Check out this week's A Week in the Life of a Criminal Defense Attorney at CrimLaw.
From Computer.com comes an article that says in part:
Computer Associates drops CEO amid accounting scandal"The changes in Sanjay [Kumar]'s role are not based on the conclusion that he engaged in any wrongdoing. Nonetheless, the conduct in question occurred during his tenure, and the board felt this action was appropriate."
Four former finance executives have pleaded guilty to fraud or obstruction of justice charges, including Ira Zar, the former chief financial officer.
Zar implicated two other high-ranking executives and although their names were not disclosed, prosecutors noted that Zar reported to Kumar.
In January, a former senior vice-president who pleaded guilty said, CA had a "widespread practice" of inflating revenue by closing the books on a quarter a few days late.
I'm aghast. Imagine sleazy shenanigans going on in the corporate world.
Then there's this article that says in part:
Billions of pounds wasted every year on IT systems in the UKFewer than one in five of all IT projects in the UK can be considered truly successful leading to billions of pounds being wasted every year on IT systems, according to research from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.
“The UK public sector alone has spent an estimated £12.4bn on software in the past year and the overall UK spend on IT is projected to be a monumental £22.6bn,” said Basil Butler, chairman of the working group that produced the report.
I'm aghast again. This much incompetence in the UK amazes me.
Fred on Everything has an article called "An Oozing Of Gray Sludge - Reflections On Our Media of Communication". In his article he says in part:
Every year a conclave of editors and publishers laments the decline in circulation and blames illiteracy or television or the alignment of the planets. It’s someone else’s fault. Recently I saw a story, perhaps on Wired.com, saying that the media are finally realizing that bloggers and small web-only sites are undercutting them. How very alert of them. This too is someone else’s fault. One reporter thought it was because people want bias.Permit me to offer another explanation: People weary of the usual media because they aren’t very good. How’s that for a shattering insight? (This column is big on shattering insights.)
Why are the media not very good?
In thirty years of in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness. For half a dozen years I rode with the cops all around the country for my police column in the Washington Times. And I’ve written tech columns and pieces for technical mags like Signal forever.
This isn’t my first rodeo.
In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant. The military reporters didn’t know the history, the weaponry, the technology, strategy, tactics, or how soldiers work. Almost none had served. The police reporters chased scanners instead of riding regularly and just didn’t know what was out there or who cops are or why they act as they do. The tech writers were mostly history majors.
Over the years I’ve noticed several things. First, in print publications, most reporters aren’t very smart. A few are very bright, but probably through a mistake in hiring. (The prestigious papers are exceptions, hiring Ivy League snots of the sort who viscerally dislike soldiers, cops, rural people, guns, etc.) Reporting requires assertiveness and willingness to deal with tedious material under pressure of deadlines. These qualities seldom come bundled with inquiring intelligence. Consequently reporters (again with the occasional exception) lack curiosity, and don’t read in their fields.
The results are reasonably obvious to all of us, no? Is it not true that when you know a field, those writing about it clearly don’t?
Second, they are painfully politically correct, frightened of making a slip. Everyone in the racket knows exactly what you can’t say and what you have to say. Thus what reporters know, they don’t say; and what they say, they don’t believe. Writers are afraid of being fired; newspapers are afraid of their readers and, very important, of their advertisers. Editors are terrified of blacks, Jews, Hispanics, homosexuals, and women.
Third, the media are controlled, controlled, controlled. It is easy not to notice just how controlled. For example, people are interested in crime and the police. Ever see a television station put a cop on camera and let him talk for half an hour about what it’s really like out there? Never happen. An honest cop couldn’t manage three sentences without saying something perfectly true but forbidden.
He even says about blogging:
Now, compare this with the world of bloggery. If it is your blog (or website), you are the editor. You aren’t afraid of advertisers because you don’t have any. No one sits at the next desk. If you want to, you can write under an assumed name. Them as wants to read it, will; them as don’t, won’t. The choice is entirely between you and the reader.The net is…gasp…a truly free press.
Here in Oregon the Corvallis Gazette-Times has a story about a rally for Colonel Reusser and his wife. Colonel Reusser is a decorated veteran who has lost almost everything. The story is a pretty good one. An excerpt is below:
The Reussers several years ago lost nearly $300,000 in an investment scam and their accountant embezzled more than $80,000 from them, according to friends at the rally.The Reussers filed for bankruptcy last summer. A bankruptcy court in December authorized foreclosure on the Beaverton house the couple have owned since the early 1970s. The property is valued at $1 million.
"The average person has no way to fight back unless they're millionaires," Reusser said.
The story then goes on to say:
Money raised Sunday will go to the "Oregon Hero" account set up for the Reussers, said family friend Jesse Lott of Milwaukie.Lott, a cousin of U.S. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, hopes enough money is raised so the Reussers can make a downpayment on a considerably smaller home. The Reussers have had a dispute with Washington Mutual Bank since the fall of 2002. Last December the couple appealed a March 2003 Washington County Circuit Court summary judgment, which dismissed the Reusser's claims against Washington Mutual.
Asked about his financial situtation by a television reporter Sunday, Reusser quipped, "What financial situation? I don't have any left."
"I got mixed up with a couple of large banks that were quite heartless," he continued. "Washington Mutual now has all of our finances."
The article goes on:
The Reussers continue living in their Beaverton house. The bank says it allowed them to return there after the foreclosure, and they did so and changed the locks.Libby Hutchinson, a Washington Mutual spokeswoman, said from Seattle today the Reussers have a new lawyer and the bank was giving him time to get up to speed on the long-running dispute.
The dispute began when the Reussers — apparently after investment scheme losses — asked the bank in October 2002 to allow them to sell the $1 million house for less than the loan, on which they owed about $900,000.
Washington Mutual agreed in January 2003 to approve the "short sale" and discharge its lien against it, at a loss to the company of $242,600, if the Reussers would drop their $1 million lawsuit against the bank over the embezzlement by their bookkeeper. According to the bank, the Reussers declined the offer.
In March 2003, according to the bank, the court dismissed the Reusser lawsuit against the bank because the Reussers had failed to notify the bank in time of the fraudulent activity of their bookkeeper.
Since then the Reussers have filed legal actions in federal court alleging, among other things, violations of admiralty law. They also have been issuing so-called "arrest warrants" against bank officials, sheriff's officers and others.
Issuing "arrest warrants" against bank officials, sheriff's deputies and others is what the "white supremacist/sovereign citizen" does all the time in their quest to replace the existing government with a white supremacist government.
What the two reporters failed to bring out, or maybe it wasn't the subject of the story, was that the Reusser's were actually brought into their present circumstance by a small band of sovereign citizens here in Oregon. These sovereign citizens first targeted the Colonel and his wife and then victimized them.
I think the whole story needs to be told.
The Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics 2000: Data for Individual State and Local Agencies with 100 or More Officers from the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics is now out. It's pretty interesting to peruse through.
It seems now the Sierra Club is having an internal argument over immigration.
By CECILIA M. VEGA - THE PRESS DEMOCRATA divisive election for control of the Sierra Club could change the direction of the nation's largest environmental group and has local members staking out positions on the hot-button topic of immigration.
Members have until Wednesday to vote on whether the club should maintain its current neutral stance on immigration or elect to its board of directors a majority that advocates strong immigration restrictions as a way to reduce the environmental threats brought by population growth.
The subject has divided the club's leadership at the national level and prompted many in the 10,000-member Redwood Chapter to participate in an election that typically gets ignored.
And I alway thought the Sierra Club had something to do with environmental stuff. The article goes on to say.
The debate over immigration has turned into a face-off between longtime club members and a new group of challengers, charges of power-hungry leadership being hurled by one side and insinuations of racism made by the other.Some current leaders have noted that anti-immigrant and white supremacist groups have encouraged their members to join the Sierra Club in an attempt to control its platform.
It's weird to know your relatives have been swallowed up by cult whose leaders are insane and all the cult members become insane.
It's weird to find out that the mate you had for thirteen years was actually a member of the cult before she met you and that the cult leaders and members told her to start a relationship iwth you in order to try and get you into the cult and, if failing that, to help them destroy you.