#finance and felony

[pegassi-toreador]

Dewbauchee Seven-70

[sayruq]

A bipartisan bill would give the secretary of the treasury unilateral power to classify any charity as a terrorist-supporting organization, automatically stripping away its nonprofit status. The bill, H.R. 6408, already passed the House of Representatives in November, and a companion bill, S. 4136, was introduced to the Senate by Sens. John Cornyn (R–Texas) and Angus King (I–Maine) last week. In theory, the bill is a measure to fight terrorism financing. At least, that's what sponsor Rep. David Kustoff (R–Tenn.) claimed. "I urge the swift passage of this legislation that will significantly diminish the ability of Hamas and other terrorist groups to finance their operations and carry out future attacks," he said in a November statement. Financing terrorism is already very illegal. Anyone who gives money, goods, or services to a U.S.-designated terrorist organization can be charged with a felony under the Antiterrorism Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And those terrorist organizations are already banned from claiming tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Nine charities have been shut down since 2001 under the law. The new bill would allow the feds to shut down a charity without an official terrorism designation. It creates a new label called "terrorist-supporting organization" that the secretary of the treasury could slap onto nonprofits, removing their tax exempt status within 90 days. Only the secretary of the treasury could cancel that designation.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting “The Bezzle” audiobook, sequel to Red Team Blues

I'm heading to Berlin! On January 29, I'll be delivering Transmediale's Marshall McLuhan Lecture, and on January 30, I'll be at Otherland Books (tickets are limited! They'll have exclusive early access to the English edition of The Bezzle and the German edition of Red Team Blues!).

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to last year's Red Team Blues, featuring Marty Hench, a hard-charging, two-fisted forensic accountant who spent 40 years in Silicon Valley, busting every finance scam hatched by tech bros' feverish imaginations:

http://thebezzle.org

Marty Hench is a great character to write. His career in high-tech scambusting starts in the early 1980s with the first PCs and stretches all the way to the cryptocurrency era, the most target-rich environment for scamhunting tech has ever seen. Hench is the Zelig of tech scams, and I'm having so much fun using him to probe the seamy underbelly of the tech economy.

Enter The Bezzle, which will be published by Tor Books and Head of Zeus on Feb 20: this adventure finds Marty in the company of Scott Warms, one of the many bright technologists whose great startup was bought and destroyed by Yahoo! (yes, they really used that asinine exclamation mark). Scott is shackled to the Punctuation Factory by golden handcuffs, and he's determined to get fired without cause, so he can collect his shares and move onto the next thing.

That's how Scott and Marty find themselves on Catalina island, the redoubt of the Wrigley family, where bison roam the hills, yachts bob in the habor and fast food is banned. Scott invites Marty on a series of luxury vacations on Catalina, which end abruptly when they discover – and implode – a hamburger-related Ponzi scheme run by a real-estate millionaire who is destroying the personal finances of the Island's working-class townies out of sheer sadism.

Scott's victory is bittersweet: sure, he blew up the Ponzi scheme, but he's also made powerful enemies – the kinds of enemies who can pull strings with the notoriously corrupt LA County Sheriff's Deputies who are the only law on Catalina, and after taking a pair of felony plea deals, Scott gets the message and never visits Catalina Island again.

That could have been the end of it, but California's three-strikes law – since rescinded – means that when Scott picks up one more felony conviction for some drugs discovered during a traffic stop, he's facing life in prison.

That's where The Bezzle really gets into gear.

At its core, The Bezzle is a novel about the "shitty technology adoption curve": the idea that our worst technological schemes are sanded smooth on the bodies of prisoners, mental patients, kids and refugees before they work their way up the privilege gradient and are inflicted on all of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

America's prisons are vicious, brutal places, and technology has only made them worse. When Scott's prison swaps out in-person visits, the prison library, and phone calls for a "free" tablet that offers all these services as janky apps that cost ten times more than they would on the outside, the cruelty finds a business model.

Working inside and outside the prison Marty Hench and Scott Warms figure out the full nature of the scam that the captive audience of prisoners are involuntary beta-testers for, and they discover a sprawling web of real-estate fraud, tech scams, and offshore finance that is extracting fortunes from the hides of America's prisoners and their families. The criminals who run that kind of enterprise aren't shy about fighting for what they've got, and they're more than happy to cut some of LA County's notorious deputy gangs in for a cut in exchange for providing some kinetic support for the project.

The Bezzle is exactly the kind of book I was hoping I'd get to write when I kicked off the Hench series – one that decodes the scam economy, from music royalties to prison videoconferencing, real estate investment trusts to Big Four accounting firm bogus audits. It's both a fast-moving, two-fisted crime novel and a masterclass on how the rich and powerful get away with both literal and figurative murder.

It's getting a big push from both my publishers and I'll be touring western Canada and the US with it. The early reviews are spectacular. But despite all of this, I had to make my own audiobook for it, which I'm pre-selling on Kickstarter:

http://thebezzle.org

Why? Because Audible – Amazon's monopoly gatekeeper to the audiobook world, with more than 90% of the market – refuses to carry my work.

Audible uses Digital Rights Management to lock every audiobook they sell to their platform. Legally, only an Audible-authorized app can decrypt and play the audiobooks they sell you. Distributing a tool that removes Audible DRM is a felony under Section 1201 of the 1998 DMCA.

That means that if you break up with Audible – delete your Audible apps – you will lose your entire audiobook library. And the fact that you're Audible's hostage makes the writers you love into their hostages, too. Writers understand that if they leave the Audible platform, their audience will have to choose between following them, or losing all their audiobooks.

That's how Audible gets away with abusing its performers and writers, up to and including the $100m Audiblegate wage-theft scandal:

https://www.audiblegate.com/

Audible can steal $100m from its writers…and the writers still continue to sell on the platform, because leaving will cost them their audience.

This is canonical enshittification: lock in users, then screw suppliers. Lots of companies abuse DRM to do this, but none can hold a candle to Amazon, who understand that the DMCA is a copyright law that protects corporations at the expense of creators.

Under DMCA 1201 commercial distribution of a "circumvention device" carries a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that if I write a book, pay to have it recorded, and then sell it to you through Audible, I am criminally prohibited from giving you the tool to take it from Audible to another platform. Even though I hold the copyright to that work, I would face a harsher sentence than you would if you simply pirated the audiobook from some darknet site. Not only that: if you shoplifted the audiobook in CD form, you'd get a lighter sentence than I, the copyright holder, would receive for giving you a tool to unlock it from Amazon's platform! Hell, if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CD, you'd get off lighter than I would. This is a scam straight out of a Marty Hench novel.

This is batshit. I won't allow it. My books are licensed on the condition that they must not be sold with DRM. Which means that Audible won't sell my books, which means that my publishers are thoroughly disinterested in paying thousands of dollars to produce audiobooks of my titles. A book that isn't sold in the one store than accounts for 90% of all sales is unlikely to do well.

That's where you come in. Since 2020, I've used Kickstarter to pre-sell five of my audiobooks (I wrote nine books during lockdown!). All told, I've raised over $750,000 (gross! but still!) on these crowdfunders. More than 20,000 backers have pitched in! The last two of these books – The Internet Con and The Lost Cause – were national bestsellers.

This isn't just a way for me to pay off a lot of bills and put away something for retirement – it's proof that readers care about supporting writers and don't want to be locked in by a giant monopolist that depends on its drivers pissing in bottles to make quota.

It's a powerful message about the desire for something better than Amazon. It's part of the current that is driving the FTC to haul Amazon into court for being a monopolist, and also part of the inspiration for other authors to try treating Amazon as damage and routing around it, with spectacular results:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson

And I'm doing it again. Last December, I went into Skyboat Media's studios where Gabrielle De Cuir directed @wilwheaton, who reprised his role as Marty Hench for the audiobook of The Bezzle. It came out amazing:

https://archive.org/details/bezzle-sample

Now I'm pre-selling this audiobook, as well as the ebook and hardcover for The Bezzle. I'm also offering bundles with the ebook and audiobook for Red Team Blues (naturally these are all DRM-free). You can get your books signed and personalized and shipped anywhere in the world, courtesy of Book Soup, and I've partnered with Libro.fm to deliver DRM-free audiobooks with an app for people who don't want to mess around with sideloading.

I've also got some spendy options for high rollers. There's three chances to name a character in the next Hench novel (Picks and Shovels, Feb 2025). There's also five chances to commission a Hench short story about your favorite tech scam, and get credited when the story is published.

The Kickstarter runs for the next three weeks, which should give me time to get the hardcopy books signed and shipped to arrive around the on-sale date. What's more, I've finally worked out all the post-Brexit kinks with shipping my UK publisher's books to EU backers. I'm working with Otherland Books to fulfill those EU orders, and it looks like I'm going to be able to sign a giant stack of those when I'm in Berlin later this month to give the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Canadian embassy:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

Red Team Blues and its sequels are some of the most fun – and informative – work I've done in my quarter-century career. I love how they blend technical explanations of the scam economy with high-intensity technothrillers. That's the the same mix as my bestselling YA series Little Brother series – but these are firmly adult novels.

The Bezzle came out great. I hope you'll give it a try – and that you'll come out to see me in late February when I hit the road with the book! Here's that Kickstarter link again:

http://thebezzle.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/10/the-bezzle/#marty-hench

[prolifeproliberty]

There are 55 pages of jury instructions, but the most important pages are pp. 27-31

This is where the judge instructs the jury on what the charges are and what is required for a guilty verdict.

Many people have spread misinformation that Trump was just convicted of campaign finance violations. This is untrue. He was not tried on those charges.

The charges he was tried on were 34 felony counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree

This means they are saying Trump broke this law 34 separate times (in reality it’s that the same transaction is recorded and reported in multiple places, so each of those would be a separate count)

Normally, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor with a 2-year statute of limitations, which would mean they couldn’t have charged Trump with this UNLESS they could upgrade it to a felony.

To make it a felony, the prosecution is supposed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that:

1. He actually knew and approved of falsifying the records (Trump does not do his own accounting, if you weren’t aware)

2. He did so or agreed to do so with the intent of covering up another crime

The jury instructions include one possibility of what that crime could be (campaign finance violation), but the prosecution could not prove that he committed that crime and he was not officially charged and tried for that crime. The judge proceeded to tell the jury that they did not need to agree on whether the campaign finance violation was the crime that Trump was supposedly trying to cover up (p. 31). They only needed to agree that Trump was covering up some kind of crime.

Again, for those who haven’t followed this case, here was what the prosecution said happened:

Michael Cohen, as an attorney for Trump, made a payment to Stormy Daniels in exchange for he keeping quiet about a sexual encounter she claims she had with Trump

Michael Cohen claims that he told Trump about the payment and was reimbursed for the payment, and that the reimbursement was recorded as a payment for legal fees (this is where they claim it’s being falsified)

Only the defense was able to completely discredit Cohen’s story about when he supposedly had this conversation with Trump about the payment. (The video has lawyers reviewing the transcript, reading it, and commenting on the significance)

And then there’s the fact that the only evidence that Trump even reimbursed Michael Cohen for this payment is a $420,000 transaction marked as legal fees. Thing is, the payment to Stormy Daniels was $130,000. More importantly, Cohen had previously testified that he had been receiving $420,000 a year as a retainer from the Trump organization for several years. That is, $420,000 was his normal annual retainer fee, split into monthly payments of $35,000.

In this video you can skip to about 49 minutes in to hear these lawyers read the transcript and discuss Cohen’s explanation of how a $130,000 reimbursement somehow ended up looking exactly like his normal annual retainer.

So based on this testimony, it looks like the Trump organization may not have even reimbursed Cohen for the payment, they just paid him his normal legal fees, which is why they were recorded as…legal fees.

So when I say this trial is a sham, this is what I mean.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Mother Jones:

Americans of a certain age tend to throw around the term “Orwellian” willy-nilly. But the expression really suits in describing the behavior of our felonious, twice-impeached president-elect.

In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, a dictatorship represented by the all-powerful “Big Brother” dictates the reality its citizens must adhere to, however topsy-turvy. Official slogans include “ignorance is strength,” “freedom is slavery,” and “war is peace.”

In this context, another slogan comes to mind: “Drain the swamp.”

Trump didn’t invent this populist expression, but he made it a centerpiece of his first campaign—a vow to rid DC of the toxic influence of special interest money, lobbyists, etc. Of course, politicians of both parties have long railed, often without much credibility, against special interests in Washington, and the US Supreme Court’s trashing of campaign finance safeguards has indeed created a cesspool of oligarchic influence in DC that crosses party lines.

It’s not the slogan itself that’s Orwellian. The Orwellian part is Trump’s evocation of the Swamp as he appoints foxes to guard the federal henhouse yet again. It’s a trolling of the libs, but a trolling with potentially dire consequences—and a signal that our government is for sale, more openly now than ever.

Exhibit A: Trump’s selection of Chris Wright, the CEO of a Denver fracking services company called Liberty Energy, for the position of energy secretary. Wright has no government experience and certainly no experience related to the nuclear weapons whose oversight is a critical part of DOE’s role.

Meanwhile, as typical of Trump’s cabinet picks to date, Wright’s other qualifications for the job are—to use Orwellian “Newspeak”—doubleplusungood.

It has escaped nobody’s notice that Trump’s top consideration in doling out key positions is loyalty to the boss. For attorney general, he chose Matt Gaetz, an inexperienced lawyer (but fierce loyalist) who has been accused of sexual impropriety—no charges were ever filed—and is notorious for allegedly foisting upon House colleagues videos of women he’s bedded. For his director of national intelligence, Trump picked Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman my colleague Dan Friedman describes as a “uniquely bad choice.” Namely, she lacks intelligence experience and is so in sync with Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine that her nomination was even celebrated on Russian television. To oversee White House communications, he picked a bomb-thrower who cut his teeth at UFC. For Health, he chose Robert Kennedy Jr., a man with no academic expertise in the areas he would oversee, and whose views and priorities are far from the mainstream, as my colleague David Corn has reported. (In this administration, apparently, ignorance is indeed strength.)

Wright, too, is a loyalist, but this pick feels distinctly transactional—Swamplike. Trump, after all, met multiple times during his campaign with top fossil-fuel CEOs, promising that, if they gave him money and helped him get elected, they would be richly rewarded. Wright, who denies the climate crisis and completely dismisses the US clean energy transition—which is weird, because it is well under way, despite the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to thwart it—is the industry’s reward. As was Trump’s choice for Interior, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgham, who is apparently champing at the bit to expand drilling on federal land.

The New York Times reports that Wright’s wife, Liz, co-hosted a Trump fund-raiser in Montana, and that the couple donated a total of $350,000 to a Trump campaign committee. Most notably, Wright was the preferred choice of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, a major Trump donor and co-host of gatherings where candidate Trump wooed oil executives with what sounded suspiciously like a pay-to-play pitch.

[mariacallous]

Russia’s parliament is warning the public that it might criminalize the distribution of a highly anticipated Ukrainian video game. This week, Anton Gorelkin, who serves as the deputy head of the State Duma’s Information Policy Committee, told the media that “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl” could be banned in Russia, though he stressed that the developers’ support for the Ukrainian military wouldn’t be sufficient cause to prohibit the game. Meduza reviews what could become of Ukraine’s blockbuster horror game after its long-awaited release later this month.

The Russian authorities say they will act based on the content of the game itself, and early in-game footage screened for reviewers in October did not reveal anything that would obviously constitute “extremism” for censors. However, despite its beloved franchise and source material, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 nevertheless faces an uphill battle to gain popularity in Russia.

The design studio GSC Game World has erected its own obstacles to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s distribution in Russia, refusing to sell the game there officially and removing the game’s Russian language track (though Russian subtitles are still available).

Lawyer Mikhail Mushailov warns that purchasing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 could expose gamers to felony prosecution in Russia, given the country’s current legal climate and how easy it would be for police to “prove” that a customer knew the design studio donates financially to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. 

Besides public pleas to support Ukraine’s war effort, GSC Game World raised $800,000 for the Ukrainian charity Come Back Alive, which provides the army with equipment, drones, and medical supplies. Meanwhile, the studio hasn’t said if it plans to donate any of its S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 profits to the Ukrainian military.

Since the start of the invasion, Russia’s Prosecutor General has threatened to bring treason charges against anyone who supports or finances Ukrainian NGOs, and the agency recently outlawed the Come Back Alive Foundation specifically as an “undesirable organization.”

GSC Game World describes S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl as a “unique action experience of survival in the post-apocalyptic Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.” Gamers are invited to take a “non-linear journey through a sinister open world in the Eastern European post-apocalyptic setting.”

The game has been stuck in development for more than a decade and has endured multiple apparent cancelations. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was originally scheduled for 2021, but six delays (partly due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) pushed the final release date to November 20, 2024, available initially on PC and Xbox exclusively. Last week, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 presales lifted the game to 16th place on Steam’s top sellers list.

[sorrowlikefalling]

not my usual post, but i care enough to speak.

tw: mention of rape.

was never so disappointed in the world ever. the fact that felonies, misogyny, rape, and other things arent deal breakers for the so many of us is insane. you would rather a felon lead you than a woman. a woman who wouldve stuck up for women. a woman who wouldve supported this country. america, you are truly disappointing. the world was in your hands and you let that man win. the only people who dont care are the ones privileged enough not to. women and people of color have to fear for our lives now. what about the girls younger than me?. how are they gonna make it. 2028 is gonna be long from now. day one and im scared for the rest of the world. fuck everyone who is privileged enough to where your vote doesnt affect you. you changed lives. ruined some. youre disgusting. you would much rather a man like him run, because to this world masculinity equals qualified. to the men, what would your mother think? what about your daughter? your sister? your niece? why would you only preach to your benefit. donald j. trump is going to fuck a lot of people over. thats what you want? he gave police immunity. they can shoot and kill if they want. he is taking away rights from minorities. the women. the lgbtq community. your votes are rooted in the patriarchy. he is a violent man. the most important election of our lives. ruined. god bless america right? liberty and justice for all? ive always said it was bullshit. they want you to pledge to idolatry and fuck you over. the united states is under a disgusting rule. were under control. we arent being worked with. we are controlled. congratulations to the people happy. all it means is that youre privileged. enjoy your silver spoon before it rusts. some of us needed kamala as president. this is what so many people fought against. you wouldnt be here without a woman. think of that before you vote. i wish i could change minds. hes going to deport the immigrants who moved here for their kids or future generations to have a better life. you took that from them. you took our choice from us. another shot for america, but throw it to the ground. they can afford for glass to break. we are in debt in unity. not just by finances. i wish we were more of the united nations than the united states. we are united by state but not by nation. good job americana. you won. you conditioned the world to bow to you and now you got your reign. words arent meant to be on a watch list. i wish we could fight more. die for what you believe in people. they wont get it until you do. im a woman of my own. not a woman of america. you guys wont do us right anyway. woke up in fear for myself and the rest of the world. what about the children. you selfish things. your mother would never be proud of you. speak up and speak loud. if you didnt vote, youre the problem. kamala deserved that. you let her run like water through our hands. you lost her. let her slip. now our fate is in cardboard boxes. houses are paper. you know how easy it is to break that? good job. racism, fascism, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, idolatry, right wing, white supremacists. men upheld by the social hierarchy. you win. give yourself a pat on the back. i hope you throw up and choke. you can call me a liberal, a snowflake, whatever makes you happy. i know based off of that you run most of society. capitalist fucks. bourgeoisie losers. we fought and you took it away. im gonna keep editing this and i will keep saying every word that comes to mind. do it big and do it loud. fight and scream and dont let them forget. brains on pavement mean nothing to those so high they cant see it. god america you disappoint me. fuck you and your eagles. you and your everything. selfishness. trump hates the rest of the world and the minorities in it. hes the majority. dont let him fool you. thank you.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Steph Whiteside at NewsNation Now:

(NewsNation) — A jury has found former President Donald Trump guilty of felony charges for falsifying business records in an effort to keep information from voters ahead of the 2016 election. The jury, made up of seven men and five women, delivered the verdict after nearly 12 hours of deliberation. Sentencing is still to come, where Trump could face fines, probation or prison time.  The verdict does not disqualify him from continuing to run for the presidency. The case was the first of four criminal cases against Trump and may be the only one to be decided before the election in November. The case centered around hush money payments made to Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult film star Stormy Daniels who said they had affairs with Trump and were paid to stay quiet ahead of the 2016 election. Trump then allegedly paid former fixer Michael Cohen back for the payments. Trump was charged with 34 counts related to falsifying business records to conceal damaging information from voters ahead of the election. Cohen previously pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws for orchestrating or making the hush money payments.

🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: 🚨🚨🚨 Former “President” and 2024 GOP nominee Donald Trump has been found guilty on all 34 felony charges in the People of New York v. Trump criminal business records falsification trial. This is the first (and likely) only trial decision to come down prior to the general election.

For the first time in the history, a former President has been charged with a felony.

We can officially declare Donald Trump to be (34x) Convicted Felon Donald Trump now.

[transgenderer]

The Government of Croatia and the Holy See have signed four bilateral agreements (also known as concordats or Vatican agreements) and a protocol. Although the agreements proved controversial owing to great one-time and continuous financial and other burdens the agreements put on the Croatian state (relative to the Croatian government budget), no government of Croatia ever attempted to amend them. From the perspective of international law, these agreements may be seen as unjust to Croatia because of putting obligations chiefly on the Croatian state, but not on the Holy See.[1][2][3][4]

A 2012 analysis concludes that the Croatian state has to give about 1000 million HRK (~100 million USD) annually to the Catholic church.[5] Another analysis counts 8670 million HRK as the minimal possible amount that the Church got from the Croatian government budget from 1996 to the end of 2013.[6]

 The agreement sets up Catholic religious education as a subject in all schools in Croatia and enables the Catholic church in Croatia to found and run official schools and institutions of higher education with state financing. Catholic institutions of higher education should by the agreement have the power to award academic and professional grades and degrees recognised under Croatian law.[13][14][15][16][17] About 300 million HRK is spent per year on teachers of religious education.[18]

Known in Croatian as "Ugovor između Svete Stolice i Republike Hrvatske o pravnim pitanjima", it was ratified by the Croatian Parliament on 7 February 1997.[19][20]

It obliges the Croatian courts to notify Church authorities before investigating clerics for felonies,

gives the priest-penitent privilege (meaning the courts are forbidden from inquiring into confessional communication between priest and penitent),

gives local bishops the authority to veto church building plans,

guarantees the Church access to state television programming, etc.

bad!

[pegassi-toreador]

Vapid FMJ

[simply-ivanka]

Former President Donald Trump has a penchant for big talk. Whether it’s the extent of his wealth, the perfection of his phone calls or the square footage of his apartment, the former president never fails to express himself in superlatives. Anyone paying attention knows this.

And nobody is on higher alert for such overstatement than a bank appraiser entrusted with the mission of lending millions of dollars for use in a business deal. Apparently, however, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur F. Engoron hasn’t been paying attention and is indulging a partisan effort to brand the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination a criminal over a bit of asset valuation embroidery.

The former president isn’t the only one who engages in hyperbole. The “Justice” in Mr. Engoron’s title doesn’t mean he serves on the state’s highest court. Rather, New York applies the elevated term to the lowest district court judges. One form of embellishment is customary; the other is a felony. 

Justice Engoron, a registered Democrat, issued a preliminary ruling last month essentially giving away his intention to find the former president guilty of financial fraud. Dig below the surface and the nefarious conduct he outlines seems unexceptional.

In securing financing, Trump Organization accountants handed lenders their estimates of the value of various properties. Naturally, assessments of this sort are biased, and lenders take this into account before extending credit.

[sataniccapitalist]

The P.R. genius at JPMorgan Chase that thought it would be a good idea to have Jamie Dimon lecture the next president of the United States on how to run the country in an OpEd (paywall) at the Washington Post will likely be seeking a career change soon.

Dimon is the Chairman and CEO of the largest and riskiest bank in the United States. Under Dimon’s tenure, the bank has racked up five felony counts which showcase Dimon as the worst possible source of sound leadership advice. In 2014, the bank was charged with laundering money for decades for the biggest Ponzi artist in U.S. history – Bernie Madoff. In 2015, the bank was charged with being part of a bank cartel that rigged foreign currency markets. And in 2020, the bank was charged with two more felony counts for engaging in “tens of thousands of instances of unlawful trading in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium…as well as thousands of instances of unlawful trading in U.S. Treasury futures contracts and in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds…”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but U.S. Treasury notes and bonds are how our government pays its debts. Apparently, nothing is sacred at Dimon’s bank.

The bank admitted to all five felony counts and paid large fines in order to get off easy with deferred prosecution agreements from the U.S. Department of Justice.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting the Red Team Blues audiobook, which Amazon won't sell (read by Wil Wheaton!)

Red Team Blues is my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller; it’s a major title for my publishers Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and it’s swept the trade press with starred reviews all ‘round. Despite all that, Audible will not sell the audiobook. In fact, Audible won’t sell any of my audiobooks. Instead, I have to independently produce them and sell them through Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/21/anti-finance-finance-thriller/#marty-hench

Audible is Amazon’s monopoly audiobook platform. It has a death-grip on the audiobook market, commanding more than 90% of genre audiobook sales, and every single one of those audiobooks is sold with Amazon’s DRM on it. That means that you can’t break up with Amazon without throwing away those audiobooks. Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, I can’t give you a tool to convert my own copyrighted audiobooks to a non-Amazon format. Doing so is a felony carrying a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for an act that in no way infringes anyone’s copyright! Indeed, merely infringing copyright is much less illegal than removing Amazon’s mandatory DRM from my own books!

I’ve got amazing publishers who support my crusade against DRM, but they’re not charities. If they can’t sell my audiobooks on the platform that represents 90% of the market, they’re not going to make audio editions at all. Instead, I make my own audiobooks, using brilliant voice actors like Amber Benson and @neil-gaiman​, and I sell them everywhere except Audible.

Doing this isn’t cheap: I’m paying for an incredible studio (Skyboat Media), a world-class director (Gabrielle de Cuir), top-notch sound editing and mastering, and, of course, killer narrators. And while indie audiobook platforms like Libro.fm and downpour.com are amazing, the brutal fees extracted by Apple and Google on app sales means that users have to jump through a thousand hoops to shop with indie stores. Most audiobook listeners don’t even know that these stores exist: if a title isn’t available on Audible, they assume no audiobook exists.

That’s where Kickstarter comes in: twice now, I’ve crowdfunded presales of my audiobooks through KS, and these campaigns were astoundingly successful, smashing records and selling thousands of audiobooks. These campaigns didn’t just pay my bills (especially during lockdown, when our household income plunged), but they also showed other authors that it was possible to evade Amazon’s monopoly chokepoint and sell books that aren’t sticky-traps for Audible’s walled garden/prison:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/cory-doctorow/article/90282-we-wrote-a-book-about-why-audible-won-t-sell-our-book-and-snuck-it-onto-audible.html

And today, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Red Team Blues, and even by the standards of my previous efforts, I think this one’s gonna be incredible.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

For starters, there’s the narrator: @wilwheaton​, whose work on my previous books is outstanding, hands-down my favorite (don’t tell my other narrators! They’re great too!):

https://wilwheaton.net/

Beyond Wil’s narration, there’s the subject matter. The hero of Red Team Blues is a hard-charging forensic accountant who’s untangled every Silicon Valley finance scam since he fell in love with spreadsheets as as a MIT freshman, dropped out, got his CPA ticket, and moved west. Now, at the age of 67, Marty Hench is ready to retire, but a dear old friend — a legendary cryptographer — drags him back for one last job — locating the stolen keys to the backdoor he foolishly hid in a cryptocurrency that’s worth more than a billion dollars.

That’s the starting gun for a “grabby next-Tuesday thriller” that sees Marty in between three-letter agencies and international crime syndicates, all of whom view digital technology as a carrier medium for scams, violence and predation. Marty’s final adventure involves dodgy banks, crooked crypto, and complicit officials in a fallen paradise where computers’ libertory promise has been sucked dry by billionaire vampires.

It’s a pretty contemporary story, in other words.

I wrote this one before SVB, before Sam Bankman0Fried and FTX — just like I wrote Little Brother before Snowden’s revelations. It’s not that I’m prescient — fortune-telling is a fatalist’s delusion — it’s that these phenomena are just the most spectacular, most recent examples in a long string of ghastly and increasingly dire scandals.

Red Team Blues blasted out of my fingertips in six weeks flat, during lockdown, when technology was simultaneously a lifeline, connecting us to one another during our enforced isolation; and a tool of predatory control, as bossware turned our “work from home” into “live at work.”

The last time I wrote a book that quickly, it was Little Brother, and, as with Little Brother, Red Team Blues is a way of working out my own anxieties and hopes for technology on the page, in story.

These books tap into a nerve. I knew I had something special in my hands when, the night after I finished the first draft, I rolled over at 2AM to find my wife sitting up in bed, reading.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I had to find out how it ended,” she answered.

The next day, my editor sent me a four-line email:

That. Was. A! Fucking! Ride! Whoa!

Within a week, he’d bought Red Team Blues…and two sequels. I finished writing the second of these on Monday, and all three are coming out in the next 22 months. It’s gonna be a wild ride.

Kickstarter backers can get the usual goodies: DRM-free audiobooks and ebooks, hardcovers (including signed and personalized copies), and three very special, very limited-run goodies.

First, there’s naming rights for characters in the sequels — I’m selling three of these; they’re a form of cheap (or at least, reasonably priced) literary immortality for you or a loved one. The sequels are a lot of fun — they go in reverse chronology, and the next one is The Bezzle, out in Feb 2024, a book about prison-tech scams, crooked LA County Sheriff’s Deputy gangs, and real-estate scumbags turned techbros.

The third book is Picks and Shovels (Jan 2025), and it’s Marty’s first adventure after he comes west to San Francisco and ends up working for the bad guys, an affinity scam PC company called “Three Wise Men” that’s run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi who fleece their faithful with proprietary, underpowered computers and peripherals, and front for some very bad, very violent money-men.

Next, there’s three Marty Hench short story commissions: the Hench stories are machines for turning opaque finance scams into technothrillers. While finance bros use MEGO (“my eyes glaze over”) as a weapon to bore their marks into submission, I use the same performative complexity as the engines of taut detective stories. Commissioning a Hench story lets you turn your favorite MEGO scam into a science fiction story, which I’ll then shop to fiction websites (every story I’ve written for the past 20 years has sold, though in the event that one of these doesn’t, I’ll put it up under a CC license).

Finally, there’s a super-ultra-limited deluxe hardcover edition — and I do mean limited, just four copies! These leather-bound editions have Will Staehle’s fantastic graphic motif embossed in their covers, and the type design legend John D Berry is laying out the pages so that there’s space for a hidden cavity. Nestled in that cavity is a hand-bound early draft edition of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues. The binding is being done by the fantastic book-artist John DeMerritt. Each copy’s endpapers will feature a custom cryptographic puzzle created especially for it by the cryptographer Bruce Schneier.

I often hear from readers who want to thank me for the work I do, from the free podcast I’ve put out since 2006 to the free, CC BY columns I’ve written for Pluralistic for the past three years. There is no better way to thank me than to back this Kickstarter and encourage your friends to do the same:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell

Preselling a ton of audiobooks, ebooks, and print books is a huge boost to the book on its launch — incomparable, really. Invaluable.

What’s more, helping me find a viable way to produce popular, widely heard audiobooks without submitting to Amazon’s DRM lock-in sets an example for other creators and publishers: we have a hell of a collective action problem to solve, but if we could coordinate a response to Audible demanding the right to decide whether our work should have their DRM, it would force Audible to treat all of us — creators, publishers and listeners — more fairly.

I’ll be heading out on tour to the US, Canada, the UK and Germany once the book is out. I’m really looking forward to as many backers in person as I can! Thank you for your support over these many long years — and for your support on this Kickstarter.

Today (Mar 22), I’m doing a remote talk for the Institute for the Future’s “Changing the Register” series.

[Image ID: A graphic showing a phone playing the Red Team Blues audiobok, along with a quote from Booklist, 'Jam-packed with cutting-edge ideas about cybersecurity and crypto. Another winner from an sf wizard.']

[ivygorgon]

An open letter to the President & U.S. Congress

Prohibit Felons From Serving as President

46 so far! Help us get to 50 signers!

I am writing to express my concerns about felons potentially serving as President of the United States. Although our Constitution does not explicitly bar this, I believe our principles and the integrity of the office should.

The presidency is a symbol of moral leadership. A felon in this role could undermine justice and public trust, setting a poor example for the nation.

Legally, while federal laws don't prevent felons from running for President, state laws often limit felons' civic rights. This discrepancy raises questions about consistency in law application. For example, in Florida, felons lose rights like jury service until restored. Should these restrictions not also apply to the presidency, given its impact?

Historical cases, like Eugene V. Debs' campaign from prison, highlight the oddity of such a situation.

From a security standpoint, entrusting nuclear codes or military decisions to someone with a criminal history poses significant risks. Internationally, having a leader with a felony could tarnish America's image, particularly if the crime involved financial misconduct while negotiating international finance.

Given these issues, perhaps a constitutional amendment is needed. This isn't just about closing a legal loophole but about ensuring our leaders possess the moral authority necessary for such a critical role.

In conclusion, while not legally barred, the ethical and practical implications of a felon as President are deeply concerning. We must act to preserve the integrity of our highest office.

Thank you for considering this important issue.

▶ Created on November 6 by Marcus

📱 Text SIGN PDCKKQ to 50409

🤯 Liked it? Text FOLLOW MEEVV to 50409

[ms-understand]

Let's get political, because it's fun.

U.S. presidents since I was born.

Nixon: His support for Israel created an energy crisis in America when Arab nations created the Arab oil boycott. Watergate

Ford: Said he wouldn't pardon Nixon for Watergate and then pardoned Nixon for Watergate.

Carter: The Iran Contra crisis was probably his biggest setback and his lack of action at that time helped Reagan get into office.

Reagan: Escalated the arms race, Reganomics, ignored the AIDS crisis, secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran that got US soldiers killed, imprisoned young adults who didn't register for the draft, tripled the national debt, fought against labor unions, the invasion of Granada, bombing Libya, war on drugs that seemed to focus on black communities

Bush: Gulf war

Clinton: Defense of marriage act, sexual assault allegations, lied about getting a b.j. from his secretary under oath, finance controversies

W. Bush: handling of 9/11, blood for oil, financial crisis

Barack Obama: drone strikes

Trump: spread conspiracy theories, travel ban on citizens from Muslim majority countries, rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations, slow reaction to COVID pandemic and ignored recommendations from health officials, spread misinformation about treatments for COVID, diverted military funding to building a wall on Mexican border, racist and misogynistic comments, initiated trade war with China, got impeached twice once for abuse of power and obstruction of congress, once for incitement of insurrection, falsely claimed wide spread election fraud, found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, found guilty of 35 felony counts related to mishandling classified documents, found liable for financial fraud,

Biden: inappropriate physical contact with women, support of Israel, age