This is What Happens When Government Plays Footsie with Real Estate Developers

The plans for a new FBI headquarters have been scrapped.

As much as I hope that a new headquarters would remove the name of J. Edgar Hoover, this was rather complex deal, which involves various "incentives" from competing state and local governments and a byzantine property swap for services to lower cost, and as such, it seemed to be a recipe for a fiasco:

The federal government is canceling the search for a new FBI headquarters, according to officials familiar with the decision, putting a more than decade-long effort by the bureau to move out of the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building back at square one.

The decision follows years of failed attempts by federal officials to persuade Congress to fully back a plan for a campus in the Washington suburbs paid for by trading away the Hoover Building to a real estate developer and putting up nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to cover the remaining cost.

Officials from the General Services Administration, which manages federal real estate, said they plan to announce the cancellation in a phone call with bidders and in meetings on Capitol Hill on Tuesday morning. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the decision before it was announced.

For years, FBI officials have raised alarms that the decrepit conditions at Hoover constitute serious security concerns. But the plan to replace the building grew mired in a pit of government dysfunction and escalating costs with no end in sight.

………

The GSA’s unconventional strategy of trying to offset the development cost by trading the Hoover Building downtown to the winning bidder was aimed at saving the government money but became a laborious and expensive complication.

As the search dragged on, both the federal government and developers bidding on the project began to bear inordinate costs.

Real estate companies pursuing the deal spent years and millions of dollars attempting to make their case for the project. The GSA, meanwhile, is housing many of the bureau’s 9,500 headquarters employees using expensive short-term leases at about a dozen locations throughout the Washington region because the staff long ago outgrew the Hoover Building.

………

President Barack Obama had sought $1.4 billion toward construction of the project, but in May, Congress left it underfunded by more than a half-billion dollars. Congressional leaders had pulled together $523 million toward the project and possibly $315 million more through transfers of existing funds previously meant for other uses.

That was on top of $390 million that had been previously appropriated for the project.

Then in June, House appropriators rescinded $200 million from the project, drawing exasperation from local officials who have been pushing for the government to decide among three final locations: Greenbelt, Md., Land­over, Md., or Springfield, Va.

At the time the House took back the $200 million, Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.) called the decision “reprehensible.”

………

Acting GSA administrator Timothy Horne is scheduled to testify before a House subcommittee Wednesday at a hearing about “Maximizing Taxpayer Returns and Reducing Waste in Real Estate.”

Hopefully, he will be aggressively questioned, because a cost more than $1½ billion for the building AFTER giving away some of the most attractive real estate in indicates that, “Maximizing Taxpayer Returns and Reducing Waste in Real Estate,” is not a governing principle here.

Not a Surprise

British police have now announced that the Manchester suicide bomber did not have aid in manufacturing his device, all 22 people originally taken into custody without charges being filed:

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi was likely to have built the device that killed 22 people alone at his flat, police have said.

Officers said there was now a "deep understanding" of Abedi's movements in the weeks leading up to the attack.

The head of counter terrorism said it was "less clear" whether he had obtained and stored all the materials or if others were "complicit".

All 22 people arrested over the attack have been released without charge.

Det Ch Supt Russ Jackson said Greater Manchester Police now had details of Abedi's movements in the weeks leading up to the Manchester Arena bombing.

These included how the chemicals to build the bomb were obtained and where he put the device together.

Reports are that the bomber used the explosive TATP, which seems to be a favorite of would be bombers because:

• Instructions on its manufacture are easily available on the internet. (Don't Google it. You will probably end up on some TLA's watch list)
• Its precursors are readily available, and their purchase does not raise red flags as a result.
• Manufacture is less difficult than making beer from from the original grains.
• It is not detected by common explosive detection, because it contains no nitrogen. 

I would however note that TATP what is best described as some truly nasty sh%$, as it is extremely unstable, and even if you don't accidentally blow yourself up, it degrades over a relatively short period of time without some sort of post processing with a stabilizing compound, so its use in conventional military or commercial explosives applications are extremely limited.

Still, it's just about perfect for a not particularly well trained lone wolf suicide attacker, because it's an easy to make yourself dead with a very loud noise.

Don't Worry, Trump Will Pick Someone Worse

Joe Liberman has withdrawn his name from consideration for the next FBI Director.

He cited conflicts of interests, he works at a law firm that represents Trump, as the reason.

I'm not sure how you could find anyone worse to run the agency, but I have faith that Trump has the ability to do so.

I'm thinking that he will appoint Roger "Ratf%$#er" Stone.

Quote of the Day

The luck has come due to the ability of the Conservative party to fill the void in our lives left until the new season of Game of Thrones starts by providing an ongoing referendum-induced saga involving regal intrigue (Queen Elizabeth II, rumoured Brexiter), ambition (Chancellor George Osbourne), betrayal (former welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith) bizarre-o religious weirdness (Stephen “Pray Away the Gay” Crabb, his replacement), tits (Home Secretary Theresa May) and bestiality (London Mayor Boris Johnson). They’ve given us everything but the dragons. That said, there’s still a few months to go yet so we don’t want to be premature.

—"Clive" at Naked Capitalism

The post is titled, "Brexit: This is What We Call a Muppet Show," and it is quite amusing.

Credit Where Credit is Due: This Police Chief Expects his Deputies to do their F%$#ing Job

We've all seen the video of the Trump supporter sucker punching a protester as he was being escorted out by deputies.

Well, the police chief was not impressed with the lack of response of his deputies on the scene, and he lowered the boom on them:

Five sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina have been suspended without pay following a Donald Trump rally where a protester was sucker-punched as he was being escorted out, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.

Videos recorded at the March 9 rally in Fayetteville, N.C., showed a Trump supporter assaulting an anti-Trump protester, who was then detained by numerous uniformed men as his assailant walked away.

“The actions of the deputies and their failures to act in situations such as that which occurred during the Trump rally at the Crown Coliseum have never been and will not ever be tolerated under the policies of this office,” Sheriff Earl Butler said in a statement.

………

As Jones walked toward the exit, a man, who appeared to be white, emerged and punched him in the face.

“Boom, he caught me,” Jones told The Post in a telephone interview. “After I get it, before I could even gain my thoughts, I’m on the ground getting escorted out.”

John Franklin McGraw, 78, was not detained at the time. He was charged the following day with assault and disorderly conduct.

Jones told NBC affiliate WRAL that “I thought I was being arrested” by the deputies after being punched. “I saw, later on, that [McGraw] went back to his seat so I am trying to figure out why was he able to go back to his seat,” he said.

Three of the deputies have been demoted in rank and suspended for five days. The two others were suspended for three days.

Butler said the deputies were being disciplined for “unsatisfactory performance and failing to discharge the duties and policies” of the department.

What most of us saw was thuggish behavior by a Trump supporter.

To his credit, what Sheriff Butler saw was police officers literally turning their backs to a crime that was committed right in front of them.

He took names and kicked but.

Good for him.

Finally

After nearly a decade of parallel construction and lying to courts and defense attorneys, the first case regarding whether the use of a cell tower simulator (aka "Stingray") needs a warrant for its application has made it to a federal appelate court:

A criminal case examining the Fourth Amendment implications of cell-site simulators, also known as stingrays, has finally reached the 7th Circuit for the first time. Now one step below the Supreme Court, this case also likely marks the first time that warrantless use of stingrays has reached any federal appellate court.

Stingrays determine a phone’s location by spoofing a cell tower. In some cases, they can intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone along with information from other phones within the vicinity. At times, police have falsely claimed the use of a confidential informant while in fact deploying this particularly sweeping and intrusive surveillance tool.

The 7th Circuit will now consider a 2013 case known as United States v. Patrick. It involves a Milwaukee man wanted on a probation violation who was suddenly located and arrested by local police with help from the FBI. There is very strong evidence to suggest that he was apprehended through the warrantless use of a stingray.

Patrick’s attorney, Chris Donovan, filed his opening brief in the appeal earlier this month. The case is so notable that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also filed an amicus brief earlier this week. The organizations note that the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution requires that search warrants demonstrate probable cause of a crime. And, they note, Wisconsin passed a 2014 state law mandating warrants for stingray deployment.

It's about f%$#ing time.

Law enforcement has been trying to conceal their warrantless use of this devices, because they are afraid that the courts will require warrants for this.

I hope that their concerns are justified.

It's not that big deal to get a warrant, but lazy incompetent cops want short cuts.

Finally! Part Deux

Following the arrests of the Y'all Qaeda militants yesterday, the FBI has blockaded the remainder of the militants at the Malheur refuge:

Federal agents sealed off an Oregon wildlife refuge occupied by armed protesters Wednesday, hours after authorities arrested several members of that group and killed one of the most prominent occupiers.

The frenzy of activity at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County marked a sudden escalation in the ongoing standoff that has simmered for more than three weeks, ever since a small group of men and women took control of a remote facility in southeastern Oregon.

Officials set up checkpoints and roadblocks around the refuge, saying that people who tried to travel inside would be arrested and calling for the armed people remaining there to leave. That message was echoed by the leader of the group later in the day. But law enforcement officials suggested Wednesday that the situation at the refuge would not continue indefinitely and placed blame for the fatal encounter a day earlier on those occupying the refuge.

“They had ample opportunity to leave the refuge peacefully,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Greg Bretzing said at a news conference late Wednesday morning. “And as the FBI and our partners have clearly demonstrated, actions are not without consequences.”

They really should have done this weeks ago.

LaVoy Finicum might be alive if they had not held off, and given those inbred morons ime to develop a sense of impunity.

Instead, they were allowed to come and go as they pleased  ……… At an occupation.

That was some seriously weak tea from law enforcement.

About F%$#ing Time

They finally arrested 6 Y'all Qaeda members, including the two of the Bundy brothers:

Ammon Bundy, the leader of an armed seizure of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, was arrested and one was person was killed Tuesday night during a traffic stop in rural Oregon, the F.B.I. and the Oregon State Police said.

Five other people, including Mr. Bundy’s brother Ryan Bundy, were arrested, the authorities said.

The Bundy brothers and four supporters were arrested during a traffic stop along Highway 235 around 4:25 p.m., officials said in a news release. Shots were fired during the arrests, and two people who were with the Bundys were struck. One of them died, and the other was arrested and taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

………

Each of the defendants faces a felony charge of conspiracy to impede federal officers from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats. They remained in custody late Tuesday.

Arrested on Tuesday were Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nev.; Shawna Cox, 59, of Kanab, Utah; and Ryan Waylen Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont. Joseph Donald O’Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Ariz. was arrested in a separate incident, the authorities said. Officials said they were waiting for the medical examiner’s office to identify the person who was killed.

It is unfortunate that one of the protesters was killed: I am sure that the next right wing domestic terrorist will use it as an excuse for the deaths he causes.

According to local reports, it was LaVoy Finicum who was shot and killed, and Ryan Bundy was lightly wounded.

ON the other hand, but the impartial enforcement of the law against right wing militia types is long overdue.

In addition to occupying a federal building, they looted an Indian archaeological site, and bulldozed a road across a nature preserve.

This should have happened weeks ago.

Quote of the Day

I'm sure there are a lot of "good cops." The people I knew from high school who became local cops were bullies and assholes in high school. Maybe they became good cops, too. None of us were exactly perfect in high school. That they were assholes then doesn't mean they stayed assholes. Still, the high school asshole to cop career trajectory was telling.

—Duncan "Atrios" Black

To the degree that I recall what lines of work that my high school classmates went into, I concur on this observation.

Not sure how to fix the fact that police work tends to attract bullies, though.

I Think that the ECB Just Blinked

The European Central Bank has just increased emergency liquidy funding to Greek banks by €5 billion:

The European Central Bank (ECB) just increased the amount of emergency funding available to Greek banks by €5 billion — despite indications that the savers were pulling less of their money out in February.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the ECB was extending the Emergency Liquidity Assistance that can be given to Greek banks from its current (self-imposed) maximum of €60 billion to €65 billion. However, its reasons for doing so remain unclear.

Earlier reports had suggested that fears of deposit flight, where Greek savers withdrew their money from banks and deprived them of a key source of funding, after the left-wing Syriza party took power and the ECB altered its rules to prevent Greek government debt (and government-guaranteed debt) from being used to access its emergency loan programme were failing to materialise. A survey of Greek banks found that although savers remained nervous about the new government's plans deposit outflows had slowed in February, according to Reuters.

What happened here is pretty clear.

The ECB tried to get tough and saw the beginnings of a bank run, and they reversed course because they knew that if there were a bank run in Greece, it would spread to the Southern tier of the EU, as people took out cash, or transferred money to banks in the north.

Merkel has been emphatic that a Grexit (Greek exit from the Euro Zone) would be manageable.

This shows that this is a delusion.

Nope, No Racism Here

When activists marching from Ferguson to the state capitol, Jefferson City, Missouri, got to Rosebud, MO, they confronted with a display on the road of fried chicken, watermelon, and a 40 oz bottle of beer.

The crowd waved Confederate flags, and shouted racial epithets:

About 50 activists marching from Ferguson to Jefferson City encountered a hostile counter-protest Wednesday in Rosebud.

About 200 people met the marchers as they reached Rosebud around noon, activists said. A display of fried chicken, a melon and a 40-ounce beer bottle had been placed in the street. A Confederate flag flew. Counter-protestors shouted racial epithets.

Rhea Willis of Velda City, Missouri, said she saw a boy she estimated to be 8 years old holding a sign that read, "Go home.”

Somebody shot the window out of the back of one of the buses traveling with the march, dubbed by the NAACP as the Journey for Justice. The outer pane of glass broke. The bullet landed in the windowsill, the driver said.

Clearly, we are in a post-racial society.

After all, we have a black President, don't we?

Police Achieve Success by Looking at Failures

In this case, it happened in Richmond, California, where the police department has reduced policed involved shootings in what is one of the more violent cities in the Bay Area:

……….
A spate of high-profile police shootings nationwide, most notably the killing of a black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, has stoked intense scrutiny of deadly force by officers and driven a series of demonstrations across the nation and the Bay Area. But in Richmond, historically one of the most violent cities in the Bay Area, the Police Department has averaged fewer than one officer-involved shooting per year since 2008, and no one has been killed by a cop since 2007.

That track record stands in sharp contrast to many other law enforcement agencies in the region, according to a review of data compiled from individual departments.

Many observers and police officials attribute Richmond's relatively low rate of deadly force to reforms initiated under Chief Chris Magnus, who took over a troubled department in this city of 106,000 in 2006. Magnus implemented a variety of programs to reduce the use of lethal force, including special training courses, improved staffing deployments to crisis situations, thorough reviews of all uses of force and equipping officers with nonlethal weapons such as Tasers and pepper spray.

………

More important than luck, said law enforcement expert Tom Nolan, is the culture within a department. If a chief has sent a clear message that instances of deadly force will be scrutinized, you can expect more officers to think twice before firing a weapon, or employ less-lethal means when apprehending a suspect, he said.

"The chief is key in setting policy and tone," said Nolan, who worked for 27 years as a cop in Boston and now directs graduate programs in criminology at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. "If they haven't had an officer-involved shooting that's resulted in death in a city like that, it's commendable."

Here is the important bit:

Magnus has done something in Richmond that he believes is not done enough in other departments: He's been willing to second-guess the deadly force used by other cops.

"We use a case study approach to different incidents that happen in different places. When there is a questionable use-of-force incident somewhere else, we study it and have a lot of dialogue," Magnus said. "It's a model that is used in a range of other professions, but in some police circles, it's seen as judging in hindsight and frowned on. In my mind, that attitude is counterproductive."

The culture of police tends to mitigate against their examining their own failures.

Instead they circle the wagons, and protect their own, which produces an environment where dysfunction is nurtured, rather than corrected.

H/t Neo at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Andrew Cuomo is Such a Classy Guy

As expected, Andrew Cuomo won the primary, though Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu did a lot better than expected, polling at about 35%, far more than the 20% that was anticipated, so it was a bit of a black eye for Cuomo, and pretty much ensures that he will not be the VP pick in 2016.

Cuomo did not even bother having a victory party continuing his policy of not acknowledging Ms. Teachout's, but he topped this when we found out that Zephyr Teachout unable to call him to concede because he refused to give her a number to call:

As expected, Governor Andrew Cuomo won New York's Democratic primary on Tuesday night, but the success of his Mean Girls–esque strategy of ignoring rival Zephyr Teachout is still up for debate. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Cuomo had 61 percent of the vote to Teachout's 35 percent (with comedian Randy Credico at 4 percent). That's not exactly the landslide Cuomo was looking for, and the governor embarrassed himself through his ridiculous efforts to avoid acknowledging the Fordham Law School professor, even when she was standing two feet away from him.

Apparently, Cuomo kept up the act straight through primary night. He did not hold a victory party (which would have suggested he participated in a primary), and Teachout was reportedly unable to concede to the governor with a phone call, as he wouldn't give her his number.

 Really classy, Andy, really f%$# classy.

A Fact of Ferguson that is Finally Getting Mainstream Notice

The fact that more than 20% of the budget of the town of Ferguson comes from tickets and warrants issued by police shows that the police are not there to protect the populace, they are there to extract tribute from them:

Scratch any social crisis, and you're likely to find economics not far below the surface. Via ArchCity Defenders, a St. Louis legal-aid nonprofit, we can see how this has worked to create the dismaying spectacle of the breakdown of justice in Ferguson. (H/t Alex Tabarrok, via Kevin Drum.)

According to the group's recent report on the municipal court system in St. Louis County, the Ferguson court is a "chronic offender" in legal and economic harassment of its residents. There's not much of a secret why: the municipality collects some $2.6 million a year in fines and court fees, typically from small-scale infractions like traffic violations. This is the second-largest source of income for that small, fiscally-strapped municipality.

………

For a low-income community--and for a black community subjected to the racial profiling, as the report documents--these fines can gather force like a boulder rolling downhill. 

Tabarrok points to the report's observation that the Ferguson court processed the equivalent of three warrants and $312 in fines per household in 2013.

"You don't get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate," he notes. "You get numbers like this from [B.S.] arrests for jaywalking" and what the report calls "low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay without a meaningful inquiry into whether an individual has the means to pay."

The reason that the minorities in Ferguson do not see the police as their defenders and their protectors, it's because they aren't.

This arrangement, where peace officers have as their primary function tax collections, is fundamentally pathological and corrupt, and it needs to stop.

University of California Study Reveals the Obvious

Rather unsurprisingly, when protests occur, police frequently provoke violence:

The violence that turns a small-town protest into a fiery national spectacle like the one that has played out this month in Missouri is often unwittingly provoked by police, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.

The research team, which studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations.

Recent events in Ferguson, Mo., are a good example, the study's lead researcher said. For nearly two weeks, activists angered by a white police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager have ratcheted up their protests when confronted by heavily armed police forces.

"Everything starts to turn bad when you see a police officer come out of an SUV and he's carrying an AR-15," said Nick Adams, a sociologist and fellow at UC Berkeley's Institute for Data Science who leads the Deciding Force Project. "It just upsets the crowd."

Adams said many law enforcement agencies aren't aware that they set the tone of a protest and end up inflaming it.

I disagree with the last point.

I think that police are very aware that militarized responses encourage protests to turn violent, and that this violence gives a justification to engage in kinetic action to break up the protests.

This has been the norm for police-protest interactions ever since the mid 1800s, when police were used to crush organized labor.

White People Do Not Trust Cops Either

Susan Webber, better known by her nom de blog Yves Smith is white.

How white is she? This white: Harvard BA in literature and history (Phi Beta Kappa), MBA Harvard, Salomon Brothers, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Co, head of M&A for Sumitomo Bank, and now she is the head of Aurora Advisory.

And guess what, after 4 decades of the war on drugs, almost as long a period of militarization of law enforcement, and 10 years of anti-terror hysteria, she now does not trust police officers:

Since I live the most boring personal life imaginable, my interactions with the police types are limited to the every-thirty-five-year big speeding ticket, the TSA, and passport and customs officials (well take it back, I have a very long ago funny story when I went on a car ride in Harlem with a couple of black men who offered me a lift to try to find a kid on a bike who’d snagged my wallet out of my hand. The men who trundled up in the car knew the woman who’d run down the block ahead of me trying to apprehend or at least identify the robber, so they looked to be neighbors in that little corner of Harlem. The men dropped me back where I’d called 911 on a pay phone, this being in the pre-cell phone days. The cops had just arrived and drove me home and thought I was clearly insane to have take up an offer of local assistance).

I have heard bad stories about cops from cab drivers here (New York City and Bloomberg in particular has it in for cabbies for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom) and former DAs in other cities (for instance, that decades ago it was routine for cops to plant evidence and fabricate testimony in high profile cases if they couldn’t find a logical suspect fast enough). I’ve also heard some good stories about cops from local people and have seen them have to perform some unpleasant duties (like enforcing ridiculous cordons mandated by Presidential visits, the degree of lockdown and the diversions forced on locals who wind up on the wrong side of lines are insane, and the police stay patient with irate locals. I suspect they think the procedures are overkill, and even with all the overtime, they look none too happy about it). And then we have the really hair-raising media accounts, of paramilitary crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street and other dissident groups, of tasers and pepper spray and pain-inflicting zip handcuffs becoming appallingly routine.

I’ve noticed a shift in my reactions to police. While I generally assume they need to be handled with care, I’ve assumed in certain tame neighborhoods that they aren’t so bad (as in the local needs don’t call for much aggressive policing), such as my immediate ‘hood and coastal Maine.

But the other night, I saw a fire engine pulled up outside the local fire house. It had its lights on but no siren and wasn’t going anywhere. There was a cone next to it. I wasn’t paying much attention but it looked to have been deliberately parked close enough to the curb to allow traffic to pass.

I was walking towards the fire engine when I saw a cop stop a cab trying to go by the parked fire engine (I didn’t see any police car visible, so I’m not sure how he came to be there). He asked for the driver’s license and registration and told the driver in a normal conversational tone, “Park over there, this is going to take a long time.”

Now I have no idea what lead to this. I see a policeman taking a cabbie off duty (and remember, cabbies rent their vehicles, so this will force they guy into a loss regardless of what else cams out of this interaction). I realized later than with no information either way, no basis for knowing whether the cop was being completely proper or not, I assumed the cop was likely not in the right.

Maybe I’m just an outlier, but here I am, in one of the tamest spots (in terms of police likely to get rough with a resident going about their normal business) and my default assumption with my own police force has become not to trust them. That may have been what I believed on some deeper level before, but that view has now become more apparent to me.

When someone like Ms. Smith/Webber sees a confrontation involving a cop, and immediately assumed that the cop was abusing his authority.

This is a direct consequence of the changes that we have made in our police forces.  They have gone from being peace officers that served the community into a paramilitary force that is intended to exert control of the community.

In other words, they have increasingly adopted a mind-set of an occupying force.