National Leave Verizon Wireless Day

I haven’t posted in years and it took me several tries to remember my password from two years ago but I was so upset about the current “convenience fee” imposed by Verizon that I decided to resurrect my blog to propose a National Leave Verizon Wireless Day.

Some background: Verizon has announced a $2 “convenience” fee for paying your bill online or via phone with your credit card (you can still avoid this fee by using auto-pay). This smacks of corporate greed and gouging of customers who have no choice but to pay this fee. One that makes no sense what so ever since it’s more convenient (and cheaper) for Verizon to process online payment than check or cash payments (even with the fees credit card networks impose on them). Having personal experience with Verizon (FIOS) autopay consistently failing (they’ve shut off my parent’s cable/internet/phone 4 times over the last year because their system failed to autopay without ever notifying them that it has), having autopay enabled is no solution.

Of course to Verizon, autopay means you never look at your bill and thus are less likely to notice mistakes and “fees” which they tack on. This happens more often than you think. For example, my fiance returned one of her cable boxes to Verizon and was still being charged for 3 months. If she was autopaying, she might have never noticed.

This type of customer abuse is reason enough to have a leave Verizon Wireless day.

So how do you leave Verizon without incurring the dreaded early termination fee? Well along with this new $2 fee they’ve added they’ve also increased their “Administrative Charge” by 16 cents. This charge, in my non-legal, opinion is a material change (if you signed your contract prior to Sept 2011) and would justify your termination of the contract. I would “terminate” the contract by porting your number out to Google voice, a different carrier or a pay as you go plan and then calling Verizon and notifying them that you did this per your contract. Careful though if you bought your phone through a third party like Wirefly as they charge their own early terminationn fee on top of Verizon’s.

Dreams

For as long as I remember I’ve had two constant emotional beliefs/triggers.

The first, it makes me really sad when something bad happens to a person’s pride and joy and angry when someone else does something purposely to sabotage the pride and enjoy. I’m usually pretty laid back about practical jokes/pranks but if you want to get me upset try playing a prank on someone I know by doing something that makes them think they’ve lost something very dear to them. I don’t think its funny nor very nice at all.

The second, and the reason for this post, is it makes me ecstatic, to the point of tears, when a good person’s dream comes true.  Susan Boyle‘s seems like a very nice and geniunie person and last week her dream came true. It’s very heart warming. This world needs more good things to happen to good people.

American Dream

ABC News brings us this gem on a former hedge manager who squandered his wealth so badly that he was forced to deliver pizza after years of making six figures. Somehow, I don’t have any sympathy for this guy. Not only did he only save $500k  while having an annual salary of up to $750k  but he managed to blow it and lose all the equity in his house because being incredibly wealthy wasn’t good enough and he wanted to be filthy rich.

So having made a bad bet with starting his own hedge fund and seemingly doubling down by throwing all of his house equity to the cause, the guy and his wife seem to have no idea on how to regroup. First, he did the right thing in trying to get a job, any job. And there’s nothing wrong with being a pizza delivery man as an intermediary step (Disclosure: My dad did that for several years while learning and reeducating himself English when we first got to America). But second, as soon as he knew he was in financial trouble his wife should have gotten a job, his kids pulled out of boarding school and sent to public school, his mansion short sold, his car downsized, his luxury crap like jet skis liquidated (read: sold on ebay) and a multiple other money saving steps needed to be taken.

The fact that the guy kept his kids in boarding schools, still has luxury car or two (how can he deliver pizza on a car without a transmission), jet skis and his wife isn’t making money tells me the gravity of the situation hasn’t sunk in. Instead of actively selling their crap on ebay so when they house is seized, they’ve maximized their profit from the stuff they’d otherwise leave behind they seem to be lost.

I have no sympathy.

Seems like somewhere in his education this guy needed to pay attention to some of the books he was forced to read in English class. Whether it’s Dreiser’s American Dream or Sinclair’s The Jungle one of the lessons they teach is that no matter how good things are at any point in your life, they can get drastically worse at any other point. As such, it’s a must to have a safety net. His safety net was his $500k in the bank and the equity in his house. “Investing” all of it into the hedge fund was stupid. It’s a shitty way to learn a lesson, but honestly many of the people like him who made a ton and saved a little had it coming.

A Hoot-load of Responsibility

Forwarding the article about Rudnick to The Hoot brought a smile to my face because after 4.5 years, The Hoot is still around. This means every single graduating year started school when The Hoot already existed. To them, it’s as if it’s been there all along.

That said, today was the first time I told someone what my biggest fear was when Danny and I (and to some extent Leslie) founded The Hoot.

My biggest fear was not the possibility that the our effort would fail, but rather that it would succeed and in the process suck someone in completely that it ruins or hurts their college experience. The goal, at least for me, was not only to publish a newspaper that worked differently from the Justice but one that can be done by full time students without endangering their friendships and academics. I did not want it to completely take over someone’s life to the point that they can’t spend any time with their friends or find time to go to all the college events they want to go to or do their homework. I wanted there to be an alternative to the Justice that allowed editors lives; a paper that didn’t kill three or four days during the week trying to put the paper out (though the first few months The Hoot certainly did that).

The best editor-in-chief that I worked under at the Justice sent an email to her friends after her term was over basically reintroducing herself to them. My biggest fear was that I would be responsible (through the founding of The Hoot) for some future student having to do the same or to have the newspaper so completely take over their lives that they have no friends outside the paper.

When my successor at The Hoot told me she was interested in taking some courses or joining some program but was afraid The Hoot would get in the way, I told her that under no circumstances should she let The Hoot interfere with her college plans. If it comes down to you doing what you want or laboring to keep the newspaper going please, please chose your own happiness. College newspapers come and go, you only get to go to college once.

I don’t mind being responsible for my own choices, my own wrecks, my own life. However, I would hate to be responsible for others missing out on college and friends in order to run a newspaper that was founded (at least in part) as an alternative to that.

So to any current Hoot editors, if you ever stumble upon this post please keep it in mind. That said, if you enjoy editing The Hoot, please don’t let this post change your mind.

You may also be interested in a few other articles written over the years on the purpose of The Hoot: this editorial, this column, this column, this column, this column and this column. It’s quite a few articles, but all from different former contributors or editors and are very heartwarming (at least for me) to read.

Having stumbled upon them in the process of writing this post, I do want to say Thank You to their writers, for understanding what The Hoot was supposed to be about and for making the paper what it is today.

Someone saw this coming…

A friend passed a long an article about a fellow Brandeis alum Bryan Rudnick who is following in the steps of Jack Abramoff. I didn’t know Rudnick, but from what I heard as a cub reporter/editor at the Justice and later The Hoot people should not be surprised he was involved in something like that.

As a student, he (or more accurately the soon to be defunct publication he edited Freedom Magazine) was responsible bringing Charlton Heston to campus. From what I was told, this was a major disaster for the campus. Over 1000 students protested. Hundreds of people having no relation to the University flooded the campus and as a result many students were not allowed in to see his speech. Ridiculous security procedures had to be enacted to keep students safe and Rudnick, in my opinion, turned this into a political launch pad to ingratiate himself with right wing power brokers.

The security procedures and other “hurdles”–such as booking the right room–were turned by Rudnick as an us vs. the liberal college establishment battle which many eager right winger ate up. This article is one of many examples of the spin Rudnick was putting on this. Then again, it seems from what I read Rudnick was great at baiting people with outrageous comments and the playing the victim and getting PR for it. I’m not saying I agree with the Student Senate over reaction in that or any other case involving Rudnick, but I am saying he’s very experienced in making ourageous comments and the playing the victim (though luckily in the PA case, he can’t play the victim).

From what I can tell, Freedom Magazine, which after being defunded received off campus funding from right wing groups, eventually was forced to shut down for printing a student’s phone number and encouraging harassment of that student (i can’t verify this at the moment but recall vaguely hearing a story about it from a source who will go unnamed).

I forwarded the article to The Hoot with a brief back story. Maybe they can do some digging and write an interesting story.

Edit: A few more interesting tidbits about Rudnick. He worked for the Katherine Harris campaign in Florida. Apparently his experience may have been exagerated. Also this is a ruling against him and Freedom Magazine by the Brandeis Student Union Judiciary.

Defending a neighbor’s property

Joe Horn, a man who killed two would be (or alleged) burglars after they broke into his neighbors house, was cleared by a Texas grand jury of any wrong doing. He called 911 when he saw them breaking in and eventually shot them when he thought they were getting away. Since the shooting, a debate has raged on whether his use of force was justified and whether he’s a racist.

I don’t think race or racism should enter into a discussion on whether his use of force was justified. I think accusing him of racism is a red herring. Saying that he wouldn’t have shot the burglars if they were white distracts from the issue of if he had the right (or a justifiable reason) to shoot the burglars. When the left feigns outrage over his actions being racist, they are  doing themselves a disservice. They are already putting people on the defensive and thus people who would otherwise listen to their arguments on why the use of deadly force there was not justified tune them out. This also causes the argument to become about race which is good for creating lots of hatred but not good at coming up with a reasonable use of force standard.

The right, on the other hand (pun intended), tries to make this issue about gun rights. Framing this as if their right to own a gun depended on this being a justifiable use of force. This too distracts from the real issue. Deciding that this case did not warrant deadly force does not (and should not) impact the meaning of the second amendment nor the philosophical debate on people’s right to own weapons (for self defense or otherwise).

The 911 operator tells Horn:

Ain’t no property worth shooting someone over.

I’m not sure I agree with that statement, but it does put into perspective that pretty much no property is worth as much as a life. Property can be replaced or duplicated, a life cannot be. That said, if someone breaks into my house, I would want my neighbors to stop them. If they shoot their knee caps out or just shoot them because they aren’t a good shot, I would not want the low life who breaks into my living space to get away with it.  Would I want them dead? No. I would want the Justice system to punish them with the laws on the books. However, if the choice is between them getting away or them getting shot (assuming we know they are burglars who were in my house), I would want them shot to prevent their escape.

I guess, my view on this would be different if I was a burglar. All kidding aside though, it’s not like we can claim that the burglar was doing nothing wrong. Also, it’s very likely that this is not their first such crime and that they should have known the risks of breaking into someones house. By breaking in, they assumed the risk of being shot dead.

As for Joe Horn. I really am torn if he was guilty of some sort of form of homicide or was just being a good neighbor. Was this justifiable homicide, defence of neighbor’s property or murder? I’m not sure.

Finally, the fact that the two alleged burglars were in the US illegally should not enter into the conversation about the use force.

The government’s feeling of entitlment

CNN reports that a Guatemalan who illegally lived in the US and worked here for 11 years, saving over $59,000, will get to keep most of that money. Pedro Zapeta was fined $49,000 for failing to declare that he was leaving the US with over $10,000 after he was caught returning to his home country with the money. CNN reports that:

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the judge who fined Zapeta applied an incorrect standard in determining the amount to be forfeited. The appeals court ordered a hearing to set a new fine.

Good for the appeals court! It’s a travesty that a person (even if he was an illegal immigrant) who worked very hard, paid taxes and saved his money would lose most of it due a very arbitrary fine of almost $50,000 having committed no crime other than “failing to declare” that he was leaving the country with the money. It’s not like he tried to circumvent this law. According to his lawyer he didn’t even know that such a law existed. I wager most Americans don’t either. How could we have a law that basically strips a man of his 80% of his life savings because he failed to fill out a silly form? A more proper course of action would be to perhaps let him know that he needs to declare the money when customs or TSA stopped him rather than arresting him and basically stealing his money. Even still, even if they have to punish him for failing to declare, the punishment should fit the crime (to borrow a cliche) and if a fine of over 80% of life savings fits this crime, then we should punish CEO’s who back date their stocks (fail to declare the correct date) similarly as well.

Of course this reeks of civil forfeiture. I’m betting that TSA or customs figured the caught a drug mule with absolutely no evidence other than the wad of cash and arrested him. Civil forfeiture is one of my pet peeves. I don’t understand how a country who claims people are innocent until proven guilty can take away people’s money just because they are carrying it in large sums. A person is pressumed to be carrying drug money when it’s in excess of certain amounts and police have the authority to seize it with the burden then falling on the victim of the police theft to prove that the money was innocent (and yes they have to prove that the money was innocent since civil forfeiture is basically charging the property with the crime and not the person). How is it at all consistent with our justice to have the defendant prove innocence instead of the government prove guilt or even probable cause other than having a large sum of money? It’s not.

The government always acted as if the money was their own. They acted almost entitled to it. But it’s not their money. It was Pedro’s, and the [appeals] court affirmed that.

Where are the libertarians, strict constructionist republicans (those who defend their right to bear arms to almost an unreasonable degree) and civil rights democrats on this? Wouldn’t it be great if radio pundits and TV talking heads focused their outrage on actual tangible un-American, authoritarian laws/actions by the government rather than having a contest of who can kiss America’s ass more?

It’s sad that the government feels more and more that they are entitled to hard working people’s money.

Proof reading

I’m usually guilty of not proof reading or proof reading badly and thus I hesitate to criticize those who don’t either. However, in this case I’ll make an exception. They really could have phrased this much better:

MSNBC has live streaming coverage of Tim Russert’s death. Watch it below:

R.I.P. Tim Russert.

Obama’s smart delegate strategy

Today’s Washington Post discusses Senator Barrack Obama’s strategy to win the Democratic nomination. Smartly, his campaign focussed on competing in states where they had a chance:

With Clinton’s name recognition and traditional strengths obvious in big states, such as California, New York and New Jersey, Hildebrand, Carson and Berman decided it would be more effective to deploy one volunteer to Idaho or Delaware than to send that same volunteer to Los Angeles or Yonkers, N.Y.

In other words, Obama’s campaign basically conceded many places with seemingly “big” prizes in order to score easier victories in many small state races or in caucuses. In fact, Obama ended up winning most of the Democratic caucuses and thus claiming many more delegates in caucus states than Clinton.

Recently, Hillary Clinton supporters have started claiming that Obama “stole” the nomination from her because her victories in large states turned out to be less advantageous than his victories in small ones. They claim that despite the delegate math, Clinton should be the nominee because if you count the popular vote using their counting technique, she clearly has more votes. This claim seems comical at best.

As even a casual follower of the Democratic primary rules knows, the goal of the game is to win a majority of delegates–that’s how one wins the Democratic nomination. Having the most popular vote means nothing if you don’t have the most delegates. Like it or not, those were the party rules going into the primary (and for many years prior) and those are still the party rules. Don’t like the rules? Change them for next time, but please don’t complain that it’s unfair this time around. Both candidates knew the rules and agreed to them. Claiming after the fact that another benchmark (other than the pre-agreed delegate one) should be used to determine the winner shows a complete disregard for the process and disrespects everyone who was playing by the rules.

Obama did not “steal” the Primary but rather smartly courted votes where it would matter the most. He went for and got delegates in districts that Clinton ignored. Doing so doesn’t make him a thief, but rather a smart politician who reached out to voters his opponent ignored (and who also happened to be important in determining the apportionment of delegates). To illustrate, I have several examples:

A long time ago when I was in 6th grade, my entire grade participated in a beech scavenger hunt of sorts. The goal of which was to execute tasks or collect items scattered throughout the beech as defined by a check list given to us by the teachers. The list contained about 50 bullet points and many of the early tasks involved finding certain species of marine life on a vast beech. As we got to the beech, all of the teams started crazily running around trying to find the various items that weren’t exactly in plain sight. My team, composed of mostly slackers, was weary in following suit so instead we decided rather than blindly following the list in order to first read it.

As it turned out, there were lots of tasks, such as get a cup of sand or run to the far rocks and back, at the end of the list that required little to no effort. By the end of the alloted time several hours later, we had completed about half of the tasks on the check list–avoiding any difficult ones. We ended up coming in second out at least 15 groups and were praised by the teachers as the only group to stop and assess the situation and actually accomplish the easy tasks.

By going after the low-hanging fruit we were able to expand little energy yet still do very well in the contest. You wouldn’t stay we “stole” second place, but rather we smartly ignored tasks such as find a starfish (knowing there was probably only 1 on the entire beach so looking for one would be a waste of energy) and focused our limited time and energy on tasks others were ignorant to. Similarly, Obama ignored states that offered no delegate advantage for him to compete in, but rather focused on those he can quickly and easily rack up delegates in. This astuteness is something I expect from a President of the United States: know the goal, find the best path to achieve it and carry it out (of course I’m over simplifying here as the ends don’t always justify the means).

My second example should be familiar to any student that had to take a test that they weren’t fully prepared for. There were times in college and high school when I would take a test and receive a grade better than many students who were much better prepared for the test than I was. I did so by simply reading all of the questions first and briefly answering the ones I knew before bs’ing the ones I didn’t rather than answering the questions in the order they were on the test. Meanwhile, some students more versed in the material would spend a lot of time thoroughly answering the questions in order, often running out of time to answer all of the questions. They would get all of the questions they answered correct but would get no credit for the questions they left blank whereas I would get full credit on the questions I knew and most of the time partial credit on the ones I didn’t. The end result would often be a better grade.

Was this cheating? Did I steal a better grade from them by being better situated for the curve (raw grades were often scaled/curved in my classes) or was this smart test taking? Similarly, was Obama’s campaign just being smarter by trying to win the districts with an odd number of delegates? Of course the other students may have known more about the subject, but were not very smart by not recognizing that the measuring stick wasn’t how much they knew but how well they did on the test. Similarly, Clinton may be the better candidate (and I’m not conceding that point) but thats not how a nominee is decided.

Finally, lets take two football teams. Lets say one team racked up 400 yards of offense and scored 2 touchdowns (14 pts) while the other team could barely move the ball, had only 120 yards of offense but managed to kick 5 field goals (15 pts). Should the team that had the most offensive productivity win or should the team with the most points? The answer is obvious. The goal of the game is to score points not to rack up yards and thus a worse team can win by scoring more points. After the game is over, only sore losers claim that they were the better team and that they should have won if not for their opponent stealing the game with field goals.

Same should be said in this case. Obama played the game smartly and won. Clinton lost. No matter what spin is put on this, Obama won on the scorecard and the only mutually agreed way to score the Primary: the Delegate Math.

If Clinton somehow manages to sway the super delegates to abandon Obama and put her over the top, are her supporters then going to claim they “stole” the election or claim that super delegates are part of the process and she played the process to win? Of course they’ll claim that it’s how the primary game is played (as they should) and would reject any notion that she “stole” the nomination just like they should reject the notion that by playing smart Obama somehow stole the nomination from Clinton.

“Not the Scott we knew”

Yesterday, quotes from former White House Press Secretary (twice removed) Scott McLellan’s new book were released. They are not too flattering to President Bush and to current and former White House staffers. Karl Rove and the White House immediately took to the offensive saying he isn’t the “Scott we knew”. If that’s the case, then they didn’t know him really well.

Of the four press secretary’s who served Bush, he seemed to be the only one genuinely uncomfortable behind the podium. Watching him press briefings such as this, it’s clear that with every passing word he gets more and more awkward about the tangled web he’s weaving. One particular quote stuck in my mind over the years and after reading about his book yesterday I was reminded of it once again:

“You know me by my record and your dealings with me. I am someone who has served as an advocate for the President’s agenda, and that’s part of my role; part of my role is also to help make sure the American people are getting an accurate account of what’s going on here in Washington”

I thought this then, and Scott’s book seems to confirm it now, that by staking his own reputation he considered himself credible and believed what he was saying as the truth. However, as time wore on he believed less of the garbage he was forced to spew and eventually resigned. His book seems to be a real life case of the Tell Tale Heart as he couldn’t live with the guilt of having mislead the American people.

Personally, I understand the dilemma Scott was facing. Even if he knew at the time that he was misleading the American people, he probably felt trapped. On the one hand he had his morals/ethics, on the other all of his friends and colleagues. He was part of this group of people since before Bush was president. He believed in them. He trusted them. You can’t just turn your back on them or throw them under a bus overnight–at least no decent, caring, loyal human being can. Very tough choice without a clear solution.

Scott may not have plunged into the deep end of the pool right away but he slowly worked up to getting there and telling the American people what many believe is the truth. And that’s more than can be said about the other ex-press secretaries.

One thing is certain, if his friends and colleagues at the time thought that Scott was fine with what they were doing to the country and his role, then they truly didn’t know Scott. Sadder for Scott is that the people he knew and trusted that journeyed to the White House with him from Texas to make this country a better place turned out not to be the same people he knew.