Judge rules Madoff can continue house arrest

Creating $50 billion Ponzi schemes that go bust aren't as serious as they used to be, apparently. To be fair to the judge, he is asking that a the self-confessed Madoff writes up a list of "valuable portable items" so he doesn't try again to send them off to friends and family while leaving investors with pennies. I hope that he gets to keep the fluffy pillows in his penthouse apartment that requires $100 million in assets to be allowed in the building. Does losing $50 billion count?

A judge ruled Monday that Bernard Madoff would not be sent to jail pending trial, declining a request by prosecutors to revoke the bail of the financier accused in a $50 billion fraud case.

Madoff has been under house arrest, with electronic monitoring, since posting $10 million bail against his $7 million Manhattan apartment, where he lives with his wife, and against his wife's homes in Montauk, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Ellis of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York added conditions to the bail, including "restrictions of transfer of all property whatsoever, wherever located" belonging to Madoff.

The judge also ruled that Madoff compile an inventory of all "valuable portable items" in his Manhattan home. The judge required that a security company check the inventory every two weeks and inspect outgoing mail.

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Online sales taxes coming?

NOTE FROM JOHN: What idiot came up with the notion that we should increase taxes on consumers during a recession that's teetering on becoming much worse? Yes, let's make demand even LESS. Congress ought to get involved and put a stop to this now.

What a headache this is going to be if sales taxes are going to be added. From my own experiences in Europe, where each country has its own VAT (which is always expensive), adding in sales taxes for online purchases is going to be a nightmare. For states that think it's going to bring them riches, the numbers are so far off, it's likely to cost everyone more money than it's worth. Big states with big teams of people and big budgets will perhaps figure it out but for small states and local taxes, I don't see them figuring this out easily.

One of the most aggressive states, New York, is being sued by Amazon.com Inc. over a new requirement that online companies must collect taxes on shipments to New York residents, even if the companies are located elsewhere. New York's governor also wants to tax ''Taxman'' covers and other songs downloaded from Internet services like iTunes.

The amount of money at stake nationwide is unclear; online sales were expected to make up about 8 percent of all retail sales in 2008 and total $204 billion, according to Forrester Research. This is up from $175 billion in 2007.

Based on that 2008 figure, Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru says her rough estimate is that if Web retailers had to collect taxes on all sales to consumers, it could generate $3 billion in new revenue for governments.

It's uncertain how much more could come as well from unpaid sales taxes on Internet transactions between businesses. But even with both kinds of taxes available, state budgets would need more help. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the states' budget gaps in the current fiscal year will total $89 billion.

Collecting online sales taxes is not as simple as it might sound. A nationwide Internet business faces thousands of tax-collecting jurisdictions -- states, counties and cities -- and tangled rules about how various products are taxed.

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Reply-all e-mail storm hits State

We've all been there. Someone sends an email to a slew of people, cc's them all instead of bcc'g them, then more than a few brainiacs decide to reply to the entire list, everyone on the list, perhaps hundreds of people, to complain that they want to be taken off the list. Then the replies hit replies, and pretty soon, it's a mess. Well, it seems this rather low-tech threat nearly brought down the State Dept. computers. Kind of fascinating.

Officials said the storm started when some diplomats used the 'reply all' function to respond to a blank e-mail sent recently to many people on the department's global address list.

Most demanded to be removed from the list while others used 'reply all' to tell their co-workers, in often less than diplomatic language, to stop responding to the entire group, the officials said.

Some then compounded the problem by trying to recall their initial replies, which generated another round of messages to the group, they said.

Ah yes, America's finest. Read the rest of this post...

Mike Huckabee says he's not pro oral sex, among other acts

Huckabee just said on TV that he's not "pro-sodomy." Well, sodomy is oral and anal sex. So, if Huckabee wants to tell the entire nation on television what sex acts he is and isn't in favor of, all I have to say is - really? Mike Huckabee is not, never has been, a fan of oral sex? Not that any of us really needed to know, but now that Huckabee has opened the door, er, zipper, on this one, I do hope someone fact-checks him. Read the rest of this post...

Obama will issue executive order, first week in office, to close Gitmo

It takes time to make these kind of changes, but issuing an executive order week-one is far more than a simple promise. It's action. This is good. It's also, I believe, a sign that Team Obama is starting to realize that it needs to reach out to the left, and not just the right.

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to issue an executive order his first week in office — and perhaps his first day — to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to two presidential transition team advisers.

It's unlikely the detention facility at the Navy base in Cuba will be closed anytime soon. In an interview last weekend, Obama said it would be "a challenge" to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.

But the order, which one adviser said could be issued as early as Jan. 20, would start the process of deciding what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held there. Most have not been charged with a crime.

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24 envy

Does it make me a bad liberal that I've been waiting two years for 24 to come back on TV? Even worse, I kind of wanted Jack Bauer to follow through with the pen last night. The thing is, I suspect a lot of people don't object to torturing "bad people," if there's a massive and imminent threat and you know the guy can stop it. The problem is, define "bad," and just as important, how do you know you've got the right guy? It's easy to say you're only for torturing "terrorists" - but how do you know the guy you caught is really a terrorist if you don't even put him on trial? And it's even easier to say "some mistakes are an acceptable risk," until the mistake is your mom, dad, son or daughter.

The example we were given in law school was something along the lines of "a nuclear bomb is set to go off in Manhattan, millions of people will be killed, you've got the one guy in your possession who you know for a fact knows where the bomb is - do you torture it out of him?" The problem is, putting aside the discussion of whether torture even works (much evidence shows that people will say anything, usually a lie, to stop from being tortured), how many times are we really in a scenario where millions of lives are imminently at stake, and how many times are we truly 100% certain that the guy in custody is guilty? Hell, Bush and company are so unsure of the case they've got against the guys in Gitmo, they won't even try them in a civilian court.

I think, in the end, the 24-watcher's love of show/objection to torture can be reconciled. 24 is television. It's fiction. And, as Dr. Ruth will tell you, fantasies aren't necessarily a bad thing, even when they're "bad" on paper. The problem is when you confuse fantasy with reality, or a TV show with national security policy. Read the rest of this post...

RNC Chair Candidate Blackwell: "Homosexuality is a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed."

So is bigotry.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush FDA in trouble again

The medical community continues to think that conflict of interest does not apply to themselves and the Bush FDA was only too happy to go along with the program. How can patients trust doctors when they have become extensions of Big Pharma? Why should patient/consumers trust anything that the FDA approves when the process has been so deeply tainted? I don't really care whether the medical community likes it or not, but as a consumer, I think everyone deserves to know more about the process.

The Food and Drug Administration does almost nothing to police the financial conflicts of doctors who conduct clinical trials of drugs and medical devices in human subjects, government investigators are reporting.

Moreover, the investigators say, agency officials told them that trying to protect patients from such conflicts was not worth the effort.

In 42 percent of clinical trials, the agency did not receive forms disclosing doctors’ financial conflicts and did nothing about the problem, according to the investigation, which was conducted by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services and whose results were scheduled to be made public Monday.

In 31 percent of the trials in which the agency did receive the required forms, agency reviewers did not document that they looked at the information. And in 20 percent of the cases in which doctors revealed significant financial conflicts, neither the F.D.A. nor the sponsoring companies took any action to deal with the conflicts, the investigators found.

Karen Riley, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A, said the agency opposed reviewing doctors’ financial conflicts before trials because they represented just one possible source of bias.

A similar investigation by the inspector general last year found that the National Institutes of Health did almost nothing to police the financial conflicts of university professors who received federal money. And like their colleagues at the F.D.A., officials at the health institutes said they did not want to start doing so, that investigation found.

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Bush to write a book

From Political Wire:

The topic: "You know, I'm not quite exactly sure what it's going to be, but I'm toying with the idea of maybe describing the toughest decisions I had to make as President, and the context in which I made them."

Pepperoni or sausage? Read the rest of this post...

Obama to have gay Bishop give invocation at Sunday inaugural event. Obama official says has nothing to do with Warren controversy.

While I'm glad that Robinson will be giving an invocation, having an Obama official make clear that this is in no way to be interpreted as Obama trying to make nice is a bit counterproductive.

An Obama source said: “Robinson was in the plans before the complaints about Rick Warren. Many skeptics will read this as a direct reaction to the Warren criticism — but it’s just not so.”

Skeptics? Is that the way we now refer to the civil rights community?

Many of us interpreted this as a sign that the Obama people are starting to get it, that they understand how offended, slighted, and hurt many Obama supporters were at the Rick Warren invite. (Especially since Warren has sided with those who opposed Robinson being made Bishop because he's gay.) Making sure that we all know that this move should in no way be interpreted to suggest that Obama feels our pain is just incredibly dumb. Would it kill these guys to actually let us enjoy this inauguration? Read the rest of this post...

Joe the Plumber, and the GOP obsession with mediocrity

What is with the Republican obsession with intellectual lightweights? From Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush, Republicans have not just tolerated a decided lack of brainpower in their political icons, they've actually embraced these characters precisely because they're so "regular guy." The problem, of course, is that regular guys are great fun at a kegger, but not so great at running the free world.

Look at the GOP presidential candidates. Not all of them, but Reagan and Bush come to mind as recent candidates who weren't particularly bright, and weren't particularly adept at the day-to-day running of the country (let's face it, in his second term Reagan's lack of attention to detail unraveled much of his presidency). But Republicans loved them. They loved them because of their lack of qualifications, lack of smarts - euphemistically known as "outsider status." Same thing with our female Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin. Not just unqualified, but like W. Bush (and Quayle), kind of dumb too. But the GOP loved her, partly, it seems, because she's not quite all there. Then there's Joe the Plumber. Again - tough guy, regular guy, but not particularly bright (and politically damaged to boot). They love him too. Joe is even off being a "war correspondent" in Israel, even though he doesn't think there should be any war correspondents anywhere. Let's let the Republican hero speak for himself:

Citizens of Sderot [Israel[ "can't do normal things day to day" like wash their hair, because of the fear of Hamas' rockets, the former plumber said.

"I'm sure they're taking quick showers," he said. "I know I would."

While touring a facility of spent rockets with the head of the Government Press Office, Danny Seaman, and an official government photographer, Wurzelbacher provided smiles for the veteran journalists watching him at work.

"I have thousands of questions but I can't think of the right one," he said at the start of his interview with Seaman.

Yeah. This is the guy some Republicans want on a ticket with Sarah Palin in 2012.

The irony, of course, is that the Republican party is nowadays mostly composed of blue collar evangelicals and filthy rich businessmen. And while it's understandable that religious right voters would embrace someone like themselves (e.g., light on smarts and heavy on anger), you'd think the more educated, more cultivated, wing of the GOP would finally get fed up with being served a steady diet of dumb. At some point, these mascots of mediocrity actually have to run a country. And as we've witnessed the past eight years, dumb-and-dumber is not an effective strategy for moving America into the 21st century. Read the rest of this post...

Ohio's GOP Senator, George Voinovich, to retire

Another Republican Senator is retiring. Ohio's George Voinovich is calling it quits. This means four of the 20 Republicans who are up for reelection in 2010 aren't running. The other three are Brownback (KS), Martinez (FL) and Bond (MO).

Moving on to the good stuff, The Columbus Dispatch previews possible replacements:

Former Republican congressman Rob Portman of Cincinnati has indicated in the past that he would be interested in running for the Senate if Voinovich decided not to run. Portman, who served as U.S. trade representative and director of the Office of Management of Budget for President Bush, would be a formidable fundraiser.

Former Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who lost his seat two years ago to Democrat Sherrod Brown, could run for governor, senator or state attorney general. If DeWine opted for attorney general, the Republicans would present a strong statewide ticket of Portman for Senate and former Republican Rep. John Kasich for governor. Republican state Auditor Mary Taylor also might be interested in the Senate seat.

A number of formidable Democrats could run for Voinovich's seat, including Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and Rep. Tim Ryan of Youngstown, the latter reportedly a favorite of Gov. Ted Strickland.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner would be another possibility. But Democratic sources say party leaders would discourage her for fear of her yielding her crucial post on the state's apportionment board. That board draws new Ohio Senate and House seats.

This could be a Democratic pickup. Read the rest of this post...

Just more evidence that Bush was the worst president ever.

Now they tell us. Today's Washington Post has a brutal assessment of Bush's economic legacy. Brutally honest and based on the facts, it's further proof that this guy really was the worst president ever. He really did a number on this country:

President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges.

The number of jobs in the nation increased by about 2 percent during Bush's tenure, the most tepid growth over any eight-year span since data collection began seven decades ago. Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic output, grew at the slowest pace for a period of that length since the Truman administration. And Americans' incomes grew more slowly than in any presidency since the 1960s, other than that of Bush's father.

Bush and his aides are quick to point out that they oversaw 52 straight months of job growth in the middle of this decade, and that the economy expanded at a steady clip from 2003 to 2007. But economists, including some former advisers to Bush, say it increasingly looks as if the nation's economic expansion was driven to a large degree by the interrelated booms in the housing market, consumer spending and financial markets. Those booms, which the Bush administration encouraged with the idea of an "ownership society," have proved unsustainable.

So, Bush oversaw the "unsustainable" economy. That's quite an accomplishment. He was abetted by the GOP clowns on the Hill -- the very ones who are trying to thwart Obama's stimulus package. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Eight more days.

I keep thinking of all the things that will be different once the Bush era is finally over. Most, of course, are global. But there is one that's very local. Almost every morning, right around now, Dick Cheney's huge motorcade comes thundering down Connecticut Avenue, which is half a block from my place. It's got around 12 motorcycle cops, a bunch of police cars, several vans and a couple of big black limos. I don't have a problem with motorcades. But, every day, it was reminder that the evil one was on his way to work to further undermine our nation and our rights. I think and hope that noise and commotion will have a different feel starting next week.

So, let's get started... Read the rest of this post...

Obama is right - US needs to digitalize health care records

Yes, it's going to be expensive. Yes, it's going to take a long time. It's going to be both because US doctors have been living in the stone ages for decades and have successfully pushed back modernization for so long. In order to build a national health care solution these first steps must be taken. Having watched some of the nationalized systems in Europe (from an IT perspective) this makes sense. The UK system began talking about such a system a few decades ago and are only now implementing it and France is set to launch a large scale modernization this year.

Again, instead of trickling out $500 to people, start hiring people who will design and build such systems and get the ball rolling. People need jobs in this economy and such a project will pump a lot of money into the system. It will require new computers, data entry, IT architecture, developers, etc so it's a broad swath of workers who will be hired. Quit the excuses and get started. Now.

Here's the audacious plan: Computerize all health records within five years. The quality of health care for all Americans gets a big boost, and costs decline.

Sounds good. But it won't be easy.

In fact, many hurdles stand in the way. Only about 8% of the nation's 5,000 hospitals and 17% of its 800,000 physicians currently use the kind of common computerized record-keeping systems that Obama envisions for the whole nation. And some experts say that serious concerns about patient privacy must be addressed first. Finally, the country suffers a dearth of skilled workers necessary to build and implement the necessary technology.

"The hard part of this is that we can't just drop a computer on every doctor's desk," said Dr. David Brailer, former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who served as President Bush's health information czar from 2004 to 2006. "Getting electronic records up and running is a very technical task."

It also won't come cheap. Independent studies from Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund have shown that such a plan could cost at least $75 billion to $100 billion over the ten years they think the hospitals would need to implement program.

Read the rest of this post...

The Olympics did wonders for opening up China

Oh the lessons learned in Beijing. The only upside is that Google has been slapped by Beijing as well. If only they also took a shot at Yahoo!, the other portal who didn't mind working hand in hand with the Chinese government. Mission Accomplished.

China's ruling Communist Party is wary of threats to its grip on information and has conducted numerous censorship efforts targeting pornography, political criticism and web scams, but officials flagged tougher steps this time.

"Ninety-one websites that included pornography and vulgar content had been closed down from January 8 to 10," the state-run web portal China (http://www.china.com.cn ) said.

Bullog.cn, a Chinese blog portal with many famous bloggers, including some signatories of the pro-democracy "08 Charter", has been inaccessible since Friday.

Luo Yonghao, the founder of Bullog.cn, confirmed on his own blog that the website had been closed because of "amount of political harmful information", citing a notice from government.

The "08 Charter", issued online with the names of 303 Chinese citizens, calls for freedom of expression and association and open elections.

China's latest crackdown on Internet content targeted many big names, including Google, Microsoft's MSN and homegrown market-leading rival Baidu, for undermining public morality.

Read the rest of this post...

Republicans' sudden interest in deficit, spending

What a funny bunch. Joe wrote earlier about the Republicans' new-found interest in deficits, and I had to weigh in. The Republicans have spent years building bigger government and throwing money at any project that moved, slashing government spending along the way. As a result the government failed to provide traditional oversight including on Wall Street. Now that they have no leadership other than the Alaska Hillbillies they're once again going back to their old favorite, budget cuts. If they hadn't increased spending while slashing taxes, maybe the problems would not be as deep, but no, who needs to reflect on decades of bad policy when the party is adrift?

Brace yourselves for more silly examples of spending as opposed to the 900 pound gorilla in the room called Iraq that they'd rather you forget. As much as the Democrats love kicking obscure Democrats such as Roland Burris, maybe it's time they turn their attention to fighting back hard against Republicans or the failed Republican policies that are finding their way into the Democratic party. If the GOP wants to talk about how to get the US economy moving again, shouldn't they at least accept responsibility for the recession that we are in today? We're in this once a century recession due to the Republicans, but you would never know it from their words. Read the rest of this post...