Month: May 2015

Quote of the Day

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I ‘m no expert on UK politics, though I do follow it pretty constantly, but pretty sure one problem (not the only one) is that Labour has the early aughts Dem disease. “Not quite as evil as the other guys” is not a winning strategy. It isn’t really about going more Left, though on some issues it could have been, it’s about clearly highlighting the distinctions. You know, making clear just what it is you stand for, whatever the hell that is.

—Atrios

Or, as Harry S Truman put it, “Given a choice between a fake Republican and a real one, the public will choose the real Republican every time.”

Another Fact the Antivaxxers Will Ignore

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It turns out that measles vaccines do more than just preventing measles, because a case of measles can cause immune suppression for months afterwards, and so even ex-measles the death rate for vaccinated is lower:

Vaccination against measles has many benefits, not only lifelong protection against this potentially serious virus. Mina et al. analyzed data collected since mass vaccination began in high-income countries when measles was common. Measles vaccination is associated with less mortality from other childhood infections. Measles is known to cause transient immunosuppression, but close inspection of the mortality data suggests that it disables immune memory for 2 to 3 years. Vaccination thus does more than safeguard children against measles; it also stops other infections taking advantage of measles-induced immune damage.

Abstract

Immunosuppression after measles is known to predispose people to opportunistic infections for a period of several weeks to months. Using population-level data, we show that measles has a more prolonged effect on host resistance, extending over 2 to 3 years. We find that nonmeasles infectious disease mortality in high-income countries is tightly coupled to measles incidence at this lag, in both the pre- and post-vaccine eras. We conclude that long-term immunologic sequelae of measles drive interannual fluctuations in nonmeasles deaths. This is consistent with recent experimental work that attributes the immunosuppressive effects of measles to depletion of B and T lymphocytes. Our data provide an explanation for the long-term benefits of measles vaccination in preventing all-cause infectious disease. By preventing measles-associated immune memory loss, vaccination protects polymicrobial herd immunity.

I do not expect this to change any minds in the willfully ignorant anti-vaccine community, but perhaps public health officials and legislatures could use this as a justification for tightening up the waivers.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!

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We have the 5th bank failure of the year, Edgebrook Bank of Chicago, Illinois.

At this point last year, we had 6 failures.

There is a possibility, though not a probability, that total FDIC bank closures will remain in the single digits this year.

    Full FDIC list

    1. ,
    2. ,
    3. ,

    Here is the Full NCUA list.

    So, here is the graph pr0n with last few years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

    First the yearly view:

    And then a pic of the year so far:

    Stupid Lawyer Tricks………

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    A lawyer for the sorority Phi Sigma Sigma has sent a DMCA take-down notice to the Penny Arcade forums alleging misappropriation of trade secrets. (See also here)

    They have also apparently sued the poster.

    There, are of course any number of problems with this:

    • The Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies to copyright, not trade secrets.
    • The idea that the oaths, robes, secret handshakes, secret knocks, and seating arrangements are trade secrets is kind of laughable.
    • The post was made 3½ years ago, and has been publicly available since then, so the idea that it is a secret any more is ludicrous.
    • The Streisand Effect, wherein an attempt to censor information results in its wider dissemination.

    In any case, this makes the description of rituals on Penny Arcade a legitimate topic for discussion.

    Phi Sigma Sigma (PSS) secretly stands for Philanthropic Social Society. However, this is never written down or recorded (until now) because it is so “sacred”. The Handshake consists of a series of motions. Member A first begins with the pointer finger and the thumb surrounding Member B’s pointer finger and thumb. This is the “Phi”. Then Member A wraps the remaining fingers, middle, ring and pinky around the hand as a symbol of the “Sigma”. Depending on who is the senior member, the pinky finger is wrapped around the older member’s hand. Next is the hand knock. It goes Knock. Pause. Knock. Pause. Knock, knock, knock. The meetings are set up usually with the President, VP and other officers sitting at the front. The President wears a yellow or gold robe and the officers wear royal blue robes. The remaining members sit across from the officers in a pyramid formation with the base closest to the officers and the apex farthest from the officers. Members are seated by class order, then by alphabetical order. The table at which the President and Vice President are seated consists of candles on each side. Two gold candles and one blue at each corner of the table. Members usually recite an oath, “We, the members of Phi Sigma Sigma, promise to keep secret and sacred all of our proceedings.” The way to enter the pyramid is by using the hand knock to notify the members you are wanting to enter the room. The President will respond back with her gavel by repeating the knock. The person will enter then travel to the apex of the pyramid formation. The President will say the secret and sacred words “Remove the Veil” and then the member will respond back with the Chapter’s name, example, “Zeta Eta.” The Gold and King Blue symbolize “Perpetuity” and “Sincerity”. At initiation, blue “veils” (tulle from the local fabric store) are placed on the heads of the potential new members and are later removed to symbolize some sort of occult transformation and that they are full-fledged members.

    This story has made it to the ΦΣΣ Wikipedia page I think that it’s time to understand that it’s game over, and any additional attempt to suppress this information serves neither the public nor the sorority.

    Decent, but Not Great Unemployment News

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    In April, non-farm payroll increased by 223,000and the (U-3) unemployment rate fel by 0.1% to 5.4%:

    The American job market rebounded in April, the government said on Friday, helping to ease worries that the economy was on the brink of another extended slowdown after a bleak winter in which the overall economy stalled. But the growth in jobs failed to translate, once again, into any significant improvement in pay.

    Employers added 223,000 positions last month, the Labor Department reported, and the unemployment rate decreased to 5.4 percent, a turnaround from the disappointing performance in March, initially reported as a modest 126,000 gain and then revised down on Friday to 85,000.

    “We expected a rebound following the numbers in March and we got it, but not much more,” said Guy Berger, United States economist at RBS. “Wage growth is still the missing piece.”

    Indeed, before Friday’s report, some economists were estimating that average hourly earnings might rise 0.2 percent or more in April, signaling an upswing from the slow pace of wage gains since the end of the recession.


    But average hourly earnings rose only 0.1 percent in April, producing a 2.2 percent annual gain. That modest showing suggests that any meaningful wage gains for most workers are still delayed, despite the steadily falling unemployment rate.

     This really ain’t much.

    First, population increase requires about 200,000 new jobs each month to run in place, so 223,000 is not much, and second the drop in unemployment is largely an artifact of rounding:

    ………

    In April, 8.549 million Americans were unemployed. The civilian labor force, which includes the employed and everyone looking for jobs, stood at 157.072 million. Based on those numbers, the unemployment rate was 5.443%.

    In March, there were 8.575 million unemployed and 156.906 million in the labor force, which meant the unemployment rate back then was closer to 5.465%.

    That’s a 0.022% point decline in the unemployment rate. That’s definitely less of a drop than the 0.1% drop rounding will get you.

    On the brighter side, the Black unemployment rate fell tyo below 10% for the first time in 7 years.

    Quote of the Day

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    And of course, the more Labour comes to be occupied by influential but unrepresentative middle-class professionals, the more contemptuous it becomes of the Other Britain, the lesser Britain, the stupid Britain that won’t obediently vote Labour even though Labour only wants to care for it and nudge it towards health and decency.

    —Brendan O’Neill in Spiked, an online current affairs publication in the UK

    I find this interesting, because the article describes a sort of progressive contempt for the “common man” that Obama just demonstrated in his Nike speech.

    When “We know what is best for you” trumps “What do you need” you get this sort of political malpractice.

    I think that Labour, like the Democratic Party, loathes their base, while the Tories, like the Republican Party, are terrified of their base.

    Time for the liberal base to get some scalps, because putting fear into the hearts of the professional political class gets results.

    Seriously, Nike? I Think That Obama Is Trolling TPP Opponents Now

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    Obama spoke at a Nike plant to promote the Trans Pacific Partnershio (TPP).

    This is an interesting choice, considering that the show manufacturer is patient zero in shipping jobs overseas to contractors who practice abusive worker policiew.

    Bernie Sanders is not unaware of the irony of the choise of venue:

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is calling upon President Obama to cancel his plans to visit Nike’s corporate headquarters this week as part of the White House’s push to drum up support for a major new trade agreement.

    Sanders said the shoe giant, which has moved many of its manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets overseas, only epitomizes how previous trade deals “have failed American workers.”

    In a letter sent to Obama Wednesday afternoon and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the self-identified socialist, who is now running for president as a Democrat, says the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, would only boost Nike’s profits while doing nothing to increase manufacturing jobs here.

    “While manufacturing may not be the most glamorous job, I’m sure that there are workers across America, from Baltimore to Los Angeles to Vermont to Ferguson, who would be more than happy to be paid $15-$20 an hour to manufacture the Nike products they buy,” Sanders wrote.

    ………

    Obama plans to visit Nike’s Portland-area headquarters Friday morning as he takes his sales pitch outside Washington for both the 12-nation Pacific trade deal and the so-called “fast track” authority he has said is vital to finalizing negotiations with Japan and other partners.

    Obama’s fellow Democrats are proving to be the main obstacle to passing both in Congress, but he has been ramping up his appeals in recent weeks.

    ………

    But Sanders said TPP would “do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country,” and would only boost its executives’ compensation.

    He cited a study that Nike employs more than 300,000 workers in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour and labor unions are banned.

    Nike has been the subject of protests for its use of foreign sweat shop labor for over a decade, and Obama thinks that it is a good idea to extol the virtues of the TPP there.

    I am not sure if Barak is just f%$#ing with us, or if he just believes that no one could possibly have a fulfilling life living on shop floor.

    In either case though, his decision to speak there oozes contempt for people on the other side of the issue.

    I Think That We May Have Identified Part of the Problem in the Baltimore Police Department

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    The most senior of the officers indicted in the Freddie Gray murder, Brian Rice,  has had multiple incidences of threats of violence and erratic behavior:

    The Baltimore police lieutenant charged with the manslaughter of Freddie Gray allegedly threatened to kill himself and the husband of his ex-girlfriend, during incidents that led to him being disciplined and twice having his guns confiscated.

    Brian Rice, who pursued and arrested Gray after the 25-year-old “caught his eye” on 12 April, was reportedly given an administrative suspension after being hospitalised for a mental health evaluation when he warned he was preparing to shoot himself in April 2012.

     Rice, 41, also received an internal discipline when a judge granted a temporary restraining order against him after a request from Andrew McAleer, the husband of Karyn McAleer, who is the mother of Rice’s young son and a fellow Baltimore police officer. Rice has been married to and divorced from two further women, according to court records.

    A sharply critical 10-page complaint against Rice, which Andrew McAleer filed to a court in Maryland in January 2013, is being published in full for the first time by the Guardian. It details what McAleer, a Baltimore firefighter, described as a “pattern of intimidation and violence” by the officer.

    McAleer said in his court filing, which was first reported by the Guardian last month, that Rice forced one of Karyn McAleer’s young children to “shoot” a photograph of her and her husband that Rice had “taped to a piece of cardboard intended for target practice”. It was not clear from the filing whether any weapon was actually used.

    McAleer said that two months before this, in April 2012, his wife called to tell him to protect himself and her five children from Rice because the lieutenant had called her threatening to kill himself.

    Deputies from the Carroll County sheriff’s department responded to an emergency call and transported Rice to a hospital, before confiscating his police service weapon, his personal 9mm handgun, two rifles and two shotguns.

    It is unclear how long Rice spent as a patient. The police response to an incident at Rice’s home was first reported earlier this month by the Associated Press, which said it resulted in an administrative suspension from Baltimore police.

    ………

    Rice was allegedly given another administrative suspension and had his guns confiscated again eight months later, according to court filings, after McAleer obtained the week-long peace order against the police lieutenant.

    ………

    Rice was ordered to stay away from McAleer, his home and his workplace after a series of alleged confrontations, including one armed standoff in June 2012 when officers from two police departments responded to a 911 call and spent 90 minutes defusing the situation.

    McAleer alleged Rice was screaming and smelled of alcohol during the 2am confrontation in front of McAleer’s house. He said his wife later said Rice had told her he planned to kill McAleer during the June 2012 encounter.

    Great googly moogly. 

    What does a Baltimore cop have to do to get fired?

    This guy was a f%$#ing lieutenant after all of this?

    H/T Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

    Labour Loses Big in the UK Elections

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    They got their clock cleaned in an election that was supposed to be too close to call:

    Oh how painfully familiar this is. Any Labour supporter of my generation has been here too often before, hopes raised and dashed on the night. A wash of blue sweeping the board is excruciatingly familiar. But all the same, for every poll to be so dreadfully wrong delivered a profound shock to a stunned Labour party.

     A dismal night for Labour – extraordinary to lose more seats than Gordon Brown lost last time. Nuneaton just before 2am felt like the coffin nail that confirmed the exit poll’s accuracy. Forget neck and neck, this was a terrible trouncing.

     Why? Under their skin, a lot of old hands felt in their bones that it was remarkable that Labour was level pegging when the Tories had everything in their favour. Never has there been such a mighty blast of nearly all the press denouncing Labour in the crudest ways. Add to that six months of nothing but good economic news, on jobs and on growth, with orchestrated paeans of praise from business. Even if people didn’t feel it in their pockets, they were fed a story of sunlit uplands ahead.

    Inside Labour the inquest will be bitter, a battle ahead that risks turning into a grim repeat of old arguments between Blairites and Miliband radicals. Was it the man, or was it his ideas that were defeated?

     But it’s far from clear that Cameron will relish his victory. He has won it at a dreadfully high cost. He was forced to concede an EU referendum that risks taking Britain out of the EU. The volcanic eruption of nationalism in Scotland will be turbo-charged by another Conservative government they didn’t elect. Cameron’s wretched place in the history books looks set to be the man who broke the union, and left a diminished little England as his legacy. This may be the last election of a United Kingdom ever, both Labour and Tories sharing some blame.

     As I write, it’s not clear Cameron has won a majority. If not, the Fixed Term Parliament Act – passed in haste to be deeply regretted by all – means he can’t threaten an election to bully minor parties into supporting him. But if he has pulled it off, the country can expect an even more radically rightwing government. Austerity of double the ferocity lies ahead, benefits cut to the marrow, public services shredded. The NHS can expect accelerated privatisation while the BBC should prepare itself for savage treatment in next year’s charter renewal. Labour’s failure to stave off this future will lead to great soul-searching and self-blame.

    The aforementioned Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 makes the calling of an election because a coalition member has pulled out or a loss of confidence in government vastly more difficult, which should give Cameron plenty of time to privatize Britain’s National Health Service.

    This is not a good day for the UK, and I think that it gives impetus to both the anti EU factions and the forces of Scottish independence.

    It was supposed to be close, but Labour leader Ed Milibrand explicitly ruled out any coalition with the Scottish National Party, which had the effect of  driving almost all of Scotland to go SNP:

    After a shock exit poll forecast that the SNP could win 58 out of Scotland’s 59 seats, early count figures suggested the party would win all seven of Glasgow’s Labour-held constituencies, eight months after the city voted yes to independence, also unseating Scottish Labour’s former deputy leader Anas Sarwar.

    Interestingly enough, labor actually picked up a bit on the total votes, but they got steamrolled on a by constituency level:

    National results (so far, only 520 of the 650 of the seats have been decided) indicate that Labour was eliminated as a political force in Scotland (for a while, at least), and that the Lib-Dems have been absolutely demolished.

    Party Seats Gain Loss Net Votes Vote share (%) Swing (points)
    Conservative 229 26 6 20 8,286,508 34.3% -0.1
    Labour 208 18 46 -28 7,777,190 32.2% 1.2
    Scottish National Party 55 49 0 49 1,434,291 5.9% 3.9
    Democratic Unionist Party 8 1 1 0 184,260 0.8% 0.0
    Liberal Democrat 6 0 38 -38 1,820,063 7.5% -14.7
    Sinn Fein 4 0 1 -1 176,232 0.7% -0.0
    Plaid Cymru 3 0 0 0 181,704 0.8% 0.0
    Social Democratic and Labour Party 3 0 0 0 99,809 0.4% -0.1
    Ulster Unionist Party 2 2 0 2 114,935 0.5% N/A
    UK Independence Party 1 0 0 0 2,955,216 12.2% 9.3
    Others 1 0 3 -3 214,683 0.9% N/A
    Green – – – – 855,008 3.5% 2.7
    Alliance 0 0 1 -1 61,556 0.3% 0.1

    I would argue that the poor showing of the Lib Dems is a good thing. They were not a moderating element in coalition with the Tories, and the only principles that they pushed with any vigo(u)r were those were electoral policies which would serve to put them in a position as a junior coalition partner yet again. Good riddance.

    UKIP more than tripled their share of the vote, but (thankfully) it appears that they will have somewhere between 0 and 2 MPs.

    However, even without their winning many/any seats, their rise is yet another indicator of how right wing nativist parties are gaining traction throughout the EU.

    That’s Entertainment, Albany Edition

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    It appears that Preet Bharara, the US Attorney who has indicted the leaders of both houses in New York, has a major campaign donor who is singing like a f%$#ing canary:

    Just as important as Monday’s charges against Senate Majority leader Dean Skelos and his son was the revelation, in the newly unsealed complaint, that an executive with the state’s top campaign donor is now cooperating with the feds.

    Charles Dorego, the senior vice president of Glenwood Management, allegedly gave Skelos’ son Adam a $20,000 cash payment and steered him title insurance work. Like many big real estate firms, state policy changes on rent control and the 421-a subsidy program are worth millions to Glenwood, and it kept Dean Skelos, the Senate majority leader, quite close.

    What’s prompting concern at the Capitol is that Dorego, as well as Glenwood founder Leonard Litwin, are close to everyone.

    “If Dorego is involved,” said one lobbyist, speaking on background, “then you can bet more trees are going to fall.”

    In the past four years, Glenwood passed out at least $3.6 million to state politicians and the political committees that support them through a roster of two dozen limited liability companies. Records show it has ties to a dark money group that spent another $1 million attacking Democrats in 2012. It’s hard to state definitively, because only some of the L.L.C.s can be readily associated, by address, with their parent company.

    ………

    Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has benefited the most, taking in $1.45 million for his campaign committee and the soft money account he controls at the Democratic State Committee. Glenwood is also the largest donor to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Tom DiNapoli, both Democrats.

    There are more people on Bharara’s hit parade. That much is clear.

    I also think that he is looking very hard at governor Cuomo, and the people closest to him, and given that New York state is New York state, I would expect to see some of his senior aides indicted, and I hope that hizzonner is indicted.

    The Program that Edward Snowden Leaked was Ilegal*

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    A federal appeals court in New York ruled on Thursday that the once-secret National Security Agency program that is systematically collecting Americans’ phone records in bulk is illegal. The decision comes as a fight in Congress is intensifying over whether to end and replace the program, or to extend it without changes.

    In a 97-page ruling, a three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a provision of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, known as Section 215, cannot be legitimately interpreted to allow the bulk collection of domestic calling records.

    The provision of the act used to justify the bulk data program is to expire June 1, and the ruling is certain to increase tension that has been building in Congress.

    ………

    The ruling puts new pressure on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, to make serious changes to the Patriot Act, which he has so far aggressively defended against any alteration, even as recently as Thursday on the Senate floor. Mr. McConnell has pressed to maintain the N.S.A.’s existing program against bipartisan efforts to scale it back, and has proposed simply extending the statute by the June 1 deadline.

    But the court’s ruling calls into question whether that statute can still be used to issue new orders to phone companies requiring them to turn over their customers’ records.

    Thursday’s ruling is the first time a higher-level court in the regular judicial system has reviewed the N.S.A. phone records program. It did not come with any injunction ordering the program to cease, and it is not clear that anything else will happen in the judicial system before Congress has to make a decision about the expiring law.

    The data collection had repeatedly been approved in secret by judges serving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which oversees national security surveillance. Those judges, who hear arguments only from the government, were willing to accept an interpretation of Section 215 that the appeals court rejected on Thursday.

    ………

    But the appeals court ruling raises the question of whether Section 215, extended or not, has ever legitimately authorized the program. The statute on its face permits only the collection of records deemed “relevant” to a national security case. The government secretly decided, with the FISA court’s secret approval, that this could be interpreted to mean collection of all records, so long as only those that later turn out to be relevant are scrutinized by analysts.

    However, Judge Lynch wrote: “Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans. Perhaps such a contraction is required by national security needs in the face of the dangers of contemporary domestic and international terrorism. But we would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language.”

    So, the NSA argued that bulk collection of data is legal because it might be used at some later date for a national security case, and FISA court, which needs to be kept away from toilet paper, because they will sign anything, agreed.

    Thankfully, the appellate court rightly called bullsh%$ on this.

    Scott Lemieux read the full opinion (it is rather encyclopedic), and gives us these quotes from the opinion:

    …the parties have not undertaken to debate whether the records required by the orders in question are relevant to any particular inquiry. The records demanded are all‐encompassing; the government does not even suggest that all of the records sought, or even necessarily any of them, are relevant to any specific defined inquiry…

    ………

    Thus, the government takes the position that the metadata collected – a vast amount of which does not contain directly “relevant” information, as the government concedes – are nevertheless “relevant” because they may allow the NSA, at some unknown time in the future, utilizing its ability to sift through the trove of irrelevant data it has collected up to that point, to identify information that is relevant. We agree with appellants that such an expansive concept of “relevance” is unprecedented and unwarranted.

    ………

    To the extent that § 215 was intended to give the government, as Senator Kyl proposed, the “same kinds of techniques to fight terrorists” that it has available to fight ordinary crimes such as “money laundering or drug dealing,” the analogy is not helpful to the government’s position here. The techniques traditionally used to combat such ordinary crimes have not included the collection, via grand jury subpoena, of a vast trove of records of metadata concerning the financial transactions or telephone calls of ordinary Americans to be held in reserve in a data bank, to be searched if and when at some hypothetical future time the records might become relevant to a criminal investigation.

    ………

    Such expansive development of government repositories of formerly private records would be an unprecedented contraction of the privacy expectations of all Americans. Perhaps such a contraction is required by national security needs in the face of the dangers of contemporary domestic and international terrorism. But we would expect such a momentous decision to be preceded by substantial debate, and expressed in unmistakable language. There is no evidence of such a debate in the legislative history of § 215, and the language of the statute, on its face, is not naturally read as permitting investigative agencies, on the approval of the FISC, to do any more than obtain the sorts of information routinely acquired in the course of criminal investigations of “money laundering [and] drug dealing.”

    That’s going to leave a mark.

    Given Obama’s record on such privacy and 4th amendment protections, I imagine that is already on the phone with Mitch McConnell in an attempt to expand the NSA’s powers.

    *Technically, it might be unlawful, rather than illegal, but that is not the important part here. Besides, I am an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!†

    †I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!

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    You read that right.
    PC went from 70 to 10 seats in an 81 seat parliament
    Screen shot Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0

    If Canada has a Texas, it is the province of Alberta, which is very much a Petro-Feudal state.

    For the past 43 years, the Progressive Conservative (PC) party, Canada’s mainstream conservative party, has been the majority, and for over 30 years before that, the right wing populist Alberta Social Credit Party held the majority.

    In yesterday’s election, the PC was turfed out, and the liberal New Democratic Party (NDP), the most liberal of Canada’s 4 mainstream parties, won, and the PC was completely crushed.

    This is a stunning result:

    The NDP has won a majority in Alberta by toppling the Progressive Conservative colossus that has dominated the province for more than four decades.

    The party under leader Rachel Notley swept all 19 seats in Edmonton on Tuesday and made inroads in previously barren NDP territory in Calgary and Lethbridge.

    The Wildrose party appeared poised to take second place and form the official Opposition, while Premier Jim Prentice and his PCs were trailing in third.

    Of course, as Tip O’Neil was wont to say, “All politics is local,” so the recent disarray in the Alberta PC party (4 premiers in 4 years) likely has a lot to do with their electoral disaster, but I have to assume that there are also some generational changes in the Alberta electorate, which in turn may indicate changes in Canadian politics:  Alberta is a power base of the Conservative Party of Canada.

    Here’s hoping that this bodes ill for the Prime Minister Steven Harper, as well.

    Is Bipartisan Governing More Corrupt?

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    People say they want more bipartisanship. In poll after poll after poll, they decry the polarized atmosphere in Washington and say they want their leaders to work together.

    To which the people of New York and New Jersey might reply: seriously?

    It’s indictment-and-arrest season in the tri-state region. Monday morning, New York State Senate Leader Dean Skelos, a Republican, and his son Adam were arrested on federal charges of extortion, fraud, and soliciting bribes. It’s been just three months since State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, was himself arrested on federal corruption charges. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River in New Jersey, Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni, two former top allies of Governor Chris Christie, pleaded not guilty to nine counts apiece including wire fraud and conspiracy in the George Washington Bridge Scandal. On Friday, David Wildstein, a Christie appointee, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges in the same scandal.

    What New York and New Jersey share, besides oft-imitated accents and embarrassing reputations for political corruption, is bipartisan governance. It wasn’t that long ago—before the bridge scandal, credit downgrades, and collapse of Atlantic City—that Christie seemed like a model of a Republican who could work with Democrats and achieve his priorities. Christie forged an alliance with Jersey Democratic boss George Norcross and his protege Steve Sweeney, the Democratic president of the State Senate. Christie even managed to gain many Democratic endorsements in his 2013 run for reelection. In fact, prosecutors say it was his aides’ overzealous attempt to squeeze an endorsement from the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee that led to the bridge closure that now threatens to undo his career.

    Something similar was going on in Albany. Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, became extremely close with Silver and Skelos, even though Skelos was a Republican. In his January State of the State address—the day before Silver’s arrest, it turned out—he described his relationship with the two as “the three amigos.” The alliance drove some other New York Democrats nuts. Even though Cuomo had delivered two major progressive priorities in passing gun control and legalizing gay marriage, he governed far too close to the center for liberals’ taste on economic issues. But that allowed Cuomo to run the state government smoothly and implement his agenda.

    In both cases, government functioned thanks to the lubrication of lucre, which allowed coalitions to grow across the aisle. There’s been no clear evidence of illegality outside of the bridge scandal, but reporters including Alec MacGillis have shown how Christie doled out favors to his and Norcross’s factions while bullying opponents into support or at least silence. In Cuomo’s case, he launched a highly trumpeted ethics inquiry, the Moreland Commission, after a series of embarrassing arrests of lawmakers, but then muzzled and eventually shut it down—when, it seems, it annoyed too many members of both parties. Unfortunately for them, and for Cuomo, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara decided to pick up where the commission left off and ended up with charges against the two leaders.

    This is not surprising.  If there is a lesson to be learned from machine politics in the 19th century, it is that when there is personal profit in doing the business of governing, that business gets done..

    Of course, this only works for moderate levels of corruption.

    Above that, you have Nigeria, where the level of corruption is so high that there are resources left to actually provide services..

    This is not an endorsement of corruption.  Neither am I am suggesting that excessive bipartisanship, particularly when the bipartisanship supports moneyed interests, causes corruption.

    I am suggesting that it is an indicator of corruption.  I am suggesting correlation, not causation.

    I would also suggest that the desire for a new era of bipartisanship is firmly in the, “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it,” category.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Pulitzer Prize Edition

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    The editor of the editorial page most likely to be shown as factually inaccurate by the front pate, that of the Wall Street Journal, has been named as the Chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board:

    Paul Gigot, the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, has been elected chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Columbia University announced today.

    Gigot succeeds Danielle Allen, a scholar and author who is the incoming director of the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. The Pulitzer Board chairmanship is a one-year appointment. Board members serve a maximum of nine years.

     Gigot’s career at The Wall Street Journal spans 35 years. He has held his current position since 2001. He is responsible for the newspaper’s editorials, op-ed articles, arts criticism and book reviews. He also directs the editorial pages of the Journal‘s Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com website. He is the host of the weekly half-hour news program, the Journal Editorial Report, on the Fox News Channel.

     Gigot joined the Journal in 1980 as a reporter in Chicago. He became the Journal’s Asia correspondent in 1982, based in Hong Kong. He won an Overseas Press Club award for his reporting on the Philippines. In 1984, he was named the first editorial page editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal, based in Hong Kong. In 1987, he was assigned to Washington, where he contributed editorials and a weekly column on politics, “Potomac Watch,” which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

    The Journal‘s editorial page is the most fact averse in the nation. (with the Washington Post‘s OP/ED page being an embarrassingly close 2nd)

    Putting him in charge of the prize is on a par with making Mary Mallon* the New York State Commissioner of Health.

    *Aka Typhoid Mary.

    Throw a Case with a Dead Black Man, and Get Elected to Congress

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    Something is seriously wrong with Staten Island:

    The Staten Island district attorney, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., whose office investigated [Covered Up] the chokehold death of Eric Garner in a struggle with the police last year, easily won a special election for the House of Representatives on Tuesday, according to unofficial results.

    He threw it all at a grand jury with no direction, and then fought like hell to make sure that the grand jury testimony never saw the light of day.

    He didn’t think that a black man’s death at police hands warranted a serious investigation.

    With nearly all precincts reporting, Mr. Donovan, a Republican, was leading with nearly 60 percent of the vote, compared with about 39 percent for Councilman Vincent J. Gentile, the Democratic candidate, in the race to represent the 11th Congressional District. It covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

    The victory makes Mr. Donovan the lone Republican from New York City in the House.

    Mr. Donovan, in his victory speech, cast his election as a rebuke to Democrats in Washington and New York, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is widely disliked on Staten Island.

    “You sent a message to President Obama, to Nancy Pelosi and, yes, even to Bill de Blasio, that their policies are wrong for our nation,” Mr. Donovan said. “They’re wrong for our city and they’re wrong for the community of the 11th Congressional District.”

    Conceding defeat, Mr. Gentile declared his campaign a moral success for “starting a real conversation” about bringing political change in the district. “I want to say loudly that our work is not yet over,” he said.

    The seat has been vacant since January, when the previous representative, Michael G. Grimm, a Republican, resigned after pleading guilty to tax fraud.

    The election — held under unusual circumstances because of Mr. Grimm’s abrupt resignation and lingering tension around the Garner case — never developed into a heated contest. National Democrats, who were bitterly disappointed after spending millions of dollars in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Mr. Grimm in 2014, never got involved on Mr. Gentile’s behalf.

    ………

    Neither candidate spoke often about the Garner case, which prompted demonstrations across New York and other cities late last year when a grand jury declined to indict a police officer who was captured on video placing Mr. Garner in a chokehold.

    Mr. Donovan defended his office’s handling of the matter, expressing sympathy for the Garner family but saying that his team had managed the grand jury properly. He declined to answer detailed questions about the case, citing laws governing grand jury secrecy.

    Mr. Gentile did not raise it because he believed that caring about a dead black man would not play well with the Staten Island voters.

     Mr. Donovan won because Mr. Gentile was right.

    Scott Walker Thinks that He is Princess Leia

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    Scott Walker tried to glom onto the “Forth be with you” Star Wars phenomenon.

    — Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) May 4, 2015

    I thought it was kind of lame, but the good folks at NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) put it in a way that is f%$#ing perfect.

    Scottie is completely owned:

    — NARAL (@NARAL) May 4, 2015

    Epic.

    H/t Hullabaloo

    The Clown Car Gets Even More Full

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    The Abridged version of CarlyFiorina.org.


    Her campaign forgot to register it.


    This is unsurprising, seeing as how in her last campaign, she put out the notorious: 


    Demon Sheep Ad (Not a parody, really)

    Carly Fiorina has formally announced that she is running for President.

    In what is an amazing amount of hubris, even by the standards of a Presidential campaign, she will be running on her record as CEO of Hewlett Packard:

    Carly Fiorina became the second woman and the first former chief executive to enter the 2016 presidential campaign when she announced on Monday that her private-sector background and conservative credentials made her best positioned to capture the Republican nomination and take on Hillary Rodham Clinton.

     Ms. Fiorina’s long-shot campaign — polls show only a sliver of Republicans would support her at this stage — has nevertheless attracted the attention of conservatives in early nominating states, largely because of her increasingly pointed attacks on Mrs. Clinton and her impassioned anti-abortion position. (“Liberals believe that flies are worth protecting but that the life of an unborn child is not,” she said in January.)

     “I think I’m the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works,” Ms. Fiorina told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News on Monday. “I understand executive decision-making, which is making a tough call in a tough time with high stakes.”

    Her record is that she nearly destroyed HP.

    Employees began spontaneously singing, “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead” at multiple HP sites when the news of her firing broke.


    She also approved Lucent’s infamous “Brown Ring of Ambivalence” Logo

    Before that, she was the,  president consumer products and later also the president for the global service provider business at Lucent, where she oversaw financing deals that essentially had Lucent paying money to customers to buy their gear:

    Dig under the surface, however, and the story grows more complicated and less flattering. The Lucent that Fiorina walked away from, taking with her $65 million in performance-linked pay, was not at all what it appeared. Nor were several of her division’s biggest sales, including the giant PathNet deal.

     The Lucent-Fiorina story starts in 1995, when AT&T began to consider selling one of its crown jewels, its equipment-making division. The group had $21 billion in annual revenue and housed the famed Bell Labs, birthplace of the transistor and corporate America’s preeminent research outfit.

     Spinning off the equipment group into a separate company had instant appeal. As a separate company, Lucent could sell gear to AT&T’s competitors on an even footing with Nortel, Cisco and others. The timing was also perfect. In the late 1990s companies like Worldcom, Qwest and Global Crossing were laying fiber optic cables around the country and the world. Start-ups like Winstar were spending billions on new-fangled wireless networks. Dozens of small companies including PathNet came up with designs for other types of telecom networks.

     ………

     In the giant PathNet deal that Fiorina oversaw, Lucent agreed to fund more than 100% of the company’s equipment purchases, meaning the small company would get both Lucent gear at no money down and extra cash to boot. Yet how could such a loan to PathNet make sense for Lucent, even based on the world as it appeared in the heady days of 1999? The smaller company had barely $100 million in equity (and that’s based on generous accounting assumptions) on top of which it had already balanced $350 million in junk bonds paying 12.25% interest. Adding $440 million in loans from Lucent to this already debt-heavy capital structure would jack the company’s leverage up to 8 to 1, and potentially even higher as they drew more of the loan.

     Fiorina says in her autobiography that she pushed back against the pressure for short-term growth at any cost, and two former Lucent collegues with whom she remains friendly back her up. On the other hand, this 2001 Fortune story, which described Lucent’s irresponsible growth habits, cites sources saying Fiorina made it known that Wall Street would generously reward companies that emphasized and delivered robust revenue growth. And an executive who sat across the table from Fiorina in a big vendor financing negotiation, when asked this week about what he remembers of the bargaining, described Fiorina as being dead set on chalking up a huge sale. He adds: “The press release was always very important to her.”

    (emphasis mine)

    And she thinks that she can run for President, or more likely, she thinks that the Presidential run will set the table for another future Senate bid.

    It appears that she has learned nothing from her shellacking by Barbara Boxer. (10% in 2010, which was a Republican wave election)