You’ve been scammed, now pay AT&T $20,000
This is pretty infuriating… It’s a news story about a scam some folks use to illegally charge calls to someone with a voicemail address. They guess the voicemail passcode, replace the regular message with a voice saying “Hello? Yes… yes… yes…,” and then ask the operator to charge overseas calls to that number.
What’s horrible is that even though AT&T acknowleges that it’s a scam, and the customer never actually authorized the charges, AT&T is still insisting that the bill be paid. Why? Because the customer should have picked a less obvious passcode. Of course, by the same token, some simple security measures on AT&T’s part could have prevented the scam in the first place. Link via Calblog.
Barbra Striesland is Stupid
Well, that pretty much says it all, but you can visit Calpundit for the details.
Shoplifting, theft and race and class privilege
Really excellent post on Silver Rights – in part inspired by a post about shoplifting I wrote a few weeks ago – on how race and class privilege are involved in petty theft.
Regarding Jeff Hauser’s moral dilemma, I just can’t imagine turning in a shoplifter in any circumstances. Especially if they looked poor. (Well, maybe if the shoplifter was someone I really disliked – like, if I saw John Ashcroft shoplifting, I’d narc on him in a second.)
A Democratic Vision for the Economy
Terminus has some good thoughts on economic vision for the Democrats, both for the short- and long-term.
Free Speech: Not in Bush’s America!
Counterspin has the story of a man who was arrested – and is now being prosecuted by the Federal Goverment – solely for holding up an anti-Bush sign in a public spot near a Bush speech. It’s pretty disgusting stuff. Barney Frank has written a letter to Ashcroft asking that the charges be dropped – please call your congresscritters and ask them to add their names to Frank’s letter.
What they’ve said about WMDs
I’ve seen a dozen blogs link to this, and it deserves every link it gets: Whiskey Bar has very usefully compilied quotes from various notables about how certain they are that we’ll find WMDs in Iraq.
Maybe the Clinton economy wasn’t so great
Interesting post on Wampum about that oft-asked question – how did Al Gore lose the election when the Clinton/Gore economy was so strong? As the article Wampum quotes points out, “Voters do not live in the macro economy.” Although GDP looked good in 200, in terms of real disposable income – that is, how much money voters have to spend – the economy in 2000 just was actually a bit sub-average. (The article doesn’t say, but I suspect this reflects extremely top-loaded economic growth in the 90s – rich folks had more money, but average voters didn’t)..
Re the man arrested for holding an anti-Bush sign – we had the exact same thing happen in Portland during the anti-Iraq-attack protests.
A young man held a sign up in view of an SUV full of Portland Police riot cops. A bike cop asked him his name; he refused; the cop arrested him and threw him into a gang of cops, who handcuffed him while prone, pepper-sprayed him while he was handcuffed, and hit him in the back of the head with a canister of pepper spray. And it’s all on tape, from at least two different angles.