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Lottery Scams in Mass. and Texas: How to Beat the System, Win Millions, and (Maybe) Get Away with It

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2024 //
4

Every once in a while, you read a story about a person winning the lottery twice or three times, and it seems amazing that anyone could be so lucky. But when the same person wins the lottery thousands of times, something is wrong. The two biggest lottery scams in recent years happened in Massachusetts and Texas. The trick was different in each case but very effective. The perpetrators of the winning plan were jailed in Massachusetts, but not in Texas, where almost anything is legal except abortion.

In Massachusetts, the story appeared in the Boston Globe magazine about a family—a father and two sons—who collected $20 million from the lottery in less than a decade, with more than 14,000 winning tickets.

Dan O’Neil, the director of compliance and security for the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, doesn’t typically get alerted when someone shows up to claim a $1,000 prize from a scratch-off ticket. Such transactions are usually quiet, pleasant, unremarkable. The lucky winner produces the ticket and the agent, sitting at a counter behind a pane of glass in Dorchester, doles out the money.

The call came from a customer service agent in the lobby at lottery headquarters and the message was short. The Jaafars are here again, the agent said. Yousef Jaafar, this time….

An information technology expert at the lottery had run the math to show just how unlikely it was. An instant-win game called “$10,000,000 Big Money” had a 1 in 1,106.72 chance of producing a jackpot of $1,000 or more, he reported. Yet somehow, over a recent span of six months, the Jaafars had managed to claim nearly $2 million in winnings, the bulk of it from instant tickets like “$10,000,000 Big Money.” To win at that rate, the Jaafars would’ve had to purchase 22,859 such tickets every day, 952 tickets every hour, 16 tickets every minute. “Every minute of every day,” the official said. “Twenty-four hours a day.”

In lottery terminology, there was a name for this. The Jaafars were “high-frequency winners.” They were also breaking the law and the rules of the lottery itself by working with dozens of convenience store operators in an underground network where everyone was trying to avoid paying taxes on lottery prizes. In this network, everyone got cash under the table while the Jaafars got the winning tickets to claim as their own. A lot of them. In 2019 alone, the Jaafars claimed more than $3.2 million in winnings. Yousef was the sixth-highest ticket casher in the entire state that year, Mohamed was third, and their father topped the list…

The Jaafars’ scheme was built on a premise that’s been known to gamblers for decades: Some people prefer not to publicly claim their winnings, particularly if they want to hide money from the Internal Revenue Service.

At American racetracks since at least the 1960s, these reluctant winners have turned to “ten percenters” for help. In the shadows beneath the grandstands, ten percenters would pay cash for someone’s winning ticket, minus a 10 percent cut off the top and often even more — 15 or 25 percent. The real winner would walk away with cash in hand, off the books, tax-free, while the ten percenter would claim the full prize at the racetrack window and often avoid taxes by claiming large gambling losses at the end of the year or by submitting fake identification at the track.

It usually amounted to tax evasion and could have devastating ramifications: the government sometimes lost as much as $1 million a week in tax revenue at a single track. It was only a matter of time before a similar practice of ten percenting infected state-run lotteries. For any jackpot over $600, winners have to produce a valid ID and Social Security number, and pay taxes. Those who owe back taxes or child support have one more obstacle to clear: Massachusetts authorities will take that money before paying out any winnings.

In this world, someone holding a scratch-off ticket worth $1,000 can sell their prize to a convenience store operator for $750 or $850. The winner leaves with cash under the table. The convenience store clerk picks up the phone and calls a runner. This person shows up and buys the ticket for the discount price, minus a cut for the clerk — maybe $50. The runner then pretends to be the real winner and claims the ticket at a lottery office for its full value, scoring a profit of $100 or $200.

Quite a racket. But they didn’t get away with it. The father was sentenced to five years in prison, the older son got 50 months, and the younger son got a plea deal.

In Texas, a slick operation based in New Jersey managed to score a $95 million jackpot by buying every numerical combination.

By April 22, seven months had passed without a winner of the jackpot, and the top prize had grown to $95 million.

That night’s draw — 3, 5, 18, 29, 30, 52 — matched a single ticket purchased in a small store in Colleyville, outside of Fort Worth. 

Winners have six months to claim their prize, either in payments over 30 years or a lump-sum, typically worth about half. On June 27, the state of Texas issued a check for $57.8 million to a New Jersey-based limited partnership apparently formed to collect the jackpot, called Rook TX.

The Texas Lottery Commission, whose proceeds mainly fund public education, celebrated the big win — “generating much needed revenue for Texas Schools,” then-Executive Director Gary Grief wrote. “What the Texas lottery is all about.”

But a statistical analysis of the April 22 Lotto Texas drawing strongly suggests that night’s draw wasn’t what a lottery is about at all. Rather, the numbers indicate Rook TX beat the system.

Unbeknownst to the millions of players who’d invested their hopes and dreams into the game and its life-changing jackpot, the winner had already been decided.

Rook TX appears to have engineered a nearly risk-free — and completely legal — multimillion-dollar payday.

And the state of Texas helped.

Warning: Numbers ahead

While lottery players have occasionally exploited a hidden mathematical advantage to guarantee a lottery profit, there is one sure way to win a jackpot. Stefan Mandel did it 14 times, and it had little to do with luck. He simply bought up every numeric combination.

Yet Mandel, a Romanian economist and mathematician, had to master both probability and logistics. The jackpots needed to be both big enough to cover his costs, as well as favor his chances of being the only winner; splitting a payout could be ruinous. Because buying so many lottery tickets required going to dozens, if not hundreds of separate stores, he required a team of accomplices. 

The recent introduction in Texas of digital lottery apps has lowered the logistical obstacles. The Lotto Texas drawing of April 22, meanwhile, presented a perfect-storm of high reward and low risk that practically guaranteed that an opportunistic player with a sizable bankroll could walk away with tens of millions of dollars.

The evidence is in the numbers.

The first thing someone wanting to buy a lottery drawing would need to know: How many tickets would you need to buy to cover every numeric combination in a game like Lotto Texas? The answer, said Tim Chartier, a Davidson College math professor who studies sports and lottery analytics: 25.8 million.

Lotto Texas draws typically generate 1 million to 2 million ticket sales. Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show that in the days leading up to the Saturday night draw, just over 28 million Lotto Texas tickets were purchased.

That doesn’t prove Rook TX accumulated the nearly 26 million tickets necessary to guarantee a win. But an examination of the second prizes awarded indicates it almost certainly did.

In addition to the jackpot for matching all six numbers, Lotto Texas pays lesser prizes to players who guess five-of-six, four-of-six and three-of-six of the draw. The total possible combinations for each, according to Nicholas Kapoor, a Fairfield University statistics professor who studies lottery probability: 288 five-of-six combos, 16,920 four-of-six combos and 345,920 three-of-six winners.

Lower-value prizes can be cashed in at any retailer that sells tickets, and the state doesn’t track them. But Texas requires any prize over $599 to be redeemed at an official Texas Lottery Commission center, which records the winners. The April 22 drawing paid $2,015 to its five-of-six winners.

Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show Rook TX cashed in 289 winning tickets in the five-of-six game — the same number as all possible combinations plus one for the grand prize ticket. The odds a single entity managed to win the grand prize and every possible five-of-six prize — but somehow didn’t buy up every combination — are vanishingly small, said Chartier…

There is compelling evidence that Lotto Texas’ ballooning jackpot was being probed by sophisticated players in the weeks leading up to Rook TX’s big win.

With the jackpot climbing to $60 million, the April 1, 2023, draw saw a sudden sales spike. Three million tickets were purchased, more than double the previous game.

No one matched all six numbers, but the draw produced a large number of five-of-six winners. More unusual: 17 of the 40 winning five-of-six tickets were held by the same person — a rate that is extremely unlikely to have occurred randomly.

Records show the claimant, Thomas Ashcroft, purchased all his winners through two stores — the Colleyville outlet and Luck Zone, an app-affiliated store in Round Rock. Although Ashcroft gave a Connecticut address, the Chronicle could not locate anyone with that name in the region.

Another burst of sales preceded the April 15 drawing — 7.4 million tickets. While no one claimed the jackpot, the number of five-of-six winners was again high. This time, more than three-quarters of the 71 winners were claimed by a single entity — Rook TX. State records show it purchased all 55 winning tickets from the same two stores. 

For one entity to randomly win that many of the five-of-six prizes, Chartier calculated a person would have to play a lottery game every day for 327 years. 

The Texas Lottery Commission said there was nothing suspicious about the games, which it said were attracting more players because of the big prize and relatively good odds of winning: “This is not indicative of unusual activity in the lottery industry, but rather a strategic decision made by players or groups that are in pursuit of high jackpots.” 

A week later Rook TX won the $95 million jackpot and 289 five-of-six winners. The April 15 and 22 draws are the only times its name appears in the state’s registry of lottery winners.

The Texas Lottery Commission allows winners of $1 million and more to remain personally anonymous, so identifying Rook TX’s members is practically impossible. Delaware corporation records show it was formed two weeks before claiming the top prize. The limited partnership’s registered agent, Glenn Gelband, a lawyer in Scotch Plains, N.J., did not respond to a request for comment.

Texas lottery officials said there was nothing illegal about buying up all the numbers.

Massachusetts put the guys who played the system into prison. Texas can’t find them and apparently doesn’t care. The only way to beat the guys who beat the system is to hope that two or three other combines copy their tactics; they would all lose money by splitting the prize.

Categories Cheating, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, Massachusetts, Texas

Pierre Tristam: The Great Florida Voucher Swindle! Welfare for the Rich!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2024 //
7

Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive in Flagler County, Florida. In this brilliant article, he describes vouchers as welfare for the rich, a new kind of state socialism. He points out that vouchers are destroying public schools.

I want to acknowledge that I cribbed the article from the blog of the Network for Public Education, which you should subscribe to. It’s free, and it’s curated by the great Peter Greene. If you have a passion for public schools, sign up.

Tristam writes:

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Paul Renner, our esteemed Speaker of the House and Flagler’s chief pork slabber, were to champion a bill entitling every citizen to take out $2,000 from their local policing budgets so they can have their own private security and call it “Police Choice.” After all, don’t we all pay taxes? Shouldn’t we have a choice how that money is spent? Don’t we free Floridians know best? Sheriff Rick Staly would be the first to tell Renner he’s out of his mind. 

It would be absurd, I think we can all agree, if Renner, claiming that taxpayers shouldn’t have their park choices limited to Holland and Ralph Carter Park, were to champion a bill entitling every household to take out $1,000 from the parks and rec budget so they could help subsidize their Disney and Universal experiences and call it “Park Choice.” Even Renner’s chamber of commerce courtesans would tell him he’s out of his mind. 

But not too many people told Renner he was out of his mind when he did exactly that to public schools: he championed a bill entitling every child in Florida to $8,000 a year to spend on private education, at the public school system’s expense, and called it “school choice.” The few who did were themselves told they’re out of their mind. 

“School choice” is an orchestrated demolition of public schools and the social contract. The focus-group euphemism masks the thieving of tax dollars to subsidize private schools, transforming what was once an aspiration of  fringe Christian and anti-government militants into state doctrine. “I hope to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have public schools,” the televangelist and founder of the Moral Majority Jerry Falwell said in a 1979 sermon. “The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.” Falwell lived long enough to see Jeb Bush’s Florida reopen that door. Renner swung the wrecking ball. 

Flagler County schools are losing close to $11 million this year to “choice,” siphoned out so 1,250 students can get their $8,000 either for private school or home school. True, not every one of these students was attending Flagler schools before, so it’s not a net loss of 1,250 students. But very few of these students were either qualifying or getting taxpayer subsidies before. Exactly 136 did in Flagler just four years ago, costing the district less than $1 million. Now anyone qualifies, including millionaire families, and every dollar going to them is a dollar diverted from public education. 

That figure of 1,250 students is for the first full year of this “choice” being in effect. Coming years will only accelerate the drain on public schools, because if you have children you’d be out of your mind not to take the $8,000-per-child handout, especially since most of you aren’t paying anywhere near $8,000 in school taxes each year. The rest of us, and even more so businesses and renters, are subsidizing the swindle. 

Advocates of the swindle have come up with a couple of defenses: first, that they’re taxpayers who should choose where their money is spent–the untenable argument that would then support “police choice” and “park choice,” and if you push that logic far enough, “war choice,” as in: you may spend my money on the Ukraine war but not the genocide of Palestinians. But in our social contract how our taxes are spent is not an a-la-carte option, though Boomer narcissists who can’t see past the hedge of their gated community think it should be.

Second, the advocates claim the dollars “follow the child,” as if public money going to private subsidies were new money that doesn’t affect public school budgets. It’s excellent propaganda. But it’s a double-barreled lie–double-barreled, because not only is every student lost to the public schools a loss of $8,000, but every student who was never enrolled in  public school but is now getting the $8,000 compounds that loss, since these are public dollars that would have otherwise been allocated to public schools. 

Incidentally, we don’t say that people receiving food stamps are on “food choice.” We don’t say that people getting Temporary Assistance for Needy Families are on “poverty choice.” When people get free money from the government, we call it welfare. Ditching the ordurous school-choice euphemism and applying the language’s proper definition–school welfare–exposes the state’s fabrications.

Facts do the rest. The welfare kings and queens this time are much richer than those on food stamps. As the Miami Herald reported Sunday, “Last school year, the average income of families who provided income data and received scholarships for a family of four was $86,000.” (To be eligible for food choice this year a family of four can’t have a household income above $62,400.) 

According to Step Up for Students, the state’s arm administering school welfare, 82 percent of handouts went to students attending religious schools–madrassas–like one in Palm Coast that boasts of “raising champions for Christ” and still sports a crusader for a mascot, which is no less offensive to a few hundred million people than if it flew the Confederate or Nazi flags. Our tax dollars are subsidizing that kind of bigotry. 

More perniciously: When Bush started the welfare-to-school wagon he limited it to the disabled and the needy. Minorities benefited disproportionately. It was a form of segregation in reverse, like affirmative action. Renner’s scheme, like so much under Gov. Ron DeSantis, revives pre-Brown v. Board of Education segregation. By eliminating eligibility barriers, wealthier families use the subsidy as a bridge to very expensive public schools whose tuition keeps the riff raff out, even with $8,000 subsidies. A family might’ve afforded a $9,000 school but couldn’t afford a $15,000 school. So clever schools adjust their tuition just so as a barrier to undesirables and to make extra profit, thus cashing in twice over: in dollars and in whitening their own “choice” of who gets in. Et voilà. Jerry Falwell’s jolly jowly ideal realized. 

Finally, to make sure the dagger cuts deeply and fatally, the state makes it mandatory for school districts to advertise school welfare on their websites. Districts like Flagler must make it as easy as possible for parents to apply for the money and get out of the district, while the state provides a detailed list of private schools to choose from, including, of course, every madrassa under the sky. State and districts could not be shouting louder: Public schools suck. Here’s $8,000. $16,000. $24,000. Now leave.

As students continue to be bribed out, public schools will be left with less money, all the responsibilities for higher standards, more challenging students, crumbling buildings and, revoltingly, school board members and superintendents in full Stockholm Syndrome mode. You hear them in board meetings not only talking about school welfare but praising it, pandering to it, the way the condemned suck up to their executioner. 

There are exceptions. Our own Colleen Conklin for years has been sounding the alerts about the swindle, starting with the charter schemes. She thankfully kept a few of those out of the district, back when local school boards had a say. They no longer do. And Conklin is leaving in November. Our remaining board members love the school welfare swindle and are probably trying to figure out how to cash in with their own kids without looking like public school traitors. 

But as Jerry Falwell implied, it’s a matter of time before those school board members are surplus property, like public school buildings, like buses, for that matter like teachers, counselors, paraprofessionals, bus drivers and administrators, all of whom are already treated like disposable obstructions in the way of school welfare and the cult known as “parental rights.”

Categories DeSantis, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Privatization, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: Scams, Corruption and the Election

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2024 //
6

Thom Hartmann encourages readers to beware of political scams right before the elections. The economy is cooling off. Why isn’t the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates? Is it because the chair of the Federal Reserve is a Republican? Did you know about Trump’s increase in wealth during his presidency? I don’t agree that Trump wants to get elected to make money; I think he wants to stay out of jail. But we may both be right.

He writes:

—  Is the Fed Chair “trying to get Donald Trump elected” by keeping rates high? The anti-corruption watchdog group Revolving Door Project is claiming that lifetime Republican and former commercial banker Jerome Powell, now the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is “trying to get Donald Trump elected.” Fully two months ago, Powell noted that “this is no longer an overheated economy” and “the labor market appears to be fully back in balance.” Yesterday’s jobs numbers — lower than expected new jobs (144,000) and a jump in unemployment to 4.3% — suggest the economy is on the verge of tipping into recession, an event that Trump yesterday pointed out and proclaimed is happening because of “Kamalanomics.” The Project’s Executive Director Jeff Hauser was explicit: “That Powell’s Fed still refuses to lower interest rates—after Trump said that rates shouldn’t be lowered before the election—raises questions about the central bank’s independence. Whether the Fed keeps rates high or brings them down, one of two presidential candidates will benefit. While lower rates would provide much-needed economic relief to the American people, Powell has instead chosen to stick it to the people and give an electoral boost to Trump.” Senator Elizabeth Warren yesterday called on the Fed chair to “cancel his summer vacation” and “lower interest rates now.” The warnings signs are flashing bright red — with worldwide declines in stock market indexes — and if Powell and the Fed don’t lower interest rates at least a half point within the next few weeks, it’ll be safe to conclude that Hauser is exactly right in his diagnosis of this situation. 

— Did Egypt give a $10 million bribe to Trump? The Washington Post published a blockbuster report yesterday, detailing how the Egyptian government pulled together $10 million in cash in 2016 right after Donald Trump sought out Egyptian dictator El-Sisi and promised him a presidential visit (which he fulfilled) right after his inauguration. The Department of Justice found out about it in 2019 and the FBI began an investigation, but Attorney General Bill Barr — one of the most publicly corrupt senior government officials in modern history — put the kibosh on the investigation. As a result, nobody knows if or how the money was delivered to Trump, although right around the time it would have been delivered Trump took the unusual step of putting exactly $10 million of his own money into his campaign. Saudis and Russians own large parts of Trump Tower and multiple nations funneled millions to Trump by booking blocks of rooms in his DC hotel and then just leaving them empty. Forbes estimates that Trump’s businesses brought in $2.4 billion during his four years as president; hundreds of millions of that came from foreign governments and from his charging the Secret Service and our US government a small fortune for their stays at Trump properties around the world. His entire presidency, it turns out, was a giant grift; no wonder he wants back into office. 

— Senate Republicans tell us who they are. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan increased child tax credits in a way that lifted an estimated 30 million children out of poverty, cutting the US child poverty rate in half. They expired last year, and legislation to reinstate them passed the House with roughly equal votes from both Democrats and Republicans. Iowa Senate Republican Chuck Grassley famously opposes help to poor families, saying “passing a tax bill that makes the president look good mailing out checks before the election, means he could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.” Senate Republicans got the message and killed the bill on Thursday afternoon, keeping child poverty in America at a higher level than any other developed nation in the world.

Republicans say that the child tax credits are an effort by Democrats to buy votes. Maybe they are but when they were in effect, they cut child poverty rates in half. That’s reason enough for both parties to support them.

Categories Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Fraud, Republicans, Trump

Mary Trump: Keep Talking, Donald!

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2024 //
9

Mary Trump is a niece of Donald Trump, the daughter of his older brother. She knows Trump well. She loathes him.

She wrote:

Here’s some advice I never thought I would give Donald: Talk more.

Personally, I’d prefer he keep hiding and leave our exhausted, terrorized nation alone. But after watching him meltdown on national television this afternoon, I’ve changed my mind. The more America sees this vicious, broken man, the better it will be for Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz. The better it will be for all of us—because his unremitting darkness and unrelenting negative have to be wearing people out.

Donald would never admit this, but the fact that he can’t draw big crowds anymore is making him crazy. That’s an even worse fate than getting knocked off the front page of every newspaper he reads. Having ceded the spotlight to the positive and hopeful campaign of the Harris/Walz team, he’s in desperate need of attention.

He obviously misses campaigning against President Joe Biden. Then the media focused almost exclusively on Biden’s age while Donald’s violent and delusional rhetoric went unscrutinized. But he’s running against Kamala Harris now.

And what a difference 18 days makes. Actually, what a difference five days makes. At his rally in Atlanta last weekend, Donald was a rambling and incomprehensible as he usually is, but he had the kind of bullying energy—focused mainly on extremely popular Republican governor Brian Kemp—that has led a lot of people to believe he’s still cognitively intact. Today, standing alone behind a podium in an echoey ballroom in front of a small gaggle of reporters, he seemed lost and unfocused.

As he meandered from one unrelated topic to the next, he repeated his greatest hits—20 million immigrants released from prisons and insane asylums! World War III!—and reminded us just what a nihilist he is. He flailed and he fumbled, the desperation coming off him in waves.

He regained his footing somewhat after the questioning started. It helps to have a pool of hand-picked corporate-media reporters present who will hold the safety net under you; it’s easy to feel confident when said reports are already in the tank for you. This is his comfort zone—when the game is already rigged in his favor.

Even with the promise of softball questions and lack of follow up, the press conference itself was a train wreck. He bragged that his crowd on January 6th was bigger than the crowd that came to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech; he accidentally admitted he’s open to banning abortion medication and claimed erroneously that abortion isn’t much of an election issue; he pretended to defend Hillary Clinton but then, in a threatening tangent, said “I could have done things to her that would’ve made your head spin.”

He even alluded to his “beautiful sofa” without seeming to realize that sofa is a synonym for couch.

We can’t get complacent. The more Donald slips in the polls, the more the Harris-Walz movement grows, the more dangerous Donald and his followers will become. We need to hang onto the joy and energy Harris and Walz are bringing to this campaign, but we can never get complacent and we must remain vigilant.

At the same time, his cruel, hateful act has gotten old, and he’s gotten old, and we should talk about what a joke Donald is—how weak, how feckless, how pathetic. We can’t write him off—despite Harris’ surge in the polls, the electoral college will keep things close—but we can mock him without mercy.

The more America sees that side of him, the better it will be for all of us. This afternoon it was evident that Donald is fighting against the reality of his new situation—a bitter, vengeful man sliding into irrelevance—if the corporate media and the Republican Party would only let him. That’s why he almost only grants interviews on propaganda networks. That’s why he only does town halls in front of friendly audiences who applaud him in all the right places. But as we saw today, even controlled environments aren’t enough to keep him safe from his lack of discipline and impulse control.

So, keep talking, Donald. Get be among the people—your people—and let them get a good look at you. Let them hear what you have to say. Please.

Categories Elections, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Forbes: It’s Easy to Crack Your Passwords

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2024 //
5

Davey Winder, senior contributor to Forbes, writes about how to keep your passwords safe.

With just a few dollars, a little time, and a smart brute-force guessing algorithm, most passwords can be cracked in much less time than you might imagine. According to a new analysis from the experts at Kaspersky, 59% of 193 million actual passwords were cracked in less than 60 minutes, and 45% were cracked in less than 60 seconds.

The basis of a brute-force attack is where the perpetrator iterates all possible combinations in order to find a match for the password in question. However, Antonov explained, “smart guessing algorithms are trained on a passwords data-set to calculate the frequency of various character combinations and make selections first from the most common combinations and down to the rarest ones.”

Brute Force And Smart-Guessing Combine To Quickly Crack Passwords

Although very popular due to the point-and-fire simplicity of a brute-force attack, it remains suboptimal as far as password-cracking algorithms are concerned. When you consider that the vast majority of passwords in daily use contain similar characteristics involving the combination of dates, names, dictionary words and keyboard sequences, adding these to the guessing-game mix speeds things up considerably.

The Kaspersky study revealed that when it comes to the percentage of passwords crackable in any timeframe using each method, while 10% of the password list analyzed was broken in under a minute by brute force, that increased to 45% when smart-guessing was added to the algorithm. Allowing for between a minute and an hour, the difference was 20% compared to 59%.

The Smart-Guessing Algorithm Advantage Explained

Because humans are creatures of habit, we make for very poor password creators. The truth is that the passwords we choose for ourselves are rarely, if ever, truly random. We rely upon all the things that smart-guessing algorithms are designed to detect: common names and phrases, important dates both personal and historical, and patterns, lots of patterns. To give you an idea of how predictable we are, one YouTube channel took a sample of more than 200,000 people and asked them to choose a ‘random’ number between 1 and 100. Most people gravitated towards the same relatively small set: 7, 37, 42, 69, 73, and 77. Even when trying to be random with character strings, we fail as most people will favor the center of the keyboard for their selection, according to Kaspersky.

“Smart algorithms make short work of most passwords that contain dictionary sequences,” Antonov said, “and they even catch character substitutions.” In other words, using p@ssw0rd instead of password won’t slow the algorithm down that much at all.

How To Strengthen Your Accounts Against Smart-Guessing Algorithm Attack

Kaspersky recommends the following password usage strategy:

Generate strong and truly random passwords using a password manager.

Don’t reuse passwords across sites and services or hacking one basket will enable access to many more eggs.

If you don’t, or won’t, use a password manager, then use mnemonic passphrases rather than dictionary words and numeric combinations.

Don’t save passwords in web browsers.

Use a password manager protected by a strong master password.

Use two-factor authentication for all accounts that support it.

Categories Fraud, Safety, Technology, Computers

ProPublica: How Vouchers Almost Bankrupted Arizona

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2024 //
6

Voters in Arizona voted overwhelmingly against voucher expansion in a state referendum in 2018, but Republican Governor Doug Ducey and the Republican legislature expanded them anyway. The pro-voucher campaign was funded by Charles Koch and Betsy DeVos.

The financial blow to the state has been devastating. As in every other state, most vouchers are used by private and religious school students from affluent families.

ProPublica writes here about the voucher disaster in Arizona:

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies.

In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model.

Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.

Among the funding slashed: $333 million for water infrastructure projects, in a state where water scarcity will shape the future, and tens of millions of dollars for highway expansions and repairs in congested areas of one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolises — Phoenix and its suburbs. Also nixed were improvements to the air conditioning in state prisons, where temperatures can soar above 100 degrees. Arizona’s community colleges, too, are seeing their budgets cut by $54 million.

Still, Arizona-style universal school voucher programs — available to all, including the wealthiest parents — continue to sweep the nation, from Florida to Utah.

In Florida, one lawmaker pointed out last year that Arizona’s program seemed to be having a negative budgetary impact. “This is what Arizona did not anticipate,” said Florida Democratic Rep. Robin Bartleman, during a floor debate. “What is our backup plan to fill that budget hole?”

Her concern was minimized by her Republican colleagues, and Florida’s transformational voucher legislation soon passed.

Advocates for Arizona’s universal voucher initiative had originally said that it wouldn’t cost the public — and might even save taxpayers money. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank that helped craft the state’s 2022 voucher bill, claimed in its promotional materialsat the time that the vouchers would “save taxpayers thousands per student, millions statewide.” Families that received the new cash, the institute said, would be educating their kids “for less than it would cost taxpayers if they were in the public school system.”

But as it turns out, the parents most likely to apply for these vouchers are the ones who were already sending their kids to private school or homeschooling. They use the dollars to subsidize what they were already paying for.

The result is new money coming out of the state budget. After all, the public wasn’t paying for private school kids’ tuition before…

Arizona doesn’t have a comprehensive tally of how many private schoolers and homeschoolers are out there, so it remains an open question how much higher the cost of vouchers could go and therefore how much cash should be kept on hand to fund them. The director of the state’s nonpartisan Joint Legislative Budget Committee told lawmakers that “we’ve never really faced that circumstance before where you’ve got this requirement” — that anyone can get a voucher — “but it isn’t funded.”

Most importantly, said Beth Lewis, executive director of the public-school-advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona, only a small amount of the new spending on private schools and homeschooling is going toward poor children, which means that already-extreme educational inequality in Arizona is being exacerbated. The state is 49th in the country in per-pupil public school funding, and as a result, year after year, district schools in lower-income areas are plagued by some of the nation’s worst staffing ratios and largest class sizes.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars on vouchers to help kids who are already going to private school keep going to private school won’t just sink the budget, Lewis said. It’s funding that’s not going to the public schools, keeping them from becoming what they could and should be.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fraud, Funding, School Choice, Vouchers

Project 2025: A Recipe for Disaster!

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
41

Former President Trump recently discovered that members of his administration had produced a set of plans for his next term. They did this under the guidance of the Heritage Foundation, the Republican Party’s ideological center. If you believed that Trump knew nothing about this 900-page guidebook, I know of a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

Project 2025 is a handbook of extremism. It represents the far-right Republicans’ desire to eliminate many federal programs and, as right winger Grover Norquist one memorably said, “Shrink it so it can be drowned in a bathtub.”

North Carolina public school advocates Patty Williams and David Zonderman are public school graduates and parents. They wrote the following about Project 2025:

In the Spring of 2023, the Heritage Foundation released Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, aka Project 2025. Now, more than a year later, it is finally getting the serious attention that it demands. In its early pages, the Foundation claims to “have gone back to the future—and then some.” We are warned that, “The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.” To fight this supposed incubus sucking the life out of the republic, a growing number of conservative organizations have joined the Heritage Foundation in supporting this project and intend to assemble an army to march on Washington to “deconstruct the Administrative State.”

 

Project 2025 is both breathtaking and scary in its scope. It envisions a far-right rewriting of government missions, policies, and procedures, ranging from the White House, through all Cabinet-level departments, to the Federal Reserve and other independent regulatory agencies.  Tens of thousands of federal employees could be fired or subject to politically-inspired loyalty tests, gutting almost 150 years of civil service reform, and erasing institutional memory, knowledge, and expertise. Whole federal departments—including the Department of Education—and the funding that goes with them could be left on the cutting room floor, with disastrous consequences for the least among us.

 

This far-right “Playbook” is a frontal assault on honest and competent government, and the underpinnings of our 248-year-old democracy. Project 2025 flips the script on our nation’s foundation of liberty, prosperity, and the rule of law by inverting and perverting fact and data about how government actually functions to protect the environment, ensure safe workplaces, and provide some safety net for those in poverty. 

 

Project 2025 may appear to come from the right-wing fever swamp, which conjures up something out of science fiction. Indeed, it does remind us of a legendary Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode, first televised in March of 1962. In “To Serve Man,” earth is visited by the Kanamits. Enormously tall aliens, they appear frightening at first, but are eventually welcomed by humans. The Kanamits help end famine, eliminate war, and provide unlimited energy supplies for the betterment of the planet. 

 

Seemingly altruistic in their efforts, the Kanamits leave a book behind at the United Nations, which a decoding expert, Hero Chambers and his able assistant, Pat, begin to translate. Meanwhile, the Kanamits invite enthusiastic Earthlings to visit their planet, and flight reservations fill up quickly. Only when Pat races up to a space ship about to lift off does she reveal to Chambers that the title of the book—To Serve Man—is a cookbook. A recipe for disaster.

 

Project 2025 also proclaims to serve man, perhaps not literally on a silver platter like the Kanamits; but it may also cannibalize our government, our nation, and our democracy. Unlike the hapless denizens of earth in the Twilight Zone, we don’t need a decoding expert to see through the myths and deceptions that seek to dismantle our enduring republic and its Constitutional rights.

 

Let’s not wait until it’s too late and our collective goose is cooked. It’s time to stir the pot. Encourage your friends and family to vote as though their democracy depends on it—because it does.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Early Childhood Education, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization, Propaganda, Republicans, Vouchers

Mary Trump: Is America in Cognitive Decline?

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2024 //
81

Mary Trump, daughter of Donald’s older brother, thinks that the nation might be suffering cognitive decline. How, she wonders, could anyone think longingly of the days when her uncle Donald was President, when chaos was a daily phenomenon?

She writes on her blog:

Since so many people are acting as if they’re certified neurologists, I’d thought I’d join in and discuss the one patient I actually am VERY worried about.

The United States of America appears to be experiencing cognitive decline. That’s the only way I can explain the short memories that have erased the horrors of my uncle’s catastrophic four years in the Oval Office. It’s the only way I can explain a poll that shows Donald with a 51 percent approval rating in Wisconsin. It’s the only way I can explain why this race is so close and Donald—the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist and fraud—remains a significant threat to our democracy. 

On Monday, the Huffington Post published a story about how next week’s Republican convention will cash in on the nation’s “collective amnesia” with a program that seeks to remind us about all of the “good times” we had during the Trump administration. Since those good times are purely fictional—unless, of course, you’re like Stephen Miller and enjoy kidnapping and incarcerating small children—it’s going to be fascinating to see how they go about it, and whether or not the corporate media fall for it.

As writer S.V. Date noted, “Donald Trump left the White House with violent crime spiking, thousands of Americans dying each day from a disease he claimed was no worse than the common cold and having attempted a coup to remain in office despite having lost reelection.”

“The former and would-be future president and the Republican National Committee on Monday released a schedule of convention themes that counts on Americans forgetting all that and instead waxing nostalgic for his years in office.” 

Waxing nostalgic? For a time when over 5,000 Americans were dying every day; basic supplies, like toilet paper and hand sanitizer, were impossible to find; and Donald showed his concern for the American people by playing golf every day?

Yes, I’m worried about us.

Don’t get me wrong—I wish I could forget, too. I wish I could forget the refrigerated morgue vans that idled in the streets of New York City while Donald threatened to withhold vital PPE from our frontline medical workers unless Gov. Cuomo kissed his ass.

I wish I could forget the way Donald ordered peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square to be tear-gassed so he could go do a photo-op in front of a church.

I wish I could forget the way he talked about the ratings of his COVID briefings while people were on lockdown and hospital emergency rooms were overflowing.

I wish I could forget the way he tormented non-MAGA Americans with his incessant tweeting.

I wish I could forget his telling the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

I wish I could forget the anguished screams of police officers as they were beaten and tortured by Donald’s followers on Jan. 6, 2021.

And I wish I could forget how he stacked the Supreme Court with Christian Nationalists who just stole basic human rights from tens of millions of women and then rewarded him by making him—him—king.

But I can’t forget any of that. And I’m determined not to let the rest of the country forget it either. One of our goals has to be to remind this as many people as possible just how bad things were and warn them that things will be so much worse—if we keep forgetting.

Americans have short memories. And after the massive traumas we’ve experienced over the last eight years, it’s completely understandable that people are inclined to forget. That’s how trauma works. The reason things in this country continue to seem bad now despite much evidence to the contrary is because we’ve never recovered from the horrors of the Trump administration. Ironically, forgetting how bad things were is leading to nostalgia for the worst four years of my lifetime.

The fact that it’s explicable doesn’t make it any less horrifying.

At next week’s Republican convention, the opening night’s theme is “Make America Wealthy Once Again.” 

Really? 

Donald left office with the economy cratering and the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. Under Joe Biden, the stock market is breaking records daily, unemployment has been at impressive lows, wages are up, and manufacturing is back. America is much wealthier than it was when my uncle was in the White House.

On Tuesday, the theme is “Make America Safe Once Again.” 

Really? 

We would ask Officer Brian Sicknick if Donald made America safer, but we can’t because he died after being brutally beaten during Donald’s attack on the Capitol. We could ask former Vice President Pence, but Donald tried to get him hanged.

And on Wednesday, they’re going with “Make America Strong Once Again.” 

That is just beyond the pale. 

Donald is the weakest man I’ve ever known. He kisses up to dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un and Saudi Arabia’s MBS and Hungary’s Orban because he craves their power and hopes his groveling will convince them to lend him some of theirs. He thinks he can tell our allies to go to hell because, with a huge assist from the Republican Party, he’s banking on American’s forgetting who our enemies really are.

Either way, we have just a few short months to remind Americans what it was really like when Donald was in office and help them see—by talking about the Republican platform and the fascist agenda laid out in Project 2025—what the future will look like if Donald and his brown shirts get back into office.

He’s betting that we’ve forgotten a lot of things. And maybe we have. Maybe we aren’t just democracy in decline—maybe we’re a nation experiencing cognitive decline.

If we fail, I fear he will do things to this country and its people that we will never be able to forget. 

Or forgive. 

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Trump

John Merrow: The Biggest Problem with the Trump-Biden Debate

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2024 //
17

John Merrow spent many years as an investigative reporter, most recently at PBS. In the education space, he is probably best known for his multiple segments on “miracle-worker” Michelle Rhee as chancellor of the D.C. public schools, which ended with his hour-long expose of her failures.

He writes:

I spent nearly 75 years reporting for PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Pravda. During that time I received three Pulitzer Prizes, 12 George Foster Peabody Awards, 17 Emmy nominations (but only nine Emmys, to my great disappointment), and three George Polk Awards.  

(My editor and I have agreed that fact-checking this column wasn’t necessary.)

In 2016 I had the unprecedented honor of being knighted by Queen Elizabeth II AND receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.  These awards were somewhat controversial because of my quite public romances over the years with Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Farah Fawcett, Cindy Crawford, and Beyonce.

(The internet has made fact-checking irrelevant.)

But there’s no truth to the rumor that Mother Teresa and I were romantically involved.  We were very good friends, that’s all. 

(Fact-checking is soooo yesterday!)

In 1996 at the age of 55, I fulfilled a childhood dream: I temporarily gave up reporting and signed with The New York Yankees.  That season was a dream–I batted .307, stole 36 bases, and won a Gold Glove for my defensive play in left field. Many feel that I should have won the Rookie of the Year award, but my teammate and good friend Derek Jeter was certainly a deserving winner.

(Why would anyone want to fact-check me? Don’t you trust me?)

During my time as a war correspondent when I was embedded with the Special Forces in Iraq, I saved the lives of seven Americans when I picked up and threw an unexploded IED into a ditch. It subsequently exploded, and observers said we all would have been killed but for my instinctive action.  For this, I was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the only civilian to ever have received this recognition.

(Are you thinking about fact-checking this? Maybe you should!)

OK, subtlety isn’t my strong suit, and you’ve probably figured out that I’m really writing about the absence of fact-checking during the televised debate between President Biden and former President Trump, for which both political parties and CNN agreed that there would be no live fact-checking.   The result, which many of you saw, was a lie-filled 90 minutes during which Trump lied 28 or 29 times–and was never challenged!

Why am I upset?  Because CNN should never have agreed to that condition.  And once CNN did agree, the two reporters that CNN assigned to serve as moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, should have flat-out refused to participate. But they went ahead, giving candidate Trump license to say whatever he wanted, without fear of being challenged.  

The result damaged Biden, as we all know. But for me, the process also did serious damage to CNN and to the reputations of Tapper and Bash. When I tried to make that point recently with Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post and the Boston Globe, he dismissed the idea, and I imagine that many others in my (former) line of work agree with him, but I strongly believe that no reporter anywhere should ever agree to that condition.   

For every journalist, fact-checking is not a choice but an obligation!

(Editor’s note: Fact-checking reveals that Merrow told at least 16 lies in the preceding paragraphs. We apologize for our failure to fact-check and will be certain to keep a closer watch on him in the future. To do so, we have subscribed to his blog, which YOU may also do by clicking the ‘subscribe’ button at the top of the page.)

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Dean Obeidiallah: Trump’s Worst Nightmare

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2024 //
38

Dean Obeidallah blogs at “The Dean’s Report.” Here he describes Kamala Harris’s secret weapon. She terrifies Donald Trump. Can’t wait to see them debate. Trump will probably cancel.

Nothing triggers Donald Trump (and MAGA) more than strong Black women. Period. Black women are at the intersection of the racism and sexism that so fuels Trump and his MAGA movement.

We’ve seen this for years with Trump’s demonization of visible Black female leaders from repeatedly calling Rep. Maxine Waters “low IQ” to vile attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar including calling for her to “go back” to where she came from and worse. And in 2020, after Kamala Harris was named Joe Biden’s running mate, Trump lashed out by playing on the angry Black women trope by calling her a “mad woman,” “so angry” and even a “monster.”

But now with President Biden stepping aside and the Democratic party rallying around Harris, Trump will for be the first time called to go head-to-head with Harris—and he must be petrified.   Harris is the manifestation of all that scares Trump: She is a powerful, successful, smart Black woman.

Harris is also a former prosecutor who was elected in 2004 as District Attorney for San Francisco and in 2010 she was victorious statewide when she won the race to be Attorney General for the State of California. The contrast between prosecutor Harris and convicted felon Trump is perfect. And Harris has been the administration’s point person on reproductive freedom, which again is a powerful contrast to Trump who has bragged, “I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade.”

Trump knows Harris could beat him. We all saw how Trump’s frail ego reacted when Biden beat him in 2020—he attempted a coup and incited the Jan 6 terrorist attack.  The prospect of now losing to a Black woman has to shake Trump to the core—as does the prospect of ending up in prison.

That means we can expect Trump, his right-wing allies in Congress and the media to smear Harris non-stop with lies and bigotry. Mika Brzezinski shared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday that, “I’ve heard from inside Republican circles and right-wing media that the hate campaign against Kamala Harris has begun.”

In reality, though, the racist right wing smears of Harris began two weeks ago when GOP member of Congress Chip Roy, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka and a NY Post columnist Charles Gasparino all labeled Harris a “DEI” hire meaning she only got her job because of diversity mandates, not because she earned it. Gorka—while on national TV–even despicably referred to Harris as “colored.”

Gasparino went even further to say if Biden ended up stepping down as President, then, “Harris becomes the nation’s first DEI president by default.”

To the white right, it doesn’t matter that Harris has been a public servant for more than 20 years, winning election after election from DA, to California AG to the US Senate, where she distinguished herself with her service on the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees.  And of course, winning the 2020 election as VP.

Let’s be clear: Calling a person of color a DEI hire is what racism looks like.  It springs from the white supremacist myth that people of color are inherently inferior to white people, hence, we can only achieve success and visible positions with the help of a program. (I was called a “quota hire” years ago on social media by a Fox News frequent guest because at the time I was the first Muslim hired to host a national radio show.)

When these people say “DEI hire,” in reality they are speaking in coded language to other bigots as the Mayor of Baltimore, Brandon Scott, who is Black, explained earlier this year.  Scott, who some on the right have called a “DEI hire,” declared, “We know what these folks really want to say when they say DEI mayor,” adding bluntly, “They really want to say the N-word.” Mayor Johnson later gloriously trolled the bigots, saying on MSNBC that “DEI,” actually means “duly elected incumbent.”

The vitriol and bigotry that will be directed at Harris over the next 100 plus days until the Nov 5 election will likely far eclipse what we’ve seen to date. It will likely be worse than what was directed at Barack Obama given Harris is a woman. 

These expected smears are designed to both delegitimize Harris as well as excite Trump’s bigoted, primarily white base. As Brittney Cooper, a professor at Rutgers University, said in 2020 in response to Trump’s calling Harris “angry,” “nasty” and a “monster,” these attacks are intended to undermine Harris as a leader and as a person. Cooper explained, “White supremacy is lazy and unoriginal and doesn’t feel the need to ascribe humanity to Black women.”

And Kelly Dittmar, with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, in 2020 addressed the politics of Trump’s smears of Harris, saying, Trump is “speaking to a contingent of voters, particularly white male voters, who support him and who are key to his base.” She added, “We know from multiple studies done on the last election that their levels of both sexism and racial resentment were actually pretty strong indicators of their support for Trump.”

Trump never made a person a bigot. He only emboldens bigots to feel comfortable being the worst version of themselves. That means we can expect to see an ugliness over the next 100 days that will be revolting. 

But we have the power to win this election. And by doing so, these right-wing bigots now calling Harris a “DEI hire” and other racist names–come January 20, 2025– will be forced to watch America call her, “Madame President.”

Categories Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Gender
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