Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

RIP Steve Jobs

October 6, 2011, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Text of Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement address at Stanford University.

Awlaki FBI FOIA Request

October 4, 2011, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

October 4, 2011

David M. Hardy
Section Chief, Record/Information Dissemination Section
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Attn: FOI/PA Request
170 Marcel Drive
Winchester, VA 22602-4843

Dear Mr. Hardy:

This letter constitutes a request (“Request”) pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. subsection 552.

I am requesting a copy of all records or information concerning ANWAR AL-AWLAKI (aka Anwar al-Aulaqi).

Mr. Awlaki was born in 1971 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was killed in Yemen on Sept. 30, 2011, according to a statement President Barack Obama made the same day. I trust the attached statement of the president will serve as the proof of death you require for this request.

Awlaki was a leader in al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and was one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. He was the subject of numerous investigations by the FBI for more than a decade.

If you deny all or any part of this request, please cite each specific exemption you think justifies your refusal to release the information and notify me of appeal procedures available under the law. I expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material.

I look forward to your reply to this Request within twenty (20) business days as required by 5 U.S.C. 552(a)(6)(A)(i).

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Seth Hettena

Some of you may have heard…

October 3, 2011, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

that I’ve taken up boxing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fitness in 100 words

September 28, 2011, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

I’ve been getting way into fitness lately. Here’s what I’ve learned so far in about 100 words:

  1. You can change your life without changing your body. But not the other way around.
  2. You don’t need strength until you realize you don’t have it and you wish you did.
  3. Eat food that comes from living things.
  4. Don’t copy people in the gym. Most don’t know what they’re doing.
  5. Don’t just sit there.
  6. Fitness is strength, yes, but it’s also balance, flexibility, agility, power and endurance.
  7. There is no substitute for hard work.
  8. True fitness is beautiful movement. See gymnastics, dancing and martial arts.
  9. If your core is weak, you’re weak.
  10. Avoid routine. Try everything.

Fabiani Watch: Trust Me I’m a Lawyer

June 10, 2011, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

икониLove this sentence in today’s Union-Tribune story on AEG saying the days of publicly-financed sports stadiums are at an end:

From his office in San Diego, Chargers special counsel Mark Fabiani said he doesn’t share that view.

For seven years starting in 2002, Fabiani said the Chargers would construct a new stadium without taxpayer support. Then for the past 16 months, he has maintained the opposite — that one couldn’t be built in downtown San Diego without a public subsidy.

Negative Equity in the San Diego Housing Market

June 8, 2010, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

San Diego’s housing market may have much further to fall.

So says a new report from the NY Federal Reserve that calculates how many homeowners will become renters over the next few years.

In San Diego, 16 percent of homeowners will become renters, according to the study

This measure assumes that homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth — i.e. negative equity — are in effect renters.

Since the homeownership gap reflects the extent of negative equity in the housing market, it is also a gauge of the potential downward pressure on the offcial homeownership rate. Assuming that house prices do not appreciate over the next several years, negative equity households will very likely convert to renters when they move out of their current homes because they will be unable to save enough to cover the negative equity, the transaction costs of selling their existing home, and a down payment on another home. As these transitions from owning to renting take place, the homeownership gap will narrow, with the offcial homeownership rate dropping toward the effective rate.
The official rate of homeownership in San Diego is 55 percent. But the Fed’s analysis of federal loan data shows that only 39 percent of homeowners will get some money back when they sell.
The difference between these two numbers yields the homeownership gap. And barring a huge rise in prices, that’s where we are headed.
It’s bad, and it may even be worse. According to the paper, these numbers may actually understate the extent of the problem.If you use Case-Shiller’s numbers, only 35 percent of San Diego homeowners have positive equity.  So the gap grows to 20 percentage points.
This has far-reaching implications:
Consider, for example, that the Case-Shiller-based effective homeownership rates for … Detroit, New York City, San Diego, and San Francisco are all under 50 percent. That is, the median household in these areas is in a negative equity position and no longer has strong financial incentives to behave as an owner. While the effects will vary with the distribution of negative equity households across the municipalities within these metro areas, a high share of these households could result in reduced maintenance of the housing stock, an increased risk of housing vacancies, and less stable neighborhoods over time—developments that could have repercussions for local law enforcement. Moreover, the predominance of “non-homeowners” in these metropolitan areas could lead to a decline in citizen participation in local affairs, with a concomitant loss of vigilance over the quality and ef?ciency of public services and institutions.

San Diego County Pension Lowers Rate of Return

June 4, 2010, by Seth Hettena. 1 Comment

San Diego County’s pension fund just handed the county bill for more than $30 million a year yet no one seems to have noticed.

Every three years, San Diego County’s pension fund looks into its crystal ball and decides what it expects investments returns will be over the next 50 years.

It’s arguably the most important and difficult decision the board has to make. Even a small change can force the county to cough up millions of dollars each year.

Yesterday, the board of the San Diego County Employee Retirement Association lowered its assumed net rate of return from 8.25 percent to 8 percent effective July 1, 2011. (Watch the meeting online here.)

A quarter percent may not sound like much, but it’s a change that will force the county to pay 3 percent of payroll each year. Using last year’s payroll numbers, that works out to roughly $33.88 million.

The 8 percent assumed rate of return represents the pension’s best guess about how the fund will do in the future, so that the county can set aside money to ensure the plan is well funded.

The shift to an 8 percent assumed rate of return moves San Diego County’s pension more in line with other big state pension funds. CalPERS, the $200 billion retirement system, is reviewing its assumed 7.75 percent rate of return and will make a recommendation to the board whether to lower it later this year.

Three years ago, the pension’s actuarial consultant, Segal Group, recommended an assumed rate of return but the then chief investment officer, David Deutsch, promised that he could generate the additional 8.25 percent with his Alpha Engine.

Deutsch resigned under pressure shortly before the pension reported losses of $2.4 billion for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

The assumed rate of return is perhaps the most important variable in calculating a key barometer of a pension’s health known as the funding ratio — the ratio of assets to liabilities. SDCERA’s funding ratio stands officially at 91.5 percent, but that’s only because of an accounting practice that defers losses over several years.

If last year’s $2.1 billion loss were to be recognized right away, San Diego County’s pension fund would only be 65 percent funded, according to a report by an independent consultant. That’s well below the 80 percent that pension experts regard as healthy.

Anwar Awlaki Justifies the Killing of Innocents

May 24, 2010, by Seth Hettena. 0 Comments

US-born Anwar Awlaki

Former San Diego imam Anwar Awlaki — who once called Islam a religion of peace — has given an interview to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and justified the killing of American civilians in no uncertain terms:

Interviewer: Do you support such operations, even though they target what the media calls ‘innocent civilians?’

Anwar Al-Awlaki: Yes. With regard to the issue of ‘civilians,’ this term has become prevalent these days, but I prefer to use the terms employed by our jurisprudents. They classify people as either combatants or non-combatants. A combatant is someone who bears arms – even if this is a woman. Non-combatants are people who do not take part in the war. The American people in its entirety takes part in the war, because they elected this administration, and they finance this war. In the recent elections, and in the previous ones, the American people had other options, and could have elected people who did not want war. Nevertheless, these candidates got nothing but a handful of votes. We should examine this issue from the perspective of Islamic law, and this settles the issue – is it permitted or forbidden? If the heroic mujahid brother Umar Farouk could have targeted hundreds of soldiers, that would have been wonderful. But we are talking about the realities of war. (Via MEMRI.)

He calls Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day “underwear bomber” as his “students” and urges Muslims to follow in their footsteps.

Our unsettled account with America includes, at the very least, one million women and children. I’m not even talking about the men. Our unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the [attempted Christmas Day bombing] are a drop in the ocean.

Former San Diego imam Anwar Awlaki is no longer the man he once was a few years ago. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the US-born Awlaki categorically rejected violent jihad against American civilians. Trace his (de)evolution via my Anwar Awlaki Timeline.

It’s interesting to contrast this with Awlaki’s own words after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks when he gave numerous interviews to the press

About killing, the greatest sin in Islam after associating other gods besides Allah is killing an innocent soul. Source

As he has in the past, Awlaki makes repeated references to the propaganda war he says the US is waging against Islam. He recites a phrase from an anonymous CIA official quoted in a 2005 US News & World Report article and makes reference to a 2004 report by the RAND Corporation titled “Civil Democratic Islam.”

This is the undercurrent of the discussion about Awlaki among his fans, as filmmaker Kamran Pasha, writes in The Huffington Post:

When I have publicly criticized al-Awlaki, I have received emails from his devotees saying that he is being “set up” by the US government. And yet when I ask them what they mean by this, there is always pin-drop silence. His followers seem to want to believe that the good, charismatic man that they adore is somehow being falsely portrayed in the media as a villain as part of some PSY/OPS manipulation game. And yet when I ask if someone else is posting his increasingly radical and extremist sermons through his website (a CIA agent posing as al-Awlaki, let’s say), there is more silence. It is as if his followers want to keep clinging to the man he once was and selectively ignore his recent calls for the murder of civilians in the name of Islam.

There have been so many twists and turns in the Awlaki story that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.

Back in his San Diego days, Awlaki was himself accused by another imam of being part of a CIA plot, as Brian Fishman noted on Jihadica.

Farewell to a best friend

May 16, 2010, by Seth Hettena. 1 Comment



RIP Grace

Speed racer, bread enthusiast, tennis ball lover, yappy dog chaser, child protecter, kitchen floor cleaner, alarm system, beachgoer, thunderstorm hater, sweet gentle soul. Farewell.

Goldman’s Day in the Klieg Lights

May 3, 2010, by Seth Hettena. 1 Comment

“Mr. Chairman, I cannot help but get a feeling that a strategy of the witnesses is to try to burn through the time of each questioner,” Sen. Susan Collins said during last week’s Goldman Sachs hearing before the Senate.

Was this a reference to a story I wrote last year for The American Lawyer about, K. Lee Blalack II, a partner at O’Melveny & Myers who was reportedly retained by Goldman?

Click here to read a pdf of the article.

My story was about a group of lawyers who specialize in guiding firms and individuals who are in the crosshairs of the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), perhaps the most powerful investigative committee on Capitol Hill.

Blalack is a former chief counsel to the subcommittee, a job once held by Bobby Kennedy and Roy Cohn, where he learned how effective a tactic delay can be:

So to avoid having his client get buried, how does Blalack prepare him or her for a day before the committee? He tells them that the congressional hearing room is not a forum for getting at the truth. Don’t get on a soapbox. A day in the klieg lights should end with minimal damage to reputation while not complicating a client’s position in other investigations or litigation. Blalack says a well-trained witness can minimize exposure by simply running out the clock: “Long, thoughtful pauses followed by rambling nonresponsive answers can easily devour half of a member’s allotted questioning time.”

Talking Points Memo said this quote explains Goldman’s entire strategy during the PSI hearing..

But I wonder if Collins had her tongue firmly pressed in her check. The woman from Maine has served on PSI for the past 13 years and is no stranger to the Kabuki-like drama of these hearings.

Her chief counsel? None other than K. Lee Blalack.