Year: 2013

The Fed Speaks

No Comments

They won’t be stopping the stimulus, but the short version is that they will continue to keep their foot on accelerator, but maybe not quite so much:

The Federal Reserve, increasingly confident in the durability of economic growth, expects to start pulling back later this year from its efforts to stimulate the economy, the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said on Wednesday.

 Mr. Bernanke, offering new details, said the central bank intends to scale down gradually its monthly purchases of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed bonds beginning later this year and ending when the unemployment rate hits 7 percent, which the Fed expects to happen by the middle of next year.

 The central bank would then take several more years to unwind the rest of its extraordinary stimulus campaign, slowly raising short-term interest rates from essentially zero to more normal levels after the jobless rate has fallen to 6.5 percent or lower.

 He emphasized, however, that the timing of the retreat depends on the health of the economy; if growth falters, the central bank would slow, or even reverse, the process. The expectations of Fed officials for the next several years, published Wednesday, are more optimistic than the consensus of private forecasters.

 Pulling back “would basically say that we’ve had a relatively decent economic outcome in terms of sustained improvement in growth and unemployment,” Mr. Bernanke said. “If things are worse, we will do more. If things are better, we will do less.”

I would prefer that they target a higher inflation rate until unemployment falls before 6%, but who listens to me.

My Opinion of Ed Snowden Just Rose

No Comments

In his online chat for the Guardian, he said that, “Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.”

Asked during a live chat on The Guardian’s website to respond to U.S. officials who have called him a traitor, Edward Snowden, the self-proclaimed source of recently leaked top secret National Security Agency documents, said he considers it an honor to be called a traitor by the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“[I]t’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney,” Snowden wrote. “This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.”

I’ve already called him a hero.

He also appears to be a bit of a wit in what must be an anxiety laden situation.

“Grace under pressure,” is how Hemingway described courage.

The NSA is Channeling Joe McCarthy

No Comments

There are 205 … 57 … 52 … 81 … Communists …ψ

So, the NSA is claiming that their anti-privacy drift net, “helped foil more than 50 attacks.”

A few days ago, they were claiming around 20.

And, of course, “Helped foil” isn’t defined, because … Secret.

Recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance programs have helped disrupt more than 50 “potential terrorist events” around the world over the last 12 years, according to U.S. intelligence officials, who described the spying operations as tightly regulated and extremely useful.

 The officials, testifying Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee, identified two new cases — an alleged plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange, and a U.S. resident who helped finance a terrorist group in Somalia — that they said proved the value of collecting domestic telephone calling records and monitoring foreign Internet traffic.

 Most of the plots were foiled by surveillance of foreigners overseas, the kind of spying the NSA has done since it was created in 1952 to monitor communications and other so-called signals intelligence.

 The surveillance programs “are critical to … our nation and our allies’ security,” said Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the NSA and the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command. “They assist the intelligence community efforts to connect the dots.”

It’s possible that General Alexander was telling the truth, but considering the fact that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper deliberately perjured himself before Congress without any consequence, I would be inclined to believe that best, this is an example of “truthiness”, and they chose a number and cherry picked cases to hit that number.

It’s possible that the General is telling the truth, and not engaging in spin.

It’s also possible that I greeted my Sharon* in in bed this evening, wearing nothing but a towel with a chrysanthemum between my teeth.†

The US state security apparatus has used secrecy and deception to justify their program secrecy and deception. Absent a massive and complete declassification of data, Alexander, or Clapper, or Brennan, or for that matter, Barack Obama, are simply not credible sources.

Secrecy and hoovering up everything are an end in and of itself for the NSA and its ilk, and it is up to the political leaders to reign them in.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†Actually, not possible. She is violently allergic to the insecticide pyrethrin, which is a naturally occurring substance extracted from chrysanthemums. I have no comment on whether I did so with a rose between my teeth.‡
‡Let me state for the record that a moment of stunned silence, followed by a nervous chuckle, might be the world’s most effective form of birth control.
ψJoe McCarthy made claims that there were numerous Communists employed by the State Department. His numbers kept changing.

On the Other Hand, This Decision is a Good One

No Comments

The Supreme Court upheld the right of the FTC to sue to prevent brand name drug manufacturers to bribe generic drug manufactures to keep them out of the market:

This case is an antitrust challenge to an increasingly common practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Brand-name companies faced with generic competition pay the would-be competitor an amount of money to stay out of the market. The payment comes in the form of settling a dispute over the validity or infringement of the brand-name company’s patent. Because generic entry reduces drug prices, these “pay for delay” or “reverse payment” agreements are alleged to reduce competition and increase drug costs. The Federal Trade Commission sued drug companies over one such deal. The court of appeals rejected that claim, explaining that the brand name’s patent includes the right to exclude competitors.

Today, by a vote of five to three, the Supreme Court reversed and held that the claim can go forward. Justice Breyer wrote the Court’s opinion, joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Chief Justice Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Justice Alito was recused from the case.

While they did not rule that the payments were presumptively illegal, it does make such payments far more unlikely, since the right of review has been affirmed.

A Horriffic 5-4 Supreme Court Decision

No Comments

They just Eviscerated the 5th Amendment. They say that you cannot be forced to testify, but if you don’t, a prosecutor can use your silence against you:

Because merely keeping quiet when police ask damaging questions is not claiming a right to silence, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, prosecutors may use that silence against the suspect at the trial. If an individual is voluntarily talking to the police, he or she must claim the Fifth Amendment right of silence, or lose it; simply saying nothing won’t do, according to the ruling.

The Court had taken on the case of Salinas v. Texas to decide whether it violates the Fifth Amendment for prosecutors to use pre-arrest silence as evidence of guilt. But the Court did not reach that issue, since it said that one must say something that invokes the Amendment’s protection, or else it does not apply. Prosecutors’ use of the silence is then permitted, it ruled.

“A witness’s constitutional right to refuse to answer questions depends on his reasons for doing so, and courts need to know those reasons to evaluate the merits of a Fifth Amendment claim,” Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., wrote. The Court rejected the argument that, because suspects do not know the law, their silence should be understood as a Fifth Amendment plea.

Basically, if you are rich enough to have a lawyer, you can invoke that, but if you are too poor for one, then invoking the 5th Amendment in any way other than a specific and precise legalistic manner, it will be used against you.

Father’s Day Movie Review: Iron Man 3

No Comments

As I’ve noted before, I would pay to listen to Robert Downey, Jr. read the phone book, so we went to see Iron Man 3, in 3-D.

Robert Downey Jr. … Tony Stark
Gwyneth Paltrow … Pepper Potts
Don Cheadle … Colonel James Rhodes
Guy Pearce … Aldrich Killian
Rebecca Hall … Maya Hansen
Jon Favreau … Happy Hogan
Ben Kingsley … The Mandarin
James Badge Dale … Savin
Stephanie Szostak … Brandt
Paul Bettany … Jarvis (voice)
William Sadler … President Ellis
Dale Dickey … Mrs. Davis
Ty Simpkins … Harley Keener
Miguel Ferrer … Vice President Rodriguez
Xueqi Wang … Doctor Wu

This movie will not be a surprise. It’s a part of the franchise, and largely true to the conventions of that franchise.

The downside of the movie is the plot, which is overly complex, and it has problems with coherence and consistency.

This was the same problem with Iron Man 2, which I also enjoyed.

Downey is a joy to watch, but the best performance of the movie is by Sir Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, which I cannot even begin to describe without spoiling the plot.

The dialogue is punchy, and frequently amusing, much like the two previous sequels, though the best single line comes from neither Downey nor Kingsley, but from an unnamed minion of The Mandarin, who behaves in a way in which minions would in reality.

What I can say is that the film was set around Christmas, which is rather odd for a Summer blockbuster, and a child has a rather prominent role, Ty Simpkins as Harley Keener, and he does not suck.

I also found that Gwynneth Paltrow was a lot less annoying that in the last movie.  She had less hand wringing, and did things, as opposed to being an object to be acted upon.

As to the 3-D, except for explosions and action sequences (admittedly half the movie) it was relatively understated.

I would give it a 7 out of 10.

OK, I’m Impressed With this Vid of the PAK-FA

No Comments

Here is a video of the Russian PAK-FA in flight test.

It appears to be in a flat spin that it recovers from fairly easily.

It looks like the “stinger” between the engines has been slightly modified, probably to accommodate an anti-spin chute.

I think that this video highlights a difference between Russian and US philosophies on stealthy airframes.

Specifically, the US focuses a lot more on the stealth aspects, while the Russians are more focused on outright aerodynamic performance.

An example of this is the cooling arrangements.

The US F-22 and F-35 are constructed much like thermos bottles, with the cooling being accomplished by dumping heat the fuel before it is burnt.

It makes for an airframe free of radar reflectors that might be created by cooling scoops, but it also means that about 10% of the fuel on an aircraft is unusable, because it needs to stay on the aircraft as a heat sink.

By the comparison, the PAK-FA prototypes (This may change with the final model) seem to have a fair numbers of inlets and exhausts.

I am not sure how this will all play out, though I think that the Russian aircraft will be easier for a low tech military to maintain, though that has been the case since WWII.

H/t The DEW Line

Here is No Surprise

No Comments

In a lawsuit, Bank of America* has been accused of giving bonuses to staff for foreclosing on people:

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the second-biggest U.S. lender, rewarded staff with cash bonuses and gift cards for meeting quotas tied to sending distressed homeowners into foreclosure, former employees said in court documents.

 Mortgage workers falsified records and were told to delay U.S. loan-assistance applications by requesting paperwork that the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank had already received, according to statements from ex-employees filed last week in federal court in Boston. The lender improperly disqualified applicants to the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, according to a May 23 statement from Simone Gordon, a loss-mitigation specialist who left the company in 2012.

 “We were regularly drilled that it was our job to maximize fees for the bank by fostering and extending delay of the HAMP modification process by any means we could,” Gordon said. Managers instructed staff to “delay modifications by telling homeowners who called in that their documents were ‘under review,’ when in fact, there had been no review,” she said.

Bank of America, which has spent more than $45 billion to settle claims tied to its 2008 takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp., is being sued by homeowners who didn’t receive permanent loan modifications after making payments under trial programs, according to court papers. Statements from seven former loan employees were included in a filing last week as part of plaintiffs’ attempt to gain class-action status. The lender has denied the allegations.

(Emphasis mine)

Seriously, why we haven’t put banksters in jail, particularly, the former CEO of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo, who created the mess that BoA is trying to sweep under the carpet?

Also, why did the Obama administration set up HAMP as a Petri dish for mortgage servicer abuses?†

*Full disclosure, it is my bank.
†Actually, we know why. Geithner‡ wanted to let the banksters to cheat homeowners so as to protect the bank.
‡Laying it all at Geithner’s feet is not completely fair, because as I often say, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

Limited Disclosure of FISA Warrants to Internet Firms Approved

No Comments

Facebook and Microsoft have gotten permission to release total numbers of government requests for data, which both Facebook and Twitter have lambasted as inadequate.

It’s clear to me that this permission is intended more to conceal than reveal:

Facebook and Microsoft announced Friday that the U.S. government is allowing them to disclose U.S. national security-related requests they received, but lumped together with other law enforcement requests. Google pushed back against those conditions.

“Since this story was first reported, we’ve been in discussions with U.S. national security authorities urging them to allow more transparency and flexibility around national security-related orders we are required to comply with,” Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, wrote in a blog post.

“We’re pleased that as a result of our discussions, we can now include in a transparency report all U.S. national security-related requests (including FISA as well as National Security Letters) — which until now no company has been permitted to do.”

The social-networking company reported that for the six months ending December 31, it had received between 9,000 and 10,000 user data requests from U.S. local, state and federal governments, including national security-related requests, Ullyot said. Between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook user accounts were affected by the requests, he said.

This is quite literally the least the state security apparatus could approve, something which Google notes:

We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “We already publish criminal requests separately from National Security Letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.

It’s clear that this is an attempt to forestall transparency, and instead create the appearance of transparency, by the intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice.

It’s good news, because it’s clear that they, and the Obama administration, is in damage control mode, which would indicate that Google and Twitter will eventually be allowed greater disclosure.

At least, that is what I hope.

This Comes as No Surprise

No Comments

Utilities are discovering that nuclear power plants are not economically viable:

The nuclear industry is wrestling with that question as it tries to determine whether problems at reactors, all designed in the 1960s and 1970s, are middle-aged aches and pains or end-of-life crises.

This year, utilities have announced the retirement of four reactors, bringing the number remaining in the United States to 100. Three had expensive mechanical problems but one, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, was running well, and its owner, Dominion, had secured permission to run it an additional 20 years. But it was losing money, because of the low wholesale price of electricity.

“That’s the one that’s probably most ominous,” said Peter A. Bradford, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a former head of the Public Service Commission in New York. “It’s as much a function of the cost of the alternatives as it is the reactor itself.”

While the other three, San Onofre 2 and 3 near San Diego and Crystal River 3 in Florida, faced expensive repair bills because of botched maintenance projects, “Kewaunee not only didn’t have a major screw-up in repair work, it didn’t even seem to be confronting a major capital investment,” he said.

This is a turnaround because until recently, the life expectancy of reactors was growing. When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began routinely authorizing reactors to run 20 years beyond their initial 40-year licenses, people in the electricity business began thinking that 60 was the new 40. But after the last few weeks, 40 is looking old again, at least in reactor years, with implications for the power plants still running, and for several new ones being built.

………

Even if the economics do not result in retirements, they do mean setbacks. Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear operator, set out a few years ago to invest $2.3 billion in its existing reactors and raise their generating capacity by 1,300 megawatts, a little more than one new reactor would generate. But after completing about a quarter of the plan, it dropped the rest, and said it would pay its suppliers $100 million in penalties for the cancellation, because the economics were no longer favorable.

The economics of nuclear power were never favorable.

When you look at the subsidies involved in mining, fuel processing, shipping, and in the disposal of the waste, nuclear power is arguably the only industry in the United States more heavily subsidized than agriculture, and it’s still not viable.

I Have Got to Read the Works Of Iain Banks

No Comments

If this line from one of his last interviews is any indication of his mastery of the English language:

He learned of Thatcher’s death – which would have kept his own news off the front pages had it been the same day, he mused – on his honeymoon after inviting his partner, Adele Hartley, “to do me the honour of becoming my widow”.

“Then I realised I was celebrating the death of a human being, no matter how vile she was. And there was nothing symbolic about her death, because her baleful influence on British politics remains undiminished. Squeeze practically any Tory, any Blairite, and any Lib Dem of the Orange Book persuasion, and it’s the same poisonous Thatcherite pus that comes oozing out of all of them.”

(Emphasis mine)

I have to check out his work.

When the Spys Have Lost John le Carré………

No Comments

He actually makes a point that has been missed in the whole NSA revelations controversy,

Carré gets to the heart of the matter when he notes that much of the problem is that our government is increasingly serving the state security apparatus when it should be the other way around:

In my recent novel A Delicate Truth, a retired and patently decent British foreign servant accuses his old employers of being party to a Whitehall coverup, and for his pains is promptly threatened with the secret courts. Yet amid all the comment that my novel briefly provoked, this particular episode attracted no attention.

What are secret courts? Why do we need them? To protect Britain’s special relationship with the United States, we are officially told; to protect the credibility and integrity of our intelligence services. Never mind that for decades we have handled security-sensitive cases by clearing the court whenever necessary, and allowing our secret servants to withhold their names and testify from behind screens, real or virtual: now, all of a sudden, the credibility and integrity of our intelligence services are at stake, and need urgent and draconian protection.

Never mind the credibility and integrity of parliament and centuries of British justice: our spies come first. And remember, these aren’t criminal courts. These are civil courts where anyone attempting to obtain redress for a real or perceived injustice perpetrated against him by British or American secret agencies must have his claims heard and dealt with in secret.

This is the core of the problem.

Our intelligence agencies are driving national policy on the basis of their own self interests, and the interests of the rest of society suffer as a result.

It’s a Week for Good Court Rulings

No Comments

This one is a ruling that an unpaid internship must be an educational experience for the benefit of the intern, not an unpaid job:

Yesterday, a federal judge issued the first major ruling on the illegality of unpaid internships in recent years, challenging a rise in corporate reliance on uncompensated workers.

Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that Fox Searchlight Pictures violated U.S. and New York minimum wage laws by not paying two production interns for work done on the set of the movie “Black Swan.”

Pauley ruled that the interns had essentially completed the work of paid employees – organizing filing cabinets, making photocopies, taking lunch orders, answering phones – and derived little educational benefit from the program, one of the criteria for unpaid internships under federal law. Pauley also ruled that the plaintiffs were employees and thus protected by minimum wage laws.

“I hope this sends a shockwave through employers who think, ‘If I call someone an intern, I don’t have to pay them,’” Eric Glatt, one of the plaintiffs, told ProPublica. “Secondarily, it should send a signal to colleges and universities who are rubber-stamping this flow of free labor into the marketplace.”

It should also be noted that unpaid internships serve to keep poor people out numerous professions, because they cannot afford to work for free.

Quote of the Day

No Comments

From the always informative Charlie Savage:

You think any of these guys looked at what happened in 2008 and thought, “Boy, those guys really were crooks and bought the country a helluva catastrophe. We should learn from them and not do that ourselves.” Nope, I guarantee you the first thoughts among the people who thought up this scam for the insurance companies was, “Holy crap, look at the dough those guys made!” And I guarantee you those same people all got raises. The upper levels of American capitalism is so rotten with amorality, so utterly devoid of any conventional sense of ethics, let alone social responsibility, that it hardly seems worth pointing it out any more. Congratulations to America’s graduate schools of business. You have bred three generations of vampires to feed on the rest of us. It’s as though every medical school in the country adopted the basic approach to thoracic surgery of Sweeney Todd and married it to the economic philosophy of Bialystock And Bloom.

He is talking about the insurance industry, which has recently been discovered to have been using complex accounting tricks to boost their apparent assets and revenue.

If the Banksters had been sent to a “federal pound me in the ass prison,” these insurance executives would have thought twice before engaging in accounting fraud.

Won the Election and Should Have Been President

No Comments

Al Gore:

The National Security Agency’s blanket collection of US citizens’ phone records was “not really the American way”, Al Gore said on Friday, declaring that he believed the practice to be unlawful.

In his most expansive comments to date on the NSA revelations, the former vice-president was unsparing in his criticism of the surveillance apparatus, telling the Guardian security considerations should never overwhelm the basic rights of American citizens.

He also urged Barack Obama and Congress to review and amend the laws under which the NSA operated.

“I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way,” Gore said in a telephone interview. “Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

There are some people who leave politics, and just cash in as a lobbyist (Evan Bayh comes to mind), and there are those who find freedom and grow.

Al Gore is one of the latter.

Let me offer a hearty f%$# you to the corrupt Supreme Court justices who mad the Bush administration happen.

Would You Cut Someone’s Throat for Money

No Comments

The hed is instructive, “Chicago Hospital Accused of Cutting Throats for $160,000.”

When people talk about how the private sector solves everything, just remember this story:

A surgeon at Chicago’s Sacred Heart Hospital cut a hole in Earl Nattee’s throat on Jan. 3, the day before he died. It’s not clear why.

The medical file contained no explanation of the need for the procedure, called a tracheotomy, according to a state and federal inspection report that quotes Sacred Heart’s chief nursing officer as saying it happened “out of the blue.” Tracheotomies are typically used to open an air passage directly to the windpipe for patients who can’t breathe otherwise.

Now, amid a federal investigation into allegations of unneeded tracheotomies at the hospital, Nattee’s daughter, Antoinette Hayes, wonders whether her father was a pawn in what an FBI agent called a scheme to defraud Medicare and Medicaid.

“My daddy said, ‘They’re killing me,’” Hayes recalled, in reference to the care he received at the hospital.

Based in part on surreptitious tape recordings, an FBI affidavit lays out allegations that a Sacred Heart pulmonologist kept patients too sedated to breathe on their own, then ordered unneeded tracheotomies for them — enabling the for-profit hospital to reap revenue of as much as $160,000 per case.

They have witnesses who wore wires, and a number of doctors, as well as the CEO of the for profit (notwithstanding the Catholic hospital sounding name) hospital.

There is a reason why governments need to aggressively regulate, or operate, critical services, because incentives to produce good behavior are either ineffective, or more expensive than explicit regulation.

H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.