brainiac conspiracy

Sunday Night Law-Enforcement Blogging

Because blogging may be light this week since I am due back at the courthouse tomorrow to see if I am needed to convict some poor people of nonviolent drug offenses. This clip is pretty cool, actually.

---Vitelius

Double Dipping

In most businesses, that sort of behavior---reporting expenses for which you'd already been paid in advance, for instance---would be enough to get you fired. Not true, however, for America's job creators:

“We are canceling the remaining amount you owe Chase!” says a letter that JPMorgan Chase sent recently to thousands of home loan borrowers. “You are approved for a full principal forgiveness of your Home Equity Account,” says another, from Bank of America.

Jackie Esposito, of Guilford, Conn., got a letter like that. But she wasn’t elated — because she doesn’t owe the money anymore. She and her husband filed for bankruptcy three years ago. The roughly $64,000 they owed Chase has been legally wiped out.

What’s going on?

Cast your mind back to February. Five of the nation’s big banks, including Chase and Bank of America, agreed to pay $25 billion to settle state and federal claims over questionable mortgage practices and promised to work harder to help borrowers who were in trouble. To prod the banks, the government said it would give them credits against the amounts they agreed to pay.

So, to the ire of customers who couldn’t get banks to work with them before, banks are now forgiving debts that no longer exist.

“When I got this letter that said they were going to relieve our debt, I just about fell over,” Ms. Esposito said last week. “You can’t forgive a debt that you’re legally unable to collect.”

Not to mention the tax liability she will face after the bank reports the debt forgiveness to the IRS since, well, for legal purposes it's taxable income.

It's enough to make a man, oh I dunno, maybe fire off a sternly worded warning or something:

I asked Joseph A. Smith Jr., a former banking regulator in North Carolina who is monitoring the settlement, how he planned to vet the banks’ claims of relief provided and credit earned. For example, how will he ensure that institutions do not receive credit for releasing liens that have been eliminated?

“We will review compliance with this requirement as we will with all of the consumer relief requirements,” Mr. Smith said, “through review of the corporate records relating to such transactions.”

Yay Team Democrat, you are so totally fucking awesome we will only have to endure a lost decade of zero growth chronic high unemployment burdened by a parasitic banking sector you guys rock totally!

Or maybe we should just say the hell with it, and vote for Jill Stein after all.

---Vitelius

Aging Nuclear Power Plant. Seismic Soundwaves.

What could go wrong?

Plans to use an array of powerful air cannons in an undersea seismic study near a Central California nuclear power plant have federal and state officials juggling concerns over marine life with public safety.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. wants to use big air guns to emit strong sound waves into a large, near-shore area that includes parts of marine reserves to make three-dimensional maps of fault zones, some of which were discovered in 2008, near its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Well, this could go wrong:

The powerful cannons used in these projects can be fatal to animals that stray too close to them. Also, biologists said the loud noises could drive migrating whales and their calves apart, and that mortally wounded whales often sink in the ocean, so it is difficult to see how the tests affect the creatures.

Efforts to mitigate such impacts will reduce, but not eliminate, harm to animals, according to the company and earth scientists.

I'll confess, danger to marine life was not the first worry that came to mind here, but I am guessing it's a legitimate cause for concern. I think the bigger cluster here is the ongoing fact that we have nuclear powerplants situated in a seismically active geological area at all. There's a reason they call the Pacific coastline the Ring of Fire, you know. Hope we're not reminded anytime soon!

---Vitelius

He's a Complicated Man

And no one understands him but his woman:

Americans have elected many rich elites as president, starting with George Washington. But Romney’s wealth, estimated to be between $190 million and $250 million, is inextricably bound up with two cultures that are mysterious and misunderstood by many people: high finance and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He also has a complicated relationship with his own money, which he has been unwilling or unable to explain to the public. One day he says he won’t apologize for his success; another day he jokes before a roomful of donors that he’s “poor as a church mouse.”

Jesus, where to begin.

First, there is nothing "mysterious" about the workings of private equity, as anyone who has ever lost their fucking job or watched their company blown to bits due to the best practices of this wretched vampiric industry can easily attest. Second, the more salient "complicated relationship" the man has in the eyes of voters is not with his money, but with the freaking truth. Entire cottage industries dedicated to chronicling his mendacity have sprung up in recent months, and he has kept them plenty busy on a daily basis. There's a really simple reason why this clown is likely to lose this election: Because voters don't like him---not because they don't understand him or his church or his money, but because they understand perfectly well that he's an insincere phony. This isn't terribly difficult to figure out.

---Vitelius

Credit Where Due

Sooner or later, I guess it was bound to happen: The day when all the Real Americans™ came to the realization that showing some Tough Love to the colored folks often comes with a hefty price tag, and that they'd prefer to keep more of their money rather than throwing it down the ever-expanding sinkhole of our correctional-industrial complex. I am guessing this development dovetails with the increased influence of libertarianism in the Teabilly sphere since they've been lobbying to keep nonviolent drug offenders out of the prison system for as long as we Angry Lefties have. Either way, it's a positive sign.

---Vitelius

Feature, Not Bug

There are any number of ways a nation's political leadership class can tackle an economic crisis. One approach, practiced by our own government in the 1930s and '40s, is to borrow/spend/print lots of money to create social-relief and/or jobs programs for people, even if they're only make-work jobs, to keep them occupied, to boost their feelings of self-worth, to provide them with the means to feed themselves and their families, and generally to minimize the risks of spreading social unrest by maintaining essential services. Given our own history, this approach has quite a lot to to recommend it.

Then, there is another way:

Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party is increasingly assuming the role of law enforcement officers on the streets of the bankrupt country, with mounting evidence that Athenians are being openly directed by police to seek help from the neo-Nazi group, analysts, activists and lawyers say.

In return, a growing number of Greek crime victims have come to see the party, whose symbol bears an uncanny resemblance to the swastika, as a "protector".

One victim of crime, an eloquent US-trained civil servant, told the Guardian of her family's shock at being referred to the party when her mother recently called the police following an incident involving Albanian immigrants in their downtown apartment block.

"They immediately said if it's an issue with immigrants go to Golden Dawn," said the 38-year-old, who fearing for her job and safety, spoke only on condition of anonymity. "We don't condone Golden Dawn but there is an acute social problem that has come with the breakdown of feeling of security among lower and middle class people in the urban centre," she said. "If the police and official mechanism can't deliver and there is no recourse to justice, then you have to turn to other maverick solutions."

---Vitelius

Saturday Night Double-Stroke Blogging

Because there will be little blogging of any kind tomorrow because of family crap in the morning, followed by intensive work stuff the rest of the day before jury duty looms again on Monday. So ponder the amount of music you can squeeze out of a single drum until then, because it is limitless in the hands of a master.

---Vitelius

Lazy Overpaid Government Employees

Repeating the charge over and over again does not make it true:

The police acknowledge that they have all but ceded these streets to crime, with murders on track to break records this year. And now, in a desperate move to regain control, city officials are planning to disband the Police Department.

The reason, officials say, is that generous union contracts have made it financially impossible to keep enough officers on the street. So in November, Camden, which has already had substantial police layoffs, will begin terminating the remaining 273 officers and give control to a new county force. The move, officials say, will free up millions to hire a larger, nonunionized force of 400 officers to safeguard the city, which is also the nation’s poorest.

Hardly a political battle of the last several years has been fiercer than the one over the fate of public sector unions. But Camden’s decision to remake perhaps the most essential public service for a city riven by crime underscores how communities are taking previously unimaginable steps to get out from under union obligations that built up over generations.

Please. Just stop.

The city is not disbanding its police force because burdensome pension obligations and union contracts are bankrupting it. The city is disbanding its police force because its political leadership in Trenton places a greater priority on tax cuts for rich people than on providing basic public safety for its constituents.

Look, the Camden police union might be as crooked as the day is long, but aside from that worrisome absentee rate, there's nothing in this story that suggests it's a tremendous drain on local resources. Officer salaries are not exorbitant, and a force comprising 273 officers in a city with 75,000 residents is absurdly small. So why not be honest and simply report the obvious? Namely, that there is a political leadership class in America that has made it their holy mission to to destroy public-sector unions, even if it results in urban cores rendered uninhabitable and its citizens under constant siege against blight and crime, and that cities like Camden are glowing endorsements of their handiwork. And yes, if we were to make that assertion, we be inferring that many members of our political leadership class are amoral sociopaths, but, well, it would have the added benefit of being true.

Also too, be careful what you wish for: Wanna know what a minimum-wage cop looks like?

---Vitelius

Got an Easy Answer For That

Of course it is. Doesn't mean it will happen, however.

But I can remember a time---and it wasn't very long ago!---when top marginal income tax rates of this magnitude would have been (and in fact were) essentially taken for granted amongst the populace since, after all, virtually none of us would ever be affected by them. Also too, there seemed to be a much greater consensus over the need to maintain genuinely progressive tax rates to pay for the social services that vast majorities of Americans demanded---and really, the only objections that were ever raised to them were being voiced by a small gang of paleo-Confederates and gold bugs on the furthermost fringes of the American political fabric. The fact that no one---and I mean no one--in the DC policy establishment is even remotely suggesting reverting to upper marginal tax rates like this goes to show not only how far to the right our political discourse has drifted in a generation or two, but also the degree to which policymakers have become utterly disconnected from the needs/demands of their constituents. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't be hearing any talk whatever about "reforming" entitlements by scaling back benefits and/or raising the retirement age, when clearly what's needed is the exact opposite. Don't know what we have to do to steer the political winds toward the port side again, but if electing a liberal black Democrats named Hussein to the presidency couldn't accomplish it, perhaps it simply cannot be done anymore.

---Vitelius

The Happiest Place on Earth

What other institution could be more quintessentially American?

Nearly 90 cents of every dollar that Disney has spent on Florida campaigns in this election has gone to Republican candidates or Republican-leaning interest groups, according to the Sentinel's analysis. Republicans control the Governor's Office and Florida Legislature.

The contributions range from hundreds of $500 donations to individual legislators---many issued through company subsidiaries such as Disney Photo Imaging LLC and Magic Kingdom Inc.---to a single, $250,000 check made out to a committee controlled by the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Disney is part of an elite circle of big businesses underwriting campaigns across Florida. Only a handful of companies have spent more than $2 million so far on elections in Florida, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Power & Light.

Disney's goal? To elect politicians who will support its legislative agenda in the state Capitol---especially those who commit to voting against any plans to allow Las Vegas-style casinos in South Florida.

"Our contribution levels in 2012 reflect increased efforts to support candidates who oppose the expansion of casino gambling in Florida," Disney spokesman Bryan Malenius said [...]

In addition to lobbying against casinos, Disney this year helped persuade lawmakers to substantially increase---to $54 million---state spending on tourism advertising. And it got them to earmark $1 million for incentives for professional soccer teams that hold spring training in Central Florida.

Lobbyists for Disney and for International Speedway Corp. of Daytona Beach also wrote a multimillion-dollar package of tax breaks designed to benefit their sports facilities, including the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World and ISC's Daytona International Speedway.

It's been about 20 years since I set foot in a Disney joint, and every time I ever start to feel tempted to go back one day, it doesn't take much to remind me that the organization has always been run by a bunch of cheap cost-cutting control-freaks with a long-standing fondness for right-wing causes---and no, this doesn't make them any different or any worse than most other American job creators, but it's just a sobering little caution against handing over too much of your money to people whose legislative agenda is, essentially, to pick your pocket: Once at the entrance gate, and again on your income-tax form.

---Vitelius

Don't Worry, Democrats Do it Too

Unless some registrar of voters shoots himself in the head over this, I am guessing you won't be hearing much about this trivial tidbit on Fox News this weekend:

What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has spread statewide, with election officials in at least seven counties telling prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Florida Republican Party.

State Republican officials fired Strategic Allied Consulting, the company they had hired to register voters, and on Thursday filed an election fraud complaint against it with state officials [...]

Paul Lux, Okaloosa County’s election supervisor, said all of the questionable forms in the Florida Panhandle appeared to have come from Strategic’s base at the local Republican Party headquarters. He said his office had turned up dozens of them.

Mr. Lux said some forms listed dead people and some were incomplete or illegible. He met with prosecutors on Friday, he said, but added that his staff was still going through hundreds of forms.

---Vitelius

Some Say He Was Depressed Over The Latest Polling Numbers

Nice work, jerkoffs:

A carjacking in Arizona ended when the suspect shot himself in the head today as footage of the incident was broadcast live on Fox News Channel [...]

Following the break anchor Shepard Smith apologized for airing the shooting. He said the feed was on a five second delay, but they failed to cut it off in time.

"We really messed up and we're all very sorry," he said. "That didn't belong on TV . . . I personally apologize to you that it happened."

---Vitelius

LIght Blogging Again

Out for the day performing patriotic duty of incarcerating poor people. If you can't lock them up, at least keep them impoverished while I'm away.

---Vitelius

Thursday Night Law Blogging

Got called in for jury duty tomorrow. If I run into this dude, it will be well worth the time.

---Vitelius

Coming Attractions

Really looking forward to that second term:

Behind the scenes, Obama and his top aides made clear that they were willing to swallow serious changes to Medicare in exchange for deficit reduction.

As Woodward’s new book lays out, there was agreement between the White House and congressional Republicans on raising the eligibility age for Medicare — the only question was on how fast to phase it in.

Obama officials initially proposed raising the age from 65 to 67 “by one month a year, meaning the full two-year increase wouldn’t be complete until 2046,” Woodward wrote.

After House Speaker John Boehner balked at such a slow phase-in, the White House gave some on the issue.

“They still wanted to raise it at the slower rate of one month per year, but would agree to start the process four or five years earlier,” wrote Woodward [...]

Obama, in an interview with Woodward, acknowledged he was open to nudging reluctant liberals on Medicare and Social Security if Republicans were willing to deal on taxes.

“’I am willing to move on entitlement reform — even if my own party is resisting, and I will bring them along — as long as we have significant revenues so that people feel like there’s a fairly shared burden when it comes to deficit reduction,’” Obama recalled telling Boehner.

Realize I could write this same post practically every day, but I think it bears repeating as long as I come across well-meaning posts at liberal sites like this one, asking how cranky progressives like me and Greenwald and all the other antisocial grumblers on the Professional Left could possibly object to the Obama method of governance once you get past the targeted assassinations and drone strikes and that other kinda-yucky stuff. Well, sacrificing the foundational programs of the New Deal/Great Society in the name of achieving an unwise and counterproductive short-term policy goal would certainly qualify in my book, and that's why those of us who still give a shit about these programs---and who are depending on them still being around in ten years or so, when we become eligible for them---find it a moral imperative to continue agitating for more progressive policy solutions than trading in the Democratic Party's legislative legacy of the last hundred years for a 50-pound bag of Senior Bits.

Make no mistake, I will hold my nose if need be and cast a vote for Team Democrat this fall, simply because there are no viable alternatives (no, Greens, Justice Party et al don't count; a truly viable party is built from the ground up, not nationally on down) and because the alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate. But those of us who've worked and lobbied for decades to bring about a more enlightened and egalitarian government than what previous generations endured owe it to ourselves---and to the future---not to relent on these issues without a fight. The President hinted at this four years ago, when on the trail, paraphrasing Gandhi, he reminded us that power never cedes without struggle. So struggle we must---what other choice do we have? Unless we decide to simply check out, of course.

---Vitelius

Support The Troops

Of course our leaders rarely mean it when they proclaim it, but it's one thing to use soldiers as political props and quite another to, like, endanger their lives:

Years before F-22 pilots began getting dizzy in the cockpit, before one struggled to breathe as he tried to pull out of a fatal crash, before two more went on television to say the plane was so unsafe they refused to fly it, a small circle of U.S. Air Force experts knew something was wrong with the prized stealth fighter jet.

Coughing among pilots and fears that contaminants were leaking into their breathing apparatus led the experts to suspect flaws in the oxygen-supply system of the F-22 Raptor, especially in extreme high-altitude conditions in which the $190 million aircraft is without equal. They formed a working group a decade ago to deal with the problem, creating an informal but unique brain trust.

Internal documents and emails obtained by The Associated Press show they proposed a range of solutions by 2005, including adjustments to the flow of oxygen into pilot’s masks. But that key recommendation was rejected by military officials reluctant to add costs to a program that was already well over budget.

“This initiative has not been funded,” read the minutes of their final meeting in 2007.

Neither has that Truth & Reconcilation Commission. But we still need one. Mister President?

---Vitelius

Turning Shit to Gold

Literally:

This coming ski season, the resort, Arizona Snowbowl, will become the first ski resort in the world to use 100 percent sewage effluent to make artificial snow.

“It’s a disaster, culturally and environmentally,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs. He worries about the impact on the delicate alpine tundra and to human health should skiers fall into the treated sewer-water snow and ingest it [...]

Catherine R. Propper, a scientist and professor at Northern Arizona University . . . found that Flagstaff’s water contains endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or EDCs, including hormones, antibiotics, antidepressants, pharmaceuticals and steroids.

“We don’t know what effect freezing and thawing is going to have on the chemical compounds,” she said. “We don’t know what UV is going to do to them. Some of the compounds will bind to the soil; some will get into the aquifers. It is a very complicated system that we know very little about.”

Guess we'll find out a year from now.

I honestly do not know how any conscientious person could, or would, conduct any kind of business with any commercial interest headquartered in that awful state---at least, as its political leadership is currently constituted. And I'd really like to know what the conservators of our public lands are thinking by giving a thumbs-up to this nonsense. Yes, I realize the forest Service is, strictly speaking, not a conservation outfit like the Park Service, that they're a division of the Agriculture Department and are therefore charged with resource management rather than, say, habitat preservation---but come on, you cannot tell me that this doesn't present a potential health risk to some group of people sometime down the road. And for what---so some affluent urbanites can avoid the crowds at Aspen and Vail? But I guess it's par for the course for a place like Arizona, where shitting on ethnic minorities has become a cottage industry. This latest example is just a more literal repetition of the dominant social paradigm.

---Vitelius

Nothing to Look at Here

Really kinda unfortunate to see false equivalencies being pushed by people who are smart enough to know better. Specifically, insinuating a parallel between the crackpot denialism of the present day and that glorious night several years ago

when it was held for that because the final results in Ohio didn’t match---or sufficiently diverged from---the exit polls that some funny business must have taken place.

Because, you know, no funny business did take place. Except, maybe, funny business:

Warren County officials, facing scrutiny of their decision to lock down the administration building on election night, say they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a "10" on a scale of 1 to 10.

The information, which Commissioner Pat South said was previously deemed confidential, is coming out a week after the public was barred from viewing the Warren County vote count. The Ohio Secretary of State's office doesn't know of any other county in the state to impose such a restriction.

County officials initially said they feared that having reporters and photographers present could interfere with the ballot counting. They subsequently cited homeland security concerns.

Now, they say an FBI agent told them that Warren County ranked a "10" on a terrorism scale. However, state and federal homeland security officials said Tuesday they were unaware of any specific threat against the county.

Have never really understood why Josh and so many other lefty bloggers have been so passive and unquestioning over an election result that has been fairly well established by now as, well, about as legitimate as the outcome of a WWE title fight. After all, it's not as though the principals involved had never been involved in vote-rigging schemes before, now, is it? But this is also the reason why the Obama people had better hope these 10-point poll margins in the Midwest hold up---they'll need to factor in at least a 3- to 5-percent drop on Election Day due to ballots from Democratic-leaning precincts that will be accidentally misplaced, mutilated, lost or uncounted. Anyone who thinks this is not going to happen by design in a few weeks' time---in Ohio, and in Wisconsin, and in Florida yet again---is either feeding off a false narrative, or simply ignoring history.

Update: Also too, still nothing to look at in Ohio.

---Vitelius

You Goddamn Kids

The hourly wage slaves at Atkins Research are getting mighty shrill:

As someone who has actually done interviews and focus groups with Millennials about cars (unlike Ms. Faw), I can attest that what's actually going on with Millennials and cars is pretty simple: most of us can barely afford one, and especially among urban young adults, many of us would prefer not to have to drive one most of the time if we can afford not to. Having a car available is a good thing and necessary for freedom, but we don't invest ourselves and our identities in our cars. On a personal level, I want a self-driving car yesterday so that I don't have to waste productive time playing the world's most boring and potentially deadly videogame. I'd rather be getting work done on my Droid.

I had similar thoughts/reactions while reading that odious Forbes piece yesterday, i.e., "What planet does this person live on? I know lots of Millennial kids, and almost none of them have anything in common with her." Then I realized it was just another variation-on-a-theme that reactionary newspaper editors like to play every few years, blaming the unruly youth of today for being so, well, unruly, and for feeling that they're "entitled" to student loans, Pell grants, affordable housing and tuition, and stuff like that. The journalistic fig leaf, of course, is provided in this case by getting a Millennial to bag on her own generation, but this is the kind of piece that gets commissioned by older people to confirm the suspicions of older people that (somebody else's) impudent offspring are contributing to the downfall of Western Civilization. You could find commentary in the same vein on many op-ed pages many years ago; in that instance, the youth of the 1960s were routinely denigrated and belittled for having the rudeness to refuse induction into the Army so they could get shot up and exposed to Agent Orange, halfway around the world, for no fucking reason whatsoever.

But it's the same old stunt, basically. Once you've finished bashing coons, beaners and queers, turn your sights onto the punks. Because no one ever went broke at an American publishing concern from blaming society's ills on its most disempowered people.

---Vitelius

American Exceptionalism

Only socialist appeasers would refuse to acknowledge the essential truth of it:

After years of emulating the flashy United States stock markets, countries around the globe are now using America as a model for what they don’t want to look like.

Industry leaders and regulators in several countries including Canada, Australia and Germany have adopted or proposed limits on high-speed trading and other technological developments that have come to define United States markets.

The flurry of international activity is particularly striking because regulators have been slow to act in the United States, where trading firms and investors have been hardest hit by a series of market disruptions, including the flash crash of 2010 and the runaway trading in August by Knight Capital that cost it $440 million in just hours. While the Securities and Exchange Commission is hosting a round table on the topic on Tuesday, the agency has not proposed any major new rules this year.

Of course they haven't. Because hosting a roundtable is a much more productive use of our regulators' time than actually placing some commonsense restrictions on industry practices which yield zero social utility while holding the potential to crash the entire financial system on a moment's notice. Not that the system doesn't deserve to self-immolate---because it does---but it would be nice if we had a few safeguards in place to ensure that our personal pensions and money-market accounts aren't blasted into the ether the next time out job creators decide to stage a mass meltdown. It might even be worth discussing at that roundtable!

---Vitelius