Year: 2012

Martin O’Malley 2012

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This has to be one of the best slams of the Presidential election so far:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced a new line of attack on Gov. Mitt Romney today, saying the public should be suspicious of him because in 2008 Sen. John McCain considered the now-presumptive Republican nominee to be his running mate…but picked Sarah Palin instead.

“What about running for the office of the presidency this year makes it less important than the job that he didn’t get over Palin the last time around?” O’Malley asked BuzzFeed, referencing the 23 years of returns Romney allowed McCain to examine while he was being vetted but hasn’t released to the public.

Pressed in an interview at the National Governors Association meeting here whether there would be anything in those returns that would disqualify Romney from the presidency, O’Malley said he doesn’t know — and that’s why Democrats want to see them.

“But why would you pick somebody — why would you pick Palin over Romney?” he asked.

(emphasis mine)

Sweet!

Adventures in Journamalism

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The CJR discovers that the the news media repeatedly uncritically quote anti-worker lobbyists to demonstrate things like the fictitious worker shortage:

Two weeks ago The New York Times wheeled out that old chestnut of Great Recession-era economic reporting: Companies can’t find workers, despite high unemployment.

………

But what really sends the BS meter into the red zone is when you learn that the anecdotes are populated with business people with ties to lobbying groups that news organizations, for whatever reason, fail to disclose.

Take one of the Times’s main anecdotes, Drew Greenblatt, who owns a small manufacturing firm in Baltimore called Marlin Steel Wire and who gets his picture in the Times. This was his third NYT hit in three months. Here are Mr. Greenblatt’s other press hits in June: The NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour (twice), NPR’s Morning Edition, The Hamilton Spectator. So far this year he’s also been on CNN Newsroom and Fox Business (four times), and in the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Associated Press, plus a number of smaller publications. Two years ago, Greenblatt and his company were the focus of a flattering 2,300 word Atlantic profile and a couple of WaPo profiles in 2001 and 2007. This guy is like the Greg Packer of small manufacturers.

………

Undisclosed in any of these stories is the fact that Greenblatt is an executive-committee member of the board of the National Association of Manufacturers, the powerful DC trade lobby. NAM not only pushes Congress for anti-labor policies (like banning picketing), it lobbies for government-funded workforce training programs (“to be led by the business community,” naturally).

………

A couple of weeks ago, blogger Steve M. at Balloon Juice and No More Mister Nice Blog caught NPR and NBC talking to the same small businessman, Joe Olivo, about how Obama’s health care law is keeping him from hiring for his printing business. Turns out Olivo’s quite the active member of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the big right-wing, pro-corporate lobbying group that was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case against Obamacare, which is called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. His NFIB connections, needless to say, weren’t disclosed by either broadcast. And Steve M. caught NPR going back to the well a week later, with yet another anti-Obamacare Olivo interview with no disclosure of his lobbying ties.

This is hardly the first time this has happened with Olivo.

………

Here’s how you should assume this works, because it’s how it very often does: A journalist is on deadline on a story and needs an anecdote to make it feel “real” with some color—preferably someone who will add balance and/or support the journalist’s thesis. A speed-dialed call is made to industry flacks to supply a quotable small-business person…and, voilà!

That’s the quick-and-easy way, which is how readers get political activists presented misleadingly as random businessmen.

Take incompetence, mix it with laziness, and a little nudge from their corporate task-masters, and it’s no wonder that I find that the best sources for news about America are foreign.

Least surprising News of the Day

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It turns out that his syndicate, Premeir Radio Networks, hires ringers to call into his show:

One of the common refrains in the media world is that Rush Limbaugh has the largest audience in talk radio. He is eager to capitalize on this, multiple times per episode in fact. But how true is this claim?

Limbaugh is one of several radio hosts syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks, including right-wing darlings such as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck as well as known liberal voices such as Randi Rhodes and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. One of the features for Premiere syndicated shows is a service Premiere On Call, a phone banking service for voice talent. What this means is, they hire people to call in. If you ever listened to one of the shows distributed by Premiere, you may find yourself impressed at how a caller would bring up a subject which then the host would have a perfect response to, like a perfect pitch in a baseball game to allow the home run hit. Premiere On Call’s hiring standards appear to be focused on hiring people able to generate accents, vocal inflections, or other ways to enable re-use of the same voice actor multiple times without being identified as such.

Limbaugh obtained the largest audience during an era when audience count was made by manually filled out diaries, a practice which has been slowly phased out over the past few years, as detailed electronic tracking became available. Once the detailed tracking was available, Rush’s ratings dropped significantly, by over a third. With an estimated weekly audience of 15 million users now, that comes to an average of less than 3,000 listeners per station, not very good ratings at all. For comparison, left-wing giant Ed Schultz on Jones Radio Network sports an estimated 8,000 listeners per station. To get these numbers, we took the totals given from Talkers Magazine and cross-referenced with the number of stations that carry each show. Rush is carried on over 10x as many stations as Big Eddie. Even though Rush’s overall listenership is high, the number per station is low.

………He gained these stations originally due to an arrangement system whereby these stations were given his show, for free, in exchange for 15 minutes of advertising space. It was a win-win for these small stations, effectively adding filler to the stations airwaves in a non-prime spot.

What a surprise, the nation’s leading spokesman for recreational Oxycontin use appears to be running a pump and dump ratings scheme.

How is Penn State Like the Catholic Church?

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Their attempts to cover up child rape are so heinous that even the hiring of the hactackular Louis Freeh to run the investigation cannot mitigate the truth:

The independent panel investigating Pennsylvania State University’s role in the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal has determined that the school’s top leaders, including legendary football coach Joe Paterno, tried to cover up the abuse for 14 years.

Former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who led the investigation, outlined the findings of the panel’s 162-page report in prepared remarks released in advance of a 10 a.m. news conference in Philadelphia.

The report is available at www.philly.com/freeh

“The most powerful men at Penn State failed to take any steps for 14 years to protect the children who Sandusky victimized,” Freeh said.

Naming Paterno, former Penn State President Graham Spanier, former Athletic Director Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, a university vice president once in charge of the campus police, Freeh said they “never demonstrated, through actions or words, any concern for the safety and well-being of Sandusky’s victims until after Sandusky’s arrest.”

To state the obvious, if this had been curling, or for that matter college Baseball, they would have turned this matter over to the police over a decade ago.

There is no better case to be made that big ticket athletic programs are a corrupt and corrupting influence on higher education, and they need to be excised from higher education, either by the schools themselves, or by the IRS pulling tax exempt status from these programs.

It’s the Bankster’s World, We Just Live in It

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Case in point, Moberly Missouri, where the New York Times scolds them for not paying debts incurred through fraud and the corruption and/or incompetence of banks and regulators:

Residents of Moberly, Mo., got a shock last year when they discovered that their city had guaranteed $39 million in bonds, sold by an independent authority, to help a Chinese company build a plant to make sucralose, an artificial sweetener.

The project fell apart in a matter of months, and residents learned that they had been misled about the company’s track record in China — and that they were now expected to make the bond payments.

But municipal bond market participants say they were shocked, too, by how quickly the city of about 14,000 would walk away from a solemn promise to guarantee the debt payments through 2025, the life of the bonds.

Cities like Moberly that guarantee debts for entities that borrow for projects like parking garages and hockey arenas often “don’t understand that they are responsible for making these payments,” said Matt Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors, a research and consulting firm. However, he said, “It’s as if your kid runs up a $400 cellphone bill. You can’t get out of paying it by saying you didn’t authorize that.”

Moberly, where the biggest employer is a state prison, had responded eagerly to a pitch by the Missouri Department of Economic Development to host the project, hoping for hundreds of jobs. The company, Mamtek International, was said to have a sucralose plant in Fujian Province producing a sweetener called SweetO, for use in drinks, candy and pharmaceuticals. Most of the authority debt, to go toward building and equipping the plant, was issued under a federal stimulus program allowing private investors to use tax-exempt municipal financing.

But when a bond payment came due last August, with the building still unfinished, Mamtek officials said they didn’t have the money. Construction stopped; the handful of employees in Moberly were laid off. Weeks of confusion followed, with subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission, rumors of a split between the Chinese company and its United States subsidiary, reports that the plant would be liquidated and fears that the bond proceeds were gone forever.

………

Investigators also learned that state development officials had learned — before the bonds were sold — that Mamtek’s sucralose plant in China had never opened, because of environmental concerns. But that information was not relayed to Moberly, according to a report by the Missouri House Interim Committee on Government Oversight and Accountability.

Let’s be clear here:  the good citizens of Moberly were swindled by Mamtek, state development officials, and likely whoever issued the bonds.

There were serious material discrepancies.

This is the very definition of odious debt, and it should be repudiated without penalty.

I Can Has Prosecushuns?

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The New York Bank of the Federal reserve has known since at least 2007, which means that current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has known since at least 2007, that the banks were manipulating the LIBOR numbers:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York may have known as early as August 2007 that the setting of global benchmark interest rates was flawed. Following an inquiry with British banking group Barclays Plc in the spring of 2008, it shared proposals for reform of the system with British authorities.

The role of the Fed is likely to raise questions about whether it and other authorities took enough action to address concerns they had about the way Libor rates were set, or whether their struggle to keep the banking system afloat through the financial crisis meant the issue took a backseat.

A New York Fed spokesperson said in a statement that “in the context of our market monitoring following the onset of the financial crisis in late 2007, involving thousands of calls and emails with market participants over a period of many months, we received occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor.

“In the spring of 2008, following the failure of Bear Stearns and shortly before the first media report on the subject, we made further inquiry of Barclays as to how Libor submissions were being conducted. We subsequently shared our analysis and suggestions for reform of Libor with the relevant authorities in the UK.”

The Fed knew that any misstatement of LIBOR would have significant effects on Trillions of dollars of loans and derivatives, and that the manipulation of this rate would allow banks to steal money from their customers.

While the LIBOR is a matter for the British to regulate, it is, after all, the London Interbank Offered Rate, its use as a benchmark by American institutions in American markets, was a matter for the Federal Reserve.

The fact that the Fed did not even issue a warning about this is criminally negligent.

I so want to see Tim Geithner frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

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Thanks Angela, things have gotten so bad in EU that Europeans engaging in sham marriages to get permanent residency visa in Brazil:

For Rafael and Mariana, their days are now dominated by final arrangements for their upcoming marriage. He wants to bring his clothes over to her place. Before he does it, she wants to rearrange her apartment to open more space. At first sight, they do not necessarily seem to be a good fit for each other. But when asked, their friends swear they are deeply in love.

Anxious, Rafael hopes to be married in two months at most. The ceremony will be simple, only civil. After signing all the documents, there will be a kiss: a good-bye kiss. He will move back home and wait until he finds the right person to be at his side —a guy, probably.

Mariana*, 36, is a Brazilian housemaid. Rafael*, 31, is a Spanish university student waiting for a permanent visa to stay in Brazil. Their union will be one more in the growing numbers of fake marriages that foreigners use to be able to gain residency here.

“I’m a bit afraid, but I know three Germans in Rio and an American in São Paulo who did the same,” he says. “I could look for a job in Germany, where I was before I lost my job. But Europe is getting worse and worse, while the situation here is just the opposite.”

It really is the goal of the austerians to make their societies 3rd world nations, and it appears that they are succeeding.

Verizon Sucks

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And I am speaking now as a Verizon customer (FIOS).

You see, they are claiming that they have a first amendment right to censor your internet access:

Last week, Verizon filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit laying out their various and sundry complaints against the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order, which put net neutrality regulations in place for Internet service providers. The telecom giant is suing to have the FCC’s order thrown out, and one of their legal arguments is raising more than a few eyebrows. Verizon, per the court document, considers itself your Internet editor. Or your Internet editor-in-waiting.

It goes like this: the Open Internet Order says that Verizon, as a provider of broadband Internet, can’t block or slow access to (legal) online content because they disagree with its message or are being paid by an outside party to do so. This is essentially how the internet has operated since its inception, and the Open Internet Order is intended to prevent ISPs like Verizon from becoming gatekeepers. Verizon, however, argues that it has the constitutionally protected right to decide which content you, as a Verizon customer, can access — that it is no different from a newspaper editor:

Of course, when they are sued, they claim to be mere dumb pipes, and scream “safe harbor.”

C%$# sucking pig felching rat bastards.

Least Shocking News of the Day

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Wall Street executives believes that their employees cannot succeed without breaking the law:

If the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes were to go out with his lantern in search of an honest man today, a survey of Wall Street executives on workplace conduct suggests he might have to look elsewhere.

A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday.

In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.

Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.

Truth be told, I’m surprised the number is so low.

The cynic in me says that most of the roughly ¾ who disagreed were lying because that’s what they do.

The realist in me says that most of the roughly ¾ who disagreed able to deduce the purpose of the survey, and determine that their, and their companies’ needs were, and then gave an answer that served those interests.

The optimist in me says that most of the roughly ¾ who disagreed have access to some really good drugs.

Ouch!

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I am not sure that I want to win an IP case with this verdict:

Samsung won a victory over Apple in the UK high court as part of its world-spanning battle over intellectual property and design after a judge ruled the design of its Galaxy Tab isn’t cool enough to be confused with an iPad.

The ruling, by Judge Colin Birss, means that Apple cannot stop the import or sale of the Galaxy Tab 10 under claims it has made that the designs are too close to those of the iPad.

Instead, Judge Birss ruled that Samsung’s designs did not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design: “They are not as cool.”

He noted distinctions such as the thickness and details on the backs of the devices in his ruling. “The informed user’s overall impression of each of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets is the following,” he said in his ruling. “From the front they belong to the family which includes the Apple design; but the Samsung products are very thin, almost insubstantial members of that family with unusual details on the back. They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool. The overall impression produced is different.”

This is a definition of a “win” of which I was previously unaware.

H/t Kevin Drum

Here We Go Again

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MF Global, meet PFGBest:

More than $200 million in customer funds appears to be missing from the accounts of U.S. futures broker PFGBest, regulators said on Monday just hours after the firm’s founder attempted suicide outside the company’s Iowa headquarters.

The suicide attempt and missing money renewed anxiety over the stability of the brokerage industry less than a year after the collapse of much larger MF Global. PFGBest told customers their funds had been frozen and clients would be allowed to liquidate open trading positions, but would not be able to withdraw funds or make new trades until further notice.

The National Futures Association (NFA), an industry group that also plays a regulatory role, said it had issued an emergency order to effectively freeze PFGBest’s operations after finding that a U.S. bank account the broker said contained $225 million in customer funds actually held only $5 million.

“It appears that PFG does not have sufficient assets to meet its obligations to its customers,” the NFA said.

The disclosure came hours after owner Russell Wasendorf Sr., a 40-year veteran of futures markets, was found in his car near the company’s new headquarters, having apparently attempted suicide. He is in critical condition at the University of Iowa Hospitals, according to local news reports.

(emphasis mine)

I’m wondering if I’m a bad person for thinking that Wassendorf’s attempt to top himself shows a little bit more common decency and remorse than we got from Jon Corzine in the MF Global matter.

I’m beginning to wonder if your money might actually be safer invested in Nigerian 419 scams than it is with financial professionals.

And In the Role of Enron, JP Morgan Chase

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Remember the California Energy Crisis in 2001? When Enron was found to be manipulating the energy market.

Well, now it’s JP Morgan:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s refusal to turn over e-mails in a federal probe of potential energy-market manipulation is the latest challenge for Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon as the bank faces multiple investigations.

The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sued JPMorgan July 2 to release 25 e-mails in an investigation of possible manipulation of power markets in California and the Midwest by J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp., according to court filings by the Washington-based agency. FERC opened the probe in August after complaints from California and Midwest grid operators that JPMorgan’s bidding practices were abusive, the documents show.

The real lesson here is that these energy markets are rife for abuse, as are most “market based” alternatives to regulation.

Market based solutions, in effect if not in intent, are about the elites in government throwing cash to their old school chums in finance.