Month: May 2013

He didn’t answer the questions

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Brad Friedman writes about Medea Benjamin interrupting Obama’s speech last week:

Here’s what she said, as well as I was able to capture her remarks from the video…

It’s not Congress. It’s you, sir. There are 102 people on a hunger strike [in the Guantanamo Bay prison]. These are desperate people. 86 have been cleared for release. You are Commander-in-Chief. You can close Guantanamo today. You can release those 86 prisoners today.
…
How about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American killed by drones. Is that the way we treat a 16-year-old American? Why was he killed? Can you tell us why Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed?
Can you tell the Muslim people their lives are as precious as our lives? Can you take the drones out of the hands of the CIA? Can you stop the signature strikes that are killing people on the basis of suspicious activities? Will you apologize to the thousands of Muslims that you have killed? Will you compensate the innocent family victims? That will make us safer here at home.

I love my country! I love the rule of law! The drones are making us less safe. And keeping people in indefinite detention in Guantanamo is making us less safe. Abide by the rule of law. You’re a Constitutional lawyer!

For the record, the President absolutely can release the 86 prisoners who have been cleared for release immediately, as Benjamin noted. He does not have to, as he likes to suggest, get approval from Congress to do that. He can release them immediately. He only needs Congressional approval to move prisoners (such as the ones who may actually face some sort of trial or military tribunal) to another prison on the U.S. mainland.

Despite his assertions to the contrary, as seen in the video below, Obama did not address the concerns of Benjamin. He did not explain why 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed. He did not answer whether drone strikes would be taken out of the hands of the unaccountable CIA and given to the slightly-more-accountable military. He did not respond to the question about compensation to the families of innocent victims killed in drone strikes. He did not speak to whether “signature strikes” with drones (attacks based on profiles of those believed to be gathered at a particular location, rather than a specific person believed to be in the group) would be ended. He should address all of those issues.

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Baltimore train crash, explosion

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

Video NSFW.

The Baltimore Sun:

A cargo train derailed Tuesday afternoon in the Rosedale area, damaging nearby buildings, shutting down US Route 40 and causing a loud explosion that could be felt miles away.

Authorities in Baltimore County said the train struck a tractor trailer near the 7500 block of Lake Drive, veering off the tracks near an industrial park. Initial reports were that no one was hurt, but County Executive Kevin Kamenetz later said the driver of the trailer was extricated and taken to Maryland Shock Trauma center in serious but stable condition.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced at around 4 p.m. that it was sending a “go-team.”
Though it was unclear what the train was carrying, Baltimore County spokeswoman Elise Armacost said the smoke did not include toxic inhalants. Only two people were aboard the train, who were uninjured, she said.

http://youtu.be/pN6yhh1h6Zc

Disney princesses

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

http://youtu.be/7n_bzjN4KaI

In which the writer auditions for a role as a Disney Princess:

Since I was 3 years old, my family has visited Walt Disney World almost every year. We’re one of those families that refuses to vacation anywhere else. We consider getting a beer at each of EPCOT’s national pavilions a horizon broadening experience. When I was little, we waited in line to do meet-and-greets with the Disney princesses. I’d approach Belle in her iridescent gown, or Ariel in her brassiere made of bivalve remains, and present them with my autograph book, marveling at how cheerful, and dainty and ladylike they were. As a neurotic, tomboyish 7-year-old, I found them nothing less than magical.

Years later, I took a few gender studies courses, and came to realize what everyone else does about Disney princesses: They are pink, sparkly conduits for consumerism, antiquated gender roles and unrealistic standards of beauty. I couldn’t have cared less. Even if Snow White had the personality of a soggy carrot, and “Beauty and the Beast” is essentially a PSA in favor of domestic violence, I wanted to don an acrylic wig and pose for photos with 6-year-olds. I wanted to smile and use phrases like “Have a magical day” without irony. I wanted to pirouette on a parade float with Gaston, played by a man with an MFA in dance from SUNY Purchase and a professional dog groomer boyfriend.

During my family’s recent return to Disney World, I attended an open call audition for “face” roles, a term for the human characters who interact with park guests; non-human, masked characters like Mickey and Minnie are known as “fur” characters. The listing was for “look-alikes” of princes and princesses, including Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jasmine from “Aladdin,” and Ariel. On occasion, people have said that I look like Snow White, a compliment usually modified by the adjectives “Jew-faced” or “crack-addled,” but she wasn’t on the list.

Go read the rest! Interesting and funny.

‘Our system is so flawed that fraud is mathematically guaranteed’

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Former bank regulator Bill Black:

Fraud is both a civil wrong and a crime and it’s when I get you to trust me and then I betray your trust in order to steal from you. As a result, there’s no more effective acid against trust than fraud and, in particular, elite fraud, which causes people to no longer trust folks, economies break down, families break down, political systems break down and such if you don’t have that kind of trust. So that’s what fraud is.

But what my work focuses on is: what kind of frauds are the most devastating? And it turns out that the most kind of problems that we’re seeing, systemic problems and such, arise when we have, what we call in criminology, control fraud. And control fraud simply means when you have a seemingly legitimate entity and the person who controls it uses it as a weapon to defraud others. And so in the financial sphere the weapon of choice is accounting and the losses from these kinds of control frauds exceed the financial losses from all other forms of property crime combined.

So for example, in the current crisis, as with the prior ones, if you’re a lender there’s an easy recipe for maximizing fake accounting income. And it goes like this. You need four ingredients:
* grow like crazy
* by making really, really crappy loans but at a premium yield (yield just means ‘interest rate’)
* while employing extreme leverage, and
* while setting aside only the most trivial reserves or allowances for the inevitable losses this kind of behavior produces.

George Akerlof and Paul Romer wrote the classic article in economics about this in 1993. And their title really says it all in terms of the dynamic: Looting the Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit. The idea is you have a seemingly legitimate entity, the person at the top is looting it. They loot it by destroying it but they walk away wealthy. Of course, in the modern era we don’t necessarily, we may bail out the entity. So it may not even fail in that sense.

But here’s what Akerlof and Romer also said that was so critical as an understanding. They said these four steps, these four ingredients: it’s just math. It is – and I’m quoting them now “a sure thing.” So you’re mathematically guaranteed if you do these four things to report, not just substantial income, but record levels of income.
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