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Friday, August 16, 2002
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Firefighters Union Votes To Boycott Bush. Plastic::Politics::Politics:Dubya: The International Association of Fire Fighters has voted unanimously to boycott Bush photo ops, in response to Bush blocking the homeland security bill that included $340 million to fund fire departments. [Plastic: Most Recent]
Our Commander In Thief has repeatedly used firefighters, particularly NYC firefighters, as props at numerous speeches and appearances around the country, sometimes even flying in NYFD officers, since 9/11. Not any more.
In response to Bush’s refusal to release emergency funding already authorized – $340 million of which was to go to fire departments nationwide to improve emergency response effectiveness– the International Association of Firefighters has voted to boycott the Boy Blunder.
Among other things, this means you won’t see the brave boys in blue anywhere near the Dim Son this September 11, at the massive “memorial” – read photo-op – to the NYFD heroes who gave their lives on 9/11 while Bush was running and hiding.
According to the Associated Press, the other projects in the $5.1 billion spending bill Bush opposes include:
-$100 million to improve the communications systems of firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel nationwide. Radio problems hindered rescue workers' response to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 because the various agencies' radios could not communicate with each other.
-$39 million to improve and increase inspections of the 6 million cargo containers entering the country each year.
-$82 million to enhance the FBI's counterterrorism technology.
-$165 million to strengthen security around food and water supplies.
-$400 million for election reform.
-$50 million for flood prevention.
-$98 million for emergency highway repairs in 18 states, including repair of the Interstate 40 bridge recently destroyed in Oklahoma.
-$17.9 million for Wisconsin's effort to combat chronic wasting disease.
-$275 million for veterans' medical care.
Yeah, boy, sure would be terrible to fund all of those trivial projects. Besides, since when has the guy who stole the White House been interested in election reform?
6:04:55 PM 
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Brilliant Digital takes a hit. The company, still smarting from a privacy storm that erupted when its Altnet service first came to light, says its net revenue has fallen 42 percent from the same period last year. [CNET News.com]
In light of their recent privacy blunder with KaZaA, these guys should change their name to “Imbecile Digital.”
5:55:07 PM
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Anti-Baghdad Talks Shunned by Top Kurd. The most powerful Kurdish chieftain in northern Iraq refused the Bush administration's invitation to attend a meeting of Iraqi opposition figures. By Patrick E. Tyler. [New York Times: Politics]
You won’t hear the Bushies talking much about this. Here they are, crowing about the huge support for a US invasion in Iraqi resistance circles and the single most important Iraqi dissident basically tells them to pound sand, refusing to even attend a heavily hyped White House summit.
So much for the foreign policy “Dream Team.” This is about as embarrassing as it gets for the Boy Blunder and his staff of corporate toadies.
5:53:56 PM
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Robert Benchley. "A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down." [Quotes of the Day]
5:28:32 PM
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Politics weigh heavily in Bush message [USA Today : Front Page]
You know, for someone who heavily criticized Bill Clinton for paying too much attention to polls when making policy, the Dim Son sure ain’t shy about tossing out political platitudes designed to resonate with a given audience.
5:27:34 PM
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10,000 band-names [bOing bOing]
This name generator is kinda fun, but it doesn’t produce anything close to my favorite band name, ‘Stanley Planet and his Throbbing Unit.’
5:24:16 PM
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Baseball Union Sets Strike Date. Baseball players set a strike date for Aug. 30, a senior member of the union's executive board said on Friday. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]
There’s a good reason why, despite being a life-long baseball fan and a die-hard Cubs fan, I haven’t written word about baseball since opening day. I knew back in April that it would come to this.
There are no good guys in the current MLB morass. It’s impossible to feel sympathy for a bunch of uber-wealthy idiot owners, backed by the owner’s shill, Commissioner Bud “Used Car” Selig. It’s just as hard to empathize with a bunch of steroid pumped, badly behaved, half witted, spoiled brats making tens of millions for playing a kid’s game.
Personally, I think it’s about time Congress stepped in and used the power of the Exclusion to enforce reality on this sad bunch of greedy assholes. Pass a law mandating salaries, ticket prices, TV revenue, etc. Give everybody a tenth of what they get now and return the savings to the fans.
If the greedy players don’t want to play for reasonable pay, screw ‘em. There are tens of thousands who would jump at the chance to make a decent living playing baseball. And if owners aren’t happy with a small operational profit, get ‘em the hell out of The Game.
Baseball has always been about more than professional sports. In many ways it truly is *the* American game. It’s scary how much the game is reflecting the current trend towards unfettered greed on Wall Street, in corporate boardrooms and the White House.
It’s time to get back to the basics. You know, the smell of the grass, the sound of the ball hitting hard ash or maple, the satisfying thwack of a line drive hitting the outstretched glove of a diving center fielder. There’s no price tag on these things. Major League Baseball does us all a disservice by trying to cash in on the Field of Dreams.
BTW, if you want to read some fantastic baseball literature, including the book, ‘Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa,’ Hollywoodized into the movie version, ‘Field of Dreams,’ check out anything by WP Kinsella. ‘The Iowa Baseball Confederacy’ is a personal fave, though the magic and mystery of the game permeates everything Kinsella writes.
4:32:24 PM
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Lexis/Nexis Responds To “Big Brother” Charge – Kind Of
Never underestimate the power of blogging. Seems the story we did here a few days ago on Lexis/Nexis collecting name and address information from pizza delivery calls, among other sources, for skip tracing and debt collection touched a nerve at one of the largest providers of information in the world. I received an e-mail yesterday from a representative of Lexis/Nexis pointing me to their response to our story here.
I’ve included their entire response at the bottom of this piece. For the life of me, I can’t see a single thing in my story contrary in any way to what Lexis/Nexis says. I don’t see anything in the original story that in any way is “inaccurate information.” It’s hard to tell now, as they have removed any reference to the sources of information collection from their BatchTrace page. The “Features” link has been completely de-activated.
Apparently they believe the problem is people are worried Big Brother might know what kind of toppings they like. I could be wrong, but it seems to me the bigger worry is an entity as seemingly innocuous as pizza delivery companies collecting and selling customer data to giant database info providers with no consumer disclosure whatsoever.
I’ve asked Lexis/Nexis for the names of pizza companies that participate. I’d be willing to bet that not one of them discloses this practice to their customers. I’ll continue to research this important story and keep you updated on what I find.
Response from Lexis/Nexis - http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data
Statement on LexisNexis Data Collection
Due to inaccurate information posted on both an external and internal website, consumers and media are under an incorrect assumption that LexisNexis collects data regarding personal consumer preferences from entities like pizza delivery companies. In fact, that is not the case in any way.
LexisNexis is an information company that manages an enormous amount of data – the vast majority of which is publicly available from many sources. The “pizza” information that has been misinterpreted stems from the fact that one of the information sources available on LexisNexis comes from a data company that offers address and phone verification services and call routing for pizza delivery companies and other large call centers. The vendor verifies the accuracy of its information from phone company directories and manages hundreds of thousands of consumer-initiated transactions on a monthly basis, primarily through their large call center clients. They maintain a compiled, multi-source database of name, address and telephone numbers.
LexisNexis licenses a sub-set of that database containing only name, address and telephone information that has been verified and validated against public white page directory sources. If the information cannot be verified as valid through a public white page source, then it is not made available to LexisNexis. The vendor resells this verified data to companies like LexisNexis, after removing records that do not appear in public white page sources.
LexisNexis takes a consumer’s personal privacy extremely serious and information provided by LexisNexis to its customers is offered in compliance with current privacy protection legislation and regulations. LexisNexis has strict privacy policies enforced by our Chief Privacy Officer and our privacy practices are regularly audited by a respected, independent third party privacy company. To review these policies, please visit http://www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data.
3:06:18 PM
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© Copyright 2002 Dusty Rhodes.
Last update: 8/31/2002; 4:42:33 PM.
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