Will SCOTUS rewrite the nation in their own image tomorrow? Stay tuned.
Category: Corporate Statism
Oh, nice!
It looks like the only chance we have to get justice over bank fraud will be these local efforts. Here’s hoping they actually go ahead with this, because it will interesting to see which local politicians are under those rocks:
After financial agreements called interest-rate swaps went south along with the economy a few years back, the city and the Philadelphia School District had to fork over millions of dollars to major banks to sever the deals.
This spring, the city retained an outside law firm to examine whether to file a lawsuit. The move followed a resolution that Councilman Jim Kenney introduced in March calling for hearings to investigate interest-rate swaps.
“Our transit agency is suffering, our schools are in a terrible situation and the city is always on the brink of financial calamity,” Kenney said Tuesday at a news conference held at City Hall to draw attention to the swap deals. “So we’re hoping that the law firm that we have engaged to look at this comes back with a favorable idea to go forward with a lawsuit to sue Bank of America, Wells Fargo and all of the others — everybody who was involved in the collapse of the economy.”
He said he hoped that a lawsuit would force the banks to come to the table to negotiate a deal that does not include “punitive payments.”
The city’s Law Department said the outside law firm — Faruqi and Faruqi — will “evaluate potential claims related to these transactions, but it has not yet reached a decision on whether to file suit.” The firm would only be compensated if the city recovered damages from a suit.
Critics of the deals say that in the early 2000s bankers persuaded local governments and schools throughout the country to purchase swaps that were contingent on the future of U.S. interest rates. But those deals went sour in 2008, when the economy crashed and governments were forced to pay banks the difference once market interest rates plummeted.
Kenney was joined at the news conference by other critics of the swap deals, the Transit Workers Union Local 234 and Fight for Philly. Organizers pointed to a report titled Riding the Gravy Train, issued this month by a group of transit advocates and workers known as the Refund Transit Coalition. The report details costs of interest-rate swaps for cities across the country and its impact on public transit systems.
Hat tip to Jason Kalafat, Attorney at Law.
Sorkin too old-school for ultra-hip blogger
Here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, an Atlantic editor and blogger, quoting from Aaron Sorkin’s “deeply unpleasant, condescending and sexist” interview with the Globe and Mail:
“I think I would have done very well, as a writer, in the forties,” [Sorkin] says. “I think the last time America was a great country was then, or not long after. It was before Vietnam, before Watergate.”
Coates thought Sorkin, in the interview, was insensitive to victims of segregation and “gender repression” back in the ’40s. He scolded Sorkin for extolling a great era that never existed, and for expressing “attendant notions that the internet [has] ruined everything.”
What a crock. In the interview, Sorkin betrayed a nostalgic streak and apparent insecurities about the quality of his work. But I’m still trying to figure out what it is about him and his new HBO show, The Newsroom, that so deeply offended Coates and the many Sorkin non-fans who posted comments on Coates’ site.
They all seemed to miss the main points Sorkin made in the first episode of his new show, especially in the initial rant about America’s decline, delivered by Jeff Daniels, playing (at least in this scene) a latter-day Howard Beale.
The EPA
Once again, looks the other way when a disaster occurs.
Urp
I always cringe inwardly when in an attempt to show me how well-read they are, someone mentions the latest Tom Friedman “book.” Read this to understand why.
‘Democrats should come out swinging’
Michael Tomasky dreams on about how Obama should react to a SCOTUS ruling overturning the ACA:
Let’s say the court overturns the mandate by a typical 5-4 vote, but leaves the rest of the law intact. What must the Democrats do? The main thing is all about tone. I can just picture already what I fear I will see: Obama coming out to a press conference with his head down, speaking in a dour monotone, still trying to point out the silver linings but in a way that sends the message to anyone listening that he’s really apologizing for them, and muttering that he is now “calling on the Congress to act” (this has become my least favorite Obama phrase) and get busy working on one of the alternative approaches that will still keep the law alive—which is nothing more than a punchline, really, because everybody knows Congress isn’t lifting a finger.
No, a thousand times no! He needs to stand up there and get mad. The law may be unpopular, but he and the Democrats are stuck with it, and being stuck with it, they need to stick by it. Almost never before in American history has a Supreme Court taken a law duly passed by the people’s representatives and in just two years’ time invalidated it. If that isn’t legislating from the bench, what is? Mr. Cool needs to get Hot. Against unanimous and ferocious opposition, and in the face of blatant lies about what this bill would and would not do, he and the Democrats came up with a way for people with cancer and diabetes and what have you to get the treatment they need and not be either turned away or gouged. He’s proud of that, he ought to say, and by God, he’s going to fight for it. That provision of the law is wildly popular—85 percent supported that, in a late-March New York Times survey. If you can’t play offense with 85 percent of the people behind you, I give up.
Personally, I think it’s a crappy bill that has a lot of downside for anyone who doesn’t have a lot of money, but whatever. It won’t break my heart if the mandate is overturned, because Republicans will simply defund the subsidies and it will be worthless, anyway.
Healthcare Act
Digby looks back at her reaction to the passage of the deeply shitty healthcare bill. Yeah, pretty much what I said, only more words.
Consider the source
I saw this ad this morning, and went to the Restore Our Future website to get information. There was none. So I looked on Wikipedia:
As of March 2012, Restore Our Future raised almost $43 million, of which almost half came from Wall Street contributors.[4]
As of August 2011, the largest individual contributor to Restore Our Future was John Paulson, a billionaire and hedge fund manager who is, according to Politico, “famous for [having enriched] himself by betting on the collapse of the housing industry.”[3] An additional million dollars came from W Spann LLC, an entity with no record of actual business activities.[6] W Spann LLC was formed, donated to the PAC, and then dissolved in a matter of months,[7][8] attracting concerns from election-watchdog groups and campaign-finance experts about the use of dummy corporations to shield large campaign contributions from public scrutiny.[6]
Several watchdog groups requested that the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission investigate donations to Restore Our Future from W Spann LLC as possible violations of campaign-finance law.[9] Restore Our Future declined to provide additional details about the donation and asserted that it had complied with existing laws. In response to rumors, a spokesman for Bain Capital, an equity firm previously headed by Romney, stated that W Spann LLC “is not affiliated with Bain Capital or any of our employees.”[6] Shortly thereafter, Edward Conard, a former top executive at Bain Capital who retired in 2007, came forward to state that he had formed W Spann LLC and funded and authorized the $1 million contribution.[10]Conard requested that Restore Our Future amend its filings to reflect that he, rather than W Spann LLC, donated the $1 million.[11][12]
Another entity, Paumanok Partners LLC, contributed $250,000 to Restore Our Future. It has been traced back to Romney donor William Laverack, Jr.[13] Glenbrook L.L.C. was originally reported as donating $250,000 in August 2011, but in an amended filing with the FEC the Glenbrook donation was replaced by two $125,000 donations by Jesse Rogers, a former executive at Bain & Company.[14]
Two additional $1 million contributions came from corporations registered to the offices of two executives of Nu Skin Enterprises, a Utah-based multilevel marketing company selling skin-care products and dietary supplements.[3] Other large contributors included members of the Marriott family, hedge-fund managers, and investors in Bain Capital.[3]
Several Affiliates of Melaleuca, Inc., an Idaho-based multilevel marketing[15] company owned by Frank L. VanderSloot, have donated a total of approx. $1 million to the PAC.[16] VanderSloot is also a national finance co-chairman of the Romney campaign.[17]
[edit]From federal contractors
Despite a 36-year-old ban against federal contractors making federal political expenditures, Restore Our Future has accepted donations of $890,000 from at least five such companies, who are taking advantage of a legal gray area created by the U.S. Supreme Court‘s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case. Oxbow Carbon, a major coal and petroleum company founded by William Koch that contracts with the Tennessee Valley Authority, gave $750,000, and has insisted such donations are now legal. Another company, M.C. Dean, a Virginia-based electrical engineering company, donated $5,000, but has asked the funds to be returned after consulting with lawyers. The other companies are: B/E Aerospace, a U.S. Department of Defensecontractor, which gave $50,000; Clinical Medical Services, which contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs, donated $25,000; and Suffolk Construction Co., which is building a U.S. Naval base, donated $60,000.[18]
Politics as usual
Hopeful
That this might actually mean something positive for consumers – i.e. don’t squeeze my Roku!
New fears that Big Cable will squash online-video competition has caught the attention of the Justice Department — and is one of several antitrust issues now facing cable giant Comcast Corp.
Investigators have sent the equivalent of civil subpoenas to Comcast, other pay-TV providers, and programmers, in a broad sweep for information about contract provisions related to online video. It’s an industrywide probe.
Comcast’s proposed deal to sell wireless spectrum through a consortium of cable companies and partner Verizon Wireless to market quad-play bundles — wireless phone, wireline phone, Internet, and cable TV — is being analyzed separately by the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. Critics say the deal amounts to a business truce between Comcast and Verizon Communications Inc., which controls Verizon Wireless and also competes with Comcast with its FiOS TV and Internet products. Comcast and Verizon officials say that there is no truce and that they still will compete.
In addition, Judge John R. Padova has scheduled for trial in September a class-action antitrust lawsuit that, since late 2003, has been wending its way through federal court in Philadelphia. The suit claims that Comcast clustered its cable systems in the Philadelphia region through swaps with other cable companies, leading to market power and higher prices for consumers.
Legal issues in the three cases are different, and, Comcast officials say, the matters are unrelated. But observers note that a common thread is the company’s willingness to push legal limits when pursuing growth.
Experts say that it’s very early in the online-video investigation, but that the probe seems serious.
“Online television is now getting to the point where it is a real threat to cable companies, and anything the cable companies do to undermine that threat will draw antitrust scrutiny,” said Ankur Kapoor, a partner and antitrust specialist with Constantine Cannon, a New York law firm.