Of Course the Courts Protect the Rich

A federal judge in Texas temporarily halted a plan by the Biden administration to lower late fees on credit cards to $8 that was slated to go into effect next week.

The temporary nationwide injunction imposed by Judge Mark Pittman in the Northern District of Texas is a win for the big banks and major credit card companies, which collect billions in revenue each year in late fees and were looking to stop the proposal from going into effect. It is also a win for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led the lawsuit on behalf of the banks.

No real shock that a judge that was appointed by the TOFF would side with the banksters against people. You can bet heavily that the Supremes will see it the same way, especially since some of them are owned by billionaires.

Londongrad is Still Open for Business

Despite sanctions, the Brits have been pretty loose when it comes to allowing sanctioned Russian oligarchs to spend their dirty money in London.

Because, as we all know, money talks.

Well, That's Unusual

Switzerland will adopt all the sanctions that the European Union has imposed on Russian people and companies and freeze their assets to punish the invasion of Ukraine, the government said in a sharp deviation from the country's traditional neutrality.

That's different. Usually, the Swiss take a stance that can be summed up as either "money talks" or "money has no conscience". For them to be choosing sides tells me something, but I'm not sure what.

Democrats and Republicans in Congress Jointly Agree to Fuck You, But Hard: The TurboTax/H&R Block Protection Act of 2019

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing.

Basically, the online tax companies are doing their damnedest to protect their rice bowls. Because, absent public scrutiny, the first principle of American politics is "money talks."

So, if you can file a simple return, print off the tax forms yourself, fill them out and mail those fuckers in.

Reading Gun Reviews is Like Kremlinology

You have to read carefully in order to find the stuff that matters.

Case in point: Let's take a look at the July, 2018 issue of Shooting Illustrated.

This is the cover:

This is the two-page center:

These are the money paragraphs:

That, to my mind, damns the gun, regardless of all of the paragraphs about how cool it looks or all of the different choices of colors for the gun. This thing is a self-defense gun and the very last thing it should be is "very difficult to shoot well". It's a gun that, for the most part, will be bought by people who are neither gun professionals, hobbyists, nor competitive shooters. Because, to be frank, nobody who is well versed in firearms will likely care that the gun comes in a range of pretty colors. It's a gun that's supposedly made for concealed carry, for the love of Dog.

The Spectrum is being marketed to people who are not gunnies. The gun's being marketed to people who may, at the very best, put a box of ammo through it every three years. For those folks, a gun with a horrible trigger and piss-poor sights will be more of a woobie than a serious tool. For unless they are shooting at contact range, with such a lousy gun, they're just as likely to miss.

All other things being equal, a sweet trigger is the berries when it comes to accurate shooting. I'd rather have sub-optimal sights and a sweet trigger than the other way around. A horrible trigger leads to spraying-and-praying.

In short, this is Taurus's latest derp gun.

Some shit doesn't ever seem to change.

A Really Good Gauge of Financial Fuckery; Vampire Squid Ed.

You can be pretty sure that something is financially evil when Goldman Sachs is getting into it:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is exploring how it could help clients trade bitcoin and other digital currencies, according to a person briefed on the plan.

The New York-based bank is in talks with cryptocurrency experts but hasn’t yet formulated a business plan, a timetable for implementation or made any bitcoin-related investments, according to the person who asked not to be identified talking about internal deliberations.

Their clients may end up taking a bath, but the Evil Vampire Squid will make money on both sides of the deal. That you can take to the bank.

Olympic Waste

You don't have to look very hard to find photo essays of Olympic venues and parks falling into ruin around the world. They are a colossal waste of money. It is as dumb as it would be if the city that hosted the Stupor Bowl each year had to scratch-build a stadium for it.

So here's an idea: Pick one place for each set of games, winter and summer, and have them there. Permanently.

Of course, that'll never happen. The IOC is full of grifters, even if the grift is limited to subsidized travel and free stays in top-flight hotels (which it isn't). Sure, the outright bribery that came to light in the late `90s may be gone, but you can bet the farm that it still goes on in some fashion or another.

It was a Bad Idea for Me to Overestimate the Viewing Public, Overseas Edition

I was very dismissive at the idea of Tom Cruise playing the role of Jack Reacher; not the least because when compared to the description of Reacher in the novels, Cruise is a pretty-boy midget.

The movie didn't do that well in the U.S., but it played well to foreigners. Maybe they re-dubbed it.

A sequel will soon hit the theaters, which will be yet another movie I won't go see.

"Have a Coke and Some Cash"

A nonprofit founded to combat obesity says the $1.5 million it received from Coke has no influence on its work.

But emails obtained by The Associated Press show the world's largest beverage maker was instrumental in shaping the Global Energy Balance Network, which is led by a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Coke helped pick the group's leaders, edited its mission statement and suggested articles and videos for its website.

This is more of a follow-up to an earlier story. Coke said that its money was an "unrestricted gift", but they sure got into the nitty-gritty with the bribe-takers, to the point of ensuring that their logo didn't have any blue in it.

But I'm not sure that Coke is the main evildoer in this story. The researchers may have approached Coke with a proposal, which makes them different from a whore at a truck-stop only in degree.

Coke essentially says that, having been caught buying off researchers, they'll stop doing it. At least this time. Their "Chief Health and Science Officer" has resigned-- ayup. Coke having a senior executive working on health issues would be almost as laughable as Budweiser or RJ Reynolds having a similar position on their company flowcharts.

(E-mail excerpts here)

The Donations of the Haters

There is a report that the racist asshole who allegedly inspired the Asswipe of Charleston has made significant donations to some GOP presidential candidates. Ted Cruz is returning the money, but Frothy and Baby Paul are silent.

I think it'd be better to have taken the jerk's money and then make a dollar-for-dollar donation to the NAACP legal Defense Fund or the Southern Poverty Law Center and say that publicly. But you know they won't, because that would piss off the racist component of the GOP base. Which as John McCain learned the hard way in 2000, is a lot of people.

Maybe This Time, They'll Use Ebola to Nuke the Fridge?

There's going to be another "Indiana Jones" movie.

Probably with Indy using a scooter-chair to outrun the bad guys.

The Crystal Skull sucked like a new Dyson, but it made plenty of money. Which is all that counts in Hollywood.

Who is Buying Our Politicians; State Edition

The big donors to state (not Federal) elections in `14.

Besides being the #1 individual donor, Bruce Rauner* dropped $27.6 million of his own money to become governor of Illinois. Which is a pittance compared to the money that Mikey the Nudgenick Bloomberg spent on his mayoral campaigns**, but to be fair, Bloomberg has a shitload more money than Rauner.

Other than ego, one wonders why these guys feel such a need to buy themselves a political job. Is it so that they can bypass the middleman when it comes to grinding their heels into our faces?
_________________________________________
* Funny thing about Rauner: He ran on a platform of controlling state spending. But the very first thing he did was jack up the salaries for his lackeys.

** Including the one where he got rid of term limits so he could run for a third time. The rules don't apply to the richest folk in the way that they do to the rest of us.

Tony Blair: A Whore for Tyrants

He's a tyrant's best friend, provided the tyrant can afford the fee. (And most can.)

Kazakhstan is one of the more corrupt countries on the planet. It is not a free state by any stretch of the imagination. If you looked up the definition of "autocratic keptocracy", Kazakhstan would be in the definition.

But that's who Tony Blair is whoring for.

(Saddam Hussein's shade is probably finding this all pretty funny.)

(H/T)

How Bills Become Law

From health care to diet supplements, whenever corporations start ladling out the "campaign contributions", the politicials hop on board.

Here's an egregious one from Missouri, a state where the GOP-dominated legislature has never seen a tax they aren't willing to cut. Except one: Sales taxes, which they want to raise in order to fund road construction. They did that in the same session where they passed oodles of tax breaks and cuts for businesses and the wealthy. The construction industry got the sales tax raise through by the tried-and-true method of "campaign contributions" to an influential legislator.

Because "money talks" is now the overriding principle of our state and federal governments. All of those fuckers would give a tax credit to child molesters if there was enough money in it for them.

Short Version of Supreme Court Ruling: "Money Talks"

The Supremes struck down aggregate limits on campaign contributions.

Because money talks.

I respectfully suggest that anyone who doesn't believe that they will also strike down limits on individual donations, when the right case reaches them, is smoking too much weed.

Traitor Joe, Now Whoring for the Libyans

He said that he wasn't going to become a lobbyist, but now he is one.

This has been in the works for the last few months, it seems.

The folks at Balloon Juice are probably accurate when they say that calling former politicians such as Lieberman "whores" and "pimps" is pretty defamatory to hard-working people in the sex trade. But I'm at a loss for better adjectives. Feel free to make your suggestions in the comments section.

Anyway, the D.C. revolving door spins ever on.

(H/T)

Give to the American Red Cross, So They Can Bank the Money?

Apparently, that's what the ARC did with most of the money that it raised from Superstorm Sandy:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Seven months after Superstorm Sandy, the Red Cross still hasn't spent more than a third of the $303 million it raised to assist victims of the storm, a strategy the organization says will help address needs that weren't immediately apparent in the disaster's wake.

Here I thought that the ARC's mission was to go in and help the survivors with immediate needs. At least, if you watch their ads and their publicity, that's all they talk about. If they're transitioning into mainly helping with long-term rebuilding/relief, that's fune. But they ought to be more honest about what it is that they're doing.

And while I'm on the subject of fundraisers, can someone tell me why the hell there is still crap underway about giving money to Newtown? The median household income in that town is $142,000. It's a well-off town in one of the richest counties in the United States. Do they really need people across the country sending in donations?

I sure as shit don't think so.

This isn't Going to End Well; Stupid-Ass Kids With Far More Money Than Brains Edition

Justin Bieber spat on a Calabasas neighbor and threatened him after a harsh exchange of words over the pop star's behavior and that of his entourage, a neighbor told deputies when making a battery complaint.

L.A. County sheriff's detectives are now investigating allegations involving the Tuesday morning confrontation, as well as complaints Bieber and his entourage drove at excessive speeds through his Calabasas neighborhood, authorities said.

And there's more!

TMZ broke the story ... Bieber was allegedly driving his Ferrari at speeds approaching 100 mph in the gated community ... this according to multiple neighbors. The guy next door went onto Justin's property to complain, and he says Justin told him, "Get the f**k out of here," and then he spit in the guy's face and said, "I'm gonna f**king kill you." The neighbor filed a battery report.

100mph through a residential neighborhood? And I like it how some punk-ass little twerp with an entourage the side of a reinforced rifle platoon thinks that he's a real tough guy.

In the real (non-celebrity) world, a twerp like Bieber who spit on somebody would have had a bloody mudhole stomped into his ass and nobody would have thought a thing about it. There probably are legions of eight-something great-grandmothers who could beat the crap out of that fool without even mussing their hairdos.

And they should.

Skeevy No Matter Which Party Is In Power

Donate (or bundle) half-a-million bucks for President Obama's post-campaign campaign fund and you get to go to a meeting with him!

If you would have thought that sort of shit would have been sleazy when Chimpy was in office, then it is just as sleazy now.

Automatic Defense Cuts

The approach of the two parties towards how to avoid those cuts shows some rather stark differences:

Democrats say the military can be spared if Republicans are willing to consider tax increases for high-wage earners. Republicans argue that the defense cuts could be offset with reductions in food stamps, benefits for federal workers and social services programs like day care for children and Meals on Wheels for the elderly.

I don't think I need to snark about the point hat the Republicans are eager to cut services for the poor and elderly in order to make sure that General Dynamics gets to make more tanks.

But don't worry, O Descendents of Sam Walton and Spawn of Rmoney, the Democrats will cave on this, just as they have caved on everything else. Don't count on Obama to veto anything, his "veto pen" has been remarkably quiescent.

Beyond that, by and large, it's not the kids of rich people who have gone off to serve in the wars of this century, while the Republicans have been doing their level best to make certain that the über-rich pay less and less taxes. Mitt Romney made something like $40 million in the only year of this taxes that he'll show "you people" and he paid a lower tax rate than a married couple making about fifty grand. Yet it is damn near certain that Mittens thinks that he paid too much in taxes.

It would be nice if the rich did more for this country other than rape the workers, push more burdens onto wage-earners and the poor, and buy elections.