, the NWS is predicting snow tonight, 2-4 inches in total:
Winter Weather Advisory
URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE BALTIMORE MD/WASHINGTON DC
1214 PM EST THU FEB 25 2010MDZ005>007-011-260115-
/O.UPG.KLWX.WS.A.0007.100225T2300Z-100226T1600Z/
/O.NEW.KLWX.WW.Y.0018.100225T1714Z-100226T1700Z/
CARROLL-NORTHERN BALTIMORE-HARFORD-SOUTHERN BALTIMORE-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF…WESTMINSTER…BALTIMORE
1214 PM EST THU FEB 25 2010…WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON EST FRIDAY…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN STERLING VIRGINIA HAS ISSUED A
WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW…WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL NOON
EST FRIDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.* PRECIPITATION TYPE…SNOW.
* ACCUMULATIONS…SNOW WILL ACCUMULATE 1 TO 2 INCHES THROUGH THIS
EVENING…ESPECIALLY ACROSS BALTIMORE AND HARFORD COUNTIES.
ANOTHER 1 TO 2 INCHES IS EXPECTED ACROSS NORTHEAST MARYLAND
OVERNIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING.* TIMING…SNOW THIS AFTERNOON WILL CONTINUE THROUGH FRIDAY
MORNING.* TEMPERATURES…HIGHS IN THE MID 30S TODAY. LOWS IN THE UPPER 20S
TONIGHT. HIGHS IN THE MID 30S FRIDAY.* WINDS…NORTHWEST WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 40 MPH
THROUGH THIS EVENING. NORTHWEST WINDS 25 TO 35 MPH WITH GUSTS TO
55 MPH OVERNIGHT AND FRIDAY.PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY MEANS THAT PERIODS OF SNOW WILL CAUSE
TRAVEL DIFFICULTIES. BE PREPARED FOR SLIPPERY ROADS AND LIMITED
VISIBILITIES…AND USE CAUTION WHILE DRIVING.
It’s pretty weak tea compared to the uptick rule, but it’s better than nothing:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission curbed some bearish stock bets, ending a yearlong debate between individual investors and Wall Street with a solution that fails to satisfy anyone.
SEC commissioners voted 3-2 today to restrict short sales of a company’s stock once it falls 10 percent from the previous day’s closing price. When the 10 percent threshold is triggered, traders could only execute short sales for the stock at a price above the market’s best bid. The curb would be in place through the following day.
General Electric Co., Charles Schwab Corp. and more than 5,600 people who signed a petition sent to the SEC wanted a short-selling restriction that was always in effect, similar to the so-called uptick rule the agency abolished in 2007. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and hedge funds Citadel Investment Group LLC and D.E. Shaw & Co. lobbied against a limit.
You only need to know who was for it, and who was against it, and go against the Vampire Squid.
Short selling has a role, but there needs to be a balance between what ever “price discovery” function it has, and the ability that it gives for people to create wild swings in prices for speculation.