Poltergeists from the anus of Mr. Paulson, all rise

The banks using cash from the $700 billion U.S. rescue plan for bonuses, acquisitions and other purposes unrelated to lending are clearly not thinking like the working man. Still, their corporate scams are likely run by so-called "conservatives" who, thrilling to the new-nazoid urgings of Arnold, will consider it their Joesixpack-like duty to vote, if they do at all, for McCain/Palin.

If one proved to these sincere politicians that they are attracting the scum of the earth to their ticket, would they have the decency to see the error of their ways?

It's enough to snuff a good man out.

Here's hope he'll haunt them from above while the wraiths of Hank seek them from below.

Fear breeds scum, scum breeds fear

Raymond kept rising in the Republican ranks. In 1998, Sen. Mitch McConnell hired him ...

McConnell this a.m. was quoted on NPR as saying, in effect, USians "should be afraid."

Indeed.

The 4th Estate, moribund since 1956

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. government's main disaster-response agency apologized on Friday for having its employees pose as reporters in a hastily called news conference on California's wildfires that no news organizations attended.

When we're all done harrumphing, please advise as to what would have been learned had "real" reporters been there.

"...released the virus cannot be recalled"

Tax dollars at work

Minor update on our Cluster Bomb ClusterFuck Thread:

At the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva last month, Bush administration officials said that the threat to civilians from cluster munitions is “episodic” and “manageable within current response mechanisms” - presumably unless you’re a [not a joyous link] child attracted by the bomblets. They said it “only” took two years to clear the high-risk affected areas in Kosovo after 1999, but also admitted that eight years later, unexploded bomblets remain. They cited 10 countries threatened by cluster bombs - Afghanistan, Albania, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vietnam - as well as Kosovo, leaving out another 20 countries so affected.

Separately, the US State Department has said that Israel may have illegally used US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon, but welcomes that it will take “only” a year and a half to largely clean up the remnant. CSMonitor

No One Ever Wins.

Businessmodello Furioso

business

O.E. bisignisse (Northumbrian) "care, anxiety," from bisig "careful, anxious, busy, occupied" (see busy) + -ness. Sense of "work, occupation" is first recorded 1387. Sense of "trade, commercial engagements" is first attested 1727. Modern two-syllable pronunciation is 17c. Business card first attested 1840.

model

1575, "architect's set of designs," from M.Fr. modelle (Fr. modèle), from It. modello "a model, mold," from V.L. *modellus, dim. of L. modulus "measure, standard," dim. of modus "manner, measure" (see mode (1)). Sense of "thing or person to be imitated" is 1639. Meaning "motor vehicle of a particular design" is from 1900 (e.g. Model T, 1909). Sense of "artist's model" is first recorded 1691; that of "fashion model" is from 1904. The verb is 1665 in the sense of "fashion in clay or wax;" 1915 in the sense "to act as a model, to display (clothes)." The adj. is 1844, from the noun.

David Weinberger, in Delaminate the Bastards:

The problem is, this business model requires the carriers to work against the public interest.

David is talking about the way the providers of access to the net are working against the public interest. Read the whole thing - it's lucid, sensible, clear, and openly builds on David Isenberg's Making Network Neutrality Sustainable.

Both Davids say we the users, the people, must act to turn policy around, in the direction of network neutrality.

They are surely right. But what is the recommended method to take a labyrinthine industry's business model apart and create something quite new? How often does this happen?

What they're seeing with corporate network perversion is pretty much homologous with what Michael Moore sees happening with USian health insurance, and again,

The problem is, this business model requires the carriers to work against the public interest.

If a business model is working against the public interest, is it a business model?

Distributed realtime Sicko

In Sicko Moore says he put a note requesting stories of encounters with US healthcare, and received over 25,000 stories within a week.

My name is Eugenio Tisselli, and I am the developer behind zexe.net (http://www.zexe.net), a project in which specific urban collectives broadcast their daily experiences from mobile phones directly to the web. These collectives have included so far people on wheelchairs in Barcelona mapping the architecural barriers in the city, and motorcycle messengers (motoboys) in Sao Paulo, Brazil, among others.

From my point of view, small collectives engaged in communicative processes which are mediated by digital technology seek not only to represent themselves as a social entity, but also to make visible the invisible: the day to day issues that they encounter in their cities, which are particular to them and many times constitute problems or specific issues that affect their urban life. This process of visibilization is intended to have an effect not only on the general public, but also on the local government. IDC list

So...

not news at 11

For all our alleged "communities" -- orkuts, mySpaceyfacebeaks, freundsters, flackrs -- this seems not yet covered: What if everyone facing a health crisis, an overcrowded ER, a Kaiser cab ride to the Permanente Dumpster, were equipped with a cell and a site to break some news of the USian inhuman condition in real time?

What if people were making their healthcare events visible right now? On a public server. It could be called 911.

A Picturebook Ameriqan Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, Roland E. Arnall headed a boiler room subprime lending enterprise that made Enron look like Doctors Without Borders, according to a killer report by NPR's Chris Arnold.

In July, 2005, Arnall was nominated by George W. Bush to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of Ameriquestia to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

On which day it was already quite well documented that his company, Ameriquest, was under investigation in 30 states for Extraordinary and Plenipotential Predatory Lending practices.

Some congresspeople apparently had reservations about the presidential wisdom of making an Ambassador out of a man whose trainers, according to Arnold's report, used the film Boiler Room to educate salespeople in the finest points of how to rip off financially strapped homebuyers.

Ameriquest's success (billions of dollars of refinanced loans) was built on a "culture of deception," a former loan officer tells Arnold, who spoke with four ex-employees of Ameriquest. These folks describe straight-up fraud techniques, loans that were essentially financial time bombs. Some loan officers allegedly whited-out income numbers on W-2s and bank statements, enhancing income figures to qualify loan applicants for loans they couldn't afford. This was called taking the loan to the art department.

Vin Diesel shows Ameriquest trainees the ropes.

But Ambassador Arnall hadn't emulated the Ken Lay Action Figure in vain:

Along with his wife, Dawn, Arnall was listed as a Bush Ranger for the 2004 campaign, and the Washington Post reports that the couple has raised at least $12.25 million for the president since 2002, making the couple the president’s single largest fundraisers.

In the ensuing $325 million Settlement with 49 states' Attorneys General, Ameriquest admitted no wrongdoing.

"This agreement is good for consumers and good for the company," the company said in a written statement.

The active citizen and philanthropist had the joy of presenting his creds to Her Majesty Queen Beatrix on March 8th, 2006.






And the company lived happily ever after.




Update: Phil unearths predatory philanthropists. And Mark Winston Griffith on the Myth of the Risky Sub-Prime Borrower.

I'm no pedant

When I take my Kultur Warrior Test

I want to be fair.

I want to be balanced.

I want to be accurate:

The reception of Moyers is predicted by his story

"The institutional decay which Moyers chronicles is not merely a matter of historical interest. Instead, it continues to shape our mainstream political dialogue every bit as much as it did back in 2002 and 2003." Greenwald.

"Moyers' program frustrated and depressed me, for the simple reason that it showed how well-protected the US state is from any real democratic challenge." Perrin.

Tom Tomorrow

Spectacular Moyers

Buying the War would seem a pretty sharp piece of journalism. Packed with stats, interviews, glimpses of the USian press in denial, in suckage, in syncophancy, in DanRatherism, in policy diktats that show, in the case of MSNBC and mineshaft canary Phil Donohue, that Joe McCarthy could rest quietly instead of having to rise up and hold public hearings. Unelected powers were sufficient to put terror of the number into the heart of corporate media.

Moyers' critique was well constructed journalism, sufficiently devastating to the NY Times and its ilk to be news. It didn't make the Times' previews.

The spectacle continues to make a spectacle of itself.

Antigen needed: slime residue on the slugtrail of Al Neffgen

Al Neffgen

March 3, 2007 - The Bush Administration's drive for privatization may be responsible for the "deplorable" outpatient care for soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, according to a top Democratic Congressman investigating the scandal, which has already led to the resignation of the Secretary of the US Army.

A five-year, $120 million contract awarded to a firm run by a former executive from Halliburton – a multi-national corporation where Vice President Dick Cheney once served as CEO – will be probed at a Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs hearing scheduled for Monday....

"We have learned that in January 2006, Walter Reed awarded a five-year $120 million contract to a company called IAP Worldwide Services for base operations support services, including facilities management," Waxman continues. "IAP is one of the companies that experienced problems delivering ice during the response to Hurricane Katrina."

Waxman notes that IAP "is led by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official who testified before our Committee in July 2004 in defense of Halliburton's exorbitant charges for fuel delivery and troop support in Iraq."




March 2, 2007 A message left at the home number belonging to Al Neffgen was not immediately returned.


2006 "We have learned that in January 2006 WALTER REED awarded a FIVE-YEAR, $120 MILLION contract to a company called IAP WORLDWIDE SERVICES...IAP IS BEST KNOWN FOR THE PROBLEMS IT ENCOUNTERED DELIVERING ICE during the response to Hurricane Katrina. The COMPANY IS LED BY AL NEFFGEN, a FORMER HALLIBURTON OFFICIAL..." [Update: see video here]



2005 - IAP Worldwide Services, which recruited Al Neffgen, has lucrative contracts for Katrina clean-up under a "small business clause." It has "about 5,000 employees working in more than 25 countries."



2003 Looks like the former president and chief executive of J.A. Jones Inc. has landed on his feet with a new job at massive international company Halliburton.


Al Neffgen has been appointed chief operating officer for government operations for the Americas at Kellogg Brown & Root, Halliburton's engineering and construction group. In his new role, Neffgen will oversee all work performed by KBR for the U.S. government.

He's familiar with the inner workings of government-based contracting, a longstanding Jones specialty.

Halliburton recently purchased Neffgen's home at The Peninsula.

The company is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries and was previously headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Neffgen was at the helm of Charlotte-based Jones from 2000 until last year, when it became clear the general contracting giant would not be able to avoid bankruptcy.


2003 As of 2003, it was Al Neffgen who was responding - or delaying responding to government demands for information related to KBR accounting problems. In this case, "refusing to turn over internal documents that show the company was aware of accounting problems related to an Iraqi fuel contract that allegedly has overcharged U.S. taxpayers so far nearly $100 million". At that time, Al Neffgen was KBR's chief operations officer.link


2001 While J.A. Jones International's current focus is clearly with the Department of State, it also serves all branches of the Department of Defense, USAID, as well as commercial clients, by providing construction and design-build services for a variety of facilities.
[including] Naval Housing in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Date uncertain: "I had a great experience and enjoyed more laughter than I had for many years. The hunting was terrific, your hospitality most gracious and the food was excellent. All in all, a wonderful experience." Al Neffgen, S.C.