THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Even as unemployment remained high and the economy dragged, players in many states responded. Of the 43 states with lotteries, 26 saw revenue grow in traditional games in the last fiscal year, with total sales up 3 percent to $56 billion, according to La Fleur’s. Ticket sales in at least 17 of those states set records, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and several states are on track to hit all-time highs this year.

Many states are considering expanded gambling as well. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation Nov. 22 authorizing as many as three resort casinos in his state, while officials in Georgia and Florida are weighing similar proposals. Interstate gambling online is barred by federal law. Washington, D.C., and other jurisdictions are looking at launching Internet poker within their boundaries. At least 28 states have considered lottery or gaming-related bills since 2010 to close budget gaps, according to data from the Washington-based National Conference of State Legislatures.

Overall, states got an average 2.4 percent of revenue from lotteries and other forms of gambling in 2009, according to a report last year from the Albany, New York-based Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.

// posted by montag @ 2:03 PM 0 Comments

Millions of American schoolchildren are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their families for the decades-old safety-net program.

The number of students receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers the meals program. Eleven states, including Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee, had four-year increases of 25 percent or more, huge shifts in a vast program long characterized by incremental growth.

// posted by montag @ 1:15 PM 0 Comments

Iraq’s prime minister indicated on Wednesday that he was open to the eventual return of American troops as trainers, underscoring that the United States is likely to be involved in this country’s security even after the last soldiers depart in the coming weeks.

“No doubt, the U.S. forces have a role in providing training of Iraqi forces,” said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki after meeting Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is here to mark the withdrawal and to inaugurate a new phase in ties between the United States and Iraq...

Mr. Biden reaffirmed that the two countries would maintain a “robust security relationship,” adding that it was up to the Iraqis to decide “what you think that relationship should be.” He and Mr. Maliki agreed to set up a committee to plan security cooperation.

“We will continue our discussions with your government over the substance of our security arrangements, including areas of training, intelligence and counterterrorism,” he said.

// posted by montag @ 1:03 PM 0 Comments

In a paper for the VoxEU think tank, the Bank's executive director for Financial Stability, Andrew Haldane, and economist Vasileios Madouros claimed British and U.S. national accounts have significantly overestimated the "value added" provided by financial services firms before and since the crisis began.

The essence of their argument is that in calculating gross domestic product, government statisticians give far too much weight to banking activity that merely involves creating and bearing risk in lending and asset holdings.

Under the current system, the paper points out that the value added ascribed to U.S. financial intermediaries was as much as $1.2 trillion last year -- some 8 percent of GDP and a fourfold increase in its share of GDP since World War Two. In Britain the equivalent in 2009 was even higher at 10 percent.

To justify those huge gains, the economists argue that the productivity of bank capital and staff would need to have soared too -- in part justifying the huge rises in pay and bonuses. But the precipitous collapse of many of these banks in 2007 and 2008 questions whether the scale of those efficiency gains was anything more but smoke and mirrors.

// posted by montag @ 12:40 PM 0 Comments

That line, “a cost of doing business imposed by having to maintain a working relationship with a regulatory agency,” is one of the more brutally damning things you’ll ever see a judge write. Rakoff is saying that these fines are payoffs to keep the SEC off the banks’ backs. They’re like the pad that numbers-runners or drug dealers pay to urban precinct-houses every month to keep cops from making real arrests. That's what he means when he refers to "maintaning a working relationship." It's heavy stuff.

// posted by montag @ 7:58 PM 0 Comments

A Minneapolis man was arrested and illegally detained for 43 days by federal immigration agents who sought to have him deported even though he is a U.S. citizen, according to a lawsuit filed recently in federal court in Minneapolis.

Federal agents arrested Anthony A. Clarke during a late-night raid in 2008 at his sister's house in Columbia Heights, then shuttled him back and forth between a Sherburne County jail and an unidentified detention facility in South Dakota, the suit says.

The case is thought be the first federal suit of its kind in Minnesota, and it appears to follow a national pattern. A recent study at Northwestern University found thousands of cases in which U.S. citizens were arrested in error and held for deportation. Collectively, they raise disturbing questions about the tactics of immigration agents and the adequacy of checks and balances in a parallel court system overseeing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

// posted by montag @ 7:28 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:13 PM 0 Comments

A Marine sergeant who received the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama last September for saving 36 comrades has sued his previous employer, a major weapons manufacturer, for defamation, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Details weren't released at the time of the original lawsuit in June, the Journal added, but Dakota Meyer filed an amended complaint on Monday in which he accuses BAE Systems of retaliation after he criticized the company for selling sniper scopes to Pakistan that he said were better than what U.S. soldiers got.

"We are taking the best gear, the best technology on the market to date and giving it to guys known to stab us in the back," Meyer wrote to his supervisor, according to the lawsuit. "These are the same people killing our guys."

Meyer says he later tried to return to a job with an earlier employer but was spurned when his BAE supervisor made false claims about a drinking problem and that he was "mentally unstable."

// posted by montag @ 7:03 PM 0 Comments

This mostly involves violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, in particular the restriction on foreclosing on active duty military while they are overseas. The scandal has led to an extreme degree of restitution from the banks, which have been camo-washing their reputations by providing settlements of up to $117,000 per wrongful foreclosure. The banks know they are severely exposed by illegal foreclosures on members of the military. In fact, violations of the SCRA carry with it potential sentences of up to a year in prison.

// posted by montag @ 5:26 PM 0 Comments

As targeted killings have risen sharply across Afghanistan, American and Afghan officials believe that many are the work of counterintelligence units of the Haqqani militant network and Al Qaeda, charged with killing suspected informants and terrorizing the populace on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Military intelligence officials say that the units essentially act as death squads and that one of them, a large group known as the Khurasan that operates primarily in Pakistan’s tribal areas, has been responsible for at least 250 assassinations and public executions.

Another group, whose name is not known, works mainly in Afghanistan and may be responsible for at least 20 killings in Khost Province over the summer alone, including a mass beheading that came to light only after a video was found in the possession of a captured insurgent. The video shows 10 headless bodies evenly spaced along a paved road, while their heads sit nearby in a semicircle, their faces clearly visible.

// posted by montag @ 1:02 PM 2 Comments

A new trend in pharmaceutical sales has raised concerns over ethics and patient safety, as companies buy up critical cancer drugs in short supply and attempt to resell them at huge markups.

Rather than operate by the dark of night on street corners, these drug dealers work in broad daylight using fax, phone and email to deluge hospitals with offers.

Experts say the so-called “gray market” is not illegal and could even be poised to surge further after President Barack Obama issued an executive order that tried to fix the problem, but may have just opened a larger loophole.

“These are a number of very small firms that have popped up out of nowhere. Most of them are relatively new,” said Thomas Smith, director of palliative medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.

“It happens in every other market, we just don’t expect it to happen in pharmaceuticals for cancer treatment,” he told AFP.

More than half (56 percent) of the 549 hospitals surveyed by the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) earlier this year said they received daily solicitations from gray market vendors “to purchase medications no longer available through the manufacturer or usual wholesaler.”

// posted by montag @ 12:25 PM 0 Comments

Coulter is backing Romney, who she says is now a true conservative because “he’s flopped to my positions.”

// posted by montag @ 12:10 PM 0 Comments

"During this investigation, extremely little evidence, if any, was found to raise even a suspicion that Jose Guerena was involved in any possible drug trafficking ring," the notice says.

Scileppi said the fact that Guerena had been fired at 71 times and hit 22 times was "grotesque," and "almost a caricature of an overly excited group of poorly trained law enforcement agents."

// posted by montag @ 10:27 PM 0 Comments

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the S.E.C.’s $285 million settlement, announced last month, is “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” because it does not provide the court with evidence on which to judge the settlement.

The ruling could throw the S.E.C.’s enforcement efforts into chaos, because a majority of the fraud cases and other actions that the agency brings against Wall Street firms are settled out of court, most often with a condition that the defendant does not admit that it violated the law while also promising not to deny it.

That condition gives a company or individual an advantage in subsequent civil litigation for damages, because cases in which no facts are established cannot be used in evidence in other cases, like shareholder lawsuits seeking recovery of losses or damages.

The S.E.C.’s policy — “hallowed by history, but not by reason,” Judge Rakoff wrote — creates substantial potential for abuse, the judge said, because “it asks the court to employ its power and assert its authority when it does not know the facts.”

Judge Rakoff also refers at one point to Citigroup as “a recidivist,” or repeat offender, which has violated the antifraud provisions of the nation’s securities laws many times. The company knew that the S.E.C.’s proposed judgment – that it cease and desist from violating the antifraud laws – had not been enforced in at least 10 years, the judge wrote.

// posted by montag @ 4:26 PM 0 Comments

How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

// posted by montag @ 3:56 PM 0 Comments

The poll — which asked New Jerseyans where they find news and information about current events — found that Sunday morning news shows are the most informative, while Fox News actually leads people to be less informed than those who consume no news at all.

The poll focused partly on popular uprisings in Egypt and Syria. Asked whether the people of Egypt successfully topped Hosni Mubarak’s regime, 49 percent of Fox News viewers answered “yes” — the lowest on the scale — while 68 percent of NPR listeners answered in the affirmative, the highest on the scale.

Those who watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart performed well on the questions. Sixty percent of Daily Show viewers correctly answered that opposition forces in Syria have not yet toppled the government, second only to NPR. Forty-five percent of Fox News viewers answered “no.”

“The (poll’s) results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” said Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the poll.

// posted by montag @ 5:10 PM 0 Comments

Steven J. Baum PC, one of the largest law firms specializing in home foreclosures in New York state, is shutting down after losing business from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Baum firm notified government entities, including the New York State Department of Labor, that it planned mass job cuts, it said in an e-mailed statement today. Earl Wells, a firm spokesman, confirmed that it’s closing.

This month, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage- finance companies operating under U.S. conservatorship, dropped Steven J. Baum PC from their lists of law firms eligible to handle foreclosures. Home-loan servicers including Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Ally Financial Inc. also stopped using the firm, which last month agreed to pay the U.S. $2 million and change its practices to resolve a probe of faulty foreclosure filings.

“Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices,” Steven J. Baum, who owns the firm, said in the statement.

// posted by montag @ 1:31 PM 2 Comments

The lawsuit, filed today by Julio Jose Jimenez-Artunduaga and Heather Carpenter, claims the police violated protesters’ Constitutional rights against unlawful detention and arrest and used excessive force after the Oct. 15 demonstration.

Carpenter, 23, a Citibank account holder from Port Jefferson on New York’s Long Island, decided to close her account in frustration after being notified that the bank was imposing a $17 monthly fee unless she maintained a balance of $6,000, according to the lawsuit.

She said in court papers that she and other protesters, including Jimenez-Artunduaga, joined a demonstration inside the branch at 555 LaGuardia Place in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

According to the complaint, Carpenter left the branch after closing her account and began filming demonstrators as they interacted with police. An unidentified officer arrested Carpenter, saying, “You were inside with everybody else. You have to come with me,” according to the complaint.

When she questioned officers and showed them the receipt for her closed account, Carpenter said Jimenz-Artunduaga approached police. Officers dragged the two of them into the bank vestibule, where Jimenez-Artunduaga was kicked in the back of the knee, knocked to the ground and handcuffed, the couple alleged. They were both arrested after the incident, the plaintiffs said in the complaint.

// posted by montag @ 1:24 PM 0 Comments

“Al-Qaeda will continue to do what it’s done in the past, and we expect that it’s possible they could even increase their capability,” he said. Meanwhile, Shiite militias based mostly in the south will pursue their efforts to expand their capabilities, Austin said.

“There’s likely to be setbacks, some tough times in the days ahead,” he told journalists at a briefing at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. “As we leave, we can expect to see some turbulence in security initially.”

// posted by montag @ 12:56 PM 0 Comments

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich wants to give younger workers the option to choose private retirement accounts as an alternative to Social Security.

"It would be a voluntary choice. Keep the current system if you want to, or have a savings account," Gingrich said Monday at Rivier College in Nashua.

// posted by montag @ 12:05 PM 0 Comments

Last year, for example, the bank affirmed its belief in the confidence fairy — that is, the claim that budget cuts in a depressed economy will actually promote expansion, by raising business and consumer confidence. Strange to say, that hasn’t happened anywhere.

// posted by montag @ 11:47 PM 0 Comments

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association agrees. The group, which represents the industry and is largely controlled by big banks, says anyone who doesn’t like the offer can walk away. “If a payment is missed, trigger the C.D.S. and be made whole,” the group said on its Web site...

Contrary to what the I.S.D.A. says, the BNP Paribas bankers have been telling bond holders that their credit insurance may not pay off down the road, because after the restructuring is completed, the terms of the old debt might be changed, these money managers said.

Normally, investors would shrug off such an argument.

But the warnings from BNP Paribas carried weight, the money managers said, because of one of the officials who was making them. She is Belle Yang, a BNP specialist who also happens to serve on a powerful I.S.D.A. committee. The panel, the “determinations committee” for Europe, decides what constitutes a “credit event” in Greece or elsewhere on the Continent.

This is the committee that will likely rule that the Greek deal would not constitute a default. That is because the restructuring would be “voluntary.” Some investors who were counting on their credit insurance would be out of luck.

In the meetings, the investors said, Ms. Yang identified herself as a member of the committee. That itself was unusual, because the names of I.S.D.A. committee members are normally kept confidential. The association doesn’t disclose them, and lists only panel members’ employers — 15 large global banks and financial services firms. Those institutions include Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and Pimco.

One of the money managers who attended the meetings said Ms. Yang’s presence seemed to raise a conflict. Ms. Yang works for BNP, which stands to profit from the restructuring. She is also on the I.S.D.A. panel, which will determine if credit default swaps pay off.

One of the money managers said he pointed out Ms. Yang’s dual role at a meeting.

“You’re on the determinations committee, your firm is earning a big fee and trying to scare me into tendering my bonds,” he said he told her. He said Ms. Yang replied: “No, I’m just trying to help tell you what could go wrong.”

// posted by montag @ 12:41 PM 0 Comments

As a joint Congressional committee appears paralyzed days from a deadline to agree on a plan to cut the nation’s deficit, the Pentagon remains vulnerable to forced reductions over the next decade that would slash its spending by $500 billion, on top of $450 billion in cuts already in the works — a total of more than 15 percent of its operating budget.

But as Mr. Panetta considers scaling back major weapons programs, the Osprey illustrates the challenges in downsizing the world’s most expensive military. The aircraft has survived after repeated safety problems during testing, years of delays, ballooning costs and tough questions about its utility.

Even Dick Cheney, when he was the defense secretary under the first President George Bush, could not kill it.

“Don’t bet against the Marines as budget warriors,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.

// posted by montag @ 12:23 PM 0 Comments

Democratic Florida Congressional Rep. Ted Deutch has proposed an amendment to the Constitution of the United States outlawing corporate money in politics and ending so-called “corporate personhood”, according to Talking Points Memo.

If passed, the amendment would overturn the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision, restoring caps on corporate election spending and rescinding the right of for-profit business interests to receive the same protections as citizens under the First Amendment.

// posted by montag @ 11:41 AM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 4:46 PM 0 Comments

How did America’s heavily militarized security guards for the 1% spend the work week? Oh, just pepper-spraying sitting students in the face, macing old ladies, stomping peaceful protesters, yanking women around by their ponytails, destroying libraries and bloodying the faces of America’s citizens. You know, what they’ve dreamed of doing for decades.

// posted by montag @ 2:15 PM 0 Comments

Remember when Newt Gingrich claimed that the mortgage giant Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 for his advice “as a historian?” Thousands of young history majors who were resigned to a future in which they would pad out their $2,000-a-semester salaries as part-time adjunct lecturers with fulfilling careers in bartending suddenly were engulfed with new hope.

Unfortunately, it turned out that Newt’s income actually comes from running think tanks that help promote the corporate clients’ goals in the public sector. That may be a little harder for the youth of America to put their heads around. But, kids, if anybody asks you what you want to be when you grow up, say: policy guru.

Some of the Republican candidates seem to have no visible means of support whatsoever — like Rick Santorum, who has seven kids. You would hate to think they were going without shoes just so Dad could continue his never-ending quest to break into the 5 percent range in the polls.

But, good news! Santorum made at least $970,000 in 2010, in all those mysterious ways unsuccessful Republican candidates for president seem to have of making money. Part of it came from being a commentator for Fox News, and part of it came from Santorum’s work at — yes! — a think tank.

// posted by montag @ 1:16 PM 0 Comments

The number of children in the United States considered poor rose by 1 million in 2010, the U.S. Census said on Thursday, with more than one in five of the youngest Americans now living in poverty.

"Children who live in poverty, especially young children, are more likely than their peers to have cognitive and behavioral difficulties, to complete fewer years of education, and, as they grow up, to experience more years of unemployment," the Census said.

In 2010, when the Census survey was conducted, 21.6 percent of children across the country were poor, compared to 20 percent in 2009.

That was mainly due to a rise in the number of children living below the federal poverty threshold, defined as an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four, to 15.7 million from 14.7 million in 2009.

// posted by montag @ 11:51 AM 0 Comments

“Senator Brown is a free-market advocate who believes that our strength as a nation comes from the ingenuity and hard work of its people,” read an invitation to a fund-raiser at a New Canaan, Conn., country club last week, that circulated among hedge fund and private equity executives. His Democratic opponent, the invitation noted, was all but certain to be the financial industry’s most prominent foe: “big government liberal Elizabeth Warren.”

Mr. Brown...has taken more money from the financial industry than almost any other senator: all told, more than $1 million during the last two years, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Of the 20 companies that accounted for the most campaign donations to Mr. Brown, about half were prominent investment or securities firms like Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments and Bain Capital. His donors include such blue-chip names as Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, and the hedge fund kings John Paulson and Kenneth Griffin.

Mr. Brown, in turn, has been an important ally at critical moments, using his swing vote in the Senate to wring significant concessions out of Democrats on last year’s financial regulation bill, including helping strip out a proposed $19 billion bank tax and weakening a proposal to stop commercial banks from holding large interests in hedge funds and private equity funds.

// posted by montag @ 10:16 PM 0 Comments

In a speech before the U.S. Council for International Business yesterday, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris joined the tax-me-more crowd, saying, “I can tell you the highest taxpayers, including me, should be paying more“:

“Come on, everyone over a certain threshold of money — and you can define what it is — but I can tell you the highest tax payers, including me, should be paying more,” Liveris said during a speech on Wednesday night…”Come on, we are underpaying for our future.”

CNN Money noted that “while his speech did garner applause a few times, his call to raise taxes was not applauded.”

// posted by montag @ 5:32 PM 0 Comments

In an interview on Thursday with WMUR in New Hampshire, Herman Cain seemed to be holding back tears when discussing his wife holding the Bible at his inauguration. This might strike some people as odd, seeing as how he hasn’t been elected to the presidency, or any other public office — and indeed, not one single ballot has even been cast in the primaries yet.

The subject came up while Cain was discussing his wife’s potential role as First Lady. “I almost can’t say it,” Cain said, choking up a bit as he bowed his head. “Holding the Bible when I’m sworn in.”

// posted by montag @ 4:58 PM 0 Comments

In his first speech as president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi complained Friday that Europe’s political leaders have been too slow to implement their own plan to address the sovereign debt crisis, and offered no hope he would come to their rescue by printing money.

Mr. Draghi, who took office at the beginning of the month, implicitly rejected calls for the E.C.B. to use its enormous financial resources to stop the upward creep of borrowing costs for Spain and Italy, which threaten their solvency and by extension the European and global economies.

// posted by montag @ 12:28 PM 0 Comments

Top Mormon leaders had hired two big-name advertising agencies in 2009, Ogilvy & Mather and Hall & Partners, to find out what Americans think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Using focus groups and surveys, they found that Americans who had any opinion at all used adjectives that were downright negative: “secretive,” “cultish,” “sexist,” “controlling,” “pushy,” “anti-gay.”

// posted by montag @ 12:22 PM 0 Comments

"Business as usual," says Mary Boyle of good-government group Common Cause. "The lobbyists and other traditional Washington powers know that the newbies will learn fast that they need them, and their rolodexes."...

Among the biggest PAC donors to the tea party freshmen are familiar Washington faces, including Honeywell International, which led the way both in number of donations and overall money given. The top five corporate PACs that donated to these freshmen:

1. Honeywell International, a Fortune 100 company best known for its defense manufacturing, made 52 donations worth at least $105,000
2. The American Bankers Association, one of the major trade associations for the financial sector, made 31 donations worth at least $53,000
3. Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest defense contractors in the country, with 30 donations for at least $28,000
4. Koch Industries, the company run by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, made 29 donations worth at least $38,000
5. The National Association of Realtors, a major trade group for real estate agents, with 29 donations worth $34,000

// posted by montag @ 12:03 PM 0 Comments

A new experiment appears to provide further evidence that Einstein may have been wrong when he said nothing could go faster than the speed of light, a theory that underpins modern thinking on how the universe works.

The new evidence, challenging a dogma of science that has held since Albert Einstein laid out his theory of relativity in 1905, appeared to confirm a startling finding that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos could travel fractions of a second faster.

The new experiment at the Gran Sasso laboratory, using a neutrino beam from CERN in Switzerland, 720 km (450 miles) away, was held to check findings in September by a team of scientists which were greeted with some skepticism.

Scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) said in a statement on Friday that their new tests aimed to exclude one potential systematic effect that may have affected the original measurement.

“A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny,” said Fernando Ferroni, president of the INFN.

“The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world.”

// posted by montag @ 11:51 AM 1 Comments

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

Wingate had the option of sentencing McLemore according to federal guidelines, which would have left her with a term of two months to eight months, followed by probation. Not good enough! Wingate was so outraged by McLemore’s fraud that he decided to serve her up the deluxe vacation, using another federal statute that permitted him to give her up to five years.

He ultimately gave her three years, saying, "The defendant's criminal record is simply abominable …. She has been the beneficiary of government generosity in state court."

Compare this court decision to the fraud settlements on Wall Street. Like McLemore, fraud defendants like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank have "been the beneficiary of government generosity." Goldman got $12.9 billion just through the AIG bailout. Citigroup got $45 billion, plus hundreds of billions in government guarantees.

All of these companies have been repeatedly dragged into court for fraud, and not one individual defendant has ever been forced to give back anything like a significant portion of his ill-gotten gains. The closest we've come is in a fraud case involving Citi, in which a pair of executives, Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, were fined the token amounts of $100,000 and $80,000, respectively, for lying to shareholders about the extent of Citi’s debt.

Neither man was forced to admit to intentional fraud. Both got to keep their jobs.

// posted by montag @ 12:07 AM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:22 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:16 PM 0 Comments

Because he is doing, and engaging in the exact kind of corruption that America disdains. The very things that anger the Tea Party movement and the Occupy Wall Street movement and everybody who is not in a movement and watches washington and says why are these guys getting all this money, why do they all become so rich, why do they have these advantages? Unfortunately Newt seems to play right into it.

// posted by montag @ 2:18 PM 0 Comments

In a number of states where Republicans have been hopeful of picking up a seat, they are being hampered by some of the same dynamics that vexed their party in 2008, including trouble recruiting strong and experienced candidates, intra-party fighting, weak fund-raising and the very same anti-incumbent sentiment that also threatens Democrats.

Winning the Senate is tantalizingly within reach for Republicans, who have just 10 seats up for re-election, compared with the 23 that Democrats will defend next year, many of them in states where Democrats barely won in strong years for their party. Powerful national political trends continue to favor Republicans, especially in a weak economy.

But on a state by state basis, there are factors that give the Democrats hope and the Republicans pause. In states like Nebraska, tensions between the Tea Party movement and so-called establishment factions of the party threaten to roil the base. Florida and Pennsylvania have muddled Republican primary fields, with multiple candidates and no real standouts.

// posted by montag @ 1:17 PM 0 Comments

There is a distinct cultural rift in this country between the people who feel safest when there are as few guns on the street as possible and the ones who believe that they aren’t secure unless they have a loaded gun around to protect themselves against evildoers. “As millions of American families can attest, there is no greater threat to our families than — the ability to protect,” said Representative Renee Ellmers, a Republican of North Carolina, flung into incoherence by the drama of the moment. What she pretty clearly meant to say was there was no greater threat than a crazed, knife-wielding zombie breaking through the doors of an unarmed household and trying to carry off the baby.

“We must protect our families,” she concluded.

Actually, the evidence suggests very strongly that a gun in the house will most likely be used to take out a relative. And guns in the house are not the subject of this bill anyway, since we’re talking about weapons being carted across state lines. So maybe the danger here is a crazed knife-wielding zombie breaking into the station wagon while the family is stopped for gas on the way to Disneyland.

Anyway, God wants everybody to be armed. “Mr. Speaker, rights do not come from the government. We are, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights,” said Representative Marlin Stutzman, an Indiana Republican.

Among these rights are life, liberty and a pistol in the glove compartment.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments

The second, though, is even more surprising. A massive meta-analysis of epidemiological data on alcohol and health, conducted by Italy's Fondazione di Ricerca e Cura, showed that moderate consumption of beer decreases drinkers' risk of heart disease by 31%, just as much as moderate consumption of wine. The Italian findings were based on data from over 200,000 people's drinking habits. The study found no benefit to consumption of spirits, which may indicate that something other than ethanol consumption per se is responsible for the health boost.

Other studies have demonstrated a link between good health and beer consumption, but this one is striking in the degree of the benefit.

// posted by montag @ 12:56 PM 0 Comments

Pennsylvania State University, after years of skirting public-school rules, may claim protection from liability under commonwealth laws that shield government entities, if it faces suits related to a child-sex scandal.

Moody’s Investors Service is examining the school’s relationship with the state to see whether claims of sovereign immunity apply, analysts said yesterday. Fallout from abuse charges against an assistant football coach and perjury accusations against two administrators led to the dismissal of Joe Paterno, the head coach, and Penn State’s president.

The commonwealth’s flagship state-supported school has successfully claimed to be exempt from freedom-of-information laws that apply to most public institutions, including competitors such as Ohio State University and the University of Texas. Penn State’s unusual position has for years shielded the school and its football program from public scrutiny.

// posted by montag @ 7:43 PM 0 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

// posted by montag @ 7:10 PM 0 Comments

President Obama and Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced plans on Wednesday for the first sustained American military presence in Australia, a relatively small deployment that is still a major symbol of American intentions to use regional alliances to counterbalance a rising China...

On his two-day visit, the president will fly north across the continent to Darwin, a frontier town and military outpost across the waters from Indonesia that will be the center of operations for the coming deployment. The first 200 to 250 Marines will arrive next year, with forces rotating in and out and eventually building to 2,500-strong, the two leaders said.

The United States will not build new bases on the continent but instead will use Australian facilities. Mr. Obama said Marines will rotate through for joint training and exercises with Australians and the American Air Force will have increased access to airfields in the nation’s Northern Territory.

// posted by montag @ 11:59 AM 0 Comments

Wisconsin is facing a jobs crisis. The state's official unemployment rate, down to 7.1 percent in January, has risen to 7.8 percent since Republican Gov. Scott Walker took office. But Walker and the GOP-led Legislature have a plan: First, they curtailed collective-bargaining rights and threatened to lay off government workers, including teachers, cops, and firefighters. Then Walker called a special jobs-focused session of the Legislature, which he dubbed "Back to Work Wisconsin," to pass even more "job-creating" laws. At the top of the jobs agenda? Gutting the state's sex ed standards and replacing them with abstinence-only education.

A bill launched during Walker's jobs session and nearing passage in the Legislature would repeal significant portions of the state law that requires schools to provide comprehensive, scientifically accurate, and age-appropriate sex ed...

"They say nothing's a bigger priority than the economy and jobs," says state Rep. Gordon Hintz, a Democrat who sits on the committee that will take up the repeal bill on Wednesday. "But the legislation that's actually passed has been the ultimate social agenda."

// posted by montag @ 11:43 AM 0 Comments

The Second Mile Center, a nonprofit that provides jobs, training and support for former convicts, has been confronted with a drop in business and hostile customers, according to NBC. Philly locals have mistakenly blamed this local nonprofit for the shocking accusations being launched against the organization with nearly the exact same name, the Second Mile.

// posted by montag @ 11:33 AM 0 Comments

In recent months, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has strongly criticized Freddie Mac and sister company Fannie Mae, as well as Democrats in Congress that he claims played a key role in the collapse of the housing market. And yet two former Freddie Mac officials recently told Bloomberg that Gingrich made between $1.6 million and $1.8 million in consulting fees from the mortgage company.

That amount is significantly larger than the $300,000 payment that Gingrich was asked about during a Republican presidential debate on Nov. 9.

The Freddie Mac officials also told Bloomberg that Gingrich was asked to build bridges with Capitol Hill Republicans and help sell the mortgage company's public-private structure to conservatives.

// posted by montag @ 11:14 AM 0 Comments

The US Air Force has a new 30,000-pound bomb in its arsenal designed to penetrate targets buried deep underground, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The Air Force started taking delivery of the giant bomb, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” in September, said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Miller.

Under an August 2 contract worth $32 million, the aerospace firm Boeing is due to produce eight of the giant MOP bombs to fulfil the Air Force’s “operational needs,” according to Miller.

The Air Force could not say how many of the conventional bombs have been delivered so far, but the MOP is seen as a weapon made for going after underground bunkers and tunnels in North Korea or Iran.

The MOP bomb, with more than 5,000 pounds (or nearly 2.5 tons) of explosives, is supposed to fit on a B-2 stealth bomber to strike at underground sites hiding weapons of mass destruction.

// posted by montag @ 10:51 AM 0 Comments

A bullet has struck the ballistic glass of an exterior window of the White House and another round has been found nearby, News4, a local NBC affiliate, reported.

The news outlet said the Secret Service – the bodyguard detail charged with protecting the US president and other top officials — began investigating after an incident on Friday when gunshots were heard near the White House.

// posted by montag @ 10:38 AM 0 Comments

Harmon, a member of the OccupyColumbia movement that’s been staging a running protest outside the South Carolina state House for more than month, went to the Romney rally along with several other Occupiers who are military veterans in the hopes of protesting the VA privatization scheme. They wore their homemade t-shirts questioning the plan underneath bulkier outer shirts.

The Romney organizers seemed to be prepared for something to happen, Harmon said.

“They were actually asking people who were entering if they were with OccupyColumbia, which was strange,” Harmon said. “Once we were inside, they actually escorted in three different groups the other people I was with out. I managed to to stay in.”

When Romney’s remarks turned to health care, Harmon says she took off her outer shirt and exposed the homemade T-shirt underneath.

“I stood there peacefully until somebody came around and asked me to leave,” she said. Harmon said person kicking her out looked to her like a member of the campaign staff.

“They were pleasant enough,” she said. “There were two of them when they came.”

// posted by montag @ 4:57 PM 0 Comments

The seeds are tiny as a flea and germinate like crazy. In less than a month, you can have a robust green crop that’s good for much more than smoking. You can grow vaccines in it. Extract protein from it. Make drugs from it...

Tobacco is often called the white mouse of the plant world, and Nicotiana tabacum has been turned inside out for study. The first studies of nicotine, in which researchers watched how a chicken’s leg twitched when exposed to the drug, were conducted in the late 1800s. They led to the discovery — and naming — of nicotinic receptors in the brain that play a key role in neurotransmitting.

The plant itself has relatively few genes, so it’s easy to manipulate to maximize any trait — low or high nicotine, faster maturity, slower burn rate, tougher leaves for finer cigar-wrapping.

It has a density of high-quality protein, and extracting, purifying and exploiting the value of that protein is where Hodge saw opportunity for Maryland growers. So a team of University of Maryland researchers also have been fooling with tobacco for the past several years.

// posted by montag @ 11:57 AM 0 Comments

Across this state — and in others where young voters were the fuel of the Obama organization, voting for him two to one over John McCain — the enthusiastic engine of the 2008 campaign has run up against the reality of a deadened job market for college students.

Interviews here and across the country suggest that most of his college supporters of 2008 are still inclined to vote for him. But the Obama ground army of 2008 is hardly ready to jump back into the trenches, potentially depriving Mr. Obama of what had been an important force in his victory.

Mr. Obama’s advisers, while acknowledging the shift, said they were confident that the loss of these workers would be negated by an influx of new students who have turned of voting age since 2008. Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, said there had been eight million voters ages 18 to 21 registered since the last election, most of whom were Democrats.

// posted by montag @ 11:25 AM 0 Comments

A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile offences.

Christopher Jarvis, 49, a married father-of-four, investigated historic claims of child abuse, interviewing the victims when they were adults.

He was responsible for child protection at 120 churches and parish community groups for nine years.

He also, as a member of the Devon and Cornwall Multi-Agency Safeguarding Team, had access to police and social services information about victims of child abuse...

Police officers who traced him to his home in Plymouth, Devon, found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick when they raided the house in Penrose Road.

// posted by montag @ 10:18 PM 0 Comments

Banks can still earn a profit on most checking accounts. But they are under intense pressure to make up an estimated $12 billion a year of income that vanished with the passage of rules curbing lucrative overdraft charges and lowering debit card swipe fees. In addition, with lending at anemic levels and interest rates close to zero, banks are struggling to find attractive places to lend or invest all the deposits they hold. That poses another $8 billion drag.

Put another way, banks would need to recoup, on average, between $15 and $20 a month from each depositor just to earn what they did in the past, according to an analysis of the interest rate and regulatory changes on checking accounts by Oliver Wyman, a financial consulting firm.

For consumers, the result is a quiet creep of new charges and higher fees for everything from cash withdrawals at ATMs to wire payments, paper statements and in some cases, even the overdraft charges that lawmakers hoped to ratchet down. What is more, banks are raising minimum account balances and adding other new requirements so that it is harder for customers to qualify for fee waivers.

Even the much-maligned debit usage charges have effectively been bundled into higher monthly fees on checking accounts. Bank of America abandoned its $5 a month debit card usage fee in late October amid a firestorm of criticism. Yet, it more quietly raised the cost of its basic MyAccess checking account by more than $3 a month earlier this year. Monthly maintenance fees now run $12 a month, up from $8.95.

Chase and Citigroup, which quickly distanced themselves from the debit card usage fee, ratcheted up the price of their entry-level checking products without the public relations nightmare. This month, Citigroup’s basic checking account jumped to $10 a month, up from $8. Chase raised the fee on its standard checking account to $12 a month in February; many of those customers were previously charged nothing at all.

// posted by montag @ 1:27 PM 0 Comments

Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. In several states, they include people convicted of violent crimes, including first-degree murder and manslaughter, an examination by The New York Times has found.

While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements — part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. The restoration movement has gathered force in recent years, as gun rights advocates have sought to capitalize on the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms.

This gradual pulling back of what many Americans have unquestioningly assumed was a blanket prohibition has drawn relatively little public notice. Indeed, state law enforcement agencies have scant information, if any, on which felons are getting their gun rights back, let alone how many have gone on to commit new crimes.

// posted by montag @ 1:09 PM 0 Comments