The Calico Cat

I wrote about the sex scandal in my previous post, Jessica Cutler, the Washingtonienne, latest Washington sex scandal.

Her blog is so interesting, I decided to take the time to analyze it in a more detailed manner. The entire archives are available at http://washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com.

Jessica Cutler’s first post:

This makes me feel sorry for the young women who want the job because they are genuinely interested in the political process, but they are passed over because they are not very attractive. The cute girls, like Jessica Cutler, get the jobs even though they don’t deserve them based on merit or interest.

This leaves me with some feelings of sympathy for the unfortunate “hard-up” men that Jessica refers to so dismissively. Also, I note that Jessica confirms some people’s suspicions that government employees don’t work very hard.

This supports the theory that girls with a healthy appetite for food also have a healthy appetite for sex

RS is Robert Ethan Steinbuch, a man who is almost old enough to be Jessica’s father, but Jessica’s boss doesn’t think there’s anything unusual about the age difference, and neither does Jessica, because she never mentions it anywhere in her blog.

The following quote refers to Mr. Steinbuch:

What a lucky guy.

Interesting how she uses the words “pimped me out”.

W is the guy who pays her for anal sex. Comments like these will help other bloggers to out him.

More details about the shocking relationship with W. It’s clear from the blog that Jessica doesn’t consider herself to be a hooker. The hundreds are not payment for sex, they are just a fringe benefit.

And more information about the other guy who pays her to have sex.

A moment of introspection on Jessica’s part. Once upon a time, probably when she was in high school, she bought into the conventional middle-class values which dictate that one should remain a virgin until married.

Details about what it’s really like on Capitol hill, for those of us who haven’t worked there. The implicit assumption is that these jobs don’t require any special skills at all, and maybe don’t even require much work. To get these jobs, the applicant needs a college degree, and needs to be an attractive girl.

This is her most quoted passage. Maybe because it shows the most disdain for her job and for conventional middle-class values.

This passage is likely to evoke different reactions in different readers. Some will think, with righteous indignation, “how dare she complain about $25K, why does she expect someone to pay her any more than that?”

Others will feel sympathy and agree that $25K in the Washington, DC area equates to a pretty lousy lifestyle. How do they all get by wearing such expensive clothes, and living in safe NW neighborhoods and not in dangerous ghetto areas? Probably, most of them have parental support. But Jessica has given us something to think about. How many of the young women working on Capitol Hill are getting paid by men to have sex? Is this rare, or are a significant percentage of Staff Assistants making extra money by doing this?

When I read about Chandra Levy, the girl who was murdered and who was having an affair with U.S. Representative Gary Condit (who I strongly suspect was involved in the murder), what I noted was that she was living in an apartment that probably cost $1500/month, which is completely unaffordable on the salary she was making. Her father is a rich doctor from California, and I’m sure her parents were paying her rent.

Isn’t it unfair that young people whose parents can afford to support them can do these resume building jobs on Capitol Hill, while those from more humble backgrounds are left out?

Will parents with conventional middle-class values (or those who feel guilty about not having them so insist on their children having them) continue to let their daughters work in DC with all these scandals?

This is the last thing she wrote. If Jessica ever reads this post, she will probably think I’m a loser for spending so much time analyzing her blog.

Sigh. Jessica, if your goal was to entertain people, I assure you that I was entertained. Thanks.

This is a news story that was broken by blogs, and not the mainstream media.

Jessica Cutler, a 23 year old staff assistant for Senator Mike Dewine of Ohio, kept a blog about her sexual exploits. She was fired on May, 18 when her boss found out about it. Her original blog has disappeared, but someone has kindly recreated it, and is now at this url: http://washingtoniennearchive.blogspot.com/. I think her most interesting post is the following:

Others will find her sexual exploits more interesting. Especially her relationship with F, a “Married man who pays me for sex. Chief of Staff at one of the gov agencies, appointed by Bush.” $400 is how much he pays her. Who is the mysterious F?

In an exclusive interview at Wonkette, when asked about the “chief of staff guy”, Ms. Cutler said:

I’m sure that dedicated bloggers will be going over all the government agencies to see who has the initial F. Whomever he is, I’m sure he will soon be outed.

The other interesting thing here is the connection with Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy. What do they all have in common? They are all Jewish. At least I presume Jessica is Jewish, because my grandmother’s maiden name is Cutler, and I know my grandmother was Jewish, so I presume Jessica is too. She may even be my distant cousin. This Jewish connection is not mentioned anywhere else, so this is a Calico Cat exclusive. I was also the first blog to point out that Nick Berg was Jewish, so maybe I’ve found my niche.

In addition to the previously cited sources, I would also like to thank The Dredwerks for the photo (confirmed by Wonkette as really being Jessica), and this post at Swamp City for naming the Senator. I’ve also read posts at the following blogs: I Love Jenna Bush, and Something’s Always Wrong.

UPDATE

I overlooked the fact that Jessica claims not to be Jewish in her blog:

Jessica is talking abour RS, who according to information in the blogs cited above, is a Robert Steinbuch, who was formerly a lawyer at the Department of Justice but now works at the Senate. Searching some public records, it seems that he had (or still has) a wife named Diane who is 36, and two kids (which makes sense, why would a single guy own a four bedroom house in the 'burbs?). He's also probably in his late thirties, and she's 23; that's quite an age diffence. He bought his house in Bethesda, MD in 1998 for $283,500.

To answer the question posed by the title, mesothelioma is how greedy plaintiff’s attorneys turn cancer into wealth.

A more scientific answer is that mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest or abdomen. Asbestos is the only demonstrated cause of mesothelioma. However, some mesothelioma cases are not traceable to an asbestos exposure.

Because I’ve seen advertisements on television advising people to call a certain attorney if they have mesothelioma, I figured that the attorney in question must be making big money if he can afford a national advertising campaign. And sure enough, I did some research and discovered that asbestos litigation is a multi-billion dollar industry. According to the Rand Institute, $54 billion has been spent on asbestos litigation through the year 2000. It makes me wish that I went to law school. (Oops, I forgot, I did go to law school; unfortunately, I’m not seeing any of this mesothelioma money.)

You don’t even need to have mesothelioma or some other type of disease to cash in on the asbestos litigation handout. Approximately 90% of asbestos claims don’t involve any type of cancer, with many of the non-malignant claimants showing no physical impairments from asbestos exposure. Through the end of 2000, more than 600,000 claims have been filed for asbestos injury.

The story of asbestos litigation is the story of what’s wrong with our legal system and how it’s hurting our economy. We have a disease that arouses sympathy in jurors and defendants with deep pockets. Attorneys file the lawsuits in the states where the laws are the most biased in favor of plaintiffs, a tactic known as “forum shopping”. (Texas, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, and Maryland are the states most popular with asbestos lawyers.) As companies go bankrupt from asbestos litigation, attorneys seek out new defendants with deep pockets so the lawsuits can continue. The number of companies named in asbestos lawsuits increased from around 300 in 1982 to more than 6,000 by the end of 2000.

A few plaintiffs and their families get rich. In August 2001, a jury in El Paso, Texas, awarded a single plaintiff $55.5 million. In September 2001, a jury in Orange, Texas, awarded five plaintiffs $130 million. In October 2001, a jury in Mississippi awarded $150 million to six plaintiffs with asbestosis claims, and according to local media reports, none of the plaintiffs actually had asbestosis.

Only 34% of the money spent on asbestos litigation actually goes to plaintiffs. The rest goes to attorneys or is spent on other costs related to litigation. The legal system creates an incredibly inefficient insurance scheme. It’s more like a lottery instead of any sort of rational scheme to help people who have suffered injury.

Attempts to create a legislative solution to the problem have failed. Democrats, who receive a large amount of campaign funds from trial lawyers, have blocked all the legislative proposals. Earlier this month, talks in the U.S. Senate to establish a national asbestos trust fund failed again. Reuters: Asbestos Talks End Without Agreement - Source.

The RAND Institute for Civil Justice does an excellent job advocating for an asbestos trust fund:

I would take an even harder line than the RAND Institute. If someone has mesothelioma or some other asbestos related illness, but it’s not really anyone’s fault, then it’s not clear to me that the victim should receive any compensation at all. This is the traditional rule of tort law; there has to be negligence in order for there to be liability. I suspect that most of the truly negligent companies are already bankrupt. Nevertheless, a trust fund like the one proposed by Republicans, but blocked by Democrats, makes a lot more sense than the current system.

The quote above and most of the information in this essay comes from Asbestos Litigation Costs and Compensation, a report produced by the RAND Institute for Civil Justice. Highly recommended reading.

Dumb news out of New York City:

1010 WINS: Transit Officials Propose Photography Ban

Dumb news, but scary. Our nation is turning into a police state because of unreasonable fears of terrorism. If terrorists wanted to put bombs in the subways, will this anti-photography rule have the least effect on their plans? Has their ever been a terrorism incident that involved the terrorists taking pictures? Do any of these unnamed "transit officials" have any kind of explanation as to how this ban would actually deter terrorists from doing anything nefarious?

Given how small digital cameras are these days, a real terrorist could easily take photos anywhere without being noticed. A guy looking at his cell phone or PDA might be surreptitiously taking photos. This ban would only prevent law abiding citizens from taking photos in a public place, which should be our right in a democracy.

Only journalists certified by the government are allowed to take pictures. Bloggers and other citizens doing research are not allowed. It sounds more like the former Soviet Union than the United States.

The craziness isn't limited to the United States. Out of Canada:

Montral Gazette: 'National security threat' just taking photos of metro

It turns out that the kid was just a college student who was doing research on public transportation for some urban planning professors. You would think that the cops in Montreal would be less facist than the ones here in the States, but I guess not.

PEOPLE TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOT TERRORISTS!!!!!!

Evan Maloney at Brain Terminal writes the following about the media coverup of the Nick Berg video:

Abu Ghraib & Nick Berg.

There is a wide consensus in the blogosphere that the media is very blatantly showing its bias against the war, against the Bush administration, and against America.

Paul Krugman writes about oil again in his New York Times column today, and this time he actually uses the entire column to write about oil instead of attacking the Bush administration. The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: A Crude Shock. Maybe he read my blog and rewrote his column based on my complaints about his last column.

In fact, Kerry should read this column. Kerry has been complaining about oil prices being high, and blaming Bush for it. Here we have a ultra-liberal like Krugman actually talking straight and making sense.

Ah ha! Here we have Krugman admitting that oil prices are not high because of Republican policies, but because the Chinese are consuming too much, and supplies are limited.

This is certainly a reasonable question to ask.

Yes, in case you didn't get it before, oil prices are high because there is barely enough prodouction to meet demand.

Yes, the basic principle of supply and demand. Free markets work. Imagine a liberal admitting that free markets work! Liberals like Kerry who think we use too much oil should be happy that prices are high, because high prices will give consumers an incentive to consume less.

Yes, once again an explantion of how high prices will cause people to conserve energy. People will drive less. What an interesting concept. Maybe instead of driving 30 miles to the big Walmart, they will walk to a nearby store. What a radical concept, people using their feet to get from point A to point B. Liberals have complained about how Walmart squeezes out the small businessman. High gasoline prices will give the small businessman a chance to come back. Liberals should be cheering the high gasoline prices. Why aren't they?

Here is where Krugman is wrong. Because only about half of our oil is imported, that means that half of the $70 billion benefits American oil companies. Or shareholders of American oil companies. Who are these shareholders? I am one of them. I've made a lot of money (relative to the unfortunately small amount invested) from my investments in domestic oil and gas companies. I couldn't be happier that oil prices are high. If you had read my blogs and followed my investment advice, you too would own oil stocks and be as happy as I am.

This is good news for Republicans! George W. Bush doesn't have a chance in hell of winning another term in office. So John Kerry will get blamed for the economic downturn, which means he will be a one term president, and then maybe if we are lucky, in 2008 the country will elect a genuine conservative Republican into office, one who believes in a small federal government, simplifying the tax code, eliminating burdensome regulations, keeping illegal immigrants out of our country, and all the other things that real Republicans believe in that W. doesnt.

It causes Krugman great pain to make it through a whole column without putting down the Bush administration, so he had to stick in a gratuitous insult at the end. But at this point, it's really like beating a dead horse. With Bush's approval rating at an all time low, and nothing looking up for him on the horizon, he's already like a lame duck.

MSNBC has made public photos, provided by Spc. Charles Graner's attorney, which show military intelligence officers who were "in charge of interrogations at the prison", involved with the abuses. MSNBC - Photo may show intelligence officers in charge.

The interrogators are trained at top secret Fort Huachuca in Arizona. "[T]wo former soldiers training there to become interrogators told ABC News that they were taught to 'bend the rules' to inflict physical and mental pain on prisoners." The Arizona Republic: Ex-trainees: We learned abuse tactics at Huachuca.

"The abuse at Abu Ghraib occurred in two cell blocks in the 7,000-prisoner facility. Two cell blocks, 1A and 1B, hold about 200 of some of the most hard-core insurgents thought to have vital information on the whereabouts of Iraqi fighters killing American troops." The Washington Times.

It could not be more clear that this was not some random abuse by a few bad apple rogue soldiers, but rather an example of military intelligence officers using methods they learned at their top secret training to get information out of enemy insurgents.

Now the military and the Bush administration are in deny, scapegoat, and cover up mode. In a most cowardly manner, the Bush administration has blamed everything on the actions of a few low level soldiers, and the army is helping out by happily court martialling them.

No one in the administration has the courage to say what's politically incorrect but true, that these prisoners are terrorists who participated in the murder of Americans, and they should be thankful that they just had to walk around naked and wear women's underwear, and that they weren't beheaded like poor Nick Berg.

I thought that after we got rid of Clinton, the days of coverups and lies coming from the White House had ended, but this is apparently not the case.

As I wrote before, the wrong people are being court martialled. These soldiers were serving their country, and now their country is punishing them for their loyalty.

I see that I am not alone in noting the double standard here. The media eagerly shows pictures from the Iraqi prison that make American soldiers look bad, but then avoids showing us the Nick Berg video, and even reporting facts about the execution, because this would make our enemies look bad.

Robert Cox at the blog The National Debate writes:

The Boston Globe was so eager to maker our troops look bad that it published fake photos that purported to show American soldiers raping Iraqi women. (See WorldNetDaily: Globe publishes apology for fake 'GI rape' photos.)

Many pages of business books are filled with advice on how to hire employees. If someone said “hire the best employees and you’ll have the best company”, it wouldn’t be a recommendation that would raise any eyebrows. Someone has probably said that exact same thing.

But mathematically, it’s impossible for all companies to have the best employees. If we say that the “best employees” comprise the top 10%, that means at the most only 10% of companies could have all their employees be “the best.”

Furthermore, it’s mathematically impossible for all companies to have good employees. If we say that half of employees are “good” and the other half “bad”, this means that only 50% of companies will be likely to have more good employees than bad employees.

Yet you will rarely hear a company say that it has bad employees. In fact, I would say you’ll never hear a company admit to such a thing, except that “never” is too absolute of a word. Somewhere out there, there must be a company outside of a Dilbert cartoon that admits they have bad employees and they’re proud of it.

In one industry I’m familiar with, government contracting, I would say that companies definitely do not want to hire the best employees. This is because the best employees demand higher salaries than mediocre employees. And in most of the contracts I’ve seen, the money billed to the government is based on how much experience the employee has. A lousy employee with many years of experience will get billed out at a much higher rate than a superstar employee with little experience. So a government contractor would lose money by hiring better employees, because they’d have to pay them more but would get reimbursed the same amount of money. Even worse, if it’s a time and materials contract, the best employees might complete the work faster than mediocre employees, causing the contractor to make even less money from the contract. Clearly, government contractors have a lot to lose by hiring the best employees!

For a consulting or contracting company, it’s much more important to create the perception of having the best employees than to actually have them. The most profitable company would have the perception of having the best employees, but would actually have the worst, and thus lowest paid, employees. The only problem is that maintaining such a perception is difficult if the employees are really that bad. But the point, nevertheless, is that perception trumps reality. (Read my essay about the marketing economy for my further thoughts on the importance of marketing in today’s economy.)

Clearly, a government contractor is better off with mediocre employees and the best account managers, who are able to create the perception, in the clients, that they are getting the best employees. But probably, government contractors won’t even get the best sales people, because the best sales people will be in most profitable industries where they can get bigger commissions.

The highest profit industry in the United States is investment banking, and that is where they very best people work. (The investment banking industry maintains its high profitability through an illegal gentleman’s agreement whereby no investment banks compete with each other on price—but that’s surely a tangent best fleshed out in a future post.)

Even outside of government contracting, there are many reasons why the best people aren’t hired. If an organization is comprised of mediocre people, such an organization probably doesn’t desire to hire a superstar who wouldn’t fit in. Most managers probably avoid, either consciously or unconsciously, employees who might outshine them.

Unless a company puts forth effort into cultivating a philosophy of seeking the best employees, the forces of entropy will result in the mediocre being hired. At most companies, finding employees willing to work for the least amount of money seems to be given a higher priority than finding the best.

Many companies, through lack of foresight, laziness, or other reasons, wait until the last minute to hire people. At the last minute, the need to hire someone fast becomes more important than finding the best person. To pick on the same industry again, this seems to happen a lot in government contracting. If there is a time and materials contract, the contractor can’t bill the government for an employee unless there is a warm body to fill the position. If it takes three weeks to hire a mediocre employee, or eight weeks to hire the best employee, then five weeks of billing would be lost by engaging in a lengthier hiring process. Once again, the government contractor has the financial incentive not to hire the best. This problem is further exacerbated by the government itself, which often waits until the last possible minute to award a contract, giving the contractor little time to fill positions.

When I had to fill a position at a government contractor that I recently worked for, the HR department wasn’t especially pleased at my rejection of so many applicants. Yet HR refused to place an advertisement in at the premium job sites or in the newspaper, because they were too expensive. I’ve never dealt with an HR department in any industry that didn’t rewrite ad copy submitted to them; and the rewrites were always worse than the original. At most companies, HR definitely seems to stand in the way of hiring the best employees.

This essay doesn’t address the issue of whether companies know how to identify which job applicants will become the best employees. It’s not clear that companies can identify the best employees even after they’ve been on the job for a year! But these are issues for a future post.

The conclusions today are: (1) many companies don’t desire to hire the best employees; (2) the perception of having the best employees is often more desirable than actually having the best employees; and (3) government contracting is an example of an industry that doesn’t usually gain anything by hiring better employees.

It's reported by Reuters that Kerry wants to make a campaign issue out of the high gasoline prices:

Link to news article.

The Democrats have said that we are using too many hydrocarbons, and it's ruining the environment, and making us dependant on foreign oil, and blah blah blah.

So if Kerry and the Democrats were consistent, they'd be applauding the higher prices because high prices will encourage people to conserve and use less gasoline.

Nick Berg, the American who was beheaded by Iraqis linked to Al-Qaida, was Jewish, but you would never know that from the news stories released by the major media publications. Only the JTA has written anything about it (see JTA News: Videotaped execution of U.S. Jew may not shake commitment in Iraq).

Is this a fact worth noting? Absolutely. If the Klu Klux Klan murdered someone, and the victim was black, you can be sure the media would point this out.

Here we have Islamic terrorists, who are known to hate Jews above all others, killing a Jewish American, and this fact is not noted.

Amongst left wing folk, killing people because of their ethnic background is the most evil of all possible offenses. Although I suspsect that the average American doesn't care about Nick's ethnicity, they just care that he's an American who was killed in horrible manner by our enemies, the left wing probably sees it differently.

Add to this the fact that no pictures of the beheading, or of the Islamic terrorists holding his head up for the cameras, were shown by the American media. The same media that is eager to show pictures of alleged abuse at the Iraqi prison, to make our own soldiers look bad, avoids showing pictures and reporting facts that make the terrorists look bad.

Something smells unkosher.

I'm happy to see that I'm not the only person outraged over the reaction to the prison abuse:

Yahoo! News - Senator 'Outraged by Outrage' at Prison Abuse

If I lived in Ohio, Senator Inhofe would have my vote.