Zero Tolerance: France vs. the good ol’ USA

Posted on February 1, 2013 by The Old Wolf

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE FRENCH WAY: A police officer in Ustaritz, France, was summoned to an elementary school’s cafeteria to remove a 5-year-old girl only identified as “Lea” as classmates watched. Lea’s crime? Her parents had not paid 160 Euros (US$220) in accumulated lunch fees. French officials were outraged when the report hit the news. “All children in France should be eating in their cafeteria, and not be victims of acts which, of this nature, are acts of violence,” fumed French Education Minister Vincent Peillon, who said he was “shocked” that the police were called. France’s human rights organization has started an investigation “to identify the successive dysfunctions that led to this situation,” says its director, Dominique Baudis. The police officer did as she was told: she removed the girl from the lunchroom, and took her home. When she found no one there, she took her to the police station — for lunch — and then took her back to school. (RC/Time) …See? It’s just that easy.

ZERO TOLERANCE, THE AMERICAN WAY: Melody Valentin, a fifth-grader in South Philadelphia, Pa., found an L-shaped piece of paper in her backpack in class; her grandfather had made it. As she went to throw it away, a classmate saw it and told the teacher Melody had a gun. “He yelled at me and said I shouldn’t have brought the gun to school,” Melody said through tears. “I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn’t listen.” As other students watched, administrators searched the girl and questioned her. Other children started to call her a “murderer,” and her mother had to pull her out of school to stop the bullying. The mother notes that the girl is having nightmares over the incident, and school officials refuse to comment. (RC/WTXF Philadelphia)

Slight correction: the school officials are the nightmare, and the silence is their defense.

Zero Tolerance in American school systems is nothing more than Zero Common Sense, driven by soulless attorneys hungry for billable hours and racked with paranoia.

Don’t put up with things you can’t change; change the things you can’t put up with.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Do Abusive Cheapskates Have a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy?

Posted on January 31, 2013 by The Old Wolf

A recent article at AOL Jobs has been today’s Internet sensation. It seems a pastor stiffed a waitress and added a snotty note on her receipt about giving 10% to God, so why does a server deserve 18%? A followup article at The Consumerist prompted an update of the original article, but it raised an interesting question or two. (Read both articles for the relevant facts.)

A lot of people are focusing on Applebees’ firing of the person (not the server involved in the incident) who posted the picture. That individual said later, “I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn’t break any specific guidelines in the company handbook — I checked.”

As readers, we’re on the horns of a dilemma, because douchebaggery of this nature is very appropriately outed… or wait, is it? Is this fodder for an article over at Not Always Right (here is a delightful example) or is it senseless voyeurism of the kind we would expect to find in the National Enquirer or People magazine?

Well, I don’t read either of those publications (although I am a proud owner of a copy of The Irrational Inquirer, a parody edition by Larry Durocher and Tony Hendra), but I find both angst and satisfaction when reading about ignorant behavior toward those who serve the public, especially when it’s richly rewarded.

The “pastor” (and I use the scare quotes deliberately) left her nasty note in public, and so on the one hand her shame should be public. On the other hand, I think the poster of the photo made some tactical errors by reporting the incident without removing any PII (personally identifiable information). As much as I was sorry to hear she was fired, I think I have to stand with Applebee’s on their personnel action – the posting of the photo was a breach of expected privacy, even if the person involved was a total jerk. You’ll notice that “Not Always Right” is very careful to give only the kind of store and a generic location, and never reveals names, dates, or identifiable places.

Moral: If you’re going to out the douchebaggery, make sure you do so in a non-identifiable way, or you might just lose your situation!

The Old Wolf has spoken.

A Sad Tale of Abuse of Power

Posted on January 26, 2013 by The Old Wolf

On May 21, 2012, Barbara Alice Mahaffey died of colon cancer in her home in Vernal, Utah. It was 12:35 AM, and her husband Ben and a friend who was also an EMT were at her side. Within ten minutes, a hospice worker and a mortician were present to attend to the remains… along with Vernal police officers Shawn Smith and Rod Eskelson. Instead of allowing Mr. Mahaffey to grieve and attend to his wife’s body, they insisted that he stop what he was doing and help them search for any prescription painkillers his wife had been using.

The search was warrantless. No one knows how the police came to be there in the first place.

“I was indignant to think you can’t even have a private moment. All these people were there and they’re not concerned about her or me. They’re concerned about the damn drugs. Isn’t that something?” Mahaffey said. Mahaffey said he was treated as if he were going to sell the painkillers, which included OxyContin, oxycodone and morphine, on the street. “I had no interest in the drugs,” he said. “I’m no addict.”

Not surprisingly, Mr. Mahaffey wasn’t happy about what happened, or how he was treated. He complained. And the story gets worse.

Mr. Mahaffey says he asked Assistant Police Chief Campbell where his officers had gotten authority to enter the home without invitation and conduct a warrantless search, and was abruptly told that the Utah Controlled Substances Act granted the requisite authority.

City Manager Ken Bassett dismissed plaintiff’s concerns by saying that his own parents had recently passed away, and that although their prescription drugs had not been seized by the police, he would not have cared had the police done so. He also informed Mr. Mahaffey that he was being “overly sensitive to the actions by the police, and that the police were only acting to protect the public from the illegal use of the prescription drugs.”

The city attorney told Mahaffey that his contract with Good Shepherd Hospice waived his rights to be protected from police intrusion in his home, but no such clause in the contract appears to exist.

Chief of Police Dylan Rooks allegedly told Mr. Mahaffey that “this is a great program and we’re going to continue it,” meaning the active pursuit of drugs in the community.

After trying to have “meaningful, man-to-man” conversations with Vernal officials, and finding them “rude and condescending,” Mr. Mahaffey turned to the courts and filed a federal lawsuit against the city, police officials and the two police officers who invaded his home.

I don’t much care for attorneys, and there are far too many frivolous lawsuits clogging up our court system. In this case, however, it appears that everyone in Vernal has lost their sense of decency and humanity.

“Note the utter lack of compassion, the inability to see a grieving husband as anything other than a potential drug dealer. Note the priorities on display. The most important thing the cops had to do that day was get those drugs out of that house. Preventing someone from using Barbara Mahaffey’s pills to get high, or preventing Ben Mahaffey from–God forbid–using pain medication not prescribed to him at some point in the future, was more important than giving a widower a last moment of dignity to say goodbye to his wife of 58 years.” (Radley Balko, Huffpost)

The maraschino cherry on top of this cake of shame is found in this article from the Salt Lake Tribune, which reports that a former Vernal detective has been charged with stealing prescription medication from a couple under the guise of repeated “pill checks.” It would seem that the elected and appointed officials in Vernal would do well to cleanse the inner vessel and re-examine their priorities. Violating basic dignities at one of the most sensitive moments in a person’s life bespeaks a shameful lack of humanity; this lawsuit should act as a wakeup call for those involved, but based on the response thus far, what I’m predicting is that they will circle the wagons, deny any wrongdoing, and continue their campaign of ignoring fundamental civic rights.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Sources:

Raping the public… legally

Posted on January 25, 2013 by The Old Wolf

About a decade ago, my identity was stolen. An insurance card I had given to a family member was lost in the state of Florida, and some drone got his hands on it. All of a sudden I was being contacted by debt-collection companies for things like trips to a hospital in an ambulance, 9 months worth of rent, cell phone accounts with T-Mobile, and a host of others.

It took me about 4 years to get my credit reports cleaned up, and countless hours of time on the telephone, writing letters, and filing police reports. Through it all was dealing with the collection companies, and it was brutal. These people are relentless bullies, and they care about only one thing… collecting. Explaining to them that I did not owe said debts was fruitless. Explaining that I had been the victim of identity theft was wasting breath. Even after multiple explanations, I had agents offer to discharge the debt if I was willing to pay 50¢ on the dollar. Nothing I said made a difference. They kept calling until I informed them, by law, that they were no longer allowed to do so. ^[1]

Now comes word of a new scam being perpetrated on the public by a company called Corrective Solutions, and others like them. This article in LA Weekly outlines how DA’s offices have partnered with some very ugly, very mean people to terrorize consumers into paying stiff fees for bounced checks, all in the name of “diversion” – meaning keeping cases out of the court system – but really for only one purpose – increasing the flow of revenue into the DA’s coffers.

An extract from the article outlines the sad tale of Carole Hirth:

In fact, it was banker scheming that landed Carole Hirth in trouble last year. More than a dozen major banks have paid multimillion-dollar fines for reordering purchases and delaying deposits solely in order to generate overdraft fees. In Hirth’s case, PNC was holding her direct deposits until it withdrew her outgoing charges — effectively overdrafting her account so it could charge extra fees.

She knew none of this at the time she wrote a $393.86 check to Dominick’s, a Chicago grocery story. The 59-year-old was in the hospital being treated for Crohn’s disease when the check bounced. For some reason, the store never tried to redeposit it, which most merchants do. If it had, Hirth says, the check would have cleared. Instead, the Safeway-owned chain sent her a letter.

“I had been back from the hospital for just four days when I checked the mail and thought, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she says.

Hirth went straight to Dominick’s, wrote a new check and paid a $35 bounce fee. She considered the problem fixed.

But four months later, she received a letter from the Cook County state’s attorney. It said that she’d been accused of deceptive practices and that she faced up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. The only way to avoid this fate was to pay $649.86, which included penalties and a diversion course.

“I already paid them,” Hirth says. “I contacted [the grocery store’s] ethics department and said this was just wrong. I spend enough money there. I told them they should work with me. I told them to look up my Safeway card. I’ve been shopping with them for the past 30 years!”

Safeway said there was nothing it could do. She’d have to contact the state attorney’s office.

Hirth called the toll-free number on the letter but got nowhere.

“They accused me of committing a fraudulent act. They said that if I don’t pay everything and take their class, I could be arrested and end up in jail. He was very, very mean,” she says. “I told him that I didn’t understand how that could happen. I said I’d already handled it, it should be cleared up, but he just went on and on and on.”

Hirth wrote another letter to Safeway, begging the grocer to contact the prosecutor’s office on her behalf. The letters and phone calls kept coming.

It wasn’t until she got in touch with Arons that she discovered she wasn’t being threatened by Cook County. It was Corrective Solutions, which has contracts with 21 counties in Illinois.

Notice three major instances of douchebaggery in this one single story:

Bank malfeasance (reordering deposits and withdrawals to create deliberate overdrafts and charge fees)
Corporate insouciance (once a charge has been submitted to collections, nobody gives a rat’s south-40 – there appears to be no one inside a massive corporation who cares or who can deal with human situations)
Consumer intimidation by Corrective Solutions using the name of Cook County to perpetrate their scheme, but fully with Cook County’s blessing.

The Napa Valley Register filed an article in October of 2012 describing a class-action suit against Corrective Solutions and another company, and outlining practices similar to what happened in Hirth’s case above, but the news is not good – most consumers won’t even benefit from any possible settlement, and the companies will likely continue to operate in one form or another. Indeed, Corrective Solutions is a rebirth of American Corrective Counseling Services, which lost a class-action suit against it, filed for bankruptcy, paid nothing, and began operating a few months later under a new name, free and clear, as reported in the LA times article.

The fight against this kind of corporate and governmental misbehavior continues. The war will be long and hard, and there will be bodies left on the battlefield, many belonging to innocent victims who made honest mistakes and found themselves caught up in a web of greed. The good news is that many legal advocates are aware of what is happening, and will continue to fight until this sort of program is outlawed by statute.

In the meantime, the more people who know what’s happening, the more ammunition they have to fight back. Read the linked articles. Be careful with your finances, and don’t roll over for the bullies.

This has been an Old Wolf public service announcement.

[1] A recent example: A family member has set up payment arrangements with a collection company in Idaho, in order to pay off a medical bill. The payments have been kept current for the last 18 months. Despite that, this letter is sent out monthly:

No mention of current account status, no “thank you for your payment,” just the constant threat of legal action. I’ve written the office to complain about this lack of courtesy and ethics, and no one has ever bothered to respond.

You can’t discuss it, but I can.

Posted on January 21, 2013 by The Old Wolf

From MSN News:

Kindergartner suspended for comment on toy bubble gun

MOUNT CARMEL, Pa. — A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.

Her family has hired an attorney to fight the punishment, which initially was 10 days but was reduced to two.

Attorney Robin Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials labeled the girl a “terrorist threat” for the bubble gun remark, made Jan. 10 as both girls waited for a school bus.

Ficker says the girl didn’t even have the bubble gun with her and has never fired a real gun. He says she’s “the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania.”

School district solicitor Edward Greco tells pennlive.com that officials are looking into the case. He said school officials aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions.

You aren’t at liberty to discuss disciplinary actions, but I am.

You are douchebags.

Idiots.

Paranoid schizophrenics with delusions of relevance.

For your gratuitous information: A child of 5 has no conception of reality when it comes to gun violence. They play with water guns and bubble guns and toy guns and parrot what they see on television. They have no idea what a real weapon can do to a human body. They play.

When reasonable adults hear a child of that age say something inappropriate, they take them aside and explain it. They offer benefits and consequences. Maybe she loses recess and goes home with a note pinned to her jacket.

But you don’t sodding call her a terrorist and suspend her from school for ten days, you asswaffles!

You blistering simpletons, you have done more to warp that little girl’s world view than anything she might have seen on television. She will never forget this event, and it is likely that she will never understand why such a firestorm of stupidity ignited around her. She will only know subconsciously that she did something horribly wrong. and will never look at another firearm in the same way again, even though carrying a legal one might save her life when she’s older.

Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice: Stick to chasing ambulances, and leave 5-year-old girls alone. Better yet, find a profession far, far away from people, where you can do no more damage with your pompous self-importance.

The Old Wolf has discussed.

Remembering Aaron Swartz

Posted on January 13, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Official Statement From the Family and Partner of Aaron Swartz

Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing.

Aaron’s insatiable curiosity, creativity, and brilliance; his reflexive empathy and capacity for selfless, boundless love; his refusal to accept injustice as inevitable—these gifts made the world, and our lives, far brighter. We’re grateful for our time with him, to those who loved him and stood with him, and to all of those who continue his work for a better world.

Aaron’s commitment to social justice was profound, and defined his life. He was instrumental to the defeat of an Internet censorship bill; he fought for a more democratic, open, and accountable political system; and he helped to create, build, and preserve a dizzying range of scholarly projects that extended the scope and accessibility of human knowledge. He used his prodigious skills as a programmer and technologist not to enrich himself but to make the Internet and the world a fairer, better place. His deeply humane writing touched minds and hearts across generations and continents. He earned the friendship of thousands and the respect and support of millions more.

Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. ^[1] Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.

Today, we grieve for the extraordinary and irreplaceable man that we have lost.

How not to get a tattoo

Posted on January 9, 2013 by The Old Wolf

A buddy of mine over at Facebook posted this picture which made me laugh out loud – really, I’ve sworn not to say “LoL” unless I really did:

But that got me thinking, because so many people in this country (and probably others) get Chinese/Japanese characters tattooed in various places on their bodies, thinking their tats mean “bravery” or “samurai” or “golden lovebird” or “Tadgh Ó Suilleabhain”, only to find out when they bump into a native speaker that it really means something else again, or nothing at all.

An example from the wonderful website “Hanzi Smatter,” dedicated to identifying bad tats and what they mean (or don’t):

The customer wanted a tat that said “Fast and Furious”, but what they got was “Fast Foolish”

This one, on the other hand, is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It’s based on a gibberish asian font which was deciphered by Alan Siegrist, a professional Japanese-English translator and member of both Japan Association of Translators (JAT) and American Translators Association (ATA); with Alan’s help, tian (writer of Hanzi Smatter) compiled this chart, which has been widely circulated around tattoo parlors:

(note this website, which is currently selling this chart along with some other character sheets for $64.99).

The very clever user DavidR created this website, where you can generate your own garbage tattoo text for your amusement. But for the love of Mogg’s holy grandfather, don’t use it! (Note: At this writing, only the “to nonsense” function works – the other direction throws a DB error.)

If you’re still not quite sure what’s going on, have a look at these pictures, which give you an idea of what a native speaker might see if they looked at your sic tat:

This girl thought her tattoo says “Lord of the Dance”

She was hoping for “Grace Under Pressure”

“You mean, it doesn’t say ‘passion’?”

“But you swore this meant ‘Hot Stuff’!”

So why does this happen with far-too-common frequency? First of all, we can’t heap coals on the head of the average tattoo artist, no more of whom are total idiots than you would find in the average business establishment (law firms excepted). The answer appears to lie in the fact that kanjis (or hanzi) look cool to many non-Asians, but take a gruntload of specialized education to understand properly – and that would hold true even if you didn’t speak the language but were simply trying to understand the general concept of ideographic writing, and what it would take to incorporate that into your artwork in a professional way. But the fact remains that when you extract the vast majority of well-meaning and honest tattoo artists out there,

Some of them are downright malicious, and think it’s funny to write “醜” (bad looking; shame; ugly; unclean) on some young lady’s arm;
Some of them have no more than a third-grade education to back up their admirable art skills, and just have no idea that the character chart they bought online is worth less than the powder to blow it to Hell with;
And some of them are incompetent and just draw crap, hoping the customer will never know the difference.

So what’s a body to do? Here are some helpful hints:

If you want a character tat, find someone you trust (and I mean, really trust, not your buddy who will draw dicks all over your face the next time you pass out at a party) who speaks the language, and let them help you design something that both looks good and means what you want it to mean.

Don’t trust a dictionary, either hardcopy or online. Dictionaries are only useful in direct proportion to your knowledge of the target language. That’s why

is not a good thing to use if you want “freedom,” because it means “free”, as in “no charge” – it’s also poorly drawn.

Take your artwork to the tattoo artist of your choice, and have them design on paper what you’re going to have emblazoned on your body forever and ever worlds without end (remember these suckers are permanent unless you have more money than Donald Trump) and take that design back to your expert to make sure that a) it means what it’s supposed to mean, and b) it looks good. Doing this will mean working with a tattoo artist who doesn’t have severe ego issues and will be willing to work with you. Remember, it’s your money and your body, so you have the right to make sure you get what you expect.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Life Insurance: Spam ‘n’ Scam

Posted on January 5, 2013 by The Old Wolf

The Internet is a perfect place to steal people’s money legally. All you have to do is write something, post it, and the equivalent population of Belgium will take it as gospel truth. There’s a lot responsible for this phenomenon, but lack of education appears to be the primary culprit.

This appeared in my mailbox last night, typical of the kind of UCE (junk mail) that Comcast’s filters allow to slip through.

Warning: NEVER buy life insurance from Globe Life, this is not an endorsement!

I could smell the rotting fish almost before I opened my malibox this morning. Red flags:

The fact that they’re spamming at all. Ethical companies don’t spam.
The “marketer” or affiliate being paid to send out this putrescence is “Future Modern Logistic” which has no internet presence and a UPS Store PO Box for a mailing address
The bait-and-switch tactic using a huge headline plus an asterisk^[*] followed by lots of small print is immediately suspect.
A quick search of “Globe Life Insurance” brings up page after page of consumer complaints.
Using shills to promote the company, even if the writer couldn’t get a “C” on a third-grade composition. Have a look at this “endorsement” I found at nationwide-insurance.org – the website is a black-hat SEO spamdexing site which provides no useful content but rather spurious data and backlinks to other sites in an effort to boost their search ratings:

“Globe Life Insurance Scam-Our Honest Review

There are some insurance companies that do scam except is the globe life insurance scam legit? Globe life insurance corporation is a great company who offers a great insurance policy. When we are asked if we think they are one of the insurance scams our answer is no. They have great insurance deals and if you seem up insurance reviews you will notice their reviews are great. Plus you can go online and get free insurance quotes for life and health insurance. When you get an insurance quote make sure you select the right semester life insurance. Also they supply event insurance in case you want to connect to two. We also have a protective life insurance company scam you might want to check out”

Bad punctuation, horrid grammar, and it goes on for about 8 more paragraphs of the same kind of liquid dung. I mean, who in the name of Mogg’s holy grandmother would consider doing business with a company that descends to this kind of tactic? Perhaps the kind of people who believe the “Cash4Gold” infomercials…

The Internet is a huge place, and I don’t anticipate that a small voice like mine, crying in the wilderness, will have a large impact. But if one single person reads this and as a result, refrains from doing business with Globe Life or another disreputable company of the same caliber, it will have been worth the time.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

*Like this. By reading this blog post you are legally obligating yourself to send $50,000 per year to the blogger in perpetuity, and to eat nattō three times a day without complaining about how slimy it is.

Gotta Catch Them All Ages, Part 2 (From Not Always Right)