Yes, It's Another Governor Christie Scandal!

There was a Newsweek reporter or writer or something sitting in for Norman Goldman.  And he validated one of my pet peeves.  As you know I have frequently said that when you give your money to an investment manager you are just throwing your money out the window, because most often these people don’t even manage to do as well as the financial averages, such as the Standard and Poor’s 500.  Today this guy illustrated that fact.  Governor Chris Christy is a guy we haven’t heard from much lately.  Well what he does is invests pension funds of people to whom the money is due by law when they retire- - he invests it with these expensive Wall Street managers.  And he and other governors who do the same thing, don’t even come up to the median level of state pension funds without high priced management.  This came as no surprise to me.  However Chris Christy gets a kick-back of course.  These same handpicked managers donate to his campaign and in fact worked closely during his 2012 reelection campaign.  But it goes beyond that.  Now the Republicans have a law to explicitly repeal this 2011 security and exchange commission law expressly forbidding campaign donations by investment managers.  They claim they are doing it on the grounds of “Free Speech” first amendment rights.  But the thing is, it isn’t even THEIR money.  They have a trust, a “fiduciary duty” to invest the funds of the people who entrusted the funds to him as wisely and safely as possible.  So it’s not even his decision to make whether he decides or not to exercise said “Free Speech”.  Of course now Christie is mad at this Newsweek reporter.  Christie is nothing but a two bit self serving bully, who is pretty much tempermentally unfit for ANY government office, in my opinion.  This reporter states that “government processes take time”.  Well there has already been “Time” and a lot of it.  Bridegate occurred last September.  It’s been nearly a year.  But the situation is complicated by the fact that New Jersey is among only five states where the Attorney General of the state is handpicked by the Governor, and not put up for election by the people.  But there is another scam going on, too that you know about from the Post Office pension funds.  That is, there are often requirement of very lengthly amounts- - - so you can say “The pension fund is short by X amount” when in the case of the Post Office, they require funding for the next 75 years.  Therefore when it comes time to deliver on these pensions to the retiring workers, they will say “Oh our pension fund is short; we can’t pay it”.  Often, as in the case of Ronald Reagan stealing from the Social Security trust fund to “bring down the deficit” that politicians have deliberately NOT been putting everything into these funds that the law mandates.  But I’m wondering who would vote for a politician who says “I’m a snake in the grass-  and I stole your money- but I’ve impressed right wing tea party members how “efficient” I am with government”.   I don’t see how the American people can continue to go along with this crap from politicians year after year.   But somehow they haven’t added up two and two.

In the case of the recent naked and undesguirsed overt military aggression by Russia - - you might be surprised to learn that when it comes to Vladimir Putin, some people still live in a "parrellel universe".  And Thom Hartman is one of those people.  He was talking with someone about Putin and Ukraine- - and the alleged “wrong involvement” the United States has in this situation, which seems to have undergone a news black-out.  If I knew more about it I’d blog about it, but I don’t.  All I know is that President Obama has been rather limp wristed about both the ISIS thing and now this new Soviet agression.  Allow me to use a little Rush Limbaugh mockery right now.  Because "Soviet Union' is the politically "correct" term, you know, because in Putin's mind the Soviet Union never went away.  And the mindset that the Soviet leaders of old had of the world, Putin STILL has.  It's a world he wants to bring back.  (Selah)  I didn’t see a recent posting in George Washington’s blog on the “first shooting war in Europe” since Kosovo.  Now Thom Hartman and friend are saying the Kosovo war was wrong, too, because of course the Soviets love Serbia.   So Thom Hartman is among the rights of the Putin ass kissers, and justify anything he’d do.  To hear these people talk, that Ukraine as a condition to its very existence, had to covenant that it would never adopt anything relating to Europe or NATO and this is a bucket of bogus crap, and I’m amazed it would even be proposed that nations don’t have sovereignty to make their own decisions.

On “The Big Picture” Thom Hartman took on a black man and a white woman.  They say such bogus things such as “Al Gore’s policies are taking food out of the poor because all of these poor African communities are just yearning to develop their resources, but the UN isn’t allowing them to do it”.   It boggles my mind when they have this fake sympathy for the poor.  And these two also say in response to Hartman informing “Medical costs in this country all around are down the past few years” and they respond, “Well, that’s what happens when you have medical service rationing”.   These two said they were for law and order but didn’t like Clinton’s plans to put a hundred thousand more cops on the beat.  And they didn’t like Hartman’s claim that there are so many unqualified police because they don’t pay them a decent salary, so people of quality don’t even apply”.  And of course they said that the total number of Blacks shot by cops is 101, which somehow I doubt because we see cases of that all the time just in the LA area.  Rush Limbaugh said trying to be sarcastic “Well what are these people expecting in Ferguson- - another Black shooting?”  And it turns out that’s just what happened the following week.  Most often the bring up an entirely different subject- - and don’t allow Hartman to complete one sentence.  Even some of the concessions they claim willing to make that sound a little liberal- - you know if someone asked them “Do you really believe that?” they’d say “No”.   And they roared with approval when Hartman said “Ronald Reagan undid all of the energy policies Carter instituted that would have given us energy independence by the year two thousand”.    There were other times during the morning when Hartman was talking about how the Supreme Court “Blew up all our campaign spending laws that seemed to be working so well”.  Hartman also listed the many bills that has passed the US Senate, but got filibustered by the Republicans.  These days every vote on any issue taxes sixty votes in the Senate, not the constitutionally mandated majority.  Thom said “It used to be only in area of conscience like abortion or something they would filibuster; but now it’s every bill”.   I went out in the morning for coffee and had two cups.  But basically - - it seems things are either a recent rerun, or else there is just no fresh news on anything.

I think even more disturbing to me personally when it comes to the Ferguson shooting is not the deed itself, but the way the local establishment has tried to cover it up.  But even more to the point, the way the Tea Party makes Officer Wilson a folk hero the same way they made Cliven Bundy a folk hero, or that Duck Dynesty guy, or George Zimmerman.   Their stance seems to be “Well you can’t prove he did it, and frankly- - I don’t care that you get obstructed in your search for the Truth of what really happened.  And besides even if he did it- - I really don’t care because you know these Blacks- - the guy had it coming”.   To show how bias the media is, they had an “expert guest” on whether that audio tape of the Ferguson shooting was genuine or not, so they get an LAPD officer.  That’s like electing the manager of a slaughter house as the next president of PETA.  But guess what?   He didn’t dismiss the tape out of hand.  He said he didn’t know if it was genuine or not.  But to the Media - - a Maybe means “Hell No’.  And naturally they want to hear this “expert witnesses reasoning” or at least I do.  He said “Well, you know it seems suspiciously like a prank they’d do on the Howard Stern show”.  That’s it.  No facts.  Just this “I think we’ve been Punked” and Howard Stern stuff.  In other words- - the fact we know who made the tape and where it was recorded - - and we can get sound experts in there to validate it as the same acoustics - - none of this matters.  All they can say is “Well I think it’s suspicious that this recording didn’t surface for over two weeks.”   And the way they spin words is amazing.  Instead of saying for instance “The FBI is examining the tape right now”, they will instead say “The FBI has not validated the tape” putting the whole thing in the negative.

Not to put too fine of a point on it, but just now on Eye Witness news this older couple was on vacation and they had their home well secured, just like the Police Dept recommends - against "intruders" but the police department used a battering ram to bash in the front door when they weren't home, and then proceded to trash the place- - as well as smash open other locked doors - - in search of a stolen computer.  They turned the security cameras to the ceiling "for the safety of the police" in case they were under remote surveilance by some dangerous gang ready to ambush them.  There is anther place where a black man had his house broken into by the police in the dead of night- - and the guy was in his underwear - and he was informed by the police by a gay couple that had just moved in next door that there was a "prowler" at the next house, meaning the color of his skin was wrong.  Then we have President Obama talking about the case of the police "acting stupidly" by arresting a Black man who had been locked out of his own house.  The only thing I'd have said differently- - is I'd be a whole lot diplomatic than saying "acted stupidly".  I'm sure the word Pigs would have made my way into my description somewhere.  Then there is this marine corporal who was Black, of course, who was stopped driving home one mile from his house.  When asked why he was stopped the cops just said something like "Because we feel like doing it" and the guy was roughed up.  But in the case of the right wing- - there is no point as which they will say "We agree with you in this case; you are right".   No matter how blatant or corrupt a police action the right will as with one voice say "The police are never wrong".   Instead they criticise the President for "injecting himself into a local situation".  And I DO NOT believe the statistic quoted by that "mixed" couple Hartman had on that Four Times as many Whites are gunned down unjustly as Blacks.  But let's suppose that the killing of a Black man is an excedingly Rare event by the police.  All the more important that people say "This Is An Exception".  There is no point on ANY political issue where the Right Wing says "Enough!" or "Now you're going too far" or "This crosses the line".   Remember for Rush there IS no "line" of what is fanatical and what is not.  So really to continue with the Road metaphor- - there IS no point at which it's even theoretically possible for the car to carreen off the right side of a mountain cliff, for instance.  (Selah)

I ought to at least mention the high waves of two days ago, which made the national news.  A big wave drenched a bunch of people who thought they were safe on the sand.  The waves were up to twenty feet.  One guy said they were the highest he’d seen since 1997, and another said they only get waves like that every twenty years.  Of course it was high tide, too- - and structures close to the water were impacted.  Twice Bill has turned down a peach cigarette tail end.   Our AC is still working well.   I haven’t heard any more about that Ferguson shooting audio recording.  Perhaps I can Google it.  They keep saying Thursday is football night.  Let’s check.  There is no football.  Now a USC football team member has been suspended for lying.  I guess next time it will be shooting spitballs or chewing gum during practice.   He lied about his sprained ankle, and I don’t know why and I don’t care.  It’s nothing worth starting WW III over.  It seems as if there will be a lot tougher penalties for football players guilty of domestic violence.  Several weeks ago I heard roomers of a whole new raft of player safety rules.