Blog

They penciled in a Super Bowl and called it economic impact. I know the sentence, and I know the font: the big round number on the slide, set in bold, with the footnote about methodology set in the size of an ant’s apology. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than an upper-deck season ticket, writing that the problem with stadium deals was who was doing them, and that a better mayor from a better party would negotiate a better split. I believed the split was the story. It turns out the study is the story, and the study is written by whoever wants the money.

Here is the record. Jacksonville taxpayers are committing $775 million to renovate the Jaguars’ 31-year-old stadium, Reason’s Jon Loesche reported Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. Democratic Mayor Donna Deegan closed the deal, and the city council approved it in June 2024; the talks started under her Republican predecessor, Lenny Curry, whose administration negotiated a May 2023 memorandum of understanding that would have split the cost of the stadium and surrounding development 50–50, and who later urged the council to pass Deegan’s version, calling it a “win for taxpayers.” An August 2023 study by Tourism Economics, commissioned by the Jaguars, projected $21.7 billion in economic impact between 2028 and 2052, starting from $10.3 billion in direct spending; Deegan later touted a $26 billion impact over the 30-year lease, a figure the team’s own stadium page repeats. About $700 million over 25 years is attributed to “mega events visitor & operator spending,” with examples including the Super Bowl, the NFL Draft and College Football Playoff games. In October 2025, Reason notes, owner Shahid Khan told talkSPORT that a Super Bowl “needs infrastructure besides the stadium, hotel rooms, infrastructure, and so on, and Jacksonville doesn’t have that.” The city has separately given Khan an incentives deal worth up to $82 million in grants for a Four Seasons hotel, part of a roughly $134 million package for his riverfront development. Economist J.C. Bradbury of Kennesaw State called the study “propaganda.” “The goal,” he told Reason, “is to concoct a big number, not an accurate number.”

Now the numbers you can count without a consultant. The stadium is city-owned, the team’s own FAQ says, and in 2026 it is down to 42,465 seats, with 27,308 offline. Sunday, the Jaguars beat the Colts 42-7 in front of 42,156, the team’s site reported — their first game at home since Sept. 27, with the next three on the road and the next home date Nov. 29. They play six regular-season home games this season, having shipped two to London, Reason reports; in 2027 they play in Orlando; the Florida-Georgia game, one of the existing events the study counts on, is in Atlanta this year and Tampa next. The study projects 848,100 attendees a year, 62 percent of them at Jaguars games, leaving about 322,000 for everything else — a number Reason says the pre-existing events alone would nearly fill. The team’s FAQ lists “protecting the taxpayers” as the first priority of the deal and promises an August 2028 opening. Fine. I hope it opens on time and the canopy cools the place by every degree they say. But read what the alibi is. Not the stadium. The number. A projection built partly on an event the owner says the city can’t host, started under a Republican who called it a win for taxpayers, closed by a Democrat who touted $26 billion. Both parties are the help. One brings the memorandum. One brings the ribbon. The billionaire brings the study, and the study brings the Super Bowl that isn’t coming.

Deb says the church once approved a new parking lot because the youth pastor projected a bus ministry, and twenty years later the lot is lovely and there is still no bus. Buck says he went to Sunday’s game, and that 42,156 people sound exactly like 42,156 people, and that the upper deck was very quiet and very economically impactful. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Economic impact” is the alibi. The Super Bowl in the spreadsheet is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A city that owns the building and is putting up $775 million is renting the forecast from the tenant, and the tenant’s forecast includes a night the tenant has said won’t happen. I know what it is to get a number from the government that was really somebody else’s comp; I paid mine, and I am not here to talk about it. Maybe the renovated stadium earns every dollar back. I hope it does; Jacksonville deserves the parade. But a public deal sold on a big number instead of an accurate one is not development. It is advertising with a bond rating. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask the Jacksonville City Council, out loud, before the next incentive lands: who checked the $21.7 billion, why is the Super Bowl still in it, and what does the city get back if the mega events never come?

Sources:

• Reason, Jon Loesche, “Jacksonville’s $775 million stadium deal was sold on a Super Bowl the Jaguars’ owner says won’t happen,” Nov. 1, 2026
• Jaguars.com, John Oehser, “Game Report, 2026 Week 8: Jaguars 42, Colts 7,” Nov. 1, 2026
• Jaguars.com, “Stadium of the Future: FAQs,” accessed Nov. 2, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They renewed the graduate at $415 and called it cancel any time. I know this one from the inside, which is the worst way to know anything. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than a semester of textbooks, linking every morning to paragraphs that sat behind somebody’s paywall, and I never once asked what happened to the kid who signed up for the student rate and then, God help her, graduated. I thought journalism was the thing that read the fine print for you. It turns out journalism also has fine print, and it renews automatically.

Here is the record. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, that Bloomberg L.P. — the parent of Bloomberg News — will pay $500,000 in penalties, change its subscription practices and refund eligible subscribers in New York and nationwide over its Bloomberg.com subscriptions. According to the attorney general’s office, a first-time subscription could cost $1.99 for the first three months and then increase automatically to $39.99 a month; customers also complained they didn’t know a $1.99 monthly plan would become $34.99. A student annual subscription cost $99 and then automatically increased to $415 after graduation, with no warning; in some cases, the office says, annual student plans jumped over $300, and other annual subscribers saw increases of over $100 at renewal. The office found Bloomberg failed to clearly disclose the terms, didn’t give the post-purchase acknowledgment New York law requires, didn’t give enough notice before renewal, made cancellation information hard to find, and did not refund annual subscriptions despite promising customers at sign-up that they could “cancel any time.” Since 2021, the office says, the website and chatbot presented a maze of questions and options, forcing some people to click through multiple pages before reaching a cancel option; subscribers could cancel by email or phone, but Bloomberg didn’t tell them so until 2023. Westfair’s Peter Katz notes that former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is the company’s founder and majority owner.

Now the terms, because terms are where the bodies are buried. The assurance of discontinuance — I read the PDF — says Bloomberg “neither admits nor denies” the findings. Restitution goes to U.S. subscribers between Feb. 9, 2021, and June 30, 2023: annual promotional subscribers who canceled during their first renewal year can get up to $200, pro rata; monthly promotional subscribers who canceled within three months of the higher price get $15 each; student subscribers who asked to cancel within three months of the jump get 50% of that first non-student renewal; and people who complained to Bloomberg, the attorney general, the Better Business Bureau or the FTC get back what they paid after the complaint or first cancellation request. Fine. Take the refund. But do not mistake the $500,000 for a reckoning. The press release doesn’t say how many people paid the jump or how much Bloomberg collected from them, so nobody outside can say what share of the take the penalty is. The same release lists the office’s recent subscription cases — Thirty Madison, $400,000 in August; 1-800-Flowers, $375,000 in July — and the prices on these settlements read like a cover charge. The corporation designed the maze, the state sold it a ticket out, and the kid with the $415 bill gets a form letter. I am not cheering the referee. I am counting the chairs.

Taryn says the twins’ diaper subscription renewed at triple the price the week they switched sizes and the cancel button was behind a chatbot named something like Sunny, and she has never forgiven a sun. Buck says he canceled a fishing magazine in 1994 by mailing back the cover with a swear word on it and it worked fine. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Cancel any time” is the alibi. The $415 is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A company whose product is information — whose whole pitch is that it tells you what the price of things will be before you pay it — didn’t tell its own customers what their price would be. Maybe the new disclosures fix it. I hope they do; I would rather renew than rant. But a subscription you can only leave by solving a maze isn’t a subscription. It is a toll road with a newsroom attached. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then, if you subscribed between February 2021 and June 2023, check your inbox for the refund notice, and ask Bloomberg, out loud: how many graduates paid the $415, how many found the cancel button, and how many are still paying because they never got past the chatbot?

Sources:

• New York State Office of the Attorney General, “Attorney General James Secures $500,000 from Bloomberg News for Deceiving Consumers about Subscriptions,” Nov. 2, 2026
• New York State Office of the Attorney General, Assurance of Discontinuance, In the Matter of Bloomberg L.P. (PDF), 2026
• Westfair Communications, Peter Katz, “AG James settles with Bloomberg News about deceiving subscribers,” Nov. 2, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They left the hardware in the shuttered offices and called it significant improvements. I know that sentence, too. It is what an office says when the grade comes back bad and the answer is not the work but the context. I spent years at the You Know Who Post, in a cardigan that cost more than a help-desk technician’s week, writing that the consumer bureau was the one piece of the state that had picked our side. I believed the word in the middle of its name. Protection. It turns out protection is a line item, and a line item is the first thing the state stops paying for when it loses interest in a promise.

Here is the record. The Federal Reserve–CFPB Office of Inspector General has found that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s information security program is “not effective,” Reuters’ Douglas Gillison reported Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026 — this at the agency holding millions of consumer complaints, sensitive financial information and confidential supervisory records about financial institutions, Credit Union Daily reported Oct. 30. The watchdog rated the program a 2 on a five-level federal maturity scale; a 4 is considered effective. The same office rated it a 4 in 2024, then lowered it to a 2 in 2025, and it is still a 2. Among the findings: several datasets the bureau actively uses were missing from its data inventory; critical and high-severity vulnerabilities were not fixed within the required 30 days; risk-management procedures and security policies were incomplete or outdated, including missing business impact analyses for nine newly authorized systems; and computer equipment at vacated regional offices was not adequately inventoried or verified as secure. Ten of 14 earlier inspector general recommendations remain open; the new audit adds eight more. In a Sept. 30 management alert, the inspector general had already warned that hardware left at former regional offices — FedScoop reported they included Atlanta, Chicago, New York and San Francisco — had not been verified as secure, and said that left uncertainty about whether equipment, or anything stored on it, had been accessed or removed. FedScoop’s Matt Bracken reported Oct. 29 that the agency has lost nearly 30% of its staff since September 2024; the audit counts 524 of 1,758 employees gone between Sept. 30, 2024, and Dec. 31, 2025. Enterprise risk management work was suspended in March 2025, and data inventory management was handed to just one person. The Trump administration moved last year to abolish the bureau, Reuters reported, closing offices, halting work, canceling contracts and seeking to cut staff en masse.

Now the defense, and I will give it its full length because it deserves to be read closely. The bureau agreed with the recommendations. Its chief information officer, Christopher Chilbert, wrote that the report “lacks important context” and doesn’t fully recognize the “significant improvements” the bureau has made, citing a 55% reduction in vulnerabilities and the decommissioning of 46 systems; he said the bureau had no major security incidents or breaches of personally identifiable information in fiscal 2026, has “already done the work of addressing most of the OIG’s recommendations,” and plans to close all open findings by year’s end. The inspector general is still reviewing evidence the bureau sent after fieldwork closed, which will decide whether nine of the 10 open recommendations can be closed. And the audit did not establish that anything was breached; I will say that as plainly as Credit Union Daily did. But read what the defense is. No major incident is not a security program; it is a weather report. And the context the CIO says is missing is the whole story: an agency created to protect people’s financial data was emptied out, its regional offices closed, nearly a third of its people gone, the work of keeping the inventory handed to one person — and then the state that did the emptying moves on to the next press release, and the bureau that got emptied gets to call what’s left an improvement. I used to think the problem was that the bureau had enemies. The problem is that the state treats your data the way a landlord treats a vacant unit: leave the stuff, change nothing, call it decommissioning.

Deb says when the church closed the Wednesday-night office, the Altar Guild took the computer home in a laundry basket, wiped it in front of the pastor and wrote it on the minutes, and that the federal government should be ashamed to be out-administered by four women and a basket. Buck says he’d like his credit score rated on a five-level scale where he picks the context. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Significant improvements” is the alibi. The beige box under the desk in a closed office is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. Somewhere in Atlanta or Chicago or New York or San Francisco there may be hardware that once belonged to the agency charged with protecting your financial records, and the agency’s own watchdog could not tell you, by the end of September, whether anyone had walked off with it. Maybe the bureau closes every finding by Dec. 31. I hope it does; I would rather write the correction. But a protection agency that can’t list its own datasets and can’t vouch for its own machines is not protecting anyone; it is a sign on a door. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask the bureau and your representatives, out loud, before the year-end deadline: which datasets were missing from the inventory, what happened to the equipment in the closed offices, and who exactly is the one person holding the list?

Sources:

• Credit Union Daily, “CFPB Failed at ‘Protection’ Part When it Comes to Consumer Data, New IG Report States,” Oct. 30, 2026
• FedScoop, Matt Bracken, “Understaffed CFPB’s security program has foundational ‘weaknesses,’ OIG says,” Oct. 29, 2026
• Reuters via Investing.com, Douglas Gillison, “US consumer watchdog’s information security ‘not effective,’ watchdog finds,” Oct. 28, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They code-named the spaceport and called it duly posted. I know the phrase. Duly posted is what a public body writes in its own minutes when the notice went up on the one wall nobody reads, under a name nobody would recognize, for a meeting nobody from the public attended. It is technically a sentence about the law. It is actually a sentence about the door. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than a parish council member’s annual stipend, writing gentle copy about “economic development” as if it were weather that happened to small places. I never asked who printed the forecast. These days I read every public number about property taxes with more personal interest than I’d like, and this one is the biggest I have ever seen.

Here is the record. The Vermilion Parish Police Jury’s committees meet Wednesday, Nov. 4, the day after the election, and the Courthouse/General Needs agenda lists an executive session — closed to the public — to discuss the lawsuit asking a court to void the parish’s SpaceX tax agreement, The Vermilion Times reported Oct. 31, 2026, from the parish’s own posted agendas. The same agenda lists a “Request for SpaceX Related Funding” from the Vermilion Council on Aging, with no amount. The suit, filed Monday, Oct. 26, in the 15th Judicial District Court by the Vermilion Citizens Coalition and three residents, alleges eight Open Meetings Law violations, The Advocate’s Alex Lubben reported. It says the police jury revived the parish’s Industrial Development Board, inactive since 1997, by amending its July 15 agenda mid-meeting, and that on Aug. 25 the board approved a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement with SpaceX for its planned $100 billion spaceport near Pecan Island — listed on the agenda only as “Project Osprey,” announced by a one-page notice posted at the courthouse 24 hours ahead, with no notice sent to the state as the law requires. The seven-member board approved it unanimously in less than half an hour with no public comment, hours before Gov. Jeff Landry announced the project at an invitation-only event behind barricades, the Louisiana Illuminator and Gulf States Newsroom’s Drew Hawkins reported, citing recordings of the meetings. At the board’s first meeting in July, its program counsel, Butler Snow lawyer Mike Busada, said a notice posted somewhere in the courthouse would do. “Back door?” a board member joked. “Doesn’t have to be the front door,” Busada replied. The agreement trades property taxes for payments starting at $25 million a year and rising 2 percent annually for 25 years — about $800 million — plus $20 million for local infrastructure and $25 million for a charitable fund. The exemption alone is worth nearly $23.8 billion over 25 years; the payments cover about 3 cents of every dollar SpaceX would otherwise owe, by the newsroom’s analysis, as part of what it calls the largest incentive package in state history, an estimated $27.5 billion. The suit puts the break at about $8 million for each of the 3,000 jobs SpaceX estimates. A notice of lease recorded less than two hours after the vote carries a SpaceX executive’s signature dated Aug. 20, five days before it. The land came from ExxonMobil marsh the state acquired in a coastal-lawsuit settlement and sold to SpaceX for $100 million; SpaceX transferred it to the board, which leased it back. When plaintiffs asked for that settlement, parish counsel said the records had been delivered to the governor’s office, according to the petition. Two police jurors who attended both board meetings had signed nondisclosure agreements for “Project Osprey” in June.

Now the defense, and there are several. The board’s minutes say the Aug. 25 notice was “duly posted and given in the manner provided by the Open Meetings Law.” Landry’s office says its executive counsel attended the July 15 meeting, that the Exxon settlement was approved in open session after an executive session, that courts ordered the settlement kept confidential, and that the parish’s outside attorney has a copy. Landry defended the NDAs: “You think I want Texas to steal my thunder?” Busada called the PILOT a “phenomenal deal” for the parish, and said the point was to “really roll out the red carpet.” The plaintiffs themselves say theirs “is not a lawsuit against SpaceX or the Starbase”; neither SpaceX nor the state is a defendant, and SpaceX did not respond to the Illuminator. Fine. Courts will decide the eight counts; these are allegations. But read the handshake. The state negotiated, the firm signed five days early, a dormant board was woken up to hold the pen, and the public’s seat at the table was a sheet of paper on a courthouse wall under a bird’s name. The state didn’t fail to protect the parish from the company. It ran the meeting for the company and called it a notice. And now the response to a lawsuit about closed doors is, of course, a closed door. Both parties are the help. One brings the NDA. One brings the term sheet. The rocket brings the barricades.

Deb says if the church council had voted on the new fellowship hall under the code name “Project Pelican” with a note taped to the boiler room door, the Altar Guild would have rioted, and they’d have been right. Buck says he’d like three cents on the dollar on his property taxes and is prepared to change his name to Osprey. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Duly posted” is the alibi. The 3 cents is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A parish signed its piece of the largest incentive package in its state’s history in under thirty minutes, by a board raised from a thirty-year sleep, under a code name, with the public’s only notice a page on a wall, and with the related land settlement carried back to the governor’s office — and the lawsuit asking to have it done again in daylight is about to be discussed behind a door marked executive session. Maybe the court sends it back and the parish gets a better deal. I hope it does; the people of Pecan Island are the ones who will live under the launches. But a deal this big that could only survive in the dark is not development. It is a transfer with a press event. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask the Vermilion Parish Police Jury, out loud, at Wednesday’s public comment period before the doors close: who wrote the “final offers,” why couldn’t the public see the agenda’s real name, and when the Council on Aging comes asking for “SpaceX related funding,” why is it asking at all, if the parish kept only 3 cents on the dollar?

Sources:

• The Vermilion Times, Brison McPhail, “Council on Aging to Ask Police Jury for SpaceX-Related Money; Jurors Set Closed-Door Talk on Starbase Lawsuit,” Oct. 31, 2026
• Louisiana Illuminator / Gulf States Newsroom, Drew Hawkins, “‘Behind closed doors’: The secret SpaceX deal and the lawsuit challenging it,” Oct. 27, 2026
• The Advocate, Alex Lubben, “Lawsuit seeks to void SpaceX tax deal in Vermilion Parish,” Oct. 26, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They cut six hundred thirty-four and called it agile. I know the word. Agile is what a company calls itself on the morning it lets people go, the way a man who has just sold his neighbor’s fence calls himself “light on his feet.” Agile used to mean something about software. Now it means the headcount moved and the press release didn’t. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than a month of the triple-play bundle, writing admiring copy about “transformation,” and I never once asked who was being transformed into what. Last week I sat with Comcast’s 144,000 departing broadband customers. This morning I am sitting with the people who answered their calls, designed their routers and kept the lines up.

Here is the record. Comcast is laying off 634 employees at its Philadelphia headquarters as it pursues a cost-cutting transformation and invests in artificial intelligence, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Andrew Seidman and Ariana Perez-Castells reported Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, citing a notice filed with Pennsylvania regulators. The layoffs begin taking effect Dec. 31. Comcast also notified regulators it is cutting 119 positions in New Jersey, 159 in Washington state and 82 in California. The cuts hit the two Center City towers at 1800 Arch St. and 1701 JFK Blvd., Technical.ly’s Danya Henninger and Sarah Huffman reported — nearly 8 percent of the more than 8,000 people who work there — and include engineers, product managers, executive assistants, social media analysts, construction specialists, business analysts and IT leaders. The company says it will hire for more than 1,100 new positions, more than 500 of them in Philadelphia, and that affected workers will be considered for other roles or receive severance. On the Oct. 22 earnings call, co-CEO Michael Cavanaugh called it “the most significant operating and cost transformation in our company’s history, with an opportunity we believe will ultimately amount to billions of dollars over time,” WHYY’s Meir Rinde reported; the company will take a $1 billion fourth-quarter charge for the restructuring, and executives have said they are cutting layers and expanding AI agents to handle customer service. Chief financial officer Jason Armstrong had already told a Goldman Sachs conference in September that Comcast had embarked “on the largest cost transformation in the company’s history.” McKinsey & Co. consultants started showing up at headquarters around that time, multiple employees told the Inquirer. Workers described people “crying in the halls or the bathrooms.” Several spoke only anonymously so as not to endanger their severance. Comcast employs about 15,000 people in the Philadelphia region and roughly 180,000 worldwide; its revenue was flat in 2025, its shares hit their lowest level in more than a decade in October, and it lost 144,000 residential broadband customers in the third quarter.

Now the defense, and it was signed by a vice president. “Comcast is fundamentally redesigning our organization to build a more agile company and better serve our customers,” the company said, in a letter to Mayor Cherelle Parker from government affairs vice president Robert Murken. “We are deeply grateful to the colleagues whose roles are affected,” and “Philadelphia is our home.” Fine. The company is losing cable and broadband customers, a laid-off employee told the Inquirer “the writing was on the wall for years,” and some of the 1,100 new jobs will be real. I am not going to pretend a firm owes anyone a desk forever. But read what the defense is defending. Not the customers. The margin. “Better serve our customers” arrives in the same breath as the plan to have AI agents talk to them, and in the same year the customers are leaving for somebody else. A construction-department worker who maintains the network told the Inquirer the work “has to get done” and he doesn’t know who will do it. That is the whole confession: the work stays, the worker goes, the savings are booked as billions “over time,” and the people who were there at the beginning of that time get an envelope. The machine has not changed since the mill town. It just hires McKinsey to name the shift change.

Deb says when the parish switched to an automated phone tree she pressed zero for eleven minutes and then drove over with a casserole to talk to a human. Buck says he has had Comcast at the lake cabin for nineteen years and has never once been served agilely. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Agile” is the alibi. The 634 are the story. Sit with them until they confess. A company that calls this the largest cost transformation in its history, takes a billion-dollar charge to do it, and promises billions back over time has decided that the cheapest customer service is a machine and the cheapest headquarters is a thinner one — and has framed that as a gift to the customer. Maybe the new hires land and the net number shrinks. I hope it does; Philadelphia is a city, not a cost center. But a corporation that calls a layoff “better serving” is not serving anyone but the spreadsheet. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask Comcast, out loud, before Dec. 31: how many of the 1,100 new jobs go to the people losing theirs, which customer calls will a person still answer, and how much of the “billions over time” goes back into the network instead of out to the shareholders?

Sources:

• Philadelphia Inquirer, Andrew Seidman and Ariana Perez-Castells, “Comcast is laying off more than 600 Philly employees amid big cost-cutting transformation,” Oct. 30, 2026
• WHYY, Meir Rinde, “Comcast to lay off 753 employees in Philadelphia and New Jersey in restructuring bid to boost flagging revenues,” Oct. 30, 2026
• Technical.ly, Danya Henninger and Sarah Huffman, “Comcast’s nationwide overhaul will cut 634 jobs at its Philly headquarters,” Oct. 30, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They kept the records from the watchdog and called it respecting its independence. I know the sentence. It is the one a powerful office says with a straight face while it changes the locks, cuts the allowance, and then thanks the watchdog for its service in the passive voice. Independence, in this usage, means: you are free to look at anything we hand you. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than a junior auditor’s monthly rent, writing confident paragraphs about how “strong institutions” and “robust oversight” would hold the line. I believed the inspector general was the line. It turns out the line has a budget, and the budget is set by the people it watches.

Here is the record. The Federal Housing Finance Agency — the regulator over the Federal Home Loan Banks and over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which back the majority of U.S. mortgages and have been under its direct oversight since the 2008 financial crisis — refused to provide records to its own Office of Inspector General, obstructing congressionally mandated reviews, according to a report Reuters’ Marisa Taylor and Chris Prentice reviewed and reported Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. The report, prepared earlier this month and sent to lawmakers that day, says the agency refused records and information during at least three separate evaluations, including one on its oversight of a lender involved in multifamily loans that defaulted in June 2024. It calls the obstruction “unprecedented.” Reuters found it is the first time in at least a decade of the office’s semiannual reports that it has flagged FHFA interference with its independence. The report says the watchdog’s general counsel tried to win cooperation by showing the agency documentation of the office’s congressional mandate — the OIG is “entitled to access ‘all records,’” it says — and that in mid-August the two sides appeared to reach an “understanding.” Two weeks later, FHFA notified its inspector general that it was “drastically reducing” the office’s funding. Reuters previously reported that FHFA pulled most of the watchdog’s funding a month ago and that employees have been told as much as 80 percent of staff, or about 80 people, would be cut; staff have received furlough notices. In an Oct. 14 memo, acting Inspector General James Hodge warned that the reductions would undermine the office’s capacity to investigate suspected fraud in multifamily mortgage lending, WRE News’ John G. Stevens reported Oct. 31. The cuts, the new report says, are “an extreme escalation of the Agency’s challenge to the OIG’s authority and independence.” This is the same agency whose director, Bill Pulte, appointed himself chairman of both the Fannie and Freddie boards after his March 2025 confirmation, later ousted the acting inspector general, and has made criminal mortgage-fraud referrals against Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom deny wrongdoing, Reuters reported.

Now the defense, and it comes with a tally. An FHFA spokesperson called the allegations incorrect, said the agency “readily produced” information, and said staff completed 56 document requests and attended 16 separate hour-long meetings for just three recent reviews. “FHFA is proud of its record of respecting the independence and role of the OIG and continues to do so,” the spokesperson said. The agency has also defended the cuts by saying the watchdog’s budget and headcount are outsized compared with other regulators’. Fine. WRE News is careful to note the dispute has not been adjudicated and that the agency’s numbers don’t, by themselves, show whether the watchdog got every record it asked for — and I will be just as careful. But read what the defense is defending. Not the records. The meetings. Sixteen hours in a conference room is a fine way to be seen cooperating and a poor substitute for handing over the file. And the budget argument is the tell: if the watchdog is too big, the watchdog’s size is a question for the Congress that created it, not for the agency it was created to watch. The state’s favorite trick isn’t hiding things from you. It is grading its own homework and then defunding the teacher. Both parties are the help. One loves its inspectors general right up until the inspector general is reading its mail.

Deb says when the church treasurer started picking which receipts the audit committee got to see, they got a new treasurer, not a smaller audit committee. Buck says he’d like to cut the budget of whoever checks his boat registration by 80 percent and call it respecting their independence, and that this is the first federal policy he has ever understood completely. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Respecting its independence” is the alibi. The three evaluations are the story. Sit with them until they confess. An agency that sits atop the machinery behind most of the country’s mortgages told its own watchdog no, more than once, then — two weeks after a handshake — announced it was taking away most of the watchdog’s money, and now answers with a count of meetings attended. Maybe the full report reads softer than Reuters’ account. I hope it does; I would rather be wrong about this one. But oversight that exists at the pleasure of the overseen is not oversight. It is a courtesy, and courtesies get revoked. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask your senators and your representative, out loud, before the furlough notices turn into pink slips: which records did the inspector general ask for and not get, who decided to cut its funding two weeks after the August understanding, and who will be checking the multifamily lending if as many as 80 of the people paid to check it are gone?

Sources:

• Reuters via Investing.com, Marisa Taylor and Chris Prentice, “Exclusive-Trump appointee Bill Pulte’s housing agency obstructed watchdog, report says,” Oct. 30, 2026
• WRE News, John G. Stevens, “FHFA Watchdog Accuses Housing Regulator of Withholding Records in Oversight Reviews,” Oct. 31, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They sold your hard braking and called it Smart Driver. I know the sentence. I came home from a poetry reading tonight, Halloween night, past porch lights and a kid in a cardboard robot suit, and sat down still in the expensive cardigan with one line from the open mic stuck to me like a burr on a sleeve — a poet at the microphone read a poem about a county road, and the line I wrote on the back of the program was that the road remembers every mile you put on it and never once asks your name. Then I opened the phone, and the first thing it handed me was a car company that, according to thirty-six attorneys general, remembered every mile, asked for the name at the dealership, and sold the memory anyway.

Here is the reading, as the record has it, and I will keep the allegations labeled as allegations, because that is what a settlement leaves them. On Thursday, October 29, 2026, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office announced that General Motors will pay $220 million to settle allegations that it illegally sold drivers’ private behavior data and location information to third parties, including data brokers who then sold the data to insurance companies. Washington and Oregon co-led a coalition of 36 attorneys general; Washington says it will receive $12.3 million, and the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, announcing the same deal the same day, says Massachusetts will receive $5.7 million. The Seattle Times’ Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton and Engadget’s Mariella Moon reported it Friday, October 30. The program in question was called Smart Driver. From 2016 to 2024, per the Washington release, GM enrolled millions of drivers in it, pitched it “as a way for drivers to improve their own driving safety,” and told drivers it would not share their data with insurers without express consent.

Now the stanza where the title stops matching the poem. The attorneys general say GM sold the information to data brokers “under contracts that specified the data was to be used for insurance products,” and the brokers sold it to insurers, “who could then change the driver’s premium based on their driving habits.” GM, they say, did not disclose that purpose. And look at what was in the envelope. The data, in the release’s own words, was “personal, identifiable, and specific”: how many times a person drove the vehicle, the start and end times of each drive, how many times they braked or accelerated quickly, and whether they went faster than the speed limit. Insurers then used that to change rates, the states say, sometimes increasing premiums. After the New York Times reported on the practice, GM discontinued Smart Driver.

Then the sign-up, because the sign-up is the meter. Most people who got enrolled, the release says, got enrolled at the dealership when they bought the car, through one sign-up process that bundled Smart Driver with GM’s OnStar services. In many cases, the states allege, dealership employees accepted the terms and conditions on the customer’s behalf without the customer’s consent. At the time, GM was “heavily incentivizing” dealerships to sign up as many customers for OnStar as possible; sales employees received bonuses based in part on how many customers signed up for GM’s connected vehicle services, and dealerships were ranked by their enrollment numbers. Then the line I read twice: the OnStar app mistakenly told more than 370,000 drivers they were not enrolled in Smart Driver when they actually were, and GM was collecting and selling their data. GM later quietly unenrolled those drivers without telling them about the mistake, the states say, and left their data with the data brokers and insurance companies.

For fairness, the other side of the room, and it is not empty. These are allegations resolved by settlement, not findings after a trial. GM’s position, per the Seattle Times, is that it does not sell vehicle information that can be linked to an individual. A GM spokesperson told Engadget that “this agreement addresses Smart Driver, a product we ended in 2024, and reinforces steps we’ve taken to strengthen our privacy practices,” and added that “safer, more helpful and personalized experiences are enabled by connected vehicle data, and GM is committed to being clear about what information is used, how it’s protected, and the choices customers have about what they share.” Going forward, the settlement requires GM to get affirmative express consent before collecting or disclosing driving and location data, to limit the driving data it collects, to run a privacy program with internal and external assessments, and to put oversight and training in place at its dealerships. Engadget notes the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year banned GM from sharing specific consumer data with third parties for five years, and that GM reached a separate $12.75 million settlement with California in May.

Deb says her car has asked her to rate her drive twice and she has never once been allowed to rate the car. Buck says the only data his truck shares is with the guy at the gas station, and Buck shares the rest himself, at volume. Taryn wanted to know whether the baby’s stroller has a terms-and-conditions page, and nobody at the table could swear it doesn’t. I love them. They are seasoning. Not the plot. Not the meter.

“Smart Driver” is the alibi. The bonus at the sales desk is the story. Sit with the name until it confesses. It does not say Premium Input. It says Smart, and it says Driver, and both words point at you, like a mirror hung on your own windshield for your own good. The poem, if the states have it right, was never about your driving. It was about the contract with the broker that said what the data was for, the one you never saw, written in the plain prose a company saves for the people it actually has to answer to. Your braking at eleven at night was a line item on somebody else’s invoice. Your commute had a buyer. And the consent — the one thing the brochure swore it would ask for — was in many cases, allegedly, clicked by a man whose bonus depended on the click. That is not a feature. That is a toll booth that takes your name on the way in and sells your speed on the way out.

And I am not crowning the state, either, because I came home from the reading with my cardigan, not my old party card. Thirty-six attorneys general called it holding GM accountable, and some of it is: the consent rule is real, the dealer training is real, and somebody had to make the company write it down. But read the releases the way I read the program tonight. Washington will receive $12.3 million. Massachusetts will receive $5.7 million. The releases count the money by state; not one of the ones I read describes a check to the driver whose premium moved. The state got a press release and a share. The firm got a consent decree and a sentence about personalized experiences. The driver got the right to be asked next time. Both parties are the help, and a bipartisan agreement, which is what Washington’s attorney general proudly called it, just means both of them were in the room when the number got split. A man whose own house lately came back from the assessor wearing a fresh number knows what it is to be measured by people who never asked. Then he goes back to the file.

Here is the bleed. Every machine you own is now a little poet with a notebook, writing down when you leave, how fast you go, how hard you stop. The poet tonight said the road never asks your name. The road is the honest one. It is the company that asks, and the state that settles, and the broker in the middle who never had to ask at all. So ask them, out loud, the next time a salesperson slides a tablet across the desk and says it is just the standard setup: who is this for, who is it sold to, and what is your bonus if I say yes. And if nobody at the desk can say it plainly, do not let them write the poem in your name.

Sources:

• Washington State Office of the Attorney General, “GM to pay $220M for sharing drivers’ private data in case co-led by Washington,” Oct. 29, 2026
• Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, “AG Campbell Secures $5.7 Million For Massachusetts In Settlement With General Motors Over Alleged Data Privacy Violations,” Oct. 29, 2026
• The Seattle Times, Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton, “GM to pay $220M, with $12.3M for WA, in driver data-sharing settlement,” Oct. 30, 2026
• Engadget, Mariella Moon, “General Motors agrees to pay $220 million to settle multi-state data privacy lawsuit,” Oct. 30, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They exempted the stadium from the benefits law and called it a community benefits agreement. I know the move. You write a rule for everybody who takes public money, you put it on the books with a ribbon-cutting about accountability, and then the first truly enormous check walks in and the rule turns out to have a side door with the team’s name on it. The law is for the corner bakery. The deal is for the franchise. I have sat in a lot of luxury boxes, in a lot of cardigans, as a guest of people who were being “good neighbors,” and the view from up there is always that the neighborhood is very grateful.

Here is the record. Tampa’s City Council voted 4-3 on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, to exempt the Tampa Bay Rays’ proposed $2.3 billion stadium development from the city’s community benefits ordinance and approve a separate $21 million agreement, Tampa Bay Business & Wealth’s Chuck Merlis reported. The exemption lets the project bypass the 2023 ordinance governing publicly supported developments — community engagement, impact assessments, workforce programs and sustainable construction standards — because the law allows a developer to substitute alternative benefits “of substantially similar value.” The $21 million is Tampa’s 35% share of a $60 million commitment negotiated in the stadium financing deal; Hillsborough County’s $39 million share is in a separate agreement not yet approved, Florida Politics’ Jesse Mendoza reported. Only $4.2 million is due in the first five years — 2027 through 2031, Axios Tampa Bay’s Yacob Reyes reported — leaving $16.8 million for future councils to negotiate in later five-year plans. Revised terms from the Rays arrived at 7 a.m. the morning of the vote, Senior Assistant City Attorney Rebecca Johns told the council; they require at least 70%, or $2.94 million, of the first $4.2 million to be cash, dropping to 50% later, and exclude complimentary tickets from counting. Non-cash benefits are credited at their cost or appraised fair market value, “whichever is greater.” The team may change individual allocations and schedules without another council vote as long as it hits $4.2 million in five years. And the city “cannot withhold stadium funding if the team violates the community benefits agreement,” TBBW reported; it can seek a court order. The stadium district’s first phase contains no affordable housing. This all sits on the council’s 4-3 vote in August for $80 million in city money, and on what Axios calls nearly $1 billion from Tampa and Hillsborough County together, the largest commitment of taxpayer dollars to a sports stadium in the region’s history.

Now the defense, and it was made from the dais. Council members Naya Young and Luis Viera argued that taxpayers all over Tampa are helping pay for the stadium and deserve a share of its benefits, so the money shouldn’t pool only around the ballpark; a Rays consultant, Nicole Travis, defended the citywide approach. The money does buy real things on paper — rental assistance, park upgrades, sidewalks and drainage near Drew Park, youth sports, workforce training — and the team has to report every year. Fine. Then read the handshake. Council member Lynn Hurtak estimated only about $1.5 million of the first $4.2 million targets District 6, where the stadium actually goes. Council member Bill Carlson asked why the city didn’t just cut its $80 million contribution instead of collecting benefits over decades; the answer was that changing the stadium deal would require the Rays’ consent. That is the whole relationship in one sentence: the public can give more without asking, and can only take back with permission. Viera, who asked in August for the agreement to come back before November, leaves the council Nov. 2. Hillsborough College, whose Dale Mabry campus is being cleared for the stadium, has secured $50 million of the $200 million in state money it says it needs to rebuild, its president said, and could not guarantee the rest. Both parties are the help here, and the help voted 4-3 twice. The state wrote a rule and waived it; the team wrote the waiver’s terms at 7 a.m.

Deb says if the church let one family skip the casserole rotation for a promise to bring sixteen casseroles in later years, she’d want it in writing and she’d want the pan back. Buck says the Rays should have to mow somebody’s lawn, at minimum, and they can’t count the free tickets. I love them. They are seasoning.

“A community benefits agreement” is the alibi. The exemption is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A city passed a law in 2023 so that anyone taking public money would have to engage, assess and build to a standard, and then, for the largest public stadium commitment in the region’s history, voted 4-3 to let the team buy its way out for $4.2 million up front and an IOU for the rest, credited at the higher of two numbers, with no lever to pull if it falls short. Maybe the Rays deliver every dollar. I hope they do; Drew Park and West Tampa deserve more than renderings. But a benefits law that bends for the biggest beneficiary is not a law. It is a price list. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask the Tampa City Council, out loud, before the county votes on its $39 million: what did the full ordinance process require that this agreement skips, who appraises the non-cash benefits, and what happens to the $80 million if the $16.8 million never comes?

Sources:

• Tampa Bay Business & Wealth, Chuck Merlis, “Tampa Council Exempts Rays’ $2.3B Stadium Project From Community Benefits Rules,” Oct. 29, 2026
• Florida Politics, Jesse Mendoza, “Tampa City Council narrowly approves $21M Rays community benefits agreement,” Oct. 29, 2026
• Axios Tampa Bay, Yacob Reyes, “Tampa City Council approves Rays community benefits deal,” Oct. 29, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They priced your town by the satellite and called it dynamic. I know the word. Dynamic is what a company calls a price when it wants you to hear weather instead of decision. Airlines taught us. Ride apps perfected it. Concert tickets made it a sport. And now the same idea has climbed into orbit and is looking down at a farmhouse in Missouri, deciding what that farmhouse can bear. I used to write admiring pieces about the frontier, at the You Know Who Post, in a cardigan that cost more than a year of rural broadband, about how the sky would liberate the places the cable companies skipped. It did. Then it sent the invoice.

Here is the record. SatelliteInternet.com’s Andreas Rivera reported Oct. 29, 2026, that Starlink appears to be rolling out a dynamic pricing model in which monthly prices rise or fall by customer location, for current and new customers in affected areas, based on emails customers posted online. Reported increases run up to 20 percent, taking a $130 Residential Max plan to $156 a month; one customer got a 10 percent discount, to $117. “Starlink prices are dynamic, based on supply of capacity and demand from customers,” the email reads. “As our constellation grows and network capacity changes, service pricing may change from time to time.” Starlink says it will evaluate pricing roughly quarterly. Starlink had already raised prices for most U.S. customers in the first half of 2026, so for some this is the second increase in a year, and SpaceX, the site notes, recently became publicly traded. TeslaNorth, citing PCMag, reported Oct. 30 that in Missouri one Residential Max customer saw $130 become $156 and another saw a Residential 100 Mbps plan go from $50 to $60.50, both effective on or after Nov. 30. Starlink.com, it reported, currently lists Max at $156 in Rolla, Missouri, and $143 in Warsaw, Missouri, while Kansas City shows $117 and Marysville, Kansas, $104. The company now counts 13.6 million consumer subscribers worldwide. In high-demand places like Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, a one-time “demand surcharge” appears to still be in place.

Now the defense, and it is in the email. The constellation is still being built. The first V3 satellites, launched on Starship, are supposed to bring as much as ten times the downlink capacity; when capacity grows, prices can fall, and some towns already got cuts. Customers are month to month and can change or cancel at any time. Fine. Some of that is true, and I am not going to pretend a dish on a barn has a better option waiting at the end of the gravel road — that is the whole point. Read what the defense is defending. Not a cost. A position. “Supply of capacity and demand from customers” is a polite way of saying the price is whatever the neighborhood can’t walk away from, recalculated every quarter. In Kansas City you have choices, so the sky is cheaper. In Rolla you have fewer, so the sky is $156. The cancel-anytime line is the tell: it is only a freedom if there’s somewhere to go. The machine has not changed since the railroad. It finds the place with one way out and charges at the gate. It just does it from orbit now, with better stationery, and calls the gate a market signal.

Deb says her phone plan is fixed-price and she intends to die on it. Buck says the dish on the lake cabin went up twenty percent and the fish did not. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Dynamic” is the alibi. The town is the story. Sit with it until it confesses. A company with 13.6 million subscribers and new shareholders to please has decided that the same plan costs $104 in one Kansas town and $156 in one Missouri town, and that it will revisit the number four times a year, and has framed that as physics. Maybe the V3 satellites arrive and the needle swings down. I hope it does; the people who signed up because nothing else reached them deserve a price that stays put. But a price that moves with how badly you need it is not a market discovering anything. It is a meter on dependence. The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask the next email, out loud, before Nov. 30: what is the capacity number in my cell, what would make my price fall, and why does the same sky cost more over the town with fewer ways out?

Sources:

• SatelliteInternet.com, Andreas Rivera, “Starlink Customers Hit With Price Changes Based on Location,” Oct. 29, 2026
• TeslaNorth, Sarah Lee-Jones, “Starlink Tests Dynamic Pricing, Pushing Some Bills to US$156,” Oct. 30, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström

They shared the site plans with everyone and called it not exposed externally. I know the sentence. It is the one an institution reaches for when the door was open the whole time and nobody it is willing to count walked through. Externally. As if the danger to a courthouse floor plan stops at the org chart. As if a contractor with a login is family. I spent years at the You Know Who Post in a cardigan that cost more than a security clearance background check, writing gentle copy about how the federal government needed to “modernize,” and modernize it did: it moved the filing cabinet to the cloud and left the drawer open in a nicer font.

Here is the record. The General Services Administration’s Office of Inspector General released an audit Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, finding that the agency “did not effectively protect” physical security information, personal data and proprietary business information in its Google Drive, Nextgov/FCW’s Christian Robles reported Oct. 29. In a limited search, the watchdog found 116 files containing controlled unclassified information — CUI — shared with employees and contractors who had no legitimate business reason to see them. ExecutiveGov reported the same day that the 116 files were open to every GSA Google Drive user, contractors included, that more than half held building security information and five held personal data, and that among the building records were Washington, D.C., site plans covering entrances and screening areas, a progressive collapse analysis and floor plans marking spaces such as judges’ chambers. Social Security numbers, birth dates, phone numbers and addresses turned up too, along with vendor proposals carrying technical and pricing detail. GSA management estimates employees and contractors store 2.5 million documents in that drive; this was a sample. As of September, the agency had spent $7.8 million on a third-party data loss prevention tool meant to catch exactly this, and the tool did not flag about a third of the files even though they carried an “official use only” marking or a variant. GSA hadn’t fully completed its annual reviews of the tool’s search terms, left out “many relevant terms” from its own CUI guidance, didn’t turn on the tool’s optical character recognition feature, and “was not aware” the tool skips files over 15 megabytes, the OIG wrote. It also had no approval process for sharing sensitive files and no naming convention for them. And this is not news to the watchdog: in August 2014 it reported GSA had failed to protect information about child care centers, courthouses, water sources, building automation, security and fire alarm systems in the same Google environment, then raised concerns again in reports from 2015 to 2017, and again in April 2025.

Now the defense, and they filed one. GSA’s chief information officer, David Shive, wrote that GSA IT’s review found the documents “not exposed externally” and saw “no indication of malicious intent.” He agreed with all seven recommendations, said the agency is “working on a plan to address them,” and said GSA took “significant corrective action” during the audit — updating procedures, restricting domain-wide sharing “as appropriate,” and adopting the optical character recognition the OIG asked for. Fine. Agreeing with your inspector general is cheaper than arguing with one, and I believe somebody really did switch the feature on. But read what the defense is defending. Not the 116 files. Not the third the tool missed. Not the twelve years. It is defending the perimeter — the idea that the inside of a government is a safe room by definition, that a judge’s chamber on a floor plan is fine as long as only the people with badges, and the people with contractor badges, and whoever they hand a laptop to, can open it. That is the state’s favorite category error: it trusts itself by default and audits everyone else. The $7.8 million tool didn’t fail. It did what it was configured to do by people who did not read its manual.

Deb kept the church directory in a three-ring binder in a locked cabinet and still made the youth pastor sign for it. Buck says his tackle box has a better access-control policy than the federal real-estate agency, and that the tackle box is also not exposed externally because it lives in the garage. I love them. They are seasoning.

“Not exposed externally” is the alibi. The 116 files are the story. Sit with them until they confess. An agency whose whole job is running federal buildings left the security geometry of those buildings — where you enter, where you get screened, how the structure collapses — open to its entire drive, paid $7.8 million for a guard that couldn’t read big files, and has been told about the same cloud since 2014. Maybe the plan will be excellent. I hope it is; the people in those buildings deserve a locked drawer. But a government that keeps grading its own perimeter as safe is not protecting anyone. It is protecting the word “internal.” The cardigan stays. Fill the notebook. Then ask your member of Congress, out loud, before the next appropriation for the next tool: how many of the other 2.5 million documents have been checked, who outside the 116 ever opened them, and why did it take a sample search by the inspector general to find what the $7.8 million was bought to find?

Sources:

• Nextgov/FCW, Christian Robles, “GSA left sensitive information in its Google Drive exposed, watchdog finds,” Oct. 29, 2026
• ExecutiveGov, Mendel Cohen, “GSA Inspector General Finds 116 Sensitive Files Open to All Agency Users in Google Drive,” Oct. 29, 2026

— Theo Ashford-Lindström