The Drug War Sucks

We've kind of been rolling the trifecta with colds.

Sharon^* has been on antibiotics for a cough and sinus for a few days, and after being blown off by our kid's pediatrician's replacement doc, so we went to an urgi-care clinic, and we got diagnoses for them, and me as well, since I had a nagging cough, and it had gotten bad enough that I wasn't waiting until I saw my doctor at my regularly scheduled appointment with my doctor.

Charlie has a sinus infection, Natalie's sinus infection migrated down to pharyngitis, and mine had migrated down to a full blown bronchitis.

In addition, Marilyn, my mother-in-law is at Sinai Hospital for what appears to be pneumonia.

So, what does this have to do with the drug war?

Well, in addition to antibiotics, both Charlie and I were prescribed decongestants, and both of these medications contained Pseudoephedrine, and so I could not buy both, because federal regulations say that it's too much, and we might ………… cook meth.

The war on drugs is, to misappropriate the words of Nietzsche, like the bite of a dog into a stone, it is a stupidity.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

This Isn't Water, It's Shoggoth Blood!

Russian researchers in Antarctica have drilled through more than 2 miles of ice and extracted a ten million year old water sample from "Lake Vostok" underneath.

Between the novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. (writing as Don A. Stuart), the oeuvre of Howard Phillip Lovecraft, and John Carpenter's take on cinematic take on Antarctic science, this is not something that I find particularly reassuring.

Two Banks Get Eated

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

7. Charter National Bank and Trust, Hoffman Estates, IL
8. SCB Bank, Shelbyville, IN

An average week, and this Shelbyville is nowhere near Springfield (about 200 miles), so it's not the real (Simpsons)  Springfield.

Full FDIC list


So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):


And here is the detail, since it is early in the year:

Obama and Contraception

When your opposition looks this pampered and out of touch, you have a winning issue

So, in the ginned up controversy over the requirement that religious non-profits cover contraception for their employees, Obama has split the baby:

Mr. Obama announced that rather than requiring religiously affiliated charities and universities to pay for contraceptives for their employees, the cost would be shifted to health insurance companies. The initial rule caused a political uproar among some Catholics and others who portrayed it as an attack on religious freedom.

Meeting with his top advisers in the Oval Office last week amid rising anger from Catholic Democrats, liberal columnists and left-leaning religious leaders — a fed-up Mr. Obama issued an order meant for Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. Ms. Sebelius and agency lawyers had initially told the president they needed a year to work out a compromise that had seemed obvious to some in the administration from the start: make the new rule more like that offered by the State of Hawaii, where employees of religiously affiliated institutions obtained contraceptives through a side benefit offered by insurance companies.

But in difficult internal negotiations, a group of advisers had bested Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and others and sold the president on a stricter rule. Now the political furor surrounding it was threatening to consume signs of economic improvement giving a boost to the White House and put the Obama re-election campaign on the defensive.

So the mandate for coverage is now on insurance companies, rather than the employers.

If this is the end of this matter, then this is a good thing.

My concern, based on past history, is that this is only the first step in a larger retreat.

Then again, there are a number of people I respect who see it as eleventy dimensional chess, with people like Amanda Marcotte suggesting that Obama punked both the Conference of Bishops and the woman hating wing of the Republican Party, by forcing them to publicly oppose contraception, which is used by something like 99% of all sexually active women in the US at one time or another.

Certainly the optics, for now at least, are good, and the effect on coverage of this change is zero, so it's a win win.

But the most powerful knock against Obama is his unwillingness to fight, and in the 2-3 days before this decision, news outlets were starting to note that there are 28 states that have had an identical mandate, and have had such a mandate for years, with nary a peep from the pedophile protection bureau US Conference of Catholic Bishops, so it was clear that the worm was turning in the media as well, so keeping this up until they blinked would, to my mind, have been the optimal approach.

[on edit]
I think that the real policy and political implications are best synthesized by the following from Lindsay Beyerstein:

But if the bishops won't accept this deal, Obama should stop trying to accomodate them. Respect for religious freedom does not include paying solemn lip service to the contraception cooties.

Deep Thought

Just not my deep thought:

Your Good News of the Day

Both houses of the Washington State legislature have passed gay marriage legislation, and the Governor will sign it.

Sorry Felix, You are Wrong

Yesterday, I talked about Dave Dayen and Yves Smith's take on the settlement, and their take was "bankster bailout", and I noted that Felix Salmon's take was that it was a good thing.

Well, now the journalist who is I think the best person (this side of Jon Stewart, anyway) at distilling the complexities of Wall Street to you average reader, Matt Taibbi has weighed in, and not only is he calling bailout for Wall Street crooks, but he apologizes for his earlier optimism. What's more, he distills what it all means in one paragraph:

But this deal not only doesn't end robosigning, it officially makes getting caught for it inexpensive. Shame on me for ever thinking that might be a good thing.

That is the final word.  Fraud and forgery have been given a price tag, and it's less than 2 grand.

OK, These Are Some Tax Collectors That I Could Love

So, the Italian police have taken to staking out posh neighborhoods and pulling over drivers of expensive cars. They then take their personal information, and send that to the tax bureau to make sure that their lifestyle matches up to their declared income:

Police fanned out across Milan in late January halting more than 350 vehicles, mostly luxury SUVs and Porsches.

At checkpoints, including one adjacent to the fashionable Corso Como, the police got the driver’s license and registration, which they passed on to the national tax agency. The tax authorities will use the data to check if the cars’ owners had declared enough income -- and of course paid the right amount of income taxes -- to justify their lifestyles.

It was at least the fifth raid targeting wealthy Italians since a Dec. 30 sweep at the posh Cortina d’Ampezzo ski resort, where 251 high-end cars were stopped, including Ferrari and Lamborghini supercars, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Feb. 13 issue. Rome, Portofino on the Italian Riviera and Florence have also been targeted.

I'm Matthew Saroff, and I approve of this tactic.

So, the Pedophile Protection Bureau Wants Contraception Coverage Banned

So, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, or more accurately the guy they hired to represent their position, has admitted that they want to ban coverage for all forms of contraception for everyone:

“There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular,” [Conference general council Anthony] Picarello said. “We’re not going to do anything until this is fixed.”

That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for “good Catholic business people who can’t in good conscience cooperate with this.”

“If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate,” Picarello said.

They want to pull all coverage for contraception for everyone, and so we should take it seriously when they they say want to ban all contraception.

At least the Taliban does not find f%$#ing little boys to be a moral imperative.

It's Jobless Thursday

Defying forecasts, initial claims fell last week, with the 4-week moving average falling to an almost 3 year low, though continuing claims rose.

Good news, I just hope that this isn't just a temporary blip.

The Obama Administration Just F%$#ed Us All to Benefit the Banks Again

Well, it looks like everyone (except Oklahoma) has signed onto Obama's bank sellout settlement :

After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market’s downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses.

Despite the billions earmarked in the accord, the aid will help a relatively small portion of the millions of borrowers who are delinquent and facing foreclosure. The success could depend in part on how effectively the program is carried out because earlier efforts by Washington aimed at troubled borrowers helped far fewer than had been expected.

Still, the agreement is the broadest effort yet to help borrowers owing more than their houses are worth, with roughly one million expected to have their mortgage debt reduced by lenders or able to refinance their homes at lower rates. Another 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure from September 2008 to the end of 2011 will receive checks for about $2,000. The aid is to be distributed over three years.

An announcement was scheduled in Washington for Thursday morning. The final details of the pact, including how many states would participate, were expected to be announced then. The two biggest holdouts, California and New York, now plan to sign on, according to the officials with knowledge of the matter who did not want to be identified because the negotiations were not completed.

So, if a bankster steals your house, you get $2000, which might cover the cost of having all your furniture hauled to the dump.

And as for the write-downs, that's about $17 billion for about one million home owners ($5 B goes to the states), or about $17k  for homeowners, but there are 11 million homeowners under water, and on average it's more than $50K each.

And, BTW, the banks get to do this for mortgages that they manage, but don't hold, meaning that the money is coming from investors, pension funds, and the taxpayer, and this serves to strengthen the second mortgages, which the banks do hold.

I'm with Yves Smith's take on this, "The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage-Settlement.html," not Felix Salmon's rather more optimistic take on this.


This is not a settlement, it's another sellout and back door subsidy to the banksters.

The Foreclosure Sellout Settlement Is Getting Weird

I missed it, but the New York AG canceled a press conference about his position on the mortgage/foreclosure fraud settlement at the last minute:

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman late Tuesday postponed a much anticipated conference call with reporters that was set up to announce whether the state would participate in broad a settlement with five big banks over foreclosure practices. Schneiderman, who is co-chair of a new mortgage fraud task force, told reporters in late January that he was not ready to participate in state settlement negotiations. Observers had speculated that he might announce his participation.

This is happening despite the full court press from the Obama administration for this deal to go through.

The sticking point appears to be the MERS lawsuit, and the banks want this dropped before they sign off on any deal.

I think that this delay is a good thing because:

• The deal is basically another bailout for the banks.
• As it gets nearer to the election without a deal, the more it becomes likely that the Obama administration will be forced to go after them for electoral benefit, as opposed to just going after some small fry.

This should get interesting.

More on the Catholic Church and Sh%$

Amanda Marcotte has a great example of just what "public accommodation" means, and it is both illustrative of just how hypocritical the Catholic Church is being over the requirement that they follow the law in insuring their employess.

It has the additional advantage of goring my own ethnic ox, albeit that I am not at a black hat Jew:

There was an interesting story a few months ago here in Brooklyn about a privately owned company that serves the public that was engaging in discrimination against women.

Women who ride the B110 bus in Brooklyn can't sit where they want unless they're okay with being berated by Orthodox Jewish men, even though technically the B110 is a public bus.

The B110, which travels between Williamsburg and Borough Park is open to anyone, has a route number, and goes to city bus stops. However, the line is run by a private company under a decades-old agreement with the city, and since the bus is designed to serve the Hasidic community in the area, a board of rabbis sets the rules. They've decreed that women should sit in the back and men should sit in the front to avoid contact betwen members of the opposite sex.

When it was exposed that a bunch of religious fanatics were doing this, the city came down on them and said, "God or no god, you can't discriminate against women if you're serving the public."

She's right.  Hospitals and universities  serve the public provide public accomodation.

The Catholic Church has no more right to make its employees sit at the back of the bus for their insurance than do those Jews running that bus line.

If You Choose to Invest in a Criminal Enterprise, You are Supposed to Lose Money

So, the SEC is giving the banksters a free pass when they defraud investors, but the SEC gives them a pass. Why? To protect the investors.

You know, for most people, letting the banksters steal with impunity is not protecting investor:

Even as the Securities and Exchange Commission has stepped up its investigations of Wall Street in the last decade, the agency has repeatedly allowed the biggest firms to avoid punishments specifically meant to apply to fraud cases.

By granting exemptions to laws and regulations that act as a deterrent to securities fraud, the S.E.C. has let financial giants like JPMorganChase, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America continue to have advantages reserved for the most dependable companies, making it easier for them to raise money from investors, for example, and to avoid liability from lawsuits if their financial forecasts turn out to be wrong.

An analysis by The New York Times of S.E.C. investigations over the last decade found nearly 350 instances where the agency has given big Wall Street institutions and other financial companies a pass on those or other sanctions. Those instances also include waivers permitting firms to underwrite certain stock and bond sales and manage mutual fund portfolios.

JPMorganChase, for example, has settled six fraud cases in the last 13 years, including one with a $228 million settlement last summer, but it has obtained at least 22 waivers, in part by arguing that it has “a strong record of compliance with securities laws.” Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which merged in 2009, have settled 15 fraud cases and received at least 39 waivers.

Only about a dozen companies — Dell, General Electric and United Rentals among them — have felt the full force of the law after issuing misleading information about their businesses. Citigroup was the only major Wall Street bank among them. In 11 years, it settled six fraud cases and received 25 waivers before it lost most of its privileges in 2010.

By granting those waivers, the S.E.C. allowed Wall Street firms to have powerful advantages, securities experts and former regulators say. The institutions remained protected under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which makes it easier to avoid class-action shareholder lawsuits.

And why are they doing this?

“The ramifications of losing those exemptions are enormous to these firms,” David S. Ruder, a former S.E.C. chairman, said in an interview. Without the waivers, agreeing to settle charges of securities fraud “might have vast repercussions affecting the ability of a firm to continue to stay in business,” he said.

S.E.C. officials say that they grant the waivers to keep stock and bond markets open to companies with legitimate capital-raising needs. Ensuring such access is as important to its mission as protecting investors, regulators said.

…………

Thomas Lee Hazen, a securities law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that it is understandable that the S.E.C. might relax some potential sanctions on Wall Street firms — where it appears that lessons have been learned, or when a fine is thought to be sufficient punishment.

“The ripple effect of having a sanction that could shut them down or could seriously impede a company’s operations would seriously affect a lot of innocent customers,” he said. “It’s a very fine balance. That’s not to say that the S.E.C. is striking the balance properly. That is in the eye of the beholder.”

Let's be clear here. The SEC is using regulatory forbearance to subsidize fraud.

If people stopped investing in firms that committed fraud, the firms would be less inclined to defraud investors.

It's Official, We Have a 2nd Tech Bubble in 15 Years

How do I know this? I know this because Paul R. La Monica says that we are not in one.

When he says, "If you want to declare that tech stocks are once again a bubble ... you'd be dead wrong," any sane person would start shorting tech.

This is a guy who called short sales the next bubble, and used a song about masturbation to suggest that it was time to reenter the market. (My posts about him can be found at this link.)

In the world of investing advice, it's hard to find someone who gets it right even half the time, but there lots of people, like Paul, who can be counted on to function reliably as a reverse barometer.

I'm just sayin'.

Appeals Court Rules that Prop 8 Is Unconstitutional

It was a 2-1 decision, and the opinion is a pretty strong:

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently,” Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote in the decision. “There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

“All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage,’ ” the judge wrote, adding, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

BTW, all three judges agreed that the defendants request that the judge Vaughn Walker recuse himself was pretty much a crock of sh%$.

The precedent on this case is fairly straightforward, the Supreme Court ruling on Colorado's Amendment 2 about 15 years ago, where they said that voters can't strip rights from a group just because they make them feel squicky, the so-called "rational basis" test.

The question now is whether or not this case goes to the full appeals court (en banc), or to the Supreme Court.

And while we are on recusals.  Seeing as how Scalia has publicly, and repeatedly, made comments explicitly stating that he has pre-judged the matter, how about he recuse his flabby ass from the case?

If SCOTUS takes it, it will be closer though, as O'Connor has been replaced by Alito, who is an almost certain vote against gay civil rights.

Obama F%$#s Unions Again

First it was not following up on card check, and now, he's selling unions down the river in the latest FAA authorization, which served to gut decades of labor law.

The labor movement seriously needs to start going totally "Club for Growth" on the Democrats in the primaries.

And While We Are Talking About White House Spelunking…

It looks like the White House is preparing to cave to the Conference of Catholic Bishops on reproductive rights:

A top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign suggested on Tuesday that the administration was open to working with Catholic hospitals and universities over their objections to providing birth control services to women.

“I’m less concerned about the messaging of this than to find a resolution that makes sense,” David Axelrod said on MSNBC.

“I heard earlier Joe [Scarborough] say, ‘Well, there may be compromises that can be reached.’ We have great respect for the work that these religious institutions do. … We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms, so we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,” he explained.

Jeebus.

It's like capitulation is so firmly engrained in their DNA that they can't stand their ground even when it is to their advantage to do so.

These days, the Catholic Bishops is as likely to support Democrats as the Chamber of Commerce, so all you are doing is pissing off your base.

Am I the Only One to Call False Flag?

Symantec with an assist from the FBI, is now alleging that a group of hackers stole the source code for pcAnywhere and attempted to shake them down for $50,000.

OK, I get that. But what I doubt is the claim, coming from either the software firm, or the boyz in the Hoover building, that the miscreants are, "group of hackers associated with Anonymous and AntiSec."^*

As MP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS observes, "Anyone claiming to be raising funds in any way on behalf of Anonymous is about as kosher as bacon-wrapped shrimp."

I have no doubt that Symantec got hacked. I've suffered with their software at a number of work places, but my sense is that any mention Anonymous is something that the FBI spent a lot of time manufacturing.

After all, it looks much better in a personnel file at annual review time.

^*Tin foil hat. When I originally read the first article, there were constant mentions to anonymous, and now they are all gone.

I Guess She Could Not Handel the Pressure

Yes, the right wing hack hired by Komen as their VP for public policy, Karen Handel, has>called it quits, or as Erin Gloria Ryan so clearly states, Noted Liar Karen Handel Defensively Resigns From Komen, with a self-indulgent letter of resignation where she denies it being about politics.

I'd say, "Cry me a river," but the letter was more like "Water Music".^*

The thing is, the folks at Komen knew that she was a right wing political hack.  Not only had she campaigned for governor on defunding Planned Parenthood before Komen hired her, but she also has a long history of voter suppression and civil rights violations so bad that the Bush Justice Department called her out.

She was clearly a right wing political hack, and Komen chose to let Ari Fleischer pimp her for a cushy office job, and they knew what she was.

There are lots of better breast cancer charities out there.

Even ignoring politics, the corporate pink-washing Komen does for companies probably contribute to higher cancer rates (KFC? Seriously?) should look elsewhere.

When you add in their politics, any woman who gives them money is like a chicken donating to Colonel Sanders, because they are a a petri dish for right wing zealots who think that the problem with the world is that, "women [are] not being properly punished for having unapproved sex."


^*OK, that's it for the Handel puns.

And While We are Talking Bankster Corruption

The Missouri AG has filed criminal indictments for felony forgery over "robo-signing".

This is a remarkable development, because while what on pretty clearly was forgery, but I never expected someone to actually prefer criminal charges:

“Linda Greene” has become a household word to those on the foreclosure fraud beat. And it turns out, for once, that the work of diligent investigators such as the foreclosure attorneys around Max Gardner, and investigators like Lynn Szymoniak and Lisa Epstein led to press coverage which in turn spurred prosecutors to act.

What is striking about the indictment by a Missouri grand jury is that the Missouri AG Chris Koster has decided to challenge the banks’ party line that robosigning and related abuses were mere “paperwork problems.” He’s called robosiging what it is: forgery. The 136 count indictment is for forgeries and false declarations, and the targets are LPS subsidiary and its founder and past president, Lorraine Brown.

About f%$#ing time.

Foreclosure Sellout Settlement Update

Well, over 40 states have signed onto the deal, but the biggies, New York, California, Nevada (highest foreclosure rate in the nation), and Delaware (all the banks are covered by Delaware law, and Beau Biden is Joe's kid), are not (yet) a part of this deal, so the "deadline" has been pushed back two weeks.

We know the deal is bad.

We know that it's a sellout because:

• There has been no meaningful fact finding about wrong doing, so the deal is more like the selling of indulgences, because the only ones who know just how evil things got are the banks.
• We also know that it's a sell out because, "Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. made a last-minute demand that New York drop claims filed against them Feb. 3." which implies that they don't want even that small rock (MERS) uncovered.
• The holders of mortgage backed securities (MBS) are opposing the deal, because it allows the banks to fob off all the write-downs on them, and the banks will always spend other people's money, or as Yves Smith puts it, "the money in the end comes out of pension funds and 401(k)s."
• The deal is structure with a rather odd provision that, "states signing a nationwide accord on foreclosures will be entitled to improved terms won later by states that opt out," which makes any separate settlement prohibitively expensive for the banks.

That being said, the fact that this deal is pitting one part of Wall Street against the other, with, asset management group of SIFMA frantically lobbying negotiators for a better deal,  is a welcome development.

We also have the fact that the deal  favors 2^nd mortgages, generally held by the banks, would be favored over 1^st mortgages, which the judge who has to approve the deal might see as an illegal taking.

FWIW, if any of the biggies move, it will be California first, because (when current Governor Jerry Brown when he was AG, thanks Governor Moonbeam) they already cut a deal with Bank of America/Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the state, which eliminated most pre-2008 liability, so they have the least to gain from holding out.

What a Surprise

The USAF is determined to avoid having a meaningful close support capability. Case in point, they are cutting 5 to 10 A-10 squadrons:

The A-10 Thunderbolt II provides the type of close-air support that ground-pounders love and the Taliban dread. Although the A-10s are workhorses in the war on terrorism, the Air Force in its new budget request is planning to get rid of five squadrons.

As part of the Defense Department’s efforts to trim close to $500 billion in spending over the next decade, defense officials said Friday that the service intends to cut five A-10 tactical squadrons and two other squadrons as well.

The Thunderbolt squadrons to be stood down encompass one active-duty, one Reserve and three National Guard units. The remaining two squadrons disappearing are a Guard F-16 tactical unit and an F-15 training squadron.

Let's be clear about this: The F-35 and the F-22 cannot take over this role effectively.

The A-10 can deploy and loiter over the battlefield for hours below 15,000 feet, while the two supersonic stealth jets can loiter for something like 15 minutes before calling bingo fuel.

That Sound You Heard Was Sharon* Swearing a Blue Streak

She bleeds New England Patriot Blue, and the Super Bowl final score, Giants 21, Patriots 17, is not to her liking.

^*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Oh, By the Way

The Mittster won the Nevada caucuses, no big surprise.

Clark County (Las Vegas) has not reported yet, so the final numbers are not available.

I'm Making a Prediction As to Romney's VP Pick

Mark Rubio.

He's Hispanic, he has real teabagger cred, and he is rather articulate and telegenic.

Of course, my record as a prognosticator sucks.

Well, This Has Me Confused

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed suit against the big banks for fraudulent use of the MERS electronic title registry.

He is claim fraud, deception, and illegal evasion of recording fees (to the tune of more than $2 billion on just the fees).

This is interesting. It appears that the settlement, for which Schneiderman is the most prominent hold out would not shut down any suits already filed.

To my mind, this is likely a bad thing, because it implies that Schneiderman is getting his ducks in a row in preparation for signing onto the sellout settlement with the banks.

I just hope that I am wrong about that last bit.

Full release from the AG after the break:

This is an Epic Prank

Righteous!

Something to add my rules to live by: Don't use prison labor to do graphic design for law enforcement:

How did an image of a pig — the infamous ’60s-era epithet by protesters for police officers — wind up on a decal used on as many as 30 Vermont State Police cruisers?

State officials Thursday pointed to the failure of the quality assurance office within the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans to detect a prisoner-artist’s addition made four years ago to the traditional state police logo. A spot on the shoulder of the cow in the state emblem was modified into a pig.

An investigation has begun into how the computer program was improperly modified to insert the image, Vermont Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito said.

I really hope that whoever did this does not get caught.

Seriously, Susan G. Komen is Looking Worse and Worse

It looks like their latest gaffe, in which they defunded Planned Parenthood, was masterminded by Ari Fleischer:

Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush and prominent right-wing pundit, was secretly involved in the Komen Foundation’s strategy regarding Planned Parenthood. Fleischer personally interviewed candidates for the position of “Senior Vice President for Communications and External Relations” at Komen last December. According to a source with first-hand knowledge, Fleischer drilled prospective candidates during their interviews on how they would handle the controversy about Komen’s relationship with Planned Parenthood.

Fleischer’s relationship with Komen and the Planned Parenthood controversy was previously undisclosed. He confirmed to ThinkProgress his recent role in filling a key communication position at Komen. Fleischer stressed, however, another communications firm (Ogilvy PR) was retained by Komen to deal with crisis communications over the last few days and he has not been involved.

Seriously, this just get better and better.

Komen for the Cure isn't a charity, it's yet another Republican full employment program masquerading as a charity.

My Bad

No bank failures this week, but I missed the closing of a credit union on January 27, Eastern New York Federal Credit Union in Napanoch, NY.

So, 2 credit unions for the year,  and 7 banks.

I'm Expecting an Alien Tort Claim Act Against Apple

William Black makes the convincing case that the widespread abuse of contractors' employees in the manufacture of Apple products is the product of deliberate management decisions:

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories. It highlights a form of control fraud that criminology has identified but rarely discussed. I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it drives our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. The primary intended victims of accounting control frauds are the shareholders and the creditors. Other private sector control frauds target customers (e.g., George Akerlof’s 1970 article on “lemons”), and the public (e.g., the unlawful disposal of toxic waste, illegal logging, and tax fraud).

Anti-employee control frauds most commonly fall in four broad, but not mutually exclusive, categories – illegal work conditions due to violation of safety rules, violation of child labor laws, failure to pay employees’ wages and benefits, and frauds based on goods and loans provided by the employer to the employee that lock the employee into quasi-slavery. Apple has just released a report on its suppliers that shows that anti-employee control fraud is the norm. Remember, fraud is hidden and is often not discovered and Apple did not have an incentive to make an exhaustive investigation. Apple calls its inquiries “audits” and it is apparent that most of its information comes from reviewing written and electronic records at its suppliers. That is exceptionally revealing. The suppliers know that they can defraud their employees with such impunity that they don’t even bother to get rid of records that prove their frauds. Apple has resisted making public its suppliers and the report refused to identify which suppliers committed which violations – often for years despite repeated, false promises to end their anti-employee control frauds. Two other facts are evident (but not reported). First, Apple rarely terminates suppliers for defrauding their employees – even when the frauds endanger the lives and health of the workers and the community – and even where Apple knows that the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about these fraudulent and lethal practices. Second, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Apple makes criminal referrals on its suppliers even when they commit anti-employee control frauds as a routine practice, even when the frauds endanger the worker’s and the public’s health, and even when the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about the frauds. Apple’s report, therefore, understates substantially the actual incidence of fraud by the 156 suppliers (accounting for 97% of its payments to suppliers).

The ATCA has been used in cases like this, and what is clearly a policy of deliberate blindness to these abuse by Apple, seems to me to bean opening for a very well deserved lawsuit.

You Have Got To Be Kidding

Guess what, the heavy duty Randroids out there are now going after their enemy du jour, George Bailey, president of the Bailey building and loan:

It’s been a standing joke for ages to claim that some free-market Randroid was so clueless that he or she would watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and cheer for Mr. Potter while hissing at George Bailey. It would be the equivalent, say, of someone hoping that Scrooge would tell the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future to sod off or that Spielberg would leave E.T. to die alone in a ditch in Southern California or that Dorothy would be stranded in Oz for the rest of her life as the Wizard’s concubine.

But, of course, this, or so everyone thought, was all just cute and snarky hyperbole. No one, not even the High Priestess Ayn Rand herself, could possibly actually watch “It’s A Wonderful Life” and come away not sobbing like a child but instead thinking that George Bailey was a social parasite spouting vile commie propaganda against the heroic Mr. Potter, the job creator who knew what was really best for the people of Bedford Falls.

Yes, they are demonizing the hero, played by honest to God war hero Jimmy Stewart, of Frank Capra's treacly bit of cinema, It's a Wonderful Life, which is considered by many (not me) to be an American cinematic icon.^*

Seriously, what the f%$# are wrong with these folks?

I'm beginning to understand what led Ayn Rand to have a doting crush on one William Edward Hickman, a monster who kidnapped and dismembered a twelve year old girl, it's because Randian libertarianism is not so much a philosophy as it is a beard to conceal from the rest of the world that they are sociopaths.

^*Personally, I'm not a big fan of the movie, and it was viewed as a resounding failure when released.  My interest was in the fact that it became popular when it passed out of copyright, and TV stations showed it repeatedly in the holiday season, creating a classic.  My interest is how a series of court rulings allowed it to be snatched out of the public domain.

Unambiguously Good News

The January jobs report is out, and there were 243000 net jobs created, and the unemployment rate fell from 8.5% to 8.3%.

This is good news. If we have about 6 years of this, and we'll have recovered.

But They Still Suck

So the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure has sort of backed down:

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced Friday that it would revise a new policy that barred the organization from funding Planned Parenthood, a move that had thrust the breast cancer foundation into a national controversy.

Komen apologized “to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.”

The foundation said that Planned Parenthood would now be eligible to apply for grants. It did not, however, address other reasons Komen has cited for why it might choose not to approve such grants.

“Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation,” a Friday statement said. “We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.”

“We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities,” the statement continues.

What they are saying that they aren't cancelling current grants, which they never said they would, and Planned Parenthood can apply for grants next year, but there are "no promises".

There may be grants to Planned Parenthood next year, but they will eventually cut them off, assuming that these folks aren't (hopefully) a dead corporatist charity walking.

Btw, in the, "It sucks when an angel pees down the barrel of your rifle," department, a documentary, called "Pink Ribbons, Inc.," is hitting theaters in Canada, and film festivals in the United States as I am typing this.

The film alleges that Komen is "Pink Washing" companies that are suspected of exposing the population to carcinogens that might cause breast cancer, among other things.

My Daughter Will Be Safe Forever

And Mitch Daniels Signs the Union Busting Bill Into Law

There is a lesson to be learned here.

The first priority^* of Democrats is to implement decent policy, and the first priority^* of Republicans is to change the rules in order to strengthen their allies and diminish their opponents.

In the long run, the latter strategy gives better results.

Case in point, the Republicans in Indiana passing union busting right to work legislation:

Indiana became the 23rd state to pass anti-union "right-to-work" legislation on Wednesday and the first in the nation's manufacturing heartland, dealing a blow to organized labor by allowing workers to opt out of paying union dues.

Indiana's Republican governor Mitch Daniels signed the legislation into law immediately after it was given final approval in the state Senate, making Indiana the first state to adopt such a measure since Oklahoma did so a decade ago.

This is why Obama should have attempted to re-institute the fairness doctrine, and pass the Employee Free Choice Act (card check) when he had overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate in 2009.

If Democrats ever again have such a large majority, how about repealing Taft-Hartley, and adding the right to organize the workplace to the Civil Rights Act?

^*OK, truth be told, the truth be told, the real first priority of all politicians is reelection.

Now They Tell Us

One of the architects of the European austerity program is now saying that austerity is making things worse:

A leading architect of the austerity programme in Greece – one of the harshest ever seen in Europe – has admitted that its emphasis on fiscal consolidation has failed to work, and said economic recovery will only come if the crisis-hit country changes tack and focuses on structural reforms.

Poul Thomsen, a senior International Monetary Fund official who oversees the organisation's mission in Greece, also insists that, contrary to popular belief, Athens has achieved a lot since the eruption of the debt crisis in December 2009.

"We will have to slow down a little as far as fiscal adjustment is concerned and move faster – much faster – with the reforms needed to modernise the economy," he told the Greek daily Kathimerini, adding that the policy shift would be "reflected" in the conditions foreign lenders attached to a new rescue programme for Athens.

Hoocoodanode?

Taking a pay cut makes it harder to pay off your debts.

It's Jobless Thursday

Initial claims fell to 367000, with the 4-week moving average, and continuing claims falling as as well, though emergency/extended claims rose.

Good news, and we'll get the non-farm payroll numbers tomorrow.

Boycott the Susan G Komen Foundation

You've probably heard how the Komen foundation created trumped up reasons to defund Planned Parenthood.

What we also know now is that their senior management is a vipers den of 'Phant political operatives, (their founder and CEO is a former Bush appointee) and failed right wing candidates, and (only a Wiki away) that they have aggressively harassed other non-profits in an attempt to prevent them from using the term "for the cure".

What you may not know is that their top top public-health official resigned in protest over the decision, and that the board overruled the professional staff who recommended against defunding PP.

And finally, we have a report that they aggressively lobbied against the Breast & Cervical Cancer Prevention & Treatment Act because they wanted the money to go through them, they lobbied against single payer in Obamacare, and fought to neuter the Breast Cancer & Environmental Research Act, and they appear to be attempting to use this as a wedge in order to create a Republican political opening.

That, and the fact that Republicans want women to be punished for having sex, so they oppose birth control and things like the HPV vaccine.

I'm with what Atrios says:

It's OK To Say You Suck

Just echoing what tbogg had already said, but what Komen has done is made it ok to point out that they kind of suck. And they kind of sucked before all this, but not many people ever want to rain on the pink paradise parade. They managed to associate their brand with a cause, and to criticize the brand was to criticize the cause.

Now we all get to say: you suck hard.

I don't think that they realize is just how much scrutiny they will be getting as an organization now that they will no longer be seen as synonymous with the fight against breast cancer.

[on edit]
Well, now that their original explanation, that they cut off any organization under an official (trumped up in the case of PP) investigation, because they are continuing to give to Penn State, home of the pedophile friendly athletic department, which is under a legitimate investigation, they have a new alibi.

I Hate Technology

I got a replacement phone from Sprint.

It doesn't work.

Crap.

Frantically trying to find a fix on "the Google," but no wifi, blue tooth, and it reboots when making calls.