In Wellington, New Zealand, a group of pro cannabis protesters pushed a cart of burning weed into a police station:
Police in the New Zealand capital of Wellington were weighing charges Friday against a group of pro-cannabis protesters who invaded the cop-shop with a cart full of burning marijuana, according to a report from the scene.
I wonder who had the fig newton concession at what was described as, “one of the happiest protests the political precinct had seen in some time.”
You know, the earth is round, and if a jet is passing directly over you as it comes over the horizon, its contrail looks vertical.
Of course, we know what this was. It was a slow speed chase involving a white Ford Bronco.
As Jon Stewart notes, quoting the helicopter pilot who filmed it, this “rocket plume” continued for about 10 f%$#ing minutes, which would put the missile (assuming a 1 G acceleration) would put the missile about 1800 km (100 mi) down range.
<Facepalm>
A Testament to Management Selfishness
I was discussing this graphic on the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
It details the history of Yahoo’s acquisition activity, and it is grim.
Pretty much everything that they ever bought never made money when they bought it, and never made money after they bought it, and they sold it for a loss.
In any case, someone was wondering why companies keep making purchases like this, and I put in my 2¢:
Carly bought Compaq, and then promptly demanded a raise from the board, since HP was now a larger firm.
Buying this sh%$ provides a justification for upper management to demand a raise, and provides a bump in visibility which raises their profile when they apply for the next position, where they demand even more money.
It’s the virtue of selfishness, baby.*
Basically, this is the problem with corporate governance in the United States, there isn’t any.
Basically, we don’t have managers, we have pillagers running companies in the United States, and it is destroying us.
Not only has our politics become klepto-capitalist, but so has our entire culture, even when the government is not involved.
H/t Barry Ritholtz.
*Why yes, this is a reference to the execrable Ayn Rand’s even more execreable book by the same name, why do you ask?
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
Just to note, yes, that is the Vidalia where the sweet onions come from.
So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):
I’m going to try to come up with a slightly more informative bank graph this week.
Jack Johnson, the outgoing County Executive for Prince George’s County, has been arrested for corruption:
Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson and his wife were arrested at their home Friday and charged in federal court with trying to hide or destroy the proceeds from a bribe from a local developer, according to court papers and federal law enforcement authorities.
Johnson and his wife, Leslie E. Johnson, were charged with evidence tampering and destruction, alteration and falsification of records. After brief hearings late Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Connolly ordered Jack Johnson to be released and placed under electronic monitoring. The judge released Leslie Johnson on her own recognizance. Both Johnsons were ordered to surrender their passports.
The charges stem from a frantic phone call on Friday in which Leslie Johnson told her husband that “two women were at the door” and ultimately ended when federal agents found $76,000 in Leslie Johnson’s underwear, according to an affidavit in support of the criminal charges.
I think that we are finally seeing the end of the PG County machine.
It began with Donna Edwards’ defeat of Al Wynn for Congress in the 2008 primary, and you can see things piling up in this handy Washington Post timeline.
The FBI has been investigating him for about 4 years, and the fact that he owns about 6 homes, with mortgage payments larger than his salary, might have been an indicator that something odd was going on.
Here’s hoping that maybe some reformers get swept in at the next election.
Everyone’s favorite NFL blowout, Heath Shuler, has decided to challenge Nancy Pelosi as minority leader in the 112th Congress.
This guy’s entire life has been defined by his trying to do things that he was manifestly unfit to do, whether it’s being an NFL Quarterback (top ten first round draft10 busts) a representative of the values of Democratic Party, or of pretty much anything he has done since he has gotten out of college.
Here’s hoping that Nancy Pelosi hangs him by his entrails on the Statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol Dome.*
I’m considering taking up a collection to have Gus Frerotte move to his district and run against him. After all, someone needs to replace this loser, and Frerotte has already proved that he has what it takes to do that.
*In a purely metaphorical, “He needs to be slapped down in a parliamentary kind of way.”†
†The reason that I do not wish him to be threatened with actual physical harm, is that when he is threatened with the possibility of physical harm, he throws a pass to the opposing team, which in this case, is the Republican Party.‡
‡I think. All things considered, I’m not sure which team he is really playing for in Congress.
Round up the usual suspectsControl fraud occurs when a trusted person in a high responsible position in a company, corporation or state uses their powers to subvert the company and to engage in extensive fraud for personal gain.
Pass the Popcorn
It’s spelled al Qaeda
Richard Whitney (financier) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia the corrupt head of the NYSE, who went to jail, and had to find work on a farm when he got out.
The origins of the Evangelical political movement grew from racial bigotry, not abortion.
Dianne Feinstein*
*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.
but I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*
*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:
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:
- It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
- It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
- It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.
This article is far better than anything I could write, (alternate link) I learned some things:
In 1746, Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act, requiring anyone seeking to collect on an insurance contract to have an interest in the continued existence of the insured property. Thus was born the insured-interest doctrine. The indemnity doctrine, which precludes a buyer from insuring property for more than it’s worth, soon followed. The point of these rules is to limit insurance contracts to trading existing risks and not to create new risks by giving buyers of insurance incentive to destroy property. The doctrines have been part of insurance law in both England and the United States (which in 1746 were colonies under English common law) ever since.
*Full disclosure, I worded at GE Transportation Systems (GETS) their locomotive manufacturing unit from 1994-1996, and for about half of my time there, the chief of the division was Bob Nardelli, who I have never met.
Picture, H/t Pro Bono Statistics
Bummer of a birth mark, InsertNameHere
*The definition of Santorum is, “That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex”.
how do do indented multiline footnotes
how do do indented multiline footnotes
The classic rejoinder is the Yiddish, “Az der bubbe vot gehat baytzim vot zie geven mein zayde.” (If my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.)
Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.
Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.
The Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (openness)
abortion first emerged as a proxy issue about race and segregated private academies
At least, there is symmetry.
blah
Blah, blah, blah!
As Ronald Reagan, Jr. said about Dick Cheney, “I don’t think he’s a mindful human being. That’s probably the nicest way I can put it.”
Russia to export Worlds Most Capable Surface to Air Missile my RCS computations
His latest, on the corrupt Florida “rocket docket” special foreclosure courts is a thing of beauty.
Go read.
Not only is the US military is pressuring our own soldiers to get them to sign documents admitting to a pre-existing “Personality Disorder” when they are injured in combat, so that they are not eligible for disability, now we have testimony that they tortured at least one soldier for the requisite signature.
This is a rather profoundly unsettling 9 minutes and 37 seconds.
So, now that the election is over, the two co-chairmen of Barack Obama’s catfood* deficit reduction commission, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, have released the plan that they came up with together.
On their own.
Without consulting with anyone else on the commission.
Which needs to get affirmative votes from 14 of the 18 members to actually issue a report.
It makes it pretty clear that these folks are idiots.
Remember now, that this commission was given one charge, to reduce the deficit in the long term, so let’s see what they came up with:
Note that these are clearly not part of the committee’s charge, which was to reduce the deficit, but they decided to go wingnut to start off.
Additionally, in areas where they are acting within the scope of their committee they want to:
No wonder that (still) Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls it, “simply unacceptable.”
Felix Salmon is scathing about the plan, and shows just how silly it is:
Meanwhile, some of the small savings have to be seen to be believed. The deficit commission, charged with coming up with a bold plan to bring the nation’s finances into order, really does propose:
- Increasing the amount of time spent on instant messenger, to reduce travel costs;
- “Reduce copying use by putting the default option on copiers to double-sided”;
- Merging the Commerce Department with the Small Business Administration;
- Charging a fee to Smithsonian visitors.
- Etc.
Really, they are suggesting that we have the Smithsonian charge admission, and changing copiers to copy both sides of a sheet of paper by default.
This was foreseeable. Both Bowles and Simpson have been advocating privatizing Social Security for years, and Bowles almost had a deal cut with Gingrich in the 1990s to do so.
Not surprising, BTW, since Bowles is an investment bankers, and those folks have been salivating for decades about the possibility of getting fees for (mis)managing all that money.
This is not a deficit reduction plan. This is a slash fanfic wet-dream from the denizens of some warped right wing think tank.
I would note that the way is playing in the press will be disastrous for the Democrats, because it’s all, “Obama Commission proposes cutting Social Security” (or the mortgage deduction, or veterans’ benefits, etc.), and that was clear even before wankers Bowles and Simpson were appointed.
It was intended to be yet another excuse for Obama to preen about how he was post-partisan and reasonable he is, and once again, what emerged from this bit of narcissism is cataclysmic blow back, both in terms of the policy and the politics.
<Facepalm>
*In the interest of health, I would suggest that people eat dog food, and not cat food. Cats because they are one of the few true carnivores, do not need the complex carbohydrates and fats that people, and dogs do. As such, dog food is better for you than cat food because it provides carbs and essential fatty acids. A dog can go blind if it is fed on cat food, but a cat lives just fine on dog food. The phenomenon is known as rabbit starvation.
Practice at the Detroit Lions stadium was delayed after a player reported finding an unknown white powdery substance on the ground. After a complete analysis, forensic experts determined that the white substance, unfamiliar to most of the players, was in fact, the goal line. Practice will resume tomorrow after Police and Homeland Security decided the team was unlikely to encounter the substance again.*
*No clue as to who came up with this in the first place, but it’s funny.
This is a good thing. If banks are too big to fail, then their insurance costs should reflect this:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. proposed shifting the burden for protecting depositors against bank failures toward larger lenders whose reliance on riskier funding sources may pose a greater threat to the financial system.
The FDIC board today approved two proposals for overhauling assessments for its deposit insurance fund, including one that would base the fees on banks’ liabilities rather than their domestic deposits. The fee proposal, a response to the Dodd- Frank financial-regulation law, would increase assessments on banks with more than $10 billion in assets.
“This proposal achieves the goals of the Dodd-Frank Act to change the assessment base to better reflect risks to the deposit insurance fund,” said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. The measure is subject to a 45-day comment period.
If we make too big to fail too expensive to exist, I can live with that.
Andrew Shirvell has been fired as assistant Michigan Attorney General for stalking University of Michigan student Chris Armstrong.
Armstrong was the first openly gay president of the Michigan Student Assembly, and this sent the already right-wing Shirvell into a delusional hissy fit.
As a private citizen, it would be creepy, but as a supporter and confidant of Michigan’s right wing Attorney General, it took on some rather disturbing overtones.
Background here.
The Numbers Do Not lie
But David Henderson Does
Economist Mike Kimel does a masterful job of taking down another right wing economist, one David Henderson, who asserts that the government spending actually suppressed economic activity during WW II, and when reduced, we experienced an unprecedented boom in GDP.
Only we didn’t.
Henderson also claims that the relaxation of economic controls under Truman lead to a much larger increase in private investment.
Only it didn’t.
The giveaway that Henderson is writing to reflect his opinions, rather than the facts is that he published his article at the Geroge Mason University Mercatus Center, which is another one of those right wing “think” tanks.
In any case, both of Kimels articles are worth a good read.
It is a very well done, and very well deserved, “Fisking” of a charlatan.
H/t Angry Bear.
Generally, this has not been a good day for economic news.
We have seen a a spike in inventories, they rose 1.5% in September, following a 1.2% increase in August, which indicates that recent increases in manufacturing activity, which were largely driven by businesses rebuilding inventories, may now be running to the wall of weak consumer demand.
The fact that job openings fell again in September, indicating that there is simply not a an opportunity for people to find their way back into the job market, might be a part of this, as would the continued increase in personal bankruptcies.
On the brighter side, the National Federation of Independent Business’s optimism index rose to a 5 month high in October.
The high-frequency trading industry is stepping out of the shadows in Washington.
Closely held companies with undisclosed profits and obscure names like Getco LLC, Hard Eight Futures LLC and Quantlab Financial LLC, are beginning to act more like Wall Street banks, cutting checks to politicians, forming trade groups and hiring lobbyists and ex-regulators. They’re looking to fend off tighter rules and appease lawmakers who say the firms disadvantage small investors and contribute to wild swings in stock prices.
While the companies, which use high-powered computers to execute thousands of trades in milliseconds, aren’t approaching the big banks in Washington spending, they have more than quadrupled their political giving over the last four years, a Bloomberg News analysis shows. The top recipients include Eric Cantor, set to become House majority leader, and several incoming senators who won in last week’s Republican rout.
Among other things, they are worried that the SEC will limit their ability to manipulate stocks by doing things like submitting large number of orders and then canceling them.
The Obama Department of Justice has elected not to prosecute CIA officials who obstructed justice by erasing torture tapes:
Central Intelligence Agency officials will not face criminal charges for the destruction of dozens of videotapes depicting the brutal interrogation of terrorism suspects, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
After a closely watched investigation of nearly three years, the decision by a special federal prosecutor is the latest example of Justice Department officials’ declining to seek criminal penalties for some of the controversial episodes in the C.I.A.’s now defunct detention and interrogation program. The destruction of the tapes, in particular, was seen as so striking that the Bush administration itself launched the special investigation after the action was publicly disclosed.
Government officials said Tuesday that the special prosecutor, John H. Durham, could still decide to charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements to a grand jury over the course of the investigation, which began in January 2008.
Yes, they could, “Charge current and former C.I.A. officers and lawyers with making false statements,” but they won’t because they want to cover this up because Obama and Holder fear a future prosecution by a future Republican administration want to “look forward, not backward.”
Respect for the rule of law, my ass.
Unfortunately, it’s just Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood:
The Obama administration is urging Wisconsin’s incoming Republican governor, Scott Walker, to reconsider his opposition to high-speed rail in his state and threatened to rescind $810 million in federal stimulus grants for the project if the venture is killed.
In a letter (pdf) to Walker yesterday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood discussed what he called a “difference of opinion about the value of a Midwest high-speed rail network” between the Obama administration and the incoming governor, emphasizing economic benefits that high-speed rail could bring to the region.
Walker, who is currently the county executive of Milwaukee County, campaigned heavily against a proposed high-speed line to link Milwaukee and Madison that would eventually be part of a Midwest network. Decrying the project as a waste of tax dollars, he has called for the cash to be redistributed to highway and bridge repairs in his state.
But LaHood said the stimulus grants must be spent on rail projects.
Additionally, LaHood is demanding $271 million back from New Jersey Transit for Governor Christie’s cancellation of the rail tunnel under the Hudson, and there are indications that the Feds will be demanding money back from Ohio when the new Republican governor there cancels their rail program.
Even more amusing is that Illinois is already applying for the money that the ‘Phant governors don’t want.
Good for Secretary LaHood, but I expect Obama to overrule him and give the money to Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey anyway, because he wants these loony tunes to like him.
It is interesting that the only one in Obama’s administration to do the right thing because it is the right thing is a Republican.
And yes, I mean the author, as in in the Scrooge quote, “Are There No Prisons? Are There No Workhouses?”
The new Conservative government in the UK is going Charles Dickens on the unemployed:
Ministers have defended their plans to force the long-term unemployed to do manual work or lose benefits.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told the BBC the idea was not to “punish or humiliate” but to get people back into the habit of working.
But the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the changes could drive people “into a downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair”.
Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is to unveil the plans this week.
Under the plan, claimants thought to need “experience of the habits and routines of working life” could be put on 30-hour-a-week placements.
Anyone refusing to take part or failing to turn up on time could have their £65 Jobseekers’ Allowance stopped for at least three months.
Of course, the Tories like this because they hate poor people, and their coalition partners, the Lib-Dems love this, because it hearkens back to a time when they had political relevance, those halcyon days before World War I.
With unemployment at the highest levels since the great depression, and unemployment in the UK among the highest in western Europe.
As Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman notes, “But she said the government needed to understand that to get people back into work, there had to be jobs for them to go to – and at the moment there were five people chasing each vacancy.”
I think that Labour doesn’t get it. The Conservatives plan to destroy enough so that people will be ready to dismantle the National Health Service for something more disastrously like the US system.
The barbarians are not at the gates, the barbarians are in the gate.
We have two different data points, first mortgage delinquencies were up in the 3rd quarter, but we also saw that U.S. household debt shrunk by 0.9% over the same period.
So, are people paying down their debts, or are they having their debts written down by banks that realize that they will never get the money?
Coupled with this, crude oil is getting close to $90/bbl again, which may put another crimp in the economy.
Finally, the other shoe has dropped for monoliner bond insurer Ambac, and it has filed for bankruptcy, chapter 11 reorg, not chapter 7 liquidation.