5 Scientific Reasons Powerful People Will Always Suck
A study of personality types once found that as a group, serial killers scored highest in "superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others." The other highest-scoring group for these undesirable traits? Politicians.
Again and again science has found that being in charge not only attracts terrifying douchebags, but creates them as well. And with that, here's the scariest article you'll read this month...
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Coming Soon From the Air Force: Mind-Reading Drones
Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before drones become self-aware and kill us all. Now the Air Force is hastening that day of reckoning.
Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of recent Air Force contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse.
It all starts with a solution for a legitimate problem. It’s dangerous to fly and land drones at busy terminals. Manned airplanes can collide with drones, which may not be able to make quick course adjustments based on information from air traffic control as swiftly as a human pilot can. And getting air traffic control involved in the drones cuts against the desire for truly autonomous aircraft. What to do?
The answer: Design an algorithm that reads people’s minds. Or the next best thing — anticipates a pilot’s reaction to a drone flying too close.
Enter Soar Technology, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area of Operations,” or ESPRIT. It’ll create a “Schema Engine” that uses “memory management, pattern matching, and goal-based reasoning” to infer the intentions of nearby aircraft.
Not presuming that every flight will go according to plan, the Schema Engine’s “cognitive explanation mechanism” will help the drone figure out if a pilot is flying erratically or out of control. The Air Force signed a contract Dec. 23 with Soar, whose representatives were not reachable for comment....
Scientifically speaking, it’s only a matter of time before drones become self-aware and kill us all. Now the Air Force is hastening that day of reckoning.
Buried within a seemingly innocuous list of recent Air Force contract awards to small businesses are details of plans for robot planes that not only think, but anticipate the moves of human pilots. And you thought it was just the Navy that was bringing us to the brink of the drone apocalypse.
It all starts with a solution for a legitimate problem. It’s dangerous to fly and land drones at busy terminals. Manned airplanes can collide with drones, which may not be able to make quick course adjustments based on information from air traffic control as swiftly as a human pilot can. And getting air traffic control involved in the drones cuts against the desire for truly autonomous aircraft. What to do?
The answer: Design an algorithm that reads people’s minds. Or the next best thing — anticipates a pilot’s reaction to a drone flying too close.
Enter Soar Technology, a Michigan company that proposes to create something it calls “Explanation, Schemas, and Prediction for Recognition of Intent in the Terminal Area of Operations,” or ESPRIT. It’ll create a “Schema Engine” that uses “memory management, pattern matching, and goal-based reasoning” to infer the intentions of nearby aircraft.
Not presuming that every flight will go according to plan, the Schema Engine’s “cognitive explanation mechanism” will help the drone figure out if a pilot is flying erratically or out of control. The Air Force signed a contract Dec. 23 with Soar, whose representatives were not reachable for comment....
The Government Internet ID Proposal’s Pros and Cons
...“In that [government employee] capacity there really wasn’t a huge privacy concern,” Stepanovich said. “And then it started growing, this need to authenticate everybody.”
In 2009, the government released a Cyberspace Policy Review first proposing the objective of a national plan for online identification — what sounded like a national ID card for the Internet — and concerns grew.
“That’s what a lot of people feared — that the government was going to take REAL ID and put it on the Internet and be able to track everybody’s Internet activity,” Stepanovich said....
...The first problem with this idea is obvious: If you consolidate all of your passwords in one place, that actually makes your identity even easier to steal. And if you’re carrying that identity around on a pocket-sized device, you’re about as likely to lose it as you are your wallet — now with added disastrous consequences...
...“In that [government employee] capacity there really wasn’t a huge privacy concern,” Stepanovich said. “And then it started growing, this need to authenticate everybody.”
In 2009, the government released a Cyberspace Policy Review first proposing the objective of a national plan for online identification — what sounded like a national ID card for the Internet — and concerns grew.
“That’s what a lot of people feared — that the government was going to take REAL ID and put it on the Internet and be able to track everybody’s Internet activity,” Stepanovich said....
...The first problem with this idea is obvious: If you consolidate all of your passwords in one place, that actually makes your identity even easier to steal. And if you’re carrying that identity around on a pocket-sized device, you’re about as likely to lose it as you are your wallet — now with added disastrous consequences...
The UN ‘disappears’ 50 million climate refugees, then botches the cover-up
...And there you have it, folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover-up attempt.
Thanks to the reality of census numbers, followed by the UN’s handling of this, we can now safely say that the claim of “climate refugees” is total fantasy. Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website...
...And there you have it, folks, another bogus climate claim rubbished by reality, followed by an inept cover-up attempt.
Thanks to the reality of census numbers, followed by the UN’s handling of this, we can now safely say that the claim of “climate refugees” is total fantasy. Be sure to leave comments on any website that makes this claim, and link to this and the Asian Correspondent website...
C.S. Lewis: "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State"
...On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.
Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'
This would be no more than an extreme application of the political philosophy implicit in most modern communities. It has stolen on us unawares. Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts.
As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business. ...
...I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind'. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists' puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Thirdly, I do not like the pretensions of Government --the grounds on which it demands my obedience-- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique.[4- Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Politique tiree des propres paroles de L'Ecriture-Sainte (Paris, 1709).] I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. ...
...On the old view public opinion might protest against a punishment (it protested against our old penal code) as excessive, more than the man 'deserved'; an ethical question on which anyone might have an opinion. But a remedial treatment can be judged only by the probability of its success; a technical question on which only experts can speak.
Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. Observe how the 'humane' attitude to crime could operate. If crimes are diseases, why should diseases be treated differently from crimes? And who but the experts can define disease? One school of psychology regards my religion as a neurosis. If this neurosis ever becomes inconvenient to Government, what is to prevent my being subjected to a compulsory 'cure'? It may be painful; treatments sometimes are. But it will be no use asking, 'What have I done to deserve this?' The Straightener will reply: 'But, my dear fellow, no one's blaming you. We no longer believe in retributive justice. We're healing you.'
This would be no more than an extreme application of the political philosophy implicit in most modern communities. It has stolen on us unawares. Two wars necessitated vast curtailments of liberty, and we have grown, though grumblingly, accustomed to our chains. The increasing complexity and precariousness of our economic life have forced Government to take over many spheres of activity once left to choice or chance. Our intellectuals have surrendered first to the slave-philosophy of Hegel, then to Marx, finally to the linguistic analysts.
As a result, classical political theory, with its Stoical, Christian, and juristic key-conceptions (natural law, the value of the individual, the rights of man), has died. The modern State exists not to protect our rights but to do us good or make us good -- anyway, to do something to us or to make us something. Hence the new name 'leaders' for those who were once 'rulers'. We are less their subjects than their wards, pupils, or domestic animals. There is nothing left of which we can say to them, 'Mind your own business.' Our whole lives are their business. ...
...I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the freeborn mind'. But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of Government who can criticise its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology. Read Montaigne; that's the voice of a man with his legs under his own table, eating the mutton and turnips raised on his own land. Who will talk like that when the State is everyone's schoolmaster and employer? Admittedly, when man was untamed, such liberty belonged only to the few. I know. Hence the horrible suspicion that our only choice is between societies with few freemen and societies with none.
Again, the new oligarchy must more and more base its claim to plan us on its claim to knowledge. If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. This means they must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists, till in the end the politicians proper become merely the scientists' puppets. Technocracy is the form to which a planned society must tend. Now I dread specialists in power because they are specialists speaking outside their special subjects. Let scientists tell us about sciences. But government involves questions about the good for man, and justice, and what things are worth having at what price; and on these a scientific training gives a man's opinion no added value. Let the doctor tell me I shall die unless I do so-and-so; but whether life is worth having on those terms is no more a question for him than for any other man.
Thirdly, I do not like the pretensions of Government --the grounds on which it demands my obedience-- to be pitched too high. I don't like the medicine-man's magical pretensions nor the Bourbon's Divine Right. This is not solely because I disbelieve in magic and in Bossuet's Politique.[4- Jacques Benigne Bossuet, Politique tiree des propres paroles de L'Ecriture-Sainte (Paris, 1709).] I believe in God, but I detest theocracy. For every Government consists of mere men and is, strictly viewed, a makeshift; if it adds to its commands 'Thus saith the Lord', it lies, and lies dangerously. ...
Rousseau’s ‘General Will,’ Redux
A pull quote that really jumped out at me, in the new issue of The Nation:
We must develop an argument that the market is a source of constraint and government an instrument of freedom.
A pull quote that really jumped out at me, in the new issue of The Nation:
We must develop an argument that the market is a source of constraint and government an instrument of freedom.
NLRB to Boeing – build all your 737s in union state or we’ll sue
...No, they haven’t sent such a message. What they’ve said is they have a backlog of orders and can’t afford (business interest) work stoppages every 3 years while unions negotiate a new contract. That is a legitimate concern. And they want some sort of continuity built into the productions system that accounts for that probability. No one is denying union workers their “rights” in Washington nor have any union employees been fired because of them – again, since the decision to locate in SC was made, 2,000 additional union employees have been hired there.
What’s is happening here is government has chosen to take sides and is attempting to intimidate Boeing. The side it has picked – surprise – is the union side. And it plans to use its power to attempt to force a company into doing something which is not in its best business interests, despite the lip service Solomon gives that “right”. But there’s no “hostile business climate” here, is there?...
Friday, April 22, 2011
Your history lesson for the day:
On This Day: Iron Workers Bomb Los Angeles Times Building
On Oct. 1, 1910, dynamite set by union member J.B. McNamara exploded and set the Los Angeles Times building ablaze, killing 21 and injuring more than 100....
...The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, a national union headquartered in Indianapolis, was determined to unionize the workers in Los Angeles. They often resorted to violent measures, bombing upward of 70 factories, bridges and railroad tracks between 1907 and 1911....
McNamara Brothers Trial: 1911
...Two brothers, James B. McNamara and John J. McNamara, were active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Both men were in their late 20s. The union represented workers in the construction industry, and was particularly active on the West Coast. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was the Union's arch enemy. Otis used his newspaper as a public platform for his tirades against the unions and to promote the interests of the pro-management Merchants and Manufacturers Association. On the morning of October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded in the Los Angeles Times building, killing 20 people and causing considerable damage to the building. Shortly thereafter, there was another bombing at the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles....
...[Clarence] Darrow had suffered a humiliating defeat by being unable to rescue his clients in the face of the evidence against them. Worse was yet to come, however.
One of the people on Darrow's payroll was Bert Franklin, a former investigator for the U.S. Marshal's office. District Attorney Fredericks had learned that Franklin was trying to bribe jurors to acquit the McNamaras and had approached at least two jurors, namely Robert Bain and George Lockwood. Fredericks arranged a "sting" operation, and on November 28, 1911, three days before the McNamara trial, arrested Franklin in the act of handing money to Lockwood. In January 1912, Franklin pleaded guilty to charges of jury tampering, and on January 29, he testified that Darrow had known and approved of the bribery efforts....
On This Day: Iron Workers Bomb Los Angeles Times Building
On Oct. 1, 1910, dynamite set by union member J.B. McNamara exploded and set the Los Angeles Times building ablaze, killing 21 and injuring more than 100....
...The International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, a national union headquartered in Indianapolis, was determined to unionize the workers in Los Angeles. They often resorted to violent measures, bombing upward of 70 factories, bridges and railroad tracks between 1907 and 1911....
McNamara Brothers Trial: 1911
...Two brothers, James B. McNamara and John J. McNamara, were active in the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Both men were in their late 20s. The union represented workers in the construction industry, and was particularly active on the West Coast. Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, was the Union's arch enemy. Otis used his newspaper as a public platform for his tirades against the unions and to promote the interests of the pro-management Merchants and Manufacturers Association. On the morning of October 1, 1910, a bomb exploded in the Los Angeles Times building, killing 20 people and causing considerable damage to the building. Shortly thereafter, there was another bombing at the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles....
...[Clarence] Darrow had suffered a humiliating defeat by being unable to rescue his clients in the face of the evidence against them. Worse was yet to come, however.
One of the people on Darrow's payroll was Bert Franklin, a former investigator for the U.S. Marshal's office. District Attorney Fredericks had learned that Franklin was trying to bribe jurors to acquit the McNamaras and had approached at least two jurors, namely Robert Bain and George Lockwood. Fredericks arranged a "sting" operation, and on November 28, 1911, three days before the McNamara trial, arrested Franklin in the act of handing money to Lockwood. In January 1912, Franklin pleaded guilty to charges of jury tampering, and on January 29, he testified that Darrow had known and approved of the bribery efforts....
Children sing the praises of environmental activism for Earth Day
...Song lyrics:
The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap.
Don’t wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.
Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself,
Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.
Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That if we mess it up here, there’s nowhere else we can go.
Don’t shrug your shoulders, say, “What can I do?”
Only one person can do that and that person is you!
...Song lyrics:
The sky is high and the ocean is deep,
But we can’t treat the planet like a garbage heap.
Don’t wreck it, protect it, keep part of it wild,
And think about the future of your great-grandchild.
Recycle, bicycle, don’t you drive by yourself,
Don’t buy those plastic products on the supermarket shelf.
Boycott, petition, let the big business know,
That if we mess it up here, there’s nowhere else we can go.
Don’t shrug your shoulders, say, “What can I do?”
Only one person can do that and that person is you!
‘We will sacrifice quality if necessary’
The newly elected president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Liam Burns, spelt this out very clearly. Speaking to the Scottish Herald before his election, he said we should put aside the archaic idea that universities should encourage the advancement of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, and welcome the fact that unis are now training grounds for youngsters who want to have brighter career prospects.
‘I think we should be honest about our priorities’, he said. ‘At the end of the day, the point of the university has changed. If you look at when only five per cent of the population went, that was about knowledge, discovery, pushing boundaries, people talked about the crème de la crème. [Now], it is about social mobility and people changing their lives. The reality is you need that bit of paper [a degree] to get into better jobs with greater earning potential and influence. So we want as many people to get one as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’...
Why I Detest the State
...You should know it is because I love my country that I loathe its government, in all its forms, for a host of reasons. How I don't just despise government because it is wasteful, arrogant and immoral. I don't hate it solely because it is coercive and legally steals for its livelihood. It is true that I abhor government because it cloaks its crimes with euphemisms: It robs, but calls it taxation; it defrauds, but calls it "social security; it kidnaps, but calls it "busing"; it enslaves, but calls it "conscription; and it counterfeits, but calls it inflation. It does the very things I cannot do without committing crimes, but do you know why I really detest government? (I thought you would never ask.)
It is because of what government has done to my friends, and has much to do with what Karl Hess has termed the most pernicious institution in the United States today: the public school system, how he didn't just say that because so many high school seniors read at a fourth grade level, have difficulty filling out a job application, or trouble making simple change in the market place. He said that because there is where government transforms fine, young, mental timber into petrified, apologetic tools of the state: so that they will stand mindlessly and pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, with 50 stars for 50 percent taxation, and think they are free; so that they will lend their lives as cannon fodder around the globe whenever El Presidente goes on the warpath, all in the name of peace, you understand; so that they will lock step behind officials of state in a myriad of assaults on human liberty, and cry out with the multitude, Crucify! Crucify! That's why I loathe government because of what it has done to my friends!...
The newly elected president of the National Union of Students (NUS), Liam Burns, spelt this out very clearly. Speaking to the Scottish Herald before his election, he said we should put aside the archaic idea that universities should encourage the advancement of knowledge and the pursuit of truth, and welcome the fact that unis are now training grounds for youngsters who want to have brighter career prospects.
‘I think we should be honest about our priorities’, he said. ‘At the end of the day, the point of the university has changed. If you look at when only five per cent of the population went, that was about knowledge, discovery, pushing boundaries, people talked about the crème de la crème. [Now], it is about social mobility and people changing their lives. The reality is you need that bit of paper [a degree] to get into better jobs with greater earning potential and influence. So we want as many people to get one as possible, at the expense of quality if necessary.’...
Why I Detest the State
...You should know it is because I love my country that I loathe its government, in all its forms, for a host of reasons. How I don't just despise government because it is wasteful, arrogant and immoral. I don't hate it solely because it is coercive and legally steals for its livelihood. It is true that I abhor government because it cloaks its crimes with euphemisms: It robs, but calls it taxation; it defrauds, but calls it "social security; it kidnaps, but calls it "busing"; it enslaves, but calls it "conscription; and it counterfeits, but calls it inflation. It does the very things I cannot do without committing crimes, but do you know why I really detest government? (I thought you would never ask.)
It is because of what government has done to my friends, and has much to do with what Karl Hess has termed the most pernicious institution in the United States today: the public school system, how he didn't just say that because so many high school seniors read at a fourth grade level, have difficulty filling out a job application, or trouble making simple change in the market place. He said that because there is where government transforms fine, young, mental timber into petrified, apologetic tools of the state: so that they will stand mindlessly and pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth, with 50 stars for 50 percent taxation, and think they are free; so that they will lend their lives as cannon fodder around the globe whenever El Presidente goes on the warpath, all in the name of peace, you understand; so that they will lock step behind officials of state in a myriad of assaults on human liberty, and cry out with the multitude, Crucify! Crucify! That's why I loathe government because of what it has done to my friends!...
Saturday, April 16, 2011
An Observer of the public’s ‘speech crimes’
Something very odd happened at the weekend. A 40-year-old member of the far-right British National Party (BNP) was arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in his own back garden. Yes, it is apparently now a crime to express your disdain for a certain religious faith in the privacy of your own home. But that’s not the end of it. What makes this case especially odd is that the man in question - Sion Owens - was reported to the police by a broadsheet newspaper that claims to be liberal: the Observer. Since when has it been the job of the respectable, left-leaning press to grass people up to the cops for alleged speech crimes?...
Something very odd happened at the weekend. A 40-year-old member of the far-right British National Party (BNP) was arrested for burning a copy of the Koran in his own back garden. Yes, it is apparently now a crime to express your disdain for a certain religious faith in the privacy of your own home. But that’s not the end of it. What makes this case especially odd is that the man in question - Sion Owens - was reported to the police by a broadsheet newspaper that claims to be liberal: the Observer. Since when has it been the job of the respectable, left-leaning press to grass people up to the cops for alleged speech crimes?...
Big government on the brink
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
“Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything,” writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays (“American Politics, Then and Now”). The concept of “vital national interest” is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. What has abetted this political sprawl, notes Wilson, is the rising influence of “action intellectuals” — professors, pundits, “experts” — who provide respectable rationales for various political agendas.
The consequence is political overload: The system can no longer make choices, especially unpleasant choices, for the good of the nation as a whole....
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans’ benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The census list doesn’t include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
“Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything,” writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays (“American Politics, Then and Now”). The concept of “vital national interest” is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency. What has abetted this political sprawl, notes Wilson, is the rising influence of “action intellectuals” — professors, pundits, “experts” — who provide respectable rationales for various political agendas.
The consequence is political overload: The system can no longer make choices, especially unpleasant choices, for the good of the nation as a whole....
It’s Official: Environmentalism Is the New Religion
Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.
Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview. ...
Robert Nelson, in the Independent Institute’s recent book, The New Holy Wars, points out that environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin.
Manhattan’s new Church of Earthalujah is perhaps the most striking—though hardly rare—expression of this new religion. Its leader, the Rev. Billy, outlined the church’s purpose and practices in this recent interview. ...
How Safe Is Your Roth IRA?
...When I look at the budget problems we face, I'm skeptical that Congress is going to live up to its promise to keep its hands off that money....
...Ultimately, Congress is going to be faced with penalizing people who didn't save adequately for retirement by cutting their benefits, or penalizing people who did save, by raising taxes on their savings. For a lot of reasons, I expect them to err on the side of penalizing savings. This may have some very ill effects on capital formation in the US--but by the time they're making this decision, everything they do is going to have some very ill effects on something....
...Corse figures it's all kinds of fun to tell people they can have Roth IRAs, and then change the deal later on and take all their money. What does he want to do with the money when he takes it? I will bet you a dollar to a donut he wants to give a big chunk of it to public union members who retired at age 50 with six-figure pensions, because they were told they'd be able to do that, and the government's word is sacred. Sometimes. ...
...When I look at the budget problems we face, I'm skeptical that Congress is going to live up to its promise to keep its hands off that money....
...Ultimately, Congress is going to be faced with penalizing people who didn't save adequately for retirement by cutting their benefits, or penalizing people who did save, by raising taxes on their savings. For a lot of reasons, I expect them to err on the side of penalizing savings. This may have some very ill effects on capital formation in the US--but by the time they're making this decision, everything they do is going to have some very ill effects on something....
...Corse figures it's all kinds of fun to tell people they can have Roth IRAs, and then change the deal later on and take all their money. What does he want to do with the money when he takes it? I will bet you a dollar to a donut he wants to give a big chunk of it to public union members who retired at age 50 with six-figure pensions, because they were told they'd be able to do that, and the government's word is sacred. Sometimes. ...
Stripping Congress of its Power of the Purse?
...This raises an extremely serious constitutional question: if Congress has refused to fund the “czars,” where exactly does President Obama get the authority and funding to pay them?
Remember Iran-Contra? The problem for the Reagan Administration there was that Congress banned the president from allocating money to the Contras. The Administration, quite illegally in my view, tried to get around that ban by using funds from arm sales to Iran to subvert the Congressional ban.
At least the Reagan Administration had the decency to do this secretly, knowing that it was acting unconstitutionally. Moreover, the Reagan folks at least were able to claim that they technically weren’t violating the Congressional ban, because they weren’t using Congressionally allocated funds, but the proceeds from arms sales.
The Obama Administration, by contrast, seems to be brazenly violating the Constitution. As I tell my constitutional law students, Congress’s ultimate power is the power of the purse. ...
Did Florida Video Website Pay Homeless Men to Get Beat Up by Women?
A series of videos that allegedly feature scantily clad women beating up homeless men in Florida has led to an investigation by local law enforcement and a lawsuit filed by the Southern Legal Counsel on behalf of the transient men....
Scientists and Journalists Still Obsessed With Duck Sex
Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds
Man catches fire while watching porn at San Francisco sex shop; vic ran out 'engulfed in flames'
A series of videos that allegedly feature scantily clad women beating up homeless men in Florida has led to an investigation by local law enforcement and a lawsuit filed by the Southern Legal Counsel on behalf of the transient men....
Scientists and Journalists Still Obsessed With Duck Sex
Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds
Man catches fire while watching porn at San Francisco sex shop; vic ran out 'engulfed in flames'
Teachers support cop-killer
Between negotiating for more benefits and teaching their students, the California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Between negotiating for more benefits and teaching their students, the California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Telecom gurus discuss competition, reform at Free Press conference
Former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official Colin Crowell, former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, and Kenneth DeGraff, adviser to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, discussed telecom issues at the Free Press conference in Boston on Sunday.
...CRAWFORD ON THE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES:
"Unfortunately the world where regulating these guys into to an inch of their life is exactly what needs to happen."...
Former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) official Colin Crowell, former White House technology adviser Susan Crawford, and Kenneth DeGraff, adviser to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, discussed telecom issues at the Free Press conference in Boston on Sunday.
...CRAWFORD ON THE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES:
"Unfortunately the world where regulating these guys into to an inch of their life is exactly what needs to happen."...
Forfeiture Follies
...Despite having some of the highest taxes in the nation, Nassau County has such a massive structural deficit that it's under the thumb of a finance authority to compel the executive and legislature to avoid renaming the courthouse after Wal-Mart. This had nothing to do with the fact that its crime lab has been shuttered for lying and cheating, while under the watchful eye of Rice and cops perpetually by her side. Now they have to do it all over again, paying a competent lab for the effort, and this only goes back as far as 2005, while no one knows how far back the lying and cheating goes.
What if the cost of this incompetence meant that schools were closed, teachers fired? What if it meant taxes went up for the nice family in the split level on the corner? What if it meant your taxes went up. You would be angry. You would be very upset that massive incompetence, the sort you could put your finger on, was taking money out of your pocket. You would make the angry sound, grrrr, and go out to the garage to look for the pitchfork.
Fortunately, you won't have to. As Rice announced, it won't cost taxpayers a dime. The cost will be paid from the "police department's forfeiture funds." They way she said it, she sounds like the taxpayer's hero. Heroine? That just sounds wrong, though.
This carefully crafted announcement, however, hides a few ugly things behind the great news. First, that the police have a slush fund that nobody knows about, all while they are sucking at the public teet for money to keep cops on the street to protect the womenfolk from rapists. Second, that this slush fund came from asset forfeitures, that shady process of civil seizures with negligible basis and even lower burden of proof, while owners are tied up with defending against criminal prosecution.
But the third bit of ugliness is that one that raised the cackles of the Newsday editorial writer, that the amount of the slush fund is itself a big secret...
...Despite having some of the highest taxes in the nation, Nassau County has such a massive structural deficit that it's under the thumb of a finance authority to compel the executive and legislature to avoid renaming the courthouse after Wal-Mart. This had nothing to do with the fact that its crime lab has been shuttered for lying and cheating, while under the watchful eye of Rice and cops perpetually by her side. Now they have to do it all over again, paying a competent lab for the effort, and this only goes back as far as 2005, while no one knows how far back the lying and cheating goes.
What if the cost of this incompetence meant that schools were closed, teachers fired? What if it meant taxes went up for the nice family in the split level on the corner? What if it meant your taxes went up. You would be angry. You would be very upset that massive incompetence, the sort you could put your finger on, was taking money out of your pocket. You would make the angry sound, grrrr, and go out to the garage to look for the pitchfork.
Fortunately, you won't have to. As Rice announced, it won't cost taxpayers a dime. The cost will be paid from the "police department's forfeiture funds." They way she said it, she sounds like the taxpayer's hero. Heroine? That just sounds wrong, though.
This carefully crafted announcement, however, hides a few ugly things behind the great news. First, that the police have a slush fund that nobody knows about, all while they are sucking at the public teet for money to keep cops on the street to protect the womenfolk from rapists. Second, that this slush fund came from asset forfeitures, that shady process of civil seizures with negligible basis and even lower burden of proof, while owners are tied up with defending against criminal prosecution.
But the third bit of ugliness is that one that raised the cackles of the Newsday editorial writer, that the amount of the slush fund is itself a big secret...
US police increasingly peeping at e-mail, instant messages
Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."...
Law enforcement organizations are making tens of thousands of requests for private electronic information from companies such as Sprint, Facebook and AOL, but few detailed statistics are available, according to a privacy researcher.
Police and other agencies have "enthusiastically embraced" asking for e-mail, instant messages and mobile-phone location data, but there's no U.S. federal law that requires the reporting of requests for stored communications data, wrote Christopher Soghoian, a doctoral candidate at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, in a newly published paper.
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote. "As such, this surveillance largely occurs off the books, with no way for Congress or the general public to know the true scale of such activities."...
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Eat the Rich
...Now, compare this to deficits of $1,413 billion in 2009 and $1,293 billion in 2010, and using optimistic White House estimates, $1,645 billion in 2011 $1,101 billion in 2012, $768 billion in 2013, and continuing at over $600 billion after.
Alternatively, you might also notice that while taxable income in 2008 was $5,488 billion, adjusted gross income on all returns was $7,583 billion on taxable returns only (with an additional $680 billion on untaxable returns), which means that $2,095 billion isn't even in the tax base. $592 billion of that difference is exemptions, which are not tax expenditures, and $1,512 billion is deductions, which are mostly tax expenditures.
My point is just that I don't see how deficits this large can be closed with income taxes on the rich, even at marginal rates far higher than anything we've seen in the post-1986 era. Paying for spending at near-term levels, not even considering entitlement and interest payments that will accelerate a decade out, would have to include meaningful base broadening by eliminating tax expenditures like the mortgage interest deduction or the employer health case deduction, or would have to rely on new taxes like a VAT.
Not-So-Safe-Deposit Boxes: States Seize Citizens' Property to Balance Their Budgets
...San Francisco resident Carla Ruff's safe-deposit box was drilled, seized, and turned over to the state of California, marked "owner unknown."
"I was appalled," Ruff said. "I felt violated."
Unknown? Carla's name was right on documents in the box at the Noe Valley Bank of America location. So was her address -- a house about six blocks from the bank. Carla had a checking account at the bank, too -- still does -- and receives regular statements. Plus, she has receipts showing she's the kind of person who paid her box rental fee. And yet, she says nobody ever notified her.
"They are zealously uncovering accounts that are not unclaimed," Ruff said.
To make matters worse, Ruff discovered the loss when she went to her box to retrieve important paperwork she needed because her husband was dying. Those papers had been shredded.
And that's not all. Her great-grandmother's precious natural pearls and other jewelry had been auctioned off. They were sold for just $1,800, even though they were appraised for $82,500.
"These things were things that she gave to me," Ruff said. "I valued them because I loved her."
Bank of America told ABC News it deeply regrets the situation and appreciates the difficulty of what Mrs. Ruff was going through. The bank has reached a settlement with Ruff and continues to update its unclaimed property procedures as laws change. ...
...It's not just safe-deposit boxes. A British man went to retire and discovered the $4 million in U.S. stock he had been counting on had been seized and sold for $200,000 years earlier -- even though he was in touch with the company about other matters.
A Sacramento family lost out on railroad land rights their ancestors had owned for generations -- also sold off as unclaimed property.
"If I had hung onto it, I would be a millionaire, multimillionaire," said John Whitley. "But that didn't happen because we didn't get to hold it." ...
Secrecy hides taxpayer dollars used in Big Green lawsuits
For thousands of farming and ranching families with leases and grazing rights on public lands in the West, having a good lawyer on call is more than a routine cost of doing business. It's an absolute necessity to protect a way of life that has often been handed down for generations. But that's far from the worst of it because not only do these hard-working, taxpaying men and women have to pay their own attorneys, they also frequently end up having to help pay the attorneys' fees and other legal costs for Big Green environmental groups that file lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to do their bidding. Usually, the individual ranchers and farmers aren't even defendants, they're just innocent bystanders who need attorneys to protect their interests because their livelihoods depend on the outcome of such litigation.
This unjust situation is a result of the Big Green environmental movement's discovery several decades ago that there was indeed "gold in them thar hills," thanks to an obscure federal law known as the Equal Access to Justice Act. Sunday's Examiner editorial detailed how a law intended to help small businesses get their day in court has been perverted into an unaccountable, tax-paid, cash cow worth hundreds of millions of dollars to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for Biodiversity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Payments under EAJA are made by the U.S. Treasury to its Judgment Fund, which is funded by a permanent congressional appropriation. The fund is not audited, agencies aren't required to account in their budgets for payments mandated by court decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, and courts often seal settlements to prevent public examination. It's an open invitation for Big Green groups to file suits, knowing that win or lose, most if not all of their legal expenses will be paid by the government. Best of all for them, it's all but impossible to track who gets how much from the taxpayers from these suits....
For thousands of farming and ranching families with leases and grazing rights on public lands in the West, having a good lawyer on call is more than a routine cost of doing business. It's an absolute necessity to protect a way of life that has often been handed down for generations. But that's far from the worst of it because not only do these hard-working, taxpaying men and women have to pay their own attorneys, they also frequently end up having to help pay the attorneys' fees and other legal costs for Big Green environmental groups that file lawsuits seeking to force the federal government to do their bidding. Usually, the individual ranchers and farmers aren't even defendants, they're just innocent bystanders who need attorneys to protect their interests because their livelihoods depend on the outcome of such litigation.
This unjust situation is a result of the Big Green environmental movement's discovery several decades ago that there was indeed "gold in them thar hills," thanks to an obscure federal law known as the Equal Access to Justice Act. Sunday's Examiner editorial detailed how a law intended to help small businesses get their day in court has been perverted into an unaccountable, tax-paid, cash cow worth hundreds of millions of dollars to groups like the Sierra Club, Center for Biodiversity, Environmental Defense Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council.
Payments under EAJA are made by the U.S. Treasury to its Judgment Fund, which is funded by a permanent congressional appropriation. The fund is not audited, agencies aren't required to account in their budgets for payments mandated by court decisions in their areas of jurisdiction, and courts often seal settlements to prevent public examination. It's an open invitation for Big Green groups to file suits, knowing that win or lose, most if not all of their legal expenses will be paid by the government. Best of all for them, it's all but impossible to track who gets how much from the taxpayers from these suits....
Obama, Libya, and Me
...But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do....
Obama, Libya, and Me: A Followup
...But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted. I voted for him because I trust his judgment, and I still do....
Obama, Libya, and Me: A Followup
EPA's days as 'rogue agency' are numbered
Lost in the kabuki-dance drama of last week's budget showdown were immensely important votes in the Senate and House on the Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to govern through regulation. In the House, 19 Democrats joined the Republican majority in a decisive 255-172 vote to defund the EPA's attempt to circumvent Congress and begin its own cap-and-trade program.
The measure was introduced by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton of Michigan. A companion measure introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, fell just short of the votes needed for passage, despite support from three Democrats.
Supporters of the EPA effort should think twice before cheering the outcome of the Senate vote because, while the regulatory initiative is safe for now, the prospects for its long-term survival are dim, prompting Politico to headline a recent story, "EPA holds on for dear life." The reason the outlook is so grim for the EPA on this issue is the fact that a growing number of congressional Democrats have had enough of being threatened by executive branch political appointees....
In St. Louis, a protest sign meets government arrogance
...Roos responded by painting on the side of one of his buildings a large mural — a slash through a red circle containing the words “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” The government that had provoked him declared his sign “illegal” and demanded that he seek a permit for it. He did. Then the government denied the permit.
The St. Louis sign code puts the burden on the citizen to justify his or her speech rather than on the government to justify limiting speech. And the code exempts certain kinds of signs from requiring permits. These include works of art, flags of nations, states or cities, and symbols or crests of religious, fraternal or professional organizations. And, of course, the government exempted political signs. So the exempted categories are defined by the signs’ content. ...
...Roos responded by painting on the side of one of his buildings a large mural — a slash through a red circle containing the words “End Eminent Domain Abuse.” The government that had provoked him declared his sign “illegal” and demanded that he seek a permit for it. He did. Then the government denied the permit.
The St. Louis sign code puts the burden on the citizen to justify his or her speech rather than on the government to justify limiting speech. And the code exempts certain kinds of signs from requiring permits. These include works of art, flags of nations, states or cities, and symbols or crests of religious, fraternal or professional organizations. And, of course, the government exempted political signs. So the exempted categories are defined by the signs’ content. ...
Save our National Health Service? Why, exactly?
I recall being involved in a campaign against the closure of a local hospital – St Leonards in Shoreditch – under the Labour government of the late 1970s. When I approached a young man in the local street market on a Saturday morning asking him to support the campaign, in a dramatic gesture he pulled up his shirt to reveal a spectacular midline scar up his abdomen. ‘That’s what they did to me in that hospital, just to get my appendix out.’ As far as he was concerned, the sooner it was closed down the better. He refused to sign our petition. (Though the hospital was closed, St Leonards, the site of a nineteenth-century workhouse, remains the base of local community-health services.)
This encounter reminded me that while, as both professionals and as patients, the middle classes have generally benefited from the NHS, the less prosperous have often experienced poor-quality care and inferior standards of service. In more recent years, as the focus on health has widened to the concept of wellbeing and the concerns of doctors have expanded to cover wide areas of personal lifestyle and behaviour, a substantial section of the population (amounting to at least a quarter) has become the particular object of medical condescension and authoritarian public-health intervention. It is not surprising to find a marked lack of enthusiasm for campaigns to ‘save the NHS’ among a public that is regarded – and treated – with such contempt by the modern NHS....
I recall being involved in a campaign against the closure of a local hospital – St Leonards in Shoreditch – under the Labour government of the late 1970s. When I approached a young man in the local street market on a Saturday morning asking him to support the campaign, in a dramatic gesture he pulled up his shirt to reveal a spectacular midline scar up his abdomen. ‘That’s what they did to me in that hospital, just to get my appendix out.’ As far as he was concerned, the sooner it was closed down the better. He refused to sign our petition. (Though the hospital was closed, St Leonards, the site of a nineteenth-century workhouse, remains the base of local community-health services.)
This encounter reminded me that while, as both professionals and as patients, the middle classes have generally benefited from the NHS, the less prosperous have often experienced poor-quality care and inferior standards of service. In more recent years, as the focus on health has widened to the concept of wellbeing and the concerns of doctors have expanded to cover wide areas of personal lifestyle and behaviour, a substantial section of the population (amounting to at least a quarter) has become the particular object of medical condescension and authoritarian public-health intervention. It is not surprising to find a marked lack of enthusiasm for campaigns to ‘save the NHS’ among a public that is regarded – and treated – with such contempt by the modern NHS....
Life Beyond Blue: Faith and the Inner City
...The failure of the blue social model to solve the problems of the underclass in America’s inner cities was one of the great tragedies of the last thirty years. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent; tens of millions of lives remained blighted, and a culture of violence, degradation and despair has taken hold among some of our society’s most vulnerable and needy people. Generations of children are growing up in gangs; our scarce financial resources are being consumed by a grotesquely overbuilt prison system; whole segments of our population are unable to cope with even the simplest demands of modern life....
...The failure of the blue social model to solve the problems of the underclass in America’s inner cities was one of the great tragedies of the last thirty years. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent; tens of millions of lives remained blighted, and a culture of violence, degradation and despair has taken hold among some of our society’s most vulnerable and needy people. Generations of children are growing up in gangs; our scarce financial resources are being consumed by a grotesquely overbuilt prison system; whole segments of our population are unable to cope with even the simplest demands of modern life....
Justice Dept. to Congress: Don’t Saddle 4th Amendment on Us
...The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way....
...The Obama administration is urging Congress not to adopt legislation that would impose constitutional safeguards on Americans’ e-mail stored in the cloud.
As the law stands now, the authorities may obtain cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days, thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act adopted in 1986. At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection. However, the law demands warrants for the authorities to seize e-mail from a person’s hard drive.
A coalition of internet service providers and other groups, known as Digital Due Process, has lobbied for an update to the law to treat both cloud- and home-stored e-mail the same, and thus require a probable-cause warrant for access. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on that topic Tuesday.
The companies — including Google, AOL and AT&T — maintain that the law should be changed to reflect that consumers increasingly access their e-mail on servers, instead of downloading it to their hard drives, as a matter of course.
But the Obama administration testified that imposing constitutional safeguards on e-mail stored in the cloud would be an unnecessary burden on the government. Probable-cause warrants would only get in the government’s way....
Landslide!
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
Washington vs. America: D.C. doesn’t doesn’t act like there’s a deficit problem
...In effect, the respectable "pivot to entitlements" position says,"we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT."... Why not wring the fat out of government first?
...In effect, the respectable "pivot to entitlements" position says,"we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT."... Why not wring the fat out of government first?
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Landslide!
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.
"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:
It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.
Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled....
Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. "Scientists" collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about....
Washington Post and CBS receiving money from Obamacare ’slush fund’
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”...
Republicans question Obamacare’s $5 billion early retiree ‘slush fund’
House Republicans are challenging a slush fund they recently discovered in Obamacare — a $5 billion bailout for states, corporations and unions, dubbed the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP).
At a Friday hearing in Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Republicans alleged the Obama administration is passing out that $5 billion in taxpayer money to labor unions and companies it favors, like General Electric and General Motors — instead of using it to help early retirees obtain health insurance.
Also, the administration is racing through the $5 billion much faster than it previously projected — it was supposed to last until 2014, when no person will be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. New statistics and projections, however, suggest it may run out before the end of 2012, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Thursday they will no longer be accepting applications for subsidies after April 30. ...
Two mainstream news organizations are receiving hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars from Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) — a $5 billion grant program that’s doling out cash to companies, states and labor unions in what the Obama administration considers an effort to pay for health insurance for early retirees. The Washington Post Company raked in $573,217 in taxpayer subsidies and CBS Corporation secured $722,388 worth of Americans’ money.
“It is fine with me if they continue covering the ObamaCare debate,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, in an e-mail to The Daily Caller. “When NBC used to cover energy issues, they identified themselves as a subsidiary of General Electric. CBS and Washington Post just have to disclose that they are subsidiaries of the Obama Administration.”...
Republicans question Obamacare’s $5 billion early retiree ‘slush fund’
House Republicans are challenging a slush fund they recently discovered in Obamacare — a $5 billion bailout for states, corporations and unions, dubbed the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP).
At a Friday hearing in Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Republicans alleged the Obama administration is passing out that $5 billion in taxpayer money to labor unions and companies it favors, like General Electric and General Motors — instead of using it to help early retirees obtain health insurance.
Also, the administration is racing through the $5 billion much faster than it previously projected — it was supposed to last until 2014, when no person will be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition. New statistics and projections, however, suggest it may run out before the end of 2012, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on Thursday they will no longer be accepting applications for subsidies after April 30. ...
MORE ON Obama’s scoffing at high gas prices’ impact on Americans.
Can’t Afford Gas For Your Car? Trade It in, Rubes Says Obama
...Surprising that the AP actually reported that, isn’t it? But wait ! They of course swiftly realized the error of their ways; it does not suit to report, you know, the truth. It might make The One look bad. So, they changed the headline of the article and removed the offending section above. Forgetting, as always, that nothing actually disappears once on the internet.Instapundit grabbed a screen shot. It’s funny that people who constantly claim to be oh-so-smart and worldly are actually such simpletons....
Can’t Afford Gas For Your Car? Trade It in, Rubes Says Obama
...Surprising that the AP actually reported that, isn’t it? But wait ! They of course swiftly realized the error of their ways; it does not suit to report, you know, the truth. It might make The One look bad. So, they changed the headline of the article and removed the offending section above. Forgetting, as always, that nothing actually disappears once on the internet.Instapundit grabbed a screen shot. It’s funny that people who constantly claim to be oh-so-smart and worldly are actually such simpletons....
QOTD
"since voting can result in laws that require men with guns to enforce them, the minimum ID requirement should be the same required to buy a gun."
"since voting can result in laws that require men with guns to enforce them, the minimum ID requirement should be the same required to buy a gun."
Obama’s Down on the Farm
...Again, the crowd applauded and laughed. One line that landed a little flat, though, was when Mr. Obama sympathetically noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket.
"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" the senator said. "I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."...
...Again, the crowd applauded and laughed. One line that landed a little flat, though, was when Mr. Obama sympathetically noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket.
"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" the senator said. "I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff."...
Open Secret: Planned Parenthood turns tax dollars into donations to Democrats
In 2010, Planned Parenthood and a California affiliate together spent more than $700,000 on federal lobbying efforts, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of federal lobbying records finds. By comparison, all other organizations that primarily advocate for abortion rights collectively spent $247,280 on federal lobbying efforts during the same period, according to the Center’s research. …
The organization’s political action committee, for example, donated more than $148,000 to federal candidates — almost all Democrats — during the 2010 election cycle. The PAC spent more than $443,000 overall.
Planned Parenthood also recorded $905,796 in independent expenditures during the 2010 cycle — money spent in support of, or in opposition to, federal political candidates, largely through advertisements. The top beneficiaries of this money were Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.)....
Sunday, April 03, 2011
List of health reform waivers keeps growing
The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.
With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits.
The administration says the temporary waivers are granted to help stabilize the insurance market until a fuller package of reforms takes effect in 2014, but the growing number of waivers have exposed the White House to heavy criticism from Republican opponents of the law.
“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last month. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.
Meanwhile, a group back by Karl Rove is suing the administration for detailed documentation of waiver requests, and conservatives have accused the administration of awarding waivers to allies who supported the healthcare overhaul. ...
The number of waivers the Obama administration has awarded for a provision of the year-old healthcare reform law grew by 128 in March.
With the new waivers, that means 1,168 businesses, insurers, unions and other organizations have received one-year exemptions from a healthcare reform provision requiring at least $750,000 in annual benefits.
The administration says the temporary waivers are granted to help stabilize the insurance market until a fuller package of reforms takes effect in 2014, but the growing number of waivers have exposed the White House to heavy criticism from Republican opponents of the law.
“The fact that over 1,000 waivers have been granted is a tacit admission that the healthcare law is fundamentally flawed,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last month. Upton is one of three House committee chairmen who has used new oversight powers to investigate the annual limit waivers.
Meanwhile, a group back by Karl Rove is suing the administration for detailed documentation of waiver requests, and conservatives have accused the administration of awarding waivers to allies who supported the healthcare overhaul. ...
Part of the problem is that the American distrust of intellectualism is itself not the irrational thing that those sympathetic to intellectuals would like to think. Intellectuals killed by the millions in the 20th century, and it actually takes the sophisticated training of "education" to work yourself up into a state where you refuse to count that in the books. Intellectuals routinely declared things that aren't true; catastrophically wrong predictions about the economy, catastrophically wrong pronouncements about foreign policy, and just generally numerous times where they've been wrong. Again, it takes a lot of training to ignore this fact. "Scientists" collectively were witnessed by the public flipflopping at a relatively high frequency on numerous topics; how many times did eggs go back and forth between being deadly and beneficial? Sure the media gets some blame here but the scientists played into it, each time confidently pronouncing that this time they had it for sure and it is imperative that everyone live the way they are saying (until tomorrow). Scientists have failed to resist politicization across the board, and the standards of what constitutes science continues to shift from a living, vibrant, thoughtful understanding of the purposes and ways of science to a scelerotic hide-bound form-over-substance version of science where papers are too often written to either explicitly attract grants or to confirm someone's political beliefs... and regardless of whether this is 2% or 80% of the papers written today it's nearly 100% of the papers that people hear about....
'Climate Change': the new Eugenics
...In the latest episode, he explored how the roots of the Holocaust lay in a dry run genocide carried out by the Germans (who else?) in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in the 1900s against the Herero and Namaqua natives. Around 80 per cent of the former tribe and 50 per cent of the latter were brutally massacred with many of the survivors sent to concentration camps where their racial characteristics were studied by proto-Dr-Mengeles as part of the fashionable new scientific field popularised by Francis Galton – eugenics.
Ferguson said:
“The important point to note is that 100 years ago, work like Galton’s was at the cutting edge of scientific research. Racism wasn’t some backward-looking reactionary ideology: it was the state of the art and people then believed in it as readily as people today BUY the theory of man-made climate change.”...
...In the latest episode, he explored how the roots of the Holocaust lay in a dry run genocide carried out by the Germans (who else?) in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in the 1900s against the Herero and Namaqua natives. Around 80 per cent of the former tribe and 50 per cent of the latter were brutally massacred with many of the survivors sent to concentration camps where their racial characteristics were studied by proto-Dr-Mengeles as part of the fashionable new scientific field popularised by Francis Galton – eugenics.
Ferguson said:
“The important point to note is that 100 years ago, work like Galton’s was at the cutting edge of scientific research. Racism wasn’t some backward-looking reactionary ideology: it was the state of the art and people then believed in it as readily as people today BUY the theory of man-made climate change.”...
ATF Gunwalker Scandal Explained
...Think about this. A store opens up in a bad part of Phoenix for the express purpose of purchasing stolen weapons (for the ATF) and drugs (for the other agencies). The store lets it be known that they’re open for [criminal] business and spreads a ton of cash around. No one gets arrested. And so their “success” snowballs over nine months. The bad guys know there’s a thriving market for stolen guns. So what do they do? Steal guns.
Now look at this from an Arizona gun owner’s point of view. You’re sitting in your house with a nice collection of guns. Suddenly, bad shit goes down. A group of very bad people (with a nice new income stream to keep them ungainfully employed) have decided that they want your guns. And by God they’re going to take them. Why? So they can sell them to the federal government.
News flash: sting operations don’t stop crime. The foster it. ...
...Think about this. A store opens up in a bad part of Phoenix for the express purpose of purchasing stolen weapons (for the ATF) and drugs (for the other agencies). The store lets it be known that they’re open for [criminal] business and spreads a ton of cash around. No one gets arrested. And so their “success” snowballs over nine months. The bad guys know there’s a thriving market for stolen guns. So what do they do? Steal guns.
Now look at this from an Arizona gun owner’s point of view. You’re sitting in your house with a nice collection of guns. Suddenly, bad shit goes down. A group of very bad people (with a nice new income stream to keep them ungainfully employed) have decided that they want your guns. And by God they’re going to take them. Why? So they can sell them to the federal government.
News flash: sting operations don’t stop crime. The foster it. ...
Judge Sumi Warns Attorneys About Criticisms
...I have not seen any comments by attorneys in the case which rise to the level in the rule cited above. Attorneys are free to criticize the content of a ruling by a Judge, and as I have documented, there was plenty to criticize in the Judge Sumi's decision to interfere in the legislative process by attempting to prevent a bill from becoming law.
I find it disturbing that Judge Sumi issued this warning, which carries the threat of a Bar disciplinary referral. This is tantamount to the nuclear option, by putting attorney licenses to practice on the line.
Such a warning necessarily is one-sided, since only the attorneys unhappy with a court's rulings would comment negatively. Such a warning allows the winning side, so far the Democrats, to crow all day long about the court rulings, while muffling the ability of the Republicans to explain why such rulings were unjustified.
This is a highly political case which has been made even more political by the court's rulings. Absent comments which impugn Judge Sumi's integrity or make false statements about her, the attorneys in the case should be free to comment.
...I have not seen any comments by attorneys in the case which rise to the level in the rule cited above. Attorneys are free to criticize the content of a ruling by a Judge, and as I have documented, there was plenty to criticize in the Judge Sumi's decision to interfere in the legislative process by attempting to prevent a bill from becoming law.
I find it disturbing that Judge Sumi issued this warning, which carries the threat of a Bar disciplinary referral. This is tantamount to the nuclear option, by putting attorney licenses to practice on the line.
Such a warning necessarily is one-sided, since only the attorneys unhappy with a court's rulings would comment negatively. Such a warning allows the winning side, so far the Democrats, to crow all day long about the court rulings, while muffling the ability of the Republicans to explain why such rulings were unjustified.
This is a highly political case which has been made even more political by the court's rulings. Absent comments which impugn Judge Sumi's integrity or make false statements about her, the attorneys in the case should be free to comment.
Green regulation in CA: Academic fraud, retaliation, and science denial
Reason TV’s Ted Balaker offers a lengthy look into how government and academia teamed up in California to stifle scientific dissent and pass new environmental regulations on the basis of fraud. Take the time to watch it all, as there is a lot to unpack in this story, which starts off with a trucking company in Cypress, California, that may go out of business thanks to new rules from the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB). New rules on diesel emissions make Dwayne Whitney’s trucks illegal to operate without enormously expensive additions, rules CARB imposed because of a study on particulates produced by Dr. Hien Tran that linked the emissions to 2000 “premature deaths” in California each year.
However, another researcher who found no connection between diesel particulates and “premature deaths” decided to check on Tran’s credentials, and discovered that his PhD had come from a diploma mill, bought for $1000. When the researcher, UCLA’s Dr. James Enstrom, blew the whistle on Tran and insisted that CARB needed to consider his work before passing the new regulation, a curious thing happened. After 34 years on the job, UCLA fired Enstrom. Why? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that two powerful CARB commissioners, Mary Nichols and John Froines, are also UCLA professors. According to Balaker, Froines voted to give Enstrom his pink slip....
Reason TV’s Ted Balaker offers a lengthy look into how government and academia teamed up in California to stifle scientific dissent and pass new environmental regulations on the basis of fraud. Take the time to watch it all, as there is a lot to unpack in this story, which starts off with a trucking company in Cypress, California, that may go out of business thanks to new rules from the state’s Air Resources Board (CARB). New rules on diesel emissions make Dwayne Whitney’s trucks illegal to operate without enormously expensive additions, rules CARB imposed because of a study on particulates produced by Dr. Hien Tran that linked the emissions to 2000 “premature deaths” in California each year.
However, another researcher who found no connection between diesel particulates and “premature deaths” decided to check on Tran’s credentials, and discovered that his PhD had come from a diploma mill, bought for $1000. When the researcher, UCLA’s Dr. James Enstrom, blew the whistle on Tran and insisted that CARB needed to consider his work before passing the new regulation, a curious thing happened. After 34 years on the job, UCLA fired Enstrom. Why? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that two powerful CARB commissioners, Mary Nichols and John Froines, are also UCLA professors. According to Balaker, Froines voted to give Enstrom his pink slip....
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.
The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets. ...
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.
Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as much as $33.5 billion through its New York branch from the Fed’s “discount window” lending program, according to Fed documents released yesterday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc, taken over in 2007 by a German real-estate lender later seized by the German government, drew $24.5 billion.
The biggest borrowers from the 97-year-old discount window as the program reached its crisis-era peak were foreign banks, accounting for at least 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed during the week in October 2008 when use of the program surged to a record. The disclosures may stoke a reexamination of the risks posed to U.S. taxpayers by the central bank’s role in global financial markets. ...
We've Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers
More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.
If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?
Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.
Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker. ...
More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.
If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.
It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?
Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.
Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker. ...
Wisconsin Unions Get Ugly
...Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."
We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.
The letter is signed by Jim Parrett, the "Field Rep." for Council 24 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is the most powerful union in the AFL-CIO. The letter presents a litany of objections to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's changes to benefits and public union collective bargaining power, describing them as "things that make life working in a 24-7 facility tolerable."
The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members." ...
[Police] Union threatens boycott of any business that doesn't show support
...Terri Gray, executive director of the Union Grove Chamber of Commerce, said she had received many calls from member businesses about the union-led effort. She said most of the calls came from business people who preferred to remain neutral in the dispute.
"They don't want to pick a side," she said. "I told them, 'I believe you can choose to not choose.' "
Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, said his coalition's boycott efforts were buoyed by a statement made by David Galloway, chairman of the board of BMO Financial, the group that is acquiring M&I Bank. Galloway has said that he supported collective bargaining....
...Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."
We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.
The letter is signed by Jim Parrett, the "Field Rep." for Council 24 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is the most powerful union in the AFL-CIO. The letter presents a litany of objections to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's changes to benefits and public union collective bargaining power, describing them as "things that make life working in a 24-7 facility tolerable."
The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members." ...
[Police] Union threatens boycott of any business that doesn't show support
...Terri Gray, executive director of the Union Grove Chamber of Commerce, said she had received many calls from member businesses about the union-led effort. She said most of the calls came from business people who preferred to remain neutral in the dispute.
"They don't want to pick a side," she said. "I told them, 'I believe you can choose to not choose.' "
Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, said his coalition's boycott efforts were buoyed by a statement made by David Galloway, chairman of the board of BMO Financial, the group that is acquiring M&I Bank. Galloway has said that he supported collective bargaining....
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