Wind power…and hand grenades?

July 3rd, 2012

This is an odd story.

Charles Anthony Malouff used to be a cop; he worked for both the Bosque County sheriff’s office and the Bertram Police Department. In 2007, he was convicted of “unlawful transfer of a firearm” and got three years probation.

The charge related to Malouff’s keeping and handling of noise-flash diversionary devices, also known as flash bangs or stun grenades, a federal affidavit said.

It is not clear to me if he resigned or was fired, but in either case he stopped being a police officer.

Malouff and Mary Jo Woodall have been indicted on various fraud charges; the two are accused of trying to fraudulently obtain federal stimulus funds for a wind farm near Jonestown.

Back in October, search warrants were served at Malouff and Woodall’s homes. In the process, two gun safes were found at Woodall’s home. Woodall said they belonged to Malouff. The safes were opened, and…

…authorities found 36 guns and at least 10 so-called “destructive devices,” including eight grenades, court documents state.

According to the Statesman, the “destructive devices” were registered to the two agencies Malouff worked for. Malouff has pled guilty to the weapons charges; the plea agreement specifies a 2 1/2 year sentence, subject to judicial approval. The Statesman article raises a whole host of questions:

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: special Heidi Hedi Ho edition.

July 3rd, 2012

Julian Goodman, former NBC executive.

I haven’t been able to determine for sure if he was responsible for canceling “Star Trek” (which would be enough to make him one of nature’s noblemen in my book), but:

...he was compelled to apologize to viewers in 1968 after NBC cut away from a nationally broadcast New York Jets-Oakland Raiders game so that a movie version of “Heidi” could go on as scheduled.

More on the “Heidi Bowl” here.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Just like a row of dominos.

July 2nd, 2012

First, Stockton. Now the California city of Mammoth Lakes has filed for bankruptcy.

Interestingly, this does not appear to be a municipal pension or bond problem. Instead, the city lost a lawsuit against a developer, who was awarded $43 million in damages. The developer agreed to make improvements to the local airport (Mammoth Yosemite Airport) in return for rights to build a $400 million hotel on part of the airport property, along with an option on the land.

However, it seems that the city discovered there were issues with FAA policy with respect to the airport improvements, and decided they’d delay the hotel project, at which point the developer sued and won. The LAT specifically mentions that both parties wanted to extend the airport runway to handle 757s. Looking at this document, I think we’re talking roughly 2,500 meters or about 8,200 feet as the bare minimum runway length needed to handle a 757. (The actual takeoff and landing distance depends on airport elevation, atmospheric conditions, weight, and a host of other factors. as shown in the charts. According to various sources, Mammoth Lakes is at an altitude of about 7,900 feet, though the airport is at 7,135 feet according to AirNav. AirNav also shows the two active runways at 7,134.8 feet and 7,061.4 feet. So we’re talking probably a minimum of 1,200 additional feet of runway, maybe more if you want to have some margin.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Planes, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: In Japan, the hand can be used like a knife…

July 2nd, 2012

…but that doesn’t give you immortality.

Barry Becher, one half of the team that brought you the Ginsu knife, passed away on June 22nd, though his death was not widely reported until Saturday.

Posted in Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

The continuing chimpanzee crisis.

June 29th, 2012

A University of Texas at San Antonio graduate student is in critical condition after two chimpanzees mauled him at the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee Eden in South Africa.

More:

Witnesses said two chimpanzees grabbed Oberle by his feet and pulled him under a perimeter fence and into their enclosure, then dragged him almost a half-mile.

Posted in Clippings, Primates | Comments Closed

Well. Well. Well. Isn’t THAT special?

June 29th, 2012

Earlier this week, I noted the goings-on in the notoriously corrupt California city of Vernon. One thing I mentioned was the $1.6 million salary of one Eric T. Fresch, a Vernon city official until this past May and one of the people behind Vernon’s failed natural gas hedge.

Mr. Fresch was found dead Thursday night in Angel Island State Park.

According to the LAT, the coroner’s office does not suspect foul play.

Amy Brees, an Angel Island State Park superintendent, said rangers began searching for Fresch after receiving a call Thursday afternoon that he had been cycling on the island but never came home.
“He hadn’t returned on the boat he was expected to return on,” said Brees, adding that Fresch’s body was found in the water near the shore.
The island features a mix of trails and terrain, including some cliffs. Water is accessible from various points all around the island.

Also interesting: remember that audit?

The auditor said her staff could not reach him for an interview despite a deposition subpoena and repeated attempts by process servers to track him down.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Vernon, Vernon, Vernon…

June 28th, 2012

The LAT has a story about a state audit report on the notoriously corrupt city. Some of the things in the audit were touched on the other day, like the natural gas hedge deal. There is some new stuff:

…the audit called into question the government reform plan Vernon enacted last year, after it was nearly disincorporated by the state Legislature. The auditor said the city has failed to develop policies to actually implement some of the reform proposals, and that other key initiatives — like increasing the city’s residential population — are still years away.

Since 2005, Vernon has paid out more than $60 million in taxpayer dollars under contracts that had no caps on total expenditures, the audit said. Some of the agreements reviewed did not even define specific work product.

The auditor also noted that Vernon provided “legally questionable” retirement benefits to some of its top officials. The California Public Employees Retirement System has already moved to slash some of those benefits, but it is unclear whether any legal action will be taken against the city or the individual employees.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Cop watch: June 28, 2012.

June 28th, 2012

I have not been able to give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut about the whole Drake/Chris Brown/Tony Parker kerfluffle. (If you are unaware of this, consider yourself lucky.) But there’s an interesting aspect to the story in today’s NYT.

W.i.P (the club where the fight broke out) and Greenhouse (another club) share both the building and a liquor license. Greenhouse has what the NYT characterizes as “a history of violence and other problems”. So…

…Faced with the prospect of being shut down, the owners signed an agreement with the Police Department in March 2011 that required them to scan the ID of everyone who passed through the club’s doors. The data was to be kept for at least 30 days, and provided to the police upon request.

Yep, that’s right. You go into a club, the club captures your ID, keeps it on file for 30 days, and gives it to the cops if they ask for it.

Gabriel Taussig, who heads the city Law Department’s administrative law division, said in a written response that starting in 2007, many nightclubs in the city had entered into agreements with the Police Department to scan the identification cards of patrons.

I’ve written previously about the Patricia Cook case (the woman who was shot by a cop in Culpepper, VA: the cop is now charged with murder). Reason has an interesting article about how the community used Facebook to draw attention to the case: the Facebook campaign led to increased press coverage and the discovery of a new witness. One thing that leaps out at me:

Local residents flooded the comment boards of the Star-Exponent*. Under the guise of anonymity, they defended “Pat” Cook, and called for an investigation into the Culpeper Police Department. “Two weeks after the shooting, [the publication] stopped that,” Jennings says of the message boards. “It deleted all the existing comments and all the existing discussion on that.” The paper relaunched with Facebook commenting, requiring people to identify themselves. At that point, the message boards for the small-town paper went silent. “I think people were afraid to speak up,” Jennings says, adding, “there are a couple of bullies in town.”

“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” indeed.

And do you remember Deputy James Mee of the LA County Sheriff’s Department? You might: he arrested Mel Gibson. Apparently, Mee later sued the department, claiming his superiors had tried to pressure him into removing Gibson’s anti-Semetic remarks from his report. Deputy Mee settled the suit for $50,000….

…and now the department is planning to fire him.

[Richard A.] Shinee [Mee’s lawyer] said the department is trying to fire Mee over a June 17, 2011, pursuit of a drunk driver who slammed into a gas station, causing a fire. Mee received a letter dated June 7 notifying him the department intended to fire him, Shinee said.
“Although they allege that he violated the pursuit policy, the letter is unclear and vague as to how that occurred,” Shinee said.

Mee’s lawyer claims that the department is also peeved because Mee testifed for one of his colleagues at a disciplinary hearing. The gentlemen in question was accused of drunk driving, Mee testifed as an expert on DWI, and…

The commission cited Mee’s testimony in its decision to clear the discipline case, finding that there was no credible evidence that the deputy involved had been drunk.

I don’t know what to make of this. My reading of the LAT account is that the LACSO is looking to get rid of a meddlesome deputy, but I concede that account is pretty one-sided. It would be interesting to see LACSO’s side of the story, but they probably can’t discuss it.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Law, Media | Comments Closed

I hate every ape I see, from chim-pan-A to chimpanzee…

June 27th, 2012

L.A. Zoo visitors watched in horror as a baby chimpanzee was killed Tuesday afternoon by an adult male chimpanzee.

Posted in Clippings, Primates | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 27, 2012.

June 27th, 2012

Obit watch: Nora Ephron.

Oh, gee: “business leaders” are threatening to move their firms out of the notoriously corrupt city of Vernon, claiming the cost of business has become too high. Vernon has raised taxes and electricity rates, due to “the recession and a series of ill-fated investments that have cost the city millions”.

Among other bright ideas:

In other news, Stockton, California plans to file for municipal bankruptcy.

Edited to add: “It’s in our DNA to take the bitterness of lemons and make sweet lemonade,” [Rev. Dwight Williams of the New Bethel Baptist Church] said.

Hmmm.

  1. The ability to make lemonade is genetically inherited, rather than learned? This might explain why my lemonade isn’t very good. (Then again, it could be that I make mine with bottled lemon juice. Yeah, I know, but I mostly make lemonade so I can mix it with iced tea and make Arnold Palmers; why use fresh lemon juice for that?)
  2. Lemonade isn’t sweet until you add something like sugar to it. What does Rev. Williams propose to add to the lemonade of bankruptcy?

More details on the Jovita’s heroin bust from the Statesman.

One of the great barbecue related stories of the past quarter century was the Kreuz Market feud. In brief, when the family patriarch died, he left the Kreuz Market building to his daughter; he’d previously sold the business itself to two of his sons. This led to a family fight, and ultimately Kreuz Market moved into a new building on the highway, while the old building became Smitty’s.

What’s news? Well, the owner of Kreuz and the pitmaster at Smitty’s, along with another family member, are opening a new barbecue place: Schmidt Family Barbecue in Bee Cave. I am morally certain we will be going out there for an SDC, as soon as they’ve had time to shake out.

Posted in Beef, Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law, Obits | 2 Comments »

Gratuitous and unnecessary photography (part 2 of 2?)

June 26th, 2012

I’ve uploaded a second small set of photos. These are photos I took of Ernest Hemmingway’s grave, and of the Hemmingway Memorial near Ketchum. You can view them here.

Posted in Photography, Travel | Comments Closed

Gratuitous and unnecessary photography (part 1 of 2?)

June 26th, 2012

I’ve uploaded some photos I took during our tour of the Old Idaho Penitentiary to Flicker. You can find them here.

Posted in Law, Photography, Travel | Comments Closed

Smack!

June 26th, 2012

Lawrence and I (and others) have often joked that certain establishments, given the amount of traffic they seem to get, stay in business only as fronts for either organized crime or the CIA. (Those of you who want to argue that there is no difference between those two can do so in the comments.)

I just discovered (by way of the TM Daily Post) a possible example of that theory:

Federal authorities are seeking to seize the well-known South Austin restaurant and music venue Jovita’s under a federal indictment that charges 15 people, including three members of the family that owns the South First Street business, with heroin distribution.

Actually, I do believe Jovita’s was an exception to the CIA front rule; it certainly seemed busy whenever I drove past.

And the combination of this raid and the Sixth Street raid in such close proximity makes me go “Hmmmmmmmm”, especially since there appears to be a Texas Syndicate connection to both.

(Apologies for posting this a little late. The story broke while I was in Boise, and I wasn’t checking the Statesman or other papers every day. This did remarkable things for my blood pressure, but was bad for blogging.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law | Comments Closed

After action report: Boise, ID.

June 26th, 2012

This is going to be more like a collection of random notes towards an AA report than an actual report. I do plan on a longer more thoughtful blog post later; probably this weekend, if everything works out the way I want it to. (I’m waiting for something to come in, and I need to go out to my mother’s place to take some pictures.)

  • You can do blog posts from the Kindle Fire. I wouldn’t recommend it, and there are some issues with the WordPress interface on the Kindle, but in a pinch it can be done. And it is better than trying to post from a smart phone.
  • On the other hand, I was at dinner one night with some friends. One of them was talking about a new gun he’d bought, but wasn’t sure what variant it was. He (and several other people at the table) were very impressed when I whipped out the Kindle Fire open to the appropriate section of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson 3rd Edition. At least one person said, “That’s it. I’ve got to get one.” Yeah, I like having the Kindle Fire.
  • Speaking of books, I started and finished The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl on the way up. Tam has written about this book previously, and anything I could add except “go read it” would be superfluous.
  • Supposedly, according to the TSA, you no longer have to take out your laptop if it is under 12″. At least, that’s what I was told by a TSA agent in Austin (too late to do me any good) and the first TSA agent I spoke with in Boise. The second TSA agent in Boise apparently either didn’t get the memo, or the other two were wrong. Good old government ineptitude.
  • I feel obligated to link to this Oatmeal comic.
  • I had a lot of good food in Boise. Other than Bar Gernika and the Moxie Java on Chinden, I had a fantastic breakfast (as in, one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had) at a small place called Goldy’s in downtown Boise, and a very nice meal off the prix fixe menu at Chandlers Steakhouse.
  • Speaking of Chandlers, some folks have been talking about martinis, so I thought I’d post this: Chandlers calls this “The ’33 Plymouth”; it is, of course, made with Plymouth gin and Nolly Prat vermouth. They do warn you that it takes 10 minutes to make one; I consider it worth the wait.
  • There was a restaurant near the hotel that I (sadly) did not make it to, but was notable for the carved wooden sign out front stating “Famous Prawns”. I am sufficiently geeky that whenever I saw that sign, all I could think of was “No prawns at this altitude!”
  • I find that what gets under my skin about travel these days is mostly the minor annoyances. The $3 bottled water in the room. (A buck or $1.50, maybe. That’s gas station price. And what do you suppose the gas station’s markup on bottled water is?) The lack of notepaper and envelopes. (Remember when hotels used to supply those? I know, everyone emails now, but an envelope is still useful to hold receipts and other bits of important loose paper.) Annoying WiFi networks. Etc.
  • Minor annoyances aside, I did like the staff and the facility at the Riverside Boise. (And at least the WiFi was free.) The cookie and milk/coffee break provided by the hotel on Friday was a particularly nice touch.
  • Anyone ever read Lawrence Block’s short story about Keller the hitman, “Answers to Soldier”? I understand how Keller felt about Roseburg; I feel much the same way about Boise. It reminds me a lot of Austin twenty years ago. (And, much like Keller, I have fantasies about moving almost every place I travel to. And then I end up going back to Austin…)
  • I was reliably informed that on Thursday (the first full day I was there, when we spent much of the afternoon tramping around the Old Idaho Penitentiary) the high was 92 degrees. Balmy by Austin standards, but the humidity was 6%. That would explain why I was drinking water like it was going out of style the whole time I was there…
  • As small town as Boise feels, it is big enough to have at least three gun stores. (There may be more, but the show host recommended three specifically.) I was able to visit two: the folks at Boise Gun Company were really nice, and have a huge selection. Cliff’s Guns, Safes, and Reloading seems to be a great place for reloading supplies; they didn’t have quite the new or used selection of Boise Gun Company, but did have a couple of interesting used guns. (On the other hand, $2,000 for a Model 16-4 strikes me as high. But I didn’t try to talk them down, what with being an out-of-state resident and all.) And the staff at Cliffs was perfectly pleasant to me, thankyouverymuch.
  • Sadly, I didn’t have a chance to search for used bookstores in Boise. I did look for bookstores in Ketchum and along the route between Boise and Ketchum, but didn’t see any. Oddly enough, I also didn’t see any gun stores along the route. (They probably would have been closed on Sunday, but I was specifically looking for both gun stores and book stores, just to satisfy my curiosity.)
  • Speaking of Ketchum and the general area around it, can you say “yuppie heaven”? I suspect if you planted magnets on old Ernie’s body and placed him inside a coil of copper wire, you could provide enough power to light all of downtown Ketchum at night.
  • On the other hand, the stretch of 51/20 between I-84 and 75 is an amazing drive. This is basically 82 miles of…well, nothing, except high desert country, farms and ranches, mountains, and lots of curvy mountain road. I have a track of the route I took, and may post it later so folks can get a feel for what the country looks like.
  • I haven’t been a big KIA fan, but the rental company gave me a KIA Forte, and it turned out to be a pretty swell car. It handled well on the road, got close to 30 MPG, and felt pretty stable at 85 MPH. Plus, it had two 12V sockets, an aux input, and a USB plug up front. I haven’t checked the Consumer Reports repair records, but the Forte might be worth looking at if you’re in the market for a 4-door sedan.
  • Boise seems to have nearly as many thrift stores as Austin, Mom. I didn’t see any Goodwill stores, though; the majority of thrift stores seemed to be affiliated with the “Idaho Youth Ranch“.

Posted in Beef, Books, Cars, Food, Geek, Guns, Kindleing, Mixology | Comments Closed

Back on the train, hey, back on the chain gang….

June 26th, 2012

And we have a couple of stories from the municipal beat.

Story #1: The last ballots cast in June’s election in the notoriously corrupt California town of Vernon have been counted…and Reno Bellamy has been declared the winner. Bellamy’s opponent, Luz Martinez, was endorsed by the Vernon Chamber of Commerce. Of course, the Chamber “has vowed to pursue further legal action”.

Story #2: A while back, the town of Moberly, Missouri, agreed to guarantee $39 million in bonds through 2025. The bonds were intended to help a Chinese company, Mamtek International, build a plant to manufacture sucralose in Moberly.

Guess what happened next? If you said, “I bet the project fell apart”, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.

The hook here is that Moberly is refusing to make payments on the bonds, basically claiming that they were “misled” by Mamtek. (Mamtek claimed they already had an operating sucralose plant in China; it turns out that plant never opened, and that Missouri state development officials were aware of this before the bonds were sold, but nobody told Moberly officials.)

In a related NYT story:

Surprised local taxpayers from Stockton, Calif., to Scranton, Pa., are finding themselves obligated for parking garages, hockey arenas and other enterprises that can no longer pay their debts.

This is particularly interesting:

Residents of Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, recently learned from a forensic audit that their city’s fiscal woes could be traced to a guarantee issued in 1998, for the bonds of a trash incinerator project. Every few years after that, the authority running the project issued more bonds, and the city guaranteed those as well.
The audit showed that the authority had been selling new bonds for the cash to pay its older bonds — saving unwitting residents from having to honor their guarantees for a time, but blowing up their debt from the incinerator to an impossible $310 million. That’s more than three times what residents owe on the city’s own bonds.

If you or I did this, they’d call it a Ponzi scheme, and we’d be going to Federal pound you in the ass prison.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

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