In celebration of the possible Bank of America wikileaks takedown, I offer one of my own unpublished wikileaks: an old Bank of America customer service chat with “Emmanuel.” This is for reals.
Emmanuel: How may I assist you today? You: I closed my account over a month ago and just received a service charge. You: I need the account FULLY closed and the service charge refunded.
Emmanuel: I understand that you want to close the account.
Emmanuel: May I have the last four digits of the account concerned? You: It should already be closed.
Emmanuel: Thank you for the information
Emmanuel: Please be with me. You: I will be with you.
Emmanuel: Thank you.
Emmanuel: I appreciate your time and patience to chat with me. You: I enjoy our time together.
Emmanuel: Please bear with me for me minute.
Emmanuel: Thank you,
(several minutes pass) You: You still there? I had a bubble bath while waiting.
Emmanuel: I sincerely apologize to keep you waiting.
Emmanuel: I see that I am successfully placed the request for closing
the account. You: And the $8.95 charge will be refunded?
Emmanuel: I request you not to make any activity on the account
othewise the account will get active . The account will take 3-5
business days to close the account . I was able to refund the fee as
well.
Emmanuel: Is there anything else I may assist you today? You: I haven’t made any activity on the account before, but they still
charged me. How do I know it won’t happen again?
Emmanuel: I see that the monthly maintenance fee was assessed to the account . You: That’s the problem.
Emmanuel: It will occur in a month .
Emmanuel: I apologize and do regret the trouble you had to face today.
Emmanuel: I assure that you will not get this trouble again! You: What will occur? I don’t want to get charged for an account I have closed. You: So it is COMPLETELY closed now? You: No more service charge?
Emmanuel: Yes!
Emmanuel: It will be closed!
Emmanuel: Is there anything else I may assist you today? You: Yes, BoA has repaid the government bailout loans, so when do we get
reimbursement checks?
Emmanuel: I wish I could have answered but unfortunately my scope is
limited to Savings and Checking accounts.]
Emmanuel: I will help you with the contact details to get the query resolved
Emmanuel: Please contact us at: 1.800.432.1000. We are available from
7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday
and Sunday, Local Time. You: Ah, I see. Ok, thanks. Back to my bubble bath.
Emmanuel: Sure!
Emmanuel: It was a pleasure assisting you today. Have a pleasant day
and take care. You: I enjoyed our time together.
Emmanuel: Bye and Have a great day ahead!
As an advocate of disaster tourism, culture hacking, and the special olympics, I fully support the heckling and harassment of the AIG’s high echelon criminals, and the free market blowback rage that is currently threatening their lives. Relax, right? All laissez-faire economists should realize this is simply how the market corrects itself. Fuck with the people’s money and the people fuck you back. Eventually. We NEED to send this message, Godfather style. I’m talking horse head in the bed, ears and fingers of loved ones in the mail, flaming piles of shit on the doorstep, whatever. All of it.
A message to AIG from the Godfather:
On a side note it kills me how the media is labeling all of this public outrage as some sort of “populist” revolt. Since when has demanding accountability become synonymous with populism?
I have latched on to the GOP-are-statist-hypocrites meme and I am not letting go. I fucking love it when Libertarians rip on the GOP! If the Republitards were in power right now we would have a similarly sized stimulus package with a different name. Something like, “Heterosexuals, Guns n’ Freedom- Why Do You Hate America Act?”
Under Bush and a Republican Congress we had an explosion of growth on all fronts: spending that put Lyndon Johnson to shame, huge deficits and a doubling of the national debt, corporate bailouts, further centralization of education, protectionism, expansion of Medicare, increased regulation, undeclared wars, civil-liberties violations and other unchecked executive power, and more. Bush did not veto a single spending bill in eight years. His cutting of tax rates in 2001 and 2003 has to be judged in the context of growing spending. Milton Friedman pointed out that the level of spending, not taxation, is the truer gauge of the government burden. The money has to come from somewhere. Removing it from the economy through borrowing is as economically damaging as taxation — more so when you figure that the government will perpetrate inflation to manage the debt.
That was bad enough, but the Republicans added rank hypocrisy to the mix by claiming to favor free markets.
Perhaps there is no getting around pork when it comes to a good redistribution of wealth sandwich.
When congressional leaders began to assemble the mammoth economic stimulus bill, top Democrats and the Obama administration decided that there would be no earmarks: no “special projects,” no pork-barrel spending. In so doing, they gave up some control over how the money is spent, leaving the decision to public servants around the country.
“Someone has to decide how money gets spent. It’s either going to be Congress or the executive branch or states or municipalities,” says Fred Wertheimer of the congressional watchdog group Democracy 21.
Indeed, to get a sense for what it’s like to be 18 and Cuban these days, imagine going to a high school that won a miraculous and inspiring football championship in 1959. The guy that quarterbacked the team some 50 years ago is still wearing the same damned uniform—only now he’s the school principal, and he’s decreed that all academic subjects must be studied within the context of that bygone championship game. Everyone at your school is now an honorary member of the football team—though the stadium is condemned from years of neglect, no actual games have been played in decades and anyone with the temerity to point out this discrepancy is summarily sent to detention. On most school days you’re required to study your principal’s old pass-routes and blocking schemes and tell him how ingenious he was to have devised them. All of which would seem insane were it not for the fact that tourists from wealthier schools—schools with actual, functioning football teams—are constantly visiting your class to marvel over how wonderful it was that your team triumphed 50 years ago, and gush about how proud you must be to have such innovative role models. In this context, it’s easy to understand why young Cubans are underwhelmed by the idea of Che: To them, he’s just another sepia portrait in the trophy case—handsome and intriguing, perhaps, but hardly relevant or revolutionary.
Good Obama, pleasing even some of those curmudgeon libertarians already. And nerds everywhere are inspired by the recent changes to the whitehouse.gov robots.txt, and the Obama Team’s more savvy use of internet technologies. Plus, dude will get to keep his blackberry AND use a Sectera Edge for more presidential matters. Imagine that…a president that wants to do work efficiently.
Brand Obama is certainly indisputable. If nothing else, sales of Obama merchandise alone might get us out of the great depression part 2 the quickening. Perhaps Obama branded merchandise could actually be the next Big Bubble. Good luck, Obama dude, you’ve got quite a mythology to live up to. Obama as Jesus. Obama as hipster icon. You are a legend, an icon, a hero, and you haven’t even started your job. That’s some pressure. Sure, I feel the hope, but only like an alcoholic after a near death bender. Excuse me if I’m a little skeptical of either of these political parties of ours that have gotten us here in the first place, and the soaring fancy talk that woos the credulous and adamant. But I’ll keep paying my mortgage just to pitch in.
The all-kale diet: How I stopped eating anything else. - Slate Magazine2012/05/10 Most chefs massage their kale for 5 to 10 minutes in a mixing bowl. I went longer than that for my first kale salad—an hour and a half total—mostly because that's what I'd want if the kale were massaging me.
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