Statement on grand jury decision in Sandra Bland case: pic.twitter.com/r1oFu9MHWc
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 22, 2015
He’s right. If Sandra Bland had been white, she would have been home that evening, and she would be alive today.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts is just a parasite:
Everybody hates Comcast. The cable giant consistently ranks last or near last among all companies on consumer satisfaction surveys. Hurling insults at Comcast — its prices, its speeds, its customer service — has risen nearly to the level of a national pastime.
But what if there’s nothing the company can do to change its customers’ minds? What if most of what people hate about Comcast has its roots in the structure of America’s cable market?
That’s what the company’s CEO, Brian Roberts, suggested last weekend when asked about the company’s poor record in an interview with Business Insider founder Henry Blodget.
………
The problem isn’t Comcast’s service, Roberts is saying; it’s that people have to pay for it. Comcast operates by striking deals with content creators and publishers — ABC, CBS, FOX, ESPN, HBO, and the rest — for the right to broadcast their shows, movies, football, baseball, and basketball games. And as Roberts said, it doesn’t come cheap.
………
One problem with Robert’s argument is that Comcast makes money too — a lot of it.
In 2014, it brought in nearly $69 billion in revenue, with $14.9 billion of that being operating income, a.k.a. profits.
So, yes, Comcast has to charge its customers, but it could charge them less if it wanted to. It could also invest more heavily in more and better-trained customer service workers. It could boost those data caps that customers are always complaining about.
………
But he seems to believe that it may just never be enough. No matter how hard Comcast tries to make its customers happy, they still wind up disgruntled. Customers just can’t stand paying for things, and the only way Comcast could really earn their love is by giving away its product, as Google and Facebook do.
The problem with this argument is that most companies do charge for their products, and few if any are as hated as Comcast. Indeed, the cable TV industry’s upstart rivals — Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime — charge their customers as well.
And customers don’t hate Netflix the way they hate Comcast. In 2014, Comcast scored a 54 out of 100 on the American Customer Satisfaction survey — down from 64 in 2001. On the same survey, Netflix came in at 81. In eight years of measurement, it’s never dropped below a 74.
Comcast’s business model is predicated on monopoly rents.
To paraphrase Lily Tomlin from a long time ago, “We’re the Cable Company, we don’t care, we don’t have to.”
They treat their customers, and their employees with complete contempt, and the customers, return the favor.
Joe Steffen, a former aide to former Maryland Governor Robert “Badhair” Ehrlich was forcibly retired from his position when he got caught planting false stories about Martin O’Malley. (Someone caught him bragging)
Because of his reputation as Ehrlich’s hatchet man, and the glee with which he did his work got him the nickname, “Prince of Darkness”.
He blogs occasionally, and muses on Maryland politics with a focus on the Republican party, which can frequently be rather illuminating.
You know, I can remember when former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, was running for Governor the first time, the time that he won, the time I was still in his employ, that he and a few others from the campaign were in contact with the National Rifle Association (NRA) – in an effort to get the NRA to LOWER its rating of Ehrlich’s time in Congress from an “A” to a “B.”
I don’t recall who it was that Bob and his chosen spoke with at the time, but I do know that the NRA obliged Ehrlich’s request. The reason that the soon-to-be one term Governor made the request is because Bob didn’t want to be going after that office against liberal firebrand and dumbass, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend as an “A” rated NRA supporter. The reason he didn’t want THAT was because at that time the NRA was viewed none too favorably in Maryland, and Ehrlich figured that an “A” rating from them would likely sink his chances at attaining the Governorship.
First, I find it interesting, though not surprising, that the NRA gamed its own rating system to benefit a Republican candidate.
It’s also interesting just how a good NRA rating is poison in Maryland, or at least that it was in 2002.
Given that Steffen is complaining about Governor Larry Hogan’s tepid moves regarding expanded carry of firearms in Maryland (thank you, Governor), it appears that the politics have not changed much in the state.
It also is another bit of evidence that the NRA has become a blatantly partisan organization.
It’s why you read stuff from people that you disagree. You learn stuff.
As to his categorizing Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,(KKT) Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter as a, “liberal firebrand and dumbass,” I disagree with the former, not because she wasn’t a liberal, but because the term, “Firebrand,” implies the ability to generate political heat, and KKT could not generate enough heat to light a match.
As to dumbass bit, I have repeatedly noted that KKT was the worst candidate in the history of the Kennedy clan, and arguably the history of history. (She kicked Ehrlich’s ass in the debate, and still got beaten like a rug in the election.)
The House of Saud has announced a new Muslim coalition to fight terror.
One small problem though, 2 of the more important members of the coalition, Pakistan and Lebanon, have denied being members of the coalition, while Indonesia and Malaysia have indicated that their roles would be far more circumscribed than announced:
Earlier this week Saudi Arabia announced a new 34-country coalition of Muslim nations to fight terrorism, but two of the key countries have said they had no idea they were involved.
The countries from Asia, Africa and the Arab world were combining their efforts to combat extremism, according to the Saudis, who have faced mounting pressure to step up efforts in addressing the threat of extremism.
………
But following the statement at least two governments have claimed they were not aware of their own involvement. Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary, Aizaz Chaudhry, has been quoted as saying he only learnt of his country’s inclusion in the alliance from news reports.
He is said to have phoned the country’s ambassador in Saudi capital Riyadh – where a joint operations centre is planned – for clarification. Senior officials claimed they were not consulted beforehand.
………
Lebanon was also equally baffled country following the announcement, according to Lebanese media outlet Naharnet. The Prime Minister Tammam Salam reportedly welcomed the news, saying: “Lebanon is at the forefront of the confrontation with terrorism.”
In contrast the Foreign Ministry was adamant they had no “memo or phone call mentioning this coalition.” They added they had :”No knowledge whatsoever of the issue of forming an Islamic anti-terror coalition.”
The office also questioned whether the move encroached on their ‘constitutional jurisdiction on foreign affairs’.
Indonesia was also said to be still deciding whether to join, while Malaysia ruled out any military intervention.
This is not surprising.
The non-Arab Muslim nations have very little interest in being part of an endeavor directed by the House of Saud, and majority Shia Lebanon would not be a big supporter of this initiative, since it would likely involve efforts to extend Sunni hegemony in the region.
In order to fund health benefits for 911 first responders, the fees for H1B visas have been doubled, and the software houses in India who abuse the program are unamused:
The United States is set to pass a bill named the “9/11 Health and Compensation Act” and Indian IT companies are mad as hell about it.
The bill delivers funding to compensate those whose lives were impacted by the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. To keep those dollars flowing, the Bill has changed the amount businesses must pay to secure an H1-B or L1 visa to bring workers into the USA.
Indian IT companies use those visas a lot, to bring people from India to work in the USA. Use of such visas has become an issue in the US presidential election, as some candidates seek to curb use of the permit in order to promote employment of local workers. Critics of H1-B visas also argue that they are used to keep wages low, as by bringing in foreign workers it becomes possible to give them a modest pay bump to cope with the cost of living in the US without paying them the same wage as permanent residents or citizens.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the H1-B, Congress will on Friday double the cost of using one to US$4,000, with the increase funnelled into funds for the victims of 9/11.
India’s large IT concerns, which are among the heaviest users of H1-Bs, are livid because the fee increase will push up their costs. So livid that when Barack Obama called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to thank him for help negotiating the Paris climate change agreement, Modi pointedly “shared with President the concerns of the Indian IT industry and professionals on the proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress relating to H1B and L1 visas.”
The H1B program is about letting people in who cannot be found in the US.
The Indian IT firms, as well as large IT firms in the US, use it to cut their labor costs, both by hiring cheap slave labor, and by pushing down wages for domestic workers.
I think that this fee should be closer to $40,000 than it is to $4,000.
Companies should never save money by bringing in H1B and L1 visas.
As to Tata and Infosys and the rest of the Indian software firms, they can take the implicit subsidy to their business model that comes from the H1B program and shove it up their ass.
He offers a primer on how to deal with your Foxhole uncle/cousin/brother/etc. at holiday time:
It appears that the Cuyahoga County district attorney has been pulling out all the stops in the grand jury proceedings to ensure that the police walk free:
Lawyers for the family of a 12-year-old boy fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer called for a federal investigation into his death because they say the local prosecutor has been biased in favor of law enforcement.
In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch that was released on Tuesday, the legal team for Tamir Rice’s mother and sister complained about the unusual measures taken by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office in reviewing the 2014 shooting.
“We write to request that your office launch an independent investigation into Tamir’s death because the local prosecutor has abdicated his responsibility to conduct a fair and impartial investigation and has severely compromised the grand-jury process,” attorneys for the Rice family wrote.
Among a variety of complaints, the letter describes a bizarre moment when a prosecutor allegedly shoved a toy gun in the face of a police expert testifying to the grand jury that the shooting of Tamir was unjustified.
………
But the letter to Lynch shows that the family’s frustrations have widened under prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s oversight. The family’s lawyers allege that he has manipulated the investigation and grand jury proceedings to benefit the officers.
This month, McGinty allowed Loehman and Officer Frank Garmback, who drove the squad car to the playground, to read prepared statements to the grand jury, but then allowed them to invoke the Fifth Amendment to avoid questioning by lawyers.
An individual cannot selectively use Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination after giving some testimony under oath, the Rice family attorneys said.
………
The letter also alleges that McGinty’s office, in another unusual move, asked Rice’s family to gather evidence on its own for the grand jury. Experts rounded up by attorneys for Rice’s family were then subjected to perverse questioning by prosecutors last week, the letter alleged.
In one instance, a prosecutor removed a toy gun from his pants and pointed it in the face of an expert during his testimony, according to the letter. The letter says the surprise use of a prop in court was an exaggerated reference to the threat Loehman allegedly felt when encountering Tamir.
The expert was Roger Clark, a 27-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department. He was one of two experts with law enforcement backgrounds who’d been retained by Tamir’s family and wrote reports that concluded the killing was unjustified. HuffPost has been unable to reach Clark for comment.
I would suggest that a criminal,and a state bar, investigation against by the McGinty are justified, because the allegations appear to be credible, and if they are true, there appear to be a lot of lawyers who need to be marched out of their offices in handcuffs.
It sounds like the DNC blinked, notwithstanding their protestations to the contrary:
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign overnight Friday night reached an agreement on voter data access, after a day of acrimony between the sides.
Even in the wake of a deal, the DNC and Sanders’ team have differing stories on how it was settled.
In a statement shortly after midnight, the Sanders campaign said the DNC “capitulated and agreed to reinstate Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign’s access to a critically-important voter database.”
The statement said that the campaign’s filing of a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington brought about the change.
“We are extremely pleased that the DNC has reversed its outrageous decision to take Sen. Sanders’ data. The information we provided tonight is essentially the same information we already sent them by email on Thursday,” said Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver.
In a statement released at about the same time, DNC Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explained the resolution differently, saying it came after the Sanders camp “complied with the DNC’s request to provide the information that we have requested of them.”
“The Sanders campaign has agreed to fully cooperate with the continuing DNC investigation of this breach,” she added.
“The fact that data was accessed inappropriately is completely unacceptable, and the DNC expects each campaign to operate with integrity going forward with respect to the voter file.”
I don’t think that anyone with a Glasgow Coma Scale score above 3 believes DWS on this one.
Once the lawsuit was filed, and it was clear that the DNC was violating the terms of the contract, there was a 10 day waiting period required before taking action, and that the optics were rebounding to Sanders’ benefit, they had no choice.
Could someone please fire the frowzy headed albatross around the Democratic Party’s neck that is Debbie Wasserman Schultz?
Note: If you are seeing this of Facebook, it will not update as I update.
10:50 pm
Hillary ended her closing statement with, “May the force be with you.”
That is f%$#ing awesome.
10:49 pm
Closing statements:
Bernie Sanders: Talked about his background, growing up poor, and how it shaped is opinions on the economy, education, etc.
Martin O’Malley: Republicans will do nothing the make the country, endorses path to citizenship for undocumented, we must act on climate change.
Hillary Clinton: Republicans are scary and evil assholes. I just became a grandmother, and think about her future.
10:37 pm
Martin O’Malley just talked about his wife Katie in glowing terms when he got to talk about the first spouse thing, extolling her lawyering, judging, and advocacy against domestic violence.
He is so getting laid tonight.
10:36 pm
What the F%$#?
A question about the role of the first spouse, and talked about Bill Clinton not supervising flower arrangements?
What the F%$#ing F%$#?
10:33 pm
Radditz just asked about the mess that is Libya, and how much blame she bears for that.Clinton’s reply was not particularly meaningful, and Radditz basically repeated her question.
Neither Sanders or O’Malley are saying that they need to talk, because they recognize that she is digging herself a hole.
Sanders finally gets to talk, and notes, once again, that the unintended consequences of regime change are tend to be disastrous.
O’Malley, says that we let our, “Lust for regime change,” to override our ability manage the situation.
10:26 pm
A Union-Leader editor just asked Sanders how to handle the recent Heroine epidemic.
Sanders response is that we need to look at doctors and pharmaceutical companies and the over prescription of opiates, and that addiction is a disease, not a a crime, and that it is immoral for addicts to wait months for treatment.
Hillary talks about how this was brought up to her at her talks in New Hampshire (good move), and largely agrees with Sanders.
O’Malley talks about the loss of a daughter and a mother of his friends to addiction. It is a human and touching moment.
He also specifically talked about how we need to have interventions from the first time that someone hits a hospital with addiction problems.
10:20 pm
They ask Hillary Clinton about racism and law enforcement misconduct.
Clinton talked primarily about rebuilding trust between the police and the populace.
O’Malley talked about how he worked to fix Baltimore when he was mayor (IMNSHO, too aggressive policing) and that he reduced incarceration as governor.
O’Malley went there, saying that police forces need to be more open and accountable.
Sanders notes that we are a prison society, with the highest incarceration in the history of history. He said that racism is real.
He then said that cops should not shoot unarmed civilians, and that we should legalize pot, and end the war on drugs, “Spend more on jobs and education, not incarceration.”
10:10 pm
Another break, and the talking heads come on (Stephanopoulos and Karl, not David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison, the band Talking Heads make a comment would be cool)
I screamed, “SHUT UP GEORGE!”
10:08 pm
Clinton is trying to say that people earning a $¼ million a year are middle class who must not pay a few bucks more a week for health care and family leave.
Sanders again notes that his proposals would be a net saver for the middle class.
O’Malley noted that he balanced all his budgets (a bit of a fib, it’s required in the state constitution, not a choice) and that he made taxes more progressive (true)
10:05 pm
Quote of the night. When Sanders and Clinton get into it on taxes, Bernie says, “Oh, now this is getting fun.”
10:04 pm
They switch to education, and call out an educators ask Sanders how free tuition won’t just load up the taxpayers.
Sanders goes back to his Tobin tax.
O’Malley says, “I have actually done this,” as Governor. Point, O’Malley.
Clinton talks about her educational compact, and then says that Sanders single payer is unaffordable.
Sanders replied how the costs of healthcare are born by the ordinary people, and that single payer will save them money,
9:57 pm
We move to healthcare, Hillary is asked about increases in healthcare prices.
She talks about needing new regulations, and calls out governors who opted out of Medicaid expansion.
Sanders still calls for single payer. He says that everyone should have the right to health coverage. Martha Radditz demands to know the exact amount of tax increases, and Sanders replied that ordinary family will save thousands of dollars a year.
9:52 pm
Sanders calls out Bill Clinton’s role in repealing Glass-Steagall and deregulating the financial industry.
9:50 pm
Clinton just made a little fib: She said that she had more donations from teachers and students than she has from Wall Street. There may be more $20 dollar checks from teachers, but the banksters cut bigger checks, and gave her more money.
9:48 pm
Hillary is asked about what she would do, and who should like her. Her response, “Everyone.”
Sanders explicitly says that big business will not like him. He wants the big banks up, and says that the greed of the billionaire class are destroying the economy and people’s lives.
O’Malley just called out Hillary Clinton for invoking 911 to excuse her support for the big banks.
Charlie just said, “I want O’Malley to be Bernie Sanders’ running mate.”
9:43 pm
Clinton was a little late coming back from the break. She apologized, and Charlie, my son, said, “This is the most entertaining she has been all night.”
Sanders is asked about middle class stagnation, and he listed them off quickly:
O’Malley noted how he has walked the walk, raising Maryland’s minimum wage, and having the highest median wage in the nation.
Clinton basically calls out the Republicans, doing the front runner again.
9:33 pm
I’m watching a break, and the f%$#ing talking heads have taken advantage of the beak to have George Stephanopoulos and Jonathan Karl bloviating.
Please, run ads instead.
9:27 pm
Clinton just said that we have to remove Assad first. (Gawd, her foreign policy sucks)
Sanders notes that her priorities are wrong, and that we need to focus on ISIS, and that Assad is a distraction.
O’Malley notes that Clinton is engaging in cold war thinking, where we pick and choose who we want to overthrow. Has a great quote, “It is not our role to roam the world looking for monsters to destroy.
9:21 pm
Sanders is asked about ISIS, and he says that the US should not be the policemen of the world.
He called out Saudi Arabia and Qatar for not dealing with ISIS. He specifically called out the war in Yemen, and Qatar’s profligate spending on the world cup.
Clinton was asked whether we are already on the ground, as we lost a special forces member there, and there are more special forces on the ground.
She denied that this is an escalation, and Martha Radditz suggested that our current actions will lead to an escalation.
Radditz asked O’Malley about his accusations of lack of adequate human intelligence in the region.
O’Malley makes note that we are under resourcing foreign policy, and sustainable development.
Clinton replies that she is still arguing for a no-fly zone. Again, stupid. A no-fly zone is declare war against Syria.
Gawd, she is stupidly bellicose in her foreign policy.
Sanders noted that Clinton is too eager for regime change, and does not consider the blowback.
He notes that we have created vacuums have created safe havens for terrorists.
9:10 pm
Clinton is asked about a Syrian refugee ban, and goes full weasel, and says nothing of note.
O’Malley calls the talk of a Refugee ban a betrayal of American values.
9:07 pm
Clinton is asked about banning encryption, and suggests a “Manhattan like Project for Tech.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If law enforcement has access, then the companies have access, then the crooks have access.
O’Malley was asked, and said that we should not asked to give up our rights for security.
9:03 pm
Clinton is asked of Trump supporters are wrong.
She just called him ISIS’s best recruiter directly.
Sanders comes back with the fact that Trump is using hatred and bigotry to rip off ordinary people.
O’Malley objects to being ignored again.
8:59 pm
Clinton claims that O’Malley mischaracterized her positions.
I would note that Clinton is clearly playing the front-runner in her debate strategey.
8:56 pm
Clinton is asked why she supports gun control when many Americans want more guns.
Clinton shot this down, noted that she does not feel that this is helpful.
She also went after Trump, essentially calling him an ISIS recruiting tool.
Sanders was then asked about guns, and he said that wants better background checks and an end tyo the gun show loophole. More significantly, he came out for an assault weapons ban, which is a big deal.
Martin O’Malley had to break in to note that he actually passed gun control laws, and noted that Sanders voted against the Brady bill, and that Clinton has flip flopped on this issue.
He scored a good point when he said that ISIS propaganda videos suggest buying from gun shows.
Sanders got pissed off, and noted his record.
8:48 pm
The moderators bring up the San Bernardino attack, asking Hillary Clinton.
She calls for an American led air campaign with Arab and Kurd boots on the ground. (Hasn’t work so far)
She also talks about working with the tech companies, which sounds a lot like carrots and sticks to get them to look through our personal statements.
O’Malley brings up that we have failed to invest in intelligence, and brought up his close ties to first responders, and increase data sharing.
Sanders told by the moderators that 78% of the population believes the government cannot defend against lone wolf terrorists. Sanders agreed, and noted that it was a fruit our our ill considered Iraq invasion.
8:43 pm
The moderators started with a question on the data breach issues (FYI).
Bernie Sanders was very forthcoming, noted that there have been repeated problems with the way that the data is (mishandled) the data.
He admitted that his staff did the wrong thing, and that he would fire anyone involved in this breach.
When he asked, he apologized immediately to Clinton.
Clinton was reasonably gracious in reply.
O’Malley condemned the whole thing as a distraction from the issues, and brought up terrorism again.
8:38 pm
Clinton, then O’Malley, and then Sanders.
Clinton did a fairly generic opening that leaned on her inevitabiliuty, and claimed that she had a plan to defeat ISIS.
O’Malley went big on national security and terrorism. Oh, snap! O’Malley called Trump out as a fascist, though not by name.
Sanders opened with his fairly standard positions: Changing the economy to benefit us all, moving away from fossil fuels, and he said that our foreign policy needs to change
8:32 pm
Skipped the 30 minutes of talking heads, they walked on the stage and are about to start the opening statements.
Most of the Jews of Poland died in the Holocaust.
Many of the rest fled following antisemitic incidents post WW II.
But Poland is Poland, and they won’t let an absence of Jews get in the way of blaming them for everything:
When some 50,000 people turned out in Warsaw recently to protest a plan by Poland’s ruling party to pack the nation’s constitutional court, the hard right-wing political faction responded quickly with a counter-demonstration of its own. Its counter-protest featured, among other things, a placard that mocked those claiming to defend democracy as “the committee to defend Jewish-Communist wealth.”
At around the same time in Wroclaw, Poland’s fourth largest city, crowds at a parallel demonstration to support the recently elected Law and Justice party shouted, “Wroclaw is being de-Polanized as the Jews are buying up homes in the city.”
At another Wroclaw demonstration, held November 18 to protest a European Union plan that would see Poland admit some 7,000 Syrian refugees, demonstrators denounced the proposed immigrants as Islamists — and to somehow add to this point, they set fire to a previously prepared effigy of a Hasidic Jew holding the E.U. flag.
God, Honor and Fatherland,” the crowd then chanted.
Some things never change.
H/t the inner walls
*Google the Kielce Pogrom.
After repeated failures by the DNC’s politically connected vendor to properly secure candidate databases, a techie at the Sanders campaign did something wicked stupid, and the DNC cut off the campaign form their own data:
A fight between the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders and the Democratic leadership went public on Friday as the party punished the campaign over a data breach and the Sanders camp sued the party and accused it of actively trying to help Hillary Clinton.
The dispute came after members of Mr. Sanders’ data team were found to have gotten access to, searched and stored proprietary information from Hillary Clinton’s team during a software glitch with an important voter database. The Democratic National Committee acted swiftly to deny the Sanders campaign future access to the party’s 50-state voter file, which contains information about millions of Democrats and is invaluable to campaigns on a daily basis.
Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, accused the party committee of stacking the scales to help Mrs. Clinton, claiming that it was being unfairly penalized for the data breach. At a news conference, Mr. Weaver insisted that the campaign had dealt with the situation by firing its national data director. Later Friday, the campaign filed a federal lawsuit seeking to have its access to the file restored.
The Democratic committee is “actively” working to “undermine” the Sanders campaign, Mr. Weaver said, reflecting its longstanding frustration that the party apparatus, which is supposed to be neutral, is lining up behind Mrs. Clinton.
………
At issue is a database of voter information, with millions of records, that the party makes available to campaigns for a fee, and is “heart and soul” of modern presidential campaigns, as the Sanders campaign put it. State parties feed the list with information including names, addresses, ethnicity if available, and voting history. Usually, public election records show which elections a person has voted in, though who they voted for is secret.
The Democratic Party then adds data from commercially available lists that track such information as television habits and magazine subscriptions. They match voter names to donor lists created by both political and nonpolitical organizations.
Each campaign then inputs data gathered by its own staff, gleaned from door knocks, phone calls, emails and other sources. With the data, they can assign each voter their own “score” signifying how likely they are to vote for a candidate. The scores advise everything from decisions about whose doors to knock on to which voters might donate.
It is this use of the massive combination of data that drives modern campaigns, mastered by the Obama operations in 2008 and 2012, which had a team of more than 50 people poring over the information to best target their fund-raising, persuasion and voter turnout efforts.
The breach occurred Wednesday when the firm that handles the list, NGP VAN, was making a tweak to its system and inadvertently dropped the firewall between the campaigns for approximately four hours, according to the court filing by the Sanders campaign. That meant that the campaigns could see each other’s information. But only the Sanders campaign gained access to data that was proprietary.
………
In its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, the Sanders campaign argued that the party had no right to terminate the licensing agreement that allowed the campaign access to the voter file. The campaign estimated that the loss of access would cost it $600,000 in contributions, a serious blow because it has “been financed primarily with contributions from individual donors rather than Political Action Committees.”
“However, the damage to the campaign’s political viability, as a result of being unable to communicate with constituents and voters, is far more severe, and incapable of measurement,” the suit said. Party representatives said they had not seen the suit and thus could not comment.
One show of support for Mr. Sanders’s case came from David Axelrod, a senior adviser for President Obama’s campaigns. He called the penalty “harsh,” saying on Twitter that, without evidence that the campaign hierarchy knew about data poaching, it appear that the “DNC is putting finger on scale.”
Josh Uretsky, the fired national data director from the Sanders campaign, also called the punishment “an overreaction” and insisted that he had merely been trying to verify the data breach, adding: “We did so in a way that we know would create a record that the D.N.C. and NGP VAN would have access to. We deliberately did not download or take custodianship of the records.” Mr. Utresky and Mr. Sanders’ aides did not address why multiple users from the campaign searched the Clinton data.
Mr. Uretsky acknowledged that Clinton data was being looked at, but said his intent was to see whether the Sanders campaign’s data might also be vulnerable.
Utretsky did something classically stupid, and he deserved to be fired.
This is kind of the problematic “IT Bro” bullsh%$ that plagues the computer professions.
The fact that this is all over the news, when repeated failures by this vendor, NGP VAN, over the past few months got buried and ignored does seem to indicate that the always thuggish and incompetent Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is seizing on this incident to once again to put her thumb on the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton.
After all, the stupid sh%$ that the Sanders hapless IT dweeb pulled over a short time, “Over a period of more than 40 minutes,” so the action taken appears to be excessive.
The fact the DNC aggressively leaked of the whole affair to the press, further reinforces the perception that DWS is deliberately f%$#ing the Sanders campaign.
So we have a lawsuit against the DNC to the tune of $600,000.00 a day.
Can we please fire Debbie Wasserman-Schultz now? She is hopeless and hapless.
The official statement by the Sanders campaign comes after the break:
Statement by Jeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders 2016 Campaign Manager
December 18, 2015
Two months ago, shortly after our digital vendor who conducts modeling for our campaign told us that there was failure in the firewall that prevents campaigns from seeing one another’s data, we contacted the DNC and told them about the failure. We were concerned that our data could be compromised and we were assured at the time the firewall would be restored.
Instead, we found out two days ago that once again, this sensitive and important data was compromised because the DNC and its vendor failed to protect it.
We have invested enormous campaign resources in acquiring the rights to use this proprietary information. But the DNC, in an inappropriate overreaction, has denied us access to our own data.
Let me briefly discuss the three issues involved here.
First, this is not the first time that the vendor hired by the DNC to run the voter file program, NGP VAN, has allowed serious failures to occur. On more than one occasion, they have dropped the firewall between the data of competing Democratic campaigns. That is dangerous incompetence. It was our campaign months ago that alerted the DNC to the fact that campaign data was being made available to other campaigns. At that time our campaign did not run to the media, relying instead on assurances from the vendor that the problem would be resolved. Unfortunately, the other day, the vendor once again dropped the firewall between the campaigns for some data.
Secondly, after discussion with the DNC it became clear that some of our staffers irresponsibly accessed some of the data from another campaign. That behavior is unacceptable to the Sanders campaign and we fired the staffer immediately and made certain that any information obtained was not utilized. We are now speaking to other staffers who might have been involved and further disciplinary action may be taken. Clearly, while that information was made available to our campaign because of the incompetence of the vendor, it should not have been looked at. Period.
Thirdly, rather incredibly, the leadership of the DNC has used this incident to shut down our ability to access our own information, information which is the lifeblood of any campaign. This is the information about our supporters, our volunteers, the lists of people we intend to contact in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. This is information that we have worked hard to obtain. It is our information, not the DNCs.
In other words, by their action, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee is now actively attempting to undermine our campaign. This is unacceptable. Individual leaders of the DNC can support Hillary Clinton in any way they want, but they are not going to sabotage our campaign – one of the strongest grassroots campaigns in modern history.
We are announcing today that if the DNC continues to hold our data hostage, and continues to try to attack the heart and soul of our campaign, we will be in federal court this afternoon seeking an immediate injunction.
What is required here is a full and independent audit of the DNC’s handling of this data and its security from the beginning of this campaign to the present, including the incident in October that we alerted them to.
Courtesy of Bear who Swims:
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The hopeless non-sense spoken by everyone about recent terror attacks miss a single point:
We can minimize attacks, but we can’t stop them
.………
Yes we can improve intelligence, control weapons, strike an bases. And a good strategy might improve safety, limit gun crime, prevent radicalization.
But it won’t stop it all. As the font of much wisdom pointed out “Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man.”
In case you are wondering, this was said by to the Kang* who was Kang before there was Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons.
*My bad, I got the dialogue in the ST:TNG episode Day of the Dove wrong. I am not worthy.
I no longer have the slightest desire to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
It used to be that the Grammys came up with the most irresponsible assessment of popular music, overlooking important artists during their best years (and sometimes apologizing with belated lifetime achievement awards). Recently, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has surpassed the Grammys dubious track record, and this year brings the group to what may be a new low. The Hall’s new slate involves turning down several worthy nominees for the sake of inducting Steve Miller, Deep Purple, and Chicago. If these are the bands most suitable for honoring, the hall should just fold itself up and go home.
I want to have nothing to do with any organization that has the Steve Miller Band as a member.
Vladimir Putin handed out a couple of ringing—if not entirely official—endorsements to two of this year’s most notorious men: Donald Trump and suspended FIFA President Sepp Blatter. During his annual press conference on Thursday, the Russian president praised Donald Trump, calling the frontrunner in the Republican primary race a “bright and talented person,” according to the Associated Press. He also welcomed Trump’s calls for improved U.S-Russia relations.
A recurring theme among GOP presidential candidates is whether they possess the negotiating chops to deal with the Russian strongman. It appears Trump and Putin would be bosom buddies. (Trump has previously said he thinks he’d get along with Putin “very well.”)
Putin also handed out praise to Sepp Blatter, who’s facing a criminal investigation in Switzerland for allegations of corruption. Blatter, Putin said, is “a very well respected person.”
“He has always tried to treat football not as a sport but as an element of cooperation between countries and peoples,” Putin added. “He is the one who must be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Seriously, he is just poking us with a stick for his personal amusement.
On closer examination, I noticed that they were both news choppers, as I saw the cameras, and I figured that something had happened in the first Freddie Gray trial.
It turned out that we had a hung jury and a mistrial:
A judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the case of Baltimore Police Officer William G. Porter after jurors said they had failed to reach an agreement on any of the charges against him in the death of Freddie Gray.
The decision, which came a day after jurors told Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams they were deadlocked, frustrated activists who had watched the first trial in Gray’s death closely. Outside the downtown courtroom, city officials and community leaders pleaded for calm, and authorities reported two arrests, but no violence or serious disruptions.
Porter, 26, the first of six police officers to be tried in Gray’s death, remains charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. Gray, 25, died in April after suffering a severe spinal cord injury in the back of a police van.
Jurors deliberated for three days before Williams declared the mistrial. The decision now throws the other trials into flux.
Prosecutors chose to try Porter first, planning to use him as a witness at the trial of Officer Caesar Goodson. Goodson, who is charged with second-degree murder, was slated for trial in the first week of January.
I can’t imagine that the States Attorney Marilyn Mosby is not going to announce her intention to retry him soon.
Even ignoring the political overtones, if she gives up, she has no leverage at all about getting him to testify against his superiors.
Even so, it’s kind of depressing.
On the other hand, the announcement that “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli had been arrested for securities fraud:
It has been a busy week for Martin Shkreli, the flamboyant businessman at the center of the drug industry’s price-gouging scandals.
He said he would sharply increase the cost of a drug used to treat a potentially deadly parasitic infection. He called himself “the world’s most eligible bachelor” on Twitter and railed against critics in a live-streaming YouTube video. After reportedly paying $2 million for a rare Wu-Tang Clan album, he goaded a member of the hip-hop group to “show me some respect.”
Then, at 6 a.m. Thursday, F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Shkreli, 32, at his Murray Hill apartment. He was arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on securities fraud and wire fraud charges.
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Shkreli said he was confident that he would be cleared of all charges.
Mr. Shkreli has emerged as a symbol of pharmaceutical greed for acquiring a decades-old drug used to treat an infection that can be devastating for babies and people with AIDS and, overnight, raising the price to $750 a pill from $13.50. His only mistake, he later conceded, was not raising the price more.
The picture of him being hauled off in handcuffs (above) just made my day. (Does this make me a bad person?)
The comment of the day on this comes from the inimitable Charlie Pierce, “I suppose he could argue for a change of venue, but I think it impractical to delay the trial until we make it to Mars.”
Honestly, I think that it would be impossible to find a jury that wouldn’t want to give him the death penalty for jaywalking.
It appears that the Danes have have become the Donald Trumps of Europe:
Denmark vows to strip refugees of their valuables to help pay for the cost of resettlement. Weddings rings are off limits.
As if refugees needed yet another reason not to want to resettle in Denmark after the country placed “Don’t come here” ads in Arabic newspapers over the summer, now the country warns it will strip immigrants of their valuables.
The latest anti-refugee sentiment came closer to reality on Sunday when Denmark’s parliament debated a measure that would allow border police to strip incoming refugees of all valuables and cash worth over €300 to help offset costs of resettlement, according to Swedish STV television.
After some discussion, the Danish government apparently decided that refugees could keep their wedding rings, cellphones, and laptops in the measure that will eventually go up for a vote. At least one Danish parliamentarian reportedly insisted that wedding rings with a diamond over a certain carat weight should also be confiscated.
Sören Pind, Denmark’s immigration minister, told Danish television that the plan was the only way the country could afford to house the refugees seeking asylum. “I’m talking about a situation in which there are personal items of significant value but no sentimental worth,” Pind told the television station. “I’m talking about a situation in which a man comes along with a case full of diamonds and asks for protection in Denmark. That’s only fair.”
Fair, perhaps, in that strange world in which theft is OK. The measure, whether it eventually passes or not, raises the question of whether certain European countries really think it is OK to repeat the Nazi approach to immigration, during which the confiscation of valuables was the practice.
I’m with the Danish journalist who said, “Having armed men indiscriminately seize refugees’ personal belongings doesn’t strike me as the best representation of a free society.”
But wait there’s more:
Denmark has promised that any of the 13,000 asylum seekers who are eventually granted a right to stay will be forced to live in segregated tent camps erected in two tent cities and that they will defy European standards and triple the normal waiting period for family reunification as a further deterrent.
So, stealing their stuff, and putting them in internment camps.
This? From the Danes?
What do they think they are? Germans?
The FBI has now made official statements (as opposed to the leaks that they have been feeding the press) regarding the San Bernardino shooters, and there was no proclamation of support for ISIS or any other terrorist group on social media:
There is no evidence a married couple who killed 14 people in California this month were part of a terrorist cell, the head of the FBI said on Wednesday, echoing investigators’ views that the pair were inspired by, rather than organized by, Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
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However, he said that while the perpetrators of the Dec. 2 shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. — Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 29 — had expressed support for “jihad and martyrdom” in private communications, they never did so on social media.
Just days after the attack, authorities said they were looking into an apparent Facebook post in which Malik had pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Multiple U.S. media outlets reported Malik had expressed “admiration” for al-Baghdadi, but it was under an account that used a different name. The messages were reportedly deleted before the attack, and Facebook quickly removed the account in the wake of the shooting.
Seriously, why does the press continue acting as the FBI’s stenographer when the senior officials who leak this crap could not be trusted if they said the sky was blue?
When you get repeatedly burned by a source, they are no longer a source, they are just a random asshole for whom you refuse to take off the record statements.
After dropping $2 million on a Wu-Tang Clan album, the pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli has found a new project: making an essential treatment unaffordable for poor immigrants from Latin America.
Shkreli, otherwise known as “pharma bro,” gained notoriety earlier this year when his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, increased the price of a drug used to treat AIDS patients from around $13.50 to $750. He’s now the CEO of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, which recently announced its plans to submit benznidazole, a treatment for Chagas disease purchased earlier this month, for Food and Drug Administration approval next year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 300,000 people in the United States have the deadly disease. Most of them are immigrants from Latin America, where as many as 8 million people are infected.
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Right now, doctors in the U.S. obtain benznidazole free of charge through the CDC. According to Rachel Cohen, the regional executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Disease Initiative in North America, the drug sells in Latin America for somewhere between $60 and $100 for each course of treatment. Both of these would change the moment the FDA approved benznidazole from any company—and Shkreli, in particular, seems determined to price this drug out of reach of the people who need it. In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, KaloBios wrote that it expects to price the Chagas drug similarly to antivirals for Hepatitis C, which can cost almost $100,000 for a single course of treatment in the United States.
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The CDC currently purchases benznidazole from a Brazilian company. They used to send less than a dozen treatments a year to physicians across the country, according to Susan Montgomery, who leads the epidemiology team at the CDC’s Parasitic Diseases Branch. But after blood banks started testing people for Chagas in 2007, that number spiked.
In theory, FDA approval for benznidazole would make it more accessible to patients: Right now, because benznidazole isn’t approved, a patient who needs the drug has to be enrolled in a clinical trial in order to receive it from the CDC. In practice, though, the current plans for pricing will negate any good that could come from removing the drug’s “experimental” label.
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Recently, the FDA added Chagas to a special program for neglected diseases. If a pharmaceutical company submits a drug for a disease on the program’s list, the FDA gives the company a “priority review voucher.” That voucher lets companies bring another drug to the FDA for expedited review, usually around six months between submitting the application and receiving a decision (a process that usually takes years. The hope is that the program will incentivize companies to invest in new treatments for neglected diseases that afflict the poorest regions of the world. But companies aren’t required to come up with new drugs to get those fast-track vouchers. The drugs only have to be new to the FDA. (Companies can also sell those vouchers for big money—last August, for example, United Therapeutics sold its voucher for $350 million.)
Last month, Doctors Without Borders, joined by a number of other public-health organizations, asked the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to amend this voucher program. The groups argued that companies should be eligible only if they actually invest in researching and developing new treatments for neglected diseases, and that they should be required to submit a strategy for how they would keep the drugs accessible for patients.
“If this price hike were to happen, it would be a complete disaster for Chagas patients in the United States,” Cohen said. “People affected by this disease in the United States are poor, are marginalized, have very limited access to health care to begin with. It would be catastrophic.”
2 years ago, on the occasion of actor Jack Klugman’s death, I noted that one of the things that he was lauded for was lobbying for the Orphan Drug Act of 1983.
I took issue, and said that the effect of the act was to manufacture non-patent monopolies that primarily served to raise the cost of drugs through rent-seeking behavior.
The IP restrictions and incentives that are a part of the US medication development regime are killing and impoverishing us.
How about price controls and compulsory licensing? That sounds good.
The resemblance is striking
It appears that you closely resemble a scientific reconstruction of the appearance of Jesus.
You are a bit paler, but summers in Seattle would do that to you.
Perhaps you should consider a career as a false messiah.
As L. Ron Hubbard once said, “If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
After an increasing chorus of criticism the largest pension fund in the nation, CalPERS, has abandoned its plans to relax standards in order to favor private equity:
The state’s biggest public pension fund has repeatedly missed a key performance goal for its controversial private equity investments.
But a CalPERS committee said Monday that the fund’s staff could not strip language from a written policy that required them to aim to meet that benchmark – returns roughly 3% higher than the stock market to compensate for private equity’s risk.
By voice vote, the committee defeated the proposal to change the policy so that the new objective would have been simply “to enhance” the pension fund’s private equity returns.
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The suggested policy change had been criticized by financial experts who said it would clear the way for CalPERS to continue to invest in the complex Wall Street sector – the buying and selling of companies — without requiring higher returns to compensate for the added risk.
“This is outrageous,” Eileen Appelbaum, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank, said before the meeting. “CalPERS can’t get over the goal, now plans to do away with goal post.”
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The proposed policy change came after many years where CalPERS failed to meet the so-called “risk-adjusted” benchmark.
For the year ended June 30, for instance, private equity earned a seemingly healthy 8.9%, but that was lower than the 11.1% goal.
A recent report by a CalPERS’ consultant acknowledged that the private equity investments had also failed to beat benchmarks over the last three, five and 10 years.
Appelbaum said that CalPERS would have made the same amount over the last 10 years if it would have just invested in the stock market – but without the added risks or high fees.
(emphasis mine)
I would note that the abuse of private equity by CalPers, and the increasing furor over its backflips to favor private equity is a direct result of the investigations, and aggressive use of freedom of information act requests, by Yves Smith and the Naked Capitalism team, who have been on this like white on rice.
One think that I have not figured out yet is why CalPERS has been so insistent in pursuing a failed strategy.
The cynic in me assumes that there is some sort of corruption involved.
The realist sees this being driven by blind panic as a historically underfunded institution flails around searching for a magic bullet.
I’m not sure which analysis frightens me more.