US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

"the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy

Also note that the word conjugal implies "within marriage" = they only care about the babies of socially upright husbands and wives, properly conceived in the dark, in the missionary position, and keeping in mind that Jesus is always the third partner. Or something.

Actually you'd think by those standards they'd stop harassing single women about their own fertility...something doesn't make sense there....

Wish I could find a screencap of that scene from The Handmaid's Tale which illustrates perfectly what they mean by "conjugal intimacy."

state and local governments have cut about a half million jobs over the last two years from a NY Times blog

I guess this makes Norquist and other conservatives happy(although they would prefer to see those cuts at the federal level as well)

nothing makes them happy

not in public

well, being in power, for its own sake? notice how nobody gives a shit about 'deficits' until the economy is bad and/or a democrat is in the white house.

the strange variable in all this, which i don't really know what to make of, is that the unemployment crisis is really only at crisis levels within Dem demographics. what will this mean? i don't know. right now, though, it means republicans can talk about while comfortably opposing anything that will improve it.

xp

I can't believe TPM ran this story. Until we know if they're lobbyists, what's the point?

to foment rage

stories like that are only good in pairs:

http://consumerist.com/2011/07/chase-gets-man-thrown-in-jail-for-fraudulent-check-except-the-check-is-legit.html

"class warfare" etc

I've eaten in Bistro Bis twice btw. It's not that great (or so expensive).

C'mon, Michael: you don't view economics from a moralistic perspective? You think that people who "don't work hard" "deserve" financial security anyway? I don't think it's a specially "Christian" view to think that that's wrong.

jeeeeeeeeesus christ @ goole's story

Reading that story made me shake with anger.

punch a banker, you'll feel better

I read that story that goole posted earlier today and I just . . . that kind of stuff probably happens to poor people in this country a jillion times day, but the media manages to get people outraged that CEOs might pay an extra 4% on their income taxes. It's amazing.

it's funny, on both sides of my family I have super-mega-rich investment banker uncle-in-laws. both are perfectly nice, conscientious guys and yet... neither of them seems particularly happy (one seems distinctly UNhappy afaict) and I find it hard to reconcile my personal loathing for their profession with their chosen livelihoods.

xp

I never had it as bad as that dude, but I remember starting off as a young, undereducated married person with a shit job literally digging through my couch and my laundry looking for enough change to buy a single gallon of gas to put in my car so I could go to work, and being unable to come up with enough.

I feel like my whole life I have watched them accrue bad karma and reap the psychological/emotional damage of such. otoh they are still filthy rich.

xp

Rich people buying expensive stuff! Run for the hills!

That guy screwed by Chase seems like such an almost cartoonishly cliched capital V victim - all it's missing is a dead pet - that it makes me wonder if there's more to the story. Like, a bank clerk can't just have a non-violent, non-confrontational guy arrested, can he? Even if it was a fake check, let alone a real one. There's got to be more to the story, especially since such a page-view bait story is coming out a year after the fact. Not that I wouldn't put it past Chase to fuck this guy every which way they can.

otm

Like, a bank clerk can't just have a non-violent, non-confrontational guy arrested, can he? Even if it was a fake check, let alone a real one.

Can't speak for his jurisdiction, but in Ohio, they certainly can. Attempting to cash a bad check of that amount if a fourth degree felony.

He was black, it was $8k, come on, totally reasonable, call the cops

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/07/chase_bank_is_very_sorry_for_h.php

Another article about it with a link to the lawyer's letter

btw guys congrats on pulling the "the shifty black guy must have done SOMETHING to deserve this" card, it's good to see bias alive and thriving on the left

well i hope you know i was being sarcastic!

Yes of course! That was specifically for Josh and Alfred.

that TPM ryan thing is hilarious

Well, I always look for more than one source when a piece of non-fiction asks for my sympathy.

xpost Fuck that. I just said there must be more to the story. Maybe the clerk has a record of being an asshole? Maybe the cop had a bone to pick? Maybe this happens all the time at this branch? Who knows? It's just an oddly incomplete story for such a tale of massive economic tragedy.

alfred's prudence is the right way to operate but i find that story totally easy to believe just because it's chase

who are (post-wamu-takeover) my bank

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/assets_c/2011/07/Ryan-Split-Wine-cropped-proto-custom_2.jpg

and Josh wrote:

Not that I wouldn't put it past Chase to fuck this guy every which way they can.

"massive economic tragedy"

Like, a bank clerk can't just have a non-violent, non-confrontational guy arrested, can he? Even if it was a fake check, let alone a real one.

As an ex bank-clerk: if the teller has suspicion, he brings it to the branch manager. If the branch manager believes a check of that amount is fraudulent, and especially if it appears to be a fraudulent check issued by you, espeeeeecially if it's a fraudulent cashier's check which has a half dozen fraud-guards embedded in it (as this one seems to have been), policy is you hold IDs and the check itself and stall the customer until police arrive.

I am really, really curious why the teller & manager thought it was fake.

Maybe losing your car (which you owed less than $100 on) and your job, in a single weekend, is not a massive economic tragedy for you?

xp

like it sucks and sympathy for dude an all that, i just want to know what the manager et al saw that convinced them it was fake

A black guy with a funny name.

C'mon, Michael: you don't view economics from a moralistic perspective?

Sure I do, just not from a set point of view and I try to stay open to different perspectives. My cosmology isn't married to any particular economic belief. Conjugal intimacy to that.

How is it that they couldn't verify ONE OF THEIR OWN checks?!

notice too though that he was going to deposit the thing, not cash it. this means he's an accountholder, which for the bank should have lowered the suspicion-meter significantly. at the branch i worked at most of my customers were spanish-speaking construction workers who'd come in every 3-4 weeks with a big post-project check, so dude's activity wouldn't at all be unusual. that's not where the red flags were coming from. i really want to know wtf happened here

ok wait wait

Njoku qualified for the first time home buyer rebate on his tax return.

"It was really important, I had a vehicle I was looking on paying off," said. Njoku. And it wasn’t just any vehicle. “It was a 2001 Infinity I-30, silver…just like my favorite car, “he said.

Njoku signed up to have the rebate deposited directly into his Chase Bank account. But when the IRS rebate arrived, there was a problem. Chase had closed Njoku’s account because of overdrawn checks in the past. The bank deducted $600 to cover what he owed them and mailed him a cashier’s check for the difference--$8,463.21.

But when Njoku showed up at the Chase branch near his house intending to cash the check, he was in for a nasty surprise.

The check had Njoku’s name and address on it and was issued by JP Morgan Chase. But the Chase Customer Banker who handles large checks at the Auburn branch was immediately suspicious.

“I was embarrassed,” Njoku said. “She asked me what I did for a living. Asked me where I got the check from, looked me up and down—like ‘you just bought a house in Auburn, really?’ She didn’t believe that,” he said.

The Customer Banker said the check looked fake, so she took it, along with Njoku’s driver license and credit card, and called Bank Support.

After waiting for about 15 minutes, Njoku said he got impatient and told Chase he was leaving to do an important errand. By the time he got back, the bank was closed. Njoku said he called customer service and asked them what he should do. He says they told him to go back to the bank the next day to get his money.

But when Njoku arrived, it wasn’t the money that was waiting for him.

“They just threw me in jail; they called the police and said this guy has a fraudulent check,” Njoku said.

Yeah, but it also says they had closed his account for too many NSF checks.

xp

ok i see what happened here--teller goes to verify the check, already suspicious for racist reasons. verifying can take a long-ass time. then, she stretches the phone cord around the corner to peek at the dude and see if he's fidgety or whatever, red flags. he's gone. big red flag. instead of continuing to hold (and because they're about to close and she wants to go home) she assumes based on his jetting on this giant check (biggest of flags) that her racist suspicion is correct and it is a fake. she hangs up the phone without verifying that its actually fraudulent. tells the boss, who doesn't himself verify that it's fake, and it goes from there.

ie this teller and manager need to get sacked for a half dozen reasons

He left w/out his license and credit card (or noting their closing time)?

Unwise at best.

The mgr really, really needs to be fired or at least reprimanded.

ah wait wait this isn't even a teller, this is a banker, they don't even get the same fraud training tellers do

jesus