Year: 2012

Well Here’s Some Interesting Information

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In the matter of the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, we have a new development.

It appears that the detective originaly assigned to the case wanted to arrest him for manslaughter:

The lead homicide investigator in the shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin recommended that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter the night of the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News.

But Sanford, Fla., Investigator Chris Serino was instructed to not press charges against Zimmerman because the state attorney’s office headed by Norman Wolfinger determined there wasn’t enough evidence to lead to a conviction, the sources told ABC News.

Police brought Zimmerman into the station for questioning for a few hours on the night of the shooting, said Zimmerman’s attorney, despite his request for medical attention first. Ultimately they had to accept Zimmerman’s claim of self defense. He was never charged with a crime.

Serino filed an affidavit on Feb. 26, the night that Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, that stated he was unconvinced Zimmerman’s version of events.

The fact that Zimmerman’s dad is a retired judge makes this decision even more suspect.

Then there is the fact that Martin’s body remained listed as a John Doe in the coroner’s office for 3 days, while repeated calls to his cell phone went unanswered. (Maybe that would have allowed them to identify the body)

Whatever else happened, given the Sandford, Florida PD’s long and notorious record of corruption and racism, it’s tough to conclude that their handling of the case was racially tinged.

BTW, Lawrence O’Donnell was going to interview Zimmerman’s lawyer, but when he realized that it wasn’t going to be softball questions he fled the studio.

O’Donnell then asked the questions of the empty chair, and they were very basic questions:

  • Who is paying you? Who hired You? When, exactly, did they hire you?
  • Does George Zimmerman have a job? Does he have any property? Does he own anything?
  • Did you represent him when he was arrested for assault on a police officer in 2005? Did you represent him in a domestic violence case in 2007 when his girlfriend accused him of assault?
  • You said Zimmerman got a broken nose, can you show us photos of him that night with the broken nose, or even the next day?
  • You said Zimmerman’s clothes had grass stains and other evidentiary material … do you have that garment, can you show us what happened to it?”

These are not unexpectedly hard hitting question.  Certainly they are a bit hostile, but if you are doing the media rounds as his lawyer (to my mind always a bad decision) you have to be able to answer these questions.

One of the interesting things here is just how hard the right is trying to smear this teenager.

It’s an article of faith among them that there is no longer any racism in the United States, and the obvious racism here kind of gets in the way of that.

I Am So Jealous

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It’s a long story, but I was discussing journalism with someone today, and uttered a Yiddishism, and he replied, “Sy Hersh is the only guy who speaks Yiddish to me.”

I’m jealous. It would make my day if the dean of investigative journalism, Seymour Hersh, called me an “Ill conceived son of a wombat.”

And We Are Supposed to Trust the Cable Companies Because?

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Yes, they are moving to the gated garden, where favored vendors receive priority bandwidth:

It looks as if Comcast is preparing to move from a limited beta test to a wide release for its long-promised Xbox Live streaming video app, with some details appearing on the company’s support pages. Probably the biggest revelation about the service is that streaming Comcast’s On Demand videos through the Xbox 360 will not count towards customers’ 250GB monthly data limit.

Comcast says the Xbox app gets special treatment because the video is “being delivered over our private IP network and not the public Internet.” This gives the service a potentially large advantage over not just other video streaming apps like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but also over Comcast On Demand content streamed through the company’s website and mobile apps, both of which count against the data limits.

Enjoy your 3rd party streaming while you can, because it is not going to work reliably much longer.

I expect them to start f%$#ing with 3rd party IP telephony in the next few years as well, so buh-bye Skype.

H/t Harold Feld.

Orwell Much?

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It looks like Samsung has come up with a telescreen that has cameras and microphones that it can use to watch you:

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it’s the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung’s own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.

Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets. And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung’s app partners, Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.”

…………

A Samsung representative showed how, once set up and connected to the Internet, these models will automatically talk to the Samsung cloud and enable viewers to use new and exciting apps.

These Samsung TVs locate and make note of registered viewers via sophisticated face recognition software. This means if you tell the TV whose faces belong to which users in your family, it personalizes the experience to each recognized family member. If you have friends over, it could log these faces as well.

In addition, the TV listens and responds to specific voice commands. To use the feature, the microphone is active. What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

Seriously Eric Arthur Blair must be spinning in his grave at sufficient velocity to power all of Totnes on Devon.

Yes, we have a TV that watches you back, just like Big Brother in 1984.

Any bets on how long before the NSA hacks the cloud that this interfaces, so they can spy into people’s homes?  Certainly, the TOS described here would allow it, so perhaps they would not even have to hack into the system.  They just need to twist some arms at Samsung.

Lovely.

H/t Slashdot.

It Looks Like Ion Drive is Going Commercial

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Following the success of the Dawn Spacecraft in exploring the asteroids, I suppose that it was inevitable that ion propulsion would hit the commercial satellite industry:

It’s no secret that Boeing’s space systems unit is aggressively pricing bids in an effort to grow its commercial business segment as government spending flags. But even the most bullish observers were taken aback by an estimated $400 million deal just signed with Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and Satellites Mexicanos (SatMex) to build the first all-electric commercial telecom spacecraft intended for launch to geostationary orbit.

The technology—which uses light-weight xenon-fueled ion thrusters rather than conventional chemical propulsion to maneuver a spacecraft into position—is promising. Imagine cutting in half a satellite’s weight, and subsequently its launch costs, which can top $100 million depending on the size of the spacecraft. All-electric satellites could potentially save fleet operators hundreds of millions of dollars in annual launch expenditures, with potentially no impact to their satellites’ capability or performance.

The downside is that while most commercial communications spacecraft are expected to be on station and making money within a few weeks of launch, new all-electric satellites could spend up to six months using slow pulses from ionic propulsion systems to maneuver into their final orbital slot—months when the spacecraft is not generating any revenue. This might not pose a problem for large operators with established revenue streams who can accommodate the lag in revenue as they incorporate new satellites into fleet-replenishment programs. But it could put small companies at a disadvantage as they sacrifice up to half a year’s income waiting for the spacecraft to enter service.

In either case, employing an all-electric spacecraft requires getting an early start on the capital-spending cycle to accommodate the lengthy orbit-raising process.

“It is easier for a company with a large fleet that has to anticipate replacement satellites several years in advance to tolerate the several months it takes for an electric satellite to reach position once it has separated in orbit,” says Romain Bausch, chief executive of Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest fleet operator by revenue.

Basically, chemical maneuvering thrusters have something like a hundred times more thrust, but have about 100x lower ISP (fuel efficiency).

The downside to ion propulsion close to earth is time, but the lines cross for anything farther the earth-moon system.

Welcome to Belly Rave*

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Poverty is growing more rapidly in the suburbs than in either urban or rural areas, this is not something that we have experience in handling:

In many of America’s once pristine suburbs, harbingers of inner-city blight — overgrown lots, boarded up windows, abandoned residences — are the new eyesores. From the Midwestern rust-belt to the burst housing bubbles of Nevada, California and Florida, even in small pockets of still affluent regions like Du Page County, Ill., the nation’s soaring poverty rates are visibly reclaiming last century’s triumphal “crabgrass frontier.” In well-heeled Illinois towns like Glen Ellyn and Elgin, unkempt, weedy lawns blot the formerly manicured, uniform and tidy landscape.

The Brookings Institution reported two years ago that “by 2008 suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.” In the previous eight years, major metropolitan suburbs had seen poverty rates climb by 25 percent, almost five times faster than cities. Nationwide, 55 percent of the poor living in the nation’s metropolitan regions lived in suburbs.

To add insult to injury, a new measure to calculate poverty — introduced by the Census Bureau just last year — darkens an already bleak picture: nationally, 51 million households had incomes less than 50 percent above the official poverty line, and nearly half of these households were in suburbs.

When juxtaposed with the structure of the suburbs, poverty may be even more problematic in the burbs, particularly in terms of things like transportation.

I’m not saying that the suburbs are heading toward a dystopian world of suburbs as gang infested slums, the there does appear to be a change in the status of suburbs.

*Seriously, if you haven’t read Gladiator At Law, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, you should.

I Can Haz Prosecushions?

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We now have a smoking gun in the matter of MF Global, an email detailing how John Corzine ordered customer funds transferred to JP Morgan Chase, and the fact that JP Morgan asked for, and never got a statement that they weren’t customer funds:

Jon S. Corzine, MF Global Holding Ltd.’s chief executive officer, gave “direct instructions” to transfer $200 million from a customer fund account to meet an overdraft in a brokerage account with JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), according to a memo written by congressional investigators.

Edith O’Brien, a treasurer for the firm, said in an e-mail quoted in the memo that the transfer was “Per JC’s direct instructions,” according to a copy of the memo obtained by Bloomberg News. The e-mail, dated Oct. 28, was sent three days before the company collapsed, the memo says. The memo does not indicate whether that phrase was the full text of the e-mail or an excerpt.

…………

arry Zubrow, JPMorgan’s chief risk officer, called Corzine to seek assurances that the funds belonged to MF Global and not customers. JPMorgan drafted a letter to be signed by O’Brien to ensure that MF Global was complying with rules requiring customers’ collateral to be segregated. The letter was not returned to JPMorgan, the memo said.

The money transferred came from a segregated customer account, according to congressional investigators. Segregated accounts can include customer money and excess company funds.

So Corzine ordered the illegal transfer of customer funds, and JP Morgan was worried about this that they demanded a letter saying that they were not doing this, but never followed up on their demand.

I think that the bigger story here is JP Morgan. We already knew that Corzine was hip deep in stealing customer funds, what we didn’t know that JP Morgan knew, but took the money anyway.

These folks need to be frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

They need to be tried under RICO and if they go to jail it should not be a white-collar resort prison, they should go to a federal POUND ME IN THE ASS prison.

FCC Takes a Bite Out of Clear Channel and Its Ilk

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It looks like the FCC is finally moving on low power local radio, and in so doing, they are going to be kneecapping crappy mass market radio, which includes a lot of the right wing talkers:

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision issued Monday (PDF) will clear the runway for hundreds of new community radio stations that broadcast on low-power FM signals, bringing progressive, community voices to urban areas that have for decades only known what’s being broadcast by major corporations and America’s political right.

In other words, the dismantling of Rush Limbaugh was just the beginning, and the whole FM dial is next.

The FCC’s decision on Monday wipes away a massive backlog of applications for FM repeater stations, which are transmitters that repeat signals broadcast by corporate and religious radio operators — many of which rake in big listening audiences for right-wing syndicated talk shows.

“So, what a lot of right-wing, conservative radio stations have been able to do is expand their reach out in communities by just having these translators out in the wild, which is why Rush Limbaugh gets the type of audience that he has — because the networks take one signal and repeat it over and over and over across the dial all over the country,” Steven Renderos, national organizer with the Center for Media Justice, told Raw Story on Tuesday. “They’re constantly looking for opportunities to expand that, so there were a slew of these applications pending at the FCC.”

…………

Instead of slowly grinding down thousands of repeater station applications that leave no room for community radio, the FCC essentially threw most of those applications away by limiting who can apply, how many filings a single entity can make, and which markets can consider new repeaters — all of which frees up the regulatory body to examine applications for new community stations. The regulatory agency still gave some deference to corporate broadcasters, however, by allowing them one shot at revising their applications to fit the new guidelines.

…………

The FCC’s move Monday was the first step on a path laid out by the Local Community Radio Act, signed by President Barack Obama at the start of 2011, which represented the first real victory in activists’ long fight against the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) the radio industry’s biggest lobbying group. The bill freed up portions of the radio spectrum that had otherwise been kept empty by the larger broadcasters, who had long insisted upon four clicks of blank space on the FM dial to prevent interference. It also stipulated that new space on the dial must be reserved for community stations in urban areas where there might otherwise be none.

The radio stations that they are clearing the deck are limited to non profits, and each one has to be independently owned.

So, we’ll see more diversity on radio, and we’ll have better radio.

The Banksters Acts Exceed My Cynicism

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When a mortgage firm sues their servicer because for being too cooperative with the people that they cheated:

Just when you think you’ve seen it all in mortgage-backed securities litigation, along comes the likes of Sand Canyon to prove you wrong.

The onetime California mortgage lender, which stopped originating loans in late 2007 and sold its servicing business to American Home Mortgage Servicing in 2008, has filed a complaint in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan that accuses American Home of making it too easy for MBS trustees and insurers to get hold of underlying loan files. In essence, Sand Canyon’s lawyers at Cahill Gordon & Reindel are arguing that the servicer should be helping it thwart claims that it breached representations and warranties about the mortgages it sold to MBS issuers, not smoothing the way for put-back demands.
Sand Canyon’s 26-page complaint, filed last month, asserts that American Home pledged to act as an ally when it bought the servicing business in 2008. “Sand Canyon bargained for and obtained (American Home’s) cooperation in connection with Sand Canyon’s defense,” the complaint said. Under their agreement, according to the complaint, American Home was supposed to “refrain from disclosing confidential loan information to third parties except as required by law.”
Most pooling and servicing agreements permitted MBS trustees and insurers to see underlying loan files only during regular business hours and at the servicer’s offices, according to the Sand Canyon complaint. But American Home, the suit alleged, has provided electronic records in response to demands from trustees and insurers.

Until we start putting these f%$#s in prison, and we seize every penny that they have through RICO and asset forfeiture, they aren’t going to stop.

We need to put some of them in jail for the rest of their lives, and when they die, we need to take their fillings.

Greece is Imploding

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I’m serious. It looks like local scrip is breaking out all over the country as an alternative to the Euro:

In recent weeks, Theodoros Mavridis has bought fresh eggs, tsipourou (the local brandy: beware), fruit, olives, olive oil, jam, and soap. He has also had some legal advice, and enjoyed the services of an accountant to help fill in his tax return.

None of it has cost him a euro, because he had previously done a spot of electrical work – repairing a TV, sorting out a dodgy light – for some of the 800-odd members of a fast-growing exchange network in the port town of Volos, midway between Athens and Thessaloniki.

In return for his expert labour, Mavridis received a number of Local Alternative Units (known as tems in Greek) in his online network account. In return for the eggs, olive oil, tax advice and the rest, he transferred tems into other people’s accounts.

“It’s an easier, more direct way of exchanging goods and services,” said Bernhardt Koppold, a German-born homeopathist and acupuncturist in Volos who is an active member of the network. “It’s also a way of showing practical solidarity – of building relationships.”

Basically, we are seeing a wholesale flight from the regular economy, and the concept of the Greek nation state. (It’s also a repudiation of the EU, since it sets up a system where it’s impossible to purchase non-local products)

The Guardian presents this positively, but I see it as a step toward Greece, a barely function nation to begin with, moving in the direction of Somalia.

I’m increasingly coming to believe that the Euro currency experiment, and in particular German domination of this process will lead to another war in Europe (hopefully cold, and not hot) in the next decade, as my brother (Bear who swims) has predicted, .

Mixed Emotions

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In the Illinois primary, we had a closely watched Democratic Primary in Illinois 10thIlya Sheyman.

Sheyman is younger (25) and more liberal than Brad Schneider, Steny Hoyer supporter Schneider, and the district currently is served by a Teabagger republican who was elected in the 2010 blow-out, but definitely trending blue, even with redistricting.

Sherman won , and I have mixed emotions about this.

I’m uncomfortable with his attempting to appropriate the occupy movement for his campaign, and I think that the real source of his support is that he is a FOB (Friend of Barack).  He worked on his initial Senate campaign and was later one of his staffers.

We had another FOB running in 2010, Alexi Giannoulias, who also ran a failed bank, in the Illinois
Senate race, so I’m dubious of his ability to run a good race.

A bigger issue is a matter of policy, specifically Social Security.

I have concerns that Sheyman would salute anything that Obama would send up the flag pole, including cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while I think that with Schneider is LESS likely to support Obama if he were to propose such a policy out of a sense of political self preservation.

We’ve already had a number of near misses with these programs, where Obama has tried to trade them to the Republicans in the name of comity, and so I have included that this is what he really wants, because it’s “transformative”.

It’s ironic that a President Obama is more likely to make major cuts to the jewels of the New Deal and Great Society than a President Romney would.