Month: November 2019

Linkage

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The DR Who Theme as a Spaghetti Western Theme is a complete mind-f%$#:

Yeah, His Demeanor Screams Client from Hell

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Rudolph Giuliani is under investigation in the Ukraine affair, and so needed a lawyer, but no one wanted him as their client:

President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Wednesday that he had assembled a legal team to represent him in the criminal investigation into his activities related to Ukraine, an announcement that came after weeks of sputtered attempts to find a lawyer willing to take him on as a client.

Mr. Giuliani said on Twitter that he would be represented by three lawyers, including his longtime friend, Robert J. Costello. The hires show how seriously Mr. Giuliani is treating the inquiry by federal prosectors in Manhattan, who are investigating whether he violated lobbying laws in his efforts to dig up damaging information about Mr. Trump’s rivals.

………

The hires came after a weekslong search to find a lawyer who would represent Mr. Giuliani, who rose to prominence as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same office that is now investigating him. He has a wide range of close associates — including former prosecutors and judges — who could have taken him on as a client.

But at least four prominent attorneys declined for various reasons, according to people familiar with the matter. They included Mary Jo White, who also once led the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District, as well as Theodore V. Wells Jr., a trial lawyer at Paul, Weiss, according to people familiar with those discussions.

Another was Daniel L. Stein, a former senior prosecutor who recently held top posts in the Southern District, where he oversaw the prosecutions of public officials including Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York State Assembly, and Dean Skelos, the State Senate majority leader.

………

Big law firms are, for the most part, conservative institutions that often represent a wide range of clients with varying business interests, many of whom tend to shy away from controversy, regardless of their politics. Mr. Giuliani’s connection to Mr. Trump, his unpredictability and his recent history of outbursts in his frequent television appearances could make him a challenging client.

Lawyers who are solo practitioners were concerned that Mr. Giuliani, who is known to have difficulty delegating, would try to manage his own case, according to a person close to Mr. Giuliani.

So basically, Rudy is a complete asshole, and there is not enough money for most white-shoe lawyers to be willing to work with him.

Hoocoodanode?

This is F%$#ed Up and Sh%$

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It turns out that the College Board, aka the SAT folks, have been selling the names of low performing SAT takers so that schools can aggressively recruit these students.

It turns out that by getting under-qualified students to apply, and then rejecting them these schools appear more exclusive, and get a boost to their college rankings.

This is profoundly cruel and yet more evidence that if US News and World Report, and its associated college rankings, were swallowed by a black hole, the world would be a better place:

Jori Johnson took the practice SAT test as a high-school student outside Chicago. Brochures later arrived from Vanderbilt, Stanford, Northwestern and the University of Chicago.

The universities’ solicitations piqued her interest, and she eventually applied. A few months later, she was rejected by those and three other schools that had sought her application, she said. The high-school valedictorian’s test scores, while strong by most standards, were well below those of most students admitted to the several schools that had contacted her.

………

The recruitment pitches didn’t help Ms. Johnson, but they did benefit the universities that sent them. Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.

Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.

The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities.

That has helped schools inflate their applicant pools and rejection rates. Those rejection rates have amplified the perception of exclusivity that colleges are eager to reinforce, pushing students to invest more time and money in preparing for and retaking exams College Board sells. Colleges say the data helps them reach a diverse pool of students they might have otherwise missed.

“The top 10% of universities don’t need to do this. They are buying some students’ names who don’t have a great chance of getting in,” said Terry Cowdrey, an enrollment consultant for universities and Vanderbilt University’s acting dean of undergraduate admission in 1996 and 1997. “Then the kids say, ‘well why did you recruit me if you weren’t going to let me in?’ They do it to increase the number of applications; you’ve got to keep getting your denominator up for your admit rate.”

………

College Board now controls the majority of tests students take to earn college admission, which places it at the nexus of opportunity, resources and ambition in American life, said Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and a former vice president at Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT.

By selling student names to attract more applications, College Board is helping colleges expand and market their reputations of exclusivity, he said. “The College Board runs the game, and there is an intimate, mutual dependency between them and the colleges,” he said. “They are selling class and that’s a good business to be in. People are terrified of falling out of the middle class. Basically, your job as a parent is to make sure your kids don’t fall out of the middle class.”

This some seriously evil sh%$ that the College Board and the Universities are pulling.

I Cannot Find the Evil Here

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Gilead Sciences has been sued by the US government for violating HHS patents with its HIV preventative drugs. (Truvada and Descovy)

Considering the fact that their drugs costs $1800.00/month in the US, and $8.00 in Australia, going after the price gougers at Gilead is an unalloyed good, but it’s the Trump administration, so I’m trying to figure out how they got here.

There has to be some sort of corruption or evil behind this.

A rift between the Centers for Disease Control and pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences ruptured further Wednesday when the Trump administration sued Gilead in U.S. District Court, asserting that Gilead made billions of dollars on HIV prevention therapy while repeatedly ignoring government patents.

 The patent infringement case against a major drug company, coming at a time of increasing political anger over drug prices, signals a shift in a relationship that typically has been collaborative. The San Francisco-based company has worked for years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight HIV, including providing free drugs for government experiments, as well as efforts to expand treatment of hepatitis C.

 But the lawsuit filed on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services this week describes how, beginning in 2015, Gilead repeatedly refused to recognize CDC patents for an HIV prevention called Truvada for PrEP.

“Gilead has repeatedly refused to obtain a license from CDC to use the patented regimens,’’ the government said in its lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department in federal court in Delaware. “Meanwhile, Gilead has profited from research funded by hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Indeed, Gilead has reaped billions from PrEP . . . but has not paid any royalties to CDC.’’

If I were directing CDC of HHS policy, I would not be asking for royalties, I’d be demanding price controls as a condition for the license.

It would save a lot more money than any royalty scheme.

Great, Another Self-Important Billionaire Throws His Hat into the Presidential Ring

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This time, it’s Michael Bloomberg who appears to be upset that he will have to pay more taxes under a Sanders or Warren presidency.

Michael R. Bloomberg is actively preparing to enter the Democratic presidential primary and is expected to file paperwork this week designating himself as a candidate in at least one state with an early filing deadline, people briefed on Mr. Bloomberg’s plans said.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor and billionaire businessman, has been privately weighing a bid for the White House for weeks and has not yet made a final decision on whether to run, an adviser said. But in the first sign that he is seriously moving toward a campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has dispatched staffers to Alabama to gather signatures to qualify for the primary there. Though Alabama does not hold an early primary, it has a Friday deadline for candidates to formally enter the race.

Mr. Bloomberg and his advisers called a number of prominent Democrats on Thursday to tell them he was seriously considering the race, including former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the retired majority leader who remains a dominant power broker in the early caucus state. Aides to Mr. Bloomberg also reached out to Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Yes, the problem with the Democratic Party Presidential primaries are that there are not enough arrogant billionaires in the race, said no one ever.

If you think that Kamala Harris has problems because of her record as District Attorney and California Attorney General, just imagine how “Mayor Stop and Frisk” will be received by minority voters.

ISPs Lie

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The latest controversy over internet technology is browsers implementing DNS over HTTPS, which would prevent ISPs from tracking their users browser habits, and selling that information to 3rd parties.

Mozilla is claiming, with a lot of justification, that ISPs lied when lobbying against this technology:

Mozilla is urging Congress to reject the broadband industry’s lobbying campaign against encrypted DNS in Firefox and Chrome.

The Internet providers’ fight against this privacy feature raises questions about how they use broadband customers’ Web-browsing data, Mozilla wrote in a letter sent today to the chairs and ranking members of three House of Representatives committees. Mozilla also said that Internet providers have been giving inaccurate information to lawmakers and urged Congress to “publicly probe current ISP data collection and use policies.”

DNS over HTTPS helps keep eavesdroppers from seeing what DNS lookups your browser is making. This can make it more difficult for ISPs or other third parties to monitor what websites you visit.

“Unsurprisingly, our work on DoH [DNS over HTTPS] has prompted a campaign to forestall these privacy and security protections, as demonstrated by the recent letter to Congress from major telecommunications associations. That letter contained a number of factual inaccuracies,” Mozilla Senior Director of Trust and Security Marshall Erwin wrote.

This part of Erwin’s letter referred to an Ars article in which we examined the ISPs’ claims, which center largely around Google’s plans for Chrome. The broadband industry claimed that Google plans to automatically switch Chrome users to its own DNS service, but that’s not what Google says it is doing. Google’s publicly announced plan is to “check if the user’s current DNS provider is among a list of DoH-compatible providers, and upgrade to the equivalent DoH service from the same provider.” If the user-selected DNS service is not on that list, Chrome would make no changes for that user.

………

In addition to the broadband-industry letter to Congress, Comcast has been giving members of Congress a lobbying presentation that claims the encrypted-DNS plan would “centraliz[e] a majority of worldwide DNS data with Google” and “give one provider control of Internet traffic routing and vast amounts of new data about consumers and competitors.” Comcast and other ISPs are urging Congress to intervene.

But a number of the arguments ISPs made to lawmakers are “premised on a plan that doesn’t exist,” Erwin told Ars last week, referring to the ISPs’ claims about Google.

………

Mozilla’s letter to Congress said the ISP lobbying against encrypted DNS amounts to telecom associations “explicitly arguing that ISPs need to be in a position to collect and monetize users’ data. This is inconsistent with arguments made just two years earlier regarding whether privacy rules were needed to govern ISP data use.”

………

Web users are tracked by Google, Facebook, and other advertising companies, of course. ISPs, though, have “privileged access” to users’ browsing histories because they act as the gateway to the Internet, Erwin said to Ars.

There is already “remarkably sophisticated micro-targeting across the Web,” and “we don’t want to see that business model duplicated in the middle of the network,” he said. “We think it’s just a mistake to use DNS for those purposes.”

………

Mozilla has established specific policy requirements that DNS providers have to meet to earn a spot in Firefox’s encrypted-DNS program. For example, DNS resolvers must delete data that could identify users within 24 hours and only use that data “for the purpose of operating the service.” Providers also “must not retain, sell, or transfer to any third party (except as may be required by law) any personal information, IP addresses or other user identifiers, or user query patterns from the DNS queries sent from the Firefox browser.”

Do you really trust COMCAST to protect your privacy when their profits depend on NOT protecting your privacy?

I know that I don’t.

Pity the Persecuted Billionaires

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Pied-a-Terre is a tax on non primary residences, and in this case, and it would apply to purchases greater than $5 million.

Needless to say, real estate developers are completely losing their sh%$ over this:

New York’s pied-a-terre tax, left for dead earlier this year, is back on the table and the real estate industry is gearing up for a fight.

Fresh off imposing an increased “mansion tax” and eliminating privacy protections favored by well-heeled buyers, state lawmakers are reviving efforts to tax second-home purchases of $5 million or more.

There’s a growing desire among Democrats to address wealth inequality, and for them, the idea of slapping an annual tax on the uber rich who scoop up Manhattan apartments is long overdue. But for William Zeckendorf, whose firm built some of the city’s most expensive condo towers, the proposal is the wrong idea at the wrong time.

He and other developers — and the lawyers, appraisers and brokers who cater to millionaire clients — argue that going after pied-a-terre buyers would further dent demand in the already struggling luxury real estate market. Thousands of new high-end condos are on their way, adding to a glut, and takers for them have all but disappeared. New rules that promote a political environment where buyers feel targeted would push even more of them away, Zeckendorf said.

Zeckendorf’s clients use city roads, bridges, and services, but they do not pay city income tax.

F%$# Zeckendorf, and f%$# his clients.

New mansion and transfer tax surcharges, which took effect July 1, will raise an estimated $365 million annually, dedicated to shoring up the city’s crumbling transportation system. But there are more public-spending needs, and it makes sense for people who can afford the most expensive apartments to help foot the tab, said State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat.

Hoylman has been trying to pass a pied-a-terre tax since the heady condo boom days of 2014, when high-end buyers from other countries thought nothing of sheltering their millions in the safe harbor of Manhattan apartments.

“They use our system of laws to protect their international investment in real estate, and I think there should be a premium on that,” said Hoylman, who hasn’t yet released a revised version of the bill. “This is a way to capture that purchasing power and use it for some common good.”

Indeed.

If this can help stop New York from becoming London, where whole blocks are full of mansions that are empty most of the year.

Tweet of the Year

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Taavi Kotka , former CIO of Estonia, on the low £100m price tag for being the most tech-savvy government in the world: “If you don’t use Accenture or McKinsey, you’d be amazed at what you can get done.”

— Philip Salter (@Philip_Salter) November 4, 2019

The point is a valid one.

The fixation that governments have on outsourcing and consultants serves primarily to increase cost and to reduce effectiveness of government programs.

Just look at the Obamacare website.

A Feature, Not a Bug for the DSCC

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It turns out that former Colorado Governor, and current Colorado Senate Candidate, John Hickenlooper, is under ethics investigation for taking gifts from lobbyists.

This has been the case for some time, well before when the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee endorsed him in the PRIMARY.

Why would they endorse in the primary?

I’m sure that some will claim that this was just an oversight, but I believe that it was deliberate.

Where most of us see this sort of crap, and think, “Corruption,” but I think that Chuck Schumer and his Evil Minions™ see that and think, “He shares our values.”

Between Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Sherrod Brown, it makes it hard for Democrats to suck up to Wall Street, payday lenders, and oil companies, and the like, and another liberal in the Senate would make Chuck’s job just too damn hard:

The Colorado Independent Ethics Commission is expected to release an investigative report this week into allegations that John Hickenlooper, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2020, violated state law by receiving free private jet rides and other gifts from corporations when he served as governor. While Hickenlooper has denied any wrongdoing, and last year the Denver Post editorial board said the complaint consisted of “politically motivated lies,” there are fears that the investigation stands to damage Hickenlooper’s chances in Colorado.

………

Some progressives worry that Hickenlooper, the current frontrunner and the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate, could fumble the party’s chances of flipping the seat if he is found guilty of violating the state ethics law. Hickenlooper, who abandoned his lagging presidential campaign in order to run for Senate in August, is one of eight Democrats vying for the chance to take on Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable Republicans heading into 2020. And though he was a popular governor and leads Gardner in head-to-head polls, Hickenlooper’s pro-fracking record could also be a liability in the primary, especially as voters’ anxieties over the climate crisis rise.

………

In August, The Intercept reported that former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, a progressive candidate largely considered to be Hickenlooper’s main competition, called the DSCC’s intervention a “recipe for disaster.” He said that if voters are told that their voice doesn’t matter, “then why would they show up in November?

The original complaint focused on travel including a trip to the Bilderberg Meeting in Italy and related luxury lodging and transportation costs, such as a ride in a chauffeured Maserati limousine; a flight from Dallas, Texas, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to attend the American Enterprise Institute’s Jackson Hole Symposium; and a private jet from New Jersey to Colorado. (In 2006, Colorado voters passed a constitutional amendment that created additional restrictions on gifts to elected officials, including a ban on gifts exceeding $53 per year.)

The complaint is being dismissed as a political hit job, and there is definitely an element of that, but Hickenlooper is literally a guy who literally drank fracking fluid to demonstrate his allegiance to the oil industry, so these allegations are going to stick.

And Chuck Schumer and the DSCC are backing him because  they are worried about a real Democrat hurting the feelings of the K Street lobbyist crowds.

Scooters Break Down and Wear Out? Hoocoodanode?

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It turns out that, much like the Gypsy cab companies Uber and Lyft, e-scooters have no path to profitability.

Scooters break, and they break after only a few months, which makes the plague of rental scooters unsustainable:

E-scooters really are the vaping of public transportation. They’re a safe alternative that’s somehow even more dangerous, and they’re incredibly popular despite being despised by every human being on the planet. They also make you look like a spoiled 15-year-old douche. But that’s not what’s hurting the e-scooter brand, which claims it’s close to becoming a billion-dollar industry … if only they could stop burning through scooters at breakneck speed.

I just love the phrase, “E-scooters really are the vaping of public transportation.”

It nails the situation in a nutshell:

………

So what’s causing Lime to leak money faster than the fluid out of one of their scooter’s cut brakes? According to them, it’s a matter of scooter “depreciation” — a shareholder-friendly way of saying that their product gets treated like crap. Rideshare companies have to spend a fortune picking up their scooters from whatever random patch of sidewalk their scootees ditched them like so much spent chewing gum. And then there are the constant repairs. According to Lime, their scooters only survive the mean city streets for five months (which is about four months longer than some other reports), thanks to a corrosive combination of elemental wear and tear, heavy/irresponsible usage, and people getting so mad at douches dropping them in front of their homes that they’ve started sabotaging them.

I’ve increasingly come to believe that Silicon Valley venture capitalists have no interest in the viability of a business, they just want to just hype the company until sufficiently stupid people purchase shares at the IPO.

As strange as it seem, it appears that they have actually begun to start run out of stupid people.

I do not see how this does not meet the legal definition of fraud.

I Did Not Know That He Could Lose His Sh%$ Even More

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Trump, who on a good day is melting down, is having an epic meltdown:

President Trump doesn’t think House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry should get any media coverage.

Meanwhile, he’s ravenously consuming news about the subject — primarily through a friendly lens. From the Oval Office to the White House residence to Air Force One, he’s closely tracking how Republican members of Congress are digesting the latest revelations on his handling of Ukraine, and monitoring their statements for any sign of hesitation or perceived disloyalty.

“We’re getting f%$#ing killed,” Trump often gripes — a complaint about media coverage that is escalating in volume and frequency amid the impeachment probe, according to a Republican close to the White House. “He does make that comment literally every day.”

Trump is especially frustrated that the depositions by current and former officials — which have taken place behind closed doors, but nonetheless have leaked in some detail to reporters — “have to be covered at all,” according to a senior White House official.

“We should have no speculative coverage of what’s going on inside these private briefings, according to the very people who keep it private,” said another White House official. “Either let everybody see what’s happening as it happens or keep your mouth shut.”

Trump tells White House aides in private that he sees no need for leaks from the depositions because everyone can read the transcript of his call with the president of Ukraine, which he has repeatedly called “perfect.” He also is critical of witnesses he accuses of “pretending they know what he meant” on the call.

Seriously, I’m thinking that Mike Pence is aching to invoke the 25th amendment, and he’s just waiting for the right time.

Clearly, the Solution is Not Enough Profit Motive

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We now have a number to attach to the cluster-f%$# that is Pacific Gas & Electric’s malicious prioritization of profit over safety, 1,500 fires over the past 6 years.

They could have done the job right, but there are stock buybacks and dividends to be made:

Over the past week, the Kincade Fire has torn through nearly 78,000 acres of California wine country, forcing about 180,000 people to evacuate. At the same time, millions have gone without electricity, often for days at a time.

Hospitals scrambled to find refrigerators for medications, people bundled their children to keep them warm during cool nights, and seniors were left alone in the dark.

The state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., is responsible for these blackouts and possibly for the fire itself.

About the same time the Kincade Fire ignited, a jumper cable broke on a PG&E transmission tower in the area, the company told state regulators on October 24. By the time PG&E personnel arrived, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, had taped the area off and identified the broken cable.

A problem with PG&E equipment was also the cause of the Camp Fire, a California state agency said, which killed at least 85 people last year and razed more than 18,800 structures. It was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history.

In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, the utility company’s equipment led to more than 1,500 fires from June 2014 to December 2017.

………

PG&E CEO Bill Johnson said Californians should expect these types of preemptive service interruptions for another 10 years.

“We recognize the hardship of not having electric service,” a PG&E representative told Business Insider in an email. “While we recognize that the scope of these events is unsustainable in the long term, it was the correct decision given the large-scale, historic weather events and ensuing equipment damage that unfolded across our service area.”

But many Californians say they should have never been forced into this choice: deadly fires or multiday blackouts. Instead, PG&E’s critics accuse the company of shirking safety precautions to funnel money toward investor dividends.

The Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik suggested PG&E might now be “the most detested, and detestable, corporation in California, if not in the observable solar system.”

Worse than Comcast?

Daym!!!!!

……….

After a PG&E pipeline exploded in 2010, killing eight people, state regulators started investigating the company. They found that PG&E had collected $224 million more than it was authorized to collect in oil and gas revenue in the decade before the explosion. At the same time, it spent millions less than it was supposed to on maintenance and generally fell short of industry safety standards.

“There was very much a focus on the bottom line over everything: ‘What are the earnings we can report this quarter?'” Mike Florio, who was a California utilities commissioner from 2011 to 2016, told The New York Times. “And things really got squeezed on the maintenance side.”

A 2017 report to state regulators highlighted PG&E’s lack of a comprehensive safety strategy, unclear communication about safety between management and field personnel, and tendency to take action only after a major disaster.

Anticipating the cost of billions of dollars in legal claims associated with the Camp Fire and other fires from 2017 and 2018, PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January.

PG&E is completely beyond redemption.

Regulators have the power to liquidate PG&E by refusing to sign off on their bankruptcy, which would wipe out the executives and investors who have benefited from their deliberate negligence.

Break it up, take it over, and throw the executives in jail.

This Is Familiar, and Not in a Comfortable Way

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This is serious, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” stuff:

A wry smile crept across Steffan Stefanov’s face as he scanned the internet, digesting news of England’s now notorious football match against Bulgaria. It wasn’t that he was belittling the racist abuse that was directed against the black English players, but rather the use of two words littering media reports about it.

“Bulgaria and racism,” he proclaimed. “The two go hand-in-hand. It’s our reality, we live it every day. I’m sorry for the England players who were targeted but, in truth, this was pretty minor for us.”

………

The government of prime minister Boyko Borissov is propped up by a grouping of three small rightwing populist parties known collectively as the “United Patriots”. They are made up of the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria (NFSB), the Bulgarian National Movement and the Attack party.

Krasimir Karakachanov, head of the Bulgarian National Movement, holds three portfolios – deputy prime minister, minister for defence and minister for public order and security. His “Roma integration strategy,” or “concept for the integration of the unsocialised Gypsy (Roma) ethnicity” to give it its formal name, is due to be presented to the Bulgarian parliament and could soon become law.

It defines Roma as “asocial Gypsies,” a term used by the Nazis, and calls for limits on the number of children some Roma women can have; the introduction of compulsory “labour education schools” for Roma children and forced work programmes for sections of the community. It also depicts the Roma as “non-native Europeans” left over from the Ottoman empire.

His party’s manifesto also calls for the creation of “reservations” for Roma based on the model used for Native Americans or Indigenous Australians, claiming that they could become “tourist attractions”.

Earlier this year, following violence between Bulgarian Roma and non-Roma, Karakachanov declared: “The truth is that we need to undertake a complete programme for a solution to the Gypsy problem.”

His predecessor as deputy prime minister Valeri Simeonov described the Roma as “arrogant, presumptuous and ferocious humanoids”. He was also chair of Bulgaria’s National Council for Cooperation on Ethnic and Integration Issues at the time.

Jonathan Lee, spokesman for the European Roma Rights Centre, said: “Unfortunately, racist chanting and offensive gestures from the terraces is not even close to as bad as it gets in Bulgaria. Last Monday night, Europe was confronted with what for most Roma in the country is the everyday. Rising anti-Gypsyism, decline of the rule of law, and increasingly fascist political rhetoric is nothing new – it just rarely gets such a public stage.”

Lee added: “This is an EU member state where violent race mobs are the norm, police violence is sudden and unpredictable, punitive demolitions of people’s homes are the appropriate government response, random murders of Romany citizens only a fleeting headline, and the rights and dignity of Romany citizens are routinely denied on a daily basis.”

So now we have two NATO allies (Turkey and Bulgaria) who have proposed credible attempts at genocide, Turkey against the Kurds, and Bulgaria against the Roma.

And then you have AfD in Germany, the NR in France, the LN in Italy, etc. on the rise.

Obviously, Turkey is not in the EU, but the rest of them are, and the promise of the whole, “European Project,” that it would prevent the horrors of the 20th century, seems increasingly remote.

My Heart Bleeds for These Corrupt Motherf%$#ers

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You know, maybe if your business is dependent on concealing its ownership, you should not have a business at all:

Small businesses are assessing the potential costs of complying with requirements under proposals in both chambers of Congress aimed at limiting the use of anonymous shell companies.

The House in October passed a bill requiring most limited-liability companies, among other firms, to tell the Treasury Department who their primary owners are. A companion measure has been introduced in the Senate. The legislation aims to crack down on entities that are used as vehicles for hiding or moving illicit funds.

The bills would require companies with 20 employees or fewer and no physical office to provide owners’ names and other personally identifiable information. The House measure calls for annual submissions; the Senate bill gives businesses 90 days to report ownership changes and a year to report changes to addresses or other personal information.

Limited-liability companies, often referred to as shell companies, provide owners with protections against lawsuits, among other financial benefits. They are frequently used by real-estate investors and sole proprietors, those who run one-person businesses. Some limited-liability companies are registered in the U.S. under the names of representatives who neither own nor operate them.

Passage of the House bill marked a victory for corporate-transparency advocates, following several failed attempts. Big banks, human-rights advocates, law-enforcement authorities and other groups have expressed their support for creating a registry of “beneficial,” or true, owners.

If you need to conceal the ownership of your business, your business is fundamentally corrupt, and and it needs to be ended.

Kind of Like Your Mother-in-Law Driving off a Cliff in Your Brand New Car

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It appears that in an attempt to forestall impeachment, the Trump administration is going to war against the US State Security Apparatus.

It appears that Trump is leaning on British intelligence agencies to dig up dirt on US intelligence agencies:

As the impeachment hearings get more and more alarming for Donald Trump, with damning new evidence emerging every day, there appears to be increasing urgency in the parallel counteroffensives under way by the president’s team in an attempt to defend him.

There are attacks against the witnesses giving testimony by Trump and his supporters, including attempts to smear Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Ukraine expert at the National Security Council who this week provided crucial testimony about Trump’s telephone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. And there have been the extraordinary scenes of congress Republicans breaking into the proceedings and disrupting them.

At the same time, overshadowed by the publicity around the impeachment, is the ever-broadening investigation by William Barr, the attorney general, which the White House sees as a game-changer. An investigation which is seeking nothing less than to overturn the conclusion of the US intelligence services and special counsel Robert Mueller that Russia interfered in the last US presidential election.

………

The attorney general is focusing on the theory, aired on far-right conspiracy sites, and raised by Trump and Giuliani, that Ukraine framed Vladimir Putin over the US election in a complex triple-cross operation by impersonating Russian hackers.

Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.

And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.

“Quite robust terms,” is official Brit speak for, “These motherf%$#ers are nuts, completely bonkers, mad as a hatter.”

I only hope that there is a way for both of them to lose.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!! (On Saturday, Again)

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No bank failures in 2018, a failure in May of this year, and now 3 bank failures in 2 weeks.

The most recent failure, the 4th for the year, is City National Bank of New Jersey of Newark, NJ.

I’m beginning to wonder if regulatory forbearance has begun to come to the end of its string, and now banks that were left to slide are beginning to collapse.

Full FDIC list

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

Buh Bye Beto

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Cue Queen

Beto O’Rourke has ended his Presidential bid.

He was a much better candidate toward the end of the campaign, when he actually showed some outrage following the mass shooting in his hometown.

Former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas announced on Friday that he was dropping out of the presidential race, ending a campaign in which he struggled for months to recapture the energy of his insurgent 2018 Senate candidacy on a national stage full of other big personalities and liberal champions.

Mr. O’Rourke made the decision to quit the race in the middle of this week, on the eve of a gathering of Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa, according to people familiar with his thinking. He is not expected to run for any other office in 2020, despite persistent efforts by party leaders and political donors to coax him into another bid for the Senate.

His campaign has been under extreme financial strain, and Mr. O’Rourke’s advisers concluded that proceeding in the race might have meant making deep cuts to his staff in order to pay for advertising and other measures to compete in the early primary and caucus state.

Mr. O’Rourke confirmed his withdrawal in a post on Medium and in an email message to his supporters. In that message, Mr. O’Rourke said he was proud of championing issues like guns and climate change but conceded that his campaign lacked “the means to move forward successfully.”

Maybe if he hadn’t been a candidate about nothing for the first half of his campaign, he would still be in the race.