Snapple replaces corn syrup with real sugar
The old ingredient list for Lemon Snapple Iced Tea: “water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, tea, natural flavors.” Calories: 200. The new ingredient list: “filtered water, sugar, citric acid, tea, natural flavors.” Calories: 160.
David Gorski is a surgical oncologist, and also a well-known though bepseudonymed blogger for Science Blogs. His anti-antivaccination stance is legendary, for good reason: he is incredibly well-spoken and his posts railing against the pro-measles (haha) crowd routinely eviscerates them.
But none of his posts has ever done so in such a remarkably thorough fashion as in this lengthy post in which he destroys the movement from top to bottom.
That week in Monterrey, newspapers reported, Mexico clocked 167 drug-related murders. When I lived there, they didn’t have to measure murder by the week. There were only about a thousand drug-related killings annually. The Mexico I returned to in 2008 would end that year with a body count of more than 5,300 dead. That’s almost double the death toll from the year before—and more than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since that war began.
But it wasn’t just the amount of killing that shocked me. When I lived in Mexico, the occasional gang member would turn up executed, maybe with duct-taped hands, rolled in a carpet, and dropped in an alley. But Mexico’s newspapers itemized a different kind of slaughter last August: Twenty-four of the week’s 167 dead were cops, 21 were decapitated, and 30 showed signs of torture. Campesinos found a pile of 12 more headless bodies in the Yucatán. Four more decapitated corpses were found in Tijuana, the same city where barrels of acid containing human remains were later placed in front of a seafood restaurant. A couple of weeks later, someone threw two hand grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, killing eight and injuring dozens more.
We use the doctrine of imminent threat-
We haven't faced an imminent threat since the Cuban missile crisis, 1962, but we whip ourselves into a frenzy because we're a democracy and that's what it takes.
If that doesn't work, we shout out "he's got a gun!" just as we rush in. Then we look over the body and find an old cigarette lighter and say "Well Jesus, it was dark"
TSA? Thousands Standing AroundHe wails on the most sacred cows with a curiously Machiavellian outlook. Look, you want this? This is what needs to happen...
The government official told me that if word leaked out in any way that the government was even considering nationalization, it could spook the stock markets so badly that all those troubled banks would, instantly, become dead banks.
One of the most important political questions of our time is: Where is Osama bin Laden? We use biogeographic theories associated with the distribution of life and extinction (distance-decay theory, island biogeography theory, and life history characteristics) and remote sensing data (Landsat ETM+, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, Defense Meteorological Satellite, QuickBird) over three spatial scales (global, regional, local) to identify where bin Laden is most probably currently located. We believe that our work involves the first scientific approach to establishing his current location. The methods are repeatable and can be updated with new information obtained from the US intelligence community.
...the geographers' paper suffers from a classic data-crunching problem: garbage in, garbage out. In this paper's case, the trash includes some hoary urban myths about Osama.Will the editors of America rise up and punish the idiots who brought this story to our attention?
…it’s obvious that nationalization of the banks is a done deal. We bought them. We own them.The author, Michael Hilzik, takes everybody to task and just spells out where we're at and what needs to be done.
The only problem is that we’ve failed to exercise our right to control them…
The cash injections alone are almost enough to buy up all of BofA’s outstanding common stock twice over and Citi’s stock three times over. Yet the government has failed to demand any specific performance in return. There have been no sackings of management and no mandate that the money be applied to support loans in credit-strapped sectors, like small and medium-size businesses.
Step One should be dumping current management, he says. The banks' CEOs argue that their executive caste needs to stay put because they know best how to run the place. This is the sort of argument my mother used to characterize as, "I like me, who do you like?"
Even if one agrees that a core of professional management should be left intact, what's the rationale for not firing the boards? Bank directors presided over a disaster in a collective stupor, yet unaccountably continue to hold on to their seats with what George Orwell called "prehensile bottoms."
Kathy Lovelace lost her job and was about to lose her house, too. But then she made a seemingly simple request of the bank: Show me the original mortgage paperwork.
And just like that, the foreclosure proceedings came to a standstill.
Lovelace and other homeowners around the country are managing to stave off foreclosure by employing a strategy that goes to the heart of the whole nationwide mess.
During the real estate frenzy of the past decade, mortgages were sold and resold, bundled into securities and peddled to investors. In many cases, the original note signed by the homeowner was lost, stored away in a distant warehouse or destroyed.
Persuading a judge to compel production of hard-to-find or nonexistent documents can, at the very least, delay foreclosure, buying the homeowner some time and turning up the pressure on the lender to renegotiate the mortgage.
"I'm going to hang on for dear life until they can prove to me it belongs to them," said Lovelace, a 50-year-old divorced mother who owns a $200,000 home in Zephyrhills, near Tampa. "I'll try everything I can because it's all I have left."
Maddow: It seems like the emerging, um I guess the emerging debate about what to do in the whole Afghanistan/Pakistan region - it comes down to this idea of about whether or not the problem can be out-governed instead of out-gunned. Whether this is something the US can be part of a constructive political solution, whether it really is a military issue. When I look at the evidently corrupt government - and, and a goverment of a limited reach of Hamid Karzai - and I look at the government in Pakistan which is only one year old and is bankrupt. It's hard for me to believe that we're, we've got enough- there's enough governance there to really solve this big problem.
Brzezinski: I can't help smiling because you used two words which we like to use when we become uncomfortable with those who are dependent on us - or who are, who are to some extent our allies. If we are uncomfortable with them we begin to say they are corrupt. Or now we're say that the Pakistanis are bankrupt. What about us? We're close to being bankrupt, and you know Washington and I know Washington. What we have in this city is well-organized, legalized corruption.
Brzezinski: We have wasted seven years, pursuing policies which were ill-defined - not seeing any realistic objective - and now we have to re-think this whole engagement very seriously and taking into account Pakistani and European views.
Since the peanut butter-salmonella scandal was traced to PCA last month, the company and CEO Stewart Parnell have taken a very public path to corporate oblivion. Within weeks of linking the salmonella outbreak to contamination at its facilities, PCA's plants have shut down, its customers have fled, and the company has filed for bankruptcy protection. Civil lawsuits have been filed across the country.Tell that to the nine people who died. Or the hundreds of people who got sick while the CDC scrambled to find out how widespread this problem was - or where it orignated.
[snip]
Regulators share some of the blame here, since the Washington Post reports they didn't even know the company's Plainview, Texas, plant existed until this outbreak. To hear consumer groups tell it, however, the answer to regulatory failure is -- more regulation! The Center for Science in the Public Interest is among those supporting a bill pushed by Representative Rosa DeLauro that would take food safety away from the Food and Drug Administration to create another, presumably more activist agency.
Other proposals would aim to trace food on every step of its journey of growing, sorting, processing, distributing and mixing on the way to grocery stores and pantries. But it's nuts to think any kind of reasonable inspection regime can make the food supply safer than it already is. Taxpayers can't afford to hire enough inspectors to guarantee the safety of the entire food chain. Meanwhile, such a regime will raise costs for law-abiding companies and consumers.
The best food-safety enforcement tool is the one now being wielded against PCA and Mr. Parnell in the form of corporate self-destruction. Their fate should be chastening to any company inclined to play fast and loose -- and will do more to enforce food safety standards than any army of inspectors.
“We should be focusing on what works,” Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, told the FT. “We cannot keep pouring good money after bad.” He added, “If nationalisation is what works, then we should do it.”
The Journal has a superb A1 story today about a foreclosure “rocket docket” in Florida that gives homeowners fifteen or twenty seconds to “present” their cases.
Reporter Michael Corkery (disclosure: a friend and former colleague of mine) traveled down to Fort Myers to find judges there are hearing some thousand foreclosure cases a day in a frantic bid to cut down a backlog.Hoping to save her house, Saundra Hill Scott arrived at the county courthouse clutching dog-eared mortgage bills and letters from her lender.
She need not have bothered. The foreclosure hearing lasted less than 20 seconds, with Judge John Carlin asking her two questions: Are you current on your mortgage and are you living in the home? She answered no and yes and then offered to show him her paperwork.
“I don’t need to see that. That’s between you and the bank,” he said as he gave Ms. Hill Scott, her husband and three grandchildren 60 days to work out a deal with their lender or vacate their three-bedroom house.
Reuters - U.S. charges Stanford Financial with "massive" fraud
In a complaint filed in federal court in Dallas, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused the cricket-loving Stanford and two other top executives at Stanford Financial Group of fraudulently selling $8 billion in high-yield certificates of deposit.
NYT - Adding Up the Government’s Total Bailout TabTo which I would add...
Beyond the $700 billion bailout known as TARP, which has been used to prop up banks and car companies, the government has created an array of other programs to provide support to the struggling financial system. Through Feb. 10, the government has made commitments of nearly $8.8 trillion and spent $2 trillion.
(H/t The Big Picture)
Kansas suspends income tax refunds, may miss payroll
Income tax refunds and state employee paychecks could be late after Republican leaders and the Democratic governor clashed Monday over how to solve a cash-flow problem.Payments to Medicaid providers and schools also could be delayed."We are out of cash, in essence," state budget director Duane Goossen said.
[Morgan Stanley's] JAMES GORMAN: I’m going to turn to a topic that I suspect is near and dear to everybody’s hearts, which is retention. There will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus, it is not a bonus it is an award. The award will be based on ‘08 full year production. Clearly it would have been cheaper to do it off ‘09 but we think it’s the right thing to do and we’ve made that decision.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc are preparing to pay $3 billion of retention awards to brokers to keep them from fleeing a brokerage joint venture, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Congress strengthens executive pay limits
Sounds pretty impressive eh?
Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, inserted strict rules into the $787 billion economic stimulus package over the White House's objections. Dodd's limits on bankers' bonuses are significantly more aggressive than those sought by Obama or Geithner in recent days, with much fanfare.
Dodd, D-Conn., said the restrictions — an executive making $1 million a year in salary could receive only $500,000 in bonus money, for example — are necessary if Obama plans to ask Congress for more money to save the financial sector.
[snip]
The stimulus bill, however, sets executive bonus limits on all banks that receive infusions from the government's $700 billion financial rescue fund. The number of executives affected depends on the amount of government assistance they receive. But as a rule, top executives will be prohibited from getting bonuses or incentives except as restricted stock that vests only after bailout funds are repaid and that is no greater than one-third of the executive's annual compensation.
The prohibition would not apply to bonuses that are spelled out in an executive's contract signed before Feb. 11, 2009.
SIMON JOHNSON: ...And [Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner] said, “The compensation caps we’ve put in place, for the executives of these banks, are strong.” And at that point I just fell out of my chair. That is not true. That is factually inaccurate, in my opinion.Late edit: Forgot to link to TBP for the Moyers transcript. Whoops.
BILL MOYERS: That?
SIMON JOHNSON: That this $500,000 limit, and deferred stock, is some kind of restriction on what they do? It’s deferred stock, Bill. It’s not restricted. You can get as much stock as you want, as soon as you pay back the government, you can cash out of that. That’s one.
Second, you can, sorry to get technical, but reset the strike price. This is something you and your and your viewers, you need to hear this one out. Just look for these words, okay, follow them through the press. When you get into trouble, when your company goes down, and you have massive amounts of stock options that aren’t worth much anymore, because the stock price has gone down, you say, “Oh, well, we’re going to reset our option prices.”
And, basically, it means that, at the end of the day, these people are going to walk away with tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars paid for by basically, insurance policy that you and I are providing.
Think of it like this, our taxpayer money is ensuring their bonuses. We’re making sure that companies, that banks survive. And eventually, of course, the economy will turn around. Things will get better. The banks will be worth a lot of money. And they will cash out. And we will be paying higher taxes, we and our children, will be paying higher taxes so those people could have those bonuses. That’s not fair. It’s not acceptable. It’s not even good economics.
[Burris'] affidavit is dated Feb. 5 -- three weeks after Burris was sworn in to replace President Obama in the Senate.Burris, you are so not getting re-elected.
[snip]
"There were several facts that I was not given the opportunity to make during my testimony," Burris said. "I voluntarily submitted an affidavit so everything was transparent."
Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.
Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.
Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. No, they are borrowing it from China. Your children are expected to repay the Chinese.
Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.
Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.
Last month, [Federal Judge Emmet] Sullivan ordered the Justice Department to turn over all the agency's internal communications regarding a whistleblower complaint against the FBI agent leading the investigation into the former Alaska senator.
The agent, Chad Joy, bitterly complained about some Justice Department tactics during the trial, including not turning over evidence and an "inappropriate relationship" between another agent working the case and the prosecutor's star witness.
[snip]
During Friday's hearing, Sullivan repeatedly asked three Justice Department attorneys sitting at the prosecution's table whether they had some reason not to turn over the documents. They finally acknowledged they did not, and Sullivan exploded in anger.
"That was a court order," he bellowed. "That wasn't a request. I didn't ask for them out of the kindness of your hearts. ... Isn't the Department of Justice taking court orders seriously these days?"
He said he didn't want to get "sidetracked" by deciding a sanction immediately and would deal with their punishment later. But he ordered them to produce the material by the end of the day.
"That's outrageous for the Department of Justice — the largest law firm on the planet," he said. "That is not acceptable in this court."
[The FBI whistleblower] also said the lead FBI agent in charge of the investigation, Mary Beth Kepner, had an inappropriate relationship with witness Bill Allen, the Alaska millionaire at the center of the investigation. Joy said he once saw Kepner entering Allen's hotel room alone and that Kepner told Joy that she wore a skirt during her appearance at the Stevens trial as a "surprise/present" for Allen.
He accused her of developing close personal relationships with other witnesses — inviting them to dine at her home, revealing details of FBI investigations and accepting gifts from them, including a job for her husband as a security guard at the Port of Anchorage, Alaska.
A 9/11 Widow, Killed in Crash Near BuffaloI've said it for my own reasons, but it's doubly true for Ms. Eckert:
Which is news to many Pakistanis. Their President has called the strikes -- more than 40 in the past year -- "counterproductive"; their prime minister, "intolerable." Pakistan's army has practiced shooting down the drones.(Via Danger Room)
Here is the statement the White House just put out on kicking Judd Gregg to the curb, in full:“Senator Gregg reached out to the President and offered his name for Secretary of Commerce. He was very clear throughout the interviewing process that despite past disagreements about policies, he would support, embrace, and move forward with the President’s agenda. Once it became clear after his nomination that Senator Gregg was not going to be supporting some of President Obama’s key economic priorities, it became necessary for Senator Gregg and the Obama administration to part ways. We regret that he has had a change of heart”.Translation: Gregg asked us for the gig and lied to us, so eff him, this is his fault.
As one longtime White House correspondent just told me, "I have never seen a White House statement that kicks someone in the balls that hard before."
The Hummingbird is unique in its ability to hover at high altitude (over 15,000 feet) and its endurance of over 20 hours. This means it can park high in the sky and scan a wide area. Robo-chopper camera-maker BAE Systems says that its imager will be able to cover an area of over a hundred square miles. The refresh rate is fifteen frames per second and a "ground sample distance" of 15 centimeters –- this means that each pixel represents six inches on the ground.Meaning the Hummingbird is way the hell up in the air - stays there all day - and can spot objects as small as a kleenex box.
Fifty-three Merrill bankers got bonuses of more than $5 million each. The top four got $121 million total. The FT goes further:That'd be 149 employees sopping up almost a quarter of the $4 billion Merril paid out in bonuses.
The next 10 bonus recipients took home $128m in incentive pay, while the top 149 recipients got $858m in aggregate payments.
Emptywheel: Say, Mr. AG, I'd really appreciate seeing some of your original lawyering work on this one, please. I've seen what the dead-enders want to give me, and I'm not really interested in seeing their stale arguments rehashed again. Unless, of course, you're really willing to adopt their completely indefensible position as your own?bmaz: Ladies and gentlemen, Vaughn Walker is on a mission. As most of you know, I have thought that was the case for quite some time now. But jeebus, and seriously, I have rarely, if ever, seen a judge more on top of a subject, loaded for bear and out in front of a case as we see here. It is awesome and impressive. He is anticipating what the parties are going to argue and how appellate courts are going to rule in the next set of appeals, all from a pre-trial posture. He is treating this case with the respect, depth and care that it deserves because nothing short of our Constitution and Fourth Amendment thereto is at issue. There are precious few bright lights in the dark field of justice these days; irrespective of how it all plays out in the end, so far this sure looks like one of them.
I'm sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this particular issue. And I'm certainly in the majority on this one. My anecdotal experience for the past several months has been that the more someone knows about the economy, the more they know (or at least are willing to admit to) what they don't know. Anyone who is professing with certainty that this or that will work -- nationalizing the banks, for instance -- is an idiot.Martin Wolf: Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks
The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once....Mr Obama is taking a huge gamble. He should have resolved to cleanse these Augean banking stables. He needs to rethink, if it is not already too late.My own fury at Wall Street's ineptitude and greed makes me predisposed to any plan that involves making Wall Street suffer - a LOT, but I'm genuinely confused.
Nearly 100 federal banking regulators descended on Citigroup in New York on Wednesday morning. Dozens more fanned out through Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and other big banks across the nation.CalculatedRisk explains:
[snip]
At the center of this effort, part of the Obama administration’s plan to shore up the nation’s financial industry, is a new stress test for banks that federal officials are devising.
[snip]
“What you are left with is that we are going to nationalize banks that fail the stress test,” [Stanford Group analyst] Mr.[Jaret] Seiberg said. “How many big companies are going to want to do business with government-run banks?”
It sounds like the stress tests could be completed within "weeks" at some banks, and I think 30 days is sufficient for all 18 or so banks with $100 billion in assets.
The banks will probably fall into one of three categories:
1) No additional assistance required. These banks will definitely want this publicized!
2) The banks in between that will need additional capital. This is where the Capital Assistance Program comes in...
[snip]3) Banks that will need to be nationalized or sold.
But the highlight of the hearing came when Congressman Greg Walden (R-OR) offered up a plastic bin wrapped with big yellow CAUTION ribbons--with Peanut Corporation peanut material inside. Walden asked Parnell and Lightsey if they would be willing to eat some of their own product right there, before the Sub-Committee.
"On the advice of counsel, I uh respectfully exercise my rights Fifth Amendment of the Constitution."
A simple yes or no might have sufficed.
In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today.(Via Spaceflight Now and Danger Room)
The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.
So here’s a question the House Financial Services Committee might put to the Titans of Finance: How is it that Kim Price, a community banker with an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University, a tiny executive staff and a pay package that you would consider insulting, somehow managed to come up with a more creative use for his government bailout money than any of you?Damn good question.
Our winner is Dr. Anderew Wakefield. He is the doctor, almost single handedly responsible for the paranoia in some parents, worldwide, for a decade now about letting their kids get the MMR vaccination - measles, mumps & rubella.
His research, published in February 1998 in the British medical journal the Lancet suggested that the MMR triple vaccine was a likely cause of autism via some new kind of inflammitory bowel disease that the vaccinations induced with symptonms appearing within days.
He apparently made it up.
The Times of London has obtained the actual hospital medical records of the vaccinated kids on which Wakefield based his conclusions.
There were only 12 kids in the study, and their ailments as described in the article were different than the ones in their hospital records.
Worse still, Wakefield left out the fact that in several of the 12 cases there had been concerns before the vaccinations that the kids were not healthy enough to be vaccinated. And the hospital records show nearly all of the kids had no bowel troubles at all, while Wakefield's article said they all did.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who may have put millions of kids at unnecessary risk for measles, mumps, rubella and who knows what else...?
Today's worst person in the world.
One question is whether the state secrets doctrine concerns facts or documents. That is: does it mean that government documents cannot be entered into evidence because they are secret? Or does it mean that the underlying facts are "state secrets" that can never be ventilated in an American courtroom, even if they are well known everywhere else in the world and the plaintiff can prove them using publicly available evidence?Like many who voted for the man, I'd be very curious about what motivates a decision like this. If it's just continuity until key players are ramped up enough to change the policy - okay. But you'd think if this was so, there would be an attempt to get this across. There have been great strides on secrecy law in the past few weeks - so it's probably too early to pronounce judgement.
The latter position -- that the state secrets privilege is a rule about facts, not about evidence -- is absurd, but it is the government's position.
It's time to throw away the Ring, Frodo, before it hooks you and enslaves you.
There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either (click) snapped or is about to snap.Well said.
In the First World War, that condition was called “shell shock”. Simple, honest, direct language. Two syllables, shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves.
That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the Second World War came along and the very same combat condition was called “battle fatigue”. Four syllables now. Takes a little longer to say. Doesn't seem to hurt as much.” Fatigue” is a nicer word than “shock”. (Stridently) “Shell shock!” (Subdued) “Battle fatigue”.
Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison Avenue was riding high by that time, and the very same combat condition was called “operational exhaustion”. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now! And the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car.
Then of course, came the war in Viet Nam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called “post-traumatic stress disorder”. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen! And the pain is completely buried under jargon. Post-traumatic stress disorder.
I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Viet Nam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll bet you. I'll bet you.
Court’s “baby mama” remark leads to resentencing
A Caucasian judge’s comments on the African-American defendant’s lifestyle and his “baby mama” could lead to a reasonable perception that the sentence was imposed at least in part because of race, a three-judge panel of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals held.
[snip]
“Where do you guys find these women, really, seriously,” the judge remarked. “I’d say about every fourth man who comes in here unemployed, no education, is with a woman who is working full-time, going to school. Where do you find these women? Is there a club?”
Later, the judge said, “Mr. Harris sits at home, gets high while his baby mama works and goes to school. I swear there’s a club where these women get together and congregate.”
“At worst, the ‘baby mama’ comment here is an awkward attempt by the trial court to sound hip to a defendant when explaining how his idleness and lack of ambition are negative character traits especially in contrast to the mother of his child,” Brennan wrote.At least according to Judge Brennan, baby mama is a discrete rung in the relationship ladder.
Further, Brennan said the judge used the term “baby mama” a second time after mistakenly referring to the mother of Harris’s child as “your wife.” The judge had to correct himself and state, “not your wife, your baby mama.” Brennan said these circumstances yield no racial subtext.
The Obama administration will not prosecute CIA officers who participated in harsh interrogations that critics say crossed the line into torture, CIA Director-nominee Leon Panetta said FridayMeaning, if the DOJ chooses to issue opinions that contradict existing law, all who refer to them cannot be prosecuted?
Asked by The Associated Press if that was official policy, Panetta said, "That is the case."[snip]Panetta, in an interview with the AP after a second day of confirmation hearings with the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he arrived at that conclusion even before he began meeting with CIA officials.
"It was my opinion we just can't operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department" they could be in danger of prosecution, he said.
Panetta demurred on saying whether the Obama administration would take legal action against those who authorized or wrote the legal opinions that, for a time, set an extremely high legal bar for an action to constitute torture.
The producers of Tent Show Radio and Wisconsin Public Radio have decided to cut Tent Show's founder, Warren Nelson, from its broadcasts in light of allegations against Nelson of sexual assault and battery.(Via the Ashland Daily Press - login required)
Mike Crane, WPR's acting director and chief operating officer, said Thursday the show will be re-cut with an alternate host, and an edited version could appear as early as Saturday.
...the most powerful women in America might be the club of four Republicans in the United States Senate: Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Kay Bailey Hutchison.
"No immediate need". Famous last words.
...the odd contrast between the front page story and a back page story in the New York Times yesterday. The front page story was about Daschle (and Geithner) underpaying tens of thousands of dollars of taxes.
The back page story was about illegal immigrants who are dutifully paying taxes (according to the IRS, $50 billion dollars between 1996 to 2003). Indeed, these illegal immigrants are so anxious to pay their taxes that they have utilized fraudulent social security numbers to do so. The rub is that--to the dismay of the IRS--various law enforcement authorities are now seeking to use the tax records to find the illegal immigrants and bring them to justice.
The article suggests that these illegal immigrants have an ulterior motive for paying taxes, hoping this provides evidence that they will be good citizens. ...What is clear is that these people by and large do not make a lot of money, yet they willingly hand over a chunk of it to Uncle Sam, at risk of getting caught and losing everything.
The contrast seems bizarre: two public-minded elites substantially underpay their taxes (yet earn nominations to Cabinet posts), while illegal immigrants duly pay their taxes (and authorities use these payments to track them down).
YT - Kyrgyzstan Said to Deny Base to U.S.
Long War Journal - Taliban sever NATO supply line through Pakistan's northwest
AP - NATO says members may use Iran for Afghan supplies
NATO would not oppose individual member nations making deals with Iran to supply their forces in Afghanistan as an alternative to using increasingly risky routes from Pakistan, the alliance's top military commander said Monday.
We find each $100 of FEMA-provided disaster relief increases the average state's corruption by nearly 102 percent. Our findings suggest that notoriously corrupt regions of the United States, such as the Gulf Coast, are in part notoriously corrupt because natural disasters frequently strike them. They attract more disaster relief, which makes them more corrupt.E passed along this little nugget from the Clarion Ledger
-Peter Leeson (George Mason) and Russell Sobel (West Virginia U.)
Weathering Corruption (2008)
Gulfport mayor, wife indicted in Katrina fraud
A federal grand jury Wednesday indicted the Gulfport mayor and his wife on 16 counts of Hurricane Katrina-related fraud involving more than $222,000 in government grants they received to repair damage to a beachfront house.It's a bit of a step down, as corrupt Gulf Coast mayors go, but it's still good old home-grown corruption.
Mayor Brent Warr and Laura Jean Warr potentially could face decades in prison and up to $4 million in fines if convicted on all counts.
[snip]
The Warrs are charged with filing fraudulent paperwork and making false statements to get federal grants to repair damage caused by the 2005 storm. According to the indictment, both the mayor and his wife at various times from September 2005 through January 2007 signed various documents claiming the aid for the house, although the home was not their primary residence.
Florida’s "homestead" laws, which are unlike what any other state has, in part allow homeowners facing legal judgments (or other financial issues) to protect their primary residence fully - keeping it out of the hands of potential creditors. One of the key steps in qualifying for the home-protection is seeking "homestead exemption," which provides homeowners with a tax break.
On May 10, 2001, Peter Madoff bought the home at 200 Algoma Road in Palm Beach, Fla., along with his wife Marion. Both were listed as owners at the time.
Five years later, on Nov. 8, 2006, Peter transferred the title to Marion making her the sole legal owner of the home.
A month later, on Dec. 28, 2006, Marion applied for, and soon after received, homestead exemption.
[snip]
Meanwhile, property records show Bernard Madoff’s Palm Beach mansion at 410 N. Lake Way has been in his wife’s name since it was purchased in March of 1994.
But, information obtained exclusively by CBS News reveals that it wasn’t until Dec. 10, 2006, that Ruth Madoff applied for homestead exemption. This was within weeks of when her sister-in-law Marion applied for the same exemption.
When Obama picked Tom Daschle to be the HHS Secretary, I nearly shit my pants. In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger.
--Matt TaibbiOkay, so I read this:
USA TODAY:
Daschle delayed telling Obama about tax problem; earned $200K+ from health industry
Glenn Greenwald: The Daschles: feeding at the Beltway trough-and figured, well what's the point?
Nice. When this guy gets confirmed - we can all look forward to nothing happening on the health care frontier.
...they know how to stay on the right side of what is strictly legal. There's no evidence they did anything illegal, but it is still blatantly sleazy and corrupt -- exactly the sort of legalized sleaze and corruption that Barack Obama, as a centerpiece of his campaign, vowed to combat. And it's unlikely to matter for exactly the reason Mencimer said: there are very few people in Washington who could criticize this sort of behavior without being guilty of the most extreme hypocrisy imaginable.
Under his consulting arrangement with InterMedia, the report said, Mr. Daschle received $1 million a year, or $83,333 a month. The payment to Mr. Daschle for May 2007 was omitted from the annual statement of income sent to him by InterMedia. Ms. Backus said the omission resulted from “a clerical error by InterMedia.”Oh, well - that explains it all then. InterMedia paid him $83 K a month and they just forgot to tell him. No wonder he didn't put it on his taxes.
