Month: March 2021

It’s Called “Doing Your Job”

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Mitch McConnell is now threatening to make Senators stay in town if there are any meaningful changes to the filibuster.

We pay Senators $174,000.00 a year in salary, and they are in for 3 days a week.

If they have to stay near for a quorum call or the like, they still are not the most overworked blokes out there.

Also, one of the proposals requires that the people supporting a filibuster, i.e. Mitch’s evil minions™, would have to stay in town, not the Democrats.

Muck Fitch:

A Senate operating in the “nuclear winter” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell promises if the filibuster is eliminated is one in which lawmakers face incessant roll calls and other inconveniences turning their comfortable lives into a living hell.

Why it matters: In employing apocalyptic language to warn about a “scorched-earth” response, the Kentucky Republican is trying to scare Democrats away from the tool they’re considering to break through the GOP’s own political obstinance.

Oh, dear, making it so that Senators need to remain nearby.

What a f%$#ing horror.

Finally, Someone Suggest Breaking Out the Handcuffs

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Someone states the obvious, that if you want to rein in tech giants, start treating them like the criminals that they are. 

Between criminal violations of anti-trust laws, violations of wiretapping laws, securities law violations, and conspiracies to violate laws and regulations (Uber, AirBnB, etc.) these guys should be subject to arrest, trial, and imprisonment”

On March 25, the CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Twitter will once again testify before a committee of the House of Representatives, this time about the spread of disinformation on their platforms.

………

Fortunately, there are two options to buy time, neither of which requires congressional action. It merely requires the government to apply regulatory tools that do not get used frequently, namely subjecting business executives to felony prosecution.

The first option is an antitrust case against Google led by the attorney general of Texas that alleges a price fixing conspiracy in digital advertising. The complaint names Facebook as a co-conspirator. Price fixing falls under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, significant because it does not require proof of harm. The attempt itself is a crime. And if, as has been alleged, there is evidence of an agreement for mutual legal defense, there may be a second count. When appropriate, executives can be subject to felony prosecution, punishable by up to three years in prison. Google denies any wrongdoing.

………

The second option would be a securities fraud investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a decade or more, journalists have reported evidence of overstated user counts and advertising views by internet platforms. They assert that a material percentage of advertising clicks are manufactured by fraudsters exploiting the lack of transparency in digital advertising. The opacity of all digital ad platforms relative to traditional media and Google’s dominance of digital ad infrastructure have prevented a thorough accounting.

………

Securities law requires public companies to report accurate numbers. For internet platforms, user count and ad views are key to investor sentiment, the latter an essential revenue driver. If ad views are overstated, then revenues must also be overstated. If the overstatement occurred over many years, with the knowledge of the executives, then the SEC has the option to pursue a felony case, creating legal jeopardy for senior executives who may face prison time. Such cases are not common, but the circumstances surrounding internet platforms certainly warrant a thorough investigation.

While it has not been a common practice to use felony cases to reform an industry, these are extraordinary times. The goal is not to put executives in jail, but rather to create incentives for good faith negotiation with corporations whose behavior poses a threat to society and the authority of the government.

It used to be common practice to use felony cases to reform an industry, just look at the prosecutions, and long jail sentences in the 1930s, see the fate of Richard Whitney, former head of President of the NYSE.

He was not the only one.

………

The Biden administration wants to restore faith in government. Its aggressive actions to distribute Covid vaccines and pass the American Recovery Act are important first steps, but not enough. Directing executive branch agencies to enforce the antitrust and securities laws against flagrant violators would be welcome next steps. Doing so against Google and Facebook would begin the process of reforming an industry that continues to act recklessly.

I know I say this a lot, but I want to see them frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.

A Return to Normalcy

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I am referring, of course to the the mass shooting in Boulder Colorado today. 

Of course it was in Colorado, you had Columbine, Aurora, Aravada, Aurora again, and now Boulder.

It appears that mass shooters are to Colorado what Florida Man is to Florida.

Please, let’s set about to prying their guns from their cold dead hands.

Almost forgot, thoughts and prayers:

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

………

A gunman killed 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder on Monday afternoon, the latest in a grim litany of mass shootings in Colorado — this one including among its victims a police officer who was first to respond to reports of shots fired at the grocery store.

The suspect was taken into custody, but there were few answers in the following hours. Officials said it would take days to investigate the large crime scene and to notify families that their loved ones had been killed.

It’s Colorado, so my guess is that their response will be to ……… loosen gun laws even further.

Seriously, just f%$# the NRA.

It’s OK if You Are a Republican (IOKIYAR)

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Remember disgraced former Missiouri Governor Eric Greitens>?

He resigned after credible allegations emerged of rape, blackmail, and other sexual misconduct with hid hair stylist.

In fact, impeachment proceedings had begun by the time he resigned.

Well now, he is looking to run for the US Senate to replace retiring Senator Roy Blunt.

He seems to think that the aforementioned crimes just don’t make a difference, talk about chutzpah:

Former Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens on Monday announced a bid to replace retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).

Greitens’s announcement came nearly three years after he resigned as governor amid mounting scandals, including allegations that he photographed a woman nude without her consent in an effort to conceal an extramarital affair.

Despite the scandals, Greitens has floated a Senate bid for weeks, even before Blunt announced his retirement earlier this month. On Monday, he made his decision official.

“I have been so encouraged by the people of Missouri that I am happy to announce tonight that I am running for the United States Senate to continue serving the people of Missouri,” Greitens told Fox News’s Bret Baier.

 Also, he is a Jew, so in addition to being a narcissistic psychopathic megalomaniac, he is a, “Shanda fur die Goyim,” an embarrassment to Jews around the world for his behavior.

It makes him a perfect Republican though.

Linkage

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Leopard Seal tries to show NatGeo photographer how to eat a penguin.  It did not go to said seal’s satisfaction.

“Mishandled?” The Term is “Rioted.”

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At the New York Times, they are describing the response to Black Lives Matter protests by the police as, “Mishandled.”

This is patently wrong, and IMHO deliberately misleading.

The brutality of police in confronting what were largely non-violent protesters were police riots.

Their behavior was deliberate and premeditated:

For many long weeks last summer, protesters in American cities faced off against their own police forces in what proved to be, for major law enforcement agencies across the country, a startling display of violence and disarray.

In Philadelphia, police sprayed tear gas on a crowd of mainly peaceful protesters trapped on an interstate who had nowhere to go and no way to breathe. In Chicago, officers were given arrest kits so old that the plastic handcuffs were decayed or broken. Los Angeles officers were issued highly technical foam-projectile launchers for crowd control, but many of them had only two hours of training; one of the projectiles bloodied the eye of a homeless man in a wheelchair. Nationally, at least eight people were blinded after being hit with police projectiles.

Now, months after the demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police in May, the full scope of the country’s policing response is becoming clearer. More than a dozen after-action evaluations have been completed, looking at how police departments responded to the demonstrations — some of them chaotic and violent, most peaceful — that broke out in hundreds of cities between late May and the end of August.

In city after city, the reports are a damning indictment of police forces that were poorly trained, heavily militarized and stunningly unprepared for the possibility that large numbers of people would surge into the streets, moved by the graphic images of Mr. Floyd’s death under a police officer’s knee.

The police were prepared.  Their goal was to create violence, and some property damage, in an attempt to discredit protestors, and to a significant degree, they succeeded.

This was malice, not ineptitude. 

 

Iawn, Pa Un Ohonoch Chi Sydd Wedi Bod Yn Ffycin Defaid? *

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It appears that as a result of Covid-19, efforts to reduce the population of feral goats has been curtailed, and so feral Llandudno Goats have been running rampant over portions of Wales. 

Is it just me, or does anyone else have an image of some poor bureaucrat trying to convince goats to wear a condom?

The goats of the Great Orme headland in Wales were a worldwide sensation during the first Covid lockdown last year after they were pictured roaming brazenly around the deserted streets of nearby Llandudno.

This year there has been a population explosion of the kashmiri goats in their north Wales headland home after the Covid crisis forced countryside wardens to cancel a planned contraception campaign.

………

Sally Pidcock, warden of the Great Orme country park, said there were estimated to be about 30 billy goats – the males are the ones that tend to travel – at large Llandudno and roughly 150 less adventurous males, plus females and kids, back on the Great Orme.

Pidcock said a campaign to give contraceptive injections to nanny goats last summer had to be postponed because of Covid. “It means there are more kids being born on the Great Orme now than there would have been,” she said. As long as Covid allows, a contraceptive vaccination campaign will take place this summer.

We live in strange times.

*This is Welsh for, “Which one of you boys been f%$#ing the sheep?

バカにつける薬はない*

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In response to raucus partying and a refusal to engage in proper social distancing, Miami Beach has announced a curfew.

Who could have possibly known that a bunch of drunk college students on spring break would take of their masks and swap bodily fluids?

The answer to this question is, “Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together.” 

One day after the spring break oasis of South Beach descended into chaos, with the police struggling to control overwhelming crowds and making scores of arrests, officials in Miami Beach decided on Sunday to extend an emergency curfew for up to three weeks.

The officials there went so far as to approve closing the famed Ocean Drive to all vehicular and pedestrian traffic from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — the hours of the curfew — for four nights a week through April 12. Residents, hotel guests and employees of local businesses are exempt from the closure.

The strip, frequented by celebrities and tourists alike, was the scene of a much-criticized skirmish on Saturday night between at-times unruly spring breakers who ignored social distancing and masking guidelines, and police officers who used pepper balls to disperse a large crowd just hours after the curfew had been introduced.

The restrictions were a stunning concession to the city’s inability to control unwieldy crowds of revelers that the city and the state of Florida aggressively courted amid the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Florida, man.

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Quote of the Day

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What explains the clampdown mania among liberals? The most obvious answer is because they need an excuse. Consider the history: the right has enjoyed tremendous success over the last few decades, and it is true that conservatives’ capacity for hallucinatory fake-populist appeals has helped them to succeed. But that success has also happened because the Democrats, determined to make themselves the party of the affluent and the highly educated, have allowed the right to get away with it.

—Thomas Frank in The Guardian

He’s right. 

The modern Democratic Party, particularly under Clinton and Obama, was hostile to organized labor, and favored finance and international labor arbitrage over the well-being of the average working American.

How Convenient

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It turns out that Purdue Pharmaceuticals conducted an in-depth probe of the Sackler family, but they are refusing to release the results. 

If the results exonerated anyone, they would been in a press release:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, conducted what may be the most extensive investigation yet of the Sackler family, exploring whether they committed crimes or financial improprieties, but the company has kept most of its findings secret.

In a bankruptcy filing late Monday, the drugmaker acknowledged hiring attorneys, forensic accountants and other financial experts to probe members of the family who own the company and profited billions from opioid sales.

According to the filing, the team searched for evidence of wrongdoing by the family, reporting to a special committee of Purdue’s board between April 2019 and earlier this month.

Yet in its filing, Purdue Pharma chose to reveal almost nothing of what investigators uncovered, a decision that infuriates opioid activists and some government officials.

“They’re still trying to cover up the facts,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who has sued the company and it owners, in a statement.

“Purdue’s disclosure filing says it paid its lawyers for a 22,000-hour investigation of the Sacklers, but it doesn’t disclose any of their findings,” she added.

First, the Sacklers decided to become drug pushers, and when they got caught, the Sacklers decided to loot the company before declaring bankruptcy. 

Once again, I think that the best way to deal with this is to apply the Billy Ray Valentine principle, “You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people.”

This is Kind of Horrifying

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In a story about how a candidate for Erie County Sheriff (Buffalo, NY), completely screwed up a drug raid and the warrant he swore out to allow it, we have the following testimony from another member of his team:

[Detective Joseph M.] Cook had shot other dogs in drug raids. He did not dispute during the deposition that he had shot 26 dogs over roughly a three-year period.

So, he shot a dog about once every six weeks.

The owner of the job got a $110,000 settlement.  Nothing wrong here, I guess. 

Support your local police.

Speaking of Leverage

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Indeed, WTF


Increased leverage goeth before a fall

It appears that the use of margin trading, one of the things that triggered the stock market crash of 1929, is spiking, which is a pretty good indicator to me that we are headed to another market panic:

In the current craze that encompasses everything from sneakers and NFTs to stocks, where valuations don’t matter because of widespread certainty that valuations will be even greater in a few days, and where folks are chasing lottery-type returns, supported by the Fed’s interest rate repression and $3 trillion in asset purchases, and by the government’s trillions of dollars of handouts and bailouts – well, in this perfect world, there is a fly in the ointment: Vast amounts of leverage, including stock market leverage.

Margin debt – the amount that individuals and institutions borrow against their stock holdings as tracked by FINRA at its member brokerage firms – is just one indication of stock market leverage. But FINRA reports it monthly. Other types of stock market leverage are not reported at all, or are disclosed only piecemeal in SEC filings by brokers and banks that lend to their clients against their portfolios, such as Securities-Based Loans (SBLs). No one knows how much total stock market leverage there is. But margin debt shows the trend.

In February, margin debt jumped by another $15 billion to $813 billion, according to FINRA. Over the past four months, margin debt has soared by $154 billion, a historic surge to historic highs. Compared to February last year, margin debt has skyrocketed by $269 billion, or by nearly 50%, for another WTF sign that the zoo has gone nuts:

………

And it’s risky leverage for the borrower. It seems like risk-free leverage when stocks go up, but when your stocks do the unheard-of and tank below a certain level, your broker will ask you to put more cash into your account or sell stocks into the tanking market, whereby you then join the legions of forced sellers.

In the past, a big surge in margin balances tended to precede history-making stock market declines:

………

Leverage is the great accelerator of stock prices, on the way up, and on the way down. Purchasing stocks with borrowed money creates buying pressure, and prices rise, and rising prices increase the margin balances a portfolio can support, and this encourages more stock-buying on margin.

On the other hand, selling stocks to deal with margin calls adds more selling pressure to an already declining market. The more prices fall, the more selling pressure there is from frazzled forced sellers trying to deal with margin requirements.

When market correct, this is going to be very ugly.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

Probably a Good Idea, Not Sure If It Is the Right Time

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The Federal Reserve is looking to reverse its pandemic driven loosening of capital requirements for banks. 

I am generally in favor of higher capital requirements for banks, because when the requirements are lowered, fraud, incompetence, and collapse invariably follow.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if now is the best time for this:

The Federal Reserve has announced that it will let looser capital rules for banks introduced at the start of the pandemic expire at the end of March.

The US central bank’s decision could disappoint banks, which had been pushing for an extension of the capital relief.

Capital rules were eased last year in a temporary change to the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR), and have been the focus of an intense political battle in recent weeks.

While Democrats in Congress had argued that the relief from capital rules should be terminated at the end of this month, many Republicans sided with the banks to argue for an extension.

The Fed said on Friday that the change to the SLR would expire as scheduled on March 31. However, the central bank said it would explore a more permanent overhaul to the rules.

………

The SLR requires large banks to have capital equal to at least 3 per cent of their assets, or 5 per cent for the largest systemically important institutions. Under the April 2020 rule change, lenders were allowed to temporarily exclude holdings of US Treasuries and cash kept in reserve at the central bank from their assets when calculating the ratio.

………

Bank executives have warned that the reimposition of these capital requirements could hamper their ability to extend credit to companies and consumers, and in some cases force them to turn away deposits.

If you cannot justify a loan with a return to (already dangerously lax) existing capital requirements, you should not have made the loan in the first place.

If you are making those loans, then when (not if) you need a bailout, the taxpayers will be on the hook

This Reminds Me of Bush and Hurricane Katrina

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By August of 2005, Karl Rove had managed to manipulate the public discourse in such a way as to make meaningful criticisms of George W. Bush almost unthinkable.

Then came Katrina, and much like New Orleans and its levees, the ensuing backlash washed away Rove’s carefully constructed barriers intended to protect bush, and everything started coming out.

The same is going on with Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo right now, and here is an update:

  • We have another claim of sexual harassment, this one from a current aide, “He called her and her co-worker “mingle mamas.” He inquired about her lack of a wedding ring, she said, and the status of her divorce. She recalled him telling her she was beautiful — in Italian — and, as she sat alone with him in his office awaiting dictation, he gazed down her shirt and commented on a necklace hanging there.“
  • Also, we have reports that the  FBI is investigating ties between campaign donations from nursing homes and his inserting immunity provisions in legislation, “FBI investigators probing the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic last spring are seeking information about a state budget provision that gave operators legal immunity, THE CITY has learned. ……… FBI officials started to make house calls this month, showing up at people’s residences and leaving business cards, according to the three sources.“

FWIW, I don’t think that “Rat Faced Andy” is going to resign except perhaps as part of a plea deal, because he wants to make sure that he has this chip in his pocket until it is certain that he won’t be going to jail.

I so hope that he goes to jail.

Don’t Give to the Audubon Society

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As I have noted before, “You Don’t Do Good by Doing Bad,” and this goes double for charities that go full scorched earth to suppression union drives, as is the case, unfortunately, for The Audubon Society, which has chosen to go on a jihad against its employees unionization efforts:

As President Biden touts union jobs as central to America’s clean energy future, a fight over unionizing has broken out at one of the country’s leading conservation groups.

Employees at the National Audubon Society are organizing after allegations of widespread workplace problems, including two rounds of layoffs, a mishandled diversity training, and the resignations of two top equity and inclusion officials.

They say they are meeting sharp resistance from the group’s management, which has hired one of the country’s most well-known union-busting firms.

Audubon strongly disagrees with that characterization, saying that it does not oppose the effort and that the firm, Littler Mendelson PC, was hired to provide advice to managers to stay out of the organizers’ way — not to break them up.

Littler Mendelson PC is notorious for busting unions, and half of their own web pages tout their “Union Avoidance” strategies.

But tensions between the organizers, who have rallied under an “Audubon for All” banner, and management nevertheless seem to have quickly reached a boil. They claim Audubon management is deploying some of Littler’s tactics, and they filed a complaint this week with the National Labor Relations Board alleging Audubon’s management is improperly meddling in their organizing effort.

………

In an emailed statement, Audubon said it is “devoted to providing a workplace in which all our employees feel respected, valued, and empowered.”

………

Audubon insisted that Littler is not advising the organization on how to combat the unionizing effort. But Littler’s website states that’s one of its specialties, and a handbook from the firm obtained by E&E News lays out multiple strategies for fighting unionization efforts.

“Our deep experience in representing management serves as a strong counterpoint to the world’s most powerful labor organizations,” its website states. “We guide companies in developing and initiating strategies that lawfully avoid unions or effectively respond to unconventional corporate campaigns.”

Union officials, including from CWA, said Audubon is setting itself apart at the wrong time.

Gee, ya think?

………

President and CEO David Yarnold’s handling of the anonymous survey, including allegedly asking for the names of participants, led to the October resignation of one senior diversity specialist, Devon Trotter. Another official, Deeohn Ferris, left the previous March and said she was forced out.

Those developments coincided with two rounds of layoffs, in which 108 employees were let go. One round took place last June, and another, larger round was announced on Earth Day last April.

It appears that the management wants to run the company like a business, burn it down for the insurance money.