Year: 2013

What is Wrong With Democratic Political Class in One Phrase

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It appears that they think that the biggest strength that a candidate can have is he or she, “doesn’t have particularly strong views.”

Because, I guess, nothing always beats something:

Democratic Party officials believe that Kevin Strouse is exactly the kind of candidate who can help them retake the House next year.

 He’s a smart, young former Army Ranger — good qualities for any aspiring politician. But what party leaders really like is that Strouse doesn’t have particularly strong views on the country’s hottest issues.

 Immigration? Tax policy? “Certainly I have a lot of research to do,” Strouse acknowledged in an interview Thursday as he announced his candidacy in a suburban Philadelphia House district.

 Strouse’s candidacy reflects an emerging Democratic strategy for taking back the House from Republicans after the tea party takeover of 2010.

 The best way to defeat the conservative, ideologically driven GOP, Democrats say, is to field non-ideological “problem solvers” who can profit from the fed-up-with-partisanship mood of some suburban areas. These districts will offer some of the few competitive House campaigns in the country.

 “You pick your strategic high ground and force them to fight on it,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has begun a particularly early effort at traveling the country and working the phones to lure Strouse and others like him into races.

(emphasis mine)

Steve Israel was, until he wanted a leadership position, he was a one of the Quisling Blue Dog Caucus, and his goal is to restore the decimated Benedict Arnold Blue Dog Caucus, because the f%$#ing Blue Dogs were so good for the party in the past.

In any case, be aware that this sort of mind bogglingly stupidity is from the person trying to pick and choose Democratic Party nominees for the US House of Representatives, and he is bragging about this bit of lunacy.

Choose your own candidates.  Don’t give to the DCCC, because they will waste your money on bullsh%$ like this.

It is Called Fraud

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When lenders lose original loan documentation, and their response is to fabricate documents that have nothing to do with reality, it is not a business plan, it is criminal fraud:

It is hard to credit, but lenders routinely mislay the card and loan agreements their customers originally sign. But even more astonishingly, if there has been a dispute later on, the lenders have used computer software to ‘ recreate’ the original documents, sometimes with less than accurate results.

Being able to recreate agreements in this way helps banks pursue borrowers over debts, but there is growing evidence that when lenders ‘recreate’ contracts they often do not stick to the original terms.

The result is that borrowers who are often already in financial trouble are left in worse difficulties.

Document ‘recreation’ is in the spotlight after a court case last month involving a number of borrowers with credit cards issued by HBOS, Barclaycard, MBNA and HSBC. Part of the case, heard in the High Court in Manchester, was to assess the circumstances in which banks could ‘ reconstitute’ lost agreements.

Judge David Waksman concluded that in future, lenders would have to explain why they did not have the original agreements. He said they would have to prove that the recreated document was a true copy of the original contract.

This is in the UK, not the US, that this is happening in right now.

There should be arrests and criminal charges, but all they are getting is a slap on the wrist from the Office of Fair Trading guidelines.

The UK is like us in this way, and it is a pity.

Just In Case You Wondered if Obama Didn’t Want to Gut Social Security

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Notice his shout out to Bob (Rubin) who wants to privatize Social Security

This is Obama at the opening meeting for the Wall Street driven “Hamilton Project”, and when he says, “too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938, believing that if we admit the need to modernize these programs to fit changing times.”

Notice how he is enthusiastic about the idea of cutting Social Security.

He knows that it involves “throwing momma from the train,” so when he says, “This is not a bloodless process,” (7:56 in the vid) it ain’t his blood, or Bob Rubin’s blood that he is talking about.

This is not eleventy dimensional chess.  Obama sees gutting cutting Social Security as a potential bipartisan legacy.

This is what he wants.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Margaret Thatcher, Dead at 87

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She was 87.

There is an argument that one should not speak ill of the dead, but Margaret Thatcher was a public figure, and her supporters are using this as an opportunity to shape her legacy, so I feel that speaking the truth is essential at this juncture in any public forum except for her funeral or wake.

In my case, I will start with a list of positive things about her:
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That is all.

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Off to have a birthday date with Sharon.*

We are going to a newly opened kosher middle eastern restaurant, Easta La Vista.

If you are ever there, get the silk soup (Charira), a Moroccan Chick Pea and herb soup.  It is sublime.

No blogging, because I hope to be busy doing other things.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

The Non Farm Payroll Numbers Sucks

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Only 88,000 Jobs were created:

American employers added an estimated 88,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, compared with 268,000 in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. It was the slowest pace of growth since last June, and less than half of what economists had expected.

It also was the start of a third consecutive spring in which employers tapered off their hiring after a healthy start to the year. Slowdowns in the previous two years could be attributed to flare-ups in the European debt crisis, but this time the cause is less obvious. The recent payroll tax increase or other fiscal tightening in Washington could be partly to blame for the sudden retreat in hiring, but neither seems to be showing up much yet in other relevant economic data.

“People were starting to believe the economy was really picking up steam, and desperately wanted this report to be better,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief economist at MFR Inc. “But that didn’t happen.”

Paul Krugman understands what is causing this:

That deficit has declined from 5.6 percent of potential GDP in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2013 — that’s 3 percent of GDP, which is a lot of austerity. Not all of that cut has even hit yet — the sequester isn’t in the macro numbers yet — but the rise in the payroll tax is very clearly driving the latest bad numbers, which show big declines in retail.

This is Obama policies that we are talking about largely.  Notwithstanding the posturing by Republicans, all they really want is to cut the social safety net and cut taxes for rich guys.

Obama is the one who really wants to cut the deficit in the middle of a recession.

His “Grand Bargain” is all about balancing the budget in the relatively near future while bridging the difference parties. 

It is a dangerous delusion.

High Tech Eutopianism Fail

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The fact that the Silicon Valley icon Michael Arrington’s behavior towards woman has been ignored and covered up for years puts the lie to the idea that somehow the culture of high tech will in and of itself to create a better world and a better workplace:

Everyone knows Silicon Valley is a boys’ club. The needs of women are often ignored when it comes to business, but the story developing around the alleged rape and brutalization of a girlfriend by a Silicon Valley hotshot indicates that lack of effort carries into the personal realm as well.

Michael Arrington, tech magnate and founder of TechCrunch, has long been known for temper tantrums. His former girlfriend, Jenn Allen — the CEO and founder of the start-up RTist.com — recently took to Facebook to accuse him of some nasty stuff. Allegedly, he was constantly violent, raped her and another woman, and threatened to “murder” her if she told a soul.

That is disturbing, yes. But what is most disturbing is that many people in Silicon Valley had heard about his alleged violent tendencies towards women for years and never said anything, fearing repercussions by the constantly angry man who controlled so much in the land of tech.

Arrington’s legendary temper and deep connections in Silicon Valley and the most powerful media outlets earned him the ability to do whatever he pleased with no fear of being confronted. While this apparent bully might have been stopped years ago, bystanders preferred their comfortable lives in Silicon Valley while others suffered terribly at Arrington’s hand.

This is not surprising.

The difference between the Silicon Valley and any other industry is simply the technology they use.

The underlying human aspects are the same as in any other industry.

Judge Overturns Craven Obama Administration Morning After Pill Policy

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A while back, in yet another attempt to appease right wing Neanderthals who will never support him, the Obama Administration overruled its experts at the FDA, and limited access to the morning after pill.

Well, a Federal Judge just called the decision, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable:

A federal judge on Friday ordered that the most common morning-after pill be made available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. But his acidly worded decision raises a broader question about whether a cabinet secretary can decide on a drug’s availability for reasons other than its safety and effectiveness.

In his ruling, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Eastern District of New York accused the Obama administration of putting politics ahead of science. He concluded that the administration had not made its decisions based on scientific guidelines, and that its refusal to lift restrictions on access to the pill, Plan B One-Step, was “arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”

He said that when the Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, countermanded a move by the Food and Drug Administration in 2011 to make the pill, which helps prevent pregnancy after sexual intercourse, universally available, “the secretary’s action was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent.”

This is a very well deserved smack down.

Of all the bits of cowardice to come out of the Obama administration over the past few years, this was arguably the most heinous.

Because the So Called Pro-Life Movement is an Oxymoron

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Yes, the folks who want to criminalize abortion have threatened the life of a Nevada state legislator for saying that she had an abortion:

The life of a Latina assemblywoman in Nevada has been threatened after she used a story about her own personal abortion experience at age 16 to make a point about the importance of sex education.

“I’m going to say something I’ve never said publicly before, because — Why not? I’ve been open about everything else?” Democratic Assemblywoman Lucy Flores reportedly told the state Assembly Education Committee on Monday. “I had six other sisters, all of them became pregnant in their teens — all of them. One was 14 years old when she got pregnant with twins. That is what I had to learn from.”

“I had an abortion because I didn’t have access to birth control, or even an understanding of what that meant,” she explained. “I didn’t even understand that my worth did not come from men, or sex with men, trying to fill up a hole in me from so much pain.”


………

After several Nevada news sites published accounts of Flores’ emotional testimony, conservative websites like Life News got the message out to anti-abortion activists with headlines like: “Democratic Legislator: I Don’t Regret Killing My Baby in Abortion.”

“Unlike Flores, most women regret their abortions and tell painful stories of how they are often unable to come to grips with taking the life of their child,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt wrote.

Flores was scheduled to explain her support for Assembly Bill 230 to reporter John Ralston on the Thursday edition of Ralston Reports, but canceled before the show aired.

Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages. Cancels Ralston Thur.
— Dana Gentry (@DanaGentryLV) April 3, 2013



“Assemblywoman Lucy Flores, who testified at sex ed hearing re abortion as a teen, recipient of threatening messages,” television producer Dana Gentry wrote on Twitter. “Cancels Ralston Thur.”

On Thursday, feminist blogger and activist Emmily Bristol, who wrote about Flores’ testimony, wondered if she had “indirect culpability in giving greater exposure to the kind of information that has been shown to incite anti-choice news outlets and organizations.”

“Those opposed to reproductive health care — lest I remind you that abortion is a legal form of health care — and those opposed to comprehensive sex education share the same goal: To silence and shame women,” Bristol wrote. “They seek to demonize human sexuality.”

This is what the whole abortion criminalization movement is all about: Punishing women for having sex.

It’s why they threaten lives, and why, over the past few election cycles, they have talked about banning birth control, and keeping birth control coverage out of Obamacare.

They hate the idea of women having power over their bodies.

This is why compromise with those ratf%$#s is a losing proposition.

Obama is Not On Our Side

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After increasing signs that even rank and file Republicans oppose to cutting Social Security, but Barack Obama is determined to throw mama from the train:

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

 Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

 Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

Yeah, and who is going to take the blame for gutting Social Security?

Seriously, when I have referred to him as the Manchurian Democrat, I was being prophetic.

He just flushed Democratic protection of Social Security down the f%$#ing toilet.

This is so contemptible MoveOn has gotten its hipster head out of its hipster ass and condemned his move without taking the time to set it up as a lame video contest:

“President Obama’s plan to cut Social Security would harm seniors who worked hard all their lives. Under this plan, a typical 80-year-old woman would lose the equivalent of three months worth of food every year. That’s unconscionable.

 It’s even more outrageous given that Republicans in Congress aren’t even asking for this Social Security cut. This time, the drive to cut Social Security is being led by President Obama and Democrats.

 Millions of MoveOn members did not work night and day to put President Obama into office so that he could propose policies that would hurt some of our most vulnerable people. Just as we fought and defeated President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, we will mobilize and stop this attempt to diminish the vital guarantee of Social Security. MoveOn’s 8 million members will not stand by and watch a Democratic President chip away at one of the most successful government programs of all time. Every member of Congress — Democrat or Republican — who votes for this proposal should expect to be held accountable.”

Call your Congresscritter, and tell them that you will do your best to have them primaried if they vote to support this.

IOKIYAR*

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It’s on!

Mark “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” Sanford won the Republican nomination for the special election in 1st Congressional district in South Carolina:

Mark Sanford’s fiancée, the Argentine for whom he risked a political career, stood next to him Tuesday as he accepted the Republican nomination for a South Carolina Congressional seat.

María Belén Chapur’s appearance was a surprise, especially to leaders in the national Republican Party. It might not have been the most strategic move in Mr. Sanford’s attempt at a political comeback. Still, it was how Mr. Sanford wanted it.

Whether national Republican leaders will decide that the former governor is putting the seat in jeopardy and decide to lend more support is only one question in a race that has already been filled with political and personal drama. After defeating 15 other candidates in a primary race and winning a runoff on Tuesday, Mr. Sanford faces Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Democrat with enough celebrity appeal and financial backing to change what could have been an easy victory in the special election on May 7 into a real battle.

There is yet another example of just how classless Republicans are in the article:

“Everybody is really concerned because she’s not a bad-looking lady, she is a good speaker and she’s got some money,” said Jerry Hallman, chairman of the Beaufort County Republican Party. “In politics, those things are important.”

Elizabeth Colbert Busch is Stephen Colbert’s older sister, so when the classless Mr. Hallman talked about her celebrity, he was not kidding. (See the vid for more)

Still, it is remarkable how complete a Republican self-immolation can be, and yet they are still allowed to return to positions of public trust.

This is a guy who runs on family values, and he gets caught f%$#ing around on his former wife with the woman who is now his current wife, and it’s, “Hey, no harm, no foul.”

The Republican culture of impunity is a marvel to behold.

*It’s OK If You Are a Republican.

Not Surprising News………

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Though it is surprising that it was former FBI director Louis Freeh who reported that Jon Corzine ran MF Global into the ground: (Thorough investigation is not what his consulting business is all about)

The “negligent conduct” of Jon Corzine and other officers of the MF Global Holdings Ltd brokerage contributed to the firm’s dramatic collapse in 2011, according to a report by the bankruptcy trustee.

The report by former FBI director Louis Freeh said the failure of MF Global’s officers contributed to losses of as much as $2.1 billion and adds to the growing number of reports and investigations pointing to their liability.

Freeh has prepared a lawsuit against former executives for breaches of fiduciary duty, but had not filed it pending the outcome of talks with a mediator appointed in a separate securities class action, according to the report.

Freeh’s 124-page document blamed the collapse on “the risky business strategy engineered and executed by Corzine and other officers and their failure to improve the company’s inadequate systems.”

While the report was sharply critical of Corzine’s conduct, it did not focus on one of the biggest mysteries of the MF Global collapse: the misappropriation of funds from customer trading accounts.

What, you mean that Freeh was too busy looking for Monica Lewinski’s blue dress to figure out who stole the f%$#ing money?

Now, there’s a surprise.

When Freeh is on the case, it is not about finding wrong-doers, it’s about protecting the powerful and generating PR.

Yeah, the Sequester is Benign………

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That’s why cancer clinics are unable to treat thousands of patients:

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially.

Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

………

The care will likely be more expensive: One study from actuarial firm Milliman found that chemotherapy delivered in a hospital setting costs the federal government an average of $6,500 more annually than care delivered in a community clinic.

Those costs can trickle down to patients, who are responsible for picking up a certain amount of the medical bills. Milliman found that Medicare patients ended up with an average of $650 more in out-of-pocket costs when they were seen only in a hospital setting.

So, not only are we going to kill grandma, it’s going to cost us more money to do so.

Well, anything to make Grover Norquist happy, I guess.

Misplaced Priorities

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H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I understand that they have problems getting their games out on time, and getting them out finished, they buy up companies and destroy their ideas, and they routinely treat their employers like galley slaves, but considering the excesses of they banksters, or the the slapdash contracting at KBR (which literally electrocuted soldiers in the shower), it is a bit much for a poll to vote computer gaming company Electronic Arts the “Worst Company in America”:

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has a new feather in its cap: It has won The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award.

 The tournament rookie beat out America’s other most-hated companies by a landslide 64 percent vote. Rival honorees included Walmart, PayPal, Bank of America, and even fellow game industry villain, Gamestop.

 A statement from The Consumerist, part of the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports, noted that “while both Bank of America and EA drew consumer ire for their poorly-received practices of swallowing up smaller competitors and nickel-and-diming customers with up-charges and fees, EA’s success in this year’s tournament shines a spotlight on an industry that is often considered ignored by regulators, courts, and the mainstream media.”

 “Some may look down their noses at the idea of voters picking a video game publisher as the Worst Company In America, but that is the exact kind of attitude that has allowed EA and its ilk to nickel and dime devoted customers for a decade,” said Chris Morran, Deputy Editor of Consumerist.com. “This is not just a few people complaining about bad games; this vote represents a large group of consumers who have grown sick and tired of being ignored and taken advantage of.”

There are plenty of companies that abuse and nickel and dime their customers, but the banksters blew up the world, and companies like Blackwater XE Academi murder brown people with impunity.

From all reports, and I know people in the game publishing business, EA is one of those companies that seems to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that successful companies deliver good products that satisfy their customer needs.

But the worst company in America?

Puh-leeze!

As if the Obama Administration Revolving Door Could not Spin Any Faster………

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Promontory Financial Group has hired Former SEC Chief Shapiro:

As regular readers may recall, Promontory Financial Group was one of the huge winners from the joke on the public otherwise known as the Independent Foreclosure Review. The only accurate word in that label, it turns out, was “foreclosure”.

As part of a series of consent orders issued to servicers in 2011, the OCC mandated that borrowers who had a foreclosure underway or completed in 2009 and 2010 could receive a review to determine if their foreclosure was handled improperly and caused financial harm. If so, they could receive as much as $125,000 in compensation.

Many observers, including yours truly, could see as soon as the reviews were announced that they were destined to be a sham, since the consultants hired to perform these assessments would be selected and pad by the banks, who would also be their immediate client. And after the reviews were hastily shut down, the revelations were even worse than even the cynics had predicted. Consultants like Promontory, who worked for three servicers, including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, ran up enormous tabs via being utterly incapable of organizing a process of this scale and complexity. Not that the bank cared, since they didn’t really want the work completed. Promontory racked up an estimated $1 billion in fees. Our whistleblowers say they completed only 4,800 borrower letters at Bank of America and may not have gotten through any at its smallest IFR client, PNC (in October of 2012, after over a year of work at PNC, Promontory said the work to dat needed to be scuttled since questions had been raised about the independence of the process. The reviews were shut down two months later).

So how is Promontory using all this lucre? Buying up even more former regulators to further its reputation as a connected insider. Mary Shapiro had barely left the SEC when she was nominated for a board seat at General Electric, which despite its image as a manufacturer, has for over two decades had nearly half its revenues coming from financial services. And now Shapiro has been signed by Promontory to help arm-twist regulators not to do their job.

This sort of incestuous corruption is a feature, not a bug.