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SEC staffer raised warnings on Madoff in 2004

post from AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth on 02 July 2009 07:54:00 AM. © AMERICAblog News| A great nation deserves the truth

There is so much more to the Madoff story that we don't know about yet. The family relations at the SEC are certainly raising eyebrows but so are the stories of 1000% returns. More charges are expected soon. Washington Post:

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't add up and suggesting a set of questions to ask his firm, documents show. Several of these questions directly challenged Madoff activities that much later turned out to be elements of his massive fraud.

But with the agency under pressure to look for wrongdoing in the mutual fund industry, she wasn't able to continue pursuing Madoff, according to documents and two people familiar with the investigation, and her team soon concluded its work on the probe.

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case.

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ings-on-madoff.html

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Goodbye Mark Sanford

post from MyDD on 02 July 2009 07:51:56 AM. © MyDD

I have tried to stay away from the Mark Sanford story as best I could over the past week, but with the South Carolina Governor continually stepping in it, it's getting increasingly hard. Looking through the latest news, it's difficult to see how Sanford[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mydd/~3/8rlEIv7R27s/50852

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Early Morning Swim

post from Firedoglake on 02 July 2009 07:45:45 AM. © Firedoglake

Sounds like a whackjob to me.But...but...Helen Thomas is a liberal with BDS. White House says questions were legit.Sign of the times. Another awesome benchmark for W.Where are the jobs going to come from? The WaPost let the crazy near a computer[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/07/02/early-morning-swim-163/

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Thursday Open Thread

post from My Left Wing - Front Page on 02 July 2009 07:30:00 AM. © My Left Wing - Front Page

If the First Amendment means anything,
it means that a state has no business telling a man,
sitting alone in his house,
what books he may read or what films he may watch.

Thurgood Marshall,

Born July 2, 1908
None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.

I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

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http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=25119

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Docudharma Times Thursday July 2

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 02 July 2009 07:30:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

what I'm saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance, to make America energy independent, to save your jobs and create new ones.[...]

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/_dML3WajdcI/docudharma-times-thursda
y-july-2

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Two Missiles Fired By N. Korea

post from Where's the Outrage? on 02 July 2009 07:16:18 AM. © Where's the Outrage?

As warned, North Korea has fired more missiles off the coast. According to the Associated Press,[...]

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http://www.whereistheoutrage.net/wordpress/2009/07/02/two-missiles-fired-by-n-kor
ea/

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Is Mike Huckabee the New Jesse Jackson

post from FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right on 02 July 2009 07:05:00 AM. © FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right

Michael Barone has a fascinating insight that, dare I say, I'd never really contemplated before.

Huckabee or a candidate with a similar profile can corner the votes of evangelical and born-again Christians and, starting with Iowa, can round up a significant number of delegates. It is conceivable that such a candidate, with the help of Republicans? winner-take-all delegate allocation rules and if he continues to face multiple opponents, could accumulate enough delegates to win the nomination. But otherwise he is in the position of Jesse Jackson in the 1984 and 1988 Democratic contests, able to run a significant second or third thanks to strong support from one of the party?s core constituencies but unable to run first.

Does this analogy hold water? I've always tended to think of Huckabee, who has more populist views on economics than most other Republicans, as a candidate who had a fair amount of crossover appeal. But Huckabee may be crossing over too far -- appealing to independents and some conservative Democrats, but not necessarily the non-evangelical part of the Republican primary electorate.

Here is how the major Republican candidates split the vote last year before Mitt Romney dropped out of the race after Super Tuesday:

Evangelicals make up a larger share of the Republican primary electorate -- about 40 percent, than black voters do of the Democratic primary electorate -- about 20 percent. But Huckabee was nowhere near as dominant among evangelicals as candidates like Jackson and Barack Obama have been among blacks He won the evangelical vote in about half the states that voted through Super Tuesday; almost all of those wins were in the South. But John McCain and Mitt Romney won the evangelical vote in other states, and Huckabee wound up with only about 37 percent of the evangelical vote overall (weighting for the approximate number of evangelicals in each state). As Barone suggests, a Republican candidate could potentially win the nomination if he absolutely ran the table among evangelicals, even if he had little support elsewhere. But Huckabee didn't do that in 2008, and with Sarah Palin a probable entrant in the primary next time around, the going isn't likely to be much easier in 2012.

Meanwhile, Huckabee won only 8 percent of non-evangelical voters, which is getting into Ron Paul territory. Could Huckabee make inroads with this group instead? He'll probably have a larger media profile in 2012 than he did last year, which could help to make up for what might be chronic deficiencies in fundraising and establishment support. But this is likely to be a tricky road to navigate: the Republicans, so far, seem more inclined to play up their fiscal conservatism than their social conservatism, and Huckabee is swimming in somewhat the opposite direction.

Some months ago, I had a smart Republican strategist tell me that he thought that Huckabee might skip 2012 to focus on 2016 instead. Since that time, 2012 has started to look a bit more winnable for the Republicans. But it nevertheless might be tough for Huckabee to squeeze out enough votes with Palin competing on his right and Romney and some Charlie Crist alternative on his left (if he's smart, Romney will run somewhat to the left, especially if Palin enters, endeavoring to pick up big delegate prizes in some winner-take-all states like California).

Huckabee is not like Jackson in this way: there are circumstances where one can at least imagine him being his party's nominee, which was probably never the case for Jackson. But I'm not sure if those circumstances are shaping up all that well for him in 2012. Moreover, I suspect any Republican candidate who runs and loses for the second time in 2012 (this would include Palin, since she was on John McCain's ticket, as well as Romney and Huckabee) will be severely damaged going forward and will risk being tarred with perennial candidate label so often applied to folks like John Edwards (as well as to Jackson himself). So it might be indeed be smart for Huckabee to go into political hibernation in 2012 and hope that Romney and Palin have managed to eliminate themselves, or one another, once's he's woken up.

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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/07/is-mike-huckabee-new-jesse-jackson.html

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What Happened Yesterday

post from Talking Points Memo on 02 July 2009 07:00:00 AM. © Talking Points Memo

Yesterday in 100 Seconds: Soul Mates[...]

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esterday_107.php

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Presented By:

[...]

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California: IOUs and Meltdown

It's been coming a long time. We knew in December that California would start issuing IOUs instead of cash in February, which they mostly avoided by moving the budget gap into the following fiscal year, which began yesterday. After days and nights of negotiations, today the IOUs begin in earnest. Here it is:

Chiang was set to print 28,742 IOUs starting at 2 p.m., said Garin Casaleggio, a spokesman for the controller. The initial warrants, which total $53.3 million, will go primarily to people who are expecting state income-tax refunds.

In addition, IOUs will go to contractors and the neediest of Californians. Interest could hit $3 billion over 30 years. That is, when you get an IOU from the state, they have to pay you interest. What can you do with them? Bank of America and Golden 1 Credit Union will accept the scrip, at least through 10 July.

Who gets actual cash money?

The state is constitutionally required to pay schools and bond holders first. State employees, retirees and businesses that provide Medi-Cal and In-Home Supportive Services also must be paid in cash.

Those state employees already get two unpaid furlough days a month, and it looks like it will rise to three, which would be a effectual 14% salary cut.

In other bad fiscal news for the state:

A state appeals court panel clouded the budget picture further Tuesday with a ruling that could cost the state nearly $3.5 billion. The judges in the 3rd District Court of Appeal said that since 2007, gasoline-tax funds intended for mass transportation had been improperly diverted by the governor and lawmakers to cover other expenses.

If you want to get angry at these legislators who cannot do their jobs, take a look at this list of cars that California bought for their legislators which cost over $40,000. Each.