Fossil Ridge Park and Corruption in Los Angeles

In researching places within striking distance where I can walk at high speed and get good aerobic activity and yet minimize toxic waste input.  As you might imagine this can be difficult in the greater Los Angeles area unless you are in a few well understood regions: for example near the beach or in the Santa Monica mountains.  There are some other regions too, often mediated or enabled by so-called micro-climates.  

So one obvious general area is south of here in Van Nuys in or near Mulholland Drive.  I came across a park I had never heard of before: Fossil Ridge Park.  What I did not realize is that this park, although difficult to visit and use, features one of the great attributes of Los Angeles: corruption in the service of real estate development.

But be careful, what you read on the always useful and informative Internet may be nothing more than self serving bullshit.  See for example:

https://thepregopizza.com/top-sights/fossil-sherman-oaks-ca/

 

On the Road to Fascism 05/09/2023

I write about the things in this post not because I think I can solve any of the problems, or say anything the least bit interesting that hasnt been said before on these topics.  I write these posts to help me remember some of the outrages we are exposed to because it is so easy to forget, being bombarded as we are by injustice and stupidity on a near-daily basis.

 

Here is just a sample of what has been happening recently.

 

1. Jordan Neely is murdered for the crime of talking to himself on a subway.  I talk to myself, and if I was in NY where there is a subway, I might talk to myself there too.  Would I be murdered?  Daniel Penny, the white man who murdered Jordan, is free and walking around. 

 

2. The Supreme Court is so deeply fucked up and illegitimate that it almost seems cruel to even mention it.  But yes, the corruption of Clarence Thomas has gone on long enough.  Roberts or someone needs to act.

 

3. The Republicans, who dont want to actually support the constitution which created a method for controlling appropriations, are dead set on destroying this country through the debt limit nonsense.  On the one hand, Biden is right to  stand firm, but wait.  Why didnt the Democrats change the debt limit when they controlled both houses of congress and the White House?  Maybe the Democrats are incompetent. At least they are not consciously evil, but that is about all I can say in their favor.

Would any other country be better?  Well, maybe, I dont know.  But I do know that if I were living in another country and bad things like this happened I would not feel betrayed because I would not have had to listen to the self-servicing, self-congratulatory, BS that I was exposed to here, in America, where people think they are the only country with a legitimate government.

I wonder if this is one of the posts that the Internet censors will use to block this blog?

The supreme court back in the day when it had legitimacy.

 

Excellent Statute of Limitations on Suing Government Agencies

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I admit that I am impressed with some of the things I learn about how our government works. So for example if you want to have a dictatorship but pretend you don't have a dictatorship and you want to pretend that you have a justice system and that people can file a lawsuit to get the government to do something reasonable, or to stop committing what are obviously crimes, then all you have to do is put in a 6 month statute of limitations which would be nearly impossible for most people to comply with unless this is what they did for a living and they had plenty of resources and they had a law firm ready to go which I think we can comfortably say doesn't happen. At least private individuals are unlikely to be able to comply with this requirement but possibly mid- to large- corporations could.  Thus corporations are able to protect themselves, or at least have a tool that might allow them to protect themselves, but the private citizen not so much. 

In that way you can see the corruption and crimes of the government can operate with complete freedom. This is most excellent. Obviously if we wanted a free society this rule would not exist.

(Policy Recommendation #2: Change or eliminate this statute of limitations).

Arms Sales, Donald Trump, and Logical Deduction

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[This is a transcript of a discussion with a friend about whether or not there is a kickback to Trump from the many billion dollar sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirate]

I apologize for not giving you better info on the kickback thing, I was being deliberately lazy and annoying. I have no hard evidence but my pathetic self-education includes studying the work of Holmes & Doyle (Hounds of the Baskervilles, etc) which means that we can use deduction and in this case the deduction chain is straightforward even if the money path is not. First some obvious comments on the arms business and the vast business of money laundering, then the more interesting things we know about the Trump administration and the various motivations here. This is going to be a little pedantic because it is much more work to keep it concise. Feel free to correct me at any point but keep in mind I read a lot of spy novels so I know something here.

 

1. The "corporate culture" of the arms business, in particular the arms business to 3rd world countries, is rife with corruption of which some form of unofficial transfer of the vast amount of moneys involved is the most common. Its one of the simplest ways to extract money from an official budget for personal use, and it is, to the best of my knowledge, very common. 2. The details of how the money gets transferred are arcane, have many variations, necessarily evolve with evolving law enforcement, and so forth. I have no idea what percentage of the money laundering business is kickbacks for arms deals, probably only a small percentage (10%? Less?) Some countries and institutions depend on this sort of thing although I suspect drugs and tax fraud are a larger part of this business. 3. But we would not expect to see a lump sum up front although we might depending on the level of trust. We might expect to see a series of payments at each step of the deal that go to various anonymous accounts in cooperative banks, where these accounts are for shell companies which transfer the money in relatively small amounts to other accounts at other banks in other countries, etc, until they end up making investments in something that in fact pays down the debt in another account at, for example, Deutsche Bank. 

Now lets move from this to Trump and our foreign policy.  4. There is no evidence that Trump gives a fuck about American foreign policy nor that he understands what he is dealing with here. By supporting Israel illegal settlements and bribing various countries to support Israel, he could easily bring down governments and/or destroy Israel, or cause a war that spins out of control. He may not intend to do this, but there is no evidence he cares. 5. Quid pro quo is the very heart of many, perhaps all, negotiations; its just that with Trump we expect to see it to be a blunt instrument. But it would be perfectly reasonable to expect that if a country wants our most advanced defense technologies that they could not ordinarily get, offering to recognize Israel in return for F-35s is the sort of thing that Trump might easily do, although in a normal administration it might not happen because of risks (see below). 6. In the past, money has always been a part of the deal, and we are talking about Saudi princes, Lockheed executives, American Congressman and Senators, and so forth. Rarely, if ever, is the President *directly* involved although indirectly they probably are. The classic example was Nixon and the Committee to Reelect the President who apparently received excellent cash donations from various organizations like the mafia and others. Or there is Reagan who would break the law right and left and then lie about it. Iran/Contra? No problem. I doubt, however, that the president's net wealth has been directly involved but I am confident that in the past other elected representatives have definitely received money. 7. But its Trump and we know that he has some amount of debt coming due in a few years even if there are many questions about exactly how much, to whom, etc. You regularly see estimates at $400M but I think that it is probably more. This is real estate in the hospitality business and that business is on its ass due to the pandemic. Even if that improves (and it might, it should) financing Trump is going to be a very negative thing for many institutions, not least because Trump is without doubt cavalier about honoring debt. (You know the joke about how you say "fuck you" in Hollywood). So where does he get the money from. 8. If a few percent came off the top of this deal and ended up eventually at Deutsche bank through various intermediaries, that would be I think a very logical thing to do from Trumps point of view. He certainly would not hesitate because of laws, ethics, or the interests of his country. 

 

 

9. Finally, lets add that Trump does seem to like to take care of his friends in Russia and thinks he is being VERY smart about it while Russia plays him for a fool, which he is. I doubt he has a clue what is really going on most of the time and he certainly does not believe what our intelligence community tells him. And so, Trump would ignore warnings that our most advanced defense technologies would be at risk if the destination country could not be relied on to keep it secret and that is why we only send that technology (at first) to very few countries such as Israel, Japan, Germany, the UK, etc, and even with them we usually water it down. Trump wouldnt give a hoot.

So in conclusion, Watson, it would be very logical to expect that there is a quid pro quo going on here, that the cards are not on the table which is normal, that our national security is not being protected, and that Trump would benefit financially in a substantial way. Of course, this would have to be proven but this kind of analysis is not going to be unique to me, I am not that smart or that original, sadly.

 

You Dont Know Angry

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People ask me why I am angry and I stare at them in disbelief.  People attack me because I am angry and I laugh at them because, frankly, I think they are being worse than stupid.

A rapist on the supreme court.
A malignant narcissist as president, as corrupt as can be.
A right wing nut on the supreme court (Gorsuch).

The entire Republican party demonstrating their complete failure to have any ethics at all.

Now read this article about Zinke who just resigned as Secretary of Interior.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/12/21/18150520/zinke-resignation-resigns

All I want is for these people to be in jail.  Is that so much to ask?

Recycling Computers in California

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In California, when you want to recycle old computers and electronic equipment, you cant just give them to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. They wont take them. You must take them to a special recycling center, hand them over one by one to an attendant, who will itemize them and have you sign a variety of forms that certify that you bought these devices in California. The net result is that one thinks twice or maybe three times before going through the hassle. It probably never occurred to those who make the regulations that people value their time and those who are maybe less filled with civic spirit will just throw these items away. Would it be so bad to have a dumpster or something at these recycling centers for electronic equipment that people can leave things in? Do we really need an itemized form of where they were purchased? Really?

[OK, my informants tell me that I have this all wrong.  That in other states, people pay when they are recycling their computers so they either come to California and dump them here or leave them in the desert.  In California, of course, you pay for this service when you buy the equipment. 

Also, my friends tell me that at other recycling centers in California, they literally unload your car for you and you dont even have to get out of the car, it is painless, etc, etc. ]

Too Bad They Fucked Up Democracy in this Country

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Oh this so needs to be rewritten.  So many more things to say.  So much left out.  What a disgrace these people are.  How much they have degraded our country.  How pathetic.

Too bad they fucked up democracy in this country. I dont want to hear about it anymore. From now until the rest of my life, if they are Republicans they are traitors. That does not mean all Democrats are great, but at least we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

We live in a tyranny by and for the rich. Here is the minimum that they have to do to restore any faith in this country.

I think that the Russians are throwing Trump a bone to save his presidency.

1. Trump goes to jail.  2. Nancy Pelosi becomes president.  3. Gorsuch off the supreme court.  4. The tax bill is revoked.  5. Trumps accomplices go to jail.  6. The electoral college is eliminated.  7. The criminals on wall street behind the 2008 disaster go to jail.

Ups and Downs in Escondido

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Ups and Downs was the name of a skating rink in Escondido, CA. I am pretty sure, but not totally sure, that it was out of business by the time I got here in 2006. It has been empty all that time.

It happens to be located next to the Escondido Chamber of Commerce and a variety of local government offices.

This is the second time I have had occasion to walk past this formerly wonderful business, and the second time that I noticed the “No vagrancy” sign and the evidence of homeless people making this their home. I wonder if they can use the local government offices for their sanitation or a shower?

There but for the grace of God, etc.

The California DMV and Insurance Industry

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I expect that various services that are required by law to be provided at a certain level of competence to the citizen.

I am required to have my vehicle insured and registered which seems reasonable, doesn't it? So I gave the state and a private company $1,500 and my car is registered until March and insured until May.

I will almost certainly be in Europe during February - May of next year, so I asked if I could register my car for next year. I was told no. I would have to do that no sooner than 30 days before. Same thing for the insurance.

Obviously, the State of California and the insurance industry which makes so much money from us does not care to do one thing to make it possible for citizens to live their lives and obey the law. You must bend over, give them money, or be punished.

I have yet to see the State of California be other than totally corrupt and difficult to work with. From the DMV, to the Franchise Tax Board, to long term asset seizure of bank accounts, they are either extremely inflexible and difficult to work with, or just corrupt.

What the Newly Released CIA Files Reveal

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Now the JFK assassination files are being released. I have wondered for years what could possibly be in them that was worth suppressing all these years. Here is one person's guide to what may be in these papers by Phillip Shenoni for Politico.  You can read his guide here.

Shenoni has a theory for what it is that was being protected in those files and why they were not released, and I think his theory is oddly compelling.  Here is the theory in my own words.

There was a CIA cover up but it was not about who killed JFK. It was about how much the CIA knew about Lee Harvey Oswald before he came back to this country from Mexico. It was about his activities in Mexico City that *should* have tipped the CIA off that Oswald was planning to kill JFK. Hindsight is 20 20 of course, but apparently the evidence suggests that the warning signs for Oswald were really high and that the CIA was grossly at fault for not doing anything about this.

In other words, the concern was that the CIA was going to get itself reamed a new asshole for its failure, and so they conspired to hide the truth from the Warren Commission, not about who killed Kennedy, but how badly the CIA had screwed up. A classic, cover-my-ass, bureaucratic fuckup and protection maneuver of galactic proportions.

No space aliens on the grassy knoll. No mafia paid for, Castro financed, commie-plot to kill Kennedy. No CIA rogue operation gone wrong. No Oliver Stone revealed truth. Just the CIA covering up its gross failure to do its job and protect America.

And lets not forget that LBJ and every president since then has known this truth and decided not to tell the American people. And every single bipartisan heads of the Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees knew or could have known and did not tell the American people.

Just like today, when the President and Congress fails to tell us that the Russians threw the election to Trump.

Whats my point? My point is, if you lie and you lie and then you lie again, why should we ever believe you?

Behold.... This is Trump's America

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From someone named Egriff commenting on an article in the Guardian about a discovery in Egypt.

I met a traveller from a Western land,

Who said—“A vast and broken wall of stone

Stands in the desert. . . . Near it, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

Behold – this is Trump’s America;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Trump being hauled out of the desert

You can find the article in The Guardian at the link below and Egriff in the comments.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/look-on-my-works-ye-mighty-ozymandias-statue-found-in-mud

Criminalizing Corporate Crime and Malfeasance

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Famously, Don Corleone said in the novel The Godfather that one lawyer with a briefcase could steal more than a gang of thieves with guns, or words to that effect.

Of course, everyone knows this is true. The egregious corruption of our justice system, from top to bottom is well known. Whether it has always been that way or has gotten worse in the last 3 or 4 decades is not known to me, but in the interest of helping our poor, stupid, and corrupt political elite in matters that should be obvious, we are going to make a few comments.

Dear Stupid Politicians,

If you do not start fixing the justice system, you are going to see a blowback that makes the Globalization / Trump debacle look minor in retrospect.

Everyone has noticed, and I mean everyone, that our justice system is grossly unfair and biased in favor of the rich. A poor man can go to jail in Alabama for life for stealing a stapler, but not even stealing billions of dollars on Wall Street and causing the collapse of the world economic system is a cause for even the most modest reprimand.

But if you keep ignoring what the people think, and keep kicking the can down the road while chortling to yourself that you got away with it again, one day this is going to blow up in your face. This is a specific example of the more general "failure of the cultural myth" or "failure to believe in a nation's institutions". It means that people start believing conspiracy theories, even the most ludicrous, and never believe anything that a politician tells them. You don't want that, although it may already be too late as The Donald Trump Disaster demonstrates.

What can you do about this?

In a nutshell, when a corporation commits a crime, people should go to jail. And I do not mean the little people here, say, for example, the 5,000 people that Wells Fargo fired after a decade of crime. We mean the top executives, all of them, and for a reasonable period of time depending on the extent of the crime.

Specifically, this includes the people on Wall Street whose incompetence and greed caused the financial collapse. Put them in jail. This means the executives at Volkswagon, to the very top, who of course knew all along that they were committing fraud with the EPA Decepticon software. This means the Exxon executives, who suppressed research reports on global warming and funded fake science to attempt to delay action on global warming. This means the Wells Fargo executives who stole money from their clients. This means AT&T who was caught stealing $88 million from customers. I suspect that is the tip of the iceberg. Put them in jail.

Put them all in jail.  Yes, even the ones who gave all that money to your reelection campaign and that you have been protecting all these years behind the scenes.  Even those executives you play golf with.  Even them.

Furthermore, if our government can seize the assets of middle class people who have not even been accused of a crime, then civil asset forfeiture could surely be applied to such people as Exxon executives or Wells Fargo executives. Just think of all the good you can do with that extra $100M from the Wells Fargo CEO who of course knew all along that his company was stealing. 

We all know that "statute of limitations" is nothing more than a way of exempting rich criminals from facing the penalties of their crimes.  People figured that out long ago.  So when some stooge quotes "statute of limitations" at us why a criminal corporation can not be prosecuted, we know we are being lied to again.

We dont care that you failed over the last 60 years to make the criminal code correspond in the least to fairness here. We know you are in the pay of the worst criminals / executives. Put them in jail anyway and fix the criminal code while you are at it. 

Of course you wont do it. You are as corrupt as they are. But you have been warned, so dont pretend innocence when this blows up in your face.  

Sincerely,
MW
Global Wahrman

__________________________________________

Article on AT&T Stealing $88 Million

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3148319/mobile-wireless/atandt-to-cough-up-88m-for-cramming-mobile-customer-bills.html

Posts of Ultimate Futility

This post is to describe the immediate future of posts on Global Wahrman so that my regular readers will not be too surprised or disappointed.

This blog has many topics including but not limited to discussion of the aesthetic and ethical failures of computer animation, the importance of comic book superheroes to our civilization, the role of the esoteric knowledge and forgotten wisdom as applied to stupid user interface design on the Internet, the aesthetics of modern espionage, and other related and critical topics.

But certain events have preempted these important discussions and replaced them (or failed to replace them as the case may be) with essays in progress on a number of political and economic topics. These topics have accumulated and are trying to work their way into print and are doing so with agonizing slowness. In the four years of writing this blog, I have never had such a backlog of mostly written posts that are not yet published. The problem, or rather, one of the problems, is that I am more than a little aware of how completely, insanely futile it is for me to have opinions on any of these topics.

I am well aware that no one, not even my best friends or family, could give a “hoot” what I think about these topics in economics, civic governance, international trade and so forth. If the Bureau of Labor Statistics fails to report on unemployment in a way that could be seen as even minimally accurate that is not for me to say or others to care. No one in government, or in politics, or on the right or on the left could possibly think that I have anything to contribute to the ongoing debates about whether this country is doing enough to impoverish Americans and disenfranchise the poor just to name two of the important initiatives.

Sure we have been successful at destroying opportunity for the poor, but are we doing enough to see that our society is completely corrupt and disingenuous?

So if you do me the incredibly courtesy of actually reading my notes on Globalization and the overt corruption and failures of our government and institutions, please be patient with me as I am quite aware what a complete waste of time this all is.

If there is any value at all in this exercise is that it lets me blow off a little steam and may help others form their own opinions on some of these topics.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

Proposed Naming Convention for Random Acts of Violence

If you are like me, you are confused by the different random acts of violence in this country. Who can remember if the murders were committed by an extreme Muslim, a right wing nut trying to cause a race war, a local police force who traditionally murders black people to keep then in line, murder by special teams of major city police forces, murder by pretend-suicide in jail?  And whether they used an automatic weapon, ran into them with their HUMVEE or dropped a piano on their head.  Nobody can remember, its too confusing.

I think that we need to have a good naming convention, or at least a naming convention of some type in order to keep things straight.

When the time comes to build your digital studio, naming conventions will also be very important so this is good practice for you.   Naming conventions bring order out of chaos, give meaning to otherwise random strings of letters, and help you to find things both during a project or later, when the project is long over.  Because when a project is over, the project isn't over and very often a project needs to be revisited years later.

In this case, I propose that each random act of violence (RAV) have two names: a short one that is easy to remember, and a long one with all kinds of information.

The short one might be something like ELIJAH-2015-3, meaning the third RAV of 2015, named for the prophet Elijah.

The long name would be something like ELIJAH-2015-3-<type of violence>-<weapon>-
                                                                 <number dead>-<number wounded>-<location type>
                                                                  <location by name>

So it might be something like ELIJAH-2015-3-INDIVIDUAL-SEMIAUTOMATIC-5-8-
                                                                        MOVIE THEATRE-COLORADOSPRINGS

Of course we could come up with clever abbreviations to make things more obscure.

I am not sure if I really like this naming convention, but maybe with more thought we can come up with something that would work for us and help us to remember and keep separate the various criminals, nuts, insane and other people who are running around in America these days.

Corruption and Degradation in Orange County

“The law must be honest, just, reasonable and according to the ways of the people. It must meet their needs and speak plainly, so that all men may know and understand, what the law is. It is not to be made in any man's favor, but for the needs of all them who live in the land. No man shall judge contrary to the law, which the king has given and the country chosen. [...] neither shall he [the king] take it back without the will of the people.”

English translation of the Latin from the Danish code of Holmiensis from roughly 1291. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Holmiensis

Why should we, as citizens, be concerned if it turns out that the District Attorney office of Orange County is a snake pit of unconstitutional illegalities?   I am of the opinion that nothing we do could possibly make a difference to our justice system.   Just publicly discussing the issues will probably result in some sort of action against the citizen who complains.  

I suppose that the reason we should care about the local insanity is that it puts us in a better position to accuse the rest of the world of being unjust and racist.  I mean how does it look for us to point the finger but not be aware of our own little, or not so little, corrupt cesspools?

So I want to bring to your attention two scandals closer to home.  The first is in Orange County and involves the District Attorney's office.  The second will be for another post and involve the LAPD.

To give you a feel for the magnitude of this gross violation of law, by those that we trust to enforce the law, consider the following paragraph chosen almost at random from the articles listed below:

In recent months, we've learned, over the objections of the Orange County Sheriff's Department (OCSD), that the agency created TRED, a computerized records system in which deputies store information about in-custody defendants, including informants. Some of the data is trivial; other pieces contain vital, exculpatory evidence. But for a quarter of a century, OCSD management deemed TRED beyond the reach of any outside authority. In Dekraai, deputies Ben Garcia and Seth Tunstall committed perjury to hide the mere existence of TRED. Those lies didn't originate from blind loyalty, however. The concealed records show how prosecution teams slyly trampled the constitutional rights of defendants by employing informants—and then keeping clueless judges, juries and defense lawyers.

from  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/29/1388819/-Judge-disqualifies-all-250-prosecutors-in-Orange-County-CA-because-of-widespread-corruption#

The scandal in Orange County is pretty amazing. The news broke about 16 months ago, but I never heard a word of it until I stumbled on this about a month ago. Why not?   Why isnt our media discussing this, what should we call it, gross abuse of justice? A scandal that affects thousands and thousands of innocent citizens who have been victimized by a corrupt justice department in flagrant and egregious ways.

The thing to realize is that the corruption in Orange County is that it is so bad, that it may literally be the worst of its kind in American history.  True there has been a lot of corruption in American history, so that is quite a statement.  But it may be true because this is a particularly specific form of corruption. 

Its a complex story, a very large story, and I am sure I only know a few percent of the big picture. But let me tell you what I think I know and point you to some news articles. Then the both of us, you and I, can watch our justice system fail to punish the guilty and release and compensate the innocent. We can watch together as our system does what it has always done: support criminals as long as those criminals are in bed with the politicians. As it has always been in America.

What seems to have happened is that through a series of misadventures, a few judges demanded some information which revealed that the entire justice system of Orange County was completely corrupt. That they were keeping a database of evidence that proved the innocence of people which the County was prosecuting and getting convictions for. That the system was running an informant system in the jails that violated the rights of prisoners in an egregious and systematic fashion.

Check these out.  They are pretty terrific.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/06/national_review_calls_forepublicans_to_take_responsibility_in_orange_countys_informant_scandal.php

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/03/seal_beach_salon_massacre.php

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/29/1388819/-Judge-disqualifies-all-250-prosecutors-in-Orange-County-CA-because-of-widespread-corruption#

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/03/orange-county-da_n_6993390.html

Excuse me? All 250 prosecutors for the county are disqualified? Excuse me, the entire office of the District Attorney of Orange County?

The problem is, you don't get to wash this shit under the rug forever you know. One day you wake up and find that citizens no longer believe that there is any justice, that all politicians are corrupt, and that the state exists purely to exalt the rich. Of course that is the case, now, all of these things are true: the politicians are corrupt, there is no justice except for the rich, and the state and the law and the economy only exists for the rich. But not everyone knows it. But when everyone does know it, then you have a bad situation. So you want to correct the problems before everyone figures it out. That would be the smart thing to do. Unfortunately, as proven over and over again, our leaders and their masters, the rich, are not smart. They are just greedy and corrupt.

Before we go beating up our friends in the South, I think we should clean up our own puddle of nastiness first.

Lets start with the Orange County DA office.

In another post, I will write up what I think I know about the LAPD and the jail that they run.   But that will be extra credit and later.

The Cost of Retraining Workers in the 3D Industry

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[In this post, we discuss what I am calling Strategy 2, which is that the disenfranchised worker attempts to leave the industry he has trained for and worked in by retraining him or her self by getting an advanced degree in a different subject at the university.   In a previous post, we discussed the out-of-pocket costs of Strategy 1, which is to try to persevere in the field he or she has worked in by staying current and attending various conferences.  You can find that discussion here.]

Lets examine the real costs to society of unemployment, especially unemployment that is caused by foreign subsidies that damage industries in other countries particularly our country, since that is what we have in the train wreck that is computer animation, that foreign subsidy thing.

A friend who believes in the free market says that those who got screwed by foreign government subsidies are worthless garbage who lost out on the “free market” and deserved what they got.  How an industry that has been devastated by foreign subsidies could be confused with a free market, I do not know. Besides, we have never really had much of a free market in this country, at least not for the rich. You know what they say, its socialism for the rich but the free market for the rest of us.  

Since employment in this industry in this country was severely impacted by these subsidies, and since our government failed to act, presumably at the request of the studios although again no one really knows, nevertheless we can calculate what it will cost to retrain these workers into another field.

But how many workers were displaced?   No one knows the numbers, so far as I know, and no one cares to know as far as I can tell.   But we can look at a few indicators and make our own rough estimates.   I am going to guess that the peak employment in this country for computer animation in the service of visual effects and animation was roughly in the years 1997 - 2004 or so.   If we look at employment then and compare it to now we will get a rough estimate of the change.

R&H goes from 600-1000 people to zero, Sony Pictures Imageworks which used to have over 1,000 people working has moved production to Vancouver.   Digital Domain which used to also be over 1,000 people I think are down to a few hundred.   ILM which was over 2,000 at one point is now about 500 according to one estimate of someone currently working there.    Dreamworks Feature Animation laid off 1,000 people in S. California and then closed their N. California office.   At this point we are nearing 5,000 people.

Now some of these people have in fact found employment overseas.   And some of these people, I do not know how many, will be able to slide into other careers with only some disruption.   Some will be able to work for Google, some for Facebook, and some will get married and have families while their spouse works. I think that it is mostly the mid-level and senior people who have specialized in computer animation and spent over a decade in that field who will especially suffer.  I do not know the numbers but I am going to guess here for the purposes of this post, 2,500 people.  I hope this number is conservative.

Unfortunately most of these people live in California which is very expensive, and many of them have significant others or families that they are supporting.   I estimate a minimum monthly expense of roughly $4,000 which breaks down to $2,000 for rent, $1,000 for utilities and food, $1,000 for car payment, insurance and everything else.  I realize that outside of California these rates might seem exorbitant.  But it costs a lot of money to rent in LA and SF and you don't get much for your money.  At least in NYC, you are living in NY, goddamnit, but not in LA and SF where it is merely expensive without returning any value that I can see.  And you need a car out here.  Those who do not drive will not be permitted to play.

There are several paths one might take to create a new career, but one of them, and the only one I am going to price here is to go to a university and get an advanced degree.   That will take 3-5 years and cost roughly $30,000 per year.  One might get a masters degree in computer science, or get an MFA in Art and look at teaching.

Thus if we estimate 2,500 people for three years getting an advanced degree then we get 2,500 * (48,000 + 30,000) = 195 million per year for three years or just under 600 million in total, adjusted for interest, net present value and what have you.

It goes without saying that the family goes off health insurance unless the school provides some, and I am not sure what the policy is for students with families.  It goes without saying that the kids get the substandard public education we give to our worker-swine, they don't deserve the elite education of private schools. Also that unemployment insurance, should they receive any and I never have in spite of what the law says or what is taken from my salary, is a pathetic joke and does not amount to much.

Now you may not care about these people and you may object to retraining them on theoretical grounds. You may believe that these people deserve to have their lives destroyed. But I disagree, I do not think they deserve to have their lives destroyed. I think that the society that failed to protect their jobs through greed or malfeasance has the duty to retrain them. That is what I think.

But even if you do not agree with me, then at least I hope we can agree that the people who made a commitment to this field, many of them at the urging of respectable organizations like SIGGRAPH, will now have costs they must bear in order to get into a different field in mid-career.  And those costs, paid for by the individuals affected, come to not less than $600 million over three years.  At least. My point is that there are real costs to society of failing to deal with this issue and of training too many people (or whatever we did) for this field.

The good news is that this money is easy to get. The studios have made much more money than this using the subsidies and making product based on the technology which we invented and was then shipped overseas to take advantage of slave labor and subsidies. So they have plenty of money. Have them pay. That would be only fair and I am sure that they will be happy to do so.

The Great Mystery of San Onefre

2.28.2015   The weirdness of this story continues to amaze me.   These private utilities seem to be nothing more than complicated scams to deliver the wealth of rate payers to an elite at the top of a private utility, quote end quote, that has no risk, only benefits.  They can make any mistake, and the rate payers will pay for it with the governments understanding and approval.  The CEO of SCE only makes 2.3 or so million a year, so its not as if it is infinite money.   

As I dig out more reference material, this post will be updated, and eventually may even be an informative summary of what happened here and who paid for it.  Right now, though, its far too loosy goosy with the facts, a situation I hope to remedy, with time.

2/20/2015 I continue to read about how such things as nuclear power plants are financed and indeed it is something of a worst case scenario.  Not only are nuclear power plants famous for costing at least twice as much as estimated, indeed they are nearly all paid for by the "rate payers", e.g. you and me, and with government guaranteed credit, at least in part.   When you realize that top executives at power utilities refuse all but a token salary, it is a little easier to take.  One CEO of an energy utility only makes 9 million $US / year, although I am told that there is also other compensation in various ways that are beyond this modest fee.

When the great ones who nobly serve society by generating and selling us electric power announced to a cheering world that they would shut down the nuclear generating station at San Onefre many questions occurred to me that did not seem to be answered in the highly detailed two or three paragraph in-depth articles written about the situation by our Fourth Estate.

But that was long ago, and as time passed, I knew that our tireless and intelligent press would think to ask these questions and report to the world the real situation. Sadly, this has not taken place and none of these questions have been answered. So I set to discover the answers to these great questions on my own, and clarified a few details in the clusterfuck that is San Onefre, but sadly not many of the answers that I sought were available online.

Nevertheless, I can describe the situation to you and what I think some of the questions are that should be asked, and even answered.

In the following discussion, the operators of the plant are referred to by SCE/SDGE which stands for the partnership of Southern California Edison (80%) and San Diego Gas and Electric (20%).  There is a third partner with less than 2% ownership.  The design and engineering subcontractor was Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.  NRC stands for Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The situation.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when the San Onefre nuclear generation system was built, the citizens were told that this plant would have a certain useful life. But it turns out, it didn't. And it was discovered that it didn't when the heat transfer system pipes (1)  started breaking. So they shut the plant and made arrangements to fix the heat transfer system which meant that they had to replace a very important part of the system.  They told the NRC that they were just replacing the system (in other words, no new engineering), but they were in fact redesigning the system, which should require proper notification to the NRC and their approval.   I am not sure who did the redesign, SCE or Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, but it was MHI that had the contract to build the new system.  This cost $750 M and the contract limited MHI's liability to 1/5th the contract amount.  But when the new system was installed it was found to be much worse than the original system.  So the plant was shut down again.   Only this time most of the $750 M was gone and they would have to start the process over again.

Boy, were their faces red.

The unanswered questions.

1. Why did they need a new heat transfer system before the end of expected life? Were they lying when they estimated life of equipment or were they merely incompetent? Or if they were simply wrong, were they lying when they said that this plant was not a research project?   You see, there is a difference between engineering and research.  In research, you do not know how long something might last, so you have theories and you run tests.  Then you create pilot plants and run more tests, and when you have your principles down, then you design a production plant based on what you have tested and know to be true.  It is not R&D to build a bridge, it is engineering.   A well-engineered power plant will have an estimated life that is likely to be exceeded in reality because it was over-engineered to do so.

It sounds as if they were either lying about this being a production technology, or that they were incompetent when they designed both the first set and the second set of pipes.

2. How is it possible to spend $700 million dollars on a new heat transfer system without having tested it first to know if it would work?   If there were risks to the new design, then it should have been tested and/or the contract not have limited liability.  

3. Were the operators supposed to notify NRC before doing this type of work or not?  If not, what are the penalties?   Why did Barbara Boxer call for criminal charges against SCE/SDGE and what became of that?

4. The decommission of the plant will cost over $4 billion dollars. There is a trust fund that has most of that money already. But where did that trust fund come from? How much of that is paid for by the customers and how much by SCE/SDGE?

5. Over 2,000 highly trained workers are being let go from the plant. What plans are being made to help those workers whose termination will certainly affect the economy of N. San Diego county.

6. How is the power that is being bought to replace the power from San Onefre being generated? Who pays for it, that is, who pays the additional fees?

7. What is the long term change in carbon output which is coming from this change to other forms of power generation, and what are SCE/SDGE's plans for mitigating this?

My suspicion is that the original plant, the changes and the removal of the plant are all paid for by the people of San Diego and Los Angeles and that this is just another scam for government to create a monopoly to give their friends a lot of money. I dont have a choice about where I get my power from, so I have no recourse but to use the bad decisions and management of SCE/SDGE.

My suspicion is that the reason SCE/SDGE were not punished for violating the law vis a vis the NRC is because of course their friends at the NRC and PUC protected them.

 As they always do.

What lessons can we learn from these series of events?   I propose to you that the lessons learned are (a) we can not trust the power companies, the NRC or the PUC to look after our interests and be honest with us about what is going on and who is paying for it, (b) that the best business to be in is a government enforced monopoly, like power generation.

That is where the real money is in America.

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1. San Onefre is, or was, a pressurized water reactor.  What that means is that one set of pipes contains water at pressure that flows through the reactor spaces and is heated by the heat generated from the nuclear reaction.   This hot water at pressure flows through the pipes to pass next to other pipes which also contain water at pressure and heat is transferred from the first set to the second.  No water is actually transferred, just the heat.  The heat in the water of the second set of pipes has not been directly irradiated and therefore is not radioactive and this is the water that drives the steam turbines that actually generate the electricity.   You do not want the water from the first set of pipes to leak because that water is radioactive.