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Gary Edwards

Public unions thrive at taxpayer expense - 1 views

www.westernfreepress.com/...ons-thrive-at-taxpayer-expense

unions public-sector-unions privatization Political-Corruption Christopher-Cook Big-Government

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Dec 11
     
    The bottom line is that the public unions continue to increase their wages and benefits, inspite of the economic free fall the economy is in, because they ruthlessly use members dues for lobbying and bargaining with politicians who are paying them with "other people's money". CC provides some interesting diagrams describing how the scam works, and, he does point to two solutions being tested in Wisconsin and Indiana. In Wisconsin, gov Walker is trying to end public sector "collective bargaining". While Gov Daniels in Indiana has successfully ended the the requirement that the State deduct union workers membership dues from their pay checks. When given the chance to choose, most union workers chose NOT to pay those dues. The Daniels method seems to be working very well, and is based on an easy to understand Constitutional principle; money earned is personal property, and the individual should have the right to chose what happens to their property. There are some other things that might be tried, although i think the Daniels principle should be an automatic first step taxpayers take to restore Constitutional Rule of Law. .... Break strike threat with non union replacements President Reagan was tested by the public sector unions when they threatened a strike by the thought to be essential and irreplaceable Air Controllers union. Reagan called them on it, and brought in non union replacements to break the strike. Painful, but it worked. ..... Privatization The most basic and Constitutional response is to privatize the service, and turn it over to the open market of competitive contract bids. Works every time, but the awarding of contracts has it's own level of political corruption and influence peddling. Personally i would prefer a grand jury approach to oversight problem involved in the awarding of contracts. Citizens need to be pressed into the task of backstopping political corruption. Any connection of cross channeling of people or t
Paul Merrell

Wisconsin Governor Walker signs bill restricting secret investigations - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/-investigations-030948985.html

Walker cover-up legislation John-Doe_proceedings

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker on Friday signed a bill into law that prohibits prosecutors from using the state's secret investigation law to probe political crimes - a measure used to convict four of his aides and investigate his campaign. In Wisconsin, prosecutors can use a so called "John Doe" proceeding law to call witnesses, request search warrants and offer immunity without probable cause that a crime has been committed. Under the legislation Walker signed, prosecutors can no longer use the law to investigate cases of bribery or political misconduct. Instead, the law is limited to the investigation of certain crimes, such as ones involving violent felonies.
Gary Edwards

How Obama can be stopped in Electoral College - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...e-stopped-in-electoral-college

Electoral-College election-2012 election-fraud

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Nov 12
     
    The clock is ticking and this idea needs a Web wildfire to suceed. excerpt: "...According to the 12th Amendment, for the Electoral College to be able to select the president, it must have a quorum of two-thirds of the states voting. If enough states refuse to participate, the Electoral College will not have a quorum. If the Electoral College does not have a quorum or otherwise cannot vote or decide, then the responsibility for selecting the president and vice president devolves to the Congress. "...Democrats have actually set this precedent of refusing to  participate to deny Republicans a quorum. They did this in Wisconsin and in Texas. Why can't we do this with the Electoral College? "Mitt Romney carried 24 states. We need to have conservative activists from all over the nation contact the electors, the Republican Party and the secretary of state in all of these states and tell them not to participate in the Electoral College when it meets on Dec. 17. If we can get 17 of those states (just over one-third) to refuse to participate, the Electoral College will have no quorum. Then, as the Constitution directs, the election goes to the House of Representatives. "...We need this concept shared with every tea party, liberty and  patriotic group throughout the country. We have time to act, but we must pressure Republicans to do the right thing." [http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/how-obama-can-be-stopped-in-electoral-college/] http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/how-obama-can-be-stopped-in-electoral-college/
Paul Merrell

Greens Question Trump's Victory - Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...greens-question-trumps-victory

Auction 2016 Greens recounts Wisconsin Pennsylvania Michigan

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 16 - No Cached
  • A sudden flood of cash has enabled the Green Party to demand recounts of votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, three formerly Democratic states that largely decided the 2016 election for Donald Trump, reports Joe Lauria.
Gary Edwards

The List: Unnecessarily Shut Down by Obama to Inflict Public Pain - 0 views

www.breitbart.com/...st-obama-closures-for-shutdown

government-shutdown Obammunism financial-crisis

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Oct 13
     
    "The media may or may not report on these individual occurrences, but what they will never do is provide the American people with the full context and scope of Obama's shrill pettiness. Below is a list of illogical, unnecessary, and shockingly spiteful moves our government is making in the name of essential and non-essential. This list will be regularly updated, and if you have something you feel should be added, please email me at jnolte@breitbart.com or tweet me @NolteNC.Please include a link to the news source. -- 1. Treatments for Children Suffering From Cancer - The GOP have agreed to a compromise by funding part of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, which offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatment. Obama has threatened to veto this funding. 2. The World War II Memorial - The WWII memorial on the DC Mall is a 24/7 open-air memorial that is not regularly staffed. Although the White House must have known that WWII veterans in their eighties and nineties had already booked flights to visit this memorial, the White House still found the resources to spitefully barricade the attraction.  The Republican National Committee has offered to cover any costs required to keep the memorial open. The White House refused. Moreover, like the NIH, the GOP will pass a compromise bill that would fund America's national parks. Obama has threatened to veto that bill. 3. Furloughed Military Chaplains Not Allowed to Work for Free - Furloughed military chaplains willing to celebrate Mass and baptisms for free have been told they will be punished for doing so. 4. Business Stops In Florida Keys - Although the GOP have agreed to compromise in the ongoing budget stalemate and fund the parks, Obama has threatened to veto that funding. As a result, small businesses, hunters, and commercial fisherman can't practice their trade. While the feds have deemed the personnel necessary to keep this area open "non-essential," the "enforcement office
Paul Merrell

FBI says search warrants not needed to use "stingrays" in public places | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...se-stringrays-in-public-places

surveillance state stingrays DoJ privacy 4th Amendment

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The Federal Bureau of Investigation is taking the position that court warrants are not required when deploying cell-site simulators in public places. Nicknamed "stingrays," the devices are decoy cell towers that capture locations and identities of mobile phone users and can intercept calls and texts. The FBI made its position known during private briefings with staff members of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). In response, the two lawmakers wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security chief Jeh Johnson, maintaining they were "concerned about whether the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have adequately considered the privacy interests" of Americans. According to the letter, which was released last week: For example, we understand that the FBI’s new policy requires FBI agents to obtain a search warrant whenever a cell-site simulator is used as part of a FBI investigation or operation, unless one of several exceptions apply, including (among others): (1) cases that pose an imminent danger to public safety, (2) cases that involve a fugitive, or (3) cases in which the technology is used in public places or other locations at which the FBI deems there is no reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • The letter was prompted in part by a Wall Street Journal report in November that said the Justice Department was deploying small airplanes equipped with cell-site simulators that enabled "investigators to scoop data from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, collecting their identifying information and general location." The bureau's position on Americans' privacy isn't surprising. The Obama Administration has repeatedly maintained that the public has no privacy in public places. It began making that argument as early as 2010, when it told a federal appeals court that the authorities should be allowed to affix GPS devices on vehicles and track a suspect's every move without court authorization. The Supreme Court, however, eventually ruled that warrants are required. What's more, the administration has argued that placing a webcam with pan-and-zoom capabilities on a utility pole to spy on a suspect at his or her residence was no different from a police officer's observation from the public right-of-way. A federal judge last month disagreed with the government's position, tossing evidence gathered by the webcam that was operated from afar.
  • In their letter, Leahy and Grassley complained that little is known about how stingrays, also known as ISMI catchers, are used by law enforcement agencies. The Harris Corp., a maker of the devices from Florida, includes non-disclosure clauses with buyers. Baltimore authorities cited a non-disclosure agreement to a judge in November as their grounds for refusing to say how they tracked a suspect's mobile phone. They eventually dropped charges rather than disclose their techniques. Further, sometimes the authorities simply lie to judges about their use or undertake other underhanded methods to prevent the public from knowing that the cell-site simulators are being used.
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  • Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said some states and judges are pushing back against stingrays. "In Tacoma, judges now require police (to) specifically note they plan to use an IMSI catcher and promise not to store data collected from people who are not investigation targets," he said. "The Florida and Massachusetts state supreme courts ruled warrants were necessary for real-time cell phone tracking. Nine states—Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin—passed laws specifically requiring police to use a warrant to track a cell phone in real time."
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15
     
    Is there any problem here that couldn't be cured by discharge and public flogging for any government official caught using information derived from a stingray?
Paul Merrell

Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-to-rise-from-lower-rungs.html

class warfare income inequality economic mobility land of opportunity myth

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.
  • But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage. Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Republican candidate for president, warned this fall that movement “up into the middle income is actually greater, the mobility in Europe, than it is in America.” National Review, a conservative thought leader, wrote that “most Western European and English-speaking nations have higher rates of mobility.” Even Representative Paul D. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who argues that overall mobility remains high, recently wrote that “mobility from the very bottom up” is “where the United States lags behind.”
  • Liberal commentators have long emphasized class, but the attention on the right is largely new.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes.
  • Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile.
Paul Merrell

Shaking My Head - Medium - 0 views

medium.com/...shaking-my-head-5c1b60db9086

surveillance state NSA 702 FISA legislation backdoor-serches stats

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 16 - No Cached
  • Last month, at the request of the Department of Justice, the Courts approved changes to the obscure Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs search and seizure. By the nature of this obscure bureaucratic process, these rules become law unless Congress rejects the changes before December 1, 2016.Today I, along with my colleagues Senators Paul from Kentucky, Baldwin from Wisconsin, and Daines and Tester from Montana, am introducing the Stopping Mass Hacking (SMH) Act (bill, summary), a bill to protect millions of law-abiding Americans from a massive expansion of government hacking and surveillance. Join the conversation with #SMHact.
  • For law enforcement to conduct a remote electronic search, they generally need to plant malware in — i.e. hack — a device. These rule changes will allow the government to search millions of computers with the warrant of a single judge. To me, that’s clearly a policy change that’s outside the scope of an “administrative change,” and it is something that Congress should consider. An agency with the record of the Justice Department shouldn’t be able to wave its arms and grant itself entirely new powers.
  • These changes say that if law enforcement doesn’t know where an electronic device is located, a magistrate judge will now have the the authority to issue a warrant to remotely search the device, anywhere in the world. While it may be appropriate to address the issue of allowing a remote electronic search for a device at an unknown location, Congress needs to consider what protections must be in place to protect Americans’ digital security and privacy. This is a new and uncertain area of law, so there needs to be full and careful debate. The ACLU has a thorough discussion of the Fourth Amendment ramifications and the technological questions at issue with these kinds of searches.The second part of the change to Rule 41 would give a magistrate judge the authority to issue a single warrant that would authorize the search of an unlimited number — potentially thousands or millions — of devices, located anywhere in the world. These changes would dramatically expand the government’s hacking and surveillance authority. The American public should understand that these changes won’t just affect criminals: computer security experts and civil liberties advocates say the amendments would also dramatically expand the government’s ability to hack the electronic devices of law-abiding Americans if their devices were affected by a computer attack. Devices will be subject to search if their owners were victims of a botnet attack — so the government will be treating victims of hacking the same way they treat the perpetrators.
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  • As the Center on Democracy and Technology has noted, there are approximately 500 million computers that fall under this rule. The public doesn’t know nearly enough about how law enforcement executes these hacks, and what risks these types of searches will pose. By compromising the computer’s system, the search might leave it open to other attackers or damage the computer they are searching.Don’t take it from me that this will impact your security, read more from security researchers Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze and Susan Landau.Finally, these changes to Rule 41 would also give some types of electronic searches different, weaker notification requirements than physical searches. Under this new Rule, they are only required to make “reasonable efforts” to notify people that their computers were searched. This raises the possibility of the FBI hacking into a cyber attack victim’s computer and not telling them about it until afterward, if at all.
Paul Merrell

US looks at ways to prevent spying on its spying - 0 views

bigstory.ap.org/...king-prevent-spying-its-spying

surveillance state NSA call-metadata dispersed-call-metadata research

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • (AP) — The U.S. government is looking at ways to prevent anyone from spying on its own surveillance of Americans' phone records. As the Obama administration considers shifting the collection of those records from the National Security Agency to requiring that they be stored at phone companies or elsewhere, it's quietly funding research to prevent phone company employees or eavesdroppers from seeing whom the U.S. is spying on, The Associated Press has learned. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has paid at least five research teams across the country to develop a system for high-volume, encrypted searches of electronic records kept outside the government's possession. The project is among several ideas that would allow the government to discontinue storing Americans' phone records, but still search them as needed.
  • Under the research, U.S. data mining would be shielded by secret coding that could conceal identifying details from outsiders and even the owners of the targeted databases, according to public documents obtained by The Associated Press and AP interviews with researchers, corporate executives and government officials.
  • Internal documents describing the Security and Privacy Assurance Research project do not cite the NSA or its phone surveillance program. But if the project were to prove successful, its encrypted search technology could pave the way for the government to shift storage of the records from NSA computers to either phone companies or a third-party organization. A DNI spokesman, Michael Birmingham, confirmed that the research was relevant to the NSA's phone records program. He cited "interest throughout the intelligence community" but cautioned that it may be some time before the technology is used. The intelligence director's office is by law exempt from disclosing detailed budget figures, so it's unclear how much money the government has spent on the SPAR project, which is overseen by the DNI's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity office. Birmingham said the research is aimed for use in a "situation where a large sensitive data set is held by one party which another seeks to query, preserving privacy and enforcing access policies."
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  • A Columbia University computer sciences expert who heads one of the DNI-funded teams, Steven M. Bellovin, estimates the government could start conducting encrypted searches within the next year or two. "If the NSA wanted to deploy something like this it would take one to two years to get the hardware and software in place to start collecting data this way either from phone companies or whatever other entity they decide on," said Bellovin, who is also a former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission.
  • An encrypted search system would permit the NSA to shift storage of phone records to either phone providers or a third party, and conduct secure searches remotely through their databases. The coding could shield both the extracted metadata and identities of those conducting the searches, Bellovin said. The government could use encrypted searches to ensure its analysts were not leaking information or abusing anyone's privacy during their data searches. And the technique could also be used by the NSA to securely search out and retrieve Internet metadata, such as emails and other electronic records. Some computer science experts are less sanguine about the prospects for encrypted search techniques. Searches could bog down because of the encryption computations needed, said Daniel Weitzner, principal research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and former deputy U.S. chief technology officer for the Obama administration. "There's no silver bullet that guarantees the intelligence community will only have access to the records they're supposed to have access to," Weitzner said. "We also need oversight of the actual use of the data."
  • The encrypted search techniques could make it more difficult for hackers to access the phone records and could prevent phone companies from knowing which records the government was searching. "It would remove one of the big objections to having the phone companies hold the data," Bellovin said. Similar research is underway by researchers at University of California at Irvine; a group from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Texas at Austin; another group from MIT, Yale and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and a fourth from Stealth Software Technologies, a Los Angeles-based technology company.
Paul Merrell

NSA oversight dismissed as 'illusory' as anger intensifies in Europe and beyond | World... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...veillance-anger-deepens-europe

surveillance state NSA NSA-oversight NSA-blowback IAHCR U.N. legislation Sensenbrenner Leahy

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration's international surveillance crisis deepened on Monday as representatives from a Latin American human rights panel told US diplomats that oversight of the programs was "illusory".Members of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an arm of the Organization of American States, expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with the National Security Agency's mass surveillance of foreign nationals – something the agency argues is both central to its existence and necessary to prevent terrorism. "With a program of this scope, it's obvious that any form of control becomes illusory when there's hundreds of millions of communications that become monitored and surveilled," said Felipe Gonzales, a commissioner and Chilean national."This is of concern to us because maybe the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights may become a target as well of surveillance," said Rodrigo Escobar Gil, a commissioner and Colombian citizen.
  • Frank La Rue, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression, told the commission that the right to privacy was "inextricably linked" to free expression. "What is not permissible from a human rights point of view is that those that hold political power or those that are in security agencies or, even less, those in intelligence agencies decide by themselves, for themselves, what the scope of these surveillance activities are, or who will be targeted, or who will be blank surveilled," La Rue said.While the US sent four representatives to the hearing, they offered no defence, rebuttal or elaboration about bulk surveillance, saying the October government shutdown prevented them from adequate preparation. "We are here to listen," said deputy permanent representative Lawrence Gumbiner, who pledged to submit written responses within 30 days.All 35 North, Central and South American nations are members of the commission. La Rue, originally from Guatemala and an independent expert appointed by the Human Rights Council, travels the world reporting on human rights concerns – often in countries with poor democratic standards.
  • The Obama administration has been fielding a week's worth of European outrage following media reports that the NSA had collected a similarly large volume of phone calls from France – which director of national intelligence James Clapper, who recently apologised for misleading the Senate about domestic spying, called "false" – and spying on German chancellor Angela Merkel's own cellphone, which US officials have effectively confessed to. Brazil and Mexico are also demanding answers from US intelligence officials, following reports about intrusive acts of espionage in their territory revealed by documents provided to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The White House has said it will provide some answers after the completion of an external review of its surveillance programs, scheduled to be completed before the end of the year. The Guardian reported on Thursday that the NSA has intercepted the communications of 35 world leaders.
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  • Spying on foreigners is the core mission of the NSA, one that it vigorously defends as appropriate, legal and unexceptional given the nature of global threats and widespread spycraft. Monday's hearing suggested that there are diplomatic consequences to bulk surveillance even if there may not be legal redress for non-Americans. Brazil has already shown a willingness to challenge Washington over bulk surveillance. President Dilma Rousseff postponed a September meeting with President Obama in protest, and denounced the spying during the UN general assembly shortly thereafter. Brazil is also teaming up with Germany at the UN on a general assembly resolution demanding an end to the mass surveillance. The commission's examination of the NSA's bulk surveillance activities suggested a potential southern front could open in the spy crisis just as the administration is attempting to calm down Europe.
  • International discomfort with NSA bulk surveillance is not the only spy challenge the Obama administration now confronts. Congressman James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican and key author of the 2001 Patriot Act, is poised to introduce a bill this week that would prevent the NSA from collecting phone records on American citizens in bulk and without an individual warrant. The National Journal reported that Sensenbrenner's bill, which has a companion in the Senate, has attracted eight co-sponsors who either voted against or abstained on a July amendment in the House that would have defunded the domestic phone records bulk collection, a legislative gambit that came within seven votes of passage.Sensenbrenner's bill, like its Senate counterpart sponsored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, would not substantially restrict the NSA's foreign-focused surveillance, which is a traditional NSA activity. There is practically no congressional appetite, and no viable legislation, to limit the NSA from intercepting the communications of foreigners. An early sign about the course of potential surveillance reforms in the House of Representatives may come as early as Tuesday. The House intelligence committee, a hotbed of support for the NSA, will hold its first public hearing of the fall legislative calendar on proposed surveillance legislation. Its chairman, Mike Rogers of Michigan, has proposed requiring greater transparency on the NSA and the surveillance court that oversees it, but would largely leave the actual surveillance activities of the NSA, inside and outside the United States, untouched.
  • Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the ACLU, which requested the hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, warned the human rights panel that the NSA could "target the foreign members of this commission when they travel abroad", as well as foreign dissidents of US-aligned governments; foreign lawyers for Guantánamo detainees; and other foreigners."If every country were to engage in surveillance as pervasive as the NSA, we would soon live in a state … with no refuge for the world's dissidents, journalists and human rights defenders," Abdo said.
Paul Merrell

Walker falls to 10th in Iowa in latest poll | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...to-10th-in-iowa-in-latest-poll

Auction 2016 Iowa polls Trump Carson Walker

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's support in Iowa continues its free fall as fellow presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Ben Carson remain ahead of the Republican pack by double digits, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll. Walker, the former front-runner, tumbles to 10th place in the GOP presidential pack just two months after taking the top spot in the university’s July poll. Then, he had 18 percent support, compared to just 3 in the new poll.ADVERTISEMENTAs governor of a neighboring state, Walker had long been thought to be the presumptive leader in Iowa. But his support has steadily dropped since Trump entered the race in late June. The new numbers underscore the slide that Walker has seen across the board. He has dropped below former business executive Carly Fiorina for fifth place in the five most recent Iowa polls, just a hair above former Gov. Jeb Bush (Fla.). He’s in seventh place nationally and in the second presidential nominating state of New Hampshire. 
  • By contrast, outsiders Trump and Carson continue to have a dominant hold on the polls. Real estate mogul Trump showed 27 percent support, while retired neurosurgeon Carson received 21 percent, well ahead of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who received 9 percent support.If Trump was not in the race, Carson is the second choice of a vast plurality of Trump voters, with 30 percent backing him. Cruz is the second choice of 11 percent of Trump voters.
Paul Merrell

DoJ Creates Special Dept to Deal with Growing Domestic Extremism Threat | nsnbc interna... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...wing-domestic-extremism-threat

liberties tyranny DoJ domestic-terrorism™

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • John Carlin, Department of Justice assistant attorney general and head of the national security division, spoke at George Washington University (GWU) about concerns over mounting threats posed by violent extremists within the US which has prompted the creation of a special counsel position to deal with these issues.
  • Carlin told the audience that “the domestic terrorism counsel would not only help oversee the prosecution of cases but also would develop plans to intervene when the threat of violence is imminent.” The DoJ expressed concern over the “staggeringly broad” threat to national security posed by domestic extremists “motivated by anti-government animus, eco-radicalism and racism have created a new urgency for federal and local law enforcement authorities.” Carlin said: “No single ideology governs hate and extremism. Nevertheless, we see commonalities among those who wish to do us harm. This gives us important information as we shape our deterrence and disruption strategies. Across the spectrum of extremist ideologies, two related traits emerge: first, the prevalence of lone offender attacks that do not require a terrorist network; and second, the increasing number of disaffected people inspired to violence who communicate their hate-filled views over the Internet and through social media.’’
  • The deputy attorney general said: “White supremacists represent the most violent. The Charleston shooter, who had a manifesto laying out a racist worldview, is just one example. His actions followed earlier deadly shooting sprees by white supremacists in Kansas, Wisconsin and elsewhere.’’ Along with white supremacists, Carlin said: “Adherents to the sovereign citizen ideology believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities or law enforcement. And although most sovereign citizens peacefully espouse these views, some sovereign citizen extremists resort to violence.’’ Foundational concerns about domestic terrorism can be found in the 2010 report Rightwing Extremism, wherein domestic extremists, particularly white supremacists, were proposed to be the newest and most dangerous threat to the US since al-Qaeda.
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Oct 15
     
    To get a glimmer of just how ridiculous this DoJ initiative is, skim http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/youre-nine-times-likely-killed-police-officer-terrorist.html Talk about misplaced priorities. 
Gary Edwards

Paul Ryan -- the Man Who Could Save America - Casey Research - 0 views

www.caseyresearch.com/...3249

paul-ryan constitutional-conservatism

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Mar 10
     
    incredible plan!  This article is a quick synopsis of the comprehensive, but "short" plan Republican representative Paul Ryan introduced to Congress in 2009.  It covers everything.  And if ever there was a Conservative Manifesto, this is the nuts and bolts of how to get it done.  Unbelievable.  
Joseph Skues

Peter and Lou Berryman on Vimeo - 0 views

www.vimeo.com/20319641

wisconsin solidarity forever and lou peter on

shared by Joseph Skues on 17 May 11 - No Cached
  • by luciano M
    • Joseph Skues
      Joseph Skues on 17 May 11
       
      "Solidarity Forever" When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one, But the union makes us strong. CHORUS: Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, Solidarity forever, For the union makes us strong. Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite, Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might? Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight? For the union makes us strong. Chorus It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade; Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid; Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made; But the union makes us strong. Chorus All the world that's owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone. We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone. It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own. While the union makes us strong. Chorus They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn. We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn That the union makes us strong. Chorus In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the union makes us strong.
  • Joseph Skues on 17 May 11
     
    Solidarity Forever
Paul Merrell

Fire the Liar | War Is A Crime .org - 0 views

warisacrime.org/fire-liar

surveillance state Clapper VIPS lies Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Obama Urged to Fire DNI Clapper December 11, 2013 (Editor Note)  Last March – before Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s sweeping collection of phone and other data – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said no such operation existed. Now, a group of ex-national security officials urge President Obama to fire Clapper. MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Fire James Clapper
  • We wish to endorse the call by Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Committee on the Judiciary, that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be removed and prosecuted for lying to Congress. “Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it,” the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill. “The only way laws are effective is if they’re enforced.” Sensenbrenner added, “If it’s a criminal offense — and I believe Mr. Clapper has committed a criminal offense — then the Justice Department ought to do its job.”
  • This brief Memorandum is to inform you that we agree that no intelligence director should be able to deceive Congress and suffer no consequences. No democracy that condones such deceit at the hands of powerful, secretive intelligence directors can long endure. It seems clear that you can expect no help from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to which Clapper has apologized for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony, and who, at the height of the controversy over his credibility, defended him as a “direct and honest” person. You must be well aware that few amendments to the U.S. Constitution are as clear as the fourth:
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  • “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Even the cleverest lawyers cannot square with the Fourth Amendment many of the NSA activities that Clapper and Feinstein have defended, winked at, or lied about. Only you can get rid of James Clapper. We suspect that a certain awkwardness — and perhaps also a misguided sense of loyalty to a colleague — militate against your senior staff giving you an unvarnished critique of how badly you have been served by Clapper. And so we decided to give you a candid reminder from us former intelligence and national security officials with a total of hundreds of years of experience, much of it at senior levels, in the hope you will find it helpful. Statements by DNI Clapper re Eavesdropping on Americans
  • Mr. President, are you not also troubled by those misleading statements? We strongly believe you must fire Jim Clapper for his lies to the Congress and the American people and that you must appoint someone who will tell the truth. * * * For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13
     
    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity call on Obama to sack Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for perjured testimony to Congress and lying to the public, with a nice collection of Clapper's lies. And Sen. Diane Feinstein gets a share of their wrath.  In my book both Clapper and Gen. Keith Alexander must be fired in disgrace else the message to the intelligence community is that there is no penalty for lying to Congress and the People, which can only encourage further lies.  Moreover, it send a message to the People that the President is more loyal to his henchmen than he is to the public's interest.
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: NSA infiltrated RSA security more deeply than thought - study | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...-nsa-rsa-idUSBREA2U0TY20140331

surveillance state NSA NSA-backdoors RSA

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • ecurity industry pioneer RSA adopted not just one but two encryption tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, greatly increasing the spy agency's ability to eavesdrop on some Internet communications, according to a team of academic researchers. Reuters reported in December that the NSA had paid RSA $10 million to make a now-discredited cryptography system the default in software used by a wide range of Internet and computer security programs. The system, called Dual Elliptic Curve, was a random number generator, but it had a deliberate flaw - or "back door" - that allowed the NSA to crack the encryption.A group of professors from Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois and elsewhere now say they have discovered that a second NSA tool exacerbated the RSA software's vulnerability.The professors found that the tool, known as the "Extended Random" extension for secure websites, could help crack a version of RSA's Dual Elliptic Curve software tens of thousands of times faster, according to an advance copy of their research shared with Reuters.While Extended Random was not widely adopted, the new research sheds light on how the NSA extended the reach of its surveillance under cover of advising companies on protection.
Paul Merrell

Peekaboo, I See You: Government Authority Intended for Terrorism is Used for Other Purp... - 0 views

www.eff.org/...ity-meant-terrorism-other-uses

surveillance state sneak-and-peek-warrants stats Patriot-Act 213

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was adamant Section 213 was needed to protect against terrorism. But the latest government report detailing the numbers of “sneak and peek” warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism. Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties. Throughout the Patriot Act debate the Department of Justice urged Congress to pass Section 213 because it needed the sneak and peak power to help investigate and prosecute terrorism crimes “without tipping off terrorists.” In 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller continued the same exact talking point, emphasizing sneak and peek warrants were “an invaluable tool in the war on terror and our efforts to combat serious criminal conduct.”
  • What do the reports reveal? Two things: 1) there has been an enormous increase in the use of sneak and peek warrants and 2) they are rarely used for terrorism cases. First, the numbers: Law enforcement made 47 sneak-and-peek searches nationwide from September 2001 to April 2003. The 2010 report reveals 3,970 total requests were processed. Within three years that number jumped to 11,129. That's an increase of over 7,000 requests. Exactly what privacy advocates argued in 2001 is happening: sneak and peak warrants are not just being used in exceptional circumstances—which was their original intent—but as an everyday investigative tool.
  • Second, the uses: Out of the 3,970 total requests from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, 3,034 were for narcotics cases and only 37 for terrorism cases (about .9%). Since then, the numbers get worse. The 2011 report reveals a total of 6,775 requests. 5,093 were used for drugs, while only 31 (or .5%) were used for terrorism cases. The 2012 report follows a similar pattern: Only .6%, or 58 requests, dealt with terrorism cases. The 2013 report confirms the incredibly low numbers. Out of 11,129 reports only 51, or .5%, of requests were used for terrorism. The majority of requests were overwhelmingly for narcotics cases, which tapped out at 9,401 requests.
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  • Section 213 may be less known than Section 215 of the Patriot Act (the clause the government is currently using to collect your phone records), but it's just as important. The Supreme Court ruled in Wilson v. Arkansas and Richards v. Wisconsin that the Fourth Amendment requires police to generally “knock and announce” their entry into property as a means of notifying a homeowner of a search. The idea was to give the owner an opportunity to assert their Fourth Amendment rights. The court also explained that the rule could give way in situations where evidence was under threat of destruction or there were concerns for officer s
Paul Merrell

The Sound of Torture - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...torture-things-still-dont-know

war & peace torture DoD Iraq-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Suddenly there was a chilling scream. “Allah,” someone wailed. “Allah! Allah!” As I wrote at the time, this wasn’t a cry of religious ecstasy. It was the sound of deep pain, coming from elsewhere in the town library, which had been turned into a detention center by Iraqi security forces who were advised by American soldiers and contractors. I was embedded with the Americans for a week, and I had already heard two of them, from the Wisconsin National Guard, talk about seeing their Iraqi partners trussing up prisoners like animals at a slaughter. During raids, I had seen these Iraqis beat their detainees — muggings as a form of questioning — while their American advisers watched.
  • The CIA’s violations of its detainees are the tip of the torture iceberg. We run the risk, in the necessary debate sparked by the Senate’s release of 500 pages on CIA interrogation abuses, of focusing too narrowly on what happened to 119 detainees held at the agency’s black sites from 2002-2006. The problem of American torture — how much occurred, what impact it had, who bears responsibility — is much larger. Across Iraq and Afghanistan, American soldiers and the indigenous forces they fought alongside committed a large number of abuses against a considerable number of people. It didn’t begin at Abu Ghraib and it didn’t end there. The evidence, which has emerged in a drip-drip way over the years, is abundant though less dramatic than the aforementioned 500-page executive summary of the Senate’s still-classified report on the CIA.
  • Just as the CIA opposed release of the Senate torture report, the Pentagon and White House continue to do their best to suppress the evidence. The Daily Beast noted the other day that the Obama Administration, responding to pressure from the Pentagon, continues to fight in court to prevent the publication of thousands of photos of detainee abuse. The argument against release is nearly identical to the argument used by the CIA to repress the Senate’s report—it could put American lives in danger. To her credit, Sen. Dianne Feinstein pushed back and published an executive summary of her committee’s 6,000-page report (which has caused practically no protest or violence overseas). Repression is the gut instinct of institutions that have something to hide, and I came across that in Samarra, too. Shortly after I witnessed the threatened execution of a detainee (an Iraqi soldier pointed his AK-47 at a prisoner who was against a wall with his hands up), an order came down from the American command to get me out of Samarra. I was told to pack my backpack for the next convoy out of town. After I made a flurry of calls on my satellite phone, the order was rescinded. Someone wanted the truth to come out.
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  • Here’s a partial reading list of essential reporting on torture in Iraq and Afghanistan: Senate Report on Abuses of Military Detainees (2008): http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/12112008_detaineeabuse.pdf Haditha Killings by Tim McGirk: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649,00.html Taguba Report on Abuses at Abu Ghraib: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/torturefoia/released/TR3.pdf Abu Ghraib Abuses by Seymour Hersh: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/05/10/torture-at-abu-ghraib Special Forces in Afghanistan by Matt Aikens: http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/a-team-killings-afghanistan-special-forces Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treament (See especially chapter 3): http://detaineetaskforce.org/report/ “The Dark Side” by Jane Mayer: http://www.amazon.com/The-Dark-Side-Inside-American/dp/0307456293
  • “None of Us Were Like This Before” by Joshua Phillips: http://www.amazon.com/None-Were-Like-This-Before/dp/1844678849 The Killing of Dilawar by Carlotta Gall: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/04/international/asia/04AFGH.html “Pay Any Price” by James Risen (See especially Chapter 7): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pay-any-price-james-risen/1117916812?ean=9780544341418 “Dirty Wars” by Jeremy Scahill (a founder of The Intercept): http://www.amazon.com/Dirty-Wars-The-World-Battlefield/dp/156858671X “How to Break a Terrorist” by Matthew Alexander: http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Terrorist-Interrogators-Brutality/dp/B0085S1S5K “The Black Banners” by Ali Soufan: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Banners-Inside-Against-al-Qaeda/dp/0393079422 “Kandahar’s Mystery Executions” by Anand Gopal: http://harpers.org/archive/2014/09/kandahars-mystery-executions/ “No Good Men Among the Living” by Anand Gopal: http://www.amazon.com/No-Good-Men-Among-Living/dp/0805091793
Paul Merrell

Solar power - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...or-you-to-use-solar-power.html

environment solar-power competition net-metering

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • When homeowners or businesses install solar panels, state laws ensure utility companies pay for unused electricity that is routed back into the power grid - a practice known as net metering.
  • Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have implemented net metering policies, some of which are more favorable than others, but all of which turn the power grid into a two-way street. More like this Rooftop solar electricity on pace to beat coal, oil Solar industry jobs are growing at 20 times the national rate U.S. utilities face up to $48B revenue loss from solar, efficiency on IDG Answers How well do solar smartphone chargers work? The cost of rooftop solar-powered electricity will be on par with prices for common fossil-fuel power generation in just two years, and the technology to produce it will only get cheaper, according to Deutsche Bank's leading solar industry analyst, Vishal Shah. As Americans have warmed to solar power and its ability to reduce electricity bills, utilities are suffering revenue losses and have been seeking ways to recoup that money. Over the past several years, state utility commissions and legislatures have pursued policies that reduce the benefits of adopting distributed solar power systems for homeonwers and businesses.
  • For example, Hawaiian Electric Co. Inc. this year asked the state's Public Utilities Commission to abolish its net metering policy because customers with photovoltaic panels aren't paying their fair share of maintenance costs. Indiana legislators are pushing bills to make it more costly for consumers there to go with solar by reducing tax credits awarded for it. Legislation, such as HB1320, introduced by Indiana state Rep. Eric Koch, a Republican, would compel fixed charges on customer bills and reduce tax credits. The bill comes as the solar industry is fighting to get on its feet in the Hoosier state. Koch, has said the bill's purpose is "to promote and grow net metering." Democratic state Rep. Matt Pierce said the bill "would effectively end net metering" by eliminating the incentive to deploy solar power.
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  • Other states, such as Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Ohio, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, are discussing or have passed revisions to their net metering policies that would included fixed monthly surcharges for residences and businesses that install solar to make it less competitive with conventional forms energy.
  • The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a nonprofit science advocacy organization, believes pressure on legislators to reduce the benefits consumers reap from renewable energy are being led by a small number of industry-supported lobbying groups. The results of lobbying efforts have been a mixed bag. In certain states, fossil fuel and utility lobbyists have had little effect, but in states such as Kansas, there have been efforts to roll back renewable energy standards for the past two years.
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