Any time cops shoot and kill an unarmed man something has gone very wrong.
Month: April 2015
Obama Went There
At the White House Correspondents Circle Jerk Dinner, Barack Obama brought out Watch Keegan-Michael Key as his Luther, his anger translator.
The interesting bit is when Obama freaks out Luther.
His full speech is here.
So, the Flash Crash Was Caused by Some Guy Living in His Parents’ Basement?
The DoJ is attempting to extradite Nav Sarao to the United States because he allegedly caused the “Flash Crash”.
While this might be significant for Mr. Sarao, this is missing the forest for the trees.
If our markets are so unstable as to be tripped into catastrophe by one guy, they are too unstable to exist in their current form:
Everyone on Wall Street has been talking about this week’s arrest of a little-known UK-based trader on allegations that he caused the May 6, 2010 “Flash Crash.”
That’s because the consensus view on the Street is that the arrest itself is absolutely ridiculous. In fact, as one trader put it, it’s “beyond ridiculous.”
Over the past few days, we’ve had several conversations with traders, quantitative analysts, and hedge fund managers. It was the topic of conversation at happy hours and charity events.
What’s more, there wasn’t a single person we spoke to who bought the argument that one guy wiped billions from the market in a matter of minutes by “spoofing” — a practice in which a trader orders a bunch of trades and then cancels them. It creates artificial demand and manipulates the price of a stock.
It’s been almost five years since the “Flash Crash” and regulators are suddenly blaming Navinder “Nav” Sarao, a 36-year-old who trades S&P futures from his mom and dad’s house in a London suburb. Yep, regulators think a guy in saggy sweatpants and Nike Airs trading from his parents’ basement did it.
It also appears that the charges are just plain bogus:
On May 6, 2010, Sarao’s algo started at 10:20:00 ET and turned off at 14:40:12. The flash crash ignition point was at 14:42:44
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) April 22, 2015
Spotting Sarao’s #HFT spoofing algo is like spotting an elephant at a tea party. An eMini chart on 5/6 pic.twitter.com/AN8Ov2VH7u
— Eric Scott Hunsader (@nanexllc) April 22, 2015
Round up the usual suspects!
This prosecution is all about covering up the total vulnerability in the market.
The “Flash Crash” was not a result of actions of one person. It was a result of the profit strategies of dozens, if not hundreds of actors in the markets, and they all are structured in a way that was calculated to maximize, and exploit, volatility.
The “market making” capabilities of high frequency traders is a mirage: As soon as the market experiences upset, they pull out, and create a crash.
We need to make the markets less responsive, and create greater transaction costs.
Otherwise, instant market panics will become a routine part of our lives, and the lives of the 99% not extracting rents from the financial markets will suck.
The Police Story on the Freddie Gray Killing Changes
Gee, what a surprise. Once what happened to Freddie Gray became a matter for independent investigation, the police story changed:
Police chiefs in Baltimore retreated on Friday from earlier claims that Freddie Gray, whose death has caused an outcry, must have been injured inside the van carrying him after his arrest.
They said they were investigating what happened during one of the stops made by the vehicle.
Asked whether Gray was fatally hurt by a so-called “rough ride” without a seatbelt in the back of the vehicle, or could have been injured outside the van, police commissioner Anthony Batts said at a press conference there were “potentials for both of those”.
“If someone harmed Freddie Gray, we will have to prosecute him,” said Batts.
Deputy commissioner Kevin Davis said officials were looking into the second of three stops the van’s driver made after Gray was arrested on the morning of 12 April. “The facts of that interaction are under investigation,” said Davis.
Gray, 25, died last Sunday after suffering a broken neck and injured voice box. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said earlier this week “what happened happened inside the van,” echoing a police report that said Gray “suffered a medical emergency” in the vehicle.
………
Davis said Gray said he needed a medic during a third stop by the van, made to pick up a second prisoner, but an ambulance was not called until 25 minutes later, after the vehicle arrived at police headquarters. Batts told reporters that during the third stop, officers “picked him up off the floor and placed him on a seat”.
Batts said on Thursday that the second prisoner, who was separated from Gray by a metal wall, told investigators that Gray was “was still moving around, that he was kicking and making noises” until the van arrived at the station. Police are declining to identify the man due to his status as a witness in the criminal inquiry.
This thin blue line crap needs to stop.
We not only need to go after don’t cops, we need to go after cops who refuse to go after bad cops.
Zero tolerance.
I Wish that I Were Finnish
IN Finland, fines are based on daily earnings, so a rich asshole got a a €54,024 fine for doing 64 in a 50 zone:
Getting a speeding ticket is not a feel-good moment for anyone. But consider Reima Kuisla, a Finnish businessman.
He was recently fined 54,024 euros (about $58,000) for traveling a modest, if illegal, 64 miles per hour in a 50 m.p.h. zone. And no, the 54,024 euros did not turn out to be a typo, or a mistake of any kind.
Mr. Kuisla is a millionaire, and in Finland the fines for more serious speeding infractions are calculated according to income. The thinking here is that if it stings for the little guy, it should sting for the big guy, too.
The ticket had its desired effect. Mr. Kuisla, 61, took to Facebook last month with 12 furious posts in which he included a picture of his speeding ticket and a picture of what 54,024 euros could buy if it were not going to the state coffers — a new Mercedes. He said he was seriously considering leaving Finland altogether, a position to which he held firm when reached by phone at a bar where he was watching horse races.
“The way things are done here makes no sense,” Mr. Kuisla sputtered, saying he would not be giving interviews. Before hanging up, he added: “For what and for whom does this society exist? It is hard to say.”
………
But the idea that the rich should pay heavier fines did not seem to be much in question. “It is an old system,” said Pasi Kemppainen, chief superintendent at the National Police Board. “It may lead to high fines, but only for people who can afford it.”
In fact, the Finnish “day fine” system, also in use in some other Scandinavian countries, dates to the 1920s, when fines based on income were instituted for all manner of lesser crimes, such as petty theft and assault, and helped greatly reduce the prison population.
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The fines are calculated based on half an offender’s daily net income, with some consideration for the number of children under his or her roof and a deduction deemed to be enough to cover basic living expenses, currently 255 euros per month.
Then, that figure is multiplied by the number of days of income the offender should lose, according to the severity of the offense.
Mr. Kuisla, a betting man who parlayed his winnings into a real estate empire, was clocked speeding near the Seinajoki airport. Given the speed he was going, Mr. Kuisla was assessed eight days. His fine was then calculated from his 2013 income, 6,559,742 euros, or more than $7 million at current exchange rates.
Someone committing a similar offense and earning about 50,000 euros a year, or $54,000, none of it capital gains, and with no young children, would get a fine of about 345 euros, or about $370. Someone earning 300,000 euros ($322,000), would have to pay about 1,480 euros ($1,590).
My heart bleeds borscht for Reima Kuisla.
Man up you over-pampered parasite.
The Shrill One is Sick of Those Muthaf%$#ing Liars on this Muthaf%$#ing Campaign
Paul Krugman tees off on the news orgs that are using the woefully inaccurate book about the Clinton foundation donors.
Among other things, he appears to be calling out the New York Times, though not by name, who publishes his opinion pieces:
So there’s a lot of buzz about alleged scandals involving the Clinton Foundation. Maybe there’s something to it. But you have to wonder: is this just the return of “Clinton rules”?
If you are old enough to remember the 1990s, you remember the endless parade of alleged scandals, Whitewater above all — all of them fomented by right-wing operatives, all eagerly hyped by mainstream news outlets, none of which actually turned out to involve wrongdoing. The usual rules didn’t seem to apply; instead it was Clinton rules, under which innuendo and guilt by association were considered perfectly OK, in which the initial suggestion of lawbreaking received front-page headlines and the subsequent discovery that there was nothing there was buried in the back pages if it was reported at all.
Some of the same phenomenon resurfaced during the 2008 primary.
So, is this time different? First indications are not encouraging; it’s already apparent that the author of the anti-Clinton book that’s driving the latest stuff is a real piece of work.
The link that he mentions it sites dates that are wrong, conflating paid and unpaid speaking gigs, and the use of hoax press releases by parody sites.
I really don’t want to defend Hillary Clinton.
The dynastic issue is of concern, and it is clear, notwithstanding her recent statements regarding finance and inequality, that she is a tool of the banksters. (And then there is that whole frothing at the mouth war monger thing)
So damn the Times and the Post for making me defend her.
The only bright note to this, as Krugman observes later in his post, is that, “There’s a much more effective progressive infrastructure now, much more scrutiny of reporting, and the kinds of malpractice that went unsanctioned 20 years ago can land you in big trouble now.”
Truth be told, I don’t think that the progressive infrastructure will make a difference, but I do think that things like Twitter and Facebook, which make it a lot easier to point out unprofessional journalism, have become a much bigger part of the media landscape, if only because they influence what organizations like Politifact, the WaPo‘s Fact Checker, and FactCheck.org, who do a little bit of separating the wheat from the chaff.
Kids are Gone for the Weekend
They are at a USY convention.
This is the first time in a LONG time that Sharon and I have had a weekend alone together.
Light posting for the next few days.
Posted via mobile.
Well, it was Only a Matter of Time Until we Killed a White Guy………
And now the Obama administration has been forced to admit that they killed two white hostages in drone strikes:
An American aid worker and another man held hostage by Al Qaeda were killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan in January, government officials disclosed on Thursday, underscoring the perils of a largely invisible, long-distance war waged through video screens, joysticks and sometimes incomplete intelligence.
Intending to wipe out a compound linked to the terrorist group, the Central Intelligence Agency authorized the attack with no idea that the hostages were being held there despite hundreds of hours of surveillance, the officials said. Even afterward, they said, the agency did not realize at first that it had killed an American it had long sought to rescue, with the wrenching news becoming clear over time.
The violent death of an American at the hands of his own government proved a searing moment in a drone war that has come to define the nation’s battle with Al Qaeda, especially since President Obama took office. Visibly upset, Mr. Obama came to the White House briefing room shortly after his staff issued a written statement announcing the deaths to make a rare personal apology.
But no one gave a sh%$ when a 16 year old American kid, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed by drones “accidentally”, former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”
His dad was a jihadi, so it was all cool.
One of the important thing to note is that the White House had no idea who was in the al-Qaeda compound:
The targets of the deadly drone strikes that killed two hostages and two suspected American members of al-Qaida were “al-Qaida compounds” rather than specific terrorist suspects, the White House disclosed on Thursday.
The lack of specificity suggests that despite a much-publicized 2013 policy change by Barack Obama restricting drone killings by, among other things, requiring “near certainty that the terrorist target is present”, the US continues to launch lethal operations without the necessity of knowing who specifically it seeks to kill, a practice that has come to be known as a “signature strike”.
Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, acknowledged that the January deaths of hostages Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto might prompt the tightening of targeting standards ahead of lethal drone and other counter-terrorism strikes. A White House review is under way.
“In the aftermath of a situation like this, it raises legitimate questions about whether additional changes need to be made to these protocols,” Earnest said.
………
Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the accidental killings revealed on Thursday raise “questions about the reliability and the depth of the intelligence that the government is relying on to conduct drone strikes”.
“In neither of these two cases did the government actually know beforehand who it was killing. It does raise questions about how much the government knows – or how little the government knows – before it pulls the trigger,” Jaffer said.
“Perhaps that doesn’t in itself suggest that the strikes were unlawful, but it certainly raises some questions.”
It appears that the CIA thought that something might be wrong when there were two extra bodies found at the strike sites.
Oops!
I will note two things, said by the inimitable Charlie Pierce:
Am I being unpatriotic if I mention that, at this point, I wouldn’t trust the CIA to give me directions to the mall?
There has been a lot of “collateral damage” (Dead innocents) from drone strikes, but it is clear that the CIA is FAR more reckless than the Pentagon over this, though it has improved from the excesses of Petraeus’ disastrous stint as DCIA.
His second point is more important:
I’ve always thought of the drone war in terms of the melon vendor and the guy in the goat cart on the other side of the road. There’s an al Qaeda operative buying a melon from a vendor. Meanwhile, a guy with a goat cart comes up the other side of the road. Suddenly, here comes death from above. The terrorist is dead. So is the melon vendor. So is the guy in the goat cart on the other side of the road. They’re all blown into equally tiny bits. How do we think the families of the melon vendor and the guy with the goat cart are going to take this? We create a desire for retribution with which our grandchildren may have to cope. And we may never know the names of the melon dealer or the guy with the goat cart, the way we now know the names of Warren Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto. We may never know the name of the melon dealer until his grandchild blows up an airplane. And none of that should be surprising because that’s also what happens when you make war, any kind of war, in a place.
The drone campaign is clearly excessive, and as a result, we are destabilizing the region, and creating a generation of people who want to make war on America.
Anyone who thinks that our drone campaign makes us safer is insane.
Ted Cruz Panders to the Ghey When Money is Involved
One of the big questions about Ted Cruz is whether he is a true believer, or if he is just a self-aggrandizing asshole who is doing this for his own selfish reasons.
Well, this news seems to strongly imply that Ted Cruz is really all about Ted Cruz:
Senator Ted Cruz has positioned himself as a strong opponent of same-sex marriage, urging pastors nationwide to preach in support of marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, which he said was “ordained by God.”
But on Monday night, at a reception for him at the Manhattan apartment of two prominent gay hoteliers, the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful struck quite a different tone.
During the gathering, according to two people present, Mr. Cruz said he would not love his daughters any differently if one of them was gay. He did not mention his opposition to same-sex marriage, saying only that marriage is an issue that should be left to the states.
The dinner and “fireside chat” for about a dozen people with Mr. Cruz and his wife, Heidi, was at the Central Park South penthouse of Mati Weiderpass and Ian Reisner, longtime business partners who were once a couple and who have been pioneers in the gay hospitality industry.
“Ted Cruz said, ‘If one of my daughters was gay, I would love them just as much,’” recalled Mr. Reisner, a same-sex marriage proponent who described himself as simply an attendee at Mr. Weiderpass’s event.
(emphasis mine)
Cruz doesn’t care about hating on the ghey, he’s just using it for political advantage.
Politicians weasel on issues all the time, but some issues, and I would include same sex marriage among these issues, there has to be a real moral component (at least on the pro-bigotry side).
Couldn’t We Send Him to Guantánamo?
This has to be the best headline of the day:
To Send a Message, Judge Sentences David Petraeus to 75% of One Speaking Fee
David PetraeusFormer CIA Director David Petraeus just got sentenced to two years of probation for leaking highly sensitive information to his mistress and then lying to the FBI about it.………
The only “surprise” of the hearing is that, rather than getting slapped with a $40,000 fine, Judge David Keesler more than doubled the fine to send a message.
To $100,000.
According to SpeakerPedia, Petraeus makes upwards of $132,750 for each speech.
Needless to say, this is disgraceful.
This guy mishandled secure information, he then deliberately leaked it to his lover, and then he lied to the FBI about it, and he can make enough to pay the fine in about 70 minutes.
BTW, the Obama administration is using him as a consultant now, so it appears that he still has a security clearance.
There is Now a Nazi Definition of Chutzpah………
The descendants of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, are suing Random House demanding royalties for the use of his quotes in the book Goebbels: A Biography:
The estate of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, is taking legal action against the publisher Random House over a new biography, claiming payment for the use of extracts from his diaries.
Cordula Schacht – a lawyer whose own father, Hjalmar Schacht, was Hitler’s minister of economics – is suing Random House Germany and its imprint Siedler, over the book Goebbels, by Peter Longerich, professor of modern German history at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Longerich, an authority on the Holocaust and Nazi era Germany, drew extensively on Goebbels’ diaries in his biography, which was published in Germany in 2010. Now those same passages from the diaries are set to appear in the English edition, which Penguin Random House UK and its imprint Bodley Head will publish on 7 May.
Rainer Dresen, general counsel of Random House Germany, told the Guardian that an important principle was at stake. “We are convinced that no money should go to a war criminal,” he said.
Agreed, Mr. Dresen.
Not only is this chutzpah, it’s insane, even when not considering the overweening nature of the international copyright regime.
There May Still Be Some Utility Left in the Mk. 1 Human
Toyota has discovered that robots cannot do it all, and that they need highly experienced experts to maximize the productivity at their plants:
Inside Toyota Motor Corp.’s oldest plant, there’s a corner where humans have taken over from robots in thwacking glowing lumps of metal into crankshafts. This is Mitsuru Kawai’s vision of the future.
“We need to become more solid and get back to basics, to sharpen our manual skills and further develop them,” said Kawai, a half century-long company veteran tapped by President Akio Toyoda to promote craftsmanship at Toyota’s plants. “When I was a novice, experienced masters used to be called gods, and they could make anything.”
These gods, or “kami-sama” in Japanese, are making a comeback at Toyota, the company that long set the pace for manufacturing prowess in the auto industry and beyond. Toyota’s next step forward is counterintuitive in an age of automation: Humans are taking the place of machines in plants across the nation so workers can develop new skills and figure out ways to improve production lines and the car-building process.
“Toyota views their people who work in a plant like this as craftsmen who need to continue to refine their art and skill level,” said Jeff Liker, who has written eight books on Toyota and visited Kawai last year. “In almost every company you would visit, the workers’ jobs are to feed parts into a machine and call somebody for help when it breaks down.”
The return of the kami-sama is emblematic of how Toyoda, 57, is remaking the company founded by his grandfather as the chief executive officer has pledged to tilt priorities back toward quality and efficiency from a growth mentality. He’s reining in expansion at the world’s-largest automaker with a three-year freeze on new car plants.
………
“What Akio Toyoda feared the company lost when it was growing so fast was the time to struggle and learn,” said Liker, who met with Toyoda in November. “He felt Toyota got big-company disease and was too busy getting product out.”
………
Learning how to make car parts from scratch gives younger workers insights they otherwise wouldn’t get from picking parts from bins and conveyor belts, or pressing buttons on machines. At about 100 manual-intensive workspaces introduced over the last three years across Toyota’s factories in Japan, these lessons can then be applied to reprogram machines to cut down on waste and improve processes, Kawai said.
In an area Kawai directly supervises at the forging division of Toyota’s Honsha plant, workers twist, turn and hammer metal into crankshafts instead of using the typically automated process. Experiences there have led to innovations in reducing levels of scrap and shortening the production line 96 percent from its length three years ago.
Toyota has eliminated about 10 percent of material-related waste from building crankshafts at Honsha. Kawai said the aim is to apply those savings to the next-generation Prius hybrid.
The work extends beyond crankshafts. Kawai credits manual labor for helping workers at Honsha improve production of axle beams and cut the costs of making chassis parts.
Though Kawai doesn’t envision the day his employer will rid itself of robots — 760 of them take part in 96 percent of the production process at its Motomachi plant in Japan — he has introduced multiple lines dedicated to manual labor in each of Toyota’s factories in its home country, he said.
“We cannot simply depend on the machines that only repeat the same task over and over again,” Kawai said. “To be the master of the machine, you have to have the knowledge and the skills to teach the machine.”
True dat.
Guys on the shop floor are an invaluable source of knowledge and wisdom.
Seriously?
I have been a bit dubious of the prosecutors’ (and the judge’s) behavior at the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Boston bombing trial.
The case that is a slam dunk, Tsarnaev’s defense team has conceded that he was one of the bombers, so the only issue in dispute is whether the sentence is life without parole or death, and I get the sense that the prosecutors are trying to push the envelope to get a death penalty, and the judge eager to allow them to do so.
This is depressing, because it is more important for the trial to be seen as scrupulously fair than it is to put a needle in has arm.
The latest, and far most concrete, example of this is the prosecutors (and the judge) have have gone a bit far with the showing a video of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev flipping off a security cam while in a holding cell:
The US Department of Justice has released an image of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev giving the finger to a security camera in his jail cell, a day after prosecutors showed it to jurors in the sentencing phase of his trial.
The image, taken three months after the April 2013 bombing in his holding cell at the federal courthouse, is one of the only public images of Tsarnaev since his arrest days after the bombing.
“This is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged,” assistant US attorney Nadine Pellegrini on Tuesday told the jurors who will decide whether the 21-year-old former college student should be executed.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers on Wednesday sought to blunt the impact of a photo, placing it in context of his movements in the cell. They showed the jury video clips of him looking into the camera, apparently fixing his hair in the reflective glass, and then making a slightly angled, two-finger gesture similar to what teenagers often do playfully in selfies. Then he raised his middle finger at the camera.
In an apparent attempt to press the argument that Tsarnaev was a “kid” who was led astray by his big brother, defense attorney Miriam Conrad asked Assistant US Marshal Gary Oliveira if he knew how old Tsarnaev was at that time.
The witness said he didn’t.
“You don’t know that he was 19 years old?” Conrad asked.
I understand that the prosecution is required to show that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a horrible and unrepentant person to get death.
But presenting a 19-year old flipping off a security cam to justify a death penalty? That seems a bit much.
This serves no purpose but to inflame the jury, and the judge should not have allowed it.
So Not a Surprise
You know those “Cybersecurity” bills that are supposed to protect our data and our privacy?
Cybersecurity legislation advancing in Congress could create the first brand-new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act in nearly half a century—a prospect that alarms transparency advocates and some lawmakers.
A bill approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee last month would add a new tenth exemption to FOIA, covering all “information shared with or provided to the Federal Government” under the new measure.
Another provision in the legislation would require that “cyber threat indicators and defensive measures” which companies or individuals share with the federal government be “withheld, without discretion, from the public.” The Senate bill, which is expected to come to the floor soon, also seeks to shut off any access to that information under state or local freedom of information laws.
Two cybersecurity bills are expected to be taken up on the House floor as soon as this week. Both contain similar language about keeping confidential threat and defensive measure information turned over to the government. However, a new FOIA exemption that was in the House Intelligence Committee cyber bill was taken out, a spokesman confirmed Friday.
In an official Senate Intelligence Committee report made public over the weekend, two Democratic members of that panel objected to the new FOIA exemption, which would be the first brand-new exemption added to the landmark transparency legislation since 1967.
“We are unconvinced that it is necessary to create an entirely new exemption to the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA,” Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) wrote in a statement accompanying the panel’s report on the cyber bill. “Government transparency is critical in order for citizens to hold their elected officials and bureaucrats accountable; however, the bill’s inclusion of a new FOIA exemption is overbroad and unnecessary as the types of information shared with the government through this bill would already be exempt from unnecessary public release under current FOIA exemptions.”
………
Critics say the proposed new FOIA exemption could allow companies to block disclosure of virtually any information by anyone in the government simply by submitting that information to the new cybersecurity portal. McDermott said the narrower provisions were also troubling and have mandatory language that could preclude the government from releasing cyber-related information even when needed to warn about a danger to the general public.
McDermott also said it would set a bad precedent if a bill creating an entirely new FOIA exemption made it into law without passing through the panels which oversee that law in each chamber.
“By authorizing a new exemption to the FOIA through a committee other than the committees of jurisdiction….you’ve undermined FOIA,” she warned.
Not surprised that the Obama administration likes this a lot. His history as President is one of being a cheerleader for the overarching security state, and his jihad on whistle blowers is a national disgrace.
Suspicious Police Killings Go Local
Specifically, the death of Freddie Gray, who was alive and well when he was put in a paddy wagon by Baltimore police, and was in a coma with a broken neck and nearly severed spinal cord when it arrived at the station:
Officials and community leaders welcomed Tuesday the Justice Department’s announcement that it is opening a criminal investigation into Freddie Gray‘s death in Baltimore police custody — an incident that continues to spark angry demonstrations.
“The Department of Justice has been monitoring the developments in Baltimore, Md., regarding the death of Freddie Gray,” spokeswoman Dena Iverson said in a statement. “Based on preliminary information, the Department of Justice has officially opened this matter and is gathering information to determine whether any prosecutable civil rights violation occurred.”
The federal agency did not release details about the investigation, but said it would include the FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and civil rights lawyers within the department.
The announcement came amid growing protests — hundreds demonstrated Tuesday evening in front of the Western District police station, where the 25-year-old was taken April 12, before being hospitalized and dying a week later. Protesters wore T-shirts with the slogan #Justice for Freddie and chanted “No justice, no peace.”
Meanwhile, police gave members of a City Council public safety committee updates on the status of their investigation into Gray’s death. After the hearing, Deputy Commissioner Jerry Rodriguez said the Police Department will cooperate fully with the FBI in the federal probe and will hand over copies of all the documents it has.
Police said they are trying to determine whether Gray was properly restrained in a transport van, where officials have said his injuries occurred. He suffered a broken vertebra after he was arrested near Gilmor Homes in Sandtown-Winchester.
Something is seriously broken with policing in America.
That New Speaker of the New York State Assembly?
It appears that he made a $200,000 profit by ignoring a restitution order that came from his mother’s embezzlement conviction:
When Carl E. Heastie leapt from obscurity to the top of New York State’s political power structure this year, he brought with him the potential of a new beginning in Albany. He vowed to bring accountability and integrity back to a statehouse that was reeling from the latest arrest of a lawmaker — the man he was succeeding as the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver.
But an episode from Speaker Heastie’s past that has never received public scrutiny casts new light on his claims of being a reformer.
About 16 years ago, when he had not yet run for public office but had already become entrenched in Bronx Democratic politics, Mr. Heastie was able to hold onto a home that prosecutors said his mother had bought with embezzled money and that a judge had instructed him to sell. Selling it years later brought what appears to be the only significant financial gain of his life.
An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.
An unusual string of legal lapses enabled Mr. Heastie to keep the home, an apartment in a three-story rowhouse in the Bronx. Carelessness of those involved in the case could be to blame, or something more questionable could have occurred given the Bronx Democratic Party’s influence on the court system and its long history of back-room deal-making.
“If it was purchased with moneys that were stolen, then no one should receive the benefit of that,” Justice Robert H. Straus told the Heasties during a hearing in January 1999 at State Supreme Court in the Bronx.
But Mr. Heastie did, indeed, profit from his mother’s crime.
Despite the judge’s instructions, Mr. Heastie was able to keep the apartment. His mother died at age 60 three weeks after being sentenced, and Mr. Heastie said he stopped trying to sell the property. When he finally did sell it — six years later for nearly $200,000 more than his mother had paid — he used the proceeds to buy a more expensive home.
………
The first break for the Heasties came when the Bronx district attorney’s office did not require Mrs. Heastie to sign a formal forfeiture agreement, as is common in such cases. Prosecutors also did not pursue a civil action against Mr. Heastie to force him to sell the home, which they could have done even after her death, Mr. Levin said.
And when Mr. Heastie told the judge, through a lawyer, that he could not sell the property, the assertion went unquestioned. Prosecutors did not press Mr. Heastie, for example, about the “real estate salesperson” who he said was trying to sell it. So it never came out in court that the person was not a full-time real estate professional but another loyalist to Mr. Seabrook with a full-time job in city government.
Finally, a judgment against Mrs. Heastie that was signed by the judge was never filed in civil court by the Bronx County clerk’s office. The judgment, which essentially disappeared, could have been used to pursue money from her estate after her death.
This really is kind of mind boggling.
I understand that there are necessary compromises that a politician must make if they want to become a leader, but it seems that everyone in New York state government are ethically compromised.
Is it Just Me, or Does Jabba the Governor Seem to be on a Path to the Pokey?
The pattern of self dealing continues.
This time it’s Chris Christie cutting a sweetheart deal for his brother’s law firm:
As one of its first moves in its state takeover of financially strapped Atlantic City, Chris Christie’s administration has awarded a lucrative government contract to the financial services firm that employs the Republican governor’s brother, Todd Christie. The deal followed an even bigger contract given to the firm by Christie officials only weeks after the governor’s brother began working there.
In January, Chris Christie signed an executive order installing an emergency management team to develop “a plan to place the finances of Atlantic City in stable condition on a long-term basis.” Two months later, Reuters obtained documents showing that Christie administration officials signed a contract with Ernst & Young, which hired Todd Christie as a New Jersey-based director in March 2013. Todd Christie is listed as working on the firm’s “business development” in campaign finance records.
The Christie administration contract will pay Ernst and Young more than $250,000 to provide financial analysis of Atlantic City. As the casino town faces a $101 million deficit and hotel closures, the deal cemented by Christie’s Department of Law also will allow Ernst & Young to bill taxpayers $455 per hour for other services, according to Reuters. The Christie administration gave the contract to Todd Christie’s firm at a time when New Jersey’s executive branch ethics code says that public officials may not use their positions “to secure a job, contract, governmental approval or special benefit for yourself, a friend or family member.”
“I hope the governor’s advocacy for the state takeover of Atlantic City was not simply to repay a favor to his brother, Todd Christie, for all of the support Todd has given him over the years,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s investigative committee. “It is fair to ask questions any time you have the executive branch taking actions that at least on the surface appear to uniquely benefit somebody very close to the governor.”
………
The Christie administration’s Atlantic City-related contract to Todd Christie’s firm follows Todd Christie delivering more than $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which backed his brother’s election campaigns. The governor’s brother also delivered a maximum $3,800 contribution to his brother’s reelection campaign after he started at Ernst & Young.
This is not the first time Todd Christie’s business has intersected with the government business his brother oversees.
Only weeks after Todd Christie started at Ernst & Young, Christie administration officials awarded the firm separate contracts worth more than $550,000 for auditing services in connection with the state’s expenditures on Hurricane Sandy recovery. Ernst & Young has said Todd Christie was not involved in the deal, and noted that Ernst & Young is a large company with many employees.
Todd Christie also was part of a group of investors who purchased and sold properties near public transit facilities that his brother’s appointees redeveloped, according to the Bergen Record. At an event touting the redevelopment, the governor joked that his father was the “lobbyist in the Christie family for this project.”
So totally not corrupt, right?
This is not the sort of sh%$ that goes unnoticed in a Presidential race, even if it is business as usual in New Jersey, and even if Christie is a Republican.
Props to the People who Complained
Newsweek published an anti-wind power OP/ED, and after an outpouring of outrage from informed readers, the magazine was forced to publish a clarification admitting that the author was literally an employee of the Koch brothers:
Editor’s note: The author of this piece, Randy Simmons, is the Charles G. Koch professor of political economy at Utah State University. He’s also a senior fellow at the Koch– and ExxonMobil-funded Property and Environment Research Center. These ties to the oil industry weren’t originally disclosed in this piece.
It’s still buried at the bottom or the article, but this sort of push-back is important.
Well, I Guess Giving Rides to Blind Folks is Restrictive Government Regulations as Well
Uber is at it again.
This time, they are refusing to give rides to people with service animals:
A federal judge in San Francisco has allowed a civil lawsuit filed against Uber by an advocacy group for the blind to proceed.
The case was initially filed in September 2014 by the National Federation of the Blind of California and one individual plaintiff, who alleged that the quasi-taxi company is in violation of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), along with other state disabilities laws.
Uber had initially filed to have the case dismissed, but the judge’s ruling last Friday means the case will proceed.
According to the initial civil complaint, UberX drivers routinely refused to serve blind riders who travel with service animals:Further, UberX drivers across the United States are likewise refusing to transport blind individuals, including identified UberX drivers who repeatedly denied rides to one blind woman on twelve separate occasions, charged blind riders cancellation fees, and abandoned blind travelers in extreme weather, all because of guide dogs.
In total, Plaintiffs are aware of more than thirty instances where drivers of UberX vehicles refused to transport blind individuals with service animals. UberX drivers that refused to transport these blind individuals did so after they initially agreed to transport the riders. The UberX drivers denied the requested transportation service after the drivers had arrived and discovered that the riders used service animals.
In addition, some UberX drivers seriously mishandle guide dogs or harass blind customers with guide dogs even when they do not outright deny the provision of taxi service. For example, Leena Dawes is blind and uses a guide dog. An UberX driver forced Ms. Dawes’ guide dog into the closed trunk of the UberX sedan before transporting Ms. Dawes. When Ms. Dawes realized where the driver had placed her dog, she pleaded with the driver to pull over so that she could retrieve her dog from the trunk, but the driver refused her request. Other blind customers with guide dogs have been yelled at by Uber drivers who are hostile toward their guide dogs.
In its motion to dismiss, Uber argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that as a private company, it is not bound by the provisions of the ADA—an argument that United States Magistrate Judge Nathaniel Cousins found did not hold water.
If they think that Title III of the ADA (public accommodations and commercial facilities) doesn’t apply to them, they are desperately trying to avoid treating their employees as employees, why should they give a damn about things like Sarbanes-Oxley?
Investing with Objectivist psychopaths who think they are supermen who are above the laws of mere mortals who does not appear to me to be a sensible thing.
This is Disgraceful
It appears that the Obama administration is ignoring federal law intended to prevent jailing juveniles in adult prisons:
The Obama administration is failing to sanction states that house excessive numbers of teenagers and children in adult jails and prisons, placing them at greater risk for violent attacks, sexual assaults and suicide, two career Justice Department employees plan to testify Tuesday in front of a Senate panel.
Under a 1974 law known as the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, the Justice Department is required to sharply curtail some federal aid to state governments when those states incarcerate too many juveniles and children in adult jails and prisons. The law also demands that the federal government withhold such funds from states that lock up large numbers of so-called status offenders — children and teens who have engaged in minor offenses such as truancy, curfew violations, drinking alcohol or running away from home.
The law was later amended to require the Justice Department to also cut grant money to states that fail to make fixes after the determination that their criminal justice systems hold “disproportionate” numbers of minority youths.
The two career Justice Department officials are expected to testify that the Obama administration is in violation of federal law by continuing to provide these funds to eight jurisdictions that do not meet one or more of those standards: Virginia, Illinois, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Idaho and Alabama, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Really?
The evidence is fairly clear here. Children incarcerated with adults are more likely to be raped, and they are more likely to become hardened criminals.
This is contemptible.