Author Archives: admin
Individual Mandate Survives Supreme Court Challenge
America, now that your neighbors are FORCED to pay for your healthcare, expect them to take interest in your diet, exercise and smoking habits. 
Supreme Court Rules on Arizona Immigration Law
German Foreign Minister sets out plans for European political union
From Open Europe Summary:
A group of ten EU Foreign Ministers, chaired by Germany’s Guido Westerwelle, have put forward proposals to use the eurozone crisis as a stepping stone towards establishing a ‘political union’ by transferring more power to the EU, including the creation of a European monetary fund, a European army and a European finance minister. The proposals were strongly criticised by Frank Schäffler, an MP with Westerwelle’s liberal FDP party, who argued that the plan was incompatible with liberal principles and that Europe “doesn’t need a centralised and planned economy.”
The march toward tyranny.
European Court Says Getting Sick On Vacation Means You Get A Do-Over
They’re already entitled to four to six weeks of guaranteed vacation leave per year, and now a court there just ruled that workers who happen to fall ill while on vacation are legally entitled to get a do-over on their trip. Who needs tips about how to not get sick on vacation with a loophole like that?
The decision came about after department store workers in Spain brought a case to Spanish court, where they won, arguing that collective bargaining agreements distinguish a clear line between annual leave and sick leave.
The National Association of Large Distribution Businesses then appealed to the Supreme Court in Madrid, which then handed the matter over to Europe’s highest court, says the New York Times.
“The purpose of entitlement to paid annual leave is to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure,” the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled. “The purpose of entitlement to sick leave is different, since it enables a worker to recover from an illness that has caused him to be unfit for work.”
A previous ruling had held that a sick person could reschedule a trip if they got sick right before it, but has now extended that provision to the vacation itself, saying, “The point at which the temporary incapacity arose is irrelevant.”
All 27 countries in the European Union will be held to the court’s decision. That means 27 potential future homes. (Read more)
Undercover police officer who infiltrated animal rights extremists ‘bombed shop’
Ministers have been urged to investigate claims that an undercover police officer who had infiltrated a group of animal rights extremists planted a fire bomb in a department store.
Caroline Lucas, the Green Party’s leader, told MPs she had seen a witness statement alleging that Bob Lambert, who went under the alias of Bob Robinson – placed the device in a branch of Debenhams in Harrow, north-west London.
The device was one of three left by activists with the Animal Liberation Front to protest at its decision to sell fur products. Two ALF members, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were jailed for planting fire bombs in stores in Luton and Romford in 1987, but the third activist involved in the attacks was never caught.
Speaking under parliamentary privilege, Ms Lucas said Sheppard now alleged that Lambert had been responsible. Reading out part of Sheppard’s statement, she said: “There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Bob Lambert placed the incendiary device at the Debenhams store in Harrow.
“I specifically remember him giving an explanation to me about how he had been able to place one of the devices in that store.”
9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians
Another demonstration of what public schools really are: prisons run by goons.
For the past two months, one of my favorite reads has been Never Seconds, a blog started by 9-year-old Martha Payne of western Scotland to document the unappealing, non-nutritious lunches she was being served in her public primary school. Payne, whose mother is a doctor and father has a small farming property, started blogging in early May and went viral in days. She had a million viewers within a few weeks and 2 million this morning; was written up in Time, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and a number of food blogs; and got support from TV cheflebrity Jamie Oliver, whose series “Jamie’s School Dinners” kicked off school-food reform in England.
Well, goodbye to all that.
This afternoon, Martha (who goes by “Veg” on the blog) posted that she will have to shut down her blog, because she has been forbidden to take a camera into school. She said:
This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.
I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too.
Police bar 3 veiled women from entering France
A police union says three Saudi women who refused to remove their face veils at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport have been barred entry to France. (Read more)
Chicago’s swift, surprising[?] decline
Part of me likes it when politicians have to face the consequences of their arrogance and psychopathic policies. But maybe I shouldn’t rejoice. The parasites got what they want — they’ve grown fat enough to weather an economic storm and re-attach themselves once a better host becomes available.
But despite the chorus of praise, it’s becoming evident that the city took a serious turn for the worse during the first decade of the new century. The gleaming towers, swank restaurants, and smart shops remain, but Chicago is experiencing a steep decline quite different from that of many other large cities. . . .
Begin with Chicago’s population decline during the 2000s, an exodus of more than 200,000 people that wiped out the previous decade’s gains. Of the 15 largest cities in the United States in 2010, Chicago was the only one that lost population; indeed, it suffered the second-highest total loss of any city, sandwiched between first-place Detroit and third-place, hurricane-wrecked New Orleans. While New York’s and L.A.’s populations clocked in at record highs in 2010, Chicago’s dropped to a level not seen since 1910. . . .
Chicago’s economy also performed poorly during the first decade of the century. That was a tough decade all over the United States, of course, but the Chicago region lost 7.1 percent of its jobs—the worst performance of any of the country’s ten largest metro areas. Chicago’s vaunted Loop, the second-largest central business district in the nation, did even worse, losing 18.6 percent of its private-sector jobs, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance. . . .
Maria Pappas estimates that within the city of Chicago, there’s a stunning $63,525 in total local government liabilities per household. Not all of this is city debt; the region’s byzantine political structure includes many layers of government, including hundreds of local taxing districts. But pensions for city workers alone are $12 billion underfunded. If benefits aren’t reduced, the city will have to increase its contributions to the pension fund by $710 million a year for the next 50 years, according to the Civic Federation. Chicago’s annual budget, too, has been structurally out of balance, running an annual deficit of about $650 million in recent years. . . .
As dire as Chicago’s finances are, those of Illinois are in even worse shape. The primary cause, once again, is pensions, which are underfunded to the tune of $83 billion. Retirees’ future health care is underfunded an additional $43 billion. There’s a lot of regular debt, too—about $44 billion of it. And Illinois, like Chicago, has run large deficits for some time. Despite raising the individual income tax 66 percent and the corporate tax 46 percent in 2011, the state is projected to end the current fiscal year with an accumulated deficit of $5.2 billion. While California has made headlines by issuing IOUs to companies to which it owes money, Illinois has taken an easier route: it just stopped paying its bills, at one point last year racking up 208,000 of them, totaling $4.5 billion. Some businesses have gone unpaid for nine months or even longer. Unsurprisingly, Illinois has the worst credit rating of any state. Unable to pay its bills, it is de facto bankrupt.
What accounts for Chicago’s miserable performance in the 2000s? The fiscal mess is the easiest part to account for: it is the result of poor leadership and powerful interest groups that benefit from the status quo. Public-union clout is literally written into the state constitution, which prohibits the diminution of state employees’ retirement benefits. Tales of abuse abound, such as the recent story of two lobbyists for a local teachers’ union who, though they had never held government jobs, obtained full government pensions by doing a single day of substitute teaching apiece. . . .
As City Journal senior editor Steven Malanga has written for RealClearMarkets, Illinois “essentially wanted to be a low-tax (or at least a moderate-tax) state with high services and rich employee pensions.” That’s an obviously unsustainable policy formula. The state has also employed a series of gimmicks to cover up persistent deficits—for example, using borrowed money to shore up its pension system and even to pay for current operations. At the city level, Mayor Richard M. Daley papered over deficits with such tricks as a now-infamous parking-meter lease. The city sold the right to parking revenues for 75 years to get $1.1 billion up front. Just two years into the deal, all but $180 million had been spent. . . .
ordinances affecting a specific council district—called a “ward” in Chicago—can’t be passed unless the city council member for that ward, its “alderman,” signs off. One downside of the system is that, as the Chicago Reader reported, over 95 percent of city council legislation is consumed by “ward housekeeping” tasks. More important is that it hands the 50 aldermen nearly dictatorial control over what happens in their wards, from zoning changes to sidewalk café permits. This dumps political risk onto the shoulders of every would-be entrepreneur, who knows that he must stay on the alderman’s good side to be in business. It’s also a recipe for sleaze: 31 aldermen have been convicted of corruption since 1970.
Red tape is another problem for small businesses. Outrages are legion. Scooter’s Frozen Custard was cited by the city for illegally providing outdoor chairs for customers—after being told by the local alderman that it didn’t need a permit. Logan Square Kitchen, a licensed and inspected shared-kitchen operation for upscale food entrepreneurs, has had to clear numerous regulatory hurdles: each of the companies using its kitchen space had to get and pay for a separate license and reinspection, for example, and after the city retroactively classified the kitchen as a banquet hall, its application for various other licenses was rejected until it provided parking spaces. An entrepreneur who wanted to open a children’s playroom to serve families visiting Northwestern Memorial Hospital was told that he needed to get a Public Place of Amusement license—which he couldn’t get, it turned out, because the proposed playroom was too close to a hospital!
And these are exactly the kind of hip, high-end businesses that the city claims to want. . . .
ordinances affecting a specific council district—called a “ward” in Chicago—can’t be passed unless the city council member for that ward, its “alderman,” signs off. One downside of the system is that, as the Chicago Reader reported, over 95 percent of city council legislation is consumed by “ward housekeeping” tasks. More important is that it hands the 50 aldermen nearly dictatorial control over what happens in their wards, from zoning changes to sidewalk café permits. This dumps political risk onto the shoulders of every would-be entrepreneur, who knows that he must stay on the alderman’s good side to be in business. It’s also a recipe for sleaze: 31 aldermen have been convicted of corruption since 1970.
Red tape is another problem for small businesses. Outrages are legion. Scooter’s Frozen Custard was cited by the city for illegally providing outdoor chairs for customers—after being told by the local alderman that it didn’t need a permit. Logan Square Kitchen, a licensed and inspected shared-kitchen operation for upscale food entrepreneurs, has had to clear numerous regulatory hurdles: each of the companies using its kitchen space had to get and pay for a separate license and reinspection, for example, and after the city retroactively classified the kitchen as a banquet hall, its application for various other licenses was rejected until it provided parking spaces. An entrepreneur who wanted to open a children’s playroom to serve families visiting Northwestern Memorial Hospital was told that he needed to get a Public Place of Amusement license—which he couldn’t get, it turned out, because the proposed playroom was too close to a hospital!
And these are exactly the kind of hip, high-end businesses that the city claims to want. (Read more)
China Announces How It Would Go To War Against The US Fleet
If, God forbid, a major naval engagement happens somewhere in the world, we will likely see the end of surface warfare. The economics favors the defender. It is easier to hit a ship with a missile than it is to hit a missile with a bullet. Also, if shooting missiles at ships, a 1% success rate is devastating. In contrast, for the side trying to shoot missiles with bullets, a 99% success rate can be disastrous.
The idea of an empires military supremacy generally outlives the reality. Given the characteristic arrogance of our political leaders, it is unlikely that this will end well.
And once it happens – Lord help us. It will be another 9/11. No dissenting opinion will be able to withstand the rhetoric surrounding hundreds of dead sailors. Every tyranny and every tax will be introduced to re-established the refuted idea of surface warfare and American military invincibility.
The U.S. has made no secret that it’s pulling its focus from the Middle East and directing military attention to the Pacific, and now China is pushing back.
The Economic Times reports China is increasing its conventional missile capability to carry out multiple launches, the one tactic that could overwhelm a Navy ship’s defenses and cripple its abilities.
Tan Weihong, Commander of China’s Second Artillery Force says, “Conventional missiles are a trump card in modern warfare. So we must be ready at any time. We must be able to deliver a quick response to attacks, hit the targets with high accuracy, and destroy them totally. Of the 114 missiles [our brigade] has launched so far, all have accurately hit the target.”
For each incoming missile a U.S. Navy ship will have to perform some variation of the following actions:
First it will launch a long-range air defense missile, like a SM-2ER. If that fails, then a shorter range missile like the ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) will go out — then the ship’s main deck guns will fire anti-air rounds with fused airburst shells.
Surviving missiles will be engaged by close-in weapons systems like the Mk-15 Phalanx or the RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile). Any incoming missiles struck by these systems will be so close, and moving so fast, that incoming shrapnel and debris would likely be unavoidable.
While all these “Hard Kill” options are going on, the ship’s electronic warfare systems will have been trying to jam the incoming missile, offering the missile a false target, while firing off chaff (for radar guided weapons) and flares (for infrared guided weapons).
All that for every single missile, so if China can send off several at once directed at the same ship, the chances of success on their part may increase exponentially.
Ron Paul Supporters Are Taking Over the Republican Party
The President’s Kill List
What is wrong with the President sitting in a room, looking at lists and portraits of people—a Somali man, a seventeen-year-old girl, an American citizen—and deciding whom to kill? That, according to long and troubling articles in both the Times and Newsweek, is a job Barack Obama has assigned himself. His aides, notably John Brennan, his counter-terrorism adviser, portray it as a matter of taking responsibility—if we are going to assassinate someone, or call in a drone strike to take out a camp in Yemen, the President should make the call—as if our only alternative were some sort of rogue operation, with generals or C.I.A. agents shooting at will. But responsibility involves accountability, which is something, in this case, that appears to be badly lacking. Obama has not taken on a burden, but instead has given the Presidency a novel power.
The “kill list” story is a reminder of how much language matters, and how dangerous it is when the plain meaning of a word is ignored. Each might include a mini-glossary: “baseball cards,” for the PowerPoint slides with the biographies and faces of targets; “Terror Tuesday,” meetings where targets are sorted out; “nominations” for death-marked finalists; “personality strikes” that aimed to kill a person, and “signature strikes” that went after a group of people whose names one didn’t know because of the way they seemed, from pictures in the sky, to be acting. (From the Times piece, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane: “The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees ‘three guys doing jumping jacks,’ the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official.”) Signature strikes were also known as TADS, for terrorist-attack-disruption strikes, or just as “crowd kills.” Both articles explore Obama’s halting efforts to confine signature strikes to Pakistan, rather than Yemen and Somalia, and how he ultimately didn’t, really. This is the kind of attack that, in one incident mentioned by Daniel Klaidman in his Newsweek piece, led to “persuasive” reports of dozens of women and children dying. A lawyer who saw that on “Kill TV,” the feed that let the military and lawyers watch strikes, said later, “If I were Catholic, I’d have to go to confession.”
More disturbing than childish names for brutal things are the absurd meanings ascribed to more sober terms. The key ones are “civilians and combatants,” and “due process.”
www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/05/the-presidents-kill-list.html#ixzz1yRg068CQ
Fear mounts among African migrants as Israel begins deportation
The South Sudanese are the most concerned of all, after a Jerusalem court last week legitimized their deportation. (Read more)
Online Crypto for made easy! Keep their eyes off your email!
Shanghai’s leading code slinger, David Veksler, who is also a good friend and long-time collaborator on all things digital, has come up with something wonderfully subversive. It is an encrypted messaging service that takes a giant step toward making cryptography available to the rest of us.
It is called cryptabyte.com. It is the first, easy-to-use, web-based service to provide absolutely uncrackable security in communications and file sharing. It’s a free product for now, and will probably remain so, but I have hopes that he can eventually commercialize it, if only to insure its viability over time.
This new technology is a brilliant example of a theme I’ve been turning over in my mind, namely, how technology is blazing new trails to give us freer lives even in times of rising state despotism the world over. It is becoming clearer by the day that it is not the politicians or even the intellectuals who are going to save civilization but the entrepreneurs and the digital cowboys who are liberating humanity in practical ways, every day. (Read more)