The sociopaths rise to the top of power by clawing, bullying, intimidating, lying, charming, betraying their ways.
They rise to the top by being enabled by the bullied, the craven, the stupid, the naive, the opportunistic, the distracted, the brainwashed, and/or by crony bullies.
A Message from the [current] resident of Cooper Union 5-11-13
There has been a concern on campus that some guards may be armed. Vice President Westcott periodically hires security guards for events or when crowds are expected, because Cooper has only a minimal security staff. These are NYPD-trained security personnel, who have received the best training in safety and legal procedures available in New York City. We were unaware that some carried concealed weapons, and regret the needless apprehension that was caused when a guard was asked if he was armed and responded in the affirmative. It is not uncommon for security guards in New York offices to be armed. Nevertheless, Vice President Westcott assures us that, since becoming aware of this, no guards will carry arms.
"Forget the Pride committee. The community has spoken: Bradley Manning IS Grand Marshal."
Bradley Manning is Grand Marshal! Pride Meeting 7 May 2013 YouTube posted May 9, 2013 by MayaMediated
YouTube info: Includes the only photos from inside the meeting! "They say court martial! We say grand marshal!" Why did Pride cancel making Bradley Manning Grand Marshal of Pride 2013? Why did they ban the press from their meeting? Sure looks like the corporate sponsors want a nice, squeaky clean party with no reminders that Pride is about fighting for human rights and that the celebration honors a RIOT. Forget the Pride committee. The community has spoken: Bradley Manning IS Grand Marshal.Read below the fold...
It looks like young Ezra (and, to be fair, everybody else) missed a major policy change in Obama's shift to the new, shorter (for individuals*), final version of the basic application.** As it turns out, the issue (or at least one of the issues; gawd knows what other time bombs are buried in the thing) wasn't only the length and complexity of the form, though that was and is bad enough; the issue is the actual content of the form. Here's what I'm talking about. It's right in plain sight. I'm using a screen dump of the new, shorter, finalized form from Ezra's article:
Figure 1.
Yes, Equifax (a private "consumer reporting agency") could be affecting your eligibility for ObamaCare (a Federal program). Now, this is a major policy change, or perhaps a policy determination. Here's the equivalent language in the draft 26-page "Single Streamlined Application." As you can see, the language had not then been finalized:
Figure 2.
Alrighty then. Let's break out the old lawyerly weasel-wording parser and actually compare what the two forms say. Read below the fold...
Yves Smith and Bill Black have a post this morning describing the potential problems with the Brown/Vitter bill. There's a lot of detail and I won't try to summarize it, but there are two points I wanted to highlight.
The first is the concept of tight coupling. Basically, a bunch of extremely interconnected small institutions can pose as much systemic risk as a handful of behemoths, so a reform that turns the latter into the former is esentially a cosmetic one. The second is the concept of systemically dangerous institutions, or SDIs. SDIs are institutions that are large enough on their own to trigger a cascade of failures if they themselves fail.
So there are two characteristics to be concerned with here: tight coupling and dangerous size. Why not tweak the nomenclature a bit to include both of those? We could call these institutions Systemically Tight and Dangerous, or STDs. That seems a bit more colorful and descriptive than SDIs, don't you think?
If it catches on, we could even end up with the bonus fun of seeing legislators try to come up with a bill title that's an acronym for penicillin. Read below the fold...
It can be difficult to write about activism in an open-ended effort like the one against fracking. It isn't like a campaign where all the activity is geared toward election day, at which point everyone will know who won and who lost. It's different even from an issue like the Keystone XL pipeline, which is a single (continent-spanning) contiguous piece of infrastructure, and which will ultimately get a definitive yes or no.
Fracking involves lots of activity in communities dotted across the nation. There are big shale plays in some parts of the west, some parts of the Midwest, some parts of the east, and so on. But nothing connects those dots, and that makes it hard to give the thing a sense of its nationwide scope. Coverage will tend to be on a smaller scale, which makes it easier to dismiss it as a purely local or parochial concern. Read below the fold...
HuffPost: Transcripts of Bradley Manning's trial have been heavily guarded and out of public reach. Alyona chats with Freedom of the Press Foundation about their efforts to raise money to hire a court reporter for the Bradley Manning trial. Read below the fold...
What could go wrong? Everybody knows health insurance companies are our friends! WaPo:
Budget request denied, Sebelius turns to health executives to finance Obamacare
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone hat in hand to health industry executives, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law. Read below the fold...
To review, under ObamaCare, employers who offer insurance will face a fine of up to $3,000 per worker who receives subsidies to buy insurance through the exchanges.
Pointing to the new monochrome structure adjacent to the Foundation Building that serves as home to Cooper Union's School for the Advancement of Science and Art—Victoria Sobel said she isn't buying Bharucha's story. Sobel, an art major who graduates this year, is a member of Cooper Union $O$, which planned and orchestrated the occupation. The window propaganda decorating the Foundation Building was her senior project, although the administration made her take down slogans mentioning Bharucha specifically by name. She accuses the president of continuing a trend established by his predecessors, that of “selling Cooper Union down the river.” Read below the fold...
