This week, after the United States’ unexpected victory over Ghana, Delta Airlines sent out a tweet that warranted a universal SMH:
The company’s tweet drove home one clear point: we know nothing about Africa, even though we think we do.
Maybe it’s because our first introduction to the continent as children made us think it was like this:
Read on.
Posted in Uncategorized
The U.S. Postal Service failed to observe key safeguards on a mail surveillance program with a history of civil liberties abuses, according to a new internal watchdog report that USPS managers tried to keep secret, citing security concerns.
…The Office of Inspector General audit of so-called “mail covers” — orders to record addresses or copy the outside of all mail delivered to an individual or an address — found that about 20 percent of the orders implemented for outside law enforcement agencies were not properly approved, and 13 percent were either unjustified or not correctly documented.
You can read the OIG report here.
Posted in Uncategorized
Regulators Won’t Let Congress Off Easy In Insider Trading Probe
WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission went to federal court Friday seeking to enforce subpoenas it issued to Congress, a move that sparks a high-stakes power struggle between two branches of government in a possible insider-trading case.
The SEC filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York seeking to compel the HouseWays and Means Committee and a top House health-care aide to turn over documents and information in the case.
In its court filing, the SEC said the health-care aide “may have been” the source for the information at the heart of its long-running insider-trading investigation.
In response to the filing, the court asked lawyers for the House and the congressional health-care aide, Brian Sutter, to explain to the court why they refused to comply with the subpoenas. U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe ordered representatives of the House committee and Mr. Sutter to respond by June 26 and to appear at a July 1 hearing on the matter.
In court filings, the SEC said the committee and Mr. Sutter have refused to comply with the subpoenas, arguing they were “repugnant to public policy,” vague and overly broad. According to the SEC, the House lawyers also argued that constitutional protections allow them to ignore the SEC requests.
The SEC responded in court by saying that those “objections lack merit, and the subpoenas satisfy all the requirements for enforcement.”
In a statement, the House Office of General Counsel said that SEC subpoenas “run seriously afoul of the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, and we expect to respond in due course on that ground, among others.”
Under the separation of powers provisions in the U.S. Constitution, Congress has several legal protections from unwarranted investigations by the SEC and other executive-branch agencies.
Wikileaks Exposes Super Secret, Regulation-Gutting Financial Services Pact
Embattled WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange announced Wednesday from London the publication of a secret draft text of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), a controversial global trade agreement said to make it easier for corporations to make profits and operate with impunity across borders.
The whistleblower and transparency website WikiLeaks published on Thursday the secret draft text of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, a controversial global trade agreement promoted by the United States and European Union that covers 50 countries and is opposed by global trade unions and anti-globalization activists.
Activists expect the TISA deal to promote privatization of public services in countries across the globe, and WikiLeaks said the secrecy surrounding the trade negotiations exceeds that of even the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) that has made headlines in the past year.
Demonstrations erupted in Geneva in April as diplomats met in secret for the sixth round of negotiations over TISA, which would cover international trade in a wide range of service industries ranging from finance and telecommunications to transportation and even local utilities such as water. Protesters demanded that the draft text be released, but it has remained secret until now.
Public Services International (PSI), a global trade union federating public service workers in 150 countries, has reported that TISA threatens to allow multinational corporations to permanently privatize vital public services such as healthcare and transportation in countries across the world.
“This agreement is all about making it easier for corporations to make profits and operate with impunity across borders,” said PSI General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli in response to the leak. “The aim of public services should not be to make profits for large multinational corporations. Ensuring that failed privatizations can never be reversed is free-market ideology gone mad.”
How Credit Suisse Got Off Easy
Last fall, James Cole, the No. 2 man at the Justice Department, sent an intriguing email about the criminal investigation of Credit Suisse’s offshore tax-evasion schemes for wealthy American clients. He asked Kathy Keneally, the agency’s top official directing the protracted investigation of Switzerland’s second biggest bank, “Can you give me an update on where we are with them?”
In that September 4 email, whose contents were obtained by Newsweek, Cole added this eyebrow-raising detail: “I got a call from Broderick Johnson who says the CEO wants to get this resolved.”
Broderick Johnson would be a lawyer and former lobbyist close to President Barack Obama. Last January, Obama named him assistant to the president and cabinet secretary—his job is to liaise with various government agencies, including the Justice Department. Cole’s email was of interest in part because Johnson’s former K Street lobbying firm, Collins Johnson Group, was representing Credit Suisse. But it was also notable because of the timing: The Justice Department had just finalized a deal for most of Switzerland’s banking industry, more than 300 banks, to pay fines for enabling tax evasion for American clients. That agreement, the capstone of the Justice Department’s seven-year crusade against offshore tax evasion through Swiss private banks, didn’t include more than a dozen Swiss banks under criminal investigation, most notably, Credit Suisse.
Johnson’s intervention appears to have worked: After some 18 months of stalemate, the bank started serious negotiations with the Justice Department. On May 19, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to aid tax evasion over decades, up to 2009, and agreed to pay the largest criminal tax fine in U.S. history—$2.6 billion—for having deceived the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Johnson’s intervention appears to have worked: After some 18 months of stalemate, the bank started serious negotiations with the Justice Department. On May 19, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiring to aid tax evasion over decades, up to 2009, and agreed to pay the largest criminal tax fine in U.S. history—$2.6 billion—for having deceived the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
justiceleague00
Justice League 