Group items tagged

What should our priorities be for the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight? What hearings would you like to see? What contract or program needs additional oversight? What laws, regulations, and policies need to be changed? I'll need all the suggestions and support I can get -- I'll draw heavily on your input as we move forward toward a system that better serves the government and the taxpayer. -Senator Claire McCaskill

consumer protection regulation reform monopolies anti-trust health public media broadband internet tax budget policy education transportation infrastructure megacorp megabank megagov megawealth megapower consumer protection reform oversight watchdog cartel cartels monopoly corporatism corporatist feudal neofeudalism finance banks financial economy economic

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search (and copy) -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.\n\nThe policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.\n\nBut representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.\n\n"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."

Includes videos of debate between Senators Rockefeller and Bingham over how much of a premium dollar should be used to pay for healthcare; discussions of Inginex fraud; debate over unwarranted subsidies given to health insurers; lack of federal oversight of insurers; etc.

"You don't have to wait to use plain language in your dealings with consumers. You don't have to wait to put the 2009 bonuses of your senior executives up for a shareholder vote," Obama said. "You don't have to wait for a law to overhaul your pay system so that folks are rewarded for long-term performance instead of short-term gains."

The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species - and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Fed and other regulators need policing: economist http://t.co/AqDLKPd