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Congress finally passed a financial reform bill, and BP finally stanched the gush of oil in the Gulf.

Of course, the experts say the bill was watered down, and there’s a chance the well could pop another leak.

Is this the beginning of the dreaded slippery slope to European-style socialist democracy? Sign me up! Perhaps we can capitalize on the momentum to get our troops home from the Middle East, reform the health care system, curb gun violence, and get corporate money out of politics.

It’s disconcerting how much blatant trickery is out there in the financial world, particularly in the area of home loans. It seems there’s an entire industry around trying to fool people into signing contracts or buying services that are against their own interest, and could ruinous to their finances. I think it’s time for Congress to create the long-awaited Consumer Financial Protection Agency…

The other day, our household received a letter from the so-called “Loan Payment Administration” in Murrysville, Pennsylvania with just such a lure. The letter looks official, and sounds like its from some federal agency.

But a cursory read through made me realize you would have to be a fool to even consider doing business with them. There is no value to their service whatsoever. They just take your money, hold it for a few weeks earning interest, then pass it on to your bank. And I bet they charge you a fee for the privilege of borrowing your money, under the guise of providing a service.

The letter says that their service can pay off your loan sooner and pay less interest. Wrong! The only way to do that is to increase the amount you pay the bank each month. And you can do this without an intermediary. Just write a check for more the minimum due, and write a note, “Please apply additional payment toward principal.”

How can they get away with a lie like this? Isn’t that “wire fraud” or “violation of interstate commerce laws” or something?

You’d be better off keeping your money than doing business with them. Even in a regular checking account, you can earn a few percent interest. And any bank worth its salt has a “bill pay” program these days, so you don’t need these con-men to do it for you.

I think a lot of people will be fooled by this, which made me wonder if this is even legal. How is this not a form of “predatory lending”? They’re trying to sell people a service they don’t want and don’t need.

Here is the complaint that I submitted to the California Attorney General:

We received an extremely deceptive mailing from this company, touting the benefits of using them as an intermediary to help pay our mortgage. They take an automatic debit from your bank account every two weeks, and then send a mortgage payment for you once a month.

Their official-sounding name might fool a lot of people into thinking they are a branch of the federal government. The way the letter is printed, with our bank’s name above our address, it seems they want it to look like they are approved by or affiliated with our bank.

It seems that their business model is to collect your money and hold it for two weeks, then simply pass it on to your bank. There is no mention of the fees or charges for this. Consumers wishing to set up an automatic debit or bill pay to their mortgage company can do that through nearly any bank these days.

This worthless service appears designed to bilk naive consumers. The Attorney General’s office should investigate the legality of this service in order to protect California consumers.

A friend emailed this to me:

You are responsible for spills

Energy expert Peter Asmus is among the many who have concluded that Prop 16 is bad and contrary to our interests. He also cites it as example of the of direct democracy gone awry.

LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik agrees, writing that the state’s iniative process has become “a plaything of powerful interests using deception and misdirection to line their pockets.”

I’ve read a tiny bit of history by Kevin Starr, and it’s convinced me that the reformers in the early 20th century had good intentions. Despite being a dyed-in-the wool liberal today, if I’d been alive 100 years ago, I just might have been an anti-monopolist Republican.

Starr’s Inventing the Dream is great reading, accessible to a non-historian. Also, you would never guess from its title, but historian Robert Kelley’s 1998 Battling the Inland Sea is a surprisingly engaging account of how state water policy questions were shaped by party politics and the “big ideas” of the time.

Progressive Era reforms–the initiative, referendum, and recall–designed to wrest control from monopolists and railroad barons, have not fared well in the age of mass media. PG&E is spending millions in ratepayer money to reinforce a virtual monopoly. Paradoxically, the initiative process is serving those interests it was originally designed to protect us against.

Add to the mix our conservative Supreme Court’s notion of “corporate personhood” and unlimited campaign spending by corporations, and we have a system that no longer serves the interests “we the people.”

There are several thing that gall me about PG&E’s monopoly-protecting Prop 16. But the worst is their phony front groups.

The so-called “Coalition for Green Jobs” led by electrician Hunter Stern, and touted in the “Yes on 16″ ads is not a legitimate organization. It’s called Astroturf. Try finding any information about this so-called coalition. A blogger in Nevada County did a little research and uncovered how phony they are.

I want to ask PG&E, “Is this the best you could do with $46 million?” If you’re going to create a fake group, at least rent a small office and a phone line.

It angers me that they are trying to capitalize on the good image and good reputation established by legitimate organizations like Oakland’s Ella Baker Center, which runs a “Green Collar Jobs” campaign, and helps organize the California Green Stimulus Coalition.

I was disappointed last month when Malian kora player Madou Sidiki Diabaté cancelled his appearance in Berkeley. But it looks like he has a new album out, from upstart producer Kanaga System Krush.

I first saw the website a few months ago, and decided it was something to keep an eye on. Near as I can tell, they are based in Grass Valley, California, in the hills northeast of Sacramento, famous (to me) as a setting of one of Wallace Stegner’s brilliant novel Angle of Repose).

They’re apparently working on a film about Malian music. And they’ve got a half-dozen CDs for sale. Based on the samples, the recordings are first rate and the production is lean and minimal. As musician and critic Banning Eyre pointed out in the book, In Griot Time, it is baffling why so many talented Malian musicians ruin their recordings with cheesy synthesizers and awful drum tracks. Better to go acoustic and let the music through without interference.

Among the albums for sale is a release by the kora player I mentioned above, Madou Sidiki Diabaté. It’s “‘the best solo kora album to date,’ according to his older brother, Grammy-Award winner Toumani Diabaté. … Rarely recorded songs, modified tunings, and an extreme level of virtuosity distinguish this 71^st generation musician’s debut.”

There’s also an album from the incredibly talented Bamako Bluesman Lobi Traoré. Other gems include a disk by Zani Diabaté, who sounds like the heir apparent to “Kar Kar” Boubacar Traoré in a lot of ways: wonderful acoustic melodies, soulful singing, steeped in cultural heritage.

Update: It looks like most of the albums from Kanaga are also available on the fair-trade music service mondomix.com. Most of the albums that Kanaga sells for $14 plus shipping can be purchased as mp3 right away for $0.99 per song.

From ESRI’s Spring 2010 Environmental Observer newsletter: GIS Aids Dry Cleaner Water Risk Analysis.

I had to read it about 8 times before I could figure it out. Modifying compounds should be hyphenated to avoid confusion.

Our organization, the Pacific Institute, has traditionally researched and written reports on public policy and environmental issues. In recent years, we’ve gotten more involved in creating tools for others to use to help them make better management decisions. This type of software sometimes falls under the heading of “decision support systems” or “expert systems”.

One of the first Excel-based programs the Institute created (before I joined the staff) was the Water-to-Air Model which helps water utilities to understand how their operations contribute to air pollution, and how  water conservation can reduce pollution and bring about air quality improvements. I gained a lot of experience with creating Excel-based models in grad school at Tufts. For my MS Thesis, among other things, I created an Excel-based hydrologic and water quality model for predicting bacteria concentrations in lakes and rivers (download the zipped .xls file here).

The model was created in Microsoft Excel, which is a decent platform for this type of software. It’s ubiquitous: almost everyone in industry or government has a copy. Users know the interface: they already know what the menus and buttons do, and don’t have to learn a whole new set of conventions. It overs certain advantages to the programmer as well. You can use Excel’s built-in capabilities rather than creating routines for data entry, financial analysis, charting, etc.

Excel is not perfect for these applications. Recently, I’ve become more and more convinced that the best way to deliver this kind of software is via the web. Spreadsheets are hard to share and can usually only be used by one person at a time. It’s hard to make updates and push new versions out to users. It’s also hard to collect information about who is using your software and how they are using it.Lastly, Excel is not free, and not everyone has it, especially in poor countries. The web can overcome many of these obstacles, which is one reason we’re moving increasingly in that direction, for example with the forthcoming Household Water-Energy Calculator or the prototype Community Choices Water and Sanitation Decision Support System.

Still, I think that Excel will continue to be used for these kinds of applications for many years to come. It will continue to be of use for prototyping and what some developers call rapid application development. Here are some links and resources I’ve collected for creating Excel-based decision support systems:

• Professional Excel Development: The Definitive Guide to Developing Applications Using Microsoft Excel and VBA. I have this book and it is quite good for the arcana of how to do just about everything with Excel.
• A Master’s thesis by a Masters student at the University of Florida in 2004 titled, Principles of Designing and Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems.
• A book called Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems. No idea if it’s any good, but the companion website has a bunch of powerpoint presentations on the topic that look interesting.

Chevron looms large over the city of Richmond, both literally and figuratively. Hundreds of acres of the city’s hilltops and waterfront are occupied by the Bay Area’s largest refinery. You might think that being home to the refinery, the Bay Area’s worst polluter, would have an upside in terms of jobs and tax revenues. But you’d be dead wrong. For years, Chevron has resisted every effort by the city to collect more tax revenues from the world’s second-most profitable corporation. This isn’t really news. Last month, Forbes reported that the 25 biggest companies pay less in taxes than most citizens.

Chevron's Richmond Refiner

This afternoon, I got a phone call from a pollster (first ever on my mobile) saying that he was polling Richmond voters, and that the information “would be used for research.” When I asked who was paying for the survey, he conceded, “I believe it’s Chevron.” I agreed to continue, because I thought it might be a chance to let the company brass know where I stand: i.e. that they should stop trying to weasel out of justly compensating the city, re-focus their efforts on pollution control, and abandon the folly of the plant expansion to process dirty tar sands from Canada.

As the poll got started, I was asked how favorably I viewed various entities, including some of our local utilities: PG&E, EBMUD, Chevron, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, Richmond City Council, etc. Then he caller asked about some ballot measures having to do with utility taxes: “Would I support a measure to cap natural gas taxes on the largest customers at $20 million, and provide all sorts of breaks on seniors and low-income families, etc.” Hmm… lower taxes on little old ladies, who could argue with that? I almost forgot about the large customer thing. How many “large customers” are there in the city. One. And it turns out they’ve been under-paying for years.

When the caller said, “Let me read you some more information about the ballot measure, and then ask your opinion,” I realized that this was a push poll, and they were trying to manipulate and misinform me.

This is nothing new. If you read back on the history of Richmond’s history of trying to collect more taxes from Chevron, you’ll find a history of deliberate obfuscation. According to this wikipedia article, Chevron responded to a 2006  ballot initiative to raise taxes on the refinery with “a massive flyer campaign, suggesting it would lead to evictions of seniors and closing of small businesses.” Since moving to Richmond, I have gotten a handful of glossy, colorful brochures in the mail explaining how committed Chevron is to the community. How much do they really contribute? According to the research brief, “Richmond’s Tax Revenue from Chevron” written by my colleague Eli Moore at the Pacific Institute:

Like many large corporations, Chevron contributes to the community not only through taxes and fees, but also through charitable donations. Chevron reported giving $1.25 million in charitable donations to service providers in Richmond and Contra Costa County during 20062 and $1.02 million in 2007.3 During this two-year period when the company’s charitable donations averaged $1.1 million, it took action to reduce its annual contributions to city revenue by an estimated $9.4 million.4 This shows Chevron’s charitable donations are minimal when compared with how much tax, and ultimately public revenue, Chevron has withdrawn and continues to work to evade.

My message to Chevron: these tactics are sneaky, disingenuous, and unethical. The issue of taxes to a large multi-national corporation are totally unrelated to taxes on residents. Stop trying to muddy the waters and confuse voters. Instead of spending money to manipulate and misinform the public, step up and do what’s right.

As a prologue to this incident, I called the mayor’s office to ask if they were aware of the poll and if Mayor McLaughlin had plans to issue a statement, and I was told that they had already received a number of complaints about the polls, but that it wasn’t clear what response there would be, if any.

I also called the refinery, and the operator said, “Oh, you mean the poll from the city?” before transferring me to public affairs’ voice mail. Is Chevron deliberately trying to trick people into believing that the poll is being conducted by the city?

This is why I love my alma mater. From Cornell’s PR wing:

The size of food portions and plates in more than four dozen depictions of the Last Supper — painted over the past 1,000 years — have gradually gotten bigger and bigger, according to a Cornell study published in The International Journal of Obesity (April, online March 23), a peer-reviewed publication.

The study found that the size of the entrées in paintings of the Last Supper, which according to the New Testament occurred during a Passover evening, has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent, over the past millennium.

The author, Brian Wansink, is the author of the recent book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, which gets very high marks by reviewers at Amazon. Not to be confused with David Kessler’s The End of Overeating, which is the one with the yummy-looking carrot cake on the cover.