Archive for July, 2023

FYI WQPH 89.3 FM Shirley Fitchburg only available as stream for the next week or so.

Posted: July 18, 2023 by datechguy in catholic

Apparently the storms that went though the area knocked out a critical piece of equipment on the tower.

The good news is we had a spare.

The bad news is the spare isn’t working.

So we will have to order a replacement (and hopefully an extra spare that works) and so until that part comes in our station will be streaming only.

So if you want some excellent catholic radio but can’t get the signal feel free to listen to the stream here. We will continue to produce original programing during this time so it’s well worth your while.

And feel free to throw a prayer our way, it is much appreciated.

Investigative reporting still exists

Posted: July 18, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

By Christopher Harper

At a time when it is virtually impossible to find a publication that engages in serious investigative journalism, PJ Media highlights one of the best of all time.

Adam Andrzejewski and OpenTheBooks.com provide an ongoing view of government waste and misconduct.

As a former investigative reporter, I commend the operation, whose motto is “Every Dime. Online. In Real Time.” OTB also encourages its readers to “join the transparency revolution.”

A former publisher from Illinois, Andrzejewski, and OTB use the Freedom of Information Act to gain access to various government data and analyses that someone has tried to keep away from prying eyes.

As PJ Media notes: “There are legions of advocacy and activism groups in America that raise hundreds of billions of dollars each year based on claims of working to make government better. But not one of them can match the monumental accomplishment of Andrzejewski and OTB.”

Using federal law and similar laws in many states takes time and effort. Simply put, governments don’t like anyone looking over their shoulders. In most cases, the government will play the waiting game, knowing that a significant delay in providing documents will tire most journalists of the search. The government will often charge excessive amounts to duplicate the information. In other cases, a journalist or private individual must be prepared to sue the government to get the information.

In 2022, OTB filed 50,000 FOIA requests and captured 25 million public employee pension and salary records.

The organization also plans to obtain “data in all 50 states down to the municipal level. We won’t stop until we capture every dime taxed and spent by our government.”

OTB also collects investigative reports from other news outlets, such as Forbes.

Here are the four most recent reports issued by OTB’s investigators and auditors:

—“Earmarks: The Return of the Swamp Creatures.” This analysis dug into the 7,509 earmarks worth more than $16 billion in that massive Omnibus Spending Bill last year. All of those earmarks are on an OTB pin map to enable anybody who wants to see comprehensive details on every one of them.

—“Improper Payments: At Least $528 Billion Wasted During the First Two Years of the Biden Administration.”  Every year, federal bureaucrats issue checks to recipients who are dead, ineligible, or fraudsters. “Since 2004, 27 federal agencies have wasted $2.9 trillion (inflation adjusted to 2022) in improper spending, giving away tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money every year to people who shouldn’t have received it,” OTB reported.

—“The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies.” The mission of the IRS is to collect taxes legitimately owed by citizens and corporations. So why did the federal tax agency need to spend “$21.3 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019? The agency stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition.”

—“Export-Import Bank: 2007 – 2021.” Did you know U.S. taxpayers handed Boeing Aerospace more than $66 billion during those years via subsidies for foreign airlines to buy commercial jets and the maintenance parts and equipment required to keep them flying?

It’s good news from PJ Media and Open The Books!

The Subsidies Don’t Cover Repair Bills

Posted: July 17, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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About three or four years ago as I was about to get onto Route 2 East to head for work a young lady hit the back bumper of my 1999 Buick LeSabre (not the 1999 LeSabre I currently drive, the 1999 LeSabre that’s currently in my son’s back yard as my parts car). Since she was going maybe 2 mph all it did was drop some rust onto the pavement so I told her not to worry about it to her immense relief.

At Not the Bee we see how lucky she was that I decided to drive a car made before Tom Brady was drafted instead of taking advantage of all the subsidies and buying an electric pickup like this one:

Apparently EV’s as a whole cost more to repair and insure:

Last year, a study from CCC Intelligent Solutions found that on average EV repairs cost more than repairs for gas-powered cars. Another report from Mitchell that was cited by the Times found that last year EV repairs cost about $2,400 more than fixes for traditional combustion-engine vehicles. 

Similarly, Insider’s Alexa St. John previously reported that EVs are more expensive to insure. For example, the national average cost of car insurance is about $2,148 per year, while a Tesla Model S costs about $4,066 to insure, according to the Insider report.

And of course if your bumper is full of sensors all of that has to be handed even if your car isn’t electric and remember while all those tax breaks, which are really tax payer giveaways to the carmakers, might make those child slave dependent electric cars easier to get, they don’t apply to the repair bills or the insurance bills.

You have been warned.

Under the Fedora: Competence Rules, Russia Mistakes, Islam vs Alphabet in Michigan, Racism Shortage…Except in AI

Posted: July 16, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Stacy McCain notes some excellent police work in identifying a serial killer:

According to cops, Heuermann kept the cell phones of two victims and used the phones to get numbers of their relatives, then used “burner” phones to taunt at least one victim’s family member. However, Heuermann apparently didn’t realize that having his own cell phone with him at the time he used the “burner” phones meant that he was “pinging” off the same phone tower. So cops pored over the phone information and, by a process of elimination, narrowed down the possibilities to a comparative handful of potential suspects, and then — because a witness had seen a green pickup truck near one crime scene — this brought Heuermann to the top of the stack, as he sometimes drove a green truck he borrowed from his brother. Once he became the focus of the investigation, Heuermann’s financial records and Internet activity added more evidence against him, and finally detectives got a DNA match from discarded garbage. 

Note that all of this was observation and deduction. Not a woke move in sight.

Newsweek is reporting that according to a Russian Lawmaker the whole movement of the Wagner Group to  Belarus to allegedly prepare for an attack against Poland.

While I think this would be very foolish as Poland is not only well armed but would be very motivated in a shooting war vs Russia for reasons still in living memory all of this talk concerning the Suwałki Gap is continuing fallout of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and Poland from World War II to the end of the Cold War that is now in play thanks to Ukraine.

While aiding the Soviets bleed Germany making victory in the west easier I’m thinking in the long term enabling Stalin and thus communism’s survival in world war 2 remains one of the biggest strategic errors in the history of the United States.

The clash between Islam and the “Alphabet People” continues in Michigan as two members of Hamtramck Human Relations Commission after they flew the LGBTQ pride flag over a public sidewalk in the town run by American Muslims.

This is in Michigan where they are preparing a law to treat “misgendering” people as a felony with huge fines.

I can’t wait to see what happens when Muslim citizens begin to flout that law if it passes

I’m old enough to remember when a new artist covering a hit was considered a complement to the previous one:

Clearly the Demand for actual “racism” and “Oppression” far outpaces the supply.

Finally there was a bizarre story at Buzzfeed about using a chatbot to illustrate how Europeans saw Americans from every state

Interesting note except for Hawaii every person is white, apparently Europeans and AI don’t think there are any black or Spanish people in the US

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