A Lost Opportunity To Rebuild Manhattan Infrastructure

Photo from that stellar news outlet, the Daily News.

Surprise, surprise, New York infrastructure is deteriorating before our eyes! How could this possibly happen? Everyone knows the city, the state and the nation have been pouring billions into creating the infrastructure of the future while putting millions to work and stimulating solid economic growth. Right? Or maybe not! 

 It would have been all too easy to commit billions to rebuild the infrastructure in Manhattan, much of which is now in its second century. But no one thought of that. And here we are.

Right now, Manhattan is riding the biggest real estate bubble in its history. The median price of a condo in the borough is well over $1 Million, with the price far higher in downtown neighborhoods, such as the Lower East Side, where this water main break and sinkhole occurred. Not that it will make us little people feel better, but what we are seeing are overpriced luxury homes being built on top of decaying infrastructure. And many of these developments are in what are now flood zones going forward as sea levels rise and more Atlantic hurricanes are expected to turn left and make landfall in the region. 

My biggest gripe with New York, beyond the fact that it is an imperialist, even pro-war city with a dangerous wealth gap, is that its infrastructure is terrible. We have outstanding drinking water. But that won't last. We are told that the subways are reliable. Yes, in spite of the fact that the system is barely holding together. When I look at Tokyo, Hong Kong, and even London (the other "Capitals of the World" right?), I see better infrastructure. We New Yorkers won't realize the lost opportunities we had to rebuild until it is too late.

The 2009 Federal stimulus package might have been our last chance to rebuild. We shall see if I'm correct.

Larry Page Hasn't A Clue What Charity Is

Well, that ruins whatever respect for Mr. Page I had left. I used to occasionally point to him as a fellow Gen-X'er (a fellow salt and pepper haired Gen-X'er at that) who led a corporation and became an infulencial leader and innovator. This is because too many in my generation struggle to get hired, let alone land an opportunity to found and lead a company.

Well, he's an idiot. And his definition of charity is frankly twisted and dangerous.

Establishing large, well run, philanthropic institutions is nothing new. Carnegie and Rockefeller were pioneers of creating highly managed charitable giving. But, and this is a huge but, those foundations give money to charitable causes, which directly assist the poor, not corporations, which might produce benefits for them. Those organizations, and their many imitators, have supported colleges and universities, built public libraries -my hometown library in Brockton was built with Carnegie funds- built hospitals, clinics and research facilities, fed the poor, and provided open space and public recreation for countless people.

Larry Page hasn't a clue what charity is, and it's pretty clear he never will.

The French Government Fears Its People

Just a quick observation. In the US the people are afraid of the government; in France the government is afraid of the people.

Citizens don't need to own firearms to make their government fear them. It just takes united demands, constant political pressure, and some strong unions here and there. While I understand the argument that unionized workers see themselves as union members first and company employees second, look at the victories they have won for workers in France, including workers who aren't unionized. Here's the latest example.

NSA Spying Revelations To Continue Well Into 2014

Edward Snowden became a household name to consumers of news media in June 2013. It also helped make The Guardian a well recognized name in elite news journalism, and they now have a Pulizer for their effors.

The reports of how the NSA has spied on virtually all electronic communications over the last 15 years (and probably longer) will continue to be released. According to SNowden, some of the biggest revelations are yet to come. We can expect more details about how the NSA partnered with corporations to collect mass data on citzens. They collect data on what you buy, where you go, and what you are into. And almost none of it related to keeping the "homeland" safe.

While we wait for more deatils on NSA programs, both past and existing, we have a blockbuster piece by two of the best investigative "Global War on Terror" journalists around, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. In it, they explain how drone strkes target mobile phones, using an NSA owned database of mobile phone numbers. It had long been suspected that the drones go after phones, not people identified visually. That helps explains all the "collateral damage" when these phones are detected in the open in crowded areas. Furthermore, we know US often follows an initial hellfire missle strike with a second strike in the same location to kill friends, family, and even medics (if that isn't state terrorism...). What drives the drone strikes? Data. 

UPDATE, June 26, 2014: Here is a fantastic summary of what we know as of May 2014, by Nadia Kayyali and Katitza Rodriguez of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

I didn't think my first post would be this way.

I feel it must.

Why do Americans feel the needs to call anyone with an English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish accent British?

No, it's not all Americans, but the majority I've encountered feel the need to classify me as British.

"Oh, you're British!?"

NO! NO! NO! You fucking twit, I'm ENGLISH! E N G L I S H, NOT British!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Georgraphically, yes, I am considered British.

However, the fact that I hail from Northern England, makes me ENGLISH!

My family Hails from North England. If we want to be exact, Corbridge is a village in Northumberland, England,

situated 16 miles (26 km) west of Newcastle and 4 miles (6 km) east of Hexham.

Again, I'm fucking ENGLISH!

Where does this hatred come from? It's not hatred at all.

Believe me, I'm not the only one. Scots, Welsh and those of Northern Ireland rather be called by where they're from, instead of British. 

We share in the UK great, long and historic rivalries. As nations, as people and especially when it comes to both football (HOWAY THE LADS!) and rugby.

With that said, our pride gets the best of us, IT SURE DOES OF ME, when I'm called British.

ASUS X200CA (Pentium) Review

A great little vehicle to try out a Linux distribution.

The 11.6" ASUS X200CA (late 2013) with the Pentium "Ivy Bridge" processor is a great little performer. Costs were cut to be sure. It's black plastic. The battery is not replaceable. It's a budget notebook rather than an entry level ultrabook. However, for those who want pretty good computing power on the cheap, it's a fine choice. It's actually a great choice for anyone who ants to give Linux a spin without breaking the bank, which is why I got it.

So, it is plastic, but it's also light - just three pounds. The keyboard took only 15 minutes to master coming from the much larger MacBook 13". This is, essentially, a disposable laptop. It's something you use for 2-4 years and then resell or recycle. Battery life is a consistent 3-3.5 hours when fully charged, and with the brightness turned down a bit, and the device is not streaming video. The display is an LED lit 1366x768. Not nearly the best of what's available today, but it does support full 1080p resolution. The speakers are front firing, which is impressive at this price point. But like any laptop, headphones will provide the best possible audio quality.

The screen is also plastic, but seems scratch resistant. The touchscreen is very good - sensitive and responsive. Even if you install a Linux distribution, the touchscreen will still provide some functionality. I love the built in SD card reader. No more tethering my camera to my laptop to process and file photos.

The last thing I need to get used to is the fan and heat vent on the left edge of the keyboard. It is easy to clean, says ASUS (with one of those Staples spray can dusters). The fan is no louder than the Apple MacBook fan. But it's right behind the vent, and it gets warm as soon as you turn on the device.So I'm figuring out how to keep an upright typing position and keep my left fingers away from the vent opening.

On the plus side, the ports are almost kept to a minimum. Aside from a legacy VGA port I will never use, there are two USB 2.0 ports, a USB 3.0 port (colored blue for easy identification), an RJ-45 network cable port, a very useful HDMI video out, and an equally useful SD card slot for easy uploading of pictures from most digital cameras. Users of Google Plus' photo editor and YouTube will especially appreciate that.

This laptop makes the case that like tablets and phones, laptops are gadgets you use for two years and then move on to the next one. A lot of people use their MacBooks for two years, but I've had mine for nearly 5 years and it is built to last. The ASUS has a 64 bit Ivy Bridge processor. That's the latest and one of the best. It could go four years, but you'd have to take extra special care of it. Separate bag. No spills. No food. Go easy. This thing has what you need on the inside, but you need to be gentle with it.

I have oily hands. The keyboard's keys, thankfully, are oil and fingerprint proof. Unfortunately, the rest of the device isn't.. You might want to consider the metal finish version if you don't like fingerprints (the ever so slightly heavier Q200). Fortunately, the laptop looks like new with a few circular wipes of a dry cloth or moist sponge. I do like the textured plastic and the wedge shape of the device. Just have to limit how much I touch that plastic. Stick to the keys and and a mouse (the cool ASUS blue ray optical mouse is a fine accessory for this), and you will minimize the blemeshes on this laptop.

For my Linux distribution, I chose Linix Mint (Cinnamon). I have seen Red Hat Linux on servers. And I have seen early incarnations of Linux on desktops, back when you had to write a developer a check and receive a stack of 3.5" floppy disks in the mail. But this was my first installation of Linix on any personal computer, and I love it. I can move on from Apple and iTunes, and go my own way. That has its pros and cons. Using an open office suite (LibreOffice), browsing the Internet on Google Chrome, and playing games on Steam is fantastic (Chrome has not run well lately in OSX). Editing photos and burning music playlists onto CDs take a little more work (yes, I still make mix CDs). But I am learning as I go, and Linux Mint is one slick operating system that proivides an opimal desktop on which to get things done, and uses minimal resources. I wish I had switched to Linux years ago.

I trust ASUS. They make great monitors, components, and tablets. But clearly going from a MacBook to this is a step down in luxury. Sort of like going from a BMW to a Mazda. But Mazdas are still a lot of fun. If you want to get into Linux computing, this might be your perfect first vehicle to give it a spin.

A Rational Criminal Act: 1971 FBI Burglars Reveal Themselves

This past January, members of the famed Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI stepped forward and revealed themselves in a conference call with the US news media.  

In 1971, the group broke into a small FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, while the nation was followng the Ali-Frasier fight (the 15 round "Fight of the Century," in which Frazier knocked out Ali). They stole thousands of documents. Nearly half of the documents detailed a domestic spying program which had begun under FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, who had a year more to live, and was going to serve as bureau director until the day he died, in May 1972.

The statute of limitations ran out on the bugulary in March, 1976, but members of the group decided that now was a perfect time to reveal themselves, less than a year after Edward Snowden's daring theft of Pentagon and NSA materials, and just in time to helop promote a new book on the break-in.

The 1971 FBI bulgulary is one of the most significant acts of whistleblowing in US history. The stolen documents  were xeroxed and distributed to the media, much like the Pentagon Papers were. The proof that the FBI was committing more time and resources to spying on non-violent activists than investigating organized and interstate crime was too much for that era's Congress to ignore, and led to major -albeit temporary- reforms. 

Hoover was a relentless bureaucrat, who cowed presidents and the Congress for decades, because, it was feared, he had dirt on EVERYBODY. No one wanted to hold him to account. And so it took eight private citizens, breaking the law, to reveal the far worse law breaking of the FBI. Does this sound familiar? Edward Snowden come to mind?

When members of Citizens' Commission stepped forward, NBC featured two of them, the married Raines couple, on the Today show. As the mainstream media usually does, they brought out a figure to provide some sort of counterpoint. They found retired agent Patrick Kelly, who charaterized the Raines' as "rationalizing a criminal act." I would argue that their act is very easy to explain: it was a rational crime. It had to be done. The unconstituinal actions of the FBI had to be revealed by a comparitively tiny crime. It was, frankly, a precursor to electronic acts of thivery, such as those by Anonymous and Wikileaks. 

Needless to say, the responses from the right wing to this news story were both predictable and sad.

World Class Cities Are Made With Infrastructure, Not Asturity.

Can we talk about the UK for a few seconds? That country has a Tory government, which practices the voodoo brand of economics called austerity, horrible storms, likely associated with climate change, which conservatives insist is a liberal hoax, and now a wave of crap! There'll always be a Britain!

One of the Most Extraordinary Developments in the Christie Scandals Happened Sunday

By now, it is so well established that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is a corrupt bully, that further reporting on his scandals ought to be suspended until the subpoenas for the investigations are in. MSNBC was covering Christie so much last month, I thought it was embarrassing. This nation is still at war in Afghanistan, we have a catastrophic, global environmental crisis, the US job market is still dismal, the US has an ongoing gun violence problem, reproductive and women's rights are under fierce attack, Guantanamo is still open, the wealth gap is the biggest it has been in nearly a century, and the US Congress is intent on destroying what's left of the nation - and I mean both sides of the aisle.

The Christie marathon, thankfully, has subsided a bit. 

Now I'm not denying that Christie's quests for political vengeance, which have cost his state quite a lot in terms of money and image, is not significant. It is. He's the most prominent politician to engage in this sort of behavior since President Richard Nixon. Not that Christie is similar to the late Richard Nixon himself. Nixon was vicious and paranoid, seeing enemies and conspiracies everywhere. Christie is a vicious bully, a classic coward who attacks and demeans those weaker than he is. I leave it to the pundits and historians like myself to argue which is worse.

Here's what I think will be the big story until all the subpoenas are carried out. The editorial board of the Star-Ledger, led by Tom Moran, has issued what is essentially a retraction of their endorsement for Chris Christie in his 2013 reelection bid. He won, of course. It is too late, of course. 

There is a fitting cliche: sin in haste, and repent at leisure. At least Moran is admitting the mistake, unlike, for example, the New York Times which allowed the Bush gang to push their imminent invasion of Iraq on its pages, backed the illegal war and published a quiet, partial retraction over a year later.

This is not a perfect story of journalistic excellence, however. If one goes to the link and reads Moran's retraction, he basically says that the Star-Ledger knew all about Christie's scandals and his bad character, and endorsed him anyway. So what else do they know? We'll find out as the investigation proceeds this spring.

Bloomberg and Kelly Leave NYC Wealthier, Probably Hated

Almost all at taxpayer expense of course.

The whole 2004 RNC ordeal ruined New York for me. It proved to me that this town is not for us little people. It isn't even for progressives or dissenters. It's an imperialist, millionaire's playground.

To my fellow New Yorkers, I say, learn your history. This was the only major city not to kick out the British during the American Revolution. That explains a lot right there. So did Ed Koch's sucking up to the GOP in the run up to that convention.

Bloomberg and Kelly have cost this town countless millions of dollars, while systematically trashing the Constitution. And the Bloomberg penalty for all this criminal stupidity? Three consecutive electoral victories as mayor of America's largest city.

Bloomberg spent over $600 Million on his three mayorial campaigns, but leaves office at least four times richer than when he first ran for office. He knew where the biggest ROI was: himself. The rich get richer, right?

Meanwhile, Bloomy's pit bull gets his big reward. 

However, he has asked our city for $1.5M a year for protection. Who hates Ray Kelly so much?