Ken Avidor's Longtime Friend Caught with Mrs. Nussbaum's Credit Cards

So everyone's heard by now how Ken Avidor's long time friend and blogging partner Mark Knapp was charged with aggravated identity theft for using credit cards obtained in another man's name.

There are so many hilarious ironies to this event that I had a hard time selecting which to write about. Most of the good quips have already been made: "the guilt-by-association king has guilty associations!", "Zimmermann is looking forward to having a fellow Green as a cellmate", and my personal favorite: "Green Party Gone Bad!"

The last, of course, is a reference to the blog, "greenpartygonebad.blogspot.com" that Mark Knapp and Ken Avidor shared right up until Ken apparently took it down when Knapp went fugitive. Can you imagine the scene at Avidor's computer that day, as he frantically tried to purge all his associations with Knapp? I imagine it was like those movie scenes when the cops arrive for a drug bust, and a drug dealer frantically flushes his stash down the toilet.

Ken Avidor flushing Knapp down the toilet. Now there's an amusing visual.

So anyway, I was looking for an different angle on this hilarious development, and I started thinking about Ken Avidor, the self-styled investigative reporter who claims to have "exposed the PRT scam". Ken Avidor, who thinks "LIM" is a PRT company, when it is actually a type of electric motor. Ken Avidor, who looked at a 10 year old satellite photo of ULTra PRT's test track site and claimed it had been bullozed (hint: the photo was taken before the track was built).

Yes, we've all had fun watching Avidor's sometimes bumbling, always inaccurate, "investigations" through the years. But with the Knapp revelation, Avidor took bumbling to a new level. Think about it: the whole time Avidor was investigating all the so-called "crooks and liars" of the PRT world, his best friend and blog partner was allegedly using stolen credit cards, and Avidor never even noticed!

So when they went out to dinner and Knapp was always picking up the check, wouldn't you think Avidor would get suspicious? Where was this luddite Green getting all this spending money? And why was he signing his credit slips "Mr. Nussbaum"?

No, Avidor didn't notice, and I'm not surprised in the least. I mean, if he can't even understand the concept of a dated satellite photo, is he ever going to grasp a high tech crime like identity theft? Of course not. So when I read that Avidor claimed he had no idea about Knapp, I believed him 100%. I'll even testify on his behalf if he wants me to, that's how convinced I am of Avidor's complete lack of skill as an investigative reporter.

Now, given that he didn't know about Knapp's criminal behavior beforehand, I started wondering what it looked like when Avidor finally found out. I think this photo captures it perfectly:

STOLEN!!

UPDATE:

I just received this email from Ken:

Michael Carrato,

You have made serious, false and defamatory statements concerning me in this blog post:

http://weinerwatch.blogspot.com/2010/01/ken-avidors-longtime-friend-caught-with.html

You may be liable for spreading false and misleading information about an ongoing criminal investigation.

The authorities have been contacted. You may want to consult an attorney.

Jeez, here I am, sticking my neck out, telling the world that I believe that Avidor knew nothing of Knapp's alleged wrongdoing, and what do I get in return? Avidor threatens me! No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

And no, I won't be contacting my lawyer.

He Really Believes He's a Sleuth

Ken Avidor has dramatically announced "the end of the road" for me. He claims I "slipped up" in revealing my IP address.

The real fact is, I've been dropping clues for months. I left a trail of breadcrumbs so obvious that an 11 year old hacker could have tracked me down in 15 minutes. But months later, Avidor still hadn't figured it out, so I had to get more obvious.

So a few days ago, I left this comment as "Mike C" on Streetsblog in which I basically revealed myself:

David Gow and I are enthusiastic about all forms of well-conceived public transportation, not just those which happen to be large vehicles gliding on precisely 2 rails. :-)

Notice that "enthusiastic" and "transportation" are in italics, and there's a smiley at the end. Get it? "A Transportation Enthusiast." How much more obvious can that be? Does that look like a "slip"?

So, Ken, congratulations on finally realizing the obvious. And, now that you know my true identity, surely we can commence our debate, right?

The Hypocrisy of TreeHugger.com

"TreeHugger". The name is synonymous with in-your-face environmentalism - the kind of activism that stands up to corporate abuses in defense of nature's majesty.

So imagine my surprise at seeing Lloyd Alter, one of the most active members of TreeHugger.com, acting at the behest of corporate construction interests!

Allow me to explain. In one corner, there is personal rapid transit, PRT, a promising new green transportation technology. A PRT system is currently being built at Heathrow Airport in London. For the uninitiated, here are a few facts about this system:

• Phase one is on budget and on schedule to open next year as a parking lot circulator, with plans in place to extend it throughout the airport and beyond.


• The system features light, automated, battery-driven vehicles which run on demand on a dedicated guideway, and initial versions will move 1200-4800 people per hour, equivalent to buses running every 1-3 minutes.


• Vehicles produce no local emissions, using batteries charged from the electrical grid.


• Vehicles consume the equivalent of a 100 mpg automobile, and are even more environmentally friendly than that because they run off grid power, and can therefore take full advantage of advancements in clean power generation.


• The system is more energy efficient per passenger than any other transit mode.


• Construction and operating costs are significantly less than light rail, and PRT provides no-wait, non-stop, private travel, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week


• The system meets Kyoto sustainability targets today - 35 years ahead of schedule.

Now, if you are a true environmentalist, what possible problem could you have with a system like that?

So that's PRT. In the other corner, there is traditional light rail transit. Now, I'm as much a fan of rail as anyone - I'm amazed by metro/subway systems like NYC and Toronto - but light rail is not a panacea. There are many situations where PRT is a much better option than light rail.

The problem is, light rail has its proponents, and those proponents see PRT as a threat. Light rail construction firms and consultancies stand to lose BILLIONS of dollars if a new technology like PRT cuts into their monopoly on city transit, so it is in their best interest to see PRT fail.

Which brings us to the Light Rail Now (LRN) website. LRN is a corporate astroturfing website - basically a site that presents itself as a grass roots effort, but is in reality just an undercover marketing campaign - in this case, underwritten primarily by three rail companies.

LRN has a somewhat famous "analysis" of PRT called "Cyberspace Dream Keeps Colliding With Reality". It was written anonymously, never published, and only exists on the LRN website in its "FACTS" section. It's basically promoted as a scientific analysis of why PRT would not work.

One problem: it's complete fiction. It's not a scientific analysis, it's marketing fluff, written to disparage PRT and preserve light rail's monopoly on city transit. Here are four separate, detailed rebuttals which debunk every major point in the "analysis".

But even though the LRN report is not accurate, it's very effective. Responsible journalistic entities wouldn't touch it - they know better than to trust anonymously written marketing fluff from an astroturfing site - but the LRN report gets plenty of circulation in blogs and forums, where transit activists who've never heard of PRT quickly buy into the criticism and spread it further.

Which brings us back to TreeHugger. Lloyd Alter apparently got a stack of propaganda from Ken Avidor, including one of Avidor's cartoons and a link to the LRN report. But Lloyd is not a journalist, so it didn't occur to him that an activist sending out propaganda should not be trusted to provide the full truth. Lloyd basically parroted Avidor's campaign verbatim.

But bad journalism is not necessary hypocrisy - maybe Lloyd was just being lazy? Nope. I posted a comment to that thread which outlined Ken Avidor's association with LRN, and LRN's association with corporate rail interests, but my comment never appeared. Then I sent an email to the TreeHugger editor detailing my concerns - no response.

And then there's this comment from Lloyd, in which he sarcastically acknowledges the objections. So Lloyd certainly cannot claim ignorance to the evidence.

No, Lloyd and TreeHugger have clearly chosen to ignore fact and support corporate rail. He's been shown the potential environmental benefits of this new technology, and he knows it's being built as we speak at Heathrow, yet he's still touting the rail company line.

Pure hypocrisy.

So the next time Lloyd goes on and on about the importance of biodegradable flooring, ask him why he is bashing the most environmentally friendly transit solution since the bicycle. Ask him why he has such a problem with a transit technology that can provide ultimate convenience and availability, and can also get us to Kyoto energy levels 20 years ahead of schedule.

It's obviously a question he's trying to evade.

Ken Avidor's Propaganda Resurfaces at TreeHugger

Ken Avidor has supposedly "retired", but his anti-PRT campaign lives on. Someone named Lloyd Alter at TreeHugger has revived his campaign, complete with links to Avidor's Greatest Hits: a Road Kill Bill anti-PRT cartoon, and the much debunked Light Rail Now PRT attack.

I left a comment there, letting them know that Ken Avidor was the originator of all that disinformation - he's even one of the anonymous authors of that unpublished "Cyberspace Dream" pseudo-scientific analysis. I also pointed out that Light Rail Now is a backed by light rail construction interests who stand to lose $Billions if PRT succeeds, and that Alter had been snookered into believing the words of a single cartoonist with an agenda, who just happens to be in bed with corporate rail interests.

But - surprise surprise! - my TreeHugger comment never appeared, despite 13 other comments being approved (mostly mindless criticisms from people who know nothing about PRT) - so why is my comment being suppressed? Perhaps Lloyd Alter was advised by his "source" to suppress my comments?

TreeHugger is yet another example of idiot journalism - a collection of untrained, unprofessional writers who take the words of those with an agenda, and present them as unaltered, unswerving fact. Did Lloyd Alter bother to investigate Avidor's claims? Of course not! If he had, he would have found responses from others which answer every single one of Avidor's talking points.

He would have also discovered that the "Cyberspace Dream" paper had been thorougly debunked multiple times - including corrections to basic 11th grade physics mistakes - yet it still appears in its original unaltered form. Did it ever occur to Mr. Alter that an anonymously written "analysis" posted on a competitor's web site might not be accurate - indeed, that it might be nothing more than marketing fluff?

No, none of this crossed Mr. Alter's mind, because he is not a journalist, and TreeHugger is not a journalistic entity. Like the Twin Cities Daily Planet and the DumpBachmann blog, TreeHugger is nothing more than a megaphone for propagandists like Ken Avidor.

Does Ken Avidor Profit Financially from his anti-PRT Propaganda?

In the comments section of this Lloydletta abomination, I asked Ken Avidor a simple question: how much have you made on your anti-highway, anti-PRT cartoon, Roadkill Bill?

Ken refuses to respond.

Why is this relevant? Well, for weeks now, Ken himself has been asking pro-PRT people if they make money to promote PRT - on Wikipedia he tried (and failed miserably) to imply David Gow (Mr Grant) had a financial conflict of interest, and he's also aggressively questioned other pro-PRT people.

So certainly the question is relevant for Avidor himself.

But unlike Avidor's fishing expiditions, I have actual evidence to back up my question:

• Roadkill Bill ran for almost 4 years in Pulse of the Twin Cities during which time I assume Avidor was paid for producing it. (How much, Ken?)


• Roadkill Bill is aggressively anti-highway, and Ken has repeatedly tried to link PRT to highways but has never provided shred of evidence to support that bogus claim. Could there be a financial reason for Ken's persistent attempts to associate PRT with highway promoters?


• At some point (right around the time he stopped getting paid for producing Roadkill Bill), he produced this anti-PRT Roadkill Bill comic - pretty strange considering that PRT doesn't run on roads. This was right around the time PRT was being discussed heavily in Minnesota and he was ramping up his anti-PRT propaganda campaign. Could it be that Ken used PRT to revive his Roadkill Bill cartoon?


• Later, in the context of his never-ending attack on the Wikipedia PRT article, he posted another Roadkill Bill comic - this one critical of Wikipedia. What possible link could there be between an online encyclopedia and a cartoon about roads?


• Ken's anti-PRT pages are located on his Roadkill Bill website - so people searching on PRT are directed to roadkillbill.com.


• There is a Roadkill Bill paperback listed at Amazon. Does Ken continue to make money by keeping Roadkill Bill in the spotlight?

Is Ken Avidor's anti-PRT campaign nothing but a tool to promote his cartoon? It's a valid question.

Here's a very plausible scenario: in 2003, as Roadkill Bill was running out of steam, PRT was a big topic in Minnesota. Everyone was talking about this new exotic form of transportation that rode above the streets, but few people had any concept of how such a system would work or how much it would cost - it was a complete unknown for the general public.

In other words, PRT was ripe for attack - especially by a train advocate who was looking for new ideas for his floudering cartoon. Unlike the anti-highway movement, which is always battling against the huge majority that is the car-driving public, attacking PRT was a piece of cake.

But, how can an anti-highway cartoon like Roadkill Bill be used to attack a new form of public transit? Easy - just tell everyone that PRT is a tool of the highway lobby! It's really brilliant: you scare the left by linking PRT to highways, you scare the right by calling it a tax boondogle, you scare everyone else by linking it to terrorism - and all the while you revive your failing cartoon!

So here we are, several years later. Ken Avidor has kept PRT (and therefore Roadkill Bill) in the limelight for several years after the last Minnesota PRT bill was defeated. He's splashed his Roadkill Bill anti-PRT and anti-Wikipedia cartoons all over the Internet. He even got an article on Roadkill Bill at Wikipedia. And web searches on PRT direct you to... roadkillbill.com.

Indeed, PRT has gained Roadkill Bill much more exposure than the anti-car movement ever could - and I assume the royalties are still coming in from his paperback.

How much of this scenario is true? Who knows? It seems we'll never know, since Ken refuses to answer any questions about his profits from Roadkill Bill. But look at all the evidence above and judge for yourselves. I think it's a very safe assumption that Ken Avidor has benefited handsomely from his anti-PRT crusade. The only remaining questions are: how much has he made so far, and how much more business does he drum up every time he posts a new PRT smear?

Give Him an "E" for Effort

Ken Avidor has discovered Easter eggs, and he's begun using them on his dumpmarkolson blog. It's unclear when or where he learned this trick, but it's a good bet he got it from 'PRT is a Joke' is a Joke, which has featured Easter eggs for quite a while now.
Ken Avidor spreads lies about PRT.
But, bless his PRT-smearing heart, Ken still hasn't figured out how to do it right. See, the key to a good Easter egg is that it must be invisible - completely invisible - but Ken's Easter eggs are plainly not. Instead of using white-on-white, he uses really-really-light-pink-on-white:
Avidor uses the 35W bridge collapse as a propaganda tool.
Ken Avidor never admits when he's wrong.
Can you see it? In that big white gap above the "Labels:" line, there's a slight but very perceptible discoloration. Look closely and you will find Ken's attempted Easter egg. You can see it especially well if you are on a laptop and you tilt the screen back, which darkens the image and increases the contrast of the "Easter egg" until it's clearly legible.
Ken Avidor smears PRT and its proponents.
And there's another problem: notice the huge gap where the Easter egg is placed. A good Easter egg has no gap other than the typical gap between paragraphs. A giant space between paragraphs is a dead giveaway.
Ken Avidor is afraid to debate me on PRT.
But hey, we gotta give him some credit for trying, right? Maybe Ken never went to an Easter egg hunt as a child, and therefore he doesn't really get the concept of "hidden". So Ken, I applaud the effort. Keep on plugging and maybe someday you'll get it right...Avidor's anti-PRT campaign is disinformation.

Lloydletta Bottom-Feeders Plunge to a New Depth of Tastlessness

Lloydletta's Nooz brings us the latest bit of disgusting discourse from Ken Avidor. I won't go into details in this post out of respect for those tragic souls who are still in the water, but suffice to say that it took Acidor less than a day to shamelessly use an unspeakable tragedy in his own hometown to attack a PRT promoter - then alluded to it again on Lloydletta.

So, when David Gow naturally objected to Ken's shameless attempt to use this tragedy to make a point (also here), Ken, oblivious to hypocrisy as he is, shamelessly tried to pin the blame on Gow!

Can this man sink any lower? We already know he has no problem continuing to attack someone who died 4 years ago, but now we see he's not even averse to using tragic accident victims to promote his cause - even while the tragedy is still unfolding!

Lloydletta and Ken Avidor: plunging to the depths of tastelessness once again.

An Open Challenge to Ken Avidor: Debate Me Online

In the comments section of this post, Ken Avidor made the following declaration:

"I have offered to debate PRT with local PRT proponents for years and they have declined every time"

And at least the first part of this statement is true: Ken has repeatedly made this same declaration indicating his desire to debate a PRT proponent.

So, naturally, I replied that I'd be more than willing to take him up on his offer, which I was sure he'd accept - if he's so sure about his stand on PRT that he's willing to debate a local Minneapolis PRT expert, why would he back away from debating an anonymous nobody from Buffalo, NY?

His response, from the same comment thread:

"My terms are a debate with a person who is a member of ATRA, CPRT, Taxi 2000 or an elected official who has authored legislation for and/or promoted PRT. I would prefer to debate that person in front of a live audience, but I will also debate that person live on radio or television. It's important that people get to ask questions."

Wow, you can tell this guy's a bicyclist by the way he backpedals! It took only a few hours to go from grandiose declaration to meek legalistic cop-out!

So, to summarize: he'll only debate certain PRT experts. And only in certain forums. And there has to be an audience. Well so much for PRT people "declining for years". I guess he doesn't consider me a PRT person, even though he's frequently awarded me the "gadgetbahner" and "PRTista" labels.

Are you afraid to debate me, Ken?

I am hereby challenging you, Ken, to an online debate on PRT. Here are my only terms: (a) it has to be an online forum, (b) and I'm not going to reveal my true identity.

That's it. You make up the rest. It can be on any online forum of your choosing. It can be live chat or email, whatever you choose.

I'll declare now that I have no financial or personal interest in PRT - my interest is purely academic. So there really is no reason for me to reveal myself. My entire history with PRT is documented using my current moniker, so that's all you need to know. If you doubt this, I will reveal myself to a trusted third party who can verify these claims.

What have you got to lose?

So that's my open challenge, Ken. Whenever you're ready for an online debate, leave me a comment here and I'll be sure to respond. And we can finally get this long-awaited debate started.

This Just In: Wacky CNN Joins Silly New York Times Promoting PRT!

Ken Avidor has the scoop:

The publicity barage continues. This puff piece in CNN Money.com reads like it's transcribed from the same press release as the others.

Let's think about this for a moment. The Times article was about the Morgantown PRT system in West Virginia. The CNN report was about the ULTra system, currently being built at Heathrow airport - a different PRT design built 30 years later on a different continent by different people!

Yep, practically transcribed from the same press release.

So two of the most well known and reputable news organizations on the planet have written favorable articles on different PRT systems in the last month, but Ken Avidor would have you believe this is all just puff. Why? Because the Twin Cities Daily Planet (Ken Avidor, Transportation Editor) has already debunked PRT as nothing but a tool of the highway lobby!

Obviously, the New York Times and CNN didn't get the message. Neither did the IEEE or the European Union. Maybe they all forgot to read the Daily Planet that week?

This Just In: New York Times Supporting Mark Olson!

Ken Avidor has the scoop! According to Ken, the New York Times is conspiring to help a Minneapolis Republican in his domestic abuse case!

As amazing as that sounds, Mr. Avidor has breathlessly documented the whole thing:

In May, I predicted that Mark Olson's pals at the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) would crank up the PRT publicity machine as a preemptive whitewash for Olson's role in the PRT scam in time for his upcoming trial. Today, the New York Times published yet another puff piece about the Morgantown PRT...

So, why did the Times run this puff piece for PRT? Does all this recent PRT publicity have something to do with Rep. Mark Olson's trial?

See, this is just another example of right wingers using the New York Times as their own personal propaganda tool. It's so transparently obvious that a Times piece about a West Virginia transit system must be linked to the Minnesota Republican party!

And even if this obvious transgression was unintentional, the Times should know better. Any good reporter will tell you: when writing an article about a successful piece of technology, always be sure to check whether a local politician 1500 miles away supports a kinda-sorta similar technology and is awaiting trial for a completely unrelated domestic abuse charge! How can a jury be expected to render a proper verdict when they've been tainted by this Morgantown article?

Shame on you, New York Times.