Catherine Crier's Blog, page 5

Corporate Lobbying Firm ALEC Now Sponsoring Overtly Political Events with the RSC

The revolving door between Capital Hill, the lobbying sector, and corporate jobs is out of control. Unaccountable corporate lobbyists write laws, draft budgets, and create policies that protect personal and business interests.

As Bill Clinton might say, ‘It takes brass ones’. While claiming tax-exemption as a 501(c)3 charity, the corporate lobbying group ALEC is sponsoring overtly political events with the Republican Study Committee. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the IRS?

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From Salon

GOP’s corporate front group

The Republican Party and the American Legislative Exchange Council are about to establish an official “partnership”

BY ALEX SEITZ-WALD

George W. Bush speaks to the American Legislative Exchange Council in July, 2007. (Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing)

After a long flirtation, the GOP and ALEC are taking steps toward making their relationship official. ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a controversial advocacy group that helps corporations and conservative interest groups write bills to be introduced in state legislatures across the country. ALEC “model legislation” includes rollbacks on environmental and labor regulation, voter ID laws and pro-gun laws, such as the “stand your ground” law that became infamous after the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida earlier this year. Recently, ALEC has come under increasing scrutiny, leading at least 38 major corporations to drop their sponsorship of the organization, including GE and Sprint, which pulled out just two weeks ago.

Despite this, the Republican Study Committee, a caucus of over 160 conservative lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives, which functions like the official in-house think tank for House Republicans, is taking steps to establish a “partnership” with the corporate front group, Roll Call’s Janie Lorber reports. The RSC has been working quietly with ALEC to host an event with federal and state lawmakers at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Friday. Paul Teller, the executive director of the RSC, was happy to embrace the ALEC. “Frankly, this gathering is long overdue … As Washington encroaches more and more into state and local spheres, it’s important that conservative legislators at the federal and state levels collaborate on policies to stop and roll back the ever-expanding federal government.”

RSC Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, is a member of ALEC, along with several dozen other Republican congressmen. ALEC has only a single Democratic member from the U.S. House, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma. Jordan’s campaign paid dues of $100 to ALEC in 2001 and 2011, and possibly other years, according to documents published by ALEC Exposed, a  project of the Center for Media and Democracy.  A handful of GOP senators, including Marco Rubio and Jim DeMint, are also members, along with Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia. While many ALEC events serve as a forum for corporate representatives to meet with lawmakers, there will be no corporations represented at Friday’s event, which will feature at least six federal and 18 state lawmakers.

ALEC has also come under fire from good government groups, who argue that it is in clear violation of tax rules governing nonprofit organizations. Unlike 501(c)4 groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, which already skirt the legal boundaries of political activity allowed for nonprofits, ALEC is a 501(c)3 charity. These groups, which include every major charity, are even more strictly limited in the political activity they can engage in. According to the IRS, “In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying).”

Critics argue that lobbying is the sole purpose of ALEC’s work, as it hooks up corporations and lawmakers. Marcus Owens, the former head of the IRS’ Exempt Organizations division, which handles nonprofits, has asked the agency to revoke ALEC’s tax-exempt status.

“To the extent that ALEC officials themselves are at this event, they are having lobbying contacts. … It seems to me that it’s probably a slam-dunk,” Joe Birkenstock, a lawyer who works with Owens told Roll Call.

But perhaps it is no surprise that the federal Republicans and ALEC have finally gotten a room, and that it’s at the Heritage Foundation. Republicans and ALEC have long held similar beliefs and worked together on the state level. President Bush and other top Republican leaders have spoken to ALEC. The group, which used to be a nonpartisan corporate front group, happy to advance legislation to either party, as long as it served its corporate backers, has increasingly become the state-based arm of the Republican Party’s progressively more conservative legislative agenda.

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon’s political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. MORE ALEX SEITZ-WALD.

 

Institute of Medicine Report Highlights $750B in Unnecessary Healthcare Spending

After years of corporate abuse, there can be no alternative to a government payer health care system without private sector reforms. According to an Institute of Medicine report, wasteful spending and inefficient uses of technology accounted for $750 billion in unnecessary health expenditures last year.

This system is bankrupting our nation morally, financially, and physically. As discussed in Patriot Acts, until we address core issues—why our costs are so high, why our outcomes are so poor, and why, as a nation, we’re in such bad shape—there can be no meaningful reform.

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From The Washington Post

We spend $750 billion on unnecessary health care. Two charts explain why.

Posted by Sarah Kliff

America spent $2.6 trillion on health care last year; about one in every six dollars went into the health-care system. A third of that spending — a full $750 billion — did nothing to make anyone healthier.

That’s the big takeaway from an Institute of Medicine report out Thursday, which looks at our big health-care spending problem. The report clocks in at a hefty 381 pages, but there are two graphs, in particular, that I found helpful in thinking about wasteful health-care spending.

The first is this pretty simple breakdown of the sources of health-care overspending:

That comes from the IOM’s analysis of its own 2010 data. You can see there are a whole bunch of sources for unnecessary spending that range from inefficient services to excess services and administrative costs.

This second chart offers a different sort of explanation, a look at how the organization of our system creates an environment in which it’s incredibly easy to waste health-care dollars.

This graphic focuses on elderly patients, who tend to have some of the most complicated (and most expensive) health care needs. As you can see, there’s a lot of space for waste. Not enough preventive care happens, meaning that costly complications may develop. Self-management is a challenge, with seniors literally taking dozens of prescriptions. A lack of coordination between doctors compounds problems later down the line.

So much wasteful spending leaves a lot of space for fixes. The Institute of Medicine recommends a number of solutions and many boil down to a pretty simple idea: Health care should be better-coordinated. Doctors should follow up with patients. There should be continuity of care, meaning that patients see the same doctors who have a better sense of their medical background. Wider adoption of digital records, another IOM recommendation, can help with that.

I’ll leave you with this monster graphic that walks through the IOM recommendations, and the various industries that show us exactly how to implement them:

Anti-Government Domestic Terrorists Are A Real Threat to Our Republic

As inflammatory rhetoric and ideological warfare threaten the very pillars of democracy, true patriots must join the battle armed with facts, not deadly weapons and destructive plots. Anti-government “Patriot” groups that engage in domestic terrorism are a real threat to our Republic.

Read this story from Huffington Post Crime about an anarchist militia group under indictment in Georgia, then take a look at the DHS report on Muslim extremism and home grown terrorists discussed in the Economist. Notice any similarities?

From The Huffington Post

Military Terror Plot: Murder Case Uncovers Terror Plot By ‘Militia’ Within U.S. Military

By RUSS BYNUM, ASSOCIATED PRESS

LUDOWICI, Ga. — Four Army soldiers based in southeast Georgia killed a former comrade and his girlfriend to protect an anarchist militia group they formed that stockpiled assault weapons and plotted a range of anti-government attacks, prosecutors told a judge Monday.

Prosecutors in rural Long County, near the sprawling Army post Fort Stewart, said the militia group of active and former U.S. military members spent at least $87,000 buying guns and bomb components. They allege the group was serious enough to kill two people – former soldier Michael Roark and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Tiffany York – by shooting them in the woods last December in order to keep its plans secret.

“This domestic terrorist organization did not simply plan and talk,” prosecutor Isabel Pauley told a Superior Court judge. “Prior to the murders in this case, the group took action. Evidence shows the group possessed the knowledge, means and motive to carry out their plans.”

One of the Fort Stewart soldiers charged in the case, Pfc. Michael Burnett, also gave testimony that backed up many of the assertions made by prosecutors. The 26-year-old soldier pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter, illegal gang activity and other charges. He made a deal to cooperate with prosecutors against the three other soldiers.

Prosecutors said the group called itself F.E.A.R., short for Forever Enduring Always Ready. Pauley said authorities don’t know how many members it had.

Burnett, 26, said he knew the group’s leaders from serving with them at Fort Stewart. He agreed to testify against fellow soldiers Pvt. Isaac Aguigui, identified by prosecutors as the militia’s founder and leader, and Sgt. Anthony Peden and Pvt. Christopher Salmon.

All are charged by state authorities with malice murder, felony murder, criminal gang activity, aggravated assault and using a firearm while committing a felony. A hearing for the three soldiers was scheduled Thursday.

Prosecutors say Roark, 19, served with the four defendants in the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and became involved with the militia. Pauley said the group believed it had been betrayed by Roark, who left the Army two days before he was killed, and decided the ex-soldier and his girlfriend needed to be silenced.

Burnett testified that on the night of Dec. 4, he and the three other soldiers lured Roark and York to some woods a short distance from the Army post under the guise that they were going target shooting. He said Peden shot Roark’s girlfriend in the head while she was trying to get out of her car. Salmon, he said, made Roark get on his knees and shot him twice in the head. Burnett said Aguigui ordered the killings.

“A `loose end’ is the way Isaac put it,” Burnett said.

Aguigui’s attorney, Daveniya Fisher, did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press. Attorneys for Peden and Salmon both declined to comment Monday.

Also charged in the killings is Salmon’s wife, Heather Salmon. Her attorney, Charles Nester, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Pauley said Aguigui funded the militia using $500,000 in insurance and benefit payments from the death of his pregnant wife a year ago. Aguigui was not charged in his wife’s death, but Pauley told the judge her death was “highly suspicious.”

She said Aguigui used the money to buy $87,000 worth of semiautomatic assault rifles, other guns and bomb components that were recovered from the accused soldiers’ homes and from a storage locker. He also used the insurance payments to buy land for his militia group in Washington state, Pauley said.

In a videotaped interview with military investigators, Pauley said, Aguigui called himself “the nicest cold-blooded murderer you will ever meet.” He used the Army to recruit militia members, who wore distinctive tattoos that resemble an anarchy symbol, she said. Prosecutors say they have no idea how many members belong to the group.

“All members of the group were on active-duty or were former members of the military,” Pauley said. “He targeted soldiers who were in trouble or disillusioned.”

The prosecutor said the militia group had big plans. It plotted to take over Fort Stewart by seizing its ammunition control point and talked of bombing the Forsyth Park fountain in nearby Savannah, she said. In Washington state, she added, the group plotted to bomb a dam and poison the state’s apple crop. Ultimately, prosecutors said, the militia’s goal was to overthrow the government and assassinate the president.

Fort Stewart spokesman Kevin Larson said the Army has dropped its own charges against the four soldiers in the slayings of Roark and York. The Military authorities filed their charges in March but never acted on them. Fort Stewart officials Monday refused to identify the units the accused soldiers served in and their jobs within those units.

“Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield does not have a gang or militia problem,” Larson said in a prepared statement, though he said Army investigators still have an open investigation in the case.

“However, we don’t believe there are any unknown subjects,” he said.

District Attorney Tom Durden said his office has been sharing information with federal authorities, but no charges have been filed in federal court. Jim Durham, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, would not comment on whether a case is pending.

 

From The Economist

 

The benefits of hindsight: The need for more monitoring of domestic terrorism

ON APRIL 7th 2009 a unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) charged with monitoring domestic, non-Islamic terrorism released a paper warning that the economic downturn and the election of the first black president “present unique drivers for right-wing radicalisation and recruitment.” Other causes included fears over illegal immigration and the possibility of more restrictive gun laws, and the challenges faced by returning military veterans. It compared the economic and political climate of 2009 to that of the early 1990s, “when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fuelled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs and the perceived threat to U.S. power”; that period culminated in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh, a disgruntled veteran who found a home in America’s right-wing fringe movements.

The report, released just as the “tea-party” movement was heating up, came under withering criticism from the right. Commentators complained that it unfairly placed conservatives under suspicion. John Boehner, the House Speaker, said it cast veterans as “potential terrorists”. Daryl Johnson, who headed the unit responsible for that report, said that DHS promptly caved in to the pressure. Within months his unit, which had six-full time analysts and two supplemental staff—fewer by far than the team that monitored Islamic threats—was gutted, “out of malice and risk aversion”, Mr Johnson maintains, and out of fear of politically motivated budget cuts. Training and publications were cut too.

Nor is this imbalance limited to the DHS: since coming under Republican control in 2010, the House Homeland Security Committee has held five hearings on Muslim radicalisation, and none on right-wing threats. Yet America’s right-wing extremists commit a vastly greater number of murderous attacks (though leading to fewer deaths) than Muslims do. According to the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), published by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, between 1990 and 2010 right-wing extremists carried out 145 murderous attacks, resulting in 348 deaths, 168 of which resulted from the Oklahoma City bombing. During that same time period Muslim extremists committed around 25 attacks, which killed over 3,000 people; but 9/11 accounted for 2,977 of these.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), which monitors right-wing extremists, saw the number of such groups wane during the 2000s, before soaring back following the election of Barack Obama and the economic downturn, as Mr Johnson predicted: by the end of 2011 it counted 1,274 anti-government “Patriot” groups, far more than existed in the mid-1990s and up from a nadir of 131 just four years earlier.

The murder of six Sikhs at a gurdwara in Wisconsin by a white supremacist earlier this month brought calls to redress this balance. But talking about right-wing extremist threatens howls of protest. Nice idea, shame about the politics.

 

Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg Claims Corporations and Lobbyists Are the ‘Solution’

As lobbyists make record sums and taxpayer dollars continue to flood Wall Street accounts, voters must realize that the fundamental principles of American democracy—capitalism, free-enterprise—are being dismantled by elected officials who claim they support traditional conservative principles.

When officials like Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg, currently running for a Republican seat in the Senate, claim corporations and lobbyists are working for pro-American policies it is an absolute sham. Read about Rehberg’s remarks to the American League of Lobbyists and consider whether these men truly represent the American public interest.

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From The Huffington Post

Denny Rehberg, GOP Senate Candidate, Said Lobbyists Are ‘Solution,’ Government Is ‘Enemy’

By Michael McAuliff

Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg has been pounding Democratic Sen. Jon Tester over lobbyist fundraising in their tight Senate race, but Rehberg declared last year in a meeting with the influence peddlers that he probably would have chosen their profession over his own if he had been “smart.”

And further, he declared they were not only honorable, but that he could not do his job without them.

Rehberg made those assertions speaking to the American League of Lobbyists in October at an event that was recorded. The recording was forwarded to The Huffington Post by the Tester campaign.

In the speech, Rehberg recalls how he nearly became a lobbyist.

“A lot of y’all’s type came to me and said, ‘What are you nuts? You know, if we had the choice of either run for Congress or be a lobbyist, wouldn’t you like to try the Congress first?’ And I fell for it,” Rehberg said. “I ran for Congress. I probably, if I had been smart, I would’ve said nope, no, I think I’ll stay out of the political arena and go into lobbying.

“What I’m trying to suggest is I think lobbying is an honorable profession,” he said.

The back-and-forth between Tester and Rehberg over their respective ties to lobbyists has been especially fierce, with Rehberg pointing out repeatedly that Tester has gotten more cash from lobbyists this election than anyone else. Tester’s side has hit back by saying that Rehberg’s son works for a lobby shop, and that Rehberg hides donations from lobbyists.

“We’re pleased that Sen. Tester wants to highlight that Denny chose ranching over lobbying after he left the Lt. Governor’s office,” said Rehberg spokesman Chris Bond, referring to the career choice Rehberg made before running for Congress. “Given that Tester is the number one recipient of lobbyist money in Congress this cycle, it’ll be interesting to see if he chooses farming over lobbying after his unsuccessful reelection bid.”

But Rehberg sounded much warmer to the profession last October.

“Thank you for doing it because we can’t survive as congressmen or as state legislators or even as presidents without the information and knowledge that you have in the areas of your interest,” Rehberg said. “I have to rely on you guys to tell me the information.”

Indeed, Rehberg argued that the lobbyists are better than the government.

“Many, many of you are part of the solution, are part of turning this economy around and ending the recession except that government’s in your way,” he said. “They are, in fact, the enemy, as they’re your senior partner and that is not what government was intended to do.”

Rehberg especially pointed to the ill-fated Super Committee that failed to agree on deficit cuts, leaving it up to the automatic sequester.

“And they blame lobbyists for the problem? What are they, nuts?” Rehberg said. “It’s, it’s, it’s the Congress itself. It’s the dysfunctional Senate and it’s got to be changed.”

Rehberg’s remarks can be heard here or using the player below:

 

DARPA’s “Plan X” Has Potential to Redefine Global Conflict

When the Stuxnet computer virus disrupted Iran’s nuclear weapons program in 2010, even Luddites realized that cyberwarfare will redefine global conflict.

DARPA’s “Plan X” provides a glimpse into this dark arena, including military strategies to defend cyberspace and online “attack systems.” Check out the article from Wired’s Danger Room, then read Daniel Roelker’s “Pillars of Foundational Cyberwarfare” for an overview of this 21st century threat.

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From Wired’s Danger Room

Darpa Looks to Make Cyberwar Routine With Secret ‘Plan X’

By Noah Shachtman

The Pentagon’s top research arm is unveiling a new, classified cyberwarfare project. But it’s not about building the next Stuxnet, Darpa swears. Instead, the just-introduced “Plan X” is designed to make online strikes a more routine part of U.S. military operations. That will make the son of Stuxnet easier to pull off — to, as Darpa puts it, “dominate the cyber battlespace.”

Darpa spent years backing research that could shore up the nation’s cyberdefenses. “Plan X” is part of a growing and fairly recent push into offensive online operations by the Pentagon agency largely responsible for the internet’s creation. In recent months, everyone from the director of Darpa on down has pushed the need to improve — and normalize — America’s ability to unleash cyberattacks against its foes.

That means building tools to help warplanners assemble and launch online strikes in a hurry. It means, under Plan X, figuring out ways to assess the damage caused by a new piece of friendly military malware before it’s unleashed. And it means putting together a sort of digital battlefield map that allows the generals to watch the fighting unfold, as former Darpa acting director Ken Gabriel told the Washington Post: “a rapid, high-order look of what the Internet looks like — of what the cyberspace looks like at any one point in time.”

It’s not quite the same as building the weapons themselves, as Darpa notes in its introduction to the five-year, $100 million effort, issued on Monday: “The Plan X program is explicitly not funding research and development efforts in vulnerability analysis or cyberweapon generation.” (Emphasis in the original.)

But it is certainly a complementary campaign. A classified kick-off meeting for interested researchers in scheduled for Sept. 20.

The American defense and intelligence establishment has been reluctant at times to authorize network attacks, for fear that their effects could spread far beyond the target computers. On the eve of the Iraq invasion of 2003, for instance, the Bush administration made plans for a massive online strike on Baghdad’s financial system before discarding the idea out of collateral damage concerns.

It’s not the only factor holding back such operations. U.S. military chiefs like National Security Agency director Gen. Keith Alexander have publicly expressed concern that America may not be able to properly respond to a national-level attack unless they’re given pre-defined battle plans and “standing rules of engagement” that would allow them to launch a counterstrike “at net speed.” Waiting more than a few moments might hurt the American ability to respond at all, these officers say.

“Plan X” aims to solve both problems simultaneously, by automatically constructing mission plans that are as easy to execute as “the auto-pilot function in modern aircraft,” but contain “formal methods to provably quantify the potential battle damage from each synthesized mission plan.”

Then, once the plan is launched, Darpa would like to have machines running on operating systems that can withstand the rigors of a full-blown online conflict: “hardened ‘battle units’ that can perform cyberwarfare functions such as battle damage monitoring, communication relay, weapon deployment, and adaptive defense.”

The ability to operate in dangerous areas, pull potential missions off-the-shelf, and assess the impact of attacks — these are all commonplace for air, sea, and land forces today. The goal of Plan X is to give network-warfare troops the same tools. “To get it to the point where it’s a part of routine military operations,” explains Jim Lewis, a long-time analyst of online operations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Of course, many critics of U.S. policy believe the deployment of cyberweapons is already too routine. America’s online espionage campaign against Iran has been deeply controversial, both at home and abroad. The Russian government and its allies believe that cyberweapons ought to be banned by international treaty. Here in the U.S., there’s a fear that, by unleashing Stuxnet and other military-grade malware, the Obama administration legitimized such attacks as a tool of statecraft — and invited other nations to strike our fragile infrastructure.

The Darpa effort is being lead, fittingly, by a former hacker and defense contractor. Daniel Roelker helped start the intrusion detection company Sourcefire and the DC Black Ops unit of Raytheon SI Government Solutions. In a November 2011 presentation (.pdf), Roelker decried the current, “hacker vs. hacker” approach to online combat. It doesn’t scale well — there are only so many technically skilled people — and it’s limited in how fast it can be executed. “We don’t win wars by out-hiring an adversary, we win through technology,” he added.

Instead, Roelker continued, the U.S. needs a suite of tools to analyze the network, automate the execution of cyberattacks, and be sure of the results. At the time, he called these the “Pillars of Foundational Cyberwarfare.” Now, it’s simply known as Plan X.

 

NHTSA’s Automobile “Black Box” Regulations Scheduled to Take Effect September 1

On September 1, NHTSA regulations are scheduled to take effect for automobiles with voluntarily installed “black box” devices that track your driving habits, routes and destinations. Promoted by insurers as a way to reduce premiums for safe drivers, these devices may soon become mandatory on new vehicles.

Salon.com’s David Sirota examines another likely scenario wherein the captured data is used to increase rates based not on speeding tickets or accidents, but on ‘bad’ driving habits. Read the article and share your thoughts below.

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From Salon.com

Big Brother takes the wheel

Your insurance company wants to install a device in your car to track your every decision and move. Be afraid.

BY DAVID SIROTA

Your chipper TV friend Flo, otherwise known as Progressive’s ubiquitous shill, wants you to be excited — very excited. As you’ve probably learned from her gratingly effervescent commercials, she and her Big Brothers in the insurance biz want you to see the latest Orwellian scheme not as a privacy-destroying step to justify raising your government-mandated car insurance premiums. Instead, she wants you to see her “patented, proprietary” device “from the future” as a great innovation aimed at saving you money.

And yet, as the federal government this week takes a big step toward possibly mandating “black boxes” for new cars, and as more car firms like Progressive pressure you (and potentially soon require you) to put tracking bugs in your vehicle, serious questions are now swirling around so-called “telematics-based insurance” — questions that Flo doesn’t want you to ask. She purports to have all the answers, shrouding this complex surveillance system in her squeaky voice, wide smile and promises of car-insurance utopia — almost as if she were deliberately parodying the saccharine avatar of an autocratic mega-corporation in a dystopian sci-fi flick. But despite the TV ad barrage, the questions nonetheless persist because the tracking system is both so invasive and so arbitrary.

To appreciate that disturbing reality, consider this FoxNews.com dispatch about how the system works:

Richard Hutchinson, the usage-based insurance manager at Progressive, says the SnapShot works on algorithms that use your driving style to predict how likely you are to have an accident, and how expensive it will be if it happens. Normal insurance plans use dozens of set variables like age and gender to calculate rates, but the SnapShot taps into literally thousands of dynamic inputs including how fast and what time of day you drive. The device captures data in one-second intervals. One of the most revealing stats: how much you brake and how often. Over-braking is a key indicator of an accident-prone driver…

In the end, (Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst with Gartner) says the major hurdle is the Big Brother effect. While (the system) might seem innocuous, once there’s a way to capture how you drive and transmit the results to a home base, the next step could be to monitor your daily commuting route and force you to take a different, theoretically safer, way.

If this seems eerily familiar, that’s because it follows earlier evidence that the 2002 film “Minority Report” was less fantasy than spot-on prophecy. In that film, humans have developed technology to fight “pre-crime” — that is, to stop crimes before they occur, and punish people as criminals for allegedly preparing to commit said crimes.

“Telematics-based insurance” is simply the insurance-industry realization of that technology — a technology that can punitively charge you higher rates for embracing driving styles and geographic routes that supposedly mean you are about to incur collision costs, even if you haven’t actually incurred said costs yet, and even if you never will incur said costs in the future. Essentially, the insurance firms are combining data from the past with real-time data from your car to presuppose that if you brake in a certain style, commute on a certain road, or drive in other myriad ways deemed “risky” but legal, there’s a higher chance that you will get into an automobile accident. So rather than charge you a higher premium after you incur those accident costs, the companies are looking to punitively charge you beforehand à la a Department of Pre-crime.

What’s wrong with such a system? The assumptions baked into the algorithms, that’s what. Yes, your particular braking method may be idiosyncratic, and actuarially, that may indeed suggest you are more likely to crash at some point. But citing generalized odds to assume that you in particular will definitely crash in the future — and to then act on that assumption by charging you higher premiums in the present — is both illogical and predatory, forcing you to pay for accidents you haven’t yet been involved in, or may never be involved in in the first place.

Of course, Flo and other insurance-industry spokespeople like her insist that the system today only exists to give customers premium discounts for “good” driving (however arbitrary that definition of “good” is), but not to raise premiums for “bad” driving. However, if and when the devices become a prerequisite for insurance — which many experts say will soon happen — we would likely see a system in which the “standard” premium is inflated, and the “discounts” for “good” driving only slightly reduce premiums. That is, we would likely see a system in which the technology stealthily raises overall premiums for everyone.

What can be done about all this? Fox reports that some states “currently have specific mandates that prevent insurance companies from requiring” the tracking devices. That’s a good first step, but the regulation is easy for the industry to get around with punitive pricing schemes — the kind that will hold a proverbial gun to the consumer’s head and make the devices a de facto obligation.

No, the only real protection is for states to ban insurers from using these devices to charge higher premiums. It’s a rather simple legislative initiative; a state could simply say that a licensed insurer cannot raise a customer’s premium unless that customer incurs a financial outlay by the insurance company (say, via a collision).

Insurers will no doubt say that’s an unacceptable government intervention into the “free market.” But, then, so too is the government requirement that all drivers buy the car insurance industry’s products. And if states are going to use statutory power to force people to be the insurance industry’s customers, which is a huge financial boon to insurance companies, then in exchange it’s more than fair to require those companies to adhere to some basic consumer-protection rules.

Without such rules, Flo or another one of her Big Brothers will probably soon be in your car — whether you like it or not.

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.” He co-hosts The Rundown with Sirota & Brown on AM630 KHOW in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

 

Vanishing Field Labor Damages U.S. Agricultural Industry

In the midst of a record-breaking drought now crippling U.S. farmers and ranchers, another shortage compounds the damage: vanishing field laborers that harvest the nation’s crops. Perhaps the 2004 movie “A Day Without a Mexican” should get a second look.

Illegal immigrants do backbreaking, often dangerous jobs for minimal wages; jobs that Americans don’t want.

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From CNBC

California Farm Labor Shortage ‘Worst It’s Been, Ever’

By: Jane Wells

There’s a different sort of drought plaguing California, the nation’s largest farm state. It’s $38 billion agricultural sector is facing a scarcity of labor.

“This year is the worst it’s been, ever,” said Craig Underwood, who farms everything from strawberries to lemons to peppers, carrots, and turnips in Ventura County.

Some crops aren’t get picked this season due to a lack of workers.

“We just left them in the field,” he said.

The Western Growers Association told CNBC its members are reporting a 20 percent drop in laborers this year. Stronger border controls are keeping workers from crossing into the U.S. illegally, and the current guest worker program is not providing enough bodies

“We have 100 fewer people this year,” said Sergio Diaz, who provides workers under contract for growers. “We’re having difficulty finding people to do this work.”

The lack of workers is forcing farmers to pay more. In one of Underwood’s fields, pickers are harvesting peppers for $9.25 a hour, or $5 a bucket, whichever is more. Craig Underwood said his workforce is aging and starting to retire, and no one is coming in to replace them.

“Migratory flows between Mexico and the United States have come to a halt,” Carlos Gonzalez Gutierrez, consul general of Mexico in Sacramento, told a California farm bureau labor committee, according to AgAlert.

Growers of California’s wine grapes are concerned there won’t be enough pickers for this fall’s harvest. Berry growers — among the highest paying — saw fewer field hands show up in the spring.

“Fruit that you should be picking is not being picked,” said grower John Eiskamp.

Most pickers in California are not here legally, a fact of life for decades.

When asked if any local residents have come out to apply to work in the fields, Craig Underwood replied, “None. Absolutely none.” He is even having trouble finding truck drivers and other semi-skilled labor for jobs that pay $12-$18 an hour.

The industry lost many workers to home construction during the housing boom, but those workers have not returned.

“The downturn should be helping us,” Underwood said.

He wishes the labor dilemma, which extends beyond California, would get the attention of the presidential campaign, but it hasn’t.

While standing in a field of peppers, Underwood realizes even if he doesn’t have enough labor to pick his crop, Americans will still have food.

“It’ll just be grown in Mexico,” he said. “Or China.”

— By CNBC’s Jane Wells

@janewells

Judge rules federal agents can track cell phone GPS data without first obtaining a warrant.

Less than a year after the decision in U.S. v. Jones, wherein the Supreme Court ruled that a warrant was needed before attaching a tracking device on a car, U.S. Circuit Judge John M. Rogers has concluded that federal agents can track someone using cell phone GPS data without first obtaining a warrant.

Unless overturned, this ruling expands dramatically ‘legal’ surveillance of U.S. citizens. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones examines the Court’s rationale. What do you think?

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From Mother Jones

The US Government Can Track Your Location at Any Time Without a Warrant

By Adam Serwer

Is law enforcement tracking your cell phone’s GPS more like intercepting a phone call or tailing someone on the street? A federal court decision says it’s more like following you—which means the authorities don’t need to get a warrant to find out where you are at any given time.

The case involves a marijuana courier, Melvin Skinner, whose disposable cell phone was being tracked by the Drug Enforcement Agency as he moved his cargo from Arizona to Tennessee. The DEA got a court order (not a warrant) compelling Skinner’s cell phone company to share his GPS information—the release of which led to Skinner’s capture and arrest.

Skinner’s lawyers argued the DEA tracking his cell was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure because the location information being given off by his phone wasn’t publicly available.

Two judges on the three judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, concluding that Skinner did not have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding his cell phone GPS data. “If a tool used to transport contraband gives off a signal that can be tracked for location,” wrote Judge John Marshall Rogers,” certainly the police can track the signal.”

Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney, says this kind of reasoning is disturbing. The court seems to be saying that if law enforcement is technically capable of engaging in a form of surveillance, it is free to do so.” Crump says. “But that can’t be right. The government is perfectly capable of busting down your door or reading your mail, the mere fact that the government can do that does not mean that you have no expectation of privacy in your home or with your mail.”

The ruling is disturbing for a number of other reasons outlined by Cato’s Julian Sanchez. The opinion compares GPS data to a license plate, a scent that might be followed by a police dog, or the paint job on a getaway car, but as Sanchez writes all of that is stuff you might notice just by looking around. On the other hand, cell phone GPS data can only be acquired through more direct means—like a federal agency using its authority to compel a private company to reveal its users’ data.

To be sure, the company might be physically capable of sending such a ping on its own, just as it would be physically capable of intercepting the contents of a phone call. And if it had built the phone with a secret capability to be remotely activated as a microphone, it would also be physically capable of remotely gathering information about the user’s activities in that way as well. Fortunately, the Fourth Amendment is not limited to pointlessly prohibiting only physically impossible surveillance. The technological capabilities of the phone company or the government do not determine what has been “knowingly exposed”—and it seems clear here that Skinner did not knowingly expose, to either the general public or the phone company, the precise GPS coordinates of his phone.

The judges in the majority, for their part, seems to have been working backwards from the conclusion that Skinner was guilty and that therefore the DEA was justified in obtaining his GPS data without a warrant. “The law cannot be that a criminal is entitled to rely on the expected untrackability of his tools”, wrote Judge John Marshall Rogers. “If it did, then technology would help criminals but not the police.” Of course, as Sanchez points out, the entire point of a warrant is to establish the probable cause that someone is committing an illegal act prior to invading their privacy. Rogers also argued that the evidence provided to acquire the court order would have “almost certainly have been sufficient to establish probable cause.”

In a footnote, Rogers adds that an innocent person would also not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, but by railing against the idea of “criminals” getting away because the government can’t treat Americans with cell phones like animals with RFID collars, he’s already shown his hand. It’s easier to justify intrusive government powers if your case study is a convicted drug courier. Unfortunately, if the “bad guys” don’t have rights, then none of us really do.

The Supreme Court recently ruled in US v. Jones that attaching a GPS tracking device to a suspect’s car requires a warrant. The judges in this case, however, appear to have latched onto Justice Antonin Scalia’s rationale in his majority opinion that the physical act of attaching the device was what  triggered constitutional protections against search and seizure. The Supreme Court avoided concluding whether or not a GPS in a phone would similarly require a warrant.

“[This] result doesn’t make a lot of sense,” says Crump. “It is just as invasive for the government to track you through your cell phone as it is for the government to track you through your car, even more so because you have your cell phone with you 24 hours a day, people even sleep with them by their beds…If all the police have to do is track you through your phone instead of your car, then Jones doesn’t mean very much in terms of protecting Americans’ privacy.”

This case is just the latest example of the government using technological advancements as an excuse to circumvent constitutional protections. Federal authorities made more than 1.3 million requests for cell phone data last year, and presumably few of those people are hauling 1,100 pounds of marijuana down the highway. Unfortunately, as far as the Sixth Circuit is concerned, your cell phone GPS data is no more private than the color of your t-shirt, and there doesn’t seem to be much support in Congress for the bills that would actually change that.

 

3D printing could offer criminals easy access to homemade guns.

Think gun shows are bad? How about a future in which guns can be manufactured from the comfort of one’s home for about $30 dollars in ABS plastic filament? Recently, an American gun forum user may have become the first person in the world to construct and shoot over 200 rounds of a semi-automatic rifle that was partially built using 3D printed plastic.

It’s only a matter of time before this technology will grant nearly anyone with a 3D printer unfettered access to weapons of mass killing. Only by having a serious discussion about the uses of guns in America can we come to a reasonable conclusion about what we can do to significantly reduce gun violence throughout the nation.

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From Wired’s Danger Room

Gun Lobby Loves 3D-Printed Weapons

By Robert Beckhusen

A .22-caliber pistol manufactured partly with 3D-printed plastics. Photo courtesy of Michael Guslick

Designing gadgets with desktop 3D printers is nothing new. But until now, no one has ever used an at-home thermoplastic machine to help build a pistol. For one of the nation’s gun lobbies, it’s about time.

The firearm in question is a .22-caliber rifle developed by Wisconsin engineer and amateur gunsmith Michael Guslick. Using his Stratasys 3D printing machine and blueprints downloaded from the internet, Guslick successfully printed the lower receiver — or frame — of an AR-15 rifle and turned it into a gun. He also shared the results on his blog.

“People have been making firearms at home since before America was a country,” Dudley Brown, executive vice president of the National Association for Gun Rights, tells Danger Room. “And not only does it not make it dangerous, it makes America safer. It’s where most of the innovation came from. John Moses Browning built guns out of his basement. We’re still using them.”

Neither Brown nor the NAGR condone building firearms illegally. But at-home plastic gun manufacturing raises some thorny legal and regulatory questions, and has some worried it could undermine attempts to keep America’s guns under control. Managing the flow of solid weapons is one thing. How do you control a digital pattern that people can use to print guns in their living rooms?

Note that Guslick didn’t manufacture the entire weapon using the printer. The rest of the rifle is assembled from commercial off-the-shelf parts. Guslick provided a photo of an earlier pistol model — seen above — to Danger Room, which shows a printed thermoplastic lower receiver, and a commercially bought metal upper receiver, barrel, grip and magazine. And of course, Guslick didn’t manufacture the ammo either. But as metal and ceramic materials become available for low-end printers, it could become possible to one day print an entire gun.

Legally, however, Guslick did print a firearm. Well, maybe. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, the receiver is what determines whether or not a gun is a gun. No receiver, no gun. For the nation’s gun lobbies — pro- and anti-gun — that may present a problem.

Michael Guslick’s printed AR-15 rifle: Photo courtesy of Michael Guslick

“The laws were written assuming people could make their own guns … the law still does regulate and restrict that,” Daniel Vice, senior attorney at the Washington-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, tells Danger Room. Guslick likely didn’t violate any laws surrounding the manufacturing of the gun without a license, as it’s only for personal use. If he attempted to sell the pistol, or opened up a factory producing the weapons, he’d need authorization from the government.

But Vice said the weapon could possibly be illegal under the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, which bans the possession and manufacturing of firearms that can pass undetected through airport security. But U.S. law is unclear whether this would apply to a gun with metal parts. The Glock pistol, for example, uses plastic parts.

The National Rifle Association did not comment by press time. A representative from the Second Amendment Foundation would not speak on the record, either.

There are also questions about the weapons’ practicality, at least for now. Given another decade or two, they could become easier to build. One current problem is that an upper receiver — where the gun’s chamber is located — made of thermoplastics could melt when experiencing the heat given off by a gas-powered rifle. Building a plastic weapon at home also isn’t like pressing a button, and requires a bit of technical know-how. Brown also doesn’t think criminals would bother trying to make them.

“Some [firearms] are legal to make and some aren’t, and it doesn’t change America,” Brown says. “[Aurora shooting suspect James] Holmes legally bought his AR-15. So it’s not like crooks are worried about getting a hold of firearms.”

But beyond that, there’s nothing technically stopping anyone from making one, or at least the receiver. One hobbyist built an AR-15 magazine. “On a technical level, this is absolutely boring, this is old news,” Guslick says, surprised by the media attention he’s received. But, he says, “On a legal level, this is kind of a curiosity.”

He added that he’s not worried about whether his gun breaks the law. “I don’t think it does, legally. There are commercially manufactured lowers which are pure polymer, no metal at all. So if it was an issue we would have heard about it on a commercial basis long ago.”

Robert Beckhusen is a writer based in Austin, Texas, where he covers Latin America for War Is Boring.

Read more by Robert Beckhusen

Follow @rbeckhusen on Twitter.

 

Jon Corzine is reportedly planning to start up his own hedge fund.

In the absence of any criminal charges filed against him, former NJ Governor Jon Corzine is reportedly planning to start up his own hedge fund; this as authorities close a ten month criminal investigation into the sudden bankruptcy of his firm, MF Global, and $1.2 billion in client funds that still remains “missing.”

Even if he skates prosecution, there should be regulatory or industry rules that would ban financial executives for, at a minimum, grossly negligent misconduct. People go to prison for stealing a few hundred bucks, while Corzine and the other “Too Big To Jail” banksters go right back to work after billions of dollars magically disappear. Your thoughts?

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From The New York Times

No Criminal Case Is Likely in Loss at MF Global

BY AZAM AHMED AND BEN PROTESS

A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

The hurdles to building a criminal case were always high with MF Global, which filed for bankruptcy in October after a huge bet on European debt unnerved the market. But a lack of charges in the largest Wall Street blowup since 2008 is likely to fuel frustration with the government’s struggle to charge financial executives. Just a few individuals — none of them top Wall Street players — have been prosecuted for the risky acts that led to recent failures and billions of dollars in losses.

In the most telling indication yet that the MF Global investigation is winding down, federal authorities are seeking to interview the former chief of the firm, Jon S. Corzine, next month, according to the people involved in the case. Authorities hope that Mr. Corzine, who is expected to accept the invitation, will shed light on the actions of other employees at MF Global.

Those developments indicate that federal prosecutors do not expect to file criminal charges against the former New Jersey governor. Mr. Corzine has not yet received assurances that he is free from scrutiny, but two rounds of interviews with former employees and a review of thousands of documents have left prosecutors without a case against him, say the people involved in the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

While the government’s findings would remove the darkest cloud looming over Mr. Corzine — the threat of criminal charges — the former Goldman Sachs chief is not yet in the clear. A bankruptcy trustee on Wednesday joined customers’ lawsuits against Mr. Corzine, and regulators are still considering civil enforcement actions, which could cost him millions of dollars or ban him from working on Wall Street.

Mr. Corzine, in a bid to rebuild his image and engage his passion for trading, is weighing whether to start a hedge fund, according to people with knowledge of his plans. He is currently trading with his family’s wealth.

If he is successful as a hedge fund manager, it would be the latest career comeback for a man who was ousted from both the top seat at Goldman Sachs and the New Jersey governor’s mansion.

A spokesman for Mr. Corzine declined to comment.

Even with the worst behind him, Mr. Corzine’s reputation has suffered lasting damage.

After the collapse of the firm, which left farmers and other MF Global customers out millions of dollars, Mr. Corzine became another face of Wall Street recklessness. Lawmakers called him back to Washington, a humbling return to the town where he once served as a Democratic senator from New Jersey, to seek answers and to criticize him. With a criminal case unlikely to materialize, the anger over the collapse of MF Global is likely to grow.

Typically in white-collar cases, investigators start their interviews with lower-level employees and build up to the top executives of a firm. In July, when federal authorities first approached Mr. Corzine’s lawyers, it was not clear whether he would agree to an interview. But the signs were good. In such cases, if prosecutors have damning information, they often file charges rather than extend an offer for a voluntary interview.

Though he is now expected to attend the meeting, questions remain about which government agencies will join. Because Mr. Corzine still faces scrutiny from regulators, including the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, their attendance could pose a problem. These agencies, which have a lower bar to proving civil wrongdoing than do criminal authorities, are examining whether top executives misled investors about the firm’s health and failed to protect customer money.

The C.F.T.C, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment for this article.

As the government’s focus shifts away from Mr. Corzine, it remains interested in a lower-level employee in the firm’s Chicago office, who was known as the “keeper of the books” at MF Global. That employee, Edith O’Brien, oversaw the transfer of customer money during the firm’s final week, when the client cash vanished into the hands of banks, clearinghouses and even other customers.

Ms. O’Brien, an assistant treasurer, has declined to cooperate with authorities without receiving immunity from criminal prosecution. The government is hesitating to grant her request, suspecting that Ms. O’Brien is the highest-ranking employee with potential liability, one of the people involved in the case said. Ms. O’Brien has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

If Mr. Corzine agrees to a meeting next month with the F.B.I. and federal prosecutors, the authorities are expected to question him about his interactions with Ms. O’Brien. But Mr. Corzine is unlikely to offer damning evidence or a critical view of Ms. O’Brien, another person briefed on the matter said. The statements Mr. Corzine provides cannot be used against him under the expected terms of the interview, but authorities can use it to build their broader case. And if Mr. Corzine were to arouse suspicions during the interview, he could find himself a target.

Mr. Corzine has already given his version of events publicly. In Congressional testimony last year, he detailed an exchange he had with Ms. O’Brien days before the firm’s collapse. The back and forth involved a $175 million transfer to JPMorgan Chase to cover an overdrawn account. The transfer, it turned out, came from customer money.

But internal e-mails suggest that Mr. Corzine did not know the origin of the funds. An e-mail reviewed by The New York Times shows Ms. O’Brien explicitly stated that the money belonged to the firm, not customers. It is possible that with the books in disarray, Ms. O’Brien was not aware that customer money was in jeopardy.

A lawyer for Ms. O’Brien declined to comment.

While Mr. Corzine also testified that he never authorized or intended to authorize the misuse of customer money, his risky trading strategy helped pave the firm’s downfall.

Known as an obsessive trader who had the highest returns at the firm, Mr. Corzine frequently inhabited a desk on the trading floor. One visitor to MF Global recalled that during a tour of the firm’s Manhattan headquarters, his guide suggested that if he “stuck around” he might catch the chief executive trading a few million dollars in bonds.

As the firm’s leader, Mr. Corzine was upbeat about its future, writing an e-mail to employees in January 2011: “Let’s be an example of how to do it right and play a leadership role in restoring confidence in our industry.”

But a $6.3 billion wager on the European sovereign debt proved fatal. The size of the bet was enough to wipe out the firm many times over, and as questions about Europe’s health grew, a run on MF Global ensued. In the panic, the firm tapped customer money to stay afloat, which scuttled a last-minute deal to save the firm. Mr. Corzine resigned just days after the firm filed for bankruptcy.

A version of this article appeared in print on 08/16/2012, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: No Criminal Case Is Likely in Loss At Corzine Firm.