They have had a civil rights investigation of his department since (at least) 2009, and he has refused to turn over documents, so the DoJ has filed suit against the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Seeing as how it’s pretty clear that the Sheriff’s office is guilty, Arpaio has campaigned on harassing people on the basis of their ethnicity, one hopes that they get the documents, and an injunction, before Sheriff Joe goes and abuses his power to go Jim Crow on Hispanic voters this year.
There is more scary graph pr0n at Calculated Risk
And workforce participation is the lowest since 1984
The non-farm payroll numbers came out, and, though better than expected, they really suck, with NFP falling by 54,000 and unemployment rising slightly to 9.6%, though most of that was the demobilization of the US census, and private payrolls increased by a better than expected 67,000.
Once again, the Panglossian members of the financial 4th estate cast this as unbelievably good news.
It isn’t. It’s no where near the 100-125 K new jobs needed every month just to absorb new entrants to the job market.
Things are still getting worse.
And we have more evidence that the stimulus package that has driven the economy is running out of steam with the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing index, a measure of activity in the service industry, continues to decline.
It’s still showing meager growth, but only barely, and it missed expectations.
I Wonder if the DA Would do This to a White ManTimothy Barnett is a con man. He has been convicted twice of using fraud to steal from homeowners.
Well, he appears to be back at his game, to the tune of 23 counts, and the DA has decided to pursue him with the 3rd strike law which would put him in prison for the rest of his life.
I think that 3rd strike laws are generally bad ideas, and the one in California is worse, but this is the sort of guy who makes me want to throw the book at him:
Timothy Barnett spent nearly five years in state prison for a 1990s foreclosure rescue scam in which he conned homeowners out of tens of thousands of dollars. Now, prosecutors say, he has been at it again, targeting residents in the same South Los Angeles neighborhood he fleeced before.
But this time, the state is unleashing one of its more powerful weapons against him. The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has charged Barnett under California’s much-debated three-strikes law. Usually aimed at offenders with a history of violent crime, it is rarely used for white-collar offenses such as fraud.
Arrested in April, the 47-year-old Barnett is charged with 23 felonies — including theft from the elderly, identity theft and real estate fraud — for allegedly tricking five people into unknowingly granting him title to their homes. He has pleaded not guilty.
Some experts said the case would be one of the first times a person charged with a white-collar crime was prosecuted under the state’s three-strikes law. If convicted, Barnett could face life in prison.
I do think if you have 3rd strike laws, and I don’t think that you should, then it should be applied to white collar criminals.
But I think that 3rd strike laws are yet another case of what H.L. Menken, the Bard of Baltimore, meant when he said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
And then when challenged by the press, she flees
I don’t know what is going on with Arizona governor Jan Brewer, but I hope that she has a substance abuse problem, because if her opening statment at the debate and her interview post debate are any indication, if it’s not that, she has a serious neurological problem.
Of course, I am an engineer, not a Doctor, Dammit†, but her goes well beyond someone who, thanks to Barack Obama hiring Napolitano, was promoted well past her capabilities, she has a serious screw loose.
Props to here opponent Terry Goddard, who, when accused of being responsible for the boycott, or at least supporting it, responds that when the governor of the state is lying about beheadings, it makes her a part of the tourism downturn.
I still think that Brewer is going to win, particularly with Sheriff Arpaio continuing his attempt to intimidate and harass Hispanic voters in the Phoenix area, but what passes for a mainstream Republican these days just buggers the mind.
*Conservatism = Mental Illness.
†I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
It’s jobless Thursday, and initial claims fell slightly to a still awful 472,000, in the middle of the 450-485k range it has been been in, with one exception, for the past 6 months, while the less volatile 4-week moving average fell to 485,500 last week from 488,000, and continuing claims fell to 4.46 million, and the people on emergency UI fell as well.
It’s a lot of press about improvement, but this is not even treading water, this is a number in which payrolls continue to fall.
Pending home sales rose slightly in July, and beat estimates, but the market is still pretty much dead.
Click for Ginormous Graphic
Barry Ritholtz has a useful infographic showing just how education loans have become the latest way that the banks keep us in debt slavery.
Note that the value of outstanding student loans is now larger than that of credit card debt, and its holders cannot discharge it through bankruptcy, ever.
This goes hand in hand with changes in the job market, where jobs that do not require a college to degree require a college degree to get, along with the explosion of for-profit schools that make false promises of a career in order to get you to overpay for trade school.
It really is remarkable just how predatory our society has become.
Yet another oil rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico.
Thankfully no fatalities.
It expands the jurisdiction of the SEC with regard to the malfeasance and misfeasance of the ratings agencies by allowing them to take actions that occurred in other countries:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it plans to use new financial laws to pursue credit-rating fraud initiated overseas after dropping a case against Moody’s Corp. amid uncertainty over its authority.
The SEC’s investigation found that a Moody’s ratings committee based in Europe refused to lower inflated grades on almost $1 billion of debt in 2007, the agency said in a report released yesterday. The committee declined to correct errors produced by a flawed ratings model out of concern for the firm’s reputation, the SEC report said.
“Uncertainty regarding a jurisdictional nexus between the U.S. and the relevant ratings conduct” led the SEC to drop the probe, the agency said in the report. That uncertainty was removed by the Dodd-Frank law, enacted in July, which clarifies the SEC’s power to sue for misconduct that has a substantial effect within the U.S., the report said.
Of course, a better alternative would be to change the laws that require the ratings agencies in the first place, as they have been a complete failure.
I thought that I did a good job of following patent law, but I was unaware that it is illegal, or more accurately a civil tort, for a company to claim a patent after it has expired.
So, if I were to get patent number 867-5309, someone could sue me for anticompetitive behavior if I were to continue to claim that my product were still protected.
Well, recent court cases have vastly expanded the law, taking this from a $500.00 award to a $500.00 award per offense, which means that it applies to each product shipped:
Marking a tube of toothpaste or paper cup with a patent that is out of date or doesn’t exist has been against the law for years. It is considered anticompetitive. Until late last year, the most a violator had to worry about was paying a $500 penalty for misleading the public.
But in December, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that defendants could be held responsible for up to $500 per offense.
DocumentLawyers for product manufacturers now fear clients are liable for up to $500 for every tube of mascara or box of garbage bags marked with an expired patent—an error that turns out to be quite common.
Now, I’m sure that the holders of patents will be lobbying Congress to fix this.
Call your Representative, and tell him, that absent meaningful change, which rolling back the expansion of patents (discovered genes, species, software, business plans, tax deductions, etc.) that have perverted the purpose of Patents in the past few decades.
Stricter rules on what is, and is not, “obvious”, as well as changes to make it harder for patent trolls would help too.
PAYPAL IS THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD
You know, it would help a lot if maybe, since they actually are a bank, that someone would actually regulate them as such.
He’s running on the Bad Hair Party ticket
Well, Jim Trafficant has been certified as a candidate for Congress.
He got enough signatures.
He is running as an independent.
Beam me up Scotty.*
It should make for an interesting campaign in 17th district this year.
*Please, JFGI.
I didn’t follow the commentary after Obama’s speech, hell, I didn’t follow the speech, I was busy driving back home to help out with a family emergency* but Rachel Maddow nails it:
“And to to have in this speech, as combat operations are ending, to have, as you point out Keith, the president not only not addressing the circumstances in which he we went to war, but these kind words for President Bush, describing his commitment to our security, despite the recklessness with which President Bush discarded that national security in favor of this war of choice, which only diminished our security, and is responsible probably for the Afghanistan war still going on today, for the depths of people who have died in Afghanistan after the time, after which that war would have ended had we not gone to Iraq, not to mention all of the people who died in Iraq,” Maddow continued.
“To talk about him having a demonstrated commitment to our security, having started this war on the terms on which he started it, — I mean, it’s beyond restraint from President Obama and anyone in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn’t feel like they’ve been given the greatest political present they never deserved was not listening to this speech,” she concluded.
I understand that Obama is not big into confronting people on wrongdoing, and I understand that he wants to look forward, not back, but he lied.
He sat in the oval office, and he lied through his teeth, because he is such conflict averse that he has to praise George W. Bush.
It wasn’t enough to not say anything, he felt compelled to lie to please people who will always hate him.
It’s truly pathological.
*Wife and kids are fine, but there are some health issues amongst the extended family.
Some guy straps suspicious canisters to his chest and takes hostages at the headquarters for the Discovery Channel in Silver Spring, MD, because he does not like their programming?
The police fatally shot him, which is an unsurprising development.
Even less surprising is that his hosting service pulled his web page, (good) and replaced it with an add for their services (tacky).
There is a lot of “te crazy” out there this summer.