‘Uncategorized’ Archives
I’ll Buy That
Technology decentralizes power and dumps it onto the keyboads of individuals at all socio-economic levels. Corporate bureaucracy and middle management are increasingly being cut out of the deal and made irrelevant despite the short-term camouflage of outsourcing because the arts of outsourcing themselves are being outsourced. Here's The New York [...]
Be My Guest?
It is an incredibly puzzling thing that advocates for lax immigration laws argue that illegal immigrants do the work that American workers refuse. Outsourcing is great for low prices at Target and Walmart. Increasing cheap labor stateside with a flood of guest workers in competition with the US unemployed is ludicrous. We may as well shoot [...]
Pay to Play
Tuition and fees at Columbia University Journalism School -- $38,500 for a one-year master's program. New York University-- $40,500 for a year-and-a-half program. Hmmmmm..... Okay. Sounds like membership dues for a country club. You'll find those price tags in the somewhat pedantic story on changes in J-schools in The Chronicle for High [...]
Cheney Shooting On White House Lobbyist’s Ranch:
Katharine Armstrong, whose family owns the ranch where Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting partner, is a registered lobbyist who has been paid to lobby the White House, according to records, reports NBC ace producer Aram Roston. Armstrong was paid $160,000 in 2004 by the powerful legal firm Baker Botts to lobby the White House, [...]
Cheney Shooting Incident: Was He Drunk?
From my source in Texas: "A lot of people down here (and remember this is where everybody hunts and has special property specifically for hunting ) think that he was probably drinking and they delayed telling anyone until he could get it out of system in case he was tested." AND NOW, a little more third-hand rumination from The Nation
Custer Battles Update
I figured Reuters was covering but, nooooooooooooooooo. So here's the skinny for the Federal District Court of Eastern Virginia: Judge Ellis denied the Custer Battles motions to dismiss, set the Iraqi currency exchange fraud trial for Feb. 13, peeled off Baghdad Airport fraud for a separate trial, and limited it to double-billing.
Part of the Problem
Once considered largely a "blue-collar" profession, the news business is now increasingly an exclusive club of the affluent. So intimates a Sun-Sentinel story on a panel discussion with New York Times columnist David Brooks and former Times reporter Judith Miller. The two journos were speaking at the Fourth Annual Leadership Educational Forum [...]
Nice Work If You Can Get It
The wheels of justice grind slowly on the question of whether a fledgling firm defrauded as much as $50 million on security contracts in Iraq. Custer Battles was dragged into federal US District Court in September 2004 after being accused of illegally pumping up costs on plum contracts handed out by the Coalition Provisional Authority, including a [...]
No Supervision for Security Contractors in Iraq
T. Christian Miller and The Los Angeles Times picks up on an issue that has been percolating for some time now: the 60 or so private security companies under US contract that storm down the roads and highways of Iraq with guns waving do so with little supervision and under even less legal oversight. "Private security contractors have been involved [...]
Contract Killings?
Once upon a time, the Pentagon relied on the military for protecting civilians in wartime environments -- now it relies on private contractors with guns. They call them private security contractors. In Iraq there are an estimated 25,000 hired to protect reconstruction contractors working in wartime conditions -- the number is more than a full [...]
