Month: April 2014

It’s a Start………

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The IRS has revoked the 501(c)3 tax exempt status of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a right wing group that has routinely engaged in illegal electioneering.

The kicker is that Center is in part a political advocacy group formed by Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas:

Under the tax code, it’s illegal for a charity to engage in electoral politics. In its response to the IRS, the Patrick Henry Center said its statements could be interpreted differently by different people, and that many of them did not advocate voting for or against a candidate.

The center’s most recent tax return disclosed $343,503 in revenue for tax year 2012. In recent years, it’s become aligned with the Tea Party movement, contributing to at least one of the groups targeted for extra scrutiny by the IRS beginning in 2010. Also in 2010, the Patrick Henry Center merged with Liberty Central, an advocacy group headed by Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese serves on the center’s board.

The IRS’s revocation means contributions to the Patrick Henry Center are no longer tax deductible.

I incorporated a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization in the early 1990s, and I recall the sh%$ I had to go through to incorporate.

I was originally turned down, because the examiner thought that the organization was better suited to 501(c)7 status, a membership organization, as opposed to a charity, which would lose tax exempt status and (more importantly to us) a special low postal rate. (Had to explain some terminology we used in my appeal,k and it worked)

In retrospect, I believe that the examiner morally right on this, though my application was was within the parameters of existing law and regulation.

It’s just that and the rules that the IRS is not enforcing are way too lax, and more observed in the breach than in actual enforcement.

It’s nice to see that this is changing.

The Ultimate 2nd Stringer

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I am referring, of course, to Earl Morrall, who died today:

Earl Morrall stepped in when the 1972 Miami Dolphins needed him most. And then he willingly stepped aside, earning enduring admiration from his teammates and coach Don Shula.

 Morrall, who started 11 games during the Dolphins’ perfect season and spent 21 years as an NFL quarterback, died Friday at age 79. He had been in failing health for some time.

 “There would be no perfect season, and probably no Super Bowl win in 1972, without Earl Morrall,” Bob Griese said Friday.

 When Griese broke his ankle in 1972, Morrall came off the bench and started the final nine games of the regular season. Morrall won praise from Shula for returning to the sideline without complaint when Griese came back to play in the final two postseason games, including the Super Bowl to cap the only perfect season in NFL history.

 Morrall also played for the 49ers, Steelers, Lions, Giants and Colts, winning three Super Bowl rings. He came off the bench to replace an injured Johnny Unitas and help the Colts win the Super Bowl to cap the 1970 season, and he was the backup to Griese on the Dolphins’ 1973 championship team.

 Morrall also was the starting quarterback opposite Joe Namath in the 1969 Super Bowl after guiding the Colts to the conference title and winning the league’s MVP award. He struggled in that famous 16-7 loss to the Jets, throwing key interceptions, and was benched during the second half for Unitas.

Morrall as the steady backup was sort of a fixture of my youth.

No Blogging for You!

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I just got back from picking up my mother in law to the airport.

She visited my sister in law in Memphis over Passover.

Unfortunately, this means that I will have to delay my brilliantly satirical essay about how conservatives are stunned and chagrined to discover that their favorite welfare cheat rancher is a bigot who liked slavery because it kept them in their place.

Posted via mobile.

Thanks, Obama

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You know, this is to be expected. Obama appoints an industry lobbyist to head the FCC, and the FCC ends network neutrality: (See also here)

………

 The following can be attributed to Michael Weinberg, Vice President at Public Knowledge:

“The FCC is inviting ISPs to pick winners and losers online. The very essence of a “commercial reasonableness” standard is discrimination. And the core of net neutrality is non discrimination. This is not net neutrality. This standard allows ISPs to impose a new price of entry for innovation on the Internet. When the Commission used a commercial reasonableness standard for wireless data roaming, it explicitly found that it may be commercially reasonable for a broadband ISP to charge an edge provider higher rates because its service is competitively threatening.

“It is hard to see how the commercial reasonableness standard, which inherently offers less protection than the standard in the previous Open Internet Rules, can serve the same policy goals. Additionally, approaching discrimination on a case-by-case basis creates less certainty than clear rules and disadvantages small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Commission should instead seek to find a way to ensure true net neutrality, including protections against discrimination by ISPs for commercial purposes. The DC Circuit Court opinion made it clear that the only way to achieve net neutrality is to reclassify internet access as a telecommunications service.”

What a thought: Obama’s FCC chair does not have the guts to reverse the that it made under the Bush administration to classify if ISP’s service as information services, as opposed to telecommunications services, which meant that they were not common carriers.

It also refused to appeal the DC Court of Appeals decision to the Supreme Court.

And they did this because ……… Regulatory capture, I guess.

It certainly fits in with Obama cozying up to malefactors in dysfunctional markets as opposed to trying to fix those markets. (Obama care, Banksters walking free, The Droning of Brown People, the NSA, etc.)

Oh well, when the Kochs take over the internet, maybe they will give Obama a medal.

Naah ……… I’m just sh%$#ing you ……… They’ll find a trumped up charge to throw him in jail.

H/t Kevin Drum for the pic.

911 Truther Links Polish Government to Right Wing Paramilitaries in Ukraine

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There are reports that the Polish government gave military training to fascist militia members from the Ukraine:

The Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan activists.

According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy), allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality, the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in Legionowo, an hour’s drive from the capital. There, they received four weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition, combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations, protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

Such training took place in September 2013, while the Maidan Square protests were allegedly triggered by a decree suspending preparations for the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, which was issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on November 21, i.e. two months later.

The Polish weekly refers to photographs attesting to the training, which show the Ukrainians in Nazi uniforms alongside their Polish instructors in civilian clothing.

Let me be clear: this source is highly dubious.

I know nothing of the Polish weekly Nei, and the machine translation is anything but clear, but I do know that the author of this article, Thierry Meyssan, is a 911 truther, and hence highly suspect.

That being said, if there is one thing that is certain about “Tradecraft”, as some are wont to call covert activities, it is that Poland would not do something like this without explicit support and approval from the US state security apparatus.

After all, they supported the CIA’s establishment of torture sites following 911.

So the short form is that if this report is accurate, and that is a big if, then the CIA or the State Department had to give support and approval.

Hopefully someone with a bit more journalistic credibility will look into this.  (It’s one of the reasons that I put “911 Truther” in the hed: it is simply not credible at this time).

Why the Boy Scouts Leadership Need to be Fired, and it Offices Should Moved from Texas to a Civilized Place

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There is was a boy scout troop in the Seattle area whose leader is openly gay, and BSA ejected him from the scouts.

When the church at which his troops were based refused to discharge him, because they oppose discrimination, and the BSA closed down those troops:

Church Pledges to Resist BSA’s Demand and Remain Open and Inclusive; Scouts for Equality Deplores Boy Scouts’ Callous Act as a Discriminatory Attempt to put Politics before Boys

In a startling and discriminatory move, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) revoked the charter of Seattle Troop 98 and Pack 98 for its refusal to remove gay Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. The BSA revoked the charter of Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s (RBUMC), a Seattle church whose two Scouting units serve a neighborhood with few other positive opportunities for local youth.

“The Boy Scouts’ decisions only serve to hurt a group of boys who need the values and leadership of someone like Scoutmaster McGrath,” said Zach Wahls, Executive Director of Scouts for Equality, a national organization dedicated to ending the BSA’s ban on gay members and leaders. “Unfortunately, the BSA’s decision calls into question its commitment to leadership and values by perpetuating an outmoded policy rooted in fear and discrimination. History will show that today’s announcement is a self-inflicted wound.”

The controversy surrounding Troop 98 emerged in March, when an NBC News report on the inclusive troop prompted the BSA to question the sexual orientation of Scoutmaster Geoffrey McGrath. McGrath, abiding by the Scout’s commitment to trustworthiness, acknowledged his sexual orientation to the BSA, which in turn, responded by revoking McGrath’s status as Scoutmaster.

Since then, support for McGrath has been overwhelmingly positive. The entire Seattle City Council, as well as more than 20 Washington State legislators, have expressed their support for Rainier Beach United Methodist Church’s right to determine its own leadership for McGrath’s ability to remain a Scoutmaster. Most important, RBUMC Rev. Dr. Monica Corsaro has stood by McGrath and has refused to remove him from his post. BSA is taking this action in direct contradiction to the inclusive religious beliefs and wishes of Rainer Beach Methodist Church.

It makes no sense to support the BSA until the leadership gets its head out of its collective asses.

If they are sponsored by your house of worship, or your church, you should consider finding some other organization that better represents a moral view of our society.

Linkage

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Here is a video about how to make smoked salmon at home:

FWIW, if you are bit less ambitious, you can make Gravlox.

I Want to be Sephardic

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First, there is the food.

They got olive oil, we got schmaltz.

They sit on the spice road, and we got ……… schmaltz.

Over Passover, they get to eat rice and beans, legumes are known as kitniyot, which Ashkenazic rabbis have ruled could be made into something too close to flour, though this does not apply to things like chestnuts, whose flour is actually used to make pastries. (Go figure)

Well, Rabbis have now declared marijuana to be kitniyot, and hence forbidden on Pesach, so no 420 on 4/20:

It’s that time of the year again — Passover and 4/20, the unofficial marijuana celebration day. On the same day.

The celebration of all things green poses a particular problem for the chosen people. Namely, is smoking pot kosher for Passover?

Sorry to disappoint, but it seems not.

In 2007, Israel’s Green Leaf Party, which supports the legalization of marijuana, declared that cannabis is among the substances Jews are forbidden to consume during Passover.

“You shouldn’t smoke marijuana on the holiday, and if you have it in your house you should get rid of it,” Michelle Levine, a spokeswoman for the party, said at the time.

Why? Because hemp seeds are considered to be kitniyot.

While biblical law prohibits eating leavened foods, rabbis have since extended the rules to apply to foods like beans, corn and rice. Hemp seeds, found in marijuana, falls under that category. So voila, no Mary-Jane for you — if you’re Ashkenazi that is.

Sephardic Jews have traditionally been allowed to eat kitniyot during Passover, so when it comes to 4/20, they’re in the clear.

I’m seriously bumming, even if I have not indulged in over 20 years. (The joys of a pee in a cup career)

H/t my hairier brother, who posted this to Facebook.

Our Clusterf%$# in Guantánamo

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As has been obvious since their founding, the military tribunals at Guantánamo are completely dysfunctional, and the latest problem, where the FBI has been infiltrating the defense teams is getting even worse:

The major fissure concerning the controversial military commissions at Guantánamo Bay is no longer between civil liberties and national security. It’s between the commissions and the intelligence services, with the future of the 9/11 war crimes tribunal hanging in the balance.

On one side are both the commission prosecutors and defense attorneys, all of whom grapple in different ways with bringing justice to defendants who spent years in the brutal black box that was CIA custody. The prosecution in particular is laboring to send the message that, after years of stop-and-start proceedings, the commissions are now a viable, professional complement to federal courts.

On the other side are the CIA and the FBI, which have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent information about the detainees – particularly about their torture in CIA custody – becoming public. The intelligence and law enforcement agencies’ equities at Guantánamo, at a minimum, conflict with the successful military prosecution of the detainees. At worst, they undermine the venue meant to provide a final dispensation for alleged post-9/11 war crimes.

And the agencies may now have overplayed their hand.

Last week, defense attorneys for 9/11 co-defendant Ramzi bin al-Shibh revealed that the FBI surreptitiously compelled a classification specialist assigned to them to sign documents indicating he would inform on the defense teams.

They have also bugged defense conference rooms, seized control of the muting system at the trial without the knowledge of the of the judge, and they are preparing to defy that judge’s order for details on the CIA’s torture program.

If the military tribunals were anything close to a real trial, the charges would have already been dismissed because of malfeasance on the part of the government.

For f%$3’s sake, just move this to the Federal Courts, where the jurist are capable of finding their posteriors with either, or both, hands.

Times Ombud Calls Out Shoddy Financial Reporting

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The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticizes their coverage of Bank of America’s latest financial results, because they completely ignored the massive fines for fraud:

Reading The Times’s coverage of Bank of America’s quarterly loss last week, I almost felt sorry for the financial behemoth. It has mortgage troubles, you see. It has onerous legal costs.

“The disappointing news shows how Bank of America is still paying for its mortgage problems nearly six years after the financial crisis,” the article said.

I thought of sending a small check to help or at least conveying my sympathy.

I really should have remembered what this is all about because it was only last month that Bank of America settled a lawsuit that claimed the bank had committed mortgage fraud. The cost of the settlement? More than $9 billion. Bank of America was one of the banks that sold mortgage securities backed by subprime mortgages, which went south during the housing and financial crises – in many cases driving American consumers into financial ruin.

Some Times readers wrote to me about it, pointing out that there was more to the story. They hadn’t forgotten what happened, it seemed. Jamison Wilcox, for example, noted in an email that he was “dismayed to see the term ‘legal costs’ given a vague and euphemistic meaning – and repeated in a headline – as a short replacement for the specific identification of monies paid out … as a legal consequence of wrongful conduct by a corporation or bank.”

………

The language certainly isn’t overheated. In fact, nowhere in this article is there any straightforward mention of what really caused these legal troubles and costs.

It says only this: “At the heart of the additional legal expenses was a $6.3 billion settlement that the bank announced last month to settle a lawsuit arising from troubled mortgage-backed securities it bundled and sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis.” (The bank also agreed to buy back $3.2 billion in mortgage securities, bringing the penalties to $9.5 billion.)

Bundles and troubles and costs, yes. Fraud accusations, not so much.

I do not think that this will make a difference, though.

This is Symptomatic of a Crisis in the Culture of the Military

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Air Force pilot Joshua Wilson, who blew the whistle on problems with the F-22 oxygen system, is having his career systematically destroyed in retaliation:

The Air Force has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past two years correcting problems with its premier jet fighter – issues that Capt. Joshua Wilson helped expose by speaking up, both to his bosses and on national television.

Since then, Wilson’s career as an F-22 Raptor pilot has stalled. A member of the Virginia Air National Guard’s 149th Fighter Squadron, Wilson hasn’t been permitted to fly the jet since early 2012. He’s fighting disciplinary actions that he sees as retribution for going public.

“I’m a fighter pilot. I worked my entire life to get in the cockpit and to that job,” said Wilson, who is 37. “Right now, I’m fighting the Air Force when I should be fighting our enemies.”

Almost two years ago, Wilson and Maj. Jeremy Gordon told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the F-22 had a defective oxygen system that was endangering pilots.

The veteran aviators, dressed in their Virginia Air National Guard flight suits, shared their personal accounts of mid-flight oxygen deprivation that left them disoriented. Other pilots had similar life-threatening experiences but were reluctant to speak publicly, they said.

………

Back at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia Air National Guard leaders were also taking action. Even before the “60 Minutes” segment aired in May 2012, the squadron’s leadership began a series of punitive measures against Wilson.

In April 2012, they stopped his planned promotion to major, and they threatened to take away his wings, jeopardizing his military career.

They also forced him out of his full-time desk job with the Air Force’s Air Combat Command at Langley.

During that time, Wilson alerted the Department of Defense’s office of inspector general, which is investigating. He and his lawyers say the Virginia Air National Guard’s actions are reprisal for speaking out.

This is a direct outcome of the up or out system that our uniformed military used.

By making a single disagreement or conflict with a superior officer a career ender, they have created a risk and conflict averse culture where careerism trumps doing the right thing.

I Can Do This Pissing in a Bucket of Bleach………

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After screwing it up by using Fascists to stage an at best marginally effective coup in the Ukraine, it looks like the Obama administration is
trying to use new dodgy allegations of chemical weapons use to try to create support for US action:

The United States has indications of the use of a toxic chemical, probably chlorine, in Syria this month and is examining indications that the Syrian government was responsible, the US State Department said on Monday.

 “We have indications of the use of a toxic industrial chemical” in the town of Kfar Zeita, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

 “We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she told reporters.

Earlier this month the Syrian regime and opposition forces accused each other of carrying out a chemical attack in Kfar Zeita, located in the embattled country’s western-central province of Hama.

 Opposition activists reported that dozens of residents suffered from symptoms of suffocation after air units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad targeted the town with explosive barrels allegedly containing toxic material.

 Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said that his country had “information” that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has continued using chemical weapons, although Paris lacked proof, AFP reported.

 “We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,” AFP quoted Hollande as telling the Europe 1 radio station.

And yes, you can create chlorine gas by peeing in a bucket of bleach.

Unlike the (blatantly false) allegations that the Syrian insurgents lacked the capabilities to make Sarin, making chlorine gas is pretty simple: (Pee has a low yield)

  1. Run DC current through sea water.
  2. Collect the oxygen and chlorine off of the anode.  (This is why, in chemistry class, they used something other than table salt, typically Epsom salt or lye).
  3. Either cool the mixture to less than -40°, or pressurize it at room temperature to more than about 100 psi. (or some combination of the two)
  4. When the chlorine condenses into a liquid, VERY carefully collect  it, and put in munitions.

Note that the provenance of the the Sarin is unclear, with Seymour Hersh detailing how the Obama administration chose to very suppress significant facts to in order to justify their abortive attempt to create a justification for a bombing campaign.

Hersh’s latest, The Red Line and the Rat Line, details how many inside and outside of the US state security apparatus are accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan of actively aiding the Islamist rebels in Syria develop chemical weapons capability.  (It appears that he objects both to Syria’s secular character, and wants the country to be a client state of Turkey).

Note that we have tapes of senior Turkish security officials planning an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb, technically Turkish soil, so as to justify direct Turkish (and possibly NATO) intervention.

Count me as tremendously dubious of the latest chemical weapons revelations.

    First, You Eliminate the Competition, Then You Refuse to Release Price Data for Competitive Reasons

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    I knew that the taxpayers would come to regret cancelling the alternate engine for the F-32, the F136, but I did not expect it to happen so soon:

    After a long battle to edge rival General Electric out of the F-35 engine market, Pratt & Whitney succeeded in 2011. GE announced it would shelve the F136 after the Pentagon refused to fund it for four years, leaving Pratt in the coveted position of a sole-source engine supplier for the largest international fighter program ever.

    Three years later, though, Pratt states that its position with its F135 engine is so potentially competitive it cannot comply with the customer’s request to publicly share the target contract pricing data. At issue is Pratt’s hope for more government funding by garnering a piece of a $1 billion next-generation fighter engine. Although proposed by the Pentagon, this program has yet to be funded by Congress.

    “We have already made significant progress in advancing this technology and anticipate a competition will be held to develop this engine. Releasing engine pricing and cost data on the F135 would impact our ability to compete for this potential next-generation fighter engine program,” says Pratt spokesman Matthew Bates.

    Senior Pentagon officials have, however, been urging Pratt to release at least some data in a transparency push for the highly scrutinized F-35. Bates cites a 40% drop in engine pricing since the first low-rate-initial-production (LRIP) lot in 2006. But the rate of cost reduction “slowed down when [Pratt] got the monopoly,” said Rear Adm. Randy Mahr, deputy program manager of the F-35. “We are trying to get that information out . . . But, I can’t force somebody to go ahead and report something that by law they are not” required to report. Mahr made his comments at the Sea Air Space 2014 conference here this month. “This is a subject of legal debate but the Department of Defense feels this information should be in the public domain,” according to one defense official who requested to talk on background owing to the sensitivity of the issue.

    The last known engine price for the F135 was cited by Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan for the third lot. The F-35A/C propulsion system cost $14 million. The F-35B, which includes a Rolls-Royce lift-fan designed for short takeoff and vertical landing, cost $38 million. He is frustrated at Pratt not bringing down F135 costs as predicted. “Pratt is not meeting its commitment,” Bogdan says. “It is as simple as that. Some of their business base has dried up on other programs and projects [and] they are spreading them right where they can, and I don’t like that.”

    Pratt & Whitney has declined numerous requests from Aviation Week over many months to release either its pricing data or its contractual cost targets.

    I predicted that the long term budget consequences of eliminating the 2nd engine would be negative, and that the F-35 advocates’ desire to lower front end costs would be swallowed up by the price increases resulting from creating an engine monopoly.

    And Our Forever War Continues………

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    Under the laws of war, once the war is over, the POWs are set free. Well, not this time:

    Typically, when a war ends, so does the combatants’ authority to detain the other side’s fighters. But as the conclusion of the US war in Afghanistan approaches, the inmate population of Guantánamo Bay is likely to be an exception – and, for the Obama administration, the latest complication to its attempt to close the infamous wartime detention complex.

    In December, when President Barack Obama and his Nato allies formally end their combat role in Afghanistan, US officials indicate there is unlikely to be a corresponding release of detainees at Guantánamo who were captured during the country’s longest conflict.

    The question has been the subject of recent internal debate in the Obama administration, which is wrapped up in the broader question of future detention policy.

    Already human rights groups and lawyers for the detainees say they anticipate filing a new wave of lawsuits challenging the basis for a wartime detention after the war ends – the next phase in more than a decade of attempts to litigate the end of indefinite detention.

    For the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon, the complicating factor is the unique legal authority undergirding the Afghanistan war.

    Passed by Congress days after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Authorization to Use Military Force cleared the legal path for the invasion of Afghanistan – and much more.

    Known as the AUMF, its broad language blessed not only the Afghanistan war, but a global battle against al-Qaida without an expiration date. Subsequent interpretations of the AUMF broadened the definition of the adversary to include al-Qaida’s “associated forces”.

    If they are not released when the war is over, then try them in civilian courts.

    This state if nebulous never-ending war is destroying us.

    Osama bin Laden is sitting somewhere laughing.

    Conservative Politics in a Nutshell

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    Looting.

    Case in point, the Tory proposal to sell British taxpayer’s data to private firms because it’s a good way to throw some vig in the direction of your supporters, in the hope that it will eventually flow back to you:

    The personal financial data of millions of taxpayers could be sold to private firms under laws being drawn up by HM Revenue & Customs in a move branded “dangerous” by tax professionals and “borderline insane” by a senior Conservative MP.

    Despite fears that it could jeopardise the principle of taxpayer confidentiality, the legislation would allow HMRC to release anonymised tax data to third parties including companies, researchers and public bodies where there is a public benefit. According to HMRC documents, officials are examining “charging options”.

    The government insists that there will be suitable safeguards on personal data. But the plans, being overseen by the Treasury minister David Gauke, are likely to provoke serious worries among privacy campaigners and MPs in the wake of public concern about the government’s Care.data scheme – a plan to share “anonymised” medical records with third parties.

    The Care.data initiative has now been suspended for six months over fears that people could be identified from the supposedly anonymous data, which turned out to contain postcodes, dates of birth, NHS numbers, ethnicity and gender.

    Seriously, John Kenneth Galbraith had it nailed when he said that, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

    It’s all about looting, and it is all justified under the rubric of the Gordon Gekko quote, “Greed is good.”

    And More Christie Corruption and Cronyism Raises its Head

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    As a result of “Bridgegate” Chris Christie’s deals are getting a lot more scrutiny.

    Now it appears that Christie threw a $300 million dollar pension deal to a supporter in violation of state anti-corruption laws:

    A PandoDaily investigation has discovered evidence that Gov. Chris Christie’s pending deal to award a $300 million pension management contract to a controversial hedge fund is in violation of state anti-corruption laws.

     New Jersey state pay-to-play statutes prohibit state contractors from directly or indirectly financially supporting the election campaigns of state officials. Those statutes also explicitly prohibit the use of outside groups or family members to circumvent that ban.

    Additionally, separate Department of Treasury rules appear to prohibit public pension contracts from being awarded to investment firms whose employees have made significant financial contributions to political entities organized to operate in New Jersey state elections. Those laws also bar investment firms doing business with the state from making contributions “for the purpose of influencing any election for State office.”

     Yet, late last month, the New Jersey State Investment Council moved to award a controversial $300 million investment contract to Chatham Asset Management, despite the fact that Chatham’s principal, and a woman living at his address and sharing his surname, donated more than $50,000 to a Republican election group that oversaw major portions of Gov. Christie’s 2013 re-election operation. The proposed investment is already highly controversial given the hedge fund also reportedly owns a stake in the Atlantic City casino, Revel.

     Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, which originally lobbied for the pay-to-play statute, said that the $300m offer “appears to be not an indirect violation, but a direct violation of the law.”

    What’s more, Chatham is providing free space to a charity chaired by Mary Pat Christie, the first lady if the great state of New Jersey:

    As part of that investigation we have also learned that Chatham made a large in-kind donation to the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund, which is chaired by the governor’s wife, Mary Pat Christie. That charity has been plagued by allegations that it is a stealth conduit for corporations to buy influence and circumvent campaign finance regulations.

    In an interview with Pando, a spokeswoman for the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund acknowledged that Chatham Asset Management housed the 501(c)3 organization from November 2012 to February 2013, a total in-kind donation value of approximately $15,000.

     For his part, Gov. Christie has denied that the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund would be used as a way to wield influence with him. At a 2013 press conference, he said donors to the charity “know, because they know me, that it will not one iota affect the way I execute my job as governor or any decisions I have to make as governor regarding the use of public money.”

    Drip, Drip, Drip.

    Japan’s to Fly Stealth Demonstrator

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    Click Pix for Slide Show

    Japan is looking to have a stealth demonstrator flying within the year:

    Japan’s defense ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI) is planning to unveil the country’s advanced technology demonstrator-experimental (ATD-X) plane within months; the lightweight stealth aircraft is scheduled to make its maiden flight later this year, Japan’s defense minister Itsunori Onodera has confirmed. ATD-X is positioned to become Japan’s next generation stealth fighter, replacing 94 locally produced F-2 that entered service in the year 2000. Speaking to the foreign affairs and defense committee of Japan’s upper house, Onodera said the indigenous fighter demonstrator is few months behind schedule.

    Powered by two afterburning turbofans each developing 11,023 pounds each (5,000kg), the aircraft is designed for maximum takeoff weight of 28,659 pounds (about 13 tonnes). With a wingspan of 9 meters (29.85 feet), and overall length of 14.174 meters (46.5 ft) the ATD-X (dubbed ‘Shinshin’) will be smaller than the F-35 and much smaller, compared to Chinese or Russian stealth fighters.

    I cannot see any space for any meaningful internal stowage, so I would guess that it is in the same category as Have Blue, basically a technology demonstrator, or they are contemporaneously developing some sort of stealthy external carriage.