Insider Trading, John Boehner and The STOCK Act Travesty

by Nomad

Even though insider trading is a serious crime, until Obama, government officials were immune from prosecution.

New legislation was supposed to eliminate this oversight and it was supposed to be a major step in the right direction. It didn't quite work out that way.

Investigative journalist John Vibes, writing for the Activist Post, reported recently that less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market.

According to Vibes' sources, many top government officials and staff were given advance knowledge that market was about to melt down in secret meetings with the Fed and the Treasury Department. (For the full story, click on this link.)
With this information, they engaged in insider trading.

It was revealed that Senator Shelley Capito and her husband sold $350,000 worth of Citigroup stock at $83 per share, just one day before the stock dropped to $64 per share. Another shady trader was Congressman Jim Moran, who had his biggest trading day of the year days after the secret meeting, sellings stock in nearly 100 different companies.

Two weeks is a lot of advanced warning. In Washington, as the collapse approached, politicians on both sides were more interested in saving their own skins than protecting the citizens. 

Who Was and Wasn't Above the Law

However, the most amazing part of this tale is that, despite this use of privileged information for private benefit or at least, safeguarding, no laws were actually broken. 

Thomas Edison, Inventor and Religious Skeptic

by Nomad

Elderly Blind Man Wins Lawsuit in Police Brutality Case

by Nomad

(Reprinted from Copblock.org.)

On Friday, a federal jury ruled in favor of an elderly blind man who had been assaulted by a Denver police officer. Philip White was awarded  $400,000, which consisted of $100,000 in compensatory damages and $300,000 in punitive damages.

The full story makes pretty grim reading.

Blind Man Wins Lawsuit After Cop Slams Head Into Counter

An elderly blind man that had his head slammed into a counter by a Denver Police officer after asking him to allow him to feel his badge to prove he was a cop, won an excessive force lawsuit against the department on Friday.

80-year-old Philip White, who is a retired school administrator with a Master Degree in Education, was at a downtown Greyhound Bus Terminal in Denver on May 22, 2012.

He was attempting to board a bus in order to go to Vail where he was to take a van to his home in Eagle – but was told the bus was full.

Hacker Group Anonymous to Release Names of 1000 KKK Members Next Month

by Nomad

The hacker group Anonymous recently issued an announcement that it would reveal the identities of some 1000 members of the white supremacist organization, the KKK next month. The announcement read:

“After closely observing so many of you for so very long, we feel confident that applying transparency to your organizational cells is the right, just, appropriate and only course of action.”

Anonymous plans to reveal names of about 1,000 Ku Klux Klan members

Why Can't We All Just Get Along?: Speaker Ryan's Hopeless Dream of GOP Solidarity

by Nomad

Newly-crowned Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan has his work cut out for him. The real question is how long the  ultra-conservative minority will give him before the daggers come out of their togas. 

A few days ago, Paul Ryan became the 62nd Speaker of the House of Representatives, following behind weepy John Boehner. The 45-year-old Wisconsin Republican Ryan seemed less than enthusiastic about taking the position and even laid down certain conditions before considering it.

If Ryan wasn't dancing a jig, then that's not much of a surprise. His predecessor was repeatedly left dangling in the wind by the fringe Tea Party who took every opportunity to undermine his authority and scuttle whatever hard-won legislative deal he arranged with the president.

Compromise was an anathema to the ultra-conservatives and that made any kind of deal, regardless of who gave up what and what was gained, utterly hopeless.

Nothing has changed on that front and Ryan is fooling himself if he thinks his charm will calm the roaring beast in the den. In the vote for the Speaker post, Ryan received 200 out of 247 votes, dissent coming mainly from the radical right wing subminority, the House Freedom Caucus.