Year: 2014

Charlie Pierce Gets It

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Pierce notes that when you look at those who wish to criminalize abortion (and birth control), “There Is No Common Ground On Abortion.”

They want to punish women for their own sexuality.  They want to remove their autonomy, and they (Catholic Church excepted) don’t give a damn about children once they are born into poverty.

These people who are afraid by women, and the power that women possess, and want to minimize it, and there can be no compromise.

The idea of  “Common Ground” is that it provides a way for Democrats to weasel out of this.

Guess what, the only people who feel inspired to vote for members of the weasel family are other weasels, like skunks.

Go read the rest

Poo Flinging in Journalism*

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Erik Wemple, former Editor in Chief of the Washington City Paper and current Washington Post media critic, has been chasing down allegations that Politico’s Mike Allen selling favorable coverage on his daily Playbook newsletter:

Politico Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen writes “Playbook,” a daily e-mail newsletter featuring stories from Politico and other outlets, various “exclusives,” tips and birthday notices. It also carries “messages” from big companies and trade associations hoping to reach “Playbook’s” audience of influentials.

All the items below were extracted from “Playbook” and are related to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying force that has advertised in the newsletter. Please designate which are paid advertisements for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and which are Allen’s own work:

 ………

 Answers: 1) and 3) are paid ads; 2) and 4) are Allen’s own work.

 One of the hottest issues in journalism today is “native” advertising, the tricks that publishers deploy to elide the domains of journalism and advertising. BuzzFeed has sustained gray-bearded criticism for its boundary-defying listicles. The Atlantic earlier this year ran a native ad from the Church of Scientology that inflamed its audience and prompted an apology and a review of Atlantic procedures for approving ads. Forbes, The Washington Post and the Huffington Post are also experimenting with this approach to funding journalism.

A review of “Playbook” archives shows that the special interests that pay for slots in the newsletter get adoring coverage elsewhere in the playing field of “Playbook.” The pattern is a bit difficult to suss out if you glance at “Playbook” each day for a shot of news and gossip. When searching for references to advertisers in “Playbook,” however, it is unmistakable. And its practitioner is expanding the franchise. Today, Allen disclosed in “Playbook” that he’ll be collaborating in the production of “Capital Playbook,” a newsletter stemming from Capital New York, the news site that Politico acquired earlier this year. Also today, the New York Times, as part of a reorganization of its Washington/political coverage, announced that it would be launching a “morning news tip sheet that sets up the Washington day for our readers.”

 ………

Such fandom helps to explain why Allen’s updates have become perhaps the Beltway’s most impressive journo-business story of the past decade. As previously reported, advertisers pay a good $35,000 for a weekly run in “Playbook,” a price tag that has inflated nicely for Politico in recent years.

And then there is the fawning coverage of Fox News, with the (buried at the end of the article) quote, “And yet former Fox News PR ace Brian Lewis told Jim Romenesko in 2012, “We do not have a do-not-deal-with-Politico policy. We deal with Mike Allen.” As they should.”

So, Mike Allen is not happy with Erik Wemple, which is profoundly unsurprising.

What does surprise me though is that senior editors at The Washington Post and Politico have set up a meeting to resolve this:

Top editors at The Washington Post and Politico tried on Wednesday to mend a rift between the two news organizations.
Politico’s editor in chief, John Harris, and the Post’s editorial page editor Fred Hiatt spoke about columns by Erik Wemple, a media critic for The Post, that have been heavily critical of Mike Allen, a star reporter at Politico and author of the popular Playbook newsletter. Mr. Wemple has accused Mr. Allen of questionable journalistic practices, including using Playbook to provide favorable coverage to the companies that advertise in his newsletter.
It had been reported that editors at The Post and Politico would meet in person, but instead they talked over the phone.
“One of his writers made assertions that I believe do not meet Washington Post standards of fairness or accuracy,” Mr. Harris said in an email, describing the call with Mr. Hiatt. The assertions, he said are  “emphatically untrue — and we had a serious and non-dramatic conversation about this.”
Would the Post have a meeting like this with the now-indicted former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnel?
Of course not.  They would contact him for comments, and they would review any complaints, but a meeting?  Of course not.

When the target has a complaint, you get those complaints, and you examine those complaints, and if you determine them to be valid, you publish a correction.

You don’t hold f%$#ing peace talks.

This sort of mutual back scratching by media institutions is one of the reasons that so many people don’t trust the press.

* Since I am mentioning Eric Wemple and journalistic poo flinging, I feel compelled to note that while Eric Wemple’s was editor at Washington City Paper, he assigned reporters in an effort to out the identity of anonymous bloggers who commented on the oft bizarre conflict with the Wag Time Pet Spa, which was next door to his house, which actually involved the arrest of his wife on allegations of literally flinging of poo, of the canine variety. (see also here)

Linkage

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This is more the ‘tude of Destructo (the male, almost not a kitten) rather than Meatball (or Mouse Trap, my wife and I disagree*)

*It doesn’t really matter, they do not come when they are called.

Do You Think that the Qataris Might Have an Agenda?

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A study funded by the government of Qatar has determined that the Assad regime is guilty to “industrial-scale killing”.

I’m not surprised by the conclusion, and I’m inclined to agree that it is generally accurate, but it is clear that its provenance is highly suspect.

The Sunni monarchs of the Gulf have long had an agenda of both attacking secular Arab regimes, as well as pushing for Sunni dominance in the Arab world.

And it comes out just as negotiations between the two sides begins.

The people who wrote this report have stellar reputations in the human rights area, one is a former chief prosecutor for Sierra Leone, but the source of the data might, or might not, be akin to “Curveball“, whose false testimony was invoked by the Bush administration in their push for the Iraq war:

The defector, who for security reasons is identified only as Caesar, was a photographer with the Syrian military police. He smuggled the images out of the country on memory sticks to a contact in the Syrian National Movement, which is supported by the Gulf state of Qatar. Qatar, which has financed and armed rebel groups, has called for the overthrow of Assad and demanded his prosecution.

Needless to say, I am dubious of the report and the timing.

From I Have a Dream to I Have a Drone

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I’ve been thinking that on the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday I should offer some sort of comment, and I’ve kind of been at a loss.

Driving to work today, I had a flash of insight.

It’s not deep, but it is glib, and I think that it is an evocative way to give the lie to the idea that somehow or other Obama is a successor to Kings legacy.

Beneficiary, yes, successor, no f%$#ing way.

More generally,  I object to the the Disneyification of King’s memory.

At the core of his activism was a profound and deep moral outrage, and the process by which he has been reduced to some sort of “Magic Negro” by the mainstream media is a real shame.

It serves to dilute much of his message, which was not just about civil rights, but addressed poverty and labor rights as well.

Not Enough Bullets

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The tech companies are trying to dodge taxes again:

Silicon Valley has launched a last-ditch attempt to derail plans devised by the G20 group of countries to close down international loopholes that are exploited by the likes of Google, Amazon and Apple to pay less tax in the UK and elsewhere.

The Digital Economy Group, a lobbying group dominated by the leading US digital firms, has written to the OECD, the Paris-based thinktank tasked by G20 leaders with drawing up reforms, saying it is not true that communications advances have allowed multinational groups to game national tax systems.

Suggesting that any leakage of tax revenues flowing from the complex corporate structures of digital groups is merely coincidental, the Digital Economy Group says: “Enterprises that employ digital communications models do not organise their business operations differently as a legal or tax matter.”

Their denial of tax engineering follows a string of tax scandals in Europe and the US in the past two years. In the UK, Google bore the brunt of criticism from Margaret Hodge, who chairs the public accounts committee, after it emerged that Google – which the Guardian understands is a member of the DEG – had been allowed to pay £3.4m in tax to HMRC in 2012 despite UK revenues of £3.2bn.

“Merely coincidental,” my ass.  0.09% tax rate?  This is not a boating accident.

I guess that you need all that money you save from tax cheating that you can pay your senior executives obscene bonuses.

How about throwing these motherf%$#ers in jail.

Stewart 1, Obama 0

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Stewarts notes that Obama has deliberately created a regime in which the rules are completely dependent on the goodwill of the authorities, something which our founders abhorred.

Obama makes an exception for “true emergencies,” and Stewart observes that, “We will totally follow the rules until we determine such time when we will no longer follow the rules, but don’t worry about it. You won’t hear about it, because we’re doing it in secret.”

Once again, with a smile on his face, Stewart reveals the hypocrisy of power.

Pack Your Toothbrush, Governor

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The DoJ has finally gotten around to indicting former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen:

Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, were charged Tuesday with illegally accepting gifts, luxury vacations and large loans from a wealthy Richmond area businessman who sought special treatment from state government.

 Authorities allege that for nearly two years, the McDonnells repeatedly asked executive Jonnie R. Williams Sr. for loans and gifts of money, clothes, golf fees and equipment, trips, and private plane rides. The gifts and loans totaled at least $165,000.

 In exchange, authorities allege, the McDonnells worked in concert to lend the prestige of the governor’s office to Williams’s struggling company, Star Scientific, a former small cigarette manufacturer that now sells dietary supplements.

 McDonnell, 59, is the first governor ever to face criminal charges in Virginia, a state that has prided itself on a history of clean and ethical politics, and the charges will probably accelerate a push for the legislature to tighten state ethics laws.

 The criminal prosecution marks a stunning crash for a politician who was considered for the Republican vice presidential nomination in 2012 and who, just a year ago, was considered a credible prospective candidate for president.

 The 43-page, 14-count indictment adds new details to a story line of largess that was first recounted by The Washington Post in March. It depicts an elected official in financial trouble who sought help from a businessman with something to gain.

Finally.

The Washington Post noted earlier that the DoJ deliberately held off indicting while he was still in office, which to my mind was a bad decision.

I can understand not indicting before an election, the DoJ has an obligation to avoid effecting electoral politics, but in the ensuing months between the election and the indictment, there was no such excuse.

The law cannot should not be deferential to power, and he should have been indicted while still in office.

Supertramp?!?!?!? Let Me Get This Straight, 911 & ……… Supertramp?

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As my son is wont to say, What the F%$#ing F%$#?

“Breakfast in America” is a 1979 record by the British rock group Supertramp. Its cover artwork features a smiling waitress who is standing in for the Statue of Liberty.* Behind her stands the New York City skyline, including the twin towers. It’s weird.

According to the latest theory from the 9/11 truther community, however, Supertramp’s album cover was never just a jokey little piece of absurdist art. What was it instead? A prophecy of doom.

Try to follow us on this one, because as one might suspect from a new 9/11 truth theory provided today (some 10-plus years after the attacks), things get a bit complicated.

The Supertramp theory, if we can call it that, is derived from the brain of one member of an online forum for David Icke (he of the evil lizard overlords theory) named “Eve.”

It gets even weirder and pathetic.

We’ve Got Weather

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We are having a spot of weather in the Mid-Atlantic states.

The Baltimore County School District canceled school for tomorrow, which means that between the MLK holiday, and today’s teacher day for the end of the end of the semester, they will have a 2-day school week.

While I acknowledge that single digit temperatures, and 5+ inches of snow is legitimate winter weather.

Whatevs.

Contemptible McCarthyite Behavior

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It appears that that the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Mike Rogers (R) and Dianne Feinstein(D),* have decided to imply that Edward Snowden was a Russian agent for a long time before he became a whistle blower:

The heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees suggested on Sunday that Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, might have been working for Russian spy services while he was employed at an agency facility in Hawaii last year and before he disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.

The lawmakers, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, offered no specific evidence that Mr. Snowden had cooperated with Moscow. Since Mr. Snowden’s disclosure first became public last spring, there has been much speculation that he was collaborating with a foreign spy service.

Nearly a year later, however, there has been no public indication that the F.B.I.’s investigation of Mr. Snowden’s actions, bolstered by separate “damage assessment” investigations at the N.S.A. and the Pentagon, has uncovered evidence that Mr. Snowden received help from a foreign intelligence service. A senior F.B.I. official said on Sunday that it was still the bureau’s conclusion that Mr. Snowden acted alone.

This is disgraceful, callous, and cowardly behavior, and it harkens back to the worst of Joe McCarthy.

Shame on Mike Rogers, and shame on Dianne Feinstein.

*Full disclosure, her grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.

This is Unbelievably F%$#ing Stupid

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Iran was just disinvited from the Syria peace talks:

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon withdrew a last-minute invitation to Iran to attend peace talks on Syria on Monday after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott this week’s conference if President Bashar al-Assad’s main sponsor took part.

Ending nearly 24 hours of confusion that dismayed diplomats who have spent months cajoling Assad’s opponents to negotiate, Ban’s spokesman said Iran was no longer welcome at the initial day of talks at Montreux, Switzerland on Wednesday.

The opposition immediately withdrew its threat to stay away from the conference known as Geneva-2. But the uproar over Iran, which has provided Assad with money, arms and men, underlined the difficulties of negotiating an end to a bloody, three-year civil war that has divided the Middle East and world powers.

Ban, his spokesman said, made the invitation to Iran after Iranian officials assured him they supported the conclusion of a U.N. conference in 2012, known as Geneva-1, which called for a transitional administration to take over power in Syria – something neither Assad nor Tehran have been willing to embrace.

Throughout Monday Iranian officials made clear that they were not endorsing that conclusion as a basis for the talks.

I would also note that US Secretary of State John Kerry was also having a hissy fit over Iran showing up.

This is all about the United States, and the Syrian exiles, supporting the House of Saud’s agenda of both hostility toward secular Arab regimes, and support toward Sunni hegemony in the region.

Doing the Saudi’s bidding might be unavoidable for the Syrian National Council, they are clearly clients of Riyadh, but for the US, intervening in a 1400 year old sectarian dispute is a losing proposition.

Doing the bidding of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr is not in America’s best interest.

Making Sense of Chris Christie………

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Joe Patrice, at Above the Law, observes that Chris Cristie’s pattern of abusing power is typical for a former prosecutor:

Unless you’re living under a rock or stuck in traffic on the George Washington Bridge, you know that N.J. Governor Chris Christie spent yesterday digging himself out of the Fort Lee traffic scandal in the most Jersey of manner — by placing a proverbial bullet in the back of the neck of one of his most trusted allies Tony Soprano-style. He even invited the media over to the Bada-Bing for a couple of hours after he did it.

………

But whether Christie was directly involved in this scandal or not — and so far the digital paper trail seems to begin with his mild-mannered aide showing uncharacteristic initiative and ends with a high school crony whom Christie put in charge of the bridge — this scandal falls somewhere between unsurprising and utterly inevitable.

Christie is a former prosecutor, serving as a U.S. Attorney from 2002 until 2008. The modern prosecutor is armed with the luxury to exact petty, brutal revenge on any and all who cross him or her, and this is the mentality that Christie brought into the Governor’s Mansion. Indeed, he made this mentality his political calling card.

………

And that atmosphere flows directly from the arrogance of a prosecutorial office.

………

Prosecutors are incentivized to use all of their vast power to get more people convicted, and they’re willing to use a bazooka to kill a cockroach if it advances that ball. Listen, I spent a lot of time working with current and former prosecutors. And whether I represented a cooperator working with the government or I was sitting on the same side as a defense lawyer freshly out of the prosecutor’s office, it always disturbed me how quickly they would leap to asking “how do we screw them?” over the most minor of slights.

When this is the model of success that propels you into office, how does one reset? In Christie’s case, he never eschewed this model of leadership. He may well have directly ordered these lane closures, but even if he didn’t, the mentality he has championed in his meteoric rise to prominence invited this sort of behavior. And now we’re supposed to be forgiving when he says his deputy acted alone when plotting to make life hell for someone unwilling to kowtow to the Governor’s overtures?

It makes a lot of sense, and it also frightens the hell out of me about our criminal justice system.

BTW, if you want to read a less charitable assessment of Jabba the Governor, you can read Chris Hedges‘ takedown.

I don’t think that it is as informative, but it’s a jolly good read. 

Wanker of the Day: Yale University

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Before Plugin                                    After Plugin  

Yale has a course selection website, and a two students, Harry Yu and Peter Xu, came up with a personal website that aggregated the ratings so that students could look at ratings and workload when selecting a course.

Yale blocked the site, and threatened disciplinary action against them so another student, Sean Haufler,  wrote a Google Chrome shortcut that does this on the fly.

Basically, Yale does not want students to access this data in a coherent way, because, tenured professors who cannot or will not teach do not want students avoiding their courses:

In January 2012, two Yale students named Harry Yu and Peter Xu built a replacement to Yale’s official course selection website. They it called YBB+ (Yale Bluebook Plus), a “plus” version of the Yale-owned site, called Yale Bluebook. YBB+ offered different functionality from the official site, allowing students to sort courses by average rating and workload. The official Yale Bluebook, rather, showed a visual graph of the distribution of student ratings as well as a list of written student reviews. YBB+ offered a more lightweight user interface and facilitated easier comparison of course statistics. Students loved it. A significant portion of the student body started using it.

Fast-forward two years. Last Friday (1/10/14), Yale blocked YBB+’s IP address on the school network without warning. When contacted, Yale said that YBB+ infringed upon Yale’s trademark. Harry and Peter quickly removed the Yale name from the site, rebranded it as CourseTable and relaunched. Yale blocked the website again, declaring the website to be malicious activity.

Later that weekend, Yale’s administration told the student developers that the school didn’t approve of the use of its course evaluation data, saying that their website “let students see the averaged evaluations far too easily”. Harry and Peter were told to remove the feature from the CourseTable website or else they would be referred to the school’s punishment committee.

………

And then it hit the internet:

Finally, Mary Miller, the Dean of Yale College, wrote an open letter to Yale on Friday night. In this letter, she defended Yale’s decision to censor Harry and Peter’s website and course rating functionality, stating:

“[Yale’s course] evaluations… became available to students only in recent years and with the understanding that the information they made available to students would appear only as it currently appears on Yale’s sites — in its entirety.”


Worded less diplomatically, it appears the Dean of Yale College is expressing to students that, “You can use our course evaluation data, but only if you view the data as we tell you to view it”.

(emphasis original)

And there were the inevitable claims of copyright and trademark infringement, and Mr. Haufler came up with his solution:

The story does not end here, however, since there’s a way to distinguish the freedom of speech issue from the copyright claims. What if someone made a piece of software that displays Yale’s course evaluation data in a way that Yale disapproves of, while also (1) not infringing on Yale’s copyrights or trademarks, (2) not storing any sensitive data, (3) not scraping or collecting Yale’s data, and (4) not causing damages to Yale’s network or servers? If Yale censors this piece of software or punishes the software developer, it would clearly characterize Yale as an institution where having authority over students trumps freedom of speech.

Guess what? I made it last night.

I built a Chrome Extension called Banned Bluebook. It modifies the Chrome browser to add CourseTable’s functionality to Yale’s official course selection website, showing the course’s average rating and workload next to each search result. It also allows students to sort these courses by rating and workload. This is the original site, and this is the site with Banned Bluebook enabled (this demo uses randomly generated rating values).

Banned Bluebook never stores data on any servers. It never talks to any non-Yale servers. Moreover, since my software is smarter at caching data locally than the official Yale course website, I expect that students using this extension will consume less bandwidth over time than students without it. Don’t believe me? You can read the source code. No data ever leaves Yale’s control. Trademarks, copyright infringement, and data security are non-issues. It’s 100% kosher.

………

If Yale denies this right, I’ll see you at the punishment committee.

Here’s hoping that Yale backs down.  If not, I hope that you talk to the ACLU.

In my day, of course, we had to talk to each other, I recall a materials course, taught by a Professor Clapp, was called “Catching the Clapp,” but I only discovered that after I was half way through the class.

I appreciate the value of tenure, but this should not be a justification for erecting the, “The Great Firewall of Yale.”

It’s not like their jobs are at stake over this, just their egos.

Elizabeth Warren’s Just Issued a Big F%$# You to Regulatory Business as Usual

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She, along with Tom Coburn,* have introduced a bill which would force disclosure of the details of sweetheart settlements:

Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) that aims to make government settlements with corporations more transparent and fair. It could end up saving taxpayers billions of dollars.

 When banks and other corporations are accused of breaking the law, the government often settles cases instead of going to trial. In the wake of the financial crisis, for example, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and government banking watchdogs have settled cases  against banks that helped tank the economy. Regulatory agencies have argued that settlements are adequate tools to enforce the law, but Warren has protested. She notes that many settlements are tax-deductible. Other deals are confidential, meaning the public has no idea whether the terms of the agreement are fair.

 Warren’s bill would discourage tax-deductible settlements by forcing federal agencies to explain why certain settlements are confidential, and to publicly disclose the terms of nonconfidential agreements so that taxpayers can see how much settlement tax-deductibility is costing them.

You can go to the link and get the link, but basically, it is typically something in the range of 30%-40% that is deductible.

Of course,  while recovery of this money is good, the real benefit is that it creates a profound disincentive for the sweetheart settlements that seem to the norm these days.

*Talk about the political odd couple.

Warren’s press release is after the break.

Washington, DC – United States Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) today introduced bipartisan legislation to increase transparency around settlements reached by federal enforcement agencies. When federal agencies close investigations and settle cases, they often tout the dollar amount obtained from the offender, but in many cases that amount is misleading because of tax deductions and other “credits” built into the settlement that reduce the settlement’s true value. Worse, sometimes agreements are deemed confidential, with key details or even the fact of a settlement hidden from the public. The Truth in Settlements Act will require more accessible and detailed disclosures about these agreements to allow the public to hold regulators accountable for the true value of these deals.

“When government agencies reach settlements with companies that break the law, they should disclose the terms of those deals to the public,” said Senator Warren. “Anytime an agency decides that an enforcement action is needed, but it is not willing to go to court, that agency should be willing to disclose the key terms and conditions of the agreement. Increased transparency will shut down backroom deal-making and ensure that Congress, citizens and watchdog groups can hold regulatory agencies accountable for strong and effective enforcement that benefits the public interest.”

“Taxpayers deserve to know the settlement details corporations arrange with the government, and the best place for Congress to start is with policies that enhance transparency,” Dr. Coburn said. “Since agencies are not currently required to disclose the financial structure of government settlements, too often the true value of those settlements is not known because often companies are allowed to deduct part of the payment. Our bill gives taxpayers the transparency tools they need to access real information and numbers regarding enforcement settlements.”

Under the Truth in Settlements Act, all written public statements that reference the dollar amounts of settlements will be required to include explanations of how those settlements are categorized for tax purposes and whether payments may be offset by “credits” for particular conduct. Companies that settle with enforcement agencies will be required to disclose in their Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings whether they have deducted any or all of the dollar amounts of their settlements from their taxes; and federal agencies will be required to post basic information about settlements and provide copies of those agreements on their websites.

To address concerns about confidentiality, the Truth in Settlements Act also requires agencies to explain publicly why confidentiality is justified in any particular instance. The Act also directs agencies to disclose basic information about the number of settlements they deem confidential each year and directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study of confidentiality procedures and to provide additional recommendations for increasing transparency. These and other provisions of the Truth in Settlements Act will increase the transparency of government settlements and permit greater public scrutiny.

###

Calling His Bluff

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Just watch an LGBT activists confronting a bigot politician Ron Webb, who has proposed reversing the Shreveport city council’s fairness ordinance forbidding discrimation against the LGBT in employment and housing, by reading Leviticus and offering him a stone so that Webb could kill her as the Bible calls for.

When confronted with the reality of the situation, Councilman Webb fled with his tail between his legs.

As Rachel Maddow is wont to say, it’s the, “Best thing in the world today.”

H/t Americablog.

In Unity, There is Strength

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It appears that police are going zero tolerance on politicians who want to cut their pensions.

They did nothing, and in some cases aggressively supported politicians, (I’m talking to you, Wisconsin Police unions) when this was done to other public servants, they would not be facing this problem now.

If you want to protect your own union rights, you have to do so for your coworkers as well.  It was clear to anyone with half a brain that once they hit clerks, street cleaners, and teachers, it was public safety next.

A drive by some American cities to cut costly police retirement benefits has led to an extraordinary face-off between local politicians and the law enforcement officers who work for them.

In Costa Mesa, California, lawmaker Jim Righeimer says he was a target of intimidation because he sought to curb police pensions. In a lawsuit in November, Righeimer accused the Costa Mesa police union and a law firm that once represented them, of forcing him to undergo a sobriety test (he passed) after driving home from a bar in August 2012.

That followed a call to 911 by private detective Chris Lanzillo, who worked for the police union and the law firm that represented it, according to the suit. Lanzillo is also named as a defendant, accused of following Righeimer home from the bar.

Disputes such as these have intensified as Detroit and two California cities, Stockton and San Bernardino, have gone bankrupt in the past two years. Police pension costs were a major factor in the financial troubles facing all three. Now large cities, including San Jose and San Diego, say they have no choice but to alter pension agreements lest they end up in bankruptcy too.

The suit by lawmaker Righeimer also said that an FBI raid of the law firm last October uncovered evidence that an electronic tracking device had been attached to the underside of the car driven by another lawmaker, Steve Mensinger, one of Righeimer’s allies in the pension fight.

“What we are alleging is a conspiracy to gather information against political opponents”, said John Manly, a lawyer representing Righeimer and Mensinger.

………

There also have been allegations of intimidation by police in Cranston, Rhode Island.

On January 9, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung announced that state police will take over an investigation into a flurry of parking tickets issued in the wards of two council members. The pair claim the tickets were issued as retribution after they voted against a new contract for police that would have given them a pay raise.

Fung announced that Police Chief Marco Palombo Jr. had been placed on administrative leave while the Rhode Island state police investigate the parking ticket allegations.

………

In 2008 DeLord told officers in American Police Beat Magazine to “get dirty and fight to win,” by getting personal with reformist council members and to “bloody their noses.”

DeLord told Reuters last month that he had learnt to be more collaborative since 2008, but said of the “get dirty” message: “I wrote it. I believe it.”

What is Wrong with the TED Talks in One Person

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My call in is at 41:05

On Monday, I went to the Doctor, and on the way there, I was listening to the Midday talk show on WYPR, and they were interviewing Dan Pallotta, who gave a TED talk (no link, ever) about how we need to spend lots of money on high powered executives and self promotion, and not be so concerned about overhead costs.  (Link to this show)

I called into the show (you can hear me at 41:05), and made two points, both from experience:* That aggressive fundraising and growth as a strategy will take place at the expense of the core function of that organization, and that studies have shown that very high levels of compensation actually decrease performance.

Pallotta spouted banalities about the use of “appropriate metrics” when discussing how a high growth focus won’t distract , and for the studies showing that excessive pay decreases performance, he pulls out the straw man about whether we should stop paying real estate agents after their 3rd sale.

The reality is that his failed for-profit event promotion business died because it became excessive expensive, and the self aggrandizement of its CEO, Dan Pallotta.

In it’s own way, this is TED Talks in a microcosm, it is all about comforting the comfortable.

After all this, I Wiki the motherf%$#er and found this “clearly-written_by-his-publicist” article:

Pallotta TeamWorks
Pallotta built his for-profit company Pallotta TeamWorks. His company employed 400 full-time people in 16 U.S. offices and was raising $169 million annually by 2002. In total, the company raised $582 million from 1994 to 2002. The company charged a fixed production fee for its services. It did not do commission-based fundraising or get a “take” off of the top. One hundred percent of all donations went to lock boxes under the charities’ exclusive control. The charities then reimbursed the company for its expenses on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Pallotta TeamWorks fees, in a hindsight calculation, amounted to 4.01% of funds raised.

As is shown below, this is a bogus number. It refers only to direct fees, and not the expenses of putting on the increasingly lavish events.

Palotta was criticized for the large amounts of money Pallotta TeamWorks was making each year and the $394,500 salary he was receiving, described as “stratospheric” for the aid world.[ His annual salary ranged from $150,000 in 1994 to approximately $425,000 in 2002. Palotta commented that “We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them”.

In 2002, the company moved into an innovative headquarters that it had outfitted, The Apostrophe. For years Pallotta TeamWorks was located in poor offices spaces in Hollywood. A new and completely empty 47,000 square-foot ’tilt-up’ warehouse was located in Atwater Village, Los Angeles. ………

Shut-down of Pallotta Teamworks

……… At the time the Breast Cancer 3-Day program was the company’s largest fundraising event series. For five years the Avon Products Foundation had been the beneficiary of the events, which netted $194 million in unrestricted funds for the Foundation in just five years. In 2002 Avon informed Pallotta TeamWorks that it would no longer be associated with the company’s events. Pallotta TeamWorks began negotiating with another charity to become the beneficiary of the events. During that period, Avon announced a nationwide series of multi-day breast cancer fundraising walks, each with a four-figure pledge minimum, in many of the same cities in which the 3-Days had been conducted and, in many cases, on very similar dates. As a result, the new charity with which Pallotta TeamWorks had been negotiating, fearing that the events would cannibalize one another, decided against partnering with Pallotta TeamWorks on the 3-Days. A few days after the news, on August 23, 2002, the company laid off its entire staff nationwide and closed the doors on its new headquarters.

So, they got dumped by their charities (more below), and they tried to set up competing events to keep their gravy train rolling.

But we can look at the Internet, where nothing goes away, and see what was being said of Pallotta Teamworks at the time:

Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2002 in the Washington Post

Expenses Eat Profits Of District AIDSRide

 by Carol Morello

Expenses ate up at least 86 percent of the $3.6 million raised in June for the annual D.C. AIDSRide organized by Pallotta TeamWorks, a rate that is expected to increase when the tally is complete, the benefiting charities said yesterday.

If the riders had not raised more money than required, the event might have lost money. Per-rider expenses averaged $400 more than the $2,400 each rider needed to raise to participate. But the event turned a $500,000 profit only because riders raised an average of more than $3,200, according to preliminary estimates made by the two charities that co-sponsored the ride.

“Disappointed doesn’t even begin to describe how we feel,” said Cornelius Baker, head of Whitman-Walker Clinic, one of two charities benefiting from the ride.

When the audit is completed in the fall, the return may be less than 14 cents on the dollar.

………

Critics of Pallotta events said the return on the D.C. ride was indicative of problems that have beset the company this summer.

“The returns are abysmal,” said Wayne Turner, an AIDS activist with the D.C. chapter of Act Up. “People are beginning to wake up to the fact these AIDS rides are not about raising money at all. They’re about building Dan Pallotta’s empire, which is now crumbling.”

This year, Pallotta TeamWorks was to have run 23 charitable events across the United States and in Africa and Europe. Pallotta’s fee for each AIDS ride runs from $225,000 — the amount for the District ride — to $450,000. Locally, it also has organized the Avon Breast Cancer walk, held in May, and a night walk this month from Fairfax County to the District to raise awareness of suicide prevention.

Pallotta had been one of the country’s most successful promoters of charitable events. But criticism grew as the company expanded and began aggressively promoting itself. Its events are characterized by emotional opening and closing ceremonies, slick marketing and creature comforts for participants, including cucumber eye masks and massages. Expenses run into the millions, though net proceeds are often high, too. But recently, many riders and walkers have complained that the events’ purity has been clouded by excessive promotion. At walks and rides attended by survivors and relatives of people with breast cancer and AIDS, vans were set up marketing the company’s other events and selling books by founder Dan Pallotta.

………
 Pallotta, though, has lost numerous clients this year.

This spring, Avon Products announced that it would no longer use the company to produce its three-day breast cancer walks and would launch its own walkathons. After seven years of collaboration, Food & Friends decided to hold its own bike event next year. The huge Heartland AIDSRide across the Midwest also is being dropped.

So he is a f%$#ing serial narcissist who put on lavish charity events for the purpose of his own self-aggrandizement, and so his business imploded.

His response is to go on TED and suggest that the way to improve our charities is to throw more money at those overpaid narcissistic sociopaths who are our looting class.

Just beautiful.

* My background:

  • I audited my university (UMass Amherst) as a part of a student government committee.

  • I founded a not-for-profit, and successfully took it thorugh the 501(c)3 process.

  • My experience was that a laser-like focus on aggressive growth and increased prestige is achieved at the expense of quality services.

  • That, as numerous behavioral economics studies have shown (Dan Ariely, for one), very high levels of compensation are associated with DECREASED performance.

There is Still Some Hope for Us as a Society

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I expected that the opposite would happen, but it appears that the controversy over its star’s bigotry has driven away viewers form Duck Dynasty:

It turns out that a national controversy sparked by racist and homophobic remarks doesn’t necessarily result in a ratings boost for a television show.

Many speculated that “Duck Dynasty,” A&E’s hit reality series about a family of swamp millionaires who made their fortune off duck calls, would draw even more viewers after one of the show’s stars, Phil Robertson, made headlines last month for railing against “homosexual offenders,” “Shintos” and “Islamists” in a wild interview with GQ.

But rather than a ratings spike, viewership for the show’s season five premiere actually dipped considerably. Wednesday’s premiere drew 8.5 million viewers, down 28 percent from the season four premiere last August.

Good.

Time to Go Back to Using a Bank Teller

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Am I the only one who is concerned about the fact that 95% Of ATMs Are Still Using Windows XP?

Who is still using Windows XP, an operating system which is now twelve years old? Other than “everyone’s mom,” the real answer might not be as obvious: the nation’s network of automated teller machines. ATMs all contain computers, of course. Computers are susceptible to malware. Systems running Windows XP may be more susceptible to malware after April 8 of this year, when Microsoft finally ends support and security patches for XP.

Don’t worry: it’s unlikely that the machines will start setting your savings account on fire anytime soon. Yet it boggles the mind to learn that 95% of ATMs in the world run on Windows XP. Still. That number won’t decrease very much after the deadline: one expert told Bloomberg Businessweek that maybe 15% would be upgraded by the deadline.

We are completely f%$#ed.

Has anyone considered secure BSD?  It’s free, and it’s, you know, not the Petri dish for security exploits that is Microsoft’s operating systems.