David Weidner has an excellent column on the unfortunate case of Sergey Aleynikov, better known as the guy who stole computer code from Goldman Sachs.
Last week, a federal judge handed Aleynikov got eight-plus years in prison for the theft. The fact is, Aleynikov is a thief, and Weidner makes sure you know he’s not minimizing that fact. But he contextualizes it, and it’s enlightening:
On March 18, the same day that U.S. District Judge Denise Cote handed down Mr. Aleynikov’s sentence of eight years and a month in prison, a different judge sent William J. Cannon, 22, of Ukiah, Calif., to prison for seven years. Mr. Cannon was convicted of the attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl.
Rodney Williams, 42, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in Norfolk, Va., for shooting his victim eight times in a fight outside a sports bar, got 12 months in prison and a $2,500 fine.
...if you’re the type of sicko who likes holing up in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thousands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble… well, if that sounds like journalism Heaven, then you’re our kind of sicko.
...[Efraim] Diveroli and [David] Packouz soon got the break they were looking for. On July 28th, 2006, the Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Illinois, posted a 44-page document titled "A Solicitation for Nonstandard Ammunition." It looked like any other government form on fbo.gov, with blank spaces for names and telephone numbers and hundreds of squares to be filled in. But the document actually represented a semi-covert operation by the Bush administration to prop up the Afghan National Army. Rather than face a public debate over the war in Afghanistan, which was going very badly indeed, the Pentagon issued what is known as a "pseudo case" — a solicitation that permitted it to allocate defense funds without the approval of Congress. The pseudo case wasn't secret, precisely, but the only place it was publicized was on fbo.gov. No press release was issued, and there was no public debate. The money was only available for two years, so it had to be spent quickly. And unlike most federal contracts, there was no dollar limit posted; companies vying for the deal could bid whatever they wanted.
Based on the numbers, it looked like it was going to be a lot of money. The Army wanted to buy a dizzying array of weapons — ammunition for AK-47 assault rifles and SVD Dragunov sniper rifles, GP 30 grenades, 82 mm Russian mortars, S-KO aviation rockets. The quantities were enormous — enough ammo to literally create an army — and the entire contract would go to a single bidder. "One firm fixed-price award, on an all-or-none basis, will be made as a result of this solicitation," the tender offer said.
The solicitation was only up for a matter of minutes before Diveroli spotted it, reading the terms with increasing excitement. He immediately called Packouz, who was driving along the interstate.
"I've found the perfect contract for us," Diveroli said. "It's enormous — far, far bigger than anything we've done before. But it's right up our alley."
The pair met at Diveroli's apartment to smoke a joint and discuss strategy. Supplying the contract would mean buying up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ammunition for the kind of Eastern Bloc weapons that the Afghans used. Because such weapons were traded in the gray market — a world populated by illegal arms dealers, gun runners and warlords — the Pentagon couldn't go out and buy the ammo itself without causing a public relations disaster. Whoever won the contract to arm the Afghans would essentially be serving as an official front operation, laundering shady arms for the Pentagon.
...
The Pentagon can be a slow-moving bureaucracy, a place where paperwork goes to die. But because the Afghanistan solicitation was a "pseudo case," it had been designed to move swiftly. On the evening of January 26th, 2007, Packouz was parking his beat-up old Mazda Protege when Diveroli called.
"I have good news and bad news," Diveroli said.
"What's the bad news?" Packouz asked.
"Our first order is only for $600,000."
"So we won the contract?" Packouz asked in disbelief.
"Fuck yeah!" said Diveroli.
...and this is where I point out that Packouz is 25 years old and Diveroli is 21.
Latest photo of workers in the Fukushima control room:
And (via VOA's Steve Herman) a report by Austrian scientists projecting the radiation levels. Herman the guy who posted the story on high levels of radiation in Iitate, Japan that equalled a chest x-ray every hour. I'm still not convinced he's not an outlier or missing a larger picture - but he posting sources that make you wonder.
"The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl had a source term of iodine-131 at 1.76 x 10^18 becquerels of cesium-137 at 8.5 x 10^16 bequerels," the statement added. "The estimated for Fukushima source terms are thus at 20 percent of Chernobyl for iodine, and 20-60 percent of Chernobyl for cesium."
The lead Austrian researcher speculates that levels may in fact be higher - in part because of a delay in collecting data and gaps in the data collected.
If you're like the Awl's Dave Bry, (and myself) you thought the Brit-Com The Young Ones was about the funniest thing on late 80's TV. University Challenge still kills.
Anyway, I never knew (and Bry's post points out) that the Young Ones theme song was a Cliff Richards cover, Makes sense, but any Young Ones fans out there might be just as surprised as I was to hear the original version by Cliff Richards and the Shadows:
On the other side of what the demonstrators have begun to call "Taghyir" or "Change" Square, others stripped off their jackets and advanced towards the ever more relentless gunfire, pointing towards their chests as if in an invitation to shoot.
As the carnage continued, killing 52 and wounding hundreds more, victims were brought to a nearby mosque that had been turned into makeshift hospital.
Photographs showed the dead, identity cards and miniatures of the Koran laid on their corpses, lain in rows across the carpeted floor on an inner prayer room.
One young boy, barefoot and dressed in an Arsenal football club T-shirt, had been shot just above the eye. Another photograph showed a veiled woman cradling the body of her young son, his arms outstretched as if in supplication.
In one video, a man holding the body of his dead brother is shown making a tearful telephone call to his mother to tell her, in a faltering voice, that her son is dead.
Nearly all the bodies in the photographs had bullet wounds either in the forehead, neck or in the back of the head. There seems little doubt that this was the work of trained marksmen.
Yet President Saleh, while expressing his sorrow, claimed that the gunmen were either the demonstrators themselves or irate residents neighbouring the university who had grown tired of the noise of the protests – a claim denied by the residents themselves.
The opposition coalition at the forefront of the protests accused Mr Saleh, a key US ally against al-Qaeda, of perpetrating crimes against humanity.
"It is a massacre," said opposition spokesman Mohammed al-Sabri. "This is part of a criminal plan to kill off the protesters, and the president and his relatives are responsible for the bloodshed."
Much of the sniper fire emanated from a building allegedly owned by a regional governor close to President Saleh, further evidence, the opposition said, of the regime's involvement in the killings.
Video footage showed a masked man crouching behind a balustrade on the building's roof.
As the gunfire continued unabated, a group of protesters stormed the rooftop, braving gunfire to capture 10 of the snipers – seven of whom were said to have possessed government identification papers.
One of the suspected snipers was dragged into the streets, where he was beaten and clubbed by protesters, while a second was allegedly flung off the edge of the building.
The Fukushima Prefectural Government tells VOA News that for the second day in a row the highest radiation level it registered outside the plant was in the village of Iitate, 40 kilometers northwest of the nuclear facility. The reading there, very slightly elevated from Friday, was 21.80 micro-sieverts per hour at 6 p.m. Saturday. Assuming these levels are staying consistent throughout the day, that means residents there are receiving about the equivalent of a plain film chest X-ray every hour.
40 kilometers would be double the official evacuation zone.
That seems like it would get more attention than just the VOA.
I found another account (also based on the VOA correspondent Steve Herman) that points out that this report is causing confusion. But seriously, if they really are picking up radiation levels this high - it would be a fairly big deal.
CJR's Ryan Chittum picks out a WSJ piece about - of all things - debtor's prison in the US.
The WSJ points out "More than a third of all U.S. states allow borrowers who can't or won't pay to be jailed."
The money quote:
Your hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts at work:
In September 2009, Jeffrey Stearns, a concrete-company owner, answered a knock at the door from a Hancock County, Ind., deputy sheriff. The deputy was holding a warrant to arrest Mr. Stearns for not paying $4,024.88 owed to a unit of American International Group Inc. on a loan for his pickup truck.
After being handcuffed in front of his four children, Mr. Stearns, 29 years old, spent two nights in jail, where he said he was strip-searched and sprayed for lice. Court records show he was released after agreeing to pay $1,500 to the loan company. “I didn’t even know I was being sued,” he said, though he doesn’t dispute owing the money. “It’s the scariest thing that ever happened to me.”
AIG, of course, got hundreds of billions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. Now it’s having those taxpayers thrown in jail. Nice.
Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and much larger emissions of radioactive materials appeared immiment [sic], according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments....
The sharp deterioration came after government officials said the containment structure of the No. 2 reactor, the most seriously damaged of three reactors at the Daichi plant, had suffered damage during an explosion shortly after 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
They initially suggested that the damage was limited and that emergency operations aimed at cooling the nuclear fuel at three stricken reactors with seawater would continue. But industry executives said that in fact the situation had spiraled out of control and that all plant workers needed to leave the plant to avoid excessive exposure to radioactive leaks.
If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.
The simple rhetoric of the Wisconsin budget battle is that the Democrats are just "thug" unions—and that Republicans are carrying water for wealthy corporate sleaze. It's more complicated than that. For one, several teachers' unions endorsed Wisconsin Republicans last year—unions are hardly the unthinking automatons of the left they're now depicted to be. Why would they do that? Quite simply, those Republicans looked into the face of their constituents… and lied.
We mentioned the activist training done by American Majority, including its most recent event in Madison on March 5th. American Majority even provides "A Wisconsin School Board Primer" about what a school board is, how to run for it, and suggestions on reforming your school district. These suggestions, surprise, are carbon copies of both the education reforms introduced in Scott Walker's budget bill as well as the campaigning points for candidiates such as Sauk County Tea Party president and 2011 Baraboo school board hopeful John Meegan, who, as we pointed out, has been working closely with American Majority since last year.
The video of American Majority seminar on guerilla internet tactics is especially nice.
Here's a sample:
American Majority Instructor: So what do we do? We become digital activists. We identify the medium, we learn the medium, we manipulate the medium. It was printing presses [in the revolutionary war era] it's the internet now. That's where we influence the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. The Tea Party's got us running up the hills, American Majority is trying to give you the tools, the muskets, right? So, here's what I do: I get on Amazon, I type in "liberal books" I go through and I say 1-star, 1-star, 1-star...The flip side is you need to go to conservative, libertarian, whatever um...you need to go to their products and give them 5 stars. So, literally 80% of the books I put a star on - I don't read. So, that's how it works."
A visual aid might be in order, here.
This is what a political movement is according to American Majority:
Note the white tablecloths
And this is what a political movement actually looks like:
In the last few weeks as Walker has claimed that he's giving local leaders the tools they need, more and more of these leaders have come forward to declare that they did not ask for a berth as wide as Walker means to provide. Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, told the Isthmus: "We've sought significant modifications in bargaining laws, but we've never sought to eliminate collective bargaining rights." Turner reiterated that his organization, which represents nearly all 424 Wisconsin school districts, did not support eliminating collective bargaining.
The Isthmus also spoke with Dan Thompson, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, representative of nearly 600 of the state's towns, who said, "The governor gave us a great deal more flexibility than we asked for." Thompson pointed out that the bill's limitation to cost-of-living increases will cripple abilities to compete with the private sector, the exact kind of commutative equality Walker claims his bill promotes.
So, to be perfectly clear, despite how Walker's cuts and union dissolving measures are pitched as being undertaken because Wisconsin had "no choice," it was all about choice. Wisconsin looked at its budget, and it chose to make massive cuts to education. Instead of making across the board, equilateral cuts, including minor tax increases and union concessions, Walker chose to balance his entire budget on the back of education. That's it. It was a conscious decision. They should own it.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, Republicans owned it. They owned the hell out of it.
His blow by blow account of the rushed vote is a must read.
FITZGERALD: Well if they flip the state senate, which is obviously their goal with eight recalls going on right now, they can take control of the labor unions. If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.
Badgers, get your recall pens ready. These people have to go down - hard.
Not exactly a barn burner of a subject line - but here's a great way to draw someone's interest into why this subject matters, courtesy of Rortybomb:
“Credit cards are the lifeline of my business as customers use plastic for everything from; a cup of coffee, to a pack of gum, to a tank of gasoline. Credit cards and debit cards are easy to use, but what customers don’t know is that every time they use a credit card, I pay a fee. For example, a customer purchases a local newspaper (75 cent retail) my profit is 9 cents. If the customer is using a debit card I would pay 25 cent for the transaction fee plus .08% interchange fee. If the customer puts down a Visa credit card the transaction fee would be 19 cents plus 1.68% interchange fee. Regardless of the payment option I lose money on the sale.”
–Jinger Duryea, President of CN Brown which owns Big Apple convenience stores across Maine
A minimum charge by the credit card companies eats retail vendors lunch.
Credit card companies don't care - but there are more merchants than credit card companies. You would think that would make them care.
But you'd never get that from corporate shill like Edward Wyatt
You aren't Reagan, the teachers aren't PATCO, and the Berlin wall has been down for decades.
Also, if you're taking your cues from Reagan - he didn't agree with you either:
"These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland … They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."
- Reagan in 1980 discussing Polish workers standing up to the Soviets.
Hey, I wonder how those same people who would have the government limit teacher pay and benefits would feel about the government limiting CEO pay at bailed-out-with-taxpayer-money firms? -Jon Stewart
Oh and Fox News Business Contributor Tracy Byrnes? You get my vote for hypocrite of the year.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a letter from Dane County District Judge John Albert to the union protesters:
Members of the Rotunda Community:
Today, I have ruled in favor of the Plaintiffs concerning the issues before me on access to the State Capitol of Wisconsin. After three days of testimony, the record establishes that the recent protest was unprecedented in the history of the state of Wisconsin. Thousands of people peacefully protested for two weeks and no injuries or damage to personal or government property occurred.
I credit that to the restraint and discipline of the protesters. I further commend law enforcement supervisors and every individual policeman or policewoman for the discipline and restraint shown during these unusual times.
The order that I will issue granting the Plaintiff's relief will contain what I consider to be a reasonable restraint on the time, place and manner of future demonstrations and protests. The restraint is as follows. Staying after the building is closed, is prohibited. Protests and demonstrations can be held at any time when the Capitol is open during normal business hours and, of course, if either house of the legislature is in session or any public hearing is being held.
I have attached a copy of a Notice requiring that you peacably vacate the State Capitol after business hours today. My intent is to facilitate the reopening of the Capitol consistent with the free assembly and free speech provisions of the Wisconsin Constitution as well as the parallel provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
It is my sincere hope that you honor the Notice and do your part to adhere to the principals of non-violent protest that has characterized these events.
Civil disobedience is always a citizen's option but understandably brings consequences to those exercising that right. If you stay you can expect that you will be removed in a humane manner and without excessive force.
In the interest of avoiding injury to anyone, please obey the Order.
This, apparently in defiance of a court order that the building be open.
What the hell is going on?
Well, if you read the WI DofA memo - whoever is calling the shots has decided to get the last remaining protesters out of the capitol by denying them essentials and waiting until they leave.
All access to the capitol in the meantime is strictly controlled until these holdouts give up the ghost. On the one hand you could say this is good policing - certainly preferable to going in and dragging people out. On the other hand, there are reports that state GOP legislators do not seem subject to these new access procedures, nor are attendees to a party for the Joint Finance Committee (this per State Rep. Mark Pocan's open letter).
Trust between the sides is nonexistent.
So, the position of the administration that is essentially "Leave, and then we'll let everyone back in" is a very hard sell. Apparently a judge has ordered the capitol open by Monday, March 7 - (but even then, there's noises from Dems like it will be open tomorrow) after the protesters are removed.
So we could have arrests, or other confrontation with the remaining capitol protesters. Or not.
And to top it all off - we have the WI Senate issuing orders to detain the missing Democratic State Senators.
Members of the legislature shall in all cases, except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest: nor shall they be subject to any civil process, during the session of the legislature, nor for fifteen days next before the commencement and after the termination of each session.
This is not an absolute bar against sanction - Wisconsin Statues Section 13.26 spells out a brief list of things that the legislature can punish "...contempt, by imprisonment, a breach of its privileges or the privileges of its members..."
Here's the first item on that list:
(a) Arresting a member or officer of the house, or procuring such member or officer to be arrested in violation of the member's privilege from arrest.
And, thus we have an interesting dilemma for WI State troopers.
And Wisconsin is no closer to ending this mess anytime soon.
Late Edit: Dane County Circuit Court Judge John Albert has ruled that the state's restrictions on access are illegal- and that the protesters must leave the capitol when the building is closed.
Which seems very reasonable.
It remains to be seen if the new restrictions on capitol access that follow this order are equally reasonable. Restricting protests to the ground floor seems very unreasonable.
While I'm listening to Gov. Walker's pep rally/Bullsh!t festival, I pulled up the Awl's great post about the misreading of the ground game in Madison, WI:
If the events in Wisconsin prove one thing, it is that the mainstream media has become journalistically irrelevant when it comes to national issues and coverage. Broadcast media is incapable of explaining anything outside a macropatriotic framework and has proven allergic to anything that puts off even the slightest whiff of the class warfare that scares away big-market advertorial. Meanwhile, the other side is cable news' partisan echo chamber of regurgitated self-assurance, where no blow is too low and no fact needs sourcing before being leveraged to make a prearranged point. Cable news reporting on Wisconsin is like going to a whorehouse and then bragging to your buddies about this girl you seduced.
It's hard to watch Walker's happy talk (punctuated by his minions eagerly applauding every break in the blather) and not wonder if Wisconsin's Union protesters are reaching the eyeballs they need.
To watch Wisconsin politics now, you'd think the place had been invaded by aliens. The sedate Midwest lifestyle has degenerated into this
Capitol access was restricted over the weekend and again this morning, following days in which the building had been crowded with protesters. The Wisconsin State Employees Union, along with the AFL-CIO and AFSCME, filed the suit against the state of Wisconsin yesterday. Today, Judge Daniel Moeser ordered the building reopened.
There was a hearing today at 2:15 to sort out the particulars. Haven't heard what the net result was but then there was this bit:
Meanwhile, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney also spoke at the news conference. He addressed questions about the removal of Dane County sheriff's deputies from security around the Capitol.
"We pulled our deputies out of Capitol security yesterday when we determined they were going to limit access to the Capitol. We did not want to serve as 'palace guards' at the Capitol. We are still assisting with security outside the Capitol, making sure protesters stay safe," he said.
...which would explain their consistent inhumanity to man.
Point being, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled today in FCC v. AT&T(No. 09-1279) that corporations do not have personal privacy rights.
That anything should slow the legal march towards corporate personhood is more than a little stunning, but here's the kicker: The Chief Justice even served up a bit of judicial snark:
The protection in FOIA against disclosure of law enforcement information on the ground that it would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.
According to a staffer at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the legislators are well aware of the partial-veto problem in the current negotiations. Writing a "veto-proof" appropriations bill in Wisconsin is essentially impossible. The Senate could break the collective bargaining provisions off the rest of the bill, making it non-appropriations and thus sheltering it from the governor's black Sharpie -- but that would mean passing a budget repair bill without any mention of collective bargaining at all, a level of independence of which Senate Republicans, with the possible exception of Schultz, have shown no hint. In the end, the Senate would probably have to rely on a handshake agreement with Gov. Walker to leave the bill intact. At this point, what is a handshake from the Governor worth? That depends whether you think the governor would openly defy a bipartisan deal to get his way on collective bargaining. The partial veto is wildly undemocratic, but it's a Wisconsin tradition. I think Walker would probably do it; and it's not clear he would pay any serious political price.
Something tells me that a guy who "thought about" planting troublemakers in the crowd, planned to lure opposition senators to talk for the sole purpose of tricking them into giving him a quorum to pass his bill AND is positioning to lock protesters out of the WI capitol building is not going to have a lot of restraint.
It's February - which sucks without saying so - yet it must be said.
Naturally, it's pledge week.
E's dumped dinner on me, so I indignantly pick up take out that does not involve cheese melted over carbs (on principle) - only to realize later I've merely bought the same ingredients served at room temperature.
So, it was cathartic when I read this bit from Max Silvestri's recap of Top Chef
It's Quick Fire time, and our chefs are greeted by the pumpkinny visage of Paula Deen. Their smiles of delight turn to screams of horror as she eats all six of them, one by one, then picks her teeth with Padma. It is very horrible and the show is canceled forever but in some ways I understand because Paula Deen seems very hungry.
At this stage in the WI union fight, both sides are looking for things to hurl at each other.
Walker's backers would point out that their budget shortfall, is in fact, real.Contrary to what the likes of Rachel Maddow and TPM have been saying.
This is true, although it does not address how WI could have shored up a 6 billion dollar shortfall in the last budget cycle by working with unions - while the projected $3 billion dollar shortfall Wisconsin has now requires a root and branch dismantling of union rights.
Still looking for a straight up answer on that, but while you're chewing on that
The Awl - would like to point out something else about Walker's "Budget Repair Bill"
What has been widely ignored about Walker's bill (in part because of the speed with which he's fisting it down Wisconsin's gullet) is a sneaky provision that paves the way for him to cut, or eliminate, Medicaid and BadgerCare healthcare benefits for low-income people.
And last but perhaps best, The Big Picture (Via GinAndTacos) draws your attention to a provision that will allow the "sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants" and here's the kicker (emphasis courtesy of GaT):
...with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).
That's allowing the state to sell state utility plants (or their operation) without bids, with the understanding that any sale will meet the legal hurdle of being in the public interest.
Does this really sound like the kind of bill that should become law in a mere 5 days?
Late Edit: I guess TBP's link is down. Rortybomb has the post.
...the worst bit is that this language is likely merely to provide an official fig leaf (and therefore effective notice of intent) for actions it is likely Walker could have taken anyhow.
There’s no reason to believe that the private sector will run those plants in a way that is better for the public, and every reason to believe that they will run the plants in a way that is worse (ie, more expensive) for the public. If the state wants to cut such a deal in return for a one-time check, that check had better be enormous. And there’s absolutely no reason to believe that it will be.
You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street...That's all it would take. Just once.
-Former Congressional Aide
"If we don't do this, there will be layoffs. By July 1, when the next budget starts, we'll have to have layoffs of 5,500 state workers plus a similar number of county and city workers...You can't negotiate if you don't have any money -- and we don't have any money. Wer'e not negotiating on the budget."
Now, here's the state's own fiscal bureau report that wasn't two weeks old when Walker said that. It's reporting that Wisconsin was on track to have a surplus at the end of the year.
However, the data indicates that state and local government employees in Wisconsin are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and disability reveal that employees of both state and local governments in Wisconsin earn less than comparable private sector employees. On an annual basis, full-time state and local government employees in Wisconsin are undercompensated by 8.2% compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. This compensation disadvantage is smaller but still significant when hours worked are factored in. Full-time public employees work fewer annual hours, particularly employees with bachelor’s, master’s, and professional degrees (because many are teachers or university professors). When comparisons are made controlling for the difference in annual hours worked, full-time state and local government employees are undercompensated by 4.8%, compared with otherwise similar private sector workers. To summarize, our study shows that Wisconsin public employees earn 4.8% less in total compensation per hour than comparable full-time employees in Wisconsin’s private sector.
(Also, you can say the same thing about public sector employees in California (7% less than comparable private sector jobs), New Jersey (5.88% less than comparable private sector jobs), Michigan (Equivalent on hours for annual full time), Indiana (5.9% less than comparable private sector jobs).
Full time state and local employees are undercompsensated by (on average) 3.7% less than their private sector counterparts. State government employees are undercompensated by an average of 7.6%.
Again, W. T. F?
If you were being charitable to Gov. Walker - you could suggest that he's being proactive. Wisconsin is facing over a $3 billion dollar shortfall in the next two years. You could say he's starting the budget pain early, so that the state's distant budget woes being to lessen sooner rather than later.
Also, if you were being charitable, you would discount all this much ballyhoo'ed claptrap about Walker calling out the national guard. His comments about that dealt with backfilling essential services (like prison guards) with national guardsmen in the event of walkouts. He's not calling for soldier vs. protester.
But it is hard to credit Walker with anything else. Including collective bargaining in his budget "fix" has the quality of your boss calling a meeting and saying "We're going to need to make some cost cutting moves to make our budget. Also, from now on, my least favorite employees will be required to show up to work without pants. That is all."
W.T.F?
You go after a union's right to have collective bargaining, you are putting them out of business. If there was a net dollar savings for a move like that, you could perhaps justify it. But there isn't. The remaining rationale would perhaps go like this "removing collective bargaining will allow us to take more away from public employees in future - because they won't be allowed to stop us."
Which is something no union can agree to. "Oh, yes, Governor, we agree to give up all future negotiation power on non-wage compensation in exchange for....nothing. Our members will continue to pay us dues despite us allowing this to happen and being powerless to stop further cuts on their benefits."
No. The fact that a conservative governor is telling us he's forced FORCED, he says to carve a chunk out of his political opponents is perhaps the biggest tip off you need that this is about power.
"Normally, I would (twitch) love unions (twitch, twitch) but this economy leaves me no choice, but to try to dismantle them..."
Sure, Governor - that sounds really credible. Now where's that bowl of dicks?
Rachel Maddow had a great piece about the larger picture that Wisconsin's drama plays into.
The short version is - politics in this country is about money funding ground games.
In the 2008 election here are the top groups making outside expenditures, (Excluding Party Committees):
So? It's the marketplace of ideas - right. There was this groundswell against Pres. Obama and his policies and this is what is expected. You could argue that. I'd argue that votes should count more than money - but it's very difficult to separate cash from successful political campaigns.
But the larger issue is that successful political campaigns are now being used to craft legislation that guts their political rivals. Having won office, pols like Gov. Walker (and apparently the rest of the GOP governorship pool) now feels it is time to engrave their current situation in stone. We will make this victory outlast the support that granted it.
And that, is the full extent of what is going on in Madison. A political struggle where elected GOP members try to drive a stake into unions, so the next election will find the GOP without a viable opposition.
You can try that - it is legal - but you should never be able to get away with it.
And certainly you should not be able to pretend that this is about anything other than power.
“MERS’s position that it can be both the mortgagee and an agent of the mortgagee is absurd, at best.”
Grossman said parties coming to him to seek to lift the automatic ban on legal claims in cases involving MERS will have to show they own both the mortgage and the note.
They've taken their page down now - this image was from Google's cache - but here's the relevant bit:
Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service. We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts.
Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we'll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won't hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.
A loose translation would be "Would you like callers to your radio shows to say what you want, rather than what they want? All it takes is money and a complete lack of integrity!"
Liz has asked Premier on Call which of their shows use the service.
I'd imagine they're going to decline to answer - but wouldn't that be a fine slice of information for their listeners to have? It's one thing to stage a call for a prank - it is quite another to fake a call to support your ideology, or to appear popular.
So asks CJR's Ryan Chittum - and if you're not interested in the HBGary story- check your pulse.
It goes like this:
An exec named Aaron Barr at a computer security firm named HBGary mouths off in the financial times that he has discovered the identities of key members of the hacking group Anonymous. Anonymous' most recent claim to fame was the denial of service attacks against credit card companies who blocked transactions to Wikileaks.
Days later the Anonymous group hacks HBGary's website, email accounts, and numerous other accounts using SQL-injection, social engineering, and other published exploits. Mind you, HBGary is a computer security firm.
Anonymous takes over the HBGary website, leaks tens of thousands of internal emails to the web (which you can now search and read), leaks their source code and internal files - then deletes their backup servers.
They they flame HBGary using Aaron Barr's own twitter account.
That's just the opener.
The emails for HBGary reveal that HBGary was offering its services to Bank of America's law firm, Hunton & Williams (along with two other security firms Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies) to smear and discredit Wikileaks and its supporters, among them Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald
Wikileaks has suggested they are about to unload a trove of internal documents for a large bank - and has mentioned acquiring the hard drive of a Bank of America exec.
And it gets better.
Ryan Chittum throws in this little tidbit:
A look through Factiva shows only one media hit for HBGary Federal in the last two years before the flurry of the past week. And it’s a very interesting one. This from SC Magazine, which covers IT security (emphasis mine):
HBGary Federal, provider of classified security services to the U.S. Department of Defense and the intelligence community, has partnered with Palantir Technologies, maker of analytics platforms. HBGary’s team of researchers will leverage Palantir’s analysis tool suite to provide enhanced threat intelligence.
...Americans tend to distinguish between benefits they feel they've earned -- Social Security, say -- and benefits they consider giveaways. It's not a very useful distinction, but it's a convenient, and thus a powerful, one. We have a vast welfare state for the middle and upper classes, but the politics of it are entirely different.
For instance: Among the more mind-blowing facts about the health-care system is that the tax break we give to employer-provided insurance dwarfs the cost of the entire Affordable Care Act -- and, if you want to take the concept a bit further, this means those of us who don't get insurance from our employers are being forced, even mandated, to pay for those of us who are. But this break is largely uncontroversial in American politics, while subsidies to help people who can't afford health insurance are extremely controversial.
Easily the most mindrending bit of Radiolab I've heard yet. Finding Emilie. It starts with a 21 year old art student named Alan talking about he and his girlfriend Emilie waking up on the morning of October 8th, 2010.
Alan: She would take the bike and I would take the train.
Jad: What was the morning like?
Alan: It was a beautiful day it was...you know, the sun was low in the sky so there were...you know, long shadows. I strapped on her helmet and adjusted it. Took her bike out for her. We kissed each other goodbye, and said 'I love you' and I watched her ride down the street. In this early morning and then y'know, [whistles] on I went, down into the subway.
Jad: Six hours later, he's working in the studio, doing some sculpture and he gets a call - from a cop.
Alan: And he just said, 'Emily Liegossiaux' she had an accident. She's at Belleview, this is the address.' And I said 'Oh. I mean, do you have any more information?' He just told me that it was bad. I was, like, carrying a bunch of stuff and I just dropped everything and started running.
Bad is quite the understatement. At the hospital, the doctors had (to quote her mother) "opened her abdomen and they had taken her intestines out and put them on top of her body so that she could breathe."
That's not even the gripping part. It only gets more intense from there.
It took nine years to even get an autopsy performed. While the autopsy report determined that the death was a homicide - personnel changes at the coroner's office short circuited a formal change to Chandra's cause of death.
NPR puts the original death certificate online in a fine example of journalistic WTF.
It'll be interesting to see how this case develops - because the first draft makes the coroner's office look pretty terrible.
The disparity between what people think happens at their county coroner's office - and what is actually going on nationwide is pretty astonishing. I don't think anyone believes that CSI is true to life, but to read accounts of coroners who are unlicensed - even blind for God's sake - is just mind boggling.
Frontline and ProPublica have given this topic both barrels in the last week.
I'll just quote this directly, because it's just too perfect:
Which reminds me of another tax issue, this one with college sports. The New York Times reported this in a story this weekend:
Federal law permits taxpayers to deduct annually 80 percent of a donation for premium seating or luxury suites. All other contributions, including those for scholarships and capital projects, are 100 percent deductible.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Anybody who thinks the plutocrats haven't captured the tax code is living in fantasyland.
Oh, look. Banks may have found a new way to screw with public pensions: by overcharging them for foreign exchange transactions.
[S]tates are looking into whether certain banks charged state pension funds the most expensive foreign-exchange price during the day when a trade took place, rather than the rate the bank paid--and when currencies were sold, paid them the lowest price for the day.
So, the GOP would like to renege on promises made to pensioners - and banks managing the money owed to pensioners have been siphoning the money when nobody's looking.
It's starting to look like the only people who have trouble getting money out of public pensions - are pensioners.
Yes, perhaps that would be best... for JPMorgan, that is.
The money quote comes from a JPM employee referring to a meeting agenda where the bank was discussing its dealings with Bernie Madoff.
News accounts have long pointed out that Madoff could not have been doing what he was doing without leaving all kinds of traces. One of the traces he was leaving behind was a total lack of account activity. Madoff claimed that his accounts were small, that the bulk of his money was tied up in all the trades he was making for his customers.
Only with a Ponzi scheme, you aren't making trades - the money is just sitting around waiting for a withdrawal (by Madoff or one of his customers/dupes). Bernie didn't keep the money in a matress, he kept it in a bank. JPMorgan Chase, to be precise.
The bank “had only to glance at the bizarre activity” in the Madoff accounts “to realize that Madoff was not operating a legitimate business,” the trustee asserted in the suit. The money coming in was not from the sale of securities, and the money going out was not for the purchase of securities — at a time when Mr. Madoff was supposedly making billions of dollars in trades as part of his investment strategy, ...
What does JPMorgan do?
Nothing. No calls to the SEC, no black listing - JPM continues to do deals with Madoff, even as their own risk people are screaming for them to pull the plug.
And here's a nice tidbit: Madoff was apparently into money laundering for wealthy clients -
According to [Madoff trustee Irving Picard], the flow of money just between the Madoff accounts and [a single] customer’s accounts should have set off warning bells at the bank.
On a single day in 2002, Mr. Madoff initiated 318 separate payments of exactly $986,301 to the customer’s account for no apparent reason, the trustee reported. In December 2001, Mr. Madoff’s account received a $90 million check from the customer’s account “on a daily basis,” according to the lawsuit.
Mr. Picard’s complaint does not speculate about the purpose of the transactions.
The transfers should have caused the bank’s money-laundering software to start flashing, Mr. Picard’s complaint asserted.
Yet another revelatory and embarrassing lawsuit that names names.
What does it take to get indictments in this country, anyway?
With Olbermann out of action, I figure I'd put up a candidate for WPITW.
I'd mentioned before that I used to edit a legal newsletter. One of its recurring features was a list of attorneys who had broken the law, failed in their professional obligations to their client/profession - or disgraced themselves in a fashion that required discipline.
This issue's star was Atty. Frederick J. Voss of Rhinelander, WI.
Atty. Voss is apparently on a personal quest to become the gold standard of attorney misconduct.
...a female client with a very extensive history of and treatment for various psychiatric disorders and alcohol dependency. The client's diagnoses include bipolar I disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and severe personality disorder with histrionic, borderline, anti-social, and passive-aggressive features.
In the past, a worker at one of her treatment centers engaged in sexual relations with her - and was "fired, criminally prosecuted, and jailed."
This client has major issues. Lots of responsibility there.
Enter Atty. Voss.
Within a year and a half of formally becoming this woman's attorney - he's sleeping with her. This is directly at odds with the code of professional conduct for attorneys, but hey... maybe nobody will find out, right?
Naturally, somebody found out.
Voss was reported to the lawyers regulatory agency, but the client would not file a complaint.
Improper relationship with disturbed client. Check.
Exhibit B Voss is alleged to have forced his client to have sex with him. This incident was reported to the sheriff - who recommended filing charges to the DA. No charges were filed.
Voss goes on the attack:
In an...e-mail to the client's sister, Attorney Voss said that if he were charged criminally, as part of his defense he would introduce into evidence information regarding various incidents involving the client that would not make her look good and that she would not enjoy testifying about in open court.
Voss then contacts two circuit judges telling them the allegations have no merit - he includes details of his clients sexual history. This is before either judge has any case in front of them.
He contacts the client's mother - promising to bring up personal family issues if he is called to testify in court. He files extraneous embarrassing information about his former client in memorandum. He pays her money in exchange for signing a self-serving statement he's prepared.
Exhibit C When all this finally blows up into a disciplinary hearing, Voss is shameless in his defense:
The [Office of Lawyer Regulation] noted that Attorney Voss claimed he has sole authority and decision-making power to decide when he is the attorney and when he is not the attorney for a client, and that the client has no right to decide whether there is a continuing attorney-client relationship. Thus, Attorney Voss argued he may end the attorney-client relationship with the client immediately after a hearing on a chapter 51 commitment and that same day may elect to have sexual relations with the client. The OLR said this is a self-serving interpretation of the supreme court rules and in this fact situation, it is particularly egregious and predatory. The OLR noted that the client was the subject of approximately 82 different treatment matters, including mental commitments, out-of-home placements, substance abuse treatments, inpatient placements, and home placements...
¶27 Attorney Voss filed a 109-page post-trial brief which started out by announcing, "[The client] is a manipulative, alcoholic, violent, mentally ill, criminal." Attorney Voss's post-trial brief ended by saying, "No relationship is symmetrical. It is one she wanted to be in. . . . The relationship was as normal as it could be under the circumstances."
Throughout this entire disciplinary proceeding, Attorney Voss persisted in attaching to his pleadings hundreds of pages of medical records containing highly sensitive personal information about the client.
In short, ginormous asswad in all respects.
Sadly, for all this asswad-ery, the disciplinary hearing does not translate into criminal charges. The court brought down as much as the disciplinary hammer as they could - suspending Voss' license to practice law for four years and eight months - and fining him over $140,000.
Although this is a staggering amount, the reason the costs escalated to this level is largely because of Attorney Voss's aggressive litigation style. It appears he greatly over-litigated the case and thus it is appropriate to assess the full amount of costs against him.
His license is still good for the next month, so if you know anyone in northern Wisconsin looking for an attorney - you should tell them to stay the hell away from this guy. He's about to lose his primary income and he owes a lot of money. A financially desperate creep is twice as dangerous as the garden variety.
You've just got to love this article in The Atlantic.
Former Bear Stearns mortgage executives who now run mortgage divisions of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Ally Financial have been accused of cheating and defrauding investors through the mortgage securities they created and sold while at Bear. According to e-mails and internal audits, JPMorgan had known about this fraud since the spring of 2008, but hid it from the public eye through legal maneuvering. Last week a lawsuit filed in 2008 by mortgage insurer Ambac Assurance Corp against Bear Stearns and JPMorgan was unsealed. The lawsuit's supporting e-mails, going back as far as 2005, highlight Bear traders telling their superiors they were selling investors like Ambac a "sack of shit."
There's so much awful going on in this that it's fun to break it down.
1) The former firm of Bear Stearns was hip deep in selling bonds backed by lousy mortgages.
2) The mortgages were so lousy, Bear traders were forcing the originators of those loans to buy them back.
So far, not so terrible - if more investment firms forced their crap back on the originators we might have had less of a meltdown.
Enter 3) Bear's servicing division were "sometimes told to falsify loan-level performance data provided to the ratings agencies"
Then 4) The crap loans that are foisted back on their originators at a discount, and the Bear execs Mike Nierenberg (now at BofA) and Jeff Verschleiser (now at Goldman Sachs) pocketed the difference. Here's the Atlantic's Teri Buhl:
The traders were essentially double-dipping -- getting paid twice on the deal. How was this possible? Once the security was sold, they didn't have a legal claim to get cash back from the bad loans -- that claim belonged to bond investors -- but they did so anyway and kept the money.
and the capstone is
5) Bear Stearns went under in March of 2008. We're only just learning about this crap because Ambach sued Bear's new owners, JP Morgan in that same year and the lawsuit just became unsealed.
Why did it take this long to unseal?
JPMorgan did fight tooth and nail for the Ambac suit not to be made public, however, because the firm argued it could damage the reputations of senior bank executives currently working in the industry.
I'll just bet it will.
Who are those execs? The Atlantic helpfully names names:
Individuals named as defendants included: Jimmy Cayne, Alan "ACE" Greenberg, Warren Spector, Alan Schwartz, Thomas Marano, Jeffrey Mayer, Mary Haggerty, Baron Silverstein, Jeffrey Verschleiser, and Michael Nierenberg.
Climbing a hillock for a better view of the grassy wastes surrounding
Jane Cooper Elementary School. If you move the camera just a few inches to the left you’ll get a bustling,
well-maintained food-packaging plant in frame, so be careful to crop that shit out.
AOL encourages the belief that its email users need to pay for the service. They don't.
If an AOL email user has a different ISP, they can (naturally) change their AOL settings - but this is not obvious to many AOL users who (famously) are not the most technically savvy.
Mary Williams Walsh (and by extension, the New York Times) would like you to think that states may try to declare bankruptcy in the foreseeable future.
That such things are illegal now does not seem to be an issue, nor does the absence of a Congressional bill making such a thing legal.
People are talking about it, Ms. Walsh warns us - and we should be afraid.
More accurately, public employees should be afraid (emphasis mine):
Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a state’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.
And Ms. Walsh is using "alter" in the same way that Darth Vader uses it:
I wish to alter your pension. Pray I don't alter it any further.
It doesn't exactly sound likely, and it cannot be terribly popular - Welching on a pension promised to workers who have upheld their part of the deal?
You've paid us with years of your life - years that are now gone. I know we'd promised you money, but....well...
Who is leading the push for this?
Let's see:
Discussion of a new bankruptcy option for the states appears to have taken off in November, after [Newt] Gingrich gave a speech about the country’s big challenges, including government debt and an uncompetitive labor market.
“We just have to be honest and clear about this, and I also hope the House Republicans are going to move a bill in the first month or so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy,” he said.
I get that the GOP is dusting off the brass knuckles with labor, post election - but does the NYT really have to be their bullhorn for their threats?
