Gov. Rick Snyder, high ranking former members of his staff and others are the target of a new federal racketeering lawsuit over the city’s water crisis. The lawsuit also targets the city of Flint. A group of 15 citizens filed the civil lawsuit seeking financial compensation for property damage, loss of business and financial losses attributed to the city’s water crisis; as well as compensatory damages for future medical care and punitive damages. ……… The lawsuit, filed Wednesday, April 6, in Flint U.S. District Court, alleges Snyder, his former Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore and others attempted to balance the Flint city budget through a pattern of racketeering activity. “He wants to run the state like a business,” attorney Marc J. Bern said of Snyder. “Well. The citizens of Flint, as shareholders in the corporation of the state of Michigan, I don’t think they were treated in an appropriate way.” The lawsuit alleges that officials misrepresented the suitability of the Flint River water as the city’s drinking water source for roughly two years and billed Flint residents at rates that were the highest in the nation for water that was unusable, resulting in the city’s budget deficit being reversed. ……… The complaint names Snyder, Muchmore, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and multiple members of its staff, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and members of its staff, the City of Flint and members of its public works department, multiple engineering companies that were hired to evaluate the city’s water system, former Mayor Dayne Walling and three of the city’s former emergency managers. ……… The suit claims officials committed mail fraud by continuing to mail water bills to Flint residents, which they allege fraudulently misrepresent that the city is providing safe, clean water to its residents. They further allege officials continued to make statements claiming the water was safe despite being aware of growing concerns over the quality of the water. The lawsuit also alleges the defendants committed wire fraud by allowing residents to pay their water bills online or with credit cards despite knowing the water was toxic. A RICO lawsuit requires attorneys to prove that the wrongdoing was part of an ongoing enterprise. If successful, the law allows triple the amount of damages to be paid.
I’m not generally fan of the expansive use of the Rico statutes, but this does appear to be a reasonable use of the law.
This latest spat in the Democratic primary contest is so sublimely, universally stupid that it’s hard to believe that Mark Penn didn’t have a hand in it somewhere
A brave mother has spoken out about refusing the whooping cough vaccine during her pregnancy and the devastating impact it’s had on her life. The first time mother later went on to catch the potentially deadly disease and eventually gave it to her newborn baby girl, Eva. “Within two weeks the cough became pretty scary, horror movie, coughing to the point of going blue, flopping in my hands, can’t breathe, not breathing for three minutes,” the clearly distraught mother explains in the clip. The emotional mea culpa has since gone viral with more than 90,000 views since it was posted earlier in the day. “They go red and from red they go blue, sometimes they go a bit black,” the mother laments in the footage speaking about her daughters daily struggles with the illness. “For a moment there you think they are dead in your hands.” The stunning admission was posted onto the Gold Coast Health Facebook page issuing a warning to others against making the same mistake she did. “I’ve been a very healthy pregnant woman, no problems, no complications, worked out, went to gym, ate very healthy, had a natural birth and somehow in the last two weeks of my pregnancy I managed to get whooping cough, I didn’t know,” she said. The mother admits that after the birth of Eva she went to the doctor about a persistent cough and found out she had whooping cough. “Unfortunately we have been in hospital for the last three weeks, um, yeah, Eva was diagnosed with whooping cough and yeah, it’s been a nightmare”.
Please, vaccinate your kids, and vaccinate yourselves.
Responding to the 11.5 million documents leaked this week showing how a Panama law firm helped some of the world’s wealthiest people establish offshore tax havens on the Central American country — the so-called Panama Papers — Bernie Sanders on Tuesday vowed to end the Panama Free Trade Agreement, tying Hillary Clinton to the same policies that he claimed fostered the practice. “The Panama Free Trade Agreement put a stamp of approval on Panama, a world leader when it comes to allowing the wealthy and the powerful to avoid taxes,” the Vermont senator said in a statement released through his campaign, adding that he has been opposed to it “from day one.” Vowing to use his authority as president to “terminate the Panama Free Trade Agreement within six months,” Sanders said his administration would “conduct an immediate investigation into U.S. banks, corporations and wealthy individuals who have been stashing their cash in Panama to avoid taxes.” “If any of them have violated U.S. law, my administration will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. Sanders also said that he had correctly predicted that the passage of the trade deal “would make it easier, not harder, for the wealthy and large corporations to evade taxes by sheltering billions of dollars offshore.” “I wish I had been proven wrong about this, but it has now come to light that the extent of Panama’s tax avoidance scams is even worse than I had feared,” he said, before pivoting to Clinton. “My opponent, on the other hand, opposed this trade agreement when she was running against Barack Obama for president in 2008. But when it really mattered she quickly reversed course and helped push the Panama Free Trade Agreement through Congress as Secretary of State. The results have been a disaster.”
It is not an unreasonable indictment of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s record on so called free trade agreements.
The Wyoming arm of the law firm at the heart of the Panama Papers global scandal is under investigation by Wyoming state officials for failing to maintain required statutory information about companies registering there, Secretary of State Ed Murray said Wednesday. Upon learning of the Panama Papers, a massive leak of secret offshore company data reported on by McClatchy and more than 100 other media partners around the globe, Wyoming initiated an audit of 24 companies registered in the state by the law firm Mossack Fonseca and its partners, he said. “The audit concluded around noon on Monday, April 4th, and determined that M.F. Corporate Services Wyoming LLC failed to maintain the required statutory information for performing the duties of a registered agent under Wyoming law,” Murray said in a statement. The state followed immediately with administrative action, demanding that required information be provided. “Subsequently, M.F. Corporate Services did provide the information,” the secretary of state’s office said, adding that Murray also briefed law enforcement that day. “This investigation of this matter is ongoing.”
This is near toxic levels of hypocrisy.
In an interesting twist of fate, Ken Silverstien, then a reporter at The Intercept was all over the story of Mossack Fonseca 14 months ago, though his employer refused to publish it, so he published on Vice.com.
And then Pierre Omidyar, the publisher of The Intercept, got in his face.
Almost all the reporting thus far, with the exception of Icelands now former PM, has been directed primarily at regimes hostile to the west, with most of the coverage being screaming about Vladimir Putin.
Also note that Suddeutsche Zeitung brought in International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) Not also the picture in the tweet.
A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted “leak” of such data to several NATO supporting news organization and a US government financed “Non Government Organization” is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor.
Both Murray and MoA are implying that the US/NATO state security apparatus are somehow involved in the release of this data.
I have not made up my mind, but if we don’t see some prominent western names in the releases in the next few weeks, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson doesn’t count, then I will be much more inclined to take their view.
In discussing the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, supporter have have stopped talking about the merits of the deal, and instead are suggesting that its defeat would be a blow for American prestige:
“Failure to move forward … would be a profound setback for American interests in the region,” Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser, said Tuesday of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. “It would be a signal that we do not have staying power and cause countries to hedge on their alignment with the United States.”
The administration is running out of time to get the accord ratified by Congress and faces an uphill slog to win approval with the leading presidential candidates in both parties opposed to the deal. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has denounced free trade deals as harmful to American workers and a drag on the U.S. economy. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who supported the TPP as secretary of state under Obama, has come out against the TPP under pressure from the left, including labor unions and her opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), who also opposes it.
But in a conference call with reporters, administration officials warned that China is poised to step into an economic and leadership void if the U.S. falters in the pact with 11 other nations, including Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia. While Trump and Sanders have called outsourcing and trade imbalances with China detrimental to the United States, White House allies said that the economic competition from China, which is not included in the TPP, is a reason to endorse the deal.
So apparently it’s not a trade deal, and it won’t provide meaningful benefits, it’s a political and diplomatic ploy to be used in a war against China.
Do you want to lose your job just to f%$# with China?
After months of outrage the Obama administration has finally taking action againat the tax dobbed known as “Corporate Inversion”, and accoording to FT, this is provoking a, “foreign fury.”
Cry me a f%$#ing river:
A White House tax crackdown designed to put a halt to Pfizer’s planned $160bn takeover of Allergan has provoked fury from foreign multinationals with operations in the US.
Barack Obama stepped up the offensive on Tuesday championing new proposals to deter “inversion” deals — such as Pfizer-Allergan — that companies use to move to low-tax jurisdictions, accusing them of exploiting “one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there”.
Multinationals responded by saying they were being unfairly caught in the crossfire of Mr Obama’s campaign as their operations in the US could also be affected by the new rules.
The angry rhetoric came a day after the Treasury department released new proposals which threatened the biggest planned inversion to date — Pfizer’s takeover of Irish-domiciled Allergan — and triggered big losses for some hedge funds, such as Paulson & Co and Third Point.
“It came as a total surprise. Everyone thought the Treasury had used all their firepower,” said one hedge fund manager.
………
The Treasury’s latest moves would make inversions less lucrative by eliminating a tax benefit for “abusive” inverters. But its plan would also deny the benefit to foreign companies with US operations.
“Rather than using a scalpel to deal with this issue they are using a machete,” said Nancy McLernon, president of the Organisation for International Investment, a trade group for foreign companies in the US.
“It’s a misguided approach. They’re trying to go after those companies that are doing something they think is problematic and carelessly hitting a whole class of employers.”
The tax benefit stems from companies’ use of internal loans to cut their tax bills. By loading up US subsidiaries with debt from head office, foreign companies can deduct the interest payments from their US tax bills — a practice called earnings stripping.
Here is my response to the aggrieved tax dodgers:
The fact that you have been able to skate on corporate taxes for the past few decades do not give you the right to continue stealing from the rest of us.
Since shortly before the late deadline to register to vote in the April 19th presidential primary in New York, state Board of Elections spokesman Tom Connolly said his office has been fielding nearly 100 calls a day from voters who are “pissed off” about their registration status, for one reason or another. On social media, there are dozensofreportsfromvoters who say they checked their registration online recently and found that their party affiliation had been switched, which is disqualifying because New York’s primaries are closed, or that that their registration couldn’t be found altogether. We could not verify the details of the majority of those accounts, but the discoveries alarmed many would-be voters, most of them seemingly Bernie Sanders supporters. Sanders fans are already on tenterhooks over long lines at the polls in Arizona, which the Justice Department is now investigating, and polling place electioneering by former president Bill Clinton in Illinois and Massachusetts, which local election officials declared proper, among other factors that they argue have skewed the primary process for Hillary Clinton.
Apparently my voter registration (less than a year old) has been purged. Way to go #NewYork
At the New York Board of Elections, Connolly said that his office looks into all complaints, and though the volume has been higher this year than his office has ever seen, “I’ve yet to come upon any example of any kind of mal-intent or inappropriate change of a voter’s record.” (Emphasis mine) Rather, he said, the increased call volume can be explained by heightened interest in this year’s primary and New York’s newfound relevance to the nomination. As for the complaints themselves, the circumstances vary, but he said there’s a rational explanation for each instance of seeming irregularity. For one, he explained that the complaints are largely coming from Democrats—”a lot” of them Sanders supporters. (There have also, he noted, been some Donald Trump supporters who are angry that they missed the deadline to change their party to Republican.) Because many voters only turn out for presidential elections, and Democrats didn’t have a primary in 2012, it has been eight years since many people thought about their registration, he said. ……… In another instance of New York state confusion, Bernie Sanders supporter Jonathan Carrillo, a Long Island resident who makes a living DJing under the name Jase, registered as a Democrat the week of the deadline and, last Friday, checked his registration online and found himself listed as a Republican. This would make him ineligible to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary. Having followed the news and online chatter about irregularities in other states’ primaries, it occurred to Carrillo to record part of his call to the Nassau County Board of Elections. In subsequent conversations, election workers pulled his file and found that a 2013 DMV form shows he chose Republican when getting a license, something he seriously doubts. “I think it’s very unlikely that back in 2013 I randomly decided to join the Republican Party against my interest and while opposing their views,” he said. “I would never do this intentionally.”
Am I the only one who thinks that this is not entirely innocent incompetence?
Two weeks ago, PayPal announced plans to open a new global operations center in Charlotte and employ over 400 people in skilled jobs. In the short time since then, legislation has been abruptly enacted by the State of North Carolina that invalidates protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens and denies these members of our community equal rights under the law. The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture. As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte. This decision reflects PayPal’s deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination. Our decision is a clear and unambiguous one. But we do regret that we will not have the opportunity to be a part of the Charlotte community and to count as colleagues the skilled and talented people of the region. As a company that is committed to the principle that everyone deserves to live without fear of discrimination simply for being who they are, becoming an employer in North Carolina, where members of our teams will not have equal rights under the law, is simply untenable. While we will seek an alternative location for our operations center, we remain committed to working with the LGBT community in North Carolina to overturn this discriminatory legislation, alongside all those who are committed to equality. We will stand firm in our commitment to equality and inclusion and our conviction that we can make a difference by living and acting on our values. It’s the right thing to do for our employees, our customers, and our communities. Dan Schulman, President and CEO, PayPal
Good for them, and a well deserved bad for North Carolina.
As some of you know, even though Obama shut down the Keystone XL project, significant portions of the pipeline, the plain old Keystone (no XL) have already been completed in the upper Midwest.
The Keystone pipeline will likely remain shut down for the rest of the week while officials investigate an apparent oil spill in southeastern South Dakota. Oil covered a 300-square-foot area in a farm field ditch 4 miles from a Freeman-area pump station, about 40 miles southwest of Sioux Falls. It was discovered Saturday. TransCanada hasn’t released the amount of oil. About 100 workers are investigating where the oil came from and removing the contaminated soil. No pipeline damage had been found as of midmorning Tuesday, company spokesman Mark Cooper said. TransCanada also said it had found no significant environmental harm. State officials were monitoring the cleanup, and so far TransCanada has “taken the necessary steps,” said Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist with the South Dakota Department of Natural Resources. The pipeline runs from Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Illinois and Cushing, Oklahoma, passing through the eastern Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. It’s part of a pipeline system that also would have included the Keystone XL pipeline had President Barack Obama not rejected that project last November.
The Keystone pipeline can handle 550,000 barrels, or about 23 million gallons, daily. Cooper didn’t immediately know the status of the oil that normally would be flowing through the pipeline.
I am so not surprised.
Oil pipelines are difficult, and TransCanada sucks it managing and maintaining them.
These days, conservatives don’t suffer too many unanimous defeats at the Supreme Court, even in its currently unsettled status. But that’s what happened today, when the Court handed down an 8-0 ruling in a case called Evenwel v. Abbott, which had the potential to upend an understanding of democratic representation that has existed for two centuries, and give Republicans a way to tilt elections significantly in their favor before anyone even casts a vote.
The conservatives lost. But losing cases like this one is part of the way they do business. With a (usually) friendly Supreme Court, in recent years they’ve employed a strategy of maximal legal audacity, one that has yielded tremendous benefits to their cause.
This case was a relatively low-profile part of a comprehensive conservative assault on voting rights — or perhaps it’s more accurate to call it an assault on the ease with which people who are more likely to vote Democratic can obtain representation at the ballot box. The question was about how state legislative districts are drawn, and the principle of “one person, one vote.” We’ve long had a legal consensus that all districts in a state have to be approximately the same size, to give everyone equal representation; a state legislature can’t draw one district to include a million people and another district to include only a thousand (although you might point out that we do have a legislative body that violates this principle; it’s called the United States Senate, where Wyoming gets one senator for every 300,000 residents and California gets one senator for every 20 million residents).
The plaintiffs in Evenwell argued that instead of using population to draw district lines, states should use the number of eligible voters. Apart from the fact that we know population numbers fairly precisely because of the census, and we have no such precision regarding eligible voters, that would exclude huge swaths of the public. You might immediately think of undocumented immigrants, but counting only eligible voters would also mean excluding people with green cards on their way to citizenship, children, and those who have had their voting rights taken away because of a criminal conviction. In practice, drawing districts this way would almost inevitably mean taking power away from urban areas more likely to vote Democratic and sending power to rural areas more likely to vote Republican. Which was of course the whole point.
They did not rule on whether a state can choose to district using this method:
For more than a half-century, the Supreme Court has spoken often of its commitment to the constitutional ideal that every citizen’s vote should count as much as every other’s, but it only now has tried to say just how that equality should be measured. On Monday, it announced the result of that initial effort to define “one person, one vote”: the states mostly get to choose, but they don’t have to switch to a system that few of them have ever tried.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the main opinion in the much-anticipated case ofEvenwel v. Abbott, and a hasty reading of it might suggest that the states must use one formula in drawing election maps: take the total number of people in a state, and then divide up that total by the number of seats in the legislature or local governing bodies, with the answer dictating how many people (give or take a few) should be in each district. But that is not where the Court wound up.
While virtually every argument used by the Ginsburg opinion in favor of basing representation on total population (because elected officials supposedly represent everybody and not just the voters) points toward a constitutional mandate, it turns out that the states actually are not bound by the Constitution to craft new election districts by starting with total population. The only thing settled constitutionally now is that the states also are not required to divide up districts by using the voting population to be assigned to each, making them equal. Should a state do it that way, the opinion seems to say, the Court will then face that issue.
The ruling’s bottom line was unanimous, but the main opinion bore many signs that its warm embrace of the theory of equality of representation had to be qualified by leaving the states with at least the appearance of the power of choice, to hold together six solid votes.
I expect a state legislature to try using registered voters instead of persons for the next redistricting following the 2020 census.
I did not think that we could make healthcare delivery worse in the United States.
To quote Rick Blaine, “I was misinformed.”
I saw this headline in Kaiser Health News — “Mortgages For Expensive Health Care? Some Experts Think It Can Work” — so I said, “Nah,” and ignored it for a couple days, but then I clicked through to the academic paper Kaiser linked to — if “academic” has any meaning, the times being what they are — and I couldn’t find any tells that it was a parody or some kind of sick joke, so yeah. It’s for real! The paper is called “Buying cures versus renting health: Financing health care with consumer loans,” by Vahid Montazerhodjat, David M. Weinstock, and Andrew W. Lo, and it was published in Science Translational Medicine (STM), February 24, 2016. First, I’ll present the author’s scheme, and after briefly showing how it conforms to the simple rules of neoliberalism, I’ll look at potential scope creep if the proposal is implemented, debt-cropping, and the possibility of predatory servicing. I’ll conclude with a 30,000-foot view of the scheme’s implications. (I’m afraid I’m thinking of this post in terms of somebody who’s take out one of these loans — a consumer patient — rather from the finance perspective that Yves would offer. That said, readers with more nuts-and-bolts knowledge of securization than I have — like most of you — please feel free to chime in; that’s why I’m describing the scheme first.)
The article goes further into the details, and each detail is more and more horrifying.
Really horrifying: Repossessing your kidney horrifying.
It is a descent into what Matt Stoller calls, “Debtcropping,” which is, as he notes, “An instrument of political and economic control.”
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have finally agreed to have a high-stakes debate in Brooklyn on April 14 starting at 9 p.m., five days before New York Democrats vote in the April 19 primary. The debate will be held at the Duggal Greenhouse on the Brooklyn Navy Yard, hosted by CNN and moderated by Wolf Blitzer. CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash and NY1 political anchor Errol Louis will join in the questioning of the candidates. The debate will also be covered by NY 1, which serves the New York Metropolitan Area. Brooklyn is an auspicious place for the two candidates to meet, as Sanders grew up in Brooklyn, and Clinton’s campaign headquarters is in downtown Brooklyn. This will be the first debate between the two candidates since the Univision-Washington Post debate in Miami on March 9.
I don’t mean that they will stop supporting the units, I mean that they will shut the units down.
They will go dark.
They are now door stops:
Nest, a smart-home company owned by Google’s holding company Alphabet, is dropping support for a line of products — and will make customers’ existing devices completely useless.
It’s a move that has infuriated some customers, and raises worrying questions about the rights of consumers in the ever-more connected future.
In October 2014, Nest acquired Revolv, a smart-home device maker, nine months after it was itself bought by Google. The terms of the Revolv deal were not disclosed, and as Re/code reported at the time, the deal was an acqui-hire — buying a company for its talent rather than its products or users.
Nest cofounder Matt Rogers praised Revolv as “the best team out there,” and Revolv immediately stopped selling its $300 (£210) home hub, which could be used to control lights, doors, alarms, and so on.
Revolv’s team was to work on “Work with Nest,” Nest’s API program, but customers’ existing Revolv products continued to be supported — until recently.
Just over a month ago, Revolv updated its website to announce that it is closing down completely, pulling the plug on its existing products in May. “We’re pouring all our energy into Works with Nest and are incredibly excited about what we’re making,” wrote Revolv founders Tim Enwall and Mike Soucie. “Unfortunately, that means we can’t allocate resources to Revolv anymore and we have to shut down the service.”
Shutting down Revolv does not mean that Nest is ceasing to support its products, leaving them vulnerable to bugs and other unpatched issues. It means that the $300 devices and accompanying apps will stop working completely.
As one customer puts it, Google parent company Alphabet is “intentionally bricking” the devices on May 15, 2016.
Arlo Gilbert, CEO of medical app company Televero, is infuriated by Nest’s decision. He has written a Medium post about the impending closure, labelling it a “pretty blatant ‘f–k you’ to every person who trusted in them and bought their hardware.”
I’ve experienced this on a smaller scale, when “upgrades” to blogger have made the product less capable and less powerful.
But this is just a blog, and until such time I own/rent my own server, I have to live with this.
If you let Google or cloud type company control your business or your phone, they are going to f%$# like a drunk sorority girl, whether it is product shutdowns, or upgrades that you hate.
I still use Office 2003, but if I used Google docs, I would be forced to work when they changed their interface and went with their low contrast “flat design”, and it would no longer support Office 2003 formats.
If you want to control how you get your work done, you cannot rely on the cloud.
It appears that back in 2012, the CIA proposed yet another of its regime change ideas to the President, and he decided not to proceed with these plans.
The CIA in 2012 proposed a detailed covert action plan designed to remove Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, but President Obama declined to approve it, current and former U.S. officials tell NBC News.
It’s long been known that then-CIA Director David Petraeus recommended a program to secretly arm and train moderate Syrian rebels in 2012 to pressure Assad. But a book to be published Tuesday by a former CIA operative goes further, revealing that senior CIA officials were pushing a multi-tiered plan to engineer the dictator’s ouster. Former American officials involved in the discussions confirmed that to NBC News.
In an exclusive television interview with NBC News, the former officer, Doug Laux, describes spending a year in the Middle East meeting with Syrian rebels and intelligence officers from various partner countries. Laux, who spoke some Arabic, was the eyes and ears on the ground for the CIA’s Syria task force, he says.
Laux, an Indiana native who joined the CIA in 2005 at age 23, says he wrote an “ops plan” that included all the elements he believed were necessary to remove Assad. He was not allowed to describe the plan, but he writes that his program “had gained traction” in Washington. His boss, the head of the Syria task force, regularly briefed members of the Congressional intelligence committees on what Laux was seeing, hearing and suggesting.
A former senior intelligence official said Laux’s ideas—many of them shared by other members of the CIA’s Syrian task force–were heavily represented in the plan that was ultimately presented to Obama.
But the president, who must approve all covert action, never gave the green light. The White House and the CIA declined to comment.
You may have noticed over the past few years that there are no “Moderate Syrian Rebels”, and there never have been.
Also, we know what happens when our quest for regime change hits reality, clusterf%$#s like Libya,
Also, when see that the plan was backed by David Petraeus, who turned the CIA into a drone based Murder, Inc., which served to generate more terrorists than it killed, the fact that Obama did not authorize this is a good thing.
Our moves toward regime change have never turned out well for us, or the citizenry of the nations where they are directed.
A massive leak of documents has blown open a window on the vast, murky world of shell companies, providing an extraordinary look at how the wealthy and powerful conceal their money. Twelve current and former world leaders maintain offshore shell companies. Close friends of Russian leader Vladimir Putin have funneled as much as $2 billion through banks and offshore companies. Those exposed in the leak include the prime ministers of Iceland and Pakistan, an alleged bagman for Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close pal of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and companies linked to the family of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Add to those the monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, enough Middle Eastern royalty to fill a palace, honchos in the troubled body known as FIFA that controls international soccer and 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine’s list of the world’s 500 richest people. Also mentioned are 61 relatives and associates of current country leaders, and another 128 current or former politicians and public officials. The documents within the leak also expose how secretive offshore companies at times subvert U.S. foreign policy and mock U.S. regulators. When drug traffickers, money launderers or other crooks control companies, they undermine national security, and the trail of dark money flowing through them strips national treasuries everywhere of tax revenues. ………
The firm is one of the world’s top five creators of shell companies, which can have legitimate business uses, but can also be used to dodge taxes and launder money. More than 11.5 million emails, financial spreadsheets, client records, passports and corporate registries were obtained in the leak, which was delivered to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in Munich, Germany. In turn, the newspaper shared the data with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
It would be nice if we actually saw some action by they criminal and tax authorities in response to the leaks, but I doubt it.
Back in the fall of 2014, Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson was unstoppable. He’d pushed through a $300 million city subsidy for a new downtown arena for the Sacramento Kings. He’d helped elbow out racist Los Angeles Clippers team owner Donald Sterling, and grabbed a little of the spotlight for himself in the process. He’d been named president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
He and his wife, Michelle Rhee—once the brightest star in the corporate-backed “education reform” movement—showed up at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. An adviser told Johnson’s hometown newspaper, the Sacramento Bee, that the couple was a “modern-day version of Bill and Hillary Clinton.” There was talk about a run for California governor or U.S. Senate.
At his peak, KJ was a figure to behold, an urban policy entrepreneur and brander-in-chief selling #Sacramento 3.0, a “world-class” city where kids would take Uber vehicles instead of buses to their charter schools, “never check out a library book,” and have “more smart devices than toothbrushes.”
………
By the fall of 2015, Johnson’s political career was effectively over. He was under scrutiny, again, for allegedly molesting a sixteen-year-old girl two decades before. And he was facing a new allegation of sexual misconduct; a city employee had filed a sexual harassment complaint. The City of Sacramento’s legal advisers warned Johnson not to hug or touch anyone at city events. So Johnson, deciding two terms in office were enough, announced that he will not seek reelection this November. His exit will coincide with the opening of the new arena, easily his most significant mayoral achievement.
Meanwhile, debt service on the bond-financed arena will reach about $18 million a year, draining money from the city treasury. Sacramento’s city finance department is warning that the city’s spending is already “unsustainable” and budget deficits are imminent. For now, however, Johnson is being credited with a dramatic makeover of the new arena district—where a decaying shopping mall had been before.
It goes on and on, and it gets more petty and sordid.
It’s not surprising. At the core of his political success has always been the Hope Academy charter school, which much like most of the charter school empires, is built on a foundation of broken promises and dubious statistics.
The Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders campaigns are still negotiating over the timing of a debate before the New York primary on April 19th, with no resolution in sight. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released a statement Saturday saying they had offered the Sanders campaign three possible dates for what would be the ninth debate between the Democratic presidential hopefuls. All were rejected, Clinton press spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement. “The Sanders campaign needs to stop with the games,” Mr. Fallon said. In a statement issued later, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said the dates and locations proposed by the Clinton campaign “don’t make a whole lot of sense.” “We have proposed other dates which they have rejected,” he added. “We hope we can reach agreement in the near future,” Mr Briggs continued. “The people of New York and America deserve to see and hear a debate on the important issues facing the state and country.” In his statement, Mr. Fallon said the Clinton campaign agreed to debate on April 4th, April 14th or April 15th.
The Clinton campaign’s 15th suggestion is in the morning.
Here is my response to the aggrieved tax dodgers: