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Liberty Chick is also a musician. See below for a link to some of my downloads.
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Big Journalism Big Government Big Hollywood Big PeaceMemories of Hurricane Floyd, only a tropical storm by the time it reached New Jersey in 1999.
Listen to Gov Christie: “You’ve maximized your tan. Get the hell off the beach….Do not waste any more time working on your tan.”
Additional photo galleries:
The Flying Kiwi, Richard Seaman: 1999 Bound Brook Flood
This is a reprint of one of my old posts from June 3, 2009. It has more relevance today, thanks to the exposure that the new documentary film “Battle for Brooklyn” is finally bringing to this horrible tale of eminent domain abuse, after all the years that so many in that community toiled to tell it.
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Amidst the coverage of ACORN for allegations of voter registration fraud, the Rathke embezzlement scandal, the ACORN-8 civil lawsuit and Justice Department complaint, controversy over Project Vote and alleged misuse of the Obama donors list, and most recently ACORN’s role in the upcoming Census in 2010, there lies a lesser told tale of controversy, conflict and allegation. Correction: it’s a feverishly told tale, at least in New York, but one largely ignored, perhaps because the very checks and balances that are supposed to be in place to expose allegations of impropriety apparently fall by the wayside when the media itself becomes part of the story (allegedly…).
This is a long, complex story that has many twists and turns, and many angles (angles that, quite frankly, I’d consider more important than the one I’m going to cover here). This is a compartmentalized version of a broader story, and will focus primarily on its relevance to ACORN.
On December 10, 2003, one of the most ambitious real estate development projects in the history of Brooklyn was announced, a project that would later unfold into layers of conflict and speculated corruption, and be considered by many to be “the most controversial project ever in New York.”
The Atlantic Yards project, an endeavor of high-profile real estate developer Bruce Ratner and his Forest City Ratner companies, is a 22-acre mixed-use commercial and residential development project that cuts through the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Park Slope in Brooklyn, NY. To understand how deep the personal impacts would be, you need to understand the area and the development plan.
“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less guess what you’re thinking about.”
– former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a Washington Ideas Forum last October
[Start at 16:02]
Much has been said about Google’s evolution from a hip, niche technology outfit to a behemoth advertising machine over the years. As the company has grown in its product offering, so has all that valuable user data – and their users’ online habits. With almost 200 million users monthly of the Gmail service alone, there’s no shortage of juicy email content from which Google can serve up a cacophony of those automated “creepy” integrated advertising links in and around your email messages based upon your email habits. When Google launched its Buzz product and automatically opted all of its users IN rather than OUT, the outcry for privacy and data protection was deafening. And most recently, we’ve read the news reports of Facebook blocking the Google Chrome extension Facebook Friend Exporter, citing its violation of Facebook’s terms of service for vacuuming data right out of other users’ Facebook accounts without their permission. Names, email addresses, websites, addresses and even phone numbers of users’ friends were being sucked out of their Facebook accounts straight onto Google’s servers where the information could be used by Google in any way they saw fit. I share my info with my Facebook friends, but that doesn’t mean I want them extracting it for other applications they might want to use. (But hey, how dare I complain, when Google calls this openness.)
Now, it’s copyrights that Google is seeking to hijack from users.
The Washington Post reports that under the fine print of the Google Terms of Agreement for Google+ there is a provision that robs photographers of the ability to sell their works if they upload their pictures on the site.
The Post noted:
Google’s Terms of Service on photography, Photofocus cautions, should be read carefully, especially these sections:
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.
You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.
Scott Bourne at Photofocus writes that there’s a reason he doesn’t use Google photo sharing services and won’t be signing up for Google+.
“If I do share images on Google services – under the current terms of service – I will risk genuine harm to my ability to earn income from those images. As a professional, I don’t see the reward of using the Google services as being worth more than the risk.”
At least this time Google had the courtesy to notify users upfront that they’ll have to abandon rights to their intellectual property–unlike the launch of Google Books, where Google uploaded copyrighted material without even asking the authors, which resulted in a class action suit.
Some will argue that the Google+ terms state that users do retain any rights they already hold, but the practical application of protecting those rights simply isn’t assured under Google’s model, and most certainly not under its current terms. In these times of open source and file sharing, artists of all stripes can barely avoid making some of their content available for free to keep customers happy. In fact, most will find it beneficial to do so to increase their traffic and to build up a customer following. But many of those artists make their money in exclusive licensing agreements, the boundaries of which become a bit blurred by portions of Google policy, especially now that Google+ has launched. My mother is an artist and as someone who helps her market her work, the Google dilemma is one with which we struggle all the time. Her artwork is quite unique and sometimes a customer may inquire about an exclusive licensing agreement to use a work of hers, for a line of fashion t-shirts, for example. If she uploads photos of her paintings to Google+, it might be great to have millions of eyes looking at and sharing her work, but at the same time, she can’t necessarily promise her customer that the “exclusive” image he’s purchasing won’t show up in a Google ad or at a trade show booth someplace.
We frequently hear people in our country say, “we used to make things here in America, we used to create things.” The truth is, we still do. We now create ideas, innovations, inventions, technology. We create inspiration: words, music, art. And while our society is speedily growing accustomed to sharing these creations collectively and openly, and expecting them at zero cost, we must remember that for some – for many, in fact – these creations are the very lifeblood of their creators.
Google itself started as the creation of two young college graduate students. In the end, Google is built on the acquisition and use of more and more data from more and more people that is used to build marketing profiles and sell advertising. And that insatiable need coupled with a long track record of outright disregard for privacy and property rights should prompt users to exercise caution.
After all, these are the same do-as Google-pleases and take-whatever-Google-wants policies that Congress and the FTC are currently investigating.
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
– Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt [video]
Until the June 23rd deadline, when the 8 hour Troopathon show begins, these blogs will battle it out – competing to see who can raise the most sponsorships for care packages that will go to our brave troops serving overseas. Packages start as low as $24.99.
Liberty Chick is part of the competition and is raising awareness of this event as a member of the COINS team (yes, as in counter insurgency…how appropriate?). Anytime you donate a care package from this link, team COINS will receive points for that purchase. Just a little friendly competition amongst bloggers. The special URL for the COINS page is http://www.thecampaignstore.com/store/default.asp?parentid=448&rname=teamcoins2011.
Here are some of the other teams with which we’re competing:
Why Donate? Here’s Troopathon’s goal:
The goal of Troopathon is simple: Send care packages to our troops, as many as we can get sponsored in a single 8-hour show. In our first year (2008) our inaugural program brought in over $1.5 million for care packages for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the single largest shipment of care packages ever recorded. Over the succeeding two years, our innovative webcasts have raised over $2 Million for our troops. Since our organization began sending care packages in 2006, we’ve sent over 168 TONS of high quality beef jerky, Gatorade, Oreo cookies and gourmet coffee to our troops, and that’s just the beginning!
A little more about the Troopathon event:
Troopathon is groundbreaking and innovative in that we bring together famous celebrities from radio, television, the movie, musicians, journalists, and more to create a one-of-a-kind event with one purpose – to support our troops on the front lines in the war on terror and honor their service and sacrifice for our nation. It’s like a “Jerry Lewis-style” telethon but on the web for a most worthy cause.
So please, donate a care package to the troops today, and do it with team COINS! Packages start as low as $24.99.
If you want to help me spread the word with my team, pass along this page or the URL below:
http://www.thecampaignstore.com/store/default.asp?parentid=448&rname=teamcoins2011
View all the hosts and personalities on the Troopathon program here.
LIVE WEBCAST on June 23rd, 4pm EST to 12 Midnight EST.
THANK A SERVICE MEMBER TODAY!
And thanks to you!
– Mandy
21 days after Weinergate first broke, the Congressman from NY finally resigned today. For the record – for me, it was never about the sexting or the pics. This was about the false accusations and the sociopathic lying of a man who was elected to hold the public’s trust. That trust was shattered three weeks ago. It never should have taken this long. (TMZ has confirmed that the heckler is in fact Benjy Bronk from the Howard Stern show).
For the best, most complete coverage out there on every step of this story, please visit Patterico’s site. It was Patterico who first reported the details on the 17yr old girl from Delaware with whom Weiner was communicating via Twitter. Hopefully, our research will continue on this part of the story and others to which it is connected. We have not been permitted to publish certain components, but perhaps this will change soon. We hope.
Also, this post from The Prudence Paine Papers entitled Weiner and the Teen is fantastic – a comprehensive look into the girl we’ve come to know anonymously as “Ethel.”
Labor unions and leftist activists are expected to once again descend upon the Captiol in Madison, WI on Tuesday. They plan to protest Governor Scott Walker’s first 2-year budget proposal, which seeks to cap entitlement programs and make cuts in education while expanding school voucher programs, in an attempt to close a $3 billion budget deficit. Republicans also expect to add the collective bargaining provisions that were passed in March, unless the State Supreme Court issues a ruling before then.
Opponents of Walker’s proposal view their side as an issue of human rights and a statement against corporations, and have not surprisingly ratcheted up the rhetoric. On its website announcing Tuesday’s protest, the Wisconsin state AFL-CIO posted:
Debate will be limited, democracy will be circumvented and the balance will greatly tip in favor of ramming through an anti-worker, anti-family, anti-community agenda. Come bear witness to this denial of democracy… Please take part in democracy and bear witness to the extreme attack on the people of Wisconsin. Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14, as we continue to stand strong against a budget that guts public schools, attacks health care, raises taxes on workers and seniors, and jeopardizes public services like police and fire. All while handing over $300 million a year in tax breaks to the rich.
Oh, the drama….
Holds Live Press Conference in NY to Complain About…All the Press
From the LA Times, Top of the Ticket, by Andrew Malcolm:
Amid all the chaos and confusion of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal, somehow Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred got connected with one of the New York Democrat’s female electronic correspondents.
And today, the pair opted to call a news conference in New York to announce that they would really like to avoid publicity and get on with their private lives.
Because Weiner has refrained from publicly texting his whereabouts and desires the last couple of days, times were slow on the power/sex news front. So, fewer than several hundred news media showed up at the Friars Club to watch the shy women enter down a spiral staircase.
Weiner’s texting partner is a Tennessean known as Ginger Lee. She is a former porn actress and what Allred calls a “featured dancer,” who is studying to become a real estate agent and likes long walks on the beach. We made up that last part.
Read the entire post and WATCH the press conference on video
I think the old gasbag has taken the left’s recent “Slut Walk” campaigns a little too much to heart. See liberals? THIS is why we don’t *embrace* the word slut, no matter what. You think you’re “taking back the word’s power” when all you’re doing is just making it more acceptable for mainstream use. By people like this misogynist.
Thank God Comcast has taken over control of the barn over there at MSNBC…
From MSNBC / HollywoodReporter
“Left-leaning Ed Schultz has been suspended from msnbc cable television for referring to radio talk show host Laura Ingraham as a “right-wing slut” and “talk slut” on his syndicated radio show Tuesday.
In a statement released Wednesday, the cable channel said: “Msnbc management met with Ed Schultz this afternoon and accepted his offer to take one week of unpaid leave for the remarks he made yesterday on his radio program. Ed will address these remarks on his show tonight, and immediately following begin his leave. Remarks of this nature are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
The remark came as Schultz was taking aim at Ingraham over her criticism of President Obama’s trip to Ireland — where he apparently enjoyed a beer — while the Midwest was experiencing severe weather, including devastating tornadoes.
“And what are the Republicans thinking about?” Schultz said. “They’re not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They’re just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday, but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name? Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.”
Ingraham has slammed Schultz for the remarks. In a posting on her Facebook wall, she wrote: “The crude comments made about me by Ed Schultz on his radio program: First, I was surprised to learn that Ed Schultz actually hosted a radio show. Is it only available online? Second, I have to get back to recording the audio edition of my new book ‘Of Thee I Zing.’ Now I’m tempted to insert one additional zing — about men who preach civility but practice misogyny.”
In Hastings, Pennsylvania, an old coal mining area, Marcellus Shale is an important component of local commerce. The sedimentary rock is in fact a very familiar part of the entire region’s landscape, where you can drive for miles and miles alongside cliff faces that look almost as though someone cut through the mountains with a serrated knife. Through the slice were all the once thriving coal mining towns that used to scatter the Pennsylvania mountainside. These alien-looking areas of Pennsylvania, while few of them coal mining spots anymore, are now some of the most promising natural gas resources this side of the country. With the rising prices of gas, the environmental stronghold over coal, and the recent increase in political hostility toward oil, many are turning to natural gas to fill a void. In 2008, there were 52 active permits for natural gas drilling in Cambria County alone, as drillers began courting landowners for access. And in 2011, as towns like Hastings struggle to create jobs in a down economy, some are relying upon natural gas to create those jobs.
Well…not SEIU, apparently. The union has teamed up with environmentalists in the area to start harassing the natural gas companies. They’ve scheduled a protest to demand that these evil drillers pay their fair share! Only – there’s one small problem. The place that SEIU selected to protest? Yeah…not actually a Marcellus drilling location.
When union workers and environmental activists picked a Hastings-area site to protest inaction on a Marcellus Shale severance tax, they made one mistake.
Marcellus activity isn’t occurring within miles of it.
Service Employees International Union officials issued an apology Monday, saying they mistakenly set up their protest Thursday – and a makeshift tollbooth asking the industry to pay its fair share – next to a surface well property that has been around for years and isn’t set up for shale drilling.
“There is no Marcellus Shale drilling on that property, and we’ve contacted the property owners and apologized. It was a mistake, and there was no malice intended even when we thought it was a Marcellus well,” said Neil Bhaerman, a SEIU Healthcare spokesman. “It was an honest mistake that we are going to take extra care to ensure never happens again.”
The union, with environmental officials and area parents, set up protests at three western Pennsylvania sites Thursday to urge for the shale drilling industry to pay its fair share.
Bhaerman said local workers from an area nursing home told them about an apparent drilling site near Third Avenue, just outside of Hastings, and the union didn’t do enough homework on it. Read the full article.
Imagine that. The union didn’t do their homework.
I seem to recall that when SEIU protested at ESSA Bank & Trust in East Stroudsburg because of their dispute with Pocono Medical Center, they hadn’t done their homework then, either.
Because while they thought they were intimidating the bank president Gary Olson, who also happens to be chairman of the hospital’s board of directors, they weren’t aware of the fact that Olson has zero authority over any labor issues at the medical center. He himself has said, “the union members wouldn’t benefit by targeting me. I’m a volunteer director who was elected chair of the board and am not involved in any union negotiations.” They didn’t exactly do their homework then, either. And they still continue to harass the same individual.
The union has been embroiled in a dispute with the hospital over the issue of a prior vote to make union membership voluntary and the “closed shop” clause in workers’ contracts, a detail the union vehemently opposes. SEIU wants to continue to force workers to join their union.
“…local workers from an area nursing home told them about an apparent drilling site near Third Avenue.”
Chances are the bad tip mentioned above came from other workers at the nearby Golden LivingCenter-Haida (GLC-Haida), a nursing home on Third Avenue represented by SEIU Healthcare PA, though this hasn’t been confirmed. The nursing home is part of a well-known chain of facilities in Cambria County, statewide across Pennsylvania, and nationwide. GLC workers on the eastern side of the state in East Stroudsburg, PA have participating in the actions against Pocono Medical Center.
Funny how all these supposedly random little occurrences all seem to be connected all the time, isn’t it?
If you want to take a pulse on the political vibe in this country, one need only look at Wisconsin. The state has become the barometer for judging not just the public’s appetite for political battle, but the competitive landscape as well. The spotlight on anything that has six degrees of separation from a Koch brother has been great drama for Wisconsin’s ongoing soap opera, but audiences in the state and nationwide might get a better show by turning their attention leftward. Few have examined the strange pattern of money and favor trading that’s been pervading Wisconsin’s beloved circle of progressive politics.
The activity in Wisconsin over the last few months becomes crucially pertinent as the state gears up for the 2012 Wisconsin Senate race. It’s worth looking at the financial innards of the Supreme Court race and the protests against Governor Scott Walker in order to assess what the fight for the Wisconsin Senate seat, soon to be vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Herb Kohl, will look like. What many don’t realize is that this race could have broader implications – not just in national politics, but in specific policy areas, like health care and your personal medical records, for example. Lots of money, fueled by liberal business interests and an ever-growing progressive movement in Wisconsin, has already been freely flowing.
But is anyone watching? Who are some of these donors?
Let’s start by looking back at the recent Wisconsin protests and the Supreme Court election, and then dissecting some of the money trail.
The hostility stemmed from the union reform bill signed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on March 11th as a stand-alone portion of the overall budget repair bill.
