Month: December 2015

I Think I Understand What Turkey is Doing

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Things in Syria are out of control, had have been since Turkey and Saudi Arabia founded ISIS to take down the Assad regime.

While silliness, like the brouhaha over a (hopefully soon to be court martialed and discharged) Russian soldier who brandished a rocket launcher while transiting the Bosporus, people are ignoring the fact that Turkey just invaded Iraq:

Turkey said on Monday it would not withdraw hundreds of soldiers who arrived last week at a base in northern Iraq, despite being ordered by Baghdad to pull them out within 48 hours.

The sudden arrival of such a large and heavily armed Turkish contingent in a camp near the frontline in northern Iraq has added yet another controversial deployment to a war against Islamic State fighters that has drawn in most of the world’s major powers.

Ankara says the troops are there as part of an international mission to train and equip Iraqi forces to fight against Islamic State. The Iraqi government says it never invited such a force, and will take its case to the United Nations if they are not pulled out.

Washington, which is leading an international coalition against Islamic State that includes Turkey, Arab states and European powers like Britain and France, has told Ankara and Baghdad to resolve the standoff, and says it does not support deployments in Iraq without Baghdad’s consent.

The Turkish troops’ presence is an embarrassment for Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Abadi, under strong pressure from powerful Iran-backed Shi’ite political groups to kick them out.

I have made the point numerous times that evidence indicates that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is determined to remake Turkey, and Syria, into Islamic states.

This neglects some of his other behavior, where he has attempted to efface the memory of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and to hearken back to the Ottoman Empire.

His attempts to recreate Ottoman buildings in Gezi Park, which led to massive protests, is one of the more prominent example of this.

I am now thinking that he is not just interested in Islamizing his neighborhood.  I think that he wants the return of something like an Ottoman Empire, or at least something very much like it using spheres of influence.

As a historical note, what is now Mosul was captured by the British after the armistice, and Turkey disputed its allocation to Iraq ferociously in the early 1900s.

I will note that my thesis is “Out there”, and that other folks are suggesting that this is a way to sabotage the Kurds autonomy in Iraq (likely), or a way to extort a route for a Qatar Turkey natural gas pipeline to replace the now moribund plan to run such a pipeline through Syria.

In either case, this is getting really ugly really quickly.

Rahm Throws Another Evil Minion™ under the Bus

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The head of the (supposedly) Independent Police Review Authority, Scott Ando, has been fired by hizzonner:

A former federal prosecutor will head the agency charged with investigating police shootings in Chicago after the immediate resignation of its chief administrator, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office announced Sunday.

Sharon Fairley will take over for Scott Ando as the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. Fairley declined to comment when reached Sunday by the Chicago Sun-Times. Ando could not be reached.

“Scott has taken important steps to move IPRA forward and reduce its backlog of cases,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Yet it has become clear that new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability and rebuilding trust in that process.”

Emanuel made his announcement hours after hundreds of protesters led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched through the Loop on Sunday, demanding accountability after the release of video footage of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.

………

A former federal prosecutor will head the agency charged with investigating police shootings in Chicago after the immediate resignation of its chief administrator, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office announced Sunday.

Sharon Fairley will take over for Scott Ando as the head of the Independent Police Review Authority, according to a statement from the mayor’s office. Fairley declined to comment when reached Sunday by the Chicago Sun-Times. Ando could not be reached.

“Scott has taken important steps to move IPRA forward and reduce its backlog of cases,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Yet it has become clear that new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability and rebuilding trust in that process.”

Emanuel made his announcement hours after hundreds of protesters led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson marched through the Loop on Sunday, demanding accountability after the release of video footage of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times on Oct. 20, 2014.

It is gratifying seeing the bully and coward that is Rahm Emanuel scrambling for his political career.

I think that he will serve out his term, even with all this, but it’s going to be as a very lame duck.

It will be fun to see the knives coming out.

Sucks to be Rahm Now

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First, it now appears that the DoJ will start an investigation of the Chicago Police Department:

The Justice Department plans to launch an investigation into the patterns and practices of the Chicago Police Department, a wide-ranging review similar to those that scrutinized the police departments in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, according to several law enforcement officials.

 The civil probe, which the officials say could be announced early this week, comes as Chicago continues to grapple with protests after the release of a video showing the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, which prompted murder charges for the officer involved and the resignation of the city’s police chief. The Justice Department is already investigating the McDonald shooting, but this new investigation by the department’s civil rights division would focus on the police department’s practices broadly to determine whether any of them contribute to civil rights violations.

 ………

 Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), a former top aide to President Obama, called the possibility of a civil rights investigation “misguided” last week. But, a day later, he reversed course and said he would welcome such an investigation.

 Emanuel has come under fire for his administration’s handling of the McDonald video, specifically for fighting its release for more than a year, which some have suggested was a politically motivated decision meant to insulate the mayor from political backlash while he was locked in a tight reelection effort. One week after the McDonald video was released, Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy.

 ………

 On the same day that McCarthy was fired, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote a letter to the DOJ urging them to open an investigation into the police department.

 “The McDonald shooting is shocking, and it highlights serious questions about the historic, systemic use of unlawful and excessive force by Chicago police officers and the lack of accountability for such abuse by CPD,” Madigan (D) wrote.

 Under Obama, Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and her predecessor, Eric Holder, have used patterns-and-practices investigations to aggressively probe police departments for potential constitutional violations, investigating dozens of departments since 2009. Those probes have found patterns of excessive force by police in Cleveland; Albuquerque; the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department; Portland; New Orleans; Seattle; Puerto Rico; and Warren, Ohio.

And on the civil/press end, a federal judge just forbade the CPD from destroying old misconduct investigations:

Chicago authorities must notify journalists and activists before they destroy decades of records related to police misconduct, Illinois Circuit Court Judge Peter Flynn ruled in an emergency order Thursday.

The order comes after journalist and activist Jamie Kalven petitioned the court after police officials said they would destroy hundreds of thousands of pages of evidence, investigative files and computer records related to Chicago police officer misconduct reports older than four years.

The documents are among a trove of data requested by Kalven and other media organizations, including the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, dating back to 1967. Last year, city officials agreed to release all of the police misconduct information, but the city’s police unions sued to prevent the documents from becoming public and the issue remains in limbo. The case will eventually be decided by an Illinois appeals court.

The emergency order comes in the wake of a large public outcry following the release of the video that shows police officer James Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in October 2014. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder hours before the video’s release.

Kalven and his attorney, Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor, played a critical role in the release of the dash-cam footage by reporting on the video’s existence and demanding that officials release it. Kalven expressed relief at the judge’s order, saying it would give him time to go back to court before authorities could set a “bonfire” to decades’ worth of key information about police misconduct in Chicago. “Ministers, civic groups … are all calling for a full examination of the systems of accountability in the city.”

………

“So while we’re having this conversation about openness, honesty, transparency, distrust and lack of accountability, the destruction of these records would ensure impunity for officers who have engaged in abuse,” Futterman said. “I can’t imagine a worse time than this.”

I rather expect to see a whole lot of Freedom of Information Act requests to follow.

It also just blows my mind that the CPD unions have the right to demand the destruction of records. I would think that this decision would be exclusively the purview of management, and in any case, state and federal law would render that portion of the contract unforceable.

In either case, I expect to see a constant drip ……… drip ……… drip, of revelations, and even if they predate Rahm Emanuel’s tenure as mayor, he will take the heat.

I’m hoping that he is frog marched out the mayor’s offices in handcuffs, but if it merely leads to his being toxic in the context of Democratic politics, Dayenu.

Why Is This News? Isn’t There One in Every Walmart?

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It isn’t often that you read a story about a, “homeless couple found living in Walmart attic with hot plate, meth lab, and 42″ LED TV,” but when you think about it, it is a juxtaposition that seems to fit that retail establishment.

Of course, the link is a parody site, Now8News, but it is the sort of story that should be true.

In a word this story is dripping with truthiness, even if it isn’t true:

Being homeless has to be very difficult, especially in the colder times of the year. But not for this Tennessee couple who had been “living in the lap of luxury” above a Tennessee Walmart store. The ‘homeless’ man, 48-year-old Wilbert Thomas, admitted to police that he and his girlfriend 54-year-old Ingrid Malone, had been living above the store for over two years. What they did to the attic, baffled police and store employees.

It’s a brilliant bit of parody, because it sounds so true.

I’m Wondering if Andrew Cuomo is Next on Preet Bharara’s Hit Parade

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The New York Post Has Great Headlines

The former speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, has been convicted on all corruption counts:

Sheldon Silver, who held a seemingly intractable grip on power for decades as one of the most feared politicians in New York State, was found guilty on Monday of federal corruption charges, ending a trial that was the capstone of the government’s efforts to expose the seamy culture of influence-peddling in Albany.

 The verdict was a quick and unceremonious end for Mr. Silver, who, during his more than two decades as the State Assembly speaker, displayed a Teflon-like quality in deflecting questions about his outside income as well as calls for his ouster.

 Mr. Silver, 71, a Manhattan Democrat, was convicted on all seven counts against him. The charges of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering stemmed from schemes by which he obtained nearly $4 million in exchange for using his position to help benefit a cancer researcher and two real estate developers.

 The son of a hardware store owner on the Lower East Side, Mr. Silver was known as a poker-faced negotiator who often got his way during budget negotiations, sometimes by simply holding out the longest. At the same time, he was also a fierce defender of New York City in the state Capitol.

 As a result of the conviction, he must automatically forfeit the Assembly seat to which he was first elected nearly 40 years ago.

 The verdict came on the jury’s third day of deliberations, after a five-week trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan. When word came that a verdict had been reached, Mr. Silver fidgeted in his chair, clenched his jaw, shook his head, sighed and glanced toward Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had taken a seat at the rear of the courtroom just before the verdict was read.

 ………

 Mr. Silver is the most prominent in a parade of state lawmakers who have been convicted by Mr. Bharara’s office. Mr. Silver’s former counterpart, State Senator Dean G. Skelos, a Republican from Long Island who served as Senate majority leader, is also being tried on federal corruption charges; his case, which also includes Mr. Skelos’s son, Adam, entered its third week on Monday.

In response to this, Andrew Cuomo has dismissed any idea of a special session to address ethics in New York State government:

Governor Cuomo, spoke publicly for the first time since the former leader of the Assembly was convicted on seven counts of corruption, for abusing his powers to earn outside income. But Cuomo says he does not think it’s the right time now for a special session on ethics reform.

 Reform groups have called for a special session to fix corruption at the Capitol, but Governor Cuomo says it’s too close to Hanukkah and Christmas now to hold one.

 “I don’t think a special session is practical, we’re coming into the holiday season,” said Cuomo, who said reform will be “on the agenda” in Januarys, when the new session begins.

 December sessions have been held several times in the past, as recently as 2011, when Cuomo and the legislature met to extend extra  income taxes on the wealthy.

This is not surprising, Silver, Skelos, and Cuomo were the infamous, “Three Men in a Room,” who would sit down and hash out pretty much everything in state politics.

I don’t think that Cuomo is particularly interested in ethics reform right now.

First, he has a new set of leaders in the State House and Senate to learn how to deal with.

Second, he still wants the money from the firm implicated in both the Silver and Skelos trials, Glenwood Management:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo isn’t ready to turn away donations from his most generous political donor simply because the firm plays a prominent role in the corruption trials of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Leader Dean Skelos.

 During a Q&A at the Javits Center on Monday, Cuomo was asked specifically if he would continue taking campaign contributions from the real estate giant Glenwood Management after the trials’ revelation about its political giving and the personal income that ended up in the pockets of Skelos’ son, Adam, and Silver.

 Cuomo gave a curious answer: “Let’s see what happens with the trial,” he said. “Let’s see what the outcome is. If someone is convicted of a crime, then obviously not.”

 If Cuomo was referring to Glenwood, his campaign has nothing to worry about so far: While the verdicts on Silver and Skelos are up to their respective juries, Glenwood and its employees and lobbyists have not been charged with any crimes. However, several people in its employ or professional orbit — including its Senior Vice President Charles Dorego and its lobbyist Brian Meara — have received non-prosecution agreements in exchange for their cooperation with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

And finally, we have reports that Bharara has Cuomo firmly in his sights, and a such, I am sure that he does not want to spend political capital on ethics reform right now:

United States Attorney Preet Bharara feels emboldened, sources say, following the conviction of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — on all of seven corruption charges. Despite lacking a “smoking gun” to constitute an explicit quid pro quo, the jury handed Bharara a sweeping win. Such is the public’s appetite for corrupt politicians, observers say.

Three sources are confirming that Bharara intends to indict Governor Andrew Cuomo on January 2nd — along with a half dozen associates and former staffers — on public corruption, racketeering, conspiracy, and honest services fraud.

If this is true, I will be very amused, but my guess is that while some of Cuomo’s aides may end up in the dock, that he has created enough space between himself and their acts to avoid legal liability.

The New York Daily News Gets It

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Calling out Wayne LaPierre

The New York Daily News continues its naming and shaming of the reptilian National Rifle Association:

………

 Murder here is easy to commit — because weapons and ammunition that tear at human flesh are easily obtainable. And once murder is committed, it is far harder to solve than it should be — because the devices that are repositories for incriminating evidence are increasingly beyond the reach of law enforcement.

 Police on Thursday reported that all four weapons used by killer Syed Farook and his wife-accomplice, Tashfeen Malik — two assault rifles and two handguns — were bought legally.

 The two had a guerrilla-sized stockpile at home: a staggering 2,000 rounds of 9-mm. bullets and 2,500 rounds of .223-caliber rifle ammunition.

 Also in the home: 12 pipe bombs and hundreds of tools that could be used to build IEDs or pipe bombs.

 In what country is it legal to collect enough weaponry to go to war? In ours, thanks to gun laws crafted and protected by lawmakers obedient to the National Rifle Association.

(emphasis mine)

On their cover, they call Wayne LaPierre a terrorist.

I agree.

What’s more, the News understands that the apocalyptic language and policies of the NRA are not effectively opposed by the standard civil and polite hand wring that we see on the editorial pages of other papers.

H/t David Harris Gershon at Daily Kos.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico

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The state of Texas has just sued the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in an attempt to prevent them from reuniting a Syrian refugee family in Dallas:

Texas has filed a lawsuit aiming to block Syrian refugees from settling in the Dallas area, in the latest salvo of an escalating row between the state, an aid group and the federal government.

Relatives of Faez and Shaza, who fled Syria for Jordan in 2013 and were settled this year in a Dallas suburb, are expected to arrive as early as Friday.

They are being helped by the Dallas branch of the New York-based International Rescue Committee (IRC), but Texas officials sent letters to IRC asking them to halt their assistance to the refugees. The humanitarian group issued a statement on Wednesday refusing to comply with instructions from Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, and Chris Traylor, the head of the state’s health agency.

In response, Texas’s health and human services commission filed a federal lawsuit against the IRC and the Obama administration this week that asks the court to stop the family from arriving in Texas in the next few days.

It accuses the defendants of potentially endangering public safety by failing to cooperate closely and share sufficient information about the background of the refugees.

This is just repulsive.

29 Dead, and Only a Misdemeanor?

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Donald Blankenship, former President of Massey Energy, was convicted of only a misdemeanor for his role in the deaths of miners in a mine explosion:

Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths.

But in a substantial defeat for the Justice Department, the verdict, announced in Federal District Court here, exonerated Mr. Blankenship, Massey’s former chief executive, of three felony charges that could have led to a prison term of 30 years. Instead, after a protracted and complex trial that began on Oct. 1, jurors convicted Mr. Blankenship only of a single misdemeanor charge that carried a maximum of a year in prison.

“We are disappointed, but not as disappointed as we could have been,” said William W. Taylor III, a defense lawyer for Mr. Blankenship, who will appeal the conviction and is expected to be sentenced next spring.

Mr. Blankenship was not tried on any charges that accused him of direct responsibility for the deaths at Upper Big Branch, which investigators said exploded because of improper ventilation that allowed gases to accumulate. But prosecutors argued that Mr. Blankenship’s leadership had laid the groundwork for a catastrophe. There was not necessarily a formal conspiracy, prosecutors acknowledged, but they said that Mr. Blankenship’s example and tone had set Massey on a course that put profits ahead of lives.

I hope that the judge sentences him to the full year, but somehow I doubt it.

I expect him to get probation, or possibly house arrest, which would be far less satisfying than his ass getting shivved while he is in the stir.

First, Kudos to the New York Daily News

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Their cover is magnificent:

The lede, “God isn’t fixing this: As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes:

Prayers aren’t working.

 White House hopefuls on the Democratic side of the aisle called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino that left at least 14 dead.

 But after yet another mass shooting in America, GOP presidential contenders were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control.

 Instead, the Republicans were preaching about prayer.

 ………

 Democrats — even those not running for office — slammed the GOP presidential candidates for offering prayers instead of action.

 “Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) posted on Twitter. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing — again.”

 Some critics accused Murphy of religious insensitivity, but he didn’t waver in a statement later Wednesday.

 “My heart aches for the people of San Bernardino,” he said. “I cannot express the profound sadness I feel each time a new community grieves and endures the same pain that brought Newtown to its knees three years ago this month.”

In addition to the Daily News‘ magnificent statement on Republicans resort to religious hypocrisy as an alternative to action.

I would like to add three bits of information to provide some perspective.

First, and second, there were two other mass shootings that day, in Savannah, GA and Houston, TX.

The third bit is a some historical perspective: Twice as many people were murdered in San Bernardino as were killed in the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

And still, the Republican response to a call for action is, “I’m too busy praying.”

F%$# that.

Rats Turning on Each Other

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Rats

Following the release of dashcam footage of  the shooting of Laquan McDonald, which took a year of court fights, the shooter Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with the first-degree murder.

Now, with the heat rising for various attempts to bury this story for a year,Rahm Emanuel has fired Police superintendent fires Garry McCarthy:

The head of the Chicago Police Department was fired Tuesday amid widespread criticism over how authorities responded to the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer last year.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said he formally asked Garry F. McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, for his resignation on Tuesday morning, a week after video footage of the shooting was released and the officer was charged with murder.

“He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction,” Emanuel said. He added that while he is loyal to McCarthy, whom he praised for his leadership of the department, the needs of the city are more important.

Even as the embattled Emanuel dismissed his police superintendent and made other vows of increased police accountability, announcing a task force to review police oversight, another Illinois official suggested that federal intervention was needed for the Chicago police. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote a letter Tuesday asking the Justice Department to investigate possible civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department.

Anger has erupted in Chicago since authorities released footage of Jason Van Dyke, a city police officer, shooting Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old, last year. In the video, Van Dyke is seen firing a volley of shots at McDonald, many of them after the teenager had already fallen to the ground.

What is clear now that the video has been released, is that there has been an aggressive attempt to sweep everyting under the rug.

The arbiter of banal mainstream opinion that is the New York Times editorial board has cut Rahm Emanuel a new asshole:

The cover-up that began 13 months ago when a Chicago police officer executed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on a busy street might well have included highly ranked officials who ordered subordinates to conceal information. But the conspiracy of concealment exposed last week when the city, under court order, finally released a video of the shooting could also be seen as a kind of autonomic response from a historically corrupt law enforcement agency that is well versed in the art of hiding misconduct, brutality — and even torture.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel demonstrated a willful ignorance when he talked about the murder charges against the police officer who shot Mr. McDonald, seeking to depict the cop as a rogue officer. He showed a complete lack of comprehension on Tuesday when he explained that he had decided to fire his increasingly unpopular police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, not because he failed in his leadership role, but because he had become “a distraction.”

Mr. Emanuel’s announcement that he had appointed a task force that will review the Police Department’s accountability procedures is too little, too late. The fact is, his administration, the Police Department and the prosecutor’s office have lost credibility on this case. Officials must have known what was on that video more than a year ago, and yet they saw no reason to seek a sweeping review of the police procedures until this week.

………

Justice Department officials, however, said on Tuesday that the department did not ask the city to withhold the video from the public because of its investigation. That makes this whole episode look like an attempt by the city, the police and prosecutors to keep the video under wraps, knowing the political problems it would most likely create.

I hope that this is a death knell for Emanuel’s political career, he is a cancer on Democratic Party politics, but the next election is 3 years down the road, and that is a long time in politics.

Syria is Confusing

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And now it appears that Russia and Israel will be expanding military coordination in Syria:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday praised bilateral efforts to prevent unintended clashes of their air forces operating in Syria and pledged to broaden so-called deconfliction measures to include forces operating from the ground as well.

Meeting in Paris less than a week after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian fighter that had allegedly entered Turkish airspace for a brief period of time, Putin characterized measures first proposed by Netanyahu as efficient and said both leaders were “satisfied with the progress of bilateral” ties.

“The mechanism … [that] presupposes contacts between the militaries to prevent incidents due to the dramatic developments in the region has been efficient,” Putin told Netanyahu.

Referencing Ankara’s downing of the Russian fighter, Netanyahu said to Putin: “The events of recent days prove the importance of our coordination, our deconfliction mechanisms, our attempts to cooperate with each other to prevent unnecessary accidents and tragedies, and I believe that we’ve been successful. It’s important.

“I hope that Israel and Russia can see eye to eye on all the strategic matter, but I want to assure you that we believe that it’s within our powers to have very good coordination on the ground and in the air so that we do not create the kind of problems that we’ve been experiencing,” Netanyahu said.

The policy makes good sense, but I cannot but conclude that its public announcement was intended as an enormous f%$# you to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Bear Who Swims Seriously Considers Move to Norway*

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My brother, AKA the Bear Who Swims, is fond of winter.

In fact, my brother has frequently expressed a sense of loss at not experiencing Minneapolis weather now that he lives in Seattle.

Well, Bear Who Swims, have you considered Norway?

Residents of Norway view their long dark winters as something to celebrate. How it’s possible to be cheerful for the next four months.

As the days get darker and colder in much of the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to indulge in gloom. For the next few months, you’ll be shivering. You’ll be battling foul weather. Thanks to daylight saving time there will be no chance to see the sun after work.

The gloom leads to a common question: What can I do to cope with the dark and cold?

If you truly want to be happy during winter, though, this is the wrong approach to the season. Changing your mindset can do more than distracting yourself from the weather.

That’s the takeaway from research done by Kari Leibowitz, currently a PhD student at Stanford University, who spent August 2014 to June 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship in Tromsø in northern Norway. Tromsø is so far north that from late November to late January, the sun never climbs above the horizon. Leibowitz went to study the residents’ overall mental health, because rates of seasonal depression were lower than one might expect.

………

It turns out that in northern Norway, “people view winter as something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured,” says Leibowitz, and that makes all the difference.

………

And finally, people are enamored with the sheer beauty of the season. Leibowitz grew up near the Jersey shore, and “I just took it as a fact that everyone likes summer the best.” But deep in the winter in Norway, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon, multiple hours a day can still look like sunrise and sunset, and against the snow, “the colors are incredibly beautiful,” she says. “The light is very soft and indirect.”

I rather imagine that as he reads this, my brother is thinking wistfully of the thought of sub-zero evenings and the Northern Lights.

*Actually, to be fair, Stephen has never expressed an interest in moving to Norway, I just think that he might now.

Tha Bankster’s Lose One

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In the highway bill, congress has significantly reduced dividends paid by the Federal Reserve to banks:

Big banks will lose a portion of a multibillion-dollar government handout they’ve enjoyed for over 100 years, thanks to a compromise highway bill released Tuesday. One estimate pegged the loss to the banks at $8 billion to $9 billion over a 10-year time frame.

 The bill, as it emerged from a House-Senate conference committee, pays for roads, bridges, and mass transit projects in part by reducing what is currently a 6 percent annual dividend on stock that the big banks buy to become members of the Federal Reserve system.

 Fed membership offers many perks, from access to processing payments to cheap borrowing. But the dividend could be the sweetest gift, because banks cannot ever lose money on the stock; they’re even paid out if their regional Fed bank disbands.

 Despite the total lack of risk, member banks have received the 6 percent dividend payout every year since 1913.

 So for example, JPMorgan Chase, which has held stock since then, has made back its investment six times over without risking any loss. And if the bank stock was in place before 1942, that dividend payment is tax-free.

 Originally — that is, 100 years ago — the Fed offered the dividend to entice banks into the new Federal Reserve system. But nationally chartered banks are today required by law to become members, and all banks must abide by the standards of membership. So the dividend is just a vestigial sweetener that never went away, pumping billions of dollars in public money to the banks for no discernible reason.

………

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, seeing no better option, stuck a version of it in the Senate highway bill. The provision called for cutting the dividend from 6 percent to 1.5 percent, eliminating $17 billion in big-bank subsidy over a 10-year period. It passed.

The banks freaked out, aided by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, who warned of unnamed “unintended consequences.” Through a well-worn lobbying strategy, they managed to get the House of Representatives to remove the dividend cut and replace it with a raid on the Fed’s capital surplus account, which is used to cover losses on the balance sheet.

In other words, Yellen and the Fed quietly preferred flushing their own surplus account over denying banks their full entitlement.

But when the final bill was released Tuesday, the dividend reduction remained in there, albeit with some modifications.

The reduction now applies only to banks with over $10 billion in assets, compared to the $1 billion threshold in the original bill. Instead of cutting the dividend to 1.5 percent, the rate will now match the interest rate of the highest-yield 10-year Treasury note at the point that the dividend is due. For context, the high yield at the last Treasury auction was 2.304 percent.

There are, however, some more giveaways to the banksters in the bill, including an attempt to exempt even more mortgage lenders from Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversight.

Rule Number 1: Mark Zuckerberg Leaves a Trail of People Who Feel that he Cheated Them in His Wake

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Rule Number 2:  See rule number 1.

As such, I am dubious of Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to donate 99% of his Facebook fortune to charity:

In a public post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced Tuesday that they will donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares “during their lives”—an amount currently worth $45 billion—to their new charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

 The organization, which seems to be modeled on the Gates Foundation, states its laudable albeit vague goal to “join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”

 The announcement came in the form of a public letter to their newly born daughter Max. It addresses important long-term goals that are often stymied in the public sector, things like “advancing human potential and promoting equality.”

But when one dives into the details, it gets seriously hinky on closer examination:

When Mark Zuckerberg announced he would give away 99% of his Facebook shares — currently worth around $45 billion — the initial impulse from many was to assume the money would all go to charity. Indeed, very many news organizations described the donation as either going to charity, or a charitable trust.

 Not so, a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed in an email to BuzzFeed News. The spokeswoman further confirmed the initiative is structured as an LLC, and not as a charitable trust.

 While charity will certainly be one of the money’s destinations, it will be far from the only one.

It’s beginning to look more and more like a way to avoid income and inheritance taxes than anything else.

I would also argue that relying on the altruism of today’s robber barons is misguided, and  notes, so does German billionaire Peter Krämer:

SPIEGEL: Forty super wealthy Americans have just announced that they would donate half of their assets, at the very latest after their deaths. As a person who often likes to say that rich people should be asked to contribute more to society, what were your first thoughts?

Krämer: I find the US initiative highly problematic. You can write donations off in your taxes to a large degree in the USA. So the rich make a choice: Would I rather donate or pay taxes? The donors are taking the place of the state. That’s unacceptable.

SPIEGEL: But doesn’t the money that is donated serve the common good?

Krämer: It is all just a bad transfer of power from the state to billionaires. So it’s not the state that determines what is good for the people, but rather the rich want to decide. That’s a development that I find really bad. What legitimacy do these people have to decide where massive sums of money will flow?

SPIEGEL: It is their money at the end of the day.

Krämer: In this case, 40 superwealthy people want to decide what their money will be used for. That runs counter to the democratically legitimate state. In the end the billionaires are indulging in hobbies that might be in the common good, but are very personal.

 Your mouth to God’s ear, Herr Krämer.