Twice Warmed

Good Lord.

2016 is finally over, and while everyone is sick of "OMG-2016-is-the-worst" comments - it's hard to get past what a crap year it has been.

The GOP selected a narcissistic con man as their nominee, the nation voted for Hillary, and the de-facto gerrymandering of the electoral college selected Trump as our next president. Which is not to say the victory is illegitimate, it is just the exclamation point following the phrase "the Electoral College is a f*&king mess." A margin of less than 100,000 in 5 states is enough to give the election to a candidate who lost the popular vote by just under three million votes.

But you knew that already.

The GOP will get rewarded for sitting on their hands while Scalia's seat went unfilled. An absolute disgrace from any angle - and the incoming president will have the ability to fill up their cabinet and the lower federal bench free of any filibuster. Great job, everyone.

And the tweeter in chief regularly trolls the planet with some new act of foolishness, sent from their smartphone.

It just makes you ill.

And - to read the headlines - pretty much every celebrity died in 2016. I was surprised how affected I was by the death of Carrie Fisher. That just got to me as so unfair, she was roaring into her own - fearlessly giving the finger to pretty much anyone she wanted.

And Pulse, and the Bastile Day attack, and...

Jesus, what the hell, anyway?

Work flattened me the past few months. Product Actual is on the hook for a great many things, and they are watching the sand run out of the glass. I'd been struggling to get my Ru beta participants to validate the data - and not having much luck.

Literally the last day before Christmas break, Hockey1 and I discovered multiple issues with the Ru datasets. We will have 1 week to define the problem for development and dev will have one week to fix it, or we will miss the release window. I went out the door scheduling meetings for Data and Thespian on the day we all get back - like we'll remember who we are after vacation...

Ugh.

But soaking up vacation has been good. Mom came up, stayed with Jen up until Christmas, then was with us until New Year's Eve. E's sister and her husband came to stay with us for a few glorious days. After the rush of Christmas, we all had some quality hang out time. I whipped through the first four books of The Expanse, and forgot what day it was. A lot of good food was made and consumed, the dog was loving the company.

Good times.

New Year's Eve - the boy has exhausted his video game eyes and wants to have a friend over - I'm dropping Mom off at the airport, E's sister and her husband are heading home, and the furnace is cycling oddly in the morning.

I go down to look at the furnace, but really - what the hell am I even looking for? Nevermind what I would be able to do if I saw something. It passes, and the day goes on. Mom's off to Charlotte, E and the dog are off to scent training, and little e is off to an overnight.

The boy and his bud play a cool evolution game that we keep getting the rules wrong for - but ultimately have a good time. The Boy hammers us using a rule we got wrong, then we set up a replay with the correct rule and he buries us all yet again. I'm a bit glad to see him displaying some tactical aptitude, but sad to see his friend get crushed at their new game.

Mid game, there's a clunk and a sizzle and suddenly the house smells of ozone.

This, I know immediately, is not a good thing. But again, rushing downstairs just confirms that the parts of the furnace that make one kind of noise (the burners) are noising along properly - and the parts that make the other kind of noise (the blower) are not.

Watching the thermostat on the Nest, it is telling me that the temp is set to 68 and the measured temp in the room is 70 - which is utter bullsh!t. I have two other thermometers within three feet of the nest and both are reading 64. Twenty minutes later, the Nest is telling me the room is 71 degrees.

It is absolutely not that temperature.

I hit the kill switch on the furnace, wait a few minutes, then power it up again. Then I restart the Nest. When it comes back, it has regained its sanity and now is telling me the house is at 64 degrees. Better, but the furnace still isn't doing anything about that.

The boy's friend heads home and we get ourselves set for bed. I consider calling an HVAC pro, but

-it's New Year's Effing Eve...

It's 21 degrees out, the house will hold heat until the morning, and there's no way on earth this gets better tonight.

Also, I'm getting a sore throat. Nice.

I get into bed and tell the Nest to just run the fan. The Nest shows it's trying, but absolutely nothing happens. We're hosed.

In the morning, I'm full blown sick, and the house is at 61 degrees. I test dialing the Nest up to 68 and watch the controls respond, I can hear the furnace burn - but no air is moving.

Time to bite the bullet.

I call an HVAC service. On New Year's Day. The answering service takes my number, and tells me a technician will call me.

An hour later, they do. They take the usual steps to inform me that I've asked for service during a holiday that is also a Sunday, so I've pretty much boned myself every way I can. Surcharge on the base fee, and any work is at a 25% higher rate.

Awesome.

I tell the guy to come anyway, because I figure if this requires ordering a part, I want to start the order today, not two days from now when the holiday and its Monday alternate are past.

HVAC dude shows up, is brusque, and announces that my furnace is full of "all the wrong parts."
I remember having it serviced by our remodelers who shorted it out and had to fix it - I would believe they totally screwed up-

"You see, all these parts are for a two stage furnace, and this here," HVAC guy pats my dead furnace "is a single stage furnace, pure and simple."

HVAC guy is wrong. First thing we had done on the house after we moved in was to replace the motor on the furnace because it wasn't shifting from stage one to stage two. I know this.

I say this.

HVAC guy is all, "Oh, now I see the [floonium particle/tachyon particle] that means its a two stage."

Which now has me full of confidence in this man, but I afford them the respect of a professional. "I'll get out of your way, let me know if you need anything."

Ten minutes later, HVAC guy comes up and (I swear, I could hear this speech in my mind before they said it). "You need a new blower, but I don't have it on my truck. I could see if we could get it, but it won't be before Thursday, on account of tomorrow being the observed holiday. Cost is about a thousand bucks, and we're at the point where you might prefer to put that thousand towards a new furnace."

Which would run..?

"About $3,500 installed. I could have a sales person here later today to discuss the details. We might have you up and running in a day or two. I can get you some space heaters."

And at this point, I've had it with HVAC guy. He might be a pro, and he's right that my furnace is old, and I should consider replacing it - but it's a 95 percent efficient furnace with a broken part. I am not jumping into the $3,500 pool today, even if he's right.

I tell him I need to sort out what I want to do with E, and he whips out his paperwork and charges me $170. I pay and sign and he's gone before I realize that he's given me a quote for the repairs, but I don't know if he's checking to see when they could get this part. And other than "Blower" I have no detail on what part is needed. Is it the motor, the module, the fan? All of it?

I call the company back and ask them to check on both of those details: when they can have the part, and what part it is. Unlikely that anyone else local would have the part, but I'd like to have the option to ask other providers. I've paid my money, I'd like to get something tangible other than a bill.

They never call back.

So, I go out back, haul in the old board from E's old flower beds - and saw each in half. E's going to get little E back from her overnight, I ask her to hit any store that is open from some firewood.

And then we fire up the wood stove.

Twenty one degrees in the morning, but its warming a bit. House is just under sixty. A few minutes later, we have a roaring fire. Hour after that, the family room is 68 degrees.

Hour after that, the first floor is 68 degrees.

It ain't great, but its doable. We'll hang in until we have better HVAC choices, and until we get a shot at the repair - but we will go primitive if we have to. We are not smoke jumping into $3,500 worth of anything. Wood is cheap.

Always liked that stove anyway. There's something about making a fire, keeping it going.

So, 2016 sucked, and it's last stab at me has me gunk-sick and wrung out, pitching logs through the side door of a wood stove to heat the house...

Over the stove door, there is a single word:


Yeah.

The past year was a sh!tshow...but it's over. And the pouting time is over, too.

Sh!t's gotta get done.

Two Tables and a Dropped Ball

It is one thing not to know, it is quite another to not even suspect.

About a month ago, I'm getting pinged by the Bass - a really excellent customer relations rep. The Bass has been aces at getting Runner and I access to clients interested in the Arwafn.

In one of our sessions, I'd griped to the universe at large about a particular feature request. Clients almost universally wanted Arwafn data separated into two groups. 

Conceptually, this is a dead simple UX request. Write it up, ship it!

But y'know: devil, details...

In order to actually split the data, I have to associate a classification of group A or group B to all of the possible data elements in report.

No problem. This data exists in the world. Somebody has compiled a list of which elements are in A or B.

Right?

I'd thought so, months ago... until I asked our SMEs who were like "Gosh, I dunno... I think it's just something you kind of know."

Point of order: Arwafn has over 2,000 data elements.

Nobody just knows that many classifications. They might know their favorites, and might be able to spot the ones that just seem wrong. But no way - there has to be a list somewhere.

So I search for such a thing and find partial lists and dodgy compilations - but nothing I could hang a hat on and present to customers. "Trust me, I found it on the interwebs...!"

Frustrating. A known set of data that is unavailable in a reliable, complete form.

So, I'm griping about this to the Bass - and they, being cool, file that away.

Days later, they IM me to say that their clients rely on a published text that gets them what they need on Arwafn grouping.  I'm like: Score! Where do I get such magic?

An hour later, I'm walking into my local megaBookstore and pulling a copy of this magical tome off the shelf.

-and trying not to let it get blown away by a stiff breeze. MegaBookstore only had the pocket edition of this reference - about 3 inches on a side - in 7 point type.

But I plow in and rapidly determine that PocketGuide will get me about 10% of what I need. But it is a published authority. A start.

Plus, a certain number of the values can be derived when applying them to similar data elements. 10% might turn into 20% or so.

At this point, I'm tipping down the rabbit hole and start doing more research. I blunder across a government database that is intended to allow for publication searches, but their header system nicely classifies the data it finds... under group A or group B.

Double Score!

Details beget details and soon I learn that the Arwafn data element list will have Groups A, B, C, D, E, F and possibly others. I only care about A & B, but with 2,000 plus elements, classifying each one will take a long time, regardless of what each value turns out to be.

I find another database in the UK that fills in more gaps - and then the big score: I find a government listing of data elements that is pretty much my Arwafn list - and it has database codes.

Winner! Better still, it has aliases for a huge chunk of my data elements. A ton of things I could not find are definitively associated with a radically different name. Searches on those names get me a classification for everything. It takes three days, plus another three to proof it and double check. 

It is not 100% but this is AGILE. We'll make this happen and improve it as we go.

But during the proofing, I notice something odd. I'd rigged some conditional formatting in a spreadsheet so I could compare my Arwafn element list vs the government element list.

And I see a bunch of things in our list that look like typos. Element names that are close to what I think they would be, but are clearly either alternate spellings or just plain mistakes.

And there are additional elements on the govt list. Things that we might want to have on our list. Some are clearly duplicates - but perhaps its better to list the same thing on the list multiple times so people can find it under the name they prefer.

It's not a huge list of discrepancies - about 50 - but my Arwafn list is currently being used by our customers in other features. If we're wrong, we are visibly wrong in front of clients.

This is bad. I think.

I mention this to Data in one of our collaboration sessions. Data is very skeptical that this is possible. And Data is a very precise kind of person. I respect their opinion, and let's face it - I'm literally cobbling together some sources into a Franken-list. 

Also, the government list I found was dated January of this year. We may already have a process in place to address this and we just haven't caught up with the new list. I really don't know, but that's why I'm checking with Data.

Meeting over - I go back and check my tables in excel. The Arwafn table vs the Govt table.

And we really do look like we have some mistakes. The Govt table looks like it has the odd typo here and there, but most of the oddness is on our end. 

And I know I pulled our list from production code.

I go do it again, and do a compare to make sure I'm not seeing things. 

I'm not.  So I copy just the 50 odd records into a file and send them to Data. Just a "Here's what I found" kinda message. Data will at least be able to tell me if I'm nuts.

A few days pass and Data pings me back "I've had a look at the file you sent. You need to set up a meeting with you, me and Noddy."

*     *     *     *

Okay, so the first thing you need to know is that part of the Reindeer Games that have been going on the past few months have involved Data avoiding Noddy almost entirely. A meeting with Data in it would typically begin with the question "are we alone?" Meaning: is everyone I can see on the video monitor everyone there is? or are there other people in room but off-camera?

Subtext: Is Noddy in the room?

The answer was generally, "Yes, who you see is all there is," but if Noddy was on the meeting invite, Data would skip the meeting so long as they had any professional cover.

Data's a pro - and they don't shirk work - but they dread working with Noddy more that most of us. Probably because they've put up with them longer  - seen more of their bullsh!t, watched too many good features die under their care.  

But this time, Data wants to meet with Noddy.

I'm wondering whether I should hide or get popcorn.

*     *     *     *

When the appointed day arrives, Runner, Noddy and I file into our conference room and dial up the west coast. Data's there and we get down to biz.

I start by stepping through what I've done to find these discrepancies and Data (sharp as ever) identifies a flaw in the way I've associated the two tables with each other. I just eyeballed them, because they line up almost perfectly. Govt table has a few more values, but inserting a few blank records into the Arwafn table makes the two virtually identical. They are clearly originating from a common list.

To Data, this is not much to count on - they want ID numbers, standardized codes, then you know that one element is truly the same thing as another. Because the codes match. 

Display text? Please, you're embarrassing yourself.

But even with this ding, Data can see we have an issue. Our list should not have typos in it - and it should match the government list.

And it doesn't.

I'm thinking this is Data's bailiwick - they are Data, after all. So I start in like an innocent, "so is there a regular process in place to check our table with the government table?"

Data is blunt. "Clearly there isn't, but there should be."

Now, I'm getting nervous. I really like Data, but my imprecision in earlier dealings with them have left me feeling like I'm always annoying them with dumb questions. Now I've come to them with a question that sounds like I'm saying their house is not in order.

I.... uh... what do we do now?  

All I wanted was to give Arwafn its grouping feature. It's just a bunch of typos, is this really a big-

"So, Noddy..." Data is staring daggers through the vidcom, "How do you usually handle this sort of thing?"

Standing neck hair. 

Lightbulbs.

Data's mad. Just not at me.

Data's grokked the issue right off the bat. Me, I'm just catching up. This data element table I'm using for Arwafn originates from a module (that I'll call Nachen) that Noddy is the go-to for. 

Anyone wants to know about the Nachen module, they always go to Noddy. They're a dork in lots of ways, but Noddy knows all about Nachen.

Except, this table and its list of data clearly has a good chunk of fail in it and Noddy clearly has no idea why that would be so.

Noddy is even slower than I to realize that this meeting is aimed entirely at them.

"Uh..."

Data is merciless. "What is your procedure for checking up on this data and ensuring that it is up to date?"

Noddy, as ever, pivots: "Well you know this government agency, they are always making errors that I have to remind them about."

"No. Most of these issues are on our side. How do you go about making sure we are current? This list murph was drawing on was from January, eight months ago. How do you go about getting us current?"

Noddy squirms a bit, but Data has set the hook. We write up action items and all of them belong to Noddy.

• Noddy will follow up with Pooka, one of our DB gurus and see about what is involved in getting our table updated.
• Noddy will also look into making sure this is a full and correct list of corrections.

Noddy slinks out and Runner and I exchange looks of 

OOOoooooooohhhh

and

DaaaaAAAAAAaaaammnn!

*     *     *     *

Two days ago - I get an email right after I leave work for the day. Pooka has been fired.

I've seen Pooka get into some regular disagreements with our Devs about coding approaches. Pooka's skillset is databases and not much else. Our Devs do it all. 

Apparently, Portal had put Pooka on notice that their productivity was not what it could be. Pooka had been volunteering for extra work here and there, but I didn't pick up on their anxiety.

The day of our team photo - including Pooka - was the day stuff came to a head.

Pooka was gone.

Sad for them, but I'd trust Portal's call. They are fiercely intelligent and don't put up with slackers.

*     *     *     *

So it's today. Our regular UX team meeting is actually occurring, and that means everyone is there - (well, except Heater). Which means Data and Noddy are in the same room for the first time in about three weeks.

We talk UX turkey - map out how impossible it will be to get all our work done by the end of the quarter and I'm gearing up to ask Sprint to look at my belated prototype-

-And Data speaks up.

"So, Noddy... Do you have anything to report on updating the Arwafn table?"

Noddy turns to the screen and it is instantly clear to everyone that they have completely forgotten the Arwafn table, their action items, the meeting from three weeks ago, hell - their own name.

Noddy is a deer in the headlights.

Then they slide into their usual line of bullcrap - because its a default setting for them.

"Well, I don't have anything new to report. You know how it is getting in touch with government agencies..."

Absolutely no one thinks this to be anything other than crap.

Data leans in. "No. You were to look into getting corrections done to our list. You don't need an outside agency for this."

Noddy starts talking about how they'd spoken to Pooka, how they'd tried to get the government agency to make corrections.

"Again. No. This is about correcting our list."

At this point, I jump in. Pointing out the obvious. "Our list had typos. We need to fix that. There are also some additions that could be duplicates or could be true additions."

Noddy launches into ever more elaborate evasions and Data just keeps pouncing.

"What have you done since murph surfaced this issue? What has been done?"

Noddy refuses to concede the obvious - they've done absolutely nothing. 

We end the meeting. Mostly out of exhaustion. Pinning a bullsh!t artist is a lot of work.

*     *     *     *

Back in our team room, Noddy is trying to make nice. "murph, that list of corrections you had, do you still have that?"

I about hit the roof. I attached a copy of this list to the meeting which is still in Noddy's outlook calendar. The day after the meeting, I emailed them a revised copy of the corrections- along with the meeting notes and their two action items.

They have done nothing with any of this and now they are asking me if I might happen to have a copy.

Without a word. I do an outlook search and instantly find the message I'd sent them. I'm about to send it to them, when Noddy stops me. "Oh, is this it?" they gesture towards their screen.

I walk around to their monitor and see a spreadsheet of mine.

It is a spreadsheet about an entirely different subject matter. It would be easy to think that one spreadsheet might look like another, but this particular one of mine is absolutely, obviously, one that has nothing to do with the Arwafn element table.

I cannot hide my irritation at this point. "No. That is entirely the wrong kind of data. Look at it."

Noddy is trying to look busy and can't even manage a decent attempt. 

The issue I'd found is not a huge deal. The heavens will not fall if it is not corrected. But it absolutely should be corrected, and doing so would not have taken much effort on their part.

Worse than their abject failure to do anything is their attempt to make it seem like they have.

Noddy has utterly besh!tted themselves - yet they are still looking us in the eye and acting like they haven't.

I end up IM'ing Data and telling them about the whiff on the spreadsheet. 

They offer a succinct 'OMG.'

Which is pretty much how the rest of UX is feeling about the situation.

There's messing up, there is completely humiliating yourself-

- and then there's The Full Noddy.

Epic.

I am Weasel

Runner [3:29 PM]:  just feeling a bit grumpy today

murph [3:30 PM]: whazzup?

Runner [3:31 PM]: oh the earlier stuff with our buddy

murph [3:31 PM]: Yeah, that's totally shitty

Runner [3:31 PM]: did you talk with him?

murph [3:32 PM]: I did.
Caution.
This will not help your mood

Runner [3:32 PM]: OK
give it to me

murph [3:33 PM]: He basically said all the things he should of said to the SMEs, but didnt'.
He thinks he was taking the bullet in the call and in his discussion with BigDog.
I do not think that is so.
He believes that he went through the stories with you to find ones that were ready for dev.
I made him repeat that.
Basically doubling down on the line of bullshit
I just....
I mean WT screaming hell?

Runner [3:36 PM]: so I take the bullet for it

murph [3:36 PM]: I went after that. "So now, the SMEs are going to think this is on Runner?"
He's like "No, I took the bullet for this."
I did not get that out of his conversation on Friday at all.

Runner [3:37 PM]: did you mention that?

murph [3:37 PM]: I did not. I sat there like a tool.
I could not believe his shit and I did nothing about it.
Which does not help.

Runner [3:38 PM]: well whatever it is done
I learned a valuable lesson

murph [3:38 PM]: Noddy is a weasel. And I'm not much help.

Runner [3:39 PM]: well you don't want to get too involved in this
I think people know that, right?

murph [3:39 PM]: No, Runner I let you down in there. Same as Friday.
I just could not believe how far down the rabbit hole he was going.
I just sat there.
I made sure I wasn't mis-hearing him but I didn't call him out.
Which is shit.
And I'm sorry, but I'll do better. This can't be how it goes.

Runner [3:41 PM]: don't worry about it
sounds like this isn
this isn't the first time it's happened
and really it's my fault for letting it happen

murph [3:42 PM]: No, letting it happen is on me, too. And I should not let this roll like that.

Runner [3:42 PM]: and truth be told, I probably shouldn't have written up those stories without combining everything and getting it all in there

murph [3:43 PM]: That's gonna be a thing, for sure for all of us.
Anyway, Runner - I'm sorry I didn't pounce on him. I was all pissed off, and then I got nowhere with him.
I don't think I can fix the overall situation, but Noddy should know that he's in the wrong.
I don't want the drama, but I hate the unfair.

Runner [3:45 PM]: well lesson learned is that we can't just move stories ready for dev unless we vet them

murph [3:45 PM]: Yeah. Totally
And we don't move stories that aren't ours.

Runner [3:47 PM]: yep

murph [3:47 PM]: See. Told you it wouldn't improve your mood.

Runner [3:47 PM]: I was expecting that really

The Standard That Works Best For Us

(via illusory tenant)

In July of 2008, a convicted sex offender named Dinkins was due to be released from prison. State law required him to register his future address with the state's sex offender registry ten days before his release. He did not do this and was charged with a class H felony as a result.

His argument at trial was that he did not know where he would be living. No relative agreed to take him in and he had no solid prospects. He had no address to register.

Nonsense, cried the state:

...Dinkins, like everyone, knows that he must sleep somewhere, and Wis. Stat. § 301.45(2)(a)5. and (e)4. merely requires incarcerated sex offenders to identify and report the address or nearest address of the place where they plan to sleep at least ten days prior to their release—even if the place is a park bench or similar on-the-street location. The State asserts that such a location is an “address” within the meaning of § 301.45(2)(a)5., citing several dictionary definitions of “address.”

That's the WI Appeals Court summarizing the Wisconsin Dept. of Justice's position in their published opinion.

So, according to the Wisconsin DOJ, a convicted sex offender can fulfil their address registration requirement by stating they live under a park bench.

Understand they are saying this because they want Dinkins to go to jail - but consider:

Dinkins fulfills this requirement by scrawling "I think I'll sleep under a bench on the 100 block of East Main St. Not sure which one, but there are quite a few on that block" on his form and he's good to go.

Let's set aside the fact that makes the sex offender registry a whole lot less effective and zero in on the point illusory tenant makes so well.

According to the state of Wisconsin, registering as a sex offender requires filling out the address form as best you can. There is no requirement that you show a utility bill for that address, a rental agreement for that address. There isn't even a requirement that it actually BE an address. Quoting the WI Chief Justice, "...park bench okay?" State says, "You betcha!"

But if any Wisconsin resident tries to vote in an election, they will be asked for a photo ID with an address that will be checked against valid addresses for their polling place.

Priorities, people.

It's all about priorities.

Calling Gableman Out

illusory tenant makes a great call - Appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged judge-on-judge action. Not that Gableman really wants that, based on how badly he's managed his accusation. Interesting to see if his actions are scrutinized as much as say, a women who accuses a man of assault?

And there's also this hugely awesome call out

Gableman also told the police:

Justice Gableman said he has not told anyone about that incident and has not talked about that incident with anyone, including Justice Bradley, after it happened.

Then Justice Ziegler tells the police (page 69 of 70):

She then said, recently Justice Gableman told her about Justice Bradley hitting him on the back of the head, but she said she did not have any details of that and did not know when it happened. Justice Ziegler said she could not be specific on when Justice Gableman told her that happened.

Gableman's interview was on July 5, and Ziegler's was on July 18, so presumably Gableman told her about the September 18, 2009 (née 2008) incident after July 5. But Ziegler hadn't known anything about it.

Even though Justice Zeigler would have been present.

Followed by the even more awesome comment by gnarlytrombone:

"Not only present, but a witness: 'Justice Gableman said that he believed Justice Bradley was not joking because nobody was laughing at the time.' [page 64 of 70] i.e., they had to have seen it happen to choose not to laugh. Because it was serious. But not memorable."

Gableman's tying himself in a bit of a knot there, isn't he?

Bring on the investigation!

Two on Foreclosure

CJR's Ryan Chittum says about all that needs to be said about the current state of foreclosures in America, netting a fistfull of great articles- like this one from American Banker:

Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

Oooh! Tell us more, do!

And then there's Reuters, saying that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is suing the big banks.

The government will argue the banks, which pooled the mortgages and sold them as securities to investors, failed to perform due diligence required under securities law and missed evidence that borrowers' incomes were falsified or inflated...

Ya don't say...

Double Taxation

(Via Felix Salmon)

I was enjoying the gnashing of teeth spawned by Warren Buffett's Op Ed/PR stunt about taxes for the wealthy - and I ran across Daniel J Mitchell whining about how Buffett has it all wrong. The highest tax bracket has it rough, you see. What with their tax rates plummeting to less then half of what they were only three decades ago.

The horror!

But he was useful in that he regurgitated one of the lamer talking points on raising the capital gains tax - It's Double Taxation!!

You see, investors bought stock and were taxed, then the investment barfed out more money and it was taxed again. That's not fair..!

Salmon beats all over that, then pulls in some backup to wail on it more. By far the best 'graph I've read on this yet was from the Citizens for Tax Justice, who point out the very selective nature of objections to multiple taxation:

It’s striking that hardly anyone in Washington talks about how the wage income of middle-class Americans is subject to “multiple taxes.” For the typical American, all income consists of wages and all of it is subject to the Social Security tax, and much or most of it to the income tax. Then when people spend their income, a great deal of the purchases are subject to sales taxes. Apparently, taxing income multiple times is something that concerns economists and politicians only when it affects the wealthy investor class.

As in - hello... whiny little investor b!tches? You think double taxation is a bad thing- I don't hear you crying over how everyone else's paycheck money gets wrung out twice to pay the feds, then stretched again for virtually every transaction its used for.

But taxing capital gains is a shameful double taxation? Oh shut the hell up, already.

News International's Version of Cooperating Fully

Oh, how the rats are running over at News International's News of the World:

(Via the Guardian)

Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive, in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard's inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005 revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators.

...

The allegation directly contradicts repeated claims from News International that it is co-operating fully with police in order to expose its history of illegal news-gathering. It is likely to be seen as evidence that the company could not pass a 'fit and proper person' test for its proposed purchase of BSkyB.

A Guardian investigation has found that, in addition to deleting emails, the company has also:

• infuriated police by leaking sensitive information in spite of an undertaking to police that it would keep it confidential; and

• risked prosecution for perverting the course of justice by trying to hide the contents of a senior reporter's desk after he was arrested by Weeting detectives in earlier this year.

CJR's Dean Starkman puts it well. "...like a trapped wolf chewing off its own leg."

Sen Ensign = Gutless

(Via the NYT)

Senator John Ensign’s resignation letter allows him to leave office just one day before he was to have to answer questions under oath about whether a $96,000 payment to the family of his former lover was illegal, designed to keep the affair from becoming public, according to people familiar with an investigation of Mr. Ensign’s activities.

That formal testimony scheduled for May 4 was the final step as Senate investigators prepared for what were almost certain to be Senate ethics charges against Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada. Mr. Ensign’s resignation is effective May 3.

Nice.

Now how about prosecuting this guy once he leaves office, eh?

This sort of "Oh, well if you're serious - Well, then I quit" crap has got to stop.

Wisconsin's First Honest Budget

Hardly

A report released Monday by the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau showed the state would spend a proposed $64.1 billion in state and federal dollars over two years after including amounts that are being transferred to quasi-public authorities like the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That would amount to $609.5 million more over the 2011-'13 budget.

When Walker unveiled his budget proposal on March 1, he said it would cut spending of all dollars by more than $4 billion, or 6%. But those amounts didn't include spending cuts that simply amounted to transferring entities like UW-Madison and a new agency to replace the state Department of Commerce off the state's books.

Plus ca change...

4-3 vs 3-4, Nothing More

The Awl's Abe Sauer has another great post on the Wisconsin situation: Wisconsin's Nasty Spring Election: Impartiality with Its Sleeves Rolled

After pointing out that that current Wisconsin supreme court judge David Prosser was oh-so-happy to be identified with incoming Governor Scott Walker before the whole flap over collective bargaining - now he seems to have second thoughts. He's his own man. We need impartiality in all things.


Witness the WI GOP asking Wisconsin's Chief Justice to Recuse herself from ruling on the union busting law because she's received political donations from unions. Cos' y'know the GOP is all about appearing above board in all things.


Sauer goes on to shine a harsh light on judge Prosser's impartiality (as well as his contempt for his opponent):

In February he was the keynote speaker "on behalf of" the Outagamie County Republican Party at its annual Lincoln Day dinner. A video posted on the Rock County Republican Party Facebook Page shows Prosser at its dinner mocking his challenger about how, as a prosecutor for the Dept. of Natural Resources, she has wasted her time… charging those violating environmental regulations. Prosser said: "She's very concerned about individuals who violate the rules on docks." The crowd laughs. "And she wants some people not to have any docks at all!" The crowd laughs more.


...


Prosser's scorn for what is essentially a prosecutor doing her job is stunning, considering Prosser's own history as a prosecutor. In 2008, Prosser was forced to recuse himself from a case involving sexually abused minors and the Catholic Church because, while serving as district attorney of Outagamie County in 1979, Prosser had refused to prosecute a Green Bay priest accused of sexually molesting two brothers. His reasoning? It would have been too hard on the boys. (In 2004 the priest, then 81, was imprisoned after abusing an unknown further number of children.) In 2008, the victim told the Journal Sentinel, "[Prosser] said it would be too embarrassing for a kid my age and said what jury would believe a kid testifying against a priest? Then he said, what really makes it bad is that [the priest's] brother, Joe, sang on the Lawrence Welk show and everybody watched that back then."

So which former district attorney would you rather have on the high court bench: the anal retentive prosecutor charging people with extending their lake docks two feet longer than allowed by the law or the guy who doesn't prosecute a child molester because the priest's brother was once on the Lawrence Welk Show?

Nicely put.

Read the full post.

Low Bidders

Q: Aren't you a little young to be international arms dealers?
A: Yes. Yes we are.

Just read this:

...[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.

Seriously.
H/t Felix Salmon

Debtor's Prison? Seriously?!

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.

Yeah, Nice.

Credit Card Interchange Reform

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

Governor Scott Walker Can Eat a Bowl of D!cks

Photo via TPM, (and some witty protester)

Watching the mayhem in Madison, WI makes you wonder if we've been deposited into bizarro land.

Here's the newly minted Governor of Wisconsin speaking on February 16:

"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.

W. T. F?

For the record, Wisconsin Public Employees are not overpaid or overcompensated.

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):

1) SEIU - (Union/Liberal)
2) AFSCME - (Union/Liberal)
3) NRA - (Conservative)
4) Freedom Watch (Conservative)
5) US Chamber of Commerce (Conservative)

You remember how 2008 worked out, yes? Libs did pretty good. Got both houses and the white house.

Here's the top groups making outside expenditures in 2010

1) US Chamber of Commerce (Conservative)
2) American Action Network (Conservative)
3) American Crossroads (Conservative)
4) Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategists (Conservative)
5) SEIU - (Union/Liberal)

The SEIU is still in the top five, but the US Chamber of commerce alone, outspent them more than 2 to 1.

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.

"I"m Not a Caller, But I Play One on the Radio"

CJR's Liz Cox Barrett nabs a nice one about a company called Premier On Call.

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.

Pathetic.

Well, That Pretty Much Explains College Athletics, Then...

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.

Crap For Sale, Dear

Bloomberg gets a hold of leaked bank documents and they reveal just what Barry was saying awhile ago: The banks are selling their crap to Freddie and Fannie.

Jonathan Weil does a better summation, though:

The gist of the article by Bob Ivry and Bradley Keoun: Citigroup, the too-big-to-fail bank that got a $45 billion government rescue, was still selling defective mortgages to Freddie Mac at an alarmingly high rate as recently as last year. And taxpayers, who now own Freddie, are on the hook as a result. The details are in an Oct. 25, 2010, internal Freddie Mac memo summarizing the findings of a yearlong quality-control review that ended last September.

...and he helpfully supplies some venom:

So who benefits from this leak? Some of the bosses at the two companies and their government minders must be embarrassed, which can only be good for the rest of us. To the extent that Freddie and Fannie have become a grabfest for the banking industry, that’s something Congress should know when it eventually gets around to rewriting the laws that govern them. Most importantly, though, the public needs to be told when it’s getting ripped off, especially when the government knows it and has no intention of telling us.

More leaks like this one, please.

Hear hear!

Some Contracts are More Unbreakable Than Others

Couldn't agree more:

It is fascinating to see how the public narrative in the media has gradually shifted over the past year from Wall Street’s sociopathic practices (which were directly responsible for the creation of the crisis) to the alleged greed of public employee unions and their pension benefits, many of which were the product of agreed wage negotiation packages in which unions were receiving these pension benefits in lieu of increased wage benefits.

During 2008, we were told that the government’s hands were tied and that sanctity of contracts had to be honored. This was when the Federal Reserve authorized 100% payouts to the likes of Goldman Sachs on AIG’s credit default swaps (in effect allowing the Fed to act as an extra budgetary vehicle of the Treasury, which is a violation of the Constitution and shows how patently false the Fed’s claims of independence are). But I don’t seem to recall many Wall Street types going on about the sanctity of contracts when agreements with the UAW were reworked to save GM or now when public employee union pension benefits are under attack. The argument seems to be that the states are suffering from a genuine solvency crisis in which everybody has to make sacrifices, including the “greedy” unions. So why should big financial firms, which would otherwise have been toast but for the munificence of the suffering American taxpayer, be any different?

That's Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager, posting on Naked capitalism

Long Term Investors

(Via Naked Capitalism)

Michael Hudson tells us that investors are hanging onto stocks and foreign currency investments longer.

Now the bad news:

Take any stock in the United States. The average time in which you hold a stock is--it's gone up from 20 seconds to 22 seconds in the last year. Most trades are computerized. Most trades are short-term. The average foreign currency investment lasts--it's up now to 30 seconds, up from 28 seconds last month.

Think about that for a second. What kind of market efficiency is there when positions are held for less time than it takes to describe them?

Here's a more granular observation from The Daily Finance's Peter Cohan:

The market is now controlled by short-term traders, rather than the long-term investors for whom these arguments might have some relevance. Specifically, 70% of trading volume on the major exchanges is conducted by high-frequency traders who hold a stock for an average of 11 seconds. Only a handful of market players have the real-time data needed to make these short-term trades.

That's 70% of trading volume happening at a rate that outstrips humanity's ability to absorb, comprehend, analyze, and react.

Remember that figure the next time some idiot tries to tell you that the Dow's latest hiccup is due to X or Y in the news.