Unbeknownst to anyone who actually cares about the pathetic life of Jorge Riley, apparently, he is out of custody and back in Sacramento. Yes, he is out of custody. I found this out yesterday. Jorge, as you may recall, was arrested by the FBI (yeah, as in federal crime not state or local) during the “insurrection at the Capital” back in January. Riley was in custody with no bail, until about the end of February, then he was extradited to DC. Apparently, a judge in DC bought his line of crap of being a combat veteran with PTSD and having no money.
Blogger commentary: Jorge was in the military, I cannot speak to his service, but a couple of veterans that I know refute his take on combat service. Riley intentionally keeps himself under or unemployed to leach off taxpayers; unlike the editorial board of this blog. This is to avoid court ordered support of his “children,” as for how many the world may never know.
Last I heard from an officer friend of mine, he is facing 2 misdemeanors and a felony for striking a child of his recently. He also is a heavy drinker, as detailed in past blogs, as well as a narcotics user. My officer friend says likely cocaine or meth, due to his skin/looks seeming far older than he really is. With no money or job, how does he keep his habit of drinking at events and using narcotics going you ask. Easy Answer!
His enablers.
After being released and told not to leave the country, Jorge flew back to California. My sources say Bill Cardoza footed the bill, no shock. I would say iron sharpens iron but neither of these two possess an IQ in positive territory. He recently attended a recall Newsom event. Give his recent past, while I guess that’s not a crime since it’s an open rally/protest; however, it’s a rough look. Even rougher is his giving an interview to a former central committee member of Sac County who is a current member of the Proud Boys and was recently expelled from said GOP committee. Couldn’t he find, I don’t know, anyone else to video tape the interview?
Oh, this interview is pure Jorge Riley gold folks. On camera, he admits to “rubbing his butt on Nasty Pelosi’s desk.” Actually, he says “may or may not have”, but in today’s media and court system, you better believe they are adding another charge, to his pending charging documents. I am sure his lawyer is thrilled. Most people get out of jail and do not wish to go back, apparently Riley misses it so much he wants to book a longer stay by nixing any chance for a concurrent sentence and insuring a consecutive one. Hotels may be open with minimal occupancy, but as an attorney friend of mine will say “there is always a vacancy at the Blue Roof Inn aka Jail.”
Oh, remember those media reports that we said were bogus about Riley leaving the California Republican Assembly in shame following his arrest for storming the nation’s Capital? Well, we now have proof, as if we needed any more, courtesy of Riley and his enabler Cardoza.
Let’s have a gander at another event Riley “showed up” to. I use air quotes because there is no way he didn’t know in advance and if I were a betting man, I would lay heavy odds Bill “the Wookie” Cardoza moved the regular meeting of the Sacramento Republican Assembly to make sure they could have Riley as their keynote speaker.
Riley’s leadership has brought such attention to the organization that he was presented with an award for his longevity of service as chapter president. Lest you forgot, Riley was SRA President and a statewide CRA Board member on January 6th. Yeah, check this award out.
Thank you for your leadership as president of the Sacramento Republican Assembly Jorge Riley 2015 – 2021
If it’s really gold, I got a feeling it’ll soon be pawned off, melted down, or sold for scrap to fuel his addiction to drugs and alcohol. Shame it won’t be around to be admitted into evidence at his trial.
Below is a photo that was taken during the night’s festivities. I can picture his time at the podium prior to the presentation. Likely Riley told stories of violating Speaker Pelosi’s office, fighting his cellmates, disrespecting officers, and stories of his multiple court outbursts. Proudly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in the photo below are 2 lawyers licensed by the California State Bar Association. Said Bar is not to be confused with the watering hole Riley is used to patronizing. The lawyers in question are Sue Blake, a former Sac CRA President and past Chair of Sacramento Republican Party, and Tom Hudson former CRA Statewide President and Placer County Republican Party leader.
Local SRA and California Republican Assembly (CRA) leaders gathered to pay tribute to Jorge for both his service on the SRA as well as the CRA board of directors. From left, 8th SRA President Angela Azevedo, Immediate Past CRA President Tom Hudson, CRA National Committeeman Bill Cardoza (me), 4th SRA President Russell Gray, current and 15th SRA President Dr. Justin Hardcastle, 7th SRA President Sue Blake, and current SRA Vice President Todd Freeman who also served as SRA’s 2nd and 3rd vice president. — Bill Cardoza Facebook page 03/09/2021
This speaks to enablement. Folks, I am sorry, but Sue and Tom know better. They may claim to be tax lawyers not criminal lawyers, but they had no business in that photo or at that meeting. First Blake hasn’t been an attending member in about a decade, so she showed up only to pay homage to Riley. Hudson knows better and knew of all Riley’s acts, again enabling. Hudson is immediate past president of the statewide California Republican Assembly—as such a sitting Board member of CRA— [per recent media reports, CRA allegedly ejected Riley which clearly is a lie]. Angela Azevedo came out of the woodwork to support Riley. Again, someone who had a career in the corrections arm of the state government and should know better. In fact, all four enablers listed above (Blake, Cardoza, Hudson, Azevedo) are career state employees living off the taxpayer’s dime.
Bill Cardoza, well he put it all together and is again running for National Committeeman of the CRA. Facepalm!
The problem Jorge has is that the drugs and alcohol have destroyed his health, and this will destroy his life, if it hasn’t already. These folks are not your friends Jorge. They are using you like the parent who uses their child to “re-live their glory years.” You may not be able to help yourself Jorge, but you are looking at about 15-20 years in a federal lockup. Try remorsefulness for a change. Stay out of politics and try to right a few wrongs you have had in your life. Jorge the FBI wants you. The scariest arm of the federal government not named the IRS is looking to bury you. You are in real trouble.
In the past, you always got your way at CRA, CAGOP, or Sac GOP meetings because Sue, Tom, Bill, and others covered for you. You screamed, shouted, interrupted, pouted, and muttered things incoherently and you were never told, “No”. These folks are not your friends and will abandon you as you leave the courtroom in handcuffs. Rest assured this video you made and the photos you took will be coming to a courtroom near you very quickly. I hope you get another stimulus check because a return trip to DC will be cheaper and more enjoyable on your own dime rather than if you ditch court. I can’t say for sure, but I think a federal chartered airplane won’t have flight attendants serving booze.
Sue, Bill, Tom and others, you may be lawyers (sans Bill) and work for powerful people, but your unfettered allegiance to Jorge has me questioning why I ever got involved in politics with people of your caliber. You are all truly the lowest of the low. None of you are above the law and I wish you were required to testify as to why you support that sack of trash Jorge. Watching you squirm would be out and out fun, seeing you try to bob and weave, or plead negligence would be funny. Frankly, I would make sure the Academy Awards committee was on site as it could be Oscar worthy for best performance on camera!
Jorge word of advice, these folks (just like your lawyer) have very little say in front of a man/women/binary with a robe and a gavel. You have been warned.
Say it isn’t so but here we go again. A New Year, a new president, and yet same old, same old, out of our favorite out of touch person. He came into the office proclaiming 500,000 had died of Covid and asked me if I still thought it was a hoax. With all the editorial crew of this blog to back me, I have never once said that. I believe, just like we all do here, that it was a harsh overreaction by a loud minority of folks who believe everything they see on TV. I heard about how 1,000 people had died in Sacramento County, a county of almost 1.8 million mind you. He hid in fear during this entire time, and yet he insisted young folks and “essential” folks report for duty in case he needed to spin the reels at the Indian Casino. My favorite was his explaining to me the different variants of Covid; CA, NY, South Africa, European, etc.…things I frankly could not care less about. Folks this virus has very similar characterizes to the flu in the opinion of my doctor and many other medical experts; sans Fauci. The flu mutates annually and as a result the flu shot is either a “hit” or a “miss” depending on science and research.
Just to be clear, I do not see much on Covid anymore, it must be since we have a new president or a Governor who is about to be recalled. But I used to look at KCRA or CBS local affiliate news sites for info on Covid and I see nothing anymore except for the rare announcement that a drive thru vaccine clinic is in town. Apparently, this info is readily available to folks who have nothing better to do. As a blogger who is consumed with work, church, politics, and other extracurricular activities, I cannot let Covid break or destroy my mind. I know it is there, and the vaccine will not be available to me for a great while due to my young age. I also know I cannot control things outside my control, I wash my hands, wear a mask as required, and generally live my life.
While 90-Day Guy was on his diatribe about the variants I asked if he enjoyed watching so much television and what he specifically watched. Predictably he got upset and proclaimed he doesn’t watch TV. He took a phone call and began to recap last night’s episode of The Bachelor and parlayed that into a discussion about The Voice with a client. When I casually brought up The Bachelorette, I was told that ended weeks ago and to “get with the program.” I don’t have cable, nor do I care about those shows. But it makes my point, he watches quite a lot of TV. He also readily admits to watching Hannity, Tucker, and Laura Ingraham daily, adding 3 more hours to the docket. He also brought up how he watched a Giants baseball game the same night. Folks, baseball is not in season, it’s Spring Training, and the players worth a rip are out of the game by inning 5, yet he is “so busy” that he watches no TV.
For the heck of it, I decided to play a game with him. I said name all 50 states, I could care less the order named, I just wanted to hear them listed off. He asked to write them down, I okayed it. He correctly listed 44, and included Washington DC, which will likely soon be a state. He left out of usual ones located in New England, left out Pennsylvania, and Illinois, which while forgettable, they are large states. Then I mentioned list all capitals. This was not a great look. He listed 20, and some of the “capitals” had me puzzled; Seattle, New York City, Tulsa, Miami, and Portland were listed. He gave up shortly thereafter and claimed again he doesn’t watch much TV. Yikes.
The point of this blog is not to antagonize but to point out how brain drain is a real thing. Liberalism is a disease, but at the same time look at what TV does to your mind. This guy could name off all the variants, and stats Covid related, were he found them I do not know. He could also give a detailed run down of reality TV to a point of obsession, and watching an entire preseason baseball game, whilst simultaneously saying he is too busy all the time. However, he could not pass a basic test of something that has not changed in our lives. This is brain drain. Stop worrying about Covid, it’s a tertiary thing in our lives right now, additional info will come in time, but to make it an obsession is not good.
Why does the Left persist with the lie that there was no voter fraud in the 2020 election? Give me a break!
Oh, the following voter fraud was made possible a grant from Big Tech. Thanks Mark Zuckerberg.
In Georgia, a state Joe Biden won by fewer than 12,000 votes, county election officials still have not complied with a law requiring them to provide documents certifying the chain of custody of more than 400,000 mail-in ballots.
The request for the drop-box transfer forms was made by The Georgia Star News under the Georgia Open Records Law. Last July, the Georgia State Election Board passed an emergency rule requiring election officials to maintain the transfer forms
.But officials for the state’s largest county, Fulton, and another major county, DeKalb, said they didn’t know if they had the documents and promised to reply later, Georgia Star News reported.
But four months after the Nov. 3 election, those counties and 33 others have failed to comply with the law.
Overall, no chain of custody has been provided for an estimated 404,691 of the estimated 600,000 votes by mail-in ballot deposited in drop boxes, delivered to county registrars and counted in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, Star News said.
Yep, if you thought the “Velvet Sweatshop,” as their employees call Microsoft, was in the clear after plugging holes in the mega security breach of SolarWinds, you would be wrong. Yesterday, I saw this article reporting another huge securing breach, this time by China. (FYI that I know of, no one has taken credit for SolarWinds.)
The quiet release of an out of band patch for a flaw in Microsoft’s Exchange server is rapidly turning into a major story, with credible reports ofat least 30,000 organizations in the USA, and possibly hundreds of thousands around the world, being hacked by a Chinese hacker group, who now has full control of the servers and the data on them.
For those that don’t know, Microsoft Exchange is their flagship email server software.
Krebs on Security reports that a significant number of small businesses, towns, cities and local governments have been infected, with the hackers leaving behind a web shell for further command and control.
Microsoft said the original attacks were targetted at a range of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs, but Krebs notes that there has been a dramatic and aggressive escalation of the rate of infection, as the hackers try and stay ahead of the patch Microsoft released.
“We’ve worked on dozens of cases so far where web shells were put on the victim system back on Feb. 28 [before Microsoft announced its patches], all the way up to today,” said Volexity President Steven Adair, who discovered the attack . “Even if you patched the same day Microsoft published its patches, there’s still a high chance there is a web shell on your server. The truth is, if you’re running Exchange and you haven’t patched this yet, there’s a very high chance that your organization is already compromised.”
“It’s police departments, hospitals, tons of city and state governments and credit unions,” said one source who’s working closely with federal officials on the matter. “Just about everyone who’s running self-hosted Outlook Web Access and wasn’t patched as of a few days ago got hit with a zero-day attack.”
Folks, this is a really big deal but unless you read tech blogs, I doubt you’ve heard about this. Again, this breach includes schools, police departments, hospitals, financial institutions, and businesses. I encourage you to read the article which I linked above. I suspect we will hear more about this breach before long. Oh, and if you don’t that doesn’t mean everything is better.
Don’t forget that whatever the outcome of this most recent breach, your smart phones are sending all your text messages, address books, location, and other data to both China and Big Tech on a regular basis. Your privacy is an illusion in a digitally dependent world. How people use the information they are collecting is probably above my paygrade. If knowledge is power, then we’re likely in trouble…
With the backdrop of impending economic ruin and a recall, Governor Newsom has implemented what I consider a financial suicide pact for California’s government. Newsom and his “brain trust” have decided that working conditions under Covid-19 are such a wonderful thing that all State workers—to the fullest extent possible—will continue to work at home from now until Doom’s Day.Yep, state workers—as a group—will never again have to report to a brick-and-mortar office building. They will continue to work at home from now until they retire.
Apparently, this onetime accounting gimmick is projected to save the state lots of money. Instead of the government paying building rental (or long-term leases) and all utilities, supplies, and maintenance of the offices, now its employees will. As a benefit, California can fudge some numbers about how green the state’s government has become because nobody must drive to work anymore. Oh, and all those businesses that once served state workers breakfast and lunch around said office buildings are going out of business in droves.
In March I will have to spend one three-hour session in my office packing up my personal belongings and scanning any documents in the cubicle. Said documents will then be placed in the shredding bin for destruction. The goal is for me to be completely out of the office at the end of this visit. My coworkers have been commanded to do likewise. Sometime that month we will also be issued laptops to replace the desktops that we have been logging into from home each day since the pandemic panic was initiated. Then we can use VPN (Virtual Private Network) access instead of the VM Ware application that we now use.
Folks, in some cases working from home might work OK but to initiate a blanket policy doing this is nuts. If you think, there’s fragmentation in the Android ecosystem, just wait until the fragmentation of government functions becomes manifest.
How does someone monitor your workload when you work from home? Remember that government is not concerned with sales or productivity so what metric do you use? Hamsters are busy all day but do they actually go anywhere on their little wheels?
How do you balance workload when you’ve never done the work you are now supervising?
How do you promote people or train new employees with no properly written procedures and no face-to-face interaction? Office work is about relationships not just managing email traffic.
Folks, I know that in this post Enron business world, separation of duties is a thing but what California is perpetrating now is a gross perversion of the concept. I think it is a formula for financial ruin with even less accountability.
Oh, case in point is EDD. Did you know that the $31 billion in fraud was due in part to EDD’s employees working from home? There was no way to properly supervise the unemployment case workers because everyone was hiding in their respective homes just clicking approve on whatever came up on their computer screens. I really doubt that EDD employees—especially those hired after the two weeks to flatten the curve—ever had any relationship with their supervisors and I also guarantee that they had inadequate training to boot. In such a scenario, you only get supervision when you ask for help or deny too many claims.
Folks, Governor Newsom, and his fellow travelers are remaking California government right under your noses and the public—as usual—is none the wiser. Guess if it’s not on television then it’s not news. Both ideas and actions have consequences.
The only upside I see on this is that more people can be home during the day to watch their neighborhoods. Hopefully, this will somewhat mitigate the fact that both Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown have emptied much of the state prison population into suburbia. Perhaps tens of thousands of state workers being home all day will make the criminal class think twice about home burglaries.
Meanwhile, because I work from home; my wife is happy that the trash is empty, the laundry is done, and the dishes are clean; and my dog is happy that he gets at least two walks a day and lots of love. Sadly, Rush Limbaugh is not the only guy showing up to work with half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair.
Note: This blog is a place where I share how I feel or what I’m doing, often to let off some steam; however, occasionally, it’s just a place where I park notes to myself in case need them later. This article is one such note to myself; however, you still might learn a thing or two about how your tax dollars are spent. If you read on, remember that you’ve been warned.
Background—including Jargon and Vocabulary
In terms of technology, one of the most backwards places to work is the State of California. Yep, while the State may be home to Big Tech, your government is stuck in the past. In a sense, I can’t blame them. Government has zero incentive to become efficient, innovate, or do better. One reason is that everybody is represented by a union whether or not they are even a member of said union. As such, no jobs can be eliminated without their express permission—which never happens. Any media reports to the contrary are lies or smokescreens to trick the public—usually for sympathy to further the union’s grip on state government.
A legacy piece of technology which is the aging backbone of California’s finances is CalSTARS (California State Accounting and Reporting System). I have written about this software before. It is a Unix based mainframe system that was brought online when Ronald Reagan was President in the 1980’s. This is the same software that desperately needed patching as part of the Y2K scare. It is still in use today.
California has spent over a billion dollars of your money to try and get their new accounting system deployed to replace CalSTARS, but as usual, it is many years behind schedule and hundreds of millions over budget. This gem is called FI$Cal (Financial Information System for California). The acronym is pronounced fis-cal [with short “I”) Think of it as pausing between syllables of the word “fiscal”.
The next thing you need to know is that within the State of California, there is no formal way for one agency to talk with another. Lazy people might blame the right to privacy in the State Constitution. This privacy clause was sold to voters as a barrier to keep agencies from sharing information and to cripple “Big Brother” from spying on citizens. Voters we told that by passing it, government would be prevented from compiling comprehensive files to track citizens. Think Soviet Union Politburo and KGB surveillance.
I have two comments on that promise. First, who needs government to do that when we have credit agencies and Big Tech to do it for you. If you want the goods on a conservative, just ask Big Tech; if you want the same info on a Liberal you better get a court order. Such is life in Biden’s America.
Second, somehow liberals argue the this right to privacy—banning the government from keeping comprehensive records on citizens—must also include a right to abortion. Abortion was never mentioned by the campaign advocating passage of the right to privacy back when it was passed in the 1970’s.
Anyway, it is impossible for peers within agencies to speak directly with each other unless you are a lifer in state service and happen to have a personal relationship with someone in another agency; usually because you were once coworkers. If my agency has a question for the State Controller, Franchise Tax Board, Dept of Motor Vehicles or any other state agency, we get to call the very same 800 number that you do as a member of the public to try and get help. Needless to say, with no way to prove who I am, where I’m calling from, or why my question is related to my duties as a state employee, I can get no help. Managers have no secret backdoor or liaison to go thru to get answers either.
This communication barrier extends to email also. Even when I have the email address of someone, say at the State Controller’s Office, my experience has been that email outside that agency is refused by the mail server and/or firewall. In the wake of Covid and other state activities, perhaps this will eventually change.
My point in bringing up communication is this, no one at my agency can get the State Controller to find a better way to send us accounting documents other than snail mail. The accounting documents that we get arrive in drips and drabs (when they make it to us). Each envelope or box has two copies of each accounting document. These must then be sorted and scanned into Adobe PDF files. These PDF files are then run thru an OCR program and then manually attached into our accounting system. My question, for the entire time that I have been a state employee (12 years), is why can’t we get this information in an electronic form?
The answer is simply that no one in my agency knows who to ask at SCO to make this happen or even if it’s possible.
Anyway, we typically get 2,500 – 3,000 unique pages, plus their duplicates, per month from the State Controller. When SCO screws-up employee payroll, then we get extras. Lots of extras. In January, we were supposed to get over 19,500 extra accounting documents (plus their duplicate copies). Snail mail being what it is, the documents did not arrive in a timely manner and yours truly was tasked with finding a way to get them from the old Unix system so we could manually attach them into our accounting system (not FI$Cal).
sample of terminal software
What follows is my account of how I solved the problem of getting these missing documents for my agency and making them usable.
SCO Prod
Via the Unix/mainframe computer program mentioned above, we can log in to the State Controller system with Read Only access. In theory, users can go other places too, but you need user and firewall permissions which I don’t have. Oh, I don’t have access to the State Controller site either. I have to use some else’s account.
You see, the Information Technology people where I work never interact with actual users, just each other. They have no clue what we need, they just take their best guess, filtered thru the lowest bidder, and deploy it to us. We are expected to like it, even if it is outdated or underpowered equipment when its brand new. Ditto for software. IT doesn’t care what our job is, just that each budget is spent and not exceeded. Thus, about five or six years ago, they went from giving access to almost everyone to taking it away. Apparently, the per seat costs were too high so they cut to the bone and beyond.
Anyway, using the log in information that I possess, I went hunting for the missing documents. We use a terminal program to access the mainframe. This software is capable of being configured to do bulk screen captures. Screen captures are the only way to get the missing documents. The only option is whether to print to a file or a physical printer.
Using my three hour per day window to be in the office, I went in on consecutive days to capture our missing documents. The missing documents were on two different dates. With a practical limit of about 80 screen captures per batch, I did over 35,000 screen captures during my six hours in the office. Each batch was saved as a PDF file. The PDF batches were then merged so all those on the same date were in a single file.
Filter Results
My next step was to sort the pages by agency, a four-digit number on each page. By doing research, I found that Adobe Acrobat had no built-in way to do this. I tried converting the file into Microsoft Word, an RTF file and a few others only to have Adobe Acrobat crash completely after the better part of an hour. After crashing Acrobat about a half dozen times, I gave up on any type of file conversion.
After more diligent research on the Internet, I found a different solution, a Java batch file run in Adobe Acrobat.
Here were the steps that I followed:
First, I had to see if it was possible and if so, how? This thread said it could be done.
By clicking on the link found in the Correct Answer, I found some Java code to copy and paste. As is usual on the Internet, it was only part of a correct solution.
If you look at the above two pages, you can figure out where to go in Acrobat DC to paste the code into the Action tab. However, the code is not correct.
The line:
var stringToSearchFor = “Total”;
is not the correct syntax. (Whatever is written inside the quotation marks is what the script searches for.)
By looking at the below line of code, I found the missing thing needed above, parentheses.
var n = str.indexOf(“welcome”);
What the wonderful Java script mentioned above does is this; it looks for a string of text on the page and if it finds a match, it copies the page to a new file. Thus, I enter the agency number as the string to search for and then everything matching my agency is copied into a new file. As counter intuitive as it seems, I filter out what I want to keep and not the other way around.
The documents that were the result of the screen captures had only one problem, the font size was too small to be used in the macro process which I will describe below in a moment.
Increase Font in Acrobat Files
Once again, I found that Adobe Acrobat lacks a feature that I desperately need now. Acrobat has no ability to increase the font size of a PDF document. The reason for the need to increase font size is due to how the macro operates. The macro searches a location on the page for a document number. The margins on the page were too large and font too small. I felt that this would be a problem going forward.
Other than a few mentions about magnifying the size of a document on the page—which is not the same thing—I could find no solution. I came to the conclusion that improvisation was needed. I took the files created by the script above and then printed them to a new PDF file while increasing the magnification of the printed output to 115%.
The result was a page with a font size and page layout similar to the snail mail copies that we normally get. Once the font size was increased, I merged all files for the month into a single PDF.
Macro
Each month, I must take the existing PDF file for the month and run a series of macros on it. The end result of the macros is three parts:
First, is a list of comments that is bulk uploaded into the accounting program.
Second is that the merged file of all PDF documents is split into individual files that are labelled by document number.
Third is a list of accounting documents that need to be manually uploaded one page at a time into the accounting program.
As part of the Macro process, each page of the PDF file is imported into an Excel workbook as a separate worksheet. This was the largest Excel workbook I every created with over 20,000 worksheets. This baby took lots of CPU power but unlike Acrobat, Excel didn’t crash under the strain.
Sadly, the next two steps of the macro failed to find the needed document number to continue.
After a review of a few worksheets, I noticed that the part of the monthly PDF file created by the process described above were all the same, which was good, but the rows were not where I needed them to be. There were blank rows at the top of the worksheets. I thought, what if I can remove the top row of all these at the same time?
In the dark recesses of my mind, I remembered that this was possible, but I forgot how. After a quick Internet search and creative use of the Shift key, I deleted the top row of one selected page and after an interminable wait, the first row was deleted from all the other selected worksheets as well.
I reran the failed macro steps and found that everything worked just like clockwork.
Elapsed time for the above was a week of my life.
Conclusion
Now 18 of us are manually attaching all the documents created above. Each of us has 1,080 (or more) PDF files that we are attaching one at a time to line items in the accounting program. This takes about 12 hours per person of uninterrupted time or about 216 manhours just for this month.
I’m sure it is possible to do this entire process in a matter of minutes if the people controlling the budget layer cared about a fiduciary responsibility for taxpayer money, but we work for the union not you so such waste in baked into the system.
Stay tuned for more tales of how your tax dollars are spent.
What a time to be alive! I fire up the KCRA 3 news app, and viola! The CA state legislature has authorized 5.7 million folks to get stimulus payments. If you are here illegally, as in you should not be here, then you get $600! But…in the words of that guy who sells Ronco knives on TV infomercials….”but wait, there’s more!”
If you make less than $75k after accounting for deductions, YOU TOO GET A CHECK! Another $600, so if you’re illegal and make less then 75k (since when do people being paid in cash file taxes?) you get a cool $1,200, just for living here. This is a modern-day bribe.
Don’t believe me, see for yourself.
About $2.3 billion of the money will go to people who claim and receive the California earned income tax credit. In general, that’s people who earn $30,000 a year or less.
Another $470 million will go to people who earn a maximum of $75,000 per year after deductions and use an individual taxpayer identification number to file their income taxes. These are mostly people who don’t have Social Security numbers, including immigrants.
Some people fit both of those categories. In those cases, they will get $1,200, not $600. The Democratic-controlled state Legislature did this because most people who file their taxes this way are immigrants who were not eligible for federal stimulus checks Congress approved last year.
About $993 million will go to people who get help from state programs targeting low-income families, the elderly, the blind and the disabled.
According to the article, you get your check 3-4 weeks from Franchise Tax Board after you file your taxes. I would file ASAP, because this state already allowed convicts, felons, folks on death row, and “US Senators” to obtain fraudulent payments via our unemployment board (EDD). There is no telling when the cash will run out so I would claim earlier as opposed to later. BTW most folks making around 100k will end up under the 75k threshold after mortgage interest, federal tax, and charitable donations are deducted. Oh well.
Just remember, the recall should be certified around early April. The election must be held a couple months or so after that, about when your check will arrive. No word if it will be stuffed inside your recall ballot. But I digress. Pretty sad for a guy to pay you to vote for him, but at least this will be construed as a legal exchange between consenting adults.
The Chief
Editor’s Note: Yesterday Gavin also gave slackers another gift from the Franchise Tax Board when FTB was instructed to halt debt collections from tax filers until July 31, 2021. Unless I missed something, tax filings are still due on April 15th; therefore, the State’s best chance to collect money from resident’s tax returns will be null and void for the second year in a row. This amounts to Newsom commanding that the debts that taxpayers owe to the State be written-off by various state agencies. Typically, state agencies will attempt collection for two years before writing-off the money as a bad debt. In a typical year, if the money is not collected by April 15th then it likely never will be.
Folks, if you want to see what’s likely on tap for your digital future, then one country to watch is Australia. Australia is doing many things differently than we are, but many of the tech companies in the United States are wanting to see their policies adopted here.
First, in Australia, Microsoft and Google are in a fight about a proposed policy that directly affects online news articles.
February 11, 2021
Australia is currently in the process of passing regulation which would force Google and Facebook to pay publishers for linking to their news articles, a controversial proposal which appears to go against the whole ethos of the web, which is in the end all about linking to pages for free. Importantly Australia would not allow Google to avoid paying the newspapers by simple delisting them from their index.
In the blog post, Smith explains the 4th Estate is a very important element in democracy, and that the weakness of news organizations and the strength of social media is what resulted in Donald Trump being able to convince tens of millions of Americans that he won the election he actually lost.
“It was far from unusual for a losing candidate to request a recount or take a dispute to court – both parts of the democratic process,” Smith noted, “But, this year, even after losing more than 50 lawsuits in a row, President Trump waged a sustained campaign that successfully persuaded tens of millions of his supporters that the election was rigged. Without this sustained disinformation barrage, it’s hard to imagine that January 6 would have become such a tragic day.”
Smith notes that while Google and Facebook has generated billions in revenue from aggregating news, since 2000, newsroom revenue in the United States has fallen by 70% and employment has been cut in half. More than 2,000 newspapers have closed entirely. In many places, local news has been decimated. The majority now got their news (and disinformation) from social media, often only reading the headlines and not even clicking through to the news website.
Microsoft notes that news publications have been powerless to fight back, due to the monopoly position of Google and Facebook, but that Microsoft has always supported paying publishers for news and that they are well prepared to do this on a large scale if they gain market share.
February 15, 2021
Microsoft has turned into one of the most ardent advocates for the proposed Australian media code, which would see Google and Facebook pay news publications a share of their profits.
The proposal has been called a link tax which would break the internet, but Microsoft insists funding newspapers is important for the health of democracy and fighting fake news.
Conceptually it is easier to think of the proposal as a tax on Google and Facebook, similar to the TV License in UK, where TV owners have to pay a £157.50 tax per year to support public access TV and news. In this case, the tax is being directed to trillion-dollar companies rather than the citizens of the country, and the benefit would be spread wider than simply the state publisher.
The FAQ does not address concerns that the proposal would fund newspapers which are equally involved in spreading fake news as Moldovian content farms and that it would place the power to decide which news outlet succeeds or fails in the hand of the government rather than the market.
February 17, 2021
In response to Australia’s proposed new Media Bargaining law, Facebook today announced that it will block publishers and users in Australia from sharing or viewing news content. This is applicable for both Australian and international news content. The proposed law will force platform providers like Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for using their content. To continue operating Google search in Australia, Google today signed an agreement with News Corporation for sharing the revenue obtained through news content. However, Facebook refused to sign any such deal citing the below reasons.
Second, Australia is putting together a coalition of corporations to fight fake news.
February 22, 2021
Microsoft today announced that it is partnering with Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel and Truepic to form the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). C2PA is a Joint Development Foundation project formed to address the prevalence of disinformation, misinformation and online content fraud through developing technical standards for certifying the source and history or provenance of media content.
“There’s a critical need to address widespread deception in online content — now supercharged by advances in AI and graphics and diffused rapidly via the internet. Our imperative as researchers and technologists is to create and refine technical and sociotechnical approaches to this grand challenge of our time. We’re excited about methods for certifying the origin and provenance of online content. It’s an honor to work alongside Adobe, BBC and other C2PA members to take this critical work to the next step,” said Eric Horvitz, Chief Scientific Officer and Project Origin executive sponsor, Microsoft.
The major technology companies and social networks in Austalia have signed up for the Australian Code of Practice on Disinformation and Misinformation, a voluntary code of practice by the Digital Industry Group Inc (DiGi), a non-profit industry association advocating for the digital industry in Australia.
Policies and processes concerning advertising placements:
Empowering users:
Integrity and security of services and products:
Supporting independent researchers:
Without prejudice commitments:
The policy was developed at the request of the Australian government and will be reviewed in 12 months. Companies involved are required to have a working complaints procedure in place within 6 months. The code excludes private messaging services, email services, and enterprise services. Notably, it also excludes content authorised by an Australian state or federal government; political advertising or content authorised by a political party registered under Australian law.
Folks, please read the links of these stories if you want more information.
What you are beginning to see is that Big Tech is setting themselves up as the arbitrators of all truth. While some of the things mentioned above, sound good and perhaps even noble, the bottom line is that tech companies are deciding what information that you can or cannot access. Microsoft has kept a lower profile than other companies, but they are right there with the FAANG companies and Twitter.
Fake News
Before I go further, it will be helpful to note that the concept of fake news is not monolithic. There are several different types of fake news. Here are a few examples:
Microsoft often talks about the potential for fake news using digital manipulation. Think the movie Looker (1981) or Carrie Fisher being digitally added to Star Wars after her death. What if a video of a politician was faked for the purposes of fomenting rebellion or aiding the point of view of a media outlet hating said politician? Wouldn’t that be bad? In theory yes, unless its Donald Trump.
DEBUNKED: Remember the "very fine people" lie the Biden campaign and mainstream media fed everyone? Here's the whole story: pic.twitter.com/DkvLekG4Ei
But Microsoft is envisioning a video technology or capability that is even more manipulated than that of Trump or Carrie Fisher. What if we entered an era when no one would trust what they see? We are a very visual society, if people don’t see something, it is not real to them but what if someone took advantage of that?
Another type of fake news is the good ‘ole Dan Rather using Microsoft Word kind. For those too young to remember, Dan Rather faked a memo about then President George W. Bush in an effort to influence the 2004 Presidential election.
Dan Rather CBS news
“Rathergate” is the derisive term applied to a set of four documents allegedly written by the former commanding officer of President George W. Bush in the early 1970s, and broadcast on the CBS program 60 Minutes Wednesday, September 8, 2004. The resultant exposure of these documents as forgeries, coupled with a lack of proper news investigating techniques, led to the ouster of four senior producers at CBS several months later, as well as the departure of long-time anchorman Dan Rather, for whom the scandal was named. Because of this, the event was also infamous for coining the phrase “fake but accurate”, referring to Fake news.
Sometimes fake news is just a refusal/denial to acknowledge something is true because it might be perceived as either hurting the side you support or benefitting someone that you disagree with. Instead of “We report, you decide” becomes “We decide, then report”. Or as Steve Taylor sang in Meat the Press (1983):
When the godless chair the judgment seat
We can thank the godless media elite
They can silence those who fall from their grace
With a note that says “we haven’t the space”
So fake news is sometimes the sin of commission or conversely the sin of omission; both are equally fatal for the person trying to make an informed decision. As I’ve stated before, without agreeing to the same set of information (or facts) we can’t have a dialogue, debate, or discussion about anything.
I’m not against polarization when it comes to certain issues. Some things just have no middle ground. As Gary North is fond of pointing out, a posture of neutrality is an illusion where one side tries to gain the upper hand on the other. The important things in life ultimately come down to the broad way or the narrow way. Lesser things can be negotiated or reduced to personal preference.
What bothers me about the fake news debate is that the purveyors of fake news have appointed themselves as the arbitrators of what is fake news; thus, when the fox places itself in charge of the henhouse, there can be only one outcome.
Let’s look at the previous election
To the is day, not a single liberal will admit to any voter fraud in any state during the 2020 presidential election. This is an unreasonable and unrealistic claim. There is always voter fraud. The question is whether it is widespread, systemic, organized, and enough to sway the outcome.
If Michigan and other states would voluntarily clean their voter rolls on a regular basis then we conservatives would have more faith in the system; however, the reality is that it takes years of lawsuits to force Secretary’s of State in Democrat controlled states to do their job. Oh, and even prevailing in court is no guarantee that the voter rolls are ever cleaned up.
Folks, I know that California does not care about election integrity or keeping clean voter rolls. As long as Democrats continue to win elections, there will be no meaningful election reform in the once golden state.
Prior to the election, was this report from Judicial Watch:
Media Matters and other groups on the left, throw hammers at Judicial Watch but where it counts, Judicial Watch wins.
The lawsuit confirmed that Los Angeles County has on its rolls more than 1.5 million potentially ineligible voters. This means that more than one out of every five LA County registrations likely belongs to a voter who has moved or is deceased. Judicial Watch notes that “Los Angeles County has the highest number of inactive registrations of any single county in the country.”
The Judicial Watch lawsuit also uncovered that neither the State of California nor Los Angeles County had been removing inactive voters from the voter registration rolls for the past 20 years.
Please note the last line in the quote above, California voter rolls have not been cleaned up in over 20 years which I’m willing to bet was the last time a Republican was Secretary of State.
Meanwhile, after a brief internet search…
Yep, it was Bill Jones, the last Republican to win the office of California Secretary of State. Jones served from 1995 – 2003.
Bill Jones 1995
This allows me to circle back to a claim made by Brad Smith, “… even after losing more than 50 lawsuits in a row, President Trump waged a sustained campaign that successfully persuaded tens of millions of his supporters that the election was rigged.”
Folks, Trump lost zero trials on the voter fraud issue because none was ever heard in court. Even the Supreme Court has taken a pass on this issue. The courts refused because they view this as a political issue and since the election is over, it’s a moot point. Thus, no determination is or will be made on election fraud or if it was significant enough to change the election outcome. I think the federal courts are taking a pass on this not due to the substance of the issue, but because they know that if the case is heard, it will be used politically as a way to even further politicize the court system and make it even less independent than it is now. Packing the court is a likely outcome of any judicial relief granted to Trump. Also, I don’t think the courts are comfortable being the arbiters of last resort in Presidential elections.
If during the first two years of the Trump administration, a national system or standard was set for vote I.D. in federal elections, I think the outcome would have been different last November. But when the leadership on both sides of the political aisle are all in very safe seats then little incentive exists to fix a very broken system. Oh, and yes, I would prefer a state solution over a federal one but see my comments above on California. No chance it ever happens here.
Conclusion
Much of the time, fake news is in the eye of the beholder. We see what we want and ignore much of the rest. This trend will continue into the future. Soon we will go from memes with fake quotes and funny captions to fake videos with words never uttered. Discerning truth will become more difficult. Look for some to just give up on trying and resort to feelings to guide them—half our population is predisposed to do this already. “Trust your feelings Luke.” Those of us that believe there is only one Truth will become fewer.
I know that digital information will be even more scattered and fragmented in the future. As our culture becomes more splintered and fragmented, we become even more isolated, even living amongst other people. Sin divides us from God, His creation, our fellow man, and ourselves.
More and more you will hear some variation of the mantra, “you have your truth and I have mine.” Or the sugarcoated Disney version of “follow your heart.” This is a lie. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
There is only One Truth. Denial of its reality does not change Reality. Believing faerie tales like there are more than two genders, or evolution explains creation, or abortion is not murder, or “gay marriage” only proves your denial, self-delusion, and spiritual blindness.
The controversy over fake news is a microcosm or a much larger battle; a spiritual one.
Here’s what our future looks like unless we change our ways. Take a look at Deuteronomy 28 starting at verse 15.
Below are a few selections from this passage:
The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.
The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him.
The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind.
You will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where the LORD will drive you.
The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.
Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess. Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot.
There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life.
The good news is the God has promised believers that His Spirit will lead you into all Truth. Only God can cut through all the “white noise” in our culture and give you the wisdom to discern which spirits of our age should be shunned or followed.
Trusting in Big Tech to decide what’s best for us is just another name for tyranny. That Big Tech wants to work hand-in-hand with big government instead of hold government accountable, is no surprise. In a way, this marriage of convenience; looks to be the ideal power couple… for now.
I was reading some highlights of various things said by Rush Limbaugh this last week and while it was not on the topic of race, it seems to touch on the subject. Here’s a few quotes from Most Limitations Are Self-Imposed
It’s easy to be a victim. Look how easy the Democrat Party has made almost half this country think they’re victims of something.
And what happens to you when you’re a victim? Well, when you’re a victim, you automatically have a built-in excuse for failure. When you are a victim, it’s always somebody else’s fault. When you’re a victim, success is not possible. When you are a victim of something, you are acknowledging that you are as far as you’re gonna get, and you can’t get any further, because there are more powerful forces arrayed against you than the force of yourself against it.
And the Democrat Party does this on purpose. The Democrat Party makes as many people victims as possible because it freezes them right where they are. And that’s usually in lower middle class or abject poverty. It makes them resentful. If you’re a victim, you’re not happy. You can’t be happy. It’s impossible to be happy. It’s even difficult to be content. If you’re a victim, you’re always mad, but never at yourself. You’re mad at somebody else.
The Democrats have parlayed this into one of the biggest political movements in human history. And that would be of the victimized. Look at how many victim groups there are. And they all happen to be Democrat constituency groups. They all are on the protest march. They’re all angry; they’re all enraged.
Some of them are women, some of them are minorities, some of them are illegal immigrants — you name it — but they all have one thing in common: They have given up on the notion that they could be somebody and instead have descended into full-fledged victimhood and the comfort of being in a group of like-minded failures. Why isn’t everybody a victim? It’d be easy. Anybody could choose that if they wanted to. Being a victim is almost as easy as being a liberal. It’s one of the most gutless choices you could make.
It doesn’t take much. There are built-in excuses for failure. Built-in excuses for being miserable. Built-in excuses for being angry all the time. No reason to trying to be happy; it’s not possible. You’re a victim. Victim of what? … You’re a victim of something. The Democrats got one [a group] for you. If you want to be a victim, call ’em up.
Call Schumer and say, “Hey, I want to join you. I want to be a victim. Do you have a group for me?” He’ll have one. … you can keep it flowing if you just do two things: Stay a victim and vote Democrat.
Folks, the difference between Conservatives (and most Republicans) is that we see people as individuals while Democrats can only see people as groups. Democrats lump people together by the color of their skin (or other characteristics). They have no place to look at each person based on the content of their character. Looking at each person as an individual with great value is a biblical concept, the fact that the Republican Party adopted it and championed the freedom of slaves, and to some extent the unborn, is an outgrowth of the influence of this biblical truth.
