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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#55 in a series)

Friday, April 26th, 2019

We have now come to the point where I have done as many of these as I have “Art, damn it, art!” watches. (And more of these than Art Acevedo watches.)

The mayor of Edinburg, Texas, and his wife have been arrested on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.

Edinburg is in the southern part of the state, in the area generally called the “Rio Grande Valley”.

The Rio Grande Valley has been a particular point of focus in Texas conversations about voter fraud. Two-thirds of the 91 Texas election fraud cases prosecuted from state investigations between 2006 and 2016 were in counties south of San Antonio. Only four of them involved in-person voter impersonation.

More:

Nearly 20 people have been arrested since last year in connection with the fraud case. Prosecutors said the scheme — involving Mr. Molina, his wife and paid campaign workers — was largely carried out by having numerous voters who did not live in Edinburg claim they were residents, including many who stated they lived in an apartment complex Mr. Molina owns.
According to court documents, Mr. Molina and his wife were both registered as volunteer voter registrars in the 2017 election and were authorized to help people fill out voter registration applications. Several of those with false addresses were signed by Mr. Molina and included his voter registrar number, according to the criminal complaint.

This does not exactly strike me as being a genius scheme.

“I feel that he didn’t steal the election away from me — he stole the election away from the community,” said Mr. Garcia, a lawyer. “The suspicions arose, when you started seeing, in checking the lists on the last days of the election, you started seeing a lot of names with the same address. There was one little house — it’s a 400- or 500-square-foot little one-room place — and there was maybe 20 people registered to that address.”

The Mr. Garcia mentioned above is Richard Garcia, the former mayor, who Mr. Molina defeated by 1,240 votes in the 2017 election.

NYT. Statesman. HouChron. The Monitor.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#54 in a series)

Thursday, April 25th, 2019

I want to note here that the flaming hyenas watch is not literal: I don’t intend for crooked politicians to catch fire. “You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” is a reference to a classic “Bloom County” strip that, sadly, isn’t available on line.

Why does this matter? I’ll get to that.

But first: I was trying to keep up with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and the whole “Healthy Holly” scandal. Really, I was. But I got busy with Holy Week and taxes and other stuff and…fortunately, Lawrence sent me the latest news.

The FBI raided the mayor’s home this morning.

And City Hall.

And “several other locations” associated with the mayor.

Telling detail:

Thursday was not the first time a Baltimore mayor’s house has been raided by investigators. In 2008, state prosecutors and police searched the home of then-Mayor Sheila Dixon. The Democrat became the first Baltimore mayor to face criminal charges, was convicted and resigned.

In other news: Tyus Byrd was mayor of Parma, Missouri. She lost her re-election bid. Her successor was sworn in a little more than a week ago.

Right after the swearing in, Mayor Byrd’s house caught fire.

Sounds like bad luck, right? You lose the mayor’s race, then your house catches fire?

Then City Hall caught fire, too.

What began as a small-town changing of the guard has quickly become a statewide investigation. The authorities suspect foul play, and the state fire marshal’s office is assisting the local sheriff’s office in an arson inquiry. At the same time, the state auditor’s office announced it had opened an audit into Parma’s finances after finding credible allegations of problems under Ms. Byrd’s watch. Some have tied the two investigations together, suggesting that the fires were meant to destroy evidence, while another theory purported that Ms. Byrd had been targeted because of her race.
Chris Hensley, a chief deputy with the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Department, said that the evidence showed that multiple fires had been set at City Hall and that arson was suspected.

The building is apparently intact, but (quel frommage!) “nearly all records and the computer” (?) were destroyed.

“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.” But this is a case where I don’t think we need to wait for a third time.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Noted.

Thursday, April 18th, 2019

1. Judith Clark has been granted parole. Officer Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady of the Nyack Police Department were unavailable for comment, as was Brinks employee Peter Paige.

2. Thread:

I haven’t seen “A Few Good Men” yet. (I feel like I should, but: Sorkin.) But I agree with his points on “Magnum Force”. I swear I’ve written about this before, but I think “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force” are both much more complicated movies than the people who call them “fascist” give them credit for. “Dirty Harry” is about a good man who is trying to do his job, while coming to terms with a world that’s changing around him. “Magnum Force” is about that same man, who, when given a chance to reject those changes, makes the moral choice not to.

3. Article about Father Fournier from the NYT. Mike the Musicologist sent over a Reddit thread as well.

It seems somehow inappropriate to refer to a priest as a bad a–, but I can’t think of a better word. Before rushing into a burning building, the Father had:

  • served with French forces in Afghanistan, and survived an ambush that killed 10 men
  • went into Bataclan while the shooting was going on to provide absolution for the victims

Clint Eastwood, call your people, please: Father Fournier would be a good subject for your next movie.

Tactical advice from a priest:

From a military base in Afghanistan to a revered cathedral torn by flames, the rule, he said, is the same: “Always be on the move, or else you die.”
Inside Notre-Dame, he said, he kept the safety of his fellow firefighters foremost in his mind. “Artworks can be reproduced, while a human life can’t,” he said.
“The one who tells you that he’s not afraid in that kind of situation is either very dangerous or foolish,” the chaplain said. “Even for a firefighter, to go inside a building in flames isn’t that natural.”

4. Should Roberto Clemente’s number 21 be retired across all of baseball? My feelings about baseball are well known, so I’m not the person to ask. But I do kind of like Clemente, who died nobly and far too young.

5. The Alliance of American Football has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Posted in Law, Movies, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 7, 2019.

Sunday, April 7th, 2019

Vonda N. McIntyre, noted SF writer, passed away on Monday, but I did not know about this until Lawrence mentioned it last night. The NYT obit is datelined Friday, but I’m thinking it must have been posted late in the day.

Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, for the historical record.

Ly Tong. He was a pilot with the South Vietnamese Air Force.

A man who never accepted defeat, Mr. Ly Tong considered it his personal mission to take back his country from the Communists, who have ruled it since winning the Vietnam War in 1975.

So, in 1992, he…

…hijacked a commercial airliner after takeoff from Bangkok, ordered the pilot to fly low over Ho Chi Minh City — known as Saigon, South Vietnam’s capital, before the Communist victory — and dumped thousands of leaflets calling for a popular uprising.
He then strapped on a parachute and followed the leaflets down to certain capture. He was released six years later in an amnesty and returned to the United States, where he had become a citizen after the war.

That takes us to 1998. In 2000…

…Mr. Ly Tong burnished his anti-Communist credentials with a flight over Havana in a rented plane, scattering leaflets as he had in Vietnam. He was commended on his return by Cuban-Americans in Florida, who gave him a victory parade.

Later that year…

…Mr. Ly Tong made a second trip over Ho Chi Minh City, sending down a new cascade of leaflets, which he had signed “Global Alliance for the Total Uprising Against Communists.”

He spent another six years in a Thai prison for that. The paper of record states he was unarmed and nobody was hurt during either of his hijackings, which makes me wonder about the definition of “hijacking”. But I digress.

In his final and most bizarre act of defiance, in 2010 in California, Mr. Ly Tong assaulted a Vietnamese singer whom he deemed sympathetic to the government of Vietnam. Disguised as a woman, he walked to the edge of the stage, reached up as if to hand the singer a bouquet and squirted a liquid, which may have been pepper spray, in her face. He was sentenced on multiple charges to six months in jail and three years’ probation. He appeared at his trial in drag.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes, Politics | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#53 in a series)

Friday, April 5th, 2019

Kind of a brief one, but I didn’t get to use this trope last night, so what the heck:

The Baltimore Sun has a good summary of the “Healthy Holly” scandal that’s threatening to take down Mayor (and former state Senator) Catherine Pugh.

There’s also a “special section” that collects links to their other stories. My personal favorite so far:

How the rise of the self-publishing industry contributed to the problems for Baltimore’s mayor

I’m not kidding. That’s an actual headline from an actual article.

Pugh’s administration was beset by other problems long before her book deal came under attack. But Baltimoreans might wonder what would have happened if the Kindle had never been invented, or if the meteoric rise of the self-publishing industry had been delayed by perhaps three decades. Would “Healthy Holly” have remained Pugh’s own private brainchild instead of a roughly 80-page national embarrassment? And would she still occupy the Baltimore mayor’s office today?

Come on. It’s Baltimore, gentlemen: if it wasn’t this, it would have been something else. Grifters gonna grift, and technology doesn’t change that.

Posted in Books, Kindleing, Politics | Comments Closed

Decisions, decisions…

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

If I was a book collector and had $100,000 to spend, what should I spend it on?

Let’s see. For that money, I could maybe get two copies of the UK first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Or maybe just one.

Or I could be like this guy, who paid $100,000 for one book from “Healthy Holly LLC”.

Should I even mention that this guy does business with the city of Baltimore? And that “Healthy Holly LLC” is the mayor’s publishing company?

Grant’s firm has long done business with the city. And in December last year, Pugh voted as a member of the city’s spending board to approve a contract with the company to finance capital projects. The value of the contract will depend on what the city uses it to buy.

It doesn’t sound as interesting as Harry Potter, but it may be equally rare:

Pugh was paid $500,000 by the University of Maryland Medical System during a time when she was a state senator and then mayor — and sat on the hospital network’s board of directors. That money was supposed to buy 100,000 “Healthy Holly” books for the city’s schoolchildren in five installments from 2011 to 2018. The “Herbie” book was the second installment.

But even after days of front-page headlines, no one has stepped forward to account for all the books. UMMS said through a spokesman that “production and distribution of the books was managed by Healthy Holly LLC,” Pugh’s book company.

Bonus: the mayor has an “upscale second hand boutique” that’s been selling Groupons. (Groupons? Those are still a thing?) But when a reporter bought one and went to visit yesterday afternoon…

…the door of the Pigtown boutique was locked, and two women who entered the building Wednesday afternoon declined to answer a reporter’s questions or to allow entrance into the shop.

Getting back to the books, it’s a shame nobody can find them: Lawrence has a birthday coming up, and he’s a connoisseur of books published by political hacks to get money under the table.

Posted in Books, Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

Notes from the legal blotter.

Tuesday, March 19th, 2019

Mildly interesting, though the Statesman is short on details (perhaps because law enforcement is not giving those out):

State officials cancelled liquor permits for Club Casino, 5500 South Congress Ave., and Zota’s Night Club, 4700 Burleson Road, on March 8., TABC officials said.

The bars were shut down “after a months-long investigation into human trafficking, narcotics and drink solicitation” involving both TABC and the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.

More interesting: APD fired officers Donald Petraitis and Robert Pfaff yesterday.

Why? February of last year, the two officers arrested a man named Quentin Perkins:

Petraitis and Pfaff filed reports that said Perkins had tried to walk away from them and glanced back as if he were planning to run. However, video footage from the incident presented during the officers’ trial showed that Pfaff used a stun gun on Perkins despite Perkins being on his knees with his hands raised.
Parts of the officers’ reports are “simply not true,” Police Chief Brian Manley wrote in their disciplinary memos, which were released Monday.

…

Manley also accused Pfaff and Petraitis of coordinating a false story.
“I find it improbable that both officers came up with a similar version of events, which included things that did not happen … as well as not recalling what actually did happen. … I have serious concerns that Officer Pfaff and Petraitis got their stories straight before they spoke with (a supervisor) and prepared their reports and the probable cause affidavit,” he wrote.

…

The disciplinary memos also say a police academy supervisor told the Austin police internal affairs unit that the stun gun use under these circumstances was unreasonable.

Even more interesting: the two officers were charged criminally as a result of this incident…and were acquitted of all the charges. Which is an additional illustration of something they tell the students in our Citizen’s Police Academy classes: you can do everything within the bounds of the law…and still get fired for violating APD policy, if that’s the way the chief wants to go. (And if you actually violated policy. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to tell the Taser story.)

Edited to add: I was going to include a link to the chief’s memo, but the city of Austin has reorganized the website and made the disciplinary memos extremely hard to find. DuckDuckGo to the rescue, but: the most recent one posted is from January 10th.

Edited to add 2: How bad does a jail have to be before even the people who run it quit? This bad.

In addition to the carbon monoxide issue, Barnett cited exposed electrical wiring, mold, bad plumbing, and an instance where a snake fell on an inmate’s head.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 14, 2019.

Thursday, March 14th, 2019

This literally just in, hot off the virtual press: Birch Bayh, former Senator from Indiana. Possibly more later.

Going out to great and good friend of the blog Borepatch: Hal Blaine, noted session drummer.

Mr. Blaine was part of a loosely affiliated group of session musicians who in the early 1960s began dominating rock ’n’ roll recording in Los Angeles. Along with guitarists like Glen Campbell and Tommy Tedesco, bassists like Carol Kaye and Joe Osborn, and keyboardists like Leon Russell and Don Randi, Mr. Blaine played on thousands of recordings through the mid-1970s.
He famously said he gave the group its name, the Wrecking Crew, although Ms. Kaye has insisted that he did not start using that term until years after the musicians had stopped working together.

He substituted for Dennis Wilson on many of the Beach Boys studio recordings:

Asked if Mr. Wilson was angry that he was replaced in the studio, Mr. Blaine said he was not.
“He was thrilled,” he said, “because while I was making Beach Boy records, he was out surfing or riding his motorcycle. During the day, when I was making $35 or $40, that night he was making $35,000” performing live.
Mr. Blaine’s other studio credits include Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” the 5th Dimension’s “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Ms. Streisand’s “The Way We Were,” the Crystals’ “Da Doo Ron Ron” and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass’s “A Taste of Honey.”

The NYT has an interesting way of presenting the obit for former UT president Bill Powers:

Francesco Cali passed away last night. He was shot six time outside his home, and (according to one report Lawrence sent me) run over by a pickup truck.

Mr. Cali was the current reputed boss of the Gambino family, John Gotti’s old outfit.

The assassination of Mr. Cali came on the same day that Joseph Cammarano Jr., the reputed acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, was acquitted at trial, and about a week after Carmine J. Persico, a longtime boss of the Colombo crime family, died in prison at age 85.

NYT on the Cammarano acquittal. Previously on Carmine “The Snake” Persico.

Edda Goering, Herman’s daughter, passed away. She was 80.

Posted in History, Law, Music, Nazis, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 11, 2019.

Monday, March 11th, 2019

Bill Powers, former University of Texas president.

Powers was the second-longest-serving president in UT history, holding the post for more than nine years until he stepped down in June 2015 to return to the Law School, where he previously was dean. Under his watch as president, UT overhauled the undergraduate curriculum; completed an eight-year fundraising campaign that netted $3.1 billion; launched the ESPN-owned Longhorn Network in a deal giving the campus $300 million over 20 years; and collaborated with local, state and UT System leaders to establish the Dell Medical School.

Quoting Lawrence:

Powers is probably most famous to BattleSwarm readers for his central role in the UT admissions scandal, in which well-connected students were admitted to the University of Texas despite not having the necessary grade averages or test scores. Powers eventually resigned over the scandal.
The UT admissions scandal was not only real, but several of the state’s most powerful politicians (including then-speaker Joe Straus) and media outlets conspired to bury the story.

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to see how the Statesman addressed this in their obituary. Hint: you will need a (metaphorical) shovel.

Sidney Sheinberg, film executive best known as an early and influential supporter of Steven Spielberg.

Just being a celebrity’s kid doesn’t automatically get you an obit watch. But if the child had an interesting life outside of, or in relation to, their famous parent: absolutely, I’ll mention it here.

In that vein: Julia Ruth Stevens, Babe Ruth’s daughter. She was 102. Ruth adopted her when he married Claire Hodgson, his second wife. (He had a daughter, Dorothy, from his first marriage to Helen Woodford. Ms. Woodford died in a house fire in 1929: Ruth married Ms. Hodgson in 1930, she adopted Dorothy, and the family lived together.)

Claire Hodgson Ruth died in 1976 and Mrs. [Dorothy Ruth – DB] Pirone died in 1989. Mrs. Stevens ultimately became the spokeswoman for the Ruth family.
She was at Yankee Stadium in May 1998 for the unveiling of a postage stamp portraying Ruth admiring one of his home run drives. That August, she threw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game in Fenway Park at ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of Ruth’s death.
She was at Fenway Park in October 1999 to toss the first pitch before the decisive Game 5 of the American League Championship Series. Having lived for many years in Conway, N.H., she had become a Red Sox fan.
“I went to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees tonight,” she said.

…

When the Yankees played their last game at the old Stadium, the House That Ruth Built, in September 2008, she threw out the first pitch. And she threw out the first ball at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park on July 10, 2016, to mark her 100th birthday three days earlier.

Freeda Foreman, one of George Foreman’s daughters, passed away over the weekend. She was 42, and had a 5-1 record as a professional boxer.

Edited to add: prompted by the exchange with Lawrence below, here’s a little lagniappe for you.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Sports, Texas | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 8, 2019.

Friday, March 8th, 2019

Ralph Hall, former Republican House rep from Texas.

Mr. Hall was 91 when he left the House after 34 years. He was defeated in a Republican primary runoff in 2014 by John Ratcliffe, a former United States attorney less than half his age.
An avid jogger who began his days with two-mile runs, Mr. Hall celebrated Memorial Day 2012, when he was 89, by skydiving. That Christmas he became the oldest member of the House, breaking the record set by Charles Manly Stedman of North Carolina, who died in office in 1930 at the age of 89 years, seven months and 25 days.

…

Mr. Hall, who flew Hellcat fighters during World War II, was known in Congress for promoting NASA and energy production. Hailing from a small town east of Dallas, he was fond of saying that he often voted with his party but always voted with his district.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

Jerry Merryman. You’ve probably never heard of him, but to my mind, he was one of the great men of history.

While working at Texas Instruments, Mr. Merryman co-created the first pocket calculator.

With this device, Mr. Merryman and his collaborators, Jack Kilby and James Van Tassel, also pioneered rechargeable batteries and “thermal printing,” which used heat to print numbers onto a special kind of paper. Speaking with NPR, Mr. Merryman said he was reminded of their work whenever he used a cellphone or was handed a thermally printed receipt by a grocery store cashier.

…

Years later, when a friend mentioned that Mr. Merryman had designed the calculator’s circuitry in only three days, Mr. Merryman leaned toward him and said, “And three nights.”
He, Mr. Kilby and Mr. Van Tassel initially built a prototype, which spanned an entire room at their Texas Instruments lab. Then, over the next two years, they packed the same circuit design into a hand-held casing using microchips.
The device had 18 keys, and it could handle addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, printing calculations on a tiny spool of paper. It reached the market in 1970 after Texas Instruments licensed the technology to Canon, carrying a $400 price tag. Soon a second partner, Bowmar, introduced a $250 version called the Bowmar Brain.

The first calculator I ever used only supported six digits (not eight) and the basic math operations. I don’t know how much it cost. I think my dad paid around $300 for a Rockwell scientific calculator sometime in the 1970s. It wasn’t that many years later that I got a TI-30 for Christmas: I think by that time they were somewhere around $20 or $30.

Moore’s Law, man.

Posted in Geek, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Lord Nelson.

Thursday, February 21st, 2019

Item #1: the Circuit of the Americas is not going to get money from the state of Texas for last year’s Formula One race.

The stunning development means the track in Southeast Austin will forfeit $25 million or more in state funds through the Major Event Reimbursement Program. The state reimbursed the racetrack $27 million through the program after the 2017 U.S. Grand Prix, $26 million for the 2016 F1 race and $22.7 million for the 2015 U.S. Grand Prix.

Why are they being cut off? Would you believe…they didn’t file their anti-human trafficking paperwork in time?

According to an October 2018 letter from the governor’s office that was obtained by the Statesman, CELOC [Circuit Events Local Organizing Committee – DB] missed the deadline to submit a required human trafficking prevention plan by 30 days before the 2018 U.S. Grand Prix. Bryan Daniel, the governor’s executive director of economic development and tourism, wrote that because CELOC failed to meet the deadline, its application for reimbursement had been rescinded.
The plan was due Sept. 19, but CELOC did not submit it until Oct. 3.
“In this case, the law is clear that if a human trafficking prevention plan is not submitted 30 days prior to an event, a reimbursement from the Major Events Fund cannot be issued,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said in an emailed statement. “The State of Texas and COTA have a productive partnership that has had a tremendous economic impact on the city of Austin and the state as a whole, and our office is already working with COTA on next year’s race.”

As much as I enjoy seeing these people cut off from their state subsidy, I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of this, and that somehow somebody’s going to figure out an end run to get them their $25 million.

Item #2:

At a murder trial last week in Travis County, a defense lawyer for a woman accused of fatally shooting her fiancé approached the witness stand and began asking questions to an empty chair. The attorney, Brian Erskine, was expressing disbelief that forensic examiner Dr. Sam Andrews did not show up to testify about his autopsy on 37-year-old victim Bradley Sullivan.

Did the Honorable Mr. Erskine think he was Clint Eastwood? And why wasn’t Dr. Andrews in court?

Turns out…

…Andrews no longer is welcome in Travis County courtrooms. The district attorney’s office recently decided it will not sponsor his testimony amid an ongoing Texas Rangers and Texas Medical Board investigation into his work at his new job as the chief of the Lubbock County medical examiner’s office.

…

The basis for the investigation has not been revealed. However, a Lubbock County commissioner might have given hints in a letter to a judge Monday in which he alleged that Andrews had improperly harvested excessive body tissue from deceased children for research. The letter from Commissioner Jason Corley to County Judge Curtis Parrish also states that another doctor in Andrews’ office, Evan Matshes, had performed autopsies despite not being licensed to practice medicine in Texas. Similar allegations are outlined in a lawsuit against Andrews and Matshes by a former employee of the medical examiner’s office.

According to the Statesman, the DA’s office doesn’t think this is a huge problem: Dr. Andrews did a total of ten autopsies in cases that are still pending. But in eight of those, “the cause of death could not be reasonably disputed by the defense“.

However, prosecutors must appoint a second medical examiner to review Andrews’ autopsy reports in all pending cases. If the second examiner affirms Andrews’ previous findings, that doctor will then be permitted to testify at trial in place of Andrews.

Posted in Law, Politics, Schadenfreude, TCDA, Texas, Travis County | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 18, 2019.

Monday, February 18th, 2019

From the Department of Brief Round-Ups, a couple of obits that people mentioned to me over the weekend:

Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Patrick Caddell, prominent political pollster.

Betty Ballantine, wife of Ian Ballantine. The Ballantines basically pioneered paperbacks in this country:

With a $500 wedding dowry from Ms. Ballantine’s father, the couple established Penguin U.S.A. by importing British editions of Penguin paperbacks, starting with “The Invisible Man” by H. G. Wells and “My Man Jeeves” by P. G. Wodehouse.

…

They left Penguin in 1945 to start Bantam Books, a reprint house. Having purchased the paperback rights for 20 hardcovers, their first round of titles included Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi,” John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
They started Ballantine Books in 1952, publishing reprints as well as original works in paperback.

And:

While Ian Ballantine, who died in 1995, was the better known of the publishing duo, Betty Ballantine, who was British, quietly devoted herself to the editorial side. She nurtured authors, edited manuscripts and helped promote certain genres — Westerns, mysteries, romance novels and, perhaps most significantly, science fiction and fantasy.
Her love for that genre and knowledge of it helped put it on the map.
“She birthed the science fiction novel,” said Tad Wise, a nephew of Ms. Ballantine’s by marriage. With the help of Frederik Pohl, a science fiction writer, editor and agent, Mr. Wise said, “She sought out the pulp writers of science fiction who were writing for magazines and said she wanted them to write novels, and she would publish them.”
In doing so she helped a wave of science fiction and fantasy writers emerge. They included Joanna Russ, author of “The Female Man” (1975), a landmark novel of feminist science fiction, and Samuel R. Delany, whose “Dhalgren” (1975) was one of the best-selling science fiction novels of its time.
The Ballantines also published paperback fiction by Ray Bradbury, whose books include “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451”; Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and J.R.R. Tolkien, author of “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Posted in Books, Gatsby, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Principles.

Thursday, February 14th, 2019

The anarcho-capitalist side of me thinks Alexandra Occasional Cortex is an idiot.

The less anarcho-capitalist side of me thinks a 100% marginal tax rate sounds like a great idea, as long as it’s applied only to people who purchase $1,475 sterling silver weed grinders and $950 bongs.

Posted in Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 14, 2019.

Thursday, February 14th, 2019

Lyndon LaRouche, one of the 20th Century’s greatest cranks. LaRouche PAC.

Defining what Mr. LaRouche stood for was no easy task. He began his political career on the far left and ended it on the far right. He said he admired Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan and loathed Hitler, the composer Richard Wagner and other anti-Semites, though he himself made anti-Semitic statements.

…

He condemned modern music as a tool of invidious conspiracies — he saw rock as a particularly British one — and found universal organizing principles in the music of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

…

In Mr. LaRouche’s view, Mr. Johnson continued, “true Platonists believe that industrialization, technology and classical music should be used to bring wealth and enlightenment to the citizens of the world.”
He added: “The Aristotelians are trying to stop them by using not only sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll but also environmentalism and quantum theory. With their bag of brainwashing techniques, they hope to trick civilization into destroying itself, bringing on a new dark ages in which the world’s riches will be firmly in the hands of the oligarchs.”

…

After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Mr. LaRouche warned that the new president was in “grave and imminent danger” of being assassinated by the “British Empire,” a familiar target of Mr. LaRouche’s.

…

But Mr. LaRouche was heartened by the election of President Trump, though he perceived a British conspiratorial hand reaching into the United States to foment efforts to “politically paralyze” the president and bring about his impeachment.

He was rather oddly obsessed with the British royal family. From a recent editorial on the LaRouche PAC web site calling for his exoneration:

The frame-up and jailing of LaRouche, facilitated by years of lying media vilification of LaRouche and his movement, which continues to this day, was carried out by the same British-run political apparatus—in many cases, by the same individual hit-men, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller—that today is out to topple the President of the United States.

…

Because LaRouche’s proposed war on drugs against London’s Dope, Inc. banking apparatus was never implemented, a drug epidemic today is poisoning our nation and the world.

They don’t make them like that any more.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Flaming hyenas update.

Wednesday, February 13th, 2019

Good news: Carlos Uresti has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for bribery.

Bad news: this sentence will run concurrently with his existing 12 year sentence from last year, so he won’t actually be doing any additional time.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

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