Buddy watch.

August 27th, 2014

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, or if it is a well known fact, but former Providence mayor “Buddy” Cianci has his own line of marinara sauce, which is sold around the city. (At the time I was regularly in Rhode Island, he also had his own line of coffee, but I’m not sure if he still does.)

Profits from the Mayor’s Marinara go to a scholarship fund for kids.

But in recent years, no money from the sauce’s sales has been donated to Cianci’s charity scholarship fund, The Associated Press has learned. From 2009 to 2012, the sauce made a total of $3 in income, longtime Cianci adviser Charles Mansolillo told the AP.

The AP thought this story was so fantastic, they gave it a special award. I have some reservations about this:

In 2009, they lost $2,200 on the sauce, Mansolillo said. The following year, they made $2,974, while in 2011, they lost $2,969. In 2012, they made $2,198 profit, he said. That adds up to a profit of just $3 during the 4-year period.

Is it possible they weren’t making money because former Mayor Cianci was kind of out of the public eye during this period? (He got out of prison in 2007, and had some radio and television gigs, but I don’t know what kind of public visibility those brought him. At least one of the shows he hosted was the “weekend public affairs program” Four Leather Chairs Against a Blue Background On the Record with Buddy Cianci. What kind of ratings do those get?)

Cianci and Mansolillo said sales have been hurt in past years by mismanagement from some of the sauce’s previous distributors, one of which went bankrupt. During the time when Cianci was in prison from 2002 to 2007, the sauce sometimes was not on the shelves at all.

More:

Bob Borges, gourmet manager at Eastside Market in Providence, said the sauce sells well at his store, which goes through about a dozen 12-jar cases a month. He said he thinks first-time purchasers might buy it because they think sales are benefiting children, but they wouldn’t get the repeat sales they get unless it was good. They sell it for $5.69 per jar.

This story, for some reason, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. To be fair, though, there’s a related story by the same author that’s a little more interesting. You know that scholarship fund mentioned earlier?

Since 2008, the charity has spent no more than 2.7 percent of its assets annually on scholarships, and as little as 1.7 percent.

…

The charity’s IRS filings show that it had $434,126 in assets as of June 30, 2013, and received around $25,000 in investment income that year. It gave out $11,000 in grants and spent $32,061 total in expenses. The year before, it had $3,862 in revenue and gave out $12,000 in grants, and before that it received $10,972 in revenue and gave out $10,000 in grants.

I hate to keep sounding like Buddy Cianci’s defender. But if this is a scam, it seems to be a very penny-ante scam. It sounds like something that started out as a PR opportunity and went a little off the rails.

(ETA: Forgot to give Romenesko credit.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Rhode Island | Comments Closed

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. Poor guy.

August 27th, 2014

I’ve mentioned previously that I watched COPS on a regular basis, at least until it left Fox for the wilderness of basic cable. I’ll still watch it if I catch it on somewhere.

I remember seeing some fairly shocking and disturbing things during that time; fatal highway accidents, one carload of police officers (with a camera crew on board) being broadsided during a high-speed chase by another cop car. But I never thought anything like this would happen.

A crew member with the “Cops” television show was fatally struck by police gunfire as Omaha officers confronted a robber — who also was fatally wounded — at a midtown restaurant, law enforcement sources said Wednesday.

…

The robbery suspect apparently had an air gun, a type of BB gun that looks like an actual firearm. He apparently was a prison parolee from Kansas, law enforcement sources said.

The World-Herald claims that the police were the only ones shooting, and that “at least 30 shots” were fired during the incident.

I’m not sure what else I can say about this, other than it is sad and awful, and I’ll pass along any significant updates.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, TV | Comments Closed

Busted, again.

August 26th, 2014

General hattip on all of this to Romenesko.

A while back, I wrote about Busted, Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Lasker’s book about their coverage of corrupt cops in Philadelphia. At that time, I asked what they had accomplished, given that the bad cops were still on the street.

Last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer (the other daily newspaper, and the one that got soundly beat by Ruderman and Lasker on the story) ran a piece “Why an accused Phila. officer is still on the force” purporting to answer the question of why Thomas Tolstoy hadn’t been fired yet, even though he’d been accused of sexually assaulting three women. There are various reasons, but the Inquirer‘s key one:

The documents also show that actions the victim ascribed to two Philadelphia Daily News reporters who wrote about her assault further undermined the criminal case by damaging her credibility and complicating a federal investigation.
The woman told investigators that the reporters – whose account of the assault and other police abuses would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 – provided her with gifts, paid her bills, offered her money to hire a lawyer, and told her that she could collect a financial windfall if she talked to them and not to law enforcement officials, according to the documents.
She also told investigators that the reporters were aware that an associate of hers had pressured her to lie about the circumstances of the attack. And she said one of the reporters encouraged her to give an exaggerated account of the raid, saying it would help in a potential lawsuit.
The woman’s accusations of impropriety by the reporters – included in detailed interview summaries signed by FBI agents – imperiled an already precarious case, according to three high-ranking officials familiar with the investigation.

Uh-huh. Ruderman and Lasker deny this, of course. Ruderman has posted a response on Facebook. And it’s worth pointing out that these accusations only involve one of the three women, and have nothing to do with the separate allegation that Tolstoy was one of the cops caught on tape stealing from bodegas.

Philadephia magazine has published their own piece about the problems of the Inquirer story. Points:

Posted in Books, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Musical interlude.

August 26th, 2014

Because even old New York was once New Amsterdam.

Posted in Clippings, History, Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 26, 2014.

August 26th, 2014

Missed this over the weekend, but notorious Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen descended into hell last week.

Bill James, in his book Popular Crime, devotes some space to Hansen and makes two good points:

  1. Hansen’s criminal career was largely symptomatic of the way the criminal justice system worked at the time:

    Robert Hansen was the end product of a criminal justice system that really didn’t want to convict people, a criminal justice system that had lost track of its responsibility to protect the public. But you know what? That was 30 years ago, when Hansen was running wild and nobody would step up to stop him. It was a long time ago. It isn’t that way anymore. The system has, to a large extent, healed itself.

    Specifically, Hansen had a long career, mostly involving petty theft but including some serious crimes against women. Yet somehow he managed to make the charges against him mostly disappear, and minimized the severity of the ones that remained. He was convicted of rape in 1971 and sentenced to five years in prison; Hansen was paroled after three months. And as far as I can tell, that, and a year and half for setting a school bus barn on fire when he was young, are the only time he did until his arrest for the killings; he was at one point sentenced to five years for stealing a chainsaw, but that sentence was overturned on appeal and he ended up on parole again.
    In short, the courts and the cops had plenty of opportunities to stop him before and while he was hunting women, and botched them all.

  2. Hansen, unlike many serial killers, was publicity shy. So much so that, according to James, he used that as a negotiating tool; “I’ll answer your questions about what I did, as long as you keep the press and the people writing books away from me.” This would explain why he wasn’t as well known as Bundy or Gacy, even though his crimes were equally sensational.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 19, 2014.

August 21st, 2014

TMQ just seems to get longer and longer.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Clippings, Music, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Fair food watch.

August 20th, 2014

In case you were wondering what Fried Sriracha Balls look like, they are slide number 5 in this eight slide (Warning! Slide show!) slide show (Warning! Slide show!) from the HouChron.

See also this non-slide-show article from the Dallas Eater site, which has a better description of the funnel cake ale.

(Yes, I didn’t use the “on a stick” category. That’s because none of these items is actually served on a stick, which is a huge disappointment as far as I’m concerned.)

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore (#1 in a series).

August 17th, 2014

Yes, introducing yet another occasional series. In this one, I document weird stuff I’ve found at the local used bookstores, on other people’s bookshelves, or just roaming around. All books are real unless otherwise stated.

Our first entry?

The Washington Fringe Benefit

Yes, that’s The Washington Fringe Benefit by Elizabeth L. Ray. For the benefit of my younger readers, Ms. Ray was a clerk and secretary for a congressman from Ohio named Wayne Hayes. To quote Ms. Ray, “I can’t type. I can’t file. I can’t even answer the phone.” So why did Congressman Hayes employ her? Yep. She was basically his mistress, paid for out of Congressional funds. Here’s a link (by way of WikiPedia) to the original WP story.

All this took place in the Watergate/immediate post-Watergate era. When the story broke in May of 1976, it became a major scandal; Hayes ended up resigning from his committee chairmanship (“Committee on House Administration”) and, a few months later, from Congress itself.

Back cover of The Washington Fringe Benefit

I have not read the book yet, but it appears to be a roman à clef about Ms. Ray’s…service, so to speak, in our nation’s capital, with the various real persons (other than Ms. Ray herself) given nearly transparent disguises. It does have the advantage of being short (172 pages), but I can’t comment on the merits of the writing.

As far as I can tell, this is Ms. Ray’s only novel. She appears to still be alive, but her Wikipedia entry describes her as having “faded back into obscurity”. Former Congressman Hayes passed away in 1989.

Posted in Books | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: August 12, 2014.

August 14th, 2014

And so is TMQ. And so is TMQ Watch. The first column of the NFL season is always kind of strange; there’s a lot of short items, basketball coverage, and other things that throw us for a loop. We’re probably not going to hit every one of TMQ’s throwaway quips. And yes, we’re aware that TMQ did a couple of draft columns; we looked at those and frankly didn’t find anything noteworthy in them. One was his usual silly mock draft, the other was his draft analysis, and both contained the recommended US daily allowance of TMQ tropes.

Anyway, back to this week’s TMQ, after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Apple, Art, Books, Christo, Clippings, NFL, Politics, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Book note.

August 14th, 2014

The NYT has a brief interview with Doug J. Swanson, tied to the release of his new non-fiction book, Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker.

This is great news, as far as I’m concerned, for two reasons:

  1. The story of Benny Binion and his foes, especially Herbert Noble, is a fascinating one. Lawrence gave me a copy of The Green Felt Jungle (a work I’m surprised Swanson didn’t mention) for Christmas one year, and that covers the Binion/Noble story at some length. But I’m excited about a more up-to-date book length treatment.
  2. I’m also kind of fond of Doug Swanson’s work. I’ve read and enjoyed (to varying degrees) four out of five of the Jack Flippo books, and was wondering why I hadn’t seen a new one in a while.

So, yeah, I’ll be picking this one up soon.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

The Washington Post makes me testy again.

August 13th, 2014

Actual WP headline:

Waldman: Libertarians silent on Mo. shooting

(I won’t provide a link because 1) the Posties tell me I’ve used up all my articles for the month even though I’m a subscriber, and II) I don’t link clickbait.)

Yeah! Those pesky Libertarians haven’t been talking at all about Ferguson!

Except for Walter Olsen at Overlawyered.

And the folks over at Reason.

And Popehat on the Twitter.

And Morlock Publishing, but technically I think he’s an anarcocapitalist rather than a Libertarian.

To be fair, Balko hasn’t had much to say specifically about Ferguson, though he has been continuing to write about police militarization and misconduct.

Perhaps the WP issues highly effective hearing protection to their staff. Maybe something like these.

Posted in Clippings, Cops | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch watch.

August 13th, 2014

Good news: football is back.
News: Tuesday Morning Quarterback is also back.
More news: TMQ Watch will return. We are not sure when, as we are still busy with other things (including wrapping up DEFCON coverage) but we will try to get to this week’s TMQ as soon as we can.

Posted in Admin, Clippings, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 13, 2014.

August 13th, 2014

Lauren Bacall. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

DEFCON 22 updates: August 12, 2014.

August 12th, 2014

Posted in DEFCON 22 | Comments Closed

Random notes: August 12, 2014.

August 12th, 2014

Garry Kasparov lost his bid to run the World Chess Federation. The incumbent president, Kirsan N. Ilyumzhinov, was re-elected by a wide margin (110 to 61).

Mr. Ilyumzhinov, 52, a native of Kalmykia, a poor Russian republic on the Caspian Sea, has led the chess federation since 1995, but not without controversy. He cultivated friendships with Saddam Hussein, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and claims that he was abducted by space aliens one night in 1997. He also claims the game was invented by extraterrestrials.

(Previously.)

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright: or, Lawrence goes to the tank museum. Hilarity ensues.

Actual LAT headline: “Convicted smuggler of prized fish bladders gets 1-year prison term“.

Posted in Clippings, History, Law, Sports | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »