Posts Tagged ‘phony’
Did you know – that Ted Cruz is a dirty syrup-guzzler?
Jon Stewart rocks!
It will be nothing but fun to watch the Birthers who ran all their Trumped-up blather over a non-white Democrat born in Hawaii running for president. Even worse – winning.
Now, they get to flip-flop when the same silly questions on presidential eligibility are asked of their favorite white Republican Kool Aid Party Kandidate – born in Calgary.
Doctor caught using prosthetic fingers to clock in for colleagues
A Brazilian doctor faces charges of fraud after being caught on camera using silicone fingers to sign in for work for absent colleagues, police say.
Thaune Nunes Ferreira, 29, was arrested on Sunday for using prosthetic fingers to fool the biometric employee attendance device used at the hospital where she works near Sao Paulo.
She is accused of covering up the absence of six colleagues…
The doctor was arrested by the local police following a two-week investigation in the town of Ferraz de Vasconcelos, and was released on Sunday.
Police said she had six silicone fingers with her at the time of her arrest, three of which have already been identified as bearing the fingerprints of co-workers…
Brazil’s ministry of health has said it will launch an inquiry of its own into the local hospital.
The town’s mayor, Acir Fillo says that the police investigation showed that some 300 public employees in the town, whom he described as “an army of ghosts“, had been receiving pay without going to work.
Wow! A couple of decades ago, this would have been a silly French movie. Now, modern science comes to the aid of phonies on the payroll.
Federal Court in Oz rules S&P credit ratings misled investors
Australia’s Federal Court has ruled that credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) misled investors before the global financial crisis.
S&P gave its safest credit rating, AAA, to complex and risky securities, which later lost most of their value.
In what is regarded as a landmark ruling, the court ordered S&P and the bank which arranged the product, ABN Amro, to pay damages to investors…
The ruling is the first of its kind on a rating agency’s liability for investors’ losses.
Federal Court Justice Jayne Jagot said that both S&P and ABN Amro were “misleading and deceptive” in the rating of two structured debt issues in 2006, which she agreed were “grotesquely complicated”.
She said the agency had published false information and given “negligent misrepresentations” to potential investors about the riskiness of two financial products…
The judge was also critical of the actions of ABN Amro, saying it was “knowingly concerned” in S&P’s misleading and deceptive conduct, and used the AAA rating on its products to denote a reliability that it knew was not accurate…
The case was brought against S&P and ABN Amro Bank by several Australian local governments which lost millions when the value of the investments was virtually wiped out during the financial crisis.
Judge Jagot said S&P and ABN Amro would have to pay 30 million Australian dollars in damages to the authorities.
Overdue. The sort of criminal proceeding which should be brought in the United States against all the rating agencies. Anyone in the market for a spell learns they are a joke; but, many covenants exist in pension plans and government agencies requiring these ratings as part of a borrowing or investing scheme.
The ratings companies were a critical part of the phony derivatives market that built the real estate bubble that led to the Great recession. Of course, they are no less likely to admit to their guilt than the politicians who built-in the disaster by making certain there was no real oversight of these investments.
New genetic disease infects Republicans
There’s a lot of chatter about the new word debuted by Obama today — “Romnesia” — which is meant to describe Mitt’s tendency to forget about, contradict or evade his own positions on a host of issues. Here’s the “Romnesia” riff Obama delivered in Virginia today:
Obama runs through Mitt’s “Romnesia” on a range of issues — equal pay, contraception, abortion, tax cuts for the rich, etc. — and then ends on a joke. He says the good news is that Mitt’s “Romnesia” can be cured — thanks to Obamacare, which guarantees coverage to people with preexisting conditions…
Romney held extreme positions to get through the primary, then flip flopped away from them to get through the general election, but can be expected as president to honor the extreme positions he originally took, since his base won’t let him do otherwise. There’s nothing contradictory in pointing all that out. However, painting Romney as a flip flopper does risk driving home the idea that Romney never really believed in the exreme positions he adopted and is a moderate at heart.
The new “Romnesia” riff can be seen as an answer to this. There’s no need to choose between “extremist” and “flip flopper.” Romney is simply a weasel.
I’ll take weasels – or the ferrets who live in tunnels under my front yard – over politicians like Romney, any day. They may be aggressive carnivores, scary to prey appropriate to their size and nature; but, Romney takes Brylcreem image onto the battlefield of ideas like a phony ambulance with a big Red Cross on the side and white phosphorus flame throwers mounted behind a sliding panel.
We’re supposed to believe that in his heart he’s just a traditional American conservative who really cares about us ordinary folk. When the reality is that he’s greedy money-sucker whose only allegiance is to dollars and gold. He doesn’t care who gets screwed for him to profit. He doesn’t even care which country’s banks get to hide his money.
CNN chief Jim Walton to leave crap network
Tony Harris and Lucia Newman still delivering real TV journalism
CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton said on Friday he is leaving the once-dominant cable news network, which has struggled in the ratings race in recent years.
Phil Kent, chief executive of Turner Broadcasting, will begin a search for a new president, the network said…”CNN needs new thinking. That starts with a new leader who brings a different perspective, different experiences and a new plan,” said Walton, 54, president since 2003.
CNN, founded in 1980 and now owned by Time Warner Inc, has tried to hold the middle ground in its news coverage, a position that some blame for its ratings erosion, while ratings have risen for competitors Fox News and MSNBC, which blend news with opinion and political commentary…
The problems run deeper than that statement. Fox blends crappy conservative news with rightwing opinion. MSNBC blends straight-up news with opinion that runs from liberal to somewhat progressive. CNN has been stuck with management that considers news only from the perspective of entertainment. That works on the Right. Not in the independent middle or the Left. Real content is still key.
One positive for CNN under Walton’s stewardship has been its financial performance; the network is highly profitable. This year, CNN is on track to post record operating profit of $600 million.
“When Jim Walton assumed the presidency of CNN in 2003, it was underperforming and earnings were in serious decline,” said Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes in a statement. “Since then, he and CNN have tripled earnings, doubled margin and delivered annual growth of 15 percent.”
Since the bottom line – short term – is all that concerns entertainment industry types like Time-Warner I don’t see any likelihood of CNN returning to being a real news source.
The funny thing is that CNN online news has kept to the standard. They’re one of the sources worthwhile blogging. The TV entertainment types got rid of real news staff and concentrated more on personalities, flash and noise. The best of the TV news staff went to NPR, Aljazeera, BBC World.
The entertainment blather bumped numbers for a while – imitating Fox – but, viewers who want real content migrated away to the Internet. Cable and satellite networks are no more courageous than CNN so real competitors like BBC World and Aljazeera have limited distribution here in the United States. At least Aljazeera is available 24/7 via their app – and my AppleTV via AirPlay puts it live up on the living room TV set any time of the day.
Iowa broker admits 20-year fraud — will regulators admit they didn’t do their job?
In the dramatic conclusion to a week-long saga that has shaken trader confidence in the trillion-dollar U.S. futures markets, authorities released parts of a detailed statement in which one of the industry’s best-known veterans explained how he used little more than a rented P.O. Box, Photoshop and inkjet printers to dupe regulators in a more than $100 million scheme.
FBI agents arrested Russell Wasendorf Sr, 64, at the Iowa City hospital where he has been since trying to commit suicide on Monday. He was charged with making false statements to regulators, but prosecutors said they would seek more charges. He faces “decades in prison”…
In the signed statement, left along with a suicide note and released as part of the criminal complaint, Wasendorf said he began forging bank documents after the business he built from his basement risked failing without additional capital. The timeline suggests his deceit lasted almost the entire life of his brokerage…
“I guess my ego was too big to admit failure. So I cheated,” the note said. It was discovered on Monday in his car outside the company’s new Iowa headquarters, where Wasendorf had tried to kill himself by funneling in tailpipe exhaust.
The arrest ends much of the mystery that has enveloped the futures industry this week. But it will not ease the pain of betrayal in the small Iowa town that Wasendorf made his corporate home in 2009, nor the anger of a financial industry still smarting from the failure of rival brokerage MF Global…
Yet he also wrote in almost boastful detail about the “blunt authority” that allowed him to control the flow of documents into the company; how he used a simple post office box to trick “unquestioning” regulators; and his skill in turning out forged bank statements within hours that “no one suspected.”
First – convict this sleazy thug. He is a crook and shouldn’t be treated differently from any other crook just because he wears thousand-dollar suits.
Second – force regulators to do the job they are paid to do. Snoop, question, evaluate according to industry and government standards. This is part of what the word “govern” means.
Wasendorf’s note about “unquestioning” regulators is significant. No differant from anything admitted by Bernie Madoff – or the few Enron officials who eventually admitted guilt. Getting away with a crime is always made easier by bureaucrats who don’t perform the tasks they’re paid for.
The usual political leeches, conservative politicians who blather of free markets and the glories of enterprise will stamp their patent leather shoes and try to bring a halt to more government regulation. That’s what you get, folks, when you don’t do your own jobs. More oversight. Try taking responsibility for the personal corruption that inspired a thoroughly ordinary thief.
Third – throw away the key.
Phony dying bride ordered to repay those she swindled
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
A New York bride who faked having terminal cancer to swindle well-wishers into funding her dream wedding and honeymoon to the Caribbean on Wednesday was ordered to repay more than $13,000 to her victims…
Jessica Vega, 25, pleaded guilty last month to fraud and forgery charges for deceiving people in the Hudson Valley area of New York into thinking she had only a few months to live, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said. Moved by her tale, individuals and businesses donated thousands of dollars to pay for her wedding in May 2010 and her honeymoon in Aruba.
Her scheme unraveled after her husband, Michael O’Connell, contacted the Times Herald-Record in Orange County to say his bride had faked her illness. He was not charged, and the couple have since divorced, although the Times Herald-Record reported he was there to pick her up from jail on Wednesday.
“To prey on people’s emotions by pretending to have a terminal illness is unconscionable,” Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said in a statement. “I am pleased that the community members, who felt so compelled to generously help a neighbor in need, will be given back their hard-earned money.”
Besides repaying $13,368.48 to her victims, Vega was sentenced to time already served in jail, must do 300 hours of community service and serve five years on probation. She spent eight weeks in jail before her release on Wednesday.
I hope her community service is dedicated to those truly stricken with life-threatening illness.
Newt Gingrich’s healthcare think tank is like the rest of Republican ideology — Bankrupt!
A healthcare think tank founded by Newt Gingrich has filed for bankruptcy, piling further humiliation on the Republican presidential hopeful following the virtual collapse of his campaign.
In the interim between resigning as Speaker of the House in 1998 and announcing his bid for the presidency last year, Mr Gingrich set up a number of businesses, including the Gingrich Group, a healthcare advisory company.
Records show that that the business, which was at the heart of a collection of Gingrich-run firms referred to as ‘Newt, Inc.’, filed for bankruptcy in Atlanta on Wednesday. The company, also known as the Centre for Health Transformation, owed debts of between $1 million and $10 million to a group of fewer than 100 creditors…
Stefan Passantino, a lawyer for Mr Gingrich’s campaign, said the financial collapse did not happen while the candidate was in charge and would not harm his presidential ambitions.
“If anything, it shows the importance of his leadership while he was there,” he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Give me a break!
In reality, Mr Gingrich’s campaign has all but surrendered with the former Speaker rarely venturing far beyond the television studios and the Washington DC area.
His phony fronts for lobbying are as worthless as the lies he told of advising Congress and corporations about history. Gingrich’s understanding of history, his “dedication” to providing improvements in American healthcare are constructs designed to look programmatic – and serve only one purpose: to enrich the corporations that profit from providing healthcare. Regardless of the quality and true value of that product.
FBI Islamic training materials gave the OK to infringe on civil rights
Dick Durbin
Training materials used by the FBI for dealing with American Muslims and other Islamic communities have advised agents they can break the law and impinge on some of their targets’ civil rights.
The instructions were contained in confidential materials reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of an internal FBI probe into what sort of training agents were exposed to when dealing with Islam…
Though that material has not been published – and senate staffers were not allowed to keep copies – committee member Senator Dick Durbin has revealed some of its contents in a letter written to FBI director Robert Mueller.
In the letter – first revealed by the Danger Room blog on wired.com – Durbin describes one slide that read: “Under certain circumstances, the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law and impinge on freedoms of others.”
That comment is sure to anger civil liberties groups and Muslim community organisations who have long complained that their community has been subject to undue harassment and racial profiling by law enforcement.
It should also anger any American citizen who believes our Constitution is worth defending.
Phony pharmacies tied to price gouging drug wholesalers
Rep. Elijah Cummings [D-MD]
Lawmakers are investigating three shadowy pharmacies in Maryland and North Carolina for diverting critical but scarce drugs from patients to wholesalers, who are then able to resell the medicine at sometimes big markups.
Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, began a probe in October to discover why certain companies were selling cancer drugs at more than a hundred times their normal cost.
Shortages of hundreds of drugs including cisplatin, a highly effective treatment for testicular cancer, and fluorouracil for colon and other cancers have helped create a lucrative shadow market…
According to preliminary details of Cummings’ investigation, made public on Wednesday, some wholesalers opened their own sham pharmacies to obtain drugs in short supply and re-sell them. One wholesaler increased the price tenfold from the pharmacy cost.
“It’s shocking to the conscience that anyone because of their greed would deny medicines to patients, who are in many instances in critical condition,” Cummings said in an interview. “If it’s not illegal, we need to make it illegal…”
Most of the nation’s drug supply passes from manufacturers like Hospira Inc and Teva Pharmaceuticals to three leading wholesalers – AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp – who distribute them to doctors, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies.
Smaller distributors help fill in the gaps in areas where larger companies may not operate or cannot meet the full demand. In recent years, a new crop of small players has surfaced, as the problem of drug shortages has worsened.
“Any time there’s a severe shortage of some critically needed good, invariably there are going to be folks who seek to exploit that,” said Jay Campbell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy.
The sleaziest of the profiteers they’ve uncovered – so far – was Jessica Hoppe, the president of a drug wholesaler called International Pharmaceuticals. State regulators discovered Hoppe operated the pharmacy from her wholesale office in Durham, North Carolina.
Cripes. How and why would the Federal Trade Commission need new regulations to deal with hustlers like this?
Holler at your Congress-critter to support Bernie Sanders' bill to 
