Non Sequitur

Complaints about automated calls up sharply

By Jennifer C. Kerr

So much for silence from telemarketers at the cherished dinner hour, or any other hour of the day.
Complaints to the government are up sharply about unwanted phone solicitations, raising questions about how well the federal "do-not-call" registry is working. The biggest category of complaint: those annoying prerecorded pitches called robocalls that hawk everything from lower credit card interest rates to new windows for your home.
Robert Madison, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., says he gets automated calls almost daily from "Ann, with credit services," offering to lower his interest rates.
"I am completely fed up," Madison said in an interview. "I've repeatedly asked them to take me off their call list." When he challenges their right to call, the solicitors become combative, he said. "There's just nothing that they won't do."
Madison, who works for a software company, says his phone number has been on the do-not-call list for years. Since he hasn't made any progress getting "Ann" to stop calling, Madison has started to file complaints about her to the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees the list.
Amid fanfare from consumer advocates, the federal do-not-call list was put in place nearly a decade ago as a tool to limit telemarketing sales calls to people who didn't want to be bothered. The registry has more than 209 million phone numbers on it. That's a significant chunk of the country, considering that there are about 84 million residential customers with traditional landline phones and plenty more people with cellphone numbers, which can also be placed on the list.
Telemarketers are supposed to check the list at least every 31 days for numbers they can't call. But some are calling anyway, and complaints about phone pitches are climbing even as the number of telemarketers checking the registry has dropped dramatically.
Government figures show monthly robocall complaints have climbed from about 65,000 in October 2010 to more than 212,000 this April. More general complaints from people asking a telemarketer to stop calling them also rose during that period, from about 71,000 to 182,000.
At the same time, fewer telemarketers are checking the FTC list to see which numbers are off limits. In 2007, more than 65,000 telemarketers checked the list. Last year, only about 34,000 did so.
Despite those numbers, the FTC says the registry is doing an effective job fighting unwanted sales calls.
"It's absolutely working," Lois Greisman, associate director of the agency's marketing practices division, said in an interview with The Associated Press. But, she said, "the proliferation of robocalls creates a challenge for us."
Greisman said prerecorded messages weren't used as a major marketing tool in 2003, when the registry began. "In part because of technology and in part because of greater competitiveness in the marketplace, they have become the marketing vehicle of choice for fraudsters," she said.
For people trying to scam people out of their money, it's an attractive option. Robocalls are hard to trace and cheap to make.
With an autodialer, millions of calls can be blasted out in a matter of hours, bombarding people in a struggling economy with promises of debt assistance and cheap loans. Even if a consumer does not have a phone number on the do-not-call list, robocalls are illegal. A 2009 rule specifically banned this type of phone sales pitch unless a consumer has given written permission to a company to call.
Political robocalls and automated calls from charities, or informational robocalls, such as an airline calling about a flight delay, are exempt from the ban. But those exemptions are being abused, too, with consumers complaining of getting calls that begin as a legitimate call, say from a charity or survey, but then eventually switch to an illegal telemarketing sales pitch.
Robocalls can be highly annoying to consumers because they're hard to stop. Fraudsters use caller-ID spoofing so that when a person tries to call back the robocaller, they get a disconnected number or something other than the source of the original call.
The best thing people can do when they get an illegal robocall is to hang up. Do not press "1'' to speak to a live operator to get off the call list. If you do, the FTC says, it will probably just lead to more robocalls. The caller will know you're there and willing to answer, and may continue to call.
The FTC says people can also contact their phone providers to ask them to block the number. But be sure to ask whether they charge for that. Telemarketers change caller-ID information often, so it might not be worth paying a fee to block a number that will soon change.
The industry says most legitimate telemarketers don't utilize robocalls to generate sales.
"They give a bad name to telemarketers and hurt everybody," says Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of government affairs at Direct Marketing Association, a trade group.
Cerasale says the do-not-call list has resulted in telemarketers making far fewer cold calls to random people. Instead, he says, marketers have shifted to other methods of reaching people, such as mail, email or targeted advertisements on websites. That, he said, could be one of the reasons that the number of telemarketers checking the registry has dropped so sharply.
In light of the increased complaints, the FTC is stepping up efforts to combat robocalls. It recently released two consumer videos to explain what robocalls are and what to do about them. It also announced an October summit to examine the problem and explore the possibility of emerging technology that might help trace robocalls and prevent scammers from spoofing their caller ID.
Enforcement is another tool. The FTC has brought cases against about a dozen companies since 2009, including Talbots, DirecTV and Dish Network. The cases have yielded $5.6 million in penalties.
The agency said this month that it was mailing refund checks to more than 4,000 consumers nationwide who were caught up in a scam where the telemarketer used robocalls from names like "Heather from card services" to pitch worthless credit card rate reduction programs for an up-front fee. Checks to consumers range from $31 to $1,300 depending on how much was lost.
To file a complaint with the FTC, people can go online to www.ftc.gov or call 888-382-1222 to report their experience for possible enforcement.

Americans overwhelmingly want limits to cash in elections

It's unfortunate that the repugican cabal is against delivering what Americans want. The numbers aren't even close yet the repugican cabal wants to maintain the status quo.

More than 8 in 10 Americans in a poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center support limits on the amount of money given to groups that are trying to influence U.S. elections.

But they might have to change the Constitution first. The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the Citizens United case removed limits on independent campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, calling it a constitutionally protected form of political speech.

"Corporate donations, I think that is one of the biggest problems today," said Walter L. Cox Sr., 86, of Cleveland. "They are buying the White House. They are buying public office."

Pennsylvania still a battleground state?

If this latest poll is accurate, it hardly sounds like it.

President Obama, already ahead in Pennsylvania, received a small bump from the Democratic National Convention and now leads Mitt Romney in the state by 11 points, according to the Inquirer Pennsylvania Poll.

But with eight weeks left before the Nov. 6 election, with debates yet to be held, and with foreign affairs suddenly atop the national agenda, it's early to concede the state to Obama, a bipartisan team of Inquirer pollsters said.

"I'm not 100 percent prepared to say Pennsylvania is not in play," said Adam Geller, of National Research Inc., a repugican firm.

Maybe Pennsylvania is 99%?

The truth be told

Santorum: "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side"

Failed repugican presidential candidate, former US Senator, and all around gay-hating guy, Rick Santorum told a religious right conference (sponsored by a number of officially-designated "hate groups") that smart people will never support religious right repugicans.

Santorum seems to have missed the irony.

Let's dissect Santorum's statement (which is below).

1. Smart people will never be on your side - but the audience, made up of religious right leaders from around the country, is on your side.  Thus religious right leaders are not "smart people."

2. If you really had the correct policy prescriptions for America, wouldn't you think "smart people" would embrace that?  I mean, do you think "dumb" people are better able to determine the life of a fetus than "smart" people?  Are dumb people better able to analyze the science on global warming and determine whether or not it's a hoax?  On gay rights, are dumb people really more capable at determining whether there's a constitutional right to civil rights for gays?  And finally (but not limited to), health care reform - you really think dumb people are better than smart people and determining its constitutionality, let alone whether health care reform is the best approach, among those available, at helping more Americans get more affordable, and better, health care without hurting the economy, et ?

I'm sorry, but when you have a brain tumor, you don't seek out a dumb doctor.  When the IRS audits you, you don't hire a dumb accountant.  No one wants a dumb banker, or a dumb lawyer.

It's seems the only time you really want someone dumb is when Rick Santorum and the religious right are stumping for votes.

That ought to tell them something.  But it clearly doesn't.

I'm reminded of a quote from high school (from the poet TS Eliot to be exact), "we had the experience but missed the meaning."

Perhaps they're just too dumb to get the irony.

PS I still can't read stuff like this and not see the word "Jew" hidden between the lines.  Maybe it's just me.

Rick Santorum at the hate group sponsored Values Voter Summit 2012:

"[T]he media doesn't go along with us. You have to understand that. They don't like conservatism. They like the other side. Not necessarily, I would argue, because they necessarily agree with them -- it's because they can influence the country more. You see, if just a few people make decisions about what this world looks like and what this country looks like, well then you can have people sitting in offices -- the major media outlets and in Hollywood -- they can deal with a small group of people, and influencing them and getting them to jump through the hoops they want them to. It's much harder if all of you collectively build America. It's much harder to influence you. We will never have the media on our side -- ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do. So our colleges and our universities, they're not going to be on our side."

Romney's tax plan to significantly increase taxes

Voodoo economics have been a hallmark of repugican politics since the Reagan years. Much like Mitt Romney's MIA tax documents, his proposed tax plan is murky and he's been unwilling to provide many details. Studies are now showing that the Romney plan is likely to hit typical repugican voters hard.
The rich will of course get their massive tax cuts but the upper middle class will lose deductions and pay considerably more than before. LA Times:

Mitt Romney's budget plan would significantly raise income taxes for many families making between $100,000 and $200,000, analyses by leading repugican economists cited by the Romney campaign show.

The repugican analyses were designed to rebut the Democratic charge that Romney's plan would "increase taxes for the middle class." The studies conclude that the plan could work as Romney has said, but that doing so would require eliminating all or most deductions and credits for households with income over $100,000. That would include wiping out such popular tax provisions as the deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.

Campaign debate so far has largely focused on the 2% of taxpayers with the highest incomes — whose taxes President Obama wants to increase — and those with earnings in the middle range of U.S. incomes. Much less attention has focused on the large number of families whose incomes are twice the national median or higher but whom Romney has defined as part of the middle class.

District Attorneys rent out their letterhead to debt collectors, split the shakedown loot

Over 300 US district attorneys have made arrangements with strong-arm debt collectors, through which the debt collectors send out threatening notices on the DAs' letterhead to people who've allegedly bounced checks, and split the payments they get back (including hefty "service fees" levied by the collectors) with the DAs' offices. Jessica Silver-Greenberg writes in the NYT:

Debt collectors have come under fire for illegally menacing people behind on their bills with threats of jail. What makes this approach unusual is that the ultimatum comes with the imprimatur of law enforcement itself — though it is made before any prosecutor has determined a crime has been committed.
Prosecutors say that the partnerships allow them to focus on more serious crimes, and that the letters are sent only to check writers who ignore merchants’ demands for payment. The district attorneys receive a payment from the firms or a small part of the fees collected.
“The companies are returning thousands of dollars to merchants that is not coming at taxpayer expense,” said Ken Ryken, deputy district attorney with Alameda County.
Consumer lawyers have challenged the debt collectors in courts across the United States, claiming that they lack the authority to threaten prosecution or to ask for fees for classes when no district attorney has reviewed the facts of the cases. The district attorneys are essentially renting out their stationery, the lawyers say, allowing the companies to give the impression that failure to respond could lead to charges, when it rarely does.
“This is guilty until proven innocent,” said Paul Arons, a consumer lawyer in Friday Harbor, Wash., about two hours north of Seattle.

In Prosecutors, Debt Collectors Find a Partner

Inside America's Poorest County

Inside America's Poorest County

A look at the people of Owsley County, Kentucky -- the poorest county in the United States.

Chase, Bank of America scrutinized in money-laundering inquiry

By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess

Federal and state authorities are investigating a handful of major U.S. banks for failing to monitor cash transactions in and out of their branches, a lapse that may have enabled drug dealers and terrorists to launder tainted money, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
These officials say they are beginning one of the most aggressive crackdowns on money-laundering in decades, intended to send a signal to the nation’s biggest banks that weak compliance is unacceptable.
Regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, are close to taking action against JPMorgan Chase for insufficient safeguards, the officials said. The agency is also scrutinizing several other Wall Street giants, including Bank of America.
The comptroller’s office could issue a cease-and-desist order to JPMorgan in coming months, an action that would force the bank to plug any gaps in oversight, according to several people knowledgeable about the matter. But the agency, which oversees the nation’s biggest banks, has not yet completed its case.
JPMorgan is in the spotlight partly because federal authorities accused the bank last year of transferring money in violation of U.S. sanctions against Cuba and Iran.
In addition to the comptroller, prosecutors from the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating several U.S. financial institutions, according to several law enforcement officials.
The surge in investigations, compliance experts say, is coming now because authorities were previously inundated with problems stemming from the 2008 financial turmoil.
“These issues may have been put on hold during the financial crisis, and now regulators can go back to focus on money-laundering and other compliance problems,” said Alma M. Angotti, a director at Navigant, a consulting firm that advises banks on complying with anti-money-laundering rules.
Until now, investigators have primarily focused on financial transactions at European banks, most recently Standard Chartered. The authorities accused several foreign banks of flouting U.S. law by transferring billions of dollars on behalf of sanctioned nations.
As the investigation shifts to U.S. shores, the Justice Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are moving beyond those violations to focus on money-laundering, in which criminals around the globe try to hide illicit funds in U.S. bank accounts. If these new cases follow the pattern of previous ones, prosecutors could follow up on regulatory actions with their own complaints.
Despite shortcomings, banks spend millions of dollars a year to guard against money-laundering. Compliance experts argue that violations are typically unintentional and often harmless because they aren’t always exploited by criminals. Banks also say that they are not the ones with lapses, pointing to check cashers and money transfer companies.
Still, prosecutors and regulators have spotted gulfs in the way financial institutions oversee suspicious cash transfers, according to the federal and state officials.
Under the Bank Secrecy Act, financial institutions like banks and check-cashers must report any cash transaction of more than $10,000 and bring any dubious activity to the attention of regulators. The federal law also requires banks to have complex controls in place to detect any criminal activity.
The comptroller’s office, JPMorgan and Bank of America declined to comment.
Federal officials are now examining whether problems run even deeper and if criminals have managed to exploit these vulnerabilities.
An example of how criminals can evade the system surfaced in a federal drug case in a Texas court this summer. Mexican drug cartels hid proceeds from cocaine-trafficking in two accounts at Bank of America, according to law enforcement testimony in the case, and some of the money was used to buy racehorses.
Bank of America was not accused of wrongdoing, and the comptroller’s office has said it is unlikely to bring an action related to the case, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Authorities have not disclosed the scope of their inquiries at Bank of America and JPMorgan, or the period being examined.

Goldman average pay to fall to only $314,000 this year

Oh the humanity! Don't we all shed a tear for the leading team that ran the global economy into the ground? While we will hear plenty of cries and complaints of evil socialism, the pampered class of Wall Street still doesn't get that they are the ones who caused the crash through their greed.

The deregulation that they had to have in the 1990s happened and it only took them a few years to see the results. New Wall Street regulations are having an impact, though we still need more disclosure and more control over the Wild West gamblers. They have proven over and over that they can't be trusted, nor should they be trusted with controlling the economy.

Sniffle, sniffle. How will they explain being bumped out of the 1% to the guys at the club?

The average compensation at Goldman (GS) is likely to fall by nearly $100,000 by the end of next year as new regulations, fewer deals and legal payouts hurt the firm's profitability. That's the conclusion of a recent report from a European division of rival JPMorgan Chase (JPM).

As recently as two years ago, Goldman's annual pay, which includes everyone from the people who work in the firm's IT department to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, had averaged $412,000. That salary put employees of the elite investment bank solidly in the top 1% of all earners in the United States. Last year, the cut off for the 1% was $368,000.

But by the end of next year, though, analysts at JPMorgan Cazenove expect compensation at Goldman to average just $314,000. That will bump the average Goldmanite all the way down to near the bottom of the top 2% of all U.S. earners. The cut off for the 98% tops out at around $290,000.

Even after dropping into the 2%, they're still doing much better than others who lost their jobs and houses. The pampered class should consider themselves lucky.

UK pro-austerity government to cap unfair dismissal payout

Isn't it curious how wage earners somehow need to be controlled and limited yet the most abusive people - the 1% - are not being asked to sign up for similar controls? It wasn't the middle class that caused the economic crisis so why are they always on the front line of cuts?
There's nothing fair about this, at all.

The maximum £72,000 [$117,000] compensation cap for unfair dismissal is to be slashed as part of a package of measures designed to remove disincentives from employers to take on new staff. The new cap may be set at the employee's annual salary, or another lower figure.

Vince Cable, the business secretary, thinks the current maximum – though awarded in only 1% or 2% of cases a year – deters employers from hiring staff. The current median award is only £5,000 to £6,000, with just 6% of cases leading to awards over £30,000.

Cable has resisted pressure to adopt compulsory no-fault dismissal – a proposal advanced by Adrian Beecroft in a report commissioned by David Cameron and given near totemic status by the Tory right.

Marijuana legalization leading in Colorado

It's close, but it's still ahead. If not this year, eventually Colorado voters will approve this. We really need to quit wasting money on this useless "war on drugs" and corporate prisons and focus somewhere else.

Denver Post:

The poll found that the measure, Amendment 64, has the support of 51 percent of likely voters surveyed, compared with 40 percent opposed. Men favor the measure more than women, a common gender split on the issue. But 49 percent of women polled said they support the measure, compared with 39 percent who said they are opposed.

Across every income bracket and in every age group except those 65 and older, more voters told pollsters they support the measure than oppose it, though some of the leads fall within the 4-percentage-point margin of error. Voters younger than 35 support the measure by a margin of 30 percentage points, 61 percent to 31 percent, according to the poll.

Anti-Putin protest draws tens of thousands

The first major protest against President Vladimir Putin after a summer lull drew tens of thousands of people, determined to show that opposition sentiment remains strong despite Kremlin efforts to muzzle dissent.

More

Tashkent: Asian city of the Russian Empire

The Russian Empire existed from 22 October 1721 until 1971 when a Soviet Republic was announced. It was the third largest Empire in history after the Britain and Mongol ones with its Emperor having an absolute power. The city of Tashkent photos of which is presented below was one of its possessions in the East. More

The Strange Lovecraftian Statuary of Puerto Vallarta

First seen at Wired, these are haunting and mighty weird sculptures, known as "La Rotunda del Mar" ("The Circle of the Sea") by artist Alejandro Colunga:

Dresden, Germany, Test Drives Longest Ever Bus

Dresden in Germany has unveiled the Autotram Extra Grand, a long bus meant to revolutionize public transport systems, combining the capacity of a train with the manoeuvrability of a bus. It's 30 metres (98 feet) long and can carry 256 passengers along busy urban streets anywhere.

Designed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, the bus is currently undergoing tests in special facilities outside the city, but is set to make its debut in Dresden traffic - on normal routes with real passengers - in October.

The Classics

1955 Chevrolet

U.S. teen arrested in Chicago car bomb plot

U.S. citizen from a Chicago suburb, was arrested Friday night in an undercover FBI operation

Adel Daoud was active in jihadist Internet forums and was accessing articles written by Anwar al-Awlaki, (pictured above) the U.S.-born radical cleric who became a key figure in a Yemen-based al-Qaeda offshoot.

Undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested an 18-year-old American man who tried to detonate what he believed was a car bomb outside a downtown Chicago bar, federal prosecutors said Saturday.
Adel Daoud, a U.S. citizen from the Chicago suburb of Hillside, was arrested Friday night in an undercover operation in which agents pretending to be terrorists provided him with a phony car bomb.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago, which announced the arrest Saturday, said the device was harmless and the public was never at risk.
Daoud is charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to damage and destroy a building with an explosive.
Someone who answered a call to Daoud's home in Hillside on Saturday who said her name was Hiba and that she was Daoud's sister declined to discuss Daoud, the family or the arrest.

'We'd like to be left alone'

"We don't even know anything. We don't know that much. We know as little as you do," she said. "They're just accusations."
"We'd like to be left alone," she said.
No one answered the door of the two-story brick home later Saturday.
A next-door neighbour said he was shocked by the arrest, describing Daoud as a quiet boy who played basketball in the driveway with friends and calling his parents "wonderful" people.
"I heard maybe he had a little trouble in school," said the neighbor, 78-year-old Harry Pappas. "He was quiet, didn't talk much, but he seemed like a good kid."
Pappas said he saw a dozen unmarked cars drive up to the house Friday night and several agents go inside.
The FBI began monitoring Daoud after he posted material online about violent jihad and the killing of Americans, federal prosecutors said.
In May, two undercover FBI agents contacted Daoud in response to the postings and exchanged several electronic messages with him in which he expressed an interest in engaging in violent jihad in the United States or abroad, according to an affidavit by an FBI special agent.

29 potential targets

Prosecutors say that after being introduced to an undercover FBI agent who claimed to be a terrorist living in New York, Daoud set about identifying 29 potential targets, including military recruiting centers, bars, malls and tourist attractions in Chicago.
He is accused of settling on a downtown bar and conducting surveillance on it using Google Street View and visiting the area in person to take photographs.
Describing the target to the agent, Daoud said it was also a concert venue and next to a liquor store, according to the affidavit.
"It's a bar, it's a liquor store, it's a concert. All in one bundle," the document quotes him as saying. The affidavit said he noted that the bar would be filled with the "evilest people ... all the kuffars are there." Kuffar is the Arabic term for non-believer.
Shortly after 7 p.m. Friday, Daoud met in the suburb of Villa Park with the undercover agent who claimed to be from New York, and the two drove to downtown Chicago, where the restaurants and bars were packed with workers ringing in the weekend on a pleasantly warm evening. According to the affidavit, they entered a parking lot where a Jeep Cherokee containing the phony bomb was parked.
Daoud drove the vehicle and parked in front of a bar that was among the pre-selected targets, then walked a block away and attempted to detonate the device by pressing a triggering mechanism in the presence of the agent, according to the affidavit. He was then arrested.
The court documents do not identify the bar.

Didn't walk away

Prosecutors said Daoud was offered several chances to change his mind and walk away from the plot.
The FBI has used similar tactics in other counterterrorism investigations, deploying undercover agents to engage suspects in talk of terror plots and then provide them with fake explosive devices.
In a 2010 case, a Lebanese immigrant took what he thought was a bomb and dropped it into a trash bin near Chicago's Wrigley Field. In a 2009 case, agents provided a Jordanian man with a fake truck bomb that he used to try to blow up a 60-story office tower in Dallas.
The affidavit said the Daoud was active in jihadist Internet forums and was accessing articles written by Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born radical cleric who became a key figure in the Yemen-based al-Qaeda offshoot known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen last year.
In his communications with one of the FBI agents about possible targets, Daoud allegedly said he wanted to carry out an attack that would kill a large number of people.
"I wanted something that's ... massive; I want something that's gonna make it in the news," he wrote, according to the affidavit. "I want to get to like, for me I want to get the most evil place, but I want to get a more populated place."

Jeffrey MacDonald revives push to prove innocence

Jeffrey MacDonald revives push to prove innocence

After best-selling books, a TV miniseries and seven reviews by the U.S. Supreme Court, the former Army doctor returns to court, attempting to show he didn’t kill his wife and two daughters.