Month: September 2019

In More Enlightened Times, Elon Musk Would Be in the Dock

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Even ignoring his highly inaccurate tweets about Tesla, things like going private and impossible promises about self-driving cars, we have the corrupt self-dealing around Tesla’s purchase of Solar City.

If the SEC or the DoJ were actually interested in pursuing stock fraud, Musk would be in a world of hurt:

Back in 2016, Tesla acquired solar panel manufacturer SolarCity, billing the $2.6 billion deal as an opportunity to create “the world’s only vertically integrated sustainable energy company.” From a SolarCity solar panel to a Tesla battery, the company promised, the in-house supply chain would scale up clean energy for all and provide cost synergies to the businesses and shareholders.

But SolarCity, of which Tesla CEO Elon Musk was chairman, was deeply in debt at the time. Now, newly unsealed documents in an investor lawsuit say the situation was far worse than that. They allege that SolarCity wasn’t just carrying a heavy debt load: it was completely insolvent.

The upshot of reams of law surrounding mergers and acquisitions is that C-suite executives and company boards of directors are supposed to make sure shareholders get the most money possible out of their investment. If they’re going to sell the company, they have to make sure they’re accepting the most valuable reasonable offer. Companies doing the acquiring, meanwhile, are supposed to do their homework to make sure they’re not wasting their resources on a bad deal—and Tesla shareholders say the SolarCity acquisition was exactly that.

………

SolarCity only continued to function because of SpaceX money, the suit alleges:

As SpaceX’s chairman, CEO, CTO, and majority stockholder, Musk caused SpaceX to purchase $90 million in SolarCity bonds in March 2015, $75 million in June 2015, and another $90 million in March 2016. These bond purchases violated SpaceX’s own internal policy, and SolarCity was the only public company in which SpaceX made any investments.

The scenario described is as follows:  Musk owns over 50% of SpaceX, and you used their money to prop up Solar City until Tesla, which is a publicly traded firm, bought the solar panel installer out.

Musk’s cousins founded the company, and Musk was Solar City’s largest shareholder, and they all made made a lot of money as a result, Elon netted about $½ Billion, of what can only be called looting.

This is as corrupt as hell, and in the days before Reagan emasculated the SEC and the white collar crime division of the DoJ, he would be under criminal indictment, and banned from both the securities industry, as well being banned from serving as an executive or a board member of of a publicly traded company.

Of course, after Reagan, and Bush, and Clinton, and Bush, and Obama, it’s, “No harm, no foul.”

The Washington Post Just Got a Bit Better

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OP/ED columnist Richard Cohen has left the Washington Post.

It appears that whatever happened, it was sudden.

My guess is that they discovered something bad, and had no choice.

Bad for him, good for the public discourse of the United States:

Richard Cohen will no longer write columns for the Washington Post, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt tells staffers in an unusually short email sent via editorial board executive assistant Nana Efua Mumford. Seriously, this is the whole thing:

After 43 years of writing a column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen has decided to move on to other challenges. Whether he is writing about politics, movies, history or his glory days in the U.S. Army, Richard is a master of the form. Readers of The Post and the many other publications that carry his column will miss his insight, humor and occasional outrage. As Richard takes on new ventures, we wish him all the best and remain hopeful that he will come back to write for the oped page from time to time.
Fred

This was clearly sudden.

Just to remind you, some of Cohen’s greatest hits:

  • Suggesting that jewelry store owners are justified in not letting black people in his store.
  • Sexually harassed a staffer.
  • Suggested that interracial marriage made observing such couples ill.
  • Lauded Trayvon Martin’s murderer.
  • Suggested that the Steubenville rape was not “real” rape. 

Even by the egregious standards of the Washington Post OP/ED pages under Fred Hiatt, he was a toxic and stupid man.

A Deep Dive on the Oil Field Strikes in Saudi Arabia

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Potential attack routes


Imagery of the attack


Detail image with directions

A week ago, cruise missiles/drones (really a missile) hit the Abqaiq oil processing facility and the Khuaru oil field, knocking out about 5% of world oil production.

The Houthis in Yemen claimed responsibility, but the Saudis and the US government claim that it was an Iranian strike.

While it is highly likely that the Iranians have been providing the technical support to the Houthi drone effort, the provenance of the actual attacks is unclear.

What is clear is that the House of Saud is facing some well-deserved blow-back for their brutal war on the people of Yemen.

There is a claim that the Houthis lacked the ability to make a missile with the range for this task, but given that the Houthis literally had a static displays showing missiles with ranges up to 1700 km 2½ months ago, which would suggest that these capabilities are nowhere near as difficult to acquire as has been implied.

The question here is guidance, and why I call this a missile rather than a drone; the 1250 km range puts the vehicle well out of the range of the control of a base statement without a satellite link, which the Houthis do not possess.

The attacks are very precise.

In fact, the precision seems to exceed the what one could get with GPS, which could not be any less than the 15 meter range.

It is possible that they get less error by using  a D-GPS installation, which could increase the accuracy to less than 1m, but the nearest installation (Al-Ahsa International Airport) would be about 80 km away, and you would need a relatively sophisticated inertial guidance to preserve that position information.

Similarly, the use of Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) might work, but again this would seem to exceed the capabilities of the Houthis.

Given that the Russian KH-5, that the Iranian Soumar is derived from has a CEP of 25m, this implies some sort of terminal guidance.

The two alternatives here are some sort of image based targeting, either TV of IR, or the use of a laser designator on the ground.

Given that the area around both Abqaiq and Khuaru are majority Shia (See map, blue is Shia, red is Sunni, yellow is Wahhabi), I think that there is a very real possibility that there was someone on the ground designating the targets.

As an aside, it should be noted that these attacks indicate a serious shortcoming of the US Patriot SAM system as compared to the Russian S-300 and S-400.

First, the Patriot has about a 90 degree coverage as compared to the full 360 degree coverage given by the Russian systems.

It should be noted that the MEADS missile system would have resolved this issue.

Secondly, the Russian systems are designed to use quick erecting elevated radar masts which are more likely to detect low flying cruise missiles.

Certainly, the Russians are using this event to sell their systems.

Linkage

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I loves me some vintage airshow newsreels:

#OnThisDay 1950: Newsreel was at the Farnborough Air Show to take a gander at all the latest planes. pic.twitter.com/n82J0zxFqe

— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) September 8, 2019

Furrsonae Non Gratae

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Midwest FurFest has refused to allow Milo Yiannopoulos to attend the convention:

Right-wing persona non grata Milo Yiannopoulos announced that he has adopted a “fursona” as a snow leopard and that he purchased tickets to a furry convention; in response, organizers rescinded his event registration.

Yiannopoulos posted an email screenshot to one of the few platforms he has left—his Telegram messaging channel—on Saturday and claimed he registered for Midwest FurFest, a convention “to celebrate the furry fandom” hosted in the suburbs on Chicago this December. “Furries,” as they’re often called, are groups of people who have interest in animal personas with human characteristics; people who participate in the subculture often present themselves as non-human characters via art and costumes.

Needless to say, members of the Furred Reich are feeling a lot of butt-hurt about this.

Not Just Republican States

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The Bernie Sanders camp is urging the DNC Rules & Bylaws committee to consider sanctions against NY if Gov. Cuomo doesn’t sign a bill sitting on his desk that would make it easier to switch parties to vote in a primary, as recommended by the party’s Unity & Reform Commission. pic.twitter.com/1mEZmukFNB

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) September 19, 2019

New York state has the most byzantine and opaque requirements for party registration in the nation.

This has clearly been done to ensure that the party bosses have no accountability.

BTW, it’s not just the Sanders campaign that has made this observation, so has the Brennan Center:

Clumsily designed ballots. An antiquated registration process. Confusing deadlines and outdated laws. Long lines and no early voting. New York state — caricatured as a bastion of progressive politics — has some of the most retrograde voting laws and practices in the nation. Reports of dysfunction from Thursday’s primary only add to the evidence: New York is disenfranchising its citizens.

We won’t see any sanctions, but we should.

Nice to See Reality Acknowledged in a Court of Law

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit has just ruled thatwas written specifically to prevent blacks from voting.

If this stands, it might put North Carolina back under the pre-clearance regime of the Voting Rights Act:

Today, a federal court struck down North Carolina’s voter-ID law, one of the strictest in the nation. In addition to requiring residents to show identification before they can cast a ballot, the law also eliminated same-day voter registration, eliminated seven days of early voting and put an end to out-of-precinct voting. The federal court ruling reinstates these provisions, for now.

………

The federal court in Richmond found that the primary purpose of North Carolina’s wasn’t to stop voter fraud, but rather to disenfranchise minority voters. The judges found that the provisions “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”

In particular, the court found that North Carolina lawmakers requested data on racial differences in voting behaviors in the state. “This data showed that African Americans disproportionately lacked the most common kind of photo ID, those issued by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV),” the judges wrote.

So the legislators made it so that the only acceptable forms of voter identification were the ones disproportionately used by white people. “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans,” the judges wrote. “The bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.”

The data also showed that black voters were more likely to make use of early voting — particularly the first seven days out of North Carolina’s 17-day voting period. So lawmakers eliminated these seven days of voting. “After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting, shortening the total early voting period from seventeen to ten days,” the court found.

Most strikingly, the judges point to a “smoking gun” in North Carolina’s justification for the law, proving discriminatory intent. The state argued in court that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic,” and said it did away with Sunday voting as a result.

“Thus, in what comes as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times, the State’s very justification for a challenged statute hinges explicitly on race — specifically its concern that African Americans, who had overwhelmingly voted for Democrats, had too much access to the franchise,” the judges write in their decision.

This is about as clear-cut an indictment of the discriminatory underpinnings of voter-ID laws as you’ll find anywhere. Studies have already shown a significant link between support for voter ID and racial discrimination, among both lawmakers and white voters in general.

“Faced with this record,” the federal court concludes, “we can only conclude that the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the challenged provisions of the law with discriminatory intent.”

I really hope that this is enough to get North Carolina back under the Voting Rights Act.

That Gonna Change the World Thing………

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We know that MIT Media Lab, and the entire senior management of MIT, conspired to keep donations from Jeffrey Epstein.

In the ensuing furor, one has to wonder what they could possibly do to make themselves even more toxic.

I mean, it would have to be something really bad, like illegally dumping toxic waste down the public sewers, which they also did:

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab have dumped wastewater underground in apparent violation of a state environmental regulation, according to documents and interviews, potentially endangering local waterways in and near the town of Middleton.

Nitrogen levels from the lab’s wastewater registered more than 20 times above the legal limit, according to documents provided by a former Media Lab employee. When water contains large amounts of nitrogen, it can kill fish and deprive infants of oxygen.

Nine months ago, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection began asking questions, but MIT’s health and safety office failed to provide the required water quality reports, according to documents obtained by ProPublica and WBUR. This triggered an ongoing state investigation.

After ProPublica and WBUR contacted MIT for comment, an institute official said the lab in question was pausing its operations while the university and regulators worked on a solution. Tony Sharon, an MIT deputy vice president who oversees the health and safety office, didn’t comment on the specific events described in the documents.

………

The lab responsible for the dumping is the Open Agriculture Initiative, one of many research projects at the Media Lab. Led by principal research scientist Caleb Harper, who was trained as an architect, the initiative has been under fire for overhyping its “food computers”: boxes that could supposedly be programmed to grow crops, but allegedly didn’t work as promised.

Throughout early 2018, the lab’s research site in Middleton, about 20 miles north of the main MIT campus in Cambridge, routinely drained hundreds of gallons of water with nitrogen into an underground disposal well, at concentrations much higher than the lab’s permit allowed, according to documents and interviews. The nitrogen came from a fertilizer mix used to grow plants hydroponically.

This is what happens when you create an institution, like Media Lab, where the principals believe that they are a priori virtuous people who are saving the world.

Also:  What the f%$# does hydroponics have to do with media?

Not Enough Bullets

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Purdue Pharma has declared bankruptcy, but they still want to pay $34 million in bonuses to senior managers, because it’s not drug pushing if you are white and went to Harvard.

I want the guillotine concession at this bankruptcy trial.

I’ll make out like a raped ape:

Officials at troubled drugmaker Purdue Pharma say “certain employees” should be paid more than $34 million in bonuses for meeting and exceeding goals over the last three years, even though the company is facing thousands of lawsuits over its role in the nation’s opioid crisis and earlier this week filed for bankruptcy.

In a legal filing, attorneys for Purdue Pharma asked a judge to authorize millions in payments to employees who have met “target performance goals.”

It is not clear from the company filings why employees would be eligible for bonuses because, while the bonuses are supposed to be partly contingent on the company’s financial performance, the company has filed for bankruptcy.

At a bankruptcy court hearing in White Plains, N.Y., on Tuesday, Paul K. Schwartzberg, an attorney for the U.S. Trustee, raised objections to some of the bonuses. While it is typical for companies in bankruptcy to try to pay employees as a firm seeks to regain its financial footing, the Purdue Pharma bonuses go “way beyond” what is typical, he said.

Enough is enough.

Govrnor Ratf%$# is at it Again

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Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has set up a a dark money group to oppose educating our children, particularly the black and brown ones:

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is reprising his role as a grass roots agitator, asking top supporters to raise at least $2 million for a lobbying and public relations campaign that would herald his Republican agenda and try to rouse opposition to Democratic priorities.

A fundraising memo obtained by The Washington Post emphasized that Hogan’s new super PAC and a related nonprofit “can accept unlimited donations.” The campaign will target, among other things, a costly plan embraced by the Democratic-majority legislature to address inequity in public schools and deep disparities in student achievement.

Campaign finance watchdogs said the governor’s solicitation illustrates a troubling trend that has escalated over the past decade, as public officeholders find methods to raise unlimited money — some from undisclosed donors — in ways often prohibited for traditional candidate committees.

The second of six fundraisers listed in the memo took place in Annapolis last week, with donors asked to give as much as $10,000 apiece.

………

The governor is trying to accomplish indirectly what hehas largely been unable to do from inside the State House: pressure the General Assembly to side with him on contentious policy questions. Democrats have veto-proof majorities in both chambers, and have easily overturned Hogan’s vetoes of bills to, among other things, raise the minimum wage, restore voting rights to felons and permanently protect oyster sanctuaries.

There are no good Republicans, some of them just hide their true nature better.

Do not be confused by statements by Hogan and Evil Minions™, when they oppose getting funding to under-resourced districts, what they really mean that they think that educating people of color is a bad thing.

I guss that Larry thinks that education makes black folks uppity.

Above the Law

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An administrative law judge has ruled that Tesla and Elon Musk violated labor law in their treatment of employees advocating for a union:

Tesla Inc. committed a series of violations of the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 and last year, a judge ruled Friday.

The electric-car maker illegally threatened and retaliated against employees, according to Amita Baman Tracy, an administrative law judge in California.

Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety record is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 21, 2018

The judge’s order calls for Tesla to offer reinstatement and back-pay to a fired, pro-union employee, and to revoke a warning issued to another union supporter. The ruling also calls for the company to hold a meeting at its assembly plant in Fremont, California, that Musk must attend. Either he or an agent with the labor board must read a notice to employees informing them that the NLRB concluded the company broke the law.

It will no doubt be appealed to the NLRB, where the minions of newly appointed Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia will no doubt rule against the workers, because that is what they do.

Even if the NLRB rules against them,it is a marker.

Companies that mistreat their employees mistreat their customers as well.

Nooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

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Iron Man director John Favreau has announcedthat he intends to direct a new Star Wars Holiday Special.

To my shame, I saw it when it came out, and that which is seen cannot be unseen:

Even though the Star Wars prequels received their fair amount of criticism from longtime fans of the sci-fi saga, nothing has ever received as much scorn as the totally weird Star Wars Holiday Special. Aired in 1978, the program took place after the events of Star Wars: A New Hope and followed Han Solo and Chewbacca as they tried to evade the Empire and get to the Wookiee home world of Kashyyyk in order to celebrate “Life Day” with Chewie’s father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy. Yeah, the Star Wars Holiday Special is quite a trip, and if Jon Favreau has his way, he’d like to create a new Star Wars Holiday Special for Disney+ someday.

No. Just no.

1 GB/S for $60/Month

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A new community broadband network went live in Fort Collins, Colorado recently offering locals there gigabit fiber speeds for $60 a month with no caps, restrictions, or hidden fees. The network launch comes years after telecom giants like Comcast worked tirelessly to crush the effort. Voters approved the effort as part of a November 2017 ballot initiative, despite the telecom industry spending nearly $1 million on misleading ads to try and derail the effort. A study (pdf) by the Institute for Local Reliance estimated that actual competition in the town was likely to cost Comcast between $5.4 million and $22.8 million each year.

Unlike private operations, the Fort Collins Connexion network pledges to adhere to net neutrality. The folks behind the network told Ars Technica the goal is to offer faster broadband to the lion’s share of the city within the next few years:

………

The telecom sector simply loves trying to insist that community-run broadband is an inevitable taxpayer boondoggle. But such efforts are just like any other proposal and depend greatly on the quality of the business plan. And the industry likes to ignore the fact that such efforts would not be happening in the first place if American consumers weren’t outraged by the high prices, slow speeds, and terrible customer service the industry is known for. All symptoms of the limited competition industry apologists are usually very quick to pretend aren’t real problems (because when quarterly returns are all that matter to you, they aren’t).

The business model of Comcast, and Charter, and Verizon, etc. is to extract monopoly rents.

Providing better service, or serving customers, is simply not a part of their model.

Cuck Fomcast.

Of Course He’s Poisoning Us

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The Trump administration is looking to eliminate California’s auto emissions waiver, which allows them to enforce stricter air standards.

I am not sure how they can do this, this waiver is written into the Clean Air Act, but when has the law ever stopped Trump and Evil Minions™:


The New York Times reports that the Trump administration will use a meeting at the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday to announce the revocation of California’s ability to set its own air pollution standards. The state’s authority was granted by a waiver that allows it to set pollution limits that are stricter than the federal government’s, which is now threatening the administration’s ability to roll back Obama-era standards for automobile fuel economy. This move has been rumored to be under consideration for months and sets up a legal showdown that will pit the federal government against California and the 13 states that plan to follow its lead.

………

During the initial implementation of the Clean Air Act, the Golden State was suffering from extensive smog problems and was granted a waiver that allowed it to set stricter pollution standards than those under the Clean Air Act. The waiver has since given the state significant leverage in negotiations regarding national automotive pollution controls, a position enhanced by the decision of a number of states to adopt whatever standards California sets. Due to the vast size of these states’ collective economies, car companies are compelled to meet its pollution standards or generate two different products: one for California and one for the rest of the country. Most have found it easier to simply involve California in negotiations from the start.

………

All of which would explain why the Trump administration would be interested in revoking the state’s waiver and why it’s already laid out arguments to justify doing so. The Times reports that this isn’t an indication that the EPA has decided what the new standards should be yet, simply that the agency is clearing the way to impose the standards when they’re ready.

But the Clean Air Act waiver mechanics are set up so that the EPA administrator must grant a waiver to any state wanting stricter standards unless the state is acting in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner or its standards don’t address “compelling and extraordinary conditions.” California would certainly have compelling arguments that climate change represents a compelling and extraordinary condition. And it’s near certain that the state would be willing to test those arguments in court.

Unfortunately, it will be a very close thing in the Supreme Court, because there are now a majority of right wing hypocrite hacks on the bench there.

I Am so Stoked about This

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We now have reports that Gary Larson’s THE FAR SIDE Cartoon may be coming back in some form:

Gary Larson said goodbye to fans and the absurdist universe of The Far Side with his final comic on January 1, 1995, and since then the real world has done everything it can to live up to the inanity of his iconic comic strip. Unfortunately, the foolishness of 2019 isn’t nearly as enjoyable as sentient chickens and oversized suburban bugs. Now, the 21st century might be getting both of those creatures—along with aliens, cavemen, clever cows, and women with beehive hairdos—because for the first time in almost two decades, the cartoon’s official webpage has been updated. And unless this joke is on all of us, The Far Side will soon be returning.

 After sitting dormant since 1999, The Far Side‘s webpage was updated suddenly and without warning (which we first learned about at The Daily Cartoonist). It features a new cartoon of an explorer using a blowtorch to melt some of the strip’s most iconic characters from a large block of ice. Below it reads, “Uncommon, unreal, and (soon-to-be) unfrozen. A new online era of The Far Side is coming!” Since the cartoon itself is signed by Larson, it certainly appears he will be returning with all new comics for the first time in almost 25 years.

For the love of God, please make this true.

NPR Navel Gazing

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I’m listening to the Cokie fest at NPR on the news of the death of Cokie Roberts of breast cancer.

I get that she is a significant figure from the early days of the network, and certainly her passing should be noted, but the wall-to-wall coverage was excessive.

If it had been Sy Hersh, or Bob Woodward, or Carl Bernstein, there would have been a 5 minute appreciation.

I understand that a number of people at National Public Radio feel this loss personally, but you are supposed to be journalists.

Suck it up, and leave space for other news.