Tag: ek Politics

(h/t Kevin Gosztola @ Firedog Lake)

Anti-Leaks Proposals Protect ‘Leak’ Powers of Congress

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Wednesday August 1, 2012 12:32 pm

Yesterday, I extensively detailed most of the proposals the Senate intelligence committee has approved. Two of the proposals, which are exceptionally crude in their nature, involve forcing intelligence agency employees to surrender their pension benefits if they are found to have disclosed information without proper authorization and prohibiting former intelligence agency employees, who want to take a job as a “consultant” or enter into a contract with a media organization.

Open government groups sent a letter to the Senate arguing this “extreme approach…would imperil the few existing safe channels for those in the intelligence community who seek to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and illegality.” It would dissuade “conscientious” or former employees from reporting wrongdoing to Congress or an agency’s Inspector General because individuals would not want to risk losing their pension through a process with no judicial review. The Center for National Security Studies condemned the proposed measure against employees entering into media contracts and wrote in a letter to the committee, “The over-breadth of this provision in prohibiting commentary and analysis even when no classified information is disclosed would violate the First Amendment. Indeed the provision seems drafted in order to chill public discussion of information that is not classified, rather than being narrowly tailored to simply target disclosures of classified information.”

…

What has most upset senators all along is the fact that government employees talk to journalists. For example, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Jeff Sessions went through the New York Times article written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane on Obama’s “kill list” and questioned Attorney General Eric Holder about this article. He highlighted the individuals that the journalists who wrote the article interviewed. He said “these” people “were all talking to the New York Times. Somebody provided information that shouldn’t have been provided. These are some of the closest people you have in government to the President of the United States. So, this is a dangerous thing.” He went on to note that the Times was talking to senior officials at the Justice Department. He added this is a “matter of seriousness.”

It is the free flow of information, not leaks, which they wish to halt. They wish to halt this flow because they are ideologically opposed to the idea of government employees openly discussing national security matters. They are legislators that have transformed their oversight role over intelligence agencies into one that serves to shield the public from interfering with an agency’s daily affairs by raising objection to policies or programs. They are a faction that wants it to be more difficult for reporters to piece together stories like the story New York Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen published on Bush administration warrantless wiretapping. They do not want national security journalists to expose corruption that will make it difficult to serve agency heads without looking complicit. As sycophant senators, who have taken advantage of a crisis they have manufactured through the spread of unmitigated hype, they are willing to faithfully oblige those in power who wish to impose strict and likely unconstitutional regimes on lower level employees.

More Executive Branch End Runs, This Time With Cybersecurity

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday August 6, 2012 10:26 am

The Obama Administration will consider an executive order on cybersecurity in the wake of a defeat in the Senate on a bill to deal with the issue. This is another example of the executive branch taking action when the legislative branch bogs down in gridlock.

…

Carney did not bother to elucidate the authority on which Obama would enact cybersecurity regulations. …  I’m sure the executive branch will somehow find a way, as they did with No Child Left Behind waivers and changes to student loan rules and deferred action on DREAM-eligible immigrants. And nobody is likely to raise much of an objection beyond a stage whisper.

…

We’re really talking here about a breakdown of democracy. I’m not a big fan of the cybersecurity bill because it uses that threat of cyber attacks as a back door to information sharing of private communications. In this instance, executive action would be preferable, since it would probably only lead to the core goal of increased standards for critical infrastructure facilities to guard against cyber attacks. But this is really no way to run a democracy, where the executive branch has to end-run around Congress because they find themselves unable to get anything done. It damages democratic accountability. These end runs don’t deal with the core problem of unnecessary and unworkable supermajority requirements in the Senate. That’s where an executive branch that wants the American system to work needs to target.

NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake on ‘The Daily Show’

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Tuesday August 7, 2012 9:24 am

A “Daily Show” clip with correspondent Jason Jones aired last night on “super spy” Thomas Drake, who worked for the National Security Agency as an analyst until he was ultimately charged as “a spy” under the Espionage Act for blowing the whistle on the NSA. The segment nicely plays up the fact he did not commit espionage and, instead, was a “cost-benefit analysis expert,” who had examined two intelligence gathering programs and decided one was cheaper and would lead to less fraud, waste, abuse and illegalities.

…

Drake leads Jones through the act he committed describing why the government decided to prosecute him. Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer for Drake and National Security & Human Rights Director at the Government Accountability Project, appears in the segment with Drake and gets in a good line before the segment concludes.

What’s shown basically affirms what Jon Stewart says in the introduction, “When it’s information the Obama administration no likey, they’ve been sonsofbitches on government whistleblowers.” And it ran right after Stewart skewered former New York Times columnist Judith Miller for going on Fox News to rail against Obama administration “leaks.” [Here’s that segment, which made for a great lead-in to the segment with Drake.]

These two segments aired in the first ten minutes of the program last night, the opening of the show. It gave Americans a flavor of the hypocrisy driving “leak hysteria” and the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowing. Few Americans are likely familiar with Drake-and they should be-so the “Daily Show” engaged in a kind of public service by choosing to satirize his case.

Here’s a pretty good summary of Bankster crime.

This summer.

In London.

String of summer scandals tarnishes reputation of London’s financial industry

By Associated Press

Published: August 7

First came U.K. bank Barclays. Its chief executive, Bob Diamond, was forced to step down last month after U.S. and British authorities fined the bank $453 million for manipulating a key market interest rate. Other banks are being investigated for their part in the scandal.

Then there was HSBC, another big London-based bank. It faces fines of up to $1 billion after the U.S. Senate issued a damming report last month alleging it had failed to stop the laundering of Mexican drug money.

Back in May, JPMorgan Chase & Co. disclosed a surprise $2 billion trading loss – later upgraded to $5.8 billion – racked up by its London office in a portfolio designed to hedge against risks the company takes with its own money.

…

And now Standard Chartered, that most predictably profitable of British banks, has been accused by a regulator in New York of laundering Iranian oil money for years.

And what is the problem with this?

“We will get out of it, but it is a blow that means regulators will have a greater say in life, which means that economic growth will be slower.”

Jon Stewart’s extended interview with Fred Guterl.

Coalition deadlock as Nick Clegg and David Cameron veto each other

Patrick Wintour, The Guardian

Monday 6 August 2012

Nick Clegg’s plan for constitutional reform and David Cameron’s scheme to shift parliamentary boundaries in the Conservatives’ favour both lay in ruins on Monday as victims of the prime minister’s inability to persuade his backbenchers to support an elected House of Lords.

A subdued and depressed Clegg announced he was abandoning all plans to reform the Lords in this parliament, adding as a result he will also be instructing his MPs to vote down revised parliamentary boundaries designed to reduce the number of MPs to 600.

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The announcement represents a personal blow to Clegg, who had championed widescale political reform as a distinctive Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition but has been thwarted at virtually every turn.

It leaves the deputy prime minister increasingly reliant on an upturn in the economy, progress on social mobility and a broader liberal agenda to justify the original decision to form the coalition with Cameron.

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Clegg was eager on Monday to limit the damage from the collapse of Lords reform – insisting the government would still be anchored in the centre ground, and focused on delivering a revival of the economy, the reason the coalition agreement was made in the first place. He said a relationship of mutual trust and respect could be maintained with his partners.

Sucker or Liar?

UK coalition in crisis over parliamentary reform

By Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas, Reuters

Mon Aug 6, 2012 2:56pm

The scuppering of Lords reform, a key plank of the coalition agreement struck in May 2010 with Cameron’s Conservatives, is particularly damaging for Clegg as it fuels the perception that the Liberal Democrats have gained little from going into government with a party that was not their ideological ally.

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However, neither governing party is eager to sink the coalition and spark an election during a recession, and while polls show both parties are unpopular.

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Dropping Lords reform is especially difficult for his party because he backed an unpopular proposal to increase university tuition fees as part of the coalition deal, a move that saw the Liberal Democrats hemorrhage support in opinion polls.

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Jeremy Hunt, a Conservative minister, said Clegg’s announcement was disappointing but said the coalition would remain focused on its economic program.

“There isn’t a cigarette paper between us on that. That is what we are focused on getting the gold medal for. Nothing is going to change that focus,” he told Sky television.

Electoral Victory?  Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah.  They don’t care about that any more over there than they do over here.

Here’s what Nick Clegg sold his soul and his party for that he’s not going to get-

Cracks in British Governing Coalition as House of Lords Overhaul Falls Apart

By JOHN F. BURNS, The New York Times

Published: August 6, 2012

As the perennial third party in British politics, the Liberal Democrats have long regarded an elected upper chamber as a potential steppingstone beyond the marginal role the party and its historical progenitor, the Liberals, have played in British politics since the 1930s.

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(T)he Conservatives’ push to change the electoral rules to bring parliamentary constituencies closer to a nationwide norm in terms of overall voter numbers, from the present system that requires many more votes to win a Conservative seat, on average, than a Labour one.

The change was one that political experts saw as capable of delivering 20 or more seats to the Conservatives at the cost of the opposition Labour Party, a potentially decisive margin in a close contest.

The proposed changes in the House of Lords would have nearly cut in half the size of the upper chamber, from its present membership of 826 to 450, and made 80 percent of the body elective by 2025, with one-third of its elected membership chosen at each of three successive general elections beginning in 2015.

Instead of the current practice of peers gaining appointment on the recommendation of the prime minister or other political leaders, 360 of the 450 House of Lords’ members would have to compete for seats in regional elections. Proportional voting rules for the contests would have favored smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats more than the current system used in elections to the House of Commons.

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The abandonment of the reform package has been a deep personal blow to Mr. Clegg, exposing him ever more starkly as a man caught between a strong commitment to sustaining the coalition until the election and a gathering revolt among a powerful bloc of Liberal Democrats who have come to regard the partnership with the Conservatives as dragging them away from their core political beliefs on social issues like education, health, immigration and justice.

Exceptional.

Leaving a sinking ship-

As Libor Fault-Finding Grows, It Is Now Every Bank for Itself

By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS, The New York Times

August 5, 2012

Major banks, which often band together when facing government scrutiny, are now turning on one another as an international investigation into the manipulation of interest rates gains momentum.

With billions of dollars and their reputations on the line, financial institutions have been spreading the blame in recent meetings with authorities, according to government and bank officials with knowledge of the matter.

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Authorities around the world are investigating more than 10 big banks for their roles in setting global interest rates like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such benchmarks underpin trillions of dollars of financial products, including mortgages and student loans.

Regulators are examining whether banks colluded to move the rates up or down to get extra profits and limit losses on their trading positions. Some banks are also under investigation for reporting artificially low rates to make themselves appear financially healthier.

When banks first started conducting internal investigations at the behest of regulators two years ago, they figured the potential penalties would be manageable, according to bank officials.

But the size of the Barclays settlement and the growing public outcry have left banks scrambling to limit their culpability as the threat of criminal actions increases. Part of the banks’ problem is that their internal investigations have created a road map that authorities are using to pursue criminal and civil cases.

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The financial industry often tries to negotiate a common deal to avoid getting singled out for bad behavior. This year, five banks collectively struck a multibillion-dollar agreement with federal authorities to address foreclosure abuses.

With the rate investigation, institutions are not sharing information or even discussing the case with rivals, according to lawyers involved in the matter. In part, they do not want to appear to have close ties with their rivals, since such cozy relationships are part of the government’s inquiry.

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The Justice Department is aiming to file criminal actions against two banks before the end of the year and is preparing to arrest former traders at Barclays and other banks, according to government officials. In addition, state attorneys general and local district attorneys have approached the Justice Department in recent weeks, seeking a role in the case.

Coming home to roost-

Banks face valuation losses

Reuters

August 6, 2012

Global banks are delaying what will be an inevitable shift to valuing unsecured derivative positions at market rates because it could hit their bottom lines, but new global prudential regulations next year are set to force their hands.

Traders and accountants have known for some time what is only becoming apparent to the public now – the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, the interbank funding rate now at the centre of a rigging scandal, is not the appropriate price to value most derivative deals on banks’ books.

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As of now, no one’s quite sure how entities with huge discrepancies in funding costs will arrive at a market standard for pricing unsecured trades.

FVA, or funding valuation adjustment, is a bitter pill to swallow. In the simplest terms, it means traders have to absorb the rise in borrowing costs over the past four years into the way they price a swap, pay for an option or discount future cash flows from long-term derivatives.

…

All that’s clear is the absence of collateral makes these trades riskier, and the economic case for revised valuations is strong.

The Basel III reforms, which kick in from next year, prescribe capital requirements for unfunded deals. The amount of margin banks will have to post with their clearing agents will likewise build as interest rate swaps, currency forwards and other over-the-counter derivatives are mandatorily cleared on exchanges.

Sharks in the water-

Libor, the New Asbestos

By Roben Farzad, Business Week

August 01, 2012

These are parched times for law firms. Clients just aren’t willing to pay what they used to for associates’ billable souls.

How fortuitous then that a multitrillion-dollar financial scandal promises to throw the lawsuit industry beaucoup fees, from both the alleged aggressors and their aggrieved. Thanks to the Barclays blowup, we now know that Libor, the most widely used and quoted benchmark for valuing about $360 trillion in financial products, has been rather rigged. Throw in the fact that this gauge is set by Wall Street, the villain à la mode, and a heretofore harmless interest rate could join the likes of asbestos and tobacco in one-word liability infamy.

…

Libor is so ubiquitously baked into the world of financial products that it is hard to get a sense of the extent of who exactly was done wrong and by how much. Libor-related litigation “has the potential to be the biggest single set of cases coming out of the financial crisis, because Libor is built into so many transactions and Libor is so central to so many contracts,” says Harvard Law School professor John Coates. “It’s like saying reports about the inflation rate were wrong.” Or like asbestos, which was built into everything from ships to cars to houses before blowing up into the most expensive mass tort action in history.

Seems Discovery is right on time.

I’ve been disappointed so often it’s hard to get enthusiastic, but facts are stubborn things and the current corrupt Merchantilist system is not going to be able to satisfy even its own ‘beneficiaries’.  It wasn’t the peasants who demanded the Magna Carta, it was the Barons.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 4 Chapter 8–

But in the system of laws which has been established for the management of our American and West Indian colonies, the interest of the home-consumer has been sacrificed to that of the producer with a more extravagant profusion than in all our other commercial regulations. A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home-consumers have been burdened with the whole expence of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars. The interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit which it ever could be pretended was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies.

It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to; and among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.

An Annual Reminder.

Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.

I need to add that he’s a great admirer of James Carville’s political savvy (though not his policies) and one story he likes to tell is how during the height of Monica-gate Carville was on one of the Talking Head shows and made a point about how important it is to stay on message.  Carville then proceeded to demonstrate his gift by working the phrase “Cigarette Lawyer Ken Starr” 27 times in the next 30 seconds.- ek

The date – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 needs to be as well known to Joe and Jane American as September 11, 2001.

Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 PDB

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted] service.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted] service at the same that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

So Vice President Dick, tell me again how the REPUBLICANS WILL KEEP US SAFE?

So Senator McSame, tell me again how invading and occupying IRAQ has helped the U.S. hunt down BIN LADEN?

I’m printing my own bumper stickers filled with images from 9-11 and this text-

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

“All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”- George W. Bush

So tonight at 1:30 am-ish the new Mars Rover, Curiosity, will, if all things go as planned, land gently on the surface near Gale Crater close to the Martian equator.

If I sound a little tentative it’s because there’s a lot that could go badly.

For one thing this whole separate rocket descender concept is a little complicated.  The idea is that you don’t need the motors and fuel once you’re on the ground so you’re better off ditching them.  I think that stringing your mission critical cargo beneath another chunk of untested junk that could go spectacularly, amusingly, and expensively wrong is a mite…

ambitious.

But hey, I’m not a rocket scientist.

As I write NASA has already forgone their last course correction and is debating a final update to the data that the computers will use.  The rover has to land independent of radio control because light is slow and on a round trip to Mars takes just a little under half an hour.  If you’ve ever gamed over a sucky connection or are a high frequency trader you know what I’m talking about.

But people aren’t talking about that very real problem and are instead focused on the “Seven Minutes of Terror” that uses conventional atmospheric braking and includes a radio blackout from the plasma which will only be 50% or less (one way) of the regular everyday lag.

No one has a really good record at landing intact probes on Mars, though the United States has the best.  This is why last time out we sent both Opportunity AND Spirit in the expectation something would probably fail.

Instead they were both incredibly successful, far exceeding their designed objectives.

This time we have only 1 lander and it’s the size of an SUV, not a Golf Cart.  The mission is not to find life, but to determine if conditions on Mars could have supported the development of life.  I consider this a pretty settled question, but you can never know too much and actual results often lead to unexpected discoveries.

We will probably not know tonight, or even for the next week, whether things have gone as planned.  If the lander is even partly functional we can get some data, if not it would be 8 months to get there if we launched tomorrow.

However once down and functional Curiosity should prove much more capable than its predecessors.  It has nuclear power for one thing so we’ll be a lot less dependent on favorable storms.

And if you are a Deficit Hawk who likes to pretend money matters I invite you to compare the $2.5 Billion for the Curiosity program to the $23.7 Trillion we gave to the Banksters.  Even a non-rocket scientist can use a calculator to figure out that’s just barely over .0001%.

And because no frontier is final without Tiberius-

Here are some places you can stream the video commentary-

• PCMag- How to Watch the Mars Curiosity Rover Landing
• Los Angeles Times- Where you can watch Curiosity Mars landing coverage

I’ve always wanted to use that title.

Maybe I can get Samuel L. Jackson to play the Pope.

I haven’t written a lot about Mitt Romney because it’s too painfully obvious that he’s a soulless, unprincipled waste of breath, the epitome of the sociopathic thieving greed heads who’ve ruined our environment and economy, as well as an out-of-touch selfish piece of shit who has utterly no empathy or understanding of anything not Mitt Romney.  It really is like the whole world disappears when he leaves the room for him.

I’d say his only natural talent is lying except he’s very bad at it.

Nor do I waste much time on Republicans as the Party is merely a haven for ignorant bigots and those who prey on their gullibility.  The only reason they survive at all is the Democratic Party resurrected them as a stalking horse for their own basic instincts to defraud and steal from the people of the United States, all 99.9% of us, for the benefit of their corporate masters.

Jon is not the only ‘liberal’ who misses the point.

Irony Appears Lost on Romney

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Friday August 3, 2012 9:31 am

The simple fact is that Romney has made claims about his tax returns that he refuses to provide proof for. The position of the Romney campaign is that the everyone should simply trust what Romney says about his taxes even though Romney won’t verify them by releasing his returns. Now that Reid is the one making claims about Romney’s tax returns, though, Romney ironically claims it is totally unacceptable for someone to make statements unless they are willing to provide the proof to back them up.

In the same interview Romney attacks Reid for not being willing to “put up” proof to back up his claims, Romney makes his own counterclaims that Reid is not telling the truth, while he himself is still refusing to “put up” the simple piece of proof that would show if Reid is wrong.

It really is that transparent, and it would be ‘irresponsible’ not to speculate.

The problem is that Democrats are lying too when they say what matters is ‘electoral victory’.

Reid Quadruples and Quintuples Down on Romney Tax Return Comments

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Friday August 3, 2012 10:56 am

The liberal squishes deeply concerned with Reid “playing dirty” are sadly typical, but it’s not going to change Reid’s position.

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In yet ANOTHER comment (quintupling down?), Reid welcomed Romney to Nevada by reiterating that he couldn’t be confirmed by the Senate to a Presidential appointment without releasing more tax returns, adding that “The contents of the one year of returns he has released would probably be enough to tank his nomination anyway: secret overseas bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, tax avoidance tricks and a lower tax rate than middle-class families pay.” He also connected the tax plan Romney has put out, the subject of a damning Tax Policy Center report this week, to the tax returns issue. Not only is the very rich Romney hiding his tax exposure, he’s planning as President to make millionaires pay less and the middle class pay more. “In short, Romney’s message to Nevadans is this: he won’t release his taxes, but he wants to raise yours.” That’s a winning slogan.

My final point is, and I’ve said this before, you can stop talking about Democrats being “weak.” They know how to play politics; none of them got into office as idealistic rubes. They can be tough. They can play dirty. They just don’t want to do that for things like genuine universal health care or increasing Social Security benefits or protecting the climate or ensuring workers’ rights to collective bargaining. When it’s about getting their guy re-elected, sure they’ll get tough. Just not on, you know, liberal policy, which isn’t really their main focus.

A government unresponsive to the needs of the people will inevitably fail.

When Gridlock Works: Cybersecurity Bill Stuffed, For Now

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Thursday August 2, 2012 11:06 am

The Senate, unable to come up with a schedule for amendments, blocked the cybersecurity bill today in an outcome that, despite being a result of Republican obstruction, satisfied Internet activists who had been urging a no vote.

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He (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) decried the fact that meetings continued on amendments without a deal, and that the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the legislation because they feel it still puts too many demands on business groups to maintain standards for resisting cyber attacks on public infrastructure, was driving the process. Lawmakers took out the mandatory standard prescriptions on businesses, but the Chamber of Commerce still finds the bill too stringent. “Republicans are running like scared cats” on the legislation, Reid said. “The Chamber of Commerce has now become the protector of our nation’s security.”

But if the Chamber is forcing Republicans to “run scared,” privacy groups and experts are running from the bill as well. Though they did get improvements from the truly awful CISPA bill that passed the House, most activist groups on the left paying attention to the bill still oppose it. The activist group Demand Progress generated 500,000 contacts to Congress opposing the bill, and the coalition Fight for the Future has been rallying against the bill as well.

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The best hope for stopping these breaches of privacy for coming into being is to kill a cybersecurity bill that many experts have doubted is necessary, especially without the mandatory standards. Sometimes gridlock is a friend.

As with Keystone XL, Social Security, and Medicare/aid this is likely a temporary victory.  Versailles is convinced the proles have too much and want to take it away.  The solution is to fire them.

All.

Remember in November.