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[Shinra]

I think Scott Walker managed to do more damage to the tea party movement in the last year than all the leftist mudslinging in the world could have done in a million years. Kind of hard to ignore the criticisms when your tea party poster child is stealing money directly from  the government as the state burns around him.

[Thad]

I think there are a lot in the Tea Party who think it's perfectly reasonable for a state to decide federal funds should be used to pay down the deficit instead of for their earmarked purpose.

But not very fucking many who think it should come out of settlement money that's supposed to go to foreclosure victims.

That, more than anything, I think, is Walker's problem: he's terrible at picking his battles.  I've mentioned before that he could have scored a huge political victory if he'd just stopped when the unions agreed to his cuts, rather than keep pushing.

[Mongrel]

Texan-Canadian doctor arrested after scamming Medicare to the tune of $375 Million.

*Long, low whistle*

[Classic]

Originally I made a snarky post that basically dared the republican establishment to re-use their retarded "welfare queen" bullshit as an excuse to try and diminish medicaid.

[Mongrel]

From a guy I know in DC:

Big story in DC today. Cops went around to a number of record stores and vintage clothing store owners and:

On Wednesday, an inspector from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs and a detective from the Metropolitan Police Department took a stroll through Adams Morgan and the 14th Street NW area, stopping by Idle Time Books, Smash Records, Crooked Beat Records, vintage shops Meeps and Treasury, and GoodWood, an "American mercantile and dry goods store." In each case, they told employees that without a secondhand business license, they were operating illegally and faced steep fines until they complied with the law. They'll have to get criminal background checks, a requirement for the license. And that piece of paper will cost them more than $700. The inspectors gave the businesses seven days to comply.

At Idle Time, the MPD detective, Avis Johnson, asked manager Adam Schaeffer if a book she was holding was used, Schaeffer says: "I said, 'yeah, it’s a used book store.'" He says they asked him for his secondhand business license—which, he says, the shop's owners never told him about. Instead, he pointed to the store's general business license. He says Johnson and the DCRA inspector, Terrell Hill, "started using this farcical good cop/bad cop routine. It was rude and unusual and bizarre in the extreme…I just didn’t have any information to give them."


Cathy Chung, the co-owner of Meeps and Treasury, wrote to DCRA Director Nicholas Majett, Ward 1 councilmember Jim Graham, and Kristen Barden, the executive director of the Adams Morgan Partnership BID:

I received a similar shockingly unpleasant visit when I experienced an interrogation by Mr. Hill about the same "secondhand business license." Ms. Johnson had a more "pleasant" approach but neither of them could tell me where I could find information about this law (I even showed them the DCRA web posting referenced below to discuss it and they just scoffed at me) or who I could speak to at the DCRA. They just told me I would be fined several thousand dollars. Then they visited me a second time to amend that statement, and in front of a customer, pulled me aside, and Mr. Hill informed me actually that I had seven days after the notice to be compliant. Why they didn't tell me that the first time is a mystery. Then he proceeded to tell me "that is, unless you have a criminal record, do you have a criminal record?" The customer heard everything and was appalled.

I had informed both detectives that I was the owner at Treasury as well and let them know that we did NOT have the secondhand license at either location. Did that prevent them from going to my other store less than an hour later and interrogating my employee? No, it didn't. I was afraid of this and had told her they were coming and to show them the licenses we did have, let them take their pictures of the licenses, let them know I had already spoken with them, and to call me with any issues. I thought that this would prevent an altercation. They screamed so hard at her that the employee was shaken when I spoke to her about it. What is the point of this during a business day? It's disruptive and unprofessional and inhuman. And it comes across as merely a scare tactic when I had ALREADY spoken to them regarding both businesses.

"That's something we're going to look into," says Kevin Carter, the supervisor of DCRA's Regulatory Investigations Division, when asked about his employee's alleged behavior. "Compliance inspections are generally noncontroversial. We don’t go in and shut them down."

In an email, Gwendolyn Crump, the director of MPD's communications office, writes: "MPD assisted DCRA. Please direct your inquiry to them." But Carter says DCRA was first notified of the compliance issues by MPD's pawn unit.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/general/2012/04/06/why-is-the-district-busting-record-stores-and-vintage-shops/

On the other hand, the DC City Council just rejected an Ethics bill that would have required them to disclose which city contractors they took money from.

This city runs a protection racket.

[Shinra]

Now, ma'am, if you don't pay for a liscense, we might have to take all these books down to the stadium. We might have to set them on fire. You wouldn't want that, would you? Now put on the armband.

[Thad]

Corruption in ICE?  I never would have guessed!

[Büge]

For a moment I thought you had just announced some sort of figure skating adaptation of Wall Street.

[Mongrel]

That's nothing. For a second I thought he was giving the real reason for the collapse of Iron Crown Enterprises.

(Don't laugh! Massive internal fraud was part of the reason Decipher went belly-up!)

[A²]

Decipher? As in CCG Decipher?

Now that's a story I want to hear, I was always stunned by how someone who had a fucking Star Wars license could just suddenly drop off the face of the earth.

[Mongrel]

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/07/game-company-embezzler-gets-6-years-must-repay-910000

[DestyNova]

That's nothing. For a second I thought he was giving the real reason for the collapse of Iron Crown Enterprises.

(Don't laugh! Massive internal fraud was part of the reason Decipher went belly-up!)

Anyone who didn't pay up tripped over an imaginary deceased turtle.