Linkage

Three men deny Oompa Loompas attack The Guardian (I feel bad for laughing)
NSA Director Heckled at Blackhat computer hacker conference. Forbes
Ted Cruz Still Needs to Be Ditched: The Rude Pundit (Must read)
New York Times editors cut Obama a new one over secrecy. (I think that the persecution prosecution of James Risen may have pissed them off)
Obama Starting to Lose It Over Snowden Naked Capitalism (also must read)
Bubble Alert!! Morgan Stanley predicts buy-to-rent boom (HousingWire)

Pic H/t Police the Police

Worst………Speaker………Ever

The Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by John Boehner, decided to pass appropriations bills based on the Paul Ryan budget.

The problem is that, unlike a budget, which is general, the appropriations bills have to contain specific spending levels, and the Republicans in the House are terrified of having to pass the actual cuts required by Ryan's smoke and mirrors numbers:

Republicans have dealt with some embarrassing moments on the House floor over the past year, but none so revealing or damning as today’s snafu, when they yanked a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Even the recent farm bill fiasco wasn’t as significant an indictment of the GOP’s governing potential.

It might look like a minor hiccup, or a symbolic error. But it spells doom for the party’s near-term budget strategy and underscores just how bogus the party’s broader agenda really is and has been for the last four years.

In normal times, the House and Senate would each pass a budget, the differences between those budgets would be resolved, and appropriators in both chambers would have binding limits both on how much money to spend, and on which large executive agencies to spend it.

But these aren’t normal times. Republicans have refused to negotiate away their budget differences with Democrats, and have instead instructed their appropriators to use the House GOP budget as a blueprint for funding the government beyond September.

………

But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.

Today’s Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion. Republicans don’t control government. But ahead of the deadline for funding it, their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218.

John Boehner decided to follow the lead of Paul Ryan, a preening Ayn Rand inspired peacock with a limited grasp of what mathematics really mean in the real world, and now he is unable to make it work.

Heh.

It's Jobless Thursday!!!

Initial claims hit a 5 year low, with the 4-week moving average, continuing claims, and emergency claims falling as well.

Additionally, 2^nd quarter GDP increase was adjusted up to a 1.7% annual rate (forcast was for 1.0%), though this was because the 1^st quarter was revised down from 1.8% to 1.1%, meaning that the end position pretty much matched estimates.

It's an artifact of the ill advised deal that gave us the sequester, because the federal spending cuts to a large degree offset good numbers from the manufacturing sector.

July job numbers come out tomorrow.

Time to Invest in Pig Newton Futures

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has signed a medical Marijuana bill into law, and the lower house of parliament in Uruguay has voted to legalize Marijuana completely.

It's nice that sanity appears to be breaking out with regard to pot.

Silvio is Going to Jail

Italy's highest court has affirmed his jail sentence:

Italy's highest court has upheld a prison sentence given to former PM Silvio Berlusconi for tax evasion.

The court also ordered a further judicial review on whether he should be banned from holding public office.

In an emotional video statement, Berlusconi denounced the decision as "based on nothing, and which deprives me of my freedom and political rights".

The sentence cannot be appealed against further but Berlusconi, 76, is unlikely to go to jail because of his age.

The ruling by Rome's Court of Cassation came after a three-day hearing. Berlusconi was not in court.

The former prime minister was sentenced to four years in prison at the conclusion of the trial in October last year, though this was automatically reduced to a year under a 2006 pardon law.

Berlusconi is likely to serve house arrest or carry out community service.

Hopefully, this spells the end of his political career.

Now go and break up his television monopoly.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Fabulous Fab Found Liable

Goldman Sachs mid-level minion Fabrice Tourre was found Civilly liable for fraud related to mortgage backed securities:

A federal jury found former Goldman Sachs executive Fabrice Tourre liable Thursday for duping investors about a shoddy mortgage deal on the eve of the housing market’s crash, the first major court victory for the Securities and Exchange Commission in its quest to hold Wall Street accountable for the 2008 financial crisis.

After two days of deliberation, the jury decided Tourre — best known by his “Fabulous Fab” nickname — was liable for six of the seven claims pursued by the SEC. The agency had accused the 34-year-old Frenchman of defrauding investors out of $1 billion by selling them a financial product that was secretly designed to fail.

The trial was one of the few to emerge from the financial crisis, and it cast Tourre as a symbol of Wall Street greed. Only twice before has the SEC brought individuals to trial in cases related to the crisis, and each time ended with lackluster results. The victory this time around is a boon for the agency, which is often criticized as a risk-averse regulator that shies away from court battles in favor of slap-on-the-wrist settlements.

Tourre was only a mid-level executive at Goldman — not a marquee Wall Street figure, some legal experts noted. Still, the morale boost is likely to build momentum inside the agency as it pursues one of its most prominent targets yet: hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen. Last month, the agency charged Cohen with failing to properly supervise two employees who engaged in insider trading, a case that could potentially end the industry tycoon’s storied career.

Note that there is no possibility of jail time, just a fine, that will be paid after what will likely be endless appeals.

So no real possibility of  getting to testify against higher up.

There are two bits in the article that are particularly important in understanding this:

“You would think the SEC convicted the Al Capone of Wall Street today when all it did was scapegoat a single mid-level Goldman Sachs’ trader who bragged in emails to his girlfriend,” Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of a nonprofit group called Better Markets, said in a statement.

John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School, said a question still remains: “Why didn’t they go after someone important and not this sacrificial lamb?”

………

Jacob Frenkel, a former SEC enforcement lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said the SEC’s victory came just in time. The five-year statute of limitations is running out on cases from the time of the financial crisis.

So,this is not a beginning, this is an end, and as that it is almost less than nothing, because it allows the banksters and Their Evil Minions^™ can point to this, and claim that not everyone skated, even though all they got was a 28 year French number cruncher.

Damn.

Linkage

• Montana Experiment Brings NHS-Style Health Care to USA; Saves State Millions, Patients Delighted (Daily Kos)
• Judge: Indiana Can’t Deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid Funds (TPM)
• I Do Not Want My Daughter to Be 'Nice' (New York Times)
• Colorado attorney turned whistle-blower alleges foreclosure abuses (The Denver Post)

Finally a performance, by The Anarchists, my kids band at the Rock Star Jam Summer Music Camp:



Natalie was much more comfortable on stage this year.