Johann Hari On The Management-Consultancy Scam

Hari tells you pretty much what you either suspected or already knew from bitter experience:

He [David Craig, former management consultant and author of the industry exposé Rip Off!] worked to a simple model, which is common in the industry. He had to watch how a workforce behaved for a week – and then tell the company’s bosses, every time, that they had 30 percent too many staff and only his consultancy could figure out who should be culled. If he calculated they actually had the right amount of staff, he was told by his bosses not to be so ridiculous and do his sums again: where was the money for them in a properly-staffed company? The company had to be POPed – People Off Payroll.

Of course, this advice was often disastrous. His company was sent into a chain of 500 menswear shops. They advised them to cut staff by (surprise!) 30 per cent, and to replace most full-time staff with part-timers. The result? The full-time employees had been highly motivated, because they wanted a career in the company; the part-timers only wanted a little extra cash. So motivation levels in the company collapsed, and with it the standard of service. The company was bankrupt within a few years.

Yes, you might say, but surely he was just a bad management consultant. The rest must get results. The evidence suggests not. The Cranfield School of Management studied 170 companies who had used management consultants, and it discovered just 36 per cent of them were happy with the outcome – while two thirds judged them to be useless or harmful. A medicine with that failure-rate would be taken off the shelves.

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?

And in another widely ignored DK diary…

I make a plea for people to report fraudulent debt collection.

Because, of course, having poor people extorted for debts they don’t owe to the tune of $1B in NYC alone (from 1/06-7/08) is not important.

How To Fool NPR

This morning on NPR, I got to hear a story about how the French have linked IHH, the Turkish aid group that organized both the Gaza flotillas, to (gasp!) al-Qaeda!!!!!

(Pause for Dramatic Prairie Dog.)

This is a rehash of the same June 2 IDF allegations that the IDF had already partially rolled back four flipping days ago but which NPR’s crack staff apparently didn’t know or care were rolled back. Here’s the skinny on that:

Not content to believe that night vision goggles signal membership in Al Qaeda, reporter Lia Tarachansky of The Real News Network and I called the IDF press office to ask for more conclusive evidence. Tarachansky reached the IDF’s Israel desk, interviewing a spokesperson in Hebrew; I spoke with the North America desk, using English. We both received the same reply from Army spokespeople: “We don’t have any evidence. The press release was based on information from the [Israeli] National Security Council.” (The Israeli National Security Council is Netanyahu’s kitchen cabinet of advisors).

“But but but what about the French intelligence report!”, you may ask. Turns out that there was no such thing — just another example of IDF disinfo, one that was planted and then “laundered” via several steps to look like actual fact, and depending on the laziness and/or fearfulness of American journalists to survive.

Here’s the long and twisted tale of how it came to be:

The Case Of The Curious Diner

Edward Teller claims, with evidence that looks convincing though is not to my eyes conclusive, that the still photos the IDF claims were taken by it during the raid and massacre it led against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were actually taken at several different times in the past:

Proof has surfaced today that many of the so-called “evidence” photographs being distributed by the Israeli government as examples of terror weapons on board the Gaza aid flotilla date back years:

The bulletproof vest photos on the Israeli flickr page are dated February 2006.

The axe photo was taken in 2003.

The pepper spray photos – 2003

The iconic pictures of knives and other weapons on the Saudi flag and other stuff:

Hi. Just to confirm that the EXIF metadata points to this photo being taken in 2006:
barney@benchwood:~$ identify -verbose farm5.static.flickr.com/4047/4662965686_a91f8 bab2e_o_d.jpg | grep Date

exif:DateTime: 2010:06:02 10:38:47
exif:DateTimeDigitized: 2006:02:07 05:52:19
exif:DateTimeOriginal: 2006:02:07 05:52:19

And on and on…..

Absolutely, this is strong evidence that by allowing the Israeli government to be trusted in any aspect of the investigation of these high seas crimes will be foolhardy and negligent.

If Teller’s supposition is disproved, it won’t be because fakery is simply out of the question for the IDF. For those who think Israel would never ever fake, doctor, or otherwise misleadingly present “evidence”, I give you The Case of the Curious Diner:

Al Jazeera reports on Israel’s propaganda campaign whose aim is to promote the message that the residents of Gaza, even while living under a severe economic blockade, “have everything they need.” As part of that effort, Israel distributed video footage of a guests enjoying fine cuisine in a gourmet restaurant in Gaza — guests including Mahmoud Abbas who hasn’t set foot in Gaza since the siege began!

Don’t expect to see this on your US evening TV news anytime soon.

UPDATE: It’s been pointed out that the weird date discrepancies of the still photos could have been caused by sheer stupidity on the commandos’ parts, and not outright fakery. They could have simply forgot to make sure that the date/time stamps in their cameras were all set properly — which, considering the whole point of having the cameras was to collect photographic evidence that could stand up under scrutiny (in a court of law or elsewhere), really doesn’t reflect well on the commandos’ professionalism. (Neither does murder, but that’s another kettle of fish.)

For the record: Tea Partiers are Republicans

Via Atrios and Jamieson Foser of Media Matters.

Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic:

Gallup’s new survey of the Tea Party movement is instructive for what it didn’t find: the movement does not encompass Democrats, including independent-leaning Democrats, or more than half of true Independents. In other words, the 28% or so of adults who say they’re Tea Partiers are very much likely to vote Republican when the chips are down.

Pay attention to terminology: it’s true that just half of those Tea Partiers surveyed called themselves Republicans. Yes, the lion’s share of the other half say they’re independent. But they’re not: they’re Republican-oriented conservative voters who are dismayed by the direction of the GOP and who don’t want to identify with the party’s brand. That’s not surprising, given how tarnished that brand is. Only 8% identify as Democratic; 7% identify as liberal; 70% percent identify as conservative; two-thirds are pro-life; nearly 90% were opposed to the health care bill.

CNN thinks the ratio is even more lopsided:

To be sure, the number of Democrats in the Tea Party movement is small. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows that while 96 percent of Tea Party activists identify themselves as either Republican or Independent, only 4 percent say they are Democrats.

As Media Matters points out, Republicans hating Democrats is not news.

I have added a new category, pseudonews to describe phenomena such as the focus on the Tea Party. It looks like news, sounds like news, smells like news, but when you bite into it, it’s styrofoam.

Freedom of Mind

One of the most alarming trends in the United States is the rise of destructive cults. These include religious cults like the Moonies and fundamentalist groups like the family, but also commercial cults like (in my opinion) Amway. With unemployment skyrocketing, the siren call of multi-level marketing companies which may be destructive cults can be heard every day on Air America radio. Regrettably, the American media are asleep at the switch on one of the most important stories of the day and the Congress refuses to legislate protections.

Eric Scheibeler does an interview with cult specialist Steve Hassan that may be worth listening to. While understanding the full spectrum of how cults undermine an individual’s free will is beyond the scope of any brief interview, there is a system to how they go about this. Scheibeler has taken on Amway Quixtar and is worth listening to. If you are considering getting involved, please listen to this clip of Scheibeler first.

Cobell win is spelled K-o-c-h

One of the few small bits of good news, and we owe it in part to ::hack:: Royce Lamberth:

Todd Wilkinson, Christian Science Monitor (via t/o)

This week’s landmark settlement on behalf of as many as 500,000 native Americans, in which the US agreed to pay $3.4 billion to right a century of wrongs that cheated Indians out of the proceeds from their properties, took 13 years, countless lawyer hours, and the persistence of one Elouise Cobell.

A Blackfeet Indian who worked as a banker, Mrs. Cobell is the original plaintiff in a lawsuit that claimed the US government for generations failed to pay royalties, totaling tens of billions of dollars, for mineral and grazing leases on land it held in trust for native Americans and tribes….

Cobell was often frustrated, first with the Clinton administration and then with the Bush Interior Department that managed the trust accounts, as the government sought to downplay the case as merely a bookkeeping problem.

Incredulous, US District Judge Royce Lamberth, who presided over a series of hearings, wrote scathing opinions, including one that said: “I have never seen more egregious misconduct by the federal government.” He added: “Real justice for these Indians may still lie in the distant future; it may never come at all. This reality makes a statement about our society and our form of government that we should be unwilling to let stand.”

The irony is that the Feds were mostly guilty of keeping sloppy books. The real malefactors are in the private sector. So, the Cobell win is in large measure a bailout of criminals in suits.

The Truth About ACORN

The Old Redneck, with help from the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson, provides a nice summary thereof:

— ACORN is not a criminal enterprise;
— The right has turned their guns on ACORN because it works for the poor and disenfranchised — whom the right wants to keep poor and disenfranchised; and,
— The legitimate media has failed in its coverage of ACORN.

Meanwhile, FOX and the filmmakers are about to get nailed for making illegal recordings in Maryland:

The crux of the lawsuit centers around a Maryland law which makes it illegal to tape someone without their consent – ACORN is alleging O’Keefe and Giles did so. ACORN is asking for $500,000 in damages to be awarded to each of the employees filmed by O’Keefe and Giles, and ACORN itself wants $1 million in damages.

I suspect that FOX is soon going to regret they ever heard the word “ACORN”.

Oink Oink! Here Come The Pork Hypocrites!

Here’s a new game for you all:

Every time a conservative legislator — be he/she a Bush Dog “Democrat” like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh or Blanche Lincoln; the fake Independent Lieberman; or just a plain old paleocon Republican — whines about the current budget bill being too big, do a quick Google to see how much pork and earmarks he or she put in that bill.

It’s really easy if the hypocrite in question is in the Senate. The group Taxpayers for Common Sense has (h/t to Kos) created a database listing the earmarks associated with each senator. And surprise, surprise — the Cons of both parties are the leaders by far in porkiness:

Earmarks  $ in millions
1. Cochran (R-MS):     204       471
2. Wicker (R-MS):      143       390
3. Landrieu (D-LA):    177       332
4. Harkin (D-IA):      177       292
5. Vitter (R-LA):      142       249
6. Bond (R-MO):         86       248
7. Feinstein (D-CA):   153       235
8. Inouye (D-HI):      106       225
9. Shelby (R-AL):      125       219
10. Grassley (R-IA):    125       219
11. Murkowski (R-AK):    93       181
12. Murray (D-WA):      155       171
13. Lincoln (D-AR):      93       181
14. Pryor (D-AR):        92       167
15. Menendez (D-NJ):    171       160
16. Lautenberg (D-NJ):  173       159
17. Hutchinson (R-TX):  106       106
18. Levin (D-MI):       178       152
19. Stabenow (D-MI):    178       152
20. Byrd (D-WV):         76       152

Time to hit the phones of the pork hypocrites. Letters to the editor and calls to call-in shows would be nice, too.

Another major fraud ($8B)

Via Calculated Risk, we learn that the SEC has charged Robert Allen Stanford and his companies Stanford International Bank (SIB), Stanford Group Company (SGC), Stanford Capital Management with fraud amounting to $8B:

The SEC’s complaint, filed in federal court in Dallas, alleges that acting through a network of SGC financial advisers, SIB has sold approximately $8 billion of so-called “certificates of deposit” to investors by promising improbable and unsubstantiated high interest rates. These rates were supposedly earned through SIB’s unique investment strategy, which purportedly allowed the bank to achieve double-digit returns on its investments for the past 15 years.

It has to be said and said again: there is a tradeoff between high returns and low risk. The only way to systematically get high returns with low risk is through inside information. That generally involves breaking the law, though certain individuals like Warren Buffett manage to skirt the law by mingling business activity with investment. If you’re not as rich as Warren Buffett, best to stay with investments that don’t promise the moon.