Month: March 2015

Your Periodic Chris Christie Corruption and Hypocrisy Dump

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First, we have the gift that keeps on giving, Bridgate, where we now learn that David Wildstein, the architect of the bridge closure, who Christie said that he barely knew, turned out to have extensive and frequent contacts with the Governor’s office:

The political operative who helped mastermind the notorious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge – and is now cooperating with a federal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal – had more extensive contact with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s inner circle than the governor has acknowledged.

 That is the conclusion of a WNYC examination of calendars maintained by David Wildstein during his four years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, along with a review of more than 1,000 photographs provided by the Port Authority and thousands of pages of documents released by the governor’s own legal team and the New Jersey Legislature.

Christie has insisted he had little to do with Wildstein, his former $150,000-a-year appointee at the Port Authority with whom he attended Livingston High School in the 1970s.

 “I don’t even remember in the last four years even having a meeting in my office with David Wildstein,” Christie said at his marathon two-hour press conference in January 2014, after the legislature released Bridgegate records including the now infamous email to Wildstein declaring, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Christie told reporters: “I may have, but I don’t remember it.”

 But the documents, corroborated by current and former Port Authority and Trenton staffers who requested anonymity because of the ongoing federal investigation, paint a new picture of Wildstein’s role in the Christie Administration. That view chips away at Christie’s and his lawyers’ portrayal of Wildstein as a rogue employee largely isolated from the governor who acted with one staffer in closing lanes and causing epic traffic jams on the roadways of Fort Lee for four morning commutes in September 2013.

Well that guy that Christie barely know also appears to be singing like a canary to investigators:

The political operative who helped mastermind the notorious lane closures at the George Washington Bridge – and is now cooperating with a federal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal – had more extensive contact with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s inner circle than the governor has acknowledged.

(emphasis mine)

And then we have his shenanigans on pensions, which, if anything are even more egregiously awful.

First it appears that Chris Christie routinely steered pension money to campaign contributors firms:

Two years ago, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie pursued re-election, his administration found itself mulling investment options for the state’s $80 billion pension fund. In one deal in May 2013, officials settled on a subsidiary of U.K.-based foreign financial conglomerate Prudential plc. With little fanfare, state pension overseers quickly endorsed the deal.

Weeks later, a Hong Kong–based executive director and board member of Prudential plc delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to Christie’s gubernatorial campaign, followed by a maximum $32,400 donation to the Republican National Committee, which was about to launch a get-out-the-vote effort for Christie. Two months after that, New Jersey began moving public employees’ retirement savings into two funds managed by the Prudential subsidiary as part of the state’s new $300 million investment commitment to the company.

State and federal rules are designed to prevent firms that manage public pension money from contributing to the campaigns of public officials who have the authority to influence pension investments. The sequence of transactions in New Jersey, campaign finance experts say, is troubling.

“Pay-to-play laws are intended to stop the potential conflicts of interest and appearance of corruption that arises whenever executives at a financial firm make large political contributions to a governor and his political party around the time the state is picking the firm to handle pension system investments,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission who now works for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, a research group in Washington, D.C. “These situations undermine the public’s confidence in the integrity of government contracting.”

………

Pension investment experts interviewed by IBTimes were disturbed by the chronology of New Jersey’s Prudential deal, and the fact that Stowe’s donations closely followed the Christie administration awarding pension contracts to Prudential’s subsidiaries.

“This is about as blatant as I think I’ve ever seen in terms of timing,” Andrew Silton, who served as the chief investment officer of the $90 billion North Carolina Retirement System, said. “Forgetting whether or not it violates New Jersey’s state rules or the SEC’s rules, just from the perception of public integrity, it is just such an obvious quid pro quo that the political organizations are working Prudential plc for contributions and simultaneously the New Jersey pension division is processing the paperwork on a major investment.”

It’s gotten so bad that New Jersey state house Democrats have finally stopped fellating Jabba the Governor, and passed a law against allowing campaign contributors to his Presidential campaign to manage pension money: (A well deserved knifing)

Chris Christie may have to change the way he does business. New Jersey lawmakers have sent a bill to the Republican governor’s desk that would keep state pension money from going to firms whose executives make donations to federal political organizations — including, potentially, Christie’s presidential campaign.

The Christie administration has invested millions of dollars of New Jersey pension money with firms whose executives donated to the Republican Governors Association and the Republican National Committee, both of which spent heavily in New Jersey in support of Christie’s gubernatorial campaigns. The bill, which would effectively deter such campaign contributions from those firms’ executives, passed both legislative chambers by large majorities.

More significantly from a political perspective is the recent judicial ruling that Christie broke his own law by underfunding pensions:

In a major blow to Gov. Chris Christie, a New Jersey judge ruled on Monday that he violated state law when he declined to make the full payment into the state’s pension system for public employees last year and ordered him to find a way to fund it now.

The decision further complicates Mr. Christie’s hopes of reviving his presidential ambitions, which have suffered in recent weeks as his approval ratings in New Jersey have sunk to the lowest point of his tenure, and Republican donors have moved to other contenders for the party’s nomination.

It came on the eve of his annual budget proposal to the Legislature, which already presented him with the challenge of finding $2.9 billion to make next year’s pension payment. The challenge is steep, with the state’s economy lagging well behind its neighbors’ and the nation’s, the state surplus dried up, and the governor loath to raise taxes.

Mr. Christie will now be scrambling also to find the $1.57 billion the judge ordered him to pay.

This might be the most politically damaging part, as his Presidential campaign.  Fiscal probity, and cutting taxes, along with that whole shouting at people bit, are supposed to be at the core of his appeal.

And then there is the Exxon pollution deal, where it appears that he settled for pennies on the dollar, because of a section of a law that he pushed that would allow him to use the money for the general fund rather than cleanup:

For more than a decade, the New Jersey attorney general’s office conducted a hard-fought legal battle to hold Exxon Mobil Corporation responsible for decades of environmental contamination in northern New Jersey.

But when the news came that the state had reached a deal to settle its $8.9 billion claim for about $250 million, the driving force behind the settlement was not the attorney general’s office — it was Gov. Chris Christie’s chief counsel, Christopher S. Porrino, two people familiar with the negotiations said.

One of those people, Bradley M. Campbell, was the commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection in 2004 when the lawsuits against Exxon were filed. Mr. Campbell, in an Op-Ed article appearing in The New York Times on Thursday, wrote that “even more troubling” than the decision to settle the lawsuit were “the circumstances surrounding the decision.”

He goes on to say that former colleagues of his in the state government told him that Mr. Porrino “inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had developed and prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal favorable to Exxon.”

………

Much of the criticism has focused on the lack of a public rationale for why the state would choose to settle a lawsuit that it had invested so much effort and time in trying to win; environmentalists fear that Mr. Christie, a Republican, wants to use the money for other budgetary needs. Indeed, a state appropriations law, proposed by Mr. Christie last year, says that any funds beyond the first $50 million collected in damages or other environmental recoveries shall go to the state’s general fund.

When state lawmakers tried to amend the proposal to steer more money back toward environmental restoration, Mr. Christie vetoed the effort.

And then we have what appears to be a coverup of the details of a deal with Jerry Jones following the Dallas Cowboys owner flying him out to a playoff game and hosting him in the owner’s private box:

After New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie recently accepted free football tickets and travel from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, two key questions emerged at the center of the controversy: Did the gifts have anything to do with Christie’s appointees to the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey giving Jones’ firm a contract to manage operations at the new One World Trade Center in New York City? And how did Christie arrive at his decision to endorse that contract?

Christie officials have publicly denied any connection between the gifts from Jones and Jones getting the contact, but there is no way to verify those denials. That’s because on Monday, Port Authority officials formally blocked the release of correspondence — if it exists — between themselves and Christie’s office about the transaction with Legends Hospitality, the Jones-owned firm in question.

Finally, we have the metastasizing scandal about how the Governor’s office intervened against a corruption investigation in Hunterdon County that implicated political allies, and the disasterous privitization of the management of the New Jersey lottery. (No surprise, the company managing the NJ Lottery has made donations to Christie run organizations.)

When is this guy going to be doing the perp walk into federal court?

Astonishingly Chickensh%$

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Illinois representative Aaron Schock, a rising star who faces several ethics inquiries into expensive trips and an elaborately decorated Downton Abbey-themed office, will resign from Congress, Politico reported on Tuesday.

………

“Today, I am announcing my resignation as a Member of the United States House of Representatives effective March 31,” Schock said in a statement to Politico. “I do this with a heavy heart. Serving the people of the 18th District is the highest and greatest honor I have had in my life. I thank them for their faith in electing me and letting me represent their interests in Washington. I have given them my all over the last six years. I have traveled to all corners of the District to meet with the people I’ve been fortunate to be able to call my friends and neighbors.”

………

Schock’s fall from grace began with a seemingly harmless report in the Washington Post that his office on Capitol Hill was decorated in the likeness of a room in the PBS drama Downton Abbey.

But when Schock refused to answer questions about the office, questions quickly surfaced over whether he had violated congressional ethics rules.

………

The final blow appeared to occur on Monday, when details surfaced of a sweetheart property deal Schock purportedly received from a group of his campaign donors. The report claimed that a shell company linked to Schock paid $300,000 to a political donor for a warehouse in Peoria, Illinois, and subsequently took out a $600,000 mortgage on the property from a local bank also run by Schock donors.

His downfall was dropping 40 grand on an Edwardian interior decorating?

Seriously. You cannot make this up.

It Looks Like the Blowback from Patent Overreach Continues………

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We are now seeing venture capitalists and other movers and shakers coming down hard on patent trolls:

What’s the biggest difference between the letter about patent trolls that prominent VCs sent to Congress in 2013 and the letter (PDF) they sent out today? Four times as many names.

In total, 140 investors in startup companies have signed a letter to Congress asking them to implement changes to patent laws that have been debated for more than two years now. The move looks to keep one important fact front-and-center: “patent trolls,” companies in the business of suing over patents, aren’t just a plague for tech giants—they are a huge problem for medium- and small-sized companies as well.

“When a troll sues, or even threatens, a small startup, the results can be disastrous,” the letter states. “Many of us have seen young companies fail in the face of such threats.”

Among venture capital investors, 70 percent say their portfolio companies have been hit with patent threats, mostly from trolls. It’s a situation which the letter calls “not sustainable.” The letter continues:

Our Constitution favored a patent system to incentivize innovation and benefit all Americans. Unfortunately that system has been hijacked by some intent on exploiting Patent Office weakness, and all too frequently it now hinders innovation and chills investment, harming the new companies it was designed to foster and imposing a patent troll tax on new technologies.

The letter asks for patent reform legislation that includes provisions for easier fee-shifting, protections for end users of technology, limits on the scope of discovery, and increased transparency requirements. Under such circumstances, the group hopes patent owners would have to include more information in any lawsuits or demand letters they might send.

IP in general, and patents in particular, are a rent seeking behavior that we as a society approve of because of the the effect, as defined by the Constitution, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” is considered to be a societal benefit.

This makes IP law public interest law, and until we reevaluate our copyright and patent regimes through this lens, we are going to end up with parasites like NTP and Intellectual Ventures sapping innovation and vitality ad infinitum.

Roger Goodell’s Worst Nightmare

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Breakout star rookie linebacker Chris Borland has retired out of concerns for his neurological health:

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, one of the NFL’s top rookies this past season, told “Outside the Lines” on Monday that he is retiring because of concerns about the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma.

Borland, 24, said he notified the 49ers on Friday. He said he made his decision after consulting with family members, concussion researchers, friends and current and former teammates, as well as studying what is known about the relationship between football and neurodegenerative disease.

“I just honestly want to do what’s best for my health,” Borland told “Outside the Lines.” “From what I’ve researched and what I’ve experienced, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

Borland becomes the most prominent NFL player to leave the game in his prime because of concerns about brain injuries. More than 70 former players have been diagnosed with progressive neurological disease after their deaths, and numerous studies have shown connections between the repetitive head trauma associated with football, brain damage and issues such as depression and memory loss.

“I feel largely the same, as sharp as I’ve ever been. For me, it’s wanting to be proactive,” Borland said. “I’m concerned that if you wait ’til you have symptoms, it’s too late. … There are a lot of unknowns. I can’t claim that X will happen. I just want to live a long, healthy life, and I don’t want to have any neurological diseases or die younger than I would otherwise.”

………

 Borland was expected to be a key part of the 49ers’ defense this season, after the retirement of All-Pro linebacker Patrick Willis last week. Borland replaced Willis, 30, after six games last season; Willis had sustained a toe injury.

Willis’ retirement had no role in his decision, Borland said.

………

 Borland, who is listed at 5-foot-11, 248 pounds, earned accolades for his aggressiveness and instincts at inside linebacker. He had 107 tackles and a sack in 14 games, eight of them starts. He was the NFC’s defensive player of the week for his performance against the New York Giants in Week 11. He led the 49ers with 13 tackles in that game and became the team’s first rookie linebacker with two interceptions in one game. He received one vote for NFL defensive rookie of the year.

His success this past season did not make his decision more difficult, Borland said: “I’ve thought about what I could accomplish in football, but for me, personally, when you read about Mike Webster and Dave Duerson and Ray Easterling, you read all these stories, and to be the type of player I want to be in football, I think I’d have to take on some risks that, as a person, I don’t want to take on.”

Borland was referring to former NFL greats who were diagnosed with the devastating brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, after their deaths. Duerson and Easterling committed suicide.

This guy has one season in the NFL, and he was arguably on a path to a multimillion dollar pay day, and he decided that it was not worth dementia in his late 40s.

You gotta figure that the current generation of teenage jocks, and their parents, are becoming less likely to take up football, and news like this will make them less likely.

The pipeline of new players has to be drying up a bit.

I’m not sure what the solution is to the CTE problem in the NFL, or if there is a solution, but a good start would be accelerometers in helmets and set them at an appropriate level (not sure of the level, I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*).

Once the sensor trips, the player gets a mandatory few weeks off on injured reserves and treatment.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

This is not Capitalism, it is Parasitism

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Digby quite clearly demonstrates that remuneration for Wall Street finance types are not an artifact of any capitalist imperative, but instead are out and out looting:

With all the changes that have taken place on Wall Street since the financial crisis hit – the mergers, the new regulations and the lawsuits that continue to take a toll on banks’ bottom lines, not to mention the Federal Reserve’s demands that they continue to prove their health via regular “stress tests” – one thing remains unaltered.

It’s the ritual of the annual bonus check handed out to those lucky folks who have survived the job cuts and who continue to endure the Hobbesian life – nasty, brutish and short – on trading desks and in investment banking groups across Wall Street.

Given the banking industry’s reputation for ruthlessness and its emphasis on the “buyer beware” philosophy, you might expect a difficult environment to be reflected in the size of those bonuses.

Well, not so fast. This is Wall Street, after all.

True, Wall Street’s profits aren’t what they used to be. Pretax profits fell 4.2% in 2014 to $16 billion, according to New York’s office of the state comptroller. If you think that sounds like a relatively modest decline, consider that 2014 profits were 33% below 2012 levels, and a whopping 74% below 2009, when Wall Street posted record results as markets zoomed back to life after the crisis and banks profited from ultra-low asset values and interest rates.

But, reflecting the new clout of banks and bankers, bonus payments didn’t dip in response to this decline. Instead, they rose. In fact, it’s the second year in a row that a decline in profitability has been accompanied by a gain in the size of bonus checks. In 2013, to be sure, the contrast was more marked: a 30.1% decline in profitability, and a 15% increase in bonus payments. This year’s gains are more modest: the New York State comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, announced the average bonus would edge up only 2%.

Of course, here’s where the fun and games start on Wall Street. Bonuses don’t come out of a bank’s profits, but out of its revenues. It’s only folks like you and I – and, one would hope, at least some of the investors – who might want to take a look at these numbers and tie them to profits. Because what good is it rewarding employees for bringing revenue through the door if it isn’t profitable revenue?

This year, bonus payouts will amount to a whopping 170% of the profits reported by New York stock exchange member firms – profits that continue to be eroded by legal settlements and regulatory expenses. Back in 2009, that figure was slightly more than 36% of profits, and it has crept steadily higher.

The people working on Wall Street think that they are Galtian superman sitting astride the economy.

They are not.  They are parasites, sucking the marrow from our economy.

In the words of Ayn Rand, these would be moochers and looters, not producers.

H/t to Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, whose post you should read if you are a Chronicles of Riddick fan.

Shoot Me! I Agree with Rand Paul………

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In a speech at HBCU Bowie State, Rand Paul has declared that the current criminal justice is structured to keep the poor and minorities down:

………

The content more than made up for that.* Paul has sharpened his pitch to black audiences over many visits and roundtables, some well-covered and some more private; he’s also re-introduced sentencing reform bills that give him more to talk about.

“Those of us who have jobs and have lived fairly privileged lives don’t know what it’s like to pay fines and penalties on top of other fines, and how someone’s life can spiral out of control,” said Paul, leaning on a podium and wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. “As I’ve learned more about criminal justice system, I’ve come to believe it’s something that’s going to keep the two Americas separate.”

Paul ran through data and examples, from Ferguson to the novels of Tom Wolfe, to demonstrate the tragedy of over-criminalization. Some of his examples had clunked when he debuted them on TV or radio appearances. “What reason do we have for telling the police that they have to take someone down for selling cigarettes that aren’t taxed?,” asked Paul. “Couldn’t we give them a ticket?”

He was referring (though not by name) to the Eric Garner killing in New York, and while that analysis had been a brief outrage last year, it made no ripple in the Bowie State auditorium. That was likely because he put everything in the context of laws discriminating against non-whites and the poor. The effect of current de jure criminal codes, said Paul, was “somewhat like segregation.”

I guess that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but I really feel profoundly uncomfortable agreeing with him.

I would also note that I am far more sanguine regarding Paul’s putative Presidential campaign.

I cannot imagine another Republican out there who could make these sorts of statements.

I still think that Senator “Aqua-Buddha” is a nut case, but the ability to depart from Republican dogma when required, and this gives him the opportunity to make adjustments to his campaign message that his rivals cannot.

Lockheed Martin Promises a Pony………

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Lockheed Martin is now saying that it will be able cut the cost of the F-35:

Lockheed Martin is on track to slash 30 per cent from the cost of each F-35 joint strike fighter, bringing the price of the controversial aircraft below that of previous, less capable generations of fighters, Marillyn Hewson, the company’s chief executive, said on Wednesday.

The reduction would bring the cost of each F-35A — the version for the US air force — down to less than $80m from between $110m and $115m each. Such a saving could save billions of dollars in procurement costs for the programme, currently estimated at $396bn for more than 3,000 aircraft for the US and key allies.

Winslow Wheeler, of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) estimates the cost of the F-35 to be at least twice that.

I would also note that the F-35, as delivered, is not combat capable.

It will will have beta software, its maintenance software will not be close to operation, and it will be unable to carry the bomb that is crucial to its mission until 2022.

Am I the only one who thinks that Lockheed’s price estimates are based on the economics of the 1954 Looney Tune Design for Leaving?

You know that one. Daffy Duck is trying to sell a push button house of the future, and the final punch line is, “For a small price, I can install this little blue button to get you down!”

All I can say is that whoever is going to deploy this clusterf%$# is going to be paying for a lot of blue buttons.

IMF Violates Its Charter to Loan to the Ukraine

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The IMF charter forbids the making of loans to countries that are either engaged in a civil war, or those who are at war with another member state.

That being the case, how the f%$# does the IMF justify making a massive loan to the Ukraine?

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed on a scheme of war financing for Ukraine. For the first time, according to Fund sources, the IMF is not only violating its loan repayment conditions, but also the purposes and safeguards of the IMF’s original charter.

IMF lending is barred for a member state in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes, according to Article I of the Fund’s 1944-45 Articles of Agreement. This provides “confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them under adequate safeguards, thus providing them with opportunity to correct maladjustments in their balance of payments without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.”

To deter Russian and other country directors from voting last week against the IMF’s loan, and releasing their reasons in public, the IMF board has offered Russia the possibility of, though not the commitment to repayment for Gazprom’s gas deliveries, and the $3 billion Russian state bond which falls due in December.

On March 11 the IMF board agreed to approve an Extended Loan Facility (EFF) for Ukraine for a total of 13.4 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDR), currently equivalent to $17.5 billion. Here are the IMF papers spelling out the details.

………

Take a magnifying glass to the tables titled “Ukraine Capacity to Repay Indicators” in last year’s SBA, and in this month’s EFF: it can be seen the newly scheduled repayments to the IMF are significantly larger from now until 2019 in the new scheme than they were in the old one, and of course they go on for much longer – another decade in fact. . For comparison, go to the SBA document, “Assessment of the Risks to the Fund and the Fund’s Liquidity Position”, page 10; for the EFF document, open this link, and go to the similarly titled document, page 13.

At the IMF Andrew Tweedie (below left) and Mark Flanagan (centre) are responsible for drafting this sleight of hand; Nikolai Gueorguiev (right), a former Bulgarian finance ministry official, has been in charge of negotiating the terms with the government in Kiev. In 2008 Flanagan was much more sceptical in his assessment of Ukrainian government accountability and capacity to repay much smaller liabilities than is plain today.

………

This trio is now making the IMF loan look less onerous for the Ukrainian economy by projecting faster recovery of GDP and exports than they thought was reasonable a year ago; and also by anticipating that other forms of debt relief, including grants, subsidies, and low-cost loans from the US and European Union will reduce the proportion of Ukrainian debt owed to the IMF.

That’s guesswork. It didn’t work in 2014 — because of the war in the east. As Lagarde’s reference to the ceasefire implies, and the EFF papers now confirm, if the war continues, the government in Kiev will be unable to repay; the IMF board’s loan conditions will falter; and disbursement of the EFF cash will stop, just as the SBA cashflow did from last October. So what calculation is the IMF making of the military costs and the war’s impact on what the IMF is calling the Ukraine’s fiscal balance?

There are 163 pages in the dossier released by the IMF to demonstrate that the new loan to Ukraine meets the Fund’s charter, lending conditions, and criteria for repayment. The term “war” appears only once, referring to “war-induced supply shocks”; the terms “defence” and “army”, not at all. Referring to military spending by the government, the IMF dossier acknowledges the “risks to the outlook are exceptionally high and predominantly on the downside. Fighting in the East may resume and spread. This would unravel confidence, increase the direct loss of economic and export capacity while military spending may rise sharply.” This is an admission that the war is what the IMF charter labels “measures destructive of national or international prosperity.”
………

This reveals that past and future spending on the war and the rearmament programme President Petro Poroshenko announced last week are “one-offs”, below the budget line, and not counted by the IMF in the conditions it has set for the release of the scheduled instalments. Since budget funds are fungible, and since the Ukrainian government and Verkhovna Rada (parliament) have agreed to increase military spending substantially, the IMF was asked to say why it is contributing to the war risks by allowing EFF support for military budget outlays at the same time as it is concealing their magnitude in reporting to the IMF board.

………

For the time being, the Russian Finance Ministry is not demurring. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (right) followed Lagarde’s announcement of board approval for the EFF with this confirmation that Russia will contribute its share to the loan. “The [EFF] program will be financed via the IMF quota resources, and the funding from shareholder countries in the framework of their participation in the so-called New Borrowing arrangements. As such, the Russian Federation will participate in the funding in accordance with its obligations as a participant, and deliver the first tranche of the IMF program for Ukraine in the amount of $13.75 million dollars. The Bank of Russia will carry out the payment on 13 March 2015.”

Although the Obama Administration claims it will not deliver lethal military equipment, it has been offering loans, repayment guarantees, and cash support for Ukrainian military agencies to buy it through third countries. Russian analysts call this a takeover by the Pentagon of the Ukrainian defence budget. Details of the line items totalling UAH 85 billion (about $4 billion) approved this month by the Verkhovna Rada can be read here. International bankers say they cannot think of a precedent in which the treasury of a country at war finances a defeated opponent to renew the fight. Siluanov hints his reason is tactical. Moscow will not call a default of covenants in the December 2013 bond for $3 billion, he says, if Kiev agrees to exclude this debt from its restructuring of other bond obligations, and repays the Russian debt at maturity this coming December.

Let me get this straight:

  • The US is pushing for the IMF loan to fund the war.  
  • The IMF is pretending that there is no war.
  • The Russians are looking the other way, because it has been implied to the IMF loans might be applied to Russian loans to the Ukraine, and the arrears to owed to Gazprom.

 Am I the only one to find this completely f%$#ed up?

H/t naked capitalism.

We Really Need More Effective Anti-SLAPP Laws

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Until recently, the Laundry Workers Center United’s claim to fame was a rabble-rousing protest encampment on Times Square, a self-fashioned “Worker Justice Café” erected by workers as part of a unionization campaign at a Hot and Crusty bakery. Back in 2012, their foolishly brave, Occupy-inspired tactics proved successful in challenging their employer’s power. Now the LWC is facing its own challenge in court, accused of illegally “conspiring” to protest against a boss.

According to a complaint brought by the LWC’s latest campaign target, the Liberato restaurant in the Bronx, the LWC isn’t a humble worker center, agitating on behalf of low-wage immigrant workers, but a racketeering enterprise, waging class warfare against a local business.

The allegations of gangsterism stem from a basic labor dispute: a group of current and former workers have partnered with the LWC to campaign against the restaurant over alleged labor violations and mistreatment. After the conflict escalated and the LWC took legal action last year—with a class action lawsuit and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint now pending—the restaurant responded with a classic New York tactic: the countersuit. Liberato has variously charged the LWC with slander and harassment, as well as violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This federal law, a curious hybrid of reactionary politics and organized-crime fighting, has historically been used to nab both mob bosses and union organizers. The suit seems to follow a rich tradition of corporations seeking to criminalize collective action as labor’s “extortion” of capital.

So Liberato Restaurant is claiming filing a complaint about wage theft, retaliation, and sexual harassment with  the NLRB, and engaging in actions specifically allowed under the National Labor Relations Act is somehow racketeering.

I hope that the owners and management of this dining establishment end up in jail over this bullsh%$.

Reality Sets in at Foggy Bottom

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Secretary of State John Kerry has admitted that the US will have to negotiate with the Assad regime:

The United States will have to negotiate with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a political transition in Syria and is exploring ways to pressure him into agreeing to talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry told CBS News in an interview.

Washington has long insisted that Assad must be replaced through a negotiated, political transition, but the rise of a common enemy, hardline militant group Islamic State, appears to have slightly softened the West’s stance towards him.

In the interview broadcast on Sunday, Kerry did not repeat the standard US line that Assad had lost all legitimacy and had to go. Syria’s civil war is now into its fifth year, with hundreds of thousands killed and millions of Syrians displaced.

“We have to negotiate in the end,” Kerry said. “We’ve always been willing to negotiate in the context of the Geneva I process,” he added, referring to a 2012 conference which called for a negotiated transition to end the conflict.

This, and maybe putting a cap in the ass of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is the single most responsible for creating ISIS.

The US is under no obligation to support the House of Saud’s great game against Shia Muslims.

It’s not our fight, and, quite honestly, as bad as the Iranian regime is, Riyadh is worse.

I will remind anyone who is unclear on the concept that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, and 0 of the 19 were Iranian.

So tell me again, which regime is a threat to national security?

The Stupid, It Burns Us!!!!

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Too True

Tehran Tom took his case directly to the Iranian government
— Jared Polis (@jaredpolis) March 10, 2015

Thank you Congressman Polis. You have described Tom Cotton perfectly.


Geography 101: Tehran is the capital of Iran

The Iranian response

In an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation,. “Tehran” Tom Cotton said that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted because, they already control Tehran: (Vid at link)

SCHIEFFER: What do you want to happen here? What is your alternative here? Let’s say that the deal falls through. Then what?

 COTTON: Well, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said, the alternative to a bad deal is a better deal.

 The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. But Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions. Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance. They already control Tehran. Increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad, and now Sanaa as well.
They do all that without a nuclear weapon. Imagine what they would do with a nuclear weapon.

Seriously?!?!?!?

The distinguished gentleman from Arkansas is suggested that theIranians have seized control of Tehran?

Next, he will say that the British have seized control of London, or that Mexico controls Mexico City, or that Arkansas has cornered the market on blithering idiots.

OK, that last one is true: In electing Tom Cotton to the Senate, the voters of Arkansas have clearly cornered the market on blithering idiots, as evidenced by their election of “Tehran” Tom Cotton to the Senate.

Minor Freakout at the Saroff Household

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It was a good one.

I was channel surfing, and saw that The Princess Bride was about to start on one of the cable channels.

Neither of the Saroff children had ever seen this film in its entirety, so I ran around like my hair was on fire getting them down to the TV.

We also made grilled cheese sandwiches and from-scratch tomato basil soup (this started before I saw the movie).

They enjoyed the film immensely. For them not to do would be ……… Inconceivable!!!

I expect to hear quotes from the film incessantly for the next few weeks.

Quote of the Day

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Let us put this as plainly as possible. William Kristol is a coward. When his own country needed soldiers to fight in the jungle, he was too busy at Harvard. For that matter, I don’t believe he has volunteered to fight the “civilizational struggle” in Israel, either, as some Americans have done. He at least could have hoisted his entitled ass out of his sinecure and lived in a West Bank settlement for a few years. One thing he hasn’t done is earned the right to denigrate the president’s record of service by comparing it to Netanyahu’s. He wasn’t decent enough to have emulated the former, nor courageous enough to have emulated the latter. A lot of institutions need a few good men. William Kristol never has been either one.

—The inimitable Charlie Pierce on the waste of protoplasm, and searing indictment of nepotism, that is Bill Kristol

One wonders how someone so consistently repugnant, and even more consistently wrong, is still viewed by the establishment as a serious thinker.

About F%$#ing Time………

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Swedish prosecutors have agreed to interrogate Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy:

In an abrupt reversal, the Swedish prosecutor leading the investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has finally agreed to question him inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange, who has been holed up in the building for nearly three years, has been accused of but not formally charged with committing sex crimes in Sweden.

In an English-language statement Friday, the Swedish Prosecution Authority wrote that Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny “has made a request to Julian Assange’s legal representatives whether Assange would consent to being interviewed in London and have his DNA taken via a swab.”

Why the sudden change of heart?


“The reason the prosecutor now decides to request permission to interview Julian Assange in London is chiefly that a number of the crimes Julian Assange is suspected of will be subject to statute of limitation in August 2015 i.e. in less than six months’ time,” the statement says.

Previously, the Swedish Prosecution Authority was on record as saying that “the prosecutor’s assessment is that a request for legal assistance involving the questioning of Julian Assange in London would not take the case forward in a significant manner.”

It’s clear that a part of this is the fact that the prosecutor is facing the statute of limitations, but I think that another part is that, with Edward Snowden’s revelations, it’s pretty clear that the various attempts by the Obama administration to intimidate potential whistle blowers has clearly failed, so the Swedes are no longer being pressured by the US.

My guess is that the charges will expire without the prosecutor filing anything.

Pass the Popcorn

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Pass the Popcorn

Glenn Beck is on a Jihad to expel Grover Norquist from the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association for ties to the Muslim Brotherhood:

The war is raging between the rabid Islamophobe Republicans and the Tax-Hating Republicans, with Glenn Beck acting as the provocateur.

Earlier this week, Beck threatened to pull all of his support from the NRA if Grover Norquist was allowed to retain his seat on the board, calling Grover a “very, very bad man.”

 I might be inclined to agree with the “very, very bad man” pronouncement, but not for the same reasons Beck has. Glenny has allowed his pal Frank Gaffney to convince him that Grover Norquist is really a secret agent for the Muslim Brotherhood. Therefore Grover must leave the NRA board before he infiltrates it with secret Muslim cooties.

“I will tell you that I am so concerned about this,” Beck said, “and I hope that the leadership of the NRA hears this and every member of the NRA hears this, that if this man is elected, or re-elected, and confirmed on the board of the NRA, I may drop my membership in the NRA. I am that concerned that he is a very bad influence and a very bad man that if this is who the NRA decides to put on their board of directors, I don’t think I can be associated with them.”

After tossing the lit match onto the haystack, the NRA was inundated by outraged wingnuts demanding to know why they had an Agent of Evil on their board. To appease Beck and his insane viewers, Wayne LaPierre agreed to hold an ethics investigation. Oh, the blind leading the blind.

Glenn Beck is wrong, of course.

Grover Norquist is not a secret agent for anyone. 

He’s a whore for whoever has the money,  so unless the Muslim Brotherhood had gotten together enough scratch for his 6 figure retainer, there is no possibility that he will do anything for them.