Tag Archives: politics

Where It’s Going

Posted by on November 10, 2020 Comments Off on Where It’s Going

On: https://akcaggiano.com/2020/11/10/cruel-to-be-kind/

Usually, I use the Commentary category for news stories, but when I was writing a comment on this blog post, I decided I had more to say about the situation and making my own post might be more appropriate.

To summarize: After having been verbally, emotionally, and physically abused by the former president and his followers, we’re now asked to simply forgive and forget.  The answer to both of those requests is "no."  Anyone that didn’t see a problem with what has been done over the last years has a serious problem.  Anyone that says the alternative would have be worse, or says that the president-elect is going to make it worse has a serious problem.

If we are not actually living in the "end times", which I’m not going to completely dismiss, a lot of people act as if there is nothing left to lose.  For example, a see a lot of posts about gender or sexuality rights.  And because "liberals" are coming into power, we’re all going to be homosexual now.  Hyperbolic and hysterical, yes, but here’s the point.  For some people, this is so important, that they would vote the incumbent back in solely because of that.  There are other similar reasons people have for the same action.  I’ll admit, there may be a case I would do something like that, but for a different cause.

The difference with me, and I would assume other rational people, is there is a level of risk/reward assessment.  To get what you want, how much do you have to give up?  And for these irrational people, it seems they would give up everyone’s everything for their one thing.  And they would suffer for it as well, despite the win – a Pyrrhic victory.  There’s no consideration to postpone that fight for 4 years and try again in better circumstances.  It’s tunnel vision.  Anyone who voted JoJo or Kayne, this is the one time to not be supporting 3rd party.  This one is too important.  But thank you anyway for pulling those votes.

Now, the point I really wanted to make in response to the post is: we’re nowhere near out of the woods on this.

There is a book from which I read an excerpt, and now there’s so many similar books there’s no way for me to find out which it was so I can link it, that discussed how Germany became Nazi Germany.  I distilled the information from that into a single statement to commit to memory, "Hitler comes later."

The point of that warning is that in Germany, there was a pre-Nazi leader who sparked the nationalistic views of the people.  He didn’t get very far, but the future Nazi party took note of how dedicated and passionate those supporters were.  The party then turned it up to 11 and viola, Hitler.

So while there may currently seem to be a glimmer of hope that civility can return, this is the time to be even more vigilant (and god, I hate that word).  I am certain the fanaticism has not gone unnoticed and can and will be exploited. 

If I had to hazard a guess, it will be Jr.  He’s young, charismatic, and carries the family name.  He’s got a partner from the media that has been successfully grooming him for presentation.  So far I haven’t heard of him speaking his own ideas, only parroting his father’s, but watch out if the tone changes and he starts instigating things himself.

We have 4 years to prepare for this.  Do not forgive and do not forget.

How That’s Done

Posted by on October 14, 2020 Comments Off on How That’s Done

I’ve kept my mouth relatively shut for the last few years on this topic, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this specific thing and I felt I should get it out and in writing before I either forget it or it becomes irrelevant.  Hopefully the latter happens first.

There’s this guy you have heard of, Donald Trump.  Without really saying how I feel about him, I just want to explain this thing he does that is so dangerous.  I know it’s way too late to change anyone’s minds for the upcoming election.  And I rather doubt anyone under his sway will actually have their eyes opened by this explanation, but it never hurts to try.

There are countless examples of people parodying a Trump response to a question.  A lot of them are spot on, usually rather funny, and also sad in their accuracy.  I think a lot of people focus on the rambling, delusional aspects of the responses, which is a mistake.  I don’t think Trump is stupid, like mentally stupid.  He does things very intentionally.

I’ve read some analysis of his verbalisms, but nothing that really focuses on what is really trying to be accomplished with them.  The best thing I have read is that he uses a long string of phrases that don’t really form a cohesive statement, but each one has a small nugget of something you want to hear and those pieces are what you focus on and ignore the rest.  That way, everyone gets something of what they want out of the spew.  That is probably accurate, but I have another observation, and I’ll provide a very simple, commonplace example.  It’s believable, for sure, and when you see that technique can be applied to just about any question, hopefully you’ll never listen to his answers the same way again.

Here’s the hypothetical journalist question and Trump’s answer:

"Meteorologists are saying it’s not going to rain tomorrow.  Do you think it’s going to rain?"

"Absolutely!  100%!  It absolutely will rain.  They say it’s not going to rain.  They went to school for years and years and have all these degrees and they say it’s not going to rain.  It should rain!  Don’t you think?  That would be beautiful.  We need the rain.  You know, all that school, all that, they don’t know.  They say it won’t rain.  Maybe it won’t.  But it should rain.  I’m sure it will.  And that will be great for everyone.  It would be a real shame if it didn’t.  It would be bad for everyone."

And what do people get out of this babble?  If it doesn’t rain, they get mad at the scientists because it should have rained.  That was the right answer even though science says it won’t happen.  The question was asking for a simple opinion and what we’re given is a statement on how we should feel about it.  "It" being one specific viewpoint.  In this case and in many cases, the viewpoint is in opposition to the scientific facts.

I have read many times that conservatives are not driven by logic, but by emotion.  Not only in political topics, but in their entire lives.  If it feels correct, it is correct.  The problem with that is it is much easier to make someone feel a certain way than it is to make them think and understand a certain way.  And that is what Trump (and many other con men) can exploit.

Let’s break down that long answer to the question.

  • "Absolutely!  100%!  It absolutely will rain." – Start off with complete confidence and speak in absolutes.  There is no place for disagreement here.
  • "They say it’s not going to rain.  They went to school for years and years and have all these degrees and they say it’s not going to rain." – Attack the opposition.  Even though they are correct, they need to be painted as the bad guys.  Vagueness – using They and Other People – is perfectly fine.  Be specific if you can, but an unknown enemy has advantages as well.
  • "It should rain!  Don’t you think?  That would be beautiful.  We need the rain." – Why should we hate the experts?  Explain it.  Exploit feelings.  You need to feel why you should be angry.
  • "You know, all that school, all that, they don’t know.  They say it won’t rain." – While people are agreeing with the good things you said, say something bad about your opponent.  Your mind is still saying "yes" and that "yes" will continue into the next statement.  This is actually a well-known sales tactic.  They get you to agree to anything ("It’s hot out today"), then carry that agreement into further conversation.
  • "Maybe it won’t." – This has two excellent benefits.  You get an out if you’re wrong, because you can say you never said absolutely, and you inject a feeling of disappointment if the experts are right.
  • "But it should rain.  I’m sure it will.  And that will be great for everyone.  It would be a real shame if it didn’t.  It would be bad for everyone." – Don’t focus on your backpedalling, focus on the benefits of your answer, despite the fact you are wrong.

To summarize: Make your claim, attack your opponent, appeal to your audience, use agreement against your opponent, suggest you might be wrong – but that would be bad, restate your claim with the benefits.

If you don’t want to absorb all of these bits, at least take this:  If you hear someone making a speech and they ask a question that sounds like it should be rhetorical, go on alert.  They are trying to create agreement between something obvious and something you need to be convinced of.

Not Getting Value for Dollar

Posted by on November 13, 2017 1 comment

This was a draft from 2015 when Florida’s online unemployment system was revamped and launched to much disaster.  It sort of became a rabbit hole and I stopped diving deeper, although there was so much more to add.  Because I’m lacking in ideas for posts, I’m going to throw this out, but it’s as complete as I really want to make it.  Being two years out of date, you can imagine the shitshow is forever ongoing.

Spurred by significant problems experienced by someone close to me, I did some investigative work just for fun.  The subject: Florida’s new online unemployment system called CONNECT.

It started simply enough, I went to the web site and looked at it.  It’s written in ASP.NET,  The HTML markup is seriously ancient.  This really scares me.  A brand new system shouldn’t be coded like it’s from 1999.  Of course the other warning signs are there: built to work with IE 8/9 (2009-2011), Safari 4/5 (2008/2010) Firefox 16/17 (2012), and worst, resolution: 1024×768.

I started filling out a fake application.  It used ASP.NET postbacks heavily, which is bad.  After submitting some totally wrong information, I was told that the SSN I entered was already in use and I should log in using it.  An invalid SSN… in use?

In the source code, the logo used an ALT tag that said “QUEST”.  That’s odd, because the site is called CONNECT.  Easy online searches show that Massachusetts’ unemployment system is called QUEST.  Really.  So Florida bought software that was developed for someone else?  Yes, and it’s worse than that.

QUEST was built by Deloitte Consulting for Massachusetts sometime around July, 2013.  They paid $46 million for the site.  Again, they paid $46,000,000 for this website.  But Deloitte was smart.  They double-dipped.  They got Florida to pay $63 million for theirs.  Ahem, $63,000,000.  For writing one severely flawed application that has proved to be a failure in both installations, they collected $107,000,000.  Sure they got fined for their fuckups to the order of about $6 million, but that’s pennychange.  The track record of this company is absolutely amazing.

That’s really what this is about.  You would not believe how much this company fucks up and continues to remain in business and get new work contracts for millions of dollars.  Boston journalists have done a pretty good job of exposing this company’s garbage, but you can find out their failure is well-documented in searchable online news stories.  In spite of that, the company is heavily embedded in the governments, with former employees now running state departments – a conflict of interest that is conveniently ignored.

Pennsylvania: Deloitte launched the worker’s comp system in 2013 and complaints abound. They built the Dept. of Welfare site in 2012 and it’s reported to be full of errors and malfunctions.  They created the COMPASS system back in 2002 and there’s no reports of issues with it.  Either Deloitte did good work back then, or Internet news reports weren’t as prevalent.  The company gets so much money from the Pennsylvania government that PA had to reconsider its bidding system.  Despite this, a company contact says that they win bids because they consistently receive good reviews.  In 2006-2007, they won nearly half of the contracts they bid on, so clearly they can’t be getting favoritism.

Massachusetts: Deloitte’s failures in this state are incredibly well-documented.  They were fired from a project after getting $54 million out of a $114 million contract for a system to process tax returns.  They almost got fired for the unemployment system mentioned previously.  Yet, they landed a contract for the DMV.  Time will tell on this one.

California: Another incredible disaster, where Deloitte got sued over charges of incompetency and corruption.  They got fired from a project to track services for the disabled.  They implemented the worker’s comp system at twice the original budget.  They were fired from the project to link the court systems, after getting hundreds of millions in payment and costing the state billions.  Also, they created the unemployment system, also error-prone.

Florida:  Deloitte was fired by Miami for incompetence not on IT, but on legal council on employment.  The unemployment system needs no additional discussion, other than FL is talking to another contractor to fix the problems.

Virginia: Deloitte has been contracted to improve systems for $100 million.  Stay tuned.

Oregon: Deloitte just won an $18M contract to oversee an integration project for state-federal health exchange. 

Rhode Island: $105M to create the infrastructure to manage the healthcare insurance integration.

Minnesota: $10M to take over the healthcare exchange built poorly by a different consulting company.  They were the original first choice, but lost because of cost projections.

Connecticut: An awesome quote by the CEO of the CT Health Insurance Exchange: “We looked at every operations area that we did and we said where can we outsource. … We have outsourced all of our third-party operations — why should we be doing something that someone else can do better, faster, cheaper?”

They did Kentucky’s system, called KEWES in 2001.  It cost them $20 million initially and $6 million/year in operation costs.  I’m not sure if that’s all consulting hours.

This company also was chosen for Ohio’s unemployment portal in 2000.  It’s written in JSP and has the developer changelog right in the HTML source.  Wonderful.

SpamBastard–1aauto.com

Posted by on March 5, 2016 No comments

I had an application idea at one time and actually finished writing it, but ended up never doing anything with it once it was live.  It was spambastard.com and its purpose was to catch companies that would sell, lose, or otherwise mishandle your email address info.  The concept was simple.  You sign up for their site using their domain name @spambastard.com and if any email comes in with a mismatch between the FROM domain name and the TO domain name (as the username, before the @), the email address would be considered compromised.

That domain and application is long dead, but I’ve been able to replicate the same concept with my personal email domain.  That eliminates the hassle of creating a second account for every site I sign up for (one with my real email and one with a spambastard email).  To date, I’ve only had a few cases where I’ve had to take action.  Those cases are:

  • albumartexchange.com – There are many people including myself who posted on their forum and complained that they received PayPal phishing emails to their unique email address.  The website did not respond.
  • lakelandlelectric.com – That debacle was chronicled already.  The utility company did follow up with an explanation of how it happened and how the process was unfortunately legal.  They said they would push for tougher laws on keeping customer information private.  This prompted a follow-up email from the spammer who was incredulous that government would try to reduce transparency.  See, transparency is only good when it works in your favor.
  • paypal.com – This got compromised after only nine people knew of its existence.  Whether it was sold or stolen, I don’t know for sure, but I am pretty confident that some eBay seller has a compromised account and a spammer is looting their customer list.

Now we can add to the list – 1aauto.com.  I placed an order with their site in January (remember when the punks broke the mirror off my car?).  Today, I get a political email from John Kasich’s New Day For America to that email.  So I immediately send a message to 1aauto.com saying they’ve either sold or given away my info or their customer database has been hacked.  So which is it?  I got a pretty quick response.

Hello and thank you for your email.

I do apologize that you received a spam email to your account. I can assure you that your information is secure and we have not experienced any kind of hacking. We do keep our customer information confidential and secure and have several measures put in place to prevent against fraud and stolen identity.

Thank you for notifying us. We will keep tabs on this and look into what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future.

So, I guess the answer is the owner sold out his customers to promote his choice of political candidate.  The fact that this happened at all negates the statement “We do keep our customer information confidential“.  As far as what they can do to prevent it from happening in the future, that’s simple.  Don’t do what you did again.

Thanks to spam law requirements, the spam email footer confirms the email address that it was sent to.  It tells me that I was added to the list on 2/24/16 via opt-in (gee, I don’t remember that), and gives me ways to unsubscribe.

There’s no sense in unsubscribing.  The email address is out in the wild and is now worthless.  Do I want to spend my life unsubscribing from every email campaign that gets that email or do I want to kill off the email?  The choice is pretty simple.

This scenario makes me pity people who only have a single email address, like @gmail.com or @outlook.com or @yahoo.com.  They don’t have the option of closing their account or changing their address.  Consider how easy it is for me, every email (except my personal email) is known to exactly one company.  Email gets compromised, only one place to change it.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Posted by on November 4, 2014 1 comment

I absolutely despise this season.  I’m not talking about the holiday season, I’m talking about politics season.  This is the time of year where everyone that has an opinion has an uncontrollable urge to convince you that they are right about something and you should think the same way.  It’s like a Caribbean straw market.

And of course, nothing is off the table when it comes to pitching your case.  At a public event a couple weeks ago, a crotchety old woman came up to me to explain why I needed to be opposed to a public transit initiative.  “It’s going to go from City A to City B.  What’s in City B?  Nothing.  There’s no reason to go to City B.  It’s stupid.”  Well, that’s a convincing argument.  Especially for people who live in City B.  Since I didn’t live in that county, I couldn’t vote on it anyway.

But yesterday, I got a spam political email for a public transit referendum in my own county.  What is it with the hatred of public transit?  There’s a bunch of selfish fucks that think if it’s not for them, they’ll fight it to the bitter end.  But before I rant on that too much, this is the point of contention for that email.

The email was delivered to an email address used exclusively for paying my electric bill.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve started using a single email per website, so I can track how my addresses are misused.  So I responded and asked how he was able to acquire an email address that is used for a single purpose.  Did my electric company sell my email address?

I was surprised I got a response and more surprised by what he said:

No, they did not.

Beyond that, I will say nothing other than what I do is in full compliance with the law.

I chose not to engage him any further.  It is clear that the best criminals are the ones that use the law to their advantage.

Knowing that my email was not sold tipped me off as to how the address was collected.  Somewhere in the electric company’s website (couldn’t find it on a quick search), there is a notice that says that communications with a government agency – which my electric company is – are public record.  Somehow, somewhere, there is a way to request these communications, which would include email addresses.  It’s legal, for sure; it’s also immoral, for sure.

And that pretty much sums up this season.  It’s a bunch of fuckasses doing anything they can to manipulate you and get done what they want done for their own personal gain.  It’s all selfishness.  Two generations before mine – the “greatest generation” – knew that by creating infrastructure for everyone, everyone benefits.  The current in-power generation, throughout their entire life, has created an a la carte existence, where you pay only for whatever you want.  More importantly, you don’t pay for anything that you don’t want.

There is no sense of community anymore.  There is no sense of making the world a better place.  There is no sense of altruism.  The selfish pricks keep screaming their heads off about taxes and how “I’m just looking out for my children’s future!”  Well, how about you do some looking out for other children’s future?