My little town
Garbage
Pete Seeger:
More on Todd Christie
You may not remember how Todd Christie was under investigation by the feds, and got off under unusual circumstances:
When Christopher Christie went on to Seton Hall Law School, Todd Christie followed their father’s path to the financial world, where his high energy and salesman’s bravado allowed him to flourish quickly at the Wall Street trade specialist firm Spear, Leeds & Kellogg. He rose to become chief executive, and when Goldman Sachs bought the company in 2000 for more than $6 billion, Todd Christie’s piece of the deal amounted to about $60 million.
By 2003, however, Spear, Leeds was under investigation on suspicion of cheating customers to benefit the firm. Todd Christie resigned in March 2003, although he says that his departure was not related to the inquiry and that he did not find out until months later that he was among the traders being investigated. When the United States attorney in Manhattan, David N. Kelley, secured criminal indictments against 15 traders at the firmin 2005, Todd Christie was spared, and faced only civil fraud charges along with four other traders.
The company ultimately settled the case, repaying more than $16 million to investors, without admitting or denying wrongdoing. During the campaign, Christopher Christie stated that his brother had done “absolutely nothing wrong,” and in an interview this week Todd Christie said he had been “completely exonerated.” Two of the indicted traders pleaded guilty; the 13 others were ultimately cleared of criminal charges.
The Securities and Exchange Administration settlement Todd Christie signed, dated Oct. 15, 2008, maintains that he carried out hundreds of trades that brought the firm thousands of dollars in profits at its customers’ expense, and had violated stock exchange rules.
While the investigation produced uncomfortable headlines, particularly when Christopher Christie was deliberating whether to run for governor in 2005, the windfall his brother earned on Wall Street certainly helped ingratiate him with party leaders.
Todd Christie began giving tens of thousands of dollars to New Jersey’s Republican county chairmen in 2001, at a time when they were deciding whom to recommend that the Bush administration nominate as the state’s United States attorney. Three months after his brother was sworn in at that job, Todd Christie wrote a $225,000 check to the Republican National Committee.
Democrats have characterized those contributions as a blunt attempt to help his brother become United States attorney, but Todd Christie insists there was no connection between the two.
“I’d always been involved in politics, but since I’d had the good fortune to become successful, I had more to give,” he said.
[…] In the general election, Democrats also tried to make an issue of Todd’s legal troubles with federal regulators and Chrisopher Christie’s decision in 2007 to give a no-bid legal contract, to monitor an orthopedics firm, to David N. Kelley, the former federal prosecutor who had handled the case against Todd Christie’s firm.
Christopher Christie says that the contract was awarded on merit, and that he and Mr. Kelley have never discussed his brother’s case. Mr. Kelley has concurred, saying his decisions in the Spear, Leeds investigation were influenced solely by the evidence.
What a fracking company did to one activist
You have to see this to believe it:
Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.
In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.
“They might as well have put an ankle bracelet on me with a GPS on it and be able to track me wherever I go,” Scroggins said. “I feel like I am some kind of a prisoner, that my rights have been curtailed, have been restricted.”
The ban represents one of the most extreme measures taken by the oil and gas industry to date against protesters like Scroggins, who has operated peacefully and within the law including taking Yoko Ono to frack sites in her bid to elevate public concerns about fracking.
Prose vs. poetry
Russia may be the only country in the world where people take these questions this seriously.
Russian stabbed to death for preferring prose to poetry (via AFP)
A dispute between two Russians over the respective merits of poetry and prose ended up with one of them, a former teacher, stabbing his friend to death, investigators said Wednesday. The two friends were having a drinking session in the city of Irbit…
Pete Seeger, ‘ever-so-gentle rabble-rouser’
I was away from the swamp, stealing potatoes at the local Super Fridge, when I heard about Pete Seeger. This will be a rough day, I thought. Swamp Rabbit is an old leftie with a soft spot for New Deal-influenced folksingers, and Seeger, 94, was the last of that breed. Sure enough, the pesky rodent was weeping next to the wood stove whe I got back to the shack. He drank Wild Turkey while I put the taters on the fire. Then we surfed for obits and skimmed old books.
The Associated Press used the phrase “ever-so-gentle rabble-rouser” and found a way to best sum up the difference between Seeger and the only other folksinger, pre-Bob Dylan, who would have as big an influence on popular music:
On the skin of Seeger’s banjo was the phrase, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender” — a nod to his old pal [Woody] Guthrie, who emblazoned his guitar with “This machine kills fascists.”
The record will show that Seeger was as brave and well-respected as he was peace-loving. Dylan alluded to this in his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, while describing the day he was signed to Columbia Records by John Hammond:
Recently [Hammond] had brought Pete Seeger to the label. He didn’t discover Pete, though. Pete had been around for years. He’d been in the popular folk group The Weavers, but had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era and had a hard time, but he never stopped working. Hammond was defiant when he spoke about Seeger, that Pete’s ancestors had come over on the Mayflower, that his relatives had fought the Battle of Bunker Hill, for Christsake. “Can you imagine those sons of bitches blacklisting him? They should be tarred and feathered.”
Seeger had been blacklisted after testifying before the “anti-communist” House Un-American Activities Committee. He had politely told the honorables to fuck off:
I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent this implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, or I might be a vegetarian, make me any less of an American.
Then we read that Seeger “lost his cool” in 1965 because Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival and the instruments drowned out Dylan’s words. A familiar story, gossiped about many times.
“I forgave him for that,” I said. “Dylan’s show must have been a shock to a guy who was born more than 30 years before rock ‘n’ roll.”
“Well now, Pete’s ghost must be sighing with relief,” the rabbit replied. “Who gives a shit who you forgive?”
We read about Seeger’s inspiring appearance at Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and wondered whether Barack Obama would mention in his State of the Union address that Seeger’s life and art were exactly in sync with the social democratic policies that boosted the quality of life in mid-20th century America. Policies that have been under constant attack since Ronald Reagan took office.
“Oh sure,” the rabbit said. “Then the Democrats and Republicans is gonna hold hands and sing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ Hold the taters, you twit. Just pass me another bottle.”
Told ya
There’s a lengthy and quietly damning look at the Christie organization in this morning’s Times.
And it validates what I said all along: Getting the endorsements was always more important than the real estate deal. The important plan was to package and sell Christie as the bipartisan savior, and the financial shenanigans were just business as usual.
Mr. Christie has said that he had not been aware of his office’s involvement in the maneuver, and nothing has directly tied to him to it. But a close look at his operation and how intimately he was involved in it, described in interviews with dozens of people — Republican and Democrat, including current and former Christie administration officials, elected leaders and legislative aides — gives credence to the puzzlement expressed by some Republicans and many Democrats in the state, who question how a detail-obsessed governor could have been unaware of the closings or the effort over months to cover up the political motive.
Christie is going to have a very hard time now, because the Times piece emphasizes that Christie was closely involved in decision making. Here are the parts that jumped out at me:
Mr. Christie himself tended to the smallest of details. He personally oversaw appointments to the State Board of Physical Therapy Examiners, legislative leaders said, and when he wanted to discuss something with lawmakers, he texted them himself. (He told one top legislator that he had learned from his experience as United States attorney not to email; texts were harder to trace.)
And this:
The State House team met briefly every morning, perhaps for 20 minutes, for a quick overview of the day’s issues and what was being reported, with the governor joining in person or on the phone. Since his days as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, many people said, he preferred to use his cellphone or to meet, rather than to communicate by email or conference call.
Christie’s in trouble. Big trouble.
Tales of the chiro
I was at the chiro yesterday, who’s trying to help me with my chronic neck and shoulder problems. He asked me if he could use this new tool, some kind of neuromuscular stimulation something or other (really, it’s like a small jackhammer). It didn’t hurt when he was doing it, but damn, everything was sore last night!
He used it on my spine and neck and when he was done, he showed me the medical journal describing how it’s supposed to work. I said, “Hmm. I wonder if that would help my ankle.”
“Do you want me to try?”
I told him I was fine with being a guinea pig, and he used it on the bottom of my foot. It felt extremely… peculiar — and really painful, to boot. But my foot feels good, so what the hell.
Officially fucked
Oh dear:
Christie’s brother profited from sale of Harrison homes near Port Authority project, report says (via NJ.com)
HARRISON — Gov. Chris Christie’s brother was part of a group that bought properties near the Harrison PATH station before a $256 million renovation of the facility was publicly approved, according to a report on NorthJersey.com. Todd Christie and…