News Cut: January 29, 2008 Archive

Mailbag: The cost of war

Posted at 8:02 AM on January 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

The Internet has served most soldiers in the Middle East well, if they're willing to pay for it.

It's been a lifeline, offering immediate communication with their families back home.

Some members of the Minnesota National Guard in Kuwait have found out recently that the connection costs money, and there's no guarantee. Jillian Wilkins of Minneapolis, the mother of a Guardsman, wrote recently that her son had free access to the Internet until a few months ago when a $30 a month charge was imposed on the soldiers. "And what makes it even more
difficult is that most of the time he cannot get connected and/or stay connected. When it was free it was working great, he was even able to make phone calls over the web," she said. "That is also impossible now."

The soldiers in Ali Al Salem, Kuwait have ponied up the money, and gotten little in return.

Jillian's son, Joel, says a lousy connection when the service was free was one thing, but having to pay for it and get so little in return is something else.

"Most of the time, things are downloaded between 1-5kbps," he says. "Today it was actually downloading at over 5kbps, which is amazing for your room. Anyway, regardless of how well the Internet is working in my room, it was working. Some of us on my team live in different buildings. I know that at least three soldiers on my team (in a different building from me) had no access for almost a week. About a month ago, my buddy and I had a 3-day period that we couldn't connect either. It seems to cut out completely from time to time and, of course, there's no reimbursement offered for those days you missed out."

I asked the public affairs office of the Minnesota National Guard for an explanation and was told last week that someone in charge of the Minnesotans in Kuwait "would be in touch" to explain the situation, according to a spokesman. That was the last I've heard from the Guard on the subject.

In some cases, soldiers in the Middle East are to set up networks through their own ingenuity and some help from home as soldier Ronnie Tabor documented on his blog in Afghanistan last fall...

"... a contractor was brought in to provide Internet much as we have just done. They charged everyone a $200 deposit, collected that and never came back. When we first got here there was another contract that would have cost over $48K to the Camp. Each individual would have to pay $100 a month for a 128Kbps connection."

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Should you sign your credit card?

Posted at 12:30 PM on January 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

Around the Internet, the worthiness of signing the back of a credit card has been kicked around to a fair degree. One school of thought says, "no" because you'll give the thief access to your signature, which can then be copied on checks. Another says "yes" because stores are not allowed to accept a credit card that isn't signed.

Police in Apple Valley today released details of a brazen robbery in which a woman, paying her respects at a funeral home (located next to the police station, apparently) , had her car broken into in a "smash and grab," in which the woman's purse was taken.

The thieves then headed for the nearest Target store, and used the woman's credit card to charge $529 worth of goods.

Question: How can someone steal a credit card and then, assuming it's signed, charge $529 at Target?

Possible answer: Clerks don't compare signatures.

Some people write "Require ID" in the signature space, some people sign their name which then -- theoretically -- is checked by a cashier against whatever is signed at the store.

It's the first line of defense against credit card fraud, unless cashiers don't check the signature. A TV station in Cleveland a few years ago found that most clerks in a random test didn't bother.

Comedy writer John Hargrave once tried to prove how useless the credit card signature is, by signing credit card receipts in outrageous ways (see image), to see if any cashier noticed. He use hieroglyphics, stick figures, the names Mariah Carey and Beethoven, Kris P. Creme, and -- while visiting the New England Aquarium -- Shamu. No one said a word.

Queried on the policy of checking signatures, a Target Corporation spokesperson promised an official response later today.

Target spokesperson Bethany Zucco says they don't check signatures on cards anymore because of the electronic machines in which customers swipe (perhaps the wrong term here, but you know what I mean) the cards through the machine. "We can't discuss how because it's proprietary but we did testing and found that it's more effective and accurate than comparing signatures," she said.

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A reward? For what?

Posted at 12:38 PM on January 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Add another voice to the outcry over the $5 million reward given to flight instructor Clarence Prevost, who first raised concerns to colleagues over Zacarias Moussaoui. But Charles Midby, who supervised two Minnesota immigration agents involved in Moussaoui's arrest on Aug. 16, 2001, isn't upset that the reward should've been split three ways; he's upset that there's any reward at all.

"It's just so obscene, beyond comprehension," said Midby to a McClatchey News reporter. "I can understand why the Muslims view us as such a rotten and decadent society when we feel we have to give something like that to an American do his basic responsibility."

Mark Cangemi, who was the agent in charge for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Minnesota and four other states, was equally upset.

"I'm very concerned that whoever made the decision that this award should be $5 million has now made it into a lottery. "Now it's, 'If I give something and it turns into something, I get my $5 million.' I think this whole thing has been mishandled. ... I think it sets a very poor precedent."

Somewhere, someone knows who decided on the amount of the reward and the recipient. But the State Department isn't talking. Its Rewards for Justice Web site shows the reward amounts available.

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Coming back from the brink in southeast Minnesota

Posted at 4:37 PM on January 29, 2008 by Bob Collins

Kevin Kelleher could have easily been killed in last summer's flooding in southeast Minnesota. His neighbor in Houston, David "Little Oscar" Ask called him shortly before 1 a.m. last August 19, concerned about water that was rising around his mobile home. "I told him to get to higher ground," Kelleher recalled today, "but he couldn't. I went outside and heard the roar from both valleys and I knew this was worse than I thought. When I tried to call him back, the phone was dead."

Kelleher told his wife he was going to help Ask. "Don't drive," she told him. So he didn't. "If I had, I wouldn't be here today because at the bottom of our road, the hillside had washed away and I'd have driven into 6 feet deep rushing water." Kelleher survived. Ask didn't. His trailer was swept away. Kelleher found Ask's body in a tree.

Because Kelleher has a personal connection to the area, and to the victims of the floods, he says he takes it personally when people criticize the state's response. He's part of that response. He's the head of the disaster task force for the state in his position with the Department of Employment and Economic Development.

A few times this month, appearing before county commissioners in the region, he's expressed frustration with negative media reports about people not getting flood relief. In at least one front-page case, he says, the couple didn't apply for assistance.

That, he says, is not an isolated case. The state says about 730 people were denied low-interest flood relief loans from the Small Business Administration, the government agency authorized to grant them. The denials make the residents eligible for Quick Start loans from the state of Minnesota, which do not have to be repaid if the recipient keeps the home as the primary residence. But, he said Tuesday, there are about 300 people who haven't applied for the flood relief money. His group has either called or sent postcards to the flood victims. "In a small town, the Post Office will find you, even if you're not at the address listed."

Kelleher says he knows some people -- especially older residents -- in small towns don't want to ask for help, but he says the help is available. But time is running out. The deadline for applying has been extended from January to March 15.

The system in place requires that the state assistance for homeowners follows the denials of federal aid. Businesses, however, are able to get the state aid first, and he figures some of the homeowners' frustration comes from seeing businesses getting help first. "The federal people have said that in many disasters in other states, there is no state aid to fall back on," he says, noting that flood dollars had moved into the region faster than ever before in Minnesota.

Still, he acknowledges that the comeback has far to go in an area swept away by a weekend of heavy rain. "Are we ever going to be like we were on August 17?" he asks. "Probably not."

There's no crying in baseball

Posted at 6:33 PM on January 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

So the Twins have traded Johan Santana to the New York Mets. Fine. Whatever. It's not as if we're not used to seeing superstars leave Minnesota. We'll always have memories of Johan pitching that deciding game in the World Series... oh wait, no we won't.

But that's the perspective we need to have if we're to persist as sports fans in the frozen tundra. We win it all when lightning strikes and the stars align, not by actually being better than other teams.

Johan Santana, afterall, was a gift. He was a Rule V draftee. His previous team didn't want him and it's safe to say the Twins, who were horrible, picked him up because he came cheap. He spent two years on the roster and, let's face it, his name could've just as easily been Bombo Rivera for all we cared. Through luck, they ended up with a two-time Cy Young Award winner. So can we really complain that somehow we're jinxed by fate now?

Suffice it to say, you've never heard of the players the Twins are getting in exchange for Santana. But the chances are you'd never heard of Kirby Puckett until the day when you did. So there are two good reasons to feel good about this trade (1) the general manager of the Twins is not named Kevin McHale and (2) not one of the players coming to the Twins is named Ndudi Ebi

But enough about what we think. Let's see what the folks in New York have to say.

The blog Baseball Crank:

The Yankees and Red Sox offers must really have petered out in the end, because the Mets' package here is nothing the team will really miss in the short run and none of the people you would have rated most highly in the long run: Carlos Gomez, Phil Humber, and pitchers Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey, rated by minor league guru John Sickels as the #2, 3, 4 & 7 prospects in the Mets system. No Wright or Reyes, no Pelfrey, no Fernando Martinez (the #1 prospect). Obviously, no Milledge. Not even Dan Norman. Looks like highway robbery to me.

Newsday.com's Mets blog:

Although the Mets sacrificed four key members of their farm system in the deal, they also managed to make the trade without giving up prized prospect Fernando Martinez.

The Hardball Times:

I don't think you can let Twins general manager Bill Smith off the hook here. While it seems the Yankees and Red Sox weren't willing to deliver an acceptable package at this late date, I suspect that the Yankees' interest—and by extension Boston's—waned when potential replacement options in center field (guys like Torii Hunter or Mike Cameron) and in the back end of the rotation started to go off the market.

In the abstract it makes sense for a high payroll team like the Yankees to concentrate as much value as possible into as few roster spots as possible (roster spots being more scarce than money), in practice they would have needed to replace the rumored major league talent heading to the Twins for the move to make sense. Smith should have known that the deeper it got into the offseason, the less a deal would make sense to the Yankees.

The window to close a deal was clearly earlier in the offseason, and while Smith did a good job of drumming up interest, he didn't close. Instead, he clearly overplayed his hand here and got burned. He deserves some credit for cutting his losses and taking the best package possible, but his tenure as GM is not off to a promising start.

Sean Deveney at The Sporting News:

They could not get the Mets to include outfielders Ryan Church or Fernando Martinez, which would have sweetened the deal quite a bit. It seems the Twins are taking a lot less than, say, Lester, Coco Crisp, infielder Jed Lowrie and pitcher Justin Masterson, which was one offer from the Red Sox.

For the record, Church is a 30 year old mediocore player. Crisp is a nobody with the coolest name in baseball. And how shortsighted would it have been to trade Santana to a team in the American League anyway?

All is not lost. The Twins weren't going to win anything this year anyway. And if you haven't heard of the new players, well, had you heard of Johan Santana before 2000?

Look, Santana is a good pitcher, but he's also 29 years old and for three straight years, opponents have hit him better than the year before. There was at least the possibility that on opening day in 2010 in the new stadium, Santana would no longer be the lights-out, best in baseball starting pitcher. He'd just be paid like one.

Twins fans, come in off the ledge and move on.

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