Someone has created a poster that lays out the US Government’s discretionary spending in a graphical and easy-to-understand format. Visit http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/9410862/ and click on the image to get a blown-up view. You can download and print it, or the artist is offering large prints for sale.
Rolling Stone has a long article called "God’s Senator" that is likely to scare the bejesus out of you if you’re scared of fundamentalist Christian Senators from Kansas who have aligned themselves with powerful forces like Opus Dei and something called the Fellowship. If half the stuff in this article is true it makes "The Da Vinci Code" seem downright realistic by comparison.
The article is a feature on Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas who has been ordained as the presidential front runner by the fundamentalist Christian movement. Normally I’d write the guy off as a quack, but the article also explores his leadership positions in groups like the Fellowship. Here’s how the article describes the fellowship:
Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide
founded a network of "God-led" cells comprising senators and
generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that
the cells — God’s chosen, appointed to power — could construct a
Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would
do so "behind the scenes," lest they be accused of pride or a
hunger for power, and "beyond the din of vox populi," which is to
say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were
known as the Family, or the Fellowship. To most outsiders, they
were not known at all.
The Senator also converted to Catholocism through Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group that could probably be described using many of the same adjectives as those used to describe The Fellowship. Then there’s the "Values Action Team" which the article describes this way:
Every Tuesday, before his evening meeting with his prayer
brothers, Brownback chairs another small cell — one explicitly
dedicated to altering public policy. It is called the Values Action
Team, and it is composed of representatives from leading
organizations on the religious right. James Dobson’s Focus on the
Family sends an emissary, as does the Family Research Council, the
Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values
Coalition, Concerned Women for America and many more. Like the
Fellowship prayer cell, everything that is said is strictly off the
record, and even the groups themselves are forbidden from
discussing the proceedings. It’s a little "cloak-and-dagger," says
a Brownback press secretary. The VAT is a war council, and the
enemy, says one participant, is "secularism."The VAT coordinates the efforts of fundamentalist pressure
groups, unifying their message and arming congressional staffers
with the data and language they need to pass legislation. Working
almost entirely in secret, the group has directed the fights
against gay marriage and for school vouchers, against hate-crime
legislation and for "abstinence only" education. The VAT helped win
passage of Brownback’s broadcast decency bill and made the
president’s tax cuts a top priority. When it comes to "impacting
policy," says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, "day to
day, the VAT is instrumental."
This guy is a player and he’s tapped into some powerful and monied networks and that makes the author’s analysis that "Brownback seeks something far more radical: not
faith-based politics but faith in place of politics" very frightening indeed if it’s true.
Citibank recently revealed that thousands of customers’ PIN numbers had been obtained by scam artists and that it had to freeze PIN-based transactions for customers in Canada, Russia and the UK and then reissue cards to those customers. They also apparently didn’t inform their customers about what was going on. And now it looks like they aren’t the only bank dealing with what one expert calls "the worst hack ever." Finally, if you used your debit/check card at Sam’s Club or OfficeMax you might want to check with your card company since it looks like the leak might have occured there.
According to this article if you pay a large chunk of your credit card bill off you may grab the attention of the Department of Homeland Security. Here’s the relevant paragraphs:
They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they
learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account
had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but
the amount available for credit on their account hadn’t changed.So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.
"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.
They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the
little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call
center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their
normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage
higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified.
And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union
and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He
learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.
If I understand this correctly the government is essentially able to freeze a portion of your assets without justifying itself. Think about it: you send in a check to pay a bill so you can’t very well use that money for other purposes because it is already spoken for, but at the same time it is not being used for its intended purpose which is to pay down your debt. Since you don’t know when the funds will be freed you can’t write another check against them, and if you don’t have your credit available to you then you can’t use it, even if you have a sudden emergency like being sick on vacation and needing to visit an urgent care center, or need to buy an airline ticket to visit your dying father…whatever.
I’d also be interested to find out what happens to your balance while your check is being held. Are you accruing more interest? I’d hope not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. After all banks have a lot better lobbyists and have contributed more bucks to lawmakers than we civil libertarians.
One could argue that none of us has a right to credit, which is true, but once we make arrangements with a company to grant us credit we expect to be able to use it. If this story is accurate then the government is infringing on our business relationships with our creditors and is doing so without having to show cause.
If I were a publisher and the Bushies came after me I hope I’d have the same reaction as the publisher of Capital Hill Blue:
"This flamboyant use of the forces of criminal prosecution to
threaten whistle-blowers and intimidate journalists are nothing more
than the naked tactics of street thugs and authoritarian juntas."Just how widespread, and uncontrolled, this latest government
assault has become hit close to home last week when one of the FBI’s
National Security Letters arrived at the company that hosts the servers
for this web site, Capitol Hill Blue.The letter demanded traffic data, payment records and other
information about the web site along with information on me, the
publisher.Now that’s a problem. I own the company that hosts Capitol Hill Blue.
So, in effect, the feds want me to turn over information on myself and
not tell myself that I’m doing it. You’d think they’d know better.I turned the letter over to my lawyer and told him to send the following message to the feds:
Fuck you. Strong letter to follow.
Normally I redact the f-bomb from this blog since I know my mom and wife read it, but that’s exactly how I feel about Bush and company these days and I suspect they share my view. However, my message would read: "Fuck you. Strong vote against you and your ilk to follow."
The Winston-Salem Troublemaker has a story about human trafficking in North Carolina, and how the FBI is looking for help in combating it. He also highlights some cases tied to the Piedmont:
Does human trafficking exist in the Triad?
In May of 2004,
Greensboro Police uncovered the State’s largest Human Trafficking case
when a Home Depot Security Guard reported a large number of vehicles
and scantily dressed young Hispanic girls being delivered to a van.
Over 20 people were held by authorities. Prostitution trafficking
charges followed.Greensboro Police have investigated several
Hispanic brothels within the last few years. Gurrant Street, Phillips
Avenue, Rainbow Street and Freeman Mill Road have hosted Hispanic
brothels.A Greensboro strip club catering to Hispanics is currently suspected for having human trafficking connections.
In
Winston Salem, local authorities shut down a Hispanicic brothel on
Country Club earlier this year. Several people were charged and
deported.
I guess we can’t say this kind of thing only happens in other places.
When I was in high school I literally confused economics with ecology, and things didn’t get a lot better in college. That best explains why I’ve always felt hampered during any discussion of "the economy." Of course ignorance has never stopped me from opening by big trap before so I do endure.
Evidence of the endurance of my ignorant discourse is my exchange with David Boyd in the comments of this post. What this discussion drove home to me is that while I do have a rudimentary understanding of economics (and I think I have some pretty accurate instincts about the Bush Administration, but I digress) I don’t quite grasp the cause and effect of varying economic factors. It occurs to me that I don’t like government deficits because:
Then I came across this on the BusinessWeek’s Economics Unbound blog:
Tyler Cowen has an item titled Do future generations pay for deficits?. He starts off this way:
Assume that government spends some money today on
consumption. That money could have been spent on a durable bridge, but
it wasn’t. Some current people benefit from the consumption and future
generations get nothing.Above and beyond that effect, do future generations bear the burden of deficit spending?
But of course, there’s a big problem with his scenario. The latest
budget pegs the FY 2006 deficit at $423 billion. But federal spending
on major physical capital, research and development, and education and
training–all long-lived investments–is estimated at $425 billion.We are not borrowing to finance consumption, we are borrowing to finance long-lived investments.
So a better question might be: Do future generations benefit enough
from these investments to justify the cost of the borrowing?
Now I’m really confused. It doesn’t help that I think maybe the blog’s author has engaged in an old debate trick here of changing the basis of the argument. My question to him would be, "Aren’t we borrowing to finance consumption AND investments?" But what do I know?
I came of age during the era of Reaganomics, which I believe was also called supply-side economics, whatever that is. I seem to remember there being a great deal of disagreement between the economists from varying schools of thought so I came to the conclusion that this might not be an exact science, which it turns out is an oxymoron since every day some scientific proof seems to be overturned, disproved or improved. Whatever, it’s not exact.
So I know that there’s a lot that economists disagree on, but I’ll be damned if I understand it. I feel like I’m listening to two people argue in Latin; I can tell by their body language that they disagree but I have no idea what they’re talking about. Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to get at least a rudimentary understanding of the language of economics. Maybe I’ll take a course at one of the local schools, but in the interim can someone recommend a book on economics that works on the kindergarten level?
We’ve all had a lot of fun with VP Cheney shooting one of his buddies in the head while hunting (check out the Daily Show’s riff if you haven’t already). It got a little less funny when the news came out that his buddy had a heart attack as a direct result of being shot. My question is this: could the VP be charged with manslaughter if his buddy died? I’m assuming yes, but I really don’t know.
Surveillance company CityWatcher.com is requiring that employees that access it’s data center do so with RFID security chips that are implanted in their biceps. Having the implants is not a condition of employment but is required for access to the data center.
Ironically a security expert recently discovered that the chips, provided by the company VeriChip can be skimmed and cloned, duplicating an implant’s aunthentification. According to this article the folks at CityWatcher.com weren’t aware of the security flaw.
All I can say is that you’d have to pay me a bunch of money to implant anything in my already-decrepit body and it darn well better be upgradeable without taking it out and putting it back in. It also better be a lot more reliable than my PC or my cell phone because if it behaved like those sorry devices it would probably start repeatedly ordering my implanted arm to pick my nose or something slightly worse.
The Winston-Salem Journal’s Ken Otterbourg wrote a blog post about how reporters are using personal blogs and journals on sites like myspace.com and facebook.com to build profiles of people in addition to or in lieu of personal interviews. One of the stories he highlights is that of the suicide of James Dungy, the son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. Reporters used his comments on myspace.com to get a sense of the young man that even his parents and friends didn’t have before his death.
Reading this got me to thinking about my own kids. Kids have always had, and always will have an altnernative persona to that which they show at home. To me that’s healthy, but it’s also scary. Does their alternate persona put them in danger (hanging out with gang-bangers, unprotected sex, buying drugs, etc.) or is it simply a matter of different language, dress, etc? I’ll do anything I can to make sure I know the answer to that question.
As far as I know my kids’ only online activity right now is playing Runescape, but honestly I’m not sure. When and if they do start to blog or set up a page on myspace or whatever I’m going to be their most avid reader. They’ll probably know this and they’ll probably try to set up a secret, anonymous presence somewhere, but if and when they do I’ll do my damndest to make sure I find it. Let’s put it this way: I’m thinking of putting something on their computer to track their activity.
Is this "warrantless spying"? Yep. Is it wrong? Nope, because I’m not a public servant. I’m a father and I want to make sure I know what’s going on with my kids. Now if I’m stupid I’ll find out their doing something I don’t like, say listening to rap and IMing nasty comments to friends, and then ride their case about it. That would totally defeat the whole purpose. I’m keeping an eye on them to make sure they aren’t hurting themselves. If I call them on every little thing I’ll just alienate them and alert them that I’m watching them like a hawk. On the other hand if I take the attitude that kids will be kids (silly, crude, arrogant, petty, etc.) and reserve intervention for serious matters (secret liaisons with 19 year-old college students, drug buys, etc.) then I’ll be doing what a father should be doing: acting in the best interest of his kids.
Now you might argue that this is the equivalent of reading my kids’ diaries. First, diaries are truly private. Posting something on myspace is the equivalent of taping a diary page to the outside of your bedroom door and if you do that I’m going to read it. Second, if I think something serious is going on with one of my kids I have no problem with cracking their diary to see if I can find out what’s going on. Not to catch them at something, but to prevent them from getting hurt. If I don’t find anything like "Yesterday I met Mr. XXX my gym teacher in his office and he kissed me" I’ll put it away and try not to ever let them know I was there.
To put this succinctly I’ll say this: My kids have the right to a perception of privacy, but until they turn 18 they have no rights to real privacy whatsoever. I’ll be polite and knock on their door before I enter their room, but if they say "Go away, I’m busy", I’ll kick the damn thing in without a second thought if I want to. When you come down to it kids are not-yet-fully-formed human beings. They can be incredibly naive and it never seems to occur to them that bad things can actually happen to them. As a parent it’s my job to help them survive long enough to become fully-formed human beings (I’m 39 and I’m still working on it) and I’ll use whatever tools I can to do the job.
Befuddled 