Month: March 2010

19 March 2010, 7:38 PM

Appeals Court Tells Fed to Turn Over Records

Well, the Federal Reserve just lost the next step of the court case, with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan siding with the circuit court, and with plaintiff, Bloomberg News, that its records are subject to the freedom of information act:

The Fed had argued that disclosure of the documents threatens to stigmatize borrowers and cause them “severe and irreparable competitive injury,” discouraging banks in distress from seeking help. A three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected that argument in a unanimous decision.

The U.S. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, “sets forth no basis for the exemption the Board asks us to read into it,” U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the opinion. “If the Board believes such an exemption would better serve the national interest, it should ask Congress to amend the statute.”

The opinion may not be the final word in the bid for the documents, which was launched by Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, with a November 2008 lawsuit. The Fed may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court.

May? May?

Of course they are going to ask for an en banc hearing, and of course they will appeal to the Supreme court.

My guess is that they will also lobby for a legislative exemption while their lawyers move as slowly as possible.

FWIW, I think that the claim that the borrowers would be “stigmatized” is pure bull sh%$.

Who got the money, and how much they got, is common knowledge on Wall Street: Everyone knows who the borrowers are, except for the general public.

What is really going on here is that there is likely evidence of some sort of wrongdoing, at least a lack of due diligence and sloppiness, that the Federal reserve does not want revealed.

19 March 2010, 7:19 PM

Are the Recent Taliban Arrests Another ISI Black Op?

Kai Eide, the former special representative in Afghanistan is saying that the recent spate of arrests by Pakistani security forces was likely a deliberate effort to sabotage ongoing negotiations with the Taliban:

The UN’s former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has strongly criticised Pakistan’s recent arrest of high-ranking Taliban leaders.

Mr Eide told the BBC the arrests had completely stopped a channel of secret communications with the UN.

Pakistani officials insist the arrests were not an attempt to spoil talks.

I don’t believe the denials.

The Pakistani state security apparatus is horrified at the thought of a government in Kabul that is at all friendly to India, and the people that they arrested were the ones who were involved in the negotiations, as Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist with an extensive background in the region notes:

While the Obama administration is watching the battlefield in Afghanistan, hoping for a quick weakening of the Taliban, regional powers are ratcheting up tensions in and outside that country. Pakistan and Iran in particular want to ensure that by the time the United States is ready to talk to the Taliban, the region’s future will already be shaped by local powers, limiting Washington’s options. Afghanistan’s ethnic and sectarian divisions are being exacerbated in the process.

…………

Events are reminiscent of the 1990s, when the bloody Afghan civil war was fueled by an alignment of India, Iran and Russia, which backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

…………

Yet Pakistan’s military clearly wants a role in shaping Afghanistan. Islamabad had given the Taliban leadership sanctuary since 2001, but in recent weeks the military has arrested several key Taliban leaders who went around the generals and the intelligence service and were using Saudi Arabia as an intermediary to talk to Kabul. Still left alone, however, are Taliban hard-liners who could promote Pakistan’s security needs in future dialogues with Kabul.

On a visit to Islamabad last week, Karzai acknowledged that Pakistan has legitimate security concerns in Afghanistan but also demanded that those arrested Taliban members be extradited to Afghanistan. Privately, senior Afghan officials were incensed, claiming that Pakistan was “sabotaging and undermining” their efforts to talk to the Taliban.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani state security apparatus continues to prepare for a cataclysmic confrontation over Kashmir, which will never happen, because India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers, and this world view continues to make them unreliable allies in the region.

19 March 2010, 7:00 PM

Friday Cat Blogging

And now, we use Sarcasm

It’s the music that makes this special.

19 March 2010, 6:52 PM

You Know How You Have a Song that You Can’t Get Out of Your Head for Days?

This is the acoustic version from the 1970 album “Hand Made.” which I prefer.

Sometimes, once in a while, this is actually a good thing, and today is one of those days, becuase for the past 2 days, it’s been Classical Gas going through my head.

19 March 2010, 6:37 PM

For Corporate Stress Relief

Apply to the………

I was in the drug store, and walked by where they have all those odd things that you see on afternoon TV, and saw the Thera Pen Massager.

It’s a pen with a rubber cap on the end, and when pressure is applied, it vibrates, like, you know, a vibrator.

I can see it being used for stress relief, but I kind of figure that the illustrations shown here don’t refer to where it might be more likely used.

BTW, if someone asks to borrow your pen, tell them to wash it before they return it.

19 March 2010, 4:37 PM

Deep Thought

18 March 2010, 7:23 PM

Great News for the Rule of Law!

So I am sure that Holder and Obama will appeal in an attempt to overturn the ruling.

The 9^th circuit court has ruled that John Ashcroft can be sued personally for arresting and detaining people under the material witness statutes.

Basically, prosecutors have a blanket immunity regarding whether or not they choose to prosecute someone, but police, and prosecutors and attorneys general, who direct that someone be arrested and detained are subject to the same sort of personal liability as a cop who engages in false arrests, as the 3 judge panel notes:

“Framers of our Constitution would have disapproved of the arrest, detention, and harsh confinement of a United States citizen as a ‘material witness’ under the circumstances, and for the immediate purpose alleged, in al-Kidd’s complaint. Sadly, however, even now, more than 217 years after the ratification of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, some confidently assert that the government has the power to arrest and detain or restrict American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because there is evidence that they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wishes to investigate them for possible wrongdoing, or to prevent them from having contact with others in the outside world. We find this to be repugnant to the Constitution, and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history.”

Note that everyone else who was originally sued over this has settled, so here’s hoping that Abdullah al-Kidd, impoverishes John Ashcroft, because, under Obama and Holder, Bush and His Evil Minions^™ will never see the inside of a jail cell.

18 March 2010, 6:44 PM

Economics Update

Click for full size

H/t Calculated Risk

It’s Jobless Thursday, and initial jobless claims fell by 5,000 to 457,000, which is less bad, you need to be under 400K for any real job growth, and the less volatile 4 week moving average fell, though continuing claims fell slightly.

Meanwhile, the CPI was flat in February, with a 0.1% increase in the core inflation rate, which omits food and energy.

In real estate, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate is basically unchanged, at 4.96%.

It will start going up once the TALF expires in a few months.

Finally, oil fell and the dollar rose, probably as a correction for the large swings in response to yesterday’s Federal Reserve statement.

18 March 2010, 6:02 PM

Are There Republican Moles in the Lay-Staff of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops?

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the position of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding healthcare reform and abortion.

Any time that anyone talks about their position, this morning, it was a law professor, the consensus is that the position of the Bishops is coming from somewhere in the Twilight Zone: There is simply no basis in realities of law, precedent, legislation, or the manner in which regulation is derived from statute to suggest the Senate language will allow for federal funding of abortion.

This raises an obvious question: Why does the professional staff of the Conference hold a position at such extreme odds with every lawyer, and almost every other Catholic organization out there, most recently the Catholic Health Association and 59,000 nuns?

The only answer that I can come up with is that the professional staff working in their offices have been captured by partisan Republican operatives.

Either there are Republican operatives working and generating legal and legislative opinions, or the staff has been browbeaten by the loud right wing lay activists, most notably Bill Donohue and his Catholic League, and so the staff is taking its talking points from Republican operatives.

In either case, it is clear that the staff is NOT providing competent or good faith advice.

Perhaps a look at the senior lay staff at the organization, and their backgrounds might be warranted by some news gathering organization. (I sent an earlier version of my theory to Josh Marshall, if you know of any other investigative organizations, please forward this to them.)

Note that I am not suggesting that the Bishops themselves are operating as partisan political operatives, simply that their staff may be operating as such.

18 March 2010, 5:15 PM

Jon Stewart Explains Lehman

Seriously, why cannot we see this on real news programs?

(10:39)

If I could write half as well as Stewart and his crew, hell, I’d be a f%$#ing amazing writer.

18 March 2010, 4:57 PM

The House Vote Can Occur Sunday

Because, as per Pelosi’s promise, there is 72 hours from the CBO report, and the unveiling of the bill, and when the vote is taken.

Well, the report is out: $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years.

Personally, I’m dubious, simply because either this is an end, which means that insurers find loopholes to screw us, or it’s a path to something more akin to European style healthcare, in which case, it gets a lot better.

In any case, it looks like a vote will occur after 2:00pm on Sunday.

18 March 2010, 4:54 AM

Dennis Kucinich to Votefor Healthcare Bill

He announced it yesterday afternoon.

Of course, we haven’t seen the pressure that he got applied to the Blue Dogs, once again proving that you don’t count if you are a liberal.

17 March 2010, 10:10 PM

Your JSF Update

Just the landing

The short take off & vertical landing & cheesy music.

F136 at full reheat using JSF nozzle

The aircraft appears to have performed well in this maneuver, though it was conducted at a lighter weight than would be used in combat.

They will be taking the weight up to around 5,000 lbs of fuel and weapons as they expand the envelope.

From the video, there is no evidence of problems with things like spalling the tarmac, but this is at Pax River, and the airfield there is rather robust.

Of course, this technical success does not make the program any better run, as shown by the latest Pentagon price estimates which show the cost of the plane increasing by 90%, to $135 million each, up from the original $69 million ( inflation adjusted, it was $50m in 2001 dollars) promised in 2001.

Additionally, because of cost and weight issues, the F-35 will be eliminating fire extinguishers and “shutoff fuses for engine fueldraulics lines,” which will increase vulnerability to ground fire, and make the aircraft more vulnerable to things like light AAA and small arms fire, which makes it less attractive to operate in a close air support.

All in all, this reminds me of the death throws of the Naval F-111B, where they were literally pulling glass off the gauges and replacing it with plastic, in an attempt to get the weight low enough to make a carrier landing feasible.

Finally, the GE/Rolls-Royce F136 alternate engine has hit full thrust in reheat (paid subscription required) on the test stand, and results indicate a thrust margin above that of P&W’s F135:

With all the improvements in place, DiLibero says Engine 006 test results so far indicate performance and durability is exceeding design expectations and turbine inlet temperatures are cooler than planned. “So that’s more margin for durability, or power,” he adds. GE/Rolls-Royce declines to comment on the top thrust levels achieved in maximum afterburner, but the team previously said it anticipated an estimated 5% margin over the F-35’s baseline Pratt & Whitney F135 powerplant.

“Both engine developers are working to the same specifications, and our customer has made it clear it is not in anybody’s interests to be over. However, we’re on firm ground by saying we have margin,” says F136 marketing manager Tim Morison. GE/Rolls-Royce says the additional thrust may be particularly valuable for increasing weapons bring-back capability and hover performance for the F-35B Stovl version. “We think the three-stage low-pressure turbine is what drives the margin in Stovl,” Morison says.

Considering the cost increases that appear to be in the pipe for the F135, as well as the ongoing issues with bringback weight with the STOVL version, it does seem to me that continued development of the F136 is prudent.

17 March 2010, 8:03 PM

Our Overpaid Elites Are Incompetent, Corrupt, and Worthless

Christopher Hayes nails it:

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.

The downfall of empires has always been the replacement of meritocracies with nepotism, because as people become entitled, they become stupid.

Get your pitchforks and torches, get your pitchforks and torches here!

Go read.

17 March 2010, 6:38 PM

Well, Now We Know Why They Closed Park Avenue Bank on Thursday

As opposed to the normal Friday.

Because Charles Antonucci, the president of the bank, was just arrested for defrauding the TARP:

The former president of New York’s privately held Park Avenue Bank was arrested on Monday on fraud charges, the first person accused of attempting to steal U.S. government bailout funds in the financial crisis.

The charges came just three days after regulators seized the bank, which had $520 million in assets.

A 10-count criminal complaint said Charles Antonucci devised “an elaborate round-trip loan transaction” that he told others was his own $6.5 million investment in Park Avenue Bank, misleading bank regulators. Antonucci made false statements in the bank’s application for $11.2 million from TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to the complaint.

I gotta figure that there is some more TARP fraud among the banksters, but time will tell.

17 March 2010, 5:20 PM

If the Supreme Court Says that They are People

Can we throw Assurant Health in jail for attempted murder:

In May, 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, [now Assurant] revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.

…………

Previously undisclosed records from Mitchell’s case reveal that Fortis had a company policy of targeting policyholders with HIV. A computer program and algorithm targeted every policyholder recently diagnosed with HIV for an automatic fraud investigation, as the company searched for any pretext to revoke their policy. As was the case with Mitchell, their insurance policies often were canceled on erroneous information, the flimsiest of evidence, or for no good reason at all, according to the court documents and interviews with state and federal investigators.

…………

In the motions, [presiding judge, Michael G. ] Nettles not only strongly denied Fortis‘ claims but condemned the corporation’s conduct.

“There was evidence that Fortis‘ general counsel insisted years ago that members of the rescission committee not record the identity of the persons present and involved in the process of making a decision to rescind a Fortis health insurance policy,” Nettles wrote.

Elsewhere in his order, Nettles noted that there were no “minutes of actions, votes, or any business conducted during the rescission committee’s meeting.”

The South Carolina Supreme Court, in upholding the jury’s verdict in the case in a unanimous 5-0 opinion, said that it agreed with the lower court’s finding that Fortis destroyed records to hide the corporation’s misconduct. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal wrote: “The lack of written rescission policies, the lack of information available regarding appealing rights or procedures, the separate policies for rescission documents” as well as the “omission” of other records regarding the decision to revoke Mitchell’s insurance, constituted “evidence that Fortis tried to conceal the actions it took in rescinding his policy.”

They were engaging in actions in which they knew that they were defrauding their customers, a felony, and they knew that there was a significant livelihood of death resulting, which makes this felony murder, and perhaps 1^st degree murder .

It’s nice that Mr. Mitchell got his money, but the company and its agents need to go to jail.

BTW, this is Murray Waas reporting this, and I would argue that he is one of the 5 best investigative reporters out there.

17 March 2010, 10:06 AM

I’m quoting American Conservative Magazine?

Why yes, I am quoting American Conservative Magazine.

You see, Daniel Larison, reads Ross Douthat’s most recent New York Times screed (no link to the Times, I don’t want to encourage them, but his wankitude is here on my blog).

Ross, it seems, felt offended because people were using insufficient nuance when describing Bush and His Evil Minions^™, particularly with regard to the architects of the invasion of Iraq, and Mr. Larison responds:

Yes, the problem might be that we do not have artists capable of rendering contemporary architects of a war of aggression that was based on shoddy intelligence, ideological fervor and deceit in a sufficiently subtle, even-handed manner. If only Hollywood were better at portraying the depth and complexity of people who unleashed hell on a nation of 24 million people out of an absurd fear of a non-existent threat! Life is so unfair to warmongers, is it not? Then again, the reason our debates are so poisonous and our nation so divided might have something to do with the existence of utterly unaccountable members of the political class that can launch such a war, suffer no real consequences, and then reliably expect to be defended as “decent” and “well-intentioned” people who made understandable mistakes. The unfortunate truth of our existence is that villains do not have to come out of central casting for comic book movies. They are ordinary, “decent” people who commit grave errors and terrible crimes for any number of reasons. Many great evils have found their origins in a group’s belief that they were doing the right thing and were therefore entitled and permitted to use extraordinary means.

………

(emphasis mine)

That is a righteous rant.

16 March 2010, 11:00 PM

Jon Stewart is a F%$#ing Genius: Pro Wrestling Edition

Do not have anything in your mouth before clicking “play”.

16 March 2010, 10:08 PM

Anti-Vaxxers Handed Another Well Deserved Defeat

A 3 judge panel has ruled that there is no scientific basis for claims of a link between thimerosal and autism:

In a further blow to the antivaccine movement, three judges ruled Friday in three separate cases that thimerosal, a preservative containing mercury, does not cause autism.

The three rulings are the second step in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding begun in 2002 in the United States Court of Federal Claims. The proceeding combines the cases of 5,000 families with autistic children seeking compensation from the federal vaccine injury fund, which comes from a 75-cent tax on every dose of vaccine.

Understand that there is a fund, which can, and does pay out for things like allergic reactions, and judges ruled that there is no factual basis for this at all:

In the three cases brought against the government, by the parents of Jordan King, Colin R. Dwyer and William Mead, all three special masters used strong language in dismissing the expert evidence from the families’ lawyers.

The master in the King ruling emphasized that it was “not a close case” and “extremely unlikely” that Jordan’s autism was connected to his vaccines. The master in the Dwyer case wrote that many parents “relied upon practitioners and researchers who peddled hope, not opinions grounded in science and medicine.”

This is judge speak for, “Get out of here, you nut jobs.”

Now, if only we could get Jenny McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. off of Huff Po before they do any more damage.