The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is after the our friends over at JP Morgan Chase for rigging wholesale electricity prices to the tune of $73m. You thought that activity went away with the collapse of Enron? These crooks will steal anything that isn’t nailed down, well okay, they will pry up the nails too. They aren’t the only people the FERC has been going after, Obama was delayed in appointing people by Republicans in the Senate, but things are finally starting to happen.

The FERC has been going after other “banks” (that’s a questionable term) for stealing hundreds of millions by illegal trading schemes. And, this is only the low hanging fruit. More complex schemes, and strategies that were de-criminalized by Reagan, and his successors, have cost us billions if not trillions.

Markets Crash as the Obamacare Tax Increase is Approved by the Liberal Court, this was the screaming headline on the so-called news from the right. The markets did take a big plunge before clawing back, but it probably had to do with it leaking out that JP Morgan’s losses aren’t $2 billion as reported. Current internal estimates put the losses at $9 billion, and there’s no guarantee that is even close to the actual size of this cash hemorrhage. When we say “too big to fail“, that’s not what we mean exactly.

The rightwing lie machine is running full speed on the tax angle, and since they seemed to have the talking points already in line that might explain why Roberts went that way. There was no question that the Commerce Clause argument was sufficient, the Righties on the bench have had no problem using it to justify their rulings in the past. Rush is spouting the talking point that it‘s the “biggest tax increase in history”.

This is the last day of spring, or - in the new Global Warming reality - the end of the “First Summer”, the “Third Summer” will be here in three months. The traditional or “Second Summer” could just be shortened to “Hell”.

New farming methods may become necessary, -maple syrup production in Wisconsin was cut by 2/3 this year because winter ended so abruptly. A hard frost killed almost all the fruit crops across the midwest because everything bloomed a month too early. In this new reality it doesn’t matter that the mechanical corn planters spray a highly effective nano-particle insecticide on the seeds and this is now know conclusively to be killing all the honey bees. The bees aren’t really needed, they’re as obsolete as unionized teachers, firefighters and bridge inspectors.

Dateline Capital City: Word has reached us of the passing of the state’s rural icon Samuel Drucker at age 96. Sam, as he was known so fondly by the people of many small communities here abouts, was a civic leader and proprietor of the Hooterville General Store for many decades until its closing in 2001. He is reported to have died at his post greeting patrons at the Super Walmart in Pixley, which opened shortly before his own store closed.

Hooterville hasn’t fared well since Sam left along with most of its original residents. The houses that are still occupied provide shelter for the undocumented immigrant labor force that work at the sprawling hog confinement operation that occupies the former Ziffel and Douglas farms.