Update from the Heartland
No.523
19.12.11 – 25.12.11
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
I trust everyone enjoyed a very Merry Christmas, or is continuing to celebrate a most Happy Chanukah, or rejoiced an illuminating Winter Solstice, or otherwise had a bountifully Happy Holiday season with their families.
The follow-up news items:
-- Grand Dear Leader Umpa-Lumpa [239 & sub] proved to be mortal after all. What a surprise! Now, we have the Great Successor Kim Jong Un, the 29-year-old son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of the original DPRK dictator Kim Il Sung. And so it goes!
On Wednesday, the sad saga continued almost unabated, except for the courage of Judge Jed Rakoff [520]. The Justice Department announced a US$335M deal with Bank of America to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom. The proposed deal is reportedly the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history. The remnants of Countrywide agreed in June 2010 to pay US$108M to settle federal charges that the company charged highly inflated sums to customers struggling to hang on to their homes, and in August 2010, they agreed to pay US$600M to settle shareholder lawsuits over its mortgage losses. Regardless, Angelo R. Mozilo – former Countrywide CEO and no.4 on CNN’s Culprits of the Collapse list [358] – is still a free, rich man, despite the 15.October.2010 settlement with the SEC for a US$67.5M fine of which the company paid US$20M. Mozilo and his cronies belong in prison with forfeiture of all their ill-gotten gain assets. These damnable deals are becoming as disgusting as earmarks – another form of corruption and criminal conduct that escapes punishment.
I am disappointed in myself. I had an opportunity last week to offer a broader, more consistent and insightful opinion, but I backed away probably in deference to the sensitivity of the topic at hand – child pornography and sexual abuse. Fortunately, this week, as I was knocking off a couple more, older rulings by the Supremes from my Reading List folder – Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas [390 U.S. 676 (1968)] and New York v. Ferber [458 U.S. 747 (1982)] – I had cause to re-examine my rather narrow opinion regarding child sexting last week [522]. I will not bore you with the details. For a modicum of perspective, let it suffice to say, Interstate Circuit dealt with local classification of the motion picture “Viva Maria” [1965] as “not suitable for young persons,” and Ferber involved the sale of two films “devoted almost exclusively to depicting young boys masturbating.” I agree with Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan’s concurring opinion in Interstate Circuit, “I would limit federal control of obscene materials to those which all would recognize as what has been called ‘hard core pornography,’ and would withhold the federal judicial hand from interfering with state determinations except in instances where the state action clearly appears to be but the product of prudish overzealousness” – not quite far enough but at least a step in the correct direction. Yet, it was one word in one single sentence that brought an otherwise foggy, fuzzy perspective into brilliant, sharp focus. The opinion of Associate Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr., concurring in the Ferber judgment, reiterated, “[T]he State has a special interest in protecting the well-being of its youth.” Brennan’s use of the third person, possessive pronoun struck me like a lightning bolt. Through all of these cases and related discussion topics, I continue to struggle mightily with one incessant, recurring question – where are the parents? In virtually every one of these morality cases, I do not recall one mention of parental responsibility or accountability; it is the State imposing its standards, its morality, its punishment to protect its children. WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? For more than a century, we have allowed the Federal government to carve away slivers and chunks of our freedom – our divine right to “Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness” – in the name of “protecting” our moral values, of “protecting” our children from life, and of “making the correct choices” in our lives. From my perspective, the Federal government should withdraw from the private morality business, except where genuine interstate or international transportation / transmission is involved at specific state request, or in a supervisory role to ensure the states do not violate the individual rights and freedoms of their residents. We must stop punishing everyone else for the failings of a few complacent, irresponsible or injurious parents.
In the wake of the admonition above, we have this news item:
“Florida Community Rallies in Support of 8 year old Girl Allegedly Forced into Prostitution”
Huffington Post
First Posted: 12/22/11 06:52 PM ET; Updated: 12/23/11 07:57 AM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/22/sue-ellen-mims-florida-emerald-coast_n_1165975.html
We can always find grotesquely negative events to justify draconian laws that punish hundreds of innocent citizens to find one bad mother or father. We need a license to drive a car, to operate a beauty parlor, to fly any aircraft, or to perform as a doctor, a dentist or pharmacist. Sue Ellen Mims offers the perfect example of why some folks are not qualified to procreate and should be denied a license to do so, if there was such a thing.
“Why Is Incest All Over Prime Time? – From "Dexter" to "Game of Thrones," incest resonates -- not because a taboo has been broken, but because it endures.”
by Tracy Clark-Flory
Salon
Published: December 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/sex/153523
OK. There are some topics I am just not brave enough to tackle in this forum.
News from the economic front:
-- The European Central Bank (ECB) allotted €489.19B (US$639.96B) in the first of two anticipated three-year refinancing operations, in a sign that banks expect other sources of funding to remain tight through 2012. The ECB indicated they allotted the three-year loans to 523 banks. The amount is reportedly the largest for a longer-term refinancing operation and the longest maturity ever offered by the central bank.
L’Affaire Madoff [365]:
-- The former controller of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, 53, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, falsifying records, and making false filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. She faces up to 50 years in prison, and joins another confessed Madoff accomplice, 66-year-old David L. Kugel.
Comments and contributions from Update no.522:
Comment to the Blog:
“I will admit that the whole ‘sexting’ uproar horrifies me. Not the act, which apparently is not especially common anyhow. What horrifies me is the notion that teenagers can be convicted of a crime and labeled sex offenders simply because they are sexual beings. When a person takes and sends pictures of herself (or himself) to a sexual partner, how is that ‘exploitation’? If I took such a picture of a young girl and sold it or misused it somehow, that would be exploitation. If she takes it and sends it to someone about whom she cares, that’s part of her relationship. Claiming she has exploited someone is utter nonsense and can be safely ignored. Sexting is indeed naïve, at least in some cases; some boys (it’s usually boys) will show pictures of their nude girlfriend(s) to their dimwit buddies, whether the pictures appear on a phone, on the Internet, or on paper. A very few of those receiving pictures will find ways to sell them, which can cause real harm to the person pictured. Ever since the invention of cameras, some girls have suffered from the abuse of their pictures. These sexting laws do not punish the abusers; they punish the naïve. The fact is those laws punish young people for admitting to having a sexual life. Certainly, the punishment far exceeds the ‘crime.’ The label of ‘sex offender’ damages the person for more than the abuse of the picture and again these laws punish the victim, not the offender.
“I share your view of the Victorian-era model of marriage as outmoded. My views in this are colored by having survived as a child in my parents’ ‘’til death do us part’ marriage. Nobody who witnessed it can explain to me why they did not divorce or simply leave, and I came to believe that marriage should be considered much more carefully than is usually the case.
“I see no way to believe that the public will ever have accurate knowledge about the downing of the US drone in Iran. I will not speculate on that.
“Perhaps the Justice Department could divert some funds from the pursuit of next year’s pot crop to use for an investigation of Wall Street et al. We can find room in Federal prisons for at least a few hundred bankers, brokers and politicians. I do not share your pessimism about convicting Members of Congress. Residents of Louisiana and Illinois know very well that Governors can be made to do time. US Representatives and Senators can be prosecuted just as well and can also live out the Beretta theme, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
“Apparently the SEC has dropped the ball on another settlement. Here’s an opportunity for another judge to serve the cause of justice by disallowing this crime.”
My response to the Blog:
Re: “sexting.” Very well said. I see little difference between a betrayal of confidence regardless of the medium. The “injury” to the naïve as you say is the expectation society creates that 1.) children (<18yo) cannot be sexual, and 2.) nudity is shameful. These are holdover notions from the Victorian-era morality. Punishing a minor for being sexual is tantamount to punishing a child for being human.
Re: “marriage.” We share the same view. Looking at unhappy marriages inevitably brings me to question the unreasonable, societal expectation of marriage as though it is some magical domain of happily ever after. Marriage is not particularly difference from a business contract, and yet we rely upon “love” for the decision rather than due diligence.
Re: “drone.” True, we may never know what happened . . . at least for the next 20-50 years, until the information is declassified.
Re: “prosecution of bankers.” Very well said again. Truth be told, the damage done by “flexible underwriting standards,” sub-prime mortgage lending, bundled mortgage-based securities and their associated derivatives, et al ad infinitum ad nauseum, did orders of magnitude more damage to the American economy, the World economy, and countless numbers of citizens than psychotropic substance consumption will ever do; but, we throw the pot-head in prison and let the bankers walk away with their millions & billions of ill-gotten gains. It just ain’t right!
Re: “SEC settlement.” Unfortunately, we simply do not have enough judges like Jed Rakoff. The alternative would be a law that specifically prohibits out of court settlements in financial malfeasance cases.
Another contribution:
“Allegedly our Lost UAV in IRAN had RTB and it didn't work, looking at the picture of what the Iranians had does not look as big as other pictures I have seen of the 170, don't suppose we sent them a Trojan horse to give them some more Stuxnet in other computer systems and Data Bases. Interesting to see what comes out of this.”
My reply:
The Return-To-Base (RTB) program we tested extensively in the simulator and on the AV05 ADFCS demonstrator was integral to the system. You would have to precisely hack a closed, redundant, digital system to circumvent it. The intent of the RTB mode was recovery of a single pilot LHX in the event of pilot incapacitation – part of the whole single seat objective. It was impressive and that was 1986.
Re: Trojan Horse. Oh my! I had not considered that actually. Great scenario though. Give ‘em something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but is actually a carrier of the real weapon – Stuxnet II, or Super Stuxnet. They tap the software and off it goes. Nice. Nonetheless, we may not know for several decades what really happened.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
I trust everyone enjoyed a very Merry Christmas, or is continuing to celebrate a most Happy Chanukah, or rejoiced an illuminating Winter Solstice, or otherwise had a bountifully Happy Holiday season with their families.
The follow-up news items:
-- Grand Dear Leader Umpa-Lumpa [239 & sub] proved to be mortal after all. What a surprise! Now, we have the Great Successor Kim Jong Un, the 29-year-old son of Kim Jong Il and grandson of the original DPRK dictator Kim Il Sung. And so it goes!
On Wednesday, the sad saga continued almost unabated, except for the courage of Judge Jed Rakoff [520]. The Justice Department announced a US$335M deal with Bank of America to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial unit discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers during the housing boom. The proposed deal is reportedly the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history. The remnants of Countrywide agreed in June 2010 to pay US$108M to settle federal charges that the company charged highly inflated sums to customers struggling to hang on to their homes, and in August 2010, they agreed to pay US$600M to settle shareholder lawsuits over its mortgage losses. Regardless, Angelo R. Mozilo – former Countrywide CEO and no.4 on CNN’s Culprits of the Collapse list [358] – is still a free, rich man, despite the 15.October.2010 settlement with the SEC for a US$67.5M fine of which the company paid US$20M. Mozilo and his cronies belong in prison with forfeiture of all their ill-gotten gain assets. These damnable deals are becoming as disgusting as earmarks – another form of corruption and criminal conduct that escapes punishment.
I am disappointed in myself. I had an opportunity last week to offer a broader, more consistent and insightful opinion, but I backed away probably in deference to the sensitivity of the topic at hand – child pornography and sexual abuse. Fortunately, this week, as I was knocking off a couple more, older rulings by the Supremes from my Reading List folder – Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas [390 U.S. 676 (1968)] and New York v. Ferber [458 U.S. 747 (1982)] – I had cause to re-examine my rather narrow opinion regarding child sexting last week [522]. I will not bore you with the details. For a modicum of perspective, let it suffice to say, Interstate Circuit dealt with local classification of the motion picture “Viva Maria” [1965] as “not suitable for young persons,” and Ferber involved the sale of two films “devoted almost exclusively to depicting young boys masturbating.” I agree with Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan’s concurring opinion in Interstate Circuit, “I would limit federal control of obscene materials to those which all would recognize as what has been called ‘hard core pornography,’ and would withhold the federal judicial hand from interfering with state determinations except in instances where the state action clearly appears to be but the product of prudish overzealousness” – not quite far enough but at least a step in the correct direction. Yet, it was one word in one single sentence that brought an otherwise foggy, fuzzy perspective into brilliant, sharp focus. The opinion of Associate Justice William Joseph Brennan, Jr., concurring in the Ferber judgment, reiterated, “[T]he State has a special interest in protecting the well-being of its youth.” Brennan’s use of the third person, possessive pronoun struck me like a lightning bolt. Through all of these cases and related discussion topics, I continue to struggle mightily with one incessant, recurring question – where are the parents? In virtually every one of these morality cases, I do not recall one mention of parental responsibility or accountability; it is the State imposing its standards, its morality, its punishment to protect its children. WHERE ARE THE PARENTS? For more than a century, we have allowed the Federal government to carve away slivers and chunks of our freedom – our divine right to “Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness” – in the name of “protecting” our moral values, of “protecting” our children from life, and of “making the correct choices” in our lives. From my perspective, the Federal government should withdraw from the private morality business, except where genuine interstate or international transportation / transmission is involved at specific state request, or in a supervisory role to ensure the states do not violate the individual rights and freedoms of their residents. We must stop punishing everyone else for the failings of a few complacent, irresponsible or injurious parents.
In the wake of the admonition above, we have this news item:
“Florida Community Rallies in Support of 8 year old Girl Allegedly Forced into Prostitution”
Huffington Post
First Posted: 12/22/11 06:52 PM ET; Updated: 12/23/11 07:57 AM ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/22/sue-ellen-mims-florida-emerald-coast_n_1165975.html
We can always find grotesquely negative events to justify draconian laws that punish hundreds of innocent citizens to find one bad mother or father. We need a license to drive a car, to operate a beauty parlor, to fly any aircraft, or to perform as a doctor, a dentist or pharmacist. Sue Ellen Mims offers the perfect example of why some folks are not qualified to procreate and should be denied a license to do so, if there was such a thing.
“Why Is Incest All Over Prime Time? – From "Dexter" to "Game of Thrones," incest resonates -- not because a taboo has been broken, but because it endures.”
by Tracy Clark-Flory
Salon
Published: December 21, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/sex/153523
OK. There are some topics I am just not brave enough to tackle in this forum.
News from the economic front:
-- The European Central Bank (ECB) allotted €489.19B (US$639.96B) in the first of two anticipated three-year refinancing operations, in a sign that banks expect other sources of funding to remain tight through 2012. The ECB indicated they allotted the three-year loans to 523 banks. The amount is reportedly the largest for a longer-term refinancing operation and the longest maturity ever offered by the central bank.
L’Affaire Madoff [365]:
-- The former controller of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, Enrica Cotellessa-Pitz, 53, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, falsifying records, and making false filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. She faces up to 50 years in prison, and joins another confessed Madoff accomplice, 66-year-old David L. Kugel.
Comments and contributions from Update no.522:
Comment to the Blog:
“I will admit that the whole ‘sexting’ uproar horrifies me. Not the act, which apparently is not especially common anyhow. What horrifies me is the notion that teenagers can be convicted of a crime and labeled sex offenders simply because they are sexual beings. When a person takes and sends pictures of herself (or himself) to a sexual partner, how is that ‘exploitation’? If I took such a picture of a young girl and sold it or misused it somehow, that would be exploitation. If she takes it and sends it to someone about whom she cares, that’s part of her relationship. Claiming she has exploited someone is utter nonsense and can be safely ignored. Sexting is indeed naïve, at least in some cases; some boys (it’s usually boys) will show pictures of their nude girlfriend(s) to their dimwit buddies, whether the pictures appear on a phone, on the Internet, or on paper. A very few of those receiving pictures will find ways to sell them, which can cause real harm to the person pictured. Ever since the invention of cameras, some girls have suffered from the abuse of their pictures. These sexting laws do not punish the abusers; they punish the naïve. The fact is those laws punish young people for admitting to having a sexual life. Certainly, the punishment far exceeds the ‘crime.’ The label of ‘sex offender’ damages the person for more than the abuse of the picture and again these laws punish the victim, not the offender.
“I share your view of the Victorian-era model of marriage as outmoded. My views in this are colored by having survived as a child in my parents’ ‘’til death do us part’ marriage. Nobody who witnessed it can explain to me why they did not divorce or simply leave, and I came to believe that marriage should be considered much more carefully than is usually the case.
“I see no way to believe that the public will ever have accurate knowledge about the downing of the US drone in Iran. I will not speculate on that.
“Perhaps the Justice Department could divert some funds from the pursuit of next year’s pot crop to use for an investigation of Wall Street et al. We can find room in Federal prisons for at least a few hundred bankers, brokers and politicians. I do not share your pessimism about convicting Members of Congress. Residents of Louisiana and Illinois know very well that Governors can be made to do time. US Representatives and Senators can be prosecuted just as well and can also live out the Beretta theme, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”
“Apparently the SEC has dropped the ball on another settlement. Here’s an opportunity for another judge to serve the cause of justice by disallowing this crime.”
My response to the Blog:
Re: “sexting.” Very well said. I see little difference between a betrayal of confidence regardless of the medium. The “injury” to the naïve as you say is the expectation society creates that 1.) children (<18yo) cannot be sexual, and 2.) nudity is shameful. These are holdover notions from the Victorian-era morality. Punishing a minor for being sexual is tantamount to punishing a child for being human.
Re: “marriage.” We share the same view. Looking at unhappy marriages inevitably brings me to question the unreasonable, societal expectation of marriage as though it is some magical domain of happily ever after. Marriage is not particularly difference from a business contract, and yet we rely upon “love” for the decision rather than due diligence.
Re: “drone.” True, we may never know what happened . . . at least for the next 20-50 years, until the information is declassified.
Re: “prosecution of bankers.” Very well said again. Truth be told, the damage done by “flexible underwriting standards,” sub-prime mortgage lending, bundled mortgage-based securities and their associated derivatives, et al ad infinitum ad nauseum, did orders of magnitude more damage to the American economy, the World economy, and countless numbers of citizens than psychotropic substance consumption will ever do; but, we throw the pot-head in prison and let the bankers walk away with their millions & billions of ill-gotten gains. It just ain’t right!
Re: “SEC settlement.” Unfortunately, we simply do not have enough judges like Jed Rakoff. The alternative would be a law that specifically prohibits out of court settlements in financial malfeasance cases.
Another contribution:
“Allegedly our Lost UAV in IRAN had RTB and it didn't work, looking at the picture of what the Iranians had does not look as big as other pictures I have seen of the 170, don't suppose we sent them a Trojan horse to give them some more Stuxnet in other computer systems and Data Bases. Interesting to see what comes out of this.”
My reply:
The Return-To-Base (RTB) program we tested extensively in the simulator and on the AV05 ADFCS demonstrator was integral to the system. You would have to precisely hack a closed, redundant, digital system to circumvent it. The intent of the RTB mode was recovery of a single pilot LHX in the event of pilot incapacitation – part of the whole single seat objective. It was impressive and that was 1986.
Re: Trojan Horse. Oh my! I had not considered that actually. Great scenario though. Give ‘em something that looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but is actually a carrier of the real weapon – Stuxnet II, or Super Stuxnet. They tap the software and off it goes. Nice. Nonetheless, we may not know for several decades what really happened.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
2 comments:
North Korea continues its effort to win the position of Most Bizarre Nation of All Time. (I have no idea who would give that award, but North Korea is certainly in the playoffs.) Apparently, Kim Jong Un is not the dictator his father and grandfather were. He will be sharing power with the military, and I have already seen a story somewhere that his uncle by marriage, whose name I cannot recall at the moment, will be the “power behind the throne.”
The malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance on the part of the SEC continue without any interest from the Department of Justice. Your idea of taking away the SEC’s authority to make civil settlements in suits against Wall Street’s worst strikes me as sound. At this point, Americans as a whole owe an apology and a warning to investors and taxpayers worldwide who stand to lose large amounts of money because Wall Street’s criminals have yet to be jailed. Angelo Mozillo is an example of our failure with these offenders. I wish he was the kind of example that would discourage others, but that has yet to happen. At least some of the players in the Madoff drama are doing time. That’s better than nothing, I guess.
If I go by the story you linked to alleging that a Panama City, Florida, mother offered her 8-year-old for prostitution, this is a sensational story with less than the usual support from evidence. The story states that a man told the police Ms. Mims approached him in a mall and offered her daughter’s sexual services, but it does not say that law enforcement has found anything else at all to support his statement. Not even scraps of corroborating evidence appear in this story. Apparently the Panama City PD did not see fit to set up a sting or use some other method to gather evidence, and we do not know whether the man making the allegation has some ulterior motive. The story does not state whether Ms. Mims has any criminal record. Certainly Ms. Mims looks awful in the picture, but that’s a mug shot. Most people are not at their best when being booked into jail. What the man has alleged is certainly serious, but only time and investigation will reveal whether it actually happened. In this particular allegation, the little girl herself does not appear to have been involved in the event, so unless the police can dig up other offenses the penalty is likely to disappoint the community even if Ms. Mims can be convicted.
Licensing parents would involve controlling people’s sex lives unless society can somehow sterilize small children and then reverse the procedure upon their licensing as parents.
I understand that incest is an explosive issue, and I disagree that it’s “all over prime time” as that headline states. “All over prime time” would involve non-pay channels for me. All the same, I suspect that we have seen a harbinger of discussions for a future time.
Calvin,
Re: DPRK. Spot on! Kim Jong Un’s uncle (by marriage to Kim Jong Il’s younger sister) is Chang Song-taek, Vice-Chairman of National Defense Commission. Interesting things often happen when flawed men have a taste of power. The next few years have the potential to be uncertain and unstable in that diminutive country. As with most power struggles at the top of any organization, there are likely to be casualties and blood spilt, but it is the collateral damage that I worry about the most.
Re: Mozillo et al. Spot on! He paid US$40M of a US$60M fine for his misconduct, and he only has US$560M left. For him, he gambled in the worst possible way, with the lives of millions of people, just like Citigroup did, betting against the very people they were convincing to buy their contaminated mortgage securities. Mozillo is just as guilty as Madoff and all the others; he is just not man enough to admit his wrong-doing. We can only hope justice will come to him and all the other criminals. I like your idea. Part of their punishment should be standing before the world and apologizing for the damage, pain, uncertainty, and distrust they have caused by their greed . . . then, commit seppuku for their dishonor.
Re: Mims. Of course, you are quite correct. We do not know all the relevant details. It is just the Mims story reminds me of too many similar tales of bad parents, and all the rest of us must pay the price for these freakin’ bad people. Mims may not be one of those bad people, but there sure is a lot of smoke around her.
Re: “licensing parents.” You are again quite correct. Managing private sex lives is certainly not consistent with my belief in keeping government out of our private lives. My bad . . . a sign of my frustration. Regardless, I do advocate for parents paying the price for the conduct of their children. In the Mims case, if she truly did try to prostitute her 8yo daughter, then she should forfeit her custodial rights and be prevented from having any other children unless she gets her life under control. If she did get pregnant again, then her infant should be removed at birth.
Re: “incest.” I think that was the point of the article. I just don’t know how to discuss the topic.
Cheers,
Cap
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