10/25/2011 archive

Cross-posted to CandyBullets, MyLeftWing, firefly-dreaming and Docudharma

If you follow my website (CandyBullets) you’re probably well aware of the threat posed by the “IP PROTECT ACT” known more commonly as the Internet Blacklist bill. You’re may also be aware that this bill was recently halted in the Senate by the true Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) who prevented the bill from coming up for a vote in the Senate (where it would doubtless pass) however a House version will be introduced this week with help of Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) — probably tomorrow. If you’re not familiar with this bill then I suggest you become acquainted (the full text of the bill may be found here.)

It was once said about the much over analyzed movie Last Tango In Paris that it was a simple movie at heart: a movie about real estate, two people who want an apartment and will do anything to get it. In a similar vane Protect IP is also simple: it is merely the latest in a long line of slovenly hand-outs to corporations at the expense of your civil rights; it would give the Government broad, censorious new powers to shut down any site merely accused of Copyright Infringement and fuck the concept of innocent until proven guilty, yes, the PROTECT IP ACT authorizes an alleged “rights holder” who decides to claim to be the victim of the “infringement” to bring an action against the owner, registrant, or Internet site “dedicated to infringement”, whether domestic or foreign, and seek a court order against the domain name registrant, owner, or the domain name. The DOJ version however can apply against ISPs, search engines, ad providers and payment processors.

Of course corporate America, what were the founding fathers thinking? Of course you must be given permission to shut down YouTube and Facebook so that no one can potentially infringe upon your Copyrights. I recall Franklin making a remark about trading liberty for safety. This bill would criminalize YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Google+, Reddit, Digg, not least this site you’re reading this at. Any other site that uses user generated content. But you know, I’m glad to know that when conservative Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and nominal liberal Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) delightfully bipartisan fascism was first shot down when they coauthored COICA (The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) these two adorable little corporate shills decided to take our criticisms into account. This time they remembered to ban criticism. Their new “PROTECT IP ACT” retains the blacklist of websites our “Democratic” Govenrment doesn’t wanting us looking at but ads a new one that we’ll just have to take a moment to marvel at: It bans people from even being able to discuss blacklisted sites. Under the new bill, anyone “referring or linking” to a blacklisted site will be Blacklisted themselves.

Yes this “bunker-buster bluster bomb” (h/t Ron Wyden) far past simply requiring these other service providers from blocking service, this new law will require search engines to censor sites out of their index. Now please understand, “infringing websites” is in no way defined in a reasonable way — the bill is not being specific about what constitutes an infringing web sites. For example if WikiLeaks or any similar organization were merely accused of distributing copyrighted content, U.S. search engines could be served a court order to BLOCK search results pointing to Wikileaks. Requiring search engines to remove links to an entire website altogether due to an infringing page raises alarming free speech concerns regarding lawful content hosted elsewhere on the site. The fact that an injunction can be issued without notifying the allegedly, supposedly infringing website essentially destroys the entire legal “presumption of innocence”, there is no innocent until proven guilty with this bill.

Perry: Tax Cuts For All, Protect Social Security – And Privatize It

Rick Perry gave a major speech in South Carolina on Tuesday, laying out his “Cut, Balance and Grow” economic plan – the centerpiece of which is a tax reform proposal that would give people the choice of filing their taxes under the current code, or a 20% flat tax.

The political benefit of such a plan should be obvious: Allowing wealthier individuals to take a huge tax cut, while in theory not necessarily raising taxes on lower-income people who would not do as well under a flat tax, by at least giving them the legal option of paying a lower rate with more paperwork.

Perry also called for a drop in the corporate tax rate to 20%, while also eliminating loopholes. He would also not tax repatriated profits, if the taxes were already paid in the countries where the profits were earned. And, for a limited time, he would offer a reduced tax rate of 5.25% on repatriated earnings.

On Social Security, Perry appeared to give two contrary messages: To uphold the solvency of the program – and to allow young workers to divert funds away from it.

From the prepared remarks:

   Second, we will end the current pillaging of the Social Security Trust Fund by Washington politicians. Here is the hard truth: the trust fund is full of IOU’s, without a single dime of money left over from what workers have paid in. The politicians have borrowed against it for years. And in order to redeem the IOU’s in the fund, they will have to either raise taxes or cut spending on other programs to replenish it.

   Here is the other hard truth: if we don’t act, in 25 years benefits will be slashed 23 percent overnight. Protecting Social Security benefits begins with protecting the solvency of the fund, and stopping all current borrowing from the fund, just as we have done with the highway trust fund.

But this is then immediately followed by:

   The third principle of reform is to allow young workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes into private accounts if they so choose.

   I am not naïve. I know this idea will be attacked. But a couple of facts are worth stating: one, the return on investment in Social Security is so small it is like an interest bearing savings account. Over the long-term, the markets generate a much higher yield.

   Second, opposition to this simple measure is based on a simple supposition: that the people are not smart enough to look out for themselves. The liberals think the American people cannot be trusted to safeguard even a portion of their own retirement dollars. It is time to end the nanny state and empower our people to exercise greater control over their money.

Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631-

(A)lthough the overt acts relied upon to support the charge of treason-defendant’s harboring and sheltering in his home his son who was an enemy spy and saboteur, assisting him in purchasing an automobile, and in obtaining employment in a defense plant-were all acts which a father would naturally perform for a son, this fact did not necessarily relieve them of the treasonable purpose of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Speaking for the Court, Justice Jackson said: “No matter whether young Haupt’s mission was benign or traitorous, known or unknown to the defendant, these acts were aid and comfort to him. In the light of this mission and his instructions, they were more than casually useful; they were aids in steps essential to his design for treason. If proof be added that the defendant knew of his son’s instruction, preparation and plans, the purpose to aid and comfort the enemy becomes clear.”

Tar sands pipeline will comfort our enemies

By Steven M. Anderson, The Hill

10/25/11 11:21 AM ET

The Keystone XL pipeline doesn’t help.  This pipeline would move dirty oil from Canada to refineries in Texas and would set back our renewable energy efforts for at least two decades, much to our enemies’ delight.  It would ensure we maintain our oil addiction and delay making the tough decisions regarding energy production, management and conservation that we need to start making today.

Transcanada, the company that would own the pipeline, makes various claims about the pipeline’s supposed security benefits.   It claims the pipeline will reduce dependence on Mideast oil, that tar sands will feed a growing US demand, and that it will provide a supply cushion in times of natural or man-made disasters. None of these claims holds up. Transcanada says the project will supply roughly half of the amount of oil the US imports from the Middle East and Venezuela – but conveniently leaves out a crucial detail:  This tar sands oil will not reduce imports from those nations.

The Keystone XL is an export pipeline. Valero Energy Corporation, the pipeline’s largest customer, has explicitly told investors that it plans to focus its Port Arthur refinery on exports.  Canadian oil won’t replace imports from hostile countries because Texas refiners are serving global demand rather than domestic need.

Steven M. Anderson is a retired Army brigadier general, and senior mentor with the Army’s Battle Command Training Program.

Former Keystone pipeline lobbyist hired by Obama campaign

The L.A. Times

October 24, 2011, 5:13 pm

President Obama’s reelection campaign has hired a former lobbyist for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline as a top adviser.

The campaign said that Broderick Johnson, founder and former principal of the communications firm the Collins Johnson Group, would serve as a senior adviser for the campaign. Before founding the firm this spring, he worked for the powerhouse lobbying firm, Bryan Cave LLP, where his clients included Microsoft, Comcast and TransCanada, the company planning to build the $7-billion pipeline to carry crude from Alberta’s oil sands to the Texas Gulf Coast.

…

An Obama campaign official said that in his new role Johnson would “serve as a national surrogate for the campaign and our representative in meetings with key leaders, communities and organizations.  Broderick will be an ear to the ground for the campaign’s political and constituency operations, helping to ensure that there is constant, open communication between the campaign and our supporters around the country.”

Given his ties to Keystone XL, Johnson is bound to get an earful when meeting with some in Obama’s constituency.

The pipeline needs a permit from the State Department because it would cross a federal border. For more than a year, Keystone XL has been mired in controversy. TransCanada, the oil industry and several labor unions have said the project would create thousands of jobs in the United States and reduce the country’s dependence on oil from hostile or unstable countries. Environmentalists, including many Obama supporters, have argued that the extraction of the crude in Alberta lays waste to the land and increases greenhouse gas emissions. They caution that the proposed route would take the pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, the main source of drinking and irrigation water in the High Plains states, and they argue that the number of jobs created would be far fewer than claimed by the project’s backers.

Moreover, in the last several months, emails and other documents have raised questions about the State Department’s impartiality as it weighs Keystone’s permit application. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said late last year that her agency was “inclined” to grant the permit, although environmental reviews had not yet been completed.

TransCanada has hired a phalanx of former Democratic operatives since 2009 to lobby for Keystone XL, including Paul Elliott, the former deputy chairman for Clinton’s failed presidential campaign. Recently released emails show that the diplomat working on energy issues at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa had an unusually warm and collaborative relationship with Elliott. Another top State Department official worked with the Canadians to hone their message about the environmental impacts of developing oil sands. The outside contractor for the State Department’s environmental impact statement also counted TransCanada among its clients. The document was harshly criticized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nebraska Legislature plans special session on Keystone XL project

The L.A.Times

October 24, 2011, 6:10 pm

The action throws a potentially significant new stumbling block into a Canadian company’s hope of winning approval before the end of the year for the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would move diluted bitumen — often heavy in sulfur, nickel and lead — from Alberta to the Texas coast.

“The key decision for current pipeline discussions is the permitting decision that will be made by the Obama administration, which is why I have urged President Obama and Secretary of State [Hilary] Clinton to deny the permit,” the governor, a Republican, said in a statement Monday.

“However, I believe Nebraskans are expecting our best efforts to determine if alternatives exist. Therefore, I will be calling a special session of the Nebraska Legislature to have a thoughtful and thorough public discussion about alternative solutions that could impact the route of the pipeline in a legal and constitutional manner.”

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Bill Black: The Anti-Regulators are the “Job Killers”

The new mantra of the Republican Party is the old mantra – regulation is a “job killer.”  It is certainly possible to have regulations kill jobs, and when I was a financial regulator I was a leader in cutting away many dumb requirements.   We have just experienced the epic ability of the anti-regulators to kill well over ten million jobs.  Why then is there not a single word from the new House leadership about investigations to determine how the anti-regulators did their damage?  Why is there no plan to investigate the fields in which inadequate regulation most endangers jobs?  While we’re at it, why not investigate the areas in which inadequate regulation allows firms to maim and kill.  This column addresses only financial regulation.

Deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization (the three “des”) created the criminogenic environment that drove the modern U.S. financial crises.  The three “des” were essential to create the epidemics of accounting control fraud that hyper-inflated the bubble that triggered the Great Recession.  “Job killing” is a combination of two factors – increased job losses and decreased job creation.  I’ll focus solely on private sector jobs – but the recession has also been devastating in terms of the loss of state and local governmental jobs.  

Paul Krugman: The Hole in Europe’s Bucket

If it weren’t so tragic, the current European crisis would be funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way. For as one rescue plan after another falls flat, Europe’s Very Serious People – who are, if such a thing is possible, even more pompous and self-regarding than their American counterparts – just keep looking more and more ridiculous.

I’ll get to the tragedy in a minute. First, let’s talk about the pratfalls, which have lately had me humming the old children’s song “There’s a Hole in My Bucket.”

For those not familiar with the song, it concerns a lazy farmer who complains about said hole and is told by his wife to fix it. Each action she suggests, however, turns out to require a prior action, and, eventually, she tells him to draw some water from the well. “But there’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.”

What does this have to do with Europe? Well, at this point, Greece, where the crisis began, is no more than a grim sideshow. The clear and present danger comes instead from a sort of bank run on Italy, the euro area’s third-largest economy. Investors, fearing a possible default, are demanding high interest rates on Italian debt. And these high interest rates, by raising the burden of debt service, make default more likely.

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, got told “No, we won’t do that” by Albany’s police and New York State troopers when ordered to clear Occupy Wall Street protesters from a park across the street from the state Capitol and Albany ‘s City Hall:

ALBANY — In a tense battle of wills, state troopers and Albany police held off making arrests of dozens of protesters near the Capitol over the weekend even as Albany’s mayor, under pressure from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration, had urged his police chief to enforce a city curfew.

The situation intensified late Friday evening when Jennings, who has cultivated a strong relationship with Cuomo, directed his department to arrest protesters who refused to leave the city-owned portion of a large park that’s across Washington Avenue from the Capitol and City Hall.

At the Capitol, in anticipation of possibly dozens of arrests, a State Police civil disturbance unit was quietly activated, according to officials briefed on the matter but not authorized to comment publicly. But as the curfew neared, the group of protesters estimated at several hundred moved across an invisible line in the park from state land onto city property.

“We were ready to make arrests if needed, but these people complied with our orders,” a State Police official said. However, he added that State Police supported the defiant posture of Albany police leaders to hold off making arrests for the low-level offense of trespassing, in part because of concern it could incite a riot or draw thousands of protesters in a backlash that could endanger police and the public.

“We don’t have those resources, and these people were not causing trouble,” the official said. “The bottom line is the police know policing, not the governor and not the mayor.”

And to add to the ego deflation for Gov. Cuomo, Albany County District Attorney David Soares has stated:

“Our official policy with peaceful protesters is that unless there is property damage or injuries to law enforcement, we don’t prosecute people protesting,” Soares said. “If law enforcement engaged in a pre-emptive strike and started arresting people I believe it would lead to calamitous results, and the people protesting so far are peaceful.”

The camp has been named “Cuomoville”

Some protesters Monday were angry with the governor.

“Gov. Cuomo’s new name is Gov. 1 Percent because that’s who he chooses to represent – the more wealthy residents of New York state, those on Wall Street, his backers and supporters,” said Victorio Reyes, 37, a community organizer with the Social Justice Center of Albany who was making video reports from the park. “We’re not going to stand for it.”

Cuomo insists the temporary surcharge on incomes over $200,000 should expire Dec. 31, as planned when it was created under Gov. David Paterson to address a fiscal crisis. Cuomo and other opponents of the tax say it and a new proposal to tax earnings over $1 million would drive tax revenue and jobs out of state.

As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided — to which ends a dozen or more committees may toil night and day. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else, including job loss, the destruction of the middle class, and the reign of the 1%. And that is the single question: Where am I going to pee?

Some of the Occupy Wall Street encampments now spreading across the U.S. have access to Port-o-Potties (Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.) or, better yet, restrooms with sinks and running water (Fort Wayne, Indiana). Others require their residents to forage on their own. At Zuccotti Park, just blocks from Wall Street, this means long waits for the restroom at a nearby Burger King or somewhat shorter ones at a Starbucks a block away. At McPherson Square in D.C., a twenty-something occupier showed me the pizza parlor where she can cop a pee during the hours it’s open, as well as the alley where she crouches late at night. Anyone with restroom-related issues — arising from age, pregnancy, prostate problems, or irritable bowel syndrome — should prepare to join the revolution in diapers.

Of course, political protesters do not face the challenges of urban camping alone. Homeless people confront the same issues every day: how to scrape together meals, keep warm at night by covering themselves with cardboard or tarp, and relieve themselves without committing a crime. Public restrooms are sparse in American cities — “as if the need to go to the bathroom does not exist,” travel expert Arthur Frommer once observed.  And yet to yield to bladder pressure is to risk arrest.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 25 is the 298th day of the year (299th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 67 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress sends a respectful petition to King George III to inform his majesty that if it had not been for the acts of oppression forced upon the colonies by the British Parliament, the American people would be standing behind British rule.

Despite the anger that the American public felt towards the United Kingdom after the British Parliament established the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by the colonists, Congress was still willing to assert its loyalty to the king. In return for this loyalty, Congress asked the king to address and resolve the specific grievances of the colonies. The petition, written by Continental Congressman John Dickinson, laid out what Congress felt was undo oppression of the colonies by the British Parliament. Their grievances mainly had to do with the Coercive Acts, a series of four acts that were established to punish colonists and to restore order in Massachusetts following the Boston Tea Party..

Passage of the Acts

In Boston, Massachusetts, the Sons of Liberty protested against Parliament’s passage of the Tea Act in 1773 by throwing tons of taxed tea into Boston Harbor, an act that came to be known as the Boston Tea Party. News of the event reached England in January 1774. Parliament responded with a series of acts that were intended to punish Boston for this illegal destruction of private property, restore British authority in Massachusetts, and otherwise reform colonial government in America.

On April 22, 1774, Prime Minister Lord North defended the program in the House of Commons, saying:

The Americans have tarred and feathered your subjects, plundered your merchants, burnt your ships, denied all obedience to your laws and authority; yet so clement and so long forbearing has our conduct been that it is incumbent on us now to take a different course. Whatever may be the consequences, we must risk something; if we do not, all is over.

The Boston Port Act, the first of the acts passed in response to the Boston Tea Party, closed the port of Boston until the East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea and until the king was satisfied that order had been restored. Colonists objected that the Port Act punished all of Boston rather than just the individuals who had destroyed the tea, and that they were being punished without having been given an opportunity to testify in their own defense.

The Massachusetts Government Act provoked even more outrage than the Port Act because it unilaterally altered the government of Massachusetts to bring it under control of the British government. Under the terms of the Government Act, almost all positions in the colonial government were to be appointed by the governor or the king. The act also severely limited the activities of town meetings in Massachusetts. Colonists outside Massachusetts feared that their governments could now also be changed by the legislative fiat of Parliament.

The Administration of Justice Act allowed the governor to move trials of accused royal officials to another colony or even to Great Britain if he believed the official could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts. Although the act stipulated that witnesses would be paid for their travel expenses, in practice few colonists could afford to leave their work and cross the ocean to testify in a trial. George Washington called this the “Murder Act” because he believed that it allowed British officials to harass Americans and then escape justice. Some colonists believed the act was unnecessary because British soldiers had been given a fair trial following the Boston Massacre in 1770, with future Founding Father John Adams representing the Defense.

The Quartering Act applied to all of the colonies, and sought to create a more effective method of housing British troops in America. In a previous act, the colonies had been required to provide housing for soldiers, but colonial legislatures had been uncooperative in doing so. The new Quartering Act allowed a governor to house soldiers in other buildings if suitable quarters were not provided. While many sources claim that the Quartering Act allowed troops to be billeted in occupied private homes, historian David Ammerman’s 1974 study claimed that this is a myth, and that the act only permitted troops to be quartered in unoccupied buildings. Although many colonists found the Quartering Act objectionable, it generated the least protest of the Coercive Acts.

The Quebec Act was a piece of legislation unrelated to the events in Boston, but the timing of its passage led colonists to believe that it was part of the program to punish them. The act enlarged the boundaries of what was then the colony of “Canada” (roughly consisting of today’s Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario as well as the Great Lakes’ American watershed), removed references to the Protestant faith in the oath of allegiance, and guaranteed free practice of the Roman Catholic faith. The Quebec Act offended a variety of interest groups in the British colonies. Land speculators and settlers objected to the transfer of western lands previously claimed by the colonies to a non-representative government. Many feared the establishment of Catholicism in Quebec, and that the French Canadians were being courted to help oppress British Americans.

First, I want to emphasize that last night’s Cardinals loss wasn’t either unexpected or particularly decisive.  There were only 2 scores, a Solo Shot and a 3 Run HR, otherwise it was a pitchers duel just as I predicted.

It was kind of surprising that Derek Holland was the one to give the Rangers Bullpen a rest, but it was a ‘quality’ start on both sides so all the drek you read about advantage there is just that.

Tonight we have the Junior League version of Game 1 with C.J. Wilson and Chris Carpenter on the mound.  I don’t think having a DH gives the Rangers any benefit though it’s always more comfortable playing at home, especially one with a short porch.

What could be significant is how ineffective Wilson has been in the post season.  Counting Wednesday’s 3 – 2 loss he is 0 – 3 with a 7.17 ERA.

So I cheerfully expect some hitting after last night’s yawn fest.  Win or lose we’re headed back to Busch Stadium where the scalpers will be charging more for nosebleed seats than the Rangers’ measly $100.

As Stephen would say, the market has spoken.