Month: June 2021

What a Bunch of Whiny Snowflakes

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A police officer in the Portland (Oregon) Police Bureau “Rapid Response Team” (Goon Squad) was caught on video wailing a journalist, and when he finally forced her to the ground, he continued to strike her with his night stick in her head.

Today, for the first time in the history of Portland, Oregon, an officer was indicted for his actions in suppressing a protest.  

It was only 4th degree assault, a misdemeanor, but in response, the PPB Goon Squad voted to disband, because they are afraid of the rule of law.

They are still on the force, but the “Rapid Response Team” is now shut down.

Considering their behavior, I would say, “Good Riddance,” because they are a bunch of bad cops who should not be allowed close to a water pistol, but Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is (once again) taking the side of the abusive cops, even as more evidence piles up against other members of the unit:

Portland’s public safety landscape has undergone tectonic shifts in under 72 hours.

On June 15, the day after the Portland Police Association filed for closed-door mediation to hash out its contract with the city, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office announced that a grand jury had indicted Portland police officer Corey Budworth on one count of assault in the fourth degree for his use of force at an Aug. 2020 protest.

Budworth, now on administrative leave, was a part of the police bureau’s Rapid Response Team, a 50-member unit most known for its management of protests. RRT members, whose assignment on the team is voluntary, receive specialized training in “crowd psychology and behavior [and] team formations and movements,” according to PPB.

Hours after Budworth’s indictment, news broke that Erik Kammerer, a squad leader for RRT who is also a homicide detective for the police bureau, is under review by the Oregon Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. (WW has reported extensively on complaints alleging Kammerer used excessive force during protests.)

………

In response, Mayor Ted Wheeler—who said he learned of the RRT dissolution late Wednesday night—has activated mobile law enforcement units in PPB and requested assistance from Oregon State Police.

………

Wheeler also said that he heard directly from RRT members during an impromptu Thursday morning Zoom meeting between the mayor’s office and law enforcement.

“I want to acknowledge the toll this past year has taken on them and their families—they have worked long hours under difficult conditions,” Wheeler said. “I personally heard from some of them today, and I appreciate their willingness to share their concerns about managing the many public gatherings that often were violent and destructive.”

It is a disgrace that this piece of sh%$ mayor is still in office. (He’s also in the pocket of real estate developers)


………
Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, a longtime advocate of police reform in Portland, called the RRT resignations “an opportunity to commit change.”

“We should formally disband the RRT, but through Council action,” Hardesty said in a statement Thursday. “The good old boy network is crumbling and we can either be a part of the change or part of the status quo—but the arc of justice is bending quickly and it’s imperative that the Portland City Council lands on the right side of history.”

Hardesty went on to describe the RRT members as “staging their own protest” through their resignations, which she said occurred “the moment there is a possibility for accountability for inappropriate and potentially illegal conduct.”

This is my assessment too.

The fact that the police are SO shocked that they are held accountable is a mark of just how bad the culture of policing in Portland is right now.

Until some police officers are disabused of the notion that they can act with impunity, and their fellow cops are disabused of the notion that it is OK for them to look the other way, it will never be fixed.

Not Enough Bullets

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The banksters are fighting the debt relief plan for Black farmers who have been harmed by government and bank racism because early pay-offs will reduce their profits.

F%$# you.

You benefited from a system which sucked resources from Black farms for more than 100 years, and now you are whining about having their loans paid off early.

Let me repeat, f%$# you:

The Biden administration’s efforts to provide $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers is encountering stiff resistance from banks, which are complaining that the government initiative to pay off the loans of borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will cut into their profits and hurt investors.

………

Now, three of the biggest banking groups — the American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and National Rural Lenders Association — are waging their own fight and complaining about the cost of being repaid early.

Their argument stems from the way banks make money from loans and how they decide where to extend credit. When a bank lends money to a borrower, like a farmer, it considers several factors, including how much interest it will earn over the lifetime of the loan and whether the bank can sell the loan to other investors.

By allowing borrowers to repay their debts early, the lenders are being denied income they have long expected, they argue. The banks want the federal government to pay money beyond the outstanding loan amount so that banks and investors will not miss out on interest income that they were expecting or money that they would have made reselling the loans to other investors.They also want other investors who bought the loans in the secondary market to get government money that would make up for whatever losses they might incur from the early payoff.

I will shed no tears over any money lost by these parasites.

They benefited and actively participated in the racism that destroyed over 90% of Black owned farms in the United States, and now they want more blood money.

This is Marjorie Taylor Greene Level Stupid

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Clearing out the library books on a cruise ship with bumping nightlife to slow the spread of coronavirus is some real galaxy-brain stuff! pic.twitter.com/cB5BR23pa9

— Andrew Dunckelman (@andrewdunck) June 16, 2021

Seriously, on a Cruise Ship they take all the books out of the library to prevent Covid transmission, while they are having nightly dances, and the passengers and crews f%$#ing like bunnies.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

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A leaked audio of a Senator Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) call with rich donors has revealed, among other things, that he asked donors at the group, “No Labels,” to bribe fellow Senator Roy Blunt.

Joe Manchin is not just a conservative Democrat, he is a disloyal one, and given that a recording of his call was leaked, one who who has people close to him looking to give him a well deserved shiv between his shoulder blades:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, in a private call on Monday with a group of major donors, provided a revealing look at his political approach to some of the thorniest issues confronting lawmakers.

The remarks were given on a Zoom teleconference session that was obtained by The Intercept.

The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans. Among the gathering’s newsworthy revelations: Manchin described an openness to filibuster reform at odds with his most recent position that will buoy some Democrats’ hopes for enacting their agenda.

………

The wide-ranging conversation went into depth on the fate of the filibuster, infrastructure negotiations, and the failed effort to create a bipartisan commission to explore the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, and offers a frank glimpse into the thinking of the conservative Democrat who holds the party’s fate in his hands.

Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines. 

OK, this is not an invalid comment, though a US Senator asking high dollar donors to act as his enforcers is pretty damn skeevy.

………

When it came to Sen. Roy Blunt, a moderate Missouri Republican who voted no on the commission, Manchin offered a creative solution. “Roy Blunt is a great, just a good friend of mine, a great guy,” Manchin said. “Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”

That is flat out corrupt.  He is asking, in an open Zoom call with big donors, that they condition any future employment for Roy Blunt on his current votes.

He is actively calling for a bribe, or at least extortion based on the threat of withholding a bribe, which is pretty much the same thing.

1000 Leona Helmsleys, Writ Small

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The not-for-profit news org Pro Publica has come into IRS records for some of the wealthiest people in America, and it turns out that the richest people in the United States pay little or no taxes.  They are claiming that they do not know the identity of their source.)

This has gotten notice from major mainstream news sources.

There has been some push-back from the usual suspects demanding, while the usual douche bags are demanding an aggressive criminal investigation.  Said douche bags include US Attorney General Merrick Garland.  (Multiple officials in the Biden administration has given every indication that it will extend the Jihad against whistle-blowers to the IRS leaker.)

We find a similar pattern in the tax filings of private equity (PE) firms, with the things like the carried interest loophole, the “fee waiver,” an under resourced IRS, and a revolving door of senior officials.

I kind of filed this under, “Same old, Same old,” until Pro Publica revealed that one of the leading candidates for Manhattan District Attorney was mentioned in the files as having paid little or no taxes on her husband’s multi-million dollar pay.

So, if these files become public, there is a pretty good chance that one of the go to sources for crappy candidates who stand for nothing that is routinely tapped by the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), hedge fund managers, and PE types, who have lots of money, and spend profligately to get elected.

Now, it the people who are looking to cash in will have to go though a trove of tax data to make sure that THEY are not on that list:

The leading candidate to take over the investigation relating to former President Donald Trump’s taxes paid virtually no federal income taxes in four of six recent years.

Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who is married to hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein, is running for Manhattan district attorney in the Democratic primary, in which early voting has already begun. She and her husband reported income as high as $107 million in 2011, and she recently donated $8.2 million to her campaign — more than her seven Democratic rivals have raised in total.

But in 2017, according to a trove of tax data obtained by ProPublica, she and her husband paid no federal income tax. In 2015 and 2013, they also paid no federal income tax. In 2014, she and her husband paid $6,584.

………

In two of the years in which the Weinsteins paid no federal income taxes, they reported negative income, losses that appear to be driven by the volatile performance of Boaz Weinstein’s hedge fund. They also claimed and received a refundable tax credit — a total of $5,000 over those two years — designed to help middle- and lower-income families with the costs of raising children.

In the other two years in which they paid little or no federal income taxes, they reported adjusted gross income of about a million dollars each year. They were able to reduce their income tax bill in those years by using a variety of deductions.

There’s no indication the Weinsteins did anything illegal.

That last bit is the REAL problem.

The fact that these sort of shenanigans are completely legal is a national embarrassment.

Because the City of London Owns England

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Following announcements by G-7 countries about standardizing a minimum tax for trans-national corporations and cracking down on tax evasion and tax havens, the UK has decided to go to the mat for its finance industry, AKA the “City of London”, whose core competency is tax evasion and money laundering:

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is pressing for the City of London to be exempt from a plan by global leaders to make multinationals pay more tax to the countries where they operate.

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies struck a historic deal last weekend that could force the world’s biggest companies to pay a minimum corporate tax rate of 15%.

Sunak is expected to make the case that financial services, including global banks with head offices in London, should be exempt from the plan when talks move to the G-20 next month.

………

A European Union official pushed back against the idea of an exemption. The EU expects all companies to pay their fair share of taxation, the official said at a briefing for journalists on Wednesday.

If they get an exemption, the City of London will spend its time turning client companies, and their subsidiaries into finance institutions so that hey can continue to evade taxes.

The UK would be hurt by this as much as any other nation, but they are the poodles of their finance industry, they have been since at least Margaret Thatcher.

An Unalloyed Bit of Good News

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Lina Khan, who shot to fame when her article in the Yale Law Review, Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, mainstreamed an new (actually old, pre-1970) and aggressive anti-trust policy.

Since then she has been a leading voice in the movement for forceful and expansive enforcement of anti-monopoly enforcement, and now, she has been confirmed as Chair of the FTC.

Hopefully, this presages a much more assertive approach to monopolies by the agency:

In a move that heralds a growing effort to check the power and influence of Big Tech, President Biden on Tuesday appointed Lina Khan, a top antagonist of the tech industry, to chair the Federal Trade Commission, the federal government’s primary antitrust watchdog.

Biden’s decision to put Khan in charge of the FTC’s agenda is the clearest sign yet that his administration will take a drastically different approach to regulating the tech giants than did President Barack Obama, whose administration took a largely hands-off approach toward Silicon Valley.

………

Khan, 32, is known for her unconventional proposals to counter the tech giants’ power. While still in law school in 2017, she wrote a paper denouncing Amazon for what she said was anti-competitive behavior and suggesting U.S. anti-competition laws were poorly equipped to counter the world of e-commerce. (Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Here proposal is not all unconventional. It was a pretty standard view of anti-trust before Robert Bork and Evil Minions™ perverted the field.

………

During her confirmation hearing, she signaled she would take a tough line on regulating tech giants. She said that in the past few years, new evidence has come to light showing there were “missed opportunities” for enforcement actions against tech companies under the Obama administration. She also said new findings show the FTC must be “much more vigilant” when it comes to large acquisitions in digital markets.

Khan also said she was particularly concerned about the ways in which large companies use their dominance in one market to give them an upper hand in others, an issue under intense scrutiny by Congress.

Hopefully, this presages an extremely muscular by the Federal Trade Commission.

Why Hasn’t This Been Done?

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The Biden administration has at this point failed to nominate a replacement for the relentlessy corrupt Ajit Pai as chairman. 

To quote the movie, Ocean’s Eleven, “You had ONE job.”

President Joe Biden’s failure to break the Federal Communications Commission’s 2-2 partisan deadlock is reaching a “critical point,” 57 advocacy groups wrote in a letter to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris Friday.

Nearly five months after his inauguration, Biden has not yet nominated a Democratic FCC commissioner to fill the empty fifth slot. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel has been leading the commission as acting chairwoman, but she lacks the majority needed to do anything opposed by the FCC’s two Republicans, such as reinstating net neutrality rules and reversing former Chairman Ajit Pai’s deregulation of the broadband industry. Even a step like raising the FCC’s broadband-speed standard—which hasn’t changed in over six years—will likely require a party-line vote because Republicans prefer a low speed standard for the FCC’s annual report on how many Americans lack modern broadband access.

In early April, over 100,000 people signed a petition urging Biden to quickly break the FCC deadlock. Advocacy groups are frustrated that they are still waiting. Why Biden is taking so long is unclear.

“Given the legislative calendar and the diminishing number of days for hearings and confirmation votes, we have reached a critical point to guarantee the agency charged with ensuring affordable communications access can do its work during your administration,” the groups wrote in their new letter.

This is an, “Own Goal,” and. to quote someone who is not named Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, it is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

We don’t want to wait until 2023, when, following 2 years of ineffectual action by Congressional Democrats leads to both the House and the Senate being flipped, when Mitch McConnell will dictate who can be put in that post.

Adding to My List

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I’ve got another entity to add to my list of They Who Must Not Be Named, but not because these individuals are unworthy, it appears that they are worthy and without blame, unless, of course they sh%$ on the carpet.

I will not meddle in the affairs of pure bred show dogs, like the Pekingese named “Waasabi” that just won “Best in Show” at the Westminster dog show.

Competitions between pure bred (inbred) animals, it’s just not my thing.

Animal pix are always welcome, whether they are cute cats, darling dogs, smiling snakes, profane parrots, obstreperous octopi, likeable lizards, precious ponies, tenacious turtles, precious pigs,
Shakespearean sharks,and happy hamsters.

This is an Outrage

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In an otherwise anodyne article about how modern super-hero animation is uniquely innovative and edgy, (This same article has  written at least once every 18 months or so since at least 1980) they release a bit of shocking news, that the producers of the Harley Quinn animated series were forced to delete a scene where Batman went down on Catwoman.

They though that it was the wrong image for a hero, which is complete crap.  Real heroes, and real men, lick pussy.*

My reaction upon hearing the news was, “Will No One Rid Me of these Turbulent Media Executives?”†

Seriously, the Harley Quinn series is profane, with “S” and “F” Bombs, sexual innuendo, violence, murders, and and theater people, how could they not have Batman NOT demonstrating is consideration to his true love’s‡ pleasure?

I am profoundly disappointed, and I want to see if there is a suppressed clip of this on the internet.  It could be the new butthole cut of cats:

“It’s incredibly gratifying and free to be using characters that are considered villains because you just have so much more leeway,” says Halpern. “A perfect example of that is in this third season of ‘Harley’ [when] we had a moment where Batman was going down on Catwoman. And DC was like, ‘You can’t do that. You absolutely cannot do that.’ They’re like, ‘Heroes don’t do that.’ So, we said, ‘Are you saying heroes are just selfish lovers?’ They were like, ‘No, it’s that we sell consumer toys for heroes. It’s hard to sell a toy if Batman is also going down on someone.’”

(In fairness to DC, both Halpern and Schumacker went on to say that the company has been remarkably supportive of their series and has allowed them to push the envelope numerous times. Still, it remains to be seen if Batman and Catwoman will be shown engaging in some bedroom antics in Season 3 or if it will simply be implied via cunning linguistics.)

I want the to see the caring and sharing lover cut of that Harly Quinn episode.

This is not The Onion, it’s Variety.

*Don’t hatge me because I made this joke. If you had thought of it, you would have too.

†It’s a reference to the conflict between Thomas à Becket and King Henry II of England. Read a history book.

‡Unless you think that his true love is Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing, but that is would take me down a rabbit hole that involve at least a dozen posts.

It’s All of the “Gig Economy” Companies

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Amazon just settled a lawsuit where it stole tips from its drivers.

The short version is, they used tip data to lower rates to drivers in specific areas.

This is the very epitome of how companies like Amazon, Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. use opaque algorithms to cheat their employees:

The US Federal Trade Commission on Friday announced the approval a consent order against Amazon that requires the company to pay $61.7m to resolve charges that for two and a half years it took tips intended for Amazon Flex drivers and concealed the diversion of funds.

………

The tech giant launched its Flex service in 2015, promising drivers – which it classified as independent contractors and referred to as “delivery partners” – that it would pay $18-25 per hour for the delivery of goods from Amazon.com, Prime Now (household goods), Amazon Fresh (groceries), and Amazon Restaurant (takeout).

Amazon’s ads made promises like, “You will receive 100 per cent of the tips you earn while delivering with Amazon Flex.”

However, during the period from late 2016 through August 2019, drivers – who, as independent contractors, paid for their own car, fuel, maintenance, and insurance – saw only a portion of the promised gratuity when customers opted to tip.

That’s because Amazon allegedly, without telling its drivers, shifted to a “variable base pay” rate, which varied by location, wasn’t disclosed to drivers, and was frequently lower than the promised hourly range.

“Under the variable base pay approach, for over two and a half years, Amazon secretly reduced its own contribution to drivers’ pay to an algorithmically set, internal ‘base rate’ using data it collected about average tips in the area,” the FTC complaint [PDF] explains.

………

To make up any difference between the base rate and the advertised minimum, Amazon is said to have used some or all of any tip left by customers to meet its payment commitment. For example, if Amazon set a base rate for a region at $12 and the customer left a tip of $6 via Amazon’s electronic tip collection system, then the company paid the driver only $12 and augmented the payment with the $6 tip, instead of paying the $18.

This is not enough.  People should be going to jail for this, and not just white collar prison.

This should be hard time in a hard prison, not just because of the scope and callousness of the theft, but because the threat of a few years in Terre Haute will get people to turn on higher ups in the operation.

They stole from thousands of their employees, and they did so knowingly, there are numerous internal emails detailing the reputational risk to Amazon.

I Did Not Think that This Would Happen

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I know that the deal had been made, and Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) 12 year long reign as Israeli PM supposed to end, but I did not want to comment about this, because I was afraid that Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) would find some way to pull a rabbit from the hat and stay in power, and out of jail.

Thankfully, I was wrong.  The Knesset has successfully had a vote of confidence in a new government that does not include Binyaman Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו).

So he is out, and there is no way that the current parliament will grant him immunity.

In fact, I rather expect that this government, with it’s “eclectic” group of ideologies and one vote majority, won’t survive more than a month beyond Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) conviction and jailing.

Still that corrupt demagogue is out, and he is very likely going to jail:

The long and divisive reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, officially ended on Sunday night, at least for the time being, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely disparate anti-Netanyahu forces.

Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old former aide to Mr. Netanyahu who opposes a Palestinian state and is considered to the right of his old ally, replaced him as prime minister after winning by just a single vote. Yair Lapid, a centrist leader and the new foreign minister, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years, if their government can hold together that long.

It won’t.  Bennett is a real horror show on his own, but he lacks the political acumen and native cunnint of Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו), is a better alternative.

There is no one and nothing that Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) would not sacrifice to his own power and impunity, as he has proved over the years.

………

Members of the bloc agree on little but a desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu, the longest-serving leader in the country’s history, and the need to end a lengthy political gridlock that produced four elections in two years; left Israel without a stable government or a state budget; and formed the backdrop to a surge in interethnic mob violence between Jewish and Arab citizens during the recent 11-day conflict with Hamas.

Violence which was aggressively fomented and encouraged by Binyamin Netanyahu’s (יִמַּח שְׁמו) to further his political aims.

………

During 15 years in power, the last 12 of them uninterrupted, Mr. Netanyahu helped shift Israel further to the right and presided over the dwindling of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, collapsing hopes of a two-state resolution to the conflict. He was also accused of undermining the rule of law by staying in office while standing trial for corruption. It was a decision that divided the Israeli right and contributed to Mr. Bennett’s decision to side with Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents.

Mr. Netanyahu, 71, simultaneously scored several diplomatic triumphs, including agreements with four Arab countries that upended assumptions that Israel would only normalize relations with the Arab world after it sealed peace with the Palestinians.

………

Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, approved the new government by the slimmest of margins — the vote was 60 to 59. In a sign of challenges to come, one lawmaker who had originally agreed to support the coalition balked at the 11th hour, deciding to abstain instead of voting in its favor. To ensure the coalition’s victory, a second lawmaker left a hospital to vote — and then returned to her hospital bed.

………

One celebrant, Shoval Sadde, expressed relief that the coalition had come together after weeks of uncertainty.

“Today is final,” she said. “There are no secret magics anymore that Bibi can pull out of a hat. It’s final.”

My feelings exactly.

I’m glad that I was wrong about my misgivings.

The (Old) New Normal in Germany

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It appears that every few weeks, we have revelations of an element of the German state security apparatus with ties to Neo-Nazis or the far right.

In this case, it was a German commando (basically S.W.A.T) unit in Frankfurt, which has been disbanded over right-wing ties:

German authorities disbanded a Frankfurt police commando unit Thursday over the suspected far-right links of a group of active officers, the latest in a string of extremist-related scandals to blight the country’s police and military.

Peter Beuth, interior minister for Hesse state, where Frankfurt is located, said “unacceptable misconduct” prompted the decision to close the unit. He also said superiors had turned a “blind eye.”

Hesse’s prosecutor on Wednesday said the office was investigating 20 officers from the force, with the majority suspected of sending messages in far-right chat groups, including Nazi symbols and “inciting content.” Three supervising officers were accused of failing to stop or report the exchanges. All but one of the 20 officers was on active duty.

The chat groups were uncovered after examining the phone of an officer suspected of possessing and distributing child pornography.

Pedophile German Neo-Nazis? That’s like the worst law enforcement misconduct bingo card ever.

Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has pushed back against assertions of structural racism or far-right sympathies in the country’s police forces. But he agreed to commission a study into the issue last year as pressure grew amid a slew of such cases.

The resurgence of Nazis in positions of authority in Germany is concerning, and there are definitely echoes from the past here.  

It’s even more concerning given the hegemony that Germany has over the EU.

This is an Interesting Trend

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For years, people in Black communities have been reticent about calling in the cops, because of the distinct chance that it would result in the arrival of an armed racist bully masquerading as a peace officer.

It appears that this reticence is spreading to white communities as well.

This is going to make Cops’ jobs more difficult, and I am not sure if this is necessarily a bad thing:

………

For decades, many Black Americans have believed that cops’ presence will either make a situation worse—or won’t have any impact. And the solution has sometimes been to not call the police at all, even in circumstances where they felt unsafe.

But it’s not just communities of color anymore: White people are now occasionally rethinking whether it’s a good idea to rely so heavily on law enforcement, especially if summoning the police could potentially harm someone. And entire cities have considered whether police officers are the best response to certain kinds of offenses.

Floyd’s fatal arrest last May seems to have hardened that perception. Even the teenage corner store clerk expressed regret over having taken the counterfeit $20 bill from Floyd, which later caused another employee to call the police. “If I would have just not taken the bill, this could have been avoided,” the clerk, Christopher Martin, said on the witness stand during Chauvin’s murder trial. An owner of the store, Cup Foods, decided after cops killed Floyd that from then on he and his employees would only call the cops to report violence, according to the New York Times.

………

While the dialogue about when it’s appropriate to call the police and if they really keep people safe isn’t new, it’s a conversation that some white communities seem increasingly willing to join.

Misha Viets van Dyk, the national chapter network organizer for Showing Up for Racial Justice, which organizes white communities for racial and economic justice, said their organization saw a “giant wave” of white people concerned about police accountability this past year.

“As people learn about their own background or the backgrounds of people around them, they see more and more reasons why putting their trust into this institution of policing is one that harms us,” Viets van Dyk said.

A Gallup poll conducted after Floyd was murdered last summer found that Americans’ confidence in the police had slid to a record low of 48 percent, the first time in nearly 30 years without a majority.

Maybe if cops weren’t also tasked with raising revenue through traffic tickets and citations for other minor offenses, law enforcement in the US would be less dysfunctional, but as it stands right now, law enforcement in the US is profoundly dysfunctional.

Your Moment of Schadenfreude

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West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who is at the forefront of cutting benefits from the unemployed in his state, is personally liable for nearly $¾ billion in loans from the collapsed dodgy non-bank loan company Greensill Capital.

It could not happen to a nicer guy:

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is personally on the hook for nearly $700 million in loans his coal companies took out from now-defunct Greensill Capital, according to people familiar with the loans and documents described to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Justice’s personal guarantee of the loans, which hasn’t been reported, puts financial pressure on the popular Republican governor. He is also dealing with unrelated lawsuits alleging parts of his sprawling network of coal companies breached payment contracts or failed to deliver coal.

Greensill packaged the loans and sold them to investment funds managed by Credit Suisse Group and Greensill ran $10 billion in supply-chain finance funds that extended financing to a range of borrowers.

………

[Governor Justice’s company] Bluestone hadn’t expected to begin repaying the Greensill loans until 2023 at the earliest, it said in a lawsuit brought in March in a New York federal court alleging Greensill committed fraud in its lending practices.

………

Greensill was a once-hot private finance firm whose bankers said could have been worth $40 billion in a potential initial public offering. It attracted investment from SoftBank Group Corp. before collapsing into bankruptcy in March when it lost a key type of insurance that backed up its loans.

………

Credit Suisse in a recent notice to investors said Bluestone owes nearly $700 million in loans.

………

The guarantees were provided by Mr. Justice as well as his wife and covered unlimited amounts, some of the people familiar with the loans said. Mr. Justice’s son and Bluestone’s chief executive, James C. Justice III, guaranteed the loans up to a certain limit, one of the people said, though that figure couldn’t be learned. All three are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Greensill.

………

Forbes this year dropped Mr. Justice from its billionaires list, owing to Greensill’s failure. It now pegs his net worth at $450 million, down from $1.2 billion in April 2020. His wealth stems from dozens of coal companies, farms and other businesses he and his family oversee, including the famed Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

$450 million – $700 million = -$250 million dollars.

He’s rich, so he is not going to have to pay it all off, rich people never pay their bills, but this is going to take a significant bite out of his wallet.

I would also note that Greensill’s model was to make to make supply chain loans, where suppliers would get the cash while their customers dragged their feet on paying them.

Their special sauce was in using complex financial instruments to mask the risk involved in these transactions, which allowed them to offer lower rates.

If you were into Greensill for 700 Extra Large, it means that you company was already in serious trouble.

Here’s hoping that Justice will need to get an honest job after he leaves the Governor’s mansion.

Of Course They Did

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A bipartisan group in the Senate has come up with a new infrastructure bill. 

Why am I not surprised that whenever you add Republicans to a group, their first move is to put the kibosh on any tax increases for the rich?

Basically, the Republicans in the group with the acquiescence of the corporate “Democrats” in the group, are determined to make their bill as meaningless as possible:

A bipartisan Senate group is taking tax increases off the table as lawmakers try to craft an infrastructure proposal after GOP talks with the White House collapsed Tuesday.

Raising taxes on high-income earners and corporations has been a key part of President Biden‘s infrastructure plan, making it nearly impossible to garner enough GOP support for legislation that can clear the Senate.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in the bipartisan group, said tax increases are not under consideration as senators attempt to reach consensus on how to pay for their plan.

………

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), another member of the bipartisan group, also told reporters on Wednesday that Republicans won’t agree to tax increases as part of infrastructure talks.

The group is expected to be looking at a proposal of around $900 billion, but they’ve been careful not to publicly release a number, saying the level of spending isn’t yet locked in. Biden’s initial infrastructure proposal exceeded $2.2 trillion.

This is why you don’t waste your time trying to cut a deal with Republicans. 

They are never going to agree to raising taxes on the rich, one of the most popular policies in the United States right now, and they don’t want the country to succeed, because it would hurt their electoral chances.

Negotiating in good faith is in opposition to core Republican values.

 

Interesting Tactic

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The state has sued Google, looking to have its search declared a public utility, which would make its favoring of its own products, including its ad markets unlawful.

This is an interesting way of doing things, but I have no idea how likely that it would successful:

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has filed a lawsuit asking a court to declare Google a public utility that should be regulated as such.

“Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products – that’s discriminatory and anti-competitive,” Yost said in a statement. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.”

The lawsuit, filed in Delaware County Common Pleas Court, is believed to be the first of its kind, Yost’s office said.

………

Google disadvantages businesses and consumers by ranking its own services above competitors, Yost argues in the complaint. For example, if someone searches for a flight, Google Flights is the first result that pops up after advertisements, not other search sites such as Expedia and Travelocity.

The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages.

Even if they win, there will be years of appeals, but I would really like the State of Ohio to prevail.

Why Is This a Surprise?

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I was not surprised when it was revealed that an Oregon State Representative let terrorists into the state house on December 21, 2000, but I am surprised that he was expelled from the state house by a near-unanimous vote. (The terrorist state legislator, Mike, Nearman, voted against)

I’m surprised that there were not at least 3 or 4 pro-insurrection Republicans who voted no:

The Oregon House voted 59-1 Thursday to expel Rep. Mike Nearman, the first time it has ejected a sitting representative.

Lawmakers removed Nearman because he let far-right demonstrators, some of whom were armed, into the Capitol on Dec. 21 while lawmakers were holding a special session. The Capitol was closed to the public due to the pandemic and remains so.

………

Surveillance video captured Nearman, a four-term Republican, opening a door and exiting the building, stepping aside so that demonstrators waiting at the entrance could quickly slip into the building. The demonstrators clashed with police who attempted to expel them from the building and allegedly sprayed police with bear mace.

………

Last week, a video from earlier in December surfaced which showed Nearman instructing viewers how they should wait outside an entrance to the Capitol and text his cell phone. Then, “somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there,” Nearman said, a plan he dubbed “Operation Hall Pass.”

In an interview Monday with a conservative radio host, Nearman said the group he instructed on how to text him when they arrived outside a door at the Capitol were “mostly blue-haired old ladies.”

That did not accurately describe the group that showed up at the Capitol and entered the door Nearman opened. Rather, the demonstrators included the right-wing, Vancouver-based group Patriot Prayer known for street brawls, people wearing clothing with Three Percenters militia logos and a Confederate flag hat and people armed with rifles and wearing military gear.

Nearman already faces criminal misconduct charges for the incident and in a committee hearing on the expulsion proposal earlier Thursday, he declined to answer questions on the advice of his attorney. However, he said it was against the state Constitution to close the building to the public and it was “a place they had a right to be, a place the legislative assembly had no right to exclude them from.”

Democrats gave Nearman unlimited time to speak during the House floor debate on the resolution to remove him. But Nearman, the lone “no” vote against his removal, kept his comments brief and reiterated that “the citizens of Oregon should be able to instruct their legislators” and industry and interest groups should have in-person access to lobby lawmakers.

Seriously, why did this take 7 months? 

There are only about 2 or 3 thousand more Republican elected officials who are guilty as hell, and they need to be pursued to the full extent of the law.