Month: May 2020

Here We Go Again

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This is what took down the markets in 2008-09, and it’s not surprising that they are doing this again, since Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Holder, steadfastly refused to prosecute.

No consequences, so they went back to ripping of the rest of us:

Among the toxic contributors to the financial crisis of 2008, few caused as much havoc as mortgages with dodgy numbers and inflated values. Huge quantities of them were assembled into securities that crashed and burned, damaging homeowners and investors alike. Afterward, reforms were promised. Never again, regulators vowed, would real estate financiers be able to fudge numbers and threaten the entire economy.

Twelve years later, there’s evidence something similar is happening again.

Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank — as well as other lenders have engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed them to award borrowers bigger loans than were supported by their true financials, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.

Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the complaint claims this time it’s happening in commercial properties like office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for commercial mortgage-backed securities).

Lenders and securities issuers have regularly altered financial data for commercial properties “without justification,” the complaint asserts, in ways that make the properties appear more valuable, and borrowers more creditworthy, than they actually are. As a result, it alleges, borrowers have qualified for commercial loans they normally would not have, with the investors who bought securities birthed from those loans none the wiser.

ProPublica closely examined six loans that were part of CMBS in recent years to see if their data resembles the pattern described by the whistleblower. What we found matched the allegations: The historical profits reported for some buildings were listed as much as 30% higher than the profits previously reported for the same buildings and same years when the property was part of an earlier CMBS. As a rough analogy, imagine a homeowner having stated in a mortgage application that his 2017 income was $100,000 only to claim during a later refinancing that his 2017 income was $130,000 — without acknowledging or explaining the change.

It’s “highly questionable” to alter past profits with no apparent explanation, said John Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert in securities regulation. “I don’t understand why you can do that.”

………

The complaint suggests widespread efforts to make adjustments. Some expenses were erased from the ledger, for example, when a new loan was issued. Most changes were small; but a minor increase in profits can lead to approval for a significantly higher mortgage.

The result: Many properties may have borrowed more than they could afford to pay back — even before the pandemic rocked their businesses — making a CMBS crash both more likely and more damaging. “It’s a higher cliff from which they are falling,” Flynn said. “So the loss severity is going to be greater and the probability of default is going to be greater.”

………

After lobbying by commercial real estate organizations and advocacy by real estate investor and Trump ally Tom Barrack — who warned of a looming commercial mortgage crash — the Federal Reserve pledged in early April to prop up CMBS by loaning money to investors and letting them use their CMBS as collateral. The goal is to stabilize the market at a time when investors may be tempted to dump their securities, and also to support banks in issuing new bonds. (Barrack’s company, Colony Capital, has since defaulted on $3.2 billion in debt backed by hotel and health care properties, according to the Financial Times.)

………

The notion that profit figures for some buildings are pumped up is surprising, said Kevin Riordan, a finance professor at Montclair State University. It raises questions about whether the proper disclosures are being made.

Investors don’t comb through financial statements, added Riordan, who used to manage the CMBS portfolio for retirement fund giant TIAA-CREF. Instead, he said, they rely on summaries from investment banks and the credit ratings agencies that analyze the securities. To make wise decisions, investors’ information “out of the gate has to be pretty close to being right,” he said. “Otherwise you’re dealing with garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.”

Once again, they are robbing us blind, and the response of the powers that be will be to bail them out.

To quote the late Paul Volker, “The only useful thing banks have invented in the last 20 years is the ATM.”

There is Brazenness, There is Effrontery, There is Gall, There is Chutzpah, and then there is ………

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Cable company legal arguments.

Case in point, Charter Communications, whose only value to society is that it makes Comcast looks good, who is now claiming that refusing to give refunds is necessary because it saves their customers money.

Seriously, on this makes the demand by the man who murdered his parents mercy as an orphan look like an amateur:

Charter is suing Maine to block a new state law that requires prorated refunds when cable customers cancel service mid-month, claiming that the requirement is a form of rate regulation and is preempted by federal law. The preemption question will be at the heart of the case, but Charter also told the court that its no-refund policy prevents its prices from rising even more than they usually do.

“Charter’s decision not to provide a partial-month rebate for cancelling subscribers reflects the fact that Charter’s service is sold on a monthly basis,” the company, which operates Spectrum TV service, said in its complaint against the state government. “It also reduces administrative costs and thus ultimately reduces the upward pressure on rates for Charter’s continuing subscribers.”

Charter further said that its policy minimizes price increases “for continuing subscribers by reducing costs associated with implementing pro-rata rebates for mid-month cancellations.” Charter said that subscribers who cancel in the middle of a monthly billing period can continue to receive the service until the end of the month.

Charter made a similar argument in a motion for preliminary injunction, saying that its no-refund policy “reduce[s] its transaction and back-office costs and thereby ease[s] upward pressure on rates for existing and future subscribers.”

Why Google Should be a Utility

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The fact that they don’t care enough to fall prey to these transparent censorship actions indicates that there should be a sh%$ load more regulation of their activities:

A Google search, at one time, could locate a news article on a man accused of attempted child rape, another on someone charged with fraud and still others on Ukrainian politicians facing corruption allegations. Googling certain keywords in March would find an article detailing the movements of two coronavirus-infected British tourists in Vietnam and warning others who visited the same places to take precautions.

Then the stories vanished.

Google stopped listing them in searches after it received formal requests that it scrub links to the pieces, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

The Journal identified hundreds of instances in which individuals or companies, often using apparently fake identities, caused the Alphabet Inc. unit to remove links to unfavorable articles and blog posts that alleged wrongdoing by convicted criminals, foreign officials and businesspeople in the U.S. and abroad.

Google took them down in response to copyright complaints, many of which appear to be bogus, the Journal found in an analysis of information from the more than four billion links sent to Google for removal since 2011.

Google’s system was set up to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. The 1998 law gives tech firms immunity from claims in copyright cases as long they quickly take down copyrighted material once alerted.

Takedown requests to Google are often from media companies legitimately requesting that pirated copies of a movie or album be removed from search results. Publishers and news outlets, including the Journal, have also asked Google to scrub allegedly infringing material from Google Search.

Yet some requests, the Journal found, appear to be from people manipulating the system in ways it didn’t intend, resulting in Google’s taking down lawful content.

When a Colorado man, Dak Steiert, faced state-court charges of running a fake law firm in 2018, he sent Google a series of copyright claims against blogs and a law-firm website that discussed his case, claiming they had copied the posts from Mr. Steiert’s own website. That wasn’t true, the Journal determined, but Google erased the pages from its search engine anyway.

Last year, Mr. Steiert, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, pleaded guilty in Colorado state court to one count of false advertising in his business. The Colorado Supreme Court closed his practice. The articles remained invisible in Google searches until the Journal flagged the cases to Google, which then reinstated the links.

………

“If people can manipulate the gatekeepers to make important and lawful information disappear,” said Daphne Keller, a former Google lawyer and now a program director at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, “that’s a big deal.”

………

After the Journal shared its findings with Google, the company conducted a review and restored more than 52,000 links it determined it had improperly removed, she said. Google said its review identified more than 100 new abusive submitters, declining to discuss individual cases.

………

A Google search for reputation managers turns up firms claiming to be able to remove negative content from popular search engines including Google—even though typically Google only removes links for alleged copyright violations or to comply with other relevant laws.

The Journal dug into the world of takedown requests by reviewing electronic records of copyright-removal notices that Google shares with Harvard University researchers. The Journal cross-referenced those requests with separate data Google releases regularly in a “transparency report,” which discloses whether it granted each request.

………

Financial-news site Benzinga fell victim to a common tactic to trick Google: backdating. Someone wanting Google to hide a webpage will find a little-trafficked blog and post a copy of the content from the legitimate webpage. After backdating the plagiarized post, the complainant will file an electronic notice with Google claiming the real article is a copyright violation.

A simple change to the DMCA, requiring fines against those who file false claims, and fines against entities who fail to use diligence with regards to a take-down notice,  (the latter would cover Google) would shut this crap down.

Meaningful regulation, and the right for private recourse would go a long way to shutting down this.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens

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The Senate has voted to allow warrantless collection of your web browsing history.

The US Senate has voted to give law enforcement agencies access to web browsing data without a warrant, dramatically expanding the government’s surveillance powers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The power grab was led by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as part of a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which gives federal agencies broad domestic surveillance powers. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) attempted to remove the expanded powers from the bill with a bipartisan amendment.

But in a shock upset, the privacy-preserving amendment fell short by a single vote after several senators who would have voted “Yes” failed to show up to the session, including Bernie Sanders. Nine Democratic senators also voted “No,” causing the amendment to fall short of the 60-vote threshold it needed to pass.

Yes, I am very disappointed that Sanders was not there to support the amendment, and mad as hell at the Democrats who voted against the the amendment to strip this from the bill.

Hopefully, Nancy Pelosi won’t ram it through the House.

Who am I kidding, OF COURSE Nancy Pelosi will ram it through the house.

Travis Kalanick’s Ghost Haunts Uber

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Again and again, despite having given Kalanick the boot, Uber shows that it remains rotten to its core.

Case in point, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has decided that maintaining the excessive pay of senior executives is worth firing thousands of employees.

At it’s core Uber is still about monetizing the public commons and misery of its employees to enrich the looters at the top:

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reportedly vetoed a request from the ride-hailing giant’s top executives to cut their own salaries in order to avoid laying off rank-and-file workers, paving the way for thousands of pink slips.

A number of the ride-hail giant’s engineering leaders last month told Khosrowshahi that they and other managers were willing to have their own pay slashed in order to spare their workers from Uber’s wide-ranging culling of its headcount, according to The Information (paywall).

“The answer is no,” Khosrowshahi said in response, according to the report. “What we’re doing through is fundamentally realigning the company so that our cost base matches the new reality of the world post COVID. We do not want to take temporary measures.”

Khosrowshahi likewise signaled that part of his plan includes “remaking the engineering team so that over time more jobs would be located overseas,” according to the report.

Uber earlier this month laid off 3,700 workers from its customer support and recruiting teams, and expects to continue the culling with cuts to its engineering, products, operation and self-driving units that will be completed by May 18. The cuts may end up representing as much as 30 percent of Uber’s workforce.

Uber is pond scum, top to middle management, dedicated to abusing its lower level employees and its customers for a quick buck.

Mixed Emotions

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It’s a big deal when the FBI formally serves a warrant to someone that they are investigation.

It’s an even bigger deal when they seize the phone of the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said.

 Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

It’s interesting, because authorization for this had to come from the most senior levels of the Department of Justice, meaning Attorney General William Barr, a man who has exhibited no interest whatsoever in pursuing this sort of corruption.

What’s more, there have been no similar serving of warrants to Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), who is objectively in an even more egregiously compromised position:

In late February and early March, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) sold stocks valued at between $1.25 million and $3.1 million in companies that later dropped significantly, including ExxonMobil. She also bought shares in Citrix, which makes telework software.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her seat to fill a vacancy and faces an election later this year, said after the sales became public that she and her husband would divest all individual stocks.

Why would William Barr do this when it is so out of character, and not go after the least senior member of the Senate?

Perhaps because Burr has temporarily stepped down as Chairman of the Intel Committee, and Burr has bee working to release a declassified version of his committee’s report of Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign:

………

The public evidence again Burr is quite damning, so there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation.

Still, coming from a DOJ that has gone to great lengths to protect other looting (and has not taken similar public steps against Kelly Loeffler), the move does raise questions.

Particularly given the focus that Richard Burr gave, during the John Ratcliffe confirmation hearing, to getting the final volume of the SSCI Report on 2016 declassified and released by August.

………

If Richard Burr is prepping to reverse his prior public comments about “collusion,” it might explain why the Bill Barr DOJ, which has stopped hiding that it is an instrument used to enforce political loyalty to Trump, would more aggressively investigate Burr than others.

Again, there’s no question that this is a properly predicated investigation. But in the Barr DOJ, properly predicated investigations about political allies of Trump all get quashed. This one has, instead, been aggressively and overtly pursued.

This is a political hit against a guilty man conducted by the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States.

On the other hand, Burr is as guilty as hell.

¯_(ツ)_/¯

Don’t Make Bernie Angry, You Wouldn’t Like It When He’s Angry

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Some of staffers fro Bernie Sanders’ now suspended Presidential campaign set up a PAC.

Bernie Sanders HATES PACs, and so was unamused when they used one of his slogans to name it.

Bernie has gotten them to change the name, and reports that Sanders loudly expressed his displeasure to the people who set up the organization.

All things considered, I think that this is an attempt by those staffers to generate some consulting fees off of Bernie supporters, so I am not surprised that he was unamused:

When a bunch of Bernie staffers formed a super PAC name-checking his old slogan “Future to Believe In,” he was none too pleased given his well-known hatred of groups that skirt campaign finance limits. So, they changed the name.

 The group will now be known as America’s Promise PAC. The change was filed with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.

 “We wanted to be as clear as possible that there is no association between the PAC and the senator,” super PAC head and Sanders adviser Jeff Weaver told VICE News.

 ………

 But Sanders has also spent the better part of his career crusading against “the millionaires and billionaires” looking to buy political power — and had a particular ire for super PACs, which can accept unlimited sums from individuals and corporations. Sanders hammered his opponents for taking help from super PACs during the 2016 and 2020 primaries. And by all accounts, he was rather furious when he found out some of his top advisers had decided to move ahead with one.

 “The senator was informed about the creation of the super PAC before the paperwork was filed, and he was not happy about it,” Sanders political spokesman Mike Casca told VICE News.

 Numerous other Sanders staff used more colorful language to describe Sanders’ reaction to the group.

………

Weaver declined to discuss the details of his conversations with Sanders, but was quick to admit his old boss wasn’t thrilled that he was creating a super PAC.

………

Weaver dismissed grumblings from critics that he might be looking to cash in with the group, saying no one had taken salaries yet from the organization, and “we’ll probably make at or less than what we made before.”

That word, “Yet,” covers a whole lot of future mischief.

………

 This isn’t the first time a Weaver group has gotten off to a rocky start, partly because he sought unlimited funds. When Weaver was named the head of the pro-Sanders Our Revolution after Sanders’ 2016 campaign, more than half the staff resigned in protest — partly over personal differences but also because he’d decided to push for a large independent expenditure effort to power the organization rather than focus on small-dollar donations. Both Our Revolution and this new group can take unlimited contributions, though the new super PAC America’s Promise will eventually be required to disclose its donors, unlike Our Revolution.

Yeah, this is going to be a remarkable success  ……… NOT.

So Not a Surprise

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The AP has come across the original recommendations from the CDC for the pandemic, the ones that the White House suppressed, and they were far more extensive than what Trump and Evil Minions™ eventually released:

Advice from the top U.S. disease control experts on how to safely reopen businesses and institutions during the coronavirus pandemic was more detailed and restrictive than the plan released by the White House last month.

The guidance, which was shelved by Trump administration officials, also offered recommendations to help communities decide when to shut facilities down again during future flareups of COVID-19.

The Associated Press obtained a 63-page document that is more detailed than other, previously reported segments of the shelved guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It shows how the thinking of the CDC infection control experts differs from those in the White House managing the pandemic response.

Hoocoodanode?

What Happens When You Go with a Moderate Uninspiring Candidate

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While I am sure that members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) and their consultants thought that it was a good idea to pick a “moderate” candidate to replace Katherine “Katie” Hill.

I can just imagine the consultants extolling an uninspiring and timid candidate, Christy Smith, who opposes Medicare for all, takes PAC money, and is squishy on climate change, and in a special election, one where bringing out the base is paramount, she gets demolished by double digits.

I understand why members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) favor uninspiring candidates who do not make waves; because they don’t make waves, they rake in the bucks, and require massive bucks in an attempt to make the sow’s ear into a silk push.

And the consultants, and their friends in the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) get a percentage of the media buy.

Ka Ching.

Unfortunately, it also means that you lose elections, but those consultants need to make their payments on their Tesla Model X’s.

Another 3 Million New Jobless Claims

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So the total since mid March, about 8 weeks, is 36½ million new jobless claims.

Assuming that the normal level of claims is 225,000 (PDF link, see page 6), this means that the excess initial unemployment claims is 36,500,000–225,000×8=34,700,000 excess unemployment claims.

The labor force was roughly 165 million with 3% unemployment, which gives about 170 million working or looking for work.

Just subtracting the 34.7 million excess claims, and a lot of people have not been processed, gives 23.4% unemployment (U3).

The above is just spit-balling by me, but it is not unreasonable to expect the unemployment rate to top 20% right now.

Fuck No!

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It appears that Bernie Sanders is being pressured to turn over his donor list to Joe Biden and the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Fuck that.

The people who donated to you do not want to be a an asset to be managed by some hack political consultant whose only qualification is their close relationships with members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Please, just don’t.

Clever Hans Speaks*

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For as long as people have been driving, cops have been imagining reasons to pull them over and coerce them into “voluntary” searches. The Supreme Court’s Rodriguez decision (sort of) put an end to extended stops — the ones that start with a perceived violation that’s dragged out until a drug dog arrives. Unfortunately, that decision only removed part of the equation. The Supreme Court’s Heien decision made it possible for cops to rely entirely on pretext to engage in fishing expeditions by saying cops only had to think they witnessed a traffic violation, rather than actually be accurate about the laws they’re tasked with enforcing.

Cops are still trying to bring drug dogs to routine traffic stops. The Rodriguez decision is generally taken to mean cops just need to be quicker about rustling up a K-9 unit. Cops love drug dogs because they allow cops to perform the warrantless searches they want to perform. The drug dog’s handler can call literally any movement by the dog an “alert,” turning normal dog behavior into “probable cause” for a search. It doesn’t help that the dogs are rewarded for every alert and given no positive reinforcement for failing to find anything interesting.

Courts have historically been willing to cut drug dogs as much slack as they cut their law enforcement officer handlers. Subjective interpretations of anything an animal does to please its master is considered close enough to Fourth Amendment compliance to justify warrantless searches. Every so often, a court will question the reliability of the dog or the intent of its handler, but those are anomalies.

This case, via FourthAmendment.com, is an amazing anomaly. Not only did the court choose to hear from experts on drug dog training and handling, it actually went so far as to call into question the reliability of every drug dog in the state.

………

The defense brought in an expert witness, Dr. Mary Cablik, who has two decades of drug dog training experience working with POST units in Nevada and California. Cablik said the absence of “blind” training is a real problem. If the dog is only tested in areas where the handler knows drugs will be found, the dog carries this knowledge on to the real world and will continue to search for nonexistent drugs until it gives its handler what they want: an “alert.”

………

Utah’s training does not produce reliable drug dogs. Officer Moore’s drug dog is possibly more unreliable than most, but this order makes it clear everyone who’s been subjected to a drug dog sniff should challenge it. The state POST training has produced little more than handy Fourth Amendment circumvention tools for officers to use at will. This court is having none of this and refuses to condone the deployment of dogs that are basically trained to please their handlers, rather than actually detect narcotics.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Dogs, in traffic stops at least, are not intended to detect drugs, they are intended to provide a corrupt pretext for a search.

Dogs are eager to please their handlers, and when the only training that a dog receives, as was the case here, was where the trainer knows what they have to find, it does not train a dog as an impartial detector, it makes the dog into a fraud routine.

This continues, because this is what the police want.

*The Clever Hans Effect, named after a horse that cued into its handler’s subconscious body to create the illusion that it could do complex math.

Another Attempt to Destroy Social Security

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The Trump White House is looking to propose a stimulus where people will be required to sign away a portion of their Social Security benefits for a payment now.

🚨 COVID paper alert 🚨

Excited to share a new paper with @sc_cath and @mjmill611

We show that allowing workers to access a tiny % of their future Social Security benefits today can provide the liquidity they need to weather this storm.

Thread: pic.twitter.com/Jmu7VeH0FH

— Natasha Sarin (@NatashaRSarin) May 5, 2020

This is a transparent strategy to cut social security benefits to reduce its popularity, so that the money can be shoveled out to private accounts where Wall Street will profit from egregious fees and the like.

As an aside, it turns out that a senior Biden Advisor Larry Summers’ protege and sometime co-author Natasha Sarin supports the same death of a thousand cuts to social security. (See the embedded Tweet)

The Trump administration is casting this idea as a way to keep the deficit down, but considering the fact that they are trying to cut more taxes, and there is always money for more war, it’s clear that they want to destroy the most popular federal program one bit at the time:

………

 Senior White House economic officials also are exploring a proposal floated by two conservative scholars that would allow Americans to choose to receive checks of up to $5,000 in exchange for a delay of their Social Security benefits, according to three people familiar with the internal matter. That plan was written by Andrew Biggs of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and Joshua Rauh of the right-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

 Senior administration officials have discussed the “Eagle Plan,” a 29-page memo that called for an overhaul of federal retirement programs in exchange for upfront payments to some workers, but the White House has already rejected it, according to three administration officials. A copy of the plan was obtained by The Washington Post.

 The proposal calls for giving Americans $10,000 upfront in exchange for curbing their federal retirement benefits, such as Social Security, the report says. Art Laffer, a conservative economist who is advising the White House on its economic response, said in an interview he reviewed the presentation and supports it.

Of course Laffer likes it.

Laffer has been an idiot ideologue has been arguing that cutting taxes to basically nothing will generate more revenues, which failed so abysmally with Sam Brownback in Kansas.

There is, of course a point where higher taxes reduce revenues, but the best evidence puts this at 75%±15%, not the less than 20% that Laffer argues for on things like corporate and capital gains taxes.

Social security is a system which by any metric is more efficient and more effective than the private sector, but the Randroid free market mousketeers believe that government programs are an ineluctable evil, so even if 80% of the benefits line the pockets of Wall Street, they support killing it.

They hate Social Security because it works, not because it doesn’t.

No Endorsement, Uncle Joe

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Democratic Socialists of America, (DSA) has declined to endorse Joe Biden for President.

Given Biden’s long history of sucking up to banks, racists, and sexual harassers, and the carceral state, this should surprise no one.

Political organizations do not vote, and, “But Donald Trump,” is not a reason to contradict one’s stated values.

Of course, this non-endorsement will be used to blame the left, when Biden loses, because an honest account of the incompetence and corruption of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) would result in too many nepotism hires having to find honest work.

Following the withdrawal of Bernie Sanders from the presidential race, our country has lost the only viable Presidential candidate advocating the comprehensive reform we need to address this pandemic head-on. Sanders’s exit leaves Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. His differences with Sanders and the broader left could not be starker, as was recently made clear when he committed to vetoing Medicare for All, Sanders’s signature legislative priority. Biden’s recent, disgraceful embrace of anti-Chinese xenophobia in his general election campaign, and credible allegations against him, are dangerous examples of how corporate Democrats continue to fail at stopping the ugly advance of far-right politics, racism, and misogyny.

The Democratic Socialists of America will not be endorsing Biden. We fully agree with Senator Sanders that taking on the reactionary, racist, and nationalist right wing represented by Donald Trump is imperative for the survival of millions of working-class people across the country and the world. We believe that the only way to beat the radical right once and for all is through a socialist movement that draws millions of disillusioned working-class people, here and abroad, into the political arena. We will continue to welcome the millions of people who supported Bernie’s platform and are looking for a political home.

We also recognize this moment to strategically strengthen our movements and power.  We will fight like hell against the Trump agenda by running pressure campaigns, engaging in mutual aid, helping to build strong, democratic unions, building coalitions with those organizing against capitalism, acting in solidarity with immigrants and incarcerated people against deportation and detention, working to protect tenants and unhoused people, organizing to expand voting rights, locations, and the right to vote by mail. We will demand COVID relief that addresses inequality through a lens of reparations, push for an end to sanctions that are killing millions and fuel militarism in many parts of the world, and will back democratic socialist candidates at the grassroots level. That’s because we know that politics does not begin every four years with a national election: when we get organized, we become the agents of the change that will win the better world the working class desires and deserves.

Were the DSA to engage in obvious hypocrisy by endorsing Biden, it would damage the DSA, and Biden would get nothing from it.

“Vote for the slightly less awful rapist,” is a political strategy that would destroy DSA.

Some Art Director is a Troll

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I see the Pentagon, Angkor Wat, and a Delta Hub

To be fair, he is a damn good troll , though.

Popular Mechanics has an article about something called Racetrack memory, which has the promise to revolutionize memory storage.

It probably doesn’t, because we get one of these stories every few months, and it rarely pans out.

What the good folks at Naked Capitalism noticed was that the circuit board shown in the lead image has a number of relatively prominent landmarks.

You can find more if you go to the Flikr page and hover over the image.

I really hope that he doesn’t get in trouble over this.

The Ukraine is Being the Ukraine Again

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As part of an investigation into “Organized Crime”, a senior Ukrainian law enforcement official demanded a list names, addresses, and phone numbers of all Jews in the city of Kolomyya.

Yeah, there is noting at all suspicious or antisemitic about this:

A Ukrainian Jewish group accused the nation’s police force of “open anti-Semitism” after a high-ranking police official requested a list of all Jews in the western city of Kolomyya as part of an inquiry into organized crime.

The official request to the head of Kolomyya’s Jewish community is dated February 18, 2020, according to a photograph of the document that Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, shared on Twitter Sunday.

“Please provide us the following information regarding the Orthodox Jewish religious community of Kolomyya, namely: The organization’s charter; list of members of the Jewish religious community, with indication of data, mobile phones and their places of residence,” read the letter.

The letter was signed by Myhaylo Bank, a high-ranking officer in the national police force who handles organized crime. The letter did not explain his unit’s particular interest in Kolomyya’s Jews.

They just need this information so as to smoothly conduct the annual Stepan Bandera memorial march and pogrom.

Nothing to see here, move along.

OOPS!

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In a court filing, the FBI mistakenly revealed the name of the Saudi official who was (allegedly) providing support to the 911 hijackers.

A sharp-eyed reporter at Yahoo News (of all outlets) noticed that the name was not redacted on a now withdrawn court document.

It turns out to be one Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who reported directly to the US Ambassador,  Bandar, aka Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, aka “Bandar Bush” for his closeness to the Bush family.

Did I mention that he was also at one point head of Saudi intelligence?

How convenient:

The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a  mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.

The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.

The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

………

“This shows there is a complete government cover-up of the Saudi involvement,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the 9/11 families whose father was killed in the attacks. “It demonstrates there was a hierarchy of command that’s coming from the Saudi Embassy to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs [in Los Angeles] to the hijackers.”

………

After being contacted by Yahoo News on Monday, Justice Department officials notified the court and withdrew the FBI’s declaration from the public docket. “The document was incorrectly filed in this case,” the docket now reads.

………

Ironically, the declaration identifying the Saudi official in question was intended to support recent filings by Attorney General William Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell barring the public release of the Saudi official’s name and all related documents, concluding they are “state secrets” that, if disclosed, could cause “significant harm to the national security.”

Who says irony is dead?

………

A few lines from the bottom of page 7 is the unredacted statement, “(i.e., any and all records referring or relating to Jarrah);”.

Oops.

But while Sanborn’s 40-page declaration blacks out the Saudi official’s name in most instances, in one it failed to do so — a discrepancy first noted this week by a Yahoo News reporter.

………

A redacted copy of a three-and-a-half page October 2012 FBI “update” about the investigation stated that FBI agents had uncovered “evidence” that Thumairy and Bayoumi had been “tasked” to assist the hijackers by yet another individual whose name was blacked out, prompting lawyers for the families to refer to this person as “the third man” in what they argue is a Saudi-orchestrated conspiracy.

Describing the request by lawyers for the 9/11 families to depose that individual under oath, Sanborn’s declaration says in one instance that it involves “any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah.”

The reference is to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000. His duties apparently included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers within the United States.

Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi missions in Malaysia and Morocco, where he is believed to have served as recently as last year.

Also, as to is his current whereabouts?

 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Is that a bone saw I hear?

Jarrah “was responsible for the placement of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees known as guides and propagators posted to the United States, including Fahad Al Thumairy,” according to a separate declaration by Catherine Hunt, a former FBI agent based in Los Angeles who has been assisting the families in the case.

Hunt conducted her own investigation into the support provided to the hijackers in Southern California. “The FBI believed that al-Jarrah was ‘supporting’ and ‘maintaining’ al-Thumairy during the 9/11 investigation,” she said in her declaration.

I’m shocked.

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This will make you hate your old (new) toaster FOREVER, and there are models of this toaster from 1948 still working.