But what can one do to make this data more re-usable? And how can one find other projects where people have done this? Well, I have no idea. Finding things on github seems to be a lot harder than it should be. Well, and there are data APIs and I should be able to use those also. Now, what the heck is my githib API authentication string and where the heck did I put it? O well. But I have figured out some things to make things more re-usable and I think that I can look for these things. For example, I have python scripts that use the openpyxl module to take apart the spreadsheets and I might look for references to this. But taking apart spreadsheets is not really what I want. It is just something I have to use. I was REST interfaces, perhaps ones where one can figure out the interfaces. I can perhaps look for artifacts of swagger interfaces. I could look for MCP interfaces. MCP is interesting. It is not interesting because AI code wants to find it. But if people with the money to run AI crap want to help get MCP interfaces put up, that would be fine. Really, MCP seems to be a way to have self-documenting interfaces to data. It should enable many things, such as agent software. You remember agent software, yes? It is sort of like AI that is actually doing things for you and some massive corporation with more dollars than sense. And so, agent stuff would be good.
Well, I have data from the California Legislature and I have begun putting a REST interface on that and I have started to put an MCP interface in front of that. And I will look around and see what I see. More to come.
]]>At a PSJC (Pub Sfty & Jst Cmte) meeting last year, Laurie Smith said they had two prisoners who had been in jail “for more than 10 years.” I sent her a note asking who these two were and she replied that she would not say. I filed a CPRA request for the information and that was refused. Apparently the Sheriff’s office does not believe that the names and booking dates of people in jail is public information. A friend of mine is a public defender. He found one of them, who I will call Trevor, in an unpublished opinion of the Appeals Court. He could not find the other. Did you know that there is a judicial “Dark Web” where unpublished opinions are searchable if you know the precise search terms to use but where documents are not fnndable on any outside search engine? I did not.
There have been a few Civil Grand Jury reports on why some people are in jail in Santa Clara County for extraordinarily long times. I will include a link to the report and the follow-up report below. The story given is mostly that the reasons for this are complicated. Getting scheduled for trials takes a long time. Getting coroner reports takes up to a year. Getting psychological evaluations takes a very long time. People change their lawyers, their lawyers retire or move on to other jobs, and these things add delays. And I am not the first one to realize that when everyone who comes into the gets asked “Will you give up your right to a speedy trial?”, which is one of the first things that gets asked, if everyone said no, it would be like dropping an atomic bomb onto the judicial system. The entire system would come to a grinding, crashing halt. It turns out that we are we are very willing to charge people but we are not willing to pay for the infrastructure then required to try them fairly. Who knew, right? I am shocked, shocked, I tell you. :–)
But all of these reasons do not apply in Trevor’s case. It turns out to be much simpler here, but no more solvable. Trevor got in a fight defending someone, but the fight involved several people on both sides. And someone was killed. The DA decided to prosecute Trevor for murder one with gang enhancements. It seems that our DA has, at some times, believed that if something happened that involved more than one person on one side and more than one person on the other, then it must have been a gang thing, right? And I bet you can guess the ethnicity of the people involved.
There was also expert testimony that spoke to intent, so Trevor was convicted for murder one. But then. It turns out that the expert witness, when he spoke about the thing that “proved” intent, was just completely making it up. Like the old joke among math people that when you read a statistic in the popular press, 63.5% of them are just made up off the top of someone’s head. Like that. So eventually the testimony was thrown out and the ADA was reprimanded for not making any effort at all to verify the validity of the testimony of the “expert” witness and the conviction was thrown out.
So, what is the problem? Well, Trevor has now been in jail, not convicted of a crime, since before 2010. That is 13 years. And it has not been because the evidence was complicated or that there were checks and verifications to be made. The problem was that the DA wanted to get murder one and their representative had someone lie to get it. And they do not want to admit that they were wrong.
Prosecutorial discretion is such a huge … thing in our system. It is almost completely unlimited. We talk about reforming the police and the courts and this is important. But. Imagine that our justice system is a 33-floor building. The police is the lobby and there is some public information about what happens there. It is not enough and it can arbitrarily hard to get to, but there is, at least theoretically, public information about what is happening. The top floor is the court. And there is of course, a lot of information about what happens, even though there are, again, many hoops to jump through. But all of the other floors of the building have covered windows and nothing can get out. 97% of people charged with a crime never go to trial. And the DA does not have to say very much about anything at all about what they do to get those plea deals. They are required to do some reports and they choose to tell us others things when it suits them, but their discretion is huge and they do not have to say anything at all about why they did or why they did not do something. It is an enormous black hole and, frankly, this is what I think stops a lot of justice reforms. There is almost no thing that can be done that a DA cannot work around and block the effect of in individual cases, about which they can say nothing at all. If you read any bills that seek to reform our courts or our procedures, you will almost always see little bits down at the bottom, after all of the lofty declarations of the intent of the Legislature, that preserve the right of the DAs to prosecutorial discretion.
What is the result of this discretion here? Well, gang enhancements are longer a thing in California. And the proof of intent in the case came from a Lie told in court. So, murder two would have been a reasonable charge. If Trevor was charged with murder two and convicted, so would have been out at least six years ago. But there he is, still waiting in jail. Apparently, the DA’s discretion and the under-funded court system can ensure that if the DA wants you to wait in jail for a long, long, long time, they can do it. And, as far as I can see, nobody can or will do anything about it.
https://www.scscourt.org/court_divisions/civil/cgj/2017/Why_Does_It_Take_So_Long.pdf
https://www.scscourt.org/court_divisions/civil/cgj/2018/Continuity%20Report%20FINAL.pdf
In August of 2024, Trevor plead out and was sentenced to serve time in CDCR. I guess the prospect of waiting for a second trial, after 15 years, was too much. :–(
]]>Some technical things seem to be getting more difficult. Or I am having less patience with some of the stupidity that we have to deal with to use or develop or work with software. Or I am wrong and everything is working great and it is just me and I am the source of the problems. But I suspect that it is not just me. But it is odd.
Last month, I tried to put up a jira instance on an Ubuntu server that is my personal back-yard and software shed. This should not be hard, yes? I am running MySQL and have been for a long time. I have installed databases and associated stuff many, many times. And I can even connect to my database server remotely. I do not worry over-much about the security of this because my site is used to publish government data that I have re-contextualized. So I am not a bank and I am not doing credit card payments and such. And you need to have remote connectivity to your database enabled to install jira because you go to their web page and point them at your server and say “install there” and they do. If it works. It did not work. So I asked if there was a problem. I could not even get them to understand my question. For example, they had, at hand, lots of docs on how to configure your database to be remotely connectable and they kept sending me that. This was not my issue. Maybe this was the issue for most people sending these random newbie problems, but it was not mine. I gave up.
I recently tried installing bugzilla. I worked, a while back and not for very long, at Mozilla and I know that bugzilla works fine. Wow, perl. CPAN. I had not seen that in a while. But CPAN had some really good ideas and good stuff was done with perl, so let us give this a shot. Well, everything worked great. I had lots of modules to install (why so many? lots of new modules being developed in perl?) but it was going ok. Then I hit the part where the apache connectivity goes and, no, not so much. Search for the error message and there is a lot of not quite what I am seeing here. Never mind. I cannot even get myself to engage.
I ended up finding something. I decided to not worry about whether I knew the name or not and I found a java-based app that required that I:
But there seem to be more than a few things that I try to install and I hit some rat-hole. Is it me? It is, at least to some extent. My ADD leads me to this way of learning. I see the big picture quickly, but I can “see” some minor point or “see” something in the documentation and I misunderstand it, but that misunderstanding gets locked into my brain. I can try to pull it out with an ice-pick and, no, I will still have that assumption right there and will trip on that same spot again and again and again.
So I know that I do this. But there is also a talent alongside this. Sometimes there are problems that most people just blithely skate over, for whatever reason. This causes them problems later, but they are perhaps not crippling problems and so the problem does not get recognized or fixed. But I will see the problem and I cannot un-see it. I can try, but, no, I cannot un-see the problem. So I point it out and the room gets really quiet as everyone realizes this thing has shipped for five years with this problem. Sometimes, they will even admit it is a real problem. Sometimes, they will not admit it is a problem but they will fix it. And sometimes, occasionally, they appreciate gettiing notice of the problem. Not often, but it has happened.
So, the question is this. Is software getting worse? People ship things and it says “just do this” and that does not work. What should one do? They often do not document what to do if there are problems. Because there are no problems. “Did you just do this?” is their only response. And I completely lack patience with this.
Obviously my approach to software has changed after being in the industry for a while. But I really do not think it is just me. Just ask yourself how many times you have seen CEOs give demos of software. Does that always work out? What has been the answer to this from the software industry. I know one thing. It seems that there have been a lot less times when you see a CEO give a demo. And that is one solution.
]]>Other groups have done “hackathons” on this data. One does find interesting things. If one does a simple import into mysql, one loses a lot of data but there are still millions of rows of data there. If you are doing hand-wavy analyses or summaries, that may be good, but I am trying to do something else.
From a 20,000 feet high view of the situation, the problem is that the SoS is required to store and display campaign finance data entered by various entities. And the FPPC (the Fair Political Practices Commission) is mandated to prosecute violations of campaign finance law. But there is nobody who is mandated to ensure that the data is “correct” and makes sense. The SoS could dis-allow filings with bad information but it does not, and if a problem is not actually prosecutable, there is no reason for the filer to fix it. And the SoS is required to display what the filer filed, so they cannot fix the data.
But we can. I can download the data and fix things, as long as I do not say that I am the California Secretary of State. So, for example, if a candidate says his campaign office is in “Los Angeles, XA”, the SoS needs to leave that data in there, whereas I can change it to “Los Angeles, CA”.
One of the most non-standard things in the database are names. Names can be entered in any form. A candidate can put his name in a “Bob Smith”, “Robert Smith”, “RL Smith”, “Bobby Smith”, or “BB Smith” all on the same form or on different forms. There do not actually seem to be any rules about how names should be entered into the system.
I have smoothed out the names, somewhat, but you can see in the list below, there are still lots of things that disconnect names. And there are 1,939,499 names in the system as of June 15, 2020. These are names in different contexts. They may be candidates, office holders, recipients (ie a campaign pays a caterer for food, the caterer is a recipient), a payer, a treasurer, or one of many other things.
So, the question is, how can these names be disambiguated so that we can link together all of the activity for an actual person? Example names are below. Any ideas or suggestions?
cheers - ray
Note that many of these entries are not entered by the entity or person named. And I am sure this contributes to the problem.
Here is, perhaps, one company:
vanir vanir construction vanir construction management vanir construction management inc vanir construction management inc and vanir group of companies inc vanir construction management inc; vanir development company vanir construction management inc; vanir development company inc vanir construction management inc; vanir development company inc; dorene dominguez vanir construction management inc; vanir development company inc; dorene dominguez; dominguez plaza llc vanir construction management inc; vanir development company inc; vanir group of companies; dorene dominguez vanir construction management inc; vanir development company; foothill village oaks inc vanir construction management llc vanir construction managment inc vanir construction mgmt inc vanir construction mgt inc vanir consturction management inc vanir contruction management inc vanir development co inc vanir development company vanir development company inc vanir energy llc vanir foundation vanir group vanir group of companies vanir group of companies inc vanir tower company
Here is a politically active couple. There seems to be confusion about whether the names are “Stuart” or “Stewart” or “Lynda” or “Linda”:
linda bresnick linda resnick ms lynda r resnick lynda rae resnick lynda resnick lynda resnick ms resnick family foundation inc resnick for peralta community college board of trustees area 6 2016 resnick lynda rae resnick stewart resnick stewart a & lynda rae; and paramount farming company llc resnick stewart a and affiliated entities roll international corporation stewart and lynda resnick paramount farming company paramount citrus association paramount steward & linda resnick steward a resnick stewart a resnick stewart a resnick & affiliated entities stewart a resnick & affiliated entities (paramount farming company) stewart a resnick & paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick and affiliated entities stewart a resnick and paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick del rey juice company llc paramount citrus association and paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick del rey juice company llc paramount citrus association paramount farming company llc paramount farms inc and roll international corporation stewart a resnick lynda rae resnick paramount farming company llc and paramount citrus association stewart a resnick paramount citrus association & paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick paramount citrus association and paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick paramount citrus association paramount farming company llc stewart a resnick paramount farming company llc and del rey juice company llc stewart a resnick paramount farming company llc and franklin mint company stewart a resnick roll international corporation paramount farming company llc and teleflora llc stewart a resnick roll international corporation paramount farming company llc teleflora llc and paramount citrus association stewart resnick stewart resnick f stewart resnick/paramount farming company llc/del rey juice company llc/roll international corporation stuart a resnick stuart resnick
Are all of these getting linked together in the SoS web site anywhere? I cannot see how they could be.
california strategies & advocacy llc on behalf of its client los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entity pacific racing assocation california strategies & advocacy llc on behalf of los angeles turf club & its affiliated entity pacific racing association california strategies & advocacy llc on behalf of los angeles turf club inc et al carter wetch & associates on behalf of los angeles turf club & its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club los angeles turf club - santa anita los angeles turf club - santa anita park los angeles turf club (bay meadows operating co) los angeles turf club & affiliated entities bay meadows llc & pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club & affiliated entities bay meadows operating company & pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club & affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club & affiliates - bay meadows llc pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club & its affiliate pacific racing association los angeles turf club & its affiliated entities los angeles turf club & its affiliated entity pacifc racing association los angeles turf club & its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club & its affiliates bay meadows llc & pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club and affiliated entity pacific racing assn los angeles turf club and aggregated contributions los angeles turf club and its affiliate pacific racing association los angeles turf club and its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club at santa anita los angeles turf club etal los angeles turf club inc los angeles turf club inc - santa anita park los angeles turf club inc (magna entertainment corp and its affiliated entities) los angeles turf club inc & affiliated entities los angeles turf club inc & affiliated entities bay meadows operating co llc & pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc & affiliated entity pacific racing assn los angeles turf club inc & its aff pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc & its affilated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entities los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entities bay mdws op collc & pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entities bay meadows operating co llc los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company llc & pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entitiesbay meadows op co llc & pacific racing asn los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entity pacific racing assn los angeles turf club inc & its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc affiliated entity pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc affiliated pacific racing assn los angeles turf club inc an affiliated entity of magna entertainment inc los angeles turf club inc and affiliated entities los angeles turf club inc and its los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entities los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating co llc and pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company lll and pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entity pacific racing assn los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entity pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club inc and its affiliated entity pacific racing association/santa anita park los angeles turf club inc and its affilitated entities los angeles turf club inc et al los angeles turf club inc santa anita park los angeles turf club inc/ bay meadows operating co llc/pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club inc/santa anita los angeles turf club inc/santa anita park los angeles turf club incorporated los angeles turf club incorporated & its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company lll and pacific racing assn los angeles turf club incorporated and its affil entities los angeles turf club incorporated and its affil entities pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entites bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entites bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing associa los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing associa los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing association los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company lll and pacific racing assoc los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entity golden gate fields pacific racing association los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entity pacific racing association los angeles turf club incorporated and its affiliated entity pacific racing association inc los angeles turf club incorporated and its affliated entities bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing associa los angeles turf club incorporated including its parent magna entertainment corp los angeles turf club incorporated santa anita park los angeles turf club incorpotated los angeles turf club llc and its affiliated entities bay meadows operating company llc and pacific racing los angeles turf club mec california los angeles turf club santa anita park los angeles turf club-santa anita los angeles turf club/pacific racing assoc magna entertainment corp & its affiliated entities los angeles turf club inc magna entertainment corp and its affiliated entities (entities: bay meadows operating company llc los angeles turf club inc pacific racing association) magna entertainment corp and its affiliated entities formerly los angeles turf club at santa anita (entities: bay meadows magna entertainment corp and its affiliated entities formerly los angeles turf club at santa anita (entities: bay meadows operating company llc los angeles turf club inc & pacific racing assn) magna entertainment corp and its affiliated entities formerly los angeles turf club at santa anita (entities: bay meadows operating company llc los angeles turf club inc pacific racing assn) magna entertainment corp/los angeles turf club inc mec california los angeles turf club mec california los angeles turf club and its affiliated entities mec california los angeles turf club and its affiliated entitypacific racing pacific racing asn and its affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing assn & its affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing assoc & affiliated entity los angeles turf club pacific racing assoc and its affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing association & its affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing association and affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing association and its affiliated entity los angeles turf club inc pacific racing association and its affiliated entity los angeles turf club incorporated santa anita los angeles turf club inc santa anita los angeles turf club incorporated santa anita park - los angeles turf club/san luis rey downs santa anita park / los angeles turf club / san luis rey downs santa anita park los angeles turf club santa anita park los angeles turf club inc santa anita park los angeles turf club san luis rey downs santa anita park/los angeles turf club inc santa anita park/mec california los angeles turf club inc santa anita-los angeles turf club inc santa anita/los angeles turf club
And here is a company we all know:
company pacific gas and electric p g & e corporation - pacific gas & electric pacific gas & electric pacific gas & electric - pg&e pacific gas & electric (pg & e) corporation pacific gas & electric (pg&e) pacific gas & electric (pg&e) corporation pacific gas & electric (pge) pacific gas & electric co pacific gas & electric co (pg & e) pacific gas & electric co law department pacific gas & electric co pac pacific gas & electric co state & local pac pacific gas & electric company pacific gas & electric company (pg & e) pacific gas & electric company (pg&e) pacific gas & electric company (pg&e) - north west california pacific gas & electric company and affiliated entities pacific gas & electric company and its affiliated entities pacific gas & electric company and its affiliates of entities pacific gas & electric company deleted 05/10/05 pacific gas & electric company id# 478163 pacific gas & electric company pg&e pacific gas & electric company state & local pac pacific gas & electric company state pac pacific gas & electric company state/local pac pacific gas & electric company state/local political action committee pacific gas & electric corp pacific gas & electric corporation pacific gas & electric corporation (pg&e) pacific gas & electric corporation (pg&e) - ie account pacific gas & electric corporation and affliliated entities pacific gas & electric corporation major donor pacific gas & electric corporation/pg & e pacific gas & electric employees state/local pac pacific gas & electric legal department pacific gas & electric state & local pac pacific gas & electricity company pacific gas & eletric company pacific gas & eletric company pac pacific gas and electric pacific gas and electric - housing pacific gas and electric (pg&e) corp pacific gas and electric co pacific gas and electric co (pg&e) pacific gas and electric co state/local pac pacific gas and electric company pacific gas and electric company (pg&e corp) pacific gas and electric company (pg&e) pacific gas and electric company and affiliated entities pacific gas and electric company and its affiliated entities pacific gas and electric company and its affiliates of entities pacific gas and electric company and its affliated entities pacific gas and electric company conference room 307 pacific gas and electric company conference room a pacific gas and electric company pac pacific gas and electric company pg&e corp pacific gas and electric company pg&e corporation pacific gas and electric company state & local pac pacific gas and electric company state/local pac pacific gas and electric corp pacific gas and electric corporation pacific gas and electric corporation (pg&e corp) pacific gas and electric state/local pac pacific gas and electric/local pac pacific gas electric company pg&e corp pacific gass & electric company]]>