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Early news is that Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov for corruption. Apparently, the spy chief, the guy who is always right and knows everything, will replace him.

But it hasn’t happened yet although it has been out there for maybe two weeks.

The real mystery is, corruption how?

Apparently it has to do with two things. One is something having to do with food distribution. The other may have something to do with supplies.

Oakland – Police chief fired by mayor for (alleged) cover-up.

https://katiecouric.com/news/national-news/what-police-reform-means/

“culture eats policy for lunch every day of the week”

A man may labor and toil to obtain a certain kind of leisure in retirement and then find that after all he yearns for the old days and the old occupations he had thought himself so glad to leave. I have already… the study of human nature.

A journal had came into my possession a journal in which a murderer had taken the trouble to record for posterity the thoughts that had accompanied a crime most dastardly. Rarely have I come across such bitterness, such envy and contempt of others, such haughtiness misplaced.

a chilly midevil

After 2 months they responded. The question is how?

They failed to address the biggest issue of fraud. You can’t sell something that is a “system error.” You have to provide a refund and stop selling it. The trouble here is both Discover and Boost kept trying to sell it. After 9 months Boost capitulated and provided something of–not entirely corrected–a refund. Discover continues to try and charge me for nothing at all, plus late fees and they continue to threaten (e.g., bogus credit hits).

It is so bad and ingrained neither of these companies are ones I will use again. With Boost I cancelled my other account; I’ve tried to cancel Discover most of this year.

I’m getting sidetracked… How? Boost sells them and if you aren’t really diligent they get away with it. They do this by routing any problems to foreign agents who are exasperating and completely unhelpful. If you cannot deal with everything automated and seemingly explained, don’t use them. If they say something is something, and it is not, that is fraud. Such things are generally covered by the state; most states have something similar to what was called the Colorado Consumer Protection Act.

Discover… How?

I’ll start by being vague. Now, at Christmastime as I conclude my fraud and corruption story for the year, two things stick out:

1. Hiding. No email support, perhaps chat for the simplest things only, and unusable foreign reps. Frequent email harassment is Do Not Reply. Websites are for company-provided information only, e.g., secure email. It is all a conscious attempt to avoid.
2. Departmentalization. This includes hiring people at low-level jobs who are only able to perform minimal tasks. They are not empowered; they don’t know what anyone else is doing and they don’t have any power over it anyway. Don’t like it? “Sorry, that’s all I can do.”

Both of these are hugely impacted by Covid and hiring problems. A lot of people are unsupervised and working at home.

To repeat what is above, listening and dealing with individual circumstances may or may not be the way it works. If you tell the person who (finally) answers the phone “This is fraud!” that isn’t likely to lead to a solution. Everyone is trained, they work off scripts, and as noted above, purposely denied authority. The result is it changes the dialogue and through organization and management it is intended.

Discover:

• no one capable of researching the issue or addressing customer concerns.
• continuous No Reply misinformation and threats; must call this number–someone will only demand payment, probably after a lot of effort to get just to that point.
• ignoring correspondence and evidence.
• lying/covering-up.

Why?

Increase/maintain profits. I.e., cheat people. That may be the motive, although not the outcome. Hard to believe they would do this over $243. Very poor management. And, they think they can get away with it.

docs/images/exhibits

Exhibit 1 is proof of.. The continued ability to download. But wait, it is .odt.

The screenshot above is a png I think… It works!!!

Now, try a pdf, like this one. Works fine!!!

Normally if I insert a pdf file it opens that huge display panel. Since I can do it this way, and produce any kind of list or document I want, it is better. I never have to log in to Hostinger again! Except to pay.

jpg. I’m going to assume.

I am going to start with the files uploaded to Discover in March. They are:

Back to this finally. How?

The Uniform Consumer Credit Code is a key to how and why credit card companies act as they do. Colorado is one of 9 states to “adopt” it. This is 18% of states but if you look at which ones are included, it is far from that percentage of the U.S. population.

Credit card companies can basically assume guilt. When you don’t pay as they demand they are allowed to yelp and report to credit agencies. Do you have to actually pay? That requires a court order.

The Uniform Consumer Credit Code (UCCC) is a code of conduct that governs consumer credit transactions. It provides guidelines for laws related to the purchase and use of all types of credit products from mortgages to credit cards. It is intended to protect consumers who use credit from fraud and misinformation.

15 U.S. Code. How to find? Start with 15 U.S. Code § 1692e – False or misleading representations. That’s not it.

unconscionable transactions

fraud

The code also limits so-called unconscionable transactions. These deals are usually subject to interpretation but refer to negotiations that are so overwhelmingly one-sided as to be deemed unenforceable. These unilateral practices may include warranty disclaimers or the blatant misrepresentation of products.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/chapter-41

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

This explains it. Right from the start. That is what I mean by known and intentional.

Overall, this case is simpler than others I have worked on. There is less communication. The evidence is brief and completely convincing.

The product is fraudulent. (check and end-April email)

Discover failed to act, as they are required-to and they said they did. (my letter and emails, March/April; no indication or proof of investigation; deleting uploads; immediately and continuously denying dispute; failure to communicate/respond)

They still won’t come clean. (Lying to CFPB via low-level employee)

They take the measures of blaming me and lying about my credit. (threatening email; credit hits)

From the Wiki link above:

Obfuscation

Abuser deliberately obfuscates an issue.

Withholding

Abuser pretends not to understand the victim.

Countering

Abuser will vehemently call into question a victim’s memory in spite of the victim having remembered things correctly.

Blocking and diverting

Abuser changes the conversation from the subject matter to questioning the victim’s thoughts and controlling the conversation.

Trivializing

Abuser makes the victim believe his or her thoughts or needs are not important.

Forgetting and denial

Abuser pretends to forget things that have really occurred; the abuser may deny or delay things like promises that are important to the victim. Although anyone can deny or delay, the gaslighter does it regularly in the absence of real external limitations. The gaslighter may make up or create artificial barriers to allow themselves to deny or delay that which is important to the victim.

It goes back to 2004 and the kennel but I haven’t found the document I am looking for. For now it jumps to 2012, but I cannot find the full Ted Mink Story from that period either–it points to the First Amendment, if I ever need that as a weapon.

The story has come a long way. Fast forward to today and this:

I always knew the history and my documents would tell the story. That means consolidating everything from lots of old computers and about 10tb of data. That is a harder task than you might think. It is reassuring to know it is there. But I am starting to find things, including those mentioned above. Often the ones I think are just a partial draft are the real thing. And I have learned to export a Libre Office odt file as a pdf so I can upload it here.

It took effort and resolve to finally open my briefcase though. I think it has been nine years. It sat next to my desk for weeks before I am now in the right frame of mind and can muster the courage. It is something that will take more than a few minutes.

The printout of “Ted Mink’s Problem” is dated 1/10/2013. The false arrest (summons including felony charges) was 10/28/12. The day of the “You can’t” (call when in danger at the park) from Liebe and pal is 10/7/12. Those are the two smoking guns, but the history, the pattern, and the trail tell the whole story. From there, I can infer the sources and the reasons.

The one above, I used to write what I called columns for my website–separate files using html. It was a cumbersome process and WordPress is a thousand times better. I think the old way, not to mention typewriters, forces the writer to pay more attention. That is something the writer has to adjust to. My blank, white, completely formatted WordPress page is unbelievably fast and easy to see and use.

RE About Writing -Col3, it is succinct and the writing isn’t bad, but it is vague for readers. For me, and I may be the only one, it is very useful as a placeholder. At the time I was a marketer and it appears I was thinking like one; a reference to the 4 P’s is not one I would make today. Community involvement also isn’t something I would reference today without an explanation–it is faint to begin with and then suppressed by the local government; the state, which is locally accessible in Denver, is generally more responsive.

What I remembered about these incidents from 2004 is the obscene behavior of the deputy and the internal affairs person and that is documented. Bumgarner was rapidly promoted and could have been called Ted Mink’s right hand man. Jeff Shrader was patrol chief under Ted Mink then became an automatically-elected, long-term, Republican Sheriff in then-red Jefferson County. Current Sheriff Democrat Regina Marinelli was soundly elected, probably with the coattails of Gov. Polis and Commissioner Dahlkemper. Clearly Sheriff Marinelli matriculated under Ted Mink (my arrival in Colorado and attention to these matters) and before.

Other live and current reactions to the column are, while not an expert and it is never-ending, now I do know the law with respect to these matters. Now I have much better insight into how and what information pertains to a legal challenge. After that, the key in Colorado is Senate Bill 20-217 because that is a gamechanger.

The beautiful Zero Halliburton aluminum briefcase is now completely empty. It is time to deal with all the documents. I even found the old, engraved money clip I was looking for.

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Politics isn’t in a good place these days. The best hope is that the lawyers will ratchet up the anxiety enough so that he will die a few years sooner. No Trump would be a start.

I am going to take the position that, while all are bad, some are worse than others. With that in mind, my outbound letterbox is going to feature Ms. Dahlkemper. I don’t see Donald Rosier as likely and he was a disgrace during the tenure that he quit anyway. And, Polis is going to win.

This, per the official ballot that I looked at today. I knew about sheriff. That is an even blacker hole.

My activities–the box of letters–has nothing to do with politics. For me, politics is musing like this blog. I rarely participate and I can’t do anything about it anyway. Jeffco is corrupt as hell. Where I live is still better than most places. Colorado politics in general are a decent fit for me.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/25/facebook-frances-haugen-molly-russell-teen-suicide-social-media-uk/

There are a couple of sentences that I really like.

I was involuntarily drafted into this long, arduous movement for accountability.

It reminds me of the Stanford rape victim, dumpster, letter. That is #1 in the genre. Write something that is so good it is noticed.

My perspective on this one gets in the way as I understand better than most how research in big companies works, how decisions are made, what is proprietary, and even what is government classified or accessible. Peripherally, it also sheds light on Twitter.

Anyone can see “engagement-based rankings” every day on the internet. Youtube suggests more videos and the Washington Post and New York Times offer more articles. You can see how the content gets more varied and possibly more opinionated and even radical if that is allowed. If you participate or log in it becomes easier and linked with other things. It can all be tracked and manipulated–the goal is more, more, more.

In an online world where “platforms” can be copied, knowing how to do this is obviously important. In fact, it is a super-duper skill if you know how to do it with a database like that of Meta. It is, also obviously, proprietary.

Data a company collects from research is confidential, as is customer data and internal algorithms. That cannot be legislated or prosecuted. The last paragraph of this otherwise excellent op-ed does not make sense. Even if Meta were to voluntarily offer every data file and research report it ever possessed, who is going to review that morass of customer, consumer, billing, opinion, post, etc. data? And what exactly are they supposed to glean from it?

This is where people who don’t read (e.g., Trump) are at a disadvantage. Frances Haugen’s testimony, those who are looking into it, and those who write about it, perform a valuable service. It is complex. There is no easy solution. Perhaps an equally serious but amorphous clue lies in the USPSTF recommendation that everyone under 65 undergo anxiety screening.

I remain ignorant: I don’t know what happens when you type “how to commit suicide” into Google or YouTube. Nonetheless, I am quite sure the public service announcement at the bottom of the Ian Russell piece appears. I suspect companies like Meta are learning to monitor such phrases closely.

Meta stock, and others, are getting crushed. One solution is, don’t use it. Another is, parents can help when a teen sequesters themself to use social media and perform “self-harm” (as is attributed to Molly Russell).

The commissioners are responsible for public safety. They are responsible for everything.

“It’s a dereliction of duty to keep the public and Congress in the dark for months,” said POGO senior investigator Nick Schwellenbach. “Digital forensics experts could have been working to recover these lost texts a long time ago.”