Waste

In a letter to [Treasury Secretary] Geithner yesterday, Liddy agreed to restructure some of the payments. But Liddy said he had "grave concerns" about the impact on the firm's ability to retain talented staff "if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury."

Bwahahahaha!! *sniff* Hehehehehehe... Go on, pull the other one:

AIG officials say that some of the upcoming bonuses are relatively modest once they are divided among employees. About 4,700 people in the company's global insurance units are receiving $600 million in retention pay. In addition, about $121 million in corporate bonuses will go to more than 6,400 people, for an average payout of about $19,000, according to AIG.

"These are not Wall Street bonuses," said one AIG executive, who was not authorized to speak on the record. "This is an insurance company."

Heh. Hehehehe.

>wipes eyes, catches breath<

for another happy-happy Monday morning post about the economy! Yay! Everyone gather around, and let Uncle Jim tell you a story...

"We're screwed."

Did you like my story? Oh, you want details? If you insist.

No, I'm not going to talk about the Dow being down below 7,000 for the first time this century (it's at 6,900 as I write). Nor about the news this morning of AIG's additional $61.7 billion loss last quarter. Those are just symptoms.

Tearful Atlanta Cops Express Remorse for Shooting 92-Year-Old Kathryn Johnston, Leaving Her To Bleed to Death in Her Own Home While They Planted Drugs in Her Basement, Then Threatening an Informant So He Would Lie To Cover It All Up

About this item:

Ex-Atlanta cops sentenced in deadly botched raid

ATLANTA – A federal judge sentenced three former Atlanta police officers to prison Tuesday for their part in a botched drug raid that ended with the death of an elderly woman in a hail of gunfire.

Jason R. Smith, Gregg Junnier and Arthur Tesler received sentences ranging from five years to 10. Kathryn Johnston, 92, was killed by police gunfire during the 2006 raid at her home.

Hehehehehe:

City to OK water-bill surcharge

The Seattle City Council is expected Tuesday to approve a surcharge on city water customers to help cover the cost of a $22 million court-ordered rebate to water customers.

The rebates are for fire hydrant costs that were wrongly charged to water customers. Fire hydrants are a basic city responsibility and have to be paid for from the general fund, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

OK, read that again. Got it? The city screwed up and charged water customers for basic city infrastructure. So they have been ordered to pay said customers back for the overcharges. And to do so they are going to slap a surcharge onto water bills.

Gotta love it.

As someone in the comments said:

How to put the scr*ws to people four times in a row.

1. Charge some customers for a city financial responsibility.

2. Pay the lawyers to defend the city for wrongfully doing so that will be paid for by all city water customers.

3. Charge the customers for the refunds they have been ordered to pay the customers who were originally charged as well as all city water users.

4. Charge the customers for the legal fees it's going to cost the city to defend itself from the upcoming law suit for wrongfully charging all water customers for the city being ordered by court to refund the fees it wrongfully charged "some" of the customers.

Brilliant.

Jim Downey

(Via BB. Cross posted to my blog.)

So, last time I borrowed money from a bank, for a Federally-guaranteed Small Business Loan, it was a bit of a nightmare. They wanted to know everything down to my shoe size, with a fair amount of documentation to support the claim that I wear an 11 wide. And, needless to say, they wanted to know exactly what I was going to do with the $50,000 I wanted to borrow - complete with a detailed business plan, revenue forecasts, et cetera. Given that I wanted to borrow the money, I didn't find this too onerous; rather it seemed to be a reasonable expectation, if a tad tedious.

But don't expect that street to run both ways.

Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret

WASHINGTON – It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

Just a follow-up to this post, because this nice little news item is making the rounds on teh intarwebs:

Gotcha!

Like Mark Draughn, I've been somewhat skeptical of Barry Cooper, the former drug cop turned pitchman for how-to-beat-the-cops videos. He comes off as more of a huckster than a principled whistle-blower, which I think does the good ideas he stands for (police reform) more harm than good.

But damn. I have to hand it to him. This might be one of the ballsiest moves I've ever seen.

The radio said 13 degrees. It's cold enough that the cats have left taking turns curling up on my lap, and have parked themselves on radiators. We're fortunate that we can afford to heat this 125 year old house, at least enough to keep us warm if we wear layers.

And the news is as cold as the weather: 533,000 jobs cut last month, over one and a quarter million in just the last three months. Take a look on how Yahoo! news titled that link - it's very telling. As I have written previously, I think we're in for a long haul, something akin to a true depression rather than just a bad recession. All the elements are in place, many are already playing out just as they did during the Great Depression. And, as bad as it is, I think this is also a time of potential - potential to make some changes which would normally be resisted by entrenched interests: reregulation (intelligent reregulation) of the financial sector; revamping transportation to create an infrastructure supporting mass transit; introduction of single-payer health insurance; elimination of our insane War on (Some) Drugs.

Forget what I said two weeks ago - we're now up to $7.7 Trillion:

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

That comes out to something like $24,000 from every man, woman, and child in the country.

Why, yes I did!

OK, this is basically S&L Crisis, Part II: Revenge of the Greedoids. You, and me, and every other US taxpayer are now on the hook for trillions of dollars of bailout money. Why? Deregulation and unwise real estate lending.

That was Sept. 7. And someone in the comments called me on it, saying that I was grossly overstating the case.

Hmm:

$2 Trillion

Total Fed lending topped $2 trillion for the first time last week and has risen by 140 percent, or $1.172 trillion, in the seven weeks since Fed governors relaxed the collateral standards on Sept. 14. The difference includes a $788 billion increase in loans to banks through the Fed and $474 billion in other lending, mostly through the central bank's purchase of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds.

Couple of weeks ago I got my notice from the state that it was time to renew my CCW permit. The whole process was fairly straight forward: go to the sheriff's office, hand over my driver's license and other ID, have them renew the paperwork on their end (checking to make sure I hadn't done anything which would warrant losing my permit); then over to the Driver's License center for a new ID.

I use a non-driver's ID for my CCW permit. It costs me an extra couple of bucks to have a separate ID, but that way if I have to hand over my DL to someone, they don't know that I have a permit to carry. It's not an issue for the police, should I get pulled over or something, since the CCW info is tied into the driver's license database. And this way, I always have a second photo ID.

So, I got to the Driver's License center. Light crowd, and it only took me a minute to get to a clerk. Who took my paperwork, pulled up the info on her computer, and said that since none of my information had changed, the simple thing to do was just to issue a renewal with the updated CCW expiration date. Cool.

Then she asked if I had a birth certificate or passport.

Via Marketplace, this item:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

I wanted to follow up this post with a note about what has happened in the two weeks since. Particularly here there was some discussion about my assessment of the true scope of the situation being wildly overblown:

Trillions? Really? Do you have a source for this prediction other than "I have a degree in economics"? You're predicting that 10% or more of these loans will go bad, or that interest rates on these mortgage backed securities will go up after the government starts guaranteeing them. Both of these outcomes seem unlikely.

Well, guess where we are just two weeks later:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, according to a draft of the plan obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.

The plan would give the government broad power to buy the bad debt of any U.S. financial institution for the next two years. It would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion to make room for the massive rescue. The proposal does not specify what the government would get in return from financial companies for the federal assistance.

So, remember the S&L Crisis of the late 1980s? I do. It was a direct result of the deregulation pushed by Reagan which resulted in unwise real estate lending. In the end, it cost American taxpayers something like $160 billion to clean up the mess (that's about $270 billion in today's money). Notable names associated with this debacle include John McCain and Neil Bush.

Well, guess what happened this morning?

WASHINGTON -- U.S. federal regulators outlined their takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Sunday morning, including control of the firms by their regulator and a Treasury Department purchase of the firms' senior preferred stock.

Via Reason, this not-at-all-surprising glimpse into the intersection of drug forfeiture laws and corruption - from my old hometown!

St. Louis — During Labor Day weekend 2002, St. Louis city police responded shortly after midnight to an unusual call.

The police chief's daughter, Aimie Mokwa, then 27, had crashed a car.

It was a car she didn't own. St. Louis police had seized it during a drug arrest and turned it over to a private company that holds a lucrative towing contract with the department. That company gave her free use of it.

Oh, it gets better from there. This was not the only such time she got such a sweetheart deal. Nor the only time that she crashed a vehicle and then walked away (including once when her blood alcohol level was recorded as being twice the legal maximum).

Offered without comment:

MOSCOW - A monument to the enema, a procedure many people would rather not think about, has been unveiled at a spa in the southern Russian city of Zheleznovodsk. The bronze syringe bulb, which weighs 800 pounds and is held by three angels, was unveiled at the Mashuk-Akva Term spa, the spa's director said Thursday.

Jim Downey

Our guys out in Iraq don't get the recognition they deserve. Placed in impossible situations, surrounded by a country in which half the population hates your infidel guts, and the other half expects you to do their fighting for them, with impossible goals set by pencil-pushing political fuckwads back in Washington - they still manage to pull it out of the fire and make progress.

Case in point. Our military units in Sadr City have been tasked with helping the Iraqi Army take the lead in the fight against the Iran-trained and equipped "Mahdi Army" Shiite militia. So, when the other shoe drops and the bullets start flying, do the Iraqis step up to the plate?

Well, some of them do. Others? Not so much. They "bravely ran away", leaving a ragged hole in the combined Iraqi/American line for the militia to exploit.

[link] Major Sattar calmly explained that he was leading the remainder of his 80-man company away from the fight. As if to underscore the point, a convoy of Iraqi vehicles piled high with furniture was parked in front of the American position.

Abandoning the stronghold, however, would allow the militias to move in again and seed the road with roadside bombs. Other Iraqi units had stood their ground through several long firefights, and Captain Veath was surprised that the major’s unit was leaving after holding off another militia attack.

“You went through a whole battle and are now removing yourself?” Captain Veath asked incredulously. “Are any of your men dead?”

Major Sattar acknowledged that his unit had several wounded but none killed. But he and other Iraqi soldiers insisted that they were poorly equipped to battle the militias. Iraqi forces, they said, were short of ammunition, had only a few armored vehicles and were up against militia fighters they said were equipped and trained by the Iranians.

“We are not afraid,” the major responded.

He also complained that he had no means to communicate directly with the American troops.

“That is an excuse, and you know it,” Captain Veath shot back. He argued that one of the major’s platoons was situated just 100 yards from some of the American Stryker vehicles and that the two sides had agreed that the Iraqis could send a runner over to the vehicles to ask for help if necessary.

The Iraqi commander returned to his convoy and Captain Veath followed, promising a Stryker escort if the Iraqi soldiers would only return to their positions.

Dozens of excited Iraqi soldiers began to join in the discussion. As tempers flared and voices rose, Sergeant Angulo ordered the company’s soldiers to stay close to Captain Veath.

The Iraqi convoy drove off, and the Americans began to scramble to find a new Iraqi unit to plug the gap.

Look, folks, I wish this damned thing never started. Thanks, President Bush. However, the cold hard facts are that we are in this thing up to our eyeballs. We need to figure out a way to disengage from this war without completely destroying the country of Iraq, leaving it to the tender mercies of the Iranian theocracy. The regular citizens there don't deserve that.

What a clusterfuck.

I've heard and seen much mockery focused on the Tom Cruise Scientology video over the past couple of days. (I apologize if that link no longer works, but the video has been on and off the net and that's the best link I can find at the time of this article.) The truth is, while I believe that atheists (especially agnostic atheists), in general, have a leg to stand on in this case, I don't think the rest of the godders, or innumerable other groups, do. Let's look at a few things that Cruise says.

Tom Cruise: ...I think it’s a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist, and it’s something that you have to earn because a Scientologist does... has the ability to create new and better realities and improve conditions. Being a Scientologist, you look at someone and know absolutely that you can help them.

"But that’s what drives me... I know that we have an opportunity to really help... effectively change people’s lives and I am dedicated to that. I am absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.

Replace the words “Scientologist” with the words Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Nazi, Feminist, Vegan, vegetarian, socialist, communist, capitalist, geek, Sikh, or even self help guru and you'll see what I mean. This statement, minus the maniacal laughter, could have come from any of the groups I listed and a whole lot more. Let's move on to the next set; shall we?
more below the fold

That's the description applied to most of the Security Theater (Bruce Schneier's excellent term) nonsense at our airports by a commercial airline pilot writing at the NYT Blog Jet Lagged. From the piece by Patrick Smith titled "The Airport Security Follies", in which he discusses the fact that current security procedures are nothing but a sham:

No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.

And:

Interesting... It appears that Ray Comfort has a blog. Here's his take on the recent mall shooting in Omaha.

[link] If the secular world insists on saying that there is no God and that we are the products of evolutionary chance, they are saying that they have no idea where we came from, what we are doing here, or where we are going after death. Robert A. Hawkins is the tragic result of that meaningless existence.

This is in response to a line in Hawkin's suicide note which read:

[PDF] "I've just snapped I can't take this meaningless existence anymore I've been a constant disappointment and that trend would have only continued."

The tragedy at the mall in Omaha was terrible, but blaming it on the "secular world" is a mistake. There has been no indication that Hawkins' was an atheist, or a Christian, or anything at all so far. (It's a good bet that he was a Christian, though. His parents and step parents issued press releases through their churches.)

But here's the thing, Ray old chap. Even if the kid turns out to be an atheist, this says exactly nothing about whether or not your god exists. People have been killing people and themselves for as long as we've been "people". Human being are animals that kill - sometimes for what we think are good reasons, and sometimes for not-so-good reasons. Hawkins' brain was broken, obviously, and his reasons were very, very bad, but the existence or non-existence of a magical man in the sky does not have anything to do with them.

*Sigh*

I'd hoped we were beyond this: government-sponsored mass incantations to appease the weather gods.

Via the Bad Astronomer, word that Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia will hold a prayer service next Tuesday at the State Capitol. From the news article:

Heather Teilhet, his spokeswoman, said the governor began talking about wanting to host a service to pray for rain on his way back from Washington D.C. last week.

* * *

"Georgia needs rain. The issue at the heart of our drought problems is a lack of rain," Teilhet said. "And there is nothing the government can do to make that happen."

You're right, Heather. There is nothing the government can do to make that happen. And indulging your superstitions won't make one whit of difference.

Jim Downey