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Painful

Monday, March 11, 2013

Sports headline in this morning’s Day (not repeated on-line):

Huskies win easy 

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More adventures in semantics

Saturday, March 9, 2013

As one ages one acquires the right to become a curmudgeon, or at least one tends to believe that to be the case. Having reached a not yet ripe, but still old age, I am going to indulge myself. The object of my not-quite-wrath? Why, as often, the New York Times, whose style book, in my cranky opinion, needs some fine tuning. Today we learn that British bankers, much like their American counterparts, are getting paid big pounds for destroying the institutions for which they work.

But the region’s banks cannot easily defend their outsize pay in the current environment. British institutions, already struggling to bolster profits since the crisis, have been tarnished by a series of scandals. In the latest disclosures on Friday, Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 82 percent owned by the British government after receiving a bailout during the financial crisis, announced on Friday that 93 of its employees earned more than more than £1 million, or $1.5 million, last year. The payments came even as R.B.S. reported a multibillion-pound loss last year. The bank did not disclose the similar figures of staff compensation for 2011.

Barclays, which came under fire after agreeing to a $450 million fine with American and British authorities related to the rate-rigging scandal, said in an annual report on Friday that 428 of its staff members still earned more than $1.5 million in 2012. (Emphasis decidedly added)

(via NYTimes.com)

I would humbly submit that in context the word “earned” is misused here.

I suppose that one could make the argument that the first definition in my dictionary might apply, if only faintly:

obtain (money) in return for labour or services,

though it is hard to argue that these bankers provided either labour or services from which anyone derived a benefit. But really, isn’t the second definition far more germane, and (perhaps) unwittingly implied by the Times:

gain deservedly in return for one’s behaviour or achievements.

Most objective people would be hard pressed to argue that these guys (and a few gals, I suppose) did anything to actually deserve these outlandish bonuses, unless you believe that tanking their own bank and the economy is an achievement, or, in the alternative, engaging in a massive conspiracy to commit fraud. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to substitute “were paid” for the more value laden “earned”. This may sound trivial, but can you to imagine the term being used by the Times to refer to a drug dealer’s ill gotten gains?

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Friday Night Music

Friday, March 8, 2013

It’s yet another snowy Friday, it being exactly one month since the actual blizzard we endured four weeks ago today. I spent some time looking for songs about winter, and trying to find suitable videos for the titles I found. Not much luck, until I found this one, in which the video and audio quality are not that great, but you can’t have everything. Ray Charles and Dionne Warwick at the 1987 Grammys.

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What an a******

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Eric Holder, two days ago:

Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday said the suicide death of internet activist Aaron Swartz was a “tragedy,” but the hacking case against the 26-year-old was “a good use of prosecutorial discretion.”

Holder, the nation’s top prosecutor, is the highest-ranking member of the President Barack Obama administration to defend the indictment and prosecution of the former director of Demand Progress, who committed suicide in January as his April trial approached. Holder’s comments come seven weeks after Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, whose office was prosecuting Swartz, said the authorities’ actions were “appropriate in bringing and handling this case.”

(via Wired.com)

Meanwhile, here’s what he said the next day about how he elects to use his own prosecutorial discretion when the perpetrator is a bank:

Yesterday Attorney General Holder stated openly what was already apparent. The Justice Department believes that Too Big to Fail Banks are Too Big to Jail. Criminal indictments against banks or leading bankers might endanger the economy and thus were too big a risk.

Here’s what Holder said

“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” he said. “And I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”

(via Reader Supported News)

It’s not just that he believes these things. It’s the fact that he follows one statement with another, without, apparently, any idea of how they play against one another. It’s fine to drive a kid to suicide for doing things some of the victims didn’t even mind, while you give a free pass to people who are engaged in criminal conspiracies to game the financial system for their own benefit, with economic catastrophe a side benefit the rest of us have to experience, though not the guys who brought it on. Not to mention that if Holder feels these banks are too big, maybe he ought to give some thought to the fact that he’s the guy whose supposed to do something about that.

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Graphing inequality

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

No time to actually post anything, but I thought I’d pass this along, which I saw here.

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Great moments in hypocrisy

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Given today’s partisan reality, Jack Lew breezed through his confirmation. Comparisons to confirmations past are irrelevant. Any Obama nomination that is even allowe a vote without a filibuster or at least protracted delay has to be considered a breeze; any nomination that gets more than three Republican votes has to be considered a landslide (and a sure sign that the nominee in question is a corporate tool). Apparently many Democrats (including, one would hope, Elizabeth Warren and Chris Murphy) held their noses while doing so, but I have not come to condemn those who disgraced themselves in that fashion. The article to which I’ve linked does that well.

No, I’m writing to note how widespread massive hypocrisy is among our politicians, and how little noted it is, perhaps for that very reason.

Here’s Orrin Hatch, his eye no doubt on Wall Street donors, justifying his vote on Lew:

Hatch complained that the committee only had 12 days to vet Lew’s nomination. He also has expressed concerned about Lew having received compensation from Citigroup, saying that Lew’s appointment might look like the administration is catering to special interests. But Hatch said he believes the president has the right to select his cabinet, which is why he would vote for Lew’s confirmation.

“I am bending over backwards to show deference to the president’s nomination and I hope that doesn’t go unnoticed,” Hatch said.

(via The Hill)

Well, that amount of bending is very impressive. Now, care to guess whether this latter day Gumby bended on Hagel, about whom there were no legitimate questions? If you really can’t guess, you can find the unsurprising answer here.

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Friday Night Music, Twin Bill

Friday, March 1, 2013

Okay, these videos have almost nothing in common, except that they’re both from the dim and distant past, and there’s a bit of religion in both of them.

I had to pass this along because it blew me away when I saw it on the Washington Monthly’s “Political Animal” blog. This is sister Rosetta Tharpe, who I never heard of before, at the dawn of the rock age, singing about Jesus and playing a mean electric guitar. Anyway, ignore the lyrics and listen to the rock.

Now, for a more topical piece, but from roughly the same era, give or take a few years. Tom Lehrer sings the Vatican Rag.

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I want in

Friday, March 1, 2013

Looks like I picked the wrong line of blogging:

A range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.

The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.

(via Daily Kos)

How come we left wing types don’t get paid to prostitute ourselves? We can use the money. I’ve mentioned before that the battery on my Ipad’s getting weak, and it’s now my primary device for sharing my amazing insights with the rest of the world. Do I have to use my own money to get one, when some third world dictator could buy one for me?

Look, I can see some merit in the Malaysian dictatorship. I’m sure they keep the trains running on time. Where’s my boodle?

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Modern Times

Friday, March 1, 2013

I confess I haven’t followed the Bradley Manning story as perhaps I should. But I was struck by his account of his attempts to get the dirt he had on the government into the mainstream:

At my aunt’s house I debated what I should do with the SigActs [war logs]– in particular whether I should hold on to them– or expose them through a press agency. At this point I decided that it made sense to try to expose the SigAct tables to an American newspaper. I first called my local news paper, The Washington Post, and spoke with a woman saying that she was a reporter. I asked her if the Washington Post would be interested in receiving information that would have enormous value to the American public. Although we spoke for about five minutes concerning the general nature of what I possessed, I do not believe she took me seriously. She informed me that the Washington Post would possibly be interested, but that such decisions were made only after seeing the information I was referring to and after consideration by senior editors.

I then decided to contact [missed word] the most popular newspaper, The New York Times. I called the public editor number on The New York Times website. The phone rang and was answered by a machine. I went through the menu to the section for news tips. I was routed to an answering machine. I left a message stating I had access to information about Iraq and Afghanistan that I believed was very important. However, despite leaving my Skype phone number and personal email address, I never received a reply from The New York Times.

(via The Dissenter)

Daniel Ellsberg would be an unknown had he tried to peddle the Pentagon Papers in this day and age.

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Mixed emotions

Friday, March 1, 2013

Today is a landmark day for me, and not because the nation has started the process of slow motion economic suicide. No, this is personal to me, for today I have lost a bet, something about which I have mixed emotions.

Many months ago I bet a friend who shall remain nameless (but not totally impoverished) that by this very date Joe Lieberman would be a commentator on Fox. This was a win-win bet for me, obviously. Worst case I got $5.00, best case Lieberman was not being paid to express his undying concern for the party that “left him”. Either way I sort of win.

So, I have to make arrangements to pay up. I’m actually surprised I lost this one. Fox and Lieberman seemed like a perfect match.

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