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Paul Merrell

Supreme Court Says Phones Can't Be Searched Without a Warrant - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In a sweeping victory for privacy rights in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously ruled that the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest.While the decision will offer protection to the 12 million people arrested every year, many for minor crimes, its impact will most likely be much broader. The ruling almost certainly also applies to searches of tablet and laptop computers, and its reasoning may apply to searches of homes and businesses and of information held by third parties like phone companies.“This is a bold opinion,” said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. “It is the first computer-search case, and it says we are in a new digital age. You can’t apply the old rules anymore.”
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    It is now beyond doubt that the Supreme Court is declining to authorize an Orwellian government surveillance future for the U.S. This sweeping, unanimous ruling definitely has broad application beyond cellphones, in no small part because the court recognized that cellphones of today are more like desktop computers and a host of other computerized devices than they are like the telephones of yesteryear. Hence, almost everything the court said afterward about the privacy rights in cellphones applies equally to all personal use computers. 
Paul Merrell

Supreme Court: Police can't hold suspects without probable cause, to wait for drug-snif... - 0 views

  • The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that the Constitution prohibits police from holding a suspect without probable cause, not even for less than 10 extra minutes--which is about the time it might take to, say, bring in a drug-sniffing dog. What does this mean for you, if you're a law-abiding citizen stopped by over-aggressive cops over something trivial, then detained? As my friend Patrick Ball of hrdag.org put it, “If the police *ask* you to wait, politely decline, ask if you're being detained, and if not, drive away.” From The Hill: Writing on behalf of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg declared that the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure prevent police from extending an otherwise completed traffic stop to allow for a drug-sniffing dog to arrive.
  • “We hold that a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures,” she ruled. The case, Rodriguez v. United States, was brought by a man who was pulled over for driving on the shoulder of a Nebraska highway. After the police pulled him over, checked his license and issued a warning for his erratic driving, the officer asked whether he could walk his drug-sniffing dog around the vehicle. The driver, Dennys Rodriguez, refused. However, the officer nonetheless detained him for “seven or eight minutes” until a backup officer arrived. Then, the original officer retrieved his dog. After sniffing around the car, the dog detected drugs, and Rodriguez was indicted for possessing methamphetamine. In all, the stop lasted less than 30 minutes. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy disagreed with the ruling, arguing that cops should be able to reasonably detain people to check out other possible law violations--as they did with the case at the heart of this ruling. "Supreme Court: Cops can’t hold suspects to wait for drug-sniffing dog" [thehill.com]
Paul Merrell

The frightening promise of self-tracking pills | The Verge - 0 views

  • Some morning in the future, you take a pill — maybe something for depression or cholesterol. You take it every morning. Buried inside the pill is a sand-sized grain, one millimeter square and a third of a millimeter thick, made from copper, magnesium, and silicon. When the pill reaches your stomach, your stomach acids form a circuit with the copper and magnesium, powering up a microchip. Soon, the entire contraption will dissolve, but in the five minutes before that happens, the chip taps out a steady rhythm of electrical pulses, barely audible over the body's background hum. The signal travels as far as a patch stuck to your skin near the navel, which verifies the signal, then transmits it wirelessly to your smartphone, which passes it along to your doctor. There's now a verifiable record that the pill reached your stomach.
  • This is the vision of Proteus, a new drug-device accepted for review by the Food and Drug Administration last month. The company says it's the first in a new generation of smart drugs, a new source of data for patients and doctors alike. But bioethicists worry that the same data could be used to control patients, infringing on the intensely personal right to refuse medication and giving insurers new power over patients’ lives. As the device moves closer to market, it raises a serious question: Is tracking medicine worth the risk?
  • But not everyone's convinced that the ability to track pills will be good news for patients. The right to refuse treatment is an important, fragile principle in health care. Many are worried that tracking whether a pill is being consumed will be the first step towards punishing patients that don't comply. While doctors can’t force a patient to take a pill, court orders frequently mandate treatments involving specific drug regimens.
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  • NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan says he can imagine a judge using Proteus to enforce medication as part of a sentence: miss a pill, and your parole is revoked. "The temptation in the legal system to say, 'I can monitor you and make sure you're not a threat' is going to be huge," Caplan says. "Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad, but it's a different world than saying I consent to taking these pills." Those court orders are rare at the moment, since there’s no way to ensure a patient is taking medication outside of a controlled treatment facility — but as pill-tracking becomes easier, those measures could become much more common. That's particularly likely given the way Proteus is entering the market. The device's first partnership bundles it with Abilify, a powerful antipsychotic most commonly used to treat mood disorders, schizophrenia, and Tourette's. The most common effects are improved concentration and decreased hallucinations, but it comes with extreme side effects like increased suicide risk and a lower seizure threshold. It's most often prescribed in cases of severe mental illness, often in psychiatric institutions or as part of a court-mandated treatment program — exactly the scenarios bioethicists like Caplan are most worried about.
  • Patient's biggest protection are medical privacy laws like HIPAA, which prevent medical data from being shared with anyone outside the hospital system. That would stop your boss or your parents from using Proteus to make sure you haven't fallen behind on your anti-anxiety medication. But those laws won't keep data out of the hands of healthcare providers, and Caplan is concerned the pill could also be used to enforce compliance. Insurers might offer a discounted rate on tracked pills, then hit patients with a $100 co-pay for every treatment they miss. It's not as oppressive as a court order, but the end result would be similar.
  • Still, those concerns are unlikely to keep Proteus out of the hands of doctors. The upcoming FDA approval will focus largely on safety and efficacy, leaving the larger ethical challenges to be solved after the drug is released to doctors and patients at large. With the technology available, it will be up to the courts to decide when it’s legal and ethical to use it. As far as Proteus is concerned, the power of the technology outweighs the risks. "There are challenges with bringing digital into any sector," a company representative said. "The reason to embrace the challenge in health care is because the need is so great."
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    Let's not forget that because Congress recently decided to revive Patriot Act sect. 215, the FBI is authorized to gather medical records for foreign intelligence and anti-terrorism purposes and according to ex-NSA chief scientist William Binney, the NSA in fact collects medical records and makes them available to law enforcement agencies without a warrant or court order.  http://motherboard.vice.com/read/i-toured-stasi-hq-with-nsa-whistleblowers  One judge has found that statute unconstitutional and may rule in the next few days. A court of appeals has found that the statute did not authorize bulk collection of telephone metadata records. An Oregon federal judge ruled that the DEA cannot obtain prescription records (in part because they are medical records) without an individualized search warrant, specifically ruling against the bulk collection argument. Maybe someday someone in federal government will get a clue that medical records are not one of the "haystacks" the NSA is permitted to create.  Involuntary medical treatment is another giant legal hairball. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_treatment   
Gary Edwards

American Thinker: Let Me Translate: We Don't Believe Him -- or You. - 0 views

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    Bang!  Right between the eyes... excerpt:  Memo to the ruling class media: We are not ignorant or stupid. We've not forgotten Jeremiah Wright. It's not that we don't "know" what faith Obama subscribes to -- it's more that we don't believe him. Or you. Sorry. Not buying. Besides, sometimes we just like to tweak you with our poll answers -- and use any poll as an excuse to "vote against Obama" in any way, shape, or form. *** Frankly, it has been equal parts comedy and insult to watch the ruling-class media haplessly wrestle with the reality that millions of Americans believe Obama to be a Muslim. They are so clueless. As if we needed any more proof -- this is simply another positive dose that the ruling-class media and the country are divided by a huge gulf of philosophy, reality, and experiences. And they are just beside themselves that a country that was concerned that Obama's (Christian?) pastor is a crazy nut in the spring and summer of 2008 can totally forget about all that in the summer of 2010 and call Obama a Muslim. They so miss the point. We have forgotten none of that. If fact, apparently, now more Americans are deciding to look into all of this and process it in light of Obama's actions.
Gary Edwards

Here's The Problem With This Market Crash... - 1 views

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    Obama and the Federal reserve are out of bullets......... The only thing that will work is Cut, Cap and Balance - the TEA Party Patriot formula that passed the House during the run up to the Natioanl Debt Limit SCAM, only to be immediately tabled and discarded by the ruling elites in the Bankster, Democrat and Repubican establishment.  With 69% of the taxpaying public in support of the Balanced Budget Amendment, one would have thought the ruling elites would have shown a bit more respect for Cut, Cap & Balance.  What we got however was anything but.   In this article Long time liberal - big government - let me into the elite ruling class advocate Henry Blodgett looks into the chasm, wondering how to pull back from the brink impending disaster. excerpt:  there are also several very important differences between this market crash and the ones a few years ago: ........... The Fed has fired most of its bullets (interest rates are already at zero) ............. Our budget deficit is already out of control, and Congress has had it with "stimulus" ............... The public has had it with bailouts That means the government's ability to do anything about this market crash is severely limited. Yes, we'll almost certainly have a "QE3." And maybe that will prop things up a bit. But it won't fix the fundamental problems clogging the economy, just as QE1 and QE2 didn't permanently fix anything. (The only thing that will fix our economy is debt-reduction, discipline, and time.)............
Gary Edwards

Stop the Fed Takeover of the Internet! Citizens Petition to stop Obama and the FCC - 0 views

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    The Issue:  President Obama and his liberal cohorts are set to takeover the Internet beginning November 20 unless freedom-loving Americans demand this illegal assault on Free Speech in America end. Back on December 21, 2009, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) power-grab, illegally imposed strict, job-killing restrictions on the Internet. The move was no doubt fueled by Tea Party successes, and a growing fear among liberals that conservatives needed to be silenced. That said, the FCC move wasn't widely reported. In fact, many are unsure as to what the new Net Neutrality rules actually mean. What is certain, however, is that in seizing the Internet Obama has also muzzled the greatest mechanism of growth in our history (under the guise of promoting "freedom" for all), and taken one giant step closer to controlling the unfettered access to news and information that we read. The Action:  Without the support of the American people and requiring no votes in Congress, the so-called Net Neutrality rules didn't require any Congressional action. Now with the federal government seizing control, Grassfire Nation is moving quickly to amass at least 150,000 petitions demanding Congress to reverse the Net Neutrality ruling through legislation.  
Paul Merrell

DOJ to disclose memo justifying drone strikes on Americans, easing Senate vote on autho... - 0 views

  • In a bid to clear the way for a controversial Senate nominee, the Obama administration signaled it will publicly reveal a secret memo explaining its legal justification for using drones to kill American citizens overseas.  The Justice Department, officials say, has decided not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act. ADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENT The decision to release the documents comes as the Senate is to vote Wednesday on advancing President Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. 
  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has vowed to fight Barron's confirmation, and some Democratic senators had called for the memo's public release before a final vote. Paul reiterated his opposition on Wednesday.  "I cannot support and will not support a lifetime appointment of anyone who believes it's OK to kill an American citizen not involved in combat without a trial," Paul said in the Senate.  But a key Democratic holdout against Barron's nomination, Sen. Mark Udall D-Colo., announced Tuesday night he will now support Barron because the memo is being released. "This is a welcome development for government transparency and affirms that although the government does have the right to keep national security secrets, it does not get to have secret law," Udall said in a statement.  Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had also been pushing for public disclosure of Barron's writings and was one of several Democrats who had been refusing to say whether he'd vote for confirmation without it. "That's certainly very constructive," Wyden said when told of the decision not to appeal.
  • Wednesday's expected procedural vote would allow the Senate to move ahead with a final vote on Barron on Thursday. "I think we'll be OK," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said earlier Tuesday. Anwar al-Awlaki, an Al Qaeda leader born in the United States, was killed after being targeted by a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Some legal scholars and human rights activists complained that it was illegal for the U.S. to kill American citizens away from the battlefield without a trial. The White House had agreed under the pressure to show senators unredacted copies of all written legal advice written by Barron regarding the potential use of lethal force against U.S. citizens in counterterrorism operations. Until now, the administration has fought in court to keep the writings from public view. But administration officials said that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. decided this week not appeal an April 21 ruling requiring disclosure by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and that Attorney General Eric Holder concurred with his opinion.
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  • The release could take some time, since the redactions are subject to court approval. And the administration also is insisting that a classified ruling on the case also be redacted to protect information classified for national security, but not the legal reasoning, one of the officials said. The drone strike that killed al-Awlaki also killed another U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, an Al Qaeda propagandist. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, was killed the following month in another drone attack. The American Civil Liberties Union and two reporters for The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, filed a FOIA suit. In January 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that she had no authority to order the documents disclosed, although she chided the Obama administration for refusing to release them. But a three-judge appeals court panel noted that after McMahon ruled, senior government officials spoke about the subject. The panel rejected the government's claim that the court could not consider official disclosures made after McMahon's ruling, including a 16-page Justice Department white paper on the subject and public comments by Obama in May in which he acknowledged his role in the al-Awlaki killing, saying he had "authorized the strike that took him out."
  • The ACLU urged senators in a letter Tuesday not to move forward on the confirmation vote until they have a chance to see any Barron memos on the administration's drone program, not just those involving U.S. citizens. Paul issued a statement Tuesday saying he still opposes Barron's nomination. "I rise today to say that there is no legal precedent for killing American citizens not directly involved in combat and that any nominee who rubber stamps and grants such power to a president is not worthy of being placed one step away from the Supreme Court," Paul said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor Wednesday provided by his office.
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    But still they push ahead, with a plan for a final vote on Barron's nomination Thursday, before the public gets to see the memos [plural].
Paul Merrell

What Obama Told Us At West Point -- Paul Craig Roberts - PaulCraigRoberts.org - 0 views

  • At West Point Obama told us, to the applause of West Point cadets, that “American exceptionalism” is a doctrine that justifies whatever Washington does. If Washington violates domestic and international law by torturing “detainees” or violates the Nuremberg standard by invading countries that have undertaken no hostile action against the US or its allies, “exceptionalism” is the priest’s blessing that absolves Washington’s sins against law and international norms. Washington’s crimes are transformed into Washington’s affirmation of the rule of law. Here is Obama in his own words: “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.” Actions indeed. In the 21st century “American exceptionalism” has destroyed seven countries in whole or in part. Millions of people are dead, maimed, and displaced, and all of this criminal destruction is evidence of Washington’s reaffirmation of international norms and the rule of law. Destruction and murder are merely collateral damage from Washington’s affirmation of international norms.
  • “American exceptionalism” also means that US presidents can lie through their teeth and misrepresent those they choose to demonize. Listen to Obama’s misrepresentations of the Putin and Assad governments: “Russia’s aggression towards former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe . . . In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe .” Obama misrepresents Assad as “a dictator who bombs and starves his own people.” Did any of the cadets in Obama’s West Point audience wonder why, if Assad is a brutal dictator who bombs and starves his own people, the Syrian people are supporting Assad instead of the American-backed “liberation forces,” the combination of imported jihadists and al Qaeda fighters who object to Assad’s government because it is secular? The US military is taught to respect its civilian commander-in-chief, but if West Point cadets actually do obtain an education, it is remarkable that Obama’s audience did not break out in laughter.
  • Obama’s speech is probably the most disingenuous ever given by a Western politician. We could have fun for hours with all the crimes that Washington commits but buries in rhetoric directed at others. Perhaps my favorite is Obama evoking a world in which “individuals aren’t slaughtered because of political belief.” I am sure Obama was thinking of this just world when he murdered without due process of law four American citizens “outside of areas of active hostilities.” Another favorite is the way Obama flushed the US Constitution of its meaning. Obama said, with reference to bringing the Guantanamo prisoners to the US, that “American values and legal traditions don’t permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders.” No, Obama, the US Constitution prevents the indefinite detention of US citizens by the US government anywhere on earth, especially within our borders. By detaining and by murdering US citizens without due process of law, Obama has violated his oath of office and should be impeached. It was only a short time ago that President Bill Clinton was impeached by the US House of Representatives (the Senate saved him from conviction) for lying about his sexual affair with a White House intern. How times change. Today a president who violates his oath of office to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic gets a free ride. The Constitution has lost its power to protect citizens from the arbitrary power of government. The US is the Constitution. Without the Constitution the US ceases to exist, and the country becomes a tyranny, both at home and abroad.Today the US is a tyranny cloaked in the garb of “freedom and democracy.”
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  • Instead of laughing our way through Obama’s ridiculous speech to what apparently was a dumbed-down West Point graduating class, lets pay attention to Obama’s bottom line: “America must always lead on the world stage. . . . The military is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership.” In other words, Washington doesn’t use diplomacy. Washington uses coercion. The favorite threat is: “Do as you are told or we will bomb you into the Stone Age.” Obama’s speech is a justification of Washington’s criminal actions on the grounds that Washington acts for the exceptional Americans whose exceptionalism places them and, thereby, their government above law and international norms. In this way of thinking, only the failure to prevail constitutes failure. Americans are the new ubermensch, the new master race. Inferior humans can be bombed, invaded, and sanctioned. Obama’s West Point speech asserts American superiority over all others and Washington’s determination to continue this superiority by preventing the rise of other powers. This arrogant hubris was not enough for the Washington Post editorial board. The newspaper’s editorial damned Obama for binding US power and limiting its use to “a narrow set of core interest,” such as direct threats to America.
  • The American “liberal media” object that Obama’s claim of exceptionalism is not broad enough for Washington’s purposes. Obama’s address, the Washington Post wrote, bound “US power” and “offered scant comfort” to those militarists who want to overthrow Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. The world should take note that the most militarily aggressive American president in history is considered a wimp by the neoconized American media. The media drives wars, and the American media, firmly allied with the military/security complex, is driving the world to the final war.
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    Obama's speech at West Point was indeed a gigantic slap in the face at international law and at the Constitution. http://goo.gl/icJGDz The Rule of Law is no longer a guiding light in the White House, now only an obligatory nod of nominal respect. The Imperial Presidency has announced that we are now citizens of post-constitutional America.  
Paul Merrell

Bail-In and the Financial Stability Board: The Global Bankers' Coup | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • Ellen H. Brown (WoD) : On December 11, 2014, the US House passed a bill repealing the Dodd-Frank requirement that risky derivatives be pushed into big-bank subsidiaries, leaving our deposits and pensions exposed to massive derivatives losses. The bill was vigorously challenged by Senator Elizabeth Warren; but the tide turned when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorganChase, stepped into the ring. Perhaps what prompted his intervention was the unanticipated $40 drop in the price of oil. As financial blogger Michael Snyder points out, that drop could trigger a derivatives payout that could bankrupt the biggest banks. And if the G20’s new “bail-in” rules are formalized, depositors and pensioners could be on the hook. The new bail-in rules were discussed in my last last article entitled “New G20 Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Hit Depositors AND Pensioners.” They are edicts of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an unelected body of central bankers and finance ministers headquartered in the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland. Where did the FSB get these sweeping powers, and is its mandate legally enforceable?
  • Those questions were addressed in an article I wrote in June 2009, two months after the FSB was formed, titled “Big Brother in Basel: BIS Financial Stability Board Undermines National Sovereignty.” It linked the strange boot shape of the BIS to a line from Orwell’s 1984: “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” The concerns raised there seem to be materializing, so I’m republishing the bulk of that article here. We need to be paying attention, lest the bail-in juggernaut steamroll over us unchallenged. The Shadowy Financial Stability Board Alarm bells went off in April 2009, when the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) was linked to the new Financial Stability Board (FSB) signed onto by the G20 leaders in London. The FSB was an expansion of the older Financial Stability Forum (FSF) set up in 1999 to serve in a merely advisory capacity by the G7 (a group of finance ministers formed from the seven major industrialized nations). The chair of the FSF was the General Manager of the BIS. The new FSB was expanded to include all G20 members (19 nations plus the EU).
  • Formally called the “Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors,” the G20 was, like the G7, originally set up as a forum merely for cooperation and consultation on matters pertaining to the international financial system. What set off alarms was that the new Financial Stability Board had real teeth, imposing “obligations” and “commitments” on its members; and this feat was pulled off without legislative formalities, skirting the usual exacting requirements for treaties. It was all done in hasty response to an “emergency.” Problem-reaction-solution was the slippery slope of coups. Buried on page 83 of an 89-page Report on Financial Regulatory Reform issued by the US Obama administration was a recommendation that the FSB strengthen and institutionalize its mandate to promote global financial stability. It sounded like a worthy goal, but there was a disturbing lack of detail. What was the FSB’s mandate, what were its expanded powers, and who was in charge? An article in The London Guardian addressed those issues in question and answer format:
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  • For three centuries, private international banking interests have brought governments in line by blocking them from issuing their own currencies and requiring them to borrow banker-issued “banknotes” instead. Political colonialism is now a thing of the past, but under the new FSB guidelines, nations could still be held in feudalistic subservience to foreign masters. Consider this scenario: the new FSB rules precipitate a massive global depression due to contraction of the money supply. XYZ country wakes up to the fact that all of this is unnecessary – that it could be creating its own money, freeing itself from the debt trap, rather than borrowing from bankers who create money on computer screens and charge interest for the privilege of borrowing it. But this realization comes too late: the boot descends and XYZ is crushed into line. National sovereignty has been abdicated to a private committee, with no say by the voters. Marilyn Barnewall, dubbed by Forbes Magazine the “dean of American private banking,” wrote in an April 2009 article titled “What Happened to American Sovereignty at G-20?”: It seems the world’s bankers have executed a bloodless coup and now represent all of the people in the world. . . . President Obama agreed at the G20 meeting in London to create an international board with authority to intervene in U.S. corporations by dictating executive compensation and approving or disapproving business management decisions.  Under the new Financial Stability Board, the United States has only one vote. In other words, the group will be largely controlled by European central bankers. My guess is, they will represent themselves, not you and not me and certainly not America.
  • Are these commitments legally binding? Adoption of the FSB was never voted on by the public, either individually or through their legislators. The G20 Summit has been called “a New Bretton Woods,” referring to agreements entered into in 1944 establishing new rules for international trade. But Bretton Woods was put in place by Congressional Executive Agreement, requiring a majority vote of the legislature; and it more properly should have been done by treaty, requiring a two-thirds vote of the Senate, since it was an international agreement binding on the nation. “Bail-in” is not the law yet, but the G20 governments will be called upon to adopt the FSB’s resolution measures when the proposal is finalized after taking comments in 2015. The authority of the G20 has been challenged, but mainly over whether important countries were left out of the mix. The omitted countries may prove to be the lucky ones, having avoided the FSB’s net.
Paul Merrell

Russia and China: Watch Out Moody's, Here We Come! | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

  • In 1945 it was easy to get a defeated Europe to agree to Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard in which all currencies would be fixed to the US dollar and the dollar alone fixed to gold at $35 an ounce, where it remained until the system collapsed in August 1971 and Nixon abandoned gold-dollar convertibility. By then Europe was booming with modern reconstructed industry and the USA was becoming a rustbelt. France and Germany demanded US gold bullion instead of inflated dollars, and US gold reserves were vanishing. After 1971, the dollar flooded the world unfettered by gold reserve requirements and US military might during the Cold War forced Japan, Western Europe and others including OPEC to accept constantly inflating paper US dollars. From 1970 until about 2000 the volume of dollars in the world had risen some 2,900%. Because the dollar was the world “reserve currency” needed by all for trade in oil, goods, grains, the world was forced to swallow a de facto mammoth inflation after 1971.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/22/watch-out-moody-s-here-we-come/
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    The established New York credit agencies would play a strategic role in this post-1971 dollar system. During the 1970's the US Government's Securities & Exchange Commission, charged with oversight of bond and stock markets, issued a ruling giving the then-dominant New York credit rating agencies-Moody's and Standard & Poor's (and later Fitch Ratings)-a de facto guaranteed monopoly in an unregulated market, when they ruled that only "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" would be qualified to issue appropriate ratings, i.e. only Moody's and S&P. Corruption was made endemic to the US ratings game and Washington was party to the dirty deal. By the end of the 1970's, using the vast amount of OPEC "petro-dollars" from the two oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, New York international banks, using London, began to loan to the rest of the world to finance imports of oil and other essentials. The New York credit rating agencies, previously primarily rating US corporate bonds, expanded into the new foreign debt markets as the largest and only established rating agencies in the new phase of dollarization and globalization of capital markets. They set up branches in Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, Argentina and other emerging markets much like the US Big Five accounting firms. During the 1980s the rating agencies played a key role in down-rating the debt of the Latin American debtor countries such as Mexico and Argentina. Their ratings determined if the debtor countries could borrow or not. Financial market insiders in London and New York openly spoke of the "political" rating agencies using their de facto monopoly to advance the agenda of Wall Street and the Dollar System behind it. Then in the 1990's, the New York rating agencies played a decisive role in spreading the "Asia Crisis" of 1997-98. With the precise timing of its downgrades they could worsen the panic because they had been suspiciously silent right up un
Paul Merrell

CFPB Determined to Regulate Billion Dollar Payday Loan Industry - Top US & World News |... - 0 views

  • The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has a new set of rules aimed at preventing payday loan operations from targeting low-income borrowers who will be buried by high fees and rising debt loads. Payday loans are traditionally a loan of $500 or less wherein the borrower “provides a personal check dated on their next payday for the full balance or give the lender permission to debit their bank accounts. The total includes charges often ranging from $15 to $30 per $100 borrowed. Interest-only payments, sometimes referred to as rollovers, are common.” Using these lenders to make ends meet, borrowers are taken advantage of which has traditionally been a state regulatory issue. However now the federal government will be stepping in to curb this extortive multibillion dollar industry. Fees from payday loans can quickly accumulate, causing some borrowers to “lose their bank accounts and cars, or even risk prison time”.
  • Richard Corday, director of the CFPB, said: “Extending credit to people in a way that sets them up to fail and ensnares considerable numbers of them in extended debt traps, is simply not responsible lending.” These new rules cover payday loans, vehicle loans, loans using a car as collateral and various other forms of high-cost lending. Enders will be responsible for making sure debtors can repay the loan in full on time before extending the loan by checking their income, borrowing history, previous financial obligations and any other indicators that the borrower would most likely default or roll over the loan. • A 60 day respite between loans • Lenders must provide affordable repayment options • Loans cannot exceed $500 • Loans cannot have multiple finance charges • Loans cannot use a vehicle as collateral Regulations on interest rates and repayments as a share of income include mandatory capping off to prevent run-a-way fees.
  • Back in February, the CFPB warned about the payday loan industry which is largely unregulated and functions outside of proper oversight and accountability. The CFPB estimates that the $46 billion payday loan or cash advance industry has no oversight, refuses to give full disclosures of interest and fees involved, and takes an annual percentage of an excess of 300% against borrowers. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) counts 32 states in the US that “permit payday loans at triple-digit interest rates, or with no rate cap at all.” Shockingly 80% of payday loans are rolled over within 14 days while an estimated 50% of these loans are “in a sequence at least 10 loans long.”
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    The first sentence if false; no rules have been adopted or even been published. In fact, these aren't even formal rule proposals or advance notice of public rulemaking, all of which must be poublished in the Federal Register, per the Administrative Procedures Act.   The Bureau is still in the information gathering stage.
Paul Merrell

Iceland Wins Major Case Over Failed Bank - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Iceland won a landmark case at a European court, ending an acrimonious legacy from the collapse of its banking system more than four years ago.On Monday, the court upheld the country’s refusal to promptly cover the losses of British and Dutch depositors who put more than $10 billion in Icesave, the bankrupt online offshoot of a failed Icelandic bank.In a judgment issued in Luxembourg, the court of the European Free Trade Association, orE.F.T.A., cleared Iceland of complaints that it violated rules governing the protection of depositors drawn up by the European Union. While Iceland is not a member of the union, it is bound by most of its rules as a member of E.F.T.A.
  • The case has attracted widespread attention because it touches on issues of cross-border banking that have been at the center of the European Union’s efforts to ensure the future stability of the region’s financial system. The Iceland banking collapse in 2008 — and the mayhem it caused far beyond the country’s borders — raised issues directly relevant to the 27-nation European Union.Monday’s court ruling in Luxembourg is a significant victory for Iceland. Unlike Ireland, Iceland declined to use taxpayer money to bail out foreign bondholders and depositors. This set off a bitter dispute with Britain, which used antiterrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by Icesave’s parent, Landsbanki.
  • In an interview this month with British television, Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, denounced the British government’s approach of using antiterrorist rules to seize Icelandic assets. “We were there together with Al Qaeda and the Taliban on that list,” he said. “We have not forgotten that in Iceland.”
Gary Edwards

The Ruling Class Consensus On Domestic Spying | Online Library of Law and Liberty - 0 views

  • This means that the US government’s vast apparatus is almost completely useless against serious terrorists or criminals, and useful primarily to do whatever the government might choose to innocent persons.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Bold statement, but then how did the Fort Hood massacre and Boston Marathon massacre occur?  Plenty of email and phone call evidence in both cases.  Yet the government was caught totally unaware.  I guess it really depends on who the watchers are watching.  Proof is slowly being gathered that the watchers are watching those whom the government elites seek to destroy through blackmail, intimidation (IRS anyone?), and breach of Constitutional rights (take your pick of any three letter government agency acronym you like).
  • Ever since the 1970s, the art of code-making has surpassed the art of code-breaking – period.
  • Hence, on the high end, anyone can purchase voice and internet communications software that are beyond the capacity of anyone to access without an electronic key.
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  • If collection is universal, the collectors don’t have to explain to others (or even to themselves) why they are targeting this person or group and not another. Possessing the data in secret, they can then decide in secret who they are really interested in.
  • That flight from responsibility is also why, in 1978, the intelligence agencies pressed Congress to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), under which the agencies submit their requests for detailed targeting, in secret, to a court that decides ex parte and in secret.
  • the FISA court. But that court acts not just in secret, but ex parte – hearing only one side.
  • The relevant question about the uses of the NSA programs, then, is simply “against whom, in the broad American public, is the US government likely to turn its animus?
  • Alas, the ruling class has shown itself all too able to treat domestic opponents as public enemies. But that is another story.
  • Another, PRISM, gives access to all records of email, chat, photos, videos and file transfers from the servers of leading US internet companies.
  • From Barack Obama to Karl Rove, the ruling class is in unison: The NSA’s collection of data on virtually all Americans is essential to preventing you from “being blown to smithereens on your morning commute”
  • Project Constant Informant, which tracks essentially all American phone calls, allows matching the account holder’s identity with each call’s precise location in time and place.
  • Here are the facts.
  • These programs stand between Americans and terrorists. Worries that they will be misused are misplaced or downright kooky.
  • In the words of General Keith Alexander, director of NSA, this surveillance has “helped to prevent” “dozens of terrorist events.”
  • anyone who has followed telecommunication technology and intelligence during the past three decades can only scoff at the claim that universal collection of telephone externals and access to internet traffic can thwart serious criminals or terrorists.
  • In fact, the expansion of the US government’s capacity to intrude on innocent communications happened just as technology enabled competent persons who intend to hide their communications to do so without fail.
Paul Merrell

Mass Surveillance and the Right to Privacy: Adding Nuance to the Schrems Case | Just Se... - 0 views

  • Last week’s post by Megan Graham is certainly a welcome contribution in explaining the implications of the Max Schrems case by the European Union Court of Justice, and specifically how it relates to the Safe Harbor arrangement between the US and the EU. Let me add a different perspective: Irrespective of its consequences for Safe Harbor, last week’s ruling is hugely important on a more general level, namely for the understanding of what the right to privacy entails in Europe and what this means for mass surveillance. Through its ruling in Max Schrems the EU’s highest court has established that: Mere access by public authorities to confidential or group-specific communications data constitutes an intrusion into the right to privacy, even without any further processing of that data; and While indiscriminate intrusion into “metadata” may constitute a particularly serious intrusion into the right to privacy, access to “content” data will affect the essence of the right to privacy.
  • These findings were made under Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, a broad provision on the right to respect for one’s private life. This provision of the EU Charter, which is a part of the foundational treaty framework of the European Union, is almost identical to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a treaty legally binding for broader Europe and routinely a part of domestic legal orders. It remains to be seen whether the guardian of the latter framework, the European Court of Human Rights, will also be courageous enough to determine that indiscriminate mass surveillance that provides access to “content” data breaches the essential core of the right to privacy. The highest EU court already took that bold step. One of the most important implications of identifying government access to content as breaching the essence of the right to privacy, is that it negates the need for a proportionality assessment. Measures that compromise the essence of privacy have already crossed a red line, and there is no need for any further “balancing” between privacy and security. Therefore, the Max Schrems ruling is a huge blow to many of the current methods of electronic mass surveillance, including those practiced by the US and several European countries (including the United Kingdom).
  • Several additional points from my earlier post in Verfassungsblog about this case are also worth noting. First, the EU court did not really dwell on the separate Article 8 provision of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights, concerning the right to the protection of personal data. This was perhaps because that provision is triggered by the “processing” of data, while the general privacy (Article 7) impact comes into play through mere “access.” Another point is that while it was easy to establish the jurisdiction of the EU court over data transfers from Europe to Facebook’s servers in the US, it may be much harder to bring a case before that court concerning “upstream” methods of mass surveillance, such as the NSA’s tapping of transatlantic fiber optic telecommunications cables. Perhaps most importantly, the substantive ruling in the Schrems case is formulated in a way that it would apply to any method of mass surveillance that gives public authorities access to the content of ordinary people’s private communications, including communications intended for a group of people but not for the authorities. Hence, the ruling is a major contribution as to what the right to privacy substantively means in Europe.
Paul Merrell

Congress Can Now Cut the Pay of Individual Civil Servants - 0 views

  • This week, congressional Republicans gave themselves the power to slash the annual salary of any individual federal worker to as low as $1 — and the budget of any individual federal program right down to zero. They executed this attack on the independence of the civil service by reviving an obscure provision enacted by Congress in 1876: The Holman Rule, named after the Indiana congressman who devised it, empowers any member of Congress to submit an amendment to an appropriations bill that targets the funding of a specific government program or employee. The rule was devised before the advent of a nonpolitical, career civil service and was rarely invoked in the modern era. In 1983, Democratic speaker Tip O’Neill laid it to rest. For the past three decades, Congress has had the power to slash any agency’s overall budget, but not to target specific projects or civil servants for funding cuts or downsizing. @media (min-width: 1024px) { .ad.vp-1024-plus { display: block; } } Until now. “This is a big rule change inside there that allows people to get at places they hadn’t before,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters this week. “All agencies should be held accountable and tested in a manner and this is an avenue to allow them to do it.” This big change flew under the radar when it was enacted Tuesday, as congressional Republicans’ (quickly forfeited) attempt to gut the House ethics office sucked up all available media attention. But the Holman Rule could prove more consequential, particularly if the GOP proves eager to deploy its new weapon.
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    That will last until the first case hits the federal courts. Huge separation of powers issue along with the Equal Protection Clause.
Paul Merrell

Spanish bankers sent to jail in landmark ruling - The Local - 0 views

  • A Spanish court has jailed five former executives who got millions in severance pay from a struggling bank that later had to be nationalised, a first in a country still reeling from banking bailouts. "These are people who managed a savings bank that had to be rescued by the state," Spain's top-level National Court said in a ruling seen by AFP on Tuesday, adding it had taken the decision to avoid allowing former bankers to enjoying "impunity". The ruling could act as a precedent for the other, more high-profile trial of former economy minister and ex-IMF chief Rodrigo Rato over alleged embezzlement when he was president of Bankia, another bank that was rescued during the financial crisis.
  • The five men, currently aged 59 to 85, had already been found guilty of embezzlement in 2015 and were then given a two-year jail sentence, which their defence asked to be suspended. In Spain, it is usual for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of two years or less to be suspended.     But the National Court said that in this case, "the gravity of the offence given its macroeconomic impact means it is necessary that the five go to prison, in the interest of avoiding impunity." They added that the former executives had not paid a fine owed, and ruled against suspending the sentence.
Paul Merrell

GOP's Last Line of Anti-Trump Defense - Consortiumnews - 0 views

  • The last-ditch hopes of the Republican Party establishment to block Donald Trump’s presidential nomination may come down to whether the GOP convention frees delegates to vote their consciences on the first ballot, a prospect possibly made more likely by the appointment of two anti-Trump party loyalists to head the Rules Committee. But the rules of any convention are ultimately set by the delegates themselves, meaning that a vote on whether to bind delegates based on the will of voters in state primaries and caucuses likely will be decided by a majority of the delegates in approving or rejecting the proposals of the Rules Committee, a test of whether pledged Trump delegates will remain loyal to the candidate or follow the will of some party establishment figures who still want to stop Trump.
  • Plus, there are some in the “Stop Trump” faction who insist that delegates are free to vote their consciences in any event – regardless of state laws and party rules – a position bolstered by a federal court ruling on Monday blocking a Virginia state law binding delegates to support the primary winner.
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    Detailed analysis.
Paul Merrell

Trump signs executive order to slash regulations - 0 views

  • President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday that will seek to dramatically pare back federal regulations by requiring agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced.
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    Idiotic blindness, without examining the need for the repealed rules. Cluestick: most rules are adopted pursuant to an order by Congress or the Courts. Trump's order is at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/30/presidential-executive-order-reducing-regulation-and-controlling
Gary Edwards

Arthur B. Laffer: Class Warfare and the Buffett Rule - WSJ.com - 0 views

  •  
    Reagan economist Arthur Laffer eviscerates the phony socialist investor Warren Buffett.  Totally!!!!  Beautifully done too.  The phony Buffett is fully exposed, and numbers are staggering.  You gotta love this! excerpt: The "Buffett Rule" would not tax the vast majority of his shielded income, including either his unrealized capital gains, which are currently taxed at zero percent, or charitable contributions, which are tax deductible. If the "Buffett Rule" were applied as President Obama proposes, then Mr. Buffett's federal tax bill would have been $14.4 million, rather than the $6.9 million he actually paid. As a fraction of his true income, his effective tax rate would only have risen from 6/100ths of 1% to 12/100ths of 1%. Mr. Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation goes to the heart of my critique of his public call for higher tax rates on the rich. Just look at the second contractual condition for his ongoing pledge to the Gates Foundation: "The foundation must continue to satisfy the legal requirements qualifying Warren's gift as charitable, exempt from gift or other taxes." In other words, if his gift weren't tax sheltered he wouldn't give it. So much for "shared sacrifice." Incidentally, I'm not the first to question Mr. Buffett's commitment to "shared sacrifice" in balancing the federal budget. In a 2007 CNBC interview, when asked why he shelters his money through tax-free strategies rather than writing big checks to Uncle Sam, Mr. Buffett responded: "I think that on balance the Gates Foundation, my daughter's foundation, my two sons' foundations will do a better job with lower administrative costs and better selection of beneficiaries than the government." So Mr. Buffett thinks he and his family can put their money to better use than the government can. I guess he's really not so different from the rest of us after all.
Paul Merrell

U.S. reasserts need to keep domestic surveillance secret - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • The Obama administration Friday reasserted its claim of ­state-secrets privilege to try to block a court from ruling on the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s interception of e-mails and phone calls on U.S. soil without a warrant. The reassertion of the privilege in two long-running lawsuits comes despite recent disclosures about the NSA’s programs and as President Obama is considering curbs to the NSA’s programs based on recommendations by a review panel he appointed.
  • The Obama administration Friday reasserted its claim of ­state-secrets privilege to try to block a court from ruling on the constitutionality of the National Security Agency’s interception of e-mails and phone calls on U.S. soil without a warrant. The reassertion of the privilege in two long-running lawsuits comes despite recent disclosures about the NSA’s programs and as President Obama is considering curbs to the NSA’s programs based on recommendations by a review panel he appointed.
  • “In my judgment, disclosure of still-classified details regarding these intelligence-gathering activities, either directly or indirectly, would seriously compromise, if not destroy, important and vital ongoing intelligence operations,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California on Friday.In court filings, the government also acknowledged for the first time that sweeping collections of Americans’ phone and Internet metadata began under the Bush administration, in concert with a program of intercepting phone and e-mail content without warrants — programs that operated for years solely under executive power before being brought under court and congressional oversight. Clapper said in his declaration that President George W. Bush authorized the collection efforts on Oct. 4, 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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  • Jewel is suing on behalf of all AT&T customers, and Shubert is suing on behalf of all Americans.
  • At issue is the NSA’s program to intercept phone and e-mail communications without a warrant, which was placed under court supervision in 2007 and then authorized by Congress in 2007 and 2008. Jewel also is challenging the agency’s collection of Americans’ phone metadata, or call logs that include numbers dialed and call lengths and times. That program was placed under court supervision in 2006 on the basis of a statute that has been reauthorized several times since then. Its existence was revealed in June following a leak by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The government has already suffered a setback in the case. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White in July ruled that the government could not assert a state-secrets privilege when the underlying law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, offers a process to hear classified evidence in closed chambers.
  • The declassification of the Bush administration’s authorization of the programs came in response to White’s order to the government to review declarations filed in the case. The judge wanted to see what could be declassified in light of Snowden’s revelations as well as subsequent disclosures made by the government. The government also declassified eight other declarations filed in the litigation by senior intelligence officials alleging national security would be harmed by disclosing program information.
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    Ooh. Reasserting the State Secrets privilege when Congress has already waived it and the judge has already ruled that it doesn't apply. That's the U.S. Justice Department in action. No argument to frivolous to raise.
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    Also deserving of notice: The Feds had the right to take an immediate appeal from the judge's order to declassify but chose not to do so. Also, the finding that the State Secrets privilege did not apply was limited to the FISA section 215 bulk metadata collection. It's still in play for the search of communication content. Perhaps the "reassertion" was not a reassertion but an assertion involving another class of records.
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