And the Lord did grin. And the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and carp, and anchovies, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats…
When Uri Berliner filed his “the problem with NPR is LIBERAL BIAS” blog in the Bari Press, it was pretty clear he was going to follow the “I will quit because you won’t fire me” path blazed by the editor. Conveniently, he makes clear that he’s full of shit very quickly:
Like many unfortunate things, the rise of advocacy took off with Donald Trump. As in many newsrooms, his election in 2016 was greeted at NPR with a mixture of disbelief, anger, and despair. (Just to note, I eagerly voted against Trump twice but felt we were obliged to cover him fairly.) But what began as tough, straightforward coverage of a belligerent, truth-impaired president veered toward efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.
Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting. At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.
Schiff, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, became NPR’s guiding hand, its ever-present muse. By my count, NPR hosts interviewed Schiff 25 times about Trump and Russia. During many of those conversations, Schiff alluded to purported evidence of collusion. The Schiff talking points became the drumbeat of NPR news reports.
But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse. Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.
It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.
There’s nothing like media criticism by someone who is eager to announce that he has no idea what he’s talking about. By “Mueller Report” what he clearly means is “Bill Barr’s dishonest partisan summary of the Mueller Report” — and of course he completely ignores the even more extensive evidence of collision between the Trump campaign and Russia. NPR dropping the story proves the precise opposite of what he thinks, leading to this huge swing and miss. As usual, radical centrist complaints about “liberal bias” boil down to complaints that the media won’t uncritically repeat Republican talking points that are treated as conventional wisdom by under-informed people.
To anybody who was still listening to NPR during the 2016 campaign, the idea that it was dominated by “liberal bias” is absolutely laughable. Above all else, as Alicia Montgomery explains in a vastly better piece that will get a fraction of the attention, NPR has long been dominated by the those of BothSidesism, which in practice means bending over backward to placate conservative listeners:
It did take a kind of courage for Uri to publicly criticize the organization. But it also took a lot of the wrong type of nerve. His argument is a demonstration of contemporary journalism at its worst, in which inconvenient facts and obvious questions were ignored, and the facts that could be shaped to serve the preferred argument were inflated in importance.
Take a step into the way-back machine to 2011, Uri’s so-called golden age. That’s the year when senior members of the development team fell for a scam set up by professional provocateur James O’Keefe. The aftermath took them out and toppled then–CEO and President Vivian Schiller. It came months after the ill-timed, clumsy firing of Juan Williams, which led to senior vice president of news Ellen Weiss resigning under pressure.
Uri also leapfrogs over a long list of contemporary fuckups and questionable calls that could explain the growing public distrust that concerns him. There were questions about NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg’s personal relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg compromising her reporting; the departure of news chief Mike Oreskes, and other prominent men in the newsroom‚ after a wave of sexual harassment charges; the exposure of systematic exploitation of NPR’s temporary workforce. And those are just the public problems.
Behind the scenes and stretching back into the “golden age,” there were major strategic errors that seriously damaged the network’s prospects. The founding producer of The Daily at the New York Times was Theo Balcomb, a senior producer at All Things Considered who couldn’t get enough support to launch a morning news podcast inside NPR. There was the “Flat is the new growth” mantra that reigned for a few years after the network decided that a multimedia future meant shrugging off softness in listener numbers for core shows. Then there was the time in the late aughts when leadership decided that podcasting wasn’t going to amount to much, and so pumped the brakes on early efforts. Though the failure of imagination started earlier; the first big blunder I saw was in the late 1990s, when the network failed to lock in a deal with a little show called This American Life.
Uri’s account of the deliberate effort to undermine Trump up to and after his election is also bewilderingly incomplete, inaccurate, and skewed. For most of 2016, many NPR journalists warned newsroom leadership that we weren’t taking Trump and the possibility of his winning seriously enough. But top editors dismissed the chance of a Trump win repeatedly, declaring that Americans would be revolted by this or that outrageous thing he’d said or done. I remember one editorial meeting where a white newsroom leader said that Trump’s strong poll numbers wouldn’t survive his being exposed as a racist. When a journalist of color asked whether his numbers could be rising because of his racism, the comment was met with silence. In another meeting, I and a couple of other editorial leaders were encouraged to make sure that any coverage of a Trump lie was matched with a story about a lie from Hillary Clinton. Another colleague asked what to do if one candidate just lied more than the other. Another silent response.
Berliner’s willful cluelessness involves ignoring both the many fake or overblown Clinton scandals that dominated 2016 coverage while also claiming that a real scandal involving Trump is fake. It’s a good application for the Bari gravy train, although how much is left in the boat at this late date is questionable — there are so many of these people who want the most they can possibly get for the least they can possibly do.
If you're trying to climb aboard Bari's big white grievance train, it's worth noting that the train is EXTREMELY full at this juncture and there may not be a lot of money in it for latecomers
> If you're trying to climb aboard Bari's big white grievance train, it's worth noting that the train is EXTREMELY full at this juncture and there may not be a lot of money in it for latecomers
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued an order against BloomTech and its CEO, Austen Allred, for deceiving students about the cost of loans and making false claims about graduates’ hiring rates. The CFPB found that BloomTech and Allred falsely told students the school’s “income share” agreement contracts were not loans, when in fact the agreements were loans carrying an average finance charge of around $4,000. BloomTech and Allred lured prospective enrollees with inflated promises of job-placement rates as high as 86 percent, when the company’s internal metrics showed placement rates closer to 50 percent and in some cases as low as 30 percent. The order permanently bans BloomTech from all consumer-lending activities and bans Allred from any student-lending activities for ten years. The CFPB is also ordering BloomTech and Allred to cease collecting payments on income share loans for graduates who did not have a qualifying job, eliminate finance changes for certain agreements, and allow students the option to withdraw without penalty. BloomTech and Allred must also pay over $164,000 in civil penalties, which will be deposited in the CFPB’s victims relief fund.
“BloomTech and its CEO sought to drive students toward income share loans that were marketed as risk-free, but in fact carried significant finance charges and many of the same risks as other credit products,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “Today’s action underscores our increased focus on investigating individual executives and, when appropriate, charging them with breaking the law.”
BloomTech is a for-profit vocational school that is headquartered in San Francisco and owned primarily by Allred and various Silicon Valley venture-capital funds. Allred founded the company as the Lambda School in 2017, and rebranded it as BloomTech or the Bloom Institute of Technology in 2022.
BloomTech operates short-term, typically six-to-nine-month training programs in areas such as web development, data science, and backend engineering. Since 2017, BloomTech originated at least 11,000 income share loans, with most of BloomTech students funding their tuition with these loans. Under almost all these loans, students who earn more than $50,000 in a related field are required to pay BloomTech 17 percent of their pre-tax income each month until they make 24 payments or hit a “cap” of $30,000 in total payments.
The CFPB found that BloomTech students were lured with false promises and deceptive marketing. BloomTech and Allred:
Hid the cost and true nature of students’ debt: BloomTech falsely claimed its “income share” agreements were not loans, did not create debt, did not carry a finance charge, and were “risk free.” In fact, the agreements are loans with an average finance charge of $4,000. The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. BloomTech further hid the cost and nature of the “income share” loans by not disclosing key terms like the finance charge and annual percentage rate, as required by law.
Tricked prospective students with inflated job-placement rates: BloomTech advertised on its website that 71 to 86 percent of students were placed in jobs within six months of graduation, when its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed placement rates closer to 50 percent. Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.
Misrepresented their financial interests by selling loans to investors: BloomTech’s marketing represented that its own interests were aligned with students, through claims such as “We don’t get paid until you do,” and “Because we invest in you, instead of the other way around, we only make money when you do.” In fact, the company was selling many “income share” loans to investors and thus often got paid long before a student finished the program and started earning a salary.
Engaged in illegal contract practices: BloomTech violated a federal consumer protection known as the Holder Rule, by failing to include a required provision making any owner of the loan subject to the legal claims and defenses that students could assert against BloomTech. Students were therefore deprived of rights they should have had when their “income share” loan was sold to an investor.
Enforcement Action
Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA), the CFPB has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer financial laws, including engaging in unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices. The CFPB found that BloomTech and Allred used deceptive statements and took unreasonable advantage of consumers’ reasonable reliance on BloomTech to act in their interests.
Under the CFPB’s order, BloomTech and Allred must:
Cease collecting payments on certain graduates: BloomTech must not collect any additional payments on “income share” loans for graduates who did not have a qualifying job in the past year.
Amends “income share” loan contracts: The order reforms “income share” loan terms to eliminate the finance charge for consumers who graduated the program more than 18 months ago and obtained a qualifying job making $70,000 or less.
Allow students to withdraw without penalty: Current students will have the option to withdraw from the program and cancel their “income share” loans or continue in the program with a third-party loan.
Pay over $164,000 in penalties: BloomTech will pay over $64,000 and Allred will pay $100,000 in penalties to the CFPB’s victims relief fund.
Consumers can also submit complaints about financial products or services by visiting the CFPB’s website or by calling (855) 411-CFPB (2372).
Employees of companies who they believe their company has violated federal consumer financial laws are encouraged to send information about what they know to whistleblower@cfpb.gov.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a 21st century agency that implements and enforces Federal consumer financial law and ensures that markets for consumer financial products are fair, transparent, and competitive. For more information, visitwww.consumerfinance.gov.
> Allred tweeted that the school achieved a 100 percent job-placement rate in one of its cohorts, and later acknowledged in a private message that the sample size was just one student.
After filing a ticket with Tesla to get the truck rebooted, the Cybertrucker went to bed and woke up the next morning to a mostly functional truck. A call with Tesla confirmed that the truck had needed a complete reboot which took over five hours of sitting to complete. From the moment he’d initiated the reboot method of holding down two steering wheel buttons, the truck was apparently working on a reboot until some time in the middle of the night.
Interestingly the user doesn’t mention whether Tesla was able to offer any insight as to why the truck decided to stop working, if it was caused by the car wash or something else entirely. The Cybertruck’s owners manual does caution against ever washing the truck in direct sunlight, and there is a section expressly mentioning that the truck has to be switched into “Car Wash Mode” before washing to avoid damage to parts of the vehicle.
If you’re out there driving a Tesla Cybertruck, maybe don’t wash it for a while. You never know when you’ll be left stranded waiting for the truck to sort itself out in five hours or so.
“The Cybertruck’s owners manual does caution against ever washing the truck in direct sunlight, and there is a section expressly mentioning that the truck has to be switched into “Car Wash Mode” before washing to avoid damage to parts of the vehicle.”
Log in
