Tag Archives: lists

Why Ben Carson’s HUD Confirmation Hearing Should Probe His Tie to a Felonious Dentist

by WilbertMoulds8 Posted on December 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump’s selection of Ben Carson as the new secretary of housing and urban development is puzzling. After all, Carson was a world-renowned brain surgeon who has never held a government job before. Recently, a top adviser to Carson noted that the retired doctor was not interested in joining the Trump administration because “he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.” Yet Carson two weeks ago did claim he had sufficient experience for the HUD job, saying, “I know that I grew up in the inner city and have spent a lot of time there, and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area.” But his campaign website’s issues page made no mention of housing policy. And the extent of his public pronouncements on housing seems restricted to an odd statement in which he compared attempts to desegregate public housing to “failed socialist experiments.”

Yet Carson does have experience with real estate and home building, thanks to his association with an investor who once pleaded guilty to committing fraud.

Much of Carson’s personal wealth, estimated to be at least $8 million, is tied up in a handful of real estate deals. These deals were engineered with the assistance of a close friend named Alfonso Costa. Costa was once a successful Pittsburgh dentist, but he went into the real estate game full time after pleading guilty to a conspiracy to commit health insurance fraud. Now Costa runs a successful commercial and high-end luxury real estate empire with properties in Pennsylvania, Florida, New York, Italy, and elsewhere. Costa also heads the Pittsburgh office of Carson’s charity, and he appears to have managed Carson’s real estate investments.

An investigation by Mother Jones last fall showed that Carson’s investments included ownership of a commercial office building in suburban Pittsburgh that netted Carson and his wife between $200,000 and $2 million in 2015. The holding companies used to buy this building were registered at Costa’s home, and Costa managed the buildings on behalf of Carson.

But that’s not Carson’s only apparent involvement with Costa. On his most recent personal financial disclosure forms, Carson listed owning a plot of land in Palm Beach County, Florida, which seems to be a rather grand horse farm:

But according to property records, the estate was actually owned by Costa’s real estate development company. For more than a year, it was listed for sale at $10 million, but records show it has never been sold. Sotheby’s currently lists the farm, which includes a riding ring, 22-stalls, brick floors, tack rooms, and a small apartment for a caretaker, for rent at $330,000 a month. Carson’s campaign refused to confirm his role in the investment.

In response to questions from Mother Jones about Costa, Carson a year ago said:

Al Costa is my best friend. Al Costa is my very best friend. I know his heart. I am proud to call him my friend. I have always and will continue to stand by him. That is what real friends do!

Carson’s relationship with Costa dates back to before Costa’s 2007 arrest and indictment on the health care fraud charge. In a 2013 book, Carson wrote that doctors who commit health care fraud should get “the Saudi Arabian Solution,” although he allowed he “would not advocate chopping off people’s limbs.” But years earlier Carson had appeared in court as a character witness for Costa and had asked the judge to impose a lenient sentence on his friend. At that time, he wrote in a letter to the court, “Next to my wife of 32 years, there is no one on this planet I trust more than Al Costa.”

Carson and Costa have vacationed together, and Carson has spent time at a luxury villa owned by Costa on the Amalfi coast of Italy.

In years past, HUD has been an agency prone to cronyism and corruption. So it might be worthwhile for senators involved in Carson’s confirmation to vet Carson closely and to examine his relationship with a convicted felon.

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Why Ben Carson’s HUD Confirmation Hearing Should Probe His Tie to a Felonious Dentist

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Best Ways to Stop Junk Mail and Control Catalog Clutter

by Chun85Q30997584 Posted on December 28, 2015

You’d think that with all the online shopping everyone does, we’d be receiving far fewer catalogs and a lot less junk mail. But somehow, all those envelopes, circulars, and catalogs still seem to show up, unrequested and very much a nuisance.

Here are Care2′s best suggestions for putting an end to any unwanted mail, and a couple of my own.

1) Use the enclosed postage-paid envelopes or reply cards to send back a “cease and desist” request.– This is really easy. All you have to do is scrawl a “Please take me off your mailing list ASAP!” message across the card or the mail piece and put it right back in the mail.

2) Contact the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) -Register for the DMA’s Mail Preference Service, then opt out of national mailing lists. Doing so puts your name and address on a “do not mail” file. All DMA members are required to run their list of prospective customers against this file and remove individuals who have registered from their mailings. This list is updated monthly and distributed four times a year. It should take about three months after your name is entered on the quarterly file to see a decrease in the amount of mail you receive.

3) Check before you submit product registration cards. – Product registration cards don’t necessarily provide any actual benefits to you. A warranty gives you service and performance protection. But a product registration card might actually go to companies that want to market similar products back to you. Before you complete a product registration card, see where it will go. According to this Care2 article, many of these actually go to a post office box in Denver, CO, where Equifax Direct Marketing Solutions picks them up, compiles consumer information from the forms, and then sells the information to other companies for marketing purposes. If you must register your product, complete only the relevant information on the card, such as your name, address and product serial number. Leave blank requests for information about hobbies, travel habits, and other consumer activites.

4) Beware of sweepstakes and prizes. – When you sign up for a free sweepstakes or prize, you probably won’t win. And then, you’ll lose again when you start receiving junk mail from whatever companies your contact information was sold to. Feeling risky? Buy a lottery ticket where you don’t have to provide your mailing info. If you want to stop getting promos from Publishers Clearinghouse, starthere.

5) Stop receiving pre-approved credit offers. – I must receive four or five pieces of mail every week that are trying to get me to open a new credit card. I have just called (888) 5OPTOUT (888-567-8688), the Consumer Credit Reporting Industry Opt-in/Opt-out number to take my information off their lists. NOTE: You will need to provide your social security number and date of birth to do this.

6) Cancel catalogs. – There are two ways to do this. One is to call the toll-free customer service number on the catalog and ask the operator to remove your name from their lists. The second is to register for free with a group called Catalog choice. Once you opt out of the catalogs you don’t want to receive, Catalog Choice will work to get your opt-outs processed. The non-profit group works with over 8,000 companies and the largest data brokers to make this process as efficient as possible. (You can also try returning the catalogs to whoever sent them, but the post office might notactually take them back.)

7) Nix Val-Pak – Almost every week, a small blue packet of coupons shows up in my mail box. Until now, I had no idea how to stop them. I was happy to learn from Ronnie Citron-Fink in this Care2 article that I can remove my name from their list here.(For online coupon sites and e-newsletters, check out Groupon, Retail Me Not, Living Social, or The Krazy Coupon Lady.)

8) Get rid of Red Plum – This is a sales flyer that shows up at least once a week unrequested. It offers everything from discounted pizza to deals on window washing – none of which I’ve ever used. To get rid of Red Plum, go here.

9) Don’t sign up for mailing lists when you shop – Sales staff will ask if you want to receive “special promotions,” but that could mean sales fliers and catalogs from unrelated companies. Just know that any time you sign up for a store’s promotions and coupons, you’ll probably receive many from other stores as well.

RELATED

12 Tips to End Clutter
The Clutter and Stress Connection

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Best Ways to Stop Junk Mail and Control Catalog Clutter

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National Briefing | Washington: 20 Types of Coral Listed as Threatened

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2014

The federal government is protecting 20 types of colorful coral by putting them on the list of threatened species, partly because of climate change. Taken from –  National Briefing | Washington: 20 Types of Coral Listed as Threatened ; ;Related ArticlesOceans Agency Lists 20 Coral Species as ThreatenedA Closer Look at Turbulent Oceans and Greenhouse HeatingWinged Warning: Heavy Metal Song Distortion ;

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National Briefing | Washington: 20 Types of Coral Listed as Threatened

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Why the Internet Loves Lists

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on February 28, 2013

This person love lists so much she had one tattooed on her. Image: Rob and Stephanie Levy

If you want to make something that does well on the internet, you’ll be doing yourself a favor to put it in list form. The internet cannot get enough lists. But why do we love lists so much? Science has some answers, and The Guardian brings them to you, in list form here.

Here are some of the reasons:

Lists take advantage of a limited attention span

There is an increasingly common view that internet use shortens a person’s attention span. While a lot of this is Greenfield-esque paranoia about new technology, evidence suggests our visual attention is attracted to novelty, and on the internet novelty is always only a click away. There is data to suggest that this is how internet use works, and much of the web is dedicated to exploiting this….

You probably won’t remember all the things on a typical list

A lot of lists are lists of 10, or some multiple thereof, given that the majority of humans have grown up using the decimal system. However, short-term memory, or “working memory” as it’s known to psychologists, has an average capacity of 7 (+/-2). This means you can hold an average of 7 “things” in your short term memory…

Popular things can be listed

Lists are very popular, so logically lists about popular things would be more popular again. Bacon, sexy ladies, funny cats and tweets, all of these regularly end up on lists. You may say this point isn’t scientific in any way, but I include it as evidence for the above point. Which means it is scientific in a very tenuous way.

The Guardian has all ten reasons in their story. But other writers have tackled this question, too. NPR’s Linton Weeks took it on in 2009, and, yes, he listed his answers in a ten point list too. Here are some of them:

Lists bring order to chaos. “People are attracted to lists because we live in an era of overstimulation, especially in terms of information,” says David Wallechinsky, a co-author of the fabulous Book of Lists, first published in 1977 and followed by subsequent editions. “And lists help us in organizing what is otherwise overwhelming.”

Lists can be meaningful. The Steven Spielberg classic Schindler’s List is based on the true story of a German businessman who used a list of names to save more than 1,000 Jews from the concentration camps. It is ranked eighth on the American Film Institute’s 2007 list of 100 top American films of the past 100 years.

Lists relieve stress and focus the mind. “Lists,” sociologist Scott Schaffer told The Oregonian newspaper, “really get to the heart of what it is we need to do to get through another day on this planet.”

The Awl has a list of 127 reasons that we love lists including the following quote:

“To my mind, the difference would be where lists support your quality of life or where they begin to impede your quality of life—where having your list perfected gets in the way of your functioning, or having too many lists. It’s a matter of how you use them. They can give you control in a certain way, but you don’t want them to be the only thing you do to gain control.”

—Dr. Cynthia Green, clinical psychologist and brain health/memory specialist, interview with the author

These lists of why we love lists go on and on. Clearly, we do love them—but too many ways to list all off them.

More from Smithsonian.com:

What Is on Your Life List?
The List: Five Volcanoes to Watch

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Why the Internet Loves Lists

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