Nate Silver once was a respected mathematical analyst. His baseball-related work, such as that at Baseball Prospectus and on PECOTA, showed that he has the ability to make solid, reasoned arguments using mathematical tools.

But now, he’s flushed his own reputation into the toilet with his campaign against Strategic Vision. The pretend math, and lack of serious analysis and justification, in his series of posts against the company is so bad, I expect him any day now to start ranting about how he hasn’t seen a given poll, but he still thinks that Obama has the consistency to pull it out just like the Reds used to. Nate Silver has become the Joe Morgan of politics.

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Hassan Nemazee was more recently a heavy donor and bundler for both the Clinton and Obama Presidential campaigns, bringing in over half a million for the new President; he was also a major bundler for the Presidential Inaugural.

NY Businessman Charged With $74 Million Bank Fraud Against Citigroup

A New York man was charged with allegedly defrauding Citigroup Inc. (C) out of $74 million in loans.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan and the Federal Bureau of Investigations say Hassan Nemazee, with residences in Manhattan and Katonah, N.Y., fraudulently applied for the loans for Nemazee Capital Corp., of which he is chairman and chief executive.

Federal prosecutors contend Nemazee obtained the money by giving the banking giant “numerous documents that purported to establish the existence of accounts in Nemazee’s name at various financial institutions containing many hundreds of millions of dollars,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “In fact, those were fraudulent and forged documents.”

And I originally had him down as ‘former’ national finance chair for the DSCC, except that I’m seeing no signs that he quit the job (screenshot here).

See also AoSHQ & @AmandaCarpenter. [Also, Dan Riehl, who's doing some more research on the topic.]

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Promoted by Paul J. Cella, because it’s always a good day to highlight Democratic corruption.

St. Bernard Parish judge is arrested in fraud conspiracy

This may be of interest to nobody but me, but please allow me to indulge in eine kleine schadenfreude.

The parishes downriver of New Orleans have tolerated corrupt local judges for decades. Judge Leander Perez dominated politics in both St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes back in the ’50s and ’60s, and stole millions from the citizens in the process. The history of public corruption in St.Bernard and Plaquemines is exceptional, even by Louisiana standards.

These days, anyone trying to do business in the parishes gives up the home court advantage to the locals - quite literally. This is especially true in the case of claims of oyster damages in the parishes’ extensive marshlands (a topic of a RS 2.0 diary by yr humble correspondent). St. Bernard & Plaquemines judges are renowned for handing down outrageous damage awards to the local oysterfishermen who keep them in power. The fact that the outrageous judgments are routinely overturned in higher courts still means delays and lawyer fees which ultimately discourage activity. Many operators simply refuse to even try to do business in these parishes.

So it’s with no small amount of glee that I read that the FBI has arrested one of the bad actors. May there be more to come.

As you know, it’s in response to the PMA meltdown/outrage (see here for some background posts):

Rep. Flake targets earmarks amidst PMA controversy
Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), the House’s most vocal critic of pork barrel spending, is trying to shake the ethics committee into action on the link between earmarks and campaign contributors.

Flake has seized on the public corruption investigation of PMA Group, a once-powerful lobbying force that has disintegrated in the wake of an FBI probe into fraudulent campaign donations to numerous members of Congress.

In the past 24 hours, Flake has highlighted earmarks in the omnibus appropriations bill for PMA clients, written a scathing op-ed to The New York Times about Congress’s pay-to-play practices and offered a privileged resolution on the House floor that would force the House ethics panel to scrutinize the connection between earmarks and campaign cash and report back to the full body in two months.

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