"You don't have Nixon to kick around any more."
Richard Nixon, November 8, 1962
"I was hoping he would take Don King as his running mate."
lesro89, commenting today on the SF Chron's poltics blog announcing Donald Trump's decision not to run.
Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributors are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Oke, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent who also serves as chief cat herder.
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Stories and Headlines
- Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner's budget solution: Tax the richest Californians
Roughly 45 minutes before Guv Jerry Brown upgraded/revised the state's budget crisis from Deathly Horrid to Ridiculously Awful, Assembly Democrat Nancy Skinner outlined her own budget hole-plugger: A bill to raise the personal income taxes on the richest Californians.
Skinner knows the bill doesn't have a prayer of passing -- not when she needs Republican cooperation on revenue raising measures. (Ask Brown, Jerry). Still, she hopes this will be a way to "start the conversation" about restructuring California's tax system.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
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- Giants' new video targets anti-gay bullying
(05-16) 17:50 PDT San Francisco -- The San Francisco Giants will become the first professional sports team to jump into the burgeoning anti-homophobia campaign with an upbeat "It Gets Better" video designed to bring a ray of hope to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender young people.
While celebrities, politicians, corporate leaders and everyday people have posted more than 10,000 "It Gets Better" videos to YouTube to build awareness to the continuing problem of gay suicide and anti-gay bullying, no teams in the pro sports world have stepped forward to produce a video.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
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- Endeavour space shuttle launches; Gabrielle Giffords calls launch 'good stuff'
(Washington Post) Space shuttle Endeavour vaulted elegantly into the sky Monday, a spectacle of fire and power lent a grace note by the wounded congresswoman watching from below.
The appearance here of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) added a new chapter to a remarkable saga of survival and recovery, five months after she was shot in the head in an attack in Tucson that left six others dead.
Endeavour, which was originally scheduled to launch in November, blasted off 1 ½ weeks after its highly anticipated April 29 launch was scrubbed because of problems with the ship's hydraulic system.
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- Republicans move to reshape consumer bureau
May 13 (Bloomberg) -- Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee advanced three bills today to reshape the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, turning the tables on Democrats who approved the agency in party-line votes last year.
Lawmakers led by Representative Spencer Bachus, the Alabama Republican who leads the panel, are pushing changes to the Dodd- Frank Act, the regulatory overhaul they've targeted since taking control of the House in January. The Republicans have proposed about a dozen bills to revise the new rules, which they were nearly unanimous in opposing when Dodd-Frank was passed in July.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/...
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- In France, Skepticism and Anger Over Official's Arrest
(NY Times) PARIS — France's shock at the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on sexual assault charges turned among some to suspicion and anger Monday, with his defenders questioning the initial New York police account and speculating about entrapment, and many others characterizing the photos of the handcuffed suspect as insulting and unfair.
Mr. Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested on charges of attempted rape and illegal imprisonment of a chambermaid in a French-owned hotel in midtown Manhattan, the Sofitel, and was arraigned on Monday in New York.
The charges against a man thought to have the best chance of becoming France's next president in elections only a year away, and who is the prominent managing director of the International Monetary Fund, have exploded most political assumptions here and caused some soul-searching, especially among the French press, about whether it had failed to dig deeply into Mr. Strauss-Kahn's sexual history. But some of Mr. Strauss-Kahn's supporters raised questions about the American handling of the case and hinted at a role by his political opponents.
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- Revenue Helps Halve California's Deficit, Brown Says
(NYTIMES) SACRAMENTO — After months of doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic warnings about cuts to California schools, parks and the police, the news from Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday was nothing short of startling: California is now expected to see $6.6 billion more in revenue over the next two years than had been expected.
But Mr. Brown was careful not to make the news sound too good. The added revenue will eat into the budget deficit, but it is not nearly enough to erase it. So the state will still need to extend some taxes that were set to expire, he said, in order to deal with its "wall of debt," and close a budget gap now estimated at $10.8 billion.
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More News
- Tea Party Bid by Frequent Candidate Shakes Up House Race
(NY Times) People in western New York used to roll their eyes when the name Jack Davis came up.
Mr. Davis, a wealthy industrialist, spent over $5 million of his own money on failed efforts to win a seat in Congress. He once said he would take a baseball bat to anyone who sent a sexually suggestive message to his children. He also predicted that states with large numbers of Mexican immigrants would secede and start a second Civil War.
But these days, few are writing off Mr. Davis.
A special election fight over a House of Representatives seat, which has attracted big money and huge interest from both parties, now appears to hinge on him. Running as a Tea Party candidate, Mr. Davis, 78, is siphoning support from the Republican candidate — so much so that Republicans privately concede that if they do not stop him, they could hand the Democrats a seat that they have not held for 50 years.
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- Weighing the Place of a Judge in a Club of 600 White Men
(NYTIMES) - WASHINGTON
The Belle Meade Country Club in Nashville has about 600 voting members. None of them are women, and none of them are black. But one of them is a federal judge.
In a confidential 10-to-8 decision last month, the Judicial Council of the Sixth Circuit, which hears misconduct complaints about federal judges in Tennessee and three other states, said the judge could keep his membership at Belle Meade.
The ruling opens windows on two odd institutions. One is a fading country club that was once an arbiter of success in Nashville's social, political and business circles. The other is the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which sits in Cincinnati and is surely the most dysfunctional federal appeals court in the nation.
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- ICC seeks Gaddafi arrest warrant
(BBC) The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor is seeking the arrest of Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi and two others for crimes against humanity.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Col Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi bore the greatest responsibility for "widespread and systematic attacks" on civilians.
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- US reaches $14tn debt limit and cuts investments
(BBC) The US has reached its debt limit of $14.3 trillion (£8.6tn) and is taking measures to cut spending to avoid breaching it.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that he will suspend investing into two large government pension funds.
This delays any breaching of the limit to 2 August.
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- Portugal's 78bn euro bail-out is formally approved
(BBC) Eurozone financial leaders have unanimously approved a 78bn euro (£68bn; $110bn) bail-out for Portugal.
The group, which has been meeting in Brussels, said the loan was to "safeguard financial stability in the euro area and the EU as a whole".
The meeting has been overshadowed by the arrest of IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York, on charges of the sexual assault of a hotel maid.
The IMF has also approved 1.58bn euros in new assistance to Ireland.
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- The Man Behind Citizens United Is Just Getting Started
(Mother Jones) Citizens United was the culmination of years of work by Bopp to chip away at the nation's campaign-finance regulations, often via obscure cases no one expected him to win. But Bopp's not done—not by a long stretch. Today, the 63-year-old lawyer is pursuing challenges to dismantle practically every facet of campaign-finance regulation. Taken individually, many of those cases look just as preposterous and doomed as Citizens United did in 2008. But laugh at your peril.
Bopp is leading "a very broad-based litigation assault being waged against both state and federal campaign-finance laws," says Tara Malloy, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit legal organization. Reformers see Bopp as using his clients—often small, mission-driven organizations—to widen loopholes in the law that end up benefiting wealthy corporations and their political allies. Arn Pearson, the vice president for programs at Common Cause, calls him "a straw man for the Republican Party for their effort to dismantle campaign-finance laws."
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- Erik Prince, You're No Indiana Jones
(Mother Jones) Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that Prince was leading an effort to build an army of mercenaries, 800 strong—including scores from Colombia—in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. They would be trained by US, European and South African Special Forces veterans. Prince's new company, Reflex Responses, also known as R2, was bankrolled to the tune of $529 million from "the oil-soaked sheikdom," according to the Times, adding that Prince was "hired by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi" Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. Erik Prince is not mentioned by name in corporate documents outlining the deal, but is instead referred to as "Kingfish."
The contract between R2 and the UAE kicked in last June and is slated to run through May 2015. According to corporate documents on the private army Prince is building in the UAE, its potential roles include "crowd-control operations," defending oil pipelines from potential terrorist attacks and special operations missions inside and outside the UAE "to destroy enemy personnel and equipment." Other sources said the Emiratis wanted to potentially use the force to quell potential rebellions in the country's massive labor camps that house the Filipinos, Pakistanis and other imported laborers that fuel the country's work force. Prince also has plans to build a massive training base, modeled after the 7,000 acre private military base Blackwater built in Moyock, North Carolina.
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Among the other Americans working closely with Prince on building the private army in the UAE is a former FBI Agent named Ricky "CT" Chambers. He recently ran Blackwater's training program in Afghanistan that was registered under the shell company name of Paravant. That arrangement remains the subject of multiple Congressional and federal investigations in the US and two former Paravant operatives were convicted in March of the manslaughter of two Afghan civilians. Chambers is being paid about $300,000 a year, while US contractors, with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being offered pay packages worth up to $200,000 a year to work for Prince in the UAE.
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- Kenya's ambitions for an outsourced future
(BBC) "Kenya is very well known for its runners and wildlife, but when people talk about IT services there is a question mark," says Sanjay Sikka, chief executive of the year-and-a-half-old firm.
Now that is all set to change, he says.
Net effect
Four years ago, the Kenyan government unveiled its Vision 2030 plan to develop the country.
Central to its goals were the use of technology and a desire to emulate the success of countries such as India, South Africa and the Philippines.
"It is not about taking India's business away from them," explains Paul Kukubo of the government's ICT board, in charge of promoting Kenya as an outsourcing destination for foreign firms.
"The market is so big globally that the issue isn't about competition. The source markets - the US and the UK - are still looking for high quality, low cost destinations to do business."
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- Chile: Miner Jose Ojeda wants 'Los 33' message back
(BBC) A Chilean miner, who wrote the message that told the world he and his colleagues trapped deep underground were still alive, wants the note back.
Jose Ojeda says he wants the Chilean government to return the scribbled paper, which translates as "We are okay in the refuge, the 33 of us".
... The note, in Spanish "Estamos bien en el refugio los 33", was discovered attached to a probe 17 days after the mine collapsed last year.
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