Month: May 2010

Nevada Banns Chicken Suits from Polling Places

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The headline is actually rather more interesting than the story.

You see, like most states, Nevada bans electioneering within a certain distance, 100 feet in this case.

This applies to things like campaign T-shirts, buttons, etc.

Well, because of Republican front runner Sue Lowden’s statements about bartering chickens for medical services, state elections officials have banned chicken costumes and chicken memorabilia from the “no electioneering” zone:

Nevada banned people wearing chicken costumes from polling places around the state on Friday.

The state election commission does not want the costumes or other poultry-related memorabilia to prevent mocking of Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden, who wants to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D).

I approve of their decision. The presence of chicken related items is electioneering in this context, so their decision is correct in both the strict legal sense, and in the more general context.

Still, it’s a weird hed, ain’t it?

Lies Conservatives Give Us

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Like the one that higher marginal tax rates stunts the economy and hurt the ordinary people.

Paul Krugman looks at the data, and notices that median family income stalled out once we started cutting the top tax rate:

You can see why: the facts are embarrassing. Here’s a rough-cut version. The blue line, left scale, shows median family income in 2008 dollars; the red line, right scale, shows the top marginal tax rate, a rough indicator of the overall stance of policy. Basically, US postwar economic history falls into two parts: an era of high taxes on the rich and extensive regulation, during which living standards experienced extraordinary growth; and an era of low taxes on the rich and deregulation, during which living standards for most Americans rose fitfully at best.

I would also add that the flattening of income growth also happened as more and more of these families became two earner families.

So the addition of the 2nd earner also masked a very real drop in wages of ordinary people.

We want the marginal rate back above 75, and we want the lower taxes on unearned income, capital gains and dividends, to be reversed.

Money does not trickle down, it bubbles up, and money that goes to paying billions to hedge fund managers and other criminals is money that is taken from ordinary families who play by the rules and work for a living.

Dutch Hammer First Nail in JSF Coffin

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The Dutch Parliament has voted to cancel its procurement of the F-35 Lightning II JSF (also here):

Proposal 1 (SP):
The government not be permitted to contract any new obligations with the JSF program

Proposal 2 (Labour)
Cancelling the contract for the First LRIP3 test aircraft and get the money back from the US for the long lead items. Not buying/ signing contract for the Second LRIP4 test aircraft. Cancelling the participation in the MOU-IOT&E (Initial Operational Test and Evaluation)

Proposal 3 (Green Left)
Because the Evaluations of the F16 replacement in 2002 and in 2008 were based on wrong estimates and unreliable data, there needs to be a new evaluation done with new RFPs (Requests for Proposal).

All three proposals were approved by the Netherlands Parliament.

The Dutch were perhaps the heavily involved nation after the British on this program, and the fact that these motions passed, at least passed a 1st reading is telling.

This happened because the MPs believe that they program is late and over budget to such a degree that any program of offsets or technology transfer does not matter because the cost and schedule issues puts them in a situation with a hollow force that they cannot afford to actually operate the aircraft, or, for that matter, their military.

They understand the budget requirements of the Euro zone, and they realize that they are not willing to cut their social safety net, among the most generous in Europe, to support mindless wasteful military spending.

More, “Looking Forward, Not Backward,” from the Obama DoJ

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There will be no criminal prosecutions of the people who created the clusterf%$# that took down AIG:

Federal prosecutors will not bring criminal charges against current and former American International Group Inc. executives for their role surrounding financial contracts that nearly brought down the insurer about two years ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

The decision brings to a close a criminal investigation that, while mostly under wraps, was widely followed. The September 2008 bailout of AIG was one of the biggest and most shocking of the financial crisis, as trading by a noninsurance unit brought down one of the most iconic financial companies world-wide.

The probe focused on Joseph Cassano, who headed a London-based unit of AIG called Financial Products, people familiar with the matter have said. Other executives at the unit, Andrew Forster and Tom Athan, also were targets of the investigation, these people said.

Seriously, at this point, we should be referring anything with the slightest possibility of conviction to a grand jury for indictment.

Anything else encourages more wrongdoing by the Wall Street boys, much in the same way that Obama’s policy of not prosecuting torturer, but pursuing the whistle-blowers encouraging more torture.

I Suppose that this Was Inevitable

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Could it be ………… Satan?

GameStation, a UK video games retailer, has entered the final frontier of click-through licensing, it has added ownership of users immortal souls as one of the conditions of the agreement:

Popular UK video games retail company GameStation has claimed that the retailer legally owns the ‘immortal souls’ of thousands of online shoppers thanks to a clause in the ‘Terms and Conditions’ documents, which, sadly most customers don’t read before purchasing an item online.

GameStation reported that, as a part of the April Fool’s day gag, the retailer changed the online ‘Terms and Conditions’ form and added the so-called ‘Immortal Soul’ clause, which read that “By placing an order via this web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul.”

Unsurprisingly, very few people notices, and very few opted out of this requirement:

GameStation also offered customers a chance to reclaim their souls by clicking on the ‘opt out’ button at the end of the document.

However, out of the 8500 customers that visited the retail site on that day, only 12 percent of them managed to read the ‘Immortal Soul’ clause and swiftly saved their souls from damnation by opting out.

I think that it is clear that to the degree that Satan exists in the manner of Zoroastrian/Christian concept,* he is kicking himself for not having come up with this earlier.

*The idea of Satan being an entity in direct opposition to God is largely a Zoroastrian concept, which was adopted by Christianity. In Judaism, Satan is a title which means adversary, though perhaps a better translation is prosecutor, and is more the inclination to do evil than the guy with the horns and tail.

Remember the Laptop Spycam Cased in Lower Merion, PA

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I’ve been kind of remiss in all of this, but the final analysis is that someone working at the Lower Merion school district) there took thousands of pictures of minors without any justification. (Background here)

Basically, the school supplied laptops took thousands of pictures of children to whom the computers were assigned, including some that involved children in a state of partial undress, and the school district’s information systems coordinator took the 5th when questioned.

As always, there are emails:

Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled at the tracking software. It was like a window into “a little LMSD soap opera,” a staffer is quoted as saying in an e-mail to Carol Cafiero, the administrator running the program.

“I know, I love it,” she is quoted as having replied.

What’s more, the behavior is so egregious that the school district’s insurer is balking at covering legal fees:

A New York insurer that issued a $1 million liability policy to the Lower Merion School District is balking at the school board’s request that it cover any legal costs and payments associated with the civil rights lawsuit challenging the district’s secret laptop tracking program.

In a suit filed in federal district court in Philadelphia, Graphic Arts Mutual Insurance Company contends that none of the seven claims made by Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins in his invasion of privacy lawsuit amount to “personal injury” as defined in the coverage that the district bought last year.

So, a vice principal got a copy of some of the pictures, of a kid eating Mike & Ikes candy, which she thought were drugs, the school district scrambled to buy insurance, and the behavior seems to have been egregious enough that the insurer is claiming, albeit indirectly, that the Lower Merion SD’s claim is fraud.

This is pretty much what an independent investigation of this cluster f%$# determined too.

What is abundantly clear is that the taking of these pictures constituted an invasion of privacy, that there was a reasonable expectation that this created what is technically child porn, and that a significant number of school staff, both in and out of the Information Systems department, knew that this was going on.

No prosecutions yet, but there should be.

Yet Another Service Sabotaging Itself

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In this case, it’s the Marine Corps, which is slipping the date of the 1st flight of its CH-53K heavy lift helo by 2 years for no apparent reason:

The first flight of the U.S. Marine Corps’ heavy lifter CH-53K helicopter has slipped two years to 2013, while its initial operational capability (IOC) has slid three years to 2018, officials have confirmed to AVIATION WEEK.

The date slips come as no surprise to the Marines and the CH-53K program office at Naval Air Systems Command (Navair). In January 2009, program manager Capt. Rick Muldoon submitted a Program Deviation Report for the aircraft’s critical design review (CDR) to the Pentagon acquisition headquarters. The CDR is now slated for September, representing a year’s delay.

There is no indication of technical problems or of development issues that would justify this.

So, why is this happening?

It appears that it is happening because the helo largely meets or exceeds the payload and range capabilities, though not the speed, of the V-22 Osprey and as such, it is a threat to Marine Corps procurement plans for the tilt rotor and foreign sales:

Why slow the program? When delivered, the new fly-by-wire CH-53K will, in theory, transport 27,000 pounds of external cargo out to a range of 110 nautical miles, nearly tripling the thirty-year old CH-53E’s lift capability under similar environmental conditions–all while fitting under the same shipboard footprint.

The CH-53K will also provide unparalleled lift under high and hot conditions while maintainability and reliability enhancements to the CH-53K will decrease recurring operating costs over the current CH-53E (the CH-53K aims at a more reasonable $10,000 dollars per flight hour while the CH-53E costs twice that). Survivability and force protection enhancements will also increase protection dramatically, for both aircrew and passengers. What’s not to like?

The CH-53K was an unsung showpiece for those preaching the virtues of incremental development, and, as a result, appetite for the platform has grown by about 30 percent, with the program of record expected to increase from156 aircraft to 200.

But, in the process, the CH-53K has become something of a MV-22-killer. Is this the problem?

Ummm ……… Yes?

The CH-53K is steadily eating away at the V-22 Osprey market. In late 2009, the Marine Corps decided to go with the CH-53Ks to replace their 40-year old CH-53D fleet (MV-22 Ospreys were originally slated to replace the CH-53D). At about the same time, Israel decided to forego the Osprey for the CH-53K, killing the Osprey’s best hope of snaring an international buyer. And with the Osprey 65% availability and the MV-22s high operating costs of about $11,000 dollars an hour, the CH-53K posed a serious threat to the MV-22 program.

Even worse, studies from the Pentagon demonstrated that a CH-53K-equipped big-deck amphib provided a lot more logistical support for embarked Marines than the MV-22, suggesting the mix of embarked MV-22s and CH-53Ks needed tweaking (and possibly fewer MV-22s).

(emphasis mine)

Much in the same way that the USAF is scrambling to retire legacy F-16s and F-15s so as to make the F-35 JSF a dire need, the Marine Corps is slow walking the CH-53K in an attempt to protect their orders, and possibly encourage foreign orders, for the ruinously expensive Osprey.

The program is being delayed because it is too successful.

This is what is wrong with defense procurement in the US Military in a nutshell.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Pinehurst Bank, St. Paul, MN

Full FDIC list

So it appears that the rapid pace of closures may be moderating somewhat.

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Convent Federal Credit Union, New York, NY

Note that this credit union has nothing to do with Nuns, it was served members of the Convent Avenue Baptist Church.

It’s a tiny institution, with fewer than 300 members.

Full NCUA list

So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):

Good Politics, Good Policy

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The Democrats in the New Jersey statehouse have passed a bill to raise income taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year, and predictably, the wingnut governor is promising a veto:

Lawmakers in New Jersey’s Democrat- controlled Assembly voted to raise income taxes on residents earning at least $1 million a year, as Republican Governor Chris Christie said he’d veto the bill.

The chamber passed the measure 46-32 in a vote that broke down along party lines. Of 33 Republicans, 32 voted no. The Senate approved the bill 23-17 along party lines, setting up a showdown with Christie, 47, as the deadline approaches to have a balanced budget in place when the fiscal year ends on June 30.

“We’ve got a lot of people who can’t afford to pay their taxes” and need the rebates that the measure may restore, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said before the vote. “Six- hundred thousand older adults would be better off.”

So now you have the Democrats lining up against Goldman Sachs traders, who get paid obscene amounts to screw their clients and other counter-parties with the guarantee of taxpayer money should they fail.

The optics are perfect, and the policy of making the wealthy pay for the damage that they cause, which has the side effect of providing a less recessionary impact on the state economy, is just plain good policy.

This is a win-win, and Dems should jam up Republicans like this more often.

Words that I Never Thought That I Would Say (UK Edition)

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God bless the Tories.

It appears that they will be doing a real investigation of the UK government’s involvement with US Sponsored Torture:

A judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said tonight.

The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners and may put pressure on the Labour leadership candidate and former foreign secretary David Miliband, who was accused by Hague, while in opposition, of having something to hide.

This is a far better policy than aiding and abetting the Bush/Cheney cover-up, “looking forward, and not back,” which is espoused by Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™.

Here’s hoping that they uncover some of the misdeeds of Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld in the process.

Why I Read Joe Steffen’s Blog

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If you know nothing of Maryland Politics, you don’t know who Joe Steffen is.

He’s a Republican political operative, formerly Bob Ehrlich’s aide, who is currently on the outs with the party, who is also known by his nickname, the “Prince of Darkness.”

I think of him as Lee Atwater writ on a state wide basis.

That being said, he tends to be rather more chatty about the comings and goings of Republican party politics in the state (In fact, it was imprudent postings on a BBS that were traced back to him which got him fired by “Bad Hair Bob” some years back), and so, despite my profound disagreements with him on issues of policy, I read his blog and I hear a lot of good inside baseball.

Case in point, he outs Republican party stalwart David Nawrocki for sending campaign emails from his work account.

It seems like a minor thing, until you realize that Nawrocki works for the Social Security Administration, which makes his email a criminal violation of the Hatch act.

Oopsie.

This is why I blogroll people and subscribe to their RSS feeds. It’s not because I agree with them, but because they can teach me things.

Journalists Protecting Their Own

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In an otherwise ordinary article about how former Googlers in the Obama White House continue to talk with current Googlers, we have the following exchange:

In January, for instance, Google’s vice president and “chief Internet evangelist” Vint Cerf anxiously wrote to McLaughlin about the worsening chances for net neutrality — the notion that Internet Service Providers should be barred from favoring their own content or from offering “fast-lane” services to premium-paying customers. “Has there been so much flack from the Hill that you guys feel a need to back away” from a commitment?, asked Cerf, attaching a CNET article by a well-credentialed business consultant who was advancing that thesis.

“Don’t be silly,” McLaughlin responds. “No one’s backed away from anything. . . . Isn’t . . . the author of the article, an anti [net neutrality] zealot?”

“Yes, he is,” Cerf wrote. “Just wanted to confirm he’s full of biased baloney.”

“Absolutely,” McLaughlin replied.

If you go through the article, you will never see that name of the journalist in question, Declan McCullagh, who was best described as a “Draw by crayon libertarian,” by the inestimable Andrew Orlowski of The Register.

I deduce it from the Clues, “CNET,” “anti [net neutrality] zealot,” and “Biased Baloney,” if you are familiar with McCullagh’s oeuvre.

What is almost certain is that if the principals in this story were talking about a statement by a lawyer given to over-the-top statements, (Geoff Feiger, for example) you would have seen the name in the story.

It’s not in this story, because it is seen as inappropriate for a journalist to call out another journalist by name, even in the context of a quote someone else.

This attitude is corrosive to journalism.

Another Shoe Drops on Blumenthal

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The Stamford Advocate quotes him as saying, “I wore the uniform in Vietnam,” which sounds particularly damning, though there is not video or audio tape at this time.

Seriously, the primary is in a few weeks, Connecticut Dems, time to switch horses.

It’s more than just a misstatement or two, because saying things like this:

“I wore the uniform in Vietnam and many came back to all kinds of disrespect. Whatever we think of war, we owe the men and women of the armed forces our unconditional support.”

Appears to be at the core of his public personae. It’s his version of, “A noun, a verb, and 911.” Every 3rd word out of his mouth is something like this, or like the largely apocryphal spitting stories, and as such this makes him seriously damaged goods.

If he does not lose the primary, he just got the state party endorsement, he will very likely lose the general.

H/t The Plum Line.

Lame, Even By Republican Standards

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Will Bunch notices that Pennsylvania State Attorney General, and Republican nominee for governor, Tom Corbett, has issued subpoenas to determine who is making nasty tweets and blog posts about him:

Corbett’s actions here look like one of the most stunning abuses of power I’ve seen in a while — not just in Pennsylvania but anywhere.

A blog focused on exposing the alleged “hypocrisy” of Attorney General Tom Corbett and the Twitter account associated with that blog could soon be enjoying a bounce in reader interest, thanks to a subpoena ordered by Corbett’s office earlier this month.

Corbett, who won a primary against Rep. Sam Rohrer Tuesday and will be the Republican nominee for governor in November, subpoenaed Twitter representatives to appear as grand jury witnesses to “testify and give evidence regarding alleged violations of the laws of Pennsylvania.”

The case could gain viral attention, since the subpoena calls into question the right to free speech, specifically from anonymous posters on the World Wide Web.

Maybe I’m missing some nuance here but at first blush it looks like the anonymous owners of these two Twitter accounts and blogs are doing nothing more than exercising their 1st Amendment rights of free speech to criticize Corbett’s public actions. If Corbett believes that he has been libelled by any of the blog or Twitter posts, he is within his rights to personally sue them (a difficult case for him to win, as a public figure). But that is a far different thing from using the power of the state and the grand jury.

Bunch further updates with a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story, where a they imply that the blogger/bloggers are a defendant in a case, but in a quick reading of the blog, there is no mention of the case, just a litany of accounts of unethical behavior by Mr. Corbett.

This is clearly an attempt at retaliation against critics.