Wacko Anti-Semitic Politician Scams Voters Who Hate Anti-Semites

Thomas Lopez-Pierre, a whack job running for New York
City Council, set up a fraudulent GoFundMe page
to raise money for his campaign

I have to agree with the New York Post: For an anti-Semite, Thomas Lopez-Pierre has a ton of chutzpah.

This idiot is running for New York City council. He doesn't have the slightest chance of winning, given he's running on a platform that calls for stopping "greedy Jewish landlord" from committing "ethnic cleansing" against blacks. 
 
Told you Lopez-Pierre is a whack job.

This guy is a Democrat. To nobody's surprise, Jewish groups and others are working to get Lopez-Pierre kicked out of the party.

A GoFundMe page called "Stop Thomas Lopez-Pierre Hate Campaign" popped up. According to the New York Post said the GoFundMe page raised $5,781.

Here's the chutzpah part. Says the New York Post:

"But anyone who donated hoping to actually stop Lopez-Pierre is going to be sorely disappointed. - because the page was created by the candidate himself to scam money from his foes.

'I call it bait and switch,' Lopez-Pierre actually bragged to The Post."

Yes, he's right. It's bait and switch all right. I wonder if he can also be brought up on fraud charges

On his campaign page, the candidate says he's a Christian "saved by God's grace."

Asked by CBS New York whether "grace should keep you from lying in such a flagrant way," he responded, "I'm a sinner."

He's right on that count, too.
 
Lopez-Pierre said he's going to use the money he fraudulently raised via GoFundMe for marketing expenses in his campaign.

Maybe not so fast. GoFundMe says it's frozen the account while it investigates, so this dude might not ever get the money.

As if anyone is going to vote for him.

Lopez-Pierre is trying to win a primary election for a seat in upper Manhattan.  An incumbent named Mark Levine, who happens to be Jewish, is extremely likely to win the seat.

Is Outrage Over United Airlines Assault A Revolt Against Corporate Authoritarianism?

I don't remember the last time an incident blew up so big on social media as that horrible attack by United Airlines on a passenger over the weekend. 

As you probably are well aware of by now, United overbooked a flight from Chicago to Louisville, and tried to get volunteers to leave the plane.

Nobody did, so they picked people are random. One guy who had to get back to Louisville objected, so United called in the Chicago cops to beat the crap out of him and drag him off the plane.

That's not how the Orwellian overlords at United would describe the incident, but anyone who has seen the video knows it's true.

This has been building for some time now: Somewhere along the line, a huge swath of corporate America has decided the customers are the enemy, and they have free reign to cheat them, abuse them.

All with the help of Congress, who have been paid off by corporations to pass laws that favor these rich donors and screw the rest of us.  You can steal a lot more money from the boardroom than robbing a person on the street with a gun.

That's why United and all the other airlines can overbook flights and kick people off. It's more profitable, and screw it if you can't make it to Aunt Matilda's funeral in Des Moines.

The United assault on a passenger was the most egregious example of corporate authoritarianism yet, and the explosion on social media, was a giant collective, "I'm sick and tired of this and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Sure, the extreme public ire was aimed at United. But the force of it was inspired by all of our experiences: Gettting screwed by the 150 pages of legalese in every consumer transaction that only a trademark lawyer can understand. Being forced to wait on hold for three hours or more until somebody at the insurance company deigns to answer the phone, then promptly hangs up on you.

That kind of thing.

And it's all dressed up in Orwellian corporate speak that's enough to make you vomit

The United Airlines assault on this passenger was a master class by United on this PR wording.

First, being beat up and dragged unconscious from a plane is not an assault. It was "re-accommodating," as if United regretfully had to transfer you from one five star hotel to another.

United's hired goons - in the form of the odius Chicago Police - said the man's injuries were because he "fell."  Because being socked in the face enough to knock you over is just your clumsiness, you understand.

Later Monday, United CEO Oscar Munoz blamed the victim, saying he had been "belligerent" for not getting off the plane. In other words, the victim apparently had no right to be upset about being denied something he probably paid hundreds of dollars for - a cramped seat on a flight to Louisville.

You're supposed to be overjoyed to be toyed with by a corporation like United!

As Jimmy Kimmel said last night, imagine going to Applebee's and being forcibly dragged out of the restaurant 20 minutes into your meal because the place was "overbooked." It's the same thing as what happened on United!

Kimmel ran a parody ad from United that was funny because it was so incredibly close to the truth. Not just of what goes on at United but many other grifting large corporations. Here's a quote from Kimmel's United "ad"

"We're United Airlines. You do what we say when we say, and there won't be a problem....If we say you fly, you fly, if not, tough shit. Give us a problem, and we'll drag your ass off the plane. And if you do this we'll beat yo so badly you'll be using your own face as a flotation device. United Airlines: Fuck you."

By the way, check out all the proposed new slogans for United in this link.

I hope the public outrage over United lives on, intensifies and spreads to other corporations who treat the public, the environment and everything else like shit for fun and profit.

People are boiling angry over a lot of things anyway, including how the government is run and how it no longer represents us, but represents corporations.

I'm sounding like Bernie Sanders, but this is exactly why he struck such a chord. He's right. The corporations are running the show, and often doing so in a criminal, morality-free way. The extreme anger at United is a symptom of that.

Let's keep fighting. But not physically, like United does.

In case you need a reminder of how brutal the assault was, here you go:

Texas Wants To Execute A Guy Who Didn't Kill Anybody

Texas wants to execute this guy, even though
everyone agrees he never murdered anyone.  

UPDATE:

A Texas appeals court has halted the execution of Lee Wood.

According to Reuters:

"It its decision, the appeals court asked a lower court to review his sentence and claims from Wood's lawyer that it was obtained in violation of due process because it was based on false testimony and false scientifice evidence."

That's a reference to the psychiatrist I reference in the previous discussion, below.

The psych doc never directly examined Wood, and had a reputation as "Dr Death" for always seeming to argue for the death penalty when called by prosecutors to testify.

The doc was kicked out of the American Psychiatric Association for the ethical violation of making diagnoses of capital murder defendents without examining them first, says Reuters.  

I'm sure some people in Texas are mad because they can't just kill anyone they want because they liked false testimony, but kudos to the appeals court for this moment of sanity.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION:

I guess there's still a tough on crime crowd out there, judging from the way Texas is handling things these days.

They're about to execute a guy. They do that all the time in Texas. Normally, you have to commit murder to enjoy the death accommodations of the Lone Star State.

Now, though, they're offing a guy who didn't kill anyone. He was just near another guy who did.

According to the Washington Post, Jeffrey Lee Wood is to be executed on August 24 because he was sitting in a pickup truck back in 1996 while his buddy, Daniel Reneau went inside a Texaco convenience store and shot a 22 year old clerk to death.

Wood was the getaway driver, but it's unclear if he even knew Reneau had a gun with him, much less whether he was going to kill somebody.

Yeah, Wood was culpable. He was in on the idea to rob the store. So he definitely deserved to get locked up. But doesn't the death penalty seem a teensy bit harsh here, given the fact he wasn't the triggerman.

And given the fact that Wood has a low IQ,  And given the fact a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution said he would be violent again -- but it turned out the psych doc didn't examine Wood, and was always hired by prosecutors to say how awful defendents were, and the American Psychiatric Association kicked the doc out a couple years later for professional incompetence, says the Washington Post. 

Naturally, Texas prosecutors aren't saying anything, citing pending litigation in the case. That's always the excuse when some officials doesn't want to answer for something scummy they did because that would just add unwanted publicity to the case.

Some Texas lawmakers have tried to change the law that allows for accomplices who don't actually do the murdering to get executed anyway. But you know those law and order types.

Makes me afraid to go to Texas. They take guilt by association seriously down there, don't they? If I just look the other way when a jaywalker does his deed, to I get locked up for not reporting it?

I exaggerate. But when they say don't mess with Texas, they mean it in weird, immoral ways sometimes.

John Oliver Exposes Most Sleazy "Legal" Business Ever: Zombie Debt Collection

Many people years ago were unable to pay debts, mostly medical payments. The statutes of limitations have long since expired on these debts, so generally those people would no longer be responsible for paying the debt

Except for some sleazy, sleazy businesses, that are made legal by corrupt state legislatures, or not made illegal by corrupt state legislatures.

BoingBoing explains the debt thing well:

"The sums themselves are "zombie debts" --- debts that have been long written off and generally don't have to be paid, which are bought up by collection firms that terrorize their victims and embroil them in difficult-to-navigate litigation that must execute perfectly, or the debts are resurrected and collected through paycheck confiscation."

These sleazy companies buy these debts for fractions of a penny on the dollar, then go after their victim. So you can see they can make a lot of money terrorizing people of modest means who are definitely not financial lawyers.

It's an outrage, and should be illegal, but some discrete campaign contributions to lawmakers probably helps keep these things going.

John Oliver recently had a brilliant segment on this outrage, in which he revealed how some state legislatures actually made it easier for these zombie debt collection agencies to terrorize former debtors, and how they remove the assumption of innocense in the proceedings against the people they're going after.

He also went to a debt collector's conference and captured video of people in the industry joking about bullying victims and ruining their lives.

Yeah, that's such a barrel of laughs. Awful people.

Then Oliver did something brilliant. He formed his own debt collection agency just like the sleazes who terrorize people.

He calls his new company Central Asset Recovery Professionals, whose acronym is CARP named for the bottom feeder fish.

Oliver was able to form this corporation, based in Mississippi with just a $50 fee. The company consists of just a web site that has the CARP logo and that's it.

According to Consumerist:

"'With little more to go on than that website,' says Oliver, 'we were soon offered a portfolio of nearly $15 million of out-of-statue medical debt from Texas'

The asking price was less than $60,000 for $14,922,261.76 in this zombie debt - ir around $0.004 for every dollar of debt owed. Purchasing the debt would CARP the names, current addresses, Social Security numbers, and amount owed (or previously owed, as the statute of limitations had expired) for nearly 9,000 individuals."

Says Oliver:

"So we bought it, which is absolutely terrifying....because it means if I wanted to, I could legally have CARP take possession of that list and have employees start calling people, turning their lives upside down over medical debt they no longer had to pay.

There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that absolutely everything is wrong with that."

Rather than calling people and houding them, Oliver took the money an organization called RIP Medical Debt, an organization of accountants and legal eagles that forgive the debts without tax repecussions for the would-be debtors.

Once RIP Medical Debt gets their hands on the zombie debts, they go away, never to rear their ugly heads again.

Since Oliver was able to spend just $60,000 to ditch $15 million in debt, I see a charitable opportunity here. Maybe some fairly rich philanthropists can form debt companies like Oliver did to funnel debts away from the sleazy debt collection agencies so they can't profit in such an evil way.

Here's John Oliver's segment.

It's amazing this a segment on medical debt that lasts 20 minutes and you can't stop watching it:

Is Kay Jewelers Stealing Diamonds From Customer?

Do some employees of Kay jewelers steal, or
at least do incredibly clumsy work?
A growing drumbeat says yes. 

Every kiss begins with cubic zirconia, apparently.

CBS Money Watch has a disturbing story about allegations that Kay Jewelers is taking expensive diamonds and gems from jewelry people bring in for servicing and replacing them with chief knockoffs.

Aimee Picchi (a fellow Vermonter!) writes that a number of people have reported the thefts. There's even a Boycott Kay Jewelers Facebook page. 

The Facebook page consists mostly of people complaining of shoddy work on jewelry at Kay's and other chain jewelers owned by parent company Signet Jewelers.

CBS Money Watch cites a report in BuzzFeed News about one woman, Chrissy Clarius, who took her $4,300 engagement ring to Kay Jewelers every six months as part of their gemstone guarantee program.

When nobody could find the diamond's certification number at one trip to Kay's, Clarius grew suspicious, took her ring to another jeweler and found the diamond had been replaced by moissanite, a cheap stone.

I really hope employees at Kay's are not stealing diamonds. According to CBS Money Watch, Kay released a statement saying they have "rigorous processes in place to help ensure this won't happen." The jewelry chain said it is "actively reviewing this issue."

BuzzFeed News also reports Kay is facing an onslaught of consumer complaints from people who bring in their jewelry for repairs and get them back looking worse than before the repair.

To me, all this sounds like a retail chain cutting corners with inexperienced workers, cheap goods and crappy customer service, all in the name of maximizing profits.

Like many (but not all!) companies, I suspect Kay is burning themselves with short term, quarter-by-quarter thinking. That sometimes temporarily results in ever increasing profits.

That is, until consumers get the memo on how people think the stores are crappy. Then there's a cascading series of financial troubles that can bring down these types of retailers. I noticed Picchi cited stock prices falling as much as 11 percent last week due to disappointing earnings for Signet Jewelers

The CEOs and top mucky-mucks tend to come out of this type of situation with huge bank accounts from their sky high executive pay, leaving a trail of unemployed former workers, angry customers and angry shareholders when things go south.

There outta be a law....

New York Post's War On Homeless Is Bizarre

The New York Post reported devoted up to 16 reporters
 to follow this mentally ill homeless person last summer.  

The New York Post has a weird obsession with homeless people.

They really, really want them to go away.

The obsession is particularly weird because they tend to zero in on one particular homeless person from time to time, splash them on the front pages of the tabloid, and humiliate them as thoroughly as possible.

It's unclear what they're trying to accomplish.

The latest case involved a homeless woman who dragged along a series of carts with her belongings in Hell's Kitchen.

The publicity prompted the NYPD to come in and throw many of the women's possessions out.

Homelessness, even one particular case, is rarely easy to solve. But I'm not sure what the benefit is of making one person's bad situation worse. Especially by highlighting them in a bad but widely read tabloid.

The woman in question might have been a hoarder, might have had other problems, and maybe someone should have helped her deal with all this. But apparently, the city just went in and threw her stuff out because of the bad publicity from the Post.

Now that they've done that, is anyone trying to help this woman? She's out of the headlines, so probably not. I'm sure there are people at the Post that now hope she just goes away and dies or something.

I think the goal of the New York Post is to make the homeless disappear. OK, but where do they go?

It seems every once in awhile, the Post singles out a homeless person because some editor finds that particular person annoying or something. Last summer, it was a homeless, mentally ill man who peed on a street that felt the front page wrath of the New York Post. 

The Post's editor,  Col Allan, apparently thought it was appropriate to devote 16 reporters to cover this homeless people, who annoyed this editor.

New York is one of the biggest, most exciting, newsiest cities in the world. You'd think something more important than some homeless guy peeing in a street happens on any given day in the Big Apple.

Maybe I can prompt the New York Post with some idea. Did any bigger crimes happen? Check with your friends at the NYPD.  What's Wall Street up to? The UN? Did Mayor DeBlasio say something you don't like? He often does.

Did any of the zillions of famous people living in the city do interesting in the city today?  Did the NYFD rescue a toddler from a dramatic fire in The Bronx?

Inquiring minds want to know, but not many of those inquring  want to know more about the Post editor's obsession with homeless people.

Do us all a favor, Col, and just work with whatever neighborhood association you deal with and shut the hell up. Go find some real news to cover.

Surprisingly, I'm On Jan Brewer's Side As She Considers Lawsuit

A couple of the dubious web ads that
were placed using images of former Arizona
Gov. Jan Brewer. She's threatening to sue.  

I can't say I've ever been much of a fan of Jan Brewer.  But now she's threatening to sue an advertiser, and I'm totally rooting for her.

Brewer, you might remember, came under fire  (and was praised in other quarters) when she signed into law that required police to determine people they encountered whether they were in the United States illegally.  

She turned into a lightning rod with that one. But she later did not seek re-election and had largely faded from the spotlight.

Brewer cropped up again as the face on one of those annoying snake oil ads that appear on so many web sites.  Some show doctored "before and after" photos of Brewer after she'd gotten the purported company's wrinkle removing doohickey or whatever.

Brewer is 70 years old, and lives in sunny Arizona, so you don't expect her to look like a 20 year old.

Worse, Brewer never agreed to be the model for the ads. They company or ad agency just swiped the photos from the Internet.

The ad that pictures Brewer said she got the "revenge makeover" after her husband dumped her because she had gotten so "ugly"

"Divorced For Being So 'Old'" reads the ad's headline.

In reality, Brewer and her husband John have been happily married for nearly 50 years now.

Brewer told the Arizona Republic "It's obviously a very distorted and unflattering photo, and it's hurtful and it's wrong....I want whoeer is behind the use of this image to cease and desist and do so immediately, or it will leave me no option but to pursue legal recourse against them."  

I'm not linking to the Arizona Republic ad because of the hoops you have to go through to get to it, and because there's an autoplay, but the paper said RevContent and Content.ad placed the advertisements.

RevContent said it is not the orignator of the ad.

Content.ad said it is investigating the circumstances of the ad's placement, but will stop running it.

We'll see if there is eventually a Brewer lawsuit, but I'm behind her on this one.

It's one of many examples of advertisers using a person's likeness to peddle their (sometimes dubious) products, and it DOES have to stop.

Downs Syndrome Cheerleader Vs. Bullies: Basketball Team's Got Her Back

Desiree Andrews walks down a hallway at Lincoln
Middle  School in Kenosha, Wisconsin with
three basketball players who defended her
from bullies during a game at the school.  

Maybe I'm being Pollyannish, but it seems this has been a bad week or two for bullies.

What with Curt Schilling's outing the Twitter bullies tormenting his daughter, and the dance party response to the heavyset guy who was fat shamed online, and now a new case, things are pretty good.

You take what you can get.

The latest bit of good news came from a middle school basketball court in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Desiree Andrews, 14, is enjoying some positive viral Internet fame, and so is the Lincoln Middle School basketball team after what started as another ugly case of bullying turned into a demonstration on how to do the right thing.

I think the whole incident went viral because people are clammoring for news of people acting with a bit of dignity.

As the Kenosha News reported, Desiree,has Down syndrome and is a Lincoln Middle School cheerleader. She was bullied by some jerks in the home bleachers as she cheered on the school's basketball team recently.

During a time out, three members of the school's basketball team, Miles Rodriquez, Scooter Terrien and Chase Vasquez, stormed off the court and told the bullies to knock it off

Desiree's father, Cliff Andrews, said the basketball players intervened in nick of time.

'She saw that I was upset,' Andrews said. 'She threw her hands around me and made me look at her face and said, 'Papa it's OK. I still love them even if they don't like me.'"

It turns out, unsurprisingly, that lots of people in Kenosha and Lincoln Middle School like Desiree.

The school and its students now refer to the gymnaisum where the incident took place as "D's House," named for Desiree. 

Students and people throughout town also bought and wear lots of t-shirts with a "D's House" logo on them.

Still the Andrews family isn't letting this attention go to their heads.

In the Kenosha News article, Desiree's father said:

"'My concern is putting Desiree out there and people thinking we're doing it just so she can get all this attention,' Andrews said. 'It didn't start out that way. It started out when some fine young men stood u for her in a bullying situation. I didn't want to lose track of that. I don't want to take away rom what those boys did."

People with Down syndrome seem to be increasingly getting the positive attention they deserve. Actress Jamie Brewer, who has Down syndrome, recently modeled an original design by Carrie Hammer on the runway at New York Fashion Week to high praise.

I'm not quite sure why the scummier people among us bully people with Down syndrome anyway. Everyone I've ever met with Down syndrome have been nice, engaging people who you want to be friends with.

Or as Scooter Terrien, one of the basketball players said, 'It's not fair when other people get treated wrong because we're all the same."

Everything That's Wrong With Major American Business

JetBlue is going to a fee system that other airlines use
to torture us. Because Wall Street wants JetBlue to make
bigger profits for them. The American Way I guess.Add caption

A few weeks ago, Wall Street analysts said they were not all that crazy about JetBlue.

The problem? They are "overly brand conscious and customer focused."

JetBlue is making money hand over fist. But not to the extend of other airlines, and not to the extent of what fat cat shareholders want. They want more money to add to their billions.

To do that, they have to make flying for us minions as rough as possible. And as expensive as possible.

It's not good enough to be profitable and treat people like human beings, i.e. fairly. You must, MUST screw them as much as possible.

Apparently, it's the American Way.

The fee system that airlines have horribly imposed on us is designed expressly to given us the most unpleasant flying experience possible while maximizing profits to the extreme.
Here's how the New Yorker describes this evil system:

"If fees are great for airlines, what about for us? Does it make a difference if an airline collects its cash in fees as opposed to through ticket sales?

The airlines, and some economists, argue that the rise of the fee model is good for travellers. You only pay for what you want, and you can therefore save money, if you, for instance, don't mind sitting in the middle seats in the back, waiting in line to board, or bringing your own food.

That's why American Airlines calls its fees program 'Your Choice' and suggests that it makes the 'travel experiencce even more convenient, cost-effective, flexible and personalized.'

But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here's the thing: in order for fees to work there needs to be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as 'calculated misery.'"

In other words, the more horrible the airlines make flying, the more they torture us, the more they insist on trying to make a 200 pound person like me sit in a seat designed for a 75-pounder, the more we will pay to accept escape from the torture and the more money they'll make.

Where will this trend end? "Hey, pay a $300 'no whipping' fee and we won't give you 100 lashes before you board."

I think airline executives would go for that, if aggravated assault wasn't still illegal. But don't worry. Congress will make it legal. If it contributes to corporate profits, which means they get more campaign money from the corporations.

This gets us back to JetBlue. That airline was trying to treat its customers with a basic level of respect. But nope, the Wall Street overlords will have none of that. Not of more profits can be squeezed out so they can buy that third beach house in the Hamptons.

Of course the free market types say if we don't like it, we can just go to the competition. But all of the so-called competition is under orders from Wall Street to commit exactly the same abuse on customers. So there really is no "competition."

As the New Yorker put it:

"When an airline like JetBlue is punished for merely trying to treat all of its passengers decently, something isn't right."

Look, I'm totally on board with one basic concept of capitalism.  Corporations must make profits. They provide a service we want, we pay for it, and they make money. Investors are happy, we're happy for getting the service we want, and live goes on wonderfully. Awesome! I love it!

What I don't love is the ethos that has taken over Corporate America. Instead of having us pay reasonable prices in exchange for goods and services, and have us coming back for more, the larger corporations by and large treat most of us with contempt.

That the 1% regards the rest of us as the enemythat has to be crushed, taken advantage of, left penniless and then discarded.

Of course, with that business model, how do they expect to make money once we're all spent?

 

Why Did Nancy Grace Tell The Dad His Missing Kid Was Found Instead Of The Police?

I think we've reached full Truman Show horror.  

How did Nancy Grace learn the missing kid was
found before the kid's dad did? 

I say that because Nancy Grace, the haranguing HLN host, informed a father, live on the air last night, that his son who had been missing for 11 days had been found alive.

The Truman Show, you might remember, was that Jim Carrey movie in which a man is unwittingly the subject of a reality TV show and his wife, friends and neighbors are all in on the ruse.

The movie was a meditation on how the media could ultimately exploit someone to the extreme. 

So now we have Nancy Grace ambushing a guy by telling him his son had been found.  She then bombarded the stunned dad with a lot of questions, which he definitely seemed unprepared to answer, given the news he'd just received.

Hey, anything for ratings, right?

Now, I don't want the media to censor itself. The more information the better. And the public is served by informing us what the circumstances were with this kid. But the Grace episode was more about entertainment and gawking, not information.

And what about the police? I certainly expect law enforcement to be fully transparent in their investigations, and to let the public know exactly what is going on in terms of public safety.  

Charles Bothuell, 12, was found after
being missing 11 days. Lots of murky
circumstances surrounding how they
found him, and who knew what, when.  

But what happened to protocol here? Typically, when police learn something significant in an investigation, they inform the immediate family first, then tell the public what's going on.

How did Nancy Grace know the kid was found before the kid's father had any clue?  Did police feel like they were more beholden to Nancy Grace than the kid or his family?

Is it the job of police to help the public, or help Nancy Grace get a ratings coup?  

We don't know the full circumstances of this missing kid case yet. I'd like to hear more of an explanation from the police.

It is odd that he was found in his basement after people had been searching high and low for him for a week and a half, and had already searched the basement.

If the father is somehow culpable, I hope they charge him with a crime. If he is not guilty of anything, I hope that police, and especially Nancy Grace, go out of their way to make sure we all know that. 

However, if the father is innocent, will that be reported? Or maybe not, because the ratings associated with a report about an innocent dad would not be high enough to keep advertisers happy.

Doctors Won't Do Transplants For Developmentally Disabled, And A Woman Named Bebe Shows Why That's Wrong

I was disturbed by a CNN report that came out in the past few days about how many doctors won't do organ transplants on people with development disabilities. 

The late, great
Bebe Lopez hugging a
tiger. She hugged everyone.  

The doctors often come up with some other excuse not to do the transplants, but secretly, or not so secretly, according to CNN, the reason is the development disability.

I can understand the dilemna. There are not enough organs ready for transplants for the number of people who need them. Hard choices have to be made. None of the choices are good because somebody will not get a transplant, and die.

But I still have a huge problem with not giving transplants to people with Downs Syndrome or other developmental issues.  One of the reasons I feel this way is a woman named Bebe.

Bebe Lopez passed away a few days before Thanksgiving. I went to her funeral Saturday.

Bebe never needed an organ transplant, but I wonder about the reasons for not giving them to other people with developmental disabilities. Like most people with Down's Syndrome, Bebe never got a PhD, never found a cure for cancer, never broke athletic records, never became President of the United States (which is kind of too bad).

Bebe never became a renouned artist, at least in the traditional sense, never conquered the world.

Or did she conquer the world after all?   And maybe she was a top level artist, too.

Bebe's great friend Rick gave the eulogy at her funeral. Rick started by saying,  "To be Bebe or not to be Bebe, that is the question. The answer is to be Bebe."

Rick was spot on, of course. Everyone who knew her said the lesson she left behind was to be Bebe Lopez. That meant embrace the laughter, perform and sing to your heart's content, be happy, hug a lot, and be brave.

Those are simple rules, and not the kind of stuff you read about when you research History's Greatest Figures.

Bebe loved performing on stage. She loved drawing. Bebe was no Meryl Streep. She probably never would have won an Oscar no matter how long she lived. Her art is not displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But boy, did people love her theatrical performances. Boy, did they love her drawings. Mostly because of the exuberance of it all.  Bebe left everybody feeling better just by being there.  As memories of Bebe kept surfacing at the funeral, there was a lot of laughter.

Yep, Bebe left them laughing at a funeral. How many people do you know who can pull that off?

Which is the lesson I go back to on the organ transplants. Is the traditional form of potential greatness the litmus test of who gets an organ transplant and who doesn't?  Do just the people who might be in the news headlines day after day the ones who get the transplants?

Or is the potential greatness we're talking about somebody like Bebe. You can certainly argue Bebe touched and improved as many lives as any uber intelligent academic, scientist, politician or whatnot.

Bebe came to our housewarming party about three years ago. She gave a toy to our dog Jackson as a gift. Jackson, himself a pretty joyous being, still gravitates to that toy frequently, as if knowing of the sunny connection to Bebe and wanting to drink it in.  People always did the same as Jackson, just wanting to drink in Bebe's energy.

My husband Jeff and I wore somber colored clothes, appropriate for a funeral, to the Bebe services. But we also each wore bright red sneakers. The exuberant color and the implied movement and activity of wearing sneakers seemed like the best tribute to Bebe we could come up with.

You see, Bebe added a lot of color to what is otherwise a pretty gray world.

It's not easy to make the rules for who gets transplants and who doesn't.  Since Bebe touched so many lives and made them better, shouldn't people like her get a shot, too?

There's probably quite a few people like Bebe out there. A few of them might need organ transplants.

Just remember. We need more people to be Bebe.

Head Transplants Would Be Confusing

A few weeks ago, an Italian neuroscientist said head transplants are now within the realm of possibility, though a lot of other scientists say that's bullcrap, to say the least.

Even when you omit how complicated the surgery would be
head transplants would create a whole host of problems.  

The surgery to do a head transplant sounds  incredibly complicated, so I don't anticipate it happening anytime soon. But if it does happen, I'm afraid it will get awfully confusing.

What happens if they screw up and you get a person with the head of a young man and a body of an old woman, or vice versa?

Will the head of a young body builder type bro with the body of an elderly woman still try to pick up hot young things. Will the head of an older woman and the body of a young body builder type bro still be accepted at her knitting circle?

Will this turn into a vanity thing. Out of shape? Don't bother with all that wearying exercise, just chop off your flabby body, find another body that's totally fit, attach it to your head and your home free!

You then get the spectacle of a horrible, 60 year old billionaire walking around with the body of a 20 year old bodybuilder. For a little while, anyway. Then the body gets out of shape, so he goes out and gets another one?

Where will the constant supply of buff bodies come from?  Fit young people don't die very often, and you presumably need the person to die to get their body . Or do you pay the fit young people hugely and live the rest of their lives as just a head, sitting on a desk like a knicknack, sort of like those pendulum things that bored executives play with.

What do you do about fingerprints and other identifying features. Your head is Joe Smith, but you have the body and fingerprints of John Davis. Could cause some security issues don't you think? Especially if some dedicated terrorist obtains the body of somebody he killed and uses that as an alternative identity.

All this means that I'm not sure if this head transplant idea will work. There's lots of other transplants that seem to be working well nowadays. Heart transplants, nerve transplants, even face transplants.

These piecemeal transplants probably don't solve every problem in the world, but they don't create a whole lot of new ones, either.

No, Employer, You Can't Root Through Our Private Messages

If in the future I look for another job, this post might turn into a strike against me, but I congratulate Facebook for threatening to sue would be employers who insist job applicants show them the private pages of their Facebook accounts.

According to the Associated Press, some employers are now requiring applicants to hand over Facebook passwords or "friend" HR managers. 

Should employers  be able to access private pages
on job applicants' Facebook accounts?

On Sunday, U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct. asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to see whether such demands for Facebook passwords violate federal law.

Of course, any employer should conduct due diligence when hiring somebody. That means combing through public records,  and looking at anything publicly available to see if the prospective employee is a good match. Anything on public Facebook pages, or obtained through Google, is fair game, as far as I'm concerned.

After all, it's probably a good idea to know if the applicant for Chief Financial Officer has three embezzlement convictions. And it's probably useful to know the prospective nanny has a side business producing child pornography.

It's also necessary for job applicants to tell the truth and be open to questions. That's the way it's always worked. And it should.

But really, going through the private pages of Facebook. What's next? Demanding to see every email you've ever written? Turning over those love letters you wrote in college to the HR Department? Wearing a listening device for the rest of your life so your employer knows what you are doing, where you are and what you're saying all the time?

Sorry, pal.  I'm all for giving 110 percent to your employer, but our personal life is our personal life. Yeah, we'll behave, obey the law and not do anything to hurt the companies we work for. That's the employee's end of the bargain.

Employers: If we want to have legal fun, say what we want, do what we want, go where we want on our own time and our own dime, then we will, and you'd better not make that affect our jobs.

Some conservative and libertarian critics say the government has too much power over the public. Others disagree, but in any even, that's a debate definitely worth having.

Another worthwhile debate is to discuss how much control employers should have over us as well. I know, it varies widely. Many employers are great at respecting boundaries, a few are not. We need to set minimum standards on this.

Let the discussion begin.

Was Outing Teacher's Gay Porno Background Ethical?

The Fox 25 reporter in Boston probably knew the subject of his story an English teacher who has made porn movies, would become the center of a nasty fire storm when his report aired.

That much is true. But now the reporter is becoming a bigger target of community wrath for airing his report.

In this image from Fox 25 Boston, reporter Mike Beaudet, right
confronts teacher Kevin Hogan about his past.

WXFT Fox 25 reporter Mike Beaudet confronted, on air, the Boston area English teacher about his, um, colorful and strenuous moonlighting gig. The English teacher has been in a couple gay porn movies, under the extremely unfortunate name Hytch Cawke.

The porn movies were done before he was hired at the school. So it's not as if he has to leave classes early to appear in his role in "Hytch does Hingham,"or some damn thing.

The English teacher, whose real name is Kevin Hogan, certainly got some criticism with Beaudet's expose.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the public lynching of Hogan. The community has largely turned its wrath onto Beaudet.

Aggressive investigative reporting is fine, the local community seems to be saying,  but if, and only if, the reporting uncovers wrongdoing, and does the public good. Comments on Fox 25's Web site are almost fully critical of Beaudet.

Many people are saying this was just a witch hunt/ambush against Hogan for no good reason. And that might reflect, at least in this case, a more sophisticated view of journalistic priorities and ethics among the public than that held by some news assignment editors.

As a journalist, I feel the tingle and thrill of finding out some juicy story about someone or something, and I'm sure the folks at Fox 25 felt the same way. The instinct is to pursue the damn thing.

But you've got to take a step back and say: "How will this help people understand things, serve a useful watchdog role and make things better?

Yes, that's doughy eyed self righteousness and idealism on my part, but there you go.

There's no question that if the teacher had somehow involved the students in his porn job, or had any other sexual or other improper contact with them, then the reporter should have gone after this guy, big time.

Hogan's supporters, and there are lots of them, are wondering why Beaudet did a report that will ruin Hogan's career. Few people are  seeing how this makes kids safer, or the school better and improve the community.

Beaudet counters, accurately, that teachers' licenses in Masschusetts require that educators be in good moral standing. But people both know pornography when they see it and morality when they see it. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

And if Hogan was in porn films, that's still legal. There's no law against being in such films, as long as everybody involved were consenting adults. Even if the films were lousy. I wouldn't know. I have not seen "Cawkes'" films, "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8" They frankly don't sound very good.

Hogan's students don't seem to give a damn whether he was in gay porn or not. They want a good teacher, and say that Hogan is good.

The kids in Hogan's school are particularly unimpressed with Beaudet. One students Tweeted. "My English teacher is a gay porn star, #nbd." The hashtag stands for "No Big Deal."  A Facebook page has appeared demanding that Hogan keep his job and Beaudet lose his.  As of mid afternoon Thursday, the Facebook page had 1,450 "likes"

 The larger issue here is, in the hyperconnected world of Google, Facebook and Twitter, this story is much, much bigger than it merits. Which is the case with most things these days. Especially when an initial story causes a huge outcry, like this one.

 We were once, as children, threatened with having our misdeeds put on our Permanent Record if we didn't straighten out.

Now, misdeeds are put on our Permanent Record of Google no matter how quickly we correct our actions or minor the infraction.  And we have this Google Scarlet Letter even if we didn't do anything wrong, which many people say is the case involving Hogan.

Does Hogan deserve punishment? And if so, should that punishment take the form of permanent Internet infamy?  To the extent that an apparently talented teacher should never get another job in education?

His supporters don't think so, and are using social media to punish Beaudet the reporter.  Maybe Beaudet's report was not exactly newsworthy. Which also puts Beaudet's action on the Google Permanent Record. Maybe his reporting did more harm than good, or no good at all.   Given that, what does Beaudet deserve?

And what about the rest of us? Yes, most of us have not acted in bad gay porn movies. At least I hope not. (For the record, I haven't. Couldn't come up with a good stage name, I guess)

But we've all done stupid things. Everything we do now is writ large on the Internet.   Since there are no innocents in the world, will our world collapse under the weight of a far too big and heavy Permanet Record?