Month: March 2020

It’s Called Fraud

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I am referring, of course to Tesla, and the efforts by the board of directors to temporarily pump up the stock price using accounting so that Elon Musk can cash in, because ethics and honesty are only for the little people.

It’s not just Musk though, it’s companies like Norwegian cruise lines, which is using accounting tricks to ignore the effects of Coronavirus so that it can hit the numbers so that its executives get their bonuses.

In the middle of a crisis that threatens to destroy the whole cruise line industry.

At its core is something called adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).

The adjustments use factors which are not considered acceptable under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), which allows for senior executives to loot the company.

What we are seeing are things like:

  • Not counting stock options grants as an expense so that they can issue those same stock options which the executives convert to cash.
  • Ignoring expenses like interest payments
  • Add in non-existent revenue, such as deferred revenue that results from merger activity. (“Ghost revenue”)

In the case of Norwegian Cruise Lines, it appears that revenue shortfalls from the current pandemic will be ignored because they are, “Not representative of our day-to-day operations and we have included similar nonrepresentative adjustments in prior periods.”

that is accounting speak for, “F%$# you, I want my money.”

The thing is, these are real costs, and real shortfalls, and when companies cook the books to hit numbers to justifiy bonuses, it sucks resources out of the company that otherwise would be invested in improving the business, or ***cough*** Boeing ***cough*** in maintaining a cushion in the event of an event impacting revenues or costs.

See this Twitter thread for a good summary of what is going on:

Stop the looting, and start prosecuting.

Justice and Transparency

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The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that police and judges do not have the right to suppress the records of their arrests, which are public information for us mere mortals:

Booking photographs of judges and law enforcement officers who are arrested and any police reports connected with their cases are public records, even if the officials are never arraigned in court, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday.

In one of two major rulings on the intersection between the public’s right to know and the privacy protections in the state’s Criminal Offender Record and Information Act, the court ruled unanimously that The Boston Globe was entitled to booking photos and reports on police officers arrested on drunken driving charges and the booking photo and report on the arrest of a judge for theft.

“The public has a vital interest in ensuring transparency where the behavior of these public officials allegedly fails to comport with the heightened standards attendant to their office,” Chief Justice Ralph Gants wrote in the 6-0 ruling.

The SJC also, for the first time, made it clear that government agencies must extract data from their electronic records to comply with requests under the state’s public records law. The law allows the government to deny requests if the information sought would force them to create a “new record.”

………

In the court’s decision ordering the release of booking photos and reports, Gants wrote that “where police officers and judges allegedly engage in criminal conduct that does not result in an arraignment … the public has a substantial interest in ascertaining whether the case was not prosecuted because it lacked merit or because these public officials received favorable treatment arising from their position or relationships.”

(emphasis mine)

I wholeheartedly agree.

When the law is structured to grant special rights to members of law enforcement, particularly as it applies to corruption and malfeasance, we are taking a step toward creating a police state.

Closer to home, Maryland should repeal the so called “Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights,” which has exacerbated a culture of corrupt impunity among Maryland law enforcement.

Serendipitous Physics Discovery

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A group of physicists attempted to use a magnetic field to influence the spin of an atomic nucleus.

Fortunately, they screwed, up, and blew up the antenna generating the magnetic field for the experiment.

In so doing, they subjected the nucleus to an electrical field, rather than a magnetic one, and when they saw the results, they realized that they had accidentally confirmed Bloembergen’s theorem, which had remained unproven for over 50 years:

A group of scientists have accidentally proven a near 60-year old theory correct, thanks to a botched lab experiment.

Nicolaas Bloembergen, the late Dutch-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to laser spectroscopy, previously predicted that it was possible to control the nucleus of a single atom with electric fields in 1961. His idea, however, was never experimentally proven and was left largely forgotten until now.

………

Asaad and his colleagues set about probing a single atom of antimony, a metalloid element, fabricated on a silicon wafer with nuclear magnetic resonance. To do this, the team had to place the device in a strong magnetic field. They generated the magnetic field by applying an electric current to a superconducting magnet and directed it towards the atom’s nucleus using a specialised antenna.

“However, once we started the experiment, we realised that something was wrong. The nucleus behaved very strangely, refusing to respond at certain frequencies, but showing a strong response at others,” said co-author Vincent Mourik, another postdoctoral researcher at the USNW Sydney, working in the same department.

Eventually they realised they had accidentally destroyed the antenna by cranking up the strength of the magnetic field. “What happened is that we fabricated a device containing an antimony atom and a special antenna, optimized to create a high-frequency magnetic field to control the nucleus of the atom. Our experiment demands this magnetic field to be quite strong, so we applied a lot of power to the antenna, and we blew it up!” Asaad said.

With the antenna borked, all that was being transmitted was an electric field instead. The researchers may have failed to induce nuclear magnetic resonance in the antimony nucleus but they had managed to get it to interact with just an electric field instead, proving Bloembergen’s theory. Results from the “failed” experiment have been published in research paper in Nature.

“I have worked on spin resonance for 20 years of my life, but honestly, I had never heard of this idea of nuclear electric resonance,” said Andrea Morello, a professor of quantum physics at the USNW Sydney. “We ‘rediscovered’ this effect by complete accident – it would never have occurred to me to look for it. The whole field of nuclear electric resonance has been almost dormant for more than half a century, after the first attempts to demonstrate it proved too challenging.”

I believe that Isaac Asimov once said that, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘That’s funny.”

I agree.

Well, This Has Gone from Concerning to Bat-Sh%$ Insane Quickly

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I am talking, of course, about Coronavirus.

In the past 24 hours, after Donald Trump gave the least reassuring political speech since Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer’s resignation speech 1n 1987,* things have gone to hell in a hand-basket.

The NCAA has canceled the collegiate basketball championships, AKA March Madness, because of COVID-19 19 concerns.

This is the most ppopular sporting event in the United States, normally pulling in about 50% more in ad revenue, and even more in eyeballs, than the Superbowl, and it’s canceled.

In addition, the Baseball Spring training has been suspended, the NBS has suspended its season,

Heard on every trading desk for last 10yrs: “Fck Dodd-Frank.”

Heard on every trading desk for the last 10d: “Thank fck for Dodd-Frank”

— Joseph S. Mauro (@jsmauro13) March 10, 2020

And then, for the second time this week, but only the third time in more than 20 years, circuit breakers temporarily halted stock trading after the S&P 500 entered free fall.

I am certain right now that there are a lot of brokers who are VERY happy that Dodd-Frank strengthened these market protections.

Finally, in Maryland, all public schools will be closed for 2 weeks, Catholic Schools in Baltimore are shutting down, Episcopal Churches are suspending services, and both state and federal courts are suspending cases, with most public entertainment events cancelled as well.

This all went pear shaped rather quickly.

* Following his conviction on bribery charges, he blew his brains out at a press converence.
.

A Noun, a Verb, and a Travel Ban

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The centerpiece Donald Trump’s announced measures to deal with COVID-19 is a travel ban from Europe.
This is the administration’s default response to any situation:  Build a wall.

In this case, the wall is the Maginot Line:

Donald Trump announced that the US would temporarily suspend all travel from the European Union, as the country reckons with the spread of coronavirus and the White House grapples with the severity of the situation.

The restrictions, which would begin on Friday and last for 30 days, would not apply to the UK, he said. He also encouraged older Americans to avoid all travel if possible.

Trump made the announcement in an Oval Office speech on Wednesday evening on the federal response to what the World Health Organization has declared a global pandemic.

During the speech, Trump defended his administration’s response while laying blame on the European Union for not acting quickly enough to address the “foreign virus”, saying US clusters had been “seeded” by European travelers.

Seriously, this is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

23 Years

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Honestly, I never expected Harvey Weinstein to get such a long sentence, but IMHO, it is well justified:

Harvey Weinstein, the titan of Hollywood turned convicted rapist, has been sentenced to 23 years in prison on Wednesday in New York.

The fallen mogul was handed down his punishment by Judge James Burke at the New York supreme court having been convicted of two counts of sexual assault. The judge imposed 20 years for a first-degree criminal sex act for forcing oral sex on a production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006.

He also imposed a three-year sentence for third-degree rape of a woman whom the Guardian is not naming because her wishes over identification are not clear.

The two sentences will run consecutively, meaning that Weinstein, 67, will have to complete the terms of the criminal sex act before serving the rape sentence.

Good.

Look Out Below

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Wall Street’s record-breaking 11-year “bull market” came to an end on Wednesday as fears about the spreading Covid-19 pandemic hit stock markets again.

US stock markets have been on an unprecedented streak since 2009, a bull market of gains. On Wednesday investors sold off shares across all sectors after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic for the first time and criticized “alarming levels of inaction” by governments in corralling the virus.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down over 1,400 points, 5.8%. After days of wild fluctuations, the Dow has now fallen 20% from its most recent highs – finally signaling a bear market. The S&P 500 also fell and is now 19% below its recent high.

I would note that the bulk, if not the totality of all net stock purchases over that period has been stock buybacks.

This is long overdue, and luckily, it’s happening during an election year with an incumbent Republican.

It’s Official

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The World Health Organization has officially declared that COVID-19 is a pandemic:

The spread of the coronavirus is now a pandemic, officials at the World Health Organization said on Wednesday.

“We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general.

………

There are only about 1,100 confirmed cases in the United States, but experts fear that is only a fraction of the real prevalence, because testing for the coronavirus has been unavailable or haphazard in the United States.

The number of cases in the world doubles every six days, epidemiologists have estimated.

And the US response will be handled by people who want to down the government in a bathtub.

Linkage

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This NOT an official Muppets video:

Yaaassssss!!!

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Wackdoodle Alex Jones has been busted for driving drunk.

Here’s hoping that he gets some real jail time:

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested in Texas on a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated after his wife called police to their house over an argument, according to court records released on Tuesday.

The Infowars founder was booked into an Austin jail shortly after midnight and released on bond a few hours later, said a spokeswoman from the Travis county sheriff’s office. Jones, 46, had a “strong odor of alcohol” coming from him and his blood-alcohol level was recorded at 0.076% and 0.079%, according to court records.

In Texas, the legal blood alcohol limit is 0.08%. Jones was also allegedly unable to complete sobriety tests.

In an arrest affidavit, the sheriff’s deputy said he was originally responding to a family disturbance call at Jones’s home just after 10pm on Monday. “Dispatch advised the disturbance now was only verbal but earlier in the day ‘it was physical’,” the affidavit said.

………

Jones is being sued in Austin by the parents of a six-year-old victim of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre who claim the Infowars host used his show to promote falsehoods that the shooting was a hoax.

So he’s a wife beater too.

Throw the book at this turd.

Today in Hack Journalism

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The New York Times has a particularly egregious article about Russian meddling in elections.

Most of the article is non specific threats related by, “American officials briefed on recent intelligence.”

It’s just that there are some people sowing dissent, and maybe some people saying nice things about American Nazis, (Maybe it’s those Nazis we should worry about) and possibly some bogus BLM groups.

They never give specific groups, or posts.

The ONLY specific actions mentioned in the article (actual quotes) wait until the last paragraph, and they are 1 story, and 2 OP/EDs from the Kremlin owned RT:

There is no reason that this editor should not have sent this back with a big red “BS” on the cover.

Of Course He Does

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It appears that Donald Trump’s plan for dealing with economic disruption from the Covid-19 outbreak is a waiver of the payroll tax, but only through the election.

Why am I not surprised that he is viewing this entire crisis as a nothing more than an opportunity to score political points?

Donald Trump told Republican senators on Tuesday that he wants a payroll tax holiday through the November election so that taxes don’t go back up before voters decide whether to return him to office, according to three people familiar with the president’s remarks.

 Trump spoke to the Republicans at their weekly conference lunch at the Capitol as his administration prepares a package of economic measures to combat the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. But the administration does not have a particularly detailed plan, several Republicans said including John Thune of South Dakota.

Other Republicans are suggesting a bailout of the fracking industry, because that never profitable industry faces a more immediate reckoning* over collapsing oil prices.

*The investments have not passed from the Vampire Squid and its Evil Minions™ down the financial food chain to ordinary investors, and the Republicans must prevent that.

How Convenient

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Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole discovered her office did not count about 10% of the ballots that voters cast on Super Tuesday.

She is now asking a court to let her conduct a manual recount of the votes, after she discovered 44 thumb drives containing ballots that were not included in the final results.

………

Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole discovered her office did not count about 10% of the ballots that voters cast on Super Tuesday.

She is now asking a court to let her conduct a manual recount of the votes, after she discovered 44 thumb drives containing ballots that were not included in the final results.

………

“It was initially believed that all of the ballots cast at all of the 454 vote centers had been received back,” wrote Pippins-Poole in an affidavit to the lawsuit. “However, it was later determined that there are ballots from 44 of the precinct scanner and tabulator machines that are unaccounted for. Consequently, I need to perform a paper recount of the ballots from 44 of the precinct scanner and tabulator machines that were not accounted for during the reconciliation process.”

Seriously, every time that we find these sorts of errors, they favor one candidate.

Hoocoodanode?

Also, there should be a recount of ALL of the ballots.

Fascinating

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At least, there is symmetry.

It turns out that Eric Prince’s mercenary operations may be a part of a Chinese government intelligence operation:

The really important fact about Erik Prince that is not mentioned in The New York Times reporting that he has been using retired US and British spies, presumably human intelligence offers (HUMINTers), to teach James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas employees to be more effective is not that Prince founded and used to run Blackwater, nor that he’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoss’s brother, nor that he’s very close with the President and others in the administration and the reelection campaign. The really important fact is that Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group, the company of military contractors that he runs, is owned by DVN Holdings, which would ultimately make Prince its chairman. DVN Holdings is owned by Hong Kong investor Johnson Ko Chun and the Chinese International Trust Investment Corporation (Citic), which is a People’s Republic of China (PRC) owned investment fund. Johnson Ko Chun is also on the board of directors of Cambridge Analytica’s spin off Emerdata Ltd along with Rebekah Mercer, her sister Jennifer, as well as former senior officials from Cambridge Analytica. Emerdata is also still tied to the former Cambridge Analytica’s parent firm SCL Group.

The important fact that everyone keeps missing is that Erik Prince’s operations are funded by the People’s Republic of China. He is now their asset. If he is involved with O’Keefe’s merry band of political ratfuckers, then he is only involved so long as Xi and the PRC want him to be. The same goes for Emerdata. And anything else that Prince involves himself with. Despite having a long history of looting his own companies and skimming from his investors and backers, such as the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emirates, Prince’s financial backing from the PRC state owned Chinese International Trust Investment Corporation means that he works for the PRC and does so only as long as he advances their interests.

I am so not surprised.  Eric Prince and Blackwater, Xe, Academi have done more damage to the United States than almost any other entity connected to the US state security apparatus.

The idea that they are being backed by the PRC in order to subvert the United States makes perfect sense.

Finally

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It is difficult to imagine that Evo Morales would have left office when and how he did — in a civic-military coup — if the Organization of American States had not found that Bolivia’s Oct. 20 election was fraudulent. To be sure, the OAS did not single-handedly bring down Morales. In the weeks before the coup, Morales faced large protests and a devastating police mutiny.

The protests did not focus solely on the election. Many were upset Morales was allowed to run at all after losing a 2016 referendum asking voters to approve his bid to seek a fourth term. The police mutiny centered on officers’ disgruntlement over pay and being asked to contain the protests. And the Bolivian right had declared that Morales could win the October election only through fraud for months before the vote, i.e., well before the OAS stepped into the fray.

Yet, the OAS actions were undoubtedly important in creating a climate within which a coup could not only succeed, but be applauded as a necessary step toward restoring Bolivian democracy, as the U.S. government and mainstream media did. In fact, the opposite has occurred. Following Morales’s ouster, Bolivia has come under the control of a right-wing authoritarian regime that has killed dozens of unarmed protesters, detained hundreds, blocked international human rights investigators, systematically repressed political opponents, threatened journalists and media outlets, embraced racism, and enacted a far-right agenda for which it has no electoral mandate nor constitutional legitimacy.

The question of whether the OAS was justified in declaring the October election fraudulent looms large. In a recent article published in The Post, John Curiel and Jack R. Williams, researchers with MIT’s Election Data and Science Lab, conclude the answer is no. Curiel and Williams used statistical analysis to analyze a central claim made by the OAS — initially in an Oct. 21, 2019, news release — that there was a “drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results” following an election-night suspension of the unofficial rapid vote count. According to the OAS, this is one of numerous pieces of evidence showing fraud. Curiel and Williams unequivocally reject this, writing: “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election.”

The OAS is an organ of the US regime change mousketeers.

Bloomberg Being Bloomberg

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Michael Bloomberg hired people, and promised, win or lose, that they would have a job through the November election.

He lied to his employees:

Mike Bloomberg’s shuttered presidential campaign is dismissing staffers across the country and inviting them to reapply for jobs on his new independent committee — despite extending guarantees of being paid through the November election when they were hired.

The consolation prize: They get to keep their Bloomberg-issued iPhones and MacBooks.

Multiple Bloomberg aides told POLITICO they participated in termination calls with the campaign on Monday. Some of them complained after the calls that they were originally told they would be paid by Bloomberg though the November general election regardless of whether he remained in the race. Most staffers will receive their last paycheck on March 31, sources said.

After a poor showing on Super Tuesday, Bloomberg dropped last week and endorsed Joe Biden. The former New York City mayor is now underwriting an outside effort to help Democrats defeat President Donald Trump.

Hiring materials from Bloomberg headquarters shared with POLITICO stated that regardless of what happened, field organizers could expect to have a job with “Team Bloomberg” through November, though it didn’t promise interviewees a specific location where they would be based. It outlined that organizers would be paid $6,000 a month, plus a $5,000 relocation stipend and full health, dental and vision benefits.

This is exactly what you would expect from a self-absorbed billionaire who thinks that he’s better than his word.

He’s not.  He’s pond scum.