Ted Cruz uses Nixon's playbook to win in Iowa

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-facing-controversy-iowa-voter-violation-mailers/story?id=36631257
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/ben-carson-ted-cruz-cheating-iowa-218615

• Teddy has been a naughty boy!
• I find this sadly ironic since Iowa is a barometer of Evangelical voting, and they supposedly like Cruz for being "more Christian" than Trump or others (definitely more than that Catholic turncoat Jeb!)
• So yeah, it's really Christian of Ted to cheat his way to victory, or at least condone unclassy (if not outright unethical) actions
• An interesting history of extremists in the GOP: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201602030900
• I am not sure which states Trump is looking stronger in (seems like the Northeast + non-TX/FL deep South?) vs. Cruz/Rubio, but of course the pre-Iowa polls have Trump ahead in all of the early states:
• http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/early_primary_state_polls.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/02/02/us/cruz-trump-rubio-nomination-paths.html?_r=0
• Not that I am a Trump fan, but sadly I think he would be less scary for the country/world than a Pres. Cruz
• Fortunately Cruz is not that electable in a general election (a TP extremist, and you see how few mainstream endorsements he's getting), yet Rubio is, so maybe we should be more concerned about Marco beating Clinton/Sanders?
• Not that I'm so fired up about a Clinton presidency either

PS - This dude just earned Mexican citizenship with one tomato:

http://www.lamebook.com/andres/

PPS - this is what a coworker found out about election fraud (the GOP should try to clamp down on this crap rather than imaginary voter fraud, but of course they won't - and they shamelessly cite the free speech defense):

Interestingly, the scope for the sorts of federal electoral crimes that a candidate can be accused of is really narrow. Take a look at the FBI page on what it considers to be electoral crimes. Essentially, there are only three things that they'd actually consider criminal:

1. Illegal donations and financing
2. Voting by an unqualified voter or abetting such voting
3. Preventing a qualified voter from voting

Everything else is pretty much fair game. (Obviously, there are state laws, but, since the Iowa caucuses are for a federal office, the FBI would have precedence in this case.)

Noteworthy also is the list of things that they explicitly identify as not being illegal (highlighting added):

What is NOT a federal election crime:

• Giving voters a ride to the polls;
• Offering voters a stamp to mail an absentee ballot;
• Giving voters time off to vote;
• Violating state campaign finance laws;
• Distributing inaccurate campaign literature;
• Campaigning too close to the polls;
• Trying to convince an opponent to withdraw from a race.

This is extremely sleazy behavior, and yet, when I heard about it, my first reaction was, "Yeah, that sounds like Ted Cruz."

GM bankruptcy shields them from liability over faulty ignition deaths and losses

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-gm-ignition-bankruptcy-20150415-story.html

This is one of the more maddening things I've seen in 2015 (and that is saying a lot). The evidence is fairly clear that GM committed serious negligence and cover-up/fraud for years regarding their faulty ignition switches that were implicated in at least 84 deaths and who knows how many total accidents.

But since GM declared bankruptcy in 2009, a judge concluded that they can't be sued over this issue. This is because the post-bankruptcy "new GM" is a totally different entity than the one that was responsible for the fraud/deaths. I wonder if the bankruptcy was a calculated move then. Businesses probably are thinking, "Well if the shit gets bad, let's just press the reset button." The people you owe only get pennies on the dollar back, and you're not on the hook for any previous wrongdoing. Isn't that convenient. And let's not forget the billions in low-interest loans they got from the taxpayers.

GM has set up a fund to pay victims off in return for dropping civil lawsuits. But this whole debacle is the kind of thing you shut down companies over. Where is the trust, when GM has shown total disdain for the customer and government? Maybe Obama shouldn't brag that he saved Detroit.

Gender differences among white collar criminals

This was interesting though not surprising (but it's good to put #s to our suspicions).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/05/even-in-white-collar-crime-female-crooks-face-a-glass-ceiling/

This Penn St. study looked at 83 fraud cases from last decade involving over 400 defendants. As you would expect, women made up only 9% of the defendant pool, so not sure if that was enough to make statistical conclusions. But half of the male defendants gained >$500K from their alleged frauds, while half of the female defendants earned nothing. The women were more often in lower subordinate job titles too vs. their male co-conspirators.

Females were more likely to occupy accounting/finance positions, and were not the "ringleaders" or creative force behind the crime. Their crimes were less likely to be personal profiteering, and instead they were accused of embellishing #s to make the firm look better or covering up losses to avoid bankruptcy. So they were doing wrong while "trying to help someone else", whereas the men were straight up stealing for themselves (and maybe making their firms some $ too).

Charter school fraud in Philly

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/27/137444337/what-happens-when-charter-schools-fail

Maybe some social services aren't designed for market competition and entrepreneurship, especially when they're funded by taxpayers with little public oversight, and run by former business sharks with minimal educational experience. I think charter schools can be a good innovation in certain circumstances, and of course there are plenty of problems with stagnant public schools, educational bureaucracies, and teacher unions.

But look at their logic: public schools are underperforming, so let's establish charter schools to pressure them to shape up, and act as a teaching lab to develop better methods. But charters are risky "nonprofit" ventures that are trying to win grants and other funding, so why would they share their successful practices with rivals? Like a new entrant into an industry, they are fighting like hell to survive and eventually dethrone the top dog. They are not there to make friends. And the more successful a charter is, the more funding it gets (which means nearby public schools are getting less, and per-pupil K-12 funding in the US is already criminally low), so that only increases the likelihood that the public schools will underperform. And if word gets out that the charter is good, parents of talented students may pluck them out of the public system in favor of the charters, creating a selection bias that further brain drains public schools. So it's pretty much a zero-sum game; there is no way charters can make publics better. But that's probably the point, and it's not a level playing field. Charter teachers are non-union (they are paid a bit more but forced to work longer hours, so their per-hour compensation is actually worse) and not fettered with as many rules, so that's almost like Bar-roid Bonds vs. me in the Home Run Derby. Plus it creates a rift and culture clash among educators - already one of the least respected professions in the US. Education needs to be collaborative, open, and trusting to be successful, and charters are an impediment to that (some may say unions are too, and they have a point).

Like we've seen in other parts of gov't, when free-market conservatives want to do away with some public program, they demonize and de-fund it. They say the program is a failure, and they create the negative conditions to fulfill that prophecy, instead of taking measures to prevent it. Maybe all this is part of the larger movement to destroy employee unions wherever they exist. Some charters have changed lives and put underserved students on a much better life path, but overall charters are about on par with publics and in some cases lagging behind. Just imagine how much better the public schools could have done with the additional resources wasted on sub-par or corrupt charters. As we all know in business and in research, most attempts end in failure. So it's not like every charter is destined to be a gem, especially when it's run by corrupt people.

In the greater Philly area, 19 of 74 charter schools are under federal investigation for improprieties. And that percentage may be fairly uniform across the nation (CA, OH, and TX have also launched recent investigations). Charters are designed to be free of regulation (but from our experiences with Wall Street and energy, we know how that goes), and there are 7 full-time employees tasked with monitoring ALL of the Philly charters (soon to be 4 due to city budget cuts, of course). Most of the problems are abuse of funds, COI, and nepotism. Like corporations, CEOs hire friendly boards who rubber-stamp ludicrous pay raises (as much as $1M for some execs) and hirings of unqualified buddies. One CEO set up his school in buildings he owned, making the charter pay inflated rent directly to him. Another director also owned the school's vending machines. His team would buy discount junk food and soda and hike up the prices to the students. Well, maybe the corruption isn't actually hurting anyone? In another school, looting by the leaders caused the special ed program to be underfunded. When parents complained to the trustees, they basically told them to piss off. 

Profits are getting in the way of education. I hope people will wake up and recognize the risk of charters as being just another pro-business scheme to undermine the public sector and embezzle precious scarce resources. Maybe charters can work and make education better, but if so, then we shouldn't compromise that potential by tolerating bad charters and improper conduct.