The President and The Yes Men

"Quick question," I asked the newly-minted University of Iowa President Bruce Harreld during his job talk. "Are you a performance artist?" As I watched Harreld's lackluster presentation -- filled with the kind of empty business jargon often used by prankster-activists The Yes Men, who had just visited campus -- I wondered if it could possibly be real, if it was a put-on.

US Chamber of Commerce suing the Yes Men

Mother Jones senior editor Michael Mechanic writes in with this update on the "Yes Men pwn the US Chamber of Commerce" story I blogged about last week, which Cory further updated here. Michael says,

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Kate Sheppard [of Mother Jones] was at the fake US Chamber of Commerce press conference in DC where a Yes Man, posing as a Chamber rep, claimed the Chamber was reversing its draconian position on climate change, which has caused lots of big Chamber members — Apple, Nike, Exelon, and others — to quit the national business group.

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Chamber of Commerce tries to Ralph Lauren the Yes Men

Rebecca from EFF sez, "The Yes Men prank — they put out a press release and held a spoof news conference on Monday, claiming that the Chamber of Commerce had reversed its position and would stop lobbying against a climate bill currently in the Senate — apparently hasn't embarrassed the Chamber of Commerce enough yet. — Read the rest

Yes Men prank the Man in New Orleans

Kembrew says,

The Yes Men convinced the organizers of a major conference attended by contractors and government officials in charge of rebuilding N.O. that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson would attend the conference. Once at the conference, Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum — posing as Rene Oswin, a fake HUD official — delivered a speech that asserted that HUD was wrong and that it would not actually demolish perfectly sound low income housing, as it was planning to do.

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Yes Men pranksters documentary trailer

The Onion's AV Club has the trailer for a new documentary on legenday political pranksters The Yes Men, who pull stunts like impersonating officials with the WTO and show up at international trade conferences and propose a "market for human rights abuses" and "auctioning votes to the highest bidder." — Read the rest

Arizona officials "can't find" $2.4B in stolen Native health funds

Forget it, Jake. It's Arizona. Image: Rebekah Zemansky / shutterstock.com

A massive fraud scheme targeting Native Americans seeking addiction treatment has left Arizona officials chasing billions in stolen taxpayer dollars, with only 5% recovered so far, according to a new ProPublica investigation.

Between 2019 and 2023, fraudulent behavioral health providers and sober living homes exploited the American Indian Health Program, billing Medicaid for services never provided. — Read the rest

Daryl Hannah introduces decomposable "MyCelia Barbie"

Life in plastic is fantastic, so they say. For the rest of us, however, made of decomposable organic compounds, we're left to live with the landfills piled high with all that fantastic plastic. So just in time for the Barbie movie, actress Daryl Hannah has launched a new Barbie line that will naturally return to the Earth just like the rest of us! — Read the rest