Retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt without the aid of Cecile B. DeMille, Yul Brynner, or Charton Heston.
Probably a good thing on the latter one.
I do not like guns at the Passover Seder.
Month: March 2013
It’s Always the Tapes………
We now have NYPD managers on tape giving quotas on stop and frisk, and telling officers to target blacks and Hispanics:
The New York police department’s controversial stop-and-frisk program is being driven by a high-pressure quota system imposed upon lower-ranking officers by their supervisors, two NYPD officers testified in court this week.
The claims were made as part of a landmark class action lawsuit that began Monday. The suit seeks to prove that the nation’s largest police department has demonstrated a widespread and systemic pattern of unconstitutional stops that disproportionately target minorities.
Lawyers for the city have dismissed allegations of quotas and scrutinized the credibility of the suit’s plaintiffs, including their allegations of racial bias on the part of the department.
………
The trial represents a historic challenge to the legacies of NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and mayor Michael Bloomberg, who have both vocally supported stop-and-frisk.
………
Darius Charney, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in opening statements that the trial is about more than numbers. “It’s about people,” he said. The NYPD has “laid siege to black and Latino communities” through “arbitrary, unnecessary and unconstitutional harassment”, Charney added.
………
By mid-week lawyers for the plaintiffs shifted focus from the experience of street stops to the internal NYPD incentive structure that allegedly motivates them.
Officer Adhyl Polanco began his testimony Tuesday by saying “there’s a difference between” the department’s policies on paper and “what goes on out there”, on the city’s streets.
Polanco testified that in 2009, officers in his Bronx precinct were expected to issue 20 summons and make one arrest per month. If they did not they would risk denied vacation, being separated from longtime partners, undesirable assignments and other consequences.
Polcano claimed it was not uncommon for patrol officers who were not making quotas to be forced to “drive the sergeant” or “drive the supervisor”, which meant driving around with a senior officer who would find individuals for the patrol officer to arrest or issue a summons to, at times for infractions the junior officer did not observe.
“We were handcuffing kids for no reason,” Polanco said. Claiming he was increasingly disturbed by what he was witnessing in his precinct, Polcanco began secretly recording his roll call meetings.
In one recording played for the court, a man Polanco claimed was a NYPD captain told officers: “the summons is a money–generating machine for the city.”
Bronx police officer Pedro Serrano also secretly recorded comments made by supervisors at the same Bronx precinct. His recordings were also played for the court this week.
On a track played Thursday, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack was heard telling Serrano he needed to stop “the right people, the right time, the right location”. When asked what he believed McCormack meant Serrano told the court: “he meant blacks and Hispanics.”
Later in the tape McCormack says: “I have no problem telling you this … male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”
Serrano claims his attempts to raise concerns about stop and frisk and the existence of quotas have been met with retaliation, including fellow officers vandalizing his locker with stickers of rats.
I think that both Bloomberg and Kelly know that this is racial profiling, but they don’t care, because they know that any protests serve to reinforce their image as being “tough on crime”.
Tough on crime in the United States means dealing with minority neighborhoods as if the police department is an occupying foreign force.
Yes, Virginia, the Trans Pacific Partnership Sucks Wet Farts from Dead Pigeons
It is a wet dream of Wall Street and IP holders.
The post is too long to summarize, but the Angry Bear goes through and summarizes the low points.
These are things like investors can sue in an extranational and secret courts for losses from:
- Strikes.
- Public protest.
The latter is the most serious. If your protest can result in a multibillion dollar judgement against your county or state, they will shut you down, constitution or no.
Tell your Congresscritter to vote no.
Wimp Out
Obama has withdrawn Caitlin Halligan’s nomination To D.C. Circuit Court:
President Obama has withdrawn the nomination of Caitlin J. Halligan, a prominent New York lawyer, to serve on an important federal appeals court in Washington, blaming Republicans for blocking her confirmation twice.
The president formally notified the Senate of his decision on Friday, after Ms. Halligan requested that her name be withdrawn from consideration. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is widely viewed as the most important federal appellate court because it reviews many cases on the government’s authority.
“I am deeply disappointed that even after nearly two and a half years, a minority of senators continued to block a simple up-or-down vote on her nomination,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “This unjustified filibuster obstructed the majority of senators from expressing their support. I am confident that with Caitlin’s impressive qualifications and reputation, she would have served with distinction.”
First, to Harry Reid: It was such a good idea to soft pedal filibuster reform. Here’s hoping that the Senate Democrats will choose a new leader in 2014.
Obama needs to show some guts.
The DC Court of Appeals is effectively the 2nd highest court in the land, and it is the one that is shortest staffed, because the ‘Phants are filibustering any appointment to the court.
Rolling over and playing dead is not a winning proposition.
Oh Ho!
The lawyer at the core of the whole “bribing prostitutes to lie about f%$#ing Senator Bob Menendez” is now saying that the Daily Caller was the one paying him to do this:
A top Dominican law enforcement official said Friday that a local lawyer has reported being paid by someone claiming to work for the conservative Web site the Daily Caller to find prostitutes who would lie and say they had sex for money with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).
The lawyer told Dominican investigators that a foreign man, who identified himself as “Carlos,” had offered him $5,000 to find and pay women in the Caribbean nation willing to make the claims about Menendez, according to Jose Antonio Polanco, district attorney for the La Romana region, where the investigation is being conducted.
The Daily Caller issued a statement Friday saying that the information allegedly provided by the Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa, was false.
The videotaped claims of two women, made with their faces obscured, were posted in the fall on the Daily Caller. The site reported that “the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000-acre resort in the Dominican Republic. . . . They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.”
In its statement Friday, the Daily Caller said: “At no point did any money change hands between The Daily Caller and any sources or individuals connected with this investigation, nor did anyone named Carlos travel to the Dominican Republic on behalf of The Daily Caller. As recently as two weeks ago, Figueroa was on record with another news outlet as saying the women he represented were telling the truth about their initial allegations against Senator Menendez.”
Tucker Carlson, who runs the Web site, said in a statement provided through his spokesman that the Daily Caller “never paid anyone, was never asked to pay anyone and of course never would pay anyone for this story.”
Yeah, sure. They somehow just got prostitutes to talk, on camera, ratting out an (as we now know falsely) alleged John out of the goodness of their hearts.
Please, don’t insult our intelligence, Tucker.
Because they Do Not Want to Pay to Get Screwed
It appears the the Russians are not going to be extending additional credit to Cyprus, nor are they going to drop the interest or extend the loans that they have already made.
Paul Murphy, watching Cypriot finance Minister Michael Sarris returning empty-handed from Moscow, says that “Medvedev and co could not have played a worse hand during this crisis — and it’s not immediately clear why”. His point is that the most likely outcome right now — he calls it “popping the red pill” — is that big depositors at Laiki Bank (read: rich Russians) are likely to lose some 40% of their money. Since that will make Russia very unhappy, why is Russia doing nothing to prevent it?
I don’t pretend to understand Russian politics, but this move seems to me to be a classic high-risk, high-aggression play; think of Medvedev as a geopolitical hedge-fund manager or poker player, and it begins to make a bit more sense.
Firstly, it’s worth noting that Russia is actually moving backwards on the amount of help it’s likely to extend to Cyprus. When the bailout plan was first announced, it included Russia extending its existing €2.5 billion loan to the country by five years, as well as reducing that loan’s interest rate. Now, Russia is refusing to agree even to that.
More generally, Russia is taking an absolutist stance with respect to Cyprus. No, we won’t restructure the money you owe us. No, we won’t buy a bank off
you. No, we aren’t interested in your natural-gas reserves. And underlying it all, of course, an unspoken — and all the more powerful for being unspoken — physical threat to any Cypriot who causes powerful Russians to lose billions of euros.
I think, and noted in the comments, that there are a number of motivations for the Russians:
- Medvedev and Putin believe that Frau Merkel (sound of horses whinnying) will demand a haircut of the Russians under any circumstances, both for political advantage, and because of the natural hostility of former residents of Warsaw Pact nations, who will gladly cut their nose off to spite the Russian face.
- The second reason is that if the ultra-rich Russia tax evaders get dinged, in the future, they may decide to keep assets in, and pay taxes in Russia, because they see the cost of taxes being less than the cost of an IMF and an EU determine to f%$# them.
- The third reason is that the Russians have been VERY concerned about their western near-abroad for centuries, it’s where they have been invaded from, and they feel that any expansion of the EU presages and expansion of NATO, which they see as a ring of steel intended to threaten them. If Cyprus, and honest hardworking depositors get boned, it is far less likely that places like the Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc. will join the union.
Note that the reasons above are orthogonal, so it might be all of the above.
I do think that any tighter government integration in the EU will have to include some sort of government structure which prevents German hegemony, something like the bicameral structure of the US Congress, because this whole “Germany runs Europe” thing is working about as well as it did the last time.
It’s Jobless thursday!!!
336,000 initial claims, up 2K, with the 4-week moving average falling to 339,750, though continuing claim rose.
Not bad.
Scotus Gets One Very Right
They reaffirmed the right of first sale of a copyrighted work:
The Court at last seems to have reached a consensus on a seemingly intractable problem of copyright law: whether a U.S. copyright holder can prevent the importation of “gray-market” products manufactured for overseas markets. When the Court tried to address this question two Terms ago – in Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega, S.A. – the Court was equally divided (with Justice Kagan recused). However, in today’s opinion in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Justice Breyer, writing for a strong majority of six, emphatically rejected the publisher’s control over the importation of such products.
The facts are almost too good to be true. A Thai national (Kirtsaeng) came to this country to study at Cornell and U.S.C. To subsidize his educational expenses, he resold textbooks purchased by his family at bookstores in Thailand. All in all, he sold several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of textbooks imported in this way, reaping a net profit in the range of $100,000. When his activities came to the attention of Wiley (a major American textbook publisher), a suit for copyright infringement predictably ensued. The district court found for Wiley and imposed statutory damages of $600,000. The Second Circuit affirmed.The case turns on a provision of the Copyright Act that permits the owner of a copy that was “lawfully made under this title” to resell the work. The publisher argues that the Thai books, printed in Thailand, were not made “under this title,” and thus that Kirtsaeng cannot lawfully resell them. Kirtsaeng, on the other hands, argues that the books were “lawfully made,” because they were made under a license from Wiley.
………
The issue in Kirtsaeng was whether the first-sale doctrine applies to copyrighted works manufactured overseas. Kirtsaeng bought textbooks in Thailand, where they are cheap, brought them to the United States, and resold them at a large profit. The lower courts said he couldn’t do this, and ordered him to pay damages to the publisher (John Wiley). The Supreme Court disagreed. The Justices said that the first-sale doctrine applies to all books, wherever made. So even if you buy a book made in England, you can resell it without permission from the publisher.
Normally, this is a close thing, but this time it was 6-3, and the opinion was strident, describing the consequences of ruling for the publisher to be a, “parade of horribles”, where people owning foreign made cars, or tablets, or cell phones would need permission from the publisher in order to resell the products.
I also think that the court was aware that if they allowed the restriction on the right first sale, that the copyright holders would set up manufacturing offshore so as to extort additional revenue by prohibiting resales, or demanding blackmail money licensing fees.
Rather unsurprisingly, the dissent was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who never saw a draconian power that she did not want to give IP holders.
As an aside, we are seeing a change in the public view of IP.
The Supreme Court, with this decision, did not ask, “How can we stop piracy of protected works,” but instead asked, “What are the reasonable limits to the exclusive license we grant to IP holders.”
This is a rather significant change in the tenor of the discussion, and we not just seeing it at the Supreme Court, but among an increasing number of Congressmen. (The White House is still firmly in the pocket of the the MPAA, the RIAA, and the rest of that hive of scum and villainy)
At Least the IMF Isn’t Being Run By Crooks ……… Ummmm ……… Nevermind
Her apartment in France just got raided as a part of a corruption investigation:
Police have searched the Paris home of the head of the International Monetary Fund as part of a fraud investigation centred on a supporter of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Christine Lagarde’s flat was raided along with that of her office manager and the home of businessman Bernard Tapie, a former politician, actor, singer and television celebrity.
The IMF chief has been the subject of preliminary investigations for “complicity in the embezzlement of public funds”, since 2011, when Tapie was awarded €284m of public money in compensation in a financial dispute while she was economy minister.
The search came hours after the French government was rocked by a separate scandal after the budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac was put under criminal investigation amid claims he hid money from the French taxman in a secret Swiss bank account. Lagarde and Cahuzac have vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
………
The accusations against Lagarde centre on her role in what is known as the Tapie Affair, a row that has rumbled for two decades, which ended when she made a controversial decision to refer the businessman’s dispute with the public bank Crédit Lyonnais to arbitration. Critics say she abused her authority. Investigators are looking into whether Tapie was given a secret deal in return for supporting Sarkozy during his successful 2007 presidential election campaign.
Of course, a police raid does not imply guilt, but it does show just how corrupt the political elites are as a class, and why the idea of apolitical “technocrats” is a fraud.
Signs of the Apocalypse
Too true
Michael Steel just said something that was:
- Provocative, and
- Not blindingly stupid.
What he said was that, if Republicans want to get minorities to vote for them they have to stop trying to trying to suppress their votes:
Steele said the RNC’s autopsy of the 2012 election does nothing to address the substantive reasons why the party fails to connect with minorities, highlighting voter identification laws championed by many Republicans, including Priebus, that disproportionately affect black voters.
“How does Reince Priebus reconcile his approach and his agreement with voter registration policies that many in the black community view as anti-black, racist, whatever the term happens to be,” Steele said. “You’ve got to reconcile how people feel about your policies, not just the fact that you’re going to show up. You can show up any time. It’s what you say and what you do when you get there that matters most to people.”
He’s right, of course, and he did not put his foot in his mouth in the progress.
I’m pleasantly surprised.
Dick Durbin Wants to F%$3 Us Like a Steubinville Football Player Would
He is proposing a Social Security to “fix” the program:
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin announced Wednesday morning that he will introduce a bipartisan bill to create a Social Security commission tasked with making the program solvent for the next 75 years.
………
Durbin says the bill would require votes in the House and Senate on whatever the commission proposes.
With no possibility of filibuster, or amendment.
It’s another way to accommodate Obama’s, and the other Washington, DC “very serious people’s”, burning need to gut security.
The solution is straightforward. If you lift the cap. It’s solvent for at least 75 years.
If you extend the tax to things like capital gains, or at least carried interest, it’s solvent basically forever.
I am sick to death of people trying to create yet another cat food commission.*
*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.
I Like the Way that This (These) Guy(s) Think
This proposal for Cyprus is brilliant:
So TMM propose the Cypriot Government do the following – they’ll have to do it very quickly to avoid the ECB panicking and pulling back the ELA cash lent against dodgy collateral. Once done, the ECB will not be able to do anything about it.
- Transfer all bank deposits & unencumbered assets from the existing Cypriot banks to new bank holding companies: e.g. Cyprus Phoenix Bank. This should include the transfer of IT infrastructure, the branch network & any tangible assets like real estate (e.g. the banks’ HQs).
- Let the old banks go bankrupt, leaving the ECB with EUR 9bn of losses and wiping out both the subordinated & senior bondholders (EUR 1.75bn).
- These new banks are now adequately capitalised & under EU law, the ECB will not be able to prevent their participation in Target 2 via the Central Bank of Cyprus. The ECB may well kick & scream, but there will be nothing they can do about it.
- Domestic Bills/Bonds haircut by 80% for non-Cypriot banks. Although their non-bank ownership is small, every little helps, & using JPM’s ownership estimates, this would produce ~EUR 820m.
- The international bonds under UK (with a 75% CAC hurdle) are certainly tough to PSI, but let’s all be realistic, there’s no money left & government debt is at astronomically large amounts of GDP. TMM believe that Cyprus will be more successful than market punters reckon in restructuring this debt. And of course, they can also just unilaterally default on the debt. Again, an 80% haircut here sounds realistic, producing EUR 3.04bn.
- Adding the Gas reserve privatisation (which JPM estimate at EUR 4.2bn), TMM have found EUR 18.9bn.
- Cyprus could also, of course negotiate with the Russians to restructure the EUR 2.5bn loan, and if they are able to get say 20% NPV reduction on this, they could make the terms on the international bond restructuring less-onerous.
I’m not a fan of the proposal to privatizing the gas reserves, I think that it’s stupid to sell the future for pennies on the dollar, but otherwise I like it.
It appears legal, and it legally f%$#s the powers that be of finance, and it doesn’t make the people of Cyprus pay for their banksters fraud.
Them that broke the world should pay, but that will never happen.
New Zealand Decides Looks at the Mess that is Cyprus, and Decides that it Has a Purty Mouth
When Troika (really, the Germans) decided that the solution to Cyprus’ problem with its banks was to take money from insured accounts, they had no idea the firestorm that it would unleash.
It appears that the Troika (really, the Germans) have found the limits of the authority, and hence the misery, that they can inflict, and so the Cypriot Parliament voted down the proposal to take money from depositor accounts:
The Cypriot parliament has thrown out a controversial plan to skim €5.8bn (£5bn) from savers’ bank accounts, in a move that risks plunging the eurozone into a fresh crisis and heightens expectations that the cash-strapped country will seek a funding lifeline from Russia.
Cyprus has just 24 hours to find a solution to its funding gap before its banks are due to reopen following the dramatic no vote on Tuesday night, which failed to support a hastily renegotiated change to the original deal.
Late on Tuesday night the eurozone governments said that despite the vote Cyprus would still need to raise the €5.8 bn – a third of the €17bn bailout.
There are limits to bailing out hedge funds and large European banks, I guess.
Unfortunately, the good folks in New Zealand, which, as Yves Smith observes is already a haven for fraudulent corporations, had decided to abandon the whole concept of insuring bank deposit:
Picture this: you check your bank balance and see that your $1000 lies safely in your savings account.
That night you switch on the evening news and find to your horror that your bank has failed.
It turns out that the Government has had to move quickly, and has placed your bank in statutory management.
The next day you check your bank balance and you find that you have taken what is referred to in the banking industry as a “haircut”.
In other words, part of your savings remain, let’s say 80 per cent, but 20 per cent of it has been frozen – perhaps forever – while the statutory manager sorts out the mess.
You have just entered the world of Open Bank Resolution (OBR).
It may come as a surprise that the Reserve Bank already has the power to freeze bank deposits. The problem for the central bank has been a lack of technical infrastructure to implement the policy, should the need arise. The bank said last week that it was in discussion with the banks on “pre-positioning” their systems for OBR.
Un f%$#ing believable
A press release from the a New Zealand Green Party MP follows after the break:
National planning Cyprus-style solution for New Zealand
Tuesday, 19 Mar 2013 | Press Release
Contact: Russel Norman MP
Tags: Banking & Finance, Smart Economics, Economics
The National Government is pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.
“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.
“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.
“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.
“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.
“Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.
“If he insists on pushing through this unfair scheme, small depositors can be protected ahead of time with a notified savings threshold below which their savings will be safe from any interference.”
Dr Norman questioned the Government’s insistence on pursuing Open Bank Resolution when virtually no other OECD country uses it.
“Open Bank Resolution is unprecedented in the world. Most OECD countries run deposit insurance schemes which protect people’s deposits up to a maximum ranging from $100,000 – $250,000,” Dr Norman said.
“OBR is not in line with Australia, which protects bank deposits up to $250,000.
“A deposit insurance scheme is a much simpler, well-tested alternative to Open Bank Resolution. It rewards safe banks with lower premiums and limits the cost to taxpayers of a bank failure.
“Deposit insurance will, however, require the Reserve Bank to oversee and regulate our banks more closely – a measure which is ultimately the best protection against bank failure.”
“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.
“While the details are still to be finalised, nearly all depositors will see their savings reduced by the same proportions.
“Bill English is wrong to assume everyday people are able to judge the soundness of their bank. Not even sophisticated investors like Merrill Lynch saw the global financial crisis coming.
“If he insists on pushing through this unfair scheme, small depositors can be protected ahead of time with a notified savings threshold below which their savings will be safe from any interference.”
Dr Norman questioned the Government’s insistence on pursuing Open Bank Resolution when virtually no other OECD country uses it.
“Open Bank Resolution is unprecedented in the world. Most OECD countries run deposit insurance schemes which protect people’s deposits up to a maximum ranging from $100,000 – $250,000,” Dr Norman said.
“OBR is not in line with Australia, which protects bank deposits up to $250,000.
“A deposit insurance scheme is a much simpler, well-tested alternative to Open Bank Resolution. It rewards safe banks with lower premiums and limits the cost to taxpayers of a bank failure.
“Deposit insurance will, however, require the Reserve Bank to oversee and regulate our banks more closely – a measure which is ultimately the best protection against bank failure.”
Finally!
A judge has ruled that national security letters are unconstitutional:
Ultra-secret national security letters that come with a gag order on the recipient are an unconstitutional impingement on free speech, a federal judge in California ruled in a decision released Friday.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing so-called NSLs across the board, in a stunning defeat for the Obama administration’s surveillance practices. She also ordered the government to cease enforcing the gag provision in any other cases. However, she stayed her order for 90 days to give the government a chance to appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“We are very pleased that the Court recognized the fatal constitutional shortcomings of the NSL statute,” said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a challenge to NSLs on behalf of an unknown telecom that received an NSL in 2011. “The government’s gags have truncated the public debate on these controversial surveillance tools. Our client looks forward to the day when it can publicly discuss its experience.”
The telecommunications company received the ultra-secret demand letter in 2011 from the FBI seeking information about a customer or customers. The company took the extraordinary and rare step of challenging the underlying authority of the National Security Letter, as well as the legitimacy of the gag order that came with it.
I would expect the Obama administration to appeal this.
They have yet to seen an excess of the state security apparatus that they won’t fully support.
Yes, Please F%$# the Cable Networks
Yes, I’m actually rooting for Verizon against the cable networks.
You see Verizon wants a new deal for its content.
It does not want to pay for each person who has access to a network, but rather it wants to pay only for the people who actually watch the shows:
Verizon wants to change how it pays television providers for their shows, according to a new report.
The company, which operates Fios TV, is currently in talks with several “midtier and smaller” television companies to pay them not for the number of subscribers their channels can reach, but by the number of people who actually watch their shows, according to the Wall Street Journal, which interviewed the company’s executives.
“We are paying for a customer who never goes to the channel,” Verizon Fios TV chief programming negotiator Terry Denson told the Wall Street Journal.
The payment structure would be passed on a “unique view” model in which one person who spends at least five minutes on the channel would count towards a fee, according to the Journal. Verizon would not need to pay for anyone who didn’t actually spend that time on the channel.
If they can apply this generally it makes it less economically viable to use things like ESPN to overload the cable networks, and our cable bills, with stuff that no one else watches.
This is a decent step toward à la carte content delivery.
It’s Our War in Syria Now
We may not be supplying arms directly, but United States has just plucked someone no one has heard of in order to have “their man” in charge of the insurgency:
Syria’s main exile opposition coalition elected a naturalized Syrian-born American citizen early Tuesday to be the first prime minister of an interim Syrian government, charged with funneling aid to rebels inside Syria and offering an alternative to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
By choosing Ghassan Hitto, 50, an information technology executive who lived in Texas until recently, the Syrian opposition coalition concluded months of contentious efforts to unite behind a leader, under pressure from the United States and its allies, which demanded that the opposition set up clear chains of command as a condition of increasing aid to the rebels.
Mr. Hitto, a relative unknown in opposition politics who rose to prominence recently through efforts to improve the delivery of humanitarian aid, was far from a unanimous choice. After a day of maneuvering and voting on Monday that lasted into early Tuesday, he won 35 votes, just three more than Assad Mustafa, a former agricultural minister under Mr. Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.
Mr. Hitto faces formidable challenges in his quest to to establish administrative authority over areas of northern Syria that have been secured by the rebels.
(emphasis mine)
If you don’t think that this guy was hand picked by the US State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you.
BTW, when you look at the history of exiles chosen by the US to rule, Achmed Chalabi and Hamid Karzai come to mind, the history is not pretty.
As the saying goes, “ない愚かさはない薬です”.*
*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.
What Gaius Said
Donating to the DCCC means helping Dems who vote like Republicans:
The DCCC is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the group of congresspeople and staff supposedly responsible for electing House Democrats. It’s led by “ex”–Blue Dog and New Dem Steve Israel, Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked choice for the job.
We’ve written about Israel before. To the world his job is simply to elect Democrats, but to the moneymen and -women behind the corporate wing of the party, his job is to:
- Elect corporate Democrats to the House
- Keep progressives out of office
- Make sure pro-corporate Republican leaders like Cantor and Paul Ryan never face credible challenges
Seriously. So long as the national Democratic Congressional election infrastructure, and Congressional election fundraising is dominated by corporatocrats, don’t give to them.
Pick and choose your candidates. Don’t let these corporate ratf%$3s make that choice for you.
FWIW, I would give similar advice to Republicans too.
It’s really pretty basic, do your homework, and chose whom you support, don’t let the Beltway crowd make your choice.
Still Looking for Senator Menendez’ Birth Certificate
Yes, the folks at the clown show known as The Daily Caller have decided, notwithstanding sworn statements from prostitutes that they were paid to lie, their fearless journamalists, they are still looking for the real killer:
Responding to reports that Dominican Republic police have concluded that three women were paid to make false claims that they had sex with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) for money, The Daily Caller, which published a report in November 2012 detailing similar allegations, says it is still investigating the story.
Seriously, the first rule here is that when you are in a hole, stop digging.
I Have a New Rule for Finance and Fraud
The first was coined by Eric Falkenstein:
People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.
The 2nd rule, which I call Saroff’s Rule:
If a financial transaction is complex enough to require that a news organization use a cartoon to explain it, its purpose is to deceive.
Well, now I have another rule, if your business plan requires an extraterritorial location not subject to any national law, it is because the principals involved intend to be lawless:
A company named Blueseed is a year away from offering entrepreneurs an inexpensive place, near Silicon Valley, in which to develop their products.
“Blueseed will station a ship 12 nautical miles from the coast of San Francisco, in international waters. The location will allow startup entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world to start or grow their company near Silicon Valley, without the need for a U.S. work visa. The ship will be converted into a coworking and co-living space, and will have high-speed Internet access and daily transportation to the mainland via ferry boat. So far, over 1000 entrepreneurs from 60+ countries expressed interest in living on the ship.”
No Civil Rights Act, no Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, no Fair Labor Standards Act, no Securities Exchange Act, no RICO statute, no consumer protection laws, no laws against slavery or indentured servitude, and indeterminate tax jurisdiction.
If you get an offer from these people, run the other way.
H/t Naked Capitalism.
Priceless
The Michigan state legislature, chock full of wingnuts, after losing an initiative on creating emergency managers for localities, promptly repassed the law with an attached appropriation to make it unchallengable.
And now they have appointed an emergency manager for Detroit, who has tax liens on his home in Maryland:
The man charged with fixing Detroit’s faltering finances has been hit with four liens in four years from the state of Maryland for unpaid taxes, records show.
State records show Kevyn D. Orr, who was appointed emergency manager on Thursday, has two outstanding liens on his $1 million home in Chevy Chase, Md., for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show.
Orr said he didn’t know anything about the liens when shown records of them Friday morning by The Detroit News.
“I don’t know what they are,” Orr said, as his new boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, sat next to him in The News’ offices. “That’s surprising to me, to be honest.”
Late afternoon, a spokeswoman for Snyder — who appointed Orr to the $275,000 per year post Thursday — said Orr spent the day researching the issue and would pay “in full ASAP.” The Washington, D.C., bankruptcy attorney blamed the problems on an outside accountant hired to file his tax returns, said Sara Wurfel, a Snyder spokeswoman.
He had 4 liens filed on his home, and did not know about it. Yeah ……… right.
The emergency management process is a clown show for a reason, and it’s no accident that over half of the black voters in Michigan will be under emergency managers.
First they cut state aid to troubled municipalities, and then effectively abolish .
The motivation for this is two fold:
- Modern movement (teabagger) conservatives visceral opposition to majority minority communities having meaningful self rule.
- By eliminating self rule, they eliminate electoral possibilities for less senior politicians.
- Basically, they are hoping to eliminate the “farm system” for a generation of politicians for political advantage.
That is why we are seeing this clown show.
They don’t care about governance, they just care about power. Everything is subverted to to that.