Rob Shuter, known as “Naughty But Nice Rob,” has been busy over at Huffington Post, trashing Bethenny Frankel for her sale of the Skinnygirl cocktail line to Fortune Brands earlier this year. In an October 11 story, Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl Business Was Not Sold For $120 Million, Rob claims that the drink line was actually sold for $8.1 million.

He states the following based on his reading of the 10-Q for Beam Inc. (formerly called Fortune Brands Inc.) for the period ended June 30, 2011:

A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission quarterly report form clearly shows that the Fortune Brands, Inc. acquisition of the Skinnygirl ready-to-drink cocktail business was for $8.1 million.

The problem is, that’s not what the filing says. The 10-Q reports on page 10 that the company booked $8.1 million in intangible assets related to the sale:

As the United States goes back to normal, following our remembrance of September 11, 2001, one of the most offensive bits of “normal” continues at airports. We, the citizens of the United States, allow the Transportation Security Administration to shame, humiliate, and violate us every single day. (See a photo of the kind of thing I’m talking about here.)

Today I focus on one Thedala Magee, a TSA employee who violated Amy Alkon in an airport. What Thedala Magee did, as described by Alkon, is nothing short of sexual assault. But it was sanctioned and allowed by our government in the name of “safety” at airports.

You may have already heard the story about Thedala Magee’s lawyer, Vicki Roberts, sending a threatening letter to Amy Alkon, demanding $500,000 for publicly saying that Magee raped her.

I have addressed the issue of teacher compensation multiple times in the context of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the constant budget problems the district claims to have. The administrators claim that they need more money, yet time and again it is demonstrated that the district has been getting more money on a per-student basis, and in spite of the increased funding children are not being taught to read and write.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, enacted on July 21, 2010, established a whistleblower incentive program requiring the Securities and Exchange commission to provide monetary awards to whistleblowers who come forward with information about the violation of federal securities laws, including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The Act also prohibits employers from retaliating against those who provide information about securities violations.

The reward for providing information that leads to a successful enforcement action by the SEC which results in monetary sanctions over $1,000,000 can be 10% to 30% of the penalty paid.

Joseph Rakofsky is still pursuing his lawsuit against the Internet. As expected, things are not going well for him in this matter. But he wants to continue nonetheless. His lawyer is withdrawing from the case. Rakofsky is not licensed to practice law in New York, where he filed his lawsuit. So while he can represent himself pro se, Rakofsky cannot represent his corporation, which is a party to the suit.

While responding to the nonsense of Rakofsky and his almost former attorney Richard Borzouye, Eric Turkewitz writes this brilliant commentary on why he and other defendants (mostly lawyer bloggers) think it’s important to write about clowns like Rakofsky:

I have written plenty about Milwaukee Public Schools and their failure to educate children, despite their out-of-control spending. Teachers and administrators always claim that more money is the answer to all their problems. And the money is for the children!!!

This is obviously not true:

The internets are all abuzz with the story of Joseph Rakofsky, young attorney with almost no experience, prone to inflating his credentials on his (now removed) web page, who is suing a large portion of the internets in what has been dubbed Rakofsky v Internet.

It all started when the Washington Post reported that the judge in a murder trial booted Joe Rakofsky as counsel for the defendant because he was so inept.  The story said Rakofsky’s incompetence was reason enough to grant a mistrial. The story was told over and over again by bloggers, and soon Joey was suing them all!

If there is any quicker way to bring negative attention to negative news, I don’t know of it. Joseph Rakofsky seems to have a lock on ruining his own career by “suing the internet.”

It all started with Rakofsky, a new-ish lawyer who was representing Dontrell Deaner in a murder case in Washington, D.C.  The Washington Post reported in its article D.C. Superior Court Judge Declares Mistrial Over Attorney’s Competence in Murder Case:

Perpetrators of fraud have plenty of schemes to choose from when cooking up their crimes. The fraud schemes range from petty theft by lower-level employees, all the way up to management cooking up stellar financial statements to dupe investors and lenders.

Fraud prevention policies and procedures sometimes have a tendency to focus on the smaller thefts. While those types of defalcations occur most often, they are not the most expensive. The financial statement frauds are the most devastating monetarily, and therefore must be fought aggressively.

This week, public workers’ unions in Wisconsin are up in arms because Governor Scott Walker has issued a budget which seeks to strip the unions of many of their bargaining rights. He wants to make the union members pay their fair share for their pensions and health care costs, and the unions aren’t having it! If Walker’s budget passes, public employees’ unions will only be able to negotiate on compensation, not on benefits.

Of course, the first cry from the teachers is that IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN and this budget should not pass. They, along with their private sector supporters, are claiming that teachers are underpaid and that school budgets are being cut.  Neither are true. They further claim that forcing a rollback in the lavish (yes, lavish) benefits of teachers will create a shortage of teachers. I disagree.