Come and whisper in my ear, give us dirty laundry
A person close to Kennedy denied her “personal reasons” were concerns about the health of her uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy, who is suffering from a cancerous brain tumor discovered last summer. The person wasn’t authorized to disclose the conversation between Kennedy and the governor and spoke on condition of anonymity.
So, umm, a person close to Becky at Deep Muck Big Rake wonders why the heck this got published. Someone at AP afraid of a little Gawker?
Posted by Becky @
10:42 pm |
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Does twice make a trend?
Gov. Bill Richardson withdraws from commerce secretary nomination … blah, blah, blah … pay-to-play.
Posted by Becky @
4:44 pm |
Dude, where’s my $700 billion?
Headline of the day. But, then, I’m partial to the whole Dude headline theme. Maybe I should see the movie, eh?
Posted by Becky @
9:12 am |
Devra: I said, “Mark my words,” didn’t I?
It’s official: Sarah Palin will appear on Saturday Night Live.
As an elected official — still in office — she will be in good company.
Sigh.
Posted by Becky @
7:51 pm |
Working Mother’s Best of Congress awards
Remember back in November 2007 when Working Mother announced that it would be accepting applications for its Best of Congress awards to be given this fall? Well, that time is here. They were announced in the August/September issue, and they were celebrated at a this morning in Washington, D.C.
P.S. Carolyn B. Maloney is on the list.
If you missed how this worked with the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers, here’s some of the PR buzz about the “Best of Congress” awards.
From a press release:
Fifty members of Congress submitted applications for this inaugural award. Applicants were judged on their voting record, sponsored/co-sponsored legislation, and efforts to promote legislation that supports working families. In addition, applicants were asked to submit policies and practices within their own offices that support working families and flexible workplace options.
From FAQs about the awards:
Q: What will they get when they win?
A: Winning Members of Congress will be:
• Profiled in the September 2008 issue of Working Mother magazine;
• Honored at a gala dinner in September 2008.
• Highlighted in an advertisement to run on the day of the gala in the Washington Post or Roll Call and their hometown newspaper.
• Profiled in Corporate Voices’ blog on the Working Mother website;
• Profiled in a press release announcing the winners;
• Highlighted on the websites of Corporate Voices’ 65 strategic partner organizations including the Society for Human Resource Management and the Conference Board.
In addition, CVWF staff will work with the Members office to highlight the award in local state media.
Q: How will this award impact a Members career or campaign?
A: Members of Congress awarded the “Best of Congress” Award will be highlighted when they win, and then again every two years as a past-winner.
Members can highlight their achievements that in Congressional updates to constituents, earned, and paid media.
Also in the FAQs: “Members will also be judged on employment practices or policies in their office that are designed to help working families.”
Listen to CEO Carol Evans speak on NPR about employees “in the trenches” of Congress working “extreme jobs” so of course things aren’t terribly flexible with those jobs. (Also on NPR with Evans were Jolene Ivey and Asra Nomani of Mocha Moms.) But, hey, not every job is made for everyone (working mothers in Congress, perhaps?), but members of Congress offer some “fun flexibility” to help their employees. Even so, they all agreed that “we need more women in Congress.” Hmm. How will that work? When Nomani criticized the lack of “family friendly” efforts in this country, Evans said, but women are excited about their jobs! Umm. OK.
The original press release
Everyone else’s press releases
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio (“hometown coverage“)
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., D-Pa
Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn.
Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas
Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis. (Here’s his “hometown coverage,” written — with a byline — from a press release generated from his office.)
Sen. Gordon H. Smith, R-Ore.
Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine
Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo.
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, D-Conn.
Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa.
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y. (“hometown coverage“)
Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio
Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.
Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Md.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, D-Pa.
Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. (announced on his Facebook page)
Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, D-Calif.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.
Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky.
Posted by Becky @
1:45 pm |
When did platinum’s value plummet?
My old bank sent a check to my new bank so we could close on our new house. When explaining things, the loan officer said:
I didn’t charge you the $3 fee to send the check because you’re a platinum member.
Let me explain the irony of that statement.
In June, we faced owning two houses at the same time. I called my bank, where I’ve had my money for 14 years, ever since it was a credit union (until it decided to become a bank in the last year or so).
It has the original mortgage on our house. I needed a loan to get us through the overlap of buying one house and selling another. After convincing Loan Officer #1 (not on the first try, mind you) that we were good for it even in this hideous housing market, she started the paperwork. We swapped faxes and phone calls. Things seemed to be moving along. Then, the day before she left on vacation, she faxed some forms she wanted me to sign, acknowledging that my house was in a flood zone.
Umm. No.
My house is not in a flood zone now. It wasn’t in a flood zone in 2002 when we got the original mortgage through the credit union, but #1 needed “proof.” So, in other words, she didn’t have “proof” in my files for the original mortgage? Nope.
Well, that’s her problem, not mine, right? Not if I want this loan.
Lovely.
So I called my insurance company, which quoted me $3,500/year for Zone A flood insurance. Paid in full. Up front. Before closing.
Then I spent the next several hours calling neighbors and walking door to door in the pouring rain, gathering documentation. Before the end of business that day, I faxed to Loan Officer #2 (who was to take over while #1 was on vacation) the documents (including a FEMA Letter of Map Revision) that showed the neighborhood was NOT in a flood zone. I provided the name and telephone number of the flood-certification company that was listed on a neighbor’s property.
When I talked to #2 the next day, she was reluctant to call the company, so I called. Someone there pulled the certification that said my property was not in a flood zone. But she couldn’t send me a copy. She could only send it to the requesting lender.
“Who ordered the certification?” I asked.
“Sunshine State Credit Union,” she said. “In 2002.”
My bank.
I called #2, gave her the telephone number again, this time with a person’s name and extension number, as well as the certification number on my property, fully expecting her to call and clear up everything. Well, no. She would call the bank’s current flood-certification company and have an answer for me in 24 to 48 hours.
That time came and went. In the meantime, I called around to find the documentation needed: the property-management company for our homeowners association, the company that did the survey on my property and the county administrator’s office, who would contact FEMA for me — in other words, I was doing #2’s job. And she refused to acknowledge any of the information I sent her.
And she still refused to call the original flood-certification company.
After hearing that the current flood-certification company believed my house was in a flood zone and things like, “FEMA says the document does not exist,” I realized she would never pull her head out and do her job. I called the executive vice president of the bank, someone I had worked with in the past, and chewed his ear for a while. He later gathered his little troops together (#2 and the underwriter), and they called me on the speakerphone. They apologized. And, oh, they would work SO hard and do everything possible to get this whole thing resolved.
Less than 24 hours later, I got an e-mail from the underwriter, saying, “At this point we have exhausted all avenues to resolve this issue.” He listed all the places he called, trying to get information. Was the original flood-certification company on that list? Of course not.
So I called it again. I said, look, I realize you can’t send me a copy of the certification, but since my bank is unwilling to request a copy, I need more information. She pulled up my certification. I asked if she had a copy of the FEMA LOMR letter my neighbors had. She did, but she could not find a document that specifically mentioned my address. She filed a request for me and put a rush on it.
Within HOURS, someone from the company called me. He went through the hard-copy archives and found the FEMA LOMR letter written for my property in 1994. The document my bank said that FEMA said did not exist.
“It’s a public record,” he said. “Do you want a copy?”
“HELL yeah!”
I sent it to the executive VP.
So, yeah. My bank was perfectly willing to make this “platinum member” pay $3,500 for flood insurance I did not need. But that fee to send the check? Well, they wouldn’t make me pay that. So what’s that “platinum” membership worth?
Oh, about three bucks.
Dear Sunshine Savings Bank,
As a credit union, you were O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G. That’s why I was with you for so long.
As a bank? You suck.
Sincerely,
Me
And, oh yeah. I’ll be calling you soon to request the title on my car so I can get license plates here. I’m sure as a “platinum member,” I won’t be trusted to put my hands on it and take it to the courthouse because, you know, we platinum members are a shifty bunch. But, hey, at least you won’t charge me for the stamp to send it to the courthouse. Right?
Update 9/4: Wow. I’m not even allowed to request that my title be sent. Oh, no. The county office had to write a letter to my bank, explaining that I moved (please stop pretending as if you don’t already know that) and that I would need to register my car in a new state. Hmph.
You still suck.
Posted by Becky @
11:48 am |
Politics: The Telephone Game
CityMama at the MOMocrats accused Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., of leaking a photograph of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., wearing a turban. Where did CityMama get her information?
CNN’s Political Ticker.
Where did CNN get its information?
The Drudge Report. (CNN editors: “No need for fact-checking. Get this published now!”)
Where did Drudge get his information?
An e-mail sent by “stressed Clinton staffers” “obtained by the Drudge Report.”
Really? Hmm.
I found the picture published by HAN-Geeska Afrika Online in September 2006. Anyone with a mouse and five minutes could have found it. It’s already been “circulated.”
Posted by Becky @
11:26 pm |
But the emporer has nothing on at all!
I was discussing the Gates of Hell chapter of the Nightmare in Norway with someone the other night.
“I would have said, ‘I want to speak to your boss, and your boss’s boss and your boss’s boss’s boss, NOW’ … you know … go up the chain of command,” he said.
Chain of command. Yeah, the military does that to a person, I guess. Maybe that works in that world.
But, really, how much latitude does a customer-bot (we’re not human beings anymore) have in an airport before going from concerned about service to a security threat? I mean, how many times could I have told Haris, “I want to speak to your boss,” before he felt “threatened” by me and sent me spiraling into the Circles of Hell to, you know … stun guns, shackles, detention, jail … that sorta thing? I mean … really?
Besides, who’s to say Haris the employee-bot (they’re not human beings anymore either) wouldn’t have just said, “No.”
Then what?
It’s happened before. I called a “customer service” line to ask for, well, customer service. (Oh, silly me.) When I got nowhere with the employee-bot, I asked to speak to his supervisor. He put me on hold. He came back and told me his supervisor refused to speak to me.
Refused to speak to me.
I asked for the name of the president of the company. He said he didn’t know. “Well, could you check?” I asked. He put me on hold again. He came back and said, “It’s against company policy to give you that information.”
It was against company policy to tell me who runs the company.
He was right. I couldn’t find the president’s name anywhere on the company Web site. In fact, three companies were involved, and none of their contact information was available through any of the companies. I had to look them up by other means. But, hey, I found them. (I need to write a love letter to the Internet.) I sent an e-mail to all of them and the customer-service department. To their credit, they actually resolved my problem. Very satisfactorily, even.
Apparently, though, it’s become standard operating procedure that employee-bots (and their CEOs) do not work for customer-bots — even if they are in the service industry. Hell, employee-bots don’t even work for their CEOs anymore. They work for the computer screens in front of them. They can only do what their computers tell them to do, which — when it comes to customer-bots — usually isn’t much.
I suppose PR bullshit goes way back, and none of this is new. Am I the only one who can remember things like “the customer is always right” … or was that just PR bullshit too? I couldn’t help thinking about The Emporer’s New Clothes, which I recently grabbed off the shelf for my son. (I got the Virginia Lee Burton pictures from a 1968 version of the book by Scholastic Book Services.)
You call your employees co-workers and expect them (and us) to believe it?
No clothes!
You say you “work hard to earn my business every time I fly”?
No clothes!
You say, “They’ll hold the plane for you”?
No clothes!
You say, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do”?
No clothes!
It’s not like I’ve never gotten good customer service. I got incredible service yesterday, in fact. More than once. (I’ll write about it one of these days.) But when I get excellent or good or, heck, even fair-to-middling customer service, isn’t it a shame that it makes me want to weep with joy? Why should it be the exception and not the rule?
I ran across a few examples of suckass non-service just skimming through my feeder this morning. Matthew at Childs Play x2 warns his readers not to shop at Home Decorators. Planet Nomad writes about inexplicable weirdness at Starbucks. CrankMama has a few choice words to say about Verizon. Updated: I just found this priceless exchange on Hotfessional. Updated2: Wow. They just keep coming. Karen at A Deaf Mom Shares Her World was denied service at Steak ‘n Shake.
What’s your suckiest non-service experience? Who deserves the “No clothes!” seal of disapproval?
Posted by Becky @
7:54 pm |
Gentlemanly Conduct
(Guest Post by Todd, The Bullshit Observer. How I know Becky: I’m just another blog-mirer.) New Years day, My 5 year old and I took a break from watching college football to play wiffle baseball in the back yard. At one point he had a little tantrum and threw his bat. As is my fatherly duty, I scolded him. “OK, not cool. You don’t throw your bat when you’re upset, Nick,â€Â He picked up the bat and hit a few. Then he threw his bat again and I immediately barked, “Nick, that is unsportsman-like conduct,†somehow expecting him to know what that means.  “What does that mean?†he asked.  “It means that it’s….not cool….and….not how you are supposed to behave when you play baseball,†I said, somewhat feebly. “It’s not respectful of the game or your fellow players,†I added.  Then I thought, “Well, what the hell does that mean?â€Â  Then I started thinking. Where has the idea of sportsmanlike conduct gone anyway? I just watched at least a half-dozen college football players get busted for late hits, pushing opponents, and celebrating in their opponent’s face. That kind of behavior seemed normal. Even routine. Then it occurred to me that the ideal of gentlemanly conduct (which “Sportmenship” is based upon and which can be defined as acting with an acute sense of respect and propriety), is one that is in dire need of a revival.When I pledged a fraternity in college, the active members made us “poopies†(pledges) memorize a poem by John Walter Waylen entitled, “The True Gentelman.†It goes like this:Â
The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.    Â
The idea of this passage was clearly too good for the fellows that made me memorize it in the back of a station-wagon at 80 miles per hour with a hood over my head and then recite it while a match burned down to the tips of my fingers. Oh precious irony. Oh precious Neosporin.  As we hop back into our lives this January 2nd, let us take a moment to absorb this ideal. Ladies too, for this is surely a gender generic idea with a gender specific name. Unlikely though it may seem, especially during an election cycle, it is possible for this true gentleman/gentlewoman ideal to make a comeback. Let us resolve ourselves to expect nothing less that this. Because if we start expecting dirty, underhanded behavior from those around us, above us or in the spotlight, then we will have accepted it and we will have succumbed to it and then the new ideal will more closely resemble Machiavelli’s The Prince. In a sense, that’s really what this blog, Deep Muck Big Rake, is all about. Isn’t it?
Posted by Todd @
2:43 pm |
Miss Landmine Angola 2008
“Everybody has the right to be beautiful.”
And how do we prove that? Why, you silly goose. With a beauty pageant! (Isn’t that the answer to everything? Well, yeah. Up next? Afghanistan! I kid you not. Look it up.)
Norwegian Morten Traavik’s latest “art project” (photos are on display at museums in Norway) is Miss Landmine Angola (in its second year). He received 500,000 Norwegian kroner (about $80,000) from the Norwegian government’s Arts Council Norway for the project. The “winner” gets a prosthetic leg from a Norwegian company.
Traavik insists that “Angolans love beauty pageants” and that his intentions are purely humanitarian.
… one shouldn’t allow oneself to be paralysed by fear of appearing imperialistic. I can’t free myself from the fact that I’m white and Western, and I’ll just have to live with the risk of being interpreted in that light. I think it’s time to rid ourselves of collective Western guilt. To the extent that I’m going to play a role, I’d most fancy being cast as the naive Norwegian with his rucksack going out to make peace in the world. I don’t mind being him.
The women participated “of their own free will.” They were paid $200 each for the photography sessions, and they “got to keep the clothes, shoes and accessories from the sessions. For most of the women, it was the first paid work they had had in a very long time.”
I don’t know. Why not use the $80,000 to buy each woman a prosthetic leg?
Here’s what others had to say.
Hey, I know. Before Traavik gets his “art” displayed anywhere, why not make him enter a beauty contest for White Western Males with Rucksacks to determine who wins a spot in the gallery? We’ll let him keep the G-string and accessories he gets to sport in publicity photos. Ooh. And I bet the Norwegian government would pay for it.
Posted by Becky @
9:44 pm |
