CBS Chair and CEO Leslie Moonves is the highest paid American; Tom Perkins Apologizes on Bloomberg TV

"...[David Simon] is no longer the highest paid American. The title now goes to CBS Chair and CEO Leslie Moonves, who’s getting a salary of $60 million, and will always be remembered by us as the man who said of rampant political spending, 'Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.'"

Advice to Perkins: Time to Shut Up!
January 30, 2014
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Moyers and Company

There’s a rule of thumb in cyberspace etiquette known as Godwin’s Law, named after Mike Godwin, the Internet lawyer and activist who first came up with it. A variation of that law boils down to this: He who first compares the other side to Nazis loses, and the conversation is at an end. Unless you’re billionaire Tom Perkins, who seems dedicated to digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself.

By now you’re probably heard about Perkins’s infamous letter to The Wall Street Journal (whose editorial page is the rich man’s Pravda of class warfare) in which he wrote, “I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich…’ This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant ‘progressive’ radicalism unthinkable now?”

It’s astonishing how ignorant (not to mention crude and cruel) the very rich can be. Surely, one of his well-paid retainers could have reminded Mr. Perkins that Kristallnacht was the opening salvo in Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, the “night of broken glass” in 1938 Germany and Austria when nearly a hundred Jews were murdered, 30,000 were sent to concentration camps, and synagogues and Jewish-owned business were looted and destroyed, many of them burned to the ground. If Perkins thought his puny point survived the outrageous exaggeration, he was sadly mistaken.

Nonetheless, after a stunned world responded, venture capitalist Perkins went on Bloomberg TV to apologize for using the word “Kristallnacht” but not for the sentiment of his letter. “I don’t regret the message at all,” he said. “Anytime the majority starts to demonize the minority, no matter what it is, it’s wrong and dangerous and no good comes from it.”

Perkins also said that he has family “living in trailer parks,” but bragged like some cackling James Bond villain that he owns “an airplane that flies underwater” and a wristwatch that “could buy a six-pack of Rolexes.” That watch, on prominent display during the Bloomberg interview, is a Richard Mille, a charming little timepiece that can retail for more than $300,000. At that price, a watch shouldn’t just tell you the time, it should allow you to travel through it, perhaps back to the Gilded Age or Versailles in 1789, just as the tumbrils rolled in. Here in the office, our $85 Timex and Seiko watches have crossed their hands over their faces in shame.

That Richard Mille watch triggered TV producer David Simon’s comment on Moyers & Company (full show airing next week) that it should be sold and used to open drug treatment centers in Baltimore, the city where Simon was a crime reporter and which served as the backdrop and central character of his classic HBO series The Wire. You can watch the complete excerpt here:

By the way, the other David Simon to whom ours refers is no longer the highest paid American. The title now goes to CBS Chair and CEO Leslie Moonves, who’s getting a salary of $60 million, and will always be remembered by us as the man who said of rampant political spending, “Super PACs may be bad for America, but they’re very good for CBS.”

Choose to take the 'for sale' sign off our democracy

Choose to take the 'for sale' sign off our democracy
Overturning Citizens United
Jan. 28, 2014
People For the American Way

Choose to take the 'for sale' sign off our democracy!

Citizens United

...[T]he problem of big money in elections is so bad, we must amend the Constitution to fix it. The Supreme Court, with decisions like Citizens United v. FEC, has left us no choice.

That's why I'm asking you to support PFAW's Government By the People campaign by renewing your 2014 membership with a much-needed contribution today.

The choice is yours, but I hope you choose to be part of this growing national movement by supporting our work.

16 states and hundreds of localities have passed resolutions supporting an amendment to save our democracy and get big money out...
Now, we're organizing students across the country to pass similar resolutions on their campuses...
And our efforts have already helped get nearly 150 members of Congress to endorse the amendment strategy...

It's incredibly important that we keep up this progress towards our ultimate goal of a constitutional amendment.

Click here to make a secure online renewal contribution now and I will put your generous gift to work immediately to support these efforts and more.

The Koch brothers and Tea Party groups are already on the air in key battleground states trying to use lies about Obamacare to smear Democratic incumbents. They've spent tens of millions of dollars on the 2014 races already, and we're still in the first month of the year.

We'll fight right-wing extremists every step of the way, and work to defeat Tea Party Republicans at the polls, but we also must keep up intense and sustained efforts to get big money OUT of our elections.v Will you support this work with a donation to renew your PFAW membership right now?

Whether it's with a picket sign in the streets of Chicago, marching against the influence of corporate lobbyists, sending activists to town halls and asking members of Congress to pledge their support in our fight to get big money out of our democracy, or with a clipboard, going to door to door to get a state resolution passed, we're not stopping.

We must restore the power in our democracy to where it belongs: with the voter.

Thank you for all that you have done and will continue to do.

Sincerely,

Michael B. Keegan signature
Michael Keegan, President

P.S. Supreme Court watchers are waiting for the next decision day in a few weeks to see if the Court's decision in McCutcheon v. FEC is essentially "Citizens United II." Thanks to arguments filed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, it's possible that the Court could dismantle what few remaining campaign finance restrictions we have. You can imagine how earth-shattering that result would be -- eliminating any barriers to elected officials being wholly owned, bought and paid for, by ultra-wealthy donors.

With a right-wing majority Court set on undermining our democracy, we must look to constitutional remedies. And we need your help to get there.

Rich GOP Donor Gets Lawmaker to Draft a Bill to Lower His Child Support Payments

In 2010, Eisenga donated $10,000 to Kleefisch and his wife, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, according to the Journal Sentinel. Eisenga also donated $15,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Rich GOP Donor Gets Lawmaker to Draft a Bill to Lower His Child Support Payments
By Molly Redden
Mother Jones
Jan. 13, 2014

After Michael Eisenga, a wealthy GOP donor and Wisconsin business owner, failed to convince several courts to lower his child support payments, he came up with an inventive plan B—he recruited a Republican state legislator to rewrite Wisconsin law in his favor.

A set of documents unearthed Saturday by the Wisconsin State Journal shows Eisenga and his lawyer, William Smiley, supplying detailed instructions to Republican state Rep. Joel Kleefisch on how to word legislation capping child support payments from the wealthy. Kleefisch began work on the legislation last fall, weeks after an appeals court rejected Eisenga's attempts to lower his child support payments.

For example, in a September 13 letter, a drafting lawyer with Wisconsin's legislative services bureau complained to a Kleefisch aide, "It's hard to fashion a general principle that will apply to only one situation."

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Eisenga's current child support payments for the three children he has with his ex-wife are set at $216,000 a year. (Per the couple's prenuptial agreement, the divorce settlement left his $30 million in assets untouched.)

Current law instructs judges to calculate child support as a percentage of income, with no cap and the option to include assets. Under Kleefisch's bill, which making its way through the Wisconsin statehouse, payments would top out at $150,000 annually, and judges would be prohibited from taking assets into account when determining child support. The bill also includes language that would allow Eisenga to restart court proceedings over his child support payments, as it requires courts to slash such payments if they are 10 percent higher than they would be under the new cap.

In 2010, Eisenga donated $10,000 to Kleefisch and his wife, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, according to the Journal Sentinel. Eisenga also donated $15,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

The drafting documents, available on the Wisconsin legislature's website, leave little not doubt that the bill was written to Eisenga's specifications. According to the documents, on September 5, Eisenga's lawyer briefed him on changes he was suggesting to a draft of Kleefisch's bill. "We focused only on the portion that would require the court to modify your child support order based solely on the passage of the bill," Smiley wrote. Eisenga then forwarded that letter to Kleefisch and one of his aides, saying, "Please have the drafter make these SPECIFIC changes to the bill." The next day, Kleefisch's aide forwarded the letter to the legislative lawyer drafting the bill.

A hearing for the bill is scheduled Wednesday before the Assembly Family Law Committee.

Eisenga and Smiley declined to speak to local news outlets about their emails with Kleefisch. On Saturday, Kleefisch told the Journal, "I do a gamut of legislation with the help and assistance of many, many constituents, and whether they gave a contribution or not has not made a difference."

JPMorgan in Talks to Settle Energy Manipulation Case for $500 Million

JPMorgan in Talks to Settle Energy Manipulation Case for $500 Million
By BEN PROTESS and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG
NYT
July 17, 2013

It is unclear whether FERC will pursue a separate action against Blythe Masters, a senior JPMorgan executive.

JPMorgan Chase, the Wall Street giant whose reputation in Washington has eroded in a matter of months, is now moving to avert a showdown over accusations that it manipulated energy prices.

The nation’s largest bank, which has previously clashed with its regulators, is seeking to settle with the federal agency that oversees the energy markets, according to people briefed on the matter. The regulator, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, found that JPMorgan devised “manipulative schemes” that transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers,” a commission document said.

The potential deal, the people said, is expected to cost the bank about $500 million, a record for the commission, which has adopted a harder line with Wall Street over the last year. For JPMorgan, which reported a record $6.5 billion quarterly profit last week, the fine will hardly dent the bottom line.

The accusations against JPMorgan surfaced this spring in the confidential commission document, reviewed by The New York Times, that outlined a pattern of illegal trading in the California and Michigan electric markets. The document, a warning that investigators would recommend that the agency pursue civil charges, also claimed that a senior JPMorgan executive, Blythe Masters, gave “false and misleading statements” under oath.

It is unclear whether Ms. Masters would be included in the potential settlement, but people close to her said that the regulator was unlikely to file a separate action against her. Initially, investigators planned to recommend that the agency hold Ms. Masters and three of her employees “individually liable,” a move that would have cast a shadow over her long career on Wall Street, where she is known for developing complex financial instruments.

While the bank still disputes the accusations, the recent settlement talks signal a shift in strategy for JPMorgan, which previously declared its intention “to vigorously defend” itself. Other banks, including Barclays, are fighting the commission in similar cases, casting the agency as overly aggressive. A settlement with JPMorgan could undermine Wall Street’s counterattacks and pave the way for more settlements.

With the recent overture, JPMorgan appears to have taken a more conciliatory approach to Washington broadly, as it works to mend relationships with regulatory agencies. Its new tack, advocated by top JPMorgan lawyers, underscores the bank’s realization that it was swiftly losing credibility in Washington.

Within regulatory circles, JPMorgan had become known as something of a bully, a bank quick to strike a combative tone with regulators. In a Congressional report examining a $6 billion trading loss the bank sustained last year, investigators faulted it for briefly withholding documents from regulators. The energy markets regulator also accused the bank of stonewalling investigators.

A settlement with the commission would enable JPMorgan to resolve the embarrassing accusations without fighting a lengthy legal battle. It also would allow the bank to focus on its other legal woes as it remains caught in the cross hairs of at least eight other federal offices. In addition to inquiries stemming from the trading loss, banking regulators are weighing enforcement actions against the bank for the way it collected credit card debt.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan’s chief executive who was once known as Washington’s favorite banker, acknowledged in his annual letter to shareholders that “unfortunately, we expect we will have more” enforcement actions in “the coming months.” He apologized for letting “our regulators down” and vowed to “do all the work necessary to complete the needed improvements.”

To reinforce the conciliatory approach, the bank has more readily dispatched executives to Washington. It also committed resources to bolster internal controls, a measure that could appease regulators.

The people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, cautioned that JPMorgan and the energy regulator were still negotiating a potential fine. The terms are subject to change. Any action recommended by investigators — settlement or otherwise — requires approval by a majority of the five-member energy commission.

The prospect of a deal with JPMorgan Chase was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment. The commission also declined to comment.

JPMorgan’s run-in with the energy regulator escalated in March, when investigators sent the document outlining the findings of their inquiry. In response, the bank issued a lengthy response to the accusations in mid-May, the people briefed on the matter said, ultimately spurring settlement talks in recent weeks.

For the energy regulator, a settlement would be the latest in a string of actions against big banks. On Tuesday, the commission ordered Barclays to pay a $470 million penalty for suspected manipulation of energy markets in California and other Western states by some of its traders. The bank is fighting the charges.

Like Barclays, JPMorgan faces accusations stemming from its rights to sell electricity from power plants. The rights come from assets the bank accumulated in the 2008 takeover of Bear Stearns.

But soon after the acquisition, the plants became a losing business that relied on “inefficient” and outdated technology. Under “pressure to generate large profits,” investigators said in the March document, traders in Houston devised a solution. Adopting eight different “schemes” between September 2010 and June 2011, the traders offered the energy at prices “calculated to falsely appear attractive” to state energy authorities. The effort prompted authorities in California and Michigan to pay about $83 million in “excessive” payments to JPMorgan, the investigators said.

In a 2012 filing in federal court, the energy regulator took aim at JPMorgan for attempting to thwart the investigation. The bank, the regulator said, refused to comply with a subpoena seeking e-mails that JPMorgan claimed were confidential because they contained private conversations between the bank and its lawyers.

In the March document, the investigators elaborated on the bank’s pushback. The 70-page document said that the bank “planned and executed a systematic cover-up” of documents that exposed the trading strategy, including profit and loss statements.

The investigators also traced some of the obfuscating to Ms. Masters. After California authorities began to object to the bank’s trading strategy, Ms. Masters “personally participated in JPMorgan’s efforts to block” the state authorities “from understanding the reasons behind JPMorgan’s bidding schemes,” the regulator, known as FERC, said.

The investigators also cited an April 2011 e-mail in which Ms. Masters ordered a “rewrite” of an internal document that questioned whether the bank had skirted the law. The new wording: “JPMorgan does not believe that it violated FERC’s policies.”

SAC: Steve Cohen’s (Allegedly) Corrupt “Information Gathering Machine”

Steve Cohen’s (Allegedly) Corrupt “Information Gathering Machine”
By Charles Gasparino
Time
July 25, 2013

When I first met Steve Cohen back in 1999, we were discussing SAC’s vaunted trading strategies, the ones that made his hedge fund one of the most successful in the finance world and burnished Cohen’s rep as one of the world’s best traders.

I said that based on my reporting — I was working for the Wall Street Journal at the time — Cohen started SAC in 1992 with a technique that wasn’t that much different than a day trader: He was trading huge blocks of stock by looking for “teenies,” or small price increments, that he could magnify into massive returns because of the sheer size of his trades.

It was the only time Cohen seemed angered during our discussion, as I recall. “No,” he shot back emphatically, “we employ real trading strategies around here. We do research.” Cohen went on to explain how his firm, SAC, had transformed itself into something much more than a day-trading sweat shop — it was now, he claimed, essentially the biggest and best information gathering machine in the world.

That information machine has now been deemed by the U.S. Department of Justice to be a criminal enterprise. Today’s indictment, filed in Manhattan federal court, of the once mighty hedge fund accuses SAC a multi-year “scheme” to profit from the use of illegal tips—also known as inside information.

It’s interesting to note that, according to prosecutors, the alleged scheme began in 1999—around the time Cohen was boasting of the firm’s new information edge. It’s also interesting to note that while Cohen himself wasn’t charged in the indictment, references to him in the documents are everywhere, which means all those headlines of Cohen himself being “out of the woods” are probably wrong.

In other words, don’t be surprised if you see an indictment of Cohen in the coming weeks as well.

If you don’t believe me, read the indictment. “The SAC Owner had sole trading discretion over his portfolio and made these decisions principally based on trading recommendations from SAC [portfolio managers],” it says. “In particular, at all relevant times the SAC Owner required each [portfolio manager] to share ‘high conviction’ investment ideas–i.e., the investment recommendations in which the SAC [portfolio managers] had the greatest confidence–with the SAC Owner. In fact, providing such ideas to the SAC Owner was an express part of a SAC PM’s duties and was emphasized to SAC [portfolio managers] in the hiring process and once working at SAC.”

As my book about the Fed’s relentless pursuit of Cohen, Circle of Friends, explains, the Feds believe having a “high conviction” investment idea is code for trading on material, non-public information, a.k.a. insider trading. They also believe almost no major trade gets done inside SAC without Cohen’s blessing — and based on my sources inside the government, they believe it’s just a matter of time before they connect the dots to Cohen himself.

I should point out that Cohen maintains his innocence and that the information machine he created runs for the most part on information and research of the legal variety. His people tell me the few bad apples at SAC that have used inside information — as many as 9 former or current company executives have been implicated during the insider trading crackdown — are anomalies.

The Feds, of course, feel they have proof that SAC, under Cohen’s watch, is a dirty shop.

One thing is certain: The mounting pressure from the government probe that’s been investigating the firm since at least 2007 is taking its toll on Cohen, both professionally and personally. Money from outside investors has been fleeing the fund for months as the government’s scrutiny has intensified.

With the indictment, SAC is basically being put out of business, though Cohen could still conceivably manage his own personal fortune of around $9 billion. But the Feds are looking for a chunk of that as well. The indictment says the scheme occurred over an 11-year period and that SAC has to give back its illegal profits.

Since most of the money now in SAC in Cohen’s, that means his net worth could take the hit and that hit could amount to billions.

A friend of mine of who knows Cohen personally said he ran into him at the MLB All-Star game at Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, in which Cohen owns a small stake. Cohen “looked terrible…and he’d gained 15 pounds” since the time the two met just a month or so earlier. More than that, my source told me, Cohen conceded that his business was basically finished and “at this point my No. 1 goal is not getting personally indicted.”

If that’s the case, he should have stuck with trading teenies.

Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/07/25/steve-cohens-allegedly-corrupt-information-gathering-machine/#ixzz2a7Q44Aqd

Senator Barbara Boxer wants probe on troubled San Onofre nuclear power plant

AP Exclusive: Boxer wants probe on troubled plant
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
Associated Press
May 28, 2013

LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer wants the Justice Department to investigate if California utility executives deceived federal regulators about an equipment swap at the San Onofre nuclear power plant that eventually led to a radiation leak, The Associated Press has learned.

The California Democrat obtained a 2004 internal letter written by a senior Southern California Edison executive that she said "leads me to believe that Edison intentionally misled the public and regulators" to avoid a potentially long and costly review of four replacement steam generators before they went into service.

The twin-domed plant between Los Angeles and San Diego hasn't produced electricity since January 2012, after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of unusually rapid wear inside hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water in the nearly new generators.

The letter was written to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which manufactured the generators that now sit idle in a plant that once produced power for 1.4 million households.

Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement Monday that she is providing the correspondence to the Justice Department and other federal and state officials to determine if Edison "engaged in willful wrongdoing."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Eliot Brenner declined comment.