I don’t usually do reviews on here, but I have to say that I found the new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie very disappointing. It was based on a hilarious series of books (which were based on a hilarious BBC radio series) that satirized science fiction with that trademark British absurdist wit. Much of the film’s acting was great (especially the guy who played Zaphod), and the funny bits were genuinely funny, but about two-thirds of the books’ rapid-fire gags were replaced by “let’s spell out the plot in a boring manner, just in case the audience is stupid”.

My only hope is that there are several hours of unused footage that they re-insert into a “Deluxe Special Squeeze More Money Out of the Die-Hard Fans” edition of the film on DVD.

All I’ve got left are the books themselves. And the radio show. And the TV series. And the video game. And I’ve heard there’s a comic book…

Hand-Picked Audience of Tom DeLay Supporters Support Tom DeLay

I will give ten American dollars to the first mainstream reporter who says “this is bullshit!” and walks out of one of these staged propaganda events.

A number of folks seem to have been taken in by this story. It’s one of those “a new study says” pieces, this particular one claiming that excessive checking of emails and text messages lowers your IQ. Well, the quote is “dents your IQ more than marijuana.”

Frankly, it appears that the study odd PR ploy to pre-emptively acknowledge and confront the possibility that loading your employees up with wireless computer and telecom gadgets doesn’t necessarily lead to increased worker productivity. With this study, HP tries to blame the situation on “inappropriate use” of such technologies, and a new “disorder” they just made up called “Info-Mania”.

In other words, buying HP’s business gadgets is not a waste of your company’s money which will lead to a loss of efficiency. You should still buy bushels of such gadgets, but teach your employees to use them wisely.

The press release says that you can download the Guide to Info-Mania (”To read more about how to spot an Info-Maniac and hints on how to improve your productivity”) from www.hp.com/uk, but I can’t find it there. So I’ve gone ahead and emailed the company asking them to direct me to this valuable document. I’ll let you know what they have to say.

Last week, media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) sent out one of its Action Alerts, which told its subscribers about a particular news story and encouraged the readers to take action. Specifically, the alert claimed that a recent Washington Post article about Senator Trent Lott minimizes his ties to racism, and urged concerned readers to write to the article’s author and complain.

Today, the Post published an article in response by the article’s author, sort of your standard “the article might not have been perfect, but we didn’t do anything wrong”, no-apology apology. Part of the article read:

I don’t like write-in campaigns. I don’t like my e-mail queue, and the e-mail of others writing in about other things, overwhelmed by hundreds of people saying essentially the same thing, in large part because somebody alerted them to something and suggested what to say. For that comment, I will now get 700 more e-mails asking how dare I impugn their assessment. I much prefer original commentary from readers, or one letter directly from FAIR laying out its critique. On the other hand, even though such campaigns are annoying, and frequently partisan, it doesn’t mean that the points raised are not legitimate challenges.

Which struck me as fairly reasonable. What writer would want to deal with hundreds of angry readers, or readers who disagreed with the way that you did your job?

Then I read this screed by Steve Gilliard on the subject and was puzzled. Why was everyone jumping all over this? It wasn’t till halfway through the comments to Gilliard’s post that I realized I’d made a huge error here. FAIR hadn’t encouraged people to write the reporter, they’d encouraged people to write the ombudsman. And the author of the response to FAIR’s campaign was also the ombudsman.

Jesus, the ombudsman, the guy who’s fucking job is to listen to and evaluate the complaints of readers wrote an article to bitch about the fact that he hates it when readers write him and complain!

Yes, I imagine it’s irritating to be on the receiving end of such a complaint barrage, but that’s the point. If a media outlet doesn’t receive messages from hundreds or thousands of people, there is no incentive for them to do a damn thing. And this poor ombudsman, he received hundreds of letters and had to actually move his ass in response.

We all hate our jobs sometimes (or all the time), but man, having a job that is allegedly about serving the public and then disdainfully announcing to the world that serving the public irritates you… that’s bound to piss off the public and your boss.

Tomorrow (April 26) is World Intellectual Property Day. I hope you spend the day downloading mp3s, buying bootleg videos on the street, selling knock-offs of well-known brands, and manufacturing generic medicines without permission.

While we’re at it, you might want to also read this short essay dispelling myths about intellectual property.

And you should also download these tracks by copyright banditos Negativland. They are made of 100% illegally appropriated music.

Sigh, yet another article about how George W. Bush is the devil.

Long story short, in the latest Bush budget, there is a single paragraph which allows the president to appoint an 8-member “Sunset Commission”. The commission would review all government programs every ten years, and the ones that they didn’t like (that are “not producing results”) would be eliminated unless Congress stepped up and did something to save them.

Near as I can figure, the panel has no oversight, and the president can appoint anyone to it he wants. In other words, this is a de facto way that the president can delete any government programs he wants. He can just appoint a panel that will hate the same programs he does, and they’re gone. Unless the opposition party in Congress has the will and the clout to stop it.

The article’s author points out that the villain behind this plan is Clay Johnson, who worked with Bush when he was governor of Texas. Johnson is a slut for corporate interests, attempting to slash regulations and constraints on big business whenever possible. For example, “One of his first acts in Texas was to remove all three members of the state environmental-protection commission and replace them with a former Monsanto executive, an official with the Texas Beef Council and a lawyer for the oil industry”. The article goes on to explain how Johnson instituted something like the Sunset Commission in Texas, and used it to cut funding for effective social programs and increase funding to ineffective partisan programs (e.g. a program that tried to “reduce the number of poor people claiming a low-income tax credit.”).

Apparently this Commission idea is potentially unconstitutional, violating the Separation of Powers clause. But they already have a back-up plan: give Congress the power to create the commission. While that’s slightly more Constitutional and democratic, with the Republicans in firm control of the legislature, the results would likely be the same.

I am attempting to upgrade my blog software to the next level, but it seems to be fucking up quite nicely. If the site radically changes appearance or transforms into a series of cryptic error messages over the next few days, please bear with me.

Why am I bothering? Because the new version allegedly has much better comment-spam blocking, and makes the process of turning audio files into podcasts ridiculously simple.

Last week, The Daily Show ran a segment about media coverage of the selection of the new pope (which you can see here, it’s the one called “Ratz!”). It provides a staggeringly emblematic example of what’s wrong with the media today.

As we all know, the magic Vatican chimney would be the signal to alert the public that the papal selection had been made. Black smoke would mean “not yet”, and white smoke would mean “we’ve got one.”

The Daily Show showed a montage of the way that the 24-hour news stations covered the pivotal moment when the chimney began releasing the white smoke. To paraphrase:

Fox News: Vatican radio says it’s black smoke… a lot of confusion… it’s looking white, now.
CNN: Black smoke, yet again… we’re not absolutely positive…
MSNBC: This is a tough call… that looks darker now…

Okay, the smoke is fucking white. No debate, no “shades of grey”, it was white fucking smoke coming out of this chimney. The news anchors saw it with their own eyes, and the audience saw it with their own eyes. And yet all of these news stations seemed either reluctant to acknowledge this information, or were outright in denial.

I understand not wanting to be the first person on international television to declare that a new pope has been selected and then find out that you’re wrong. But Jesus, how hard would it be to say “the smoke appears to be white, which means that the Vatican has selected a new pope, and we are now contacting the Vatican for confirmation”? You’ve described what’s in front of your face, and you’re working on making sure that the white smoke wasn’t a blooper or anything.

This footage shows us thee glaring examples of common news incompetence:

1) Reporter sees something with his own eyes, tells audience the exact opposite.
2) Reporter sees something with her own eyes, tells audience that facts are “unclear”.
3) Reporter sees something with his own eyes, and refuses to tell the audience that he saw it until he’s received a press release telling him what he saw.

Some interesting thoughts on the nature of our new insta-media society, from the singer of the Dresden Dolls:

I do not want to live to archive my own life.

I see it everywhere around me, especially with the popularity of web diaries, forums, and cell phones that take pictures. I do not want to fall into the subtle trap of truly believing I Blog Therefore I Am.

I see this happening at our shows, as an alien army of fans in the front row hold their phones up to my face as if probing me for signs of life in some twisted Outer Limits martian ritual. But I understand this feeling all too well. The picture that you will take home, connect to the interweb, mail to your friends and offer proof positive that you had an experience is almost worth more than the experience itself. And as I realize that more and more people out there read this diary, it haunts me in my life. Each good deed, struggle, mishap and geuinely weird experience I have gets simultaneously logged into an unhealthy mental card catalog of Good for Web Diary.

My friend who knows me best has the perspective and advantage of being older than I am, he saw me grow through my teens. We used to talk about a moment that never happened, but was a perfect metaphor for my self-consious narcissism.

It is summer. People are outside. I am lounging alone under a shady tree, in a beautiful sundress, reading a book. As people pass, I am more aware of this picturesque vision of myself than I am of the book I am reading. I am sixteen, and I know I am the Poster Girl of Youth and Beauty and Freedom, and that the middle-aged men passing by me in their polyester jogging suits take a long hard look as I focus on the page, pretending to be unaware that they are staring at me, the icon of girl.

This intrigues me. The pre-emptive strike is so easy, to denounce that “live to blog” urge as wasted life or narcissism or dysfunctional sociality. One should live in the moment, not as prelude to a scrapbook page, right? But Amanda at least entertains the notion that the feeling of “capturing” the moment could possibly be a greater feeling than living that moment. She also mentions the power of presenting one’s self as an image, and how that power can overwhelm the alleged “living in the moment” altogether. Life as souvenir and life as illustration.

What does that do to a person, going about one’s day with the mind’s eye set to snap the next cell-photo? Or constantly spinning a narrative to post on the blog later? Are you a person? A journalist? A story-teller? A performer? And is something wrong with that?

Sorry, just thinking out loud.

And I was so sure that the black or latino guy was gonna get it! Surprisingly, they instead gave the position to the second-most powerful man at the Vatican. Go figger.

The new pope picked a new pope name, Benedict XVI, which is way cooler than his previous name of Joe Rat-zinger. Benedict XVI comes in at the spry age of 78.

Less surprisingly, Ratzinger turns out to be an asshole.

In the Vatican, he has been the driving force behind crackdowns on liberation theology, religious pluralism, challenges to traditional moral teachings on issues such as homosexuality, and dissent on such issues as women’s ordination.

Liberation theology was the school of thought primarily in Latin America that maybe it wasn’t right for the people to be crushed by the iron fist of the military juntas and death squads, and supported the average person’s struggle for justice, equality and democracy. Ratzinger apparently led the Vatican’s movement to beat it down.

Religious pluralism is the idea that people of different faiths or demoninations can live in harmony. Guess Ratzinger didn’t like that.

And of course he was homophobic and doesn’t like the idea that God holds men and women in equal esteem. Neat.

Meet the new boss, same as old boss.

And a billion people are gonna follow this guy’s teachings. Even worse, they’re going to believe that he’s God’s head middle manager?

I’ll never understand religious people. Never.

[update]

Yes, I guess I did miss the point. The Vatican skips over the black and latino candidates and selects the guy who fought for the Nazis. Ratzinger claims that he was in the Hitler Youth because it was mandatory, that he was drafted into the German military during WWII, but that he wasn’t a Nazi and opposed what they stood for. But then, what else could he say?

[/update]

Very instructive article about the police, or at least about the police in NYC.

The article begins by talking about Dennis Kyne, allegedly the first protester arrested outside the last year’s Republican National Convention. The article then quotes Kyne’s arresting officer Matthew Wohl, who said “We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed. I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own.”

The article then tells us than independent video footage of Kyne’s arrest shows that he was not carried by police, was not screaming and was not kicking. Also, Wohl is not in the footage at all. In fact, video footage shows Wohl was absent at at least five arrests that he claimed to be a part of.

I’m no lawyer, but that seems like that should be five counts of perjury or false witness or something.

Next, the article tells us about Alexander Dunlop, a non-protester who was arrested, a guy who was out geting sushi when thoughtless cops went on a spree. After his case went to trial, Dunlop learned that the video footage that the prosecutors were going to use against him was missing two scenes that would undercut their case. In one of the worst excuses ever, the prosecution said that “a technician had cut the material by mistake.” That’s really only about one step above “my dog ate it.”

Then we get some fun figures:

- Cops arrested 1806 people at the protests.
- 1670 of the arrests have been resolved one way or another
- 91% of those 1670 were found innocent, although no investigation is taking place to find out why the police arrested so many innocent people.
- 400 people arrested at the protests were exonerated by amateur video footage of the protests and arrests.

Throughout the convention week and afterward, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the police issued clear warnings about blocking streets or sidewalks, and that officers moved to arrest only those who defied them. In the view of many activists - and of many people who maintain that they were passers-by and were swept into dragnets indiscriminately thrown over large groups - the police strategy appeared to be designed to sweep them off the streets on technical grounds as a show of force…

In the bulk of the 400 cases that were dismissed based on videotapes, most involved arrests at three places - 16th Street near Union Square, 17th Street near Union Square and on Fulton Street… Those tapes showed that the demonstrators had followed the instructions of senior officers to walk down those streets, only to have another official order their arrests.

So what do we learn from all this?

- Cops arrest protesters to disrupt the protests, with no real concern as to whether or not protesters are breaking the law.
- Cops will lie to get people convicted.
- Unless we see an investigation and punishment of Officer Wohl, we see that there are no negative consequences for a cop lying to get innocent people convicted.
- Prosecutors will tamper with evidence to get people convicted.
- NYC prosecutors really need to brush up on their excuse-making skills.

It’s a cycle. A big protest is planned and the city officials start weaving grim predictions about foreign agitators and streets of chaos. They bulk up the police presence, and then perform mass arrests to take protesters off the streets and scare the rest. The media breathlessly cover these arrests, and choose to interpret them as proof positive of the initial scaremongering predictions. Then, months and months later, after the story is irrelevant and half-forgotten, the arrestees face the courts and are found innocent of any wrongdoing.

Makes you wonder how many innocent people we’ve got in American prisons…

Ouch.

A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.

This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.

Seriously, is there any Monty Python sketch that is more absurd than a Bush administration plan?

The LMB radio show will air this Thursday, 1-3pm PST, at radioactiveradio.org. This will probably be the regular time slot for the show. Once I feel comfortable with the new equipment, I will start recording the shows and uploading them to the internet for you to listen to at your leisure.

For some years now, I have written blog entries that are a mish-mash of links to important news stories, and I give those entries titles like “News Stew” or “Cornucopia of News”, something with the word “news”, and a phrase that implies “large amount” or “variety.”

Those days are done, and now such posts will receive utterly absurd and whimsical names. Like the one above.

Livid Iraq Protesters Tell U.S. to Get Out- if you weren’t paying attention over the weekend, you may not have noticed that 300,000 Iraqis protested the US occupation in Baghdad. And since Iraq is roughly 1/11 the size of the US, this is analagous to 3+ million people protesting in Washington DC. Of course, you might have previously guessed that the Iraqis disliked the occupation what with the bombings and terrorism and guerrilla insurgency and such.

Appomattox- white southerner reflects upon the Confederate pride he witnessed while growing up, and takes a stab at explaining the phenomenon. Steve Gilliard picks up the ball and continues the analysis here.

Some Reflections on the Recent Papacy of JPII- theologian takes a fair and balanced crowbar to the revered image of the pope (link goes to fun foto). Say what you will about John Paul 2, his policies on sex and birth control are directly responsible for thousands of deaths.

We Told You So- after yet another government report finding that absolutely every word out of a government official’s mouth about Iraq was a complete lie, Rahul Mahajan says just about everything I could think of in response to all the assholes who derided and fought us anti-war folks. Mahajan is also good enough to point out that these lies were intentional and can be traced back to their sources, yet the report elected to ignore the fact that the Bush administration made all this shit up on purpose.

Now, for a block of rebellion news:

UCSC Students Kick Military Recruiters Off Campus

General Strike Against Coup Leaders in Nepal

Togo Youths Fight Cops Over Government Corruption

Washington University Students Continue Sit-In for Living Wage

[End rebel news]

I’m with Wolfowitz- while many liberals are up in arms about Bush’s decision to appoint neocon Paul Wolfowitz to the presidency of the World Bank, George Monbiot reminds us of the true goals and history. Frankly, the World Bank is a tool to break open and privatize the Third World for the benefit of Western investors. Wolfowitz will fit in just fine.

From our pal, White House warmonger Richard Perle’s recent testimony to Congress about the Iraq war:

There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime.

(okay, hold it together Jake, don’tscreamdon’tscreamdon’tscream)

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

I–

What–

He can’t– no

FUCK!

Perle was the head of the Defense Policy Board, a group that advises the Pentagon. He’s a neoconservative hawk, who pushed this war hard. He knows, like we all do, that all of the stuff about Iraq and WMD and democracy was just a big puppetshow to cover up the fact that they wanted to invade Iraq for empire and oil. But he can’t come out and say that, so he comes up with that whopper above.

Jesus, he’s actually trying to argue that Saddam Hussein tricked us into overthrowing him. We got punk’d! This was all one big practical joke, and having his sons killed, losing his immense wealth, losing his power, and losing his freedom were a small price to pay for such chuckles. Oh that Saddam, what a card.

Just wait till the leaders of Iran and Syria start pulling our legs, it’ll be a riot.

I’ve been involved in alternative/radical radio for around nine years now, and apparently I’ve lost sight of what I’m fighting. You see, I almost never listen to the radio. With a small avalanche of CDs, I can always listen to the music I want, not the hits selected by a music director and a focus group. Living in LA, most of my radio listening was of the far-left KPFK, the moderate-to-liberal local NPR station, or pirate rebroadcasts of Kill Radio. But your average commercial, music radio never really entered my antennas.

Last week, down in my new hood in San Diego, I gave the radio dial a spin while driving to and from work– fifteen minutes of commuting, tops. And in this tiny span, I was re-acquainted with radio insanity (or maybe this town’s just crazy. I lived in LA for 9 years, I can’t tell anymore).

The first nugget of insane-o was on the rock station, 105.3. This was the day after Terri Schiavo had died, and the TV had been wall-to-wall Schiavo coverage for around two weeks already. 105.3 lets a Pink Floyd song trail off, and the DJ then somehow segues from that into a five minute rant about Terri Schiavo. As this is a conservative town, the rant was “why didn’t we protect this poor woman”, coupled with the standard conservative hell-in-a-handbasket analysis, comparing it to how “good” convicts and death row inmates have it. “Who cares what happens to the murderers and the rapists?”, they get all the perks while “us good people” get six kinds of shaft. In this situation, I’m not sure what anyone was supposed to protect Terri Schiavo from, except maybe her own wishes. And that lucky executionee they referred to, that lucky bastard gets his death postponed a couple weeks till they find a “more humane” deadly chemical to inject him with.

Anyhow, this monolgue (well, dialogue, there were two DJs ranting) made my jaw drop through the floor. In all my years alive, I have never heard a commercial music station ever take a stance on anything political. Radio stations like to keep their “controversy” to sexy talk and swear words, not political discord. Apparently the DJs either felt so strongly about this that they decided to speak out no matter what (yeah, right), or they felt that the public was so solidly in agreement that they could say such things without fear.

Insanity #2: I flip to a random music station (turns out to be country), where a woman is dedicating a song to her fiance. They are to be married this weekend. “And this Saturday, at the wedding, we’ll kiss for the first time.” The confused DJ says “you mean that the two of you will kiss to this song for the first time?” “No, this is the first time we’ll kiss, ever.” They’ve been together four years.

Again, jaw meets floor. A four-year relationship, a decision to be together till death do you part, and they haven’t even fucking kissed? That falls somewhere between mega virginity pledge and mail order bride. I guess if you think that the sex is going to be “extra special” if you save yourself for marriage, why not make the kisses extra special too?

That’s going to be the most uncomfortable honeymoon ever.

“Omigod, honey, what are you doing?!?”
“It’s called a ‘hug’. I saw people do it on MTV.”
“Get away, you pervert!”

And finally, there was an insane ad. It was for a website, easychild.com. Easychild.com is a computer program for parents who don’t know how to raise their kids. It creates charts and tables that promise certain rewards to a kid if they perform certain behaviors and certain punishments for other behaviors. Yes, for a mere $29.95 and some refrigerator magnets, you can parent without even talking to your child! I understand that some people are going to have trouble with the parenting skills, but this just seems like a failure from the start, throwing money at disfunction and no one will know what to do when it doesn’t work.

Thanks to the miracle of radio, I was knee-deep in collective psychosis in mere minutes. Suddenly, I am quite proud to be part of a movement to turn this radio into something else– anything else. Shit, what wouldn’t be more sane than this sort of programming? Well, apart from the iceberg lettuce pop that passes for “music” on these same stations.

Next week I’ll start bringing back the rock and the grooves and the facts and the yelling, in the way that I do. Let’s kill as many radio stars as possible.

Jeezus, this cold refuses to go away, hanging on with tiny clawed feet. If this keeps up, I’m going to need antibiotics, or an exorcist.

Saw an issue of Newsweek at the grocery store yesterday, with former General Electric CEO Jack Welch on the cover. I forget the exact text, but they told you that they had an excerpt of his new biography inside.

With all that’s going on in the world, it seems an odd choice of cover story.

Until you remember that Newsweek is affiliated with MSNBC, which is partially owned by NBC, which is owned by, of course, General Electric.

Listen to this long sloppy blow job that Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker gives Welch in that issue:

“More than any other businessman alive today, Welch embodies pure energy and passion for the art of leadership. When you have a long, freewheeling conversation with Jack, as I was fortunate enough to do at a dinner not long ago, you don’t just learn about what made GE tick. You hear fascinating insights into what makes business tick, and what makes people tick…

Now Welch has poured his wealth of wisdom into a new book, “Winning,” which we’re happy to share with you in an exclusive excerpt. He outlines the eight qualities that he looks for in great leaders, as well as tips about how to hire and motivate, and straight talk on what bosses really think about balancing work and family… We hope you’ll find it a compelling read, and a valuable addition to our yearlong series on what people and priorities represent the kind of leadership we need in the 21st century.

I hate that this country thinks that CEOs should be admired or emulated or revered. Their job is to make money for their company shareholders at all costs. If putting a poisonous cobra into your mother’s bed would make money for GE, Jack Welch would do it. Well, he’d probably get an underling to tell an intern to go do it, but you get the idea.

To give us more perspective on this man among men, let’s look at this handy list of criminal violations committed by GE during only the last half of Welch’s tenure:

23 March 1990. Shepherdsville KY - GE and others ordered to cleanup PCB contamination of soil and water
27 March 1990. Wilmington NC - GE fined for discrimination against employees who report safety violations - $20,000
11 May 1990. Ft. Edward/Hudson Falls - GE ordered to clean up PCB contamination of Hudson River - $10 million
27 July 1990. Philadelphia PA - GE fined for defrauding government in defense contacts - $30 million
11 Oct 1990. Waterford NY - GE fined for pollution at Silicone Products plant - $176,000
20 May 1991. Washington, D.C. - GE Ordered to pay damages over improperly tested aircraft parts for Air Force and Navy - $1 million
27 Feb 1992. Allentown PA - GE ordered to pay damages for design flaws in nuclear plants - $80 million
4 March 1992. Orange County CA - GE fined for violating worker safety rules on handling PCBs - $11,000
13 March 1992. Wilmington NC - GE fined for safety violations at nuclear fuel plant - $20,000
22 May 1992. Illinois - GE ordered to pay damages for design flaws of nuclear plants - $65 million
22 July 1992. Washington, D.C. - GE fined for money laundering and fraud over illegal sale of fighter jets to Israel - $70 million
13 Sep 1992. Chicago IL - GE ordered to pay damages for airplane crash - $1.8 million
12 Oct 1992. Nashville TN - GE ordered to pay damages for deceptive advertising on lightbulbs - $165,000
27 Oct 1992. Washington D.C. - GE ordered to pay damages from overcharging on defense contracts - $576,215
12 May 1992. Washington D.C. - GE ordered to pay damages to whistleblower on illegal sale of fighter jets to Israel - $13.4 million
2 March 1993. Riverside CA - GE and others ordered to pay damages for contamination from dumping of industrial chemicals - $96 million
11 March 1993. Grove City PA - GE and others ordered to clean up mining site - $1.81 million
16 Sep 1993. NY - GE ordered to compensate commercial fisherman for PCB contamination of the Hudson River - $7 million
11 Oct 1993. San Francisco - GE ordered to offer rebates to consumers after deceptive light bulb advertising - $3.25 million
18 July 1993. Hudson Falls NY - GE ordered to clean up PCB contamination of Hudson R. - $2.5 million
2 Feb 1994. Perry OH - GE settles with utility companies on defective Perry Nuclear Plant.
14 Mar 1994. Ft. Edward NY - GE ordered to clean up contamination of sediment in the Hudson River - $100,000
14 Sep 1994. Washington D.C. - GE fined for overcharges in defense contracts - $20 million
2 Sep 1995. Waterford NY - GE fined for air pollution and contamination of Hudson River - $1.5 million
15 Sep 1995. Brandon FL - GE fined for groundwater contamination - $137,000
9 Sep 1996. Waterford NY - GE Fined for Clean Air Act violations - $60,000
7 Oct 1996. Hendersonville NC - GE ordered to cleanup contamination of soil and groundwater - $1.029 million
8 Oct 1996. Cook County IL - GE ordered to pay settlement from airline crash in Sioux City - $15 million
22 Feb 1997. Somersworth NH - GE and others ordered to clean up contamination of groundwater and public water supply - $ 7 million
Feb 1998. Waterford NY - GE fined for pollution violations - $234,000
20 April 1998. Waterford NY - GE fined for pollution violations - $204,000
Oct 1998. United Kingdom - GE ordered to pay for asbestos cleanup and related pollution claims - 2 billion pounds
26 Oct 1998. Puerto Rico - GE and others ordered to cleanup contamination of drinking water supply - $4.2 million
5 Nov 1998. South Whitehall PA - GE and others ordered to cleanup contamination - $1.035 million
24 Jan 1999. Chicago - GE ordered to reimburse consumers over unfair debt collection practices -$147 million
19 Aug 1999. Piscataway NJ - GE, others ordered to cleanup contaminated groundwater - $23 million
2 Sep 1999. Malvern PA - GE and others ordered to clean up groundwater contamination - $18.8 million
17 Sep 1999. Moreau NY - GE ordered to build drinking water system after PCB contamination of water supply - $5 million
9 Oct 1999. Pittsfield MA - GE ordered to clean up PCB pollution in Housatonic River - $250 million
18 Oct 2000. New York NY - GE and others ordered to clean up contamination of soil - $28 million
Jan 2001. NY - GE and others ordered to refund overcharges on mortgage insurance - $4 million
4 Feb 2001. NY - State Supreme Court rules GE deceptively misled consumers into purchasing new dishwashers after recall while sending commercial customers a replacement part.

Why mess with the poisonous cobra when you can just poison mom’s water and air?

And that list only contains what they got caught doing. It boggles the mind to think of what other atrocities they committed but got away with.

But he’s a great leader and we should learn from him. Motherfucker’s a millionaire when he should be a dead man walking.

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. Got a cold Tuesday which has pretty consistently been kicking my ass. I think I’m finally in the home stretch, and should be mostly back to normal by tomorrow. Although I do kinda wish it leaves me this cool Barry White voice.

Remember, today is April Fool’s Day. A lot of folks are going to be posting fake, “humorous” stories on the net. If you see something that seems too outrageous to be true, it probably is.

In other news, Dick Cheney and I are getting married.