Important Nomenclature Announcement

For future discussions of Russian troll farms and the like, I will use the phrase, "Russian democracy promotion efforts."

This is NOT because I approve of these efforts, but rather to show my opprobrium US "Democracy promotion" activities.

I approve of neither the Russians encouraging the "alt-right", nor of US support for neo-Nazi skinheads in the Ukraine or of Jihadis in Syria.

A Fist Fight, and then Dismemberment? Seriously?

I am referring, of course, to the (now confirmed) death of Jamal Khashoggi.

Gee, a fistfight with Khashoggi single-handedly taking on a 15 person hit squad, which included a pathologists who brought a bone saw, "Just in case."

Sound fishy to you?  It does to me too, but Donald Trump is just fine with this story:

After two weeks of shifting stories, Saudi Arabia said Saturday that its agents strangled Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist, after a fistfight inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and that 18 men had been arrested in the case.

Those arrested included 15 men who were sent to confront Mr. Khashoggi, plus one driver and two consular staff, a Saudi official said.

State media reported that Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince, had been dismissed, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence, and other high-ranking intelligence officials. The Saudi official said General Asiri had organized the operation and that Mr. Qahtani had known about it and contributed to the aggressive environment that allowed it to escalate into violence.

President Trump on Friday night said that Saudi Arabia’s acknowledgment of the death and its announcement of arrests were “good first steps” but said he would consider “some form of sanction” in retaliation.

Here is their narrative:

But the order to return Mr. Khashoggi to the kingdom was misinterpreted as it made its way down the chain of command, the official said, and a confrontation ensued as soon as Mr. Khashoggi saw the men. He tried to flee, the men stopped him, punches were thrown, Mr. Khashoggi screamed and one of the men put him in a chokehold, strangling him to death, the official said.

“The interaction in the room didn’t last very long at all,” the official said.

The team then gave the body to a local collaborator to dispose of, meaning that they do not know where it ended up, and returned to the kingdom, the official said.

Note some facts:

• Killing someone in a choke hold typically takes about 5 minutes.
• They smuggled the body out of the consulate in pieces.
• "The Turks had said the body had been disassembled with a bone saw by an autopsy specialist flown in specifically for that purpose and probably carried out of the consulate in large suitcases."

The brazenness of this lie would have Samuel L. Jackson going full Jules Winnfield.

Teaching an Old Plane New Tricks

Two versions of the MiG-31, one carrying the Kinzhal missile, top, and the other carrying what might be an updated version of the Kontact for anti-satellite use. Credit: Piotr Butowski

Specifically, the MiG 31 Foxhound, which looks to be leveraging its high speed and high altitude performance to perform as a satellite launcher and ASAT platform:

The Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor has found a second life—in fact, more than one. Not only has the aircraft known to NATO as the Foxhound been extensively upgraded, but it has also taken on new tasks: as an air-launcher for the Kinzhal ground-strike system and as an aerospace missile system to deliver small satellites to orbit or fight enemy satellites.

In September, at the Russian aviation industry’s test center in Zhukovsky near Moscow, an experimental MiG-31, No. 81, performed its first flight with an extremely large unknown missile suspended on the centerline pylon. The first high-speed taxiing of this coupling was done several months earlier.

The current program is supposed to be a follow-on of the 30P6 Kontakt (Contact) satellite intercept program of 1984-95, under which the MiG-31D aircraft using the Fakel 79M6 missile was made, and the improved MiG-31DM with the Fakel 95M6 missile was being designed.

………

The advantage of an airborne anti-satellite system over a ground-based one is longer range: The MiG-31 can deliver a missile over a distance of up to 1,000 km (621 mi.) before launch. The characteristics of the current system remain unknown. But they are probably similar to those of the previous Kontakt system, which was intended to destroy nonmaneuvering or maneuvering satellites in low orbits.

The 79M6 missile, weighing 4,550 kg (10,000 lb.), was launched by a MiG-31D flying at a speed of Mach 2.55 and altitude of 22 km. Its target was at an altitude of 120-600 km, depending on the distance. The missile flight time was 100-380 sec. The satellite was to be destroyed by a direct hit or detonation of a small, 20-kg explosive charge. The target was designated for the MiG-31 by the ground-based 45Zh6 Krona (Crown) system, consisting of a large decameter and centimeter-wavelength electronic-scanning radar and optical-laser locator and rangefinder. The Krona system was overhauled and upgraded in 2009-10.

………

The Russians have offered several systems for launching commercial satellites using the MiG-31 platform, but none of the designs has materialized. In 2001, Russia Aircraft Corp. (RSK) MiG MiG unveiled the MiG-31S project, a platform for two vehicles developed by the Astra Research Centre at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI): the Micron rocket and Aerospace Rally System (ARS) rocket plane. The Micron was to be able to launch a 200-kg satellite to an altitude of 100 km, or 50 kg to 300 km. The ARS was to be a three-seat vehicle for suborbital flights (to an altitude of 130 km), intended for astronaut training in weightlessness conditions (up to 3 min.), research of the upper layers of the atmosphere and tourist and advertising flights.

This is contrasted with the US aviation forces, where the closest they come to reusing old airframes is converting them to target drones.

South Carolina: Slavery, Sedition, and Now State Sanctioned Anti-Semitism

Specifically, South Carolina is outsourcing foster parenting to a religious non-profit that refuses to deal with non-Christians:

The Trump administration is considering whether to grant a South Carolina request that would effectively allow faith-based foster care agencies in the state the ability to deny Jewish parents from fostering children in its network. The argument, from the state and from the agency, is that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act should not force a Protestant group to work with Jewish people if it violates a tenet of their faith.

The case being made by South Carolina is an extension of the debate around RFRA, which is more commonly associated with discrimination against LGBTQ people, but by no means applies exclusively to that group.

If granted, the exemption would allow Miracle Hill Ministries, a Protestant social service agency working in the state’s northwest region, to continue receiving federal dollars while “recruiting Christian foster families,” which it has been doing since 1988, according to its website. That discrimination would apply not just to Jewish parents, but also to parents who are Muslim, Catholic, Unitarian, atheist, agnostic or other some other non-Protestant Christian denomination.

I've really had enough with how the local, state, and federal government coddle these Talibaptist whack-a-doodles.

Linkage

• The biggest policy mistake of the last decade (The Week) Austerity sucks.
• Tyndall Air Force Base a ‘Complete Loss’ Amid Questions About Stealth Fighters (The New York Times) Looks like they are all repairable, but history shows that it might be years, and it will be tens of millions of dollars.
• Obama’s Resistance to Investigating the Bush Administration Allowed Brett Kavanaugh to Skate Onto the Supreme Court (The Intercept) No action on his support for torture and illegal surveillance
• How Real Estate Segregated America (Dissent Magazine) As if there wasbn't ebough reason to reexamine our subsidies to real estate developers.
• Setting The Record Straight On Why Fighter Jets Can't All Simply Fly Away To Escape Storms (The Drive) Because a lot of these planes are waiting to be fixed and cannot fly, and the F-22 has the worst availability of any fighter in the American arsenal.
• You've been grating cheese all wrong! (Daily Mail Online) Put the box grater on its side.

I got handed an Ayn Rand sandwich straight from a can it tasted so bland I asked a lass to pass me a glass of Engel’s Conditions of the Working Class:

Heritage Foundation Cult Indoctrination Camp

The Heritage Foundation has set up training sessions for law clerks that sounds a lot like cult indoctrination:

The closed-door “training academy” was aimed at a select group: recent law school graduates who had secured prestigious clerkships with federal judges. It was organized by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group that has played a leading role in moving the courts to the right, and it had some unusual requirements.

“Generous donors,” the application materials said, were making “a significant financial investment in each and every attendee.” In exchange, the future law clerks would be required to promise to keep the program’s teaching materials secret and pledge not to use what they learned “for any purpose contrary to the mission or interest of the Heritage Foundation.”

………

“Law clerks are not supposed to be part of a cohort of secretly financed and trained partisans of an organization that describes itself on its own web page as ‘the bastion of the American conservative movement,’” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford. “The idea that clerks will be trained to elevate the Heritage Foundation’s views, or the views of judges handpicked by the foundation, perverts the very idea of a clerkship.”

On Thursday afternoon, a few hours after The New York Times published an online article about the training, Heritage announced that it was suspending the program.

………

According to the application materials, Heritage’s unnamed donors were to pay for travel expenses to Washington, hotel rooms and meals during the three-day program. The curriculum would cover, the materials said, “originalism, textualism, habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights and other substantive legal and practical subject matter.” Originalism and textualism are modes of interpreting the Constitution and statutes that are generally but not exclusively associated with conservatives.

The application called for several short essays. One prompt said, “Please describe your understanding of originalism.” Another said, “Please identify the United States Supreme Court justice (past or present) whose jurisprudential philosophy and approach to judging you agree with most, and explain why.”

This is as disturbing as it is completely expected.

Deep Thought

I hypothesize that aliens not contacted us because they have intercepted the broadcast of our televangelists, and they are trying to figure out whether or not we are an elaborate hoax.

Seriously, if your only exposure to the planet earth is our television, particularly Sunday morning programming, whether it be Pat Robertson or Chuck Todd, you would have to conclude that this is all some intricate prank, and a rather cruel one at that.

Time to Break Up Facebook, Part MMMMCLXIV

Facebook and Google's hegemony in the online ad world has reached its inevitable result, it has been revealed that Facebook has been aggressively defrauding advertisers over the effectiveness of its video ads.

If I had a chance to say anything to Mark Zuckerberg about this, it would be, "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.

According to a newly public filing in an ongoing lawsuit, a group of advertisers now says that Facebook has been willfully withholding information about how much time its users spend watching paid ads—if more people spend more time watching ads, then those ads can command higher rates.

The case of LLE One LLC et al. v. Facebook, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was filed two years ago and is currently pending in federal court in Oakland, California. In it, the plaintiffs say that, as part of the discovery from their lawsuit, they have learned that Facebook's "action rises to the level of fraud and may warrant punitive damages."

As the plaintiffs' attorneys continued:

In addition to Facebook knowing about the problem far longer than previously acknowledged, Facebook's records also show that the impact of its miscalculation was much more severe than reported. The average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60-80 percent; they were inflated by some 150-900 percent.

There are no good metrics because there are no independent metrics, and there won't be, because Facebook so dominates the space that they can, and do, refuse to provide their underlying numbers to independent verification.

The market no longer serves as a corrective, and the alternatives are either aggressive and pervasive regulation, or broken up to its component parts, or (my choice) both.

Tweet of the day

Cat on Brexit pic.twitter.com/j210eHBeq2

— cetier1 (@cetier1) October 17, 2018

You may disagree, but if there is one thing that I know, it is that it never pays to argue with a cat.

The Term Here is "Corrupt"

In July, I commented on a how a real Democrat won the primary for Montgomery County executive, and the party establishment there saw this as a threat to their bribes support from real estate developers, so they stood up a Democrat who changed her party registration for an independent bid to sabotage his run.

Well, now Nancy Floreen is trying to claim that she was really a Democrat the whole time.

She was never a Democrat. She was a tool of the developers who found pretending to be a Democrat was useful.

It's time for the Democratic Party of Montgomery County to tell her to pound sand, and say, "No backsies."

Montgomery County executive candidate Nancy Floreen says she will return to the Democratic fold after the Nov. 6 election — regardless of whether her independent bid for the liberal county’s top post is successful.

Floreen, a 16-year county council member and two-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention, left the party in July to make a surprise run for county executive, gathering enough petition signatures to appear on the November ballot.

The move was prompted by her opposition to the Democratic nominee, 12-year council member Marc Elrich. It left some Democrats feeling betrayed.

At a candidate debate Wednesday morning hosted by the Greater Bethesda U.S. Chamber of Commerce and moderated by Bethesda Magazine editor and publisher Steve Hull, Floreen said she would re-register as a Democrat if she’s elected.

Floreen later said she plans to return to the party regardless of the outcome of the election, “because I am a Democrat at heart.”

“I only changed parties in order to run the petition drive,” she said. “I’ve been very upfront about that.”

You are a contemptible piece of excrement, you've been very upfront about that.

BTW, whenever you hear a corporate Democrat call for unity, know that it's only a one way street.

Least Surprising News of the Day

It turns out that government pension plans are flushing their money down the toilet by playing high fees to Wall Street.

Of course, this observation misses the primary purpose of state pensions wasting money on hedge funds and private equity, it creates opportunities for bribes and corruption:

Recent research from North Carolina State University finds that state pension plans would be better off avoiding external asset managers when investing their plans’ assets – and would carry substantially smaller unfunded liabilities if they had simply invested in a conventional index fund.

“We set out to answer three questions about state pension plans, their external management fees and the return on their investments,” says Jeff Diebold, an assistant professor of public administration at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. “First, what influences the amount of money that state pension plans pay in external management fees? Second, do higher fees lead to better performance? And third, how would those pension plans have fared if they had taken the money spent on external management fees and invested it in a conventional portfolio, with 60 percent invested in the S&P 500 and 40 percent invested in an intermediate bond fund?”

To address these questions, the researchers turned to the Public Plans Database, where they were able to find data from 49 state-administered pension plans – spanning 30 states – regarding how much those plans spend each year on external management fees. Specifically, the researchers evaluated data on the performance of those 49 plans, spanning the years 2001-2014.

………

“Unfortunately, higher fees did not lead to better performance,” Diebold says. “There was no positive relationship between what plans paid in fees and how they performed. You don’t always get what you pay for.”

For the third research question, the researchers only evaluated 42 of the 49 plans, because the evaluation required at least 10 years of data. But for those 42 plans, the researchers found that the more a plan spent on external fees, the more it lost – relative to what it would have made investing in the conventional portfolio of the S&P 500 and intermediate bond funds.

For example, the plan that spent the fourth least amount of money on external fees would have cut 5 percent of its unfunded liability if it had invested in the conventional portfolio. The median plan would have eliminated 14 percent of its unfunded liability. And the plan with the fourth highest fees would actually have recouped 44 percent of its unfunded liability – approximately $4.2 billion – if it had invested its external fees in the S&P 500 and intermediate bond funds. In this context, an unfunded liability is the amount of the pension plan’s obligation for which the plan has not set aside money.

There is a good reason reason for me to refer to big finance as parasites, because they sure as hell aren't symbiots.

Please, Think of the Lobbyists!

It appears that murdering their columnists is a bridge too far for the Washington Post editorial board:

The Washington Post told a prominent Republican lobbyist he’d lose his gig as a contributing opinion writer unless he stopped lobbying for Saudi Arabia, a spokesperson for the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

The ultimatum came after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. permanent resident who was a columnist for the Post and wrote critically of the Saudi government. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month, and allegations that he was killed by Saudi authorities have strained the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.

The lobbyist, Ed Rogers, the chairman of the BGR Group, writes for the newspaper’s PostPartisan blog.

Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Post, confirmed that the newspaper told Rogers he’d no longer be able to contribute if he continued to lobby for Saudi Arabia. She declined to comment further.

Lobbying for the slaughter and starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, that's fine, but murder one Post columnist, that is simply beyond the pals.

As Ian Walsh so pithily notes:

It’s not that Kashoggi’s death isn’t a crime, but that any number of nameless people can be killed, raped, and tortured, and elites don’t care. It’s only when it’s one of them that they care.

Normal people are nothing–less than nothing–to our elites.

But they take care of their own.

But still, we're going to help the House of Saud starve, bomb, and burn civilians throughout Yemen.

This is a relationship that is not in the long term interest of the United States.

Fairness and Decency — 1: Betsy DeVos — 0

It appears that the Federal Courts do not take kindly to the conceit that it's OK to defraud students because it's rich people doing it:

Obama-era rules that lay out how students defrauded by colleges can erase their debt took effect Tuesday, after the Trump administration and an association of for-profit colleges lost their bids to delay them.

That means that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is now responsible for implementing a rule that she said makes it too easy for students to cancel their student loans and that she has fought to kill.

Consumer advocates back the regulations, saying the government must take a more aggressive stance against colleges that they say routinely take advantage of veterans and vulnerable students.

But conservatives worry about the hit to taxpayers if a large number of student borrowers are allowed to avoid paying off their loans. In addition, colleges, particularly for-profit ventures, opposed the Obama administration rules as harmful to their programs and students seeking loans to attend them.

The federal government has a virtual monopoly over the $100 billion-a-year student loan market, so the rules about how it will handle fraud and other issues are important.

In June 2017, DeVos put the regulations on hold and said she would replace them with her own. Two former students of a for-profit college, as well as 19 states and the District, sued to stop the delay.

Last month, a U.S. district court said that the DeVos move was “arbitrary and capricious” and that the rules should take effect. It gave the agency until last Friday to try to issue a new delay, but the Education Department said it would not try again.

“The secretary respects the role of the court and will defer to its judgment in whether parts of the 2016 rule will go into effect,” Elizabeth Hill, a DeVos spokeswoman, said Friday.

In a morass of incompetence, corruption, and soulless evil at the Trump Administration, Betsy DeVoss is truly in a class of her own.

It's good to see her lose.

Merkel’s Bavarian ally suffers historic loss in state vote

Merkel's allies in the German state of Alabama Bavaria just got their heads handed to them in recent state elections:

Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, the sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, suffered a historic loss in Germany’s wealthiest state, losing the majority it has held for much of the postwar period. Despite the ninth consecutive year of economic growth and record employment levels, the party lost votes to two rising parties on the left and right, the Greens and the Alternative for Germany.

The CSU, led by controversial Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, won 37.2 percent of the votes, according to preliminary results. It was the party’s lowest rating since 1950. The CSU was expected to win 34 percent in the latest opinion polls surveys earlier this month. In 2013, it won 47.7 percent of the votes, but still won the majority in the state’s legislature due to a complicated system of awarding seats.

You will notice that the CSU dropped by about 10%, or about ¼ of its previous vote totals, and the SPD lost about 12%, over ½ of its votes.

Establishment parties (the CSU/CDU) is taking it on the chin

Establishment parties that stand for nothing (the SPD), like what now passes for the "Center-Left" in Europe, are being destroyed.

I'm just hoping that the Greens and the Left Party, and not the neo-Fascist AFD end up on top.

Don't Say, "F%$# Trump and his Supporters"

Say, "Don't F%$# Trump Supporters."

Not my idea, nor is it Ms. Filipovic's idea. It's Aristophanes' idea.

Divorce your Republican husbands.

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) September 28, 2018

H/t Naked Capitalism

From Bloomberg?

An unsigned editorial from Bloomberg News, meaning that it represents the view of the editorial board, is calling down for a crack-down on white collar crime:

This has been a banner season for punishing white-collar crime. Guilty pleas by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former longtime personal lawyer, and criminal convictions and additional guilty pleas in the case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort have drawn enormous attention.

Cohen admitted to bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violations. Manafort, after having been convicted of tax fraud, bank fraud and failure to file a report documenting foreign bank and financial accounts, pleaded guilty to additional federal charges. It’s fair to assume, however, that neither man’s crimes would have come to light without the scrutiny drawn by their association with Trump. How many ordinary white-collar criminals expect to be found out?



The U.S. has never done an especially convincing job of policing and prosecuting white-collar crime. Complaints about the paucity of criminal prosecutions go back decades. The recent story of tax schemes engineered over many years by Trump’s family is an extreme instance of troubling and long-established pattern, showing little fear of legal consequences.

Since the financial crisis, the lack of criminal prosecutions has been widely deplored. Yet white-collar prosecutions are still on course to fall to their lowest level in at least 20 years, down more than 40 percent from 1998.

………

All of which is true, no doubt — but justice still demands that serious crimes earn serious punishments.

That would require more resources. According to Don Fort, the chief of IRS criminal enforcement, the agency has the same number of special agents — about 2,200 — as it did 50 years ago, despite huge increases in the number of tax filers and the complexity of financial crimes. The Department of Justice would have to attract and retain ambitious, competent prosecutors. Government agencies would need better ways, including financial incentives, to entice whistle-blowers.

………

This needs to change. White-collar crime is a menace, and the impunity of its ordinary perpetrators is intolerable. 

I, and a lot of other people, have been saying this for years, but it's now beaten its way into the heads of the Bloomberg editors, which is rather a surprise.

A Commentary on Stepan Bandera

Today in Munich, I corrected the grave of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, to comply with German law, which forbids shrines to Nazis.

Corrected.#Bandera #StepanBandera #Nazism pic.twitter.com/M6vH14NPEQ

— Graham W Phillips (@GrahamWP_UK) October 15, 2018

I am not going to discuss the legality of pulling down flags from the grave of Stepan Bandera, or the wisdom of such an action, but his sign was the truth.

Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer, and he was directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands Poles and Jews.

That he is considered a national icon in the new Ukraine is a blot on history and decency.

Oh, Snap!

Elizabeth Warren just released DNA results showing some American Indian ancestry, and promptly told Trump to pay up on his offer of a $1 million donation to a charity of her choice.

The analysis fits with her family story that it was her great grandmother, and she just made Donald Trump her bitch.

2 snaps up.

Linkage

• Analyzing the Effects of CFPB Oversight (Liberty Street Economics) Short version, no change in the numbers of mortgages issued, but those issued are slightly less risky.
• Medicaid Expansion and the Opioid Epidemic (The Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI)) More addiction and more deaths for states that refused to sign onto Medicaid expansion.
• Effects Of Minimum Wages On Population Health (Health Affairs) Not raising the minimum wage doesn't just make most poorer, it kills them.
• Stephen Miller's Third-Grade Teacher: He Was a “Loner" and Ate Glue (Hollywood Reporter) The racist Trump aide as a young man.
• Tech suffers from lack of humanities, says Mozilla head (The Guardian) Between technology and business degrees, we are being run by profoundly uneducated and unthinking people who nonetheless have degrees.  Short sighted business oriented education in a nutshell.

I really do hope that the kids are alright:

Typical

Rule 1 of the FCC these days is that Ajit Pai lies.

Rule 2 is see rule 1:

As the FCC gears up for legal battle against the numerous net neutrality lawsuits headed its way, its latest filing with the courts acts as a sort of a greatest hits of the agency's biggest fallacies to date. 23 State AGs have sued the FCC, stating last fall's repeal of net neutrality ignored the law, ignored standard FCC procedure, and ignored the public interest. The FCC’s new filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals (pdf) for the District of Columbia Circuit declares these concerns "meritless," despite indisputible evidence that the FCC effectively based its repeal largely on lobbyist nonsense.

At the heart of the matter sits the Administrative Procedures Act, which mandates that a regulator can't just make a severe, abrupt reversal in policy without documenting solid reasons why. The FCC has some legal leeway to change its mind on policy, but as we've long noted, the FCC's justification for its repeal (that net neutrality was somehow stifling broadband investment) has been proven false. Not just by SEC filings and earnings reports, but by the CEOs themselves, publicly, to investors (who by law, unlike you, they can't lie to).

Unsurprisingly then, the FCC's brief leans heavily on the Supreme Court's 2005 Brand X ruling, which states the FCC has some leeway to shift policy course at its discretion if it has the data to back it up. Also unsurprisingly, the brief goes well out of its way to pretend that ignoring the experts, ignoring the public, and demolishing consumer protections purely at Comcast, Verizon and AT&T's behest is reasonable, adult policy making. And again, the false claim that net neutrality harmed "innovation, investment and broadband deployment" takes center stage:

………

Of course the press has noted time and time and time again how these claims of a net neutrality-induced investment apocalypse are absolutely false. Ajit Pai has similarly gone before Congress repeatedly and falsely made the claim anyway, with absolutely zero repercussions thus far. The FCC's claims that its rules embrace transparency are equally hollow, given the agency's replacement transparency provisions are entirely voluntary. And the idea that "market forces" can fix the broken and uncompetitive broadband industry should be laughable to anybody that's experienced Comcast customer service.

………

Meanwhile, there should also be some interesting sideshows during this looming legal battle, including discussions of why the FCC made up a DDOS attack, and ignored comment fraud and identity theft during the public comment process, both part of a pretty obvious effort on the FCC's part to downplay the massive, bipartisan public opposition to what the FCC was doing. This is a story about corruption, misinformation, and ignoring the public welfare to the benefit of widely despised telecom monopolies. The FCC, in contrast, desperately wants the courts to believe this was all just adult policy making as usual.

People like Ajit Pai are deeply and profoundly corrupt, and they keep coming back because there is no meaningful investigation of their corrupt acts.

The next Democratic administration should spend some time looking back and throwing malefactors in jail.

This Does Not Sound Like Progress

Tennessee Ernie Ford says it all

Elon Musk's latest "disruptive innovation" is to return to the days of the company town and the company store, where if you lose your job, they kick you out of your house:

Tesla's Nevada-based Gigafactory could be undergoing a massive expansion which has the potential to include on-site accommodations for employees, reports the Las Vegas Review Journal. In a recent conversation with Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval at the state's first annual technology summit, CEO Elon Musk discussed the automaker's plans to hire more than 20,000 new workers for its manufacturing facility.

Currently, the manufacturing facility, coined Gigafactory 1, employs around 7,000 workers and produces the bulk of battery cells and packs found in Tesla vehicles. Despite producing an annual energy storage capacity output of 20 GWh, Tesla has acknowledged the need for batteries is virtually insatiable in order to meet the increasing demand for electric vehicles.

………

“The biggest constraint on growth here is housing and infrastructure." said Musk according to the Review, "We’re looking at creating a housing compound on site at the Gigafactory, using kind of high-quality mobile homes."

So, you live in a company town, and if you try to unionize, you get tossed out, and end up homeless, and your kid is kicked out of the company school, etc., just like in the 1890s.

Why does the Silicon Valley model of "Innovation" sound so much like the worst excess of the Gilded Age?

Useless

Chuck Schumer and his merry band of cowards just con firmec 15 Federalist Society Judge pukes because they did not want to wait to hit the campaign trail:

Senate Democrats accepted an offer Thursday from Senate Republicans to confirm 15 lifetime federal judges in exchange for the ability to go into recess through the midterms, allowing endangered Democrats to campaign.

The calculation by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus was simple: That Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would be able to confirm roughly 15 judges if he kept the Senate in session for the next few weeks anyway. So Democrats OK’d an offer to confirm three Circuit Court judges and 12 Circuit Court judges as the price to pay to go home for election season.

Under Senate rules, even if Democrats fought the nominees tooth and nail and forced the Senate to burn 30 hours of debate between each one, McConnell would have gotten them all confirmed by Nov. 1. Democrats could have conceivably left a skeleton crew of senators in Washington to force the GOP to take roll call votes on the judges over the next few weeks, although that tactic is not typically employed by the minority.

Some liberal activists are urging Democrats to show more fight after Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court; Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos even said that Democrats “need a new Senate leader” after the agreement was struck. But senators had to weigh that dynamic along with the approaching midterms and the brutal Senate map. And with a half-dozen Democrats facing serious challenges in Senate races, it made more sense to make what Democrats said was a reasonable deal with McConnell so that they could make a serious run at saving endangered senators.

No, it was not a reasonable deal.

Once again, the Democrats have sacrificed their integrity at the altar of careerism and incumbent protection.

More importantly, they have made it even clearer that voting for them will have no meaningful impact.

The lesser of two evils is still evil.

This is Seriously Cyberpunk, in a Seriously Dystopian Way

Next year, Amy Winehouse will conduct a worldwide tour, despite having died more than 7 years ago.

Dead celebrities touring as computer generated simulacrums really does sound like something straight out of William Gibson's darkest visions:

A hologram of Amy Winehouse is set for a worldwide tour in 2019. A projection of the late singer will “perform” digitally remastered arrangements of her songs, backed by a live band, singers and what the production company Base Hologram calls “theatrical stagecraft”.

Winehouse’s father, Mitch, described the endeavour as a dream. “To see her perform again is something special that really can’t be put into words,” he said. “Our daughter’s music touched the lives of millions of people and it means everything that her legacy will continue in this innovative and groundbreaking way.”

Mitch Winehouse said the tour will raise money and awareness for the Amy Winehouse Foundation. The charity educates young people about drug and alcohol misuse, provides support for those at risk and supports the development of disadvantaged young people through music.

The show is expected to last 75 to 110 minutes.

This is profoundly creepy.

Tweets that Make You Go Hmmmmm

Very strange... Iran fired missiles at ISIS in Syria. Killed several ISIS leaders - almost killed Al-Baghdadi. US complained (!!) saying Iran was reckless, cuz the strike was within 3 miles of US troops.

But why was ISIS leader Baghdadi feeling so safe so close to US troops????

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) October 5, 2018

You know, the fact that we are effectively allied with ISIS might be a small indicator that our policies in Syria are not in the national interest.

H/t naked capitalism.

They Live

I was reading an article on the Financial Times, and I saw this picture. The thing was, my laptop was at the wrong angle, so it looked more like this. (It's happened to all of us)



Does it evoke anything?



To quote "They Live", "We could be pets, we could be food, but all we really are is livestock."

So, 8 Credit Unions, and No Commercial Banks

The 8th credit union of the year, the Radio, Television and Communication Federal Credit Union ​of Staten Island, ​NY was closed down this week.

I think that I may have to rename "Bank Failure Friday" to "Credit Union Friday." Tthe "Friday" bit might be a bit much too)

I do not know why there have been so many more credit unions failures this year.

There are about the same number of banks and credit unions, but only credit unions are closing.

I'm wondering if there some regulatory forbearance that is causing this, and if so, how will this manifest itself when the next crash hits.

Here is the Full NCUA list.

These Folks Need to be in Jail

Not just Rahm Emanuel, but the aldermen that he bribed as well:

Four seconds. That’s all the time it took for item number Or2015-204 to pass the Chicago City Council on April 15, 2015. It was a proposed settlement to pay Tina Hunter, the mother of Laquan McDonald, a $5 million legal settlement after Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him 16 times on October 20, 2014.

Eight days before on April 7, 2015, Mayor Rahm Emanuel crushed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia in the city’s first ever mayoral run-off. He needed another big victory, and he got it.

But the real prize was the silence of a group of Black aldermen who along with 39 aldermen, approved the $5 million settlement more than a month after they received nearly $300,000 in campaign donations from Emanuel as he battled Garcia during the runoff. The Crusader has learned that these aldermen kept the money and stayed silent about it even after the video of McDonald’s brutal killing emerged, sowing distrust in the mayor, the police department and the Cook County States’ Attorney office. Now, the spotlight turns on a group of aldermen who have their own code of silence.

For the next several years after the $5 million settlement, they would give the mayor his money’s worth. They would stand by Emanuel as he weathered a storm that he tried to ride out until he announced on September 4, 2018 that he would not seek re-election.

Until the very end of Emanuel’s final term in office, these aldermen would say nothing negative about him or about questionable hefty donations that have made the Black aldermen the “Silent 8” at City Hall.

According to a Crusader investigation, there are actually nine aldermen who took money from the mayor before the $5 million settlement, but eight of them are Black. They are Anthony Beale (9th Ward), Carrie Austin (34th Ward), Michelle Harris (8th Ward), Walter Burnett, Jr. (27th Ward), Emma Mitts (37th Ward), Willie Cochran (20th Ward), Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), and Howard Brookins, Jr. (21st Ward). The only non-Black alderman who took campaign donations from the mayor is Patrick O’Connor (40th Ward), campaign records show.

For the last three years, Chicago’s Black aldermen have struggled along with Emanuel to regain the trust of their constituents. But unlike Emanuel, many are seeking re-election. In order to win another term, they must answer to an angry Black electorate that is having a hard time believing that they knew nothing about a case that happened right under their noses as it went through City Hall.

Rahm Emanuel might be the most contemptible "Democrat" in politics today, and unlike William Magear "Boss" Tweed, who created Central Park, funded social welfare programs, and he didn't actually do anything for the ordinary people of in his city.

What About Her Husband?

Sara Netanyahu, Benyamin's wife, is going on trial for fraudulently getting meal reimbursements:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, appeared in court on Sunday for the first hearing in the fraud trial against her, in which she is alleged to have misused state funds in ordering catered meals.

According to the indictment, Sara Netanyahu, along with a government employee, fraudulently obtained from the state more than $100,000 for hundreds of meals supplied by restaurants, bypassing regulations that prohibit the practice if a cook is employed at home.

………

She was charged in June with fraud and breach of trust and of aggravated fraudulent receipt of goods. If convicted, Sara Netanyahu could face up to five years in prison.

She had a state supplied cook but was still charging hundreds of thousands of dollars to restaurants, and Bibi had a budget for ice cream that boggles the mind, at least until it became public.

My guess is that the food was either resold, or never delivered, and kickbacks were received instead.

I am kind of hoping that Sara flips on her husband, but I'm not holding my breath.

Bankers’ Liability and Risk Taking

Some economists did a study regarding changes in liability and risk taking by bankers, and looking at a historical changes in regulations to determined that when bankers are not allowed to hide behind corporate bankruptcy, they are less likely to take stupid risks:

In order to protect the financial system from excessive risk-taking, many argue that bank managers need to have more personal liability. However, whether the liability of bank managers has a significant effect on risk-taking is an open question. This column studies a unique historical episode in which similar bankers, operating in similar institutional and economic environments, faced different degrees of personal liability, depending on the timing of their marriages, and finds that limited liability induced bankers to take more risks.

………

This raises the question of whether bank managers’ incentives are set appropriately to protect the financial system from excessive risk-taking. Managers can cash in on a bank’s profits when things are going well, but they shoulder minimal losses if the bank fails (Bhagat and Bolton 2014). This limited liability may encourage them to take undue risks with depositors’ money. There is a growing chorus of commentators arguing that the financial system will only be safe if bank managers have more personal liability (e.g. Kay 2015, Cohan 2017).

Whether the liability of bank managers has a significant effect on risk-taking is an open question. Bank managers care about their reputations and future careers; so, they might try to avoid the failure of their bank at any cost. Other stakeholders, such as uninsured creditors, may be able to force banks to reduce risk-taking (Calomiris and Kahn 1991, Diamond and Rajan 2000). To make their case, proponents of increased personal liability often point to what happened to investment banks over the last few decades. Before the 1980s, investment banks operated as partnerships with unlimited liability. During the 1980s, they went public. Anecdotally, this seems to have gone hand in hand with increased risk taking. However, this coincided with a period of general financial deregulation. So, how do we know what caused investment banks to take more risk?

In recent work (Koudijs et al. 2018), we study a unique historical episode in which similar bankers, operating in similar institutional and economic environments, faced different degrees of personal liability, depending on the timing of their marriages. Our findings suggest that limited liability really matters for bank risk-taking.

What they looked at was the effects of the passage of Married Women’s Property Acts (MWPAs) in the early 1800s on banker risk taking.

MPWAs changed property law to allow women to hold their own assets, and when women held their own assets, a bank president wife's assets were not subject to liability from a bank failure, while his assets were subject to recovery from account holders.

Because these were state laws, and the laws were passed at different times, we can compare and contrast the behaviors:

We collect data on the activities of New England national banks during the 1860s and 1870s, as well as information about bank presidents’ marriage histories. This allows us to classify bankers as ‘protected’ (i.e. married after a MWPA was passed in his state) or ‘unprotected’. We then compare the risk-taking behaviour of protected and unprotected bankers.

A key measure of bank risk-taking is leverage. We define this as loans and securities - inherently risky investments made by the bank – relative to capital invested in the bank by shareholders. A bank that extends more loans relative to capital is more likely to suffer losses that render it unable to pay back depositors.

As it turns out, bankers with less personal liability managed more highly levered banks. More precisely, a bank’s ratio of loans and securities to capital was 7 to 10 percentage points higher if its president was married after a MWPA. This does not reflect underlying differences between protected and unprotected bankers (such as age), or the characteristics of counties or towns that they live in. It also does not reflect characteristics of the banks themselves – when an individual bank switches from having an unprotected president to a protected president (through turnover, or a change in the president’s marital status), leverage increases in that bank.

Not surprisingly, the impact of a president’s protection status is contingent on the relative wealth of his wife. Figure 1 plots the difference in leverage between banks with protected and unprotected presidents with different intra-household allocations of property (inferred from the ratio of the wife’s family wealth to the husband’s family wealth). Being married after a MWPA only increases leverage for bankers whose wives own a sufficiently large share of the household’s property.

Figure 1 The effect of limited liability on bank leverage

It is also noted that during financial panics, the more conservative bankers institutions performed better, so the threat of personal consequences produced better behavior.

Eddie Murphy said in Trading Places, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."

H/t naked capitalism.

This is a Wicked Bad Day at the Office

I am not sure what a good day at the office is like in Kazakhstan, but I am pretty sure that it does not involve the rocket that you are riding on blowing up:

A Soyuz capsule carrying a U.S. astronaut and Russian cosmonaut completed an emergency landing in Russia on Oct. 11 about 40 min. after the first ballistic abort in the history of the International Space Station (ISS) program.

First reports indicate astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are in “good condition” and in contact with search-and-rescue teams sent to recover them, NASA spokeswoman Brandi Dean said.

The booster anomaly was identified about 3 min., 15 sec. after liftoff at 4:40 a.m. Eastern time, triggering a ballistic re-entry of the capsule and subjecting the crew to higher-than-normal G forces.

“It is a known mode of descent that crewmembers have gone through before,” Dean said.

The booster anomaly has not been identified or described.

………

Soyuz used its launch abort system for the first time in September 1983 after a Soyuz T rocket caught fire on the launch pad seconds before liftoff. The capsule’s launch escape system pulled the crew away from the rocket seconds before the vehicle exploded.

The narration in the video below is not completely accurate. It's someone (probably) in Houston reading from a script.

What is notable is that the "Koralev Cross" which occurs on booster separation, seemed rather odd, so the problem might be something to do with booster separation.

It appears that the escape tower had been jettisoned before the failure, and so the propulsion system for the capsule was used to separate from the booster.

This Wins the F%$#ing Internet

I PHOTOSHOPPED SARUMAN INTO TRUMP'S ORB PICTURE AND IT'S NOT EVEN WEIRD pic.twitter.com/cVJFGP5NPG

— Shahak Shapira (@ShahakShapira) May 22, 2017

This is simply beautiful.

H/t JR at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the catch.

How Convenient

In Georgia, Brian Kemp is the Secretary of State. He's also running for governor.

As Secretary of state, he has purged a tenth of voters, with blacks purged at a rate twice that of white voters.

As Marcus Tullius Cicero was wont to say, "Cui bono" (Who benefits):

My lawyer had to threaten Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp with a federal lawsuit to force him to turn over the names of over half a million voters whose citizenship rights he quietly extinguished.

This past week, I released the name of every one of these Georgia voters Kemp flushed from voter rolls in 2017. If you’re a Georgia resident, check the list. If your name is on it, re-register right now. You only have through tomorrow (October 9).

It’s no coincidence that Georgia’s Purge’n General is also running for Governor: The Republican candidate is fighting a dead-even race against Stacey Abrams, Democratic House Minority Leader. Abrams, if she wins, would become the first Black woman governor in US history.

Suspiciously, Kemp sent no notice to these citizens after he took away their voting rights. If they show up to vote on November 6, they’re out of luck — and so is Georgia’s democracy.

Palast (above) neglects to mention that it is minority voters who are being disproportionately effected by his actions:

An analysis of the records obtained by The Associated Press reveals racial disparity in the process. Georgia’s population is approximately 32 percent black, according to the U.S. Census, but the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black.

An important thing to note here:  Despite public chest beating, the national Democratic party does not spend a whole bunch of time or money on getting voters registered.

It should be 24/7 thing, but it isn't.

Francisco Franco is as Francisco Franco Does

One of the narratives regarding the conflict between Madrid and Barcelona over Catalan independence and autonomy is that the independence movement chased away finance and created a capital flight.

It turns out that the Rajoy government aggressively pushed the companies to leave Catalonia.

It's not a surprise,  Mariano Rajoy's "People's Party" is pretty much a direct descendant of Franco's Fascist (Falange) party, and the Falange was dedicated to grinding everything Catalan into dust:

Just over a year has passed since over two million people in Catalonia voted in a banned referendum to leave Spain. On that day, the separatists were given a brutal lesson in the raw power of state violence. Days later, they were given another harsh lesson, this time in the fickleness of money. Within days of holding the vote, which was brutally suppressed but not prevented by Spanish police, Spain’s north eastern region was forced to watch as one after another of its brand names moved their headquarters, at least on paper, to other parts of Spain.

………

But what is only now becoming clear is just how central a role the Spanish government in Madrid was playing in fomenting this massive exodus of funds. The Catalan newspaper Ara has revealed that large state-owned companies such as public broadcaster RTVE, rail infrastructure manager Adif, freight and passenger train operator RENFE and Spanish ports, on the behest of Spain’s central government, raided their own accounts in Catalonia during the frenzied days immediately after the referendum.

In one day alone, the state-owned companies withdrew €2 billion from Banco Sabadell. The presidents of these state-owned companies apparently told the bank’s CEO, Jaume Guardiola, that they had received orders to trigger a run on deposits. As much as a third of all the money that left Catalonia during those first days of October belonged to institutions or companies controlled by the State.

The covert ploy worked like a charm. In the short space of just a few days Banco Sabadell suffered a deposit outflow of €12 billion, while Caixabank lost almost double that, according to Ara.

Another senior executive at Banco Sabadell allegedly asked Spain’s then-Economy Minister Luis de Guindos about the apparent cause of the bank run, to which he received the response: “Have you changed your company address yet?” When the executive answered in the affirmative, the minister said there was no longer any reason to worry. Within hours, the deposits of the state-owned firms were back in their accounts.

In the long run, Rajoy ended up worsening the divisions between Barcelona and Madrid, with the spectacle of police officers in body armor beating up elderly ladies.

The smart move would have been to allow the independence forces to fall into a morass of back-biting and corruption, but the dynamics of the People's Party were such that they had to respond with brutality.
He really had no 

If Only There Was Someone at Tesla Who Knew How to Count

Maybe they should have hired someone who had worked at a place that processes payment, like PayPal.

But alas, it appears that they did not, so the auto manufacturer neglected to pay almost ¾ of a million in unemployment taxes:

A state agency is taking Tesla to court over claims that the electric car manufacturer owes the state more than half a million dollars in unpaid taxes, which a company official says is due to a “clerical” error and was paid on Tuesday.

According to a certificate of judgment filed Monday in Clark County District Court, the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) is seeking more than $654,000 in unpaid unemployment taxes from Tesla stemming from the last two fiscal quarters.

According to a statement of liability filed with the court, the company owes $210,710 from the fiscal quarter ending on April 30, and another $439,753 from the quarter ending on July 31. The company paid a portion but not all of its assessed unemployment taxes during each quarter.

Nevada law requires almost any business that pays wages in the state to pay a base 2.95 percent unemployment insurance tax on wages.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Tesla said the issue came about due to a “clerical error” with the company’s acquisition of rooftop solar installer SolarCity — founded by one of Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s cousins, Lyndon Rive — and over how the state assess unemployment taxes.

“This judgment is the result of a clerical error, and we have processed this payment today to reflect the latest unemployment insurance contribution rates,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Over the past 18 months, Tesla has already paid over $3.3 million in unemployment taxes to Nevada.”

So somehow they want us to trust their autopilot technology, but they cannot even do what is pretty basic taxes.

That is so reassuring.

Quote of the Day

While claiming to seek victory, the Democratic leadership has instead created a consulting and fundraising complex that incentivizes narrow defeat. The people responsible for losing the 2016 election were promoted, not purged. If we somehow manage to win in spite of them in 2018, we need to bring the whole corrupt edifice down.

—Maciej Ceglowski

Tru dat.

Our Friends in Riyadh

It appears that agents of the House of Saud murded dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in their consulate in Istanbul, dismembered him, and took him out of the country in diplomatic pouches:

Top Turkish security officials have concluded that the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on orders from the highest levels of the royal court, a senior official said Tuesday.

The official described a quick and complex operation in which Mr. Khashoggi was killed within two hours of his arrival at the consulate by a team of Saudi agents, who dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose.

“It is like ‘Pulp Fiction,’” the official said.

Saudi officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have denied the allegations, insisting that Mr. Khashoggi left the consulate freely shortly after he arrived. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has demanded that the Saudis provide evidence proving their claim.

………

The security establishment concluded that Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was directed from the top because only the most senior Saudi leaders could order an operation of such scale and complexity, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to disclose confidential briefings.

Fifteen Saudi agents had arrived on two charter flights last Tuesday, the day Mr. Khashoggi disappeared, the official said.

All 15 left just a few hours later, and Turkey has now identified the roles that most or all of them held in the Saudi government or security services, the official said. One was an autopsy expert, presumably there to help dismember the body, the official said.

………

Security camera footage showed Mr. Khashoggi entering the consulate shortly after 1 p.m. that day. Ms. Cengiz, his fiancée, waited outside, and she has said he never emerged.

Two and a half hours after he entered the facility, six vehicles with diplomatic license plates pulled out, carrying 15 Saudi officials and intelligence officers, Sabah reported.

Two other vehicles, including a black Mercedes Vito van with darkened windows, went from the consulate to the consul’s residence about 200 yards away. Turkish employees of the residence had unexpectedly been told not to report for work that day, the newspaper said.

This is completely nuts, but it's par for the course for Mohammad bin Salman.

The 33-year-old boy king-in-all-but-name has clearly never ever had anyone ever say, "No" to him, and he is off the deep end in a way that would have Czar Nicholas II saying, "Dude, you are letting this whole absolute monarch thing go to your head."

We are in for a bumpy ride on the Arabian peninsula.

This is Beginning to Sound Like Whitey Bulger Writ Small

Remember that horrific limousine accident in upstate New York?

Remember how the limo was falling apart, and the driver lacked proper licenses?

Well, we may now have an idea as to why this particular company was given a pass by regulators, its owner was a big time FBI informant.

In fact, this guy was commonly referred to as a "Superinformant", and seemed to spend a lot of his time, as is the FBI's wont, finding swarthy people who had very little intention of doing anything, and turning them into terrorism defendants.

The FBI does have a history of becoming excessively involved with the shady business dealings of its informants, the Boston office was almost a partner of James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr.'s during his blood-soaked run through Beantown's criminal underworld:

The aging limousine that crashed Saturday in Schoharie County, killing 20, was operated by a company with a record of failed inspections — and an owner who was a controversial FBI informant.

The 2001 Ford Excursion was operated by Prestige Limousine, a small company that shares an address with a run-down motel in the Saratoga County town of Wilton, just north of tony Saratoga Springs.

The company is owned by Shahed Hussain, whose backstory includes numerous stints as an undercover informant for the FBI.

Authorites said Hussain, 62, is in his native Pakistan at present. Other company officials have pledged to cooperate with the investigation.

Asked whether Hussain is under criminal investigation, State Police Major Robert Patnaude said anyone found to be criminally culpable will be "held accountable."

......

Albany-area lawyer Dana Salazar, who represented Shahed Hussain in a civil action against Saratoga County that revolved around the Saratoga Road motel property, verified on Monday that her client had indeed been the celebrated informant.

Hussain emigrated from Pakistan in the early 1990's, fleeing a murder charge that he later said was trumped up, according to news reports. He worked as a translator for the New York state Department of Motor Vehicles but was caught helping people cheat on DMV exams in return for money.

He later was accused of making fraudulent statements in a personal bankruptcy case as well.

Hussain pleaded guilty to a felony in relation to the DMV scam but avoided prison and deportation by becoming an informant, working in New York's Muslim communities to find people that had radical tendencies.

......

"And, perhaps perversely, it’s hard not to come away without some degree of admiration for Mr. Hussain, seen and heard only in the grainy videos shot in his car and living room," reviewer Mike Hale. "He puts on a superior performance over a long period of time and lies with breathtaking ease and quickness. If there were Oscars for informants, he’d be on the red carpet every year."

In the article, you have his hotel being shut down by authorities, multiple problems with his limo service, but he was always allowed to continue operating.

It's not exactly the same as Winter Hill Gang boss Bulger and Stephen Joseph "The Rifleman" Flemmi using their status as informants to get FBI protection and take out rivals, but it certainly seems to rhyme.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizens

It ppears that the FBI is back to some of its old tricks, specifically it is masquerading as journalists again:

Newly public Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents outline for the first time the specifics of the agency's guidelines for impersonating members of the news media in undercover activities and operations. The records detail, among other things, that such activities require high-level approval from within the FBI and Justice Department. The FBI released the guidelines after the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit when the agency failed to respond to a request for records about its impersonation of documentary filmmakers, specifically. Additionally, records recently released in connection with a separate FOIA lawsuit filed by the Reporters Committee show that the FBI has engaged in the impersonation of documentary filmmakers on a number of occasions, though questions remain as to just how frequently the FBI relies on this tactic.
......

In defense of the practice, then-FBI Director James Comey submitted a letter to the editor to The New York Times acknowledging the tactic and stating that the FBI's impersonation of an AP journalist in the Seattle investigation "was proper and appropriate[.]" The controversy also led the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General to investigate the FBI's use of media impersonation in the Seattle investigation. In September 2016, the office issued a formal report noting that the FBI had prepared new guidelines setting forth "approval levels for sensitive circumstances specifically in situations in which [FBI] employees represent, pose, or claim to be members of the news media or a documentary film crew."

The guidelines obtained by the Reporters Committee detail that approval process: The relevant FBI field office must submit an application to the Undercover Review Committee at FBI headquarters and it must be approved by the FBI Deputy Director after consultation with the Deputy Attorney General. The guidelines do not provide any criteria the FBI Deputy Director and/or the Deputy Attorney General must consider when approving these undercover activities.

.....

In response to part of that FOIA request, the FBI has asserted what is known as a "Glomar" response, refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records related to other instances in which it has impersonated documentary filmmakers during the course of its investigations. In support of its argument, in a recent filing the FBI went so far as to argue that disclosing these records "would allow criminals to judge whether they should completely avoid any contacts with documentary film crews, rendering the investigative technique ineffective."

In response, the Reporters Committee argued that this is precisely the reason why disclosure of information regarding FBI media impersonation is so important: this tactic has a chilling effect on journalists and documentary filmmakers, and sources are less likely to speak candidly to members of the news media if they think that the journalist is an agent of the government. Further, the Reporters Committee argues that the FBI cannot issue a Glomar response in this case because its practice of media impersonation is already well-known to the public and the FBI has already officially acknowledged the existence of these records — two standards the court will consider in evaluating whether the FBI's Glomar response to part of the FOIA request was appropriate.

2 Thoughts:

• J. Edgar Hoover is an inescapable part of the FBI's DNA, and we are not going to change this in my lifetime, though breaking it up into separate functions might be a good start.
•  James Comey is not, and has never been a friend of civil rights, restraints on law enforcement, or transparency.

Linkage

• Six Months Later, People Are Finally Realizing That FOSTA Actually Is Putting Lives At Risk (Techdirt) Not a surprise.  It's really about punishing prostitutes without punishing their Johns.
• How the mushroom dream of a ‘long-haired hippie’ could help save the world’s bees (The Seattle Times) It appears that juice from the mycelium has significant anti-viral/anti-mite capabilities.
• Doctor Who: How the dyspraxic assistant became my hero (BBC) Apparrently a very big thing in the community.
• Facebook, are you kidding? (TechCrunch) Facebook is trying to go into the home assistant market by putting a microphone AND a microphone in your home.  What could possibly go wrong?
• Taylor Swift Finally Got Political. Why Now? (Daily Beast) She endorsed home state Democrats.  Nazi tears in response are sweet.

3 whales do a triple breach. I think that the whales knew that they were showing of for tourists:

Banksey is a F%$#ing Genius

Brilliant

A Banksy painting sold at Sotheby's for over £1 million.

Once the auction was completed, Banksey, or someone affiliated with him, triggered the shredder built into the picture frame:

Banksy has released a video showing how he secretly built a shredder into one of his paintings that self-destructed after it was sold for more than £1m.

The framed Girl With Balloon, one of the artist's best known works, was auctioned by Sotheby's in London.

Moments after the piece was sold, the canvas of a girl reaching for a heart-shaped balloon shredded itself.

Quoting Picasso on his Instagram, Banksy wrote: "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge - Picasso."

The clip starts with a caption, saying: "A few years ago, I secretly built a shredder into a painting."

The video then shows someone in a hoodie installing the device, before another caption, saying: "In case it was ever put up for auction."

The video then shows the moment the painting shredded itself at the auction house on Friday, captured on a mobile phone.

It is unclear how the shredder was activated.

Moments before, the 2006 stencilled spray-painting had sold for £1.042m.

"It appears we just got Banksy-ed," said Alex Branczik, Sotheby's senior director and head of contemporary art in Europe.

I've got to believe that Banksy is the secret love child of Eugène Ionesco, spiritually, if not genetically.