tagged w/ Douche-Bags
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By Lisa Rein and Ed O’Keefe, Published: April 16
The inspector general for the General Services Administration said Monday that he is investigating possible bribery and kickbacks in the agency, as lawmakers accused the former GSA administrator of allowing a Las Vegas spending scandal to erode taxpayers’ trust in government.
Inspector General Brian Miller told a congressional committee scrutinizing an $823,000 Las Vegas conference that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties” surrounding the 2010 event, “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.” He did not provide details.
(more at link to the washington post)By Lisa Rein and Ed O’Keefe, Published: April 16
The inspector general for... more
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Supreme Court: Corporations aren't people ... when they torture
by Adam BFollow
Justice Sotomayor
In 1995, while on a visit to the West Bank, naturalized American citizen Azzaz Rahim was arrested by Palestinian Authority intelligence officers. He was taken to a prison in Jericho, where he was imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately killed by Palestinian Authority intelligence officers in Jericho.
Ten years later, Rahim's surviving relatives sued the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization under the Torture Victim Prevention Act of 1991, which allows civil suits in federal courts by citizens and non-citizens against "an individual who, under actual or apparent authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation," subjects another individual to torture or extrajudicial killing. Lower courts had divided over whether the statute authorized suit only against human persons, or against corporations and organizations as well.
Today, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that "an individual" meant only a human being for purposes of the TVPA, affirming the ruling of the DC Circuit dismissing his relatives' claims and, as such, really impairing the ability of victims of torture to seek meaningful relief from its sponsors. As Justice Sotomayor acknowledges in the last part of the Court's opinion, this is bad for victims, but insists it's Congress that's to blame, and they knew this when they wrote it:
(Typical double speak once again )_G.FSupreme Court: Corporations aren't people ... when they torture
by Adam... more
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(something that truly shows the sad state of journalism in the United States and the world for that matter ...G.)
The New York Times Goes to the Dogs
Canine-centric stories skyrocket during early months of Abramson’s reign
By Ron Howell
There’s really no other way to say this: The New York Times is going to the dogs.
Dogs have been appearing in the paper 45 percent more frequently since Jill Abramson took over as executive editor last November.
How do I know this? I recently did some research in the LexisNexis database, where I found that the number of Times articles containing three or more words with “dog” as the root (such as “dog,” “dogs,” and “doggie”) increased from 230 in a four-month span from November 1, 2010 though February 28, 2011 to 337 from November 1, 2011 though February 28, 2012 (the first four months of Abramson’s time as boss).
I started smelling something funny several months ago, when Abramson was celebrating her appointment as the first female chief at The Times. I listened to her on WNYC, speaking in that singularly nasal New York-cum-Harvard accent. And what was the topic? Puppies!
Abramson’s book, you see, is not about politics or poverty or even the worrisome condition of modern journalism. No, it’s about the dogs she has loved in her adult life, the dogs she has spent the large part of her off-hours admiring and contemplating. It’s titled The Puppy Diaries, and it recounts every experience she’s had with her late pet, Buddy, and her current one, Scout, and every insight she’s ever had about them. Before Scout came into the picture she felt Buddy was “my one perfect relationship in life.”
Let me say now that I love dogs. One of the saddest days of my life was in August of 1997, when I held my 14-year-old German Shepherd, Reina, as a veterinarian injected her ailing body into its final rest.
This topic of loving dogs is a very personal one. But I believe we, as New Yorkers, have crossed over to the far side in our obsession with dogs. And I worry that this canine obsession is creeping intrusively into the pages of The Times, one of our few remaining daily newspapers.
I say this as one who becomes enraged when I see important local stories lazily reported or ignored, especially stories from the Central Brooklyn communities that I love. Quite bluntly, in black and in white progressive communities of the city, The Times has a reputation of being a paper of the gentry, arguably a good thing when it comes to vocbaulary expansion, but a questionable attribute when it comes to covering people on the racial or social margins. Last year I ranted ( in The Amsterdam News, in Voices That Must be Heard, in Our Times Press, and on my blog BrooklynRon) about how consistently The Times either ignored or misrepresented Bedford Stuyvesant (the historically black Brooklyn neighborhood in which I was raised and that I love so much).
The paper’s “Crime Scene” column had previously given prominence to Bed-Stuy on two notable occasions, drawing attention to white crime victims, with a one-sidedness that struck me as a throwback to the 1950s, when city papers did not give a hoot if a black person was murdered.
In the very same two-block area where “Crime Scene” obsessively covered the robbery and beatings of a group of young men (all but one of them white), I knew of older pillars of the community, both black men, who had also been beaten and robbed. The crimes against them were greeted with a 1950s-style silence.
As I vented about this galling disparity to a friend of mine, Gayle Williams (a 1986 graduate of Columbia’s journalism school who has worked over two decades at newspapers through the East Coast), she told me she had been thinking about this subject for quite a while herself. And then she said something that gave me pause, but sounded more and more reasonable as I pondered it. “Maybe they [The Times] just ought to give up local reporting and let the bloggers and the community newspapers who really care about those communities do the job.”
This is the backdrop when I read Times articles like one on Feb. 26, headlined “A New Breed of Ring Bearers Trot Down the Aisle.” In it I learned about a furry wedding guest named Major and the barking and growling that “served as background music” to the wedding vows.
A few days before that article, on Feb. 23, there was another one headlined “Play Dead, Act Coy, Roll Over and Upstage the Humans,” which informed us that while “dog stars do not compare with human actors … they can give camera-hogging performances.”
A 45 percent jump in precious newspaper space given to dogs is significant. But check this out. Fifteen years ago, before Abramson had any clout at The Times, there were only 167 references to dogs during a four-month time-frame that I checked. That indicates an increase of more than 100 percent in the attention given to dogs between then and now!
One defense of the Times’s dog proclivities might be that there are more dogs in the city (and nation) now, and that more coverage is warranted. Hmm. Cute. But I don’t buy it.(a distraction tactic if you ask me.)(something that truly shows the sad state of journalism in the United States and the... more
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(This should steam your veggies!!!!)
Mafia mobster is freed from jail just 12 months into 15 year sentence because of ALLERGY to the beans on prison menu
By Nick Pisa
PUBLISHED: 10:35 EST, 23 March 2012 | UPDATED: 11:25 EST, 23 March 2012
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Freed: Michele Aiello was released after a judge heard he was intolerant to beans, peas, spinach and all other types of greens offered to inmates serving time behind bars
Freed: Michele Aiello was released after a judge heard he was intolerant to beans, peas, spinach and all other types of greens offered to inmates serving time behind bars
A convicted Mafia mobster has been freed early from his 15 year jail term because he is allergic to the vegetables on the prison menu.
Millionaire Michele Aiello, 56, told the judge at a special appeal hearing he was intolerant to beans, peas, spinach and all other types of greens offered to inmates serving time behind bars.
Lawyers acting for the businessman provided medical certificates as evidence in their argument for Aiello to be released after serving little more than a year of his original sentence.
He was arrested in Palermo on the Italian island of Sicily in 2010 and charged with being the financial brains behind a Mafia money laundering operation.
It saw him lending his name and that of relatives to dozens of companies and properties so cash from criminal activity could be recycled and cleaned up.
Police said Aiello laundered more than €800million for jailed Mafia Godfather Bernardo Provenzano, who was caught in 2006 after almost 40 years on the run.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2119354/Michele-Aiello-Mafia-mobster-freed-jail-ALLERGY-vegetables-prison-menu.html#ixzz1qMWQUieJ(This should steam your veggies!!!!)
Mafia mobster is freed from jail just 12... more
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The LIBOR trading scandal could turn out to be far worse for Wall Street than its mortgage troubles.
FORTUNE -- Much of the talk about bad behavior on Wall Street since the financial crisis has been about mortgages with a little bit of insider trading sprinkled in. And that makes sense. Everyone immediately understands what a mortgage is. And the housing bust that resulted from all those bad home loans affected us all. And Hollywood has taught us to ooh and ah over insider trading.
But there is another scandal that has come out of the financial crisis that at least to me makes the mortgage underwriting scandal look like small peanuts, and it has been heating up lately. Two weeks ago, the government disclosed that it is looking into bringing criminal cases against traders and banks that manipulated a key bank lending rate, called LIBOR. A source close to the case says the government's "may" will be dropped soon. Both Barclays and Deutsche Bank have disclosed that they have been the focus of investigations. Banks have suspended dozens of traders. Today, Credit Suisse announced that it was cooperating with regulators on the case. Traders at UBS reportedly are already working with the government on its investigation. Looking for instances in which Wall Streeters go to jail, unlike mortgages, this may be the one.
And yet because it is over a technical sounding bank lending rate, and has been developing for years, the scandal has mostly passed over the public without a real knowledge on what it's about. But to understand the real rot on Wall Street, and how widespread it is, you should.
Consider what went on here. Banks took a rate that they artificially set themselves, and then went out and convinced municipalities and pension funds and others to bet against them on the rate. LIBOR rates were supposed to be set by bank treasurers reflecting what it cost them to borrow from other banks. But reportedly a number of bank treasurers consulted traders when deciding what rate to report to the organization in London that collected and posted the rates. (LIBOR stands for the London InterBank Offered Rate) What's more, traders at a number of banks were given access to the systems that bank officials used to enter the rate so they could overwrite the rates with ones that would better suit them. When the rate went the way Wall Street traders programed it to do, the banks cashed in millions.The LIBOR trading scandal could turn out to be far worse for Wall Street than its... more
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Winning justice for the murders of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi means challenging the racism at the heart of U.S. society, writes Khury Petersen-Smith.
March 27, 2012
Trayvon Martin and Shaima AlawadiTrayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi
FOLLOWING THE news these days is like witnessing a parade of horrors. As soon as you regain your composure after being disturbed by an incident of racist violence, another comes into view.
Each day is bringing new details about the murder of Trayvon Martin, the Black teenager killed by racist vigilante George Zimmerman, whose body was drug-tested and classified as a "John Doe" by Sanford, Fla., police, as his parents desperately searched for their missing son. The same police department has allowed Zimmerman to go about his business without arrest.
On March 14, a few weeks after Trayvon's murder, police in Del City, Okla., killed Dane Scott Jr., an 18-year-old Black man, after pulling him over for a traffic stop. Scott--who the cops say was armed when they killed him, although no weapon has been produced--was shot in the back by police. He is among the latest African Americans killed by police this year, in a long list that includes Ramarley Graham in New York City, and Stephon Watts and Rekia Boyd in Chicago.
Then came the murder of Shaima Alawadi on March 21, one week after Dane Scott Jr. died.
The mother of five was viciously beaten into unconsciousness with a tire iron in her home in El Cajon, Calif. She died five days later after being removed from life support. According to Shaima's daughter, who discovered her mother's body, the killer left a note near Shaima, an Iraqi Muslim who wore a hijab, which read in part, "Go back to your country, you terrorist." more at my site http://figrd.blogspot.com
story used by permission from the Socialist Worker
http://socialistworker.org/2012/03/27/racism-that-connects-these-murders/Winning justice for the murders of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi means challenging... more
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Recently released documents reveal that the Department of Homeland Security is keeping tabs on us via our social networks.
According to an internal DHS document released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the department and/or a DHS subcontractor is searching social networks like Facebook and Twitter for all kinds of keywords, which are then made into reports about "items of interest" (IOI). The list of terms is HUGE, and according to the blog Animal New York, "the DHS can also add additional search terms circumstantially as deemed necessary." Here are some of the keywords; you can view the full list at Animal New York.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
Secret Service (USSS)
Assassination
Attack
Domestic security
Drill
Exercise
Cops
Law enforcement
Hazmat
Nuclear
Chemical Spill
Airport
AMTRAK
Violence
Gang
Drug
Narcotics
Cocaine
Marijuana
According to the blog post, the DHS does attempt to strip personally identifiable information (that gets its own acronym too, PII) -- unless you fall into one of the following rather broad categories:
1) U.S. and foreign individuals in extremis situations involving potential life or death circumstances; (this is no change)
2) Senior U.S. and foreign government officials who make public statements or provide public updates;
3) U.S. and foreign government spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
4) U.S. and foreign private sector officials and spokespersons who make public statements or provide public updates;
5) Names of anchors, newscasters, or on-scene reporters who are known or identified as reporters in their post or article or who use traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed;
6) Current and former public officials who are victims of incidents or activities related to Homeland Security; and
7) Terrorists, drug cartel leaders or other persons known to have been involved in major crimes of Homeland Security interest, (e.g., mass shooters such as those at Virginia Tech or Ft. Hood) who are killed or found dead.
Also, the department's "Media Monitoring Capability team can transmit personal information to the DHS National Operations Center over the phone as deemed necessary." In other words, there are a lot of loopholes here. Remember that the next time you tweet about an airport, or link to an article about marijuana on Facebook.Recently released documents reveal that the Department of Homeland Security is keeping... more
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It passed its law and now we are very angry i would find a rock and hide under it if i was a repube or a demo-can't we are legion ...and we will conquer.It passed its law and now we are very angry i would find a rock and hide under it if i... more
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Banks foreclosing on US churches in record numbers
By Tim Reid
LOS ANGELES, March 9 (Reuters) - Banks are foreclosing on America's churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.
The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.
Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.
In 2011, 138 churches were sold by banks, an annual record, with no sign that these religious foreclosures are abating, according to CoStar. That compares to just 24 sales in 2008 and only a handful in the decade before.
The church foreclosures have hit all denominations across America, black and white, but with small to medium size houses of worship the worst. Most of these institutions have ended up being purchased by other churches.
The highest percentage have occurred in some of the states hardest hit by the home foreclosure crisis: California, Georgia, Florida and Michigan.
"Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches," said Scott Rolfs, managing director of Religious and Education finance at the investment bank Ziegler.
Church defaults differ from residential foreclosures. Most of the loans in question are not 30-year mortgages but rather commercial loans that typically mature after just five years when the full balance becomes due immediately.
Its common practice for banks to refinance such loans when they come due. But banks have become increasingly reluctant to do that because of pressure from regulators to clean up their balance sheets, said Rolfs.
"A lot of these loans were given when the properties were evaluated at a certain level in 2005 or 2006," Rolfs said. "Banks have had to reappraise the value of these properties, whether it's a church or a commercial office building. Values have gone down, so the loans cannot continue in the same form."
The factors leading to the boom in church foreclosures will sound familiar to many private homeowners evicted from their properties in recent years.
During the property boom, many churches took out additional loans to refurbish or enlarge, often with major lenders or with the Evangelical Christian Credit Union, which was particularly aggressive in lending to religious institutions.
Then after the financial crash, many churchgoers lost their jobs, donations plunged, and often, so did the value of the church building.
CONGREGATIONS IN TROUBLEBanks foreclosing on US churches in record numbers
By Tim Reid
LOS... more
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Congress Votes to End Protesters' Rights
Last week, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would severely limit the First Amendment rights of protesters.
Now known as the “anti-Occupy law,” H.R. 347 makes it a federal offense to “enter or remain” in an area designated as “restricted.”
As RT.com (via the ACLU blog) put it:
Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country. The new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene…
It also restricts access to buildings or grounds that are connected to a “special event of national significance,” or a National Special Security Event, which are so categorized by a simple stroke of the pen by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Daily Paul, a blog dedicated to Ron Paul, who was one of only THREE congressional members to vote against the measure, was so alarmed they simply asked: “Is this real?”
If President Obama signs the bill into law, it means that any person protesting a Romney or Santorum event (since they enjoy Secret Service protection) could potentially be arrested, fined, and incarcerated for a year.
It means that protest of national or global summits could be punishable under federal law. It means that government workers striking outside of government buildings or ‘special events’ could be thrown in jail. And it means that certain Occupy gatherings would be expressly forbidden.
H.R. 347 is the definition of authoritarianism. It is a serious and blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of every American citizen. And it should be repealed immediately.
Update: Conveniently, this bill would also undermine protest efforts at the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Congressmen Justin Amash (R-MI), one of the few to oppose the bill, has published this on his FB page:
Current law makes it illegal to enter or remain in an area where certain government officials (more particularly, those with Secret Service protection) will be visiting temporarily if and only if the person knows it’s illegal to enter the restricted area but does so anyway. The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it’s illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect it’s illegal. (It expands the law by changing “willfully and knowingly” to just “knowingly” with respect to the mental state required to be charged with a crime.)
http://figrd.blogspot.comCongress Votes to End Protesters' Rights
Last week, the Senate unanimously... more
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New York prosecutors ask Twitter to reveal Occupy Wall Street man's tweets
Twitter agrees not to comply with subpoena from district attorney's office while protester's lawyer prepares rebuttal
The company has not complied with the subpoena from the New York district attorney's office.
Prosecutors have subpoenaed the Twitter records of an Occupy Wall Street protester who was arrested in October during a mass protest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The 26 January subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney's office seeks "user information, including email address," along with three months' worth of tweets from @destructuremal, the Twitter handle for Malcolm Harris.
Harris, 23, a freelance writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, said on Tuesday that Twitter sent a copy of the subpoena to him on Monday. He posted it on Twitter.
"When you get an email from Twitter Legal, you assume it's a phishing scam, trying to get your password," he said. "It turned out that it is a phishing scam, but it's from the prosecutors."
It is not clear what specific evidence prosecutors are after. But the subpoena is an example of posts on social media sites posing potential legal problems for authors.
Harris said his lawyer, Martin Stolar, would file a motion to quash the subpoena. Twitter has agreed not to comply with the subpoena while Stolar prepares the motion, Harris said.
A spokeswoman for the district attorney's office declined to comment.
The subpoena seeks Harris's tweets from 15 September – two days before the Occupy Wall Street movement began – to 15 December.
Harris is not sure what tweets could be fodder for prosecutors; Twitter's interface does not allow him to review all of his old tweets. Stolar was not available for comment.
A Twitter spokesman declined to comment on the case but confirmed that the San Francisco-based company's policy is "to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so", in order to protect users' rights.
Harris is one of hundreds of Occupy-related defendants whose cases are still winding their way through American courts.
A special courtroom has been set up to handle more than 1,800 cases in New York, the vast majority involving misdemeanour charges.
He was charged with disorderly conduct and is due back in court on 29 February.
Like a number of Occupy protesters, he has vowed to take the case to trial rather than accept a deal from prosecutors.
The National Lawyers Guild is representing many of the arrested protesters.New York prosecutors ask Twitter to reveal Occupy Wall Street man's tweets... more
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Elections Are For Suckers
by Robert Scheer
Let’s just dip our fingers in purple ink and pose for photos now that voting has the same significance for us as it had for those Iraqis who got conned into thinking they were participating in some grand democratic experiment.
Our own elections, the ones our government has modeled for the world, are a hoax. What other word should we use to describe this year’s presidential election, whose outcome will turn on which party’s super PACs gets the most generous bribes from billionaires? The Republicans, enabled by decisions of a Supreme Court they still control, were the first out of the gate and are far more culpable in destroying our system of popular governance. But the Democrats, no less committed to winning at any cost to political principle, have now jumped in.
The generally reserved New York Times editorial page responded to the Obama campaign’s decision to seek super PAC funding with a scathing editorial headlined “Another Campaign for Sale.” The Times reminded that Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech two years ago, called out the Supreme Court justices sitting before him over their decision to free special interests from campaign spending limits. “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests,” Obama said then. “They should be decided by the American people.” But sadly, as the Times editorial noted this week, “On Monday, the President abandoned that fundamental principle and gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denounced as a ‘threat to our democracy.’ ”
Monday was the day the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail announcing that members of the president’s administration would solicit funds for Priorities USA Action, one of the super PACs that can now, thanks to the Supreme Court decisions that Obama had castigated, raise unlimited funds in an effort to sway the election.
Just as the super political action committee supporting Republican primary contender Newt Gingrich had raised $10 million from Nevada gambling kingpin Sheldon Adelson and his wife, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama campaign set its sights on media mogul Haim Saban.
A backer of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries in 2008, Saban had not subsequently supported Obama because of criticisms over the president’s actions toward Israel. Perhaps because the president has done nothing to effectively pressure the Israeli government to make any concessions toward Palestinian self-determination, Saban recently made his first contribution to Obama and in a written statement Tuesday said, “We are looking at all the Super PACs at the moment, will surely participate, but haven’t decided on the details.”
Saban may be one of the more idealistic mega-donors the pro-Obama Priorities USA Action PAC is now courting. Less savory, if one cares about the hold that Wall Street has exerted over this administration, are some of the top donors Obama aides met with Tuesday to urge that they contribute to the PAC. The list included Hamilton E. James, the president of the huge private equity firm Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, the chairman of UBS Group Americas.
Not that the Republicans should worry, since their list of super PAC supporters is far more powerful. To date, the pro-Democrat PACs have collected a paltry $19 million as compared with the $91 million raised last year by committees controlled by Karl Rove and the allies of the Republican presidential candidates. This disparity is the president’s justification for abandoning his principled opposition to such groups. “We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”Elections Are For Suckers
by Robert Scheer
Let’s just dip our fingers in... more
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Published on Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Common Dreams
30,000 Domestic Drones to Fill the Sky, Civil Liberties at Risk
FAA Act would raise 'very serious privacy issues'
- Common Dreams staff
A bill has passed in the House and Senate this week that would increase the presence of drones in U.S. civilian airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act requires the FAA to alleviate many current rules on domestic drone authorization. Drones would now be able to fly in the same airspace as commercial airliners, private planes, and cargo jets. Up to 30,000 drones could be allowed in U.S. airspace by the end of the decade.
The Senate passed the bill on Monday, 75-20 and allots $63.4 billion to the FAA. Obama is expected to sign it into law.
ACLU, among other civil liberties groups, is expressing grave concern for civilian privacy, as the legislation does not restrict drone surveillance activities by police and federal government agencies.
* * *
ACLU states:
As we explained in our recent report, drone technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and there is a lot of pent-up demand for them within the law enforcement community. But, domestic deployment of unmanned aircraft for surveillance purposes has largely been blocked so far by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is rightly concerned about the safety effects of filling our skies with flying robots (which crash significantly more often than manned aircraft).[...]
Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.[...]
We don’t want to wonder, every time we step out our front door, whether some eye in the sky is watching our every move. [...]
Here are details on what the bill would do in terms of drones:
Require the FAA to simplify and speed up the process by which it issues permission to government agencies to operate drones. It must do this within 90 days. The FAA has already been working on a set of proposed regulations to loosen the rules around drones, reportedly set for release in the spring of 2012.
Require the FAA to allow “a government public safety agency” to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as certain conditions are met (within line of sight, during the day, below 400 feet in altitude, and only in safe categories of airspace).Nano Hummingbird Surveillance Drone
Require the FAA to establish a pilot project within six months to create six test zones for integrating drones “into the national airspace system.”
Require the FAA to create a comprehensive plan “to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.” “Civil” drones means those operated by the private sector; currently it is all but impossible for any non-government entity, except for hobbyists, to get permission to fly drones (for-profit use of drones is banned). Industry groups and their congressional supporters see this as a potential area for growth. Congress specifies that the plan must provide for the integration of drones into the national airspace system “as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015.” The FAA has nine months to create the plan. The FAA is also required to create a “5-year roadmap for the introduction” of civil drones into the national airspace.
Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.
Require the FAA to publish a final rule within 18 months after the comprehensive plan is submitted, “that will allow” civil operation of small (under 55 pounds) drones in the national airspace, and a proposed rule for carrying out the comprehensive plan.
* * *
TPM reports:
The federal government is also facing a lawsuit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group that is asking for the FAA to release records on the almost-300 agencies that have authorization to operate drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney with the EFF who brought the case, told TPM that this bill makes their suit even more important. “I think the fact that Congress is pressuring the FAA to expand its UAS program through the FAA Reauthorization Act only reinforces the need for these records,” Lynch said. “It’s important that we learn more about how the federal government and state and local law enforcement agencies are already using UASs before we expand their use further. The privacy concerns posed by the use of drones for domestic surveillance are too great to excuse the FAA’s lack of transparency on this issue.”
(Published on Thursday, February 9, 2012 by Common Dreams
30,000 Domestic Drones to... more
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By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he expects all undocumented immigrants to leave the country through a program of “self-deportation.”
During an NBC Republican presidential debate in Florida on Monday, The Tampa Bay Times‘ Adam Smith noted that the candidate has said that all undocumented immigrants should leave the country, but has said that he would not “round up people and deport them.”
“So if you don’t deport them, how do you send them home?” Smith wondered.
“Well, the answer is self-deportation,” Romney replied. “People decide that they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don’t have legal documentation to allow them to work here.”
“Isn’t that what we have now?” Smith asked. “If somebody doesn’t feel they have the opportunity in America, they can go back anytime they want to.”
“Yes, we would have a card that indicates who’s here legally,” Romney explained. “And if people are not able to have a card and have that through an E-Verify system to determine that they are here legally then they are going to find that they can’t get work here. If people can’t get work here, they’re going to self-deport to a place where they can get work.”
At a campaign event in Iowa last month, the former Massachusetts governor outlined his plan to allow immigrants the chance to receive a green card if they “go back home.”
“For those that have come here illegally, they might have a transition time to allow them to set they affairs in order, and then go back home and get in line with everybody else,” Romney said. “They start in the back of the line, not at the front of the line.”
“We’re not going to go across the country and round people up. It’s just too big of a task. There are what? Eleven, 12, 15 million — who knows the total number? But what we are going to do is that we are going to give people a chance to transition to be able to go home to get in line and then, ultimately if they would like to, to have a green card to come into this country legally.”
As Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer pointed out, having a immigrants deport themselves is a conservative idea that has been around at least since 2005, when it was pushed by the Center for Immigration Studies.
“Although immigration reform advocates would prefer a solution that involves a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already here, Romney and his top immigration advisers believe they can remove millions of people through heavy-handed enforcement that makes life for unauthorized immigrants intolerable,” Serwer wrote.
“But make no mistake, when Romney is discussing ‘self-deportation,’ he’s talking about creating a United States where parents are afraid to register their kids for school or get them immunized because they might be asked for proof of citizenship. He’s talking about the type of country where local police can demand your immigration status based on mere suspicion that you don’t belong around here. ‘Self-deportation’ is just a cleaner, less cruel-sounding way of endorsing harsh, coercive government polices in order to make life for unauthorized immigrants so unbearable that they have no choice but to find some way to leave.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/24/romney-advocates-self-deportation-for-undocumented-immigrants/
Watch this video from NBC News, broadcast Jan. 23, 2012.
"Sure!!! Great Idea DoucheBag, that's like asking GW and Cheney to turn themselves in at the Hague!!!"By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt... more
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By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn’t want to abolish the Department of Transportation, but he said on Tuesday that the agency really only needed “one guy and a computer.”
During a town hall event in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Texas congressman made the case for “user fees” for national parks and the federal highway system.
“Ideally, you can come up with all sorts of schemes about private highways and all, but that’s not going to happen,” Paul explained. “But we do have a user fee with our gasoline tax. Trouble is, they take that money then they spend it on something else.”
“If you had a user fee for our highway, what you could do is have one person in the office. Oh, we got umpteen billions of dollars in gasoline tax and all they have to do is divide up the people in each state or, you know, the size of the state and send the money back.”
He added: “And you could do that with one guy and a computer. But instead, we have a Department of Transportation, probably has tens of thousands of people, you know, playing politics with it all.”
Paul has said that he wants to abolish at least five federal agencies, a list that does not include the Department of Transportation.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/17/ron-paul-dept-of-transportation-only-needs-one-guy-and-a-computer/
Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Jan. 17, 2012.
"Eeeesh!!! At his Age I am thinking Retirement???"By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Ron... more
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The new year has just begun and we've already got our first big challenge. On New Year's Eve, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision. And it has no time or geographic limits. It can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.
Despite initial assurances that he would veto this outrageous bill, President Obama will now be known as the president who signed indefinite detention without charge or trial into law.
He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.
Make it clear you won't rest until this outrage is reversed. Sign the ACLU's pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.
Under the Bush administration, similar claims of worldwide detention authority were used to hold even a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil in military custody. The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA.
With your help, we will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally. If you believe that no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this President or any future president misusing this new detention authority, now is the time to act.
Commit to fighting indefinite detention for as long as it takes. Sign the ACLU pledge right now.
Now more than ever, the defense of freedom is up to us. Let's prove that we're up to the task.
For freedom,
Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director, ACLU
...Because freedom can't protect itself.
i hope you all can find time to sign thank you
G.M.FiggThe new year has just begun and we've already got our first big challenge. On New... more
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By Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times
December 25, 2011
Hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned inside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals, a Times investigation has found.
The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years. They were the result of a variety of factors, including officials' overlooking fingerprint evidence and working off incomplete records.
The errors are so common that in some years people were jailed because of mistaken identity an average of once a day.
FULL COVERAGE: Jails under scrutiny
Many of those wrongly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as criminals or had their identities stolen — problems that took days or weeks for authorities to sort out.
In one case, a mechanic held for nine days in 1989 on a warrant meant for someone else was detained again 20 years later on the same warrant. He was jailed for more than a month the second time before the error was discovered.
In another instance, a Nissan customer service supervisor was hauled by authorities from Tennessee to L.A. County on a local sex-crimes warrant meant for someone with a similar name.
In a third case, a former construction worker mistaken for a wanted drug offender said he was assaulted by inmates and ignored by jailers.
"I'm with criminals, and I was a criminal to them," said Jose Ventura, 53, who had never been arrested before.By Robert Faturechi and Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times
December 25, 2011
Hundreds... more
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Somewhat to my surprise, the Wall Street Journal didn't merely report that "Donald Trump wants a say in who gets the nomination, so he's hosting a presidential debate, holding out the prospect of his endorsement and threatening an independent run" (i.e., behaving like a kingmaker who expects to be honored and courted by the rival candidates); it even quoted candidate Jon Huntsman's remarkably lewd comment about why he's not going to attend the Trump "debate": Huntsman said, "I'm not going to kiss his ring, and I'm not going to kiss any other part of his anatomy."
That vivid and rather gross remark reminded me of how right my extremely cool son Calvin is about the word he wants to see win the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year contest. I had been talking to Calvin one day about the ghastly crew of obnoxious multi-millionaires who dominate the newspapers, and how they keep threatening to achieve success even in the political arena. Calvin pointed out to me both that we need a new political term for the concept of being ruled by such men, and that there already is such a term. We are living, he observed, in the age of the assholocracy.
He's right, you know. This relatively new word is really useful. Even if we ignore the whole scandal of modern banking, and the rigged election in Russia, and all the scandals in Italy (by the man who The Economist dubbed "the man who screwed a whole country"), and all the disgusting behavior and political clout of of the Murdoch press empire, there is so much else. The contest for the Republican presidential nomination illustrates as well as any other arena.
Donald Trump is famous here in Scotland. Famous for his cruel treatment of the ordinary people he has tried hard to oust from their homes so he can get control of their land, which adjoins the golf resort he is trying to build north of Aberdeen. (There is an excellent documentary on his unpleasant dealings: You've Been Trumped. The capacity crowd in Edinburgh the night I saw it broke into applause, and it was not for the Donald.) To see Trump trying to play a decisive role in choosing the next Republican presidential candidate even as he threatens to split their vote by running against them as an independent really interests us over here. It should be even more interesting to those of you who are on the left hand side of the Atlantic.
The thought of Trump having political power and influence convinces me that assholocracy is going to get my vote at the American Dialect Society's voting session. It's not just to make sure we don't find some stupid compositional phrase winning (I shudder at the thought of having to battle against my good friend Ben Zimmer over such a thing, but you can already see the way he's leaning on the phrase issue), no; it's because assholocracy is a terse and valuable addition to the vocabulary.
The whole Arab Spring has been a process of bringing down assholocracies. Italy suffered under one until recently. Russia and Syria are now protesting against their own crooked assholocracies, and the only reason North Korea and Zimbabwe don't do the same is that they daren't, they could be killed. We in the West are going to need a term for being ruled by assholocrats, because they continue to threaten to exercise power over huge parts of the earth's population even if not (yet) over us.
Assholocracy needs more Google hits, though; it's a rare word thus far (105 Ghits as of right now, combining the correct spelling assholocracy and the variant spelling assholeocracy). Rare words don't win. There are several weeks to go before the ADS vote. Those of you with blogs, use the word, visibly and often. Let's get to work and make sure we at least have the appropriate vocabulary items for dealing with the situation should it arise.
Think about the phrase "President Trump". Or even just "presidential candidate hand-picked and endorsed by Trump". Doesn't it chill you to the bone? Can ridicule by Doonesbury get rid of him? You'd better be very sure. So get out there and prepare the lexicographical ground. With words, we can win. Without the words, we don't have the concepts: just as the Eskimos have many apposite words for . . . no, never mind that; bad example. Just push the word assholocracy wherever you have influence is what I'm saying.
Update, midnight EST, 13 December: The raw Google hits (Ghits) for the two spellings combined went up from 105 to 142 during the evening. That's over 35 percent. We can win this thing.
Update, 8 a.m. EST, 14 December: The combined count is now up to 421. (Of those, 374 are the pseudo-Greek spelling that I prefer, without the e. But spelling doesn't matter too much here; there are other words that are sometimes spelled with a medial e and sometimes without: judg[e]ment is an example.) The Ghits have quadrupled since yesterday.
Update, 1 p.m. EST, 16 December: The spelling assholocracy alone now gets 7,950 Ghits. Language Log (for that is surely the mighty force behind this trend) has increased the web appearances of the word by two orders of magnitude (roughly multiplying them by 100).
[Comments are closed because now is not the time for comments: now is the time for action.]
December 13, 2011 @ 5:31 pm · Filed by Geoffrey K. Pullum under Language and politics, Words words words
http://figrd.blogspot.comSomewhat to my surprise, the Wall Street Journal didn't merely report that... more
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Secret video footage captured the moment a furious Beijing woman DUMPED her boyfriend after she publicly scolds him for not having enough money.
The humiliating scene played out on public transport as her humbled boyfriend sits forlorn.
Here’s a translation of the conversation:
“A man without money is garbage! Not having money, just thinking about it is frightening! You’ll be nothing in the future, and you want me to marry you, forget it! I’m moving out tonight, bye bye.”
http://www.tabloidprodigy.com/2011/12/14/furious-girlfriend-dumps-boyfriend-on-train-a-man-without-money-is-garbage/Secret video footage captured the moment a furious Beijing woman DUMPED her boyfriend... more
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By Robert Lenzner |
for forbes
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income disparity in the US-- and the force behind the winner takes all mantra of our economic system. If you want even out earning power in the U.S, you have to raise the 15% capital gains tax.
Income and wealth disparities become even more absurd if we look at the top 0.1% of the nation's earners-- rather than the more common 1%. The top 0.1%-- about 315,000 individuals out of 315 million-- are making about half of all capital gains on the sale of shares or property after 1 year; and these capital gains make up 60% of the income made by the Forbes 400.
It's crystal clear that the Bush tax reduction on capital gains and dividend income in 2003 was the cutting edge policy that has created the immense increase in net worth of corporate executives, Wall St. professionals and other entrepreneurs.
The reduction in the tax from 20% to 15% continued the step-by-step tradition of cutting this tax to create more wealth. It had first been reduced from 35% in 1978 at a time of stock market and economic stagnation to 28% . Again 1981, at the start of the Reagan era, it was reduced again to 20%-- raised back to 28% in 1987, on the eve of the October 19 232% crash in the market. In 1997 Clinton agreed to reduce it back to 20%, which move was an inducement for the explosion of hedge funds and private equity firms-- the most "rapidly rising cohort within the top 1 per cent."
Make no mistake; the battle that is to be fought over the coming attempt to reverse this reduction in capital gains will be bloody and intense.
(hahahahahahaha You know this!!!!!)
The facts are clear according to the Congressional Budget Office more than 80% of the increase in income inequality was the result of an increase in the share of household income from capital gains. In fact, you can go so far as to claim that "Capital Gains income is the most unevenly distributed-- and volatile-- source of household income," according to Laura D'Andrea Tyson, University of California business professor and former chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
No wonder the super wealthy plutocrats obtained the largest share of national income-- 25% of the nation's wealth- greater than any other industrial nation in the the period of 1979 to 2005. Make no mistake; after unemployment-- this disparity between the 1%-- 3 million-- or the 0.1%-- the 300,000-- and the other 312 million citizens of the U.S. has become the major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement-- and an important national debate.
http://figrd.blogspot.comBy Robert Lenzner |
for forbes
Capital gains are the key ingredient of income... more
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