Category: Evil

A Good Start

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For profit academic research publishers are firmly in the category of, “Mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

A particularly nasty player in this sphere is Elsevier, the publisher of such items as The Lancet and Cell, and Gray’s Anatomy, and it is particularly aggressive in its charges, and in its aggressive use of copyright to enforce its charges.

All for publications where the content providers, and the editors work for volunteers.

It has now engendered a boycott in its home base of the Netherlands:

A long running dispute between Dutch universities and Elsevier has taken an interesting turn. Last week Koen Becking, chairman of the Executive Board of Tilburg University who has been negotiating with scientific publishers about an open access policy on behalf of Dutch universities with his colleague Gerard Meijer, announced a plan to start boycotting Elsevier.

As a first step in boycotting the publisher, the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has asked all scientists that are editor in chief of a journal published by Elsevier to give up their post. If this way of putting pressure on the publishers does not work, the next step would be to ask reviewers to stop working for Elsevier. After that, scientists could be asked to stop publishing in Elsevier journals.

The Netherlands has a clear position on Open Access. Sander Dekker, the State Secretary of Education has taken a strong position on Open Access, stating at the opening of the 2014 academic year in Leiden that ‘Science is not a goal in itself. Just as art is only art once it is seen, knowledge only becomes knowledge once it is shared.’

Dekker has set two Open Access targets: 40% of scientific publications should be made available through Open Access by 2016, and 100% by 2024. The preferred route is through gold Open Access – where the work is ‘born Open Access’. This means there is no cost for readers – and no subscriptions.

However Gerard Meijer, who handles the negotiations with Elsevier, says that the parties have not been able to come close to an agreement.

 ………

The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities.  It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

This boycott has the potential to be a significant game changer in the relationship between the research community and the world’s largest academic publisher. The remainder of this blog looks at some of the facts and figures relating to expenditure on Open Access in the UK. It underlines the importance of the Dutch position.The 2015 Dutch boycott is significant. Typically negotiations with publishers occur at an institutional level and with representatives from the university libraries. This makes sense as libraries have long standing relationships with publishers and understand the minutiae of the licencing processes . However the Dutch negotiations have been led by the Vice Chancellors of the universities.  It is a country-wide negotiation at the highest level. And Vice Chancellors have the ability to request behaviour change of their research communities.

These folks are leeches, who have made their business plan out of the free effort of academics.

I’d love to dance on their corporate grave.

Today in Blithering Idiocy

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New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is wondering where the compassionate conservatives have gone in the Republican Party:

Back in 2000, George W. Bush did something fascinating: On the campaign trail he preached “compassionate conservatism,” telling wealthy Republicans about the travails of Mexican-American immigrants and declaring to women in pearls that “the hardest job in America” is that of a single mother.

Those well-heeled audiences looked baffled, but applauded.

That instinct to show a little heart helped elect Bush but then largely disappeared from Republican playbooks and policy. Yet now, amid the Republican Party’s civil war, there are intriguing initiatives by the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and some other conservatives to revive an interest in the needy.

Has the columnist, aka Mr. “Sh%$ for Brains” actually read these proposals?

They are all the same:  “Make the alternative starvation, and the poor will pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

As fellow Times pundit Paul Krugman noted Eight Years Ago, “Compassionate Conservatism” was, “A dog-whistle to the religious right:

Oy. Why are political writers still unaware that Bush’s phrase “compassionate conservatism” wasn’t an acceptance of the Great Society, but rather a dog-whistle to the religious right? It comes from Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion. From the Publisher’s Weekly review:

Compassion means tough love in which those who give must demand self-help from those who receive … Olasky adds a proviso that the giver too must be personally involved. He holds up the example of 19th-century charity workers, whose religious beliefs made them compassionate and willing to deal intimately with the poor … Olasky does not blame the system for poverty. He faults the poor, along with social workers back to Jane Addams and the founders of the settlement house movement.

Paul Ryan and the rest of them have no plan beyond making the poor even poorer.

My conclusion is that Nicholas Kristof is in a competition with Tom Friedman for dumb-assery.

Seriously?

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Maine’s Governor, Paul LePage, aka the “Human Bowling Jacket”, is proposing a return to the guillotine:

Maine Gov. Paul LePage says his state is too easy on drug crimes, suggesting it should bring back the guillotine for serious offenders.

The Republican governor, known for his controversial statements, was speaking on local radio Tuesday about combating the drug epidemic in his state.

“What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back,” he told WVOM. “We could have public executions and have, you know, we could even have (guessing) which hole it falls in.”

He said that he was “all in” on fighting drug criminals and said a recent proposal to establish a minimum sentence of four years for drug traffickers was too lenient.

“I think the death penalty should be appropriate for people that kill Mainers,” LePage said.

………

Even as the hosts of the show tried to wrap the interview, LePage interrupted to show his resolve, suggesting the guillotine be used for public executions, joking that the idea was part of his French ancestry.

“I like French history,” he said.

It’s only the latest controversial comments from LePage. Earlier this month, he made waves talking about drug dealers in his state.

“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty,” he said. “They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave.”

Seriously, can the legislators of Maine please impeach his flabby white ass?

We already know that he has abused his official power to engage in a personal vendetta, and the investigation is ongoing, but it needs to move faster.

This guy is a clear and present danger to the state of Maine.

H/t Charlie Pierce.

Headline of the Day

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Michael Bloomberg decides to hold a gun to the head of American democracy

It’a an interesting, and probably accurate assessment, that Bloomberg is making an implicit threat to the Democratic Party: That if Sanders wins the nomination, then he will queer the general in favor of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz:

According to this morning’s New York Times, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decided that there are not enough billionaires trying to sway the outcome of the next presidential election: “If Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump or Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a hard-line conservative, and Democrats were to pick Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg—who changed his party affiliation to independent in 2007—has told allies he would be likely to run.”

………

Bloomberg’s intent is clear: He’s considering running not because he has a viable program he wants to promote, but because he wants to exercise a veto over the already existing parties—especially a veto over whom the Democrats pick. His gambit makes Sanders’s path to the White House much more difficult but also explains why Sanders’s campaign is necessary.

Yet another Wall Street narcissist throwing a tantrum.

Vote Sanders, and tell Michael Bloomberg to go Cheney himself.

This is So Not a Surprise

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In news that surprise no one, Eve Moskowitz’s Success Academy has been sued for systematic discrimination against disabled students:

When it was revealed that a Brooklyn school run by the Success Academy charter network was systematically pushing out struggling and disabled students identified on a “Got to Go” list, the company’s head Eva Moskowitz said the list was the work of a rogue principal, unrepresentative of any broader policy. Critics of the lucrative, influential 36-school network have long alleged that it maintains high test scores by pressuring parents of students with disabilities to pull them from its schools. A federal civil rights complaint filed yesterday by 13 parents along with politicians and advocacy groups bolsters the case, alleging that difficulties faced by special-needs kids are actually the result of a company-wide policy that has been in effect for years.

“Success Academy operates schools in some of the most distressed neighborhoods of this city and receives considerable public funding but fails to serve students with disabilities in accordance with the law,” Legal Services NYC direct Raun Rasmussen said in a statement. “These children deserve better.”

………

When it was revealed that a Brooklyn school run by the Success Academy charter network was systematically pushing out struggling and disabled students identified on a “Got to Go” list, the company’s head Eva Moskowitz said the list was the work of a rogue principal, unrepresentative of any broader policy. Critics of the lucrative, influential 36-school network have long alleged that it maintains high test scores by pressuring parents of students with disabilities to pull them from its schools. A federal civil rights complaint filed yesterday by 13 parents along with politicians and advocacy groups bolsters the case, alleging that difficulties faced by special-needs kids are actually the result of a company-wide policy that has been in effect for years.

“Success Academy operates schools in some of the most distressed neighborhoods of this city and receives considerable public funding but fails to serve students with disabilities in accordance with the law,” Legal Services NYC direct Raun Rasmussen said in a statement. “These children deserve better.”

 ………

The other cases all echo this one, with some variations—some parents have already withdrawn their child, one was expelled in his fourth year, and some parents, like Jackson, are still fighting to receive special education within Success schools.

Each set of allegations involves school administrators ignoring or downplaying disability diagnoses, and when confronted with them, failing to provide such support measures as small classes or paraprofessionals. When behavioral problems arise with the inadequately accommodated special-needs child, rather than reassessing, the schools allegedly suspend the kids, force parents to pick them up early, and in some cases, call paramedics to take them to emergency rooms.

 ………

Meanwhile, the State University of New York, which licenses charter schools, is planning to investigate Success’s alleged pressure tactics, according to a New York Post report.

This is how charter schools work, because this is what we pay them for.

Essentially, they get paid for high test scores, and the easiest way to do this is to make sure that under-performing or difficult students never enroll, and to make sure that those who do enroll leave.

Their Goal Is to Punish Women. Mission Accomplished

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One of the not so tightly kept secrets of the abortion criminalization movement is that they want to ban birth control as well.

The reason for this is because they want to punish women for their sexuality, and now a study shows that when they get what they want, they succeed in punishing women:

In the US, there are many laws limiting when and how women can receive abortions. But there is almost no research on what happens to women who seek out abortions and are denied them. Now a team of health researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has completed a longitudinal study of a group they call “Turnaways,” women who tried and failed to get abortions due to local laws. The researchers found that women who received abortions were over six times as likely to have and achieve positive life plans than Turnaways.

The Turnaway study

To gather their unusual Turnaway data set, the researchers spent two years interviewing 956 women who sought abortions at 30 different abortion clinics around the US. 182 of them were turned away. All the women were interviewed a week after being turned away or receiving an abortion and then again a year later to assess the longer-term outcomes of their experiences. The team has also just completed interviews with the women that will reveal where they are five years after being turned away or not.

In its first analysis of turnaway data published two years ago, the team found that women seek out abortions for complicated reasons, with the most common being a feeling of financial unpreparedness. This earlier analysis also showed that 86 percent of turnaways chose to keep their children, and 67 percent of them would up below the poverty line a year later. By comparison, 56 percent of women granted abortions in the study were below the poverty line a year later. This finding lent credibility to many turnaways’ concerns that being financially unprepared would cause problems down the line.

………

Only 53 percent of the goals were aspirational among turnaways. Women who received abortions had roughly 85 percent aspirational plans. Women who had children but did not parent them had 80 percent aspirational plans. The upshot was that turnaways who kept their children had far fewer positive goals for the future than their counterparts who received abortions.

Of all the goals measured, 47 percent were achieved. There was little difference between turnaways and women who had abortions when it came to achieving their goals. However, as the researchers write in their paper, women who received abortions “were significantly more likely to have both an aspirational plan and to have achieved it” than turnaways who kept their children. Upadhyay was quick to point out that overall, most of the women’s goals were aspirational. “They all had high hopes,” she said. But Turnaways “were much more likely to have negative goals.”

What this latest phase in the Turnaway study reveals is that not having access to abortion can negatively impact women’s lives. As Upadhyay and her colleagues put it in their paper, “Whether or not a person has aspirational plans is indicative of her hope for the future. Without such plans or hopes, she misses out on opportunities to achieve milestones in life.”

Put bluntly, the Turnaways had fewer hopes, so they had fewer reasons to push themselves toward what they defined as better lives.

Destroying these women’s lives is one of the goals of the anti-abortion movement.

You won’t ever hear them say it, but it is clear from what they do.

Running a University Like a Business: Burning it Down for the Insurance Money

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Current President of Mount St. Marys University, and former finance type, attempted to boot about 5% of the incoming freshman class in the first weeks of class. He called it Drowning Bunnies:

Amid a conversation about student retention this fall, the president of Mount St. Mary’s University told some professors that they need to stop thinking of freshmen as “cuddly bunnies,” and said: “You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”

Simon Newman was quoted in the campus newspaper, The Mountain Echo, on Tuesday, in a special edition that reported the university’s president had pushed a plan to improve retention rates by dismissing 20 to 25 freshmen judged unlikely to succeed early in the academic year. Removing students who are more likely to drop out could hypothetically lead to an improvement in a school’s federal retention data; the deadline for submitting enrollment data is in late September.

Newman, a private-equity chief executive officer and entrepreneur who was appointed president of the private university in Emmitsburg, Md., in 2015, said Tuesday that there are some accurate facts in the Echo story, but “the overall tone of the thing is highly inaccurate.”

“The inferences, the innuendo, it’s not accurate at all — the conclusions one would naturally draw from reading it,” Newman said in an interview with The Washington Post. He described an intensive, multi-pronged effort to improve retention rates, because the school loses 20 to 25 percent of its first-year students. School administrators, he said, want to be sure their customers, the students, are successful.

………

A professor who was part of the conversation The Echo quoted confirmed to The Post that the quotes were accurate.

(emphasis mine)

“Their customers, the students,” 4 little words that show everything that is wrong with corporate management of education.

They call it, “Bringing a blunt, analytical business perspective to the management of the school.” I call it arrogance and running their company into the ground, because after this, and the story is on their Wiki Page, (I put it there) they are in for a well deserved world of hurt.

BTW, the way he was running it was unethical and profoundly dishonest:

The Mountain Echo reporters wrote that Newman’s retention plan included administering a survey to all freshmen, with this introduction: “This year, we are going to start the Veritas Symposium by providing you with a very valuable tool that will help you discover more about yourself. This survey has been developed by a leadership team here at The Mount, and it is based on some of the leading thinking in the area of personal motivation and key factors that determine motivation, success, and happiness. We will ask you some questions about yourself that we would like you to answer as honestly as possible. There are no wrong answers.”

But the paper reported on an email exchange that expressed a desire to eliminate a certain number of students, based on the survey results, by the Sept. 25 cutoff date when the university would be required to report enrollment numbers to the federal government.

The plan, the paper reported, sparked strong pushback from some members of the faculty and the administration.

An email from Newman, the paper reported, explained: “My short term goal is to have 20-25 people leave by the 25th [of Sep.]. This one thing will boost our retention 4-5%. A larger committee or group needs to work on the details but I think you get the objective.”

………One of the goals of the symposium was to help ease students’ transition to college, and with this proposal they might be kicking out some students who would be successful.

Newman responded that “there will be some collateral damage.”

This is not only everything that is wrong the increasingly corporate business of education in the country, it is an indictment of business culture generally in the US, where callous selfishiness and indifference are viewed as virtues.

H/t CURMUDGUCATION.

The Tamir Rice Investigatation Gets Even Less Credible

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It turns out that the grand jury investigating the two officers who shot 12 year old Tamir Rice to death never even took a vote on whether to indict:

The grand jury that opted not to indict Cleveland police officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback in the shooting death of Tamir Rice never actually took a vote on the matter, according to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.

What actually happened in the most significant grand jury hearing in county history isn’t quite clear, and the mechanism by which the grand jury “declined to indict” — in Prosecutor Timothy McGinty’s own words — is equally unclear.

At the conclusion of a typical grand jury hearing, there are two possible outcomes achieved via vote: a “true bill,” which results in criminal charges and a case number in the court system, or a “no bill,” which is a decision not to bring charges. A “no-bill notification” is signed and stamped and kept on record at the county clerk’s office.

Though Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty never explicitly said the grand jury voted not to indict — nor did he utter the phrase “no bill” — in his Dec. 28 press conference, he declared that that grand jury had declined to indict.

How, then, if not by voting?

After learning and confirming on Jan. 15 that there was no “no-bill notification” on file at the county clerk’s office for the Tamir Rice grand jury proceedings, Scene formally requested the document officially showing the decision, however it was reached, and wherever said document might be. We were told that it didn’t exist. Employees at both the clerk’s and prosecutor’s officers were unable to explain the lack of paperwork.

Tuesday, Scene spoke with Joe Frolik, the communications director for the Prosecutor’s Office, who said no no-bill record exists because, “it’s technically not a no-bill, because they didn’t vote on charges.”
He elaborated: “This was an investigative grand jury. This was kind of their role. Sometimes, a grand jury, after its investigation, will decide if there are no votes to be taken on charges.”
But how that decision was reached and the location of any record of that decision remain publicly unaccounted for. The term “investigative grand jury” appears nowhere in McGinty’s public statements and reports on the proceedings.

………

As for a case that went before a grand jury but didn’t result in a vote, [Law Professor Jonathan] Witmer-Rich said, “I’m not aware of an example…It could happen, I suppose, but I’ve never heard anyone talk about that.”
Professor Lewis Katz, a criminal law expert at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, noted that investigative grand juries are ordinarily held in secret. In his view, the Tamir Rice grand jury was not investigative.

………

Reached Tuesday, Subodh Chandra, the local attorney for the Rice family, said that the whole process has been “irregular.” He said he and his team had asked the county if the grand jury members were led through each possible charge for a vote or whether there was one overarching vote on all charges, but never received an answer. When informed no vote of any kind took place, Chandra said: “If it is true that the prosecutor didn’t even call for an up or down vote on potential criminal charges, including aggravated murder, then it is truly the ultimate insult to the Rice family,” Chandra said, “that the prosecutor didn’t even think it mattered to bring the grand jury proceedings to their proper conclusion.”

Our system allows a lot of leeway for prosecutors to make decisions, so I don’t think that there is any call here for a criminal investigation, but the good people of Cleveland need to put a permanent end to this guy’s political career.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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Pharma bro Martin Shkreli hasw taken the 5th in response to a Congressional inquiry into price gouging in drugs:

The founder and former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination on Wednesday, and he won’t comply with a subpoena for documents issued from a Senate panel investigating pharma drug pricing tactics.

The 32-year-old Shkreli was also subpoenaed to appear before a different panel, the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, to testify about the price of a life-saving drug he increased by more than 5,000 percent.

Shkreli became the poster child for greed last year after he raised the price of Daraprim—used to treat parasitic infections—from $13.50 a pill to $750. A single pill once sold for $1. Now facing criminal charges that he allegedly defrauded investors, Shkreli has said he should have boosted prices for the drug even more.

Let’s be clear:  He has a right not to testify against himself, but generally it doesn’t apply to, you know, physical proof.

And yes, he is a ratf%$# who deserves to spend the rest of his life in gaol.

Can We Give Florida Back to Spain?

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In response to donations from sub-par hospitals to the state Republican Party, Florida has abandoned surgical standards for hospitals:

Children’s heart doctors in Florida are reeling from a recent decision by the state to drop surgical standards for pediatric open heart surgery, CNN reports. To add insult to injury, doctors and medical experts suspect that the decision was purely political.

The decision follows a 2014 medical review and a June 2015 report by CNN, which found that one particular medical facility, St. Mary’s Medical Center and Palm Beach Children’s Hospital, had an abysmal track record for pediatric open-heart surgery—a death rate more than three times the national average. And the two reports found that the facility was failing to meet the now-repealed standards, which include proficiency in performing the surgeries themselves.

The St. Mary’s facility is run by Tenet Healthcare, which coincidentally donated $200,000 to the state’s republicans between 2013 and 2014, including $100,000 to Republican Governor Rick Scott’s political action committee. Those donations were the highest of any Tenet gave to political groups in other states.

A month after CNN’s report, the state announced that it would repeal the standards for children’s heart surgery. Florida’s health department explained the move by saying that the standards were never properly approved by the legislature, but it failed to explain to reporters why legislative approval was not sought upon realizing the lapse.

It appears that Florida is in a competition with Texas for most repulsively corrupt politics in the United States.

Muck Ficrosoft

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It’s clear that since the clusterf%$# that was Windows 8, Microsoft has been running scared.

Now, it appears that they will be doing their best to cripple earlier versions of their operating systems with the current hardware:

Soon, when you buy a new PC, it won’t support Windows 7 or 8. Microsoft has announced a change to its support policy that lays out its plans for future updates to its older operating systems, and the new rules mean that future PC owners with next-generation Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors will need to use Windows 10.

It’s not usual for old PCs to fall short of the minimum requirements of a brand new operating system, but in this case, the opposite is happening. Microsoft and its partners will not be putting in the significant work necessary to make new hardware work with older versions of Windows. The old operating systems, at best, will merely lack the latest updates. At worst, they might not function properly.

Policy starts with Intel’s current processors, Skylake

“Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support,” Microsoft notes in a blog post published on Friday. “Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming ‘Kaby Lake’ silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming ‘8996’ silicon, and AMD’s upcoming ‘Bristol Ridge’ silicon.”

This new policy doesn’t mean that Windows 7 and 8.1 are no longer supported in general. The two operating systems will continue to get updates through January 14, 2020 and January 10, 2023, respectively. But that’s only if you’re using hardware that was contemporaneous with those operating systems.


For current PC owners, the detail to note is that Intel’s current, sixth generation processors, known as Skylake, are the first that won’t support either of the older versions of Windows. (Intel and Microsoft say that the platform and Windows 10 were designed for each other.) Microsoft is phasing in the policy now.

When juxtaposed with Microsoft’s attempts to move to software as a service, it’s yet another reason to move to Linux.

Taking a Prank That Necessary Extra Step

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As you are no doubt aware, the terrorists occupying the Malheur sanctuary offices in Oregon have been asking for people to send them stuff so that they can maintain their presence.

They’ve asked for things like food and warm clothing, what they have been getting is dildos and other sex toys.

Well, Max Temkin, co-creator of the game Cards Against Humanity, saw this as problematic, so he sent the protesters a 55 gallon drum of Passion Natural Water Based Lubricant.

Epic.

Misquoting Deming

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It turns out that a common argument for expanded school testing is based on a selective quote of the efficiency expert Edward Deming which reverses its meaning:

………

If challenged, test fans often quote the late Dr. W. Edward Deming, the world-famous quality guru who showed Japanese companies how to build better stuff than anybody else. In his book, “The New Economics,” Deming wrote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Here’s the whole sentence as he wrote it: “It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it — a costly myth.”

This full Demings quote is not a surprise.

One of the central conceits of his theories statistical quality control is that testing is a sign of faulty process and faulty product.

Of course accurate quotes do not matter to the educational reform community. Mendacity is at the core of their modus operandi.

The school reform movement is largely driven by two things, the desire to crush teachers’ unions, and the desire to turn public tax dollars into private profit.

Truth is not, nor has it ever been, a meaningful part of their process.

And Police Wonder Why Some People Call Them “Pigs”

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The sense of self-entitled hostility directed toward the public for whom they nominally work is clear when they pull this sort of sh%$:

In April 2015, the New York City television station NY1 filed a open-records request for “unedited video files from the NYPD’s body camera program” captured during five specific weeks in 2014 and 2015. Four months later, the New York City Police Department agreed to review and release the footage—but only after NY1 paid a $36,000 “copying fee.” NY1 appealed the N.Y.P.D.’s decision and, in a letter dated September 16 of last year, was once again denied by the N.Y.P.D.’s deputy commissioner of legal matters.

As the New York Post reported yesterday, the details of the N.Y.P.D.’s response, including the exorbitant fee (charged by a public agency with a budget of $4.8 billion*), were revealed in a lawsuit NY1 filed against the N.Y.P.D. in the Supreme Court of New York County on Wednesday. In it, the channel accuses the department of violating New York State’s Freedom of Information Law by inflating the cost of producing the requested body camera footage—a process that, according to the N.Y.P.D., involves copying video segments that could be withheld under certain privacy and security exemptions.

The fee does indeed come from a curious calculation of labor costs. In a letter to NY1 explaining the administrative denial of the channel’s appeal, a police official explained:

The [record access officer]’s estimate of the cost of processing a copy of the [body camera footage] was reasonable based on an estimate that the total time of footage recorded during the five weeks specified in the FOIL request was approximately 190 hours, and that in addition to the 190 hours required to view the recordings in real time, an additional 60% (or 114 hours) will be required to copy the footage in a manner that will redact the exempt portions of the [body camera footage], for a total of approximately 304 hours. The lowest paid NYPD employee with the skills required to prepare a redacted copy of the recordings is in the rank of police officer, and the cost of compensating a police officer is $120.00 per hour. Multiplying $120.00 by 304 hours equals $36,480, which closely approximates the amount estimated by the [records access officer].

It’s unclear where exactly these figures came from. A police officer is the third-lowest rank within the N.Y.P.D.’s rank structure; individuals holding that title make nowhere near $120 per hour, which is the equivalent of $249,600 per year (assuming a 40-hour workweek).

This is, of course, complete bullsh%$.

A sledge hammer needs to be taken wall that the police place between themselves and the general public.

It breeds contempt, and corruption, and abuse.

Finally, One of Those Ratf%$#S Got Arrested

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One of the terrorists in Oregon got arrested for driving a stolen vehicle, specifically a Fish and Wildlife Service truck from the Malheur refuge:

Oregon State Police on Friday arrested one of the protesters occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge after he drove into town, accusing him of having a stolen vehicle.

The man was identified as Kenneth Medenbach, 62, of Crescent. He was arrested on suspicion of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, a class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison. He was to be booked into the Deschutes County Jail in Bend with bail set at $10,000, officials said.

According to federal court records, Medenbach is currently facing federal charges in Medford and was released from custody in November. A condition of his release was that he would not “occupy” any federal land. He was accused of illegally camping on federal property.

He is the first person arrested in connection with the armed occupation of the wildlife refuge, taken over two weeks ago.

He was arrested in the Safeway parking lot in one vehicle bearing federal government license plates. A second federal vehicle was parked next to him, but the man police suspect of driving that into town already had gone into the grocery before police arrived.

Both vehicles — a pickup and a passenger van, bore door signs reading “Harney County Resource Center.” That’s the new name occupiers have given to the bird sanctuary they occupy, which is about 30 miles southeast of Burns.

“The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is grateful for the quick actions from law enforcement,” said Megan Nagel, spokeswoman for the agency, which manages the refuge. “We will continue to work with law enforcement to recover vehicles bought and paid for by the American people to care for their national wildlife refuge.”

………

In 1995, Medenbach was convicted on federal charges for illegally camping on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington state. He was ordered held in custody because of evidence that Medenbach poses a risk to the safety of other persons or the community because [he] acknowledges intimidation practices, references ‘Ruby Ridge’ and ‘Waco, Texas,’ and clearly would not follow conditions of release restraining his presence at the scene of the alleged unlawful activity,” according to a federal appellate court ruling upholding his conviction.

The appellate ruling said there was “evidence that Medenbach had attempted to protect his forest campsite with fifty to a hundred pounds of the explosive ammonium sulfate, a pellet gun, and what appeared to be a hand grenade with trip wires. The government also proffered evidence that Medenbach had warned Forest Service officers of potential armed resistance to the federal government’s continued control of the forest lands in question.”

Despite his prior record, the judge released him on bail, though he was, “Ordered not to occupy federal property as condition of his release from federal charges now pending in Medford.”

Yeah, like that order is going to be obeyed.

Well, it’s a start.

H/t Daily Kos.

Bought and Paid for by the Vampire Squid

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It appears that during his first campaign for the Texas Senate, Ted Cruz got a million dollar loan from Goldman Sachs, and then in contravention of campaign finance laws, did not report it to the Federal Election Commission:


As Ted Cruz tells it, the story of how he financed his upstart campaign for the United States Senate four years ago is an endearing example of loyalty and shared sacrifice between a married couple.

“Sweetheart, I’d like us to liquidate our entire net worth, liquid net worth, and put it into the campaign,” he says he told his wife, Heidi, who readily agreed.

But the couple’s decision to pump more than $1 million into Mr. Cruz’s successful Tea Party-darling Senate bid in Texas was made easier by a large loan from Goldman Sachs, where Mrs. Cruz works. That loan was not disclosed in campaign finance reports.

Those reports show that in the critical weeks before the May 2012 Republican primary, Mr. Cruz — currently a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination — put “personal funds” totaling $960,000 into his Senate campaign. Two months later, shortly before a scheduled runoff election, he added more, bringing the total to $1.2 million — “which is all we had saved,” as Mr. Cruz described it in an interview with The New York Times several years ago.

A review of personal financial disclosures that Mr. Cruz filed later with the Senate does not find a liquidation of assets that would have accounted for all the money he spent on his campaign. What it does show, however, is that in the first half of 2012, Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained the low-interest loan from Goldman Sachs, as well as another one from Citibank. The loans totaled as much as $750,000 and eventually increased to a maximum of $1 million before being paid down later that year. There is no explanation of their purpose.

Neither loan appears in reports the Ted Cruz for Senate Committee filed with the Federal Election Commission, in which candidates are required to disclose the source of money they borrow to finance their campaigns. Other campaigns have been investigated and fined for failing to make such disclosures, which are intended to inform voters and prevent candidates from receiving special treatment from lenders. There is no evidence that the Cruzes got a break on their loans.

He should take a hit for this, particularly because much of his personal story is about how he risked it all to run for the US Senate, but it won’t make a difference in the primaries, because the Republican Party base has drunk too much Flint municipal tap water.

F$#@ Me, I Agree with Peter King

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You know Peter King, the Congressman from New York.

This is the guy who raised funds for the terrorist organization the IRA, called for the assassination of Snowden, Greenwals, and Poitras, and pretty much accused every Muslim in America of being a part of a 5th column.

But credit where credit is due, he just told Ted Cruz to go back under the rock he crawled out of:

New York Republican Rep. Peter King has some harsh advice for Ted Cruz: “Go back under a rock.”

“Memo to Ted Cruz: New York Values are the heroes of 9/11; the cops who fight terror; and the people you ask for campaign donations. Go back under a rock,” King said in a statement mailed to POLITICO Thursday regarding Cruz’s comments about “New York values.”

The Texas senator, who had been avoiding going after Donald Trump for much of the campaign cycle, finally hit back after Trump questioned Cruz’s eligibility for the White House. Cruz suggested in an interview with “The Howie Carr Show” Tuesday that Trump “may shift in his new rallies to playing ‘New York, New York,’ because you know Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values.”

I really hate agreeing with him, but he’s right, though incomplete.

When Ted Cruz talks about “New York values”, he’s really accusing Donald Trump of being in the thrall of the secret Jewish cabal that runs the world.

It’s how Cruz is trying to appeal to the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party.

I miss the Republican Party of Richard Milhous Nixon.

This is Some Seriously Sick Sh%$

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A left wing Israeli activist, Ezra Nawi, was caught on tape boasting that he turned information about Arabs who were looking to sell land to Jews over to the Palestinian security services, and boasted that these people were tortured and killed:

A prominent Israeli campaigner for Palestinian rights was recorded saying that he helps Palestinian authorities find and kill Palestinians who sell land to Jews.

 The recording was aired Thursday by the television program Uvda of Israel’s Channel 2. In it, Ezra Nawi, a Jewish far-left activist from the Ta’ayush group, is heard speaking about four Palestinian real-estate sellers, whom Nawi said mistook him for a Jew interested in buying their property.

 “Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”

 In the Palestinian Authority, the penal code reserves capital punishment for anyone convicted of selling land to Jews. This law, which Palestinian officials defended as designed to prevent takeovers by settlers, has not been implemented in Palestinian courts, where sellers of land to Jews are usually sentenced to several years in prison. However, in recent years several Palestinian have been murdered for selling land. Their murders have remained unsolved.

He has since been arrested on evidence that he was attempting to lure an Israeli Arab realtor to a village near Hebrone where he would be taken into custody by PA state security forces:

Many in Israel’s left have been trying to disassociate themselves from Ezra Nawi, the activist who was secretly taped on a Channel 2 news program Uvda bragging about sending Arab land brokers to certain torture if not death in the hands of the Palestinian Authority’s Preventive Security service (selling land to Jews is an act of treason under PA law). Those who defended him quickly became the new pariahs of Israel’s mass and social media. Then came a follow-up report Monday night showing Nawi was on the payroll of Breaking the Silence and Rabbis for Human Rights.

 ………

 Meanwhile, right-wing journalist Shai Glick, who filed a police complaint regarding Ezra Nawi’s activities, reported a conversation with an investigating police officer who told him the Arab land broker Nawi was conspiring to hand over to the PA is an Israeli citizen. Nawi and several other activists were attempting to invite this Israeli citizen to the Arab village of Yatta, south of Hebron, where PA police would be waiting to arrest him.

 This last revelation probably explains why Nawi hightailed it to Ben Gurion International, to catch a flight to anywhere else, when police caught him and took him in for questioning. It’s starting to sound like conspiracy to commit murder, which Israel frowns on, regardless of one’s political conviction.

Nawi’s lawyer is claiming that he was leaving the country to visit friends in Europe,  and that he had checked with law enforcement before booking the flight, and given the sh%$ storm that has blown up around him, I could see he wants to get out.

I understand that Ezra Nawi he feels passionately about Palestinians and their demands for a homeland, but this is a classic case for quoting Freidrich Nietsche, “If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

If you want to lead a consistently ethical life, it’s generally a good idea to avoid behavior that might invoke a Nietsche quote.

It’s pretty much an indicator that you have lost your way.

No, the FBI Won’t Investigate Questionable Pension Fund Deals

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It appears that pensioners have finally begun to realize private equity and its ilk are robbing their funds blind while underperforming the market, but I predict that their calls for an investigation of private equity and hedge fund  practices will go largely unanswered:

Diane Bucci and her fellow retired Rhode Island schoolteachers were angry about a deal last year to cut their promised retirement benefits. For 28 years, the elementary school teacher devoted between 7 and 9 percent of her paycheck to the state’s pension system. In return, the 72-year-old had been promised a consistent cost-of-living increase to make sure her retirement stipend kept pace with inflation. Now, though, state officials were trimming her check in the name of replenishing the depleted pension fund.

There was, however, a sliver of hope — or so it seemed: If the pension system could generate better investment returns and amass 80 percent of the money needed to pay current and future retirees, the annual cost-of-living increases would return.

“There was a lot of unrest and anger among teachers, but at that point we buckled down and focused on how we could get to solvency,” said Bucci, who is on the board of the 700-member Rhode Island Retired Teachers Association. “So even though we aren’t Wall Street experts, we just started to ask questions about how the pension fund was managed, and what it was invested in. That’s when we realized the fees we’ve been paying to the investment companies were the problem.”

Those levies — which hit $79 million last year — were the product of the state’s recent investment strategy. Following a controversial national trend, Rhode Island pension officials led by then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo shifted roughly a quarter of the state’s pension portfolio into high-fee hedge funds, private equity firms and other so-called “alternative investments.”

The shift by Raimondo, a Democrat who is now governor, has generated big revenues for Wall Street firms, but only middling returns for a $7.6 billion pension fund on which more than 58,000 current and future retirees rely.

When Bucci and the members of her organization began asking questions about those results, they learned of a federal review showing that roughly half of all private equity firms are charging hidden fees, and they saw a hedge fund industry whose returns have failed to keep pace with the stock market. When they dug deeper, they stumbled onto an even more disturbing revelation. What they found, they say, is evidence that some investors can obtain special rights that may let them secretly siphon money from the state pensioners’ retirement savings.

The retirees are now petitioning federal law enforcement officials to investigate whether the widely used provisions are violating laws designed to make sure all investors are treated fairly. In a letter sent last month to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI, the retirees’ adviser — former SEC investigator Edward Siedle — pointed out that some of the firms managing Rhode Island pension money claim the right to offer different fee rates, inside information and cash-out rights to some investors but not to others.

Raimondo f%$#ed her pension fund, and she did so knowingly, both because they are “people like her” (Ivy league graduates) who are supposed to be “exceptional”, and because she knows that this behavior gets her a 7 figure payday at the end of the rainbow.

It’s corrupt tribalism, and it’s harming our country.

How the Internet of Things Will Actually Be Used

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It will be invading our privacy and discrimination, all while presenting it as a benefit to the consumer.

You might want to check out this bit of propaganda from the insurance industry courtesy of the Washington Post, and imagine what they would do if they knew what food was in your fridge, or how often you drink, or what you set your thermostat to.

The term to describe this is “dystopian”:

For years, insurance companies have used estimates of your annual mileage to determine your car insurance rates. But with recent changes in technology, insurers now have an unprecedented ability to judge your actual driving habits. Armed with detailed data on how often you slam on the brakes and what times of day you’re on the road, insurance companies are increasingly relying on precise, technological means of assessing risk — and using that information to set your monthly premiums.

Liberty Mutual, the country’s third-largest property-and-casualty insurer, took the latest step in that direction Monday when it announced a partnership with Subaru. Beginning later this year, Subaru drivers who have paid for the automaker’s Starlink infotainment system will be able to download an app to their cars that notifies them when they are accelerating too aggressively or braking too hard.

The app is part of Liberty Mutual’s RightTrack program, which gives drivers a 5 percent discount on their rates for enrolling and additional discounts up to 30 percent for heeding the app’s guidance on driving safely.

Liberty Mutual, which began offering RightTrack in 2012, isn’t the only insurer to embrace usage-based insurance — a tactic that draws on a person’s real-world driving behavior to gauge his accident risk. Progressive, Allstate and State Farm operate similar programs, too.


.………

But as more Americans begin buying high-tech, connected cars that can talk to the Internet, other analysts say the rise of usage-based insurance raises uncomfortable questions for consumers and insurance companies alike.

“Don’t assume this is always going to be a way to lower your rates,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “It could be used against you to raise your rates long before you ever have an accident.”

Although many insurance companies say that agreeing to be tracked can only result in a discount, not a rate hike, those terms could always change in the future, Brauer and other analysts say. And people who drive safely one year but more riskily the next could effectively see their rates rise when an insurer decides to grant a smaller discount than before.

Then there’s the matter of consumer privacy. How long insurance companies can hold onto your data, and whom they can share it with, depends on each firm’s policies as well as state or local regulations. Insurers would also have to obey court orders for user data.But as more Americans begin buying high-tech, connected cars that can talk to the Internet, other analysts say the rise of usage-based insurance raises uncomfortable questions for consumers and insurance companies alike.

“Don’t assume this is always going to be a way to lower your rates,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “It could be used against you to raise your rates long before you ever have an accident.”

Although many insurance companies say that agreeing to be tracked can only result in a discount, not a rate hike, those terms could always change in the future, Brauer and other analysts say. And people who drive safely one year but more riskily the next could effectively see their rates rise when an insurer decides to grant a smaller discount than before.

Then there’s the matter of consumer privacy. How long insurance companies can hold onto your data, and whom they can share it with, depends on each firm’s policies as well as state or local regulations. Insurers would also have to obey court orders for user data.

………

Consumers who don’t want to be tracked don’t have to sign up. But when such programs become more common, opting out could serve as a “red flag” to insurance companies, according to Renee Stephens, vice president of U.S. auto quality for J.D. Power and Associates.

Insurers find behavioral monitoring attractive because it provides them with a clearer picture of the entire risk pool. By understanding better how each driver behaves, companies can design insurance plans that match a person’s risk more accurately and determine how much coverage a given driver requires.

Yes, just trust the insurance companies with your data, allow them to apply opaque algorithms to their systems, and the consumer will always benefit.

Yeah, sure, and Donald Trump does not have a comb over.

The insurance companies will use this to f%$# us like a drunk sorority girl.