Greensboro Police Department public records malarkey

UPDATE (June 13th): The GPD has released a version of the accident report.

UPDATE II (June 13th): In reviewing the history of this request with city staff, it appears as if some confusion was caused by the request for an accident report being translated into a request for an incident report along the way. City staff explain that the accident report was begun on June 8, completed on June 11, and made public after review and approval by a supervisor.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police (GPD) reported by press release of a collision between a pedestrian and a vehicle on Bryan Boulevard on Sunday, June 8th. As I wrote yesterday, the accident report was missing from the GPD's online database of accident reports so I requested it directly from the city.

Yesterday, I received a document specifically manufactured to respond to my request. It is not an accident report and was created an hour after yesterday's blog post wondering where the accident report is. Now we not only continue to wonder where the actual accident report is but we also need to know why it is being withheld and whose idea it was to fabricate a record in response to my request for it.

Here is a real accident report, from another accident on the same day as the Bryan Boulevard collision. You will notice it is three pages of great detail on a standard form (click to enlarge):

Here is the "report" the police created in response to my request for the Bryan Boulevard accident report (click to enlarge) :

Where is the Bryan Boulevard vehicle/pedestrian accident report?

UPDATE: As of 6:30 P.M., the report has still not been provided.

UPDATE II: An hour after this post, the city fabricated a record to provide instead of the accident report. See it and a real accident report here.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police reported via press release a vehicle/pedestrian accident occurring on June 8th on Bryan Boulevard. According to the press release, the pedestrian was taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries. From the press release:

"On June 8, 2014, at 3:45 p.m., Officers responded to the Joseph M Bryan Boulevard and Brassfield Road in reference to a traffic accident. A collision occurred between an Acura sports utility vehicle and a pedestrian." 

Usually, accident reports are posted online within hours and, indeed, there are several reports from other accidents just before and after the Bryan Boulevard collision posted online. There is, however, no accident report online for this collision, as you can see:

I formally requested the accident report from the City of Greensboro Monday night (which they acknowledged Tuesday morning), but I still have not received it.

Authorities will often withhold the identities of the deceased pending notification of the next of kin but the city has not said that is what is happening here nor, if that is the case, is it a reason for withholding the entire accident report.

Just the worst. News & Record's ethical lapse

GREENSBORO, NC -- I know newspapers are stressed. I know that, for years now, they've been trying to do more with less — or even less with less, without folding. And sure, entrenched old fogies paralyzed by shock and lacking new ideas but unwilling to relinquish the reins carry plenty of the blame for being slow to innovate. Nonetheless, a certain level of quality requires nothing more than conscientious attention to some basic standards and it is something a news enterprise can do immediately with no cost.

As Jay Rosen argues, the days when it was enough to just give both sides of a story — without providing any additional viewpoints or fact-checking — are over. He said/she said journalism is both an ethical lapse and a failure to understand how the media business itself has changed. -- Matthew Ingram 

I first started paying attention to local media about the same time I started seriously paying attention to local public policy. It was around 2000, when Greensboro went all out, successfully, to recruit what was then supposed to be the mid-Atlantic overnight cargo sorting hub for FedEx. I won't re-litigate the arguments for and against here. Suffice it to say that there were people with concerns that this city, desperately watching the last vestiges of its once solid furniture and apparel manufacturing evaporate, was investing all hope in lofty promises of great benefit while avoiding any serious consideration of costs. Fourteen years later, the worst fears have not materialized—attributable to the fact that the hub's promised activity has not materialized, never getting close to the projected 126 flights per night.

Terribly frustrating during the period of public debate was that the local media, the News & Record in particular, clearly took the pro-hub side and subtly but effectively marginalized the opposition. That's when I first noticed the insidious he said/she said "reporting" tactic in action. It's simple. Lazy, misleading and simple. Instead of reporting empirical facts as facts, report them as the assertions of someone. Then report someone else "arguing" against them. There is no need for fact checking, when both "sides" have been reported. Where do the facts lie? Who knows?

This is, unfortunately, exactly what Taft Wireback brings us with his Sunday front-pager "How dangerous is coal ash? Well, that depends," inspired by the recent Duke Power coal ash spill into the Dan River.

Wireback begins by posing the question:

Is this power-plant byproduct the “toxic sludge” so threatening to the state’s ground water, streams and lakes?

Wireback never gives his readers a real answer. He could have reported the results of water quality studies conducted after the Dan River spill for some actual empirical measurements of toxicity but, instead, he is content to let two parties duke it out, each with his assertions and giving the largest megaphone to "coal ash expert" John Daniels, a UNC-Charlotte professor who has consulted with Duke Power and who is working on making useful materials from coal ash. It is the perfect bad example of the ethical lapse of he said/she said journalism. Thus, Wireback "reports" such demonstrably false and grossly misleading nuggets as this.

The 1 percent of coal ash with a potential to harm involves such metals as arsenic that humans ingest routinely in small doses every day, Daniels said.

“You could have drank a liter of Dan River water on the day after the spill and close to the spill, and you would have consumed less arsenic than you usually ingest from other natural sources” daily, he said.

Reporting unchecked assertions was never good journalism, even back in the days of the FedEx hub debate. Its deficiencies are even more obvious now in an age where people have empirical sources at their fingertips. The News & Record should ask itself just what benefit this kind of he said/she said reporting, free from fact checking, brings to its audience. The answer is none and continuing it puts an unnecessary obstacle in the path of an already challenging future for the News & Record. It should stop, once and for all.

Allen Johnson's opinion completely wrong on the facts

GREENSBORO, NC -- What value is an opinion formed on an incorrect understanding of the facts? Not much. So it is with the News & Record's Allen Johnson. In an opinion absolving city council woman Nancy Hoffman of zoning violations, he gets his facts completely wrong.

Johnson: "If she didn’t own the buildings at the time of the citation, as it turns out, she shouldn't be held liable for their condition at that point."

Fact: Hoffman, with her partners as South End Partners, LLC, bought the buildings on October 23, 2013. They have sat in disrepair for nearly eight month, as Hoffman even admits, explaining the delay in making repairs by saying, "these things don't happen overnight." The citation was issued on June 6, 2014. 

Johnson: "She is the owner now, and she has made prompt repairs. Case closed."

Fact: As noted, Hoffman has owned the buildings since October of last year. The code violations were documented in pictures on May 30, 2014 and June 3, 2014, and in the citation of June 6, 2014. If she has made repairs since, and that has not been reported or documented anywhere that I can find, eight months to make such repairs is anything but "prompt."

Johnson is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. In this case, his facts are unquestionably wrong.

For local elected officials (and the News & Record)

GREENSBORO, NC -- To our local elected officials who insist on planting their online presence exclusively on Facebook (usually with a mandatory log in, no less): I'm sure the ability to be able to "block" people who ask inconvenient questions has its appeal, but you should think about what the guy in this video has to say and the implications of requiring your constituents to use Facebook as the online conduit to you.

What are you asking us to acquiesce to to be able to connect with you? This applies too to the News & Record too, who not only requires a FB log in to post comments, but requires that users accept the FB tracking cookie just to be able to even see comments.

Special entitlement

GREENSBORO, NC -- Joe Killian of the News & Record writes of city council woman Nancy Hoffman's downtown properties being cited for code violations. Specifically for violations of the downtown "good repair" ordinance, an ordinance approved with the intention of keeping downtown properties from becoming eyesores.

"City Councilwoman Nancy Hoffmann’s company, South End Properties LLC, was cited by the city on Wednesday for violating the Good Repair ordinance — a regulation she helped craft and pass." [emphasis added]

[snip]

"The citation said Hoffmann’s company received a warning about violations such as broken windows and boarded-up areas last July." [note: According to county records, Hoffman's company purchased both buildings in October of last year.]

[snip]

"Hoffmann said she bought the buildings last year and has been working toward a renovation of them using historic tax credits."

Hoffman also was quoted as saying:  "These things don’t happen overnight."

Here's the problem, Hoffman not only voted for the ordinance she is violating, she helped craft a more-stringent version (that did not pass) and was unmoved by concerns expressed at the time by fellow council person T. Dianne Bellamy-Small about "expediting improvements versus compassionate treatment of property owners."

Now Hoffman is pleading that these kinds of repairs take time and for some compassionate understanding. She may have a good point. However, if Hoffman is finding the ordinance under which her properties were cited is too demanding, she should go back to council and, with her experience as a guide, suggest loosening the requirements of the ordinance. What she cannot do is remain in support of the ordinance while she makes excuses for why she is not complying with it. That kind of self-serving double standard is not desirable in elected officials.

News & Record dances the ol' Melvin Okie Doke

GREENSBORO, NC -- Ever willing to withhold important details to avoid offending tender community sensibilities and comfy myths, the News & Record's Jeff Mills wrote this about a statue of former mayor and Bryan Foundation head Jim Melvin at the Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball stadium:
The statue was placed in the ballpark, which is hosting its 10th season of Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball. The park was built for $22.6 million of private money, an effort led by Melvin and the Bryan Foundation.
Greensboro Baseball LLC bought the ballpark back from the Bryan Foundation last year.

Allow me to offer a rewrite that includes all of the relevant facts and see if they don't give you some insight into the News & Record's standards and allegiances:
The statue was placed in the ballpark, which is hosting its 10th season of Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball. The park was built for $22.6 million, including $12 million from the Bryan Foundation that Melvin heads.
Greensboro Baseball LLC bought the ballpark from the Bryan Foundation last year. The group owns the team for which the ballpark was built. Melvin has been identified as a member of the ownership group. The group paid  $10 million dollars less for the stadium than it cost to build.

The Bryan Foundation, that Jim Melvin leads, subsidized the purchase of a stadium for the baseball team of which Melvin is part owner: to the tune of just over $10 million. The News & Record dances right up to those facts then, like little boy afraid of being impertinent, averts its gaze.

This is ground control, do you read me?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dr. Joe Guarino writes a post in response to mine last week about the false comparisons of the Veteran's Administration to Obamacare; or should I say, he pastes another writer's thoughts. His title: Why the VA Scandal is Extremely Relevant to Obamacare.

It's flawed right from the get-go. Rather than tackle the facts on their face, rather than make an argument from reality, Guarino's writer requires a heavy dose of paranoia first:

"Americans need to take a close look at the VA—and not only because of their concern about poor treatment of our wounded warriors. It is the prototype for Obamacare. The intent behind Obamacare is to completely centralize control over health care, and thus turn American health care into one huge Veterans’ Administration." [emphasis added]

Actually, the prototype for Obamacare was Republican Mitt Romney's health care plan from Massachusetts, itself a product, in part, of the conservative Heritage Foundation. But while the Heritage Foundation praised the individual mandate and subsidies of RomneyCare, when the same policies are implemented under Obama, well, then it's all just part of the real intent for the guvmint to own all health care facilities and have all health care providers on its payroll. Got that? Good, then you are all set to swallow Guarino's "extremely relevant" comparison of the VA to Obamacare.

On the other hand, here's what a comparison of the two looks like when tethered to the facts as they exist and not from orbit in the paranoiasphere. From Sam Baker at the National Journal:

"If you want to argue that the VA's problems are a sign of what happens under true government control of a health care system, well, there's an argument to be made there. Some of the problems at the VA—namely, long waits to see certain doctors—are similar to the biggest complaints about other socialized or quasi-socialized health care systems, including the UK's.

"And the VA is about as socialized as it gets: The federal government owns the hospitals, employs the doctors who work in those hospitals, and finances the coverage that veterans use to get care.

"Obamacare, though, is not socialized medicine. It's not a government takeover of the health care system. Sure, people call it that, and in comparison with charges like "death panels," those characterizations don't sound so off-the-reservation. But they're still wrong.

"Most people accessing the health care system through Obamacare will do so by purchasing private insurance through the law's exchanges. The federal government regulates those insurance policies and requires them to cover certain services. The vast majority of exchange customers also receive subsidies, funded by the government in the form of tax credits, to help pay for their premiums. So it's not like the government isn't involved at all.

"But, unlike with the VA, no one on the exchanges is buying insurance from the government; it's all private coverage. The government doesn't decide how much that coverage costs. It doesn't employ doctors, or decide how much they'll get paid, or require them to accept any of the insurance plans sold through the exchanges. "Obamacare" is not a health care system. The VA is."

It's opposite day for News & Record headline writer

Greensboro, NC -- The headline from a News & Record article:

N.C. plan would join states ending teacher tenure

From the article:

"Only Florida has succeeded in eliminating teacher tenure protections, according to the Education Commission of the States."

"Join states" sounds like we are part of a crowd, a trend — a movement. A more accurate headline would have reflected just what the article reported, that North Carolina's "plan" would make us exceptionally unappealing for teachers.

Dr. Wolicki's deep thoughts

GREENSBORO, NC -- Greensboro physician Karol Wolicki (an ear, nose and throat man) writes a letter to the News & Record today. Here it is in its entirety:

"The parallels are obvious. Any discussion of the comparison is thus far conspicuously absent. If you like the way the government administers health care to our veterans, you'll love Obamacare!"

Maybe the exclamation point is meant to head off any further consideration of his opinion, but I don't find his parallels "obvious" at all.

The VA is a cabinet level veterans benefit system, Obamacare is a series of laws passed by congress that mandate private insurance coverage for use among private health care providers and which helps pay for that private insurance with sliding scale subsidies.

Obvious? I think what's obvious is that Dr. Wolicki, who himself received over $30,000 in public payments last year through government administered Medicare, has something against Obamacare he is unable to articulate cogently.

Journalism

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

— George Orwell 

Keep it stupid, simple: John Hammer misguided on city's public records policies

GREENSBORO, NC -- Rhino Times editor John Hammer drones on with a negative opinion of the city's efforts to improve transparency and its handling of public records requests. In his view, the city is over-complicating things and nefariously working to shield itself from the demands of state public records law. "It's a trick," he writes in his uninformed paranoia.

In his view, access to public information is all very simple: Whoever has public records should provide them when asked. Sure, in some ideal pre-computerized era where paper records resided in binders and file cabinets, that might have worked fine, but in a world where records reside mostly electronically across a multitude of physical and virtual repositories, that's not a comprehensive policy.

Hammer might have gained some insight into the challenges and opportunities of modern technology and pubic records had he gone to the City's meeting today about improving public records access as did Ben Holder, Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record, Jordan Green of Triad City Beat, City Council members Mayor Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Jamal Fox and Mike Barber, the City Manager, the City Attorney, the City's pubic relations director, the City's public records administrator and I.

Had Hammer attended, he might have learned how thinking bigger than his quaint notions has already resulted in greater access to public information and how the city is planing to make an even more responsive and transparent city government. (Not to mention being disabused of his mistaken notion that the City intends to start charging for copies of public records.)

Here are some things the city has implemented or is planning:

Staff education: It's fine for Hammer to say that staff should just "follow the law;" that does no good if staff doesn't know what the law is or what their obligations are. The city intends to implement formal procedures for educating city staff about public records law and the city's policies.

Providing reasons when records are denied: State law allows people who have had records requests denied to ask for the reason for the denial and the city is obligated to give a response. Under the City's updated policies, a reason would be given as a matter of course if records are denied, without the requester having to ask. This is one of those rare examples of the city raising its standards above the minimum the law demands.

Online request tracking and repository: The city has already undertaken laudable efforts to put more information online. The recent document dump of records related to the finances of the city-sponsored International Civil Rights Center and Museum and the now-searchable online access to City Council and committee agenda documents, video and minutes are two good examples. The city also plans to roll out this summer online access to the system that tracks records requests so that people can see just how well (or not) the city is responding to requests for public records.

This kind of proactive and modern transparency is a world away from Hammer's simplistic view of how people are to access public records.

Appeals process: Under state law, the only recourse one has if he feels records have been improperly withheld is to go to court (or whine and make a big stink). Hammer brags of having gone to court over public records. I have too. Hammer is right that it's not the ideal remedy. The city is considering coming up with some sort of dispute resolution process so that people, like Hammer, when denied public records have another course of action more accessible than the courts. It's the kind of proactive policy Hammer should cheer.

Better access to records of elected officials: Today's meeting covered several other aspects of public records that could greatly improve transparency including the possibility of having council members forward emails about city business from their private accounts to a city account where they could be better archived and searched; and considering how texts and emails sent and received during public meetings by elected officials and city staff can be made part of the record of the meeting.

While it's true that many (but not all) of these things are plans and promises, there is a very different posture towards transparency at city hall nowadays. Gone is the hostility towards transparency that flourished under former Mayor Robbie Perkins and the former city attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan. John Hammer would help this city out if he recognized the opportunities this new council and new city administration offer and proded them forward. It may not be like this forever and putting some policies and procedures in place now, in a friendly environment, would make it just a little harder for some future enemy of transparency to clamp down on public access. Hammer could help things along, if he thought about it a little more than he has so far.

Judge: eye contact with police equals reasonable suspicion

From the News & Record, in an article describing an appeals court decision throwing out a weapons possession conviction for a man who was stopped by Greensboro police for walking away as officers approached:

"In his dissenting opinion, Judge Chris Dillon said that if someone walks away from police after making eye contact with that officer, there is justification for an officer to stop the person."

Adobe woes and your profit had you followed my short advice

GREENSBORO, NC -- On March 6th, I wrote a post saying that I was wary of the business prospect for Adobe, the maker of the very excellent website design software Dreamweaver. The title of the post was I'd short the heck out of Adobe, a reference to the stock trading method of placing a bet that the stock price will decline in the future. The day I wrote that post, Adobe's stock closed at $68.92. Yesterday it closed at $60.20. If you had followed my short advice, you would be sitting on a gain of 12.7%.

My opinion then was that Adobe was making a mistake by no longer allowing customers to buy and install Dreamweaver (and other flagship products, like Photoshop) on their computers. Instead, they moved those products exclusively to a cloud based subscription service. I thought that was a dubious move—a roll of the dice that did not justify the then 121 price to earnings ratio (P/E).

[P/E: The price of a share of stock divided by the annual earnings per share. At 121, it would take 121 years of earnings to total the current share price. The S&P historical average is currently 16]

Even with the stock's decline, Adobe's current P/E ratio of 117 is still way too high, for the same reasons I posited previously: I doubt the ability of the cloud-only software model to sustain Adobe's revenues, much less grow them.

Indeed, Adobe's entire cloud service went down yesterday. Customers who no longer have Adobe's software installed on their computers, who had moved to the subscription service, were left in the lurch. I cannot imagine how businesses are supposed to put any confidence in mission critical infrastructure vulnerable to these kinds of sustained outages. From Reuters:

Adobe Systems Inc said on Friday that access to its Creative Cloud was restored following an outage that disrupted the Web-based, subscription service to top-selling software programs including Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash for about a day.

Customers can apply to get compensation for the outage, which company spokeswoman Vanessa Rios said lasted about 24 hours and was due to a database software failure.

Not dead yet

GREENSBORO, NC -- Just as I was observing that the News & Record seems to have become incurably infected with a preference for the laziest substitutions for journalism, along comes reporter Joe Killian with an exceptional glimmer of hope. In covering the defamation suit by Conservatives for Guilford County against a local blogger, Killian takes a story tailor made for the he said/she said trap, gives each side its due but firmly stakes the story down to the pertinent and independently researched empirical facts. Journalism, not stenography.

Update:: There was an error in the link to the Killian article. It has been corrected.

Police unable to identify studies cited in their press release

GREENSBORO, NC -- In a May 6th press release announcing a new round of intensified traffic enforcement, this time on High Point Road, the Greensboro Police Department claimed this:

"Nationwide studies show that intensified traffic enforcement in hot spots serves the dual role of increasing roadway safety while serving as deterrence to potential criminals."

Upon request, Greensboro police were unable to provide or cite such studies. Instead, they provided a variety of documents explaining the methods used for this type of policing, one of which included a reference to a 1996 study of these techniques in Dayton, Ohio, but they were unable to provide or cite a nationwide study, much less the multiple studies they said existed, that demonstrate the effectiveness of these techniques.

Is it the role of police public relations to propagandize the public they serve with made up information or to be accurate and honest?

The News & Record's failure to understand the market

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record "reports" on the lawsuit filed by Conservatives for Guilford County against a local blogger with this very lame link-free, one-sided "she-said" article. Which makes this piece by Mathew Ingram at Gigaom very timely. From the summary:

As Jay Rosen argues, the days when it was enough to just give both sides of a story — without providing any additional viewpoints or fact-checking — are over. He said/she said journalism is both an ethical lapse and a failure to understand how the media business itself has changed. 

Of course, I could have it all wrong. Maybe the News & Record deserves more credit and has simply decided that their audience is not people who want to know the truth. Maybe they've decided their business opportunities lie with telling people what they want to hear.

Cheese eating results in bedsheet entanglement deaths

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) and the regurgitating News & Record, have been saying that police data shows the GPD's program of intensified traffic patrols made streets safer and reduced crime in the areas of their deployment despite the fact that police data shows a mixed bag of increases in some accidents and crime during such efforts.

Still, that hasn't stopped News & Record police stenographer Joe Gamm from drawing an unjustified straight line of causation: "That campaign resulted in a 16.9 percent drop in crime," he writes of last year's campaign on Wendover Avenue.

Gamm and the GPD should take a look at Spurious Correlations, a website that crunches various datasets to illustrate the reasoning mistake of, well, spurious correlations (although the GPD and News & Record take it beyond correlation and actually proclaim a cause and effect). Did you "know," for example, there is a "correlation" between per capita cheese consumption and the number of deaths caused by people becoming entangled in their bed sheets?

If the News & Record were to receive a press release with the claim, it would report: Cheese eating results in increased entanglement deaths. 

Here is more about the site from Popular Science:

"Data suggest: marriages in Alabama are causing deaths by electrocution, divorces in South Carolina are causing bees to produce more honey, and Nicolas Cage movies are saving thousands of lives each year. 

"Tyler Vigen created a program, appropriately titled Spurious Correlations, that finds correlations between random data sets and produces a chart every minute. Thus, the .95 correlation between mozzarella cheese consumption and civil engineering doctorates is finally uncovered. The sets appear to use easily available information, including loads of statistics about deaths, which lends the correlations a hilariously dark humor.

"Funny? Yeah. Clearly it's a sendup of the sometimes dubious findings of certain studies. But, hey, good time for a reminder: we know "correlation is not causation" but don't immediately dismiss every correlation as irrelevant. Otherwise how will we recognize and stop the swimming-pool-related deaths caused by The Wicker Man?"

Average Crime Stoppers reward: $26

GREENSBORO, NC -- You've probably seen the Crime Stoppers promise of cash rewards for crime tips: "You could be eligible for a cash reward of up to $2,000."

According to figures made public by the City of Greensboro, in 2013, the Guilford/Greensboro Crime Stoppers received 890 tips that resulted in 1,365 criminal charges and the clearing of 284 criminal cases. It paid $23,125 in cash rewards.

That's an average of $25.98 per tip or $81.43 per cleared criminal case.

Look up

Matheny's fill-in-the-blank endorsement

GREENSBORO, NC -- I received a campaign mailer from 6th district congressional candidate Zack Matheny yesterday. It included this endorsement attributed to Greg Walden, Chairman of the National Republican Committee:

"Zack's conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama's irresponsible agenda. North Carolina's hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Zack Matheny will be a strong contender this election cycle."

Impressive.

But wait...

Here's what Walden had to say about congressional candidate Ryan Costello from Pennsylvania:

"Ryan’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Pennsylvania's hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Ryan Costello will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Andrew Walter from Arizona:

"Andrew’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Arizona’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on the backs of their families. I am certain that Andrew Walter will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Lee Zeldin from New York:

"Lee’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. New York’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on the backs of their families. I am certain that Lee Zeldin will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Matthew A. Doheny from New York:

"Matt’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. New York’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Matt Doheny will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Jeff Gorell from California:

"Jeff’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. California’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Jeff Gorell will be a strong contender this election cycle."

About congressional candidate Ryan Zinke from Montana:

"Ryan’s conservative principles and priorities provide a stark contrast to Barack Obama’s irresponsible agenda. Montana’s hardworking families deserve better than skyrocketing health care costs, financial instability and mountains of debt on their backs. I am certain that Ryan Zinke will be a strong contender this election cycle."

And on and on...

Serious question on News & Record's suspect descriptions

GREENSBORO, NC -- When it comes to describing criminal suspects, the News & Record will scrub race from descriptions in police press releases if it deems the descriptions to be otherwise not "complete." Fair enough, that's their prerogative. One might think that as much information as possible, no matter how scant, would aide the public in helping to identify possible criminals—presumably, that's why the police provide the information to begin with—but the News & Record regularly proves itself allergic to inclusion of all the facts, so no real surprise that it would be okay with intentionally withholding public information.

But here's the thing: Why is that delineation made for race but not gender? While the News & Record will take police descriptions that include gender and race and scrub race from what they print, they will still report gender. Even as they cite the lack of "complete descriptions" as the reason for not reporting suspects' race, they will still identify the same suspects as "male."

I question the journalistic purpose of scrubbing anything from police issued descriptions to begin with, but it is truly unfathomable to me why a newspaper would describe "white males" as simply "males." The way I see it, either as much information as is available should be reported or, if characteristics are to be scrubbed because the description is otherwise too broad, then gender should not be reported either. If not "white males," it should be "people." What am I missing? What is the justification for reporting only the gender of suspects when only gender and race are known?

Security vulnerabilities: City's fixed, News & Record's still broken

GREENSBORO -- A quick update on the security vulnerabilities of some local websites reported by this blogger previously. The City of Greensboro has corrected theirs (kudos!). The News & Record has not  (it figures). Their Ad Express still has the security flaw.

News & Record: The myth machine

GREENSBORO, NC -- I really don't know if the News & Record intentionally works to deceive the community or if they are just oblivious. Regardless, they often leave out important details, thus feeding the misunderstandings of a deluded community.

Case in point, this from a N&R article by Dick Barron about the downtown ballpark:

"The Joseph M. Bryan Foundation built the stadium with $12 million of foundation money, a $10 million loan and Jim Melvin."

A version not afraid of all the facts would have included this, which the News & Record avoided:

Melvin not only heads the non-profit Bryan Foundation which funded the stadium, but he had an ownership stake in the team for which the stadium was constructed. The non-profit-owned stadium, built for a cost of $21.5 million in 2005, was sold to the owners of the team for about $12.8 million in 2012. 

Why would the News & Record not include this salient fact in its coverage? Is it interested in factual reporting for the sake of comprehensive understanding or does it cherry-pick information for the sake of crafting myths? Which best serves the people of Greensboro?

Team Matheny fools the News & Record again

GREENSBORO, NC -- Last month, the News & Record published a letter to the editor in support of Zack Matheny, the Greensboro District 3 City Council representative who is running for congress. Although the News & Record failed to identify him as such, the writer of that letter was a paid consultant to Mathney's campaign.

Today, the News & Record publishes another letter in support of Matheny from Tiffany Clark of Greensboro. Clark's husband is Director of Client Engagement for G-force Marketing, a company to which Matheny's campaign has paid over $80,000 this year to market his candidacy.

Clark's relationship to the Matheny campaign was not noted by the News & Record.

Get out of that state you're in

GREENSBORO, NC -- It seems Rhino Times editor John Hammer has some complaints about the News & Record's website.

The Rhino Times, with a website design from 1997, designed and maintained by a junior high school student that doesn't adapt to mobile devices, with archaic photo galleries and commenting system and no RSS feed or social media integration goes unaddressed by its editor, but he has the wherewithal to complain about another media site? Is he just monumentally oblivious or what?

News & Record impugns millions with suspect descriptions

GREENSBORO, NC -- At some point, it is going to dawn on the fogies at the News & Record that they are no longer gatekeepers of information, haven't been for a while now, and that much of what they purport to "report" we have already seen from original sources. Until then, their confusion allows us to catch them red handed subverting the facts in the service of ends other than thorough reporting.

In a press release from the Greensboro Police Department describing the robbery of an individual yesterday, the suspects were described as four "black males." In the News & Record's regurgitation of the press release, they scrubbed some of the detail and described simply "four male suspects."

I've written before of the News & Record's outright deceptions when altering suspect descriptions whereby they falsely explained to readers that descriptions were not available, incomplete or where they simply censored descriptions with no explanation.

Anonymous commenters have defended this practice by saying that it is "irresponsible" to describe suspects with only two or three characteristics because such descriptions potentially describe "millions" of people. How exactly that is irresponsible has not been explained and it implies that the police too must be irresponsible in providing the available details, even if those are "incomplete" descriptions of suspects. Of course, a "complete description" is practically impossible.

It is hilarious though how tightly backed into a corner the News & Record finds itself by pretending they have some professionally justifiable reason for dumbing down their reporting. Today's story is a perfect example.

By describing yesterday's robbery suspects as only "males," the News & Record has committed the very offense it pretends it has been avoiding when scrubbing race from suspect descriptions: They have provided a description that could not possibly be any more incomplete unless they just described the suspects as "people." They have "irresponsibly" provided descriptions that could describe half the population. If there is some theoretical line not to cross where descriptions are too broad to be "responsible," than a description that only provides gender crosses it for sure.

Why did the News & Record describe the suspects as four males instead of four people or instead of four black males?  Maybe there is no legitimate line delineating just enough and too little detail and the News & Record has other good reasons for scrubbing race from suspect descriptions; or maybe there is no good reason.

Records contradict police P. R.

GREENSBORO, NC -- At the conclusion of a months-long intensive traffic enforcement campaign on Battleground Avenue earlier this year, the Greensboro Police Department announced that a "benefit" of the campaign was a decrease in "part 1 index crimes"—the worst offenses, like murder, rape, robbery and auto theft—during the period of the patrols compared to the same period the previous year. Records contradict the claim that crime decreased.

From Greensboro Police Department press release.

It is ludicrous to claim that because two things correspond to each other, one caused the other. Without including other factors that influence crime, such as population and demographic changes, weather, economic conditions and other crime-fighting efforts, it is impossible to credibly say that increased traffic enforcement caused a decrease in crime. It's even worse when the numbers used to come to that conclusion are wrong.

Faulty logic did not stop the media from dutifully regurgitating the claim, however. No surprise there considering local media's lazy preference for stenography over journalism. Nonetheless, it turns out that the claim of a reduction in crime during that period, no matter its cause, is actually contradicted by police records.

Information provided by the police in support of their press release said that there were 24 part 1 crimes within a 1/4 mile of the traffic enforcement area in 2013 and 22 during the same period in 2014.

GPD's list of crimes

Among the crimes in 2014, the GPD said there was one motor vehicle theft. Police records contradict that representation. A search of crimes just on Battleground Avenue alone (not even including the 1/4 mile radius the police said they included) in the confines of the enforcement area (Cornwallis Drive to Horse Pen Creek Road) and only during the hours of operation of the campaign showed there were actually four reports of motor vehicle theft during the period of the enforcement campaign, not one.

They were:

01/16/2014 17:09 Incident Case #: 20140116343
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2906 BATTLEGROUND AV

01/30/2014 12:00 Incident Case #: 20140227146
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2605 BATTLEGROUND AV

02/12/2014 12:00 Incident Case #: 20140227152
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2605 BATTLEGROUND AV

03/03/2014 07:00 Incident Case #: 20140317073
Primary Offense: MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT - AUTOMOBILE 2630 BATTLEGROUND AV

When asked about the discrepancies, Captain John Wolfe, the officer in charge of the enforcement campaign said in an email:

"I can't speak to the numbers specifically as they are generated and reported through our crime analysis unit. I can speak to the methodology but not in this format. I will look into the discrepancies you've noted to determine how they occurred."

With four auto thefts instead of one, the total number of Part 1 crimes actually increased year over year, from 24 to 25. If the correlation-as-causation thinking still applies, one would say that as a result of the traffic enforcement campaign, serious crime rose 4 percent. Of course, the enforcement campaign no more deserves such sloppy blame as it deserved the sloppy credit assigned to it when the numbers were thought to imply something positive.

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Pro-Berger Jr. PAC behind attack ads

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record reports that a political action committee has launched attack ads against Republicans running for the retiring Howard Coble's seat in congress. The N&R reports of a mailer attacking Mark Walker and an online video ad attacking Bruce Voncannon.

Although such political action committees (are supposed to) operate independently of candidates, this particular pac, the ironically named Keep Conservatives United, recently conducted a poll in support of candidate Phil Berger, Jr. That the ads target Walker and Voncannon may be an indication of whom the poll found to be the front runners.

News & Record's superficial endorsement of superficial candidate

GREENSBORO, NC -- Is the News & Record even serious any more? In endorsing Greensboro district three city council person Zack Matheny in the Republican primary for United States House of Representatives, N.C. district 6, they ask readers to ignore important issues, ignore the realities of the political climate, local and national, and suggest we join them in a willful suspension of critical thinking.

The News & Record touts what they see as Matheny's:

"[W]illingness to work across party lines for the benefit of the people [he] represent[s]. That approach is sorely needed in Congress."

The fact is, Matheny is a member of a non-partisan city council where party matters so little that the mayor has served on council as a Republican, then unaffiliated and now as a Democrat. Such an environment gives us no indication of how Matheny will operate in the partisan pressure cooker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A better indication is in Matheny's campaign platform and here, the News & Record gives Matheny cover from scrutiny. They write:

"Matheny’s top issue in this campaign isn’t repealing Obamacare, opposing same-sex marriage, banning abortion, denying climate change or impeaching the president — topics that occupy some of the other candidates. It’s finding ways to create more jobs."

In congress, Matheny will have to—we, his potential constituents, will want him to—act on health care, marriage equality, reproductive issues, climate change, economic inequality and more, including budgetary, foreign affairs, defense, and entitlement issues such as Social Security. Yet, the News & Record is asking us to dumb down our examination of Matheny by suggesting that we ignore how he might act on these important issues and, instead, be swayed by rhetoric on "jobs." Voters will be wise not to oblige.

Despite what the News & Record may wish us to ignore, Matheny has staked out some positions that give a better picture than the News & Record's wishful thinking of how he'll operate if elected. No matter one's political inclinations, it will interest voters to know what Matheny has to say on the issues (and on what he has remained silent).

Health Care:
In January, Matheny's website called for an unequivocal repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: "Congress must repeal Obamacare," he wrote. Now, along with some good news about Obamacare, Matheny's website no longer calls for repeal. While he still remains critical of what he calls "government intrusion" in health care and maintains that Obamacare "hurts far more people than it helps," he seems confused about the role of government in health care as he cites as a good example of the delivery of health services the medical testing company LabCorp, which happens to be North Carolina's single largest recipient of Medicare payments (i.e. "government")  — some $157 million in 2012. (As it turns out, LabCorp made a $5,000 campaign contribution to Matheny days before he came to use them as an example on his website.)

I wrote to Matheny, in whose congressional and city council districts I live, to ask if he still opposes Obamacare and why. I also, separately, asked if he supported Republican changes to expand Obamacare signed into law by President Obama. Matheny replied that he was out of town and would get back to me when "time permits." That was two weeks ago. Matheny's views on health care have been inconsistent, confused and self-contradictory. Had the News & Record been serious, it would have explored the implications of Matheny's muddled thoughts on this issue. Voters will.

The Budget:
Matheny promotes a Constitutional amendment "requiring the federal government to balance its budget every year." As with the Affordable Care Act, it's not clear to what extent Matheny has thought this through or his level of commitment as he qualifies his support by saying we should "consider" it.

Taxes:
We'll let Matheny speak for himself here and leave it to the reader to decide if this is something the News & Record would have ignored in a serious endorsement.

"As your Congressman, I will fight for legislation to sunset our current tax code and create a simple, fair, and honest tax system. Our current code is too complex, 70,000 pages and growing every year. No one knows what’s in it, or understands the current system. If we sunset our tax code after 3 years, that gives Congress 1000 days to take out a clean sheet of paper headed 'Fair, Simple, Honest.' "

Education:
Again, Matheny's words themselves are the most illustrative and, again, the reader will evaluate the seriousness of a News & Record endorsement that, in a city with six colleges and universities, ignores Matheny's idea for education:

"We must TEACH FOR THE JOB." [Emphasis in original]  

Guns:
Yet again, another topic on which the News & Record would have had something to say, were they serious. Here's Matheny:

"As your Congressman, I will continue to support gun owners and protect their right to bear arms. Protecting Second Amendment rights is not only a Constitutional issue. Our region has an economic interest to protect these rights as well. Remington Arms has been headquartered in North Carolina’s 6th District for nearly 20 years and Ruger Firearms opened a manufacturing facility in Rockingham County just last year. Guns equal jobs in North Carolina’s 6th District."

Foreign Policy, National Defense, Social Security, Agriculture, Domestic Surveillance, Climate Change, Poverty, Marriage Equality, Reproductive Rights/Abortion, Income Inequality, Civil Liberties, Energy, Trade, etc:
On these issues, Matheny offers no comments on either of his two websites. Yet, silence on these issues is a plus in the minds of the News & Record editors. That should tell you all you need to know about the quality of their endorsement: A superficial endorsement for a superficial candidate.

Another one gets by the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC - On March 9, 2014, the News & Record published a letter to the editor in support of Congressional candidate Zack Matheny. Although the author was identified merely as Nick Wilkinson from Greensboro, the fact is Wilkinson is a paid consultant to the Matheny campaign. Wilkinson received over $2,300 from Matheny in the weeks prior to the publication of his letter in the News & Record.

From time to time, the News & Record will append information to a letter if it further explains the author's relationship to the issues or parties being discussed. This was certainly a circumstance where such an explanation was warranted. Wilkinson's position as a Matheny campaign consultant should have been revealed.

Campaign reports shed light on Matheny's nonsensical Obamacare objection

GREENSBORO, NC -- Last week I wondered why my Greensboro City Council district representative and congressional candidate Zack Matheny, in explaining his opposition to Obamacare, touted medical testing company LabCorp as a good example of keeping government out of health care delivery, even though, as it turns out, LabCorp is the single largest recipient of Medicare funds in the state, getting some $157 million in government payments in 2012.

Why would Zack have explained his position on government involvement in health care by offering an example that so contradicts his position?

I think I know the answer now. From Matheny's campaign finance report's list of contributors:

$5,000 from LabCorp's political action committee, the maximum legally allowed.

News & Record's irresponsible dissemination of outright falsehoods

GREENSBORO, NC -- What responsibility does the News & Record have to its readers to see to it that outright falsehoods are not disseminated on its pages? Apparently, none.

While people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts, but not so on the opinion pages of the News & Record where the editors don't concern themselves with factual accuracy; case in point, a letter to the editor today from one Ned van Buren, in which he writes:

"Buried in the Affordable Care Act are what the Economist magazine (Oct. 5, 2013) describes as death panels designed to “unplug Grandma.” Section 1553 of Public Law 111-148, page 259, tells how the risk of death increases by withholding treatment, but not for the purpose of causing death." 

The claims of fact presented by Mr. Van Buren here are false. The News & Record printed them anyway.

Did the Economist magazine describe death panels "buried in the Affordable Care Act?" No, it did not and it would have been an easy thing, as it was for me, for the News & Record to check, find Van Buren's statement false, and invite him to resubmit his letter without the falsehood. 

What the Economist described, in an article about "Ted Cruz, bomb throwing reactionary," were the fears of some people that the Affordable Care Act would result in "death panels," the scare quotes are theirs. The Economist did not describe such a thing as being in the Affordable Care Act, as Van Buren wrote, it described a fear of such a thing existing in the minds of people: Not in the law, but in some people's minds. Furthermore the term itself—"death panels"—was put in quotes by the magazine to identify it as a catachresis—a strained metaphor—not the Economist's description. Here, read it for yourself:

"Obamacare seeks to insure millions more Americans and rein in sky-high medical costs. Lots of insiders suspect that change will hurt them, whether via higher premiums, skimpier coverage or government 'death panels' with the power to unplug Grandma." 

What about the second part of Van Buren's claim, the confused but seemingly ominous observation that a provision in the Affordable Care Act provides for withholding treatment? Again, the News & Record could have, should have—as I did in two minutes—checked Van Buren's citation to see if it says what he says it does. It does not.

The provision Van Buren "describes," right down to the page number, deals with assisted suicide, specifically PROHIBITING the denial of health care funds to health care providers that DO NOT offer suicide assistance. In other words, it demands the exact opposite of what Mr. Van Buren seems to think it says. It mandates that insurance MAY NOT require services "for the purpose of assisting in causing, the death of any individual, such as by assisted suicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing."

From his woefully wrong "facts," it is a short hop for Van Buren to come to his Nazi comparison—fully accommodated by the News & Record.

This should not happen. If the News & Record is going to allow just any claim, no mater how wrong, to appear on its pages, it could save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by dismissing its editorial staff and just allowing people to post to its Op-Ed pages directly from the internet. Presumably, the News & Record employs editors to add value superior to the cacophony of bull crap that abounds on social media. That value should begin with filtering for blatant falsehoods.

More fact avoidance at the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record features, from time to time, "Ask a reporter," in which people submit questions and a reporter answers them... or not. As I was just writing yesterday, the News & Record and, by extension, Greensboro, suffers from a preference to rely on the pronouncements of authorities instead of its own research. Today's "Ask a reporter" is another such example.

A reader asks for the number of traffic accidents within a half a mile of the intersection of Pleasant Garden Road and Liberty Road. Reporter Joe Gamm begins his reply with " We don’t have specific data on accidents at that intersection" and proceeds, in typical fashion, to turn to a spokesperson for a less than precise characterization.

Whatever Gamm meant by "we don't have specific data," the fact is the specific data is readily available online at the City of Greensboro police department's website, with the ability to provide exactly the kind of information the reader asked for, right down to the half mile radius. One would think the News & Record's crime reporter would be aware of this.

It turns out, with five minutes of effort, I was able to determine a precise data-specific answer to the reader's question.

Accidents within a half mile of the intersection of Pleasant Garden Road and Liberty Road
------------------------

Past 12 months: 21

April, 2013: 0
May, 2013: 2
June, 2013: 1
July, 2013: 4
August, 2013: 1
September, 2013: 1
October, 2013: 4
November, 2013: 3
December, 2013: 2
January, 2014: 0
February, 2104: 0
March, 2014: 3

Greensboro hypnotized

GREENSBORO, NC -- This city would be a lot different if we had a decent newspaper, a place where reason and intellectual rigor prevailed. Instead we have a marionette dancing at the ends of strings pulled by entrenched interests, sometimes for good, sometimes not, but rarely independently challenging what it is told with skepticisms and a will to find the empirical truth.

A case in point comes today in an article by police reporter Joe Gamm "reporting" on the results of a period of increased traffic patrols on Battleground Avenue by Greensboro police. Gamm reports:

"The data from Battleground Avenue also showed a drop in crime, with the seven types of crimes tracked — murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft — decreasing by 8 percent during the campaign, (Greensboro Police Captain John) Wolfe said."

This paragraph is problematic in a number of ways. First of all, it purports to characterize empirical data and yet it is attributed only to a police spokesperson. That's nothing new, unfortunately; the News & Record is loath to check the facts against the pronouncements of authorities. Parroting assertions is one of the least valuable services journalists can perform. Making sure those pronouncements align with the facts is the value the News & Record fails to provide.

Second, it is woefully unclear whether the police are making the claim that each of the types of offenses declined by 8 percent individually or whether that is overall, with some crimes increasing and some declining. A curious reporter would have wondered himself and clarified.

Finally, and most importantly, is that attributing an alleged change in crimes to increased traffic patrols is such sloppy reasoning, the News & Record should decline to report it to begin with. That two things — increased patrols on a particular street and a vague description of a decline of certain types of crime in a unspecified surrounding "area" — imply a cause and effect is not reasonably justified. It is a failure in critical thinking.

Any serious examination of the factors influencing crime cannot examine one possible factor in a vacuum. Weather, economic conditions, population changes, even other public safety efforts such as neighborhood watch efforts, all may have an effect on crime. Correlation is not causation. To attribute a decline in crime to a single particular factor without considering others is a crock.

Here's why it matters. When the police officer in charge of these intensified traffic patrols offers the opinion, as he does, that, "people go back to their old habits after police are gone," he is not only implying that people, by nature, are prone to criminal activity (an insulting and disturbing view of the citizenry), he is also, not so subtly, arguing that we are better off with the intensified patrol efforts he oversees and, thanks to the sloppy and unskeptical reporting of the News & Record, that appears to be so.

Should we, as citizens, support the allotment of police resources for these kinds of traffic enforcement crack downs? Absolutely, I read in the News & Record that they make crime go down!

Without end, we, as a community, are offered these unthinking and doubtful reflections of our community by the News & Record. Although they look like reporting, they are crafted messages intended to manipulate public opinion by self-interested parties using the obliging News & Record as an authoritative conduit to give them a stamp of approval they don't deserve. The result is Greensboro is a community deluded by fictions. The repository of what should be truth and accuracy instead offers us figments and confusion that we mistake for an accurate representation of our reality.

How can a community possibly thrive under the spell of such an illusionist? How can it even survive?

Matheny's rationale for Obamacre objection subverted

GREENSBORO, NC -- I recently noted that my district city council representative Zack Matheny, who is also running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, is no longer saying on his campaign website that Obamacare should be repealed, as he had in January.

He continues to call it "bad policy" and claims that it "hurts far more people than it helps," but gone is the call for its repeal. Here is how he explains his view now, emphasis added:

"'Obamacare' is a bad policy that hurts far more people than it helps and represents the much bigger problem of overregulation and government intrusion into the lives of US citizens. Companies right here in the 6th district like LabCorp have shown that we can deliver health care services in a cost-efficient manner without getting in-between (sic) you and your doctor."

Aside from the fact that Obamacare is primarily just a means to enroll more people in private health insurance—hardly the "gov'ment" getting between you and your doctor— the News & Record revealed today that LabCorp is the largest single recipient of Medicare payments in the state of North Carolina.

That's right, Zack's example of an alternative to Obamacre thrives because it receives more Medicare payments from the government than any other doctor, practice, hospital or health care provider in the state.

I guess Zack didn't look into that.

News & Record censors police suspect description

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record reported this today about suspects in a robbery. The article was attributed to "staff reports" which is a euphemism for "regurgitated from a press release":

"One of the women was white, had long blonde hair, a piercing over her left eye, was in her 20s and was wearing a light-colored shirt and blue jeans. There were incomplete descriptions for the three men and the second female who asked for the water." 

That is misleading, relying on a very deceptive meaning of "incomplete description." In fact, there were no "complete" descriptions of any suspects — all descriptions were incomplete — but there were other descriptions provided by the police that the News & Record declined to report because they were "incomplete."

Here is the description of the suspects from the GPD press release:

"The black female was described as having a ponytail, wearing a black shirt, black coat and black pants with gold specks. She appeared to be in her 20’s. The white-female was described as having long blonde hair, a piercing over her left eye, and wearing a light colored shirt and blue jeans. She also appeared to be in her 20’s. The white-males were described as wearing tan masks, light colored shirts and blue jeans."

For the News & Record to describe one suspect then decline to describe the others with the explanation that the other descriptions were "incomplete" is disingenuous, at best. None of the descriptions were "complete." The descriptions of the two females had the same level of detail but for the additional description of a piece of jewelry on one of the suspects.  How does it serve the News & Recrod's readers for it to withhold information from them? What purpose does it serve?

News & Record's online security gets an F

GREENSBORO, NC -- Online testing sites report that the News & Records online ad placement, AdExpress, has vulnerabilities in its encryption configuration that earn it an F. Specifically, the testing sites warn of the site using obsolete and insecure protocols.

See: https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=adexpress.news-record.com

and: https://www.wormly.com/test_ssl/h/adexpress.news-record.com/i/70.60.250.66/p/443

City's online payment security gets an F

Update, April 30, 2014: The City has corrected the vulnerability described in this post.

[Update: GlobalSign uses Qualys SSL Labs for its testing, so while both are referenced, they are actually conducting the same test. A subsequent third test, independent of the other two, finds the same vulnerability.]

[Update II: The City Manager responds: He has asked the IT director to review.]

GREENSBORO, NC -- Computer security engineers announced the discover of the "Heartbleed Bug" this week, a computer code vulnerability that can expose information encrypted with the SSL/TLS protocol. This protocol is used to protect passwords and account numbers in web browsers, apps, email and instant messaging.

While wildly deployed, the vulnerability is not universal. It occurs with certain server configurations. There are online tools that will allow you to check an internet domain to see if it is susceptible to the Heartbleed Bug. Here are two:

Qualys SSL Labs
GlobalSign

I tested a few local sites that use encryption for online payments. None were vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. However, the City of Greensboro's encryption certificate installation for secure.greensboro-nc.gov, where the city accepts online payments for fees ranging from parking tickets to street performer licenses, got an F from both testers.

I am not knowledgeable enough to fully explain the reasons for these scores, but it appears as if there are a few areas of weakness, the most egregious being because the city allows its encryption certificates to use the older SSL2 protocol (in addition to newer ones) that the testing sites label as "insecure." Indeed, there to appear to be a number of vulnerabilities for that protocol, including vulnerability to "man in the middle" attacks where it would seem to the user as if everything is operating normally, but where information is being secretly intercepted by an uninvolved third party.

I've alerted the city of this problem and will post any replies I receive.

Triad City Beat editor chokes on his own vomit

GREENSBORO, NC -- Triad City Beat editor Brian Clarey writes the most disingenuous piece of editorial deception I've read in a long time. Taking on Greensboro city council representative Tony Wilkins' recent attempt to get the city to make public the top salaries of non-profits to which the city contributes, Clarey takes a central fact and turns it on its head so that he can proceed to cast undeserved aspersions on Wilkins and his constituents.

You may recall that the City of Greensboro, as part of lending $1.5 million to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM), asked the museum to provide some information about its finances, including salaries. The city then proceeded, in the interest of public transparency, to make the information it gathered available on the web.

Wilkins used that interest of the city in gathering and making public the salaries of the employees of the ICRCM to try to convince his colleagues to do the same for OTHER non-profits the city funds. Far from targeting the ICRCM for special scrutiny, Wilkins was saying he wanted the same kind of scrutiny for all other city-funded non-profits. In fact, by using the ICRCM as a starting point, he drew into focus the differing treatment the ICRCM received from other non-profits, hardly the kind of hostility towards the ICRCM Clarey would try to pin on Wilkins.

The facts didn't get in Clarey's way though. Ignoring that Wilkins was using the city's treatment of the ICRCM as a starting place to argue for similar treatment of all city-funded nonprofits, Clarey pretended that Wilkins was motivated, not by fairness and equal treatment, but by—fantastically—animosity for the ICRCM and, having puked up that falsehood, Clarey proceeds to use it to discredit Wilkins, his constituents and conservatives in general. Clarey writes:

"The conservatives who make up Wilkins’ cohort have an almost pathological dislike for the ICRCM, which hits the trifecta of extreme right-wing hot buttons: It concerns civil rights, it gets taxpayer support and there are a whole lot of black people involved. If they were handing out birth control in there, one of these wingnuts might just burn it to the ground." 

Of course, Wilkins' attempts to get all non-profits to be treated by the city the same as the ICRCM was treated has nothing to do with dislike for the ICRCM, in fact, it would make no sense for dislike for the ICRCM to motivate Wilkins' to call for them to be treated equitably.

No, what Clarey did is vomit up his own prejudices then choked on them in righteous indignation. It was about as repugnant as watching a drunk throw up too, and just as enlightening.

Bonus: Clarey, at his former post as editor of Yes!Weekly, endorsed Wilkins in his run for council last fall:

"Wilkins represents all the things we like about conservative policy: fiscal responsibility, fair play, free markets. He’s big on transparency, and has shown an open mind and a zeal for finding out how things work since taking his seat. We endorse him with no reservations, save for the suggestion that he continue in this vein..."

Where does Zack Matheny stand on Obamacare?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Greensboro city council representative and sixth district congressional candidate Zack Matheny appears to have shifted his position on Obamacare. In January of this year, he wanted to repeal it. He said on his website then, in no uncertain terms:

"Congress must repeal Obamacare."

Matheny's campaign website, January 9, 2014

Yesterday, the Rand Corporation announced these results of their study of the effects of Obamacare:

"At least 9.3 million more Americans have health insurance now than in September 2013, virtually all of them as a result of the law."

That prompted me, an unaffiliated voter in Matheny's council district and the sixth congressional district, to email Matheny a link to the Rand study and ask why he opposes the law and if his opposition isn't just pandering. (His campaign rhetoric is a departure from from the moderate he appeared to be while serving on city council, so it's hard to know if we are seeing the real Matheny now or if he's just trying to push the right buttons to improve his chances in the Republican primary.)

I also revisited his website and found he has changed his language on Obamacre. He now says this:

"'Obamacare' is a bad policy that hurts far more people than it helps and represents the much bigger problem of overregulation and government intrusion into the lives of US citizens. Companies right here in the 6th district like LabCorp have shown that we can deliver health care services in a cost-efficient manner without getting in-between (sic) you and your doctor. Let’s go back to the adage that government works best when it governs least." 

Aside from the question of just how LabCorp, a medical testing lab, is an example of whatever it is Matheny has in mind for health care, gone is the previous specific language about repealing Obamacare. There is no longer any mention of repeal on his website.

I haven't heard back from Matheny yet, and will post his reply if I do.