Yet another thing that shouldn't be for profit

There are plenty of things that shouldn't be run on a for profit basis.

Prisons. Jails. Healthcare. Rehab. Armies. Student housing. And schools. Grammar schools. High schools. Colleges. And, yep, nursing schools. 

Across the boards, the need to maximize profits tends to lead to a lot of bad behaviors. Depending on the industry, this can mean pressure to grow in areas that shouldn't be expanding, but should be contracting. (Looking at you, prison industrial complex!) It can mean corner-cutting and shoddy service delivery to minimize expenses. (Dorms are supposed to be crappy, no? And that patient with bedsores can wait to get shifted in her bed. She's on her way out anyway.) 

For-profit schools for younger children often weed out the kids who are most likely to be poor learners in need of extra support and who would thus put some dents in a school's vaunted "outcomes" metrics.  

In higher education, profit maximization often means predatory marketing, pressure on the low-income students they recruit to take on more debt than they can afford, and folks ending up with a substandard, unrespected degree or credential. If they achieve that degree or credential at all. 

So like most of the insitutions of "higher education" that are run as money making schemes, for profit nursing schools are controversial. They tend to focus on non-traditional students who want their education to be fast and flexible. Who are easy to get sucked in.

Florida's Carleen Noreus was the president (owner operator) of two eponymous schools in Florida: Carleen Home Health School, Inc. in Plantation, and Carleen Home Health School II, Inc. in West Palm. (Really? She gave her schools her first name? That should have been BIG RED FLAG #1.) But teaching nursing was apparently way too much work for Carleen Noreus. Those who can, teach. Those who can't teach - or just don't want to - can just sell fake diplomas. Both of Carleen's schools have been shuttered, but while she was open for business:

Prosecutors said she conspired with others to sell fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts to people who hadn't completed the required coursework, enabling them to take national nursing board examinations.

Between April 2018 and October 2025, Noreus was responsible for providing 2,956 fraudulent nursing diplomas through the schools, prosecutors said.

Of those, around 2,274 passed nursing board examinations, allowing them to obtain nursing licenses and work as nurses in Florida and across the country, authorities said. (Source: NBC Miami)

The fake credentials she provided were for RN's, LPN's, and for BSN degrees. And goody good that the majority of those who short-cutted their way out of nursing school managed to pass their licensing exams. But baddy bad that they did so without completing important coursework AND without critical clinical experience. 

As a result of her "work," Noreus - who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering - is facing lengthy prison time once she's sentenced. Not clear what happens to the 2,274 certified nurses who passed their tests with flying colors. Presumably their licenses will be revoked and their careers will crash and burn.

Noreus was one of 13 defendants in this case, which was brought by the DOJ's South Florida District. It's certainly good to know that the DOJ is still capable of focusing on something other than selective persecutions prosecutions of those on Trump's enemies list. 

This prosecution is part of the second phase of Operation Nightingale (such a great name!) "a nationwide effort targeting fraudulent nursing diploma schemes operated by for-profit nursing schools in South Florida." (During Operation Nightingale's first phase, 30 miscreants were convicted.) Florida, huh? Why am I not surprised.

“Nursing licenses must be earned through education, training, and demonstrated competence, not purchased through fraud,” said U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida. “By selling thousands of fraudulent diplomas and transcripts, the defendant undermined the integrity of the nursing profession and our healthcare system. The Southern District of Florida remains committed to holding accountable those who profit by corrupting professional licensing processes and placing the public at risk.” (Source: US Department of Justice)

Nurses. RNs. LPNs. BSNs. PAs. NPs. 

I respect and admire nurses. Sure, they're not all Florence Nightingales. Not all Edith Clavells. (A WWI nurse-martyr.) They're not all the nurse Cherry Ames-es, the nurse Sue Bartons, of the insipid book series I consumed as a kid. Some nurses are no doubt Nurse Ratchets.

But to me, they've been the human and humane face of medicine. The ones who have more time and patience for their patients.  

I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with nurses, both personally and through second-hand observation. One of the most supportive professionals we encountered during my husband's long cancer fight was the NP who worked with Jim's oncologist. During one particularly gruesome period near Jim's end of life, I emailed Kelly at 5 a.m. on her day off, hoping that she'd get back to me the next day. She got back to me at 5:15 a.m.

My ortho is a PA. When needs be, he consults with the orthopedic surgeon he works with to review XRays and MRIs, and I have 100% trust in him. 

Sure, those 2,274 wannabe nurses passed their licensing exams. Who knows what prompted them to participate in this scam. They ran out of money. They flunked an exam and didn't want to take a course over. Who knows?

But I wouldn't want one of them showing up at my bedside, that's for sure.

I guess this is just what happens when you put the profit motive first. 

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Image Source: Daily Nurse

ICE, ICE, Baby. (This is absolutely chilling..)

First, it was Paigelynne Gonyea. She's a Syracuse, NY, digital content creator. She's also a poll worker. In June, she was working the state primary election when she got a call from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gonyea invited them into the polling place - there were no voters there at the time - where they were not supposed to go.  Only voters and election workers are allowed in. But Gonyea felt that the Syracuse Central Library polling location was a safer place to have her close encounter with ICE than being on the outside. Quite reasonably, she had a bit of fear about being roughed up, dragged off, or worse.

The agents handed Gonyea a form letter that says they were investigating threats made against ICE personnel. The form says the agents had identified an Instagram account they believe breaks federal law. They asked her to remove and discontinue the behavior, according to the unsigned document she shared on Instagram.

“This notice officially informs you that it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official or that federal official’s immediate family member with the intent to impede, intimidate, and/or interfere with the federal official’s duties or retaliate against a federal official due to the performance of their duties,” the document said.

The document said she could be subject to both federal and state prosecution. (Source: Syracuse.com)

The agents were armed with copies of some of her social media posts - and her driver's license. 

Trouble was, Paigelynne Gonyea hadn't exactly been threatening much of anything. She had named the individual who shot and killed Renee Good - his name was by then public knowledge - and suggested that he should be indicted. Seems to me to be a pretty common opinion among folks who oppose the violent tactics ICE has been known to employ. 

The agents accused her of doxxing, but Gonyea didn't recall giving out anyone's address or phone number: just his name, which was all over the news. ICE counterclaims that she had, indeed, posted the guy's address. Mostly, I'm thinking that it tends to be pretty easy to find someone's address on the 'net. Still, it might be ill-advised to publicize it, given how many loosely wired people there are out there who might take a listing of someone's address as license to go after them. Best not play that game. And god knows I wouldn't want someone putting my particulars out on social media. Let someone google for themselves if they feel the need to know.

But I do have this question: if information is in the public domain, how is putting it out there - however nasty and ill-intentioned -  a crime?

The entire episode was so far-fetched that a Republican election official thought it was a hoax, and called a contact at DHS to see whether it was legit. It was.

Things got even worse for another Upstate NY resident. 

David Streever is a journalist/tech marketing guy. His wife is an Episcopalian priest. They live with their two kids in Rochester, NY. 

When the ICE agents showed up on his doorstep - the same day as their encounter with Gonyea - Streever wasn't home. He was in Finland with his older child, visiting an amusement park. But he saw the agents on his phone via his doorbell camera app - Yay, technology! There's no escape! - and the agents did speak with his wife, home with their little one. 

The two federal agents told Streever’s wife they had come Tuesday afternoon to deliver a warning letter about an email Streever had sent in January to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Source: Syracuse.com)

In the email, Streever - undestandably upset about the killing of Renee Good, of Alex Pretti - had compared Lyons to Reinhard Heydrich, a notorious Nazi who was monstrous even by monstrous Nazi standards. He wrote to Lyons that:

“You will never know peace. You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself. But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.”

Are we no longer allowed to tell those in high places what we think of them? 

If anything, it strikes me that Streever is assuming the best of Lyons: that he has a conscience, and that what ICE is doing is going to live with him forever. 

Anyway, a couple of days later, Streever and his little girl headed home. After landing at JFK, they headed off to a hotel to crash before heading back to Rochester. 

At 9:55 p.m., the front desk rang his hotel room. A special agent named Trevor Pitts had come looking for him, the staff said. The hotel staff did not tell the agent that Streever and his daughter were upstairs, Streever said. The agent left his card.

Now Streever was really creeped out: How did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security know he was in a hotel in New York City? And why was his email from January suddenly so urgent? 

With a bit of googling, Streever discovered Paigelynne Gonyea, and, inspired by her speaking out about her meet up with ICE, decided to go public as well.  

“A threat is when someone tells someone else that they’re going to do a thing to them, and there’s nothing in the email of what I will do to him,” he said. “It’s really about how he will feel and what his boss will do [i.e., 'even Trump will turn on you'], which I think was right on both counts.”

Bad enough showing up on his doorstep, but tracking him from his vaction in Finland to his airport hotel at JFK? Absolutely chilling. 

Streever and Gonyea aren't mad bombers. They're not threatening death and destruction. They're exercising their rights - and courageously opposing what they view as terrible behavior on the part of a terrible regime. 

Like pretty much everyone else in this country, I'm all in favor of ICE going after the bad guys: immigrants (here legally or not) who are committing heinous crimes. By all means, get rid of the gang bangers, the drug runners, the bad actors. (Note: but still don't deprive them of their rights and use violence where not needed.] But that's not what they're doing. In their eagerness to meet their deportation goals, the government's catching all sorts of folks in their dragnets. The vast majority have no criminal record. Many are trying to pursue legal avenues to stay here. Many have been here since they were kids and know no other life. A few weeks back, they even rounded up a Catholic nun on her way to Mass. 

Pro tip: if you don't want someone to compare you to a Nazi, don't act like a Nazi.  

As of this writing, Gonyea is exploring her legal options. Streever is suing DHS/ICE. Good!

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Image Source: Homeland Security Employee Gift Shop

Firing Offense? Well...

Although I don't typically root, root, root for teams from New York, I was delighted when the Knicks won the NBA championship. The games were exciting - some unbelievably so - and NY is such a basketball town, it was good to see them win after a drought of over 50 years since their last NBA title.

That was back in 1973, and I learned of their win while hitchhiking in Ireland. We were picked up by an American - I think he was a priest: the black slacks the giveaway - who was from NYC and gave us the news. We were Celtics fans, but okay. We were happy for Father Knicksfan.

This year, there were a couple of good story lines for the Knicks. My favorite was that three of their starting five had also been teammates on the 2016 Villanova team that won the NCAA championship. (Second favorite: Trump being booed to the rafters.)

Anyway, I was happy to see the Knicks win. It was fun seeing the watch parties throughout all the boroughs - I guess Brooklynites can be forgiven for forgetting that their borough has their own team (the Nets) - and it was fun watching the exuberant ticker-tape parade. 

It is colossally enjoyable to see fans - longtime and johnny-come-lately bandwagoners - out in the streets screaming their heads off.

Love, hate, or be 100% indifferent to sports, they can be a great unifying force. 

The celebrations can, of course, get out of hand. Occasional drunken revelers puking and pissing in the streets. Occasional violence (well beyond trash talk) directed at fans of the other guys (so much for the unifying force theorem, I guess). Occasional wanton acts of destruction. And occasional acts of sheer stupidity that don't fall under any of the above categories.

Into this bucket, I'd put the behavior of one Angie Baez who got totally carried away by carrying away a special Knicks tribute trash can, property of the City of New York. If she'd just carried it away, it might have been one thing. But she was caught on camera dumping the overflowing can onto the sidewalk, leaving a big ugly mess of trash strewn there for sanitation workers to clean up. 

If only Angie had ducked into a bodega or Korean corner store, bought some big old black Hefties, and emptied the trash can into a trash bag or two, she might have been okay. But, nope.

And it would have been one thing if she were a twenty-year old knucklehead caught up in the moment. But, nope. Angie Baez is a 40 year old professional who, until her celebratory madness went viral, was the director of executive director of the community and industry engagement program at JP Morgan Chase. No longer.  

She had returned the trash can, and paid a $175 fine for littering. But that was apparently not enough for her to keep her job, which is rumored to have been worth well into the six-figures. (I saw a couple of estimates that her package would have been between $250K and $350K. That is going to be difficult to replace...)

If only Angie Baez had waited, she might have learned that she could have bought one legitimately. 

Meaghan Chillianis, the chief operating officer for OnlyNY, which is selling both full-size and miniature versions of the cans (the mini runs $58), said the company had partnered with the city sanitation department to “celebrate the city’s championship season in a way that felt authentic.” (Source: NY Times)

Instead, poor Angie acted in haste and will no doubt be repenting in leisure.

People have swiped stuff lying around untethered since, like, forever. 

How many college dorm rooms are decorated with No Parking signs? Traffic cones? 

I don't think anyone thinks about grabbing this sort of stuff one way or the other.

A popular "found object" of my era was the plastic milk crate which, depending on the dairy, came in all sorts of swell colors. Perfect for storing record albums. (Ask me how I know.) They became such a popular item that companies started producing them for sale. Which kind of took some of the fun out of it. (Ask me how I know.)

Sometimes the thievery is more seriously thieving. One example: every couple of years some jerks manage to dislodge one of the (expensive bronze) Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Boston Public Garden and make their way off with it. 

But garden-variety stupidity-fueled pilfering by a twenty year old is one thing. One would think that a 40 year old could manage to keep her inner 20 year old reveler tamped down.

Do I think that Angie Baez should have been fired because of this? Not really. Assuming that she was taking Paid Time Off, and given that she was fully decked out in Knicks gear, and wasn't sporting a JP Morgan Chase quarter zip or polo shirt, I don't see why this is a firing offense. Sure, it's an embarrassment to the organization, her making a spectacle of herself. But I think they should have let her profusely apologize and grovel to keep her job. With a warning to grow TF up. 

I'm pretty sure that, among the 300,000+ JP Morgan Chase employees there are at least a handful who've done worse without repercussion. 

Management was probably looking for an opportunity to placate those leading the current anti-diversity zeitgeist anyway. And here was Angie Baez, offering herself up if not on a silver platter, then in a blue-and-orange Knicks trash can.

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Image Source: Instragram

Was the Peppa Pig themed birthday party worth it, Ms. Mayor?

I'm like a broken record here, but stories about people with their hand in the workplace till NEVER fail to amaze me. Do these folks think they'll pay back what they've embezzled before it gets found out? Do they think that they're going to get away with it, outsmarting the system? (Maybe a lot of them do and that the ones who get caught are in the minority.)

I suppose that many/most embezzlers start small, and once they get away with the initial theft, they just keep upping the ante. 

It just completely shocks me that there are so many people that are willing to grab at easy money only to end up doing time.

Politician thieves are another category altogether, as a lot of times they get caught using government and/or campaign funds to settle illegitimate expenses. After all, politicians being politicians, I'm sure that they can convince themselves that the fancy night out, the spa day, the pricey car, are necessary for them to stay in office. They let themselves stretch the bonds of what faithfully executing their oath of office entails. 

The latest saga to amaze me is that of New Britain, Connecticut's former mayor (in office from 2013 to 2025) Erin Stewart.

Stewart was on the course to get the Republican nomination for governor when details about fraudulent spending came out and she ended her campaign. If she'd gotten her party's nod, it's unlikely that she would have won the gubernatorial race come November. Connecticut is pretty reliably Democratic, and Ned Lamont, the incumbent, is quite popular. (Lamont does have a Democratic challenger, but is likely to be nominated this summer.)

Still, Stewart is young - she's only 39 - and running for statewide office is a credential-builder even if you don't manage to win. Things change over time. Who knows? She might have had a political future. Even reliably blue states have a habit of electing Republicans to state office as long as they temper their fiscal conservatism with social moderation. (C.f., Massachusetts governors Weld and Romney, among others.)

I doubt Stewart has much of a political future now. 

Not after it appears that she spent a lot of dimes on New Britain's account during her mayoral tenure. 

A law firm hired by the city found that Ms. Stewart had racked up $123,018 in expenses from June 2016 to November 2025 that had no supporting documentation to justify them.

The items included clothing, gifts for her husband, diapers, groceries and a membership in a members-only social club in Hartford. The goods were delivered to her home, ordered from Amazon, Instacart, Costco and other retailers, according to investigators, who combed through Ms. Stewart’s social media photos for images of items that she had purchased.

“The findings of this investigation point not to isolated lapses in judgment, but to a pattern of behavior that violated public trust and the standards expected of an elected official entrusted with taxpayer funds for nearly a decade,” said the report, prepared by the Crumbie Law Group in Hartford. (Source: NY Times)

Among the myriad personal expenses Stewart made were party supplies for her daughter's second birthday party, which was "tropical Peppa Pig-themed." State investigators matched these are other dubious expenses to party posts to Stewart's Facebook accounts. Some of her wanton spending had no supporting justification/receipts; some was noted as "office supplies."

An awful lot can fall under the category "office supplies" that would never be found out. But Peppa Pig decorations? Come on, ex-Mayor Stewart. Peppa Pig's cute and all, but please get a little real. 

Stewart also used her government card to buy clothing and jewelry for herself and her family, and baby supplies for her second child. 

All told, the law firm investigation Stewart's spending found over $100K worth of spending with no supporting documentation (and which was pretty much unsupportable, with or without documentation). 

That may not sound like much when, say, compared to the enormity of the multi-billion grift underway by the Trump family, but it's still pretty significant, especially in a blue-collar town like New Britain. And Stewart, although she has said she "will take I will take accountability for any mistakes," and that she "intend(s) to make full and complete restitution to the City of New Britain — my home — for anything that" she ends up owing, she could be in for some non-trivial hurt.

The Connecticut State Police confirmed on Thursday that they had opened an investigation into the matter after the state’s Division of Criminal Justice received a complaint.

I can't imagine that she'll do any time, but she's no doubt out of politics for good. She'll have to come up with the $100K plus payback. And she has to live with the colossal embarrassment.

Sheesh, do people just not think that misdeeds like this may one day catch up with them? Was that Peppa Pig themed birthday party worth it, Ms. Mayor?

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Additional information source: CT Insider

Image Source: Craiyon

Should've stuck to bubble gum...

When the story was first reported, it looked as if Ipswich school administrators were way over-reacting by suspending from play six members of the lacrosse team for posting pics of themselves, on graduation day, in their gowns and with big (unlit) stogies in their mouths.

The Ipswich Six weren't being allowed to play in the state boys lacrosse semi-finals in their division because they were in violation of state sports regulations that prohibit high school athletes from using alcohol, drugs, or tobacco. In order to participate in sports, the young athletes have to sign this agreement.

But if the cigars were unlit, as douche-y and bro as the pictures of these young men depict them to be, what's the BFD? They may have been cocking a snook at school administration, but what else is new.

And supposedly, the a stogie-pic on graduation day is some grand high school tradition in some quarters. So what if this tradition is obnoxious and noxious? If the 'gars weren't lit, no harm, no foul, right? (If the 'gars weren't lit, you must acquit.)

Well, the admin was quick to point out, there was another picture showing the boys puffing away, wreathed in cigar smoke. Thus, a violation.

Meanwhile, when the notice went out that the six students would not be allowed to play, three other team members said that, out of loyalty to their supposedly wrongly accused teammates, they wouldn't play. The team at that point didn't have enough players to arm with cudgels, so the remaining members voted to forfeit the game to Cohasset. (Coincidentally, Cohasset and Ipswich are both picturesque, affluent, ocean-front communities: Cohasset on Boston's South Shore, Ipswich on the North.)

Some parents went haywire.

So what if their boys posted a picture of themselves with cigars in their mouths? So what, even, if they were found to have smoked them. The cigars, one father claimed, were fake. He, in fact, had taken the real cigars, removed the tobacco, and had stuffed them with a combo of chamomile and English breakfast tea leaves. So there!

Forget for a moment that even an emptied out cigar is still tobacco, as the wrapper is a tobacco leaf. (This is unlike a cigarette, which is tobacco rolled in paper.) So if the cigars were mostly fake, that shows that the kids just wanted to appear to be smoking and weren't deliberately flouting the just-say-no regulation.

The fake cigar-making dad went so far as to submit a store receipt showing that he'd purchased the tea at Shaw's Market. Sure, the time and date stamp were smudged, but proof is proof, no?

Well, not if it's fake proof, as the Ipswich crack administators found out when they went into full Law & Order, CSI, Columbo mode and brought the receipt to Shaw's to check out whether it was legit. Well, Shaw's had a duplicate, and the receipt was legit. But when the time and date weren't smudged out, the time and date showed that the purchase had been made a few minutes after the email went out informing the lacrosse players that there had likely been a rules violation. 

As the Boston Globe put it, "the fake cigar defense appears to be going up in smoke."

The whole sitch turned into a kertuffle, with parents screaming at admins and lawyering up, the father who fakely claimed to have made the fake cigars sticking to his story - “It’s a fake cigar, it’s been proven,” - and the cops being called in. 

“We fully understand the disappointment, frustration, and emotions that have accompanied this outcome,” administrators said. “As educators and school leaders, we are always disappointed when we must make difficult decisions such as this." (Source: Boston Globe)

Yes, it is disappointing to many that the team wasn't allowed to play in the state playoffs. (For the record, Cohasset, the team Ipswich forfeited to in the semi-finals, went on to beat Nantucket for and win the state's Division 4 boys lacrosse championship.)

And the underclassmen on the team, the kids who didn't smoke the cigars, have every right to be disappointed. What the kids who smoked the cigars - violating an agreement that they had signed, and then letting a parent lie about the cigars being fake - shouldn't be disappointed. They should be embarrased. And, if not ashamed of themselves for letting the lie proceed - and, yes, it is hard to stand up to your or someone else's father, even if they're in the wrong - they should be ashamed that they're part of this entirely shameful situation.

If they wanted to have the "traditional" cigar smoking pic, they could have waited until after their playoff game(s). Or they could have poked a bit of fun at the traditional and gone with bubble gum cigars.

Ipswich admin released this statement:

... “One of the most important lessons we teach young people is that choices have consequences, even when those consequences are difficult or painful,” [Principal Jonathan] Mitchell and [School Superintendent Brian] Blake said in their statement. “While this outcome was heartbreaking for the student-athletes, their families, their coaches, and our school community, we remain committed to applying our policies consistently and acting in what we believe to be the best interests of the integrity of our educational and athletic programs.”

Good for standing up for integrity in their "educational and athletic programs." But heartbreak, shmeartbreak. This is high school. I'm guessing that most kids from Ipswich (and all pf the lacrosse players) go on to college. My wish for all of them is that high school, as much as they may have enjoyed it, is not the be all and end all of their existence.  Glory Days, indeed.

As for those conniving, lying, idiotic parents who came up with the fake cigar scheme. Grow the f up!

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Image Source: Etsy

It's not that they're tone deaf. It's that they really don't care

Google. Salesforce. Oracle. Microsoft.

They've all been pinkslipping thousands of workers to help fund the buildout of the AI infrastructure they need to implement in order to get rid of everyone else in their workforce.

Unlike its confreres, Apple supposedly hasn't done any major AI-related layoffs. But I learned that from an AI search overview, which I thought I had disabled. (AI has a pernicious way of sneaking back in. I guess when you  ask Ask Gemini how to turn Ask Gemini off, it just has its inhuman little old self good little laugh.)

By comparison with what some of the other big techs have been doing in terms of the numbers of heads being chopped off, Meta's May announced number of 8,000 seems rather paltry. Unless of course, you're among the riffed.

And unless you were among the 1,400 Seattle-area Meta workers riffed, you may not have been aware that on the very same day in May that the latest round of layoffs was announced - impacting 20% of Seattle's Meta workforce - Mark Zuckerberg's $300M, 387 foot long (or is it $387M, 300 foot long?) superyacht, Launchpad, docked in Seattle's Lake Union. (Lake Union is a "renowned hub for high-end vessel servicing.")

Zuck was elsewhere at the time, but just the thought of Launchpad's presence - apparently right outside the office windows of a number of those who'll be losing their paychecks, perks, and badges come July...What could be more symbolic of the company's attitude towards its workers? Let 'em swab decks on my superyacht instead of Let 'em eat cake.

According to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg from Meta Chief People Officer Janelle Gale, the aggressive restructuring is part of an ongoing effort to maximize company efficiency and balance the massive costs of new technological investments.

"This is not an easy tradeoff and it will mean letting go of people who have made meaningful contributions to Meta during their time here," Gale wrote. (Source:Fox13 Seattle)

First off, if there were ever a job title that needs to be retired it's Chief People Officer. CPO implies - or a naive worker might infer - that the company actually gives a) a damn; b) a rat's arse; c) a flying fuck; d) all of the above, about the actual humans who work there. Maybe we can ask ChatGPT to come up with a new title. Corporate Personnel Henchman? C-Suite Stooge?

OK, Janelle Gale is probably a perfectly nice person if you meet her IRL. I'm sure she volunteers. I'm sure she sits on boards. She's a PhD psychologist. I'm sure she's empathetic AF.

But at the end of the day, she's working for the man.

And the man, in this case Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the cadre - I almost wrote caldron, which also works - of super-brainiac tech bros enamored of emergent technology (whatever the cost in dollars or human terms), enamored with their own exceptional intelligence, and enamored of the idea of becoming trillionaires. Because billionaire is so, so, so, so very yesterday, and these bros, if nothing else, are forward thinking. For themselves, anyway.

Forget about Emotional Intelligence, which for a while there was a trait that was somewhat valued in the workplace. Exceptional Intelligence - you heard it here - is the new EQ. And that EQ is focused on perfecting the algo, and on grabbing as much power, glory, and money as you can.

And these EQ-ers do not appear in the least troubled by any of what they're doing, any of the human, humane, or environmental implications of AI-ing the world.

If Exceptional Intelligence is the new EQ, then amorality is the new humanity. Caring? Concern? Democracy? Fairness? Sissy-stuff! Real men swan around in superyachts. Real men lay off tens of thousands of workers because they've got to keep their eyes on their prize.

Last month, I was fortunate to get to Bruce Springsteen's brilliant and humane Hope and Dreams concert. On the setlist was "Badlands," with its famous lyrics:

Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything.

I read recently that, with AI, American GDP may well continue to grow, and that by using GDP as a measure, the economy will look healthy. But how healthy is an economy going to be with 8-10% (or more) unemployment?

So let's remember the opening lines to "Badlands."

Light's out tonight
Trouble in the heartland

Zuckerberg didn't sail his ship into Lake Union to taunt the laid-off workers. Hell, he probably didn't even know where Launchpad was. He's got plenty of somebodies to see to the details of his lfe. (Maybe someday those somebodies will be AIs.)

But it's not that they're tone deaf. It's that, like Melania Trump, they really don't care. (Do you?)

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This post is a shoutout to my sister Trish, who tomorrow begins her well-earned, well-deserved retirement.

First saw this story referenced by Dom Ervolina on BlueSky, who was referencing Ben Kershner (I think on Insta). Thanks, fellows.

Image Source: Amazon where the jacket goes by "Womens Melania Lady The United State I Really Don’t Care Do U Green Jacket Trump Coat"

See the USA, in your Chevrolet

By Trump administration grifting standards, Sean Duffy's Great American Road Trip, a YouTube series dropping this month, is no big deal. The "reality" show features Duffy and his wife (Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy) and a large sampling of their kids (there are nine of them in total) visiting tourist spots across the country. Its supposed purpose is to get Americans to hop in the car with the kids and explore the US of A to celebrate our 250th anniversary. 

Calling the trip a "civic experience," Duffy is urging true red-white-and-blue Americans to “gas up the car, pack up the kids, get behind the wheel and get out and see America.”

Duffy is the telegenic Secretary of Transportation, a former reality star with an equally telegenic wife and kiddos.

Duffy and Campos-Duffy, also a former “Real World” and “Road Rules” cast member, said the program was filmed in “short” production windows like weekends and their childrens’ breaks from school, and that their family would not receive a salary or royalties from the show. (Source: Forbes)

And at NO expense to the taxpayers. Or so they say.

I'd wait until we see some sort of an audit - as if! - but I seem to remember Duffy's boss claiming that he, Trump himself, was picking up the tab for the Big Beautiful Ballroom. Then that generous, patriotic Americans (like Jeff Bezos) who don't want a thing out of Trump - or at least their generous patriotic companies which don't want a thing out of Trump - were paying for it. Until we found out that the cost estimates had grown from $200M to $1B, and that the taxpayers would be footing the bill.

But the claim is that a non-profit is underwriting the show:

The Great American Road Trip says it is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization that is “fully funding its own efforts to celebrate and share America’s story.” It lists several major sponsors, including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, Google and Enterprise, but it is unclear how much money these companies have contributed and if those funds were used for the reality show. 

Well, it's not like Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, United Airlines, or Enterprise would want anything out of the Department of Transportation. Or that Google doesn't have any interest in what the Federal government does. So even if their contributions are funding the show, it's not as if these generous, patriotic corporations would expect any tit for tat for their organizations. Geez Louise, some folks are so cynical! If nothing else, the Trump Administration has always acted in an ethical, honest, transparent, and above board manner. (/s)

And what's this about encouraging  families to "gas up" and hit the road? I suppose since he's not exactly filling up the old station wagon out of his own pocket, Sean Duffy isn't all that aware about sticker shock at the pump.

Anyway, I watched part of the trailer and I have to say that the idea of a roadtrip does sound like fun. 

The Duffy family got to go fun places and do fun things, including a stop at the former firehouse in my neighborhood that was where Real World: Boston, which Duffy appeared in, was filmed. (This is more famously the place where Spenser lived in the 1980's series Spenser for Hire. And it's where I vote. Just not for Trump, Duffy, and their ilk.) Sorry I missed them when they were in my hood.

But I do kinda-sorta envy someone taking a road trip, even if the Duffy family's was done sporadically and doesn't quite fit my definition of a road trip, which doesn't include flying someplace for a weekend and pretending you drove there.

I'd love to go on a road trip. At least in theory. I'd probably get sick of all those hours in the car, the sketchy restrooms, the worn out motels, the boring diner food. And anyway, I don't need to put taking a road trip on my non-existent bucket list, as way back in the way back, I actually did go on one.

Late summer/early autumn of 1972, my college roommate and I - out of school with nothing in particular lined up to do - saw the USA. Not in a Chevrolet, as the ubiquitous ads of our childhood promoted, but in Joyce's Karmann Ghia.

We took the Northern route cross-country, the Southern route back.

On the first day, we drove through NY State during a near-tropical rainstorm. Destination: Niagara Falls, which we took in from both the US and Canadian sides. (On our way back into the country, US Customs tossed our car, removing every item from our carefully packed trunk looking for illicit drugs. Wrong girls! We were way, way, way, too cautious for that nonsense.)

Our next stop was Chicago, where we visited my grandmother and other family members. My cousin Ellen, who's the same age as Joyce and I, was very pregnant with Kate, her first child. Here was Ellen: all grown up, married, and having a baby, while Joyce and I were sporting around the country in a Karmann Ghia. 

Chicago was the last time we had a roof over our heads for a while, as we spent most of our nights on the road in state, federal, or KOA campgrounds, with an occasional splurge for a hotel (as when we stopped in Las Vegas).

It was a fabulous, and fabulously memorable, trip.

We stayed in many of our breathtakingly-beautiful national parks. Even the ludicrous faces on Mount Rushmore were in the breathtakingly-beautiful Black Hills. 

It was fun playing tourist, taking in the natural beauty of our vast and varied country while also enjoying the roadside attractions (e.g., Wall Drug in SD) and the wonders of the cities. (You try driving a manual shift car in San Francisco. I dare you.)

A full recounting of our road trip will have to wait for another day. So many highlights. Camping in Sequoia National Park when a mother black bear and her cubs decide to explore our campsite and nose around the well of our tent. (We spent the night sleeping inthe car, no small feat in a tiny Karmann Ghia.) The wonders f the San Diego Zoo. The squalor of Tijuana. (We crossed on foot. The one and only time I've set foot in Mexico.)

When we were driving into New Orleans - where we ate Oysters Rockefeller and Pompano en Papillote at Antoine's, another trip splurge  - Arlo Guthrie's City of New Orleans was blasting on the radio. How was that for timing?

So I absolutely understand why folks might want to heed Sean Duffy's call to get on the road. 

It's just that, giving everything that's going on, the timing's a bit off. 

And so is narcissistically using your family to showcase our complex, beautiful, and interesting country. Not to mention doing so at on behalf of the corporations you're supposed to be regulating.

As I said, by Trump standards, the grift is quite tiny. 

Still, when it comes to personally benefiting whenever and by whatever means are available, there's just no stopping this gang, is there?

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Image Source: Amazon, 

Swan's Way

In late March, there was a home invasion - make that mansion invasion - in Beverly, an oceanfront town North of Boston. Beverly is a very nice community, but the real ritzy-ritzes live in the Pride's Crossing area. 

Well, pride cometh before the fall for one of those ritzy-ritzes, as his home was invaded to the tune of $8M worth of stuff that the invader got (temporarily) away with.

I've been to Beverly plenty of times - my sister Trish lives in the next town - and have seen many really nice houes there. But this $18M pile, 28,000 square foot leaves me cold. Sure, the owners - Thomas Swan III and his husband - have four kids, but I can't imagine there's any way to make this pile seem homey. To me, it looks institutional. A mental institution for the uber-wealthy. Headquarters of some Catholic religious order that inherited the place in the 1950s when the OG family wanted to get rid of it, and there were still plenty of nuns, priests, and monks around. 

It may not be to my liking, but it was built back in the Gilden Age, when money was no object, and off-the-boat Irish servants were a dime a dozen. 

Known as “Rock Edge,” Swan’s Georgian revival-style mansion is one of many stately homes lining Paine Avenue, a historic neighborhood in a wealthy area known as Prides Crossing. The house was commissioned in the early 1900s by a woman named Marian Sargent, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson whose husband made a fortune in the textile industry. (Source: Boston Globe)

Thomas Swan has plenty of dough. He runs the family business, which makes and distributes heating and plumbing equipment, and owns a lot of real estate. And he's ritzy-ritz enough to own a home worth about $20M, and at least $8M of whatever - cash, coins, jewelry, watches - that the thieves got away with. That and a Porsche worth $300K that was pretty quickly found abandoned (and dowsed in bleach, I guess to remove DNA evidence) in a cemetery in Lynn, an less grand working class city a few towns down the road from Beverly. 

The heist - which is how all the Boston news outlets have described it, often with the modifier brazen - was a quasi-inside job, the perp who's been caught (supposedly he had a co-invader) is the ex-BF of a housekeeper who'd worked the day shift the day before the breakin. She is now an ex-housekeeper. (She has not been charged. Yet, anyway.)

When the thieves arrived in the dead of night, a back door had been left open, and the Swan family was not at home. (I suspect they have a few other places where they can hang.) But a woman in her 60's - variously said to be a friend of the family, housekeeper, nanny, and dogsitter - was pretty roughed up. Pistol-whipped, and left tied up in the garage with a bag over her head. She's okay (physically) but must have been terrified.

Reports say that the suspect they've apprehended was identified in part because of Ring camera footage. It's not clear whether it was Ring footage from "Rock Edge" or from other homes in the 'hood. I'm guessing it must have been from "Rock Edge," as the mansion is pretty well set back from the world at large. 

It does seem curious that the place didn't have more a sophisticated surveillance system than a Ring doorbell camera, which seems like the sort of security device when you want to keep an eye on your home, but that home isn't worth nearly $20M, you mostly want to see if someone's scooting off with your Amazon deliveries, and you don't own $8M+ worth of property in it.

It just seems completely crazy that this place didn't have inside and outside security to the hilt. Just insane.

If I were a rich man woman -  ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum (not my favorite musical, but I couldn't resist) - I'm pretty sure I'd have plenty o' surveillance gear and a safe or two. Guess it just wasn't Swan's way. 

It's more likely that I would have been there as the housekeeper, nanny, or dogsitter, and I sure as hell wouldn't have been comfortable spending the night alone in a 28,000 square foot house. And I definitely would have checked to make sure all the doors were locked before I put on my nightgown and got into bed with a good book.

Not that this excuses the vicious, dumbo thieves, but there sure seems to be an awful lot of idiocy going on with this story. 

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Image Source: The Boston Globe

At lest they didn't name him Adolf

We are now a couple of months into the baseball season. As I write this post - first of May - the Red Sox are terrible, beleaguered, in disarray. Mostly, they are no fun to watch. Which is too bad, because I really enjoy baseball. Just not the way the Olde Towne Team has been playing it. 

They don't have to win it all every year. I was a Red Sox fan for a good long time before they won their first World Series in 86 years in 2004. During my first decades of fandom, there was a lot more thin than thick, and I'm not going to abandon them now. I'm a better-or-worse kind of gal. I'd just like them to be a bit more competitive than they are now.

Then there are the NY Yankees. 

Unlike our boys of summer, they're having a pretty good year. Including coldcocking the Red Sox three times in April. Hiss, boo. 

One Yankees player who is a particular nemesis is pitcher Cam Schlittler. In his April win over the Sox, he did his part to secure a series sweep, beating our boys 4-2. And last October, when the Red Sox had narrowly made it in to the post-season, it was Schlittler who put the Sox away in the deciding game of the three-game Wild Card series. He went 8 innings in a 4-0 shoutout. (Fortunately, the Yankees got clobbered by the Blue Jays in their next series.)

Schlittler's just 25, and, unless he turns out to be injury-prone or gets the yips, it looks like he has a pretty good career ahead of him. The rub, of course, is that he's a local. He grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, a south-of-Boston suburb that, before Cam Schlittler, was perhaps best known as the home of the ultra-violent, maximum security Walpole State Prison. (In the mid-1980s, the good citizens of Walpole demanded that the state rename the prison, as they didn't want it to keep tarnishing the town's reputation. The state renamed it Cedar Junction, which makes it sound like a leafy, bucolic neighbor of Mayberry. The prison is now closed.)

And another rub: Schlittler didn't flee the harsh New England weather to play college ball in the more baseball-friendly climate of, say, Florida. No, he stayed put and played for Northeastern. 

Anyway, Cam Schlittler is a Yankee now, his family converted to Yankees fandom, part of the Evil Empire. And prior to the April series, played at Fenway, he reported that he and his family had received online death threats. The nature of these death threats did not rise to the level of 'call the cops' - which would have been his father, who is the police chief in Needham, another Boston suburb. (Apparently, no one texted a picture of seashells writing out 86 31 - Cam's number - or someone would probably have tried to make a federal case out of it.)

Schlittler shrugged the threats off as meaningless, diehard intensity. And he's been known to engage in online back-and-forth trolling with Red Sox fans. (Among other barbs, after he shut the Red Sox down and out in the Wild Card series last fall, he tweeted “Drinking dat dirty water.” Which is actually pretty funny, given that "Love that Dirty Water" is a Red Sox theme song, played after every winning home game.)

“Most normal fans could care less, right?,” Schlittler told [the New York Post's John] Sherman. “It’s just those diehards that just have nothing else in their lives other than baseball or sports that really care about this and the fact that I play for the Yankees makes it worse for them.” (Source: Boston Globe)

As one of those normal fans, I find it beyond ridiculous that someone would make an online death threat against an athlete, let alone his family. 

I'm all in favor of trashtalk, but don't cross the line into death threats. And you'd think that some of the trashtalkers might be silenced by the fact that Schlittler pretty much owns the Sox. (Kind of like the Fenway faithful should probably stop breaking into Yankees Suck chants everytime they get bored. Which is plenty, given how the Sox are performing this season. Admittedly, it is true that the Yankees do suck. Sadly, just not at baseball.)

Anyway, while we're on the subject of Cam Schlittler, I'm pretty sure that if my name were Schlittler, I would have changed it. Kept it Germanic with Schlitz. Pick out the best part and go with Little. But Schlittler is just such an unfortunate combination of the first syllable sounding like shit, and the overall name rhyming with Hitler. 

At least his parents didn't name him Adolf.

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Image Source: Topps

The Aptly Named SantaCon

I'm not 100% certain that Boston has SantaCons - a pub crawl where runners/drinkers wear Santa outfits and raise money for charity. But I'eve certainly seen the Santa-garbed pub crawlers doing their December buzzing around town.

I'd say it looks like fun, but to me it actually doesn't. Even if I were 50 years younger, this sort of event is way too extraverted to be my jam. I'm more the make-a-donation and/or show-up-and-actually-do-something to an actual charity kind of gal, without running around like a maniac, let alone shaking friends and family down for a donation. And this doesn't even take into consideration that the idea of pouring beer down my gullet and running to the next watering hole to that I can pee is beyond fathoming. Me? I just don't go pub-to-pub a-wassailing

But, hey, great that folks are thinking "charity" rather than just obsessing about Christmas shopping, wrapping, cookie-baking, and decorating.

Unfortunately, the NYC edition of SantaCon has been running something of a Grinch con.

On its website, the organization bills itself:

...as “a charitable, nonpolitical, nonsensical Santa Claus convention that happens once a year to fund art & spread absurdist joy.” (Source: NY Times)

Participants buy official badges - the price in 2025 was $17 - and the take goes to local charities like City Harvest, the City Parks Foundation and the Flatbush Development Corporation. But some of the proceeds have, grinchedly, made their way into the NYC event organizer's pockets. (In addition to the badge money, SantaCon NYC gets a cut of the action from the bars for whatever the crawlers consume along their merry and none-too-bright way.)

The lead organizer of SantaCon NYC, an annual Christmas-themed bar crawl that is both beloved and reviled, took more than half of the nearly $3 million the event raised for charity over five years, federal prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The organizer, Stefan Pildes, used his position as the president of the nonprofit that runs SantaCon to illegally divert the money into a separate company to finance “personal ventures,” and spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on “extensive renovations to a lakefront property in New Jersey, luxury vacations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and Vail, extravagant meals and a luxury vehicle,” according to an indictment.

Santa, Baby, whatever happened to being nice rather than naughty? And that naughty could end up with Stefan Pildes ending up with 20 years in prison.

Not everyone loves SantaCon NYC.

The sight of people wearing red and green and slumped over in doorways is a not-uncommon sign that the holiday season is in full swing.

The comedian John Oliver once described SantaCon as “a terrifying combination of binge drinking, public urination and trauma to small children that decades of therapy will never manage to reverse.”

But plenty of others say the SantaCon brings joy to the world. There are the inevitable "meet cute" stories of couples who got together on the run. And then there's the charity angle. (There are allegations of some dubious financial activity on SantaCon NYC's part, including involvement with cryptocurrency and the Burning Man festival. Quite a combo!)

Pildes has set up a couple of other organizations adjacent to SantaCon NYC, and funds flowed among those orgs, funding Pildes personal professional/creative efforts and diverting pay for the property renovations, concert tickets, vacations, meals and luxury vehicle, prosecutors said.

Pildes is pleading not-guilty.

We'll see whether he'll be having himself a merry little Christmas. And whether he'll be having it up and over the river.

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Image Source: SantaConNYC

Why am I not surprised

When my mother's family arrived on these shores in the 1920's, my grandfather mistakenly thought that the fee for a family to be accepted was - at least according to family lore -  $25. It was actually - at least according to family lore - $25 per capita. So the family - my toddler mother and her parents - hung around in Ellis Island's holding facilities for a week or so while my great-uncle in Chicago came up with the additional $50 entry fee. My mother's younger sister had died between when the family's decision to emigrate and their leaving the old country. If Leni had lived, the family might have had to wait a few more days, as they would have needed $75 more, not $50. (Leni was part of the family picture on the family passport, but her face was x'd out. I don't know if that was done by my grandparents or by immigration officials. But that x'd out face is the one and only picture anyone has of her.)

My mother remembers being in the women and children's dorm with my grandmother, who was crying off and on because my grandfather was separated from them - he was in the men's dorm - and she wasn't quite sure what was happening.

It all worked out, of course. The entry money was raised, the passports were stamped, and the family got on the train to Chicago, where they became Americans and prospered. 

America still likes white immigrants of European stock. These days, they're just not so prevalent among the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the good ol' US of A. And the good ol' US of A has adopted quite an attitude towards those who currently want in.

As the daughter of an immigrant, I have always valued our country's ability to absorb people and make them part of our nation. It's one of the things I cherish the most about us, one of the things that I actually do believe makes us exceptional. Our abililty to turn "others" into Americans has always made me proud. 

But that was then, and this is now.

These days:

The US government is taking fees from immigrants and US sponsors for services that it has no plans to provide. The government took their money, and now it won’t even adjudicate their applications—in many cases, it refuses even to issue denials. The State Department is actually telling consular officers not to notify future applicants that the government has banned them. (Source: The Cato Institute)

The Cato Institutes estimates that this "theft of processing fees for services never rendered" is at least a $1B fraud.

Here are the policies responsible for this fraud:

Legal entry and most visas are denied for citizens of dozens of countries that Trump & Co. don't want here. The countries on the list include, but aren't limited to: Afghanistan, Brazil, Chad, Egypt, Haiti, Ghana, Iran, Nigeria, Russia, and Somalia. (No surprise: African countries are disproportionately on the blacklist.)

...any citizens from these countries will be denied if they apply for an immigrant visa and most types of temporary visas. Nonetheless, consular officers are being instructed not to “counsel applicants or advise them in advance of the interview that they are subject to the [proclamations Trump has signed barring entry].”

So, ka-ching, ka-ching. In most of the world, taking money from someone for something you're not going to deliver is considered fraud. Big fraud. 

The list impacts not just for those applying now, but those who're already here. Some have been here for decades. They're paying fees for "everything from employment authorization documents to permanent residency applications." But the benefits they're applying for are frozen for them. Ha, ha! Joke's on you, immigrant sucker. Apply all you want. 

Over 320,000 immigrant visa applicants—based on 2024 flows—are now blocked. Once accounting for the immigrants in the United States, the number of potential legal permanent residents blocked rises to 561,000.

Then there's something called the diversity visa (DV) lottery. Naturally, with the triggering word "diversity" in there, this program is going nowhere:

The State Department writes, “DV applicants may submit visa applications and attend interviews, and the Department will continue to schedule applicants for appointments, but no DVs will be issued.” Once again, the State Department is letting people pay fees and go to interviews, while simultaneously promising not to process them.

Not to worry, though. The vast majority of DV immigrants were already on the banned list. 

There are all sorts of fees associated with immigration. 

The fees stack up. For instance, to sponsor a spouse, a US citizen must pay a $675 fee to USCIS to petition for their spouse to obtain lawful permanent residence. Then, the immigrant must pay $1,440 to adjust status from temporary to permanent residence. That application takes so long that people usually pay $560 for the spouse to receive an employment authorization document, so the total fees can add up to $2,675.

And to think that my grandfather was confused by the $25 a head requirement. Once they got to Chicago, I'm pretty sure there were no "employment authorization documents" to pay for. My grandfather got a job working as a butcher; my grandmother (my mother in tow) cleaned houses to help the family save up to set my grandfather's very own butcher shop up. The 1920's sure were a kinder, gentler time in so many ways. 

Congress should immediately require the administration to start processing applications and fairly adjudicate those applications without regard to a person’s birthplace. If someone cannot establish their eligibility, they can be denied under the law, but there is no reason to steal people’s fees and fail to provide the service the law entitles them to.

Also sprach Zarathustra the Cato Institute. Cato's David Bier, in testimony before Congress has said in no uncertain terms that "This is a scam. This is a fraud." 

And if you think the Cato Institute is some sort of haven for crazy lefties, for bleeding heart progressives, think again. It's a libertarian think tank.

"This is a scam. This is fraud."

Associating the words "scam" and "fraud" with the Trump administration? Why am I not surprised. 

Meanwhile, Lady Liberty weeps...(Me, too.)

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Image Source: Fine Art America/Delphimages