March 2012 archive

On This Day In History March 24

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 24 is the 83rd day of the year (84th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 282 days remaining until the end of the year.

March 24th is the 365th and last day of the year in many European implementations of the Julian calendar.

On this day in 1989, Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

The worst oil spill in U.S. territory begins when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, runs aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.

It was later revealed that Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Valdez, was drinking at the time of the accident and allowed an uncertified officer to steer the massive vessel. In March 1990, Hazelwood was convicted of misdemeanor negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. In July 1992, an Alaska court overturned Hazelwood’s conviction, citing a federal statute that grants freedom from prosecution to those who report an oil spill.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound‘s Bligh Reef and spilled 260,000 to 750,000 barrels (41,000 to 119,000 m3) of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. As significant as the Valdez spill was-the largest ever in U.S. waters until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill-it ranks well down on the list of the world’s largest oil spills in terms of volume released. However, Prince William Sound’s remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane and boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and severely taxed existing plans for response. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds. The oil, originally extracted at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, eventually covered 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, and 11,000 square miles (28,000 km2) of ocean. Then Exxon CEO, Lawrence G. Rawl, shaped the company’s response.

Timeline of events

Exxon Valdez left the Valdez oil terminal in Alaska at 9:12 pm on March 23, 1989, bound for Long Beach, California. The ship was under the control of Shipmaster Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood. The outbound shipping lane was obstructed with small icebergs (possibly from the nearby Columbia Glacier), so Hazelwood got permission from the Coast Guard to go out through the inbound lane. Following the maneuver and sometime after 11 p.m., Hazelwood left Third Mate Gregory Cousins in charge of the wheel house and Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm. Neither man had been given his mandatory six hours off duty before beginning his 12-hour watch. The ship was on autopilot, using the navigation system installed by the company that constructed the ship. The ship struck Bligh Reef at around 12:04 a.m. March 24, 1989.

Beginning three days after the vessel grounded, a storm pushed large quantities of fresh oil on to the rocky shores of many of the beaches in the Knight Island chain. In this photograph, pooled oil is shown stranded in the rocks.

According to official reports, the ship was carrying approximately 55 million US gallons (210,000 m3) of oil, of which about 11 to 32 million US gallons (42,000 to 120,000 m3) were spilled into the Prince William Sound. A figure of 11 million US gallons (42,000 m3) was a commonly accepted estimate of the spill’s volume and has been used by the State of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Some groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, dispute the official estimates, maintaining that the volume of the spill has been underreported. Alternative calculations, based on an assumption that the sea water rather than oil was drained from the damaged tanks, estimate the total to have been 25 to 32 million US gallons (95,000 to 120,000 m3).

Identified causes

Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the incident:

   * Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the master and provide a rested and sufficient crew for Exxon Valdez. The NTSB found this was wide spread throughout industry, prompting a safety recommendation to Exxon and to the industry.

   * The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.

   * Exxon Shipping Company failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which, if functional, would have indicated to the third mate an impending collision with the Bligh reef by detecting the “radar reflector”, placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping boats on course via radar.

In light of the above and other findings, investigative reporter Greg Palast stated in 2008 “Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate never would have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his RAYCAS radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker’s radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was (in Exxon’s view) just too expensive to fix and operate.” Exxon blamed Captain Hazelwood for the grounding of the tanker.

Economic and personal impact

In 1991, following the collapse of the local marine population (particularly clams, herring, and seals) the Chugach Alaska Corporation, an Alaska Native Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It has since recovered.

According to several studies funded by the state of Alaska, the spill had both short-term and long-term economic effects. These included the loss of recreational sports, fisheries, reduced tourism, and an estimate of what economists call “existence value”, which is the value to the public of a pristine Prince William Sound.

The economy of the city of Cordova, Alaska was adversely affected after the spill damaged stocks of salmon and herring in the area. Several residents, including one former mayor, committed suicide after the spill.

Formula One 2012: Sepang Qualifying

I hope I’ll be a little more coherent tomorrow but these far east starts on top of March Madness Hoops and the time change thing leave me a little wonky and disoriented.

The major competition story is that Scuderia Marlboro UPC has a slow car, severely lacking in downforce.  Maranello is distinctly disappointed and while Alonso is making the usual nothing to see here noises; Massa, who’s career at Big Red hangs by a thread, has asked for and gotten an entirely new chassis, tuned just for him, which is no better.

Mercedes seems poised to take over the third team spot and has some kind of fiddly aero bit reminiscent of the F-Duct that doubly reduces drag when activated in conjunction with the Drag Reduction System everyone uses and it has been ruled legal.  So far.

Red Bull really is handicapped by the changes to the blown diffuser rules and are not nearly as dominant though they are easily the second best team and are much better at race management than McLaren who still suck.

Sepang is hot and wet.  Even odds that they have to break out the Inters or Wets at some point, though with track temperatures in excess of 91 Farenheit the prescribed Pirellis are the Hards and Mediums with about 1.7 seconds a lap between them.  The Mediums have shown a tendency to lock up under heavy fuel in race start trim.  Sepang is rated a Medium to High speed track, flat with 15 turns, as opposed to Albert Park which is a bumpy road course rated Medium to Slow.

Bernie Ecclestone (aka CVC) is looking to cash out of Formula One via IPO, orchestrated by none other than those paragons of Wall Street virtue, Goldman Sachs.  The Formula One Team Association (everyone except Red Bull and Ferrari) is not altogether happy about this concept.

Tomorrow’s race starts at 2 am for GP2, 3:30 am for the start.

The Final This Week In The Dream Antilles

To be clear, your Bloguero is going nowhere. Really, he isn’t. It’s just that the format of “This Week In The Dream Antilles” has become obsolete. Outmoded. Not useful. Despite a mountain of his excellent intentions, your Bloguero hasn’t been keeping to the task. Yes, he’s put the headline up weekly, “The Week In The Dream Antilles,” but what does he do then? He doesn’t write a digest. No. He does something else.  Something else entirely. Whatever you may call it, one thing is clear: it’s not the digest of the week’s stories at The Dream Antilles.  And it’s been months since your Bloguero actually kept to the task and posted an actual digest. So, your Bloguero wonders solipsistically (you already know he talks to himself), “Ah, Bloguero, Sr. my friend, why are you keeping up this digestive kabuki? (Your Bloguero loves to punish himself). Why not instead just write a weekly essay for all of these wonderful group blogs. And drop the conceit of writing a digest of essays? Won’t that free up some of the neurons in your cranium?”

There you have it. But that’s not all. There’s this, repeated in its entirety:

Yet Another Broken Heart

President Obama got it entirely right when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” That captures it in a sentence.  A broken heart, and profound sadness and anger at the shooting of Trayvon Martin. And that’s why, today, students across South Florida, who understand from their own experiences how easy it is to be hassled, frisked, shot, or killed, walked out of school in protest. The death of Trayvon just is too much to bear. What else could they do?

And that’s why so many people are wearing hoodies today in solidarity with Trayvon and to symbolize their desire that justice be done.  I’m one of those. What else can I do?

And that’s why there are demonstrations in many cities that begin with the horror of the death of Trayvon Martin and go on to inevitable questions about the role of police, the constant frisking on the sidewalk. And the incessant of stopping of cars. And endemic surveillance and following and watching and stopping to ask questions.  Was it Justice Brandeis who wrote in dissent about the right of the people to be left alone?

It’s obvious. There’s something incredibly wrong going on. And it’s not new. No. It’s been going on in one dreadful form or another for more than half a millennium in this hemisphere and for more than 400 years in what is now the United States of America. And it continues.  In its simplest terms, it’s dehumanization. It has a long, horrible, degrading, exasperating history. And it continues.  It continues in many forms. Some are new, but others are age old. And it is persistent. And I have no idea how to stop it.  It has such deep roots and so much momentum. And despite all of the justified anger and all of the profound sadness, it continues.  Nobody seems to be able to stop it.

Here’s the heartbreak:  your teenager goes to the store to buy an iced tea and Skittles. Can he have two dollars? Sure. He doesn’t have any money. He says he’ll be right back. But he doesn’t come home alive.  He gets shot for no reason whatsoever. And he dies. Can you imagine this? And then the person who killed him isn’t even arrested.

And why isn’t he arrested? Is it because the police are stupid? Or incompetent? Or racists? Is it because the prosecutors are incompetent or racists? Or because the law of self defense has been so perverted that its been transformed by a state legislature in awe of the NRA into a shield for wanton killings of unarmed people by people with guns? Is it all of these things? Is it more than that? Is it something incomprehensible? Does it even matter why there’s been no arrest? Doesn’t the lack of an arrest speak volumes about the situation?

Here’s the heartbreak again: your teenager did nothing wrong and he’s dead. And nobody gets arrested, or charged, or indicted. And you and many other people suspect that your teenager has been murdered. But there’s no arrest. The police mumble on about the strange, new, self defense law and how somehow that ties their hands from making an arrest.  And they won’t make an arrest. And the person who should be arrested goes into hiding. And the police chief steps down temporarily. And now there’s a new state prosecutor and now there’s a federal, civil rights investigation. But there’s still no arrest. I wonder. Will there ever be an arrest? How long do I have to wait, and what exactly am I waiting for?

I wonder. How many thousands of parents have a version of this terrible event? How many parents have buried their children? How many children were lynched and killed before Emmett Till?  And how many killings of children have there been since? How many parents’ hearts have been broken when children have been killed? How many soul crushing, heartbreaking murders of children have there been? How many oceans of tears have been shed because of events just like this one?

My heart is again broken. The murder of Trayvon Martin is inexcusable. It’s yet another drop in the ocean of suffering filled with parents’ tears at the loss of their children. And the tears of the rest of us who feel their suffering. And it continues to grow.

———

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: Regional Semifinals Day 2

It’s hard to get enthused about tonight’s games.  Richard has no interest in the tournament now that MSU is out and made a point of telling me it was the worst game they played all season (I wouldn’t know).

This is the Cinderella side of the bracket and any real upsets will come tonight, but I don’t expect any.

Bear down you Bears of old Baylor U

We’re all for you, GO BEARS!

We’re gonna show dear old Baylor spirit through and through

We’re gonna fight them with all our might you Bruins bold

And win all our victories for the Green and Gold.

B-A-Y-L-O-R, Baylor Bears Fight.

Oh, and Sepang Qualifying at 4 am on Speed.

Last Night’s Results-

Result Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
64-63 1 *Syracuse 33-2 4 Wisconsin 26-9 East
44-57 1 Michigan State 29-7 4 *Louisville 28-9 West
81-66 2 *Ohio State 29-7 6 Cincinnati 26-10 East
58-68 3 Marquette 27-7 7 *Florida 25-10 West

Tonight’s Action-

Time Network Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
7 pm CBS 3 Baylor 29-7 10 Xavier 23-12 South
7:30 pm TBS 1 North Carolina 31-5 13 Ohio 29-7 Midwest
9:30 pm CBS 1 Kentucky 34-2 4 Indiana 27-8 South
10 pm TBS 2 Kansas 29-6 11 NC State 24-12 Midwest

A New Head For The World Bank & It’s Not Summers

In a surprise announcement President Barack Obama nominated Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim to head up the World Bank:

Dr. Kim’s name was not among those widely bandied about since Mr. (Robert B.) Zoellick announced his plans to move on last month. Highly respected among aid experts, Dr. Kim is an anthropologist and a physician who co-founded Partners in Health, a nonprofit that provides health care for the poor, and a former director of the department of H.I.V./AIDS at the World Health Organization. [..]

Dr. Kim, who was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2003, was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1959 and moved with his family to the United States when he was 5. He graduated from Brown University in 1982, earned an M.D. from Harvard University in 1991 and received a Ph.D. in anthropology there in 1993.

He was the first Asian-American to head an Ivy League institution when he took the Dartmouth post in 2009.

While working with Partners in Health in Lima, Peru, in the mid-1990s, Dr. Kim helped to develop a treatment program for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, the first large-scale treatment of that disease in a poor country. Treatment programs for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis are now in place in more than 40 nations, according to Dr. Kim’s biography on Dartmouth’s Web site. He Kim also spearheaded the successful effort to reduce the price of the drugs used to treat this form of tuberculosis.

The United States traditionally selects the head of the World Bank and Europe the leader of its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, since they were founded during World War II.

Apparently, Dr. Kim was suggested by former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was present with the President and Dr. Kim at the Rose Garden press conference. Though Dr. Kim will certainly be the front runner for the position, he isn’t the only candidate:

Angola, South Africa and Nigeria put forward Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance minister and former World Bank official.

José Antonio Ocampo, the former finance minister of Colombia and a United Nations official, is rumored to be another candidate.

Jeffrey Sachs, the development economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, has put himself forward for the position.

If there are more than three candidates, the board will announce a “short list” and the new head will be named in time for the April meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Kim is an excellent choice with experience in global development and management. He is well known and well liked. We wish him luck.

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

New York Times Editorial: A Broader Right to Counsel

The right to a jury trial is extolled as a fixture of American justice, but a vast majority of people charged with crimes never see a trial. Plea bargaining defines the criminal justice system: 97 percent of federal convictions and 94 percent of state convictions come through guilty pleas negotiated between prosecutors and offenders.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that the Sixth Amendment gives a criminal defendant a right to an effective lawyer during plea-bargain negotiations and when the defendant gives up the right to a trial and accepts a plea offer. In two related 5-to-4 decisions this week, the court extended that constitutional guarantee to cases in which the defendant rejects a favorable plea offer – and goes to trial – because of ineffective counsel.

Paul Krugman: Paranoia Strikes Deeper

Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Actually, it’s the noise a great political party makes when it loses what’s left of its mind. And it happened – where else? – on Fox News on Sunday, when Mitt Romney bought fully into the claim that gas prices are high thanks to an Obama administration plot.

This claim isn’t just nuts; it’s a sort of craziness triple play – a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia. It’s the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot. But now the gas-price conspiracy theory has been formally endorsed by the likely Republican presidential nominee.

Before we get to the larger implications of this endorsement, let’s get the facts on gas prices straight.

Timothy Egan: The Church Lady State

When people complain about liberal overreach they always bring up the nanny state. You know, sorting your garbage to see if a banana peel slipped in with a cellophane wrapper; energy-efficient light bulbs; neutered language in the public square to make sure no one is ever offended.

But all of the above is a mere teardrop in the Amazon compared to what your freedom-hating Republican Party has been doing across the land to restrict individual liberty.

They want the state to follow you into the bedroom, the bathroom and beyond. They think you’re too stupid to know what to do with your own body, too ignorant to understand what your doctors tell you and too lazy to be trusted in a job without being subject to random drug testing. Your body is the government’s business.

Joan Walsh: GOP Rides Paul Ryan’s Road to Ruin (But Will Dems Blow Opportunity?)

His snake oil-castor oil budget is a gift to Dems, but only if they give up on “grand bargains” with extremists

Most Democrats rejoiced when the newly elected House Tea Party extremists got behind Paul Ryan’s tax-slashing and program-cutting budget plan almost a year ago. The budget had no chance of passing the Senate, but it committed Republicans to unpopular spending cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare, and continued the party’s slavish devotion to tax protection for the top 1 percent. That’s why many liberals were horrified by reports that the White House was entertaining comparable budget-cutting proposals to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis last summer. Not only was it bad policy, it was terrible politics, sacrificing the huge advantage Republicans had conceded when they backed Ryan’s plan, especially his assault on Medicare.

Ellen Brown: The Shadow Bailout: How Big Banks Bilk US Towns and Taxpayers

Wall Street Confidence Trick: The Interest Rate Swaps that Are Bankrupting Local Governments

The “toxic culture of greed” on Wall Street was highlighted again last week, when Greg Smith went public with his resignation from Goldman Sachs in a scathing oped published in the New York Times.  In other recent eyebrow-raisers, LIBOR rates-the benchmark interest rates involved in interest rate swaps-were shown to be manipulated by the banks that would have to pay up; and the objectivity of the ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association) was called into question, when a 50% haircut for creditors was not declared a “default” requiring counterparties to pay on credit default swaps on Greek sovereign debt.

Interest rate swaps are less often in the news than credit default swaps, but they are far more important in terms of revenue, composing fully 82% of the derivatives trade.  In February, JP Morgan Chase revealed that it had cleared $1.4 billion in revenue on trading interest rate swaps in 2011, making them one of the bank’s biggest sources of profit.

Robert Borosage: The Ryan Budget vs. A ‘Budget for All’

Who pays the bill for Wall Street’s mess?

On Tuesday, House Republicans rolled out their budget plan in the Washington version of a Hollywood movie opening. There was a star turn for Budget Chair Paul Ryan at a conservative think tank. Gaseous rhetoric — “liberties endangered, time to choose” — fouled the air. There were dueling videos, and furious salvos of partisan messaging. And a backup document — the “Path to Prosperity” (pdf) — festooned with tables for wonks to wallow in.

And yesterday, with fewer trumpets and less fanfare, the Congressional Progressive Caucus release its budget plan — A Budget for All.

Each of the two documents is designed to define a message. Their contrasts help clarify the real choices the country faces. Federal deficits exploded after Wall Street’s excesses blew up the economy. The questions now are who gets the bill and when does the payment start? Ryan’s Republican budget and the CPC’s offer starkly different answers that would take the country in starkly different directions.

Brendan Fischer: ALEC and NRA Behind Law That May Protect Trayvon Martin’s Killer

A Florida law that may protect the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February is the template for an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) “model bill” that has been pushed in other states. The bill was brought to ALEC by the National Rifle Association (NRA), and fits into a pattern of ALEC bills that disproportionately impact communities of color.

Florida’s “stand your ground,” or “castle doctrine,” law could prevent the prosecution of George Zimmerman, the 28-year-old “neighborhood watch” vigilante who shot the unarmed Martin as the teen returned from a trip to 7-11 with an iced tea and a pack of Skittles. The law, also pushed by its supporters under the name the “Castle Doctrine,” changes state criminal justice and civil law codes by giving legal immunity to a person who uses “deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.” It also bars the deceased’s family from bringing a civil suit.

The JOBS Act, Only It Doesn’t

The Senate passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, JOBS Act, with a bipartisan vote of 73-26, with all the “no” votes coming from Democrats. The legislation will make it easier for small businesses to use the Internet to raise small investments from lots of people, a technique known as “crowdfunding.” :

The legislation combines six smaller bills that change Securities and Exchange Commission rules so small businesses can attract investors and go public with less red tape and cost. It eases rules on advertising and permits startups to use the Internet and other social media to solicit a large number of small-scale investors.

So why is this not such a good bill? Basically, as Mark Gongloff of Huffington Post explains, because it rolls back “investor-protection regulations, some of which date back to the 1930s, and some of which have been passed as recently as 2002 in the wake of Wall Street shenanigans from the 1990s tech bubble to Enron.”

The bill purports to make it much easier for small firms to raise money, either through private “crowdfunding,” essentially raising money online, or by going public. At its heart is the persistent myth, relentlessly propounded by Wall Street, that there are a million Facebooks out there waiting to thrive and create jobs if only the government would just get the heck out of the way. [..]

Investment banks can now issue research reports on the companies they take public — meaning we’ll be back to the days when analysts can pump up “POS” stocks they then dump on unwitting customers — removing a prohibition set by Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002.

Web sites can pitch new companies directly to investors, raising the specter of “boiler rooms” preying on your grandmother to pry away her retirement money.

To give Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) some credit, he did manage to get one amendment passed that would provide some investor protections:

required companies that use crowdfunding to provide financial statements to investors. Companies seeking between $100,000 and $500,000 in capital would have to get independent accountants to review these statements. Audited financial statements would be required for companies seeking more than $500,000 in capital.

The amendment also limits the total amount that a company can raise through crowdfunding to $1 million. The House bill would allow companies to raise up to $2 million, if they provide audited financial statements.

In addition, the amendment requires Internet intermediaries — the web sites that will offer crowdfunding investment opportunities to the public — to register with the SEC.

An amendment that would have tightened certain shareholder definitions, and prevented public companies from “going dark” if their shareholder number falls below a certain threshold, failed to pass a straight majority vote.

Dan Primack at CNN’s Fortune best describes what does and doesn’t matter about the bill and states his the reason for his opposition:

Emerging growth companies: Okay, this is where I move from ambivalence to opposition. The idea here is to make it easier for small private companies to go public, by reducing the costs associated with such an action. It does so by reducing certain existing investor protections, including one that prevents investment banking analysts from offering pre-IPO research on their firm’s own clients. Here is what I wrote on the subject, back in January:

   Going public is not supposed to be a cakewalk. We’ve already been through an IPO environment where all you needed was a clever URL and a fuzzy mascot, and the results weren’t pretty. I’m not suggesting that last year’s issuers are all future members of the Fortune 500, but shouldn’t a successful listing signal to retail investors that experienced institutions took a hard look at the issuer and considered it worthy of consideration? How can that still be true if those institutions get to see only two years of audited financial statements instead of three? Or if analysts working for a company’s underwriting bank can publish pre-IPO research (albeit with a disclaimer)?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gives his scathing criticism of the bill, calling it the “Con Job Bill”:

“The so-called ‘JOBS Act’ is an extremely anti-consumer, anti-investor, and anti-jobs bill.  As currently drafted, the bill is opposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission chairman (as well as past SEC chairmen appointed by both political parties); AARP; the AFL-CIO; the Consumer Federation of America; Consumers Union; and the Council of Institutional Investors, among many others.  There is good reason for the opposition.

“At best, this bill could make it easier for con artists to defraud seniors out of their entire life savings by convincing them to invest in worthless companies.  At worst, this bill has the potential to create the next Enron or Arthur Andersen scandal or an even worse financial crisis.

“Have we learned nothing?  Deregulating Wall Street led to the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.  Now the same people who caused this horrible recession are telling us that more Wall Street deregulation will create jobs.  Give me a break.  I strongly support providing small businesses with the tools they need to create jobs.  Sadly, that’s not at all what this bill will do.”

Calling this the “JOBS” Act is a misnomer because, as Yves Smith notes at naked capitalism, “In reality, the only jobs it is likely to create will be due to the resulting explosion in stock scamsters and bucket shop operators.”

And there is no worry that this bill will pass in the House. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has schedule a vote for early next week.

Here come the “Penny Stocks.” Good job, Barack

On This Day In History March 23

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 23 is the 82nd day of the year (83rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 283 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1775, Patrick Henry voices American opposition to British policy

During a speech before the second Virginia Convention, Patrick Henry responds to the increasingly oppressive British rule over the American colonies by declaring, “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Following the signing of the American Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, Patrick Henry was appointed governor of Virginia by the Continental Congress.

Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 – June 6, 1799) was an orator and politician who led the movement for independence in Virginia in the 1770s. A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia from 1776 to 1779 and subsequently, from 1784 to 1786. Henry led the opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765 and is well remembered for his “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” speech. Along with Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine, he is remembered as one of the most influential exponents of Republicanism, promoters of the American Revolution and Independence, especially in his denunciations of corruption in government officials and his defense of historic rights. After the Revolution, Henry was a leader of the anti-federalists in Virginia who opposed the United States Constitution, fearing that it endangered the rights of the States, as well as the freedoms of individuals.

American Revolution

Responding to pleas from Massachusetts that the colonies create committees of correspondence to coordinate their reaction to the British, Henry took the lead in Virginia. In March 1773, along with Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee, Henry led the Virginia House of Burgesses to adopt resolutions providing for a standing committee of correspondents. Each colony set up such committees, and they led to the formation of the First Continental Congress in 1774, to which Henry was elected.

Patrick Henry is best known for the speech he made in the House of Burgesses on March 23, 1775, in Saint John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. The House was undecided on whether to mobilize for military action against the encroaching British military force, and Henry argued in favor of mobilization. Forty-two years later, Henry’s first biographer, William Wirt, working from oral testimony, attempted to reconstruct what Henry said. According to Wirt, Henry ended his speech with words that have since become immortalized:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”

The crowd, by Wirt’s account, jumped up and shouted “To Arms! To Arms!”. For 160 years Wirt’s account was taken at face value, but in the 1970s historians began to question the authenticity of Wirt’s reconstruction.[8] Historians today observe that Henry was known to have used fear of Indian and slave revolts in promoting military action against the British, and that according to the only written first-hand account of the speech, Henry used some graphic name-calling that failed to appear in Wirt’s heroic rendition.

In August 1775, Henry became colonel of the 1st Virginia Regiment. At the outset of the Revolutionary War, Henry led militia against Royal Governor Lord Dunmore in defense of some disputed gunpowder, an event known as the Gunpowder Incident. During the war he served as the first post-colonial Governor of Virginia and presided over several expeditions against the Cherokee Indians, who were allied with the British.

Henry lived during part of the War at his 10,000-acre Leatherwood Plantation in Henry County, Virginia, where he, his first cousin Ann Winston Carr and her husband Col. George Waller had settled. During the five years Henry lived at Leatherwood, from 1779 to 1784, he owned 75 slaves, and grew tobacco. During this time, he kept in close touch with his friend the explorer Joseph Martin, whom Henry had appointed agent to the Cherokee nation, and with whom Henry sometimes invested in real estate, and for whom the county seat of Henry County was later named.

In early November 1775 Henry and James Madison were elected founding trustees of Hampden-Sydney College, which opened for classes on November 10. He remained a trustee until his death in 1799. Henry was instrumental in achieving passage of the College’s Charter of 1783, an action delayed because of the war. He is probably the author of the Oath of Loyalty to the new Republic included in that charter. Seven of his sons attended the new college.

2012 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship: Regional Semifinals Day 1

Saltine Warrior

In the days of old, when knights were bold

Every city had its warrior man.

In the days of new, when fights are few

You will view them from a big grandstand.

In our college town one has great renown

If the game of football he should play.

With his pig-skin ball he is cheered by all,

He’s the Saltine Warrior of today.

Chorus:

The Saltine Warrior is a bold, bad man,

And his weapon is a pigskin ball,

When on the field he takes a good, firm stand,

He’s the hero of large and small.

He will rush toward the goal with might and main

His opponents all fight, but they fight in vain,

Because the Saltine Warrior is a bold, bad man,

And victorious over all.

If you’ve never been to Syracuse you may not know it’s built over a great salt dome.  This song from 1912-13 is kind of midway between Bill Orange from 1899 and Down the Field from 1914 and was originally part of a musical, not a fight song.  Oddly enough there are no YouTubes I could find.

It’s distinctly possible that the Orange could go down tonight because they’re not that good a team and their 7 foot center, Fab Melo, is still under suspension.  Plus they’ve never, ever been able to shoot fouls in the Boeheim era.

Altogether it’s been a tough year, they’ve had a Paterno-esque molestation scandal with the assistant head coach, Boeheim has always hated his job, and they’re pulling out of the Big East because the Administration would rather have a Throwball program that sucks than a Basketball team.

They are my sentimental favorites, but you don’t bet money on sentiment.  Armando, who has been consistently wrong this season, gets to see his beloved ‘Gators go down in flames tonight so don’t expect any charity from him tomorrow.  His predictions are here.

Michigan State should advance with ease (No Troll Izzo), I’m rooting for Cincinnati over the evil Ohio State (I’m only half troll and no part Buckeye).

Time Network Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
7 pm CBS 1 Syracuse 33-2 4 Wisconsin 26-9 East
7:30 pm TBS 1 Michigan State 29-7 4 Louisville 28-9 West
9:30 pm CBS 2 Ohio State 29-7 6 Cincinnati 26-10 East
10 pm TBS 3 Marquette 27-7 7 Florida 25-10 West

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

New York Times Editorial: Pushing Back Against Austerity

Political leaders across Europe have begun to push back against the campaign of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to put the Continent’s economies into a straitjacket of unrelenting fiscal austerity. It is about time. Two years of insisting that weak economies carry out tax increases and spending cuts have brought nothing but recession and deepening indebtedness.

The German-inspired fiscal compact that 25 heads of government agreed to in December will become binding in January provided at least 12 of the 17 countries using the euro ratify it this year. That process has barely begun. Before it goes any further, euro-zone members need to amend its inflexible, one-size-fits-all deficit ceilings. Failure to do so guarantees a longer, deeper European recession and would likely hurt America’s nascent recovery.

Gail Collins: Pity the Poor Gun Lobby

There is nothing so dangerous as a lobbying organization that’s running out of stuff to lobby about.

I am thinking in particular of the National Rifle Association. These people are really in desperate straits. The state legislatures are almost all in session, but some of them have already pushed the gun-owner-rights issue about as far as it can go. You can only legalize carrying a concealed weapon in church once.

This year, in search of new worlds to conquer – or at least to arm – a couple of states are giving serious attention to bills that would allow gun owners to carry their concealed weapons in places like day-care centers and school buses.

People, do you think there is a loud public outcry for more guns on school buses? I truly believe that this is all the product of a desperate N.R.A., trying to show its base that there are still lots of new battles to be won.

Amy Goodman: Walking While Black: The Killing of Trayvon Martin

On the rainy night of Sunday, Feb. 26, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin walked to a convenience store in Sanford, Fla. On his way home, with his Skittles and iced tea, the African-American teenager was shot and killed. The gunman, George Zimmerman, didn’t run. He claimed that he killed the young man in self-defense. The Sanford Police agreed and let him go. Since then, witnesses have come forward, 911 emergency calls have been released, and outrage over the killing has gone global. [..]

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has called for the removal of Sanford Police Chief Lee. NAACP President Ben Jealous, recounting a mass meeting in a Sanford-area church Tuesday night, quoted a local resident who stood up and said, “‘If you kill a dog in this town, you’d be in jail the next day.’ Trayvon Martin was killed four weeks ago, and his killer is still walking the streets.”

With his gun.

Robert Sheer; Voters Have Two Candidates, No Choice

With Mitt Romney’s super-PAC limo now on cruise control to victory at the GOP convention, voters are left with only two reasons to vote against Barack Obama: Either they are desperate to return a white man to the White House or they feel strongly that it is time to break the glass ceiling denying Mormons the presidency.

Out of a sense of tolerance I could cotton to the latter-heck, why should the bizarre beliefs of Romney’s church be a deal breaker? I’m hoping for a strong Jewish contender someday and wouldn’t like her burdened with defending Old Testament claptrap.

The problem in this mind-numbing Republican primary season is that the campaign has exposed Romney as not just another white male Mormon like some of the fairly reasonable senators who have represented Utah. Or like Romney’s own father, George, at one time the governor of Michigan. No, this Romney is now widely regarded as the vulture capitalist he is, a politician who is a say-and-do-anything opportunist with no moral limits on his outsized ambitions.

Joe Conason: Paul Ryan’s Plan for American Decline

If the foreign adversaries and competitors of the United States imagined a future that would fulfill their most ambitious objectives, it might begin with a government crippled by the House Republican leadership’s “Ryan budget” released on Tuesday. Followed to its absurd conclusion, this document would lead America toward a withered state, approaching the point where Marxian dreams and Randian dogma converge.

Or at least that’s the view suggested by the sober analysts at the Congressional Budget Office, whose report on the Ryan budget shows debilitating cuts to nearly every department of government today, from law enforcement and border patrols to scientific research, food safety, environmental protection, federal highways, national parks, weather monitoring, education and all the other essential functions of a great country. There would not be much left for Medicare and Medicaid, either. Social Security would continue in some form, and defense-of course-would increase.

But in a nation stripped of science and infrastructure, with a people demoralized by insecurity, unemployment and inequity, exactly what would be left to defend?

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The GOP’s Religious Head Count

The Republican presidential primaries this year have turned into a religious census. There is little precedent in modern politics for the extent to which a state’s choice for a nominee has coincided so closely with how many of its ballots were cast by white evangelical voters.

Where evangelicals cast a minority of the ballots, Mitt Romney has won. Where evangelical voters predominated, Romney has lost, in most cases to Rick Santorum.

Romney’s victory Tuesday in Illinois fit snugly within this pattern. The result pointed to a continuing problem for Santorum: He has yet to break through in places where evangelicals were not the principal force.

While the exit polls did not question voters directly about their attitudes toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there is indirect evidence that Romney’s faith may be holding down his vote among non-Mormons for whom a candidate’s religion matters.

Robert Reich: Why Mitt Won’t Be Able to Hide From His Primary Self (We’re No Longer In An Etch-A-Sketch World)

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom couldn’t have said it better – or worse. When asked by CNN Wednesday morning whether Mitt was being pushed so far to the right by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich that he’d be handicapped in the general election, Fehrnstrom said “you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

An Etch-A-Sketch, for those of you under twenty, is a thick flat gray screen that comes in a plastic frame with two knobs on the front in the lower corners – one left, one right. Twisting the knobs changes the aluminum powder on the back of the screen, creating completely new images. If you twist the left knob, you alter the powder horizontially; twist the right nob, and you alter it vertically.

Remind you of anyone?

Load more