Rag Hand

A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death yesterday because 2000 people wanted to buy discount electronics.

NEW YORK – Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday’s video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

As part of its Black Friday promotion, Walmart had advertised sales like a Polaroid 42-inch LCD HDTV for $598 and a DVD of “Rush Hour 2″ for $2 – prices valid only from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Friday morning.

At Toys-R-Us two guys had a shoot out after the women that were with them started fighting.

PALM DESERT, Calif. – The shooting occurred in a crowded toy store on the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, but authorities say it wasn’t related to the bargain-hunting frenzy. Instead, two men pulled guns and killed each other after the women with them erupted into a bloody brawl, witnesses said.

Authorities released few details about the mayhem that broke out at the Toys “R” Us store around 11:30 a.m. Friday, sending scared shoppers fleeing. Riverside County sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said the fight was not over a toy and that handguns were found by the men’s bodies. He refused to say whether the shooting was gang-related.

The victims were identified as Alejandro Moreno, 39, of Desert Hot Springs, and Juan Meza, 28, of Cathedral City. No one else was hurt.

Witnesses Scott and Joan Barrick said they were checking out of the store when the brawl began between two women, each with a man. The women were near the checkout area, but the Barricks did not think the women had purchases.

One woman suddenly started punching the other woman, who fought back as blood flowed from her nose, said Scott Barrick, 41. The man who was with the woman being punched pulled a gun halfway out of his pocket, then shoved it back in, he said.

The other man pulled a gun and pointed it at the first man but forgot to cock it, Scott Barrick said. The first man tried to run but was blocked by the line of people, then ran back toward the store’s electronics section as the other man fired his gun, he said.

The first man reached a dead-end in electronics, turned around and ran toward an exit, pulling his gun and firing back, Scott Barrick said.

Black Friday shopping frenzy hits Lincoln

BY JOSH SWARTZLANDER / Lincoln Journal Star
At 4 a.m., Nate Kellison joined about 50 shoppers waiting to buy a $378 HP Pavilion notebook computer at the Wal-Mart at South 84th Street and Nebraska 2. By 5 a.m., when the sale officially started, more than 100 people had surrounded the 65 available laptops stacked on a pallet, the 25-year-old Lincoln man said.

A ring of Wal-Mart employees guarded the computers. But, when the employees began to tear back the black plastic that encased the notebooks, the crowd converged and mayhem ensued, Kellison said.

“There was no organization whatsoever,” he said. “People started pushing in toward the boxes. As soon as someone picked up a box, someone else knocked them down.”

Karl Vogel, a 40-year-old Lincoln man and a Journal Star employee, also arrived at Wal-Mart hoping to buy one of the notebooks. He was pushed aside by the crowd, which he estimated at 200.

“A couple guys went flying over the pile and dove into the middle,” he said.

One woman dove underneath the pile, grabbed a laptop and hung on as people walked over her, Vogel said.

The discount notebook computers created problems at Wal-Marts nation-wide. Fights and stampedes were reported at stores in Michigan and Florida.

♬ Tis the season to be jolly… ♪

Newsday.com
A substitute teacher was forced to take a plea agreement that found her guilty of disorderly conduct and caused the forfeiture of her teaching credentials.

Julie Amero, 41, pleaded guilty Friday to one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct in Norwich Superior Court. She will give up her teaching license and pay a $100 fine.

Amero could have faced up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor.

The computer being used in her classroom started showing porn pop-ups.

The school gave strict orders never to turn off that computer. -So she didn’t. –That was unforgivably Stupid! –They’d have probably fired her if she had.

The school didn’t have any protection in place and the computer wasn’t even updated. –It had to be the teacher’s fault. Administrators are responsible for what goes on in their school.

The first judge refused to allow outside experts to testify. –Can you spell lynching?

The prosecution’s expert wasn’t. -Just some cop who could turn change his screen saver all by himself and therefore was the resident expert. –Can you say incompetents?

After the trial, prosecutors sent the hard drive to the Connecticut State Police forensics laboratory, where an analysis found evidence that contradicted the state’s expert witness.

Amero had rejected an offer of a special form of probation for first-time offenders that would have left her record clean, insisting she was innocent and choosing to fight the state’s case.

New London County State’s Attorney Michael Regan said Friday that the state was prepared to go to trial again, but agreed to the reduce the felony charges to a single misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct because Amero had health problems.

“I have no regrets. Things took a course that was unplanned,” Regan said. “For some reason, this case caught the media’s attention.”

Notice the last statement: This guy doesn’t care about guilt or innocence. He and his staff are so technologically impaired as to ignore the real experts and rely on the testimony of an amateur when all they had to do was send the drive to the state’s forensics lab. –Which they did, but after the first conviction and then only because the press raised a stink.

The first judge and the prosecutors decided that hard evidence didn’t count. –The truth gets in the way of their legal lynching and understanding technology is beyond these people.

This woman never had a chance. Prosecutors pride themselves and get reelected based on the number of convictions they get. —Whether or not a person is guilty not only doesn’t matter it may well interfere with their ability to put another notch on their gun.

Only on TV are you likely to find anyone in the prosecutor’s office who actually cares about people.

Get used to it. This sort of thing happens every day and will continue to happen.

So much for “Considered innocent until proven guilty.”

From the NYT:
The Congressman, the Donor and the Tax Break

Representative Charles B. Rangel has helped raise $11 million for a City College of New York school of public service to be named in his honor. In recent months, as questions have emerged about his fund-raising, he has insisted that he has kept his efforts to attract donors scrupulously separate from his official duties in Congress.

But Congressional records and interviews show that Mr. Rangel was instrumental in preserving a lucrative tax loophole that benefited an oil-drilling company last year, while at the same time its chief executive was pledging $1 million to the project, the Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at C.C.N.Y.

What is clear is that Mr. Rangel played a pivotal role in preserving the tax shelter for Nabors and the other companies in 2007. And while the issue was before his committee, Mr. Rangel met with Mr. Isenberg and a lobbyist for Nabors and discussed it, on the same morning that the congressman and Mr. Isenberg met to talk about the chief executive’s potential support for the Rangel center.

AP:
Stevens, 84, the longest serving Republican in the history of the Senate, normally skates to easy wins in this solidly Republican state. His historic run was jeopardized when he was convicted last month of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts and services to renovate his Girdwood home, and not disclosing them.

Found guilty of seven felonies, Stevens has refused pleas from his own party leaders to step down.

AP:
AP Exclusive: Reid Got $1M in Land Sale

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.

The Nevada Democrat’s deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He’s never been charged with wrongdoing—except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.

Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press during a review of Reid’s business dealings show:

_The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas’ booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported. The seller never talked to Reid.

_In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Brown. The senator didn’t disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had any stake in Brown’s company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.

_After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown’s company sold the land in 2004 to other developers and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator’s investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.

The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown’s company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.

Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview last week.

In the world of politics everything, by design is a compromise. Now it’s strictly lets make a deal and how do I use the law for personal profit.

Harry Reid is one of the best things to happen to the State of Nevada, but he’s still a politician.

Coyote Springs:
At one point, Reid proposed opening the way for Whittemore to develop part of the site for free — something for which the developer later agreed to pay the government $10 million.

As the project advanced, Reid received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Whittemore. The contributions not only went to Reid’s Senate campaigns, but also to his leadership fund, which he used to help bankroll the campaigns of Democratic colleagues…

Whittemore also helped advance the legal careers of two of Reid’s four sons. One of the two, Leif Reid, who is Whittemore’s personal lawyer, has represented the developer throughout the Coyote Springs project, including in negotiations with federal officials…

But of course this is being done for the good of the state and there isn’t any conflict of interest.

Harry also fought to protect the Telecoms from legal prosecution after they illegally spied on US citizens. –ATT was among the top 20 contributors to dear old Harry.

I repeat: Crooked politician is redundant.

I bet you thought that we were safe from the special interest groups influence in the Whitehouse, didn’t you?

Well the bad guys are still winning.

Wall Street Journal Online:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration in the past week has adopted several hot-button regulatory changes long sought by business groups, drawing criticism from congressional Democrats.

The changes include new rules that open the way for commercial development of oil shale on federal land, allow truckers to drive for longer periods, and add certain restrictions on employee time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

While executive orders and rules that are not yet in effect can swiftly be reversed or altered by Obama’s appointees or his own executive orders, rules that go into effect before he takes office will be extremely difficult to undo. Rescinding a rule would require the new administration to re-start the rule-making process, which can take years and prompt legal challenges. Another strategy that has been talked about lately – getting Congress to disapprove the rules through the Congressional Review Act — carries political risks and has been used only once before.

LA Times: –President Clinton used his final weeks and months in office to strengthen a host of environmental rules and lock up federal lands with wilderness and other protective designations. Bush is using the same window of opportunity to open wilderness for oil and gas drilling, and to loosen safeguards for air, water and wildlife.

In recent days, the Bush administration announced new rules to speed oil shale development across 2 million rocky acres in the West. It scheduled an auction for drilling rights alongside three national parks. It has also set in motion processes to finalize major changes in endangered species protection, allow more mining waste to flow into rivers and streams, and exempt factory farms from air pollution reporting.

King George is using the last days in office to rape the environment, help his buddies in business and to push a series of measures that he knew damn well he couldn’t get through Congress..

George W Bush’s view of the world is so far removed from reality that he honestly believes that he has done a great job. –He even went so far as to say that he was glad that this economic crash had happened on his watch, because he had a bunch of good people working for him.

His administration helped destroy a thriving economy, started a war based exclusively on a web of lies, and has continually attacked the environment much to the glee of the oil companies.

They have taken our rights, they have imprisoned US citizens without due process, and have taken the Office of the President from a presidency as defined by the Constitution to something that looks very much like a kingship.

It’s good to be the King.

A couple of observations on the on going economic downturn. —”Downturn.” It’s such a nice word when compared to recession.

Pioneer Loan Center Blog says “Retail Sales Have Tanked”
“Everyone is scared. -We are in a full blown recession whether the number crunchers in Washington say so or not.”

Political Nevada says “It’s over! Economy isn’t!.” –Referring to the election and the economic problems.
“There are all manner of experts claiming to have the solution for our failed economy, and like anything else these experts can’t agree on any one issue other than the country is hurt.”

Opinions on economists:

Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, ‘on the one hand…on the other.’ —Harry S Truman

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
—George Bernard Shaw

According to the Wall Street Journal The experts are looking for new ways to gauge the downturn.

WSJ — Economists struggling to gauge the depth of the U.S. downturn are turning to more forward-looking clues, such as home-vacancy rates and foreign stock markets.

The standard measures of gross domestic product and monthly payroll figures give snapshots of what has happened, but say less about what will happen next.

The current downturn is shaping up to be worse than the recessions of 1990-91 and 2001 and the prolonged downturn that ended in 1982. Banks are cutting back on lending, consumers are spending less, companies are shedding jobs amid sinking profits, and the housing bust that triggered the slide persists. Here are five areas economists are watching, and the indicators they are tracking.

From the Pioneer Loan Center Blog: “Expert” that’s the guy who tells you how smart he is and then blames his failures on everybody else. All the while making sure that even if you lose money he still gets paid. –By this definition the average economist is over qualified.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted he didn’t think this could happen: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder’s equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief.”

Everybody agrees we’re screwed. Now how are they going to fix the problem?

The answer is simple if painful:
Only loan money to people you think can pay it back.
Don’t use come-ons like interest only to sell people houses they can’t possibly afford.
And make Morgan Stanley and their ilk keep their reserves instead of using them as investment capital.