Hillary’s a Piker

The BBC informs us that some other governments are as adept as ours at averting their eyes from obvious corruption among the elite.

Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency has said hundreds of millions of dollars found in Prime Minister Najib Razak’s personal accounts were donations, effectively clearing him of wrongdoing.

But it did not disclose who the donors were or what the donations were for.    

It was investigating allegations funds were transferred to Mr Razak from the 1MDB state investment fund he set up.

The allegation is that he transferred nearly $700m (£450m) from the debt-ridden fund to his own personal account.

This guy makes the Clinton Foundation look honest by comparison.

Paranoid Nightmare Special

RealClearPolicy had an interesting item yesterday on how Obama could get around the 22nd Amendment and run for a third term. Of course, he wouldn’t do such a thing, because he has too much respect for the constitution. [/sarcasm]

Seriously, I see about a zero percent chance of such a thing happening, but the article makes a good case for how it could plausibly be done – read it and offer your thoughts.

Just Another Clinton Foundation Scandal

From The Guardian:

Hillary Clinton’s overlap of private and political activities was once again in the spotlight on Thursday after a Wall Street Journal report that since Clinton helped broker a settlement in a legal tax case against UBS while she was secretary of state, the Swiss bank has increased its financial support and involvement in Clinton Foundation projects.

In February 2009, the IRS sued UBS and demanded that it disclose the names of 52,000 possible American tax evaders with secret Swiss bank accounts. In the months that followed – thanks to involvement of Clinton as secretary of state and Swiss lawmakers – a legal settlement was negotiated. On 19 August 2009, it was announced that UBS would pay no fine and would provide the IRS with information about 4,450 accounts within a year.

Since the deal was struck, disclosures by the foundation and the bank show the donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation growing “from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bank also teamed up with the foundation on the Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative, creating a pilot entrepreneur program through which UBS offered $32m in loans to businesses, the newspaper reported. Other UBS donations to the Clinton Foundation include a $350,000 donation from June 2011 and a $100,000 donation for a charity golf tournament.

Additionally, UBS paid more than $1.5m in speaking fees to Bill Clinton between 2001 and 2014, the newspaper reported.

Wedding Cake Gag Order Explained

I had heard about this 'gag order'  forbidding a bakery in Oregon from stating their opposition to being required to provide wedding cakes for same-sex marriages. It sounded like a pretty outrageous violation of free-speech rights (regardless of one's position on SSM itself)

This explanation (read the whole thing) by Eugene Volokh (a libertarian/conservative) in The Washington Post makes it much more understandable.

Statutes prohibiting similar communications (including as to race, religion, and sex, and as to employment and housing as well as public accommodations) are common, and generally thought to be constitutional. But why? Here’s what I think is the right answer, though I agree that courts haven’t been clear on it. 

Assume that it is indeed against the law to refuse to serve someone based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and so on — and, in particular, to refuse to provide a cake for a same-sex commitment ceremony. Then, saying we “will … refuse[]” to provide a cake is essentially a true threat of illegal conduct. 

To be sure, it is not a threat of violence, or even a threat to commit a crime, but it is a threat to act illegally (by violating the anti-discrimination statute). And it is a threat that would have much the same effect as an outright refusal to provide a cake to someone who shows up and asks for it, because it tells people that it’s futile to even ask.

Makes sense. Of course, if one does not believe the state has a right to order the bakery to bake the cake, then the question is moot, but as far as the gag order is concerned, based on this logic, it seems reasonable..

Will Belgium Sue FIFA for Fraud?

Belgium and Netherlands bid together on the 2018 World Cup, spending $10.2 mil in the process. If Russia got the host job through fraud, Belgium wants their money back.

Belgium may seek compensation over the €4.5m (£3.2m) spent on its unsuccessful 2018 World Cup bid if Fifa’s decision to award the finals to Russia is found to be fraudulent. 

“If fraud is proven, it is obvious to me that we will seek compensation,” the Belgian Football Federation chairman, François de Keersmaecker, told Het Nieuwsblad. The country made a joint bid with the Netherlands that cost €9m.

The article doesn't mention if Netherlands has decided also to sue.

Mexico's Supreme Court Has Effectively Legalized Same-Sex Marriage

Another country, one we may not have expected, has (effectively) legalized same-sex marriage.

In ruling after ruling, the court has said that state laws restricting marriage to heterosexuals are discriminatory. Though the decisions have been made to little public fanfare, they have had the effect of legalizing gay marriage inMexico without enshrining it in law. 

Several other countries in Latin America have done the same as Mexico. This may run contrary to our perceptions about highly-Catholic populations and macho cultures.

… the Mexican court’s rulings have added the country to a slowly growing list of Latin American nations permitting same-sex unions.  

Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil already allow same-sex marriage. Chile plans to recognize same-sex civil unions this year; Ecuador approved civil unions in April; and Colombia grants same-sex couples many of the same rights extended to heterosexual married couples.

Islam and Pigeon Porn

Avert your eyes if you offended by avian thingies.

The accompanying picture may be NSFW if you are in Syria.

The practice of raising pigeons is now banned in ISIS territory, because … get ready for it … when the pigeons fly overhead their genitals
might be visible.

Radical clerics have issued an edict prohibiting the breeding of pigeons in IS-controlled territories under Shariah law. 

Breeders have been given a one-week notice to stop – or they could face the terror group's feared religious police who can dish out punishments including public floggings. 

The ban is "to put a stop to the greater criminal act of harming one's Muslim and Muslim women neighbours, revealing the [pigeon's] genitals and wasting time", an Arabic notice said.

Except: Apparently pigeons don't have external sex organs. Nonetheless, their concern for women is touching.

In a separate report, three pigeons have been executed for spying.

The Islamic State (Isis) militants in Syria have reportedly executed three pigeons that it had arrested on charges of spying.

I'm anxiously awaiting PETA's statement on this.

It Looks Like Some of the FIFA Elite Are Ready to Sing

This is from a newsletter I get from Foreign Affairs magazine. Could get interesting if some of these crooks decide to take others (especially Blatter) down with them.

Former FIFA vice president Jack Warner said during a TV address that he would reveal information about institutional corruption in the soccer body. Warner alleged that he provided documents outlining links between FIFA, its funding, and the 2010 election in Warner’s native Trinidad and Tobago. According to Warner, Blatter is implicated in the transactions. 

Warner is one of the 14 people recently charged by the U.S. Justice Department for accepted bribes and kickbacks estimated at upwards of $150m over a 24-year period. The former vice president, who faces extradition to the United States, denies the charges against him. 

Another top FIFA official who had been previously charged with corruption, Chuck Blazer, has also outlined bribe-taking. According to a newly released transcript of a 2013 plea deal, Blazer admitted that he and other FIFA officials accepted money in exchange for supporting South Africa as the 2010 World Cup hosts. South African officials have denied the allegations.

Does Anybody Really Not Know That Cigarettes Are Unhealthy?

I'm a non-smoker. I smoked for many years, starting in my late teens, but quit about thirty-five years ago. I very much wish my friends who do smoke would quit, because I want the pleasure of their company for many years to come (but I don't preach to them – it's their call).

But I read this item with a great deal of skepticism:

A Canadian court has ordered three tobacco companies to pay C$15.5bn (£8bn; $12bn) - the largest award for damages in the country's history. 

The plaintiffs were Quebec smokers who said the firms failed to warn them of health risks associated with smoking.

All smokers, though, surely know that smoking is unhealthy, and have known for many years, several decades at least. My sympathy for someone blaming their habit on the evil corporations is rather limited at this point.

The Clinton Connection to the FIFA Mess

According to The Daily Beast, among the Clinton Foundation’s generous donors are FIFA, the Qatar 2022 Committee (the group that won the bribefest for the 2022 World Cup, and that runs the slave labor camps building the stadiums and other facilities), and the government of Qatar.

The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, partnering with the State of Qatar, “committed to utilizing its research and development for sustainable infrastructure at the 2022 FIFA World Cup to improve food security in Qatar, the Middle East, and other arid and water-stressed regions throughout the world,” according to the Clinton Foundation website. 

The cost of the two-year project is not listed on the Clinton Foundation website, but the Qatar 2022 committee gave the foundation between $250,000 and $500,000 in 2014 and the State of Qatar gave between $1 million and $5 million in previous, unspecified years.

Of course, it’s no surprise at this point to find the Clintons mixed up anywhere sleazy money is to be made.

Sheriff Joe Asking for Money

Joe Arpaio is sending out letters asking for help with his legal bills.

Arpaio said in a letter to supporters that he doesn't have the money to continue paying for attorneys out of his own pocket, adding that he feels "targeted" by the immigration rights groups that have sued him to stop what they say are racist policies targeting Latinos. 

"In some instances I have to personally pay for attorneys to represent me in these cases," Arpaio wrote in an email Thursday. "I do not have the personal wealth or the wherewithal to keep up with the costly demands of paying for attorneys to defend me. 

Arpaio made the plea while awaiting a decision by U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow on whether the sheriff broke the law in failing to carry out a 2011 court order to refrain from bias against minorities.

Arpaio also wants to have Judge Snow removed from the case.

Joe is unlikely to get a dime out of me.

Ireland Votes for Gay Marriage

Ireland voted yesterday on whether to legalize gay marriage. The results were announced today, and ‘Yes’ won by a landslide.

Irish voters backed legalizing gay marriage by a landslide, according to electoral figures announced Saturday — a stunning result that illustrates the rapid social change taking place in this traditionally Catholic nation. 

Figures from Friday’s referendum announced at Dublin Castle showed that 62.1 percent of Irish voters said “yes.” Outside, watching the results announcement live in the castle’s cobblestoned courtyard, thousands of gay rights activists cheered, hugged and cried. 

The unexpectedly strong percentage of approval surprised both sides. Analysts and campaigners credited the “yes” side with adeptly using social media to mobilize first-time young voters and for a series of searing personal stories from Irish gay people to convince voters to back equal marriage rights. 

Ireland is the first country to approve gay marriage in a popular national vote. Nineteen other countries have legalized the practice.

To anyone who grew up in the fifties and sixties, when the idea even of legal divorce was unthinkable for Ireland, so strong was the hold of the Catholic church, this is absolutely stunning. Divorce was not, in fact legalized there until the nineties.

When things start changing, it seems that the changes often come amazingly fast.

Asian-Americans File Suit against Harvard

Upon more careful reading, it isn't a suit, it's a complaint filed with the Departments of Education and Justice. In any case, here's the part quoted at the link.

Over the last two decades, Asian-American applicants to Harvard University and other Ivy League colleges have increasingly experienced discrimination in the admissions process. Many Asian-American students who have almost perfect SAT scores, top 1% GPAs, plus significant awards or leadership positions in various extracurricular activities have been rejected by Harvard University and other Ivy League Colleges while similarly situated applicants of other races have been admitted. Because of this discrimination, it has become especially difficult for high-performing male Asian-American students to gain admission to Harvard University and other Ivy League colleges. 

My guess is that the in the current administration, this will go nowhere. The idea may be to have it in place for the future.

Chicago Downgraded to 'Junk'

Well, not the city, just its bonds.

Moody's downgraded Chicago's credit rating down to junk level "Ba1" from "Baa2." 

The announcement, which the ratings agency released Tuesday afternoon, cited a recent Illinois court ruling voiding state pension reforms. Moody's said it saw a negative outlook for the city's credit. 

Following that May court decision, Moody's said it believes that "the city's options for curbing growth in its own unfunded pension liabilities have narrowed considerably."

That court decision is explained here.

On Friday, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that pension reform legislation passed in 2013, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 1, violates the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution. The Court upheld a previous circuit court ruling that invalidated the law in its entirety. The Court held that the State could not rely on its inherent “police powers” to diminish the benefits of membership in a pension system. 

While I think the decision is disastrous for the state, it also seems to be on solid legal grounds. The section of the Illinois constitution in question reads:

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State, any unit of local government or school district, or any agency or instrumentality thereof, shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

That seems pretty clear.

It also seems pretty clear that this is going to end badly.

Update: Five Reasons Chicago Is in Worse Shape Than Detroit

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

This song came up on my mp3 player while I was driving today.

I was struck by the irony of it -- not funny, haha, irony; irony can often be sad and even bitter. The song is about a brutal, racially-motivated crime that occurred in Baltimore on my sixteenth birthday -- February 9, 1963. And I was listening to it as a 68yo man and it made me think, of course, of the events of the past few weeks in Baltimore. The similarities and contrasts made me think of how far we've come in my lifetime -- and, sadly, how far we have to go.

According to Wikipedia, the verdict came down on the day of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Dylan had attended the speech and read about the case on way back to New York.

The album was released in early 1964, and I spent most of 64-65 listening to it and similar music.

Applying Data Analytics to the Supremes

538 has an interesting post about an attempt to apply data analytics to Supreme Court cases to predict how the court will rule.

CourtCast, a machine-learning model, relies only on PDF files of oral argument transcripts. There are three inputs: the number of words spoken by justices to each party, the sentiment of those words, and the number of times a justice interrupts an attorney. That’s really it — CourtCast doesn’t care about body language, it doesn’t care about justices’ ideologies, and it doesn’t care about who’s arguing the case in front of the court. It doesn’t know the law or the precedent or the political climate. The model trains itself on past cases, learning which justice tendencies are pertinent. It can then analyze the transcript from any fresh case and predict an outcome.

It's an interesting idea, though more as a starting point than as a finished product (the creator agrees that it needs refinement). The biggest problem I see is with the 'sentiment' parameter -- there's a big difference between Justice Ginsburg, for example, expressing mild skepticism concerning an argument and her shouting, "That's bullshit!"

OK, you're right -- she probably doesn't often do that.

An interesting sidelight to the article is the chart detailing how often each Justice interrupts attorneys and how many words they speak in the course of questioning or commenting. Sotomayor gets the title of Chief Interrupter by a narrow margin over Scalia and Breyer, while Thomas never interrupts and Alito and Kagan seldom do so. Breyer is Mr. Loquacious, by a good margin, and Thomas (this is not exactly news) is The Court Clam.

I thought the interruption stats were of interest, since the conventional wisdom is that men do  much more interrupting than women do. That doesn't seem to hold with the Court, where there seems, overall, to be little gender difference.

I'm afraid that if I were appointed to the Court (which seems unlikely) I would probably give Sotomayor a run for her money -- I have to admit that I fit the male stereotype in regard to interrupting people.

By the way, the model predicts a 61% likelihood that the King v. Burwell decision will uphold Obamacare.

Chevron-Ecuador: Just Start All Over?

I've mentioned the Chevron-Ecuador legal battle several times in the past – most recently here. Now it seems possible the latest court hearing the arguments (the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals) may feel that the whole thing is such a mess that it's best just to return to square one and start over.

On Monday, Circuit Judge Richard Wesley called the case "unmanageable." [...] 

Wesley asked if a solution might be to rewind the clock to have the case tried in New York as the Ecuadorians originally wanted. 

"Why not order a retrial?" he asked. "Why not cleanse the question of fraud?"

Corruption

This list, from Transparency International, attempts to list almost all the world's nations in terms of corruption. The US is tied for 19th with Uruguay (the highest-rated Latin American nation). We are just behind Japan and just ahead of Ireland.

Looking further down the list, I found the two countries I've lived in recently -- the Philippines (94th) and, just behind them, Ecuador at 102nd. I would have expected Ecuador to do a little bit better (at least relative to the Philippines).

Given that there are 177 countries on the list, these two would seem to have not terrible ratings -- lower middle. But the bottom of the list consists of some of the most horrible places on earth, and really, anything outside the top fifty or so is not a place most folks would like to live (or invest). Hell, Rwanda managed to make it to 49th.

Credentialism

So how necessary is a law degree to practicing law? The lack of one does not seem to have prevented this woman from doing the job well.

A woman used forged documents to pose as an estate lawyer for a decade and made partner at her small firm before her fraud was discovered, according to charges announced yesterday. Kimberly Kitchen was charged Thursday with forgery, unauthorized practice of law, and felony records tampering. State prosecutors contend Kitchen fooled BMZ Law by forging a law license, bar exam results, an email showing she attended Duquesne University law school, and a check for a state attorney registration fee. The firm is based in Huntingdon, about 110 miles east of Pittsburgh. Kitchen, of nearby James Creek, handled estate planning for more than 30 clients "despite never having attended law school," the attorney general's office says. 

So, over a period of several years, she took care of dozens of clients sufficiently well that her firm made her a partner, and was also elected president of the county bar association – without a law degree.

The Chevron-Ecuador Case

I've referred a few times to the legal battle between Chevron and Ecuador, which has been going on for a long time in many courts. The stakes are high ($9 billion), but the real fascination has been the maneuvering (some of which seems to have been fraudulent in nature).

I've been meaning to write a summary of it, but I've been scared off by its complexity. In lieu of that, here's a video summary.

Just bear in mind that this is Chevron's side of the story, so don't take it as gospel.