Month: September 2011

Corey Robin’s provocative thesis that conservatism is, and always has been, “a meditation on — and theoretical rendition of — the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.”

Let’s see if this is an organization you’d like to support.

GM’s OnStar now collects your GPS location information and speed “for any purpose, at any time”.

They also have apparently granted themselves the ability to sell this personal information, and other information to third parties, including law enforcement.

To add insult to a slap in the face, the company insists they will continue collecting and selling this personal information even after you cancel your service, unless you specifically shut down the data connection to the vehicle after canceling. This could mean that if you buy a used car with OnStar, or even a new one that already has been activated by the dealer, your location and other information may get tracked by OnStar without your knowledge, even if you’ve never done business with OnStar.

Let’s see if this is an organization you’d like to support.

All perfectly legal, of course.

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And, let’s see if this is an organization you’d like to support.

The Digital Due Process group, a coalition of privacy organizations like the EFF and companies that are lobbying to reform surveillance laws in the US.

The group hopes to modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) which was enacted in 1986, long before the Internet.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched Who Has Your Back calling on major Internet companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and about thirteen others to stand with their users when it comes to government demands for users’ data.

And while we’re at it, let’s see if we can keep our country.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause…”

Dave Winer says “I, as a mere user of Facebook, am seriously scared of them.”

Cory Doctorow: “Tech Companies Exploit the Way We Undervalue Privacy.”

Well?

Despite a widespread belief that contracting out services to the private sector saves the federal government money, a new study suggests just the opposite — that the government actually pays more when it farms out work.

The study found that in 33 of 35 occupations, the government actually paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost government employees to perform comparable services.

On average, the study found that contractors charged the federal government more than twice the amount it pays federal workers.

John Steinbeck said this:

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

But did John Steinbeck say this?

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Elizabeth Drew: What Were They Thinking?

The antitax dogma of the Republican Party is strongly rooted in mythology.

The theory that tax cuts create jobs has been discredited by the results of George Bush’s tax policies.

The Republicans cling to the myth that “small business” owners are the “job creators,” and so they oppose proposals to eliminate the Bush rate cuts for even those earning over $250,000. But relatively few small business owners earn $250,000—in fact, fewer than 3 percent of the 20 million people who file business income on their personal tax forms (the 1040s) earn that much.

Finally, the antitax position of many conservatives would seem to be illogical, since they also hate deficits: but their real aim is to reduce or eliminate federal programs.

They call efforts to redistribute wealth “socialism,” but have no problem redistributing from the poor and middle class to the wealthy through taxes, as set forth in Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which the House approved on April 15. Under the Ryan plan, the taxes of the richest one percent of Americans would be cut in half, while taxes would be raised on most of the middle class. People earning over $1 million would be taxed at a lower effective rate than the middle class.

Consistent with the philosophy of Ryan’s idol Ayn Rand, this scheme would by 2050 eliminate virtually all federal programs other than defense and Social Security, much of which would be privatized, while his voucher program would replace Medicare.

Leaked documents reveal the secretive Kochs agenda and impact.

The Kochs have shaped legislation touching every state in the country.

The Kochs invest in radical ideas and fertilize them with tons of cash.

The Kochs hand legislators the law that directly benefits their bottom line.

• FAQ.
• Award to Journalists.
• Koch DNA.

Let’s see now. What is strategy?

Bush cites book after book that influenced his thinking in the White House.

The Bible, for one, and he quotes Lincoln, who called it “the best gift God has given to man.”

After 9/11, he thought of Lincoln’s declaration that the battle between freedom and tyranny was “an issue which can only be tried by war, and decided by victory”—words, he says, that framed his policy toward the war on terror.

Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult:

Both parties are rotten – how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election?

Both parties are captives to corporate loot.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks.

Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics.

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

here we go, history on the wall all over again !

ONE day during the 2008 campaign, as Barack Obama read the foreboding news of the mounting economic and military catastrophes that W. was bequeathing his successor, he dryly remarked to aides: “Maybe I should throw the game.”

On the razor’s edge of another recession; blocked at every turn by Republicans determined to slice him up at any cost; starting an unexpectedly daunting re-election bid; and puzzling over how to make a prime-time speech about infrastructure and payroll taxes soar, maybe President Obama is wishing that he had thrown the game.

The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a really bad spot.

 

[er, wow, gee, Zo, that’s a bunch of pepper]

It seems to tell a lie may become unconstitutional.

Wake your brain on that !

1) Judge Jay S. Bybee wrote that “false statements of fact . . . generally fall outside First Amendment protection.”

2) False statements of all kinds, he reasoned, are a complete exception to the First Amendment, just like child pornography, fighting words, or soliciting a hitman to kill your spouse.

Do not think I will tell you what I think nor tell you my opinion nor say a word, because…

3) It should be noted that, as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Bybee also gave the green light for government to use waterboarding and other tortures, undoubtedly only to elicit truthful speech.