How Do We Screw You? Let Us Count The Ways - Are You in An Abusive Relationship With Your Credit Card Company?

As I read Bank of America's new credit card changes, Elizabeth Barret Browning's famous poem immediately came to mind with slight changes.  It's not good for a business when customers believe they are being screwed by them.  But with fewer options that are mostly the same and Wall Street's pressure for short term profits, businesses are getting meaner.

There are lots of reasons people use credit cards.  It's hard to make airline reservations without a credit card, and if you do, you have to pay more.  It's almost impossible to rent a car without a credit card.  And credit cards make it possible to spend what you don't have.
Banks issuing the cards are not shy about squeezing their customers for all they can get.  The Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 made some changes.  The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau summarizes the key changes:

• The long-standing practice of hiking interest rates on existing cardholder accounts has been dramatically curtailed.
• The amount of late fees consumers are paying has been substantially reduced.
• Overlimit fees have virtually disappeared in the credit card industry.
• Consumers report that their credit card costs are clearer, but significant confusion remains.

(Wikipedia notes that an amendment to the bill allowed people to carry firearms in National Parks.)

So the companies are trying to find ways to increase earnings while being in compliance with the Credit Card Act.

Here are some highlights of the changes listed in a letter I got recently.  Some of the most disturbing are at the end.

"Amendment To Your Credit Card Agreement:
Effective Decembr 3, 2013, the transaction fee we assess on each of the transactions identified below will be equal to 5% of each such transaction (Fee:  Min. $10):

• ATM Cash Advance
• Cash Equivalents
• Over the Counter Cash Advance
• Same-Day Online Cash Advance
• Wire Transfer Purchase"

As I understand this, if you get a $10 cash advance using your card, you'll have to pay a $10 fee which is a 100% fee.  The percentage goes down as you get a larger amount.  But the fee doesn't get down to the minimum percentage (5%) until you take $200.  And then you'll pay more in interest.  I guess because they call this a 'transaction' fee, it doesn't count as usurious interest.  (In Alaska that's 10.5% for loans above $25K)

But, there's this option: 

"If you reject this change, it will not apply to your account;"

Hey, that's cool, but only if you stop there.  The rest of the sentence is:

"however, your account will be closed as of the date we process your rejection." 

And, it goes on, you will still have to pay off what you owe us.


TOTAL MINIMUM PAYMENT DUE

"The Total Minimum Payment Due is the sum of all past due amounts plus the Current Payment.

The Current Payment for each billing cycle includes three amounts:

1. 1.00% of your balance (your New Balance Total except for any new interest charges and any new Late Fee)
2. new interest charges
3. any new Late Fee

Your Current Payment will not be less than $25."  

Not less than $25?  What if you you only used the credit card for $10?  It does say next that:

"The Total Minimum Payment Due will not be greater than your New Balance Total"

What am I missing here?  How can Current Payment not be less than $25?  If your New Balance total is $0, and you have no interest charges or late fees, why would you still owe $25?  Does it mean that if you owe less than $25 they won't bill you?  I doubt it.  I suspect they meant, "if your current balance is at least $25."  But maybe I'm just missing something, but if I am, I'm sure others are too. 

The next updates, they say, are language changes.  They say they:

"are updating the language in the following sections to clarify how payments are applied:"  See how clear you think it is.

I'm just going to offer some of the highlights:

"Interest will continue to accrue even though you have paid the full amount of any related balances because we include any accrued but unpaid interest in the calculation of each Balance Subject to Interest Rate"

Here's what I think this means:  Once you don't pay the full amount, we stick you with interest rates (and late fees).  Those accrue daily.  So, when we send out your bill, we only give you the amount due at that moment.  But after we send it out, you are still accruing interest until you pay us.  But we won't tell you that on the bill.  So you think you are finally square with us, but you are still accruing interest on everything.  Ha Ha, good trick isn't it?  Gotcha. 

One way to deal with this is to call them up and tell them you want to pay off everything and stop the interest from continuing to accrue.  You may be able to pay by phone or go to the bank branch.  If you're a long time card holder they may simply waive it.  Or you can ask them how much more will accrue until you can get the money to them and add that to your payment.  But don't use your card for new transactions until it's definitely all paid off, because interest will accrue on every transaction each day.

The Killer Clause

"We will not charge you any interest on Purchases if you always pay your entire New Balance Total by the Payment Due Date.  Specifically, you will not pay interest for an entire billing cycle on Purchases if you Paid in Full the two previous New Balance Totals on your account by their respective Payment Due Dates;  otherwise each Purchase begins to accrue interest on its transaction date or the first day of the billing cycle, which date is later."

"if you always pay your entire New Balance Total by the Payment Due Date."   This really is the only reason for which people should use credit cards if they want to keep out of permanent, ever increasing debt. 

Otherwise, they start charging you nasty interest rates that can double and triple what you actually pay for everything you charge. 

And I didn't realize that you have to pay in full for TWO PREVIOUS NEW BALANCE TOTALS.    This is designed to keep people paying interest as long as possible. 


HOW WE ALLOCATE YOUR PAYMENTS

"If your account has balances with different APRs, we will allocate the amount of your payment equal to the Total Minimum Payment Due to the lowest APR balances first.  Payment amounts in excess of your Total Minimum Payment Due will be applied to balances with higher APRS before balances with lower APRs."

 If they define APR anywhere in this letter, I can't find it.  But I think it means Annual Percentage Rate.  What they seem to be saying is:

If you have account balances with different interest rates and you only pay the Minimum Payment Due, they'll use that to pay the account with the lowest interest rate first. (Even if the other debts are older.)  That way they can still stick you for the higher interest rate longer.  But it appears they give you something - if you pay over the Minimum Payment Due, that amount will go to the higher interest accounts first. 

I'm not sure why they are making that concession, but it would seem to mean that poorer folks, who can't afford to pay more than the minimum, will get stuck paying the higher rates longer. 

USING MOBILE DEVICES

Basically, this part says that if you use your mobile device like a credit card, then when you give your phone to someone else it's like giving them your credit card.  And you're stuck with their bill. 

And they are updating their language about

PEOPLE USING YOUR ACCOUNT

This transfers all responsibility to the card holder.  If you give someone your credit card or phone with credit card capabilities, you are liable for whatever they do with it.

"even if the amount of those transactions causes a credit line to be exceeded"

 "We may send account materials (cards, statements and notices) to any liable party, and that person will be responsible for delivering those materials to the other liable parties and authorized uses.  Notice to any of you will be considered notice to all of you."

So, you have a limit on your card.  Doesn't seem to matter.  What's the point of the limit?

You let your college son on your account?  They could send him the bills and that counts as sending them to you.  If he doesn't pay them or send them to you, you're screwed.

And get this one:

"An authorized user's authority will continue until you both notify us that you are terminating the authority and you physically retrieve the card or other credit device."

So your spouse has walked out and is spending on your joint card.  You both have to terminate his or her authority and you have to retrieve the card?   Good luck with that.

What if you leave the house because your spouses is beating you?

I can't believe that in these situations you couldn't simply terminate the card, which I assume is different from terminating the other person's authority.  But that has its own problems.  What if your abusive spouse terminates the card when you've gone to a shelter?
I can understand that the Bank doesn't want to have to settle marital disputes, but this could have serious consequences for card holders. 

And I doubt that many people read this far, even though it is only page 3.

And why are they making these changes?

"We are making the changes to the Transaction Fees and Total Minimum Payment Due sections because of a change in our business practice."

 That clarifies things.


The basic rules for people with credit cards:

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.9

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.

• Don’t charge what you can’t pay back at the end of the month.
• If you must borrow money with a credit card to make ends meet, have a plan for paying the balance off ASAP.

Read more at http://www.moneyunder30.com/how-to-use-a-credit-card-responsibly#UCV8LxWh1QPrwrdp.99

• Don't use one unless you plan to pay it off in full every month so you don't accrue interest. 
• It's a way to not carry cash
• It's NOT a way to pay for something you can't afford

There are exceptions - unique situations where you have a short term need for extra cash and you have money coming in soon to pay it all off.  I've heard of any number of film makers saying they paid for their film by getting lots of credit cards.  If you can find cards with a year of 0%, you can pull this off.  But I'm not sure how many of those film makers had a way to pay it off.

Basically, we have to wean ourselves from spending more than we earn.


Russian Turns Tables On Bank

Looking for this agreement online, I did find this story of a Russian who simply crossed out the parts of the credit card offer he got and wrote in his own language - which included things like no interest, no fees, and no credit limits.  He also wrote in penalties for the bank if they broke any of the rules. 

The bank failed to notice the adjustments to the contract and issued him a card and eventually went after him for failing to pay fees and interest.  He won that case in court, but the bank is now suing him for fraud and he's counter suing for all the penalties his contract requires the bank to pay. 

Wheel Good Food And Pretty Good Weather

I did a post that mentioned food trucks when I was in LA and so when I passed this shiny clean truck yesterday, I figured I needed to document that Anchorage is hip too, even if we only have one truck in a location.

You could read the sign in Photoshop, but even if you click the picture you need wheel good eyes to read the menu.  You can see the menus better at the Wheel Good Food website.

The website also gives us some background about this truck (it says there are two trucks actually):

"Wheel Good Food is the brainchild of UAA Culinary Arts School graduate and chef, Kathy Robinson and her husband Richard Geiger.  Providing delicious, gourmet food in their home town, Anchorage, Alaska has long been a goal for this dynamic couple.  With the purchase of their state-of-the-art mobile food truck, Bombolina, named after Kathy’s signature menu item, that goal has become a reality."

I know that the Culinary Institute at UAA serves great food and teaches its students all aspects of from cooking to serving to running a business.  I should have ordered something.  Maybe next Friday when they'll be back at Lake Otis and 40th.

This is Jamey the chef.  

I also noticed yesterday that the geese are still in town.  Here's part of a flock at Waldron Lake.








And some others today at UAA. 

The edges of the clouds hinted that the sun was out there somewhere as I rode over to UAA this morning, though the blue to grey ratio was low. 

During our meeting this rainbow showed up hinting of rain somewhere, but all around there was more blue and less cloud. 


UPDATE October 21, 2013:  Here's the photo that Ropi linked to in the comment of his favorite item at the food truck at his University in Budapest.  Looks really good.

East and West Finally Connected - Very Low Key Opening Of Campbell Creek Bike Trail Under Seward Highway

The sun came out for this ceremony.  There were construction workers and some DOT employees.  A few cyclists and some dogs and walkers.  And Channel 2 and Channel 11 and the Anchorage Daily News had camera folks.  As well as an unnamed blogger.

And there were two Muni employees who'd been working to make this happen since 1991 they said.  This was the culmination of a lot of work - getting this train connected under the Seward Highway.  And now it's done.

It was hard getting good angle without blocking the sun which is already pretty low on the horizon at noon.  It says, "East & West Finally Connected."

The absence of anyone of note - mayor, assembly, representatives, even department heads - or any real ceremony was probably fitting.  The real workers behind making this happen over the long term were probably the two women who had the cake and the blue lemonade container.  Chong Kim, the DOT engineer who has overseen the actual construction, was at a meeting I was told.  There was no ceremony and no ribbon cutting even though this is probably the most ambitious individual bike trail construction project in Anchorage since the Coastal trail was built.  This connected bike paths that were separated by the Seward Highway and its two access roads.  It's true, one could scramble under the old bridges and many did.  The top photo has a picture of the old bridge.  And here are some before and after shots.  But this is a recognition that bike paths do matter. 


There are still some things to work on - crossing Lake Otis for example.  Crossing Dowling was finished this summer.  But this was the biggie - four bridges under a major highway and access roads.  One of the women there from Anchorage Public Works told me there was a $10 million estimate for a similar underpass at Lake Otis.  She smiled wryly when I suggested they use the $20 million allocated to bulldoze Elmore through the University land, a project only the engineers seriously want and all the people living near by strongly oppose.  Money that was put into the state budget in the very last minutes before the state budget was passed this year in Juneau. Over the opposition of all the state and local representatives of the area. 

 

It's hard to take a picture of something that isn't there.  Until yesterday, there was a fence blocking this bridge right here.  For me, the removal of the fence is the real opening of this trail.

Here's what it looked like earlier this week.

These are snow fences to protect the trail and trail users from snow being plowed from the road above.  Technically, they aren't supposed to plow snow from the highway into the creek anyway, but just in case, and to keep other debris falling from the highway off the people below.  

The construction is still going on.  I think they may still need to connect the bike trail on the road above to the bike trail, but it seems it would make sense to do it from the same side of the creek as the trail.  So, I'm not sure what they are doing here.  

And this last shot is from the bridge east of the highway where the fence was removed yesterday.  The cake table is just on this side of the bridge.

You Are My Editor And What Sitemeter Tells Me About You

I once lamented to an Anchorage Daily News reporter that I needed an editor and the reply was, "You don't want an editor!"  I was thinking about someone who would correct my typos and flat out mistakes.  The reporter was thinking of someone who made assignments and set deadlines and cut out things the reporter didn't want cut out.  I guess freedom from an editor, on the whole, is better than getting my typos corrected.

And I have readers who help with the typos.  AKHarpboy leaves comments or sends emails when he catches something.  My mom used to let me know about mistakes when she could still read the blog regularly.  And others chip in now and then and I just want to say thank you.

I also get some unintentional editors - people who come to the site and get to a page that has a typo or needs updating.  Every now and then I'll see that someone went to a page and I can't remember what it was about and I'll look and be appalled to see a glaring typo. (I can tell on Sitemeter where people go.  I've left it open for anyone to look at so you can see what computers know about you.  It's down on the right side column below Blogs Of Friends Or Acquaintances and above Labels.  Just click on the number.)

Here's the page they got me to update the post on people born in 2011.  Vietnamese General Giap was, at that time still alive at 100.   I'd heard the news the other day that General Giap had died and when I saw this inquiry, I realized I needed to update the post.

Here's what that user looked like on my Sitemeter.   (The links don't work because this is a screen shot.)  If you click on the Sitemeter link on the right, click on any of the categories under 'recent visitors' and then click on a number, you'll get a page like this.  Not every page has all the information, I'm not completely sure why, though I know if you browse through a proxy server - this link offers you some examples - you can clean your tracks to some degree. 

 Another post I try to keep current is the one on the number of African-Americans in Congress. This time, though, I was aware there was a likely new Black US Senator and made the changes as they were happening.

Visit Length is often a misleading category.  I've been told that it only has the time until the last page visited.  So if someone only looks at one page, it says '0'.   Experts say there is no way to know how long someone has been there unless they click on something else.  So, if someone visited only one page but clicked out on a link, it would tell me how long she'd been there until she did the link.

But there is a section called "Who's On?" (left column near the top).  That tells me the time they got there.  So even if they've only been on one page, but they are still there I can tell they've been there, say five minutes.  Why can't trackers use that to calculate how long they've been just on one page?  I'm sure it just hasn't been a priority for anyone.

Anyway, to my many editors, THANKS!  You make this a better blog.  Keep those corrections coming in. 

There Are Now Two African-American US Senators

African-Americans make up about 13% of the US population and with today's election of Cory Booker as the new US Senator from New Jersey, their number and percentage in the US Senate has doubled from one to two.


 On this apparently final day of the current round of budget and debt crisis brinkmanship, engineered by, it would seem, the likes of the Koch brothers, their fellow plotters, and their followers (witting or unwitting), it would seem that the election should tell us something about voters' reaction to the Congressional bullying. 

Here are the results:

Overall Result*			99.3% Reporting
Candidate	Party	% of Vote	Vote Count
Winner C. Booker	Dem	54.6%	713,594
S Lonegan	GOP	44.3%	579,388

*Data from Politico as of 1:41am ET

Here, based on the New Jersey State website data on voter registration as of September 2013 are the numbers and percentage of registered voters of the main groups.  (There are a number of small parties that have less than 1% of the population and I've left them out.)

Una	Dem	Rep	Total
2,570,260	1,825,751	1,093,836	5,494,230
47%	32%	20%

So, with 99.3% of the voters counted (I'll round that up to 100%) there werre 1,292,982 votes in this race or 23.5% of registered voters.

Almost half (47%) the registered voters in New Jersey are unaffiliated.
32% are Democrats and 20% are registered as Republicans.


We don't know (at least I haven't found it) what percent of each party voted.  Democrats may have stayed home thinking their candidate had it locked.  Tea Party Republicans would likely have tried to get a larger percentage of their members  But these are just  assumptions.

There's too much missing data about who voted to make any generalizations about whether this election was affected by the Congressional nonsense or whether this can tell us what to expect in the 2014 elections.  My guess is that too much can happen between now and November 2014 to prognosticate how the budget/debt ceiling chicken game will affect them or whether this election can tell us anything.

The only thing I can say is that there doesn't seem to be a backlash against the Democrats or against a statewide Black candidate.

Wind, Kitter, Candles

The wind's been blowing all day, making the trees sing, reminding me nature is in charge.  It's also been warm - high 50˚s F in mid-October.

A brief announcement in the paper today said

The classroom was packed.  30 or 40 people I'd guess.  The only seats left were in the front row with the screen right above me. 

I enjoyed the presentation immensely.  He's making money as a high school senior and wedding photographer, but his photos aren't your run-of-the-mill studio shots.  He seems to get the kids into their element and then shoots beautiful stuff.  He didn't actually talk about this side of things, but I looked on his website and I invite you to as well.  Don't you wish your senior picture really captured your beautiful essence?  Check here at propagandaAK.com.

At the museum he talked about his creative photography and his team that go out and do shoots based on some theme they come up with.  This is almost like guys going out and making a movie, but he's only taking a relatively few shots.  There's part of one on the screen above and another peeking over the far right edge.  But, again, check the website (Galleries - Creativity) to get a sense of his style and great lighting. 

In a sense he seems to do with photos what I'm sort of doing on the blog.  Finding an idea and then seeing what he can do with it.


As I turned down our street on the way home everything was dark.  The power outage was confirmed when I used the automatic garage door opener.  But J had candles going and the light was great.

As you can tell by this post being up, the power came back on after a couple of hours. 

If Cory Booker Wins the New Jersey US Senate Seat Tomorrow, He'll Be The Only Current Elected Black US Senator

Barrack Obama was the last elected African-American US Senator.  When he left the Senate in 2009 to become President, there were no African-American US Senators.

South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott, the only Republican African-American member of Congress, was appointed to fill the South Carolina US Senate seat left vacant when Jim DeMint resigned in January 2013 to head the Heritage Institute.  Soon Scott was joined by African-American William "Mo" Cowan of Massachusetts who was appointed as Interim Senator to fill  John Kerry's seat when he became Secretary of State.  It was the first time ever there were two African-American US Senators at the same time.  Cowan did not seek election in special election in June 2013 when Ed Markey was elected and took over Cowan's seat.   Scott's seat will have a special election in 2014.

So, if Booker wins, he will be the second African-American, the only Democratic African-American, and the only elected African-American in the US Senate.

I keep track of these things because several years ago I discovered it was difficult to find out how many African-Americans are in Congress.  At that time I could find a list of all the African-Americans who'd ever been in Congress, but that took a lot of time to sort through to find out who actually was currently in Congress.  It seemed the info I found should be available to others, so I posted it.

Other sources are now more readily available, but I've been trying to keep my list up-to-date.  So when I saw mention that Cory Booker, the Democratic candidate for US Senator in tomorrow's election to replace Senator Frank Lautenberg who died in January, is an African-American, I took notice.

He's running against a Tea Party Republican, Steve Lonegan.  The polls have put Booker well ahead, but a recent poll shows Lonegan gaining some ground.  The Guardian's reporter sees little danger for Booker though. But this is a special election on a Wednesday!  If the Tea Party is able to get all its members out and the overall turnout is very low, who knows what could happen?  But I can't imagine that the Democrats are very aware of that and taking necessary measures.

Booker has a degree from Stanford and a law degree from Yale.  Here's a complete bio.
And here is Lonegan's bio.

Sundance Shorts - Getting Ready for the Anchorage International Film Festival [UPDATED - AIFF Selections Are Posted]

[UPDATE Oct 15, 2013  8:30 am:  Go here to see this year's selections for the Anchorage International Film Festival.]

It seemed like a good idea to see the Sundance Shorts program at the Bear Tooth tonight as a prep for the Anchorage International Film Festival coming up in December.   Tomorrow the selections for this year are scheduled to be announced.

And tonight's program was even introduced by Tony Shepard (the man in the middle above) the AIFF founder and Rich Curtner*, one of the Shorts Programmer for the AIFF.

The films were an impressive group of shorts - but it's quite possible to have some that fit in that category at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  What impressed me particularly was the variety of styles.  Perhaps the most riveting was 'Whiplash' - that followed a young man into a music class where the teacher turns out to be a tyrannical bully. 

Screenshot from Whiplash Interview Sundance

In 'Skinnengrove', we mainly see the black and white pictures the photographer took in the waterfront village while he discusses how he took them and stories they hold.  Occasionally, we see the closeups of the photographer's face lit by a globe as he projects the photos.  An original and powerful film.  You can see the whole film here.

Old furniture marches down the road in stop motion animation in 'Irish Folk Furniture'.  The old dilapidated pieces' stories are told and they get revitalized.  Charming story with subtitles so we can understand the English.  You can see an Irish television news program announcing that the film won the best short animation.

K.I.T. is a very well made and probably the most comfortably entertaining, but fairly traditional film.  The others all brought something a little different from what we're use to seeing in film.

Here's the list of films we saw from the Sundance website:

THE DATE
Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction
Tino’s manhood is put to the test in front of two women when he has to host a date for Diablo, the family’s stud cat.
(Jenni Toivoniemi, Finland, 8 min)
WHIPLASH
Short Film Jury Award: US Fiction
An aspiring drummer enters an elite conservatory's top jazz orchestra.
(Damien Chazelle, USA, 17 min)
SKINNINGROVE
Short Film Jury Award: Non-Fiction
Photographer Chris Killip shares unpublished images chronicling time spent among the fiercely independent residents of a remote English fishing village.
(Michael Almereyda, USA, 15 min)
UNTIL THE QUIET COMES
Short Film Special Jury Award
Shot in the Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Watts, Los Angeles, this film deals with themes of violence, camaraderie and spirituality through the lens of magical realism.
(Kahlil Joseph, USA, 4 min)
IRISH FOLK FURNITURE
Short Film Jury Award: Animation
In Ireland, old hand-painted furniture is often associated with hard times, with

Irish Folk Furniture Screen shot from You Tube

poverty, and with a time many would rather forget. In this animated documentary, 16 pieces of traditional folk furniture are repaired and returned home.
(Tony Donoghue, Ireland, 8 min)
THE EVENT
Love and a severed foot at the end of the world.
(Julia Pott, USA/United Kingdom, 4 min)
JONAH
When two young men photograph a gigantic fish leaping from the sea, their small town becomes a tourist attraction in this story about the old and the new.
(Kibwe Tavares, Tanzania/United Kingdom, 20 min)
K.I.T.
A guilt-ridden, but well-intentioned, yuppie goes to great lengths to prove she is a decent person.
(Michelle Morgan, USA, 15 min)
Full program = 93 minutes

And here's where they are touring after Anchorage:

October 25-31 Winston-Salem, NC a/perture cinema          www.aperturecinema.com	October 27 Portland, ME Space Gallery         www.space538.org
October 28-30 Albuquerque, NM Guild Cinema         www.guildcinema.com	November 1  Eugene, OR Bijou Art Cinemas         www.bijou-cinemas.com
November 1 - 3 Waterville, ME Railroad Square Cinema www.railroadsquarecinema.com	December 6-12 Denver, CO Denver Film Society www.denverfilm.org

*I'm pretty sure it was Curtner through deduction and google searching.

"so oily I was thinking his nickname should be Valdez."

Twitter offers me to tidbits I might not otherwise see.  And mostly I wouldn't have missed much.  But every now and then there is something juicy that has an Alaskan angle.    I couldn't pass up this quote from a comment on a Washington Post article about Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.  Here's the whole comment:

Well-said. I met him when he was an instructor at my law school, so oily I was thinking his nickname should be Valdez. He is is the liberal version of Rubio, another sociopath I have had the misfortune of meeting. Both are solely about themselves. Stay far away from both.

This is from a Washington Post article - Maryland Politics section - based on memos the State Police had about Gansler.  Here's the beginning of the article:

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler regularly ordered state troopers assigned to drive him to turn on the lights and sirens on the way to routine appointments, directing them to speed, run red lights and bypass traffic jams by using the shoulder, according to written accounts by the Maryland State Police.
When troopers refused to activate the emergency equipment, Gansler, now a Democratic candidate for governor, often flipped the switches himself, according to the police accounts. And on occasion, he became so impatient that he insisted on driving, directing the trooper to the passenger’s seat. Gansler once ran four red lights with sirens blaring, a trooper wrote. Another account said he “brags” about driving the vehicle unaccompanied on weekends with the sirens on.

“This extremely irresponsible behavior is non-stop and occurs on a daily basis,” Lt. Charles Ardolini, commander of the state police executive protection section, wrote in a December 2011 memo that said the problem had existed for five years. “Attorney General Gansler has consistently acted in a way that disregards public safety, our Troopers safety and even the law.”

The links in the text go to the memos.


I don't know the internal politics of Maryland.  Gansler is a Democrat.  He sounds like the kind of politician who likes being important and having power that ordinary people don't have.  And abuses it.  We have those here too.   But, as I say, I don't know Lt. Charles Ardolini and his motives.  But from the tone of things, he seems a lot more solid than Gansler. 


Azerbaijan Election Results

And while we're at it, another Washington Post story reported on the elections in Azerbaijan. 

The vote counts – spoiler alert: Aliyev was shown as winning by a landslide – were pushed out on an official smartphone app run by the Central Election Commission. It showed Aliyev as "winning" with 72.76 percent of the vote. That's on track with his official vote counts in previous elections: he won ("won"?) 76.84 percent of the vote in 2003 and 87 percent in 2008.

But the newsworthy part of this report is that these election results were published the day BEFORE the election was held.  And we in the west who pride ourselves on how much more efficient and effective we are than other nations, we can take at least a few hours and sometimes weeks before we know the results.   


OK, this is not the kind of posts I want to be doing.  I put in the first one mainly because it had an Alaskan reference.  But normally I'd want to use stories like this to illustrate a larger point.  For a newspaper that wants to pull in the latest stories, using Twitter feeds can be helpful.  But it isn't real reporting - it's just second hand news.  The recent twitter based post I did was on copyrights, but that was a post with much value added on my part.  That's how I hope to use Twitter in the future.  Not like this post.

I don't plan on making a habit of this.  I don't want my readers to start calling me Valdez.

(Do you think he pronounced it Spanish way "ValDEZ" or the true Alaskan way "ValDEEZ"?)

Who Owns Your Tattoo?

Anthony's arm

This isn't a trick question.  This was the gist of an LA Times article last week.   I was already sensitized to this issue by a tweet from Mark Meyer over the copyright of the Korean War Vets Memorial.

The comments in the article he linked to, made it clear that people have very strong opinions about things they know nothing about.  Well, they are very ready to spout off without knowing any of the details involved.

There are legitimate arguments on both sides of this, and the tattoo example pushes this into serious conflicting rights, but when people start off just saying, "This is stupid," it's not a good sign.  They have a gut reaction - which probably has some legitimacy - but that's just a feeling and they haven't thought it through enough to know if their feeling is appropriate let alone to explain that feeling intelligently to others.  Often, it appears, the feeling was based on ignorance of the facts.

My photo,* not the one in question, which is much better

Below is Mark Meyer's original tweet about the rights to the image on a US postage stamp of the Korean War Vets Memorial.

[*sorry, I had the wrong link to the photo before.]

Such hostility toward copyright—everything that's wrong with the photo business is in the comments here: http://t.co/THulbUV5kC
— Mark Meyer (@markmeyerphoto) October 2, 2013

Mark is a very good professional photographer who lives in Anchorage.  As I read through the hostile comments he mentions,  it became clear to me that there are two key issues here regarding ownership:

1.  Who owns the physical object (a sculpture, a painting, a book, a cd, etc.)?
2.  Who owns the copyright to that object?

This has been an issue for artists.  Someone buys a painting for $1000.  Ten years later, the buyer sells it for $40,000. Should the artist get a cut in the resale value?

There's little debate that the buyer owns the object, but does he then get all the appreciated value of the object as the artist becomes known?  I'm trying to figure out the underlying world views that separate those who think the artist ahouls and those who think the buyer.

The capitalist would say there was a fair trade, and now the object and its potential value goes to the buyer.   After all, the artist had the choice of selling for that price or not.   But did she?  Perhaps her rent was due when the money was offered.  And even though the object sells for $1000, she's only getting, after deducting materials expenses, $5 or $10 per hour.  Of course, it's even much less if we count the time and money spent on her art school degree.

But it's not so easy.  Capitalists also believe in copyrights and patents.  Those rights are even enshrined in the US Constitution.    That's why Samsung and Apple have been in court recently and why (legal) drug prices are so high.  Drug companies argue that all the work that went into developing the drug needs to be recouped or there will be no incentive to develop new drugs.  Though consumers might question how much of a profit and for how long should the drug makers get, especially when they own the patent on the only drug that cures a particular disease, thus leaving some people with the choice of paying (if they can) or suffering or even dying.

Doesn't the artist have the same claim to recoup the investment?  Sometimes, according to the California Arts Council:

Civil Code section 986 (California Resale Royalty Act) entitles artists to a royalty payment upon the resale of their works of art under certain circumstances. 

Those who would put fairness as their highest value would probably argue that the buyer really owes the artist a portion of the appreciated value. The law may give the buyer the right, but human decency requires the buyer to give a share to the buyer. After all, the buyer merely made a purchase while the artist worked hard and long to create the piece.  But that too is an assumption.  What about an artist who pays his lunch bill by drawing a quick caricature on a napkin?  Or an athlete who autographs a ball?  One might argue it's different if it's for free, for a fee, or in payment of something else.  And one could argue that an art dealer, who spends a lot of time looking at art and buys a lot of paintings from a lot of aspiring artists, is making an investment to help the struggling artist, but also taking a risk.  Most of those purchases aren't going to gain value and the winners help pay for the losers.  And that putting the piece in his home or gallery will cause others to notice and buy art from that particular artist. 

Open source advocates offer an alternative to the capitalist emphasis on individual rights and ownership.  While capitalists advocate that competition and personal greed stimulate innovation and the economy, open source advocates argue that sharing and community spur innovation and spread the fruits of innovation better.  They see copyrights and patents and proprietary software as obstacles to human advancement.   This might explain the commenters who felt that the US government use of the photo of the Korean War Vets Memorial (the Post Office had the permission of the photographer) was a use that benefited the general public.  I'm not sure how this argument applies to the tattoo dispute. 

There's an issue here that you might notice underlying all this:  power.  In theoretical capitalism, a fair market is one in which both parties have the power to walk away from a deal they don't think is fair.  A cancer victim doesn't have much bargaining room with a drug company if the company owns a patent on the only drug likely to save his life.  (Though there have been organizations that have bargained for classes of poor patients to get discounts on such drugs.)

And power is an issue when we get to copyrights and patents.  In the case of the artist who created the Korean War Vet Memorial sculptures, according to the comments in the article Mark cited, the US government (maybe the US Park Service, but I'm not sure; it was the Post Office that got sued)  did not include the copyright when they signed the contract with the artist.

And that's the rub for many of the commenters.  They couldn't, it seemed, mentally separate the object from the copyright for the object.  Essentially, this argument says "You own the object for your personal use and enjoyment, but if you then market it to make a profit, I get a share in that profit." Arguments (in the comments) that the govrnment could have bought the copyright when they bought the object seemed to fall on deaf ears. So did arguments that they could have negotiated with the artist before commissioning the stamp. Mention of musicians getting paid every time their music is played didn't sway them either.  The basic response was, if you buy it, you should be able to use it how you want.  Especially the US government, which, apparently, made millions off the image in sales to stamp collectors.

Again, it gets down to power.  How many artists have the power to insist on an extra charge for the copyright and then fight for their copyright, even when they have it?  Only those who have enough knowledge and money to hire an attorney or can get one to take their case on contingency.

Tattoos  

Laotian Dragon Tattoo  Shot With Permission

But what happens when the art is imprinted on your body?  What rights does the tattoo artist have over money you earn because of the tattoo?  What rights do you have over photographers or others who make money off your tattoo?  Legally, it would seem that the same copyright principles prevail, with the warning to make sure they come with the tattoo.  This came up, after I read Mark's tweet, in an LA Times artcle:  

Late last year, for example, Stephen Allen, a tattoo artist, sued video game maker Electronic Arts and former Miami Dolphins running back Ricky Williams over a tattoo Allen put on Williams' bicep. The tattoo appeared on the cover of EA's "NFL Street" video game. Allen claimed that the reproduction and display of the tattoo violated his copyright.
That case was dismissed in April at the request of the plaintiff, but because so many NFL players have tattoos, it got the attention of the NFL Players Assn. NFLPA officials began advising players to get copyright waivers from their tattoo artists. George Atallah, an NFLPA official, told Bloomberg Businessweek that the union recently cautioned its players: We know you love your tattoo artists, but regardless of whether you trust them, regardless of whether there are legal merits to the lawsuits that we've seen, just protect yourself.
 

There are a lot of conflicting values and rights that come to play in this.  The contentiousness is only exacerbated by the commodification of everything.   The sculptor wouldn't be suing the Postal Service if they weren't making millions off his art work.  And the tattoo artist wouldn't have sued if his tattoo hadn't been used so prominently to market the video game.  I doubt I have much to fear about my own use of my own photos in this post - of the tattoos and of the Korean War Vets Memorial - because I'm not commodifying the originals. 

I continue to be amazed at how many people feel the need to voice their opinions so strongly about topics they know so little about. For those who want to be informed when they voice their opinion on copyrights, Mark posted another tweet with a link to an article called, "Why Copyright Infringement is Theft."

Politicians sometimes complain about being targeted by interest groups based on a vote on a particular bill.  They might argue that though it was called the Help Poor Widows bill, there were provisions in the bill that did exactly the opposite.  Like most situations that become controversial, the simplistic first reaction often doesn't take into account the details.  At times, we may have sympathy for the holder of the copyright.  At other times we may not.  It depends on the details of the situation. Unfortunately, in these days of tweets, most people don't get into those details.