Under Bush-Cheney, nobody kept case files on a lot of the prisoners at Guantanamo. Stop and ponder that. The US held these men and boys, the so-called "worst of the worst" for years, with plenty of torture but without trials, and they didn't even have files on many of the individual prisoners. I'm all too accustomed to the staggering incompetence of the Bush-Cheney administration, but this one leaves me completely gobsmacked.
[ Washington Post ]
Researchers asked white and black respondents twenty questions, before and after Barack Obama's acceptance speech at last year's Democratic convention, and again before and after he won the election. Blacks did substantially worse on the tests before
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."
Thomas Jefferson
Obama's success -- to be expected, as blacks generally do worse than whites on tests. But on the tests after Obama's success, the differences all but disappeared. It's a tiny study with only a few hundred respondents, and it's asinine to read too much into it, but I'm reading a lot into it and it's making me cry. Look, when you're constantly told that you're inferior (as blacks in American society have been told for hundreds of years) that's unavoidably going to effect how well you'll do on tests (and how hard you're willing to study, and how seriously you'll take school, and the goals you'll set for yourself, and so forth). But when you're shown that success is actually possible, then success actually becomes possible.
[ New York Times, distilled by Bad Attitudes ]
How many people who've been released from Guantanamo were subsequently involved in terrorist acts? That's something the Bush-Cheney administration has lied and lied and lied about, and the media has swallowed those lies and repeated them, over and over again, and they're still repeating those lies. "Their numbers have changed from 20, to 12, to 7, to more than 5, to 2, to a couple, to a few, 25, 29, 12 to 24. Every time the number has been different. ..."
[ Rachel Maddow Show; distilled by Daily Kos ]
OK, this one's a little complicated, but here's the case in a nutshell as I understand it: The Bush-Cheney administration alleged that Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a Muslim charity, supported terrorism. The charity was illegally wiretapped, and found out about it when the Treasury Department mistakenly turned over a memo to the charity regarding the wiretaps. The memo was suppressed for reasons of alleged "national security". A judge found the "national security" argument bogus, and told the Bush-Cheney administration to give the memo back to the plaintiffs so they could use it as evidence. Since the memo would prove
that the charity was victim of an illegal act, releasing it would give the charity legal standing, and allow legal challenge and discovery into the entire Bush-Cheney warrantees wiretap program. So this is a big one. And the new administration has weighed in on the matter by asking the judge to stay the order to turn over the memo, and seeking to have the matter reconsidered by a higher court. Why is the Obama administration taking what looks like the wrong side in this case? Call 'em and ask. (202) 456-1111.
[ Wired ]
Obama has appointed a lawyer who was very publicly opposed to the warrantless wiretapping program to the Justice Dept's National Security Division. Which, considered with the item above, suggests again that Obama's interested in setting some things right, but not at all interested in punishing the Bush-Cheney administration for its eight years of enthusiastic law-breaking.
[ New York Times, distilled by Benton Foundation ]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has given reporter Robert Dreyfuss an ever-so-slight sliver of hope that perhaps, perhaps the Obama administration will re-think its fabulously stupid pro-war policy on Afghanistan.
[ The Nation ]
"... in a broad swipe at the Bush administration's lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001." Thank you, Mr President. Of course, it's hard to say what real-world ramifications this will have, and the Washington Post isn't going to venture a guess -- Dana Priest's infuriating "analysis" (that's what the Post says it is, though I didn't read more than a few paragraphs) still calls complaints over Bush-Cheney's policies of torture a "feisty debate" over "tactics". The article also says, rather obviously, "Obama says he has no plans to diminish counterterrorism operations abroad", so why the ludicrous headline, "Bush's 'war on terror' comes to a sudden end"? Really, what are they smoking at the Washington Post?
[ Washington Post ]
President Obama has reversed the much-despised "Mexico City policy", which blocked federal funds for foreign groups that provide abortions or lobby for abortion rights. The old policy could be fairly described as shameful and harmful to families world-wide, so again, thank you, Mr. Obama. And remember, if you're pissing off the Catholic Church, you must be doing something right.
[ Time Magazine ]
The Senate has approved equal pay legislation to fix the god-awful Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which allows companies to get away with pay discrimination against women if they just keep it a secret.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
It made me stop and think
"I have believed for some time that military power is no solution to terrorism. The hatred of US policies in the Middle East -- our occupation of Iraq, our backing for repressive regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, our support of Israel -- that drives the terrorist impulse against us would better be resolved by ending our military presence throughout the arc of conflict. This means a prudent, carefully directed withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere. We also need to close down the imposing US military bases in this section of the globe, which do so little to expand our security and so much to stoke local resentment."
[ George McGovern ]
"The best kept secret of the Bush's war crimes is that thousands of children have been imprisoned, tortured, and otherwise denied rights under the Geneva Conventions and related international agreements. Yet both Congress and the media have strangely failed to identify the very existence of child prisoners as a war crime. In the Islamic world, however, there is no such silence. Indeed, the prophet Mohammed was the first to counsel warriors not to harm innocent children."
[ Michael Haas ]
"Chief Justice John Roberts, whose reverence for the Constitution had always seemed a tad less than might reasonably be expected of a Supreme Court justice, revealed the extent of his limited interest in the document to the nation when he fumbled the job of swearing in the new president."
[ John Nichols ]
Congress is also working on a four-month delay of the DTV changeover that will, when it happens, deprive a lot of people of television.
[ TV Barn ]
The Obama administration has "waived" its much-ballyhooed ethics rules, so some lobbyist you've never heard of (his name's William Lynn) can be a senior big-wig at the Department of Defense. A long sigh for a truly bonehead move by Obama, basically revealing that their claim to ethics is somewhere between shallow and a sham. Here's a better idea, President Obama: If you're going to have ethics rules have ethics rules, and if you're not going to have ethics rules don't pretend that you do.
[ The Hill ]
Republicans are blocking Hilda Solis's nomination as Labor Secretary, because she's pro-labor.
[ Associated Press ]
A US soldier is electrocuted to death in the shower, and an investigtion reveals (to nobody's sincere surprise) that he was a victim of negligent homicide -- the showers were incompetently installed by Halliburton spin-off KBR. But you and I both know that when common sense clashes with capitalism, common sense never wins, so for killing an American soldier don't expect KBR to face any punishment beyond (possibly) a small fine.
[ Associated Press ]
After a few weeks of lying about it, Israel is now admitting that it used white phosphorus in its attacks on Gaza. Use of white phosphorus is a war crime, with far too many legal exceptions, but the Israeli government will take no chances -- they're apparently going to keep the names of its officers secret, so they can't be prosecuted for their Geneva violations.
[ London Times ]
Al-Jazeera's viewership within America went way up during Israel's recent slaughter of Gazans. The article maintains that this is because al-Jazeera, unlike CNN and the rest of the competition, had reporters in Gaza. That was a big part of it, of course, but there's another difference between al-Jazeera and the competition that's more obvious -- al-Jazeera does journalism, while CNN spends most of its time in hour-long interviews with mega-church pastors and Hannah Montana's father and so on.
[ Salon ]
A lot of people think the BBC's refusal to air a multi-charity public appeal for contributions to rebuild homes in Gaza is stupid, a ham-fisted attempt at impartiality that looks instead like inhumanity.
[ The Guardian (London, UK) ]
Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld sold his $13M mansion to his wife for a hundred bucks.
[ Reuters News Agency ]
Larry Swearingen is set to be executed for murder in Texas tomorrow, but the pathologist who autopsied the victim says Swearingen couldn't have committed the crime.
[ Austin (TX) American-Statesman ]
Pope Benedict has reversed the excommunication of a bishop who's a holocaust denier. 'Cuz that's what worries the Pope -- offending holocaust deniers. If we have any tithing Catholics reading this, I'd sure like to hear why.
[ New York Times, distilled by Sly Capital ]
A blogger is being prosecuted for publishing pessimistic comments and accurate predictions about the economy in South Korea. And yeah, that's South Korea, the purported good-guy Korea, not the dratted bad-guy commies of North Korea.
[ The Guardian (London, UK) ]
And in America, Australians trying to visit relatives were instead detained at the airport and harshly turned back. It's a story that's growing more and more routine. Hopefully Obama's people will be a bit saner about such things. International tourism is good for America, and we really shouldn't be making sure that the thought of visiting America strikes fear in people's hearts.
[ Sydney Morning Herald ]
Obama tells Republican mucky-mucks, "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." It's only a wisecrack, of course, but here's hoping it's also an early warning that there's a limit to Barack Obama's bipartisanship. I'm all for politeness and collegiality, but Republicans in high office are (generally speaking) cro magnon thugs who've done much more damage to America than the Soviet Union or al Qaeda ever did. There's nothing to be gained from placating the worst of the worst.
[ New York Post ]
Airlines are mis-using the PATRIOT Act to have boorish or unruly passengers charged as if they're terrorists. Example: a female passenger yells at a stewardess and throws a can of tomato juice on the floor, for which she spent three months in jail and had her children taken away. Tell me one good thing about the PATRIOT Act, please. Give me one reason why it shouldn't be repealed in its un-American entirety.
[ Los Angeles Times ]
Embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich says of December 9, the day he was rousted from bed to be arrested: "to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States." The inference, I think, is supposed to be that Blago is a bit bonkers, and that's getting obvious. We're all supposed to hate Blagojevich, and we hate him too, but he's been impeached and he'll be out of office within a few weeks. His case, though, based on the evidence -- which is, so far, nothing -- reminds me more and more of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's railroading. Blagojevich was arrested a month and a half ago -- why hasn't he been indicted or charged? How come the Justice Department has played his entire
"prosecution" in the media, instead of in court?
[ Associated Press ]
Iraqis will re-name Abu Ghraib Prison before re-opening it. The remodeled facility will hold up to 15,000 souls, but it'll be called "Central Prison".
[ USA Today ]
In France, newspapers get underwriting, and the government will offer free newspaper subscriptions for kids turning 18. It's an interesting idea, I think, but no subsidies short of nationalization can save the newspaper business (and I'm not in favor of that).
[ Associated Press ]
If you visit a whitehouse.gov page that has a YouTube video embedded in it, Obama's whitehouse.gov webmaster and crew have developed a way to prevent YouTube from planting a cookie on your computer unless you play the video. This is, in my opinion, a remarkably picayune problem, but isn't it nice that Obama's team is awake and competent enough to care?
[ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]
A few months ago, Monty Python put all their material on-line for free. Since doing so, their DVD sales have gone up by 23,000%. Paying attention, RIAA?
[ mashable.com ]
At Sam's Club, a t-shirt with a picture of Barack Obama, fully clothed and with no words attached, has been deemed offensive.
[ Associated Press ]
It's one of Ronald Reagan's most famous lines -- "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" -- but in this piece a long-time friend of Reagan's explains that it's basically a mis-quote. Reagan was referring to a particular issue when he said that, not to government in general, and before the oft-quoted line the sentence actually started, "In the present crisis ..."
[ Los Angeles Times ]
Wikipedia is considering policy changes that would allow only trusted users to make instant changes, while other users' changes would be reviewed before going on-line. It's a good idea, and it's something they should've done years ago.
[ CNet News ]
Joel Comm, a mid-level internet entrepreneur, has been booted from Facebook because he's butted up against their limit of 4,999 "friends", and he was explaining this so often to people wanting to be "friends" that Facebook decided he's a spammer. As someone who barely understands to point of Facebook and definitely doesn't understand it as a business model, this looks ordinarily corporate and really quite stupid.
[ Scobleizer ]
I'm usually uninterested in "feel good" stories from the news, but this one, well, it made me feel good. In a high school girls basketball game between a Christian school and a much smaller school that specializes in kids with learning disabilities, The Covenant School ran up the score to defeat Dallas Academy, 100-0. The winning kids maintained a full-court press for the entire game, fired three-pointers, and basically turned the game into "a lay-up drill". Now check out the classy response of the winning school's administrators: "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christ-like and honorable approach to competition," head of school Kyle Queal and board chair Todd Doshier said yesterday in a joint release on the Covenant Web site. They added that they had made "a formal request to forfeit the game recognizing that a victory without honor is a great loss." The coach was fired when he decided that no apology was in order, which is fine with me.
[ Associated Press ]
Please send your news tips, comments, and criticisms to <unknownnews at inbox.com>. If that address ever fails, check our contact page for our alternate email addresses.
#More on streaming TV/video: I know this is perhaps un-newsworthy subject, but several things have struck me as I've delved more deeply into news broadcasts from around the world.
First off, I discovered that my guesses on the amount of bandwidth I was using were way off. I went way over my quota and had to pay a lot for the extra I used. So I had to stop watching for a while until I got myself a cheaper satellite TV package and then a more expensive broadband connection with no quota. Of course, my first use of high bandwidth streaming coincided with Israel's Gaza "operation." The combination of the streaming news and regular news provided me with an overdose of the death and destruction in the Gaza Strip for 22-days.
Returning to normal programming has seemed a little odd. These last few days instead of noting the news itself I've been noticing the aesthetics. Al-Jazeera/English and Press TV, for example, tend to have very minimalist, very modern, and quite elegant sets and a TV screen, too. You don't see a mishmash of colors and designs, screens split for no real reason, titles flying in just because that capability is there, frames on top of frames, etc. The screen on CNN news usually looks MUCH too busy and even tacky as do those of some of the Turkish TV channels.
On Press TV, you also don't see much of the women's hair. Instead you see pretty, interestingly tied or draped scarves. You won't end up seeing any women presenters with a weird new haircut or hair color -- or clothes that seem to be too small to cover them up. All of the presenters I've seen so far are definitely younger than their counterparts on the European or US news channels. They seem more like very bright good-looking college graduates who have become experienced presenters in a short time.
Press TV has a page with their schedule that shows the GMT time of the programs along with the times for your own time zone -- that you can easily select. The same site has links to their programs, links to archives of the programs, and a screen for watching those programs. There is also a link to many of their Gaza reports.
Anyway, last night I watched 2 very elegant Press TV programs using the Livestation large screen. There were NO ads, no fluff topics, no fluff or clearly biased comments, and no presenter or guests rudely interrupting each other. It was amazingly different. The pace was brisk and on topic the whole time.
One program was called "Energy World." A young Russian expert was there answering questions about the natural gas situation. The Nabucco project that Turkey is trying to get going was discussed along with Russian projects said NOT to be competing with each other. Also, a project related to homes being built with a rainwater collection system was discussed with diagrams of the system. The use of the system cuts the homeowners' water bills in half.
The second one was called "Middle East (ME) Press." 4-5 editorials and several news stories from newspapers in the region were selected and shown. In the studio, there was the presenter and a person who summarized the editorials/the news stories. Then, a third person shown on a large screen analyzed the info. In the program I saw, 2 of the articles were from Israeli newspapers. There were no raised voices or exaggerated comments. What I saw was really excellent reporting.
By the way, in November 2008, it was actually al-Jazeera/English's reporting of the US elections that seemed the most elegant and predictive to me. They had ONE straightforward and clever set up they used the whole time for summarizing and predicting the outcome while confusion reigned at CNN.
Finally, I will be checking out some of the others news channels, e.g. those in Asia. Boy, this business is more interesting and fun, to me, than I ever expected.
Excerpt: Put it all together and at this rate, the government -- that is, taxpayers -- will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest.
Consider too that the government already finances much of the aerospace industry, which is still doing reasonably well but depends on a foreign policy that itself has been a dismal failure. And a large portion of the pharmaceutical industry and health care sector (through the Medicare and Medicaid, the Medicare drug benefit, and support of basic research). These are in bad shape as well, and it seems likely the Obama administration will try to reorganize much of them.
What's left? Most of high-tech, entertainment, hospitality, retail, and commodities. So far, at least, we taxpayers are not propping them up. And when the economy turns up -- perhaps as soon as next year, most likely later -- these sectors have a good chance of rebounding.
But the others -- the ones the government is coming to own or manage -- are less likely to rebound as quickly, if ever. If anyone has a good argument for why the shareholders of these losers should not be cleaned out first, and their creditors and executives and directors second -- before taxpayers get stuck with the astonishingly-large bill -- I would like to hear it.
It's called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.
Great article. Notice how the "right" claims to detest "socialism" and therefore leaves the lower class without access to healthcare, pensions, and even food, water and shelter but simultaneously guarantees that corporate executives with lobbyists are plump and pampered.
I also note that many state governments are now asking their employees to accept some minor givebacks in pay/benefits, but there is no discussion anywhere of cutbacks to federal employee pay/benefits. Again, Joe Schmoe gets the pointy end of the stick while the Overlords are luxuriating in recession proof jobs with no requirement of competency.
Also, the author, Robert Reich, failed to mention the Post Office in his article -- another stunningly terrible organization which is so bad that its employees are famous for going on worksite killing rampages...i.e. "going postal".
Excerpt: Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, pledged an expanded and prolonged government role in everything from stabilizing banks to ensuring credit for small businesses. Geithner ... told lawmakers ... 'we're at the beginning of this process of repairing the system, not close to the end.' He committed to much more substantial action' on a 'very dramatic scale. ...
I fully expect our Post-Bubble Financial and Economic Predicament to parallel that of Britain. At some point, our problems will likely be of much greater scope due to, among other things, our system's larger size. So far, the U.K. has suffered a more acute crisis due to its inability to stabilize its troubled financial sector. For one, it is suffering through a more destabilizing outflow of speculative finance (unwind of carry trades). Also, the U.K. financial structure has traditionally been less government- influenced -- leaving it today more vulnerable to a crisis of confidence. Outside of government debt instruments, confidence has faltered for large cross- sections of U.K.'s financial claims ("moneyness" has been lost).
Our system has to this point proved relatively more stable due primarily, I believe, to the instrumental role played by government and quasi-government institutions such as the FHA, Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The market's perception of "moneyness" is retained for multi-Trillions of US claims -- a dynamic that bolsters the view that the US dollar retains its "reserve currency" and safe- haven status. And as long as this confidence holds, faith in the government's capacity for system "reflation" endures. But it all has the look of a fragile confidence game, and I fully expect the invaluable attribute of "moneyness" to be tested at some point.
There is absolutely no doubt that a massive inflation of US financial claims is in the offing. One would suspect it is only a matter of when market perceptions of "moneyness" adjust. This week's jump in gilt yields could portend a troubling new phase in the U.K. financial crisis. It could also be a harbinger of a more general crisis of confidence for global currencies and debt markets. The long-bond suffered its worst week since 1987 (according to Bloomberg). Gold was up $43 today and $56 for the week.
Markets voted on the global currency war, voted to exchange worthless paper for real money...
Yup and there ya go. What's been done already has been stupid and counterproductive, and what Obama's team is recommending is a more "expanded and prolonged" program of stupidity and counterproductively.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#1/27/2009:
I get the feeling Geithner is no history buff. Every time I see Krugman on TV, he looks like he is about to break out in spots. I get that he has had a few looks at so-called Western History (of Economics). But the Voodoo still lingers under those TARPS to come...
I have absolutely NO confidence in Geithner...
Siskiyousis
#1/27/2009:
I have no confidence in Geithner either. Or Bernanke, Summers, Obama, etc. Biden was on TV saying "We inherited a huge mess." Well, he has been a senator since he was 29 years old! Doy. Basically, the Democrats started this housing-subsidy insanity and the Repubs under Bush finished it off big time. Barney Frank had a gay live-in boyfriend for years who was associated with Fannie Mae. None of these people have fessed up yet.
The government created this mess 100%, you can't even blame Wall Street because they played the game according to the rules set up by the government. It is criminally stupid and these guys like Biden, Clinton and the rest of them have no credibility because they were "in on" this as "leaders" in D.C. We need to get rid of all of these people and replace them with people like Ron Paul.
But not until the US dollar is destroyed and the crisis demolishes the poor and lower-middle class will there be a popular uprising -- and that will happen, I think, because the only predators on D.C. are foreign creditors who will be instituting changes very soon. I keep going back to Bruce Sterling's "Distraction" because it is getting truer every year. (end of rant :-)
Mahdi Abdul Finkelstein
I want to be here when it all collapses and the ruin is upon us. I deserve to see it, because we've been warning about it for years and it's going to be spectacular. But I want to be outta here as the chaotic decades of rebuilding get underway, because I'm just getting too old for this crap.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#
Breathless with wonder, Keith Olbermann announced that the NSA was spying on EVERYONE -- according to his guest, an ex-NSA employee.
Wow! Who knew? Pretty much everyone who cared to know. We already knew. Since prior to the Bush Regime, in fact.
What we thought we knew was that the users of ECHELON, various countries such as the US, Great Britain, Australia, etc., had an agreement in place to spy on each others' citizens as a workaround for legal prohibitions against spying on one's own citizens. So, we thought, the US was spying on the citizens of Great Britain and turning the results over to their authorities, while they spied on Americans and delivered the goods to the US government.
The only new idea, really, is that what we thought we knew is most likely a cover story. We were led to believe that the US government was scrupulous about obeying the letter of the law and used the inter-country data exchanges to escape legal constraints. Obviously, that idea was fed to us -- and they were simply hoovering up everything all along.
What amazes me is that Americans, most of whom own incredibly powerful personal computers -- which are on average 50 times more powerful than the IBM mainframes of not long ago -- simply do not care enough about privacy to demand basic encryption of their routine communications such as emails and IMs. Part of the blame for this is no doubt a disinclination of the major software providers such as Apple and Microsoft to incur the wrath of Big Brother, but the courts have already ruled that encryption is legal for private citizens.
We have only ourselves to blame, therefore, for allowing the NSA to hoover up EVERYTHING and not even need to spend a penny to decrypt our communications. If the NSA had to decrypt everything then their budget needs would double at least, and maybe irate taxpayers would decide to starve out or imprison these fascist motherf*ckers...
Pavel C.
I remember being outraged by Echelon, but I haven't given it much thought in recent years and of course you're right, it's the same premise, probably the same god damned machinery. Bush and Cheney didn't start any of this, they were just spokesmen for a product that's been around a long time...
Sigh... The nuts are out of the can and rolling around on the floor.
Sherri B.
I've never been to New York, but I understand that Greenwich Village is a predominantly intelligent neighborhood, so this is going to hurt the shop's business.
Helen & Harry Highwater
I've heard that too. You have got to wonder what is happening to some peoples minds. Have they always been this nuts or is it now just throw-it-all-to-the-wind okay to act loony tunes?
I haven't seen the toons in question, but besides the possibility of toon viewers not finding the toons funny, the only other problem I see with it is the newspapers carrying the toons possibly getting miffed at such self-promotion. In general, I see nothing wrong with this, unless there's some sort of deception or misleading stuff going on.
Just more ever-present advertising. I try to blot it out of my consciousness, but it's always everywhere, so why not in a comic strip that was funny ten years ago...
H&HH
Hmmm. Although I like the idea of a blog comment helping someone
get more positive exposure than they usually do, note the entire story only
exists because the site writing about it created it in the first place. So
this isn't the 'immaculate concept' of promotion the headline implies. Darn!
Excerpt: YouTube is to attempt to raise revenues by allowing major media firms to sell their own advertising on their clips. The firms can even get cash from clips that have been illegally uploaded by users.
This is an interesting development. But what happens when multiple parties claim ownership of a clip?
Excerpt: "the FCC's Dan Gonzalez never had to wear the Bernie Madoff monitoring bracelet, or remain under house arrest. Instead, as a top-ranking federal employee, he's been able to keep the 2nd most powerful job at the FCC since being sued for the alleged Ponzi activity! Thus, Gonzalez has continued to have oversight over everything voted on by the FCC Commissioners, and on preparation of all FCC's rulings - with full compensation (from the taxpayers) intact!"
You might have covered this story months ago. I vaguely remember it, but can't be sure. There are so many swindlers out there now it's getting hard to keep track of them all! Anyway, this article is dated Jan 23, 2009. It's possible Gonzalez didn't know what was going on. He was a director of the company and many directors don't do sh*t except show up for meetings.
How many more are there? Quoting from Financial Times: "Over the course of
the next 12 months, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the futures market
regulator, expects a 25 per cent increase in commodity pool or hedge fund fraud case
filings -- above the 15 cases filed during the preceding 12 months because of Ponzi scheme
activity, says Stephen Obie, acting director of enforcement.
"The SEC, which is conducting one of the investigations into Mr Madoff's alleged scheme,
categorizes Ponzi schemes as a securities offering frauds. There were 115 enforcement
actions related to overall offering frauds in 2008, compared with 68 and 61 actions in
2007 and 2006, respectively."
You may want to revisit your decision to update only 3 times a week because there will
be less news now that Bush is gone. I generated this list by looking at the first 20
Google news results for "Ponzi scheme." There are 17,600 results in all!!!!
There have been Ponzi schemes since before Charles Ponzi's time (he was a pretty interesting character, but he didn't invent the scam, just pulled off a particularly big one). There are lots of crooks out there and there always will be, but that's not our beat and we have little to say about it beyond, close the loopholes and punish the perps.
H&HH
This is more a curiosity piece than anything important. It does show how people can mess with Google to get the results they want for searches. There is software which claims to be able to increase the rank of any webpage you select. This is advantageous for companies which are selling products. If you land near the top of the search results, you're more likely to make the sale than your competitors.
I don't get Obama as the #1 result when Googling for "failure." Possibly they've fixed it already. Anyway, here is a story from 2007 where Google claimed to have fixed the "bomb" problem. Apparently the fix didn't take.
== == ==
John Thain, the former CEO of Merrill Lynch, splurged on his office makeover to the tune of $1.2 million just a year ago. One of the items for the office was a $35K "commode on legs." Being a commoner, I took this to mean a fabulously fancy crapper. But on travelling the net, I've decided it is a fancy piece of French furniture.
Thain moved the pay date of year end bonuses up into the end of last year, while they normally are done in January. Bank of America says they knew he was doing it and gave their OK, arguing "'Merrill was an independent company until Jan. 1 of 2009,' said Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri." (quote from MSNBC News)
Well, that argument is HOGWASH, hogwash so dirty it compels me to urge that whoever at Bank of America OKed these bonuses needs to resign immediately. And you may hear lawmakers argue they can't do squat either because he was the CEO at the time and had the right to decide what to do. Sorry guys, the takeover of Merrill Lynch could have been called off on account of crap like this. In fact, unless those bonuses are clawed back, the takeover should be called off and let the frickin' piece of sh*t company fail. I'm totally pissed at the shenanigans the elite is being allowed to pull off, and the lame excuses handed to the public to paper over the abuses.
SirJ
Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but what really pisses me off is that this is the same stuff that was pissing me off ten years ago, and it's gotten worse. And if I hear another libertarian line about how the invisible hand of the market will punish such waste, my visible hand will smack 'em in the face. At the very least this is theft from stockholders, and silk-suited swindlers like Thain ought to be prosecuted same as stick-up men who wear ski masks, and ought to end up sharing a cell.
Adam Smith's invisible hand assumed plenty of competition with many buyers and many
sellers. This type of competition does not exist in most markets, especially those where
the businesses can influence governments to tilt the rules in their favor. Deregulation
is actually regulation designed to tilt the competition of the market in favor of a few
business interests, at the expense of both other businesses as well as customers.
Competitive markets rarely exist for long in a capitalistic economy. As soon as some
players gain enough of an advantage, they will seek to structure the market so it is no
longer competitive. The most effective way to structure the market to further your
advantage is to have laws written in your favor.
Some markets require vast amounts of capital which automatically limits the number of
sellers there will be. Compact Disks are made by about 16 manufacturers in the world.
You might think that a
product which looks so simple and is very inexpensive would foster competition, but it
doesn't. The bigger the plant, the more CDs it can produce, driving down the cost. Lower
cost gives that manufacturer the competitive edge. Huge factories require huge amounts of
capital, which very few sellers can come up with.
I've never understood why libertarians can't see that reality is much more complex than
their simplistic, idealistic concept of how the world functions.
The next time you hear a libertarian use the words "invisible hand", bring up CD
manufacturing as an example of a market which is inherently noncompetitive. In
noncompetitive markets, the "invisible hand" is nowhere to be seen.
SirJ
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The invisible hand offers nothing but a very visable flipped middle finger.
I don't hang out with libertarians much these days, but when I was young I spent several years as a libertarian, drawn to the idealism... and I'd sure like to have those years back. Libertarians offer an idealism that works really well in an idealized world, where Ayn Rand is giving voice to all the good guys and all the bad guys -- it's beautiful, and I still own a copy signed by Ayn herself. But that philosophy doesn't work at all in a real world where good guys, bad guys, and in-between guys (the vast majority of us) speak and think for ourselves.
I read the book Tragedy of the Commons long, long ago, and I'm not sure how much of what I now describe by that phrase came from the book, and how much came from my own mental meandering since reading the book. To my present-day thinking, the "commons" problem is that reality trumps ideology in societally-shared matters like education, public parks, consumer safety.
In a libertarian utopia, there are no public schools, and you get an education if your parents can afford private schools -- so if you're poor you get to grow up and be a janitor, and a stupid janitor at that.
You get public parks if you've paid into the parks subscription program, or if there's a millionaire in your town who's paying for parks and keeps them unlocked and the admission price is reasonable -- and if you can't afford it, you can read about nature at the library -- except that costs money you maybe can't afford, too.
And for consumer safety, hey, customers won't choose to buy a Ford if it doesn't come with safety glass in the windshield and safety belts on the seats, except, of course, that in the real world none of the carmakers offered any kind of safety until the very un-libertarian Ralph Nader and his ilk raised one hell of a public ruckus and Congress decided that certain minimal safety standards would be required by law -- and of course, every car-maker in real world America fought against safety for decades, and they're still fighting against safety.
I'm babbling, I know, but the bottom line (and that's all that matters to libertarians) is that if the libertarians ever get the utopia they dream of, it'll lack the societal framework that makes freedom, society, the economy, everything work.
Excerpt: Bergen said some of those "suspected" to have returned to terrorism are so categorized because they publicly made anti-American statements, "something that's not surprising if you've been locked up in a US prison camp for several years.
I suspect this is like the intelligence that Saddam had WMDs and was an immanent threat to the US.
Excerpt: Israel will give legal protection to soldiers who fought in the three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, has said. ...
Israel's military censor has already banned the publication of the identity of the unit leaders who fought apparently Hamas in the Gaza Strip for fear they may face war crimes charges.
Apparently Israelis believe they are above all laws and everyone else are terrorists if against Israeli attacks and subject to Israeli punishment.
Like the URL says, this website is about "unknown news". We present a thrice- weekly round-up of reports we think merit more attention, from mainstream, professional journalists, or (rarely) other sources we trust entirely.
We're not at all interested in Area 51, the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, eyeballs inside pyramids, flying saucers, FreeMasons, Paris Hilton, "Holocaust revisionism," the Illuminati, JFK's assassination, Vince Foster's suicide, the North American Union or its alleged Amero, the Rockefellers, the Rothchilds, Skull & Bones, space aliens, technologies supposedly suppressed for decades or generations, or theories you don't really understand about the World Trade Center's collapse.
We'll never link to 'news' from unreliable sources such as americanfreepress.net, Art Bell, cloakanddagger.ca, Executive Intelligence Review, Tom Flocco, David Icke, Alex Jones, Lyndon LaRouche, Wayne Madsen, Henry Makow, Al Martin, Prison Planet, Sherman Skolnick, Edgar Steele, Webster Tarpley, or your brother-in-law.
We post new entries most Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, nudging previous posts lower on the page (so scroll down for earlier news and comments).
We believe in liberty and justice for all, so of course, we oppose many US government policies. This doesn't mean we're anti-American, redneck scum, pinko commies, militia members, or terrorist-sympathizers. It means we believe in freedom, as more than merely a cliché.
We believe you have the right to live your own life as you choose, and others have the equal right to live their lives as they choose. It's not complicated.
We believe freedom leads to peace, progress, and prosperity, while its opposite -- oppression -- leads to war, terrorism, poverty, and misery.
We believe it's preposterously stupid to hate people because of their appearance, their race or nationality, their religion or lack of religion, how they have sex with other consenting adults, etc. There are far more apropos reasons to hate most people.
We believe in questioning ourselves, our assumptions, each other -- and we especially believe in questioning authority (the more authority, the more questions). We believe obedience is a fine quality in dogs and young children, but not in adults.
Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
individual responsibility,
hard work to get ahead,
and stern punishment for serious crimes.
We believe big government should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most right-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like America's left-wingers, we believe in
equal treatment under law,
war as a last (not first) resort,
and sensible stewardship of natural resources.
We believe big business should not be blindly trusted.
But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
Like libertarians, we believe it's wrong and reprehensible to arrest people for what they think, believe, look like, wear, eat, smoke, drink, inhale, inject, or otherwise do to themselves.
But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions? We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think. A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
We try to spotlight news that hasn't gotten enough (or appropriate) attention in American media, along with our opinions and yours.
We bang our keyboards against the wall, because it doesn't hurt as much as banging our heads.
Excerpt: ... the conservative drumbeat over the Fairness Doctrine is much ado about nothing. It's fearmongering -- which may be good for fund-raising. Conservatives claiming that the Obama administration will mean the death of right-wing radio seem to forget this fact: Limbaugh and other conservative talkers thrived during the Clinton years.
Excerpt: Democrats in the US House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers' personal retirement accounts -- including 401(k)s and IRAs -- and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Comment: Relax, this report is just another flat-out lie. The proposal comes from exactly one economist you've never heard of, Teresa Ghilarducci of Notre Dame (not New College, as the article falsely reports). She's one among dozens of economists who briefly testified in low-level Congressional hearings in early October, and she's the only one who made this proposal, and there's been not a peep of interest in the idea from any member of Congress. The claim that Congress is "conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers' personal retirement accounts" is more Republican fearmongering, from the liars who brought you "Obama is pallin' around with terrorists" and "the Democrats will confiscate your guns".
Excerpt: The imagery sure doesn't sell me a soda, which would be the top priority of an ad for Pepsi. Seems much more likely it's someone's idea of an joke. It's a blog post, and it links back to another blog called "Feminist Law Professors" by Ann Bartow, a real law professor who writes an interesting blog, but her source is a blog about advertising, which cites another blog which posts a wide assortment of images and very few words, and where a site-specific search led to all three of Pepsi images. That whole blog seems to be artistic imagery, and much of it's actually quite good, but there's no claim that it's a Pepsi ad, and a quick web search yields nothing as yet to validate any claim that it's a real Pepsi ad.
Excerpt: Three of our readers have sent us this link to this news, but we're not convinced. The author's remark is based not on fact but on long-simmering rumor that Track Palin was prosecuted for vandalism and/or drug dealing, and offered a choice by the judge -- join the Army, or face a jail stint. Problem is, the record is sealed because Track Palin was a minor, so there's no knowing whether it's true.
Excerpt: What customers of what bank in Florida are going to accept Ameros, the fictional currency of the fictional North American Union? At what business can Floridians spend these Ameros?
Excerpt: It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that Sarah Palin is a racist. She's a Republican in a position of power, so I'd be a little surprised if she wasn't a racist. But before we can put it in the news section on our website, we'd need to hear about her racism from a more reliable source than "Dick & Sharon's LA Progressive" quoting "a waitress" and "an insurance agent" and "Juneau observers" -- a bunch of anonymous Alaskans who may or may not exist.
Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution. viz: Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and Ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered, by the official investigators.
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