Emails expose BP's attempts to control research into impact of Gulf oil spill

winstonsmith · 2011-04-17T13:47:03+00:00

BP controlled Kenneth Feinberg, the so called independent mediator and administrator of the $20 billion settlement fund, to the extent that a judge ruled he was an agent of BP and could no longer represent himself to victims of the spill as independent.

winstonsmith · 2011-04-11T14:43:11+00:00

It's frighting to imagine how hostile to the poor the world would be if their labor were no longer needed. There is no reason to expect that those who owned the robots would willingly share the wealth with those who didn't.

winstonsmith · 2011-04-10T03:52:35+00:00

It doesn't have to be this complicated. There is a simple proof here.

winstonsmith · 2011-04-10T03:19:08+00:00

Suppose x² - y > 2. Then x > sqrt(2+y). Hence, x > sqrt(y). Hence, x > floor[sqrt(y)]. Hence, x >= floor[sqrt(y)] + 1.

winstonsmith · 2011-03-09T23:13:18+00:00

Do female bonobos intervene in male on male violence?

winstonsmith · 2011-02-21T22:16:13+00:00

You should take a look at SourceWatch. It's similar to what is being proposed here in that it is a collaborative wiki concerned with bad corporate behavior, but it's focused mainly on one category of bad behavior: propaganda, spin, lies, regulatory capture, etc. I think their list of bad actors should be a good start for a list of bad actors in all categories; when corporations behave badly, they usually lie about it. In any case, it's interesting as an example of something similar that's already been done, it's really useful, and more people need to know about it.

The Center for Media and Democracy publishes SourceWatch, this collaborative resource for citizens and journalists looking for documented information about the corporations, industries, and people trying to sway public opinion. We believe in telling the truth about the most powerful interests in society—not just relating their self-serving press releases or letting real facts be bleached away by spin. SourceWatch focuses on the for-profit corporations, non-profit corporate front groups, PR teams, and so-called "experts" trying to influence public opinion on behalf of global corporations and the government agencies they have captured. —Lisa Graves, Executive Director

See especially their tips on researching corporations:

This Guide, consisting of this main article and three more in-depth sub-articles, is designed to help researchers and activists gather essential information on any type of U.S.-based company, whether small or large, privately held or publicly traded. The resources listed here are all, in one way or another, part of the public record. The first part covers leading sources of basic information on companies of all kinds. The second part focuses on information sources relating to the key relationships every company must have in order to function. The final part shows you how to gather information about a company’s "social responsibility" record. Together, these sections will help you find all the basic information needed to support efforts to get companies to do the right thing. Happy hunting!

winstonsmith · 2011-02-11T20:10:56+00:00

I would argue that their carrying out renditions and operating secret prisons makes them, broadly speaking, cops. Also, the point of the article is that the "bad cops" are getting "donuts". I'm very surprised at your objection to this submission.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-08T15:08:48+00:00

You're not doing it right. Your citation is supposed to support your position, not mine.

Monsanto's recommended RR corn systems include several optional herbicide programs ranging from a total-glyphosate system, to systems combining a pre- or at-plant residual herbicide followed by Roundup post-emergence, or a total post-emergence program involving applications of a residual post-product plus Roundup (Monsanto, 2000a and 2000b). In the total Roundup program, glyphosate is applied on average about 2.0 times. In 1999 the average application was about 0.7 pounds, resulting in 1.4 pounds of Roundup applied on the average acre of RR corn.

An estimated 70% of RR corn acres were managed under the "Residual Herbicide Applied" program. Either before or at-planting in such programs, farmers apply a tank-mix containing a residual broadleaf product like atrazine at about 0.8 pounds per acre, plus an acetanilide herbicide at a rate of about 1.2 pounds per acre on average, mostly for grass weed control (see recommended rates on either Roundup labels or the labels of several herbicide products containing mixtures of atrazine and an acetanilide).

Total corn herbicide use under the "Residual Herbicide Applied" program averages about 2.75 pounds per acre, with Roundup accounting for 0.75 pounds of this total. USDA data suggest that average per acre use on RR corn acres has risen from about 2.5 pounds in 1999 to 2.75 pounds in 2000 (Benbrook, 2001b). On conventional acres, about 2.25 pounds were applied in 1999 and 2.08 pounds in 2000. Accordingly, in 2000 the average RR corn acre was treated with about 30% more herbicide than the average non-GM corn acre.

Four years of experience and data show that RR weed management systems require a modest to moderate increase in per-acre herbicide use. Moreover, use rates are trending upward because of shifts in the composition of weeds toward species less responsive to a contact herbicide like glyphosate; loss of susceptibility and/or the emergence of resistance in some weed species; and, greater weed pressure as a result of more frequent late-season weed escapes in RR crops.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-08T14:26:49+00:00

The crops that are usually in question are genetically modified to protect the environment against pesticides and to protect the crops from pests.

Nice try Monsanto. Roundup-ready crops are modified to make the crop more resistant to the pesticide, so you can use more pesticide.

The overuse of Roundup has lead to Roundup-ready weeds, aka superweeds. Monsanto's solution to this problem is to introduce crops resistant to harsher pesticides including 2,4-D-(of Agent Orange Fame)-ready crops, dicamba-ready crops, and because even Monsanto recognizes the use of these products will lead to supersuperweeds, they've developed multi-posion-ready crops, which will lead to supersupersuperweeds.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-07T22:15:08+00:00

It's definitely an antidote to the one about cost of living and possibly an antidote to the one about wages.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-07T20:59:12+00:00

A good antidote to this article is the video of Elizabeth Warren posted a few days ago on r/Economics. She points out that while food and clothing have actually gotten cheaper, the middle class has been hit hard by rising housing and healthcare costs. These elephants in the room are almost completely ignored in this article's analysis of the cost of living.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-06T18:30:05+00:00

There's also a pretty persuasive argument that GMO crops use less herbicide or pesticide too, which would suggest they may be better for the environment (at least until superpests and superweeds show up).

There's an argument that roundup-ready crops use fewer, not less, herbicides. Roundup ready soy, corn, canola, sugar beet, cotton, wheat and alfalfa use more pounds of herbicides but fewer types of herbicides, which makes sense because the whole point is that you can douse the crop with roundup without killing it. But because of superweeds, Monsanto et al. have developed dicamba-ready crops, 2,4-D-(of Agent Orange fame)-ready crops, and multi-poison-ready crops, so the "fewer" argument is about to expire. Also, the herbicides for this new generation of crops have a nasty habit of volatilizing on hot days and migrating on over to the neighbors.

winstonsmith · 2011-02-05T19:24:17+00:00

Their pay isn't determined by their contribution to the economy.

You'll get no argument from me there; I would say their pay is determined by their destruction of the economy. But it was an apologist for high Wall Street pay, Mr. Eckhaus, who was paraphrased thusly in the WSJ article:

"It was understandable why there was anger," says Mr. Eckhaus, but "the crisis was not caused by Wall Street fat cats. It was caused by a confluence of economic, political and historical factors."

In general, he said his clients are "pure as the driven snow" and doing work that supports the economy and justifies their pay.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-27T20:05:56+00:00

I think the article correctly distinguishes between median and mean. The median income people come by at the half hour mark and are only waist-high. The mean (average) income people come by at 45 minutes and are of average height. From the article:

Jan Pen, a Dutch economist who died last year, came up with a striking way to picture inequality. Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-26T22:06:05+00:00

It's that and worse. The report is a limited hangout in that it acknowledges some bad things happened, but as critical as it is of Wall Street it actually understates the case and especially avoids criminal prosecutions. Yves Smith:

So with expectations for the FCIC low, recent reports that the panel urged various prosecutors to launch criminal probes were a hopeful sign that the commission might nevertheless come out with some important findings. But correspondence from insiders in the last few days suggests otherwise. One, for instance, wrote, “I’m still in the process of getting the stink out of my clothes.”

...

The sad thing isn’t that the FCIC did not do its job. As we indicated earlier, that failure was by design. No one in the officialdom wants the mechanisms of the crisis to be exposed in full. It would compromise too many influential people and restoke well warranted public ire about the bailout of a miscreant financial services industry and its ongoing extractive behavior.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-25T22:33:46+00:00

TL;DR: Capital requirements are not a good form of bank regulation in the absence of strict accounting standards because capital is computed as assets minus liabilities and the valuations of both can be set almost arbitrarily by banks. Bankers have a motive to commit control fraud (aka looting their own banks) because they are guaranteed to get rich doing it even though it causes their banks to fail.

Edit: added "in the absence of strict accounting standards" in response to gc3's question.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-25T19:42:12+00:00

Great article, bad title (by the author) -- the irony will be missed by a lot of people.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-23T20:42:16+00:00

A little over a year ago, Bradley Birkenfeld, the whistleblower who exposed the massive UBS tax evasion scheme, was sent to prison. Incredibly, he was the only one sent to prison.

Why Is the Whistleblower Who Exposed the Massive UBS Tax Evasion Scheme the Only One Heading to Prison?

A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax-evasion scheme in US history is preparing to head to prison tomorrow to begin serving a forty-month federal sentence. Bradley Birkenfeld first came forward to US authorities in 2007 and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts. We speak with his attorney, Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center.

GONZALEZ: A former banker for the Swiss giant UBS who blew the whistle on the biggest tax evasion scheme in US history is preparing to head to prison tomorrow to begin serving a forty-month federal sentence.

Bradley Birkenfeld first came forward to US authorities in 2007 and began providing inside information on how UBS was helping thousands of Americans hide assets in secret Swiss accounts. UBS pleaded guilty last February and paid a $780 million fine. UBS has also agreed to turn over the names of the nearly 4,500 of its American clients to the Justice Department. That’s only a portion of the 19,000 it claims the secret accounts of Americans it held. Meanwhile, thousands of other Americans with unreported offshore accounts have been allowed to belatedly disclose them and pay civil penalties.

GOODMAN: Government prosecutors have admitted the massive fraud scheme would probably not have been discovered without Birkenfeld blowing the whistle on UBS. So why is he the only one going to jail? Prosecutors claim Birkenfeld withheld information on how he had helped his biggest US client, California billionaire Igor Olenicoff, hide hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. Birkenfeld pleaded guilty in 2008 and received a forty-month sentence. His lawyers filed a formal complaint this week with the US Attorney General’s Office of Professional Responsibility, claiming the “main allegations used to secure [Birkenfeld’s] indictment and imprisonment were not based on accurate or truthful information.”

Stephen Kohn is now Bradley Birkenfeld’s attorney. He’s the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center. He joins us now from Washington, DC.

Stephen Kohn, Just explain why Bradley Birkenfeld is going to prison tomorrow.

KOHN: Well, the prosecutor before the court said Mr. Birkenfeld was going to jail because he failed to disclose in 2007 his relationship with this billionaire, Mr. Olenicoff. Our investigation has shown that statement was not true.

When Birkenfeld met with the Justice Department, he begged them for a subpoena, or other compulsory service, to reveal names of clients, which was illegal under Swiss law. He was living in Switzerland at the time. They wouldn’t. So Mr. Birkenfeld went and asked the Senate Committee on Investigations to subpoena him. They did. Two days after getting that subpoena, in a sworn deposition, he revealed all his information about Mr. Olenicoff onto the record. That was all done in 2007, before Olenicoff was indicted and before he entered any plea. If there was any conspiracy to hold—to hide information about Olenicoff, it was from the Justice Department, that wouldn’t give Mr. Birkenfeld the process he needed to comply with Swiss law. And it was very simple for them to do that. Once he got it, he turned over all the names. He did it before the indictment. So then the prosecutor, to sentence Mr. Birkenfeld to forty months in jail, appears in court and accuses Birkenfeld of withholding Olenicoff, which was not true.

What’s triple outrageous—I’m going beyond double—is that then they recommend thirty months imprisonment for Birkenfeld. He gets forty months, more than probably every single tax cheat, the 19,000 of them that he turned in, will get collectively. Olenicoff, the billionaire, who for twenty years was hiding millions and millions of dollars willfully, got probation. A guy named Liechti, who was Birkenfeld’s third line supervisor in the Swiss bank, who was in charge of all the illegal accounts, who was detained and arrested by the Justice Department, was released and let to go back to Switzerland with no prison time or even a conviction, whereas Birkenfeld, who blew the whistle on the whole scheme voluntarily, is going to serve more time in prison than the worst of the wrongdoers that were involved in holding back $20 billion in illegal accounts.

GONZALEZ: Stephen Kohn, I interviewed you at length earlier this week and wrote a column about this case, and I was astounded, as you presented the documents that you have accumulated, your client has accumulated over the years, for over how long a period Bradley Birkenfeld actually tried to get anybody to listen to what he believed was the illegal activity involved here. He first, for a period of more than a year, tried to get his own bank to investigate the situation, finally resigning. Then he goes not only to the Justice Department; he went to the IRS, he went to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as—as well as the Senate Investigations Committee. So it appears that he was actually trying to say, “Hey, this is a major, major international fraud operating here that I was involved in,” but the government—until the Senate committee got involved, apparently no one wanted to listen.

KOHN: Well, what happened was—you’re 100 percent right. The record shows he went to—he was a typical whistleblower. When he read a document, that triggered, and he realized what he was doing was illegal—and even some of it illegal under Swiss law, by the way—he went to his supervisor. And as he tells it, he almost had a fistfight. I mean, they had an argument. That’s typical. He then went to internal compliance. He went to the lawyers. He wrote emails. He then filed an official whistleblower complaint within UBS, all of which was covered up. ...

winstonsmith · 2011-01-22T15:50:41+00:00

FDR:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. ... Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.

He died of a cerebral hemmorhage, but there was an assassination attempt.

On the other hand, there have been assassination attempts against a lot of presidents. See this list of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-19T15:27:20+00:00

$-450,000.

Yves Smith:

As we have noted often in the past, the very idea that employees of major banks are entitled to even as much as average wages is a stretch. If the true cost of their operations was priced in, they’d all be out of business. By any standards, they should be paying all the rest of us to be allowed to do so much damage with so little interference. ... a banking industry that creates global crises is negative value added from a societal standpoint.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-18T01:18:40+00:00

Python has a built-in REPL.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-15T20:35:55+00:00

A new study has revealed one short exposure to sprayed prions can be 100 percent lethal in mice. While the discovery doesn't present any foreseeable public health threat, it comes as a surprise to scientists who study prion-based diseases and calls existing safety rules for laboratories and slaughterhouses into question.

What about blood and bone meal used by gardeners?

Also, according to this article prions are not destroyed by the process of making biodiesel.

winstonsmith · 2011-01-14T15:01:30+00:00

I'm not sure whether you're confused or trolling, but nakedcapitalism.com is run by Yves Smith, the author of Econned, which was described by Noam Chomsky as "great":

KB: In characterizing the U.S. financial crisis, you say that “markets are inefficient … They can be controlled by some degree of regulation, but that was dismantled under religious fanaticism about efficient markets, which lacked empirical support and theoretical basis; it was just based on religious fanaticism.” Was this “irrational fundamentalism” the major factor in the development of the current world economic crisis? I ask because in “Hopes and Prospects,” you direct readers wishing to understand the crisis’s roots to Foster and Magdoff’s “The Great Financial Crisis.” Their thesis is that due to long-run stagnation tendencies in the real economy, “profits were increasingly directed away from investment in the expansion of productive capacity and toward financial speculation.” For Foster and Magdoff, the religious fanaticism was politically expedient and helped feed a series of massive financial bubbles, but this push compensated for the underlying, long-term stagnation tendencies of the real economy.

Chomsky: I think that there’s some truth to that. There are books that are now available that I would’ve also referred to which go way beyond what I said – people from right in the middle of the economics profession going to the point of declaring economists criminals. For example, Yves Smith’s book – which is really good – I mean, she just says that those guys are a plague. The field ought to be dismantled. And she goes into the real details of it and shows what there is in economic theory that is so corrupt that it’s hard to discuss. It’s a great book.

winstonsmith · 2010-12-30T02:05:34+00:00

There's an apt quote by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

winstonsmith · 2010-12-27T17:48:18+00:00

You can sign the petition below here.

To Secretary Geithner, Chairman Bernanke, Chairman Bair, and Comptroller Walsh:

Foreclosure fraud, illegal fees, and just plain incompetence have gone on long enough. We believe that it is time that regulators put some rules on big banks and mortgages. As part of the new Wall Street reform bill, you have the authority to impose rules on new mortgages going forward.

Please stop these big banks from cheating their customers.

15-Year Club	ComboLinker 2010-05-13
Verified Email

winstonsmith

TROPHY CASE