Wednesday, July 8, 2009
A “To Do” List for God Damned Young People
by Donald Mills
It seems to me that young people don't accomplish a Hell of a great deal in a 24-hour period.
| The Daily "To Do" List For God Damned Young People | |
| Task | Done |
| Haul your ass out of bed at noon, scratch your furry ass and then start grousing that there isn't a hot breakfast waiting for you.
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| Eat anything that isn't nailed to the floor and leave a filthy mess in the kitchen as a symbol of your outrage over "the unfairness of life."
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| Ride your damned skateboard around in front of a senior's house. Spit every 7 seconds and make sure that every other word out of your mouth is an obscenity.
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| Spend an hour in the shower in order to "decompress" from the stress of having to microwave your own breakfast and live rent free in your parents' basement.
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| Be ironic (but don't understand why you are being ironic.)
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| Send a "tweet" to let people know that you just passed gas and are considering chugging a soda.
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| Sulk.
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| Chat online with you idiot friends. Bitch and moan because you can't find a $60 an hour entry level job as a video game tester. Consider becoming an "porn star" instead.
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| Defile yourself.
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| Open your bedroom windows and play god damned rap music so loud that the old man next door has to go inside, call the police and lie down with a damp washcloth on his head.
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| Smoke reefers and watch cartoons in your underpants.
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| Moan and complain.
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| Complain and moan.
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| Call your no account lazy-assed buddies and discuss possible names for the "band" you are going to form as soon as you learn how to play a musical instrument and master Guitar Hero.
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| Demand that your parents give you more respect, autonomy, freedom and a drive to the Mall.
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| Use your parents credit cards to buy things you don't need, won't use and that will be obsolete by the time you get them out of the package.
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| "Hang out" with other reprobates. Loiter, shoplift and harass innocent old people who are shopping for reasonably priced socks.
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Rethink Afghanistan
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Palin Resignation Changes Nothing: Nutters Will Always Love Her
by Meg White
The punditry over the Fourth of July weekend was intensely focused on the announcement that Republican 
Every political analyst willing to say what they really think has called this move disastrous and confusing coming from a woman who has made it abundantly clear that she wants to be the nation's first female president.
News reports cite Palin's loss of support from conservative kingmakers across the spectrum as a result of the resignation.
But they're wrong. Not that strategists are supporting Palin's recent decision. Psychopaths such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh aside, most on the right are calling this political suicide.
It's more that Palin never had the "support" of Karl Rove, Mike Huckabee, George Will and others who are denouncing her now. Conservative strategists had always been willing to use Palin to bring in her particular brand of voter to the booth, but only as long as she didn't turn off the rest of the voting-age population.
Even GOPUSA President Bob Eberle (whose reaction to the news was basically, "What is she thinking?!") was before probably more of an opportunistic cheerleader than a real Palin lover. After all, his organization's goal of "promoting the grassroots conservative philosophy" is only aided by Palin while she can attract more voters to the Republican fold. Presently, she is treading water at best.
This seemingly recent change of heart does not mean these people are cold-hearted liars. They're strategists and fundraisers; they act from PAC pocketbook balances and polling numbers, not the heart. But the reason the media is so enraptured with what conservatives have to say about the Palin resignation is that their words have a direct bearing upon Palin's ability to follow a "higher calling," as she put it.
Meanwhile, Palin is quick to warn against those nasty critics, "spinning" their "false info," and urge her supporters to "hang in there" via her handy TwitterBerry and various other social networking avenues that are becoming more and more popular with her base.
And it works. As David Corn points out on CQ Politics, Palin's true believers are still with her.
The hardcore Palin supporters (the only kind she has nowadays) seem to be the same type you saw in the disturbing rallies at which Palin appeared as Sen. John McCain's running mate. They're religious "hockey moms" who see Palin's rapid ascent to power as both a palatable brand of feminism and as proof that they too can have prestige without all that hard work that gives you those nasty wrinkles.
Palin says winning White House will shield her from ethics charges
Refers to nonexistent 'department of law'
Sphere: Related Content
In an ABC News interview released Tuesday, the onetime Alaska commander-in-chief signaled that if she succeeded in a presidential run, life would get easier.
"I don't think it will be the day after day after day of ethics violation charges that are frivolous, that are ridiculous," she quipped. "I think on a national level your department of law there in the White House would look at this, the things we have been charged with, and automatically throw them out, not make somebody hire their own personal attorney to get out there and fight."
Wrote ABC's Kate Snow and Rick Klein wryly, "There is no 'department of law' at the White House, though Palin appears to have been referring to the White House counsel's office."
She could also have been referred to the Justice Department.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/07/palin-says-winning-white-house-ethics-charges/
Pez Candy Inc sues Museum of Pez Memorabilia for copyright infringement
(Photo by Plug1 of whatimseeing.com)
Oh, this is stupid and sad. Pez Candy Inc., makers of pixel-y candy dosed out in those iconic character dispensers, is suing the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia for copyright infringement. Doctor Popular blogs about it over at Laughing Squid:
The suit, filed last week, claims that the museum deceives the public into believing they are operating under the authority of Pez and asks that the museum's 7 foot tall replica of Pez dispenser be destroyed. The lawsuit also takes issue with the museum's sales of toy truck Pez dispensers which had been modified with Obama and McCain logos during last years elections. The museum has been opened since 1995 and is said to be the only place in the world were you can see every Pez dispenser ever made.Pez Suing Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia (Laughing Squid)
More female veterans are winding up homeless
VA resources strained; many are single parents
By Bryan Bender
Angela Peacock spent years with no home after serving in Iraq
WASHINGTON - The number of female service members who have become homeless after leaving the military has jumped dramatically in recent years, according to new government estimates, presenting the Veterans Administration with a challenge as it struggles to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
As more women serve in combat zones, the share of female veterans who end up homeless, while still relatively small at an estimated 6,500, has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
For younger veterans, it is even more pronounced: One out of every 10 homeless vets under the age of 45 is now a woman, the statistics show.
And unlike their male counterparts, many have the added burden of being single parents.
"Some of the first homeless vets that walked into our office were single moms,'' said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "When people think of homeless vets, they don't think of a Hispanic mother and her kids. The new generation of veterans is made up of far more women.''
Overall, female veterans are now between two and four times more likely to end up homeless than their civilian counterparts, according to the VA, most as a result of the same factors that contribute to homelessness among male veterans: mental trauma related to their military service and difficulty transitioning into the civilian economy.
Stoned wallabies make crop circles
 Wallabies have been observed acting strangely in poppy fields |
Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.
Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.
She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.
Australia supplies about 50% of the world's legally-grown opium used to make morphine and other painkillers.
"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.
"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."
Reading an obit with great pleasure
By Joseph L. Galloway
"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." —Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
Well, the aptly named Robert Strange McNamara has finally shuffled off to join LBJ and Dick Nixon in the 7th level of Hell.
McNamara was the original bean-counter — a man who knew the cost of everything but the worth of nothing.
Back in 1990 I had a series of strange phone conversations with McNamara while doing research for my book We Were Soldiers Once And Young. McNamara prefaced every conversation with this: "I do not want to comment on the record for fear that I might distort history in the process." Then he would proceed to talk for an hour, doing precisely that with answers that were disingenuous in the extreme — when they were not bald-faced lies.
Upon hanging up I would call Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam and run McNamara's comments past them for deconstruction and the addition of the truth.
The only disagreement i ever had with Dave Halberstam was over the question of which of us hated him the most. In retrospect, it was Halberstam.
When McNamara published his first book — filled with those distortions of history — Halberstam, at his own expense, set out on a journey following McNamara on his book tour around America as a one-man truth squad.
McNamara abandoned the tour.
Sour Grapes Obituary: How Karl Malden ruined my life
by Michael Dare
It's completely personal. Between me and him. Karl Malden fucked up my life, he really did. No matter how much I dig his talent - and I certainly do, he's a Strasberg acting God, and I studied with Strasberg in New York in 1970 where he was treated as such, so I know - Malden is still the premiere putz in my professional life. Or was. He's dead now. Great. Now I get to be pissed off at a dead man.
I know you're sick of celebrity obituaries in this horrible week of death and chaos, but this one's different. At this point I've got to pin you to the wall like a drunk in a Hollywood bar, slurring my speech, hot breath in your face, "You don't understand, no matter how good he was in Baby Doll, I'm glad he's dead, that bastard..."
Luckily, I'm not that drunk. Here's what happened 20 years ago.
The 80s was my decade as film critic for the L.A. Weekly. While trashing their films in print, I met most of Hollywood, and I considered it my duty to photograph and distort it all. In a storage locker in Desert Hot Springs there are thousands of ridiculous SX-70 Polaroid portraits of the famous, the insane, and the dead. They've never been published and rarely been seen by anyone except the subjects themselves - who usually expressed either glee or abject horror. Due to copyright law, or maybe just good old fashioned good taste, I've had an incredibly hard time getting my work shown in public.
In 1989 a horrible mistake was made and I was voted in as a member of the Los Angeles Film Critic's Association. Meetings in the incredible homes of other film critics was truly inspiring. I was in a profession that could lead to the good life. One day, just for fun, I brought a book of my Polaroids to a meeting where it was eventually passed to Doug Edwards, who turned out to be the curator of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the ones who give the Oscars. I had no idea. He asked me if I'd like to have a show in their lobby. Holy shit. The Academy lobby leads to the Samuel Goldwyn Screening room, which is used almost every night for preview screenings and premieres of major films. It's a perfect location to be seen by all of Hollywood. Total legitimacy at last. You bet I said yes.
We picked 250 images for a mammoth show. Fifty would be blown up to poster size, the rest displayed in eight groupings of 25 original Polaroids. My opening date was Sept. 18, 1989. I met with their PR firm and they drew up a press release.
The Polaroid Corporation agreed to sponsor the opening night party, and we expected the press to show up to photograph celebrities standing in front of their portraits. Entertainment Tonight, here I come. My career was made. The anti-Annie Liebowitz.Then the Academy voted in a new president, Karl Malden, who took one look at my pictures, cancelled the press release, and said "Wait a minute. Do we have releases from all of these people?"
Of course I didn't. I was a film critic for a local paper. The subjects of the show were public figures whose pictures I was literally invited to take at press conferences. I've been assured by the constitution of the United States that nobody needs permission to display a public figure's image on their wall. Nevertheless, Malden decided that my pictures were weird and that some people might not like them. He declared that no pictures would be shown without signed releases from the subjects.Okee doke. No problem. That week, the Academy sent out black-and-white Xerox copies of my pictures to all of the subjects themselves, along with a letter asking for permission to display the picture in their lobby. The Xeroxes were atrocious so I knew this was a bad idea, but I couldn't stop it.
Some of my subjects know my work. I was sure that Emilio Estevez would say yes because one of my photos was once spied on his refrigerator. But I was concerned about people like Ted Turner or Hugh Hefner or Menachem Golan. To them, I would have been just another schmuck paparazzi who took their picture one day and disappeared into the crowd. What would they think when they opened their mail to find ugly Xeroxes of their faces distorted into hideous mutants, along with a letter asking permission for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make an enormous blow-up of the monstrosity to display in a popular public place where all their friends went?
66 people said yes, 22 said no, and 72 didn't respond. A lot of the answers surprised me. Hefner said yes! Golan & Turner both said no. Steve Martin and Whoopi Goldberg said yes.
Robin Williams said no, even though he's handsome and not distorted at all in the picture.
Don Siegel said yes, Clint Eastwood said no, and they were both in the same shot! (Not this one.)
But what did it matter who said no. My reaction was "Great, let's go. 66 pictures is plenty for a show." When's the last time you saw a gallery show with 66 goddam photographs. More than enough. Doug Edwards agreed and the blowups were actually ordered, but then the word came down from Malden. The whole thing was cancelled. 66 yeses somehow confirmed in his mind that the show must not go on. It was a question of whether the glass was half empty or half full, though 22 noes is only a third of the yeses. He was worried about the people who didn't respond. (Huh? Maybe they wouldn't like the ugly pictures of other people who gave their permission?) Also, some of the negatives were big negatives. Harry Dean Stanton not only said no, he threatened to sue the Academy if they displayed my picture of him. (On what possible grounds? Malicious surreal facial reconstruction of a celebrity in an artwork?) Here's the shot.
In any case, Doug and I got the runaround. The Academy was enthusiastic about the show, they looked forward to doing it, some time, maybe the next spring, unless they got that new air conditioning system, which would mean the lobby might be torn up, so they might do the show in another location, or possibly later in the year.
Doug had a suggestion. "Let's just wait for the Academy to vote in a new president," he said.
Two years later, it happened, Malden was out on his ass, and Doug re-submitted the show to the new president, Robert Rehme, and he assured me it was a shoe-in, asking me to call the following week.
The very next Monday, I opened the Los Angeles Times and was stunned to read Doug Edward's obituary. He had died of AIDS. I didn't even know he was sick.
The Academy was in turmoil. Nobody knew who would replace him or where my portfolio was, and so I waited. On March 10, 1993, four years after the whole process got started, I got my portfolio back from the Academy along with the following letter.
Dear Mr. Dare,I recognize your frustration in losing the chance for an exhibition of your work, but I've discussed the situation with Bob Rehme and Ric Robertson and we really don't see a place here for your show. The problem isn't just the anticipated emphasis on in-house-generated exhibitions in the near future. Call us Philistines, but the hard fact is that no one here but Doug had ever been able to generate much enthusiasm for your photos as a subject for the Academy's lobby. With Doug gone, you've lost your only real advocate. However disappointing this news is, I'm hoping you'll find a straightforward assessment of the situation more useful that one that might encourage sure-to-be disappointed hopes. I hope you'll find another venue.Sincerely,Bruce Davis, Executive director
I could blame Bruce Davis or Bob Rehme or the Los Angeles Times for delivering the bad news. Harry Dean Stanton, you got some splaining to do. Hell, I could even blame AIDS. Stupid fucking disease that ruined my career. But I tend to blame Karl Malden because everything was fine till HE butted in his potato proboscis. Even though Harry Dean Stanton's reply proved he was right in starting the vetting process, that's no excuse for cancelling the whole show. You just drop the offending photo.
Somewhere in the Academy archives there are 66 signed releases from major celebrities giving the Academy, and ONLY the Academy, permission to display my pictures in public. Yeah, that's right. I can't even use them to get a publishing deal. Nobody else will ever be able to compile such a list. You got Baryshnikov's address?
It's not often you can point your finger at an individual who deliberately called your career as a celebrity dickwad to a grinding halt. Maybe that's a stupid thing to aspire to, but I can't help imagining the photos I'd be cranking out now if things had gone another way. Maybe I wouldn't have gained all this weight. It's Karl Malden's fault!
Sorry Karl. Yeah, you were in On the Waterfront, and you and your method pals got me to New York for a whole series of adventures, but now when Marlon Brando says "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am," it's got a whole other meaning. It's me talking to you.
Scientists claim breakthrough in growing human sperm from stem cells
Scientists claim to have created human sperm for the first time, in a breakthrough they say could lead to new treatment for male infertility.The sperm was grown in a laboratory in Newcastle from embryonic stem cells. Led by Professor Karim Nayernia, researchers developed a method of growing early-stage sperm from human embryonic stem cells by using retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative.
They found that about 20% of the cells produced early-stage sperm cells or spermatagonia and, after further culture, they could see a number of cells continue to split and divide.
The breakthrough came when some cells continued to grow, elongating and growing a tail which caused them to move, and forming recognisable sperm cells.
Nayernia, of Newcastle University and the North East England Stem Cell Institute (Nesci), described the cells as "fully mature, functional" sperm, which he called In Vitro Derived (IVD) sperm.
He said: "This is an important development as it will allow researchers to study in detail how sperm forms and lead to a better understanding of infertility in men – why it happens and what is causing it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/08/sperm-grown-stem-cell-fertility
New climate strategy: track the world's wealthiest
* World's richest emit about half of Earth's carbon
* Tracking the wealthy could break climate impasse
* New method would follow individual greenhouse emissions
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
To fairly divide the climate change fight between rich and poor, a new study suggests basing targets for emission cuts on the number of wealthy people, who are also the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, in a country.
Since about half the planet's climate-warming emissions come from less than a billion of its people, it makes sense to follow these rich folks when setting national targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions, the authors wrote on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
As it stands now, under the carbon-capping Kyoto Protocol, rich countries shoulder most of the burden for cutting the emissions that spur global warming, while developing countries -- including fast-growing economies China and India -- are not required to curb greenhouse pollution.
Rich countries, notably the United States, have said this gives developing countries an unfair economic advantage; China, India and other developing countries argue that developed countries have historically spewed more climate-warming gases, and developing countries need time to catch up.
The study suggests setting a uniform international cap on how much carbon dioxide each person could emit in order to limit global emissions; since rich people emit more, they are the ones likely to reach or exceed this cap, whether they live in a rich country or a poor one.
For example, if world leaders agree to keep carbon emissions in 2030 at the same level they are now, no one person's emissions could exceed 11 tons of carbon each year. That means there would be about a billion "high emitters" in 2030 out of a projected world population of 8.1 billion.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Wall Street’s Toxic Message
Illustration by Edward Sorel.
When the current crisis is over, the reputation of American-style capitalism will have taken a beating—not least because of the gap between what Washington practices and what it preaches. Disillusioned developing nations may well turn their backs on the free market, warns Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, posing new threats to global stability and U.S. security.
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
The fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989, marked the end of Communism as a viable idea. Yes, the problems with Communism had been manifest for decades. But after 1989 it was hard for anyone to say a word in its defense. For a while, it seemed that the defeat of Communism meant the sure victory of capitalism, particularly in its American form. Francis Fukuyama went as far as to proclaim "the end of history," defining democratic market capitalism as the final stage of social development, and declaring that all humanity was now heading in this direction. In truth, historians will mark the 20 years since 1989 as the short period of American triumphalism. With the collapse of great banks and financial houses, and the ensuing economic turmoil and chaotic attempts at rescue, that period is over. So, too, is the debate over "market fundamentalism," the notion that unfettered markets, all by themselves, can ensure economic prosperity and growth. Today only the deluded would argue that markets are self-correcting or that we can rely on the self-interested behavior of market participants to guarantee that everything works honestly and properly.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/third-world-debt200907?currentPage=1
The Crooks Get Cash While the Poor Get Screwed
By Chris Hedges
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| AP photo / Amy Sancetta |
| Children leave a Chicago homeless shelter on their way to school. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, more than half of children in low-income families have at least one parent who works full-time. |
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week.
Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master's degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope.
And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother's house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother's porch. He hurried down the block toward the home to see what was wrong. What was wrong was him. On the basis of a police photograph, he had been identified by an 82-year-old woman as the man who had robbed her of $9 at gunpoint a few hours earlier. The only other witness to the crime insisted the elderly victim was confused. The witness told the police Brown was innocent. Brown's friends said Brown was with them when the robbery took place.
"Why would I rob a woman for $9," he asks me. "I had been paid the day before. I had not committed a crime in 20 years. It didn't make any sense."
He was again sent to jail. But this time he was charged with armed robbery. If convicted, he would be locked away for many years. His grown son and his three young boys would live, as he had, without the presence of a father. The little ones—11-year-old twins and a 10-year-old—would be adults when he got out. When he met with his state-appointed attorney, the lawyer, like most state-appointed attorneys, pushed for accepting a plea bargain, one that would see him behind bars for at least the next decade. Brown pulled the pictures of his children out of his wallet, laid the pictures carefully on the table in front of the lawyer, looked at the faces of his children and broke down in tears. He shook and sobbed. It was a hard thing to do for a man who stands nearly 6 feet tall and weights 210 pounds and has coped with a lot in his life.
"I didn't do nothing," he choked out to the lawyer.
He refused the plea bargain offer. He sat in jail for the next two years before getting a trial. It was a time of deep despair. Jail had changed since he had last been incarcerated. The facilities were overcrowded, with inmates sleeping in corridors and on the floor. The gangs taunted those who, like Brown, were not affiliated with a gang. Gang members knocked trays of food to the floor. They pissed on mattresses. They stole canteen items and commissary orders. And there was nothing the victims could do about it.
"See this," he says to me in a dimly lit coffee shop in downtown Trenton as he rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. "It's the grim reaper. I got it in jail. I was so scared. I was scared I wouldn't get out this time. I was scared I would not see my kids grow up. They make their own tattoo guns in jail with a toothbrush, a staple and the motor of a Walkman. It cost me $15, well, not really dollars. I had to give him about 10 soups and a package of cigarettes. On the street this would be three or four hundred dollars."
Under the tattoo of the scythe-wielding, hooded figure are the words "Death Awaits."
He had a trial after two years in jail and was found not guilty. The sheriff's deputies in the courtroom said as he was walking out that they "had never seen anything like this." He reaches into his baggy jeans and pulls out his thin brown wallet. He opens it to show me a folded piece of paper. The paper says, "Verdict: Defendant found not guilty on all charges." It is dated Jan. 31, 2008.
But innocence and guilt are funny things in America. If you are rich and guilty, if you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money. You get lots of it. You maintain the lavish lifestyle of jets and spas and million-dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown and African-American and 39 years old with four kids and no job and you live in the inner city, you are in trouble. No one comes to help you. You don't get a second chance. This is what being poor means.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090706_the_crooks_get_cash_while_the_poor_get_screwed/
Financial lobby gears up effort against Obama plan
By Silla Brush
A coalition of financial services interests is in the process of organizing a major lobbying campaign against the Obama administration's plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
The plans are not yet final, but among the groups and firms in the discussion are the American Financial Services Association, Financial Services Roundtable, Mortgage Bankers Association and Community Bankers Association, according to two industry sources familiar with the plans.
The budget could be as high as several millions of dollars to organize grassroots opposition to the plan, launch an advertising campaign and contact congressional offices, according to one source.
The groups are hoping to get the effort up and running quickly because the administration and congressional leaders have set a tight timetable for passing legislation. They were listening to proposals on Wednesday from several advertising and grassroots advocacy firms.
Bill Threatens Congress’ Shield From Insider Trading Laws
Current Law Allows Congress to Profit From Valuable, Non-Public Information Floating on Hill
By Mike Lillis
Reps. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) sponsored a bill to prevent members of Congress from trading on information gleaned from working on the Hill. (house.gov)
"I am pleased to inform my colleagues that asbestos reform will be the first major legislation that we consider in late January when we return," Frist said at the time.
For most of the country, Frist's speech was the first notice of that strategy. But for some Wall Street investors, his plan was old news that translated into big money. Indeed, shares of the world's largest sheet-rock company, Chicago-based USG Corp., jumped more than $2 — and trading volume nearly tripled — the day before Frist delivered his announcement.
Somehow, someway, the message that Congress was moving to help companies like USG had dribbled onto Wall Street before the rest of the world knew a thing about it. And trading on such leaks, it turns out, is perfectly legal.
Now, a small group of Democrats, backed by a host of public-interest groups, wants to prevent the use of similar non-public information to guide investment decisions. Under the bill, sponsored by Reps. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) and Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), lawmakers and their staffs would be prohibited from trading in stocks, bonds and commodities markets based on insider knowledge gleaned from their everyday duties on Capitol Hill. The proposal would also prohibit the transfer of such information to other parties — a spouse; a brother-in-law; a political intelligence firm — who then use the information for trading purposes.
In a telephone interview last month, Baird said there's no clean evidence that such insider trading is endemic in Washington. "But in a town that trades on information," he added, the likelihood that it's happening is "almost a certainty."
http://washingtonindependent.com/49636/bill-threatens-congress-shield-from-insider-trading-laws
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