Buzzzed Blog Blue Musings from the Deep Dark Scary South

Friday, December 22, 2006

Predators will be Predators (and receive wrist-slaps from judges)

Founder of "Girls Gone Wild" gets community service for using minors in videos

Associated Press

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) ? The founder of the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire was sentenced to community service Wednesday for his company's guilty plea to federal charges of failing to monitor the ages of the women in its videos.

The company, Mantra Films Inc., also agreed to pay $1.6 million in fines for using drunken 17-year-olds in videos it filmed on Panama City Beach during spring break and failing to properly label its DVDs and videos as required by federal law.

U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak told company founder Joe Francis he added the community service because it did not appear a fine would be a meaningful punishment.

The fine represents less than 3 percent of Mantra films' profits since 2002 and only 12 percent of Mantra's 2005 profits, Smoak said. Francis makes an estimated $40 million a year.

"It does not take a very brave man to go out and corner a girl in the middle of spring break who had four drinks," Smoak told Francis.

Francis, 33, said his policy has always been not to film girls under 18 and that the girls filmed in Panama City lied about their ages.

The judge ordered Francis, his company president, general counsel and chief financial officer to each perform eight hours of community service monthly for the next 30 months. But Smoak said the corporate officers could avoid the obligation, giving Francis the option of "stepping up" and serving 16 hours a month of community service by himself in their place.

Attorney Aaron Dyer, representing Francis and the company, said he did not know if Francis would take on the entire sentence himself.

Smoak ordered Francis to read aloud in court a victim impact statement from one of the 17-year-old girls, who said she was emotionally tormented by her appearance on a "Girls Gone Wild" video and that the video damaged her relationship with her family.

Francis later left court without speaking to reporters.

Smoak ordered the company to issue a press release about its federal offenses and to publish the release in the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and The News Herald of Panama City.

Francis also faces a Jan. 22 sentencing hearing in federal court in Los Angeles on similar charges in which he has agreed to pay $500,000 in fines.

According to court papers, Mantra Films, based in Santa Monica, Calif., admitted violating record-keeping and labeling laws while distributing videos during all of 2002 and part of 2003.

Mantra issued 83 titles and sold 4.5 million videos and DVDs in 2002, according to Hoover's Inc., a business data firm in Austin, Texas.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Tancredo calls Miami 'a Third World country' where many residents can't speak English

How much more evidence of Tancredo's hypocrisy, xenophobia and racism do we need?

Shirt, shoes but no service
A Miami restaurant bars Colorado congressman after he labels the city 'a Third World country' where many residents can't speak English.
By Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2006

MIAMI ? Immigrants in multicultural Miami had the final word Wednesday in a monthlong battle with Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo: Adios.

A speech by Tancredo to the Rotary Club of Miami scheduled for today was canceled after the Key Biscayne restaurant that hosts the group's weekly lunch meetings announced that the congressman critical of immigration was not welcome there.

Tancredo insulted Floridians from kitchen help to the governor's mansion when he deemed Miami "a Third World country" where many residents can't speak English. The congressman's comments came last month in an interview during a meeting of conservative activists in nearby Palm Beach.

Miami, he said, is an example of what happens to a city when immigrants cling to their culture and language, creating foreign enclaves.

So my first question is: Will Tancredo apply the same standards to citizens, especially Anglos, who can't speak the King's English? What about Prez Shrub and his insistence -- despite being married to a former librarian -- on mis-pronouncing the word NEW-KYA-LUR? Will Tancredo denounce the prez for being an ignorant, poorly educated hillbilly?

Just the other day on C-Span I heard a fellow repeatedly say 'EARL' when of course, he meant OIL. Lord knows how many of my fellow southerners (I include myself) can actually complete gerunds and the ends of many other words. The lack of consciousness and dearth of self-awareness runs deeper than infinity.

In fact, one of my beloved Mississippi grandmothers, rest her blessed naive gentle soul, once stated with a completely straight face that black people could congenitally only say 'FO' instead of the correct enunciation of the word 'FO-uh' ( for the uninitiated, fo-uh is the deep southern pronouncement of the word FOUR.) Of course, she had virtually never been anywhere except her own small, poor southern town populated by mostly poor southerners and even poorer african american folks. Truly she meant no harm, for she was a tender and compassionate person resplendent with love for all but she really believed what she stated, something she had heard countless times and which she merely repeated. Much like Tancredo, no doubt.

One big difference: my grandmother never had any real power. Tancredo, unfortunately, has way too much.

Also saw and heard very similar complaints about foreigners during a recent News Hour report on -- drum roll -- RUSSIA -- the place that's rapidly backsliding toward fascism and totalitarianism.

Don't get me wrong: as a practical matter, I don't advocate open, unenforced borders given the realities of 9/11 and no telling what is brewing out yonder. As an idealist, I'd love to see a Star Trek New Generation utopia where people have everything they need -- food, health care, education, work, housing, etc -- all without money or capitalism. I'd love to live in that world. But we're currently in this one. I think our nation's leaders -- including business, especially the rich ones and entitled, privileged ones -- ought to be taking care of our own citizens first and foremost. If we don't, how can we help others? Meanwhile, no one has asked me and Tancredo's style of fascist nationalism and fear-based hate is despicable.

Oh yeah -- irony of ironies -- Tancredo's spokesperson's name is Carlos Espinosa.

Complete LA Times story here.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

CalTech - MIT Voting Technology Project is a Great OPEN Transparent Resource for Citizens

Forgot to leave this out of my last post:

CalTech - MIT Voting Technology Project http://www.vote.caltech.edu/

These brilliant folks monitor and provide factual information on a variety of topics related to particpatory democracy (something we don't want to see become extinct!), including:

ELECTION NEWS
VOTING TECHNOLOGY
ELECTION MANAGEMENT
ELECTION FRAUD
THREAT RISK
CONVENIENCE VOTING

There is also an election update blog sited at CalTech for "New research, analysis and commentary on election reform, voting technology, and election administration."

Additional resources worth checking out and supporting:

Friday, December 08, 2006

Election Officials in Denver Held to Accountability for Poor Operations

Denver Post: City elections chief quits

The resignation of John Gaydeski, 59, follows that of Wayne Vaden, the city clerk and recorder, who was appointed to the Election Commission by Mayor John Hickenlooper.

Both men have apologized for Denver's problem-plagued election last month, which the nonpartisan organization Electionline.org called one of the country's most flawed votes.

Denver voters stood in line for up to three hours because of problems with the computer software used to check in voters. Officials estimate about 20,000 people didn't vote because of the issues.

"I certainly assume full responsibility for any contributions I may have made to those problems," Gaydeski wrote in his resignation letter.

Also last month, the commission's technology director, Anthony Rainey - one of two computer experts at the Election Commission - was put on administrative leave. .....more

If it can happen in Denver, why isn't it happening elsewhere, ESPECIALLY Florida? In Jacksonville for instance, the supervisor of elections--Jerry Holland offered dubious excuses for another poor performance:

Duval County's supervisor of elections spent election night explaining why results were trickling out at a snail's pace and battling the technical difficulties causing those delays. ...

And at the end of election night, Jerry Holland was handed a letter of resignation from his director of communications, a woman he hired when he was City Council president and brought with him to the elections office.

Cindy Warner said she was frustrated about not being able to communicate directly with and answer directly to her boss.

"That was one of the conditions in my taking the job, a deal-breaker I guess you'd call it," Warner said. "That changed after the [last] primary election, and as far as I'm concerned, your word is your word."

It was about 9:20 p.m. before results showed up on the Duval County elections Web site, with only 18 percent of precincts completed.

Holland blamed much of the problem on two weeks of early voting at 15 sites, which dramatically multiplies the number of computer memory cards that have to be uploaded.

Each site had several machines, and two types of machines - touch screens and optical readers for paper ballots, with separate memory cards. The result, he said, is that he ended up with more than 1,000 memory cards as a result of early and absentee voting. That's in addition to the 570 cards - two each (from touch and optical machines) for all 285 precincts.

"Early voting can significantly slow posting the results, but it's a trade-off that's well worth it - because you increase accessibility to the voter, and that's key," he said.

The process was slowed by about another half hour, he said, because of problems with an Internet server used by hundreds of elections offices in the Southeast. The server translates the results into colorful graphics and color-coded maps.

Holland has asked the company, SOE Software, to do an analysis and expects results by early next week. He said tests of the system during past weeks worked well.

"They told us it was nothing on our end, that there was nothing we were doing wrong," he said.

He also said he is asking the company to install an improved, fiber-optic line to the elections center.

Holland said about 10:30 p.m. he instructed his technical staff to convert to a simpler print-like display without graphics to speed up posting the results.

About 96 percent of precincts were reported by 11:20 p.m. and election results were complete about 2 a.m., he said.

Holland denied that a staff shake-up in his office after the September primary election had any effect on the slow reporting of results. Having a larger information technology staff would also make no difference in the speed of reporting results, he said.

Holland said he understands that in a digital age, people expect instant results.

"What they forget is that we're greatly enhancing accessibility to the voting process," he said. "But it's a fast-food society and we want everything now. I think the public has to learn the cost of more accessibility may be slightly slower results."

He said he also thinks people not only want the results instantly, but the outcome instantly as well.

"They forget," he said, "that if it's a very close election we may not have results for days."

Unfortunately the local newspaper there -- The Florida Times Union -- is a perfect example of a knee-jerk neo-con organization employing reporters purely as stenographers. No real journalists, especially the investigative type, need apply.

Even the DOJ appointed an Assistant US Attorney to act as a special Election Officer to monitor election complaints in Florida.

And lordy knows they needed it in Congressional District 13 of the outgoing Katherine 'let them eat cake while I steal the 2000 election from Al Gore' Harris where 18,000 votes (apparently all or most for democrats) disappeared into nothingness and with no paper trails... C'est La Vie, suckers! ElectionOnline.org understates it this way:

"A Congressional race in Florida's Sarasota County was plagued with high numbers of under votes, about 14 percent of all ballots cast recording no preference in a hotly contested race to replace Rep. Katherine Harris in the state's 13th District."

Also from their Election Reform Briefing 15: The 2006 Election --

The 2006 Election, the 15th in a series of policy briefings by electionline.org, found widespread reports of voting system troubles, sporadic incidents of voter intimidation and/or poll worker confusion over voter identification requirements and some breakdowns at polling places because of newly-mandated voter registration systems.