Clearly, you do business with Intuit (Quickbooks, TurboTax, etc.) at your own risk

Intuit - owners of Quickbooks, TurboTax and other widely used financial software products, as well as a provider of financial services such as credit card payment processing - has just dumped one of its customers firmly in the dwang, for politically correct - not legal - reasons.

A couple of months ago Gunsite decided to make a change to a new credit card processor, QuickBooks. It seemed to be a wise business choice at the time and may have been, had Intuit not chosen to go the way they did.

. . .

Then, a week ago – May 11th, 2018 – Gunsite got another phone call from QuickBooks. This time it didn’t go as well. The software company informed Gunsite that they were immediately ceasing all business with them. Why? Because they sell and promote firearms.

At first blush this was frustrating news, but Gunsite figured it could be handled. Then the other shoe dropped: in addition to cutting business ties with Gunsite, QuickBooks/Intuit refused to release the money from credit card charges currently in process from sales that had already made.

This amounts to tens of thousands of dollars from not only purchases made in the Gunsite Pro Shop – including hats, shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs – but also money that had been paid for classes taken on gun safety and marksmanship.

Yes, you read that right. Tens of thousands of dollars in sales of products and classes, paid for in good faith, that Intuit has refused to release. Instead, Intuit stated they would refund those monies to the credit card holders. That means revenue for everything from pens to five-day level 250 pistol courses had just became door prizes, provided free to people who had the benefit of the training and took home products, all courtesy of the Intuit’s largesse.

Ken Campbell is matter-of-fact about the issue: “It is their right in the republic to choose not to do business with us. In fact, I do not want to do business with them or any company that does not support the Second Amendment. The issue is their refusal to release our funds to us.”

There's more at the link.

This is beyond stupid.  As far as I can see, it may verge on the criminal.  At least three lawyers of my acquaintance have observed that withholding funds for ideological rather than legal reasons may well be actionable - and if so, I hope Gunsite takes such action.

My own accountant had just (last month) recommended Quickbooks to me as good accounting software.  Needless to say, under the circumstances, I'll be using something else - there are plenty of competing products out there.  I shall also never again use TurboTax or any other Intuit product.  If they show such contempt for law-abiding businesses and citizens, they clearly hold me in contempt as well - so why should I give them my hard-earned dollars?

I strongly recommend to every reader of this blog that they should not do business with Intuit at all.  The company's decisions in the Gunsite case appear to be driven by political correctness, rather than the law;  and if that's the case once, it probably will be again in future.  Therefore, I intend to let them stew in their own ideological juice, and I suggest that we should all do likewise.  That may be the only language they'll understand.  I also recommend that you contact the company and tell them why you're doing so.  I already have.

EDITED TO ADD:  If you'd like to look at a couple of excellent alternatives to Quickbooks, see my article here.




Peter

Sunday morning music

You can blame a grackle for this morning's selection.  You see, I was working in the garden yesterday afternoon when one flew overhead and dropped a "souvenir" on me.  While I was cleaning up, I thought of the number of times I've been dive-bombed in similar fashion.  By far the worst offenders, in my experience at least, have been seagulls:  so, I thought, why not make this morning's music about them?  (Besides, I can't find that many songs about grackles!)

Perhaps it's inevitable that we should begin with an excerpt from Neil Diamond's music for the movie "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", based on the best-selling book by Richard Bach.

Next, Joni Mitchell's "Song to a Seagull" from her 1968 debut album of the same name.

For a change of pace, here's South African duo Des and Dawn Lindbergh with "The Seagull's Name was Nelson", which was a hit for them in that country in 1971.

Next up, rock group Bad Company didn't just produce hard rock.  Here's their acoustic number "Seagull".  It's available on several of their albums;  this one's from "Remastered".

Finally, let's have fun with English folk rock supergroup Steeleye Span.  This song, "Seagull", is from their album "Tempted and Tried".  This is an extended live version recorded in 2013.  As you can see, even though the group dates back to the 1960's, they still have a lot of fun together as they grow older.

Fun stuff!  And it's all due to an incontinent grackle . . .




Peter

"You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to"

That's the title of an article in Aeon.

Beliefs are factive: to believe is to take to be true. It would be absurd, as the analytic philosopher G E Moore observed in the 1940s, to say: ‘It is raining, but I don’t believe that it is raining.’ Beliefs aspire to truth – but they do not entail it. Beliefs can be false, unwarranted by evidence or reasoned consideration. They can also be morally repugnant. Among likely candidates: beliefs that are sexist, racist or homophobic; the belief that proper upbringing of a child requires ‘breaking the will’ and severe corporal punishment; the belief that the elderly should routinely be euthanised; the belief that ‘ethnic cleansing’ is a political solution, and so on. If we find these morally wrong, we condemn not only the potential acts that spring from such beliefs, but the content of the belief itself, the act of believing it, and thus the believer.

. . .

In exploring the varieties of religious experience ... the ‘right to believe’ can establish a climate of religious tolerance. Those religions that define themselves by required beliefs (creeds) have engaged in repression, torture and countless wars against non-believers that can cease only with recognition of a mutual ‘right to believe’. Yet, even in this context, extremely intolerant beliefs cannot be tolerated. Rights have limits and carry responsibilities.

Unfortunately, many people today seem to take great licence with the right to believe, flouting their responsibility.

. . .

Believing, like willing, seems fundamental to autonomy, the ultimate ground of one’s freedom. But, as Clifford also remarked: ‘No one man’s belief is in any case a private matter which concerns himself alone.’ Beliefs shape attitudes and motives, guide choices and actions. Believing and knowing are formed within an epistemic community, which also bears their effects. There is an ethic of believing, of acquiring, sustaining, and relinquishing beliefs – and that ethic both generates and limits our right to believe. If some beliefs are false, or morally repugnant, or irresponsible, some beliefs are also dangerous. And to those, we have no right.

There's more at the link.

The problem with this perspective is simply this:  Who decides what is factually, objectively, empirically true or false?

• The pseudo-science of eugenics was so highly thought of in the early 20th century that it led to official "programs [that] included both 'positive' measures, such as encouraging individuals deemed particularly 'fit' to reproduce, and 'negative' measures such as marriage prohibitions and forced sterilization of people deemed unfit for reproduction".
• The Nazi Party in Germany was convinced, on the basis of eugenics and other "sciences" that today we know to be false, that certain races were superior to all other races, and that the latter could (and should) therefore be treated as "subhuman".
• Philosophers have argued for centuries about the foundation for human knowledge, awareness, ethics, etc.  So have theologians from various religious traditions.  There has never been consensus among them - but does that mean we can automatically judge any or all of them to be "wrong"?  On what grounds?  Religious belief has seldom, if ever, been founded on logic and fact - more on belief in and acceptance of some form of divine revelation, which by definition is not susceptible to scientific analysis.
• Courts of law have to decide on guilt or innocence of suspects - but there are countless cases where their verdicts have been overturned, because they made their initial decision on the basis of faulty or fraudulent evidence, or false witness statements, or whatever.  They can only decide on the basis of facts as presented to them, and those "facts" may or may not be accurate.

I could go on, but the point is clear enough.  If you say that I don't have the right to believe whatever I want to, what gives you the right to say that?  If you argue it's because the facts are on your side, how sure are you of those facts?  Climate change is a good example.  The foundational elements of the eco-warriors' case have been systematically debunked over and over again, until their fanatical repetition of those discredited elements begins to seem more like religion than science.  There is no scientific consensus, as they claim, and the science is not settled.  Why, then, should I permit them to classify my skepticism as unrealistic or untrue?  From their perspective, likewise, why should they permit my skepticism to influence their belief in what they regard as "settled science"?

As soon as anyone decides that he, or she, or they, have the authority to decide whether or not my beliefs in any area are correct or not, and are therefore permitted or not, then I have precisely the same right to make that decision about what they believe.  There are two edges to that sword.  As to enforcing their beliefs over mine . . . that way lies civil war.  It's been tried before, and we all know the results.  And yet, we fail to learn the lessons that are so clear.  What are Facebook and Twitter doing now but imposing what they believe to be right upon their users, by blocking views that differ from theirs?  They are telling their users that they will decide what views they will be allowed to see, because they know better than their users what is right and appropriate.

This will not end well.

Peter

Tentacles and space-suits, oh my!

I had to smile at this report.

The paper ... attempts to tackle the question of how life originated here on Earth. The researchers embrace a number of proposed explanations and discuss their implications, but one particularly interesting note is their proposal that cephalopods (squid, octopus and cuttlefish) may have originated somewhere other than Earth. Whoa.

“Evidence of the role of extraterrestrial viruses in affecting terrestrial evolution has recently been plausibly implied in the gene and transcriptome sequencing of Cephalopods,” the researchers write. “The genome of the Octopus shows a staggering level of complexity with 33,000 protein-coding genes more than is present in Homo sapiens.”

The scientists challenge the belief that modern cephalopods evolved to their present form here on Earth and propose the possibility that those we see today are the descendants of creatures that arrived on Earth frozen in an icy comet.

“Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch color and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene,” the paper says, pointing to the possibility that this “great leap forward” in complexity was due to “cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs” crashing into the ocean on comets millions of years ago.

There's more at the link.

I think that's been thought of before . . .

Peter

The war in Ukraine and its lessons

Courtesy of a link at Cdr. Salamander's place, I came across this article by Col. Liam Collins.

The situation in eastern Ukraine might best be described as “World War I with technology.” Venturing to the front line today, you would quickly learn the two greatest threats facing Ukrainian soldiers are snipers and Russian artillery. Unlike in 1915, however, soldiers on 2018’s “Eastern Front” receive text messages on their phones telling them their cause is hopeless and they must regularly attempt to avoid being spotted from an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The fighting in Ukraine during the past 2½ years provides great insight into the types of threats facing the U.S. Army today and sheds light on what a war with a near-peer enemy—or an enemy sponsored by a near-peer—would look like.

. . .

What’s Old Is New

Electronic warfare. Russia has deployed a wide range of electronic warfare systems in Ukraine, using them to jam communications, locate headquarters and subsequently target them with long-range artillery. Few active U.S. Army members grew up in an age worrying about the signals their antennas and radios produced. After visiting a battalion tactical operations center at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, a senior Ukrainian officer observed that the headquarters would not last long in eastern Ukraine. With its antenna farm located only meters from the tactical operations center, it would basically have been sending an “aim here” message to the Russians.

We have returned to an era where communications must be short and infrequent and tactical operations centers must run their antennas hundreds of meters away. Ultimately, this will make command, control and communications more difficult, and commanders will have to get comfortable in an environment where they don’t have information dominance and don’t know the exact status of each of their units at all times. Additionally, with a force largely reliant on GPS technology, it is time for soldiers to go back to being expert navigators using only a map and compass.

. . .

CAMOUFLAGE. Largely forgotten over the past 17 years, camouflage is back in vogue. With the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles that can serve as ISR platforms for artillery, an element spotted by a UAV may only have minutes to move before a rain of artillery fires falls. After witnessing Ukrainian and NATO units in training, it is clear the Ukrainians take this seriously while NATO units only go through the motions. Ukrainian vehicles look like giant, mobile vegetation clusters, with camouflage netting put up if a vehicle is stopped for any length of time. NATO vehicles, by contrast, are too often operated on the assumption that speed alone provides sufficient security during movement, and netting (often substandard) is more slowly put up after stopping.

There's more at the link.

I was very interested to read this article, having seen at first hand what it's like to fight without air superiority, in an electronic warfare environment, with camouflage an essential survival tool.  That was back in the 1980's, in Angola.  The tools and equipment we used were, of course, considerably less sophisticated than those in use today;  but the lessons we learned align very closely with those described by Col. Collins.

Even given such restrictions, it's still surprising how much can be achieved by simply "thinking outside the box", and turning what appears to be an enemy advantage into a millstone around their necks.  It also helps to consider non-technological solutions to a seemingly technological problem.  A few examples from Angola:

• You can't buy sufficiently advanced radar equipment, and/or can't position what you have far enough forward, to monitor enemy air traffic landing at or taking off from an important air base?  Put human observers in the bush nearby, with scrambled satellite communications.  A radio call that a flight of MiGs are taking off, and turning towards the area of operations, is as good as a radar display, and just as accurate.  As a bonus, the observers can also direct artillery fire if you can get your cannon into range.
• The enemy has spent billions constructing a supply corridor from the coast, across hundreds of miles of trackless bush, to supply their forces operating against yours.  Are the enemy's air defenses so strong that your own aircraft can't interdict the route?  Then interdict the ships before they're unloaded.  A few limpet mines, strategically placed by frogmen on the hulls of Soviet and Cuban freighters, can sink an awful lot of weapons and electronics and other things before they move even one mile down the trail.  As a bonus, while the enemy might be able to dry out, de-rust and re-lubricate AK-47's, electronics take less kindly to salt water.
• Location, location, location.  If the enemy's area of operations can be determined beforehand, get to know it before they arrive.  Plot every significant terrain feature, know where they will have to go to get water, understand how terrain will affect their advance . . . then prepare your artillery fire plans and air interdiction operations beforehand.  If they can't advance a yard without taking damage or casualties, they'll advance a lot more slowly.  In many cases, the human cost will make their troops very, very reluctant to follow orders, knowing that those orders are going to get a lot of them killed.  A discouraged, fearful soldier is a lot easier opponent than one who's having it all his own way.
• If the enemy has local air superiority, learn to camouflage your units and movements so well that he can't bomb you.  He may know the general area where you are, he may even have a reasonably good idea of your location, but if he can't pinpoint your actual position, he can't drop a bomb right on top of you.  He can only crap all over the area in the hope of getting lucky.  Sometimes he will . . . but most of the time, he'll convert trees and bushes into matchsticks.  This is expensive for him, and good for you.

There are many time-honored lessons of war that probably have to be re-learned in our technologically sophisticated environment.

Peter

The bleeding never ends for the Catholic Church

I'm sickened, disgusted, outraged and infuriated to read of the latest child sex abuse crisis involving clergy of the Catholic Church.

Every Chilean bishop offered to resign Friday over a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, in the biggest shakeup ever in the Catholic Church's long-running abuse saga.

. . .

It marked the first known time in history that an entire national bishops conference had offered to resign en masse over scandal, and laid bare the devastation that the abuse crisis has caused the Catholic Church in Chile and beyond.

Calls had mounted for the resignations after details emerged of the contents of a 2,300-page Vatican report into the Chilean scandal leaked early Friday. Francis had accused the bishops of destroying evidence of sex crimes, pressuring investigators to minimize abuse accusations and showing "grave negligence" in protecting children from pedophile priests.

In one of the most damning documents from the Vatican on the issue, Francis said the entire Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible for "grave defects" in handling cases and the resulting loss of credibility that the Catholic Church has suffered.

. . .

... there was "grave negligence" in protecting children from pedophiles by bishops and religious superiors — a reference to the many cases of sexual abuse that have arisen in recent years within Chilean religious orders, including the Salesians, Franciscans and the Marist Brothers community.

Some of these religious order priests and brothers were expelled from their congregations because of immoral conduct, but had their cases "minimized of the absolute gravity of their criminal acts, attributing to them mere weakness or moral lapses," Francis wrote.

But those same people "were then welcomed into other dioceses, in an obviously imprudent way, and given diocesan or parish jobs that gave them daily contact with minors," he said.

Such behavior has been the hallmark of the clerical sex abuse crisis worldwide, with bishops and religious superiors shuttling abusers from parish to parish or dioceses rather than reporting them to police or launching canonical investigations and removing them from ministry.

There's more at the link.

I detailed my actions in response to this crisis in a four part series of articles on this blog, several years ago.  What I said then remains true today, I think also for the church in Chile.

Let me be absolutely blunt about this.  The Catholic Church, as an institution, and its bishops acting as a collective, have lied, are lying, and will continue to lie to the people of God about this problem.  They have no interest whatsoever in resolving it - only in protecting their own power, and the institution of the Church as a whole, and its power and prestige in society.  They do not care about the individuals involved, or the victims . . . or the good clergy who have been tainted with the stench of this scandal.

How can I say that?  It's very simple.  Actions speak louder than words - and lack of action is, in itself, an action.  The Church, in the United States, in Chile, in the Vatican, and elsewhere, has taken little or no effective, meaningful action against those who were ultimately responsible for this scandal - namely, its bishops and administrators, who routinely concealed the extent of the problem, shuffled offenders around among themselves, and allowed them to continue to offend, rather than deal with the matter.  Even after the scandal blew up, many leaders of the Church continued to try to defend their offices and the institution of the Church, rather than admit that the situation was absolutely indefensible.  Many of the worst offenders were whisked off to Rome and given sheltered employment there, safe from extradition or any legal consequences of their neglect.  Many are still there.

The Church has also failed to act against the breeding-grounds for so many of these problems - its seminaries.  Rather than deal with that problem themselves, the US bishops cravenly abdicated their responsibilities to a Vatican commission, and little or no effective action has resulted from its report.  Many seminaries still tolerate, if not actively encourage, instruction that is at variance with (sometimes diametrically opposed to) Church teaching.  Modern theological experiments are emphasized over classical, and the traditional philosophical and spiritual underpinning of the priesthood appears to be conspicuous by its absence in the curriculum.  What there is of it is frequently corrupted to the point that it would be better not to offer it at all.  (For a valuable, albeit one-sided discussion of these issues, see here.)  Precisely the same problems appear to have affected seminaries in Chile.

By its lack of meaningful action, the Church has (in my opinion) condemned itself, and its current generation of leaders, to the most ghastly consequences, temporal and spiritual.  Millions of Catholics  - perhaps tens of millions - have left the faith.  I know I'm not the only priest who resigned in disgust and outrage over what was clearly no more than pious window-dressing to deal with the problem, instead of seeking real, meaningful solutions.  That has not changed, and it will probably never change under the present system of Church government.

The very fact that these scandals persist, all over the world, is the clearest possible sign that the Church does not care.  It has done nothing to truly deal with the problem.  It appears to be institutionally incapable of doing so.  Even the Chilean situation was obfuscated, glossed over, denied and dismissed, until the evidence became so damning that it had to be confronted.  My thanks, congratulations and condolences to those who worked so hard (and some of whom probably wrecked their careers in the Church) to ensure that the truth finally came out in that country.

May God have mercy upon his Church, and upon all those of her people who have tried to be faithful in the face of such criminal, ungodly indifference by those who were supposed to "tend the flock of God that is their charge".  Instead, they have proved to be worthy successors, not of the Apostles, but of another class of leader.  "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity."

I . . . I'm just too sickened by this to find the appropriate words.  I would even use profanity, if I could, but I don't know any swear words or phrases strong enough.

May God have mercy on all of us for our sins . . . and upon his Church, which appears to have abandoned (at least among its leadership) the truth and Godliness he wished for her.

Peter

Mugshot of the week

For the benefit of overseas readers, in the USA a "mugshot" is a common term for the photograph taken of suspects/offenders by police when they're arrested, as they're booked into the local jail.

This one comes to us courtesy of the Oakland County Sheriff's Office in Michigan.  More information here.

Blue???




Peter

A big "Thank You!" to all my readers

Thank you very much to all my readers who've bought, and helped spread the word about, my new novel, "The Stones of Silence".

It was uploaded to Amazon.com last weekend, and officially published on Monday, May 14th.  It shot up the charts very quickly, briefly reaching a peak at #935 in the entire Kindle Store.  To crack the top 1,000 books (out of over 6½ million in the Kindle Store, both paid and free) is very hard to do, so I'm grateful to all of you for making it possible.

It's currently at #18 (out of the top 100 books) in Hot New Releases - Space Opera, and #9 in Hot New Releases - Colonization, both part of the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre.

All of those ranks will change fairly quickly, of course, depending on day-to-day sales, and the entry of newer books that will push older publications down the ranks in their turn.  Nevertheless, I'm very pleased.

If you've read and enjoyed the book (or even if you didn't enjoy it), please leave a review at the book's page on Amazon.com!  They're critically important to the ongoing success of any independent author.  I'll be very grateful.  So far there are five reviews up, four five-star and one four-star.  To those five readers, a special thank you!

Now to finish editing the second and third books in the trilogy.  Look for them next month and in July, with print editions to follow.

Peter

The US national debt and its inevitable consequences

Following the report earlier this week about a proposal to increase Illinois' property tax to pay for that state's hundred-billion-dollar-plus shortfall in pension funding, Simon Black warns that the situation across the nation as a whole is just as bad.

On October 22, 1981, the national debt in the United States crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time in history.

It took nearly two centuries to reach that unfortunate milestone.

. . .

Today, the national debt stands at more than $21 trillion– a milestone hit roughly two months ago.

This means that the government added $20 trillion to the national debt in the 37 years between October 22, 1981 and March 15, 2018.

That’s an average of nearly $1.5 BILLION added to the national debt every single day… $62 million per hour… $1 million per minute… and more than $17,000 per SECOND.

But the problem for the US government is that this trend has grown worse over the years.

It took only 214 days for the government to go from $20 trillion in debt to $21 trillion in debt– less than eight months to add a trillion dollars to the national debt.

That’s an average of almost $52,000 per second.

Think about that: on average, the US national debt increases by more in a split second than the typical American worker earns in an entire year.

And there is no end in sight.

At 105% of GDP, America’s national debt is already larger than the size of the entire US economy. (By comparison the national debt was just 31% of GDP in 1981.)

Plus, the government’s own projections show a steep increase to the debt in the coming years and decades.

The Treasury Department has already estimated that it will borrow $1 trillion this fiscal year, $1 trillion next year, and another trillion dollars the year after that.

They’re also forecasting the national debt to exceed $30 trillion by 2025.

. . .

Last year the government spent HALF of its budget just to pay for Social Security and Medicare.

The situation is so dire that the government spends more than its entire tax revenue just on these mandatory entitlement programs, plus Defense and interest on the debt.

Even if you could eliminate entire departments of government, they would still be running a budget deficit and going deeper into debt.

. . .

It’s a financial death spiral.

Think about it: if the government is having this much trouble making ends meet when they’re paying 2% interest on $21 trillion in debt, what’s going to happen when they’re paying 5% on $30 trillion?

It’s foolish to think that this trend has a consequence-free outcome. No nation in history has ever become prosperous by borrowing record amounts of debt to finance reckless spending.

There's more at the link.

Sadly, it's not just the US government that is so profligate.  Governments around the world have made the same mistake.  Nor is it just at government level.  Private US debt is also at astronomical levels, so great that many families and individuals are borrowing every month from one loan account or credit card, in order to pay the minimum balance due on another loan or credit card.  That's just as much of a financial death spiral, and just as sure to end badly.

I've said before that debt is killing us.  I see no reason to change that grim prognosis.

Peter

Headline of the week

Found at Wirecutter's place, under the headline "Must be the British national fish":

Says a lot for the reputation of British dentists, doesn't it?




Peter

How not to do it yourself

Two of my regular cartoon reads had overlapping themes yesterday, and both made me laugh.  I thought you might enjoy them, too.  Click each image to be taken to a larger version at their Web pages.  (Note, too, the mouse-over text at the second page.)

First, The Whiteboard discusses how to repair something not worth repairing.

Next, XKCD provides a handy (?) repair flowchart.

Peter

Not the Moodiest of Blues

I've enjoyed the music of the Moody Blues, particularly their original seven albums, for many years.  I was therefore intrigued to learn that an early version of their song "The Story In Your Eyes", slightly extended from the one that was released and with slightly different vocal patterns, had been recorded in 1970.  It languished unremembered until 2008, when it appeared on the remastered version of their album "Every Good Boy Deserves Favour".  It's different enough that it caught my attention, so here it is.

How young they were then - and how young I was . . . innocents abroad!

Peter

Millions of Minnesota taxpayer dollars defrauded every year?

A news report suggests that there's an organized racket in the Muslim immigrant/refugee community in Minnesota to defraud that state's government.

For five months, Fox 9 has been investigating what appears to be rampant fraud in a massive state program.

This fraud is suspected of costing Minnesota taxpayers as much as $100 million a year.

The Fox 9 Investigators reporting is based on public records and nearly a dozen government sources who have direct knowledge of what is happening.

These sources have a deep fear, and there is evidence to support their concerns, that some of that public money is ending up in the hands of terrorists.

SUITCASES FILLED WITH MONEY

This story begins at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where mysterious suitcases filled with cash have become a common carry-on.

. . .

Sources said last year alone, more than $100 million in cash left MSP in carry-on luggage.

The national, go-to expert on what is behind these mysterious money transfers is Glen Kerns.

“What we were interested in is where it was going,” Kerns said.

He is a former Seattle police detective who spent 15 years on the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, until his retirement.

“It’s an outright crime, it’s unbelievable,” he said.

Kerns tracked millions of dollars in cash that was leaving on flights from Seattle.

It was coming from Hawalas, businesses used to courier money to countries that have no official banking system.

Some immigrant communities rely on Hawalas to send funds to help impoverished relatives back home.

Kerns discovered some of the money was being funneled to a Hawala in the region of Somalia that is controlled by the al Shabaab terrorist group.

“I talked to a couple of sources who had lived in that region and I said, 'If money is going to this Hawala do you think it is going to al Shabaab?'" said Kerns. "And he said, 'Oh definitely, that area is controlled by al Shabaab, and they control the Hawala there.'”

He said when the money arrives, whether it was intended for legitimate purposes or not, al Shabaab or other groups demand a cut.

As Kerns dug deeper, he found that some of the individuals who were sending out tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of remittance payments happened to be on government assistance in this country.

How could they possibly come up with such big bucks to transfer back home?

“We had sources that told us, 'It’s welfare fraud, it’s all about the daycare,'” said Kerns.

FOX 9 REPORTED ON THE FRAUD FIVE YEARS AGO

To better understand the connection between daycare fraud and the surge in carry-on cash, you have to look at the history of this crime.

Five years ago the Fox 9 Investigators were first to report that daycare fraud was on the rise in Minnesota, exposing how some businesses were gaming the system to steal millions in government subsidies meant to help low-income families with their childcare expenses.

“It’s a great way to make some money,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said.

In order for the scheme to work, the daycare centers need to sign up low income families that qualify for child care assistance funding.

Surveillance videos from a case prosecuted by Hennepin County show parents checking their kids into a center, only to leave with them a few minutes later. Sometimes, no children would show up.

Either way, the center would bill the state for a full day of childcare.

Video from that same case shows a man handing out envelopes of what are believed to be kickback payments to parents who are in on the fraud.

When asked where the money was going, Freeman said, “I don’t know exactly where it went. But it adds up when you begin to look at how many people were involved."

There's more at the link.

My one question is:  if this has been known for years, why has Minnesota's government not cracked down on it?  Can it be they're letting political correctness and social justice concerns get in the way of enforcing the law and protecting taxpayers' money?  Say it ain't so!




Peter

Privacy? What privacy?

Yet again, we're reminded that we live in a de facto surveillance state.  It's just been privatized.

The digital privacy world was rocked late Thursday evening when The New York Times reported on Securus, a prison telecom company that has a service enabling law enforcement officers to locate most American cell phones within seconds. The company does this via a basic Web interface leveraging a location API—creating a way to effectively access a massive real-time database of cell-site records.

Securus’ location ability relies on other data brokers and location aggregators that obtain that information directly from mobile providers, usually for the purposes of providing some commercial service like an opt-in product discount triggered by being near a certain location. ("You’re near a Carl’s Jr.! Stop in now for a free order of fries with purchase!")

. . .

Currently, the Supreme Court is set to rule on the case of Carpenter v. United States, which asks whether police can obtain more than 120 days' worth of cell-site location information of a criminal suspect without a warrant. In that case, as is common in many investigations, law enforcement presented a cell provider with a court order to obtain such historical data. But the ability to obtain real-time location data that Securus reportedly offers skips that entire process, and it's potentially far more invasive.

Securus’ location service as used by law enforcement is also currently being scrutinized. The service is at the heart of an ongoing federal prosecution of a former Missouri sheriff’s deputy who allegedly used it at least 11 times against a judge and other law enforcement officers.

. . .

"Top officials at Securus confirmed to my office that Securus takes no steps to verify that uploaded documents in fact provide authorization for real-time surveillance, or conduct any review of surveillance requests," Wyden continued. "Securus claimed, incorrectly, that correctional facilities, not Securus, must ensure that correctional officers don’t misuse the Web portal."

There's more at the link.

Note that Securus does not get its data directly from the telecom companies, but from third-party aggregators.  What's more, anyone who can access it from a purportedly law enforcement account - whether real, or hacked - can request location information on any cellphone in the country, providing only an online assertion that the request is legal.  It's not checked or verified in any way.  Furthermore, the service doesn't depend on whether or not the phone's GPS is enabled.  It can track anything connected to the cellular network, anywhere.

Think of what this means for criminals.  For a major organization such as a Mexican drug cartel, or organized crime in the USA, it'll be child's play to set up or hack into a Securus account.  Once that's done, it can input the cellphone number of any individual it wants to follow or monitor, up to and including law enforcement personnel's private phones or tablets.  That done, it knows where they are on an almost real-time basis.  What better way to know whether they're following criminals, or meeting with suspected informers?  "That cop spent half an hour in Jaime's shop.  What was Jaime selling him?  Tortillas - or information?"  Too bad for Jaime if a cartel suspects him of being an informer.

On the personal level, too, this is frightening.  I can see this coming into play in divorces, civil court actions, and many other situations.  Parents may use it to track their kids, domineering spouses may use it to track their (in)significant others, private investigators may use it to track clients . . . the possibilities are endless.  At present, at least a nominal affirmation that the access is for law enforcement purposes is required;  but the time may not be far away that it can be done with no explanation or justification at all.  What if someone sets up a server in Canada, or Mexico, or the Caribbean, accessing the same third-party aggregation data and providing it to all comers, with no questions asked except the number of their credit card?

Once again, George Orwell is proved to have been prescient.

Peter

I may resemble that remark

Miss D. and I have been absent from the gym for several weeks, due to minor health issues that are rapidly being resolved.  Yesterday was our first day back . . . and today, we're so stiff it hurts!  That made yesterday's Pearls Before Swine cartoon particularly appropriate.  (Click the image to see a larger version at its Web page.)

What can I say but "Heh (Ow!)"?




Peter

Catch-and-release drones?

I was interested to see this video clip about DARPA's Gremlins program for air-deployable, reusable unmanned aerial vehicles.  The technology appears to be advancing by leaps and bounds.

When you consider this in the light of "swarm" UAV technology, it looks even more interesting.  The day may not be too far away when almost all aerial activity over a heavily contested battlefield will be UAV's, launched, recovered and supported from distant platforms, which may themselves be manned or unmanned.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #1,010

Today's award goes to a meth-befuddled motorist in Florida.

A man was arrested Sunday after asking a Florida Highway Patrol trooper if he could run away from the scene of a crash, saying he could get the trooper more meth than he had found in his car.

Scott Ecklund, 32, was arrested on charges of methamphetamine possession and driving with a suspended license. He was arrested earlier this month and accused of crashing a Chevrolet truck into a house in Winter Park and claiming to be an FBI agent with an AR-style rifle, police said at the time.

. . .

“Mr. Ecklund was making no sense during our conversation,” [the trooper] wrote [in his report].

There's more at the link.

Hmmm . . . clearly, when one's high on crystal meth, one's thought processes are less than crystal-clear!  I'd like to have been a fly on the wall, to observe the trooper's reaction to the offer.

Peter

The incredible contempt of the political class for ordinary people

I was infuriated to read a presentation by a senior economist from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.  It was at a seminar titled "Navigating Pension Reform in Illinois: What Lies Ahead?"  We've already taken a hard look at Illinois' self-inflicted financial and pension woes, and how they threaten the economic future of every resident of that state.  Now, to solve them, the presentation proposes to hit those residents even harder.

The title of the presentation is "Can (or Should) a Statewide Property Tax Be Used To Payoff the Unfunded Pension Liability?"  (Link is to an Adobe Acrobat document in .PDF format.)  Here are a couple of key slides used by the speaker.  Click each slide image for a larger view.

Note the blatant contempt and indifference displayed by the speaker for the average Illinois taxpayer.  A few lowlights:

• "The tax would be capitalized into real estate values which would prevent people leaving the state to avoid paying for the liability."  We have decided that you, peasant, must pay for our unfunded promises to trades unions.  Don't like it?  Well, **** you!  What's more, we're going to make sure you can't afford to move away to escape the tax, by making it more difficult to sell your house with its suddenly higher property tax.
• "A dedicated property tax would only be used to pay off the pension liability.  Once this occurs, the tax expires."  Suuuuure it does!  I'm willing to bet, once the tax is put in place, it'll never expire.  It'll simply be repurposed for other uses.  When have politicians ever been willing to let people have their money back?  If it wasn't for President Trump pushing with might and main, Congress wouldn't have passed tax reforms recently - and if the Democrats regain the majority, they're already promising to repeal the reforms.
• "It avoids squeezing out other state government services by making them compete for the same tax base."  In other words, we don't need to save money on other state expenditure - we can go on spending like drunken sailors, and force our citizens to pay for the pension shortfall by imposing an additional tax that won't affect existing taxes.  Pay up, peasant!
• "Communities with high effective property tax rates could be exempted since the additional property tax burden might have serious development consequences."  Let's be clear.  By "communities with high effective property tax rates", the speaker means Chicago, the heartland of tax-and-spend politics.  In so many words, he's saying that property taxes can be raised for every other community in Illinois, while leaving Chicago - with its high city property tax rates - minimally affected.  You live outside Chicago?  Too bad, peasant!

I can only repeat what I said in the heading of this blog post.  These proposals display nothing so clearly as "The incredible contempt of the political class for ordinary people".  The politicians can and will make whatever promises they think will keep them in power . . . and then they'll make their people - you and I - pay for those promises, by hook or by crook, whether or not we think their promises, and the expenditure needed to make them work, were, or are, or will be, a good idea.

If it were up to me, I'd simply cancel the impossible pension promises and deals, and tell the unions to get real.  However, the politicians rely on those unions to bring out the vote for them - so that isn't about to happen.

Illinois politicians.  Tar.  Feathers.  Rails.  Some assembly required.




Peter

Big airport OOPS!

An Asiana Airlines Airbus A330 airliner got too close to a Turkish Airlines Airbus A321 at Istanbul Airport yesterday.  I don't know why the Turkish Airlines plane was so far back in its parking position.  It doesn't look like it was being pushed back after loading passengers.

You can read more about the collision here.

I wonder how long both jets will spend in the body & fender shop?

Peter

"The Stones of Silence" is now available!

After several months of hard work, I'm delighted to announce that "The Stones of Silence", the first volume in the "Cochrane's Company" trilogy, is now available in e-book format on Amazon.com.  All three books will be published in print format in about three months' time.

The blurb reads:

The secret is out - the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it's about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy.

Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They've conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane's Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves.

But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they're going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize - and their boss, too!

Book Two of the trilogy, "An Airless Storm", will be published next month.  I put up a teaser excerpt from it here.

Book Three, "The Pride of the Damned", will follow in July.  Its cover is still being finalized.  I put up a teaser excerpt from it here.  As soon as all three e-book editions have been published, I'll get cracking on the print editions, which should follow within a couple of weeks.

I described the process of writing and preparing these books a few weeks ago. You might enjoy the background information. Also, yesterday, my wife, Miss D., wrote about the process of classifying and categorizing books in preparation for launching them, with specific reference to "The Stones of Silence". I have to admit, I'd never have thought about what she said, but she's right.

A big "Thank you!" to all my readers for your support and encouragement while writing this series - and to Miss D. for her unfailing support, without which I couldn't have done it.  I hope you enjoy the trilogy.  Please, please, PLEASE, leave a review on Amazon after you've read it!  Reviews are the lifeblood of independent authors such as myself.  They make an enormous difference to other potential readers, who will often decide whether or not to invest their entertainment dollars on the basis of what other readers have said about a book.

Thanks again.

Peter