I have a uncle who lives there.

No, I’m talking about taxes, money, dollars.

That’s where he lives.  Dollars, Taxes.

Corporate sell-outs exploit a secret new gimmick

By David Sirota, Salon

Wednesday, Jul 31, 2013 4:33 PM UTC

As The Hill reports, the U.S. Senate’s “top tax writers have promised their colleagues 50 years worth of secrecy in exchange for suggestions on what deductions and credits to preserve” in a tax “reform” bill that aims to overhaul the tax code from scratch. The system, reports the newspaper, allows only 10 congressional staff members to have “direct access to a senator’s written suggestions” and “each submission will be given its own ID number and be kept on password-protected servers, with printed versions kept in locked safes” in the National Archives until the end of 2064.

…

(C)onsider the career of one of the architects of this scheme, Max Baucus.

The retiring Montana senator is the senior Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee. In that position, he hasn’t used his power to rid the tax code of corporate-written loopholes, subsidies and handouts – the public record shows that he has used his power to riddle the tax code with those expensive giveaways. In exchange for embedding those handouts in the tax code, Baucus has been rewarded handsomely with campaign cash to the point where he has been famously labeled “K Street’s Favorite Senator.” That label is particularly appropriate considering a recent dispatch from the New York Times showing that “no other lawmaker on Capitol Hill has such a sizable constellation of former aides working as tax lobbyists.”

In light of such a record, the notion that Baucus has built the anonymous submission system in order to help challenge K Street is, in a word, absurd. Having spent so much political capital enriching his corporate donors and lobbyists at the expense of taxpayers, he is retiring with one last gift to those benefactors – a secrecy system designed to let them rewrite the tax code from scratch in a way that most serves their interests.

The numbering kind of falls apart at 6 and 7.  You have my best guess.

Or you could ignore his system altogether and come up with a dozen or two “epic fails.”

Is B of A the Most Embarrassing Department of Justice Suit Ever?

By William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives

Posted on August 8, 2013

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) latest civil suit against Bank of America (B of A) is an embarrassment of tragic proportions on multiple dimensions.  In this version I explore “only” seven of its epic fails.

The two most obvious fails (except to the most of the media, which failed to mention either) are that the DOJ has once again refused to prosecute either the elite bankers or bank that committed what the DOJ describes as massive frauds and that the DOJ has refused to bring even a civil suit against the senior officers of the banks despite filing a complaint that alleges facts showing that those officers committed multiple felonies that made them wealthy by causing massive harm to others.  Those two fails should have been the lead in every article about the civil suit.

The next most obvious DOJ fail, also ignored, was that the DOJ compounded the first two fails by congratulating itself for holding the frauds “accountable” for their crimes.  One can only imagine the hilarity with which B of A senior officers in their mansions they bought with the proceeds of their frauds must have greeted the DOJ’s latest pratfall.  If DOJ’s leadership cannot find the intestinal fortitude to renounce their infamous “too big to prosecute” doctrine they can at least have the decency to stop praising themselves for violating their oath of office and their duty to the Nation.

The fourth fail adds a new means by which DOJ has caused long-term harm to the Nation.

…

The complaint alleges that the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (FHLBSF) and Wachovia were prudent purchasers of B of A’s mortgage backed securities (MBS) – unlike the normal, imprudent MBS purchasers whose numbers are so large as to be “countless.”  Any competent defense counsel for the banks and bankers, credit rating agencies, etc. being sued for fraud will be eagerly quoting DOJ and demanding that the courts dismiss the lawsuits of investors that purchased MBS sold with the aid of fraudulent “representations (reps) and warranties” on the grounds that the investors were imprudent because they were “chas[ing] … higher rates of return.”

…

Fifth, it is hilarious for DOJ to claim that (in 2008) Wachovia, one of the Nation’s most notorious originators of fraudulent loans; was a victim of unique purity when it bought MBS from B of A.  Of course, it was equally hilarious when B of A responded to the complaint by claiming that it could not have engaged in fraud because Wachovia and the FHLBSF were financially “sophisticated.”  Criminologists have long observed how vulnerable the allegedly sophisticated are to being defrauded.

…

(Sixth) Why does DOJ Pretend that B of A’s Fraud Only Occurred in 2008 in One Deal?

The Complaint demonstrates that B of A engaged in widespread fraud, yet it sues only against one of the B of A’s officers’ relatively smaller frauds (though even it, at $885 million, is huge).

…

Again, it becomes clear that DOJ does not understand the most basic facts about the actual B of A fraud schemes and is unwilling to bring even a civil action large enough to recover a substantial amount of the losses caused by B of A’s vastly larger fraudulent sales of fraudulent mortgages.  I have explained that no honest lender would take the actions B of A’s officers took to ensure that its underwriting was pathetic.  In the home mortgage lending context this will produce widespread mortgage origination fraud.  Fraudulent loans can only be sold to the secondary market through further fraud.

…

DOJ is focused on a false assumption that the secondary market is the key rather than the ability to borrow and grow by reporting record (albeit fictional) profits in the near term by following the fraud recipe.  DOJ also fails to ask the obvious question – if the secondary market caused such a drastic and perverse change in home lenders’ economic incentives why didn’t the secondary market purchasers realize that fact and take steps to protect themselves from the lenders’ perverse incentives?  Nobody had a gun to Wachovia and the FHLBSF’s heads and required them to buy B of A’s fraudulent MBS.

…

(Seventh) An excerpt from paragraph 50 of the complaint illustrates DOJ’s factual and analytical incoherence and indicates why its incoherence has been fatal to any prosecution of the credit rating agencies for their role in aiding and abetting fraud in the secondary market.

…

These statements are, at best, disingenuous.  The credit rating agencies could have required that they be provided with the loan types on all the underlying mortgage files.  The investors could have refused to purchase the MBS unless B of A gave them the right to review a sample of the loan files.  The credit rating agencies and the purchaser deliberately refused to review even a sample of the files of the loans sold in the secondary market.  Had they reviewed a sample of the B of A’s loan files (and been honest) they would have never have purchased the loans because the quality of B of A’s portfolio was awful – and rapidly falling.

Fast-Food Fight

By The New York Times EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: August 7, 2013

As measured by the federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, low-paid work in America is lower paid today than at any time in modern memory. If the minimum wage had kept pace with inflation or average wages over the past nearly 50 years, it would be about $10 an hour; if it had kept pace with the growth in average labor productivity, it would be about $17 an hour.

In contrast, the median hourly pay of fast-food workers – most of whom are in their 20s or older and many of whom are parents – is less than $9 for front-line workers and just above $9 when shift supervisors are included. Not surprising, the strikers demanded better pay – $15 an hour – and the right to organize without retaliation.

Also not surprising, they have been motivated to act by the inaction of the nation’s leaders. Republicans are against a higher minimum wage, and Democrats are too timid. Legislation proposed by Congressional Democrats would raise the hourly minimum to $10.10 over nearly two-and-a-half years from the date of enactment. President Obama has proposed a similarly gradual increase to $9 an hour. Congress and the White House also squandered a chance to try to improve workers’ earnings prospects when they let right-to-organize legislation die years ago.

Stephen Colbert and Mary Kay Henry (SEUI) below (autoplay).

Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

By John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, Reuters

Mon Aug 5, 2013 3:25pm EDT

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”

…

“Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.”

…

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said.

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as “parallel construction.”

The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. “Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day,” one official said. “It’s decades old, a bedrock concept.”

…

One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come through the SOD and from an NSA intercept.

“I was pissed,” the prosecutor said. “Lying about where the information came from is a bad start if you’re trying to comply with the law because it can lead to all kinds of problems with discovery and candor to the court.” The prosecutor never filed charges in the case because he lost confidence in the investigation, he said.

…

As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don’t worry that SOD’s involvement will be exposed in court. That’s because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.

An Annual Reminder.

Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.

I need to add that he’s a great admirer of James Carville’s political savvy (though not his policies) and one story he likes to tell is how during the height of Monica-gate Carville was on one of the Talking Head shows and made a point about how important it is to stay on message.  Carville then proceeded to demonstrate his gift by working the phrase “Cigarette Lawyer Ken Starr” 27 times in the next 30 seconds.- ek

The date – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 needs to be as well known to Joe and Jane American as September 11, 2001.

Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 PDB

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted] service.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted] service at the same that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

So Vice President Dick, tell me again how the REPUBLICANS WILL KEEP US SAFE?

So Senator McSame, tell me again how invading and occupying IRAQ has helped the U.S. hunt down BIN LADEN?

I’m printing my own bumper stickers filled with images from 9-11 and this text-

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

“All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”- George W. Bush

RIP

Fukushima boss hailed as hero dies

Justin McCurry, The Guardian

Wednesday 10 July 2013 00.47 EDT

Masao Yoshida – whose actions as manager of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant during its triple meltdown averted an even greater disaster – has died.

Yoshida, 58, took early retirement from the plant’s operator, Tepco, in late 2011 after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer. He died in a Tokyo hospital on Tuesday, reports said.

Tepco and Yoshida, a heavy smoker, said the cancer was not related to the nuclear accident caused by the March 2011 tsunami that hit Japan.

…

Yoshida, who had been manager of the plant for just nine months when the tsunami knocked out its regular and emergency power supplies, was reprimanded but later hailed as a hero as it became clear that his actions had saved the plant from a nuclear fission chain reaction – a potentially far more devastating scenario than a fuel meltdown.

…

Despite his largely calm demeanour at the time, Yoshida would later admit that he feared he and his colleagues would perish inside the plant. “During the first week of the accident I thought several times that we were all going to die,” he told journalists shortly before he retired.

…

The company’s president, Naomi Hirose, paid tribute to Yoshida’s contribution and his ability to encourage the other engineers and emergency workers – nicknamed the Fukushima 50 – who braved high levels of radiation in the early days of the crisis.

Masao Yoshida, Nuclear Engineer and Chief at Fukushima Plant, Dies at 58

By HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times

Published: July 9, 2013

Mr. Yoshida had been chief manager at Fukushima Daiichi for just nine months when a 42-foot tsunami inundated the site on March 11, 2011, knocking out vital cooling systems to the plant’s six reactors. Eventually hydrogen explosions and fuel meltdowns occurred at three reactors, releasing vast amounts of radioactive matter into the environment.

…

When the tsunami hit, Mr. Yoshida took command from inside a fortified bunker at the plant. In video footage of the command room released by Tokyo Electric last year, Mr. Yoshida can be seen at times pushing his workers to hook up water hoses or procure fuel, at times tearfully apologizing to teams he sent out to check on the stricken reactors.

…

He later offers to lead a “suicide mission” with other older officials to try pumping water into another reactor, but is dissuaded. And as officials warn that core meltdowns have most likely started, he directs men to leave the reactors but stays put in the bunker. Mr. Yoshida later said that the thought of abandoning the plant never occurred to him.

Restarting Reactors

Japan: Radioactive water likely leaking to Pacific

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press

July 10, 2013

Japan’s nuclear regulator says radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima power plant is probably leaking into the Pacific Ocean, a problem long suspected by experts but denied by the plant’s operator.

…

The watchdog’s findings underscore TEPCO’s delayed response in dealing with a problem that experts have long said existed. On Wednesday, the company continued to raise doubts about whether a leak exists.

TEPCO spokesman Noriyuki Imaizumi said the increase in cesium levels in monitoring well water samples does not necessarily mean contaminated water from the plant is leaking to the ocean. TEPCO was running another test on water samples and suspects earlier spikes might have been caused by cesium-laced dust slipping into the samples, he said. But he said TEPCO is open to the watchdog’s suggestions to take safety steps.

Japanese Nuclear Plant May Have Been Leaking for Two Years

By HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times

Published: July 10, 2013

The stricken nuclear power plant at Fukushima has probably been leaking contaminated water into the ocean for two years, ever since an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged the plant, Japan’s chief nuclear regulator said on Wednesday.

…

Mr. Tanaka said that the evidence was overwhelming.

“We’ve seen for a fact that levels of radioactivity in the seawater remain high, and contamination continues – I don’t think anyone can deny that,” he said Wednesday at a briefing after a meeting of the authority’s top regulators. “We must take action as soon as possible.

…

The struggle to seal the plant has raised questions about the government’s push to restart Japan’s other nuclear power stations, which were shut down in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Some critics have said that the work of certifying and reopening other plants will distract from the cleanup at Fukushima. To allay public fears, the government has promised that restarts will be authorized only for reactors that pass rigid new standards that took effect this month.

Four utilities across Japan have applied to restart a total of 10 reactors, applications that must now be assessed by the nuclear regulator with a staff of just 80 people. Tokyo Electric has said that it intends to apply to restart two of the seven reactors at a power plant on the coast of the Sea of Japan. That workload may leave the agency with few resources to devote to monitoring the messy cleanup at Fukushima.

Fukushima Plant Operator Intends to Restart Reactors Elsewhere

By HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times

Published: July 2, 2013

The operator of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Tuesday that it would ask regulators to allow it to restart two reactors at a separate site in eastern Japan, even as problems with the company’s cleanup in Fukushima continue to multiply.

…

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, known as Tepco, said it would soon apply to restart two of the seven reactors at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the world’s biggest nuclear power station by capacity. That plant, about 140 miles northeast of Tokyo, was not affected by the earthquake and tsunami that wreaked havoc at Fukushima Daiichi, but Kashiwazaki-Kariwa does sit atop fault lines and was damaged in a 2007 quake caused by another fault.

…

The company says it needs to get the reactors back online to stem the losses it has suffered since the reactor meltdowns at Fukushima.

It is unclear if Tepco will face more scrutiny than other utilities; some experts have warned that Tepco is overwhelmed by the difficult cleanup at Fukushima. Recent leaks of contaminated water revealed major flaws in the company’s storage of the tons of radioactive water that is generated daily as groundwater flows into damaged reactor buildings, adding to a string of mishaps.

Fresh trouble on Tuesday underscored the precarious cleanup efforts. A small fire broke out in a waste pile near plant incinerators, the company said. Firefighters extinguished the flames an hour later, and Tepco said there were no injuries and no increase in radiation levels, but the cause of the fire, which damaged an area of about 45 square feet, was under investigation.

…

The seismic faults running underneath the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa site could be a hurdle in winning local approval. Tepco has not said when it might apply to restart the plant’s other five reactors.Tepco says the faults have not been active for at least 120,000 years, and that it has made the necessary fortifications at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant to withstand quakes.

Tepco also says its finances have been crippled by the compensation it is paying to the victims of the Fukushima disaster, which at one point had displaced more than 100,000 people. The power company was effectively nationalized last year to help pay for the mounting claims.

Tepco’s bottom line has also been damaged by the costs of the cleanup, as well as by expensive imports of fuel for the conventional power stations that now provide most of the power to the Tokyo region.

Steam Leak

Steam Detected at Damaged Fukushima Reactor

By HIROKO TABUCHI, The New York Times

Published: July 18, 2013

A damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant suddenly began releasing steam again, but the operator of the plant said Thursday it did not appear to be a result of renewed nuclear reactions – a worst-case situation that could lead to a large new release of radioactive materials.

…

Tepco said it based its conclusion that there was no new chain reaction at Reactor No. 3 on its failure to find xenon, a byproduct of fission that lingers for only a few hours and would be an indication of new nuclear activity. Tepco also said the temperature remained stable.

…

Video images seemed to show less steam on Thursday evening, but after sundown it became too dark to accurately check for any vapor, Masayuki Ono, acting general manager of Tepco’s nuclear power and plant siting division, said at a news conference.

…

The No. 3 reactor’s damaged core, like the cores of two other crippled reactors at the site, is being cooled by water that is pumped into the reactor, filtered and recycled. Among the recent mishaps at the site, the cooling system for the reactor shut down for hours in April. Tepco later said a rat had somehow short-circuited a vital switchboard, possibly by gnawing on cables.

(h/t Susie Madrak @ Crooks & Liars)

Admissions

Fukushima Plant Admits Radioactive Water Leaked To Sea

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associate Press

07/22/13 12:29 PM ET EDT

Company spokesman Masayuki Ono told a regular news conference that plant officials have come to believe that radioactive water that leaked from the wrecked reactors is likely to have seeped into the underground water system and escaped into sea.

…

TEPCO had persistently denied contaminated water reached the sea, despite spikes in radiation levels in underground and sea water samples taken at the plant. The utility first acknowledged an abnormal increase in radioactive cesium levels in an observation well near the coast in May and has since monitored water samples.

…

Ono said that an estimated 1,972 plant workers, or 10 percent of those checked, had thyroid exposure doses exceeding 100 millisieverts – a threshold for increased risk of developing cancer – instead of the 178 based on checks of 522 workers reported to the World Health Organization last year.

Fukushima Problems Escalating, Radioactive Water Going into Pacific

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Monday, July 29, 2013

I find several things to be troubling. First is that the radioactivity is apparently getting into the ocean via groundwater. Have there been any reports on the extent of the groundwater contamination? Even if Tepco could wave a magic wand and stop the leaking now, you’d still have continuing effects from the contaminated groundwater then contaminating the ocean (yes the main effects will be local, such as on local fish, but still…).

Second is that the concentration of radioactivity in the trench water has not fallen much in two years despite the leakage. Shouldn’t the impact of the leak be to reduce the level of radioactivity in the trench water? If this was an osmotic type-process, you’d expect to see the radioactivity of water in the trench fall as the radioactivity of the water on the other side rose. And if this is a straight leak (radioactive water goes into clean water, no flowback), wouldn’t you see pressure and/or water levels in the trench falling (as in why would it take these guys so long to figure this out?)

Third is that Tepco “hopes” to fix the problem by (per the Japan Times) by “building a wall out of liquid glass between the reactors and the sea” to isolate the radioactive water and then removing it. “Hopes” is one of those formulations in Japanese that often refers to aspirations rather than plans. Does anyone know if a process like this has ever been implemented successfully?

The second problem came to light last week, but appears to have gone largely unnoticed in the West. Tepco has been using water to cool the No. 1 reactor. It’s running out of storage space for the contaminated water. It promises to clean it up some before discharging it into the ocean.

Fukushima clean-up turns toxic for Japan’s Tepco

By Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito, Reuters

Tue Jul 30, 2013 5:12pm EDT

The inability of the utility, known as Tepco, to get to grips with the situation raises questions over whether it can successfully decommission the Fukushima Daiichi plant, say industry experts and analysts.

“They let people know about the good things and hide the bad things. This culture of cover up hasn’t changed since the disaster,” said Atsushi Kasai, a former researcher at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute.

…

“They had said it wouldn’t reach the ocean, that they didn’t have the data to show that it was going into the ocean,” said Masashi Goto, a former nuclear engineer for Toshiba Corp who has worked at plants run by Tepco and other utilities.

…

A worker on the site spotted steam rising from the No. 3 reactor building, but Tepco has only been able to speculate on its cause. In March, a rat shorted a temporary switchboard and cut power for 29 hours that was used to cool spent uranium fuel rods in pools.

…

Workers have built more than 1,000 tanks to store the mixed water, which accumulates at the rate of an Olympic swimming pool each week.

With more than 85 percent of the 380,000 metric tons of storage capacity filled, Tepco has said it could run out of space.

The tanks are built from parts of disassembled old containers brought from defunct factories and put together with new parts, workers from the plant told Reuters. They say steel bolts in the tanks will corrode in a few years.

Tepco says it does not know how long the tanks will hold. It reckons it would need to more than double the current capacity over the next three years to contain all the water. It has no plan for after that.

(h/t Susie Madrak @ Crooks & Liars)

Japan Admits Radioactive Water At Fukushima Plant Is An ‘Emergency’

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Monday August 5, 2013 9:28 am

Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority has admitted, despite earlier obfuscations, that it can no longer contain radioactive waste from the troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant. Radioactive water is seeping into the ocean and providers and regulators can only come up with temporary solutions to the contamination problem.

…

This is yet another mark against Tepco’s and the Japanese government’s secretive practices. The Japanese government’s and Tepco’s refusal to brief their partners, notably the United States, during the Fukushima nuclear crisis contributed to the failure of the plant, and since then the government has played misdirection games with journalists and concerned citizens seeking more information.

…

So now that the contaminated water has breached the barrier will Tepco finally come clean on the situation in Fukushima? Or should the world go back to taking Tepco’s word that everything is being handled without incident? What could possibly go wrong?

Exclusive: Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an ’emergency’

By Antoni Slodkowski and Mari Saito, Reuters

Mon Aug 5, 2013 1:38pm EDT

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

…

“If you build a wall, of course the water is going to accumulate there. And there is no other way for the water to go but up or sideways and eventually lead to the ocean,” said Masashi Goto, a retired Toshiba Corp nuclear engineer who worked on several Tepco plants. “So now, the question is how long do we have?”

…

The admission on the long-term tritium leaks, as well as renewed criticism from the regulator, show the precarious state of the $11 billion cleanup and Tepco’s challenge to fix a fundamental problem: How to prevent water, tainted with radioactive elements like cesium, from flowing into the ocean.

Postal Service Confirms Photographing All U.S. Mail

By RON NIXON, The New York Times

Published: August 2, 2013

Last month, The New York Times reported on the practice, which is called the Mail Isolation and Tracking system. The program was created by the Postal Service after the anthrax attacks in late 2001 killed five people, including two postal workers.

The Times reported that the program was a more expansive version of a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, where at the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.)

The information is then sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny, and a number of law enforcement agencies have used it, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services. Law enforcement officials called the mail covers an important investigative tool.

Mail covers are not subject to judicial oversight. Law enforcement agencies simply fill out a form and submit it to the Postal Inspection Service, an arm of the post office that oversees the programs.

The digital mail tracking programs had raised concerns about their sweeping nature because the post office and law enforcement agencies are allowed to monitor all mail, not just the mail of those suspected of a crime.

You know, I remember being in the blast zone for megatonnage.  Perhaps that’s why terrorists causing a slip and fall in my bathtub doesn’t scare me so much.

Boron Group

Aluminium occurs widely on earth, and indeed is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust (8.3%).

Goldman Sachs’s Aluminum Pile

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, The New York Times

Published: July 26, 2013

Unlike investors in the past that bought up the commodities they were trying to control, Goldman is not buying the world’s aluminum. Rather, it is storing the metal for other banks, traders and aluminum producers in a complex of warehouses outside Detroit that it acquired in 2010. The problem, as described in The Times by David Kocieniewski, is that since the bank entered this business, the time it takes buyers to get the metal from those warehouses has shot up to more than 16 months, from 6 weeks. Goldman has attributed the delays to a shortage of trucks and forklift drivers. But Goldman also pays incentives to owners of the metal to keep it in the bank’s warehouses.

Those delays have bolstered Goldman’s profits, because the bank earns more rent the longer metal stays in its warehouses. However, companies that use aluminum argue that the delays hurt them by making them wait for deliveries and can also raise the spot price of aluminum because that price is calculated by a formula that includes a premium based on storage costs. An official at MillerCoors told a Senate committee that the difficulty in getting metal supplies had cost it and other companies $3 billion last year.

…

Banks and their supporters say they should be in the commodity business because it is closely related to their trading activities. But that is also a cause for concern because banks might be able to take unfair advantage of their access to important information in the physical market to benefit themselves when they trade commodities in financial markets.

Policy makers must thoroughly investigate the aluminum warehousing strategies to determine whether Goldman and other warehouse operators distorted prices. They should also take a fresh look at whether banks should really be in the business of owning warehouses and other physical infrastructure. Bankers like to emphasize the benefits of such activities, but their involvement also entails risks for the market.

A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI, The New York Times

Published: July 20, 2013

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

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Using special exemptions granted by the Federal Reserve Bank and relaxed regulations approved by Congress, the banks have bought huge swaths of infrastructure used to store commodities and deliver them to consumers – from pipelines and refineries in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas; to fleets of more than 100 double-hulled oil tankers at sea around the globe; to companies that control operations at major ports like Oakland, Calif., and Seattle.

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For much of the last century, Congress tried to keep a wall between banking and commerce. Banks were forbidden from owning nonfinancial businesses (and vice versa) to minimize the risks they take and, ultimately, to protect depositors. Congress strengthened those regulations in the 1950s, but by the 1980s, a wave of deregulation began to build and banks have in some cases been transformed into merchants, according to Saule T. Omarova, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and expert in regulation of financial institutions. Goldman and other firms won regulatory approval to buy companies that traded in oil and other commodities. Other restrictions were weakened or eliminated during the 1990s, when some banks were allowed to expand into storing and transporting commodities.

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Next Up: Copper

As Goldman has benefited from its wildly lucrative foray into the aluminum market, JPMorgan has been moving ahead with plans to establish its own profit center involving an even more crucial metal: copper, an industrial commodity that is so widely used in homes, electronics, cars and other products that many economists track it as a barometer for the global economy.

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JPMorgan, which also controls metal warehouses, began seeking approval of a plan that would ultimately allow it, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, a large money management firm, to buy 80 percent of the copper available on the market on behalf of investors and hold it in warehouses. The firms have told regulators that these stockpiles, which would be used to back new copper exchange-traded funds, would not affect copper prices. But manufacturers and copper wholesalers warned that the arrangement would squeeze the market and send prices soaring. They asked the S.E.C. to reject the proposal.

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After an intensive lobbying campaign by the banks, Mary L. Schapiro, the S.E.C.’s chairwoman, approved the new copper funds last December, during her final days in office. S.E.C. officials said they believed the funds would track the price of copper, not propel it, and concurred with the firms’ contention – disputed by some economists – that reducing the amount of copper on the market would not drive up prices.

Others now fear that Wall Street banks will repeat or revise the tactics that have run up prices in the aluminum market. Such an outcome, they caution, would ripple through the economy. Consumers would end up paying more for goods as varied as home plumbing equipment, autos, cellphones and flat-screen televisions.

Revealed: NSA program collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

Wednesday 31 July 2013 08.56 EDT

A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its “widest-reaching” system for developing intelligence from the internet.

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“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.

US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”

But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.

XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing “real-time” interception of an individual’s internet activity.

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a ‘US person’, though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

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The system is similar to the way in which NSA analysts generally can intercept the communications of anyone they select, including, as one NSA document put it, “communications that transit the United States and communications that terminate in the United States”.

One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications. Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:

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Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.

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The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn “call events” collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.

William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had “assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens”, an estimate, he said, that “only was involving phone calls and emails”. A 2010 Washington Post article reported that “every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications.”

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While the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008 requires an individualized warrant for the targeting of US persons, NSA analysts are permitted to intercept the communications of such individuals without a warrant if they are in contact with one of the NSA’s foreign targets.

The ACLU’s deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans’ communications without individualized warrants.

“The government doesn’t need to ‘target’ Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications,” said Jaffer. “The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans” when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.

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In a letter this week to senator Ron Wyden, director of national intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that NSA analysts have exceeded even legal limits as interpreted by the NSA in domestic surveillance.

Acknowledging what he called “a number of compliance problems”, Clapper attributed them to “human error” or “highly sophisticated technology issues” rather than “bad faith”.

However, Wyden said on the Senate floor on Tuesday: “These violations are more serious than those stated by the intelligence community, and are troubling.”

Radicals

Jay Ackroyd, Eschaton

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The Village and the Democratic leadership really is embarked on a radical restructuring campaign, to gut the social insurance programs, lower wage rates and establish long-term partnerships between powerful private interests and powerful public sector agencies.

Doing this is really unpopular, and so can’t be brought directly to a vote–hence the Gangs, and the Commissions, the classified trade talks, and the terrifying debt crises and, sadly, the 60 vote Senate. None of this has worked so far.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying.

Zombie rising

by digby, Hullabaloo

Monday, July 29, 2013

Apparently, no matter how low the deficit goes or how much the president publicly repudiates the deficit framework,  the White House is still offering what it offered back when the deficit was widely considered the greatest threat the world has ever known:

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The president admitted in his NY Times interview that the deficit “framework” has been “damaging” and perhaps he finally believes that. But that means he must really believe that the elderly are living high on the hog on their Social Security and need to be forced to shop a little more smartly. How else to explain why they continue to offer this deal?

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The Villagers are far from willing to give up their favorite stale tropes. They never are. Remember, there was a time not long ago when the deficit was gone and we had a projected surplus. They still fretted about the old people stealing the food out of baby’s mouths.

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(T)he wealthy celebrities and aristocrats of the Village will never stop fear mongering that these programs are going to swallow up everything.  If the president is on the same page then he could very well have been saying in his interview that “austerity” is damaging while still believing we need to destroy these programs in order to save them. This belief is not a policy in Washington DC — it’s a religion.

Anti-Tax Republicans Once Again May Save Social Security

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Tuesday July 30, 2013 7:02 am

Despite a half dozen failed tries to get a grand bargain, President Obama is still working hard at a new attempt. Fortunately, this latest effort seems likely to fail for the same reason as all the others.

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If insanity is trying to do the same thing over expecting different results, than the administration is clinically ill.

Given that there is a fundamental and unbridgeable disagreement on this issue the administration should have moved on to basically anything else, but it has become Obama’s white whale. It is the dangerous obsession which has repeatedly brought needless destruction.

The article goes on to remind everyone that Obama is both open and even eager to cut Social Security benefits as part of a deal. The only thing that has repeatedly saved the program is Republicans refusal to increase taxes.

Is a grand bargain out of reach?

By MANU RAJU and JOHN BRESNAHAN, Politico

7/29/13 7:33 PM EDT

Republicans and the White House both agree on proposals to cut Social Security known as chained CPI, referring to reduced payments to beneficiaries because of how annual cost-of-living adjustments are calculated. And the two sides seem to be on the same page regarding reducing benefits that wealthy seniors now receive from entitlement programs, a proposal known as means testing.

But the White House wants new taxes in exchange for those entitlement cuts, something at which the GOP continues to balk. And Republicans have pushed for the two sides to agree on going beyond the typical 10-year budget projections and instead examine how much the budget picture will worsen over the next 30 years. But the White House is resisting a 30-year budget projection, believing the numbers are unrealistic.

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Even if the group reaches a deal with the White House, it’s hardly clear new taxes could win over any additional Republicans – in the House and Senate. And a White House offer on entitlements would turn off scores of Democrats who have vowed to protect the social safety net programs.

Without a grand bargain, to cut deficits by about $4 trillion over the next decade, Congress and the White House may instead simply try to find a way to prevent the government from shutting down in October. But the House GOP and the Senate Democrats remain tens of billions of dollars apart. And as Republicans are demanding fresh spending cuts in order to increase the debt ceiling, the White House and Senate Democrats say they will only pass a debt ceiling increase with no strings attached.

Obama proposal would cut corporate taxes, boost spending

By Jonathan Easley and Justin Sink, The Hill

07/30/13 02:19 PM ET

Obama’s plan would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, with a preferred rate of 25 percent for manufacturers. It would also allow small businesses to write off $1 million in investments.

Obama also wants Congress to sign off on new infrastructure spending, aid to community colleges, and investment in manufacturing hubs. The White House did not say how much Obama wants to spend.

To pay for the infrastructure investments and other spending, Obama proposed that companies be able to repatriate foreign earnings back to the U.S. subject to a one-time “transition fee.”

Obama Offers to Cut Corporate Tax Rate as Part of Jobs Deal

By MARK LANDLER and JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times

Published: July 30, 2013

The terms of Mr. Obama’s tax plan are those that Timothy F. Geithner, his former Treasury secretary, first proposed in early 2012, as the presidential campaign was getting under way: the corporate tax rate would be reduced to 28 percent, from 35 percent, with a lower rate of 25 percent for manufacturers.

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For two years, Republicans have rejected the bulk of Mr. Obama’s initiatives to create jobs by investing in public-works projects, higher education, advanced manufacturing and scientific research. A big reason was that he previously has paired those ideas – to offset the spending and avoid adding to annual budget deficits – with proposals to repeal or reduce tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations, especially oil companies, that Republicans reject.

Obama Proposes ‘Grand Bargain’ for Jobs

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 30, 2013 at 11:52 AM ET

The president has previously insisted such business tax reform be coupled with an individual tax overhaul. His new offer drops that demand and calls only for lowering the corporate rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, with an even lower effective tax rate of 25 percent for manufacturers.

Obama wants those rate changes to be coupled with significant spending on some sort of job creation program, such as manufacturing, infrastructure or community colleges.

Congressional Republicans have also long insisted on tying corporate and individual tax reform so that small business owners who use the individual tax code would be offered cuts along with large corporations. But they oppose using the revenue generated from changes in the corporate tax structure for government spending programs.

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Senior administration officials described the corporate tax proposal as the first new economic idea Obama plans to offer in the coming months, with budget deadlines looming in the fall. Administration officials wouldn’t put a price tag on the proposal or say how much would be a “significant” investment in jobs since the dollar figures would be part of negotiations with Congress. But in an example from this year’s State of the Union address, Obama proposed $50 billion to put Americans to work repairing roads and bridges and other construction jobs.

Obama Urges Business Tax Rewrite to Help Spur New Jobs

By Julianna Goldman, Bloomberg News

Jul 30, 2013 2:15 PM ET

Under the proposal, Obama would seek a business tax change that produces a one-time revenue gain, and that would be earmarked for the repair of roads and bridges or other public works, innovation centers for manufacturing and community college training to close skill gaps.

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“It represents an unmistakable signal that the president has backed away from his campaign-era promise to corporate America that tax reform would be revenue-neutral to them,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

The jobs-related programs would be funded by a one-time transition fee associated with the $2 trillion in foreign earnings that are currently held overseas, said an administration official who asked not to be identified to discuss details before the speech.

The officials declined to specify how much money would be generated and didn’t detail how it would be structured.

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Obama, in February 2012, proposed reducing the top corporate rate for most companies to 28 percent from 35 percent. The plan would eliminate tax breaks and change core tax-code features such as interest deductibility. He’s also proposed lowering the rate for manufacturers to 25 percent and expanding and making permanent the research-and-development tax credit.

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The idea of taxing approximately $2 trillion in accumulated overseas earnings as a transition to a new system resembles a proposal from Representative Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Spending the proceeds on jobs programs, though, may run counter to the Michigan Republican’s goal of a revenue-neutral approach.

Camp’s 2011 draft would require companies to pay 5.25 percent on all offshore funds, regardless of whether they are brought home. He plans to include that in legislation he wants to move through his committee this year.

Under the current tax system, U.S.-based companies must pay the U.S. rate of 35 percent on all the income they earn around the world. They get tax credits for payments to foreign governments and don’t owe the U.S. unless they bring the profits home. Companies such as Caterpillar Inc. and United Technologies Corp. have called for the U.S. to switch to a so-called territorial system that wouldn’t tax most future offshore earnings.

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Even as the economy continues to expand and add jobs four years into the nation’s recovery from its worst recession since the Great Depression, Americans at the middle of economic ladder haven’t regained lost prosperity.

The economy grew at a 1.8 percent rate during the first three months of the year, more slowly than its 2.5 percent average pace during the last two decades. The unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent in June, remains above its 6 percent average over the past 20 years.

While the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index is up more than 18 percent this year and has almost doubled since Obama took office in 2009, the median household income of $51,500 in May is 5 percent lower than in June 2009, the official end of the recession, according to estimates by Sentier Research.

President Obama’s ‘grand bargain’ for the middle-class

By Jamelle Bouie, Washington Post

Published: July 30 at 11:04 am

The details of the proposal are straightforward: For Republicans, he offers a cut to corporate income taxes, from 35 percent to 28 percent, along with fewer loopholes and a preferred rate for manufacturers. And to gain Democratic support, he includes a series of projects meant to “invest” in the middle-class and boost the economy.

While it’s hard to say how much ordinary Americans would gain from the proposal if it were to become law, what is apparent is the extent to which this “grand bargain” is a boon for business, which wants tax cuts and new investments in infrastructure (which makes it easier to conduct business). Indeed, if Amazon is any indication, the kinds of jobs that might come out of this “better bargain for the middle class” aren’t great.