Tag: galactically-stupid

Save Houston’s food trucks (from overly aggressive HPD officers)

A recent post to the Houston Press blog Eating Your Words discusses a baffling incident that almost feels like it’s straight out of the Twilight Zone. It involves local food truck The Modular, run by Joshua Martinez, and an as-yet-unnamed HPD officer.

Quoting the article:

“[The officer] told me, ‘You’re supposed to move every 59 minutes. You’re a mobile food truck,'” Martinez said, recalling the conversation 15 minutes after it happened last night. He spoke from the parking lot outside his food truck, which was parked on private property. “I showed him my licenses, explained that we are supposed to move every 24 hours and go back to our commissary.”

“He didn’t listen,” Martinez said of the HPD officer. “He just kept saying, ‘You’re in violation. I can give you up to $6,000 in tickets.'” […] “If I violated every health department violation there was, it wouldn’t be $6,000!”

The story goes on to say a formal complaint against HPD is pending. And for good reason; there is no excuse for this kind of disgraceful harassment of food truck operators by law enforcement. Especially considering that the officer did not name the city ordinance in question. The city’s own web page about mobile food units mentions nothing about this supposed “move every 59 minutes requirement.

Joshua runs a good food truck which I had the pleasure of patronizing at Canned Acoustica IV back at the end of August. I’m glad people like him are willing to stand up to this kind of flagrant badgering by law enforcement. I’m holding out hope that once the complaint is filed, the officer in question will be treated to some free weight loss (as in, being relieved of his badge).

One hockey season, hold the bananas

Racism takes many forms. I had honestly hoped that we’d see an end to the rather stupid and juvenile throwing of bananas onto the field as a racist statement against (primarily) athletes of African descent and/or with darker skin. If you haven’t heard much about it, it’s because mainly it happens in soccer games outside the US and Canada.

And until recently, exclusively in such games, but alas, that’s no longer the case. RT.com reported on the incident which occured in London, Ontario, Canada, during a preseason game between the Detroit Red Wings and Philadelphia Flyers, where Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds was targeted by a banana or a banana peel thrown on the ice at him. The COO of the Flyers owners made his statement based exclusively on the player safety issue, referring only to “an object [thrown] onto the ice” in a statement. This was followed up by this official statement from NHL Comissioner which makes even more cursory reference to what actually happened, only denouncing it as an “obviously stupid and ignorant action” which “is in no way representative of our fans or the people of London, Ontario.”

I prefer to call it what it is: flagrant racism that has no place in any sport, certainly not profesional hockey in North America. It is most unfortunate that the guilty party was not identified. I hope this person is found, and barred from further attendance of hockey games anywhere in the NHL. The consequences for flagrant hate speech which has the additional effect of endangering players need to be severe, lest this kind of hooliganism become commonplace across the US and Canada.

DHS takes a whack at the Mozilla Foundation

Harvey Anderson, a Mozilla employee in charge of legal and business affairs, recently blogged about a request by the Department of Homeland Security to take down the MafiaaFire add-on. The apparent issue DHS has with the plug-in is that it redirects the users from one domain to another automatically, which is usually not a big deal. Except that in this case, it’s a tool to circumvent domain name seizures.

[Mozilla’s] approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order.  Thus, to evaluate Homeland Security’s request, we asked them several questions similar to those below to understand the legal justification:

  • Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)
  • Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.
  • Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire add-on is based?

The fact that DHS is requesting takedowns from third parties as far detached as Mozilla shows just how much the (losing) legal battle to stop copyright infringement has gotten out of hand. I’m glad we have people willing to step up and call the bluff of the DHS. Last I checked, there is nothing illegal about circumventing the seizure of a domain name, and in essence all MafiaaFire does is say “oh, here’s a request for seizedexampledomain.com, let’s redirect it to thenewdomaintheyjustregistered.net.” (In some cases, maybe it’s just the old or a new IP address bound to the old name; I haven’t really looked at how this plugin works.)

I see no reason why the list of these domains, and the information how to get to the same site despite the domain being hijacked, is protected speech. MafiaaFire could just as easily be used by Chinese citizens to circumvent government blocking. It’s an anti-censorship tool, and I take a dim view of those who attempt to censor the publishers of an anti-censorship tool.

I can accept that the DHS doesn’t like being shown up in such a fashion. But telling Mozilla to take down this plugin won’t make it go away. It’s out there, and the plugin authors will undoubtedly find somewhere else to post it.

Is lack of intelligence a requirement to be a judge in Illinois?

I honestly don’t know what else to conclude after reading this article than it must be a requirement to have next to zero intelligence to be a judge in Illinois. This is sort of a follow-up to the Christopher Drew case that I blogged about back in 2010 June. It involves a very similar abuse of the state’s wiretapping law.

AlterNet reports on the plight of 41-year-old Michael Allison of Bridgeport, Illinois. His crime was keeping non-working cars on his mother’s property in the nearby town of Robinson. Both cities have “eyesore” laws requiring inoperable cars to either be registered or kept in a garage. The nasty part of this is that in Illinois, registered vehicle owners can be randomly selected for liability insurance verification questionnaire mailouts, and a failure to respond to such a questionnaire results in the suspension of the registration. (In Texas, by contrast, one only needs to show proof of insurance at the time of registration and–since Texas requires it as well–annual safety inspection. Though it is technically frowned upon, in Texas one can get insurance, renew registration and/or bring the inspection current, then immediately cancel the policy.)

Anyway, Michael sued the city of Bridgeport in 2007 claiming the “eyesore” law was a violation of his civil rights and the city’s impound fees amounted to a cash grab. This resulted in local police harassment and threats of arrest over the next couple of years.

Fast forward to 2010 January. Michael requests a court reporter for his hearing and is denied. In the letter he made it clear that he would be recording the proceedings himself were his request denied–an understandable action from a citizen who feels he is being wronged by the system and merely wants to document himself for his own protection.

Quoting the story, here’s what happens next:

Just after he walked through the courthouse door the next day, Allison says Crawford County Circuit Court Judge Kimbara Harrell asked him whether he had a tape recorder in his pocket. He said yes. Harrell then asked him if it was turned on. Allison said it was. Harrell then informed the defendant that he was in violation of the Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it a Class 1 felony to record someone without his consent. “You violated my right to privacy,” the judge said.

Allison responded that he had no idea it was illegal to record public officials during the course of their work, that there was no sign or notice barring tape recorders in the courtroom, and that he brought one only because his request for a court reporter had been denied. No matter: After Harrell found him guilty of violating the car ordinance, Allison, who had no prior criminal record, was hit with five counts of wiretapping, each punishable by four to 15 years in prison. Harrell threw him in jail, setting bail at $35,000.

This is a blatant attempt at intimidation which the entire citizenship of Illinois should be ashamed of. I don’t know where Mr. Harrell (a man I believe unworthy of the title of “Judge” or “The Honorable”) gets off claiming he has some kind of privacy rights in a public courtroom, especially after Michael asked for a court reporter.

I’m not sure how Mr. Harrell became a judge. But I do know lawyers and judges are supposed to uphold the concept of equal justice for all. This abuse of a poorly written wiretapping law flies in the face of anything resembling justice.

Indeed, the story also refers to Carlos Miller’s excellent blog, Photography Is Not A Crime, which he started after being arrested on trumped-up charges for exercising his legal right to photograph police officers in a public place. I can’t blog about every one of them, but the media is full of stories about police abusing their power. Intimidating citizens into giving up their rights is wrong, and is the hallmark of a police state run amok.

I refuse to quietly let the USA become a police state. A lack of resistance and public outrage in cases of clear official intimidation and harassment such as Christopher Drew’s and Michael Allison’s is all it takes for us to quietly slip into such a police state. If you are in Illinois, please make your objections known to your elected officials and the local news media. I would love to do a follow-up post about protests related to either of these two cases, or similar cases involving the abuse of this absolute garbage they call a wiretapping law in Illinois.

For residents of the other 49 states, I quote Thomas Jefferson: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” In this case, it’s keeping up with proposed legislation, and voicing emphatic and angry (but polite) objection to your state passing laws or amending existing laws similar to those laws currently on the books and being abused in Illinois.

Together, we can stop the police state. Enough is enough.

Two cents short

As reported on KMGH Denver, Ronald Flanagan, a Vietnam veteran, got the most unwelcome of surprises from his insurance company, when it dropped him for a simple two-cent ($0.02) mistake on his premium payment. Instead of paying the proper amount, $328.69, Ronald’s wife Frances keyed the amount as $328.67. That was in November.

Fast forward to Ronald’s doctor appointment on January 13. From the story:

The couple found out about losing their coverage at a doctor’s appointment on Jan. 13 while they were at the Exempla Rock Creek Medical Center in Broomfield.As Ron was getting prepped to have a bone biopsy, Frances was on the phone with Ceridian.

“The nurses were just getting ready to do the biopsy when my wife popped into the office and told them, ‘Stop. We don’t have any insurance,'” said Ron.

“And that’s when they let me know that we no longer had insurance on account of the 2 cents, and they canceled us,” said Frances. “Since then, I’ve been depressed. I haven’t been able to hardly do anything. As you can see, we still have our Christmas decorations up. So it’s been hard on me.”

I would have been a bit more understanding of Ceridian’s position were the amount significant (at the very least, over $1). It almost seems like Ceridian looks for a chance to drop unsuspecting customers when they are about to need their benefits the most–and thus, when they are about to cost Ceridian the most money. To make matters worse, Ceridian does not help their case when they say the payment fits the regulatory definition of an “insufficient payment” and use this to justify their action. According to the Flanagans, Ceridian never even gave them notice that they were about to cancel Ronald’s policy because of the two-cent mistake.

From a public relations standpoint, this is a huge mistake on the part of Ceridian. Especially since this is a Vietnam veteran we’re referring to. The right thing to do, in case it’s not obvious, is for Ceridian to reinstate Ronald’s policy and benefits without further delay. It’s not worth the PR fallout to do what is technically allowed by insurance regulations, just because. The trust and goodwill retained by doing the right thing are worth a lot more than two cents.

But I this kind of thing is a symptom of a larger problem. The people doing the accounting for insurance companies only care about maximizing profits. In fact I don’t think a human employee at Ceridian ever actually made the decision to cancel Ronald’s policy; it was almost certainly a decision made by a computer. Now, don’t get me wrong, computers are great, and are responsible for a lot of conveniences in 2011 that simply were not possible decades ago. But decisions like this should not be entrusted to a hunk of metal and silicon with all the intelligence of a very stupid worm. Computers do what they are told; in fact they do exactly what they are told and nothing more. However, there does come a time when a human should review certain items and say “wait a minute, this guy was only short two cents, this may have just been a simple mistake and it’s not reason to cancel his policy.”

Do the right thing in cases like this, and profit will follow, and everyone will be happy.