How, exactly, is it that Jon Corzine is not incarcerated at this moment? Wouldn't you consider him a flight risk? Apparently our Justice Department (or is it the Department of Justice?) doesn't assume that the ownership of a fleet of private jets and continued access to a half billion dollars of other peoples' money could be, in any way, shape or form, construed as risk-worthy.
A parallel: In our electric power industry we are [supposedly] bound by the North American Electric Reliability Councils (NERCs) reliability standards. One example: the loss of a single generator, transmission line, or transformer should not result in the overload of any remaining facility, in that we operate with sufficient capacity to absorb the loss of that one resource. Well, PacifiCorp did indeed have an issue in 2008 where a lockout relay failed to operate, resulting in 15 standards violations and the loss of a few hundred thousand customers. What I was floored by, in reading the report of this event, was how PacifiCorp was fined $4 million but did not have to admit to having failed to meet any of these reliability standards. They violated 15 standards, but do not admit having violated them! And NERCs position is that they didn't violate them, either! But $4 million was levied, $4 million was paid, and everyone's hands have been washed.
Corzine will be allowed to do the same thing, you watch. The SEC will levy a token fine in the coming years, say, fining his defunct company $50 million for having looted $800 million but also not having to admit to having done anything wrong or illegal...and most importantly, Corzine cannot be prosecuted for anything because he did not have to admit to having done anything.
Say there were a string of crimes committed here in Elk Grove. A murder at the Post Office, a kid caught for selling meth on a street corner and a robbery at the Safeway. I'm linked to all of them -- because I drove through that intersection where the kid sold the dope, was caught on the red light camera, as I was driving to the post office to ship a Christmas gift and to Safeway for a 6 pack. But instead of being charged, I meet privately with the county prosecutor and we cook up a deal -- I don't have to admit to having committed any crime, but I'm willing to spend the next 20 months under housal unit arrest with an ankle monitor.
What judge would sign off on that? Did I murder someone or was I just selling a dimebag on Franklin Blvd? Or was I innocent? But these are just the way these sorts of SEC fines are levied -- we don't get to know the true level of fraud committed, and clearly by accepting to pay a fine some presumption of guilt is assumed...but really, this is just the simple cost of doing business, having to work with such a regulatory agency. PacifiCorp did exactly that with NERC...and I argue that my utility SMUD should approach the levying of fines in exactly the same way -- treat them as any other cost of doin' business here in our grand nation where one-eye-open justice reigns on high.
Jon Corzine and MF Global -- if this one case doesn't provide you with all the ammunition you'd need to encourage you to take your money out of their criminal hands, well, continue to chase such hallucinated rates of return and prepare to lose the surplus wealth you think you "were entitled to" based on your "years of hard work." Here's a further example of how Enronized accounting is still a legal form of theft some fifteen years after Kenneth Lay (God Rest His Soul, May Peace Be With Him) started it. Indeed, ratings agencies gave sterling marks to MF Global right up until they declared bankruptcy.
If you can't see how this whole system is geared not to providing needed liquidity to producers and sellers but also to bilk you out of a percentage (yes, sometimes 100%) of your money, well, I'm glad you're there to lose it instead of me, to grease the skids of our wonderful free-market economy.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Withered Leaves
Wa-hey! Elk Grove High School gets the honor of a visit by a Real American Hero -- NASCAR driver Robbie Gordon.
Really. Do you really think that some C- average high school senior is somehow going to suddenly spring up and realize he's been fuckering away his last 6 years in middle/school all due to some 35-minute paid-for-speech by a guy who makes consecutive left hand turns at a high rate of speed for a living? Really?
I wonder why Robbie Gordon was invited. Why not Kyle Busch? -- recently arrested for 128mph in a 45mph zone. Kyle would be a far superior motivational speaker at EGHS. Who wouldn't like to not be arrested and not have their license suspended after driving 3x+ the speed limit, huh? I'm pretty sure every damn senior at Elk Grove high, that's who.
I will read the first two minutes of speech notes as prepared by Kyle that would have been delivered, had he not been cockblocked by driver Robbie Gordon delivering his speech here in our small, humble village:
"Greetings, Elk Grove High! This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that although I've had four vodka martini's just prior to taking this dais that I will address you with a candor and a decision which the present situation of my NASCAR career impels.
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from the honesty facing restrictions on our ability to speed today. The ability to drive recklessly will endure, as it has endured, and will revive and prosper.
"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is not fear itself -- it's those godforsaken CHP pigs -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terrorists which paralyzes our need for speed. In every dark hour after beating the wife that we are not allowed to drive 3 times the speed limit simply to relax and calm down, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding -- we ought have the right.
"We face common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things such as a fast car that will shit-n-git with 20" rims and a pimpin' sound system that King George himself would find worthy. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
"But I ain't no fool, fool! I know how to drive fa-fa-fast! You shouldn't limit my right to drive 128 through your simple 45! My citation comes from no failure of substance. I'm stricken by no plague of locusts! Compared with the perils that our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, I have much to be thankful for. I didn't die like #3 -- plenty is at my doorstep!"
And so it goes here in NASCAR inspired Elk Grove. And so we will graduate several hundred drivers who will think Franklin Blvd. as their own private drag strip, as Robbie Gordon's message sinks in...
Really. Do you really think that some C- average high school senior is somehow going to suddenly spring up and realize he's been fuckering away his last 6 years in middle/school all due to some 35-minute paid-for-speech by a guy who makes consecutive left hand turns at a high rate of speed for a living? Really?
I wonder why Robbie Gordon was invited. Why not Kyle Busch? -- recently arrested for 128mph in a 45mph zone. Kyle would be a far superior motivational speaker at EGHS. Who wouldn't like to not be arrested and not have their license suspended after driving 3x+ the speed limit, huh? I'm pretty sure every damn senior at Elk Grove high, that's who.
I will read the first two minutes of speech notes as prepared by Kyle that would have been delivered, had he not been cockblocked by driver Robbie Gordon delivering his speech here in our small, humble village:
"Greetings, Elk Grove High! This is a day of national consecration. And I am certain that although I've had four vodka martini's just prior to taking this dais that I will address you with a candor and a decision which the present situation of my NASCAR career impels.
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from the honesty facing restrictions on our ability to speed today. The ability to drive recklessly will endure, as it has endured, and will revive and prosper.
"Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is not fear itself -- it's those godforsaken CHP pigs -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terrorists which paralyzes our need for speed. In every dark hour after beating the wife that we are not allowed to drive 3 times the speed limit simply to relax and calm down, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding -- we ought have the right.
"We face common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things such as a fast car that will shit-n-git with 20" rims and a pimpin' sound system that King George himself would find worthy. Values have shrunk to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; and the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
"But I ain't no fool, fool! I know how to drive fa-fa-fast! You shouldn't limit my right to drive 128 through your simple 45! My citation comes from no failure of substance. I'm stricken by no plague of locusts! Compared with the perils that our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, I have much to be thankful for. I didn't die like #3 -- plenty is at my doorstep!"
And so it goes here in NASCAR inspired Elk Grove. And so we will graduate several hundred drivers who will think Franklin Blvd. as their own private drag strip, as Robbie Gordon's message sinks in...
CCC-
I wonder how it is, that we at large somehow believed, even for a minute, that Herman Cain had any possibility of winning the Office of the Presidency...let alone the Republican nomination.
This slow-moving train wreck of a candidate is exactly why Obama will remain in office until 2016. Really. What would you think of a future President Cain, having to make a snap decision with the red button on the desk...when he can't even manage allegations of a consensual affair. A total waste of Republican energy, he was.
A complete, total sham. He had no real intention, along with no real financial support, to win the Republican nomination. An outsider like Cain cannot win the nomination, ever. Proof of this is former Louisiana governor Buddy Rohmer, running for the office who hasn't even been invited to debate, a candidate who's held office before, unlike Cain. There's no reason to wonder why he's an outlier, as he's campaigning against the monetary power structure that infects the current political process.
So you Republicans should focus your energies on 2016. Rubio. Christie. Who knows who else, but certainly not the dumbasses running in 2012.
What do you think this nation would have become, had Ross Perot not dropped out of the 1992 race because of some perceived "shame" to be brought upon his daughter's wedding by the Republican establishment. What a sham that was, too. Some sort of "disgraceful event" foisted upon the ceremony of an unknown daughter of an outside candidate is apparently sufficient to derail the candidacy of an up and comer for the office of President? What is this?
All of this is representative of the shallowness, the ineptitude, and the slow-failure of our once worthy American culture. I will argue (and have argued here on this blog) that we are past the point of no return. We are slovenly. We are lazy. We think of ourselves as entitled above all others. We treat the presidential election as an extension of any reality TV episode nowadays, where we mentally equate Brandi Glanville's most recent tit-job with the Republican field running for president.
I have been, am, and will likely continue to assign American culture a CCC- rating...if I don't rate it at junk-status in the near future. And...just as Standard and Poor's ratings...this is only a opinion...
This slow-moving train wreck of a candidate is exactly why Obama will remain in office until 2016. Really. What would you think of a future President Cain, having to make a snap decision with the red button on the desk...when he can't even manage allegations of a consensual affair. A total waste of Republican energy, he was.
A complete, total sham. He had no real intention, along with no real financial support, to win the Republican nomination. An outsider like Cain cannot win the nomination, ever. Proof of this is former Louisiana governor Buddy Rohmer, running for the office who hasn't even been invited to debate, a candidate who's held office before, unlike Cain. There's no reason to wonder why he's an outlier, as he's campaigning against the monetary power structure that infects the current political process.
So you Republicans should focus your energies on 2016. Rubio. Christie. Who knows who else, but certainly not the dumbasses running in 2012.
What do you think this nation would have become, had Ross Perot not dropped out of the 1992 race because of some perceived "shame" to be brought upon his daughter's wedding by the Republican establishment. What a sham that was, too. Some sort of "disgraceful event" foisted upon the ceremony of an unknown daughter of an outside candidate is apparently sufficient to derail the candidacy of an up and comer for the office of President? What is this?
All of this is representative of the shallowness, the ineptitude, and the slow-failure of our once worthy American culture. I will argue (and have argued here on this blog) that we are past the point of no return. We are slovenly. We are lazy. We think of ourselves as entitled above all others. We treat the presidential election as an extension of any reality TV episode nowadays, where we mentally equate Brandi Glanville's most recent tit-job with the Republican field running for president.
I have been, am, and will likely continue to assign American culture a CCC- rating...if I don't rate it at junk-status in the near future. And...just as Standard and Poor's ratings...this is only a opinion...
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