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TwiceHorn

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Posts posted by TwiceHorn

  1. 1 minute ago, Degenerate Gardner said:

    In lieu of genuine contrition, Manafort is going with the 'poor me!' approach.  Bold strategy Cotton.

    I think "genuine" is where the rubber hits the road.  His lawyers know he can't pull that off, so they have to go with something else.

  2. 28 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

    Figured this was as good a post to put this.....   If taxpayers never have to pay for oopsies...    Why do we have Super Fund sites?

    Very true.  Most of those, not all, were discovered long after the polluters went out of business.  And the only lending practice that affected those, generally, was the refusal to lend to failing businesses.

    Big banks deserve most of the shit they get, and a whole lot more, but not for their lending practices.  If all they did was lend money, they wouldn't be such a problem.

  3. Five Star Choad is right. 

    https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-avenatti-bankruptcy-law-firm-20190308-story.html

    Quote

    The bankruptcy filing came on the eve of Avenatti’s scheduled testimony in federal court in Orange County on Eagan Avenatti’s finances. Frank’s lawyers were planning to interrogate him on the whereabouts of the firm’s assets.

    *  *  *

    Eagan Avenatti’s first bankruptcy filing, in 2017, also came on the eve of Avenatti’s scheduled testimony in his dispute with Frank, who claimed it owed him more than $15 million in back pay. Avenatti has denied the allegation.

    This guy is a piece of work/shit. His use of the bankrupcty code is reminiscent of another five star choad.

  4. 17 minutes ago, Larry T. Spider said:

    Is it still the case that you can write a check and get your kid into an elite school? I heard that it’s not like it used to be. I also don’t have 350 million, so that do I know?

    According to The Atlantic and data released in Harvard's discrimination case, as much as 14% of Harvard's enrollment is "legacy admissions."  https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/college-admissions-scandal-fbi-targets-wealthy-parents/584695/

    Quote

    Today, legacy students account for an estimated 14 percent of Harvard’s undergraduate population, and applicants who enjoy such alumni connections are accepted at five times the rate of their nonlegacy peers (a nearly 34 percent acceptance rate, versus just under 6 percent for those lacking connections). Surely not all of those legacies’ families made huge donations to the school, but students with a family history at an elite institution are likely to come from wealthy backgrounds that confer various other advantages.

    It’s unclear how Harvard’s legacy numbers stack up against those at other elite colleges—the Harvard data were publicized because of the affirmative-action lawsuit—but a separate national survey in 2018 found that nearly half of private higher-education institutions consider legacy status in acceptance decisions. While colleges err on the side of keeping mum about their practices, they tend to acknowledge that such applicants have at least a slight advantage.

     

  5. 1 minute ago, tantric superman said:

    Yep.  I give a huge fuck, because this is just an example in our tolerance of the swamp. 

    Fuck, people are assholes. 

    No one says we should tolerate it, but is it really necessary to apply 300 federal agents and how many dollars to pursue it?  And don't forget eight feebs to arrest the fucking tennis coach at 6 AM.

    • Like 1
  6. Just now, BurntEyes said:

    We largely agree, but my instincts tell me if the FBI got involved we are probably  only  seeing the tip of the iceberg. Which is scary since a Longhorn coach was involved.

    This is a grave possibility, yes.  And, it does kind of turn a spotlight on "legacy admissions" and similar practices that have a much larger effect than a couple dozen kids every couple of years.

  7. 6 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    There’s not a lot of other law enforcement mechanisms that could handle this type of investigation.  Additionally, this is the kind of white collarish/system rigging corruption the FBI was originally created to investigate. I bet the FBI guys love these type of cases. 

    There’s like 35,000 FBI personnel. They can’t all be tracking terrorists, spies, bank robbers, and the mafia.

    For once, I'm not bitching about their jurisdiction.  I agree that only the FBI could/should handle this.  But you have 36 parental defendants, most of whom are couples, so you're looking at something like 18-20 kids that benefited from this fraud.  Out of how many college applicants/freshmen?

    Maybe we should be grateful that they aren't entrapping terrorists or helping local cops make HUMAN TRAFFICKING!!!11!!! arrests.

    • Like 1
  8. 11 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    I don't think that this line of reasoning ends at a place where AOC wants to go.  For example apply the logic of social responsibility to individuals.

     

    Should WF run criminal background checks on all of their mortgage and auto loan applicants?  Should they establish clear criteria that would make certain individuals with a criminal history ineligible for home or auto financing. Example history of DWI results in rejection of an auto loan, or history of a drug distribution offense results in turning down a mortgage as a result of some risk assessment that the individual may use the financed asset in a way that is not socially responsible. I don't think that that is where AOC wants to go with things. Opens up a huge can of worms, imo.  How about we expect banks to operate under the regulatory frameworks that has been established and assess risk associated with the financial transaction and leave the social engineering overlay out of it. 

    It's one way to regulate capitalism, sure, but I think it's way the hell down the list of viable and effective ways to do it that won't cripple the economy.

  9. 3 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

    Seems like the FBI devoted a ton of assets to this, makes me wonder how long it will be before they seize all of the university campuses under asset forfeiture.

    As much fun as this is, it does kind of beg for a cost-benefit analysis, and also a "don't they have something better to do"?

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
  10. 9 minutes ago, elfenix said:

    then again, if the bank made a car loan to a known drug dealer, and said drug dealer had his car tied up in civil asset forfeiture, the bank probably wouldn't be able to use the innocent lienholder defense.   so i guess the question is if the bank made a loan in reckless (or worse) disregard for what its borrower was doing, should the bank be held liable? 

    In your scenario, the bank isn't "held liable," it just loses the ability to exercise its rights.  Which is more than somewhat akin to the bank's customers tanking because of shoddy business practices and the bank taking a loss on its loans.  The bank pays a price for its lending practices, but isn't independent liable for the torts or crimes of its debtors.

  11. 11 minutes ago, CleverNickname said:

    there is already forced mediation for some claims in TX. Leg likely to expand the scope. Don't forget there are 3 parties aside from the insured: doctor, insurer, and facility. It's wicked complicated. 

    Something you hear now and then is that medicine ought to be treated more like engineering than the mythical black art that it has been accepted as for centuries.  When you start talking engineering, you're starting to look at something that can be quantified like a damage and repair estimate for a car or building.  So it seems like that is something that might ought to be doable.  Public medical appraisers or something.  I dunno.

  12. 51 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

    Convince your health insurance company to give you the $80K in cash prior to a hospital stay, and the hospital will happily take the cash from you.

    Actually, the problem with that is that there is no such thing as a "health appraiser" or "health adjuster" that can give a fairly objective estimate of the cost of care.  There is the provider and the insurer, and they are irretrievably conflicted.

    That's not to say that "health care adjustment" is impossible; it just doesn't exist.  Maybe it should.

  13. 1 hour ago, triplehorn said:

    I'm not sure I fully grasp your conflict of interest angle, but Mueller wasn't tasked to or limited to specifically investigate Exec branch employees or Trump/family for events in 2016.  While it is inclusive of the Trumps, any evidentiary co-mingling they face would be incidental. 

    Setting aside TrumpCo involvement, Mueller's investigation is not about examining a static event in the past for potential crimes.  It's an active dynamic interface with multiple entities involved in an ongoing pattern of corruption, criminality, and emerging national security threats.  Bringing indictments, sealing them or not, timing the release of indictments, and pressuring for cooperation from witnesses to deepen other tranches of Mueller's work all become interwoven as tactical measures for combating active and emerging counterintelligence threats.  Conceivably, Trump and family could represent a "middle phase" of Mueller's investigation into Russia's role, international bank money laundering, transnational criminal organizations, and their impact on efforts to undermine our democracy and Western alliances.

    Mueller may get fired in the "middle phase" and I'd expect contingencies are in place, but for Mueller to be protected and allowed to captain a very large ship could be the current optimal arrangement post-Trump/family indictments.

    Because without a presidential/executive conflict of interest there is no justification for a special counsel.

  14. 12 hours ago, triplehorn said:

    Given the deadline for current funding through next Sept was 10/1/18, I agree with you.  But, for all the chatter last week suggesting Mueller is ready to wrap it up, it again feels like this could keep going on awhile.

    A thought I keep returning to re the timing of Mueller’s work is that this is an ongoing counterintelligence investigation into continuous active conduct by perps to redouble and deepen their efforts in the face of what occurred in 2016.  So I imagine there must be real time countermeasures being created based on new information from subjects, further IC observations, and more analysis to navigate going forward.  

    There is something potentially invaluable to our nat sec interests in allowing certain individuals and relationships to proceed under scrutiny for some period of time.

    It seems to me, though, that a CI investigation is not as subject to conflict-of-interest as investigation of executive branch employees and family/employees of Trump, and therefore can proceed without as much fear of executive interference as the matters Mueller was engaged to investigate.  In other words, I'm not sure it's necessary to prolong the Mueller investigation to pursue that investigation.

  15. Where it starts to matter is with ACA plans, which, as far as I can tell, all have deductibles of about 6-7000/12-14000. The lower tier ones (with premiums under or at about  $1500/month for a family) cover very little prior to hitting that deductible, so you are a cash customer until then. That means there is some incentive to spend that out-of-pocket money wisely.

    There is some notion that the ACA "catastrophic" model is how health "insurance" should be handled in the future, which will increase the need for spending the deducible wisely.

    Of course, countering this incentive is that the lower cost plans have very narrow networks, so there isn't any choice to exercise the competitive price option.  And, of course, the deductible scenario itself disincentivizes spending it wisely (might as well burn through that fucker and get what you pay for).

  16. Quote

    They allege that Huffman and her husband "made a purported charitable contribution of $15,000...to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter. Huffman later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so."

    Don't have much opinion on Huffman.  People liked her in Sports Night, I think, but:

    William_H_Macy.jpg

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