Verdict Reached In Michael Jackson Involuntary Manslaughter Case: UPDATE: Guilty

Conrad Murray, who is on trial for the involuntary manslaughter of Michael Jackson is facing a lengthy prison sentence if the jury comes back with a guilty verdit. The verdict to be released at 1PM PST.

A jury has reached a verdict in the involuntary manslaughter case against Michael Jackson's doctor. Court officials say it will be read about 1 p.m. PST.

The verdict came Monday in the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray.

Prosecutors depicted Murray as a reckless physician who abandoned Jackson while he was under the effects of the powerful anesthetic propofol on June 25, 2009.

The testimony that has been proffered paints Murray in an awful light and makes one wonder how he he can sleep at night following Jackson's death. It appears that he didn't use customary and reasonable medical practices in giving Jackson propofol, and then couldn't provide sufficient care when Jackson most needed him. His failings extended to the 911 call and giving emergency personnel information they needed that could have saved Jackson.

UPDATE:
The jury found Murray found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson's death.

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Time Lapse Video Of The New York City Marathon

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Great Falls of Paterson New Jersey Designated National Park Today

The Great Falls of Paterson New Jersey is being designated a national park today at a ceremony overlooking the falls.

The group is waiting for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and other dignitaries to officially turn over the property to the federal government.

The ceremony is expected to begin momentarily.

The 77-foot waterfall, located in downtown Paterson, is the second largest on the East Coast and one of the largest in the nation. The falls once provided power to run factories that produced silk, locomotives and firearms and helped launch the American Industrial Revolution.

The national park designation, which was signed by President Obama in March 2009, makes the 35-acre site eligible for federal funds. Paterson officials hope the building of a new park near the falls will help revitalize the city.

It will be the 397th national park designated and commemorates the importance of the falls to the American industrial revolution and the scenic wonder of the site along the Passaic River.

The Passaic River has been in the news quite a bit as a result of all the storm damage done during the flooding from Hurricanes Irene and Lee. This was among the most heavily damaged areas and it put parts of Paterson underwater for more than a week per storm.

Yet, the falls were also key to starting the industrial revolution and Alexander Hamilton saw the falls as a key to powering nearby factories.

 

 

 

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Lights Still Out For 100k Customers In Connecticut

So much for self imposed deadlines. Connecticut Light and Power (CLP) blew its self-imposed deadline to get 95% of service restored. More than 100,000 customers are still without power across Connecticut, as compared with nearly all customers restored in New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts.

CLP is now saying that service will be restored Wednesday. Anyone want to give odds on that?

There are further rumblings that the utilities may seek rate increases to cover the storm damage costs.

Sorry, but as someone who lost power for a couple of days, was severely inconvenienced by the loss of power, and poor customer service, I doubt anyone will stomach rate increases when there's evidence that the outages were extended due to the utilities own failures.

This includes not reimbursing mutual support companies for their work done in prior storms that led those companies to scale back the number of responding units. Pennywise and pound foolish looks like a theme in Connecticut, and to a lesser extend in other utilities as well.

Putting the bottom line above maintaining a dependable transmission grid has led to cutting back on basic maintenance. Trimming trees once every four to five years is insufficient. This storm once again showed that power lines are extremely vulnerable to wind and storm damage and that tree trimming must be much more aggressive to reduce the chances for outages.

So, while it means that many old growth trees might need to be pruned or removed, the upside is a much more reliable grid. Trees should be part of the landscape, but size-appropriate trees should be put in place. That means that 80-90 foot trees should make way for trees that are 20-30 feet tall and less likely to bring down lines and in places where burying lines makes sense (such as when roads are already going to be torn up for utility/sewer work/repaving projects), then the utilities should also be relocated underground. I think people will support plans that reduce damage going forward, but aren't going to sit still and take rate hikes for the companies own failings.

All of this is little comfort to those who are now without power for eight days. Among the worst hit areas include around Farmington, where more than 50% of customers remain without power.

Gov. Malloy now says that the situation is unacceptable. About time he did so. He's been late on getting ahead of the storm damage wrought by the early nor'easter. While he says that the state is mulling its options, here's a few ideas:

1. require all utilities to devote far more resources to maintaining, pruning, and other basic services;
2. impose penalties for outages that are the result of failing to adequately trim trees that lead to outages that last longer than they otherwise should have when the utility knew, or had reason to know, that the storm damage was likely;
3. impose penalties for delays that last longer than a period of time that cannot be reimbursed through rate hikes; and
4. clear red tape when it comes to tree trimming programs so that utilities can prune trees as necessary to maintain rights of way.

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Sex Assault Scandal Threatens To Take Down Penn State Sports Program

This is a story that broke over the weekend, but actually began more than a decade ago. A former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, for Joe Paterno's storied Penn State Nittany Lions football team was arrested for sexually abusing 8 boys over a 15 year period from 1994 to 2009, including some incidents that are believed to have occurred in a Penn State athletic building. Sandusky faces 40 abuse charges, including 21 felonies. He was released on $100,000 bail. Sandusky retired from Paterno's staff in 1999.

Sandusky apparently encountered the children through a charity he founded and operated called The Second Mile.

The allegations are bad enough, but the university's actions are reprehensible:

According to a grand-jury report, a Penn State graduate assistant claimed that on the night of March 1, 2002, he entered the football locker room and was surprised to hear the showers running and sexual sounds coming from that area. The young coach said he witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a boy he estimated to be 10 years old, that both the well-known former coach and the boy saw him, and that he raced to his office and called his father, who advised him to leave the building.

The graduate assistant went to Paterno’s home the next day to explain what he had seen. A day later, Paterno called athletic director Tim Curley to his home to relay the message.

More than a week passed before Curley and Gary Schultz, Penn State’s senior vice president for finance and business, called upon the graduate assistant for his direct version of events.

Curley and Schultz never reported the accusation to authorities, even though the grand-jury report indicated that Schultz testified he was aware of a 1998 investigation into shower incidents involving Sandusky and children in the football building. Sandusky retired in 1999, after 21 consecutive years as a Paterno assistant.

Curley and Schultz face charges of perjury to a grand jury and failure to report suspicion of child molestation.

Penn State’s president, Graham Spanier, expressed support for Curley and Schultz. The prosecutor didn’t. Neither Curley nor Schultz, after their lengthy delay in calling upon the graduate assistant, told university police about the allegation. They face perjury charges for claiming that the graduate assistant never informed them that sexual activity was involved.

Curley did ban Sandusky from bringing children on campus again, however, and Spanier approved the ban. The university president also never informed any police authorities, but was not charged.

So, at best, the AD and a university V-P were told about a possible child molestation in a football locker room; they waited a week-and-a-half to question the witness; they took action banning the alleged perpetrator -- a longtime former trusted employee -- from bringing children on campus; and the university president approved the ban, either knowing why he approved it, or not knowing why he approved it, which would be almost equally preposterous.

The arrest shook the campus to its core, and raises questions over who knew and when. It appears that at least several people knew about the sexual abuse, but did not alert the authorities. Two officials have resigned, and are facing charges themselves for obstruction of justice and perjury:

Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley and a university administrator, Gary Schultz, will step down amid a sexual abuse scandal involving a former football assistant, the university announced early Monday morning.

Curley will take an administrative leave to defend himself against perjury charges, and Schultz will retire. The decision came during an executive session Sunday night involving Graham B. Spanier, the president of the university, and members of the university’s board of trustees.

The possibility of the resignations of Coach Joe Paterno and Spanier was reportedly not discussed at the meeting.

Curley and Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business, were charged Saturday with perjury and failure to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations involving the former defensive coordinator, Jerry Sandusky, who was charged with 40 counts related to sexual abuse of boys.

Curley and Schultz deny any wrongdoing.

Mark Sherburne, the senior associate athletic director, will serve as interim athletic director.

“The board, along with the entire Penn State family, is shocked and saddened by the allegations involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky,” Steve Garban, the chairman of the board of trustees, said in a statement. “Under no circumstances does the university tolerate behavior that would put children at risk, and we are deeply troubled.”

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Metro North Scheduled To Resume Port Jervis Service By End of November

For a change, the MTA and Metro North are going to be able to restore service ahead of schedule. They're tentatively set to restore service on the Port Jervis line by November 28. That's quite a bit earlier than they initially expected, although repairs to various parts of the system will continue through 2012.

That's great news for those commuting from points north of Suffern.

One of the reasons that service will be restored sooner is that the MTA apparently was able to recycle materials that were washed downstream by the flash floods that wreaked havoc on the rails and ballast.

In addition, maintenance of way workers were able to salvage significant amounts of stone and ballast (the loose rock that is placed between ties to stabilize them), which had washed away, but was deposited sandbar-like not too far away.

An engineering assessment by AECOM earlier determined that it would take about 150,000 tons of stone - roughly 5,000 tractor-trailer-sized dump trucks - to stabilize the track bed and shore up the river bank for the long term.

Much of the 150,000 tons of stone that had to be moved was salvaged from the stream bed by Metro-North maintenance of way employees using bulldozers and backhoes. This effort greatly reduced the amount of stone that had to be purchased and delivered.

In all, there were 50 washouts that added up to 2 miles of right-of-way gone in the 14-mile stretch between Suffern and Harriman that was most severely damaged.

That further translated into a cost savings on service restoration.

The MTA is just trying to get the service restored; they're not going about improving the service beyond what was there originally. The improvements, which include better drainage and protection against flooding along the Ramapo River are to continue once the segment is reopened to revenue traffic.

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New Renderings For Intrepid Shuttle Museum Exhibit

New York's Intrepid Sea Air Space Museum won the right to display the shuttle Enterprise and while there are efforts by a couple of senators to rescind NASA's decision, the Intrepid is going ahead with its plans.

And they are delicious to look at. It would include the construction of a pavilion across the street from the aircraft carrier with the shuttle prominently displayed.

There are a few hurdles though. The museum doesn't own the parking lot on which the facility would be built, and there's the matter of fundraising. However, one pesky problem may be how the museum handles bus parking since it's expected to become a huge draw on the far West Side.

However, this is a project that can get done - and will look absolutely magnificent once completed.

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Contrary To MSNBC Report; Guy Fawkes Masks Aren't Symbol of OWS

Despite the MSNBC report claiming that Guy Fawkes masks being the Occupy movement symbol, the fact is that I've seen all of one person with that mask down at the Zuccotti Park protests. The guy, when interviewed provides an incoherent stream of babble about how he's defending everyone's rights but can't name a single thing he'd want. But he's been down there since the beginning and isn't shy about getting to the fringes of the park where the cameras are located. He's looking for attention - and he's getting it.

The masks themselves represent a movement of anarchists and was inspired by an awful movie (V for Vendetta) in which the antihero wears the mask as he attempts to fulfill the mission of the original Guy Fawkes - to blow up the British Parliament building.

Look at a photo or news clip from around the world of Occupy protesters and you'll likely spot a handful of people wearing masks of a cartoon-like man with a pointy beard, closed-mouth smile and mysterious eyes.
The mask is a stylized version of Guy Fawkes, an Englishman who tried to bomb the British Parliament on Nov. 5, 1605.

"They're very meaningful masks," said Alexandra Ricciardelli, who was rolling cigarettes on a table outside her tent in New York's Zuccotti Park two days before the anniversary of Fawkes' failed bombing attempt.

"It's not about bombing anything; it's about being anonymous — and peaceful."

To the 20-year-old from Keyport, N.J., the Fawkes mask "is about being against The Man — the power that keeps you down."

But history books didn't lead to the mask's popularity: A nearly 30-year-old graphic novel and a five-year-old movie did.

With so many disparate groups involved in the movement and when anyone can set up a tent in Zuccotti Park and protest anything they see fit, it's impossible to rid the park of individuals who are pushing for an anarchist agenda.

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Utilities Still Working To Restore Power Across Northeast

While PSE&G and Jersey Power and Electric are close to getting the lights turned back on for all of its residents, Connecticut consumers aren't so lucky. There are more than 300,000 customers still without power.

Why did Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy wait until yesterday to activate the National Guard to help with clearing trees and debris from roads? Activating the National Guard would have freed up resources and helped localities get reconnected to the grid faster.

Yet the real problems lie with Connecticut Light and Power (CLP). They've done so much wrong in handling this crisis that someone will likely do a case study about how a utility shouldn't function.

But giving Northeast, specifically its Connecticut Light and Power subsidiary, a divine pass is like absolving Lehman Brothers of any blame for its demise in 2008. Like financial firms, utilities need to manage risks. And they have it relatively easy: much of the task simply involves clearing overhanging trees and other hazards from power lines.

Yet according to regulatory filings, Connecticut Light and Power cut its maintenance spending by 26 percent, from $130 million in 2008 to $96.5 million last year. Put simply, that seems to suggest that one in every four trees that could have been trimmed was left untouched, though the company says the maintenance line was depressed by a deferral of expenses for accounting purposes.

The utility showed the same kind of tin ear as some banks, too. Even as customers still faced a week without electricity after Irene struck, the Connecticut Light and Power boss, Jeff Butler, suggested any restoration costs should be covered by increasing electricity rates — when Connecticut’s power is already the most expensive in the continental United States. Mr. Butler later backtracked. But this week he suggested the weekend snowstorm came without warning — words he was again forced to eat.

There’s even a near-perfect model of how Connecticut Light and Power could have done the job better. Norwich, Conn., a city of 40,000, has owned its own electric utility, as well as those for sewage, gas and water, for 107 years. Norwich Public Utilities’ customers pay, on average, a bit less than Connecticut Light and Power’s. Yet after this past weekend’s snow dump, power was out for only about 450 of its 22,000 customers — and for no more than an hour. As of Thursday morning, nearly half a million Connecticut Light and Power customers were still waiting for the lights to go on.

That’s not luck, either. After Irene hit, just 13 percent of the city’s customers lost their power for more than a day. Within three days, the whole of Norwich had been restored. It took more than a week for Connecticut Light and Power to fully restore power.

That makes it seem odd that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has tended to appear alongside Connecticut Light and Power’s Mr. Butler and to support the utility, even though far more customers lost power than should have and restoration proceeded too slowly. There’s solid numerical evidence to justify Mr. Malloy’s berating Connecticut Light and Power and calling for Mr. Butler’s head on behalf of the citizens of his state.

In contrast to Connecticut Light and Power, Norwich’s electric unit last year increased operations and maintenance spending by 11 percent, to $2.9 million. Put another way, in 2010 Norwich allocated about $132 a customer to this line item in its accounts. Connecticut Light and Power reported maintenance, unadjusted for deferred expenses, of $96.5 million, or around $78 per client.

They refused to get mutual assistance calls in before the storm hit so that they didn't have prepositioned units ready to respond. They didn't take the weather forecasts seriously enough - even after everyone in the region knew that the early season snows would bring down trees because most trees still had their leaves. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that snow of any significance would lay low trees and power lines when the leaves are still on the trees.

CLP can't make its own self-imposed deadlines for service restorations, and that's completely unacceptable, particularly in light of the way that the company has cut back on basic maintenance.

It's abundantly clear that CLP failed its customers, but it further appears that the state of Connecticut failed its citizens as well in not taking appropriate steps to handle the natural disaster. When the state saw that CLP wasn't getting the job done in any semblance of a timely manner, it needed to act. The governor failed to do so.

Someone must be held responsible for the ongoing failures, and that includes both the utility and the governor.

Back in New Jersey, the last few remaining outages are being dealt with and some single customers may be out of power for longer because the damage affects more than the power line to their homes or businesses (taking out the lines all the way to the utility box/meter for example). Some towns are already out of snow days and are contemplating extending the school year to meet requirements.

Municipalities around the region are also dealing with how to clear tree debris. Some, like Fair Lawn and Wayne, are allowing residents to bring all tree debris to the curb and crews will pick them up if they bundle the trees/branches and cut them down to size. Landscapers will have to cart away tree debris.

However, in Mountainside, New Jersey, the town workers are cutting branches along the right of way but are then throwing the tree debris back on to the properties for the owners to remove. That's an absolutely asinine policy - but the town claims that they aren't responsible for removal.

And for a real estate market that is already rocky, the loss of so many trees means a reduction in curb appeal. Healthy trees can add up to 10% in value to a home. I'm spending quite a bit of money to get the damaged trees on my property pruned following the storm. Healthy trees were most affected by the storm since they still were in full leaf.

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Corzine Resigns From MF Global As Investigations Continue

Things are not looking good for former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. First, his new company MF Global imploded after Corzine pushed the company to take risky bets on sovereign debt in Europe and failed to have sufficient collateral to back those bets.

Then, the company failed to provide proper protections for client accounts - commingling funds of clients with company money that is a huge red flag. That only came to light after suitors for the company started poring through the books and saw serious discrepancies. Those discrepancies total more than $630 million that cannot be accounted for.

The potential buyers fled, MF Global declared bankruptcy, and the regulators and investigators are now picking over the ruins.

And what of Jon Corzine? Not only has he resigned as head of MF Global, he's now hired a criminal attorney, which is natural because he's likely going to be facing charges relating to the commingling of funds, leading everyone astray with his reassurances at a time when he knew, or had reason to know, that his company was crumbling all around him.

We're supposed to be grateful that Corzine didn't seek his massive severance package, which totals more than $12 million? Sorry, but he's bankrupted the company; there's no money to collect.

Mr. Corzine resigned from MF Global on Friday morning and will not seek $12 million severance payments.

Federal authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Securities and Exchange Commission, are investigating the $630 million in missing customer money at MF Global.

Mr. Levander could not be reached as he is out of the country, according to his assistant. He did not return an e-mail seeking comment. Daniel O’Donnell, the chief executive of Mr. Levander’s law firm, Dechert, declined to comment.

In Mr. Levander, the chairman of Dechert, Mr. Corzine has retained a New York lawyer who is no stranger to defending prominent Wall Street executives. He represented John Thain, the former chief executive at Merrill Lynch, in a government inquiry related his role in Merrill’s sale to Bank of America. Ezra Merkin, a hedge fund manager who invested with Bernard L. Madoff, hired Mr. Levander to defend him against a New York attorney general’s lawsuit connected to the Madoff case.

“Andy is not just smart but has a deep understanding of the investigative process,” said Steven M. Cohen, a defense lawyer at Zuckerman Spaeder in New York and the former top aide to Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. “He understands how cases are built and therefore how they are defended.”

Other recent high-profile assignments for the bow-tie clad Mr. Levander include his representation of the outside directors of Lehman Brothers and Monster.com, a jobs Web site, in a government investigation relating to the backdating of employee stock options. In 2004, he obtained an acquittal for Michael Rigas, a former Adelphia Communications executive, in a criminal trial. A jury convicted Mr. Rigas’s father and brother in the same case.

Like much of New York’s white-collar defense bar, Mr. Levander is a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. A graduate of Tufts University and Columbia Law School, Mr. Levander clerked for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the Federal Appeals Court in Manhattan. He joined Dechert in 2005 after it acquired Swidler Berlin Shereff Friedman, a small New York firm where he had worked.

Corzine also hired another firm to represent him in bankruptcy proceedings and shareholder suits that are already being lodged against the firm and him personally.

This will not end well for Corzine.

UPDATE:
Is there a conflict of interests between the regulators and investigations into Corzine's actions. The head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is Gary Gensler. The two have crossed paths numerous times and raises questions as to whether Gensler can do his job to suss out all that went wrong with MF Global and hold Corzine accountable:

Gensler was a partner with Goldman Sachs, rising to rank of co-head of finance before leaving the firm in 1997 for a role in the U.S. Treasury department. At the time, Corzine, a 24-year veteran of the firm, served as its CEO.

The two men met up again on Capitol Hill, when Corzine, then the junior senator from New Jersey, in 2002 helped co-author the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which imposed massive new regulations in response to accounting scandals that caused Enron, Tyco and WorldCom to implode. Gensler was a senior advisor to Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.), then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, for whom the act was partially named.

This week’s turn of events–MF Global’s meltdown and subsequent findings by its regulators that the firm allegedly violated requirements on customer segregated funds–promises to reunite the two men once again, though on opposite sides of the table. A CFTC spokesman did not return a message immediately seeking comment on Corzine and Gensler’s connection and whether it represents a potential conflict.

I don't think this will affect the investigations, since Gensler could recuse himself while others around him in the CFTC can do their jobs.

UPDATE:
Wouldn't you know it that Corzine lobbied to get regulators to reduce their restrictions on the very kinds of transactions that undid MF Global.

As a former United States senator and a former governor of New Jersey, as well as the leader of Goldman Sachs in the 1990s, Mr. Corzine carried significant weight in the worlds of Washington and Wall Street. While other financial firms employed teams of lobbyists to fight the new regulation, MF Global’s chief executive in meetings over the last year personally pressed regulators to halt their plans.

The agency proposing the rule, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, relented. Wall Street, which has been working to curb many financial regulations, won another battle.

Yet with MF Global in bankruptcy and regulators scrambling to find $630 million in missing customer funds, Mr. Corzine’s effort may come back to haunt him.

The proposed rule would have restricted a complicated transaction that allowed MF Global in essence to borrow money from its own customers. Brokerage firms are allowed to use customers’ money to earn interest, not unlike banks, but this rule would have outlawed using customer funds for a loan to the firm itself.

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New Skirmishes Erupt As Gazan Terrorists Attack Israeli Security Forces Along Fence

Gazan terrorists carried out a sustained attack against an Israeli security force working on the security fence between Israel and Gaza. It was a sustained skirmish, and no Israelis were injured in the attack on the Israelis who were fixing the security barrier between Israel and Gaza.

Armed Palestinians on Thursday opened fire on IDF forces that were working on the security fence near Kibbutz Zikim, north of the Gaza Strip.

The force was positioned near the fence when suddenly shots and mortar shells were fired at them from the Gaza Strip. The force responded with fire, hitting several members of the terrorist cell. No injuries reported among the IDF forces, but a military vehicle sustained light damage.

This may have been an attempt to capture an Israeli a la Shalit but were thwarted by a concerted effort by the Israelis to pin down and kill the terror cell attacking them.

A Hamas operative was among the Palestinian terrorists killed.

Israel has suspended transfer payments to the Palestinian Authority following the UNESCO vote to grant the PA membership. The Israelis have also stopped their $2 million payment to UNESCO over the vote.

All this follows over 40 mortars and rockets fired at Israel over the weekend.

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Syria Continues Slaughter Of Protesters Despite "Deal" With Arab League

The Arab League claimed that it struck a deal with Syria's Bashar al Assad to stop the brutal crackdown against protesters across Syria. The ink wasn't even dry when Assad's security forces continued the bloodletting. Five more protesters were killed in Homs by security forces.

After seven months of street protests demanding the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, and a nascent armed insurgency against his rule, Syria agreed on Wednesday to an Arab League plan to withdraw the army from cities, release political prisoners and hold talks with the opposition.

Assad's critics have dismissed his past offers of dialogue as insincere, saying the killing must stop before any meaningful talks can take place. The main opposition National Council has not commented on Syria's acceptance of the Arab League plan.

However, Paris-based Burhan Ghalioun, one of the council's leading figures, questioned whether it would be implemented.

"The regime has accepted the Arab initiative out of fear of Arab isolation, its weakness and lack of options. But its acceptance does not mean it will respect its clauses," Ghalioun wrote on his Facebook page.

In Syria, residents and activists said there were no signs so far of any troop pullout, and security operations continued.

In Homs, tanks fired heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns in Bab Amro, a hotbed of protests and scene of operations by the military against insurgents hiding there.

Activists named two civilians killed in the bombardment. A rubbish truck driver district was among three others killed elsewhere in the city of one million, where army snipers were shooting from rooftops and soldiers fired from checkpoints.

NATO has already ruled out any kind of action along the lines of the Libyan mission, which means that the Syrian protesters are on their own for now.

The Arab League is powerless to stop Assad, and Assad's regime continues to get support from Iran, who is using the crisis to further its own interests as a regional power to thwart moves by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Egyptians.

So much for that supposed lifeline. Indeed, the "deal" has no teeth; there are no timetables for withdrawal of forces and a cessation of use of military force to quell protests. In other words, it's not even worth the paper it's written on. Assad will continue murdering opponents to his regime and there's nothing the Arab League will do about it.

Assad's regime is throwing up all kinds of roadblocks for protesters and those trying to escape the violence, including laying minefields along the border with Lebanon to thwart escaping refugees from the centers of violence.

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Frustrations Mount As Millions Remain Without Power Across Northeast

While there's been quite a bit of good news in New Jersey (particularly PSE&G) in restoring power, other areas aren't so lucky. Jersey Central Power and Light has the bulk of the outages in New Jersey, and PSE&G has reduced their outages to about 20,000 statewide (mostly Northern NJ). Those that are still without power can't take solace in those figures.

JCP&L is urging people to be patient, but as the outages wear on and the weather remains cold, it's hard to give the company any slack. After all, PSE&G was able to cut down the number of outages significantly, although towns like Teaneck remain a mess and schools remain closed as a result of the ongoing outages.

Orange and Rockland still has thousands without power across the Hudson River valley, and CLP still has more than 400,000 customers without power.

The frustration is mounting, and there's quite a bit of chatter about how CLP has misallocated its resources, including not giving mutual assistance crews the go-ahead to fix downed lines and equipment when they have the ability to do so. Power isn't expected to be restored until the weekend in large parts of Connecticut, and it doesn't appear that anyone is going to hold the utility responsible. Gov. Malloy is talking the talk about how they're trying to safely restore power and that it will take time, but isn't taking the right tone in dealing with the utility, which seems to have done everything wrong - from refusing to make the mutual aid calls in a reasonable time frame, to underestimating the level of damage, and then not giving its mutual assistance crews the ability to fix what needs to be fixed so that areas can be restored.

Some localities are considering suits against the utility. One in particular is Simsbury, which claims that the utility has only one crew working there - and that the public works crews are trying to clear streets, but need the utility to sign off on whether the lines are safe to work around and clear.

When asked whether the town was going to seek a lawsuit against Connecticut Light & Power, Glassman said the town is extremely disappointed that up until Wednesday they have had one CL&P crew working in Simsbury.

The town sued CL&P in the 1990s for the same reason because there were too many outages at the same time.

As a result of that lawsuit, CL&P increased their tree-trimming program, upgraded their transmission lines and added a substation in Simsbury which has since improved power in Simsbury.

“But we have a lot of questions now,” Glassman said. “Why five days into the storm do we only have one crew assigned to Simsbury, which was one of the hardest towns hit? So we will be exploring our options including litigation.”

Public Works Director Tom Roy said Tuesday they have every single person working on the restoration efforts and there are several contractors clearing the streets and debris.

“What our goals are right now is to get access to residents by car and emergency vehicles,” said Roy. “The limiting factor for us the majority of trees that have not been cleared at this point are entangled in the power lines. We need CL&P to verify that it is safe to work near them.”

Clearly, it appears that CLP is in hot water with its customers and regulators better take a good look at whether it's exercised reasonable prudence when it comes to maintaining its grid, handled trimming trees properly, and then failed to address the outage in any semblance of urgency.

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Corzine's MF Global Missing $633 Million

In the wake of the collapse of MF Global, regulators have found that $633 million is missing. The regulators also found that the company sought to hide transactions from regulators as bankruptcy was looming:

MF Global, the dealer-broker firm run by former Gov. Jon Corzine, made several last minute transfers of customer funds in a manner apparently designed to avoid detection as it headed for bankruptcy, an industry regulator said Wednesday.

The statement, by CME Group of Chicago, came as federal regulators probe whether the company used customer funds for company business.

Federal regulations require that customer and company funds be kept separate. Lawyers for the Chicago Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures and options trading, said $633 million in customer commodities funds is missing, Bloomberg News reported.

CME Group, the owner-operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, said that any transfer of customer funds occurred after CME completed an audit last week.

"The results of our review indicated that MF Global was in compliance with its segregation requirements," in the audit period, CME said. But the statement added that "It now appears that the firm made subsequent transfers of customer segregated funds in a manner that may have been designed to avoid detection."

The company, which filed for bankruptcy Monday, did not report the transfers to the Chicago Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures and options trading, until early Monday morning, CME said.

It would appear that someone authorized these transactions following the audit period so as to cover the losses that were pushing the firm into insolvency and ahead of the bankruptcy sale to another brokerage.

That's criminal action - and those involved, including Jon Corzine must be held accountable.



Corzine pushed the company to get into sovereign debt bets as a way to expand a profit center, and the bets went badly particularly because the company didn't have sufficient collateral to cover the positions if they went bad.

The company failed to maintain adequate controls separating client accounts from the company's own monies.

The sale of MF Global prior to the bankruptcy was scuttled when the potential buyer ended up finding discrepancies. Turns out that the potential sale showed the failures and exposed all kinds of problems with the firm.

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Four Arrested In Georgia Terror Plot Using Ricin and An Update On The Hutaree Militia Case

Four men from Georgia were under arrest after allegedly being involved in a plot to attack government officials using ricin and other weapons.

The men, all aged 65 and over, were recorded telling an F.B.I. informant that they wanted to kill federal judges, Internal Revenue Service employees and agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to court documents.

“There is no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly, highly illegal: murder,” one of those charged, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga., was recorded telling the informant.

“When it comes time to saving the Constitution, that means some people have got to die,” he said.

Another of the men, Samuel J. Crump, 68, of Toccoa, Ga., is accused of saying he wanted to make 10 pounds of ricin and disperse it in Atlanta and other cities, as well as loosing it from a car traveling on Interstate highways. Ricin, made from the castor bean, is a potent toxin, though it is not generally believed to be effective for killing large numbers of people.

The others arrested were Dan Roberts, 67, and Ray H. Adams, 65, both of Toccoa, the Justice Department said.

Ricin is a bioweapon and has no known cure. If you are afflicted with ricin poisoning, you will die. That's just one of the weapons that these four men sought to use.

They have ties to the militia movement in Georgia and one of the men had worked at the CDC. These weren't men engaging in idle talk. They wanted to take action against the government, including assassination:

Thomas was described in affidavits as a leading speaker at the meetings. He discussed having a “bucket list” of government officials, business leaders and members of the media who needed to be “taken out” to “make the country right again,” the affidavit said.

Thomas also said he was a military veteran who had been to war and had taken a life, and said he could do it again, the affidavit said.

“There’s no way for us, as militiamen, to save this country, to save Georgia, without doing something that’s highly illegal: murder,” Thomas said during a meeting in March, according to the affidavit. "... When it comes to saving the Constitution, that means some people gotta die."

Adams formerly worked at the USDA for the Agricultural Research Service as a lab technician, the U.S. Department of Agriculture verified to the FBI. Adams is accused of trying to help Crump obtain ricin for use as a weapon, authorities said. According to the affidavit, Crump once worked for the Centers for Disease Control for a contractor doing maintenance work for the CDC. Roberts is retired from the signage industry, family members said Tuesday.

FBI documents reveal the men held a series of meetings beginning in March and as recently as last week in which they discussed their plans.

One of the arrested men has ties to an extremist group called the North Georgia Area Command. The Georgia plotters apparently got the idea for the attacks from an online novel written by an extremist.

Meanwhile, there's a guilty plea being entered by one of the Hutaree militia members. The Hutaree, a militia group in Michigan, was arrested by law enforcement and charged with plotting to overthrow the government. While the defendants claim that they were engaging in tough talk - protected by the 1st Amendment, prosecutors note that they were heavily armed and had taken steps in furtherance of the talk. Another one of the defendants has been declared incompetent to stand trial.

Kudos to law enforcement for thwarting this planned attack, which had the potential to be a mass casualty attack of significant proportions.

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100 Members of Congress Urge Super Committee To Look At All Options To Close Deficit

100 members of Congress, including 40 Republicans, have written a letter to the deficit super committee entrusted with coming up with a plan to close the huge federal deficit with a plan that must receive up or down approval from Congress or else mandatory across-the-board cuts.

The 100 are in agreement that all options must be considered, including tax hikes.

With a deadline three weeks away, the evenly divided, 12-member committee has shown few signs of progress. Democrats have demanded higher taxes as their price for accepting significant savings from benefit programs such as Medicare, but have been rebuffed by Republicans who oppose tax increases.

The letter, to be released later Wednesday, also urges the committee to aim well beyond its official goal of finding at least $1.2 trillion in savings over a decade.

"We know from other bipartisan frameworks that a target of some $4 trillion in deficit reduction is necessary to stabilize our debt as a share of the economy and assure America's fiscal well-being," the letter says.

Bipartisan budget experts who have produced plans for reducing the debt have urged the committee to produce at least $4 trillion in savings. They say doing less would not significantly alter the long-term financial nightmare the government faces, in which federal red ink continues growing at a faster rate than the U.S. economy.

A partial list of the letters' signers shows many moderates from both parties. There's a range, too, from conservative Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., who has had tea party support, to liberal Peter Welch, D-Vt.

Others who signed on include Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democratic leader and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., one of this year's 87 House freshmen. Reps. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, organized the letter.

"We know that many in Washington and around the country do not believe we in the Congress and those within your committee can successfully meet this challenge. We believe that we can and we must," the letter says.

The approximately 60 Democrats on the letter shows that nearly one-third of House Democrats say they are willing to cull savings from benefit programs as part of a debt-cutting deal. Republicans have insisted that these huge and fast-growing programs, also called entitlements, must be targeted heavily.

That's in stark contrast to the no-tax-hike pledges from Presidential candidates and the Grover Norquist band of GOPers who see tax cuts and starving government programs as the way forward.

Watch the Tea Party crowd have those Republicans called out for stating the obvious - that it will take more than spending cuts to bring the budget in line and to create a fiscally responsible budget going forward.

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Power Remains Out For Millions In Northeast; Connecticut Remains Hardest Hit

While I may have gotten power restored yesterday, millions of other people in the NYC metro area and up into New England are still suffering for lack of power.

PSE&G has been ramping up its response, and they've got more trucks and equipment stashed at the parking lot for Garden State Plaza than when they used it as a staging area for Hurricanes Irene and Lee. They're using the lot to stash equipment ranging from poles and transformers to power lines and other key equipment to get the distribution lines up and running.

Connecticut Light and Power is saying that it hopes to get power restored to 99% of its customers by Sunday. There are also reports that CLP's response may have been slow because the company hadn't paid contractors for work done during the storm response to Hurricane Lee and Irene.

On Tuesday, Butler also said that he was aware of reports that a slow response from out-of-state contractors who were hesitant to travel to Connecticut to aid in power restoration was because they had not been paid from their work during tropical storm Irene.

When asked if the non-payment had been an issue that prompted the contractors to avoid showing up sooner in Connecticut this week, Butler said, "I'm not aware that it has been.''

"I know our customers are extremely frustrated,'' Butler said. "It's not a pleasure to have customers without power.''

He added, "Unlike Irene, it's cold at night. ... We recognize the frustration.''

Butler is the COO of CLP; and the company better be looking at revisiting the policy in light of the devastating outages that affected all parts of Connecticut and nearly took CLP off the grid entirely.

Trying to pin the blame on the lack of mutual aid from PSE&G or Con Ed makes no sense, not when utilities up and down the East Coast from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York were struggling to deal with millions of outages themselves. PSE&G was bringing in crews from Ohio and elsewhere to assist; so too was Con Ed; yet CLPwas finding it difficult to track down mutual assistance? That would appear to have more to do with the CLP company policy than the mutual assistance companies.

Even the feds are noticing that the storm response is slower than during Irene, particularly in Connecticut:

Bryan says utility companies didn't have time to get additional workers from other regions in place before the snowstorm like they were able to do before Irene in August. The companies had several days to prepare for Irene and only a few days to prepare for the snowstorm, which hit the region harder than was forecast. At midweek last week, some forecasters said the storm was going to miss New England.

Thousands of extra crews from across the country are now helping to restore power in the Northeast, where some utility customers aren't expected to get their electricity back until next week.

"When you know you've got a hurricane coming, part of the mutual assistance package is to pre-stage crews," Bryan said. "So after the hurricane has come and gone, you already have crews on the outskirts ready to come in and start working. … This storm hit, and these crews were not mobilized."

Six thousand extra utility crews were either working in the Northeast on Tuesday or getting close to arriving, officials said.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who asked the Department of Energy for help in coordinating the cleanup and power restoration response, said Tuesday that he was disappointed that the number of out-of-state crews helping in the state was lower than expected. A spokeswoman for the governor said he wasn't criticizing the utilities' response, just trying to do everything he could to get the power on quicker.

About 700 extra workers on Tuesday were helping the 200 regular crews of Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state's largest utility, which had requested 1,000 additional crews. The weekend storm caused more than 830,000 outages in the state — a record — and about 650,000 customers remained in the dark Tuesday.

Bryan said it appeared there were problems in the way extra workers were being distributed in the region.

"If you look at the outages in Connecticut, which basically equal the outages of all the other places combined, you really don't have yet a fair distribution of workers, mutual assistance teams out here doing this," Bryan said.

CLPadmits that they didn't request mutual assistance before the storm hit, as they did in preparing for Hurricane Irene. That was a serious mistake on their part, and one of the reasons why it is going to take as long as it is for power restoration.

The latest figures on outages is here.

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The Latest From Zuccotti Park's OWS Protests

So how are the protesters dealing with the lack of generators after the NYPD and FDNY confiscated them as a fire hazard? They've gone and become their own generators - using bikes to power generators:


Local businesses continue suffering from the ongoing security measures put in place after OWS protesters took over Zuccotti Park. One business claims to have laid off a bunch of part time workers because business is down significantly as a result of the security barriers limiting the traffic to his establishment.

Marc Epstein, owner of the Milk Street Cafe at 40 Wall Street, just let 21 employees go.

The reason? The barricades police have set up throughout Wall Street as a consequence of the ongoing demonstration.

In June, he opened the New York branch of the Boston shop, which has a 30 year history. Epstein says he leased the space on Wall Street because it was next to a pedestrian plaza – and his was the only restaurant along that plaza.

“The opening was perfect,” Epstein told CBSNewYork.com. “The food was delicious, the customers were happy, and the line was out the door.”

Customers kept coming back, Epstein said.

“Everything was going in the right direction. Sales continued to grow. We started to build our catering business. Costs were going down. I felt that by October or November we would break even.”

Then the Occupy Wall Street movement launched.

“I came one Monday morning and I found the exit by the 2 or 3 subway station closed. I saw all these barriers – barricades – all up and down my street,” Epstein said. “At first I thought nothing of it, but after a week… it’s been six or seven weeks now.”

The security barriers are meant to thwart protesters from marching into the Wall Street hub area around the NYSE and Federal Hall, but they have also served to thwart tourists and local businesses from carrying out regular business. These measures are in addition to the barriers installed in the wake of 9/11 to protect the stock exchange from potential attack by car/truck bombs.

Note too that the building where the business is located is owned by none other than Donald Trump, so expect Trump to squawk about the situation.

Local politicians continue weighing in over the protests, and Shelly Silver, the Assembly Speaker, has come out against the protests after spending time on the fence. He's been joined by other Democrats, including Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who represent the area of Lower Manhattan. They're demanding the city crack down against the nuisances, particularly those protesters who are defecating and urinating on local streets and the incessant noise coming from the drummer groups along the west side of the park.

While expressing sympathy for Occupy Wall Street protesters and their right to protest, the elected officials wrote to Bloomberg insisting he solve growing concerns.

“Some of the protesters, and others who have opportunistically joined the crowd for unrelated reasons, have created serious qualify-of-life concerns for residents of the immediate area,” the letter states.

The group complained about public urination, nonstop drumming - and erected barricades that make it difficult for local residents to get around.

“It is important that these quality-of-life concerns are addressed in an effective and thoughtful manner by the city so that they do not keep recurring,” the letter states.

Silver, at the Capitol in Albany, told reporters that exercising one’s First Amendment rights “should not include defecating or urinating on sidewalks.

“What we want is a recognition that other people have a constitutional right to enjoy their home, that businesses have a right to do business unimpeded by people who are exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.

Meanwhile Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former Mayor Ed Koch sparred over the protesters and whether they were focused on the right target. While Bloomberg suggested that the real beef was with Congress and Washington, Koch pointed out the problem with someone stealing a bike going to jail while someone who stole millions got a fine.

Both are serious problems, but the issue of fines is one that Congress has to address - that's not merely something that Wall Street can rectify on its own. It means giving teeth to the penalty structure in place for Wall Street and financial malfeasance.

At the same time, a new poll suggests that the makeup of those protesting isn't quite what people may think.

The poll by Fordham's Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy released last week found that the Occupy Wall Street movement is 68% white, 61% male and 28% unemployed. But most of the protestors are college graduates and 22% hold advanced degrees.

It also found that only 25% of the protestors identify with the Democratic Party, while 21% want Rep Ron Paul (R-Texas) to become the Republican Party nominee for president.

The project by Costas Panagopoulos, professor of political science at Fordham and students, surveyed 301 protestors camped out at Zuccotti Park from Oct. 11 to Oct. 14, with a response rate of 78%. Only one other such survey of Occupy Wall Street exists and it polled fewer protestors, Panagopoulos said.

“The group is very liberal and part of the Democratic base,” Panagopoulos said. “But a surprising number don’t plan to vote."

The OWS rabble rousers seem to detest the Tea Party movement, with 75% giving it two thumbs down.

But, like their conservative counterparts, the Zuccotti Park denizens don’t trust Washington to “do what is right” and 97% disapprove of how Congress is handling its job.

More protestors identify with the Socialist Party than the Republican Party, and more than a third identify with no party at all, the survey found.

A surprising percentage support Ron Paul, which suggests quite a significant libertarian streak among protesters, which isn't nearly what Panagopoulos suggests. It isn't surprising that there's a significant liberal presence, but there's a confluence of anti-government sentiment among the protesters that has all kinds of shades - from socialist to libertarian.

The Daily News reported that a group claiming to be affiliated with the OWS protesters that circulated a supposed manifesto codifying various demands of the protesters is a bunch of bunk.

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Corzine's Big Bets Bust Major Financial Firm; Regulators Want To Know Where Investor Money Went

One of the sacrosanct rules in finance (and law) is that you never commingle investor/client funds with your own. It's one of the few automatic ways that a lawyer can find themselves disbarred.

Yet, we're now learning that the financial firm headed up by none other than former New Jersey Jon Corzine is potentially in hot water over being incapable of accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars of investor funds after MF Global went belly up after Corzine bet big on foreign funds and lost.

Federal regulators have discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars in customer money has gone missing from MF Global in recent days, prompting an investigation into the brokerage firm, which is run by Jon S. Corzine, the former New Jersey governor, several people briefed on the matter said on Monday.

The recognition that money was missing scuttled at the 11th hour an agreement to sell a major part of MF Global to a rival brokerage firm. MF Global had staked its survival on completing the deal. Instead, the New York-based firm filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

Regulators are examining whether MF Global diverted some customer funds to support its own trades as the firm teetered on the brink of collapse.

The discovery that money could not be located might simply reflect sloppy internal controls at MF Global. It is still unclear where the money went. At first, as much as $950 million was believed to be missing, but as the firm sorted through its bankruptcy, that figure fell to less than $700 million by late Monday, the people briefed on the matter said. Additional funds are expected to trickle in over the coming days.

But the investigation, which is in its earliest stages, may uncover something more intentional and troubling.

Sloppy controls my ass. Banks and financial firms know down to the penny how much is in individual accounts and that MF Global was playing games and can't account for where all the investor money was is not just troubling, but it shows that regulators failed in basic oversight to make sure that the brokerage was playing by the rules.

How did MF Global get in this mess? Corzine bet company money on European debt - and didn't have sufficient capital to back up the bets. He did the same kind of thing at Goldman Sachs where some of those decisions went bust, but Goldman Sachs could absorb some of those losses. Here, he's dealing with a much smaller firm and by buying up big holdings of debt from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Ireland at a discount, he thought he could turn around and profit if the Eurozone fixed its mess. However, it wasn't to be.

So, while the bonds may have matured in less than a year - we've repeatedly seen that failure to have proper capitalization can lay low major financial firms. MF Global was taking inordinate risk and lacked sufficient capital reserves; that's where the issue of investor money comes into play. Regulators are now poring over whether the company used those investor funds to paper over and increase the capital behind the bond bet.

The CME and other regulatory bodies are already saying that MF Global broke the rules. The question will be determining the extent of the mess.

And criminal charges should be coming down the road too. You break these kinds of rules, and you're essentially stealing from your clients in the hopes that you can make back your money. It's a losing proposition and the brokerage industry needs to know that these rules aren't to be trifled with.

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