Daily Kickoff – Dec. 10th
Driving the Day: Bipartisan Senate group nears deal on new Iran sanctions – “A bipartisan group of Senators is close to an agreement on tougher Iran sanctions in opposition to the White House, which is easing them as part of an interim accord Tehran struck with world powers aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions, CNN has learned. A Senate deal would include a new round of sanctions to begin in six months and would not allow for the enrichment of uranium. But it would permit commercial nuclear power as long as it was monitored by the international community. The bipartisan group includes Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York; Robert Menendez of New Jersey; Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Mark Kirk of Illinois.” [CNN] “Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Time magazine in Tehran during the weekend that new sanctions – even if delayed – would kill the agreement reached in Geneva. “The entire deal (would be) dead,” Zarif said, adding that Iran’s parliament could also adopt legislation that would go into effect if talks fail. “But if we start doing that, I don’t think that we will be getting anywhere.” [Reuters]
Secretary of State John Kerry to Visit Israel, Again! – According to the State Department, John Kerry will travel to Jerusalem, Ramallah, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Tacloban, and Manila from Dec. 11-18, 2013. In Jerusalem, Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss a range of issues including Iran and the ongoing final status negotiations with the Palestinians. In Ramallah, Kerry will meet with President Abbas, where he will also discuss the ongoing final status negotiations, among other issues. [StateDept]
Last Night: John Kerry and David Brooks addressed the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Centennial Celebration Dinner in DC — Kerry: “We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Not now. Not Ever.” “Spoke today with Netanyahu, after my 8th trip to Israel, back for dinner with Bibi on Thursday – this is a commute folks.” David Brooks: “When we do philanthropy, it’s not enough to give money. It’s important to communicate the soft and squishy things.” [JewishInsider] — (Also watch David Brook’s Keynote at Yeshiva University’s Hanukkah Convocation [YouTube]) (more…)
Jews on de Blasio’s Inauguration Team
Bill de Blasio is getting ready for his inauguration.
Almost exactly one month before the January 1 date when he’ll take the oath of office, the mayor-elect rolled out his inaugural committee today, a list of names “from all five boroughs, every community and every walk of life,” as his transition team put it in a press release.
Jewish Members of the Inaugural Committee
1.
Rabbi Heshie Dembitzer. Bobover Yeshiva B’nai Zion
L-R: Chaim Sieger hosts NYC mayor-elect Bill de Blasio with askanim Yitzchok Fleischer and Heshie Dembitzer. (Credit: Hamodia)
2. Matthew Hiltzik, Founder, Hiltzik Strategies
3. Yitzchok “Isaac” Leshinsky, CEO, Housing Bridge
4. Jona Rechnitz
Rahr and Jona Rechnitz (credit: NYDN)
5. Ronald Perelman, Chairman and CEO, MacAndrews & Forbes
6. Morris Missry, Partner, Wachtel Missry LLP
7. Jay Eisenhofer, Founder, Grant & Eisenhofer P.A.
Jewish Insider Kickoff
FIRST LOOK – Vanity Fair September issue, “GOLDMAN’S GEEK TRAGEDY: A month after ace (Jewish) programmer Sergey Aleynikov left Goldman Sachs, he was arrested. Exactly what he’d done neither the F.B.I., which interrogated him, nor the jury, which convicted him a year later, seemed to understand. But Goldman had accused him of stealing computer code, and the 41-year-old father of three was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Investigating Aleynikov’s case, MICHAEL LEWIS holds a second trial” – “[I]n early 2009 [Aleynikov got an offer] to create a trading platform from scratch for a new hedge fund run by a 39-year-old Russian fellow named Misha Malyshev [who was] willing to pay him more than a million dollars a year … He agreed and then told Goldman he was leaving. … Four times in the course of [his final six] weeks he mailed himself source code he was working on. (He’d later be accused of sending himself 32 megabytes of code, but what he sent was essentially the same 8 megabytes of code four times over.) The files contained a lot of open-source code he had worked with, and modified, over the past two years, mingled together with code that wasn’t open source but proprietary to Goldman Sachs. As he would later try and fail to explain to an F.B.I. agent, he hoped to disentangle the one from the other, in case he needed to remind himself how he had done what he had done with the open-source code, in the event he might need to do it again. (more…)
