Year: 2015

He lightly patted her ass. She looked so good tonight. She had on her Liz Claiborne dress. White down the back, covering the zipper. Cut just above the knees. Her simple black heels. Dark stockings that he’s pretty sure have lace at the top. He’ll wait to find out. The dress had no sleeves. Showing off her still stunning arms at 38. She still finds time to work out. It’s her security blanket. Her arms are freckled yes, the doctor said it’s nothing to worry about. Come back every six months. Her hair is still that auburn color. She doesn’t die it. Her eyes, bright, and yes of course blue. They shine when she is happy. Tonight she is happy. Simple and beautiful is his wife. My god how he loves her. “Are you ready?” he asks. Grabbing the keys off the hook in the kitchen. He’ll take the Mercedes, and leave the SUV for the baby sitter in case of emergency. Through the mudroom he steps, dog food pieces here and there, some slobber from the little guy. Who get’s a puppy with an infant? He opens the door to the garage. Smacks the button, the bulb flickers. I should probably change that he thinks to himself as he dances around to the right side of the garage. Happy. He cautiously opens the door, spots yet another ding. He enjoys driving her though. Dings and all. He owns it. Door ajar now, he dumps himself into the seat, starts her up. The 6 cylinder is still a thing of beauty. A soft rumble. He swipes at the seat warmers; he knows she doesn’t like her tushy cold. She gets in after a minute of him waiting, listening to the recent plight of his team. “Torn ACL, out for the season.” He doesn’t care, tonight is going to be fun.

Paul Krugman:

...Go back to the politics of 2009, when the new Obama administration was trying to cope with the most terrifying crisis since the 1930s. The outgoing Bush administration had already engineered a bank bailout, but the Obama team reinforced this effort with a temporary program of deficit spending, while the Federal Reserve sought to bolster the economy by buying lots of assets. And Republicans, across the board, predicted disaster. Deficit spending, they insisted, would cause soaring interest rates and bankruptcy; the Fed's efforts would "debase the dollar" and produce runaway inflation. None of it happened. Interest rates stayed very low, as did inflation. But the G.O.P. never acknowledged, after six full years of being wrong about everything, that the bad things it predicted failed to take place, or showed any willingness to rethink the doctrines that led to those bad predictions. Instead, the party's leading figures kept talking, year after year, as if the disasters they had predicted were actually happening. ...How would the men and women who would be president respond if crisis struck on their watch? And the answer, on the Republican side at least, seems to be: with bluster and China-bashing. Nowhere is there a hint that any of the G.O.P. candidates understand the problem, or the steps that might be needed if the world economy hits another pothole.

What are our state lawmakers doing about criminal enterprises chartered, incorporated, and employing tens of thousands of citizens in our state? As well as ripping those same people off? Seriously? Shouldn't they as LAWmakers be doing something? Don't they have a duty? Shouldn't they be focused on racketeering? Perhaps an employer engaged and convicted of energy market rigging: 5 banks guilty of rate-rigging, pay more than $5B?

Five major banks Wednesday agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay more than $5.5 billion in collective penalties to settle charges their traders routinely manipulated the world's foreign-exchange market for their own profit. The Department of Justice, the Federal Reserve and other U.S. and European authorities and regulators said corporate units of Citicorp(C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), London-based Barclays(BCS) and Royal Bank of Scotland(RBS) acknowledged their traders rigged foreign exchange prices of U.S. dollars and euros from Dec. 2007 to Jan. 2013.

Now go there and read their huge story on DuPont's destruction of West Virginia. Here is a taste:

Then, in the early 1980s, DuPont, which ran a sprawling chemical plant called Washington Works in nearby Parkersburg, approached the family about buying some acreage for a landfill. The Tennants were wary of having a waste dump so close to the farm. But DuPont assured them it would only dispose of non-toxic material like ash and scrap metal, and so they agreed to sell. Shortly after the deal closed, Jim and Della, whose home abutted the new landfill, say their two young daughters started wheezing and hacking. Worried about the girls’ health, they moved to a house in town. But most of their relatives stayed, and Jim and Della continued hunting game and eating beef grazed on the farm. Della took her daughters’ Girl Scout troop there to catch tadpoles in the creek and make plaster molds of deer tracks. Then, at some point in the mid-1990s, the water in the creek turned black and foamy, and the family began finding dead deer tangled in the brambles. The cattle started going blind, sprouting tumors, vomiting blood. “One time this cow was coming down the road and it was just bellowing, the awfulest bellow you ever heard,” Della told me. “And every time it would bellow, blood would gush from its mouth and its nose. It just bellowed and bellowed and blood just kept flying, and then it would fall down, and it would try to get up … We didn’t have anything to shoot it with, so we just had to watch it until finally the cow bled to death.”

My question is and will always be, at what point does the Governor of a State step in and do something about a company that constantly defrauds the citizens of his state? Of his country? And of the planet?

Did you get an automated call from JPMorgan Chase on your cell phone? Allegations are the company made unsolicited robocalls to cell phones, which is illegal. Now they are settling a class action lawsuit, and you could get up to $50 back if you qualify.