You may have seen the PDF version of the latest list of Bernie Madoff's human and corporate victims. If not, check it out.
See my colleague Roy Edroso's riff on the list. I'm trying to post a text version of the entire roster of willing suckers, but our server is gagging on the size. Anyone have a Bloomberg machine? May I borrow it? May the SEC borrow it?
Good for the New York Times! Always trying to take a broad view (even when one doesn't exist, as Jack Shafer often points out), the paper weighs in on how the plight of Bernie Madoff's white-haired victims gives us valuable insights about the global meltdown with this morning's "Fossils of Largest Snake Give Hint of Hot Earth."
Good info that the "prehistoric snake" was "a giant relative of today's boa constrictors." The elderly Madoff wasn't the first, nor will he be the last, snake to swallow your money. Wall Street is really is a dangerous place, even for celebrities — see the latest list of Madoff's victims.
Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos's testimony yesterday on Capitol wasn't quite as colorful, but the bookish-yet-tigerish accountant was pretty damn intense, as I previously noted.
Among other fascinating details, Markopolos told the dazed House members that he planned to deliver to the SEC today a "mini-Madoff." The agency is sure to accept this silver platter with respect and care.
President Barack Obama, on the other hand, is showing me no respect with his $500,000 limit on CEO pay ( VIDEO). To get a bailout, I have to limit my pay? I don't think so.
New York's top banking firms went on a multimillion lobbying spree late last year -- just as the feds were crafting a $700 billion rescue plan for struggling banks.
The banks got an extraordinary return on their investment, as they got federal cash injections that were thousands of times larger than what they spent trying to influence Congress and the administration - which doled out the cash.
In a high-profile reversal of the Bush administration, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday the government is scrapping the leases of 77 parcels of federal land for oil and gas drilling in Utah's redrock country.
When President Barack Obama launches his version of the faith-based initiative Thursday, he will expand the mission to include abortion reduction and outreach to the Muslim world. He will also try to avoid the thorniest constitutional issues that beset the program for years under his predecessor.
Mr. Obama's approach to the federal faith office reflects his search for common ground on contentious social issues, and his willingness to dial back some of his campaign positions.
A federal judge charged with slapping his wife hired a big shot defense attorney as he faces a misdemeanor charge that could land him in the clink.
James Peck, 63, the bankruptcy judge overseeing the breakup of Lehman Brothers, hired Barry Bohrer, a prominent criminal defense lawyer whose clients have included Sam Israel, the hedge fund swindler who went on the lam last summer after faking his own suicide to avoid a 20-year jail term.
Peck, who was briefly assigned to handle the Bernard Madoff bankruptcy until he recused himself in December, told cops when they came to his Park Ave. apartment Saturday afternoon that "I was defending myself."
He said his wife, Judith Peck, 64, was late in returning to the city from their home in the Hamptons and then they argued over a ladder that she had put in his closet.
"I was moving the ladder out. She slapped me in the face," he told cops. "I put the ladder down and slapped her back. We slapped each other back and forth."
...Other victims were identified as Ground Zero developer Larry Silverstein, the estate of late singer John Denver, actor John Malkovich, former Mets second baseman Tim Teufel and even Madoff's lawyer Ira Sorkin. The 163-page list also includes hundreds of trust funds, charities, pension plans and unions, as well as entries for Madoff's grandchildren. [FULL LIST]
Two managers of the Massachusetts state pension fund have been fired for poor performances, including one who lost $12 million investing with accused Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff.
Chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon computed the Mets' 2009 payroll at $143 million when factors such as Freddy Garcia's probable salary with bonuses, the $1.6 million owed to the Diamondbacks for Scott Schoeneweis and $2.25 million owed to Willie Randolph are included. Wilpon handed Minaya that budget early in the offseason, before Wilpon learned his family had lost money in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Wilpon declared that the Mets had accomplished their winter objectives, mentioning the acquisitions of Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz and "addition by subtraction" with trades that shipped out players such as Aaron Heilman and Schoeneweis.
Obama tells a surprisingly blunt Katie Couric, "I messed up."
Tom Daschle's quick exit from the health-care Cabinet job is just proof that he was a poor choice for the job.
If the guy can't get it together enough to wipe his nose clean after rubbing it against the rear of society schmuckettes like Catherine Reynolds, then he's not the person to tackle the extraordinarily tricky job of cleaning up the health-care mess.
He should just return to his destiny: playing off his former job in Congress to lobby his former Congress pals on behalf of rich clients. (See Muckety's quick read on Daschle's ties to Reynolds.)
Daschle wasn't a notable senator in the first place, despite his high post in the Democratic Party heirarchy. Teddy Kennedy or Paul Wellstone he wasn't.
Barack Obama did take responsibility for the Daschle embarrassment and did admit that he, the president, screwed up, but it was Daschle who screwed up his own nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.
All he had to do was come clean to Obama or Obama's vetters, and this wouldn't have happened. Actually, he could have just paid his taxes in the first place. But hubris isn't exclusive to Wall Street bankers or pro athletes. Former senators often think that they, too, are above the law or the law's consequences.
Obama's screw-up came when he picked Daschle in the first place — unless Obama wanted a weak-sister guy like Daschle in there. All of this leaves murky the question of what exactly the Obama regime has in mind for health care.
The last time a Democratic administration came to power, Bill Clinton turned the health-care issue over to Hillary Clinton, who, true to her conservative roots, immediately reneged on her vow to supporters and advisers to consider a national health-care plan. Instead, she relied on the inherently corrupt health-care industry — not the doctors, but the insurers — and any hope of a cleaner, fairer, more inclusive national health-care plan that wouldn't be controlled by the middlemen (the insurers) was doomed. (Click here for my February 2005 rant about this; you'll have to scroll down a little ways to get to it.)
In any case, good-bye, Daschle. Don't let the revolving door hit you on your way into and out of government offices.
The rest of you, however, are welcome to stay right here and click on the following items...
President Obama will announce a crackdown on Wall Street fat cats on Wednesday, setting a $500,000 cap on executive compensation for companies getting taxpayer bailouts, a senior administration official said Tuesday night.
...One of President Barack Obama's closest political confidants and early mentors, Mr. Daschle had been tapped to spearhead the effort to overhaul the nation's health-care system. But concerns arising from Mr. Daschle's failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes on time, coupled with tax problems involving two other cabinet nominees, threatened both the administration's health-care agenda and the credibility of Mr. Obama's pledge to raise the ethical standards of Washington.
Mr. Daschle's sudden withdrawal came two weeks to the day after Mr. Obama took office, and 24 hours after the president told reporters that he "absolutely" stood by his nominee. The abrupt move stands to potentially dent the reputation for steadiness and managerial prowess that the 47-year-old president had cultivated over a smoothly run campaign and a transition to power that boasted of a swift vetting and nomination of top aides.
Federal immigration officials had repeatedly told Congress that among more than half a million immigrants with outstanding deportation orders, they would concentrate on rounding up the most threatening -- criminals and terrorism suspects.
Instead, newly available documents show, the agency changed the rules, and the program increasingly went after easier targets. A vast majority of those arrested had no criminal record, and many had no deportation orders against them, either.
President Barack Obama will announce today that he's imposing a cap of $500,000 on the compensation of top executives at companies that receive significant federal assistance in the future, responding to a public outcry over Wall Street excess.
Any additional compensation will be in restricted stock that won't vest until taxpayers have been paid back, according to an administration official, who requested anonymity. The rules will force greater transparency on the use of corporate jets, office renovations and holiday parties as well as golden parachutes offered to executives when they leave companies.
Senior U.S. commanders are finalizing plans to send tens of thousands of reinforcements to Afghanistan's main opium-producing region and its porous border with Pakistan, moves that will form the core of President Barack Obama's emerging Afghan war strategy....
Virtually none of the new troops heading to Afghanistan will go to Kabul or other major Afghan cities. By contrast, when the Bush administration dispatched 30,000 new troops to Iraq as part of the so-called surge, the bulk of the new forces went to Baghdad....
The deployments, part of a planned doubling of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, are almost certain to spark heavier casualties and push the war squarely onto the public agenda. "I hate to say it, but yes, I think there will be [more U.S. casualties]," Vice President Joe Biden said on CBS Sunday. "There will be an uptick."
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and his Alliance for Climate Protection say clean-coal technology is a fantasy.
Peabody Energy Corp., the biggest U.S. coal producer, says another prominent Democrat has pledged to make the technology a reality: President Barack Obama.
The Gore-Obama split illustrates a growing debate in the U.S. as the new president attempts to deliver on his promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the country 80 percent by 2050. Depending on who's speaking, coal is either the villain or part of the solution.
Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister selected after the Americans handed power back to Iraqis in June 2004, has made a comeback in the provincial elections, unofficial preliminary returns indicate, setting himself up as a potential rival to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
Connecticut, the wealthiest U.S. state with per capita income of $54,117 in 2007, has profited from its proximity to Wall Street since rail lines from the city reached north to Fairfield County more than a century ago. According to Forbes magazine, the state's richest residents now are hedge fund managers including Steven Cohen and Paul Tudor Jones, who live and work in and around Greenwich. Cohen earned $900 million in 2007 while Jones made $300 million, according to Institutional Investor magazine's Alpha publication.
A one-man crime wave from Massachusetts road-tripped it to Columbia University every weekend for the past two months -- stealing wallets from gymnasium lockers and a dozen laptops, the Post has learned.
Fraud investigator Harry Markopolos blamed the Securities and Exchange Commission's "financial illiteracy" for failing to heed his warnings about money manager Bernard Madoff.
Mr. Markopolos had warned the SEC for nearly a decade that Mr. Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. Mr. Markopolos is set to testify before a House committee Wednesday, and 311 pages of his written testimony became public Tuesday evening.
You won't see edgy Bernie Madoff-related work like this in U.S. mainstream papers, but New York's own Jewish Daily Forward, as always, is up to the task of covering Jewish politics and news with a minimum of politically correct tiptoeing.
Above, an excerpt from Eli Valley's "The Shonda!" in the Forward.
Valley, sort of the Jewish version of R. Crumb, touts his work as "Ethnocentric Parochialism for the Whole Family!"
See Valley's profile on Jewcy.com, where I just discovered that, like me, he's a huge fan of noir-era cinematographer John Alton. No wonder I like Valley's work so much.
For more Madoff-related news that's not of the cartoonish persuasion, go to the end of this post for my daily Gelt Trip aggregation.
But first, please note that Barack Obama isn't being so politically correct either. Now in charge of a generally conservative country long dominated by profligate financiopaths, the nation's first black president is chewing out Wall Street bankers and generally acting like some kind of goldurned liberal.
Watch your back, my brother. And tell the Secret Service to do the same.
Top economic officials are discussing new efforts to help banks while trying to mitigate the cost to taxpayers. Obama stepped up his attacks on these banks, calling Wall Street bonuses "shameful."
Three decades ago, engineer Peter Fraenkel created an underwater turbine to use river power to pump water in Sudan, where he worked for a charity. Civil war and a lack of funding stymied his plans. Now, his modified design generates electricity from tides off Northern Ireland.
At least 128 soldiers killed themselves last year, as the Army suicide rate surpassed that for civilians for the first time since the Vietnam War, according to Army statistics.
A former cop seeking line-of-doody disability pay for breaking a finger on an overflowing toilet is spit out of luck, an appeals court ruled yesterday.
Three workers accused of raping underage girls at an acclaimed upper Manhattan psychiatric treatment center have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor endangering charges and will do no prison time...
He chased down a lunatic serial stabber in Times Square, and lived to tell a jury about it yesterday.
"I don't know if it was more heroic or stupid," former W Hotel doorman Adam Szpiler, 32, said of his bravery after testifying against accused knifeman Kenny Alexis, charged with attempting to murder three tourists and a cook in a 13-hour rampage in the summer of 2006.
U.S. government guarantees on securities totaling $419 billion for bank bailouts provide an early test of President Barack Obama's pledge to be open with taxpayers about what they have at risk in the credit crisis.
The M.T.A. expects to spend $497 million in federal stimulus money to complete the stalled and over-budget Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan.
Add another voice to the chorus of city officials who say that the city should renegotiate its deal with developer Bruce Ratner, whose Atlantic Yards mega-project is in jeopardy due to the economic crisis.
Accused Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff's luxurious penthouse apartment -- where he currently whiles away the hours under house arrest -- could soon be up for sale, the Post has learned....
[Real-estate] brokers have been invited by lawyers working for Irving Picard, the trustee appointed by a federal bankruptcy-court judge to oversee the liquidation of Madoff's Manhattan investment firm.
Picard presumably would use any sale proceeds to help pay back, at least somewhat, Madoff's creditors.
Because he must remain inside the two-story apartment as a condition of his $10 million bail, Madoff will be in awkward proximity to brokers when they eyeball its four bedrooms, at least five bathrooms, kitchen and library.
Notz, Stucki & Cie., a Swiss money manager, probed and later dismissed concerns about Bernard Madoff investments, which offered "dull but steady" returns.
Maybe our mayor can now make her a kind of special city envoy to Washington in these difficult times ahead.
She will still have a deep connection with our new President, one of whose daughters now sleeps in Caroline's old room at the White House.
Christ, at least make sure she votes a few times before we make her our "ambassador."
I'm not attacking the Kennedys or rich people. Ever since Chappaquidick, Teddy Kennedy has worked hard in the trenches as a senator. And Jackie O took on big cultural battles, leading the successful fight to save and restore Grand Central Station.
Now we have a huge crisis on our hands. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers are being fired, and basic social services are being slashed, feeding a downward spiral.
There are a million fires that need to be put out — and I don't mean the problems faced by Carnegie Hall, which is slashing its schedule and budget. Yes, that's a shame, but stay away from that "cause," Princess Caroline.
Do some public service before you're anointed as our ambassador. If you have celebrity capital (and you do), then start spending it to help goad other rich New Yorkers (and there are still plenty of them) into helping their increasingly desperate fellow residents.
Do something noblesse before we oblige you.
As for Daly, one of his readers, hjo4, said it best in a cranky 7 a.m. post:
Special Envoy give me a break there are thousands of New Yorkers without the Kennedy name or connections who commit themselves to New York and NewYorkers whether it be our children in education, mentoring or being a role model or be it our Senior citizens they do this from their heart, they are the "unsung heroes" perhaps if you want to appoint a "Special Envoy" I suggest you turn an eye to one of those citizens I'm sick of people making those whose family fortunes was made questionably and off the backs of others still receive special treatment. Turn to the average Joe who does good deeds from their heart Those are the special envoys we need.
President Barack Obama, on a busy first full day in office, announced a wage freeze for top White House staff, waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and prepared to issue executive orders Thursday -- including one to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year.
He also issued the strictest rules to date on lobbying activities for members of the administration and met with his national security team to begin the process of withdrawing troops from Iraq.
In an unusual moment that was not part of his team's extensive planning for day one, Mr. Obama also retook the oath of office. That came after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and then Mr. Obama, spoke one of the words out of order during the swearing in on Tuesday.
Musicians and managers are turning to BlackBerry phones and YouTube videos to solve a problem that just won't go away: illegal downloads of digital tracks.
The U.S. led the global economy into its worst recession in at least a quarter century. Now the rest of the world is looking to Barack Obama to lead the way out. The trouble is, even the incoming commander-in-chief of the biggest economy can't do it alone.
Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards project is in such financial upheaval that the developer is now trying to cut back on much-needed transit improvements, which he promised in exchange for approval for...
...In my tests, even the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer, waking it from sleep and launching programs.
And this speed boost wasn't only apparent in the preconfigured machine from Microsoft, but on my own Sony, which had been a dog using Vista, even after I tried to streamline its software. Of course, these speed gains may be compromised by the computer makers, if they add lots of junky software to the machines. Windows 7 is also likely to run well on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed....
Compatibility with hardware and software, which was a problem in Vista, seems far better in Windows 7 -- even in the beta. I tried a wide variety of hardware, including printers, Web cams, external hard disks and cameras, and nearly all worked fine.
I also successfully installed and used popular programs from Microsoft's rivals, such as Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Reader, Apple's iTunes, and Google's Picasa. All worked properly, even though none was designed for Windows 7.
In a provocative HuffPost piece, Larry Gellman writes:
...My fellow Jews love to write and talk about how horrible Madoff is and how much damage he has done to the Jewish people. Some have even compared him to Hitler which is scary because it means that money has become so important today that someone who steals money and swindles people is comparable to a person who engineered the murder of six million people....
Banco Santander SA sold Bernard Madoff investments to a teacher and a street vendor, not just to wealthy private banking clients in Spain and Latin America.
Branch managers channeled customers with money from property sales or inheritances to private banking salespeople, lawyers for the investors said.
Comparing the coverage by the Times and Wall Street Journal.
Click above for a roundup of the best Blago jokes.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich will name former Illinois AG Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat.
Read the mid-afternoon versions of that breaking story in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and it's no contest.
The news is that Blago is naming some Foghorn Leghorn guy to the Senate. You gotta hand it to Gov.-not-for-long Blagojevich; he's cleverly playing the race card by replacing a black senator with another black senator. That should blunt some critics. Maybe.
The race angle is for another story. What's relevant here is the WSJ's third graf:
The choice is likely to face intense scrutiny because the governor faces federal corruption charges. The governor appears to be thumbing his nose at critics who have said the process allowing him to choose Mr. Obama's replacement should be circumvented.
Mr. Blagojevich, who faces federal corruption charges including allegations that he tried to sell Mr. Obama's former senate seat for a high-paying job or money, had not been expected to try to fill the seat. As recently as ten days ago, his lawyer, Edward Genson, said he would not attempt to make an appointment, since Senate leaders had indicated they would not accept anyone whom the beleaguered Mr. Blagojevich had appointed.
The snooty Times thumbs its nose at phrases like "thumbing his nose." The Journal consistently beats the Times at analyzing the facts and giving us the gist in colloquial — or at least lively — English that pols and other crooks use when privately figuring out ways to screw the public.
The WSJ is the best daily in the city, obviously for business news, but also for political news. That's because you don't have to read very far into its stories to get the real skinny. After all, its audience is largely those people who skirt the line between being crooks or just barely legal (according to their own lawyers) sharks.
But even if you're not a shark or otherwise scheming just to make money from money, the Journal's still a great read. Sound, detailed, lucid reporting, with plenty of human-interest angles and vivid descriptions, even of callow business people. The paper's a cheap subscription and has a well-tuned website. Besides, it offers a good way for Americans who can't afford million-dollar apartments to try to understand the nefarious activities of those who can.
Considering that the country is falling into a major depression, you commoners (who, after all, will feel the brunt of it) would be better off reading the Journal than the Times. At least you'll get a more accurate and readable measurement of how far you'll fall.
Both papers, incidentally, are likely to still be publishing a year from now. The same can't be said of other papers.
Even the New York Times notes the eerie connection.
You mean that all-time schemerBernie Madoff isn't the only crook in town? (See above video, because it's the last time you'll be hearing his Ponzi pitch.)
Even with 40,000 cops, the NYPD doesn't have enough crimefighters to round up all of the city's crooks. They didn't even nab Madoff; the goniff's sons turned him in.
So which crooks do you think the NYPD is scrambling to arrest: the common criminals who robbed other people's banks or the Wall Street investment bankers who robbed their own banks?
In 2008, 2.5 trillion messages were sent from cell phones worldwide, up 32 percent from the year before, according to the Gartner Group and reported by the New York Times. But, what also rose in the last three years was the price — doubling from 10 to 20 cents per message while the industry consolidated from six major carriers to four.
Speaking of getting fucked, the New Yorkerreviews the new edition of The Joy of Sex.
Don't grab your partner or your box of tissues yet. Anticipation is part of the pleasure, so for now, keep both hands on the keyboard and click on the following items ...
A mother accused of beating her obese 10-year-old son to death told officials she homeschooled the boy to protect him from teasing and abuse, sources said.
Furious family members are horrified that a Holocaust survivor concocted a story that the girl who became his wife saved him from starvation by tossing apples and bread over a concentration-camp fence.
Ken Rosenblat, the son of Holocaust hoaxer Herman Rosenblat, said he knew of the lie "for many years" but couldn't stop his 79-year-old dad from spreading it.
Geologists have collected evidence indicating that something very big occurred in the waters near New York around 300 B.C., but convincing other scientists has been an uphill battle.
Caroline Kennedy, who gave a flurry of media interviews on Friday and Saturday, revealed some cringing verbal tics that showed her inexperience as a speaker, experts told the Daily News.
The Orthodox Union's Nathan Diament has some advice for Barack Obama. Writing in the New Republic, Diament -- the OU's public policy director -- urges the incoming president to do more than offer religious voters symbols, like an inaugural invocation by Rev. Rick Warren. Obama, Diament writes, has an opportunity to advance policies that are important to religious voters -- and he can do so without sacrificing Democratic Party principles on issues like abortion, gay rights, and school vouchers.
To that end, he suggests that Obama support programming aimed at reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies; ensure that religious schools and social welfare agencies can continue to receive federal funding, regardless of their policies on homosexuality, and make federal grants available to parochial schools expanding their pre-kindergarten programs or greening their campuses.
If only he had died before hatching his Ponzi scheme.
What few celebrations are still planned for International Human Rights Week, which is winding down and ends tomorrow, one thing is clear: Bernie Madoff isn't invited.
Nothing could be further from "human rights" than Madoff's scheme, short of his taking a machine gun and going berserk.
A shanda we're talking about. The Yiddish word for shame/scandal fits well — particularly the expression "a shanda fur die goy," which means doing something embarrassing to Jews where non-Jews can observe it.
Check out Laurence Leamer's enlightening December 12 piece on HuffPost, "Bernard Madoff and the Jews of Palm Beach," for more on this moneychanger who hung out in temples instead of being driven from them.
Don't call me a self-hating Jew. Jew-haters will relish this sorry episode; look for an outbreak of anti-Semitism, especially in Europe, which has such a strong history of it.
The rest of you can restrict your hate to Madoff, the exclusive-club guy who scammed his co-religionists in much the same way that Christian evangelists fleece their flocks. Few religions are immune: Muslims even blow themselves up for their "faith."
This Madoff situation is kind of the reverse of Weekend at Bernie's, the 1989 comedy in which the title character dies and a couple of employees prop him up to pretend to others that he's still alive.
Madoff, however, is no joke. The Wall Street goniff's shanda is crippling the world — including the crippled children treated at the hospitals that invested millions of dollars in his Ponzi scam.
Like the Long Island Jewish Hospital chain, which, as Newsdayreports, lost $5.7 million. It was only that relatively small amount for the heavily endowed hospital, the paper says, because some schnook stipulated that the hospital invest his donation with Madoff.
Madoff's alma mater, Hofstra, placed him on leave from his post as a trustee. But Yeshiva University, here in the city, has made Madoff disappear. Bernie was a trustee there, too, but the school's webmeisters are frantically scrubbing all mention of him on the Yeshiva site.
That won't stop people from knowing that, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (the Jewish establishment's main news wire) reports, Yeshiva was "hit hard" by Madoff's scheming:
Sources close to the university, the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy, told JTA that the school has lost tens of millions of dollars if not more. Y.U. released an official statement saying it would not officially address the matter at this time.
We've always known that New York is the city of big liars. But if last week's blockbuster criminal complaint is true, then Bernie Madoff is the biggest liar in town.
And now that adds to the burden of Barack Obama. At least he's from the city of big shoulders. And he'll need them.
It is satisfying that Madoff is one of those annoying high-society mogul twits and that he has enveloped other rich goniffs in places like the Palm Beach Country Club.
It's like a bad Spielberg movie — and it is to Steven Spielberg himself, who also got taken.
But Madoff's assault on other rich people is only an amusing sideshow in light of the charities and other institutions that got suckered and are now shuttered because of his alleged Ponzi scheme. (Brilliant New York Post lede graf this morning: "He's the Grinch who stole ... everything.")
Wall Street's potholes are widening into one big chasm, thanks in part to such stupidity as pension funds letting Wall Streeters manipulate the money reserved for hard-working middle-class retirees. Yes, it's not only banks, hedge funds, and other rich people who lost millions. Fairfield, Connecticut, for just one of many examples, reports losses of $42 million in pension funds.
But at least environmentalists are getting good news about other valuable real estate. They just might have won a major victory with Obama's selection of Colorado senator Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior.
He's definitely no Stewart Udall — not even close — but for these times he'll do. Salazar has been engaged with the Bush regime's Bureau of Land Management in a bitter fight to keep the government from tearing up the Roan Plateau in western Colorado, a beautiful, massive area west of Aspen that sits over gas and oil shale.
For newsy, recent background, see Alan Prendergast's fine reporting (as always) in the Denver alt paper Westword. Last June, in "A Hot Summer on the Roan Plateau," Prendergast wrote:
It's official. The Bureau of Land Management announced Monday that it will auction gas leases on 55,000 acres on top of the Roan Plateau on August 14. And Governor Bill Ritter and Senator Ken Salazar, who've been battling the BLM plan for years, are more than a little exercised over the move.
Although it doesn't enjoy the protection of a national park or even a designated wilderness area, the Roan is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the state — a haven for black bears, mountain lions, peregrine falcons, rare plants and the world's purest strain of Colorado River cutthroat trout. But the plateau also sits on an estimated $22 billion worth of natural gas.
Stewart Udall, by the way, is still alive. And as recently as last June, the still-sharp 88-year-old former Secretary of the Interior under JFK and LBJ told the New York Times's Timothy Egan that he was hopeful that the country was about to enter "a new era" of conservation.
Tragically, his brother, charismatic former congressman, presidential candidate, and shoulda-been-president Mo Udall, died a decade ago after a bitter battle against Parkinson's during which he clung to his congressman post for 12 years after he was diagnosed. However, Stewart's son Tom Udall is a senator-elect in New Mexico, and Mo's son Mark Udall is a senator-elect in Colorado.
As Egan wrote:
[F]rom Udall's long tenure as secretary of the interior for both Kennedy and President Lyndon Johnson came a legacy of public land protection responsible in large part for so many wilderness areas just outside Western cities.
Now, the son also rises. And so does the nephew.
That is a family that helps relieve the bitter taste left in our mouths by Bernie Madoff and his clan.
Violent unrest may be sparked around the world by a prolonged global slump unless governments act with greater urgency to jump-start stalled economies, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn sounded a stark warning over the consequences of what he argued was weak and uncertain government reaction to the economic crisis. He used a hard-hitting speech in Madrid to single out eurozone nations over what he attacked as an inadequate response.
The broadside from the IMF's managing director came as fears over a protracted global recession, and political fallout, mounted after China said that its factories' output registered the weakest growth in almost a decade last month.
Nine in ten emails are now spam with an estimated 200bn junk mail messages a day clogging up the internet, according to a new report by networking and security giant Cisco.
The US is the single biggest source of spam, accounting for 17.2 per cent of junk mail. Other big offenders include Turkey (9.2 per cent), Russia (8 per cent), Canada (4.7 per cent), Brazil (4.1 per cent), India (3.5 per cent), South Korea (3.3 per cent), Germany and the UK (2.9 per cent each). ...
The latest 2008 edition of Cisco's annual security report notes a 90 percent growth in threats stemming from legitimate domains, nearly double that recorded in 2007. Numerous mainstream websites were loaded with iFrames, malicious scripts that redirect visitors to malware-downloading sites.
The compromise of legitimate domains is all part of the bigger picture of increasingly sophisticated attacks which these days are usually tied to cybercrooks looking to turn a fast buck, rather than teenagers looking to make a name for themselves.
The eye-popping scale of what is being billed as the world's largest swindle became apparent yesterday as wealthy investors and banks around the world emerged as the victims of Bernard L. Madoff. ...
Banks and investors around the globe announced probable losses of $19.5 billion in aggregate, although Mr Madoff has said that the figure could go as high as $50 billion.
Wall Street was still trying to digest the unprecedented scale of the fraud, news of which broke last week when the FBI announced that Mr Madoff, a pillar of New York society and a former chairman of the Nasdaq share market, had been arrested and charged. What had taken Mr Madoff years to set up had collapsed in less than three months.
[It is a little unnerving that George W. Bush's Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings (great name!) has praised the guy, Arne Duncan, as a "kindred spirit." — Harkavy]
Politics corroded Bush administration decisions on protecting endangered species nationwide, federal investigators have concluded in a sweeping new report.
Former Interior Department official Julie MacDonald frequently bullied career scientists to reduce species protections, the Interior Department investigators found.
Wall Street financier Bernard L. Madoff's alleged $50-billion Ponzi scheme appears to have extended deeply into Southern California's Jewish community, with millions of dollars in losses tallied Monday by charitable organizations, Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and a foundation bankrolled by director Steven Spielberg. ...
The more than 30 organizations and individuals around the world identified so far as victims of the alleged deception are a diverse lot. But the disclosures by Southland Jewish organizations suggest a so-called affinity scam, in which members of a perpetrator's ethnic or religious group are targeted.
Conservation organizations are asking President-elect Barack Obama to reverse the Bush administration's efforts to speed oil shale development in western Colorado, eastern Utah and southern Wyoming.
Twenty-one local, regional and national organizations are asking the incoming administration to withdraw the Bush administration's last-minute rules governing oil shale development and wait until after the results of a research and development program are known.
They accuse the Bush administration of "rushing development of a commercial oil shale leasing program in a manner that solely benefits industry -- at the expense of taxpayers and sound policy." ...
Environmentalists are looking to the Obama administration to be a closer ally on their issues than the Bush administration, which they criticized for rolling back protections for public lands and easing energy exploration.
They have been asking Obama's transition team to reexamine a range of public lands issues, from drilling on the Roan Plateau to protections for roadless areas.
Desperate after a season of utter failure from their bullpen bailout corps, the Mets have traded for J.J. Putz.
It's not our fault that he pronounces his name "puts." This is New York City. Maybe he's not a jerk, but P-U-T-Z is "putz."
And the former Seattle relief pitcher's numbers back that up. He'll make $5 million in 2009 and — while the city will be suffering through a full-on depression in 2010 — he'll rake in $8.6 million.
The guy pitched 46 innings last season, so at that rate the Mets will be paying him about $100,000 an inning.
That makes him Putz with a capital P.
There could be a bright side to this deal. Now that he's a Met, stores will carry New York baseball jerseys adorned with his name. If Bloomberg wanted to do something other than try to make us stop smoking, he could require any Wall Street execs whose companies are receiving bailout money to wear those "PUTZ" jerseys.
More than 17,000 students in at least 42 schools in the poorest sections of the Bronx lack library access due to budget cuts and overcrowding, the Daily News has found.
Now 40 brothels in [the small Czech town Dubi] have shrunk to just four — the others have turned into golf shops or goulash restaurants.
"Two or three years ago, we would get 1,000 men coming here for sex on a Friday night, which is a lot for a town of 8,000 people," said Mayor Petr Pipal. "The one good thing about the economic crisis is that it has impacted so severely on the sex trade."
Jan-Phillip Buergermann, a brothel owner in Frankfurt, said: "I have offered free Viagra, free porn and cut the rates of the girls by 40 per cent, but business is down 45 per cent — it's really terrible."
A Bronx father defending his stepdaughter's honor was shot to death by a plainclothes cop after he ignored repeated orders to freeze and came at the officer with a raised baseball bat, the NYPD said yesterday.
The wife and stepdaughter of victim Alex Figueroa, 40, witnessed the bloodshed Tuesday night and disputed the police account, saying ...
A 40-year-old woman is suing a Croatian TV station after it filmed her in public and then featured her in a documentary about obesity. Gordana Knezic was shopping in Zagreb and did not know that she was being filmed, Ananova reports.
Move over, Client No. 9. The capital has a new man of mystery: Senate Candidate 5.
Not since Eliot Spitzer did his business at the Mayflower Hotel has there been so much excitement over an unnamed person in a federal criminal case. Client 9 may have paid for sex, but Candidate 5 was willing to pay for a Senate seat -- or so claimed Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, according to the feds.
The guessing game didn't last very long yesterday before Candidate 5 more or less outed himself. ...
The son of the civil rights leader performed all the usual rituals for a man suddenly in the middle of a scandal. He professed his innocence ("I am not a target of the investigation"), his humanity (he choked up while speaking of a supportive text message from his sister), his willingness to cooperate with "the hardworking men and women of the United States attorney's office," and, of course, his refusal to take questions on advice of counsel.
U.S. Special Forces troops in southeastern Afghanistan killed six Afghan policemen and wounded 13 Wednesday in an incident that Afghan and U.S. officials said was a case of mistaken identity.
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