† Living In These Mad, Mad, Madoff Times: Tamara Huffman, of Toms Brook, VA, is stocking up on freeze-dried food - the culinary equivalent of the U.S. Postal Service's "Forever Stamps." But she’s not a survivalist, she’s just trying to survive the stagflation that is threatening her family’s financial future, Los Angeles Times reports:

 

"The price of everything is going up. I have no idea what's going to happen," Huffman says, assessing her growing collection of dehydrated and freeze-dried food in cans that look like house paint - pink is fruit, green is vegetables, blue is dairy, orange is grains - much of it with a shelf life that won't expire until her second-grader, Chloe, is 32. Whatever she stocks at today's prices her family can eat at tomorrow's sure-to-be-higher ones. …

 

Not unlike the generation that survived the Great Depression and spent the rest of their lives pinching pennies, some middle-class Americans have developed a sense of thrift that is lasting even as the economic crisis loosens its grip. The so-called Great Recession was declared officially over last fall, yet consumer confidence - or lack of it - remains consistent with an economy in deep trouble. …

 

The fear factor alone can drive families to avoid restaurants and stock up on coffee in ways that would have seemed extreme a few years ago.

 

"There are all kinds of ways consumers can feel this," said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody's Analytics. "With unemployment hitting 10%, most people probably know someone who has lost their job. Housing markets haven't recovered yet and that matters for about two-thirds of consumers who are homeowners."

 

† Homelessness In The Time Of Obama: In its annual State of the Homeless report, the Coalition for the Homeless says a record 113,553 NYers - 42,888 of them children - turned to the city’s homeless shelters in fiscal year 2010, an 8 percent increase over the previous year, The Associated Press reports:

 

The group is calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to make greater use of federal housing programs like Section 8 vouchers to move families to permanent homes.

 

Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond says the coalition is being unrealistic if it expects the city will receive more federal housing subsidies.

 

He said the city's priority is helping homeless people find jobs.

 

NY is a sanctuary city, which makes The Stiletto question the Bloomberg administration’s priorities.

 

† We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?: Part XVII (second item): After pleading guilty to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization and collecting information to assist in planning a terrorist attack on a transit facility, Farooque Ahmed, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, was sentenced to 23 years in prison for assisting people he thought were al Qaeda terrorists to plan bombings at Washington, D.C. area Metrorail stations, The Washington Times reports:

 

After accepting the guilty plea, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee sentenced Ahmed to the agreed-upon prison term and imposed a 50-year term of supervised release. …

 

[Court] records show that on April 18, 2010, he drove to a hotel near Washington Dulles International Airport and met with a courier he believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda. The man provided him with a document that listed potential locations for future meetings.

 

Ahmed, according to the records, participated in surveillance and recorded video images of Metrorail stations in Arlington and later, in a hotel room in Sterling, handed a memory stick containing video images of the stations to a person he thought was affiliated with al Qaeda.

 

In September, Ahmed handed a USB drive containing images of two stations in Arlington to another person he thought was affiliated with al Qaeda, and he later provided suggestions as to where explosives should be placed on trains to kill the most people.

 

Meanwhile, at the other end of the Boston-Washington Corridor, after Pakistani-born Aftab Ali, (AKA Aftab Ali Khan) pleaded guilty to immigration document fraud and unlicensed transmission of money, U.S. District Judge Denise Casper of Boston sentenced him to the 11 months he's already served, three years of supervised release and remanded him to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service so that he could be transferred to ICE for deportation, reports The National Law Journal:

 

Ali waived indictment by a grand jury and pleaded guilty under a plea deal with the government. He also agreed not to appeal if the judge accepted the sentencing deal. …

 

According to the government, Ali arrived in the United States in August 2009 through a visa that allowed him to marry his then-fiancée. He began working at a gas station without a work permit. Ali married a different woman, and in November 2009 he falsified immigration documents by omitting his U.S. work history.

 

Ali had given failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad approximately $5,000 in February 2010.

 

† Fed Up With Farmers: Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed budget plan may - may - do something even more miraculous than balancing the budget - actually cut agriculture subsidies $30 billion over the next 10 years. But he’s going to have an uphill fight – even within his own party, The Associated Press reports:

 

Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, commended Ryan for "taking the first serious step in reining in our deficit" but was quick to add that the policy proposals "are simply suggestions. At the end of the day, members of the House Agriculture Committee and I will write the next farm bill." …

 

The 72-page report laying out Ryan's plan said crop prices and deficits are both hitting new highs. It noted that net farm income this year is forecast to hit the second-highest total in 35 years, and that farmers' five most profitable years in the last 35 have all been in the past decade.

 

"The record-breaking prosperity of American farmers and farm communities is to be celebrated," the report said. "But it also calls for a re-examination of federal agricultural programs that spend billions each year, to ensure that taxpayers aren't funding support for a sector that is more than capable of thriving on its own."

 

Ryan has proposed … spending less on a crop subsidy program called direct payments and giving smaller subsidies to crop insurance. Direct payments were already expected to be a major target in the 2012 farm bill.

 

Farmers who sign up for direct payments get them regardless of how much they grow or what happens to crop prices in any given year. The fixed per-acre payments are based on a farm's historic production of eligible crops, such as corn or cotton, and don't shrink when crop prices are high, as they are now. Lucas has been a strong defender of the program, which costs about $5 billion a year but is popular with Southern farmers.

 

† The Media Get Punked (Yet Again): The Associated Press ran – then quickly retracted – a story headlined “GE Responds to Public Outcry – Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs,” Mediaite reports:

 

An AP story on its own mistake said “the fake release, which was emailed to the AP, included a GE logo and a link to a website designed to look like GE’s website. The AP published a 90-word story based on the release. Thirty-five minutes later, AP withdrew the story and advised its customers that the story was a hoax.” Associated Press business editor Hal Ritter explained “the AP did not follow its own standards in this case for verifying the authenticity of a news release.”

The infamous anti-corporate activist duo, the Yes Men, was behind the media hoax.

† There’s Something About Harry (second item): Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that D.C. is “a-buzz” that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) “space[s] it” and leaves out  the words "under G-d" in remarks about how “moved” he gets when the pledge of allegiance is recited in the Senate “to mark the beginning of the legislative day,” adding “On the 105^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War [Editorial Note: It’s the 150^th anniversary] the words ‘one nation indivisible’ mean more today than most other days.” 
  

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, Rearranging The Deck Chairs): Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $70 million to settle civil and criminal bribery charges in the U.S. and U.K. stemming from allegations that between 1998 and 2007 the company bribed doctors in Greece, Poland and Romania, as well as gave kickbacks to Iraq to illegally obtain to obtain contracts under the United Nations Oil for Food Program during Saddam Hussein’s regime, The Wall Street Journal reports: 

J&J recently agreed to heightened government oversight of manufacturing in its McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit, the source of recalls of millions of bottles of over-the-counter medicines including Tylenol since 2009. …

 

J&J's payments to settle the various probes include $48.6 million to the SEC in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, a $21.4 million criminal penalty to the Justice Department, and £4.8 million ($7.8 million) to the U.K. Serious Fraud Office.

 

J&J entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, and Corporate Counsel reports that criminal charges may be dismissed after three years if the company reports its efforts to comply with U.S. anti-foreign bribery laws to the DOJ every six months and appoints a chief compliance officer and a head of compliance within each business unit.

 

The WSJ calls this “the latest black eye” for J&J. But hey, the company met its 2010 environmental sustainability goals!

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Restorative Capital Punishment): India’s Kayem Pharmaceutical, one of the last suppliers of the sedative sodium thiopental, announced it will no longer sell the drug to American prison officials, The Associated Press reports:

 

Kayem Pharmaceutical was fast becoming a major supplier of sodium thiopental, a sedative in the three-drug lethal injection cocktail that most of the 34 death penalty states use. The sole American manufacturer stopped making the drug last year and since then at least seven states have obtained the scarce drug overseas; others got it from fellow states.

 

Mumbai-based Kayem said on its website it made the decision to "refrain ourselves in selling this drug where the purpose is purely for lethal injection and its misuse" because it cherished the "ethos of Hinduism." …

 

As the shortage worsens, some states are switching to alternatives. Ohio and Oklahoma have used pentobarbital, a stronger sedative often used to euthanize animals, by itself to execute inmates.

 

Texas, the nation's busiest death row state, is swapping out sodium thiopental in favor of pentobarbital in its three-drug cocktail. Mississippi and Arizona are considering similar moves.

 

Officials in Nebraska, which bought the drug from the Indian firm for about $2,000, declined to comment on Kayem's decision. Corrections spokeswoman Dawn-Renee Smith said the state still has its sodium thiopental.

 

We may not have enough sodium thiopental to go around but we have plenty of bullets.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fifth item, The TSA Emperor Wears No Clothes: Part II): After helplessly watching their six-year old daughter get subjected to an enhanced pat down at New Orleans Armstrong International Airport during which a female TSA screened rubbed the girl’s inner thighs and stuck her fingers inside the waistband of her pants, Dr. Todd Drexel and his wife Selena want the TSA to adopt a different screening process for children, ABC News reports:

 

"I did ask for alternatives, I asked for her to be rescanned," Selena Drexel said. "They just refused and said they were going to do what they were going to do."

 

Selena Drexel said she could only speculate as to why the 6-year-old was selected for the pat down. She said that the TSA supervisor made it clear "non-verbally" that there would be trouble if she caused a fuss. 

The girl's father said that while his daughter was polite and respectful during the screening, she broke down into tears afterwards.

 

"Initially she was just confused," Todd Drexel said. "She really didn't understand what she had done wrong." He said he and his wife struggled with how to explain to their child what had happened after teaching her previously it was not ok to be touched in certain places. "Now she's been pat down in a public setting, in an airport."

 

“Blogger Bob” of the TSA Blog Team explains [emphasis, The Stiletto]:

 

TSA has reviewed the incident and the security officer in the video followed the current standard operating procedures.

 

With that said, you may have read recently that our Administrator is looking into ways to move past the cookie cutter approach to screening. Recognizing that terrorists are willing to manipulate societal norms to evade detection, TSA has been actively assessing less invasive screening methods for low-risk populations, such as younger passengers, while still maintaining a high level of security.

 

Got that? TSA’s current SOP is to flout societal norms with its gape-or-grope MO so as to detect terrorists who manipulate societal norms to evade detection. Uh huh. That’s how come this six-year old didn’t get past the eagle-eyed TSA matron, but a GAO report found that counterterrorism specialists in the agency’s much-hyped "Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques" (AKA SPOT) program were unable to, um, spot 16 jihadis who moved through eight airports "on at least 23 different occasions" (pages 46 and 47).

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Madoff’s Victims: Gullible Or Greedy?): In a prison interview with The Financial Times Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff drops this bombshell:

 

Several business schools have approached him, he adds, and asked him to work on ethics courses. He likes that idea; Harvard and Northwestern are in his sights. But from 10am to 7pm, four days a week, he mans the commissary, or prison store. Fittingly, Madoff tells us, it is called the “money management department”

 

In a previous interview with New York magazine, Madoff makes the case – credibly – that he got left holding the bag for a criminal enterprise that investment banks, regulators and many of his clients were – to varying degrees - knowingly in on, and that he repeatedly – and unsuccessfully - tried to return funds to those investors who he thought could ill afford to lose their savings:

 

[I]t was said that Madoff insinuated himself into the sympathies of wealthy, often older people, the better to fleece them. In Madoff’s mind, everyone understood the terms of friendship: They liked him because he made them money. And Madoff insists that rather than the pursuer, he was usually the pursued. People begged him to take their money. Madoff says that he waved red flags, issued caveats that should have been obvious to even an unsophisticated investor. “They were all told by me, ‘Don’t invest any more money than you could afford to lose. This is the stock market. There’s always stuff that can happen. Brokerage firms can fail. I could go crazy and do something stupid. If you want a [safe thing], put your money in government bonds.’ So everybody understood this.”  

 

“Everyone was greedy,” he continues. “I just went along. It’s not an excuse.” In his mind, the hedge funds and the banks were little more than marketers, skimming their 1 to 2 percent off the top, a fee for their supposed “due diligence,” though they exercised little oversight. “Look, there was complicity, in my view,” Madoff told me. …

 

Privately, Madoff resented many of his clients whom, legitimately or not, he’d carried for years, turning modest nest eggs into luxurious lifestyles. … Madoff’s four big investors have little reason to complain, as Madoff sees it: Carl Shapiro, an apparel manufacturer, Jeffry Picower, a Wall Street investor, Stanley Chais, a money manager, and Norm Levy, a real-estate developer who told his children on his deathbed, “Trust Bernie Madoff.” …

 

“When you deal with people’s money, as I did for all my life,” he continues, “you realize how strange they are; it’s all like, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ If you made money for me, I was smart because I gave you the money and I went there, and if you lose money, then it’s all your fault. So you become somewhat callous about people lying.”

 

Through the nineties, Madoff dreamed of climbing out of the hole he’d dug. “I kept telling myself that some miracle was going to happen or that I was going to be able to work my way out of it. I just didn’t know when that was.” By around 2002, he realized this was a fantasy. …

 

[I]ncreasingly, it was some of his largest investors, with their outsize expectations, their winks and nods at the mounting facts, who called the shots. According to one of the trustee’s lawsuits, the power relationship had been turned upside down. The suit alleges it was the swindler who took marching orders. Picower, probably his largest individual investor on paper, dictated the returns he sought or needed one reason the trustee accused him of being tacitly in on the scheme, and his widow agreed to return $7.2 billion. …

 

Madoff … wished he’d been caught earlier, anything to put an end to a nightmare he didn’t have the courage to end himself. In his mind, he even tried to act honorably. “I was always able to rationalize it  Look, I tried to give moneys back to my individual clients when I realized it was impossible to get myself out. I tried to return funds to my friends, moneys to the smaller clients. They wouldn’t take it back. Everybody said, ‘No, you can’t do that. You can’t send me my money back. I’ve been a friend of yours, or a client, for years.’”

 

Madoff’s capture and incarceration took the crushing weight of his secret off his back, but it was soon replaced by the crushing weight of his son Mark’s suicide as a result.