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These are my links for October 3rd from 08:00 to 12:42:

• The Bloomberg Hit Piece on the Koch Brothers – Bloomberg Markets has a print cover story on “The SECRET SINS of KOCH INDUSTRIES” (unusual capitalization and italicization choices theirs), which is plugged heavily in a long (nigh interminable) web item headlined:

  “Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales”

  The nut of it is that, in 2008, a newly-hired Koch ethics officer discovered evidence of improper bribes paid by a French subsidiary to secure six different deals in Africa, India, and the Middle East. (I know, I know. But try to contain your shock that doing business in Africa could be anything but above-the-board.) Koch HQ then dispatched a larger investigative team that confirmed the findings and the parties responsible were terminated.

  Fast-forward to over a year later: The ethics officer who first discovered the impropriety, having since been promoted, is let go for emerging performance issues. She files suit against Koch for wrongful termination, and not only loses, but is ordered to pay Koch’s legal fees. Now she’s giving quotes to Bloomberg. Unrelatedly, and this is crucial, the Koch subsidiary also had some business (which has since completely desisted) with Iran at a time when — both Bloomberg and Koch reps seem to agree — that business was perfectly legal under U.S. law. Again, the Iran business was entirely separate from the alleged bribes. But go back and look at that headline. Would you ever know?

  I reached out to the Koch Industries and got this statement from general counsel Mark Holden:

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• Koch responds to Bloomberg – In an exclusive interview with Right Turn, Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden responded to a lengthy investigative piece by Bloomberg news citing various legal incidents and allegations of wrongdoing by the industrial conglomerate owned by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have become the target, if not the obsession, of left-wing groups who take issue with their libertarian politics and political activity.

  The two issues featured most prominently by the Bloomberg report, according to Holden, are rife with errors and/or are old, long-since resolved matters.

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  Pretty much answers the Bloomberg attack piece….

• Do Mother and Baby Risk Factors Predict a Child’s Obesity? | Smiles For A Lifetime – Temporary (Locum Tenens) Dentistry – Do Mother and Baby Risk Factors Predict a Child’s Obesity?
• President 2012: South Carolina Moves GOP Primary Election to January 21 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012: South Carolina Moves GOP Primary Election to January 21 #tcot #catcot
• Social media giving small firms a boost – Laid off after 23 years in the mortgage lending business, Dede Parise couldn't find a job. So she took a marketing class to reinvent her career, and before long she turned an assignment into a company.

  Parise invented the Bandee, a headband women wear while playing golf and other sports. She sells her product mostly on the Internet, working from home.

  Her audience is big, and growing. In a year, using Facebook, she has parlayed her reach into 15,000 fans.

  For small businesses such as Parise's, social media has become a portal to success.

  "It's really important," said Parise, 49, of Weston, Fla. "It's just the way the market has gone."

  No question, the use of social media by businesses is booming.

  According to a recent study by EMarketers, 80% of leading companies will participate in social media marketing in 2011, nearly double the number from three years ago.

  And a 2011 Social Media Marketing report by SocialMediaExaminer.com found that 90% of marketers said social media was important for their business. Eighty-eight percent said it generated more business exposure, and 72% said it increased traffic to their site.

  The most commonly used social media tools, the 2011 report found, are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, in that order.

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• Flap’s Links and Comments for October 2nd through October 3rd | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for October 2nd through October 3rd #tcot #catcot

These are my links for September 23rd through September 26th:

• Here comes another Koch/Tea Party smear – Evidence was found four years ago that other KGF employees had paid bribes to obtain business. An investigation was begun, and Egorova-Farines was one of the investigators. Ultimately, more than two dozen people were either terminated or allowed to resign.

  Koch USA officials say they were as surprised and angered as anybody else when they were first apprised of the bribery allegations, and moved as quickly as possible to get to the bottom of the situation and fix it.

  But, during this period, Egorova-Farines grew progressively unhappy with KGF, allegations of discrimination were lodged, and her case went to the Employment Tribunal of Paris.

  All of Egorova-Farines' claims were dismissed. She appealed and the decision was overturned on a technicality. KGF and Egorova-Farines then settled out of court.

  I spent a lot of my reporting years working with whistleblowers, mainly within the government, and generally find them admirable. But, like the rest of us, they're just human and can have very mixed motives, of which careful journalists must always be aware.

  A former U.S. government official of my acquaintance was approached recently by one of the Bloomberg reporters working on a Koch investigative piece. After some conversation about the French case, the reporter said, "the other interesting thing here is Koch has strong ties to the Tea Party."

  When the official asked what the Tea Party had to do with French bribery allegations, the reporter dropped the topic.

  I've also had occasion to meet a lot of Bloomberg journalists over the years and have been unfailingly impressed by their professionalism. But they're human, too, and can make mistakes.

  Joining the rampant Koch-bashing would be a mistake.

• Koch addicts seek another hit – As The Washington Examiner reported last week, Bloomberg Markets appears to be on the verge of dropping a lengthy treatise on the Kansas-based energy conglomerate Koch Industries.

  According to an individual interviewed by Bloomberg (who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity), much of the focus will likely be devoted to re-litigating past legal peccadilloes. But the piece may also reveal at least one previously unreported controversy: Koch Industries’ connection to the sale of petroleum industry equipment in Iran in the early-to-mid 2000s.

  Koch currently has a policy prohibiting its subsidiaries from doing business in Iran, and the past sales (some of which likely involved state-owned Iranian companies) appear to have been conducted by a foreign subsidiary of a subsidiary of Koch.

  Still, this comes on the heels of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN General Assembly — and at a time when Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are receiving increased attention.

  All of this, of course, means the story could provide political fodder to Koch’s political enemies — which are legion. (In 2005, you might recall, Halliburton, the company once run by former Vice President Dick Cheney, also came under fire for doing business in Iran.)

  In reality, the revelation isn’t terribly newsworthy. While U.S. law bans American companies from making direct sales in Iran, foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations may do so under certain circumstances. And many of them do.

  Dozens of multinational companies — including household names like General Electric, Exxon Mobil, Hewlett Packard, Caterpillar, and Honeywell — conducted business in Iran during the time period. For example, a 2010 New York Times analysis identified 74 corporations — many of whom received government contracts — that have conducted business in Iran over the last decade.

  Regardless of whether or not one finds this troubling, the fact that the practice was ubiquitous raises an obvious question: Why is Bloomberg singling out Koch?

  The answer seems pretty obvious.

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• Ryan to put ‘replace’ back in ‘repeal and replace’ | Campaign 2012 – Ryan to put 'replace' back in 'repeal and replace' | Campaign 2012
• foursquare – 10 miles and now Breakfast at Ronnie's with Alice and Tara (@ Ronnie's Diner)
• Untitled (https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-dKap5IWFQ8c/Tn3EPSyF02I/AAAAAAAAATg/9blXVHx-dB4/CIMG0150.jpg) – Off soon to LA Marathon training with LA Roadrunners for 10 easy miles. Ronnie's Diner after.
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• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-09-24 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-09-24 #tcot #catcot
• Ryan to put ‘replace’ back in ‘repeal and replace’ | Campaign 2012 – Ryan to put 'replace' back in 'repeal and replace' | Campaign 2012
• (500) http://flapsblog.org/2011/09/23/dilbert-september-23-2011-listen/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter – Dilbert September 23, 2011 – Listen
• Ryan to put ‘replace’ back in ‘repeal and replace’ | Campaign 2012 – RT @philipaklein: RT @conncarroll: @RepPaulRyan will give major speech outlining alternative to Obamacare Tuesday
• Flap’s Dentistry Blog: Los Angeles Roadrunners: My Saturday Mornings for the Next Six Months – Los Angeles Roadrunners: My Saturday Mornings for the Next Six Months
• Poll Watch: Obama Rated Same or Worse Than Bush – Obama Much Worse Than Clinton | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Poll Watch: Obama Rated Same or Worse Than Bush – Obama Much Worse Than Clinton #tcot #catcot
• 43% of Twitter Users Access Twitter From a Mobile Phone [Data] – 43% of Twitter Users Access Twitter From a Mobile Phone
• 43% of Twitter Users Access Twitter From a Mobile Phone – The latest data on mobile phone usage is out, and the numbers show that mobile isn't slowing down. And where inbound marketing is concerned, some of the key mobile data centers around how people are using their phones to access content and social media.

  MarketingCharts' mobile research has found that people are increasingly using their mobile phones to access content on browsers, apps, and social networks:

  In March 2011, nearly 39% of US mobile subscribers were browsing the internet using their mobile device. That's up by 2.2 percentage points from just 3 months prior.
  Mobile apps are almost as popular as browsers; 37% of subscribers used downloaded apps.
  Subscribers are also increasingly using social networks on their phones. In March, 27.3% indicated they used a social network on their mobile phone, up from 24.7% just 3 months prior.

• Flap’s California Morning Collection: September 23, 2011 » Flap’s California Blog – Flap’s California Morning Collection: September 23, 2011
• Flap’s Links and Comments for September 20th through September 23rd | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Flap’s Links and Comments for September 20th through September 23rd #tcot #catcot

These are my links for May 2nd from 03:02 to 09:24:

• The Secret Team That Killed bin Laden – From Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH-60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the center of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyperspectral imagers.

  After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap — boom, boom — to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.

  Were it not for this high-value target, it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.

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• Michael Bloomberg: Send the immigrants to Detroit – Everyone has a solution to the immigration problem these days. (At least until they are actually elected to public office when they seem to forget about it.) Should we build a fence? Have more screeners? Shut down the process entirely? Out in the Big Apple, Mayor Bloomberg thinks he’s come up with a far more creative solution to the problem. We’ll just let all of the immigrants in who want to come, but as soon as they arrive we just ship them all to Detroit.

  Mayor Bloomberg has a fix for the nation’s immigration debate: Send ‘em to Detroit.

  “If I were the federal government,” Bloomberg told David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday morning. “Assuming you could wave a magic wand and pull everybody together, you pass a law letting immigrants come in as long as they agree to go to Detroit and live there for five or ten years.”

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  How stupid is Bloomberg?

• A New Immigration Consensus – Or a Sell Out for Americans? – We believe in the need to secure our borders, make it possible to hold businesses accountable for verifying the status of workers, address the reality that 11 million people are here illegally and cannot be deported en masse—and increase lawful opportunities for those who want to come to this country and contribute to our prosperity. Nevertheless, our nation cannot afford to wait for Washington to get its act together and pass comprehensive immigration reform. There is too much at stake. Our economy demands that we take immediate action on the most urgent—and politically attainable—reform: making it easier for job creators to come and stay here.

  Creating a visa for entrepreneurs who already have funding to start their businesses will lead directly and immediately to American jobs. Visa reforms to improve temporary and permanent pathways for companies to fill the current shortages of engineers, scientists and other specialists—whose annual visa caps are often exhausted within days of becoming available—will spur growth at existing U.S. companies.

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  Big corporations like Bloomberg would rather import talent from outside the USA then invest in America to develop our own talented entrepeneurs and business people of the future.

  We have a vast underclass of illegal immigrants that need remediation rather than a new importation of immigrants that may or may not stay in America.

  Bloomberg and his cohort would be better to concentrate on education reform and scholarships for American citizens to attend graduate schools.

  The offshore talent should have the same visa requirements as everyone else.

• @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-02 | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – @Flap Twitter Updates for 2011-05-02 #tcot #catcot