Weakening Dodd-Frank — John Carney Edition

Weakening Dodd-Frank — John Carney Edition

According to this Saturday's NJ, John Carney is lending some bi-partisan credibility to one of (there's a package of bills out there trying to weaken an already weak legislation) the bills meant to loosen restrictions on banks who are trading in derivatives from their foreign operations:
Sunday Open Thread [5.19.13]

Sunday Open Thread [5.19.13]

BREAKING: I didn't win the Powerball yesterday! In the evolving story of the "doctored" emails that ABC's Jon Karl breathlessly injected into the Benghazi stupidity, it looks as though Karl has some right-wing bias issues. He's not as bad as James O'Keefe, but one wonders where this man's editors were. In the same vein, Jay Rosen has written in some detail on how Jon Karl got played by his confidential source, and now he's made ABC a problem too.....

Saturday Open Thread [5.18.13]

Usually, you can tell when the GOP has reached its overreach point on the scandal machine when they start screaming about something dumber than dirt. In this instance, they are apparently unhappy that a U.S. Marine held an umbrella over President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan as it began to rain over the press conference they had earlier this week. Something about violating the U.S Marine protocol about not carrying umbrellas. Which I'm sure has nothing to do with doing what your Commander-In-Chief asks you to do. And, there's this.....
The Real IRS Scandal

The Real IRS Scandal

Michael Hiltzik at the LA Times has written what I think is the definitive piece on the IRS problems -- making the case that the real scandal in all of this is that the IRS isn't functional enough to have stopped the bastardizing of the C(4) organizations in the first place. As usual, you have to go read the whole thing:
Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity. Nor has it enforced rules requiring that donors to those groups pay gift tax on their donations.

The “War on Terror” Surveillance State Hits Journalists

Yesterday, the AP disclosed that the DOJ obtained lists of "incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery." Apparently this is in the service of an investigation of a leak -- one that revealed an Al-Queda affiliate plot to blow up an airliner on the anniversary of the killing of Bin Laden. Except that it wasn't a real plot --it was one cooked up by a CIA plant to try to discover the elements of this affiliate. The Obama Administration has been pursuing this leak -- they seem to pursue them all -- but there is a little extra impetus in this one:

Mother’s Day Open Thread [5.12.13]

Happy Mother's Day! Hope you are lavishing attention and gifts on your Mom today. The adorable Kid President has a message to all of the Moms out there (not the least of which is that the secret to changing the world is Moms):

Saturday Open Thread [5.11.13]

Today's NJ has a piece by Adam Taylor explaining the stakes in the upcoming meeting regarding rezoning several areas of the Beaver Valley holdings of the Woodlawn Trustees. I've seen alot of Facebook energy on this, but this is the first I've seen the issues spelled out.
In all, the plans call for 200,000 square feet of commercial space that would be housed in several buildings and residential developments with a total of 432 houses and townhomes, Green said. The commercial development would be called Concord Commons, an age-restricted community would be called The Mews at Concord and the other residential development would be called The Preserve at Concord.
Nothing about this seems like conservation. And conservation is about more than preserving recreational options. And certainly this is one more opportunity to increase traffic and congestion on roads that were not built for their current capacity.