Month: August 2014

Shorter Republicans: N*****s Shouldn’t Vote

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The Executive director of the Missouri Republican Party has called the voter registration drive being conducted in Ferguson “Disgusting”:

Encouraging more participation in the democratic process in a community that feels alienated from political power — hence the demonstrations — seems like an obviously good idea; and one that’s particularly compelling because it’s so simple. Voting is an alternative to protesting in the streets.

 And yet, the executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, Matt Wills, denounced the plan.

 Mr. Wills told the right-wing website Breitbart: “If that’s not fanning the political flames, I don’t know what is. I think it’s not only disgusting but completely inappropriate.”

 On another right-wing site, Red State, Dan McLaughlin also argued that there was something indecent about the registration drive. Ferguson presents an opportunity for “Right and Left” to find “common ground,” he wrote. But “the minute you turn your energies into just another effort to register Democratic voters and fire up the Democratic base in advance of an election,” he argued, “the harder you make it to keep the common ground from vanishing in the fog.”

In case you’re wondering, Mr. Sharpton did not say that the residents of Ferguson should vote for Democrats; he said they should vote, full stop. He didn’t even mention the ideological composition of the area’s governing bodies; though he did mention their racial composition (lopsidedly white in a majority black community). And of course the residents of Ferguson, once registered, will have the ability to vote for anyone they please — not just Democrats.

Your inner Jim Crow is showing, dudes.

Voter registration is not a partisan activity, it is an invocation to civic virtue, so of course Republicans are against it.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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This is the epitome of a pro police state mentality:

Even though it might sound harsh and impolitic, here is the bottom line: if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me, don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge. Don’t scream at me that you pay my salary, and don’t even think of aggressively walking towards me. Most field stops are complete in minutes. How difficult is it to cooperate for that long?

Yes, just let the cop search your car, and your person when they have no right to.

Let them shut down your completely legal demonstration.

Let them prevent you from talking at a city council meeting because the Mayor disagrees with you.

Never, ever tape cops when they don’t want you to.

How difficult is that?

Don’t worry, cops never abuse their power.

Just a little pinprick. ……… But you may feel a little sick.

This is Beyond Repulsive

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It appears that some courts have made the conscious decision to imprison poor people for just being poor:

In a recent letter to the United States Sentencing Commission, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. sharply criticized the growing trend of evidence-based sentencing, in which courts use data-driven predictions of defendants’ future crime risk to shape sentences. Mr. Holder is swimming against a powerful current. At least 20 states have implemented this practice, including some that require risk scores to be considered in every sentencing decision. Many more are considering it, as is Congress, in pending sentencing-reform bills.

 Risk-assessment advocates say it’s a no-brainer: Who could oppose “smarter” sentencing? But Mr. Holder is right to pick this fight. As currently used, the practice is deeply unfair, and almost certainly unconstitutional. It contravenes the principle that punishment should depend on what a defendant did, not on who he is or how much money he has.

 The basic problem is that the risk scores are not based on the defendant’s crime. They are primarily or wholly based on prior characteristics: criminal history (a legitimate criterion), but also factors unrelated to conduct. Specifics vary across states, but common factors include unemployment, marital status, age, education, finances, neighborhood, and family background, including family members’ criminal history.

Such factors are usually considered inappropriate for sentencing; if anything, some might be mitigating circumstances. But in the new, profiling-based sentencing regimen, markers of socioeconomic disadvantage increase a defendant’s risk score, and most likely his sentence.

So, you live in the bad part of town (high crime area), you go to jail longer.

You grew up poor, you go to jail longer.

Broken family, you go to jail longer.

Unemployed, you go to jail longer.

From a single parent household, you go to jail longer.

As Hamilton Nolan observes:

Design an economic and political system that requires a great many people to be poor. Pass laws that are far more likely to be broken by poor people. Use a computer to dispassionately predict that poor people will probably break the law more in the future. Then sentence poor people to longer prison terms.

This is a f%$#ing abomination.

We Learned Nothing from the California Energy Crisis

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It’s Enron all over again, as energy traders loot the ratepayers through the magic of the market:

By 10 a.m. the heat was closing in on the North Shore of Long Island. But 300 miles down the seaboard, at an obscure investment company near Washington, the forecast pointed to something else: profit.

As the temperatures climbed toward the 90s here and air-conditioners turned on, the electric grid struggled to meet the demand. By midafternoon, the wholesale price of electricity had jumped nearly 550 percent.

What no one here knew that day, May 30, 2013, was that the investment company, DC Energy, was reaping rewards from the swelter. Within 48 hours the firm, based in Vienna, Va., had made more than $1.5 million by cashing in on so-called congestion contracts, complex financial instruments that gain value when the grid becomes overburdened, according to an analysis of trading data by The New York Times.

Those profits are a small fraction of the fortune that traders at DC Energy and elsewhere have pocketed because of maneuvers involving the nation’s congested grid. Over the last decade, DC Energy has made about $180 million in New York State alone, The Times found.

………

The contracts were intended to protect the electricity producers, utilities and industries that need to buy power. The thinking was that the contracts would help them hedge against sharp price swings caused by competition as well as the weather, plant failures or equipment problems. Those lower costs could reduce consumers’ bills.

But Wall Street banks and other investors have stepped in, siphoning off much of the money. In New York, DC Energy accounted for more than a quarter of the total $639 million in profits in the congestion markets between 2003 and 2013, The Times found. Some of DC Energy’s biggest paydays involved Port Jefferson, a village 60 miles east of Manhattan. Because of the geography of the grid, moving power from one point to another means demand often briefly outstrips supply here.

“Why aren’t we getting that money?” said Margot Garant, mayor of Port Jefferson. City officials, including the mayor, had not heard of DC Energy before they were told about it by The Times.

DC Energy — and its profits — are an unexpected result of the deregulation of the nation’s electric grid. The idea behind deregulation was to eliminate old monopolies and create robust, competitive markets that would encourage investment and ultimately lower costs for consumers. But in most places, electricity bills have been rising, not falling. While fuel prices, taxes and fees have added directly to the costs, Wall Street-style traders have contributed in subtle ways by turning new markets, like the trading of congestion contracts, to their advantage, The Times analysis found.

The contracts have attracted big money: More than $2 billion has been invested nationwide in the monthly auctions for contracts since 2011, according to Platts, a trade publication.

This is ALWAYS what happens when the decision is made to use the magic of the market instead of regulators.

The banksters figure out a way do rape us like a bunch of passed out sorority girls.

This sort of inherently parasitic behavior is what gave Timothy Geithner an erection when he waxes nostalgic about the increasing financialization of our economy.

Yes, James Risen Has a Legitimate Beef with Barack Obama

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What has been done to him is so egregious that Maureen Dowd actually wrote a decent column, albeit it one that still contains gratuitous fashion references and a junior high school sensibility:

Over lunch near the White House on Friday, Risen, dressed in his Men’s Wearhouse shirt and khakis and his brown Ecco walking shoes, talked about having the sword of Damocles over his head, as the reluctant star of a searing media-government showdown that could end with him behind bars.

(See what I mean about the fashion bullsh%$?)

Risen said he’s not afraid that F.B.I. agents will show up one day at the suburban Maryland home he shares with his wife, Penny. (His three sons are grown, and one is a reporter.) But he has exhausted all his legal challenges, including at the Supreme Court, against the Obama administration.

 “I was nervous for a long time, but they’ve been after me for six years so now I try to ignore it,” he said, musing that he’s already decided what he’ll take to prison: Civil War books and World War II histories.

 The Justice Department is trying to scuttle the reporters’ privilege — ignoring the chilling effect that is having on truth emerging in a jittery post-9/11 world prone to egregious government excesses.

 Attorney General Eric Holder wants to force Risen to testify and reveal the identity of his confidential source on a story he had in his 2006 book concerning a bungled C.I.A. operation during the Clinton administration in which agents might have inadvertently helped Iran develop its nuclear weapon program. The tale made the C.I.A. look silly, which may have been more of a sore point than a threat to national security.

But Bush officials, no doubt still smarting from Risen’s revelation of their illegal wiretapping, zeroed in on a disillusioned former C.I.A. agent named Jeffrey Sterling as the source of the Iran story.

 The subpoena forcing Risen’s testimony expired in 2009, and to the surprise of just about everybody, the constitutional law professor’s administration renewed it — kicking off its strange and awful aggression against reporters and whistle-blowers.

 Holder said in May that “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail,” trying to show some leg and signal that his intention is benign, merely to put pressure on Sterling so that he will plead guilty before his trial.

I can think of no more contemptible reason to go after a reporter then to save a bit of effort by prosecutors.

This is the sort of crap that killed Aaron Swartz.

How can he use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who “tortured some folks,” and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?

 “It’s hypocritical,” Risen said. “A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin. They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation.”

I tend to agree.

The Obama administration has been implacably hostile to reporting on the US state security apparatus, to a degree that would make Richard Nixon go, “What the f%$#?”

Our security apparatus runs Barack Obama, not the other way around.

Israel’s Nuclear Armed SSG

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It looks like it’s designed to sit on the sea floor

It’s the Dolphin II class submarine, and in addition to being really ugly, it has 10 torpedo tubes, 6 of the standard 21 inch (533 mm) size, and 4 with a 26 inch (650 mm) tubes.

The obvious question is why the Dolphin II might need larger tubes, and the obvious answer is that it is used to launch the Popeye Turbo submarine launched cruise missle, which is alleged to have a 1500 km range, though it could also be used to deploy relatively large mines

As such, this constitutes a fairly formidable 2nd strike capability with nuclear weapons, along with the ability to launch conventional strikes at a fairly long range.

When combined with its AIP (Air Independent Propulsion) system, which uses liquid oxygen and methanol reacted into hydrogen, which can allow for the boat to remain submerged for up to a month.

Of course, this assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons, but this assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons, which it neither conforms nor denies.  (Yeah.right)

A Correction That I am Happy to Make

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In yesterday’s post about the indictment against Rick Perry, I suggested that the indictment for abuse of official power against Rick Perry, I supported the outcome, but was dubious on the actual law.

Well, I was wrong. Both the facts and the law support this indictment.

First, in addition to his public pronouncements, Governor Goodhair called the Travis County DA to threaten the veto:

When Lehmberg refused to resign, Perry threatened to veto funding of her Public Integrity Unit—which investigates corruption of local, state, and federal public officials. Sources close to the investigation told me that Perry’s threat happened as the unit’s prosecutors were investigating whether Perry’s political backers and campaign contributors had received preferential and improper treatment in receiving grants from an anti-cancer state agency, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

 ……… (Run of the mill Texas corruption snipped)

 When Lehmberg refused to resign, Perry threatened to veto funding of her Public Integrity Unit—which investigates corruption of local, state, and federal public officials. Sources close to the investigation told me that Perry’s threat happened as the unit’s prosecutors were investigating whether Perry’s political backers and campaign contributors had received preferential and improper treatment in receiving grants from an anti-cancer state agency, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

Making public statements and publicly threatening a veto is one thing, but the behind the scenes machinations and contacts by his evil minions™ appear to be a direct threat against the office that is investigating him.

And then there is the legal precedent:

The closest precedent dates back to 1917, when Gov. James Ferguson, who wanted the University of Texas to fire some faculty and staff of which he disapproved, was indicted based on his veto of funding to the university. Ferguson resigned before he was convicted. “There’s not really any legal or political precedent for this. You’ve got to go back nearly a century,” Jillson said.

I think that the case is far stronger than is made out in Politico.

The case against Perry is a lot stronger than against Ferguson, because those college professors were not investigating him and his, and DA Lehmberg is investigating him and his.

I still think that it is a tough case to prove unless the DA turns one of Perry’s evil minions™, but I do think that it is a winnable case.

JMR Demonstrators Downselected

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Valor


Defiant

Bell’s Tilt Rotor and the Sikorsky/Boeing coaxial rotor helo have been selected to produce the two Joint Multi Role technology demonstration (JMR TD) vehicles:

Bell Helicopter and Sikorsky/Boeing have been selected to build high-speed rotorcraft technology demonstrators for the U.S. Army. Both aircraft are scheduled to fly in 2017.

 Bell will build the 280-kt. V-280 Valor tiltrotor and Sikorsky/Boeing the 230 kt.-plus SB.1 Defiant rigid coaxial-rotor compound helicopter under the $217 million first phase of the Joint Multi Role technology demonstration (JMR TD).

 JMR TD is the precursor to the Army’s planned Future Vertical Lift Medium (FVL-M) program to replace the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopter from the mid-2030s onward. Later an attack derivative could replace the Boeing AH-64 Apache and a marinized version of the Navy’s MH-60 Seahawk.

 The two other competitors for JMR TD Phase 1, small companies AVX Aircraft and Karem Aircraft, are expected to receive Army contracts for some level of continued technology development. AVX was proposing a 230-kt. coaxial-rotor compound and Karem a variable-speed tiltrotor.

Both demonstrators have about the same installed HP, around 3300 KW, which is about double that of the Black Hawk helicopter which they are slated to replace, though to be fair, the gross weight is about is about 35% more than the Black Hawk.

I’m inclined to go with the helicopter over the tilt rotor, because I like the idea of being able to autorotate if things go bad, and because the history of tilt-rotors is one of high costs, low reliability, and a large footprint, while coaxial helicopters have been in deployment (albeit Soviet/Russian deployment) for over 40 years.

I Have Mixed Emotions About This………

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I think that Texas Governor Rick Perry is a truly evil person, he has presided over the dubious executions, as well as the obstruction of the investigations of these questionable executions.

Additionally, I think that his handling of Texas retirement funds have been clearly corrupt.

I also get the fact that they got Al Capone for tax evasion.

But I have mixed emotions about the abuse of power allegations against Rick Perry:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was indicted on felony charges Friday by a grand jury in Austin for allegedly abusing his veto power to force the resignation of a Democratic prosecutor.

The grand jury indicted the 2016 presidential hopeful on two felony counts – coercion of public official and abuse of official capacity, according to The Associated Press

Perry, 64, must turn himself in to the Travis County Jail, where he will be booked, fingerprinted and have his mug shot taken, according to KVUE-TV.

The charges stem from an ethics complaint filed last year by Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning government watchdog group, claimed that Perry abused his official powers by threatening to veto money for public corruption prosecutors in the state in order to pressure a local district attorney to resign.

The public integrity unit is housed in the Travis County district attorney’s office. Perry called for the resignation of District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg after she was arrested and pled guilty in April 2013 to drunken driving.

Lehmberg, a Democrat, did not resign. Perry eventually made his veto threat a reality. The special prosecutor on the case worked to show evidence that Perry’s threat to veto $7.5 million over two years was unlawful.

I do not think that Governor Goodhair is on the side of the angels. 

Travis County is both one of the few strongly Democratic counties in Texas, and because the capitol, Austin, is located in Travis County, it also runs the state public integrity division.

Were Lehmberg to resign, it is clear that Perry would replace her with a political crony who would do their level best to ignore the ethical cesspool that is Texas politics.

On the political or social merits, it is clearly a good thing that Rick Perry is looking at some time in the hoosegow, but I am a bit dubious as to the underlying legal theory:  It seems to me that a governor’s veto should be accorded a wide amount of respect, even if the governor in question should not be accorded any respect.

When Fox News’ Ruben Bolling is Tired of Your Right Wing Agitprop, You Have Jumped the Shark

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That’s one big shark


This is Not Star Trek. 
 In Startrek, the Evil Spock has a goatee. In our world the evil James O’Keefe is clean shaven, and the good one, who is also chief cat-herder for the Massachusetts Pirate Party, has a goatee.

In this case, it’s James O’Keefe (the evil one), and Reuben Bolling of Fox News is tired of his sh%$:

Controversial filmmaker James O’Keefe, known for deceptively editing videos in order to push his canard of “political disinformation,” released a video of himself dressed up as Osama Bin Laden to purportedly show how a terrorist could easily get into the U.S. from the Mexican border. Gawker immediately debunked the O’Keefe video, explaining that the area O’Keefe claims to have crossed in includes a “well-patrolled road that runs parallel to the river” and other obstacles that did not appear in his video.

 And even Fox News dismissed O Keefe’s latest stunt.

 During the August 8 edition of The Five, Bolling explained that talking about real border issues is helpful, but “what’s not helpful [is] … filmmaker James O’Keefe donning an Osama Bin Laden mask and crossing the Rio Grande.” Bolling added that O’Keefe should “give it a rest.”

Dude, your 15 minutes of fame are over.

Get a real job, and stop living in your parents’ basement.

StudentsFrist Rhee-Boots

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Or more accurately, it boots the doyenne of educational grifters, Michelle Rhee:

Michelle Rhee had big ambitions when she went on Oprah four years ago to launch her new advocacy group, StudentsFirst, with a promise to raise $1 billion to transform education policy nationwide.

But as she prepares to step down as CEO, she leaves a trail of disappointment and disillusionment. Reform activists who shared her vision say she never built an effective national organization and never found a way to use her celebrity status to drive real change.

StudentsFirst was hobbled by a high staff turnover rate, embarrassing PR blunders and a lack of focus. But several leading education reformers say Rhee’s biggest weakness was her failure to build coalitions; instead, she alienated activists who should have been her natural allies with tactics they perceived as imperious, inflexible and often illogical. Several said her biggest contribution to the cause was drawing fire away from them as she positioned herself as the face of the national education reform movement.

“There was a growing consensus in the education reform community that she didn’t play well in the sandbox,” one reform leader said.

That last bit is pretty much the story of her career:  Walk into a room, kiss up, kick down, and do everything possible to ensure that her name is in the lights.

I do wonder what her next con-job will be, though.

Oh Crap

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If reports from the Ukrainian government are true, and I’m not big on the idea of trusting them, then they just shelled a Russian aid convoy:

Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian military vehicles in the country’s east, a day after a column was spotted moving across the border.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron by phone that his country’s armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that the Guardian saw moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.

There was no immediate proof, and it was impossible to establish if the Ukrainians had targeted the same convoy seen by the Guardian. The Russians categorically denied that any of their troops were even in Ukraine. But the claim marks a new escalation in the six-month confrontation over Ukraine and if verified would amount to the first confirmed military engagement between the two adversaries since the crisis began in the spring.

“The president informed [Cameron] that the information was trustworthy because the majority of those machines [Russian military vehicles] had been eliminated by the Ukrainian artillery at night,” a statement from Poroshenko’s office read.

Russia is denying this, but if this is true, or worse, they shelled an aid convoy in the dead of night, the Russians have arranged one with the Red Cross, things are going to go pear shaped quickly.

I Sure Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Constitutional Right to Bribe Edition

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Yes, once again, the ‘Phants are looking at a 1st amendment challenge to anti-pay to play regulations:

Wall Street is one of the biggest sources of funding for presidential campaigns, and many of the Republican Party’s potential 2016 contenders are governors, from Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Perry of Texas to Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. And so, last week, the GOP filed a federal lawsuit aimed at overturning the pay-to-play law that bars those governors from raising campaign money from Wall Street executives who manage their states’ pension funds.

………

With the $3 trillion public pension system controlled by elected officials now generating billions of dollars worth of annual management fees for Wall Street, Securities and Exchange Commission regulators originally passed the rule to make sure retirees’ money wasn’t being handed out based on politicians’ desire to pay back their campaign donors.

………

In the complaint aiming to overturn that rule, the GOP plaintiffs argue that the SEC does not have the campaign finance expertise to properly enforce the rule. The complaint further argues that the rule itself creates an “impermissible choice” between “exercising a First Amendment right and retaining the ability to engage in professional activities.” The existing rule could limit governors’ ability to raise money from Wall Street in any presidential race.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, a spokesman for one of the Republican plaintiffs suggested that in order to compete for campaign resources, his party’s elected officials need to be able to raise money from the Wall Street managers who receive contracts from those officials.

“We see (the current SEC rule) as something that has been a great detriment to our ability to help out candidates,” said Jason Weingarten of the Republican Party of New York — the state whose pay-to-play pension scandal in 2010 originally prompted the SEC rule.

Because bribery is protected speech, I guess.

No, this is not The Onion, but I wish it were.

The Most Transparent Coverup Ever

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So, the Ferguson police department, aka the gang that cannot shoot straight, but will do so with fully automatic weapons mounted on top of an MRAP, decided to both release the shooting officer’s name and begin a policy of character assassination against Michael Brown:

Police on Friday said that Darren Wilson, the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown last weekend, confronted Brown after the teenager was identified as the main suspect in a convenience store robbery that occurred Saturday morning.

 However, hours later, authorities said that the robbery was not the reason for the encounter that ended with Brown shot to death on a suburban St. Louis street, suggesting that it was unrelated to the confrontation.

As Ezra Klein notes, “The police are the issue in Ferguson, not Michael Brown’s character.”

I am tempted to go all Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp fiction, and asking if Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson thinks that we look like a bitch, because he is certainly trying to f%$# us like one.

If there are not multiple of indictments of the police involved in this, both for the town of Ferguson and for St. Louis county, I will be suggest that it will be because of collusion between the police and the prosecutors.

This is F%$#ed Up and SH%$

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Private equity companies are worried about regulations on insane levels of leverage, so they are lobbying organizations that don’t even regulate them:

The private equity industry’s lobbying group met officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve last week to address concerns over a crackdown on junk-rated loans, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

 The private meeting – the first between the Private Equity Growth Capital Council (PEGCC) and the U.S. regulators over the issue – underscores many buyout firms’ reliance on leveraged loans for outsized returns in their debt-fueled acquisitions of companies.

 It also highlights the willingness of the OCC and the Fed to engage with parties they do not regulate. Private equity firms are typically regulated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Seriously. What has got them worried? Has the SEC, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, been too hard on them?

I get it. You are pillaging barbarians, and your weapon is other people’s money.

You need insane levels of leverage so that you can make your money by shutting down factories, moving production overseas, charging excessive fees to “manage” your acquisitions, etc.

Clearly, you need assurances that no one will ever prevent you from doing this, because anything that might get in the way of your f%$#ing the rest of us would be an affront to  the gods of the market.

Not enough bullets.