Month: April 2015

I am Unreasonably Stoked About This

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I don’t know why, but the taxonomic resurrection of the species Brontosaurus has me pleased to a completely unreasonably degree:

The brontosaurus, loved by kids the world over but cruelly snubbed by paleontologists for more than a century, is back. British and Portuguese fossil boffins have concluded the dinosaur existed as a separate genus after all.

It was back in 1879 that paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh named a collection of bones a brontosaurus, or Thunder Lizard, and described a massive herbivore with a long neck and tail that wandered across the plains of what is now America.

But within a couple of decades the existence of the Thunder Lizard was called into question, and the scientific community decided that the stumbled-upon brontosaurus was just an adolescent apatosaurus. There then followed a 100-year campaign to expunge the word brontosaurus from textbooks, but the name proved just too popular.

Now a study looking at the largest range of fossils of the genus has shown that the brontosaurus was a distinct genus. While the dino does have strong similarities to the apatosaurus, there are enough differences to separate the two, the study’s authors concluded.

Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago”, explains Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the research from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, “in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had.”

The initial argument for the non-existence of the brontosaurus was down to its sacrum bones, which link the tail to the base of the spine. The first Thunder Lizard found had five of these, compared to the apatosaurus’ three, but it was assumed that the brontosaurus bones were young and would have merged together to form these three bones.

But as more and more specimens were found, this theory started to look a little off. That was reinforced by other fossil evidence, so the new study turned to statistics to find out what was going on.

“The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,” explained Roger Benson, a co-author from the University of Oxford.

I have no clue why I am so giddy over this news, but I am incredibly happy about this.

The Worst Democrat North of the Manson Nixon Line Wins Reelection

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I am referring, of course, to Rahm Emanuel, who won a double digit victory over challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel soundly defeated challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia on Tuesday, capturing a second term in Chicago’s first-ever runoff election and striking a note of humility by thanking voters for “a second term and a second chance.”

The win followed six weeks of a hard-fought, nationally watched second round in which Garcia tried to cast the contest as the latest proxy battle between establishment Democrats and the party’s progressive wing. Emanuel’s overwhelming financial advantage ultimately helped save the mayor as he fought for his political life.

………

With 98 percent of the city’s precincts reporting, Emanuel had 55.7 percent of the unofficial vote to 44.3 percent for Garcia.

It was closer than I expected, but money, and the self defeating bigotry of a significant portion of the Chicago African American community was too big a hill to climb.

I may be a political Little Orphan Annie here, but I do think that Rahm’s mantle has been pierced, and so when the creative accounting that has been obscuring the true state of Chicago’s finances, much of which appear to be in the form of sweetheart deals for his Bankster buddies for complex (and high fee) derivatives of the sort that f%$#ed Greece, collapses, the knives should come out.

At least, I hope that this is what will happen.

I’m bummed.

Least Surprising Education News of the Year

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In the New York Times, Paul Campos notes that much of the increase in the cost of a college education comes from an explosion of spending in administrators:

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

He also notes that university presidents are now getting 7 figure salaries.

I am not sure how to fix this, but with a 17 year old daughter, I’d love to find a fix.

This Guy is Going to Destroy Israel

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I am, of course, referring to Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who penchant for considering nothing but his own prospects for political power are a clear and present danger for the State of Israel.

The latest case of this is Netanyahu’s willingness to use the most polarizing issue in Israeli politics to help build a coalition, at least if reports that he will kill conversion reform in order to placate right wing parties: (This is Arutz Sheva, so a grain of salt is recommended)

Sources in Shas and United Torah Jewry said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the Likud on rolling back recently approved rules on conversion. The changes had been designed to remove some of the power over the conversion process from the Chief Rabbinate and install it in the local authorities, where some jurisdictions would presumably be more liberal in their acceptance of converts.

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counting on them to join his new government, MKs from Shas and UTJ are insisting on rolling back the laws on conversion to what they were before Netanyahu’s last government – with the Chief Rabbinate solely responsible for the conversion process, overseeing the entire process without government interference.

In the November change, the government voted to allow municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts, which were to receive administrative and budgetary backing from the state. A rabbinical committee whose makeup is specified in the decision was to oversee the courts, which would exercise their own judgment regarding each conversion.

With several cities already appointing very liberal rabbis as the heads of their committees, the government”s intent was to provide venues for converts to receive approval from authorities more easily than they would have from the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, which until then had sole jurisdiction over conversion. The newest deal restores that situation.

This is arguably the most contentious issue in Jewish Israeli society, and, after years of tumult, they made these baby steps toward sanity.

And now Netanyahu is going to douse this issue with gasoline, and light a match because he is worried about forming a coalition government.

As a secular Zionist, I find this extremely self destructive, but I am not surprised:  Netanyahu ran an explicitly racist campaign.

From the perspective of normative Jewish theology, it was this kind of short sighted bullsh%$ like this that got both temples destroyed.

H/T Failed Messiah.

Election for Chicago Mayor are Tomorrow

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All indications are that he will win handily, though the abnormally high early voter turnout might give Jesus Garcia a slim chance, but polling indicates that it is a very slim chance, even with the endorsement of Garcia by many liberal organizations, including Howard Dean and Democracy for America.

One of the big problems is that the black community appears to be unwilling to vote for a Hispanic candidate, even if this candidate was a strong supporter of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington:

Jesus G. Garcia, candidate for mayor, strode down the sidewalk on Monday evening, trailed by a giddy pack of supporters, volunteers and passers-by. They snapped pictures and chanted his nickname: “Chu-y! Chu-y!”

 One man did not join in. An African-American who wore a knit Blackhawks hat, he glared at Mr. Garcia from the curb.

 “I’m voting,” he said, when asked if he would take part in Tuesday’s election. “But I ain’t voting for no Chuy. I ain’t voting for a Mexican.”

 Pressed to explain, he said he was tired of competing with Latinos for jobs. Then he walked away.

 The scene exposed a fault line in Mr. Garcia’s campaign to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Tuesday’s runoff election. Mr. Garcia’s strategy was to build a coalition of white liberals, blacks and Latinos — angered by Mr. Emanuel’s closing of dozens of schools and supportive of a plan to shift development from its wealthy downtown to poorer neighborhoods.

 But a Chicago Tribune poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Emanuel with a commanding lead. He not only has large margins among white voters, but a nearly two-to-one margin among black voters, 53 percent to 28 percent. Mr. Garcia has not been able to increase his share of the black vote.

 ………

 Mr. Garcia, 58, who has won election to the City Council, the state Senate and the county board of commissioners, has been one of the most prominent Latinos in elected office here, beginning in the 1980s. If elected, he would be the city’s first Latino mayor.

 From the start of his campaign, he spoke of building a multicultural coalition in the spirit of Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, on whose campaign Mr. Garcia worked.

 He has reached out to black leaders, collecting endorsements, campaign donations and promises of votes. And he has focused his campaign on concerns Chicagoans share, including improving public education, a higher minimum wage, reducing gun violence and modernizing mass transit.

(emphasis mine)

Once again, we see that when bigotry to drives the vote, hate voters vote against their own interests. (It kind of explains about 95% of the Republican electoral success in the past few decades)

We already have indications that Rahm Emanuel will double down on those policies which led to this runoff in the first place. It’s why one of Rahm’s big donors is squawking that Emanuel should shut down even more public schools:

The Chicago Teachers Union predicts more school closings if Tahm is re-elected. A major campaign contributor said he should have closed 125 schools, not just 50. This donor, Ken Griffin, is a Republican who also has given to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

………

Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.

Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.

This is a pretty big tell that Rahm wants to continue to privatize public schools, much like his predecessor privatized parking for pennies on the dollar.

Meanwhile Rahm is aggressively fighting the release of emails between him and his big ticket donors.  (see also here)

Of course, given the history of elections in Illinois, it may all be moot, as the chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners appears to have gotten lucrative lobbying contracts for his lawfirm, and it appears that he has already pulled strings for Rahm Emanuel allies down the ticket:

If Chicago’s first mayoral runoff in history ends up razor close on April 7, the city will be relying on a purportedly independent arbiter to oversee any recount. But that arbiter, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, is chaired by a politically-connected lawyer whose firm has received secret city lobbying contracts from incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration. After receiving those contracts, the chairman has already used his power to boost the mayor’s allies against anti-Emanuel challengers in other municipal elections.

Board chairman Langdon Neal was appointed to his position by the Cook County Circuit Court, not by any city official — a structure that is supposed to preserve the board’s independence from candidates for municipal office. However, the laws establishing the election commission do not prohibit Neal from getting contracts from the mayor, whose election he will oversee. How much he has made from those contracts remains a closely guarded secret: the Emanuel administration has denied an open records request for the terms of the deals, refusing to respond to International Business Times within the timeframe mandated by Illinois law.

What’s that Josef Stalin quote again?

I remember, it’s, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

That Sound You Hear is the Revolving Door Spinning Fast Enough to Generate a Sonic Boom

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US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he’s going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis’ courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

………

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump’s Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court’s heavy load and was Ward’s permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John “Johnny” Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis’ son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.

Republican Family Values………

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New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte’s state director (her 2nd most senior staffer) just got busted for prostitution and has resigned:

A senior aide to New Hampshire US Senator Kelly Ayotte resigned his position after he was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, Ayotte’s office announced late Saturday night.

 David Wihby, 61, served for the past year as Ayotte’s state director, the number two staffer behind her chief of staff. Wihby is also an elected member of the Manchester (N.H.) school board. He is a former longtime Manchester city alderman and the former deputy commissioner and interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor.

 Wihby was arrested Friday evening in Nashua on a misdemeanor charge for solicitation of prostitution, Ayotte’s office confirmed.

This isn’t the auto-asphyxia death of a Jerry Falwell confidant in 2 wet suits with a dildo up his butt, but  I notice a pattern here.

This was a Foreseeable Consequence of the German Hegemony in the European Union

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The EU sanctions against Russia have to be renewed by a unanimous vote.

It’s a core feature of EU governance, and it’s also why the aggressive growth strategy of the organization is a bad idea. It allows any nation to hold major decisions hostage.

Now, after many years of being punished by, and being used as a political whipping boy by Germany, Greece is looking to discuss EU sanctions against Russia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plan to discuss economic ties and the European Union’s sanctions against Moscow when they meet for talks next week, a Kremlin spokesman said on Friday.

 Russia wants the EU to lift the sanctions imposed over Moscow’s role in the turmoil in Ukraine and hopes to get support from some EU member states, notably Hungary and Greece.

 The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was too early to talk about any possibility of Moscow providing financial help to the cash-strapped Greece before the talks.

 “Relations between Moscow and the European Union will be discussed in the light of Brussels’s policy of sanctions and Athens’ quite cold attitude to this policy,” Peskov said.

 Greece’s new left-wing government has said it will not seek aid from Moscow but has so far failed to reach a deal with its EU/IMF creditors to unlock fresh funds.

 Putin and Tsipras will meet in Moscow on April 8. It will be Tsipras’ first visit to the Russian capital after his leftist Syriza party swept to victory in a snap election in January.

I don’t expect the meeting to generate any substantive policy changes in Greek foreign policy, but it is a warning that, absent some amelioration of the EU and IMF created humanitarian crisis in Greece, there could be substantive changes in EU foreign policy.

The EU and the Euro zone are both in trouble because the people behind it decided to move forward before the necessary economic and political structures were in place. (To say nothing of popular support, as shown by the repeated failures of plebiscites for the treaties and subsequent re-votes.)

I do not think that the Euro will survive in its current form, (I expect pretty much all the non-Germanic nations to drop out eventually) and I would give even money that the EU will either be scaled back to a simple customs union, or that a significant number of members will leave in the next 10-20 years.

Headline of the Day

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President Obama Declares the Threat to Crappy Sony Movies a National Emergency

—Marcy “Emptywheel” Wheeler

A response to Obama’s new executive order, which is vague enough to allow sanctions against pretty much anyone who publishes the data or provides privacy tools..

It is overarching, irresponsible, and fundamentally anti-democratic, which makes it a typical security policy of Obama and His Evil Minions™.

But it gets worse. The EO targets not just the hackers themselves, but also those who benefit from or materially support hacks. The targeting of those who are “responsible for or complicit in … the receipt or use for commercial or competitive advantage … by a commercial entity, outside the United States of trade secrets misappropriated through cyber-enabled means, … where the misappropriation of such trade secrets is reasonably likely to result in, or has materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States” could be used to target journalism abroad. Does WikiLeaks’ publication of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations qualify? Does Guardian’s publication of contractors’ involvement in NSA hacking?

 And the EO creates a “material support” category similar to the one that, in the terrorism context, has been ripe for abuse. Its targets include those who have “provided … material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of” such significant hacks. Does that include encryption providers? Does it include other privacy protections?

 Finally, I’m generally concerned about this EO because of the way National Emergencies have served as the justification for a lot of secret spying decisions. Just about every application to the FISC for some crazy interpretation of surveillance laws in the name of counterterrorism founds their justification neither in the September 17, 2001 Finding authorizing covert actions against al Qaeda nor the September 18, 2001 AUMF, but instead in President Bush’s declaration of a National Emergency on September 14, 2001. I’m not sure precisely why, but that’s what the Executive has long used to convince FISC that it should rubber stamp expansive interpretations of surveillance law. So I assume this declaration could be too.

 In other words, the sanctions regime may well be the least of this EO.

Just lovely.

The Governor of the State of Walmart Vetoes Pro Bigotry Bill

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I am, of course, referring to the decision of the Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchison, to veto their (almost the same as Indiana’s) so called religious freedom bill:

Facing a backlash from businesses and gay rights advocates, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas on Wednesday called on state lawmakers to either recall or amend legislation billed as a religious freedom measure so that it mirrored a federal law approved in 1993.

 Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, said he understood the divide in Arkansas and across the nation over the question of same-sex marriage and its impact on people’s religious beliefs. His own son, Seth, he said, had asked him to veto the bill, which critics say could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.

 To ensure that the state is “a place of tolerance,” Mr. Hutchinson said, he was considering using an executive order that would seek to balance the “competing constitutional obligations” if the legislature declined to make changes to the bill.

 “What is important from an Arkansas standpoint is one, we get the right balance,” he said, “and secondly, we make sure that we communicate we’re not going to be a state that fails to recognize the diversity of our workplace, our economy and our future.”

 “This is a bill that in ordinary times would not be controversial,” Mr. Hutchinson said. “But these are not ordinary times.”

 Two state legislative leaders — Senator Jonathan Dismang, president pro tem of the Senate, and Jeremy Gillam, speaker of the House — who appeared with Mr. Hutchinson at a news conference Wednesday, said they agreed that the bill should be changed, but that they could not guarantee that outcome.

 The legislation, which easily cleared the state House by lopsided margins, has created a political rift in the state, with Mark Stodola, the mayor of Little Rock, sending a letter to Mr. Hutchinson this week urging him to veto the bill, saying it would have “a negative impact on our state’s image.”

 Several businesses and tech companies, including the state’s largest private employer, Walmart, as well as the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Municipal League and other civic groups have spoken out against the legislation.

(emphasis mine)

It’s clear that the backlash in Indiana is a major factor, but I think that it was the objections by Walmart that was the main reason for this.

The Scandal is that this is Normal for Prosecutors and Courts

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In one of the more prominent cyber crime trials of the year, it has been revealed that
some of the government agents who infiltrated the Silk Road underground site stole from the Site:

After a jury in February found Ross Ulbricht guilty of narcotics and money laundering conspiracies among other charges, in conjunction with his role as the mastermind behind the Silk Road online drug marketplace, even most long-time Ulbricht supporters looked at the preponderance of evidence against him and assumed the case was resoundingly closed. Yesterday, the door to that conviction may have cracked open a tiny bit.

 The US Department of Justice has charged US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV with money laundering and wire fraud in conjunction with their roles leading the Silk Road investigation. (Force was also charged with theft of government property). The pair of federal officers stand accused of diverting $800,000 in bitcoin from Silk Road to their own personal wallet accounts.

 [Aside: Is it just me or aren’t Bridges and Force the two most perfect Hollywood cop names you could ever think of?]

 Even crazier, the two are accused of posing as hitmen on the darknet website and subsequently ensnaring Ulbricht in a murder-for-hire plot against one of his Silk Road employees, whose death they later faked while collecting $80,000 for their services. Later Bridges and Force allegedly extorted 770 bitcoins – then worth approximately $100,000 – and had sought even more, by threatening to reveal his role in the employee’s disappearance.

 ………

 Judging by a tweet from Ublricht counsel Joshua Dratel yesterday, this is not the first time the defense had heard of these accusations:

Major Silk Road govt corruption scandal revelation today that we’ve had to sit on for four months and were not permitted to use at trial.
— Joshua Dratel (@JDratel) March 30, 2015


 The question is, why was this information inadmissible at trial and what, if any impact, did that have on Ulbricht’s conviction? If the defense can prove to an appellate judge that the defense was wrongly handicapped by this decision – a fact that may be more likely given the new information brought to light by the DOJ indictment – then it could be enough to merit a new trial. In such an event, it’s certainly conceivable that some of the evidence collected by Bridges and Force could be thrown out as a result. A report by Wired suggests that the most crucial evidence related to Ulbricht’s conviction was collected by the New York division of the FBI and the Chicago Department of Homeland Security, meaning it still may be enough to put him away.

It turns out that these revelations will figure prominently in an appeal of his conviction:

………

Late yesterday, Ulbricht’s attorney Joshua Dratel posted a statement to Tumblr answering many of these questions and clarifying that the defense is in fact seeking a new trial. Dratel also notes that the defense was aware of the ongoing investigation against US Secret Service (USSS) special agent Shaun Bridges and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Carl Mark Force IV during the Ulbricht trial, but was denied the ability to enter this information into evidence.

According to Dratel, the defense has already filed a post-trial motion seeking a new trial, to which the government’s response is due by this Friday, April 3 – with a subsequent defense response scheduled to be filed April 15. Dratel adds that should these motions fail to obtain a new trial, Ulbricht will appeal the existing verdict, citing the Bridges-Force indictment among its arguments.

………

Below is the full statement posted to Dratel’s Tumblr. (Note: Dratel’s original post was entirely devoid of paragraphing. Pando has added the below paragraphing to aid in readability. The content remains otherwise unchanged.)

The government’s considerable efforts at keeping this monumental scandal from being aired at Ross Ulbricht’s trial is itself scandalous. In addition to keeping any information about the investigation from the defense for nearly nine months, then revealing it only five weeks prior to trial, and then moving to keep sealed and secret the general underlying information so that Mr. Ulbricht could not use it in his defense at trial, and then stymying the defense at every turn during trial when the defense tried to introduce favorable evidence, the government had also refused to agree to the defense’s request to adjourn the trial until after the indictment was returned and made public – a modest adjournment of a couple of months, since it was apparent that the investigation was nearing a conclusion.

Throughout Mr. Ulbricht’s trial the government repeatedly used the secret nature of the grand jury investigation as an excuse to preclude valuable defense evidence that was not only produced in discovery, independent of the investigation of Mr. Force, but also which was only at best tenuously related to that investigation. In that manner the government deprived the jury of essential facts, and Mr. Ulbricht of due process. In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt.

It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside. Also, it is clear that Mr. Force and others within the government obtained access to the administrative platforms of the Silk Road site, where they were able to commandeer accounts and had the capacity to change PIN numbers and other aspects of the site – all without the government’s knowledge of what precisely they did with that access.

In light of the information provided in the Complaint, it is now apparent to all just how relevant some of the issues raised by the defense at trial were, including the payment by Dread Pirate Roberts to a law enforcement agent for information about the investigation, the ramping up of the investigation of Mr. Ulbricht in mid-2013, soon after that paid information began flowing, and the creation of certain evidence at trial, such as the 2013 journal that conveniently begins – again – in Spring 2013, after the corruption alleged in this Complaint ripened. As the evidence at trial – particularly from the government’s law enforcement witnesses – demonstrated, the Baltimore investigation and agents were inextricably involved in the evolution of the case and the evidence, as well as with alerting Mark Karpeles that he was under investigation, and meeting with his lawyers and exchanging information.

At Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, knowing full well the corruption alleged in the Complaint made public today, the government still aggressively precluded much of that evidence, and kept it from the jury (and had other similar evidence stricken from the record). Consequently, the government improperly used the ongoing grand jury process in San Francisco as both a sword and a shield to deny Mr. Ulbricht access to and use of important evidence, and a fair trial. In addition, the government not only precluded use of the information at trial, even if it emanated from independent sources, such as discovery, but the government also prevented the defense from conducting any independent investigation, including subpoenaing Mr. Force to testify at trial. The defense also filed numerous discovery requests, to which the government refused to respond.

Regarding the government’s claim that the information was not relevant, the government notified the defense of the investigation of Mr. Force December 1, 2014. Two days later, the government provided its trial exhibits. Among those exhibits were several that referred to Mr. Force in his various internet personas, including “Nob” (his authorized undercover alias), as well as his rogue identities on Silk Road, including alpacino, french maid, and Death From Above (all of which were providing, or attempting to provide, Dread Pirate Roberts with confidential information about the government’s investigation of Silk Road). Thus, according to the government, even after it disclosed the fact of the investigation, it believed Mr. Force was indeed quite relevant. However, in the course of the ensuing litigation regarding whether the defense would be allowed to use the information about the investigation of Mr. Force at Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, by the time trial began the government either eliminated those exhibits or redacted them. During trial, the government successfully objected to the defense’s attempts to introduce the unredacted documents the government had initially designated as its exhibits.

While I will not claim that it is normal for investigators to be this larcenous, this sort of behavior by the prosecutors is normal.

It’s clear to my non-lawyer mind that the fact that a significant portion of the investigation of Ross Ulbricht (allegedly the Dread Pirate Roberts) was being conducted by corrupt agents is a material fact for the jury to evaluate, but the prosecutors managed to wave the secrecy magic wand, and to hide this information from the jury.

This is why you should never talk to a prosecutor of cop without a lawyer in the room.

New York City Wants to Treat Financial Advisers Like Cigarettes

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Basically, they are suggesting that financial advisers be labeled like cigarettes:

Last week, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer unveiled a new plan to regulate financial advisers, the first of its kind, that tries to protect the average investor from advisers who don’t have to put their clients’ best interests first.

Currently, the regulations that apply to financial advisers have a carve out for broker-dealers who can give financial advice but don’t have to act as what is called a fiduciary. What that means in practice is that they can recommend investment products to their clients that serve to make them more money but aren’t necessarily the best or right option for their clients. A recent White House report estimates that this conflicted advice costs workers who invest their savings about $17 billion each year.

Stringer has proposed that New York State pass legislation that would require financial advisers to disclose whether or not they are fiduciaries and whether or not they have to put a client’s interests ahead of their own. Brokers, financial planners, and retirement advisors who don’t follow the fiduciary standard, which means put their clients’ interests first, would have to state at the outset: “I am not a fiduciary. Therefore, I am not required to act in your best interests, and am allowed to recommend investments that may earn higher fees for me or my firm, even if those investments may not have the best combination of fees, risks, and expected returns for you.”

“Like putting a warning label of a package of cigarettes, this would be a warning label for people who want to protect their life savings,” Stringer told ThinkProgress. “If you’re working for a company that’s about the company’s product and not about your client, we want you to own up to that.” The rule, he pointed out, wouldn’t say that these advisers can dole out advice to those who want it, but that they have to clarify the standard they follow.

………

States can’t have a stronger fiduciary standard than the federal regulations. But they do have the authority to regulate disclosure. Stringer’s proposal, while not as strong as the federal one, could have an impact. “The disclosure they’ve proposed is pretty stark, which improves the chances that it would be effective,” Roper said. “At least it’s not a bunch of legalese.” The average investor, usually someone seeking out advice for retirement planning, should be able to understand the warning label that Stringer has laid out.

That clear language could steer people away from investors who may not serve their needs. “This might make them think…maybe I should go ask someone else,” Hiltonsmith said. “It could actually change the market a little bit and drive people toward fiduciary advisers.”

Seeing as how the financial industry makes a lot of its money by exploiting these ambiguities, I can understand how they will oppose this tooth and nail.

OK, This is an Insanely Great Idea

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A company called Openbay has come up with a a device that plugs into your car’s diagnostic port, reads the codes, and gets quotes from local mechanics:

Car maintenance, and the costs associated with auto care, is a pain point and often a total mystery for many car owners. It is also one of the last industries where the consumer has traditionally had no power over negotiations, especially once a car is in an auto repair shop.

This morning at the New York International Auto Show, auto repair marketplace startup Openbay unveiled a new product called OpenbayConnect to give consumers more power in the process of getting work done on their cars. The new device, which Openbay founder and chief executive Rob Infantino says can be installed by anyone, automatically connects a car’s computer system to diagnose problems and find a local repair shop to fix the issue through the company’s automated service recommendation engine.

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OpenbayConnect further automates this process by diagnosing the problem through a car’s computer system – something I was charged about $70 for at the Subaru dealership – and making the auto repair shops vie for a customer’s business by offering the best deal. The company will be shipping the product to early adopters throughout the spring, but has been testing the device with a few unnamed partners with access to large fleets of cars for a few months now. For a limited amount of time, the OpenbayConnect devices will be free and won’t cost users any data costs or activation fees. Eventually, the company will sell the connected diagnosis components through its partners.

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One specific target of OpenbayConnect is auto service customers who don’t know very much about their vehicles, see a check engine light go on, and immediately call a auto shop or dealer. Often, that customer will pay just to have their computer system checked. Many times, the problem could be as simple as low tire pressure or a loose gas cap. The automated OpenbayConnect system can diagnose exactly what the problem is and whether it warrants more extensive service, all without having to get mechanics involved.

Even if they just sold the device, so you could plug in and get the codes on your smart phone, this would be f%$#ing brilliant.