US Senate Takes Leisurely Course to Shutdown

Maybe it's a strategic move, but after the US House worked over the weekend, you'd think the Senators would be eager to send the rejected budget bill back to the House, but maybe they're smarter than me, I dunno.  I would venture to guess it will become a joke topic on the late night shows, the Democrats left themselves open to ridicule.  Just for the record, I think they deserve ridicule for that.

Oregon Official Site for Health Insurance

After Oct 1 the official Oregon Health Care site will be open to enroll.  It is coveroregon.com.  Health Insurance under this program will be effective starting Jan 1, 2014.  If you already have health coverage through your employer, you don't have to do anything.  For seniors on medicare nothing is changed, medicare continues as before.

House GOP Goes Nuts Over Obamacare

Ted Cruz was pouring Kool Aid and the guys in the house were guzzling it like drunks on New Years Eve, singing "Hail, Hail, the gang's all here.  What the heck do we care?".  It was just two days ago while Cruz was doing his marathon speech on the Senate floor that CNN published an analysis of the political chessboard and concluded that a shutdown would be bad for the GOP and they probably wouldn't let it happen, but Kool Aid can change everything.  The House Republicans nearly unanimously voted to check into the new Cruz wing of the asylum.  Chanting the mantra "We're listening to the people", they neglected to check out the polls that a majority of people would blame the GOP for a shutdown.  Good luck with that guys.

In a Blog post The Hill.com noted that the Wall Street Journal thought the idea was ill advised, in a story sprinkled with battlefield anecdotes.

“We wish the GOP luck, since we support the policy if not the strategy,” the conservative-leaning board wrote in a Tuesday editorial. “But however this charge into the fixed bayonets turns out, we hope the folks who planned it will take responsibility for what happens now.”

In the piece entitled “The Cruz Campaign Against Obamacare,” the op-ed board singled out Lee and Cruz for their “implausible defunding gambit”

The NY Times also discussed the sanity of the House GOP in an Opinion piece.

Our challenge today is to explain how Congress evolved into our national nutcase.  Cruz kept demanding that the Senate “listen to the American people,” but he really meant that they should listen to his Twitter followers. A politician riding on a wave of tweets feels as if the nation is cheering his every word, even when the nation is actually reading the sports page while a select splinter of hard-core supporters manically pound away on their smartphones. A hundred thousand people cheering you on in the social media feels like a mass movement. But this is a gigantic country. You can find 100,000 people who believe in a secret plot by Belgium to corner the market on beetroot.

GOP steaming towards shutdown

It's Saturday 9/28/2013 and only 2 days to go before a government shutdown and the GOP has allowed the anarchist Tea Party element of their party to paint them into a very bad corner.  They are set to propose a 1-year delay of Obamacare and a permanent repeal of its tax on medical devices as conditions to keep government running, and that would assure shutdown, as the Senate will vote it down in a second.

House leaders also proposed a provision to ensure that military service members would not be affected by a shutdown, an indication that Republicans will try to insulate themselves from political fallout if a shutdown occurs.
The proposal will be considered by the House in three separate votes. The one-year delay and the tax repeal for medical devices would be added to the Senate spending bill. The measure to keep financing for the troops in the event of a shutdown would be separate. Votes are likely to come on Saturday night.

 I think the GOP will come to regret this craziness very soon.

Wyden Proposes Surveillance Limits

Ron Wyden issued a press release Tuesday on new legislation proposed to limit the most objectionable powers the government has assumed that led to mass spying on all American citizens.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), will hold a press conference on Wednesday, Sept. 25 at 4 pm EDT to unveil principles for comprehensive surveillance reform. Their approach will end the bulk collection of phone records of law-abiding Americans, close the “back-door searches” loophole that allows the government to search for Americans’ communications without a warrant, and create an independent constitutional advocate to argue significant cases before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Wyden also had a lot to say about the operation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) as well, in an article published in Ars Technica.

Further, the Oregon senator said that the FISC needs to be far more open than it has been previously. Until this year, nearly all FISC opinions and orders had been secret. That has changed recently, as lawsuits brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and resulting pressure from the Edward Snowden leaks forced a limited number of new documents to be exposed.
“[FISC's] rulings and opinions need to be made public in order for public confidence to exist,” he said. “Secret courts were one of the reasons that we rebelled against the English. Star chambers became a symbol of our reason for revolution, and secrecy should be really an anathema to our judicial process.”
Wyden and his colleagues also pushed the idea of a “constitutional advocate,” or ombudsman, who would act as the government’s judicial adversary in a FISC hearing. He also addressed a likely rebuttal from the intelligence community, that valuable information may be lost if the judicial process is bogged down by appeals.
“There should be no delay from a constitutional advocate because the review can happen while the warrants are ongoing,” he said. “That appeal can be to SCOTUS or to [other] courts of appeals, to [the FISC of Review]. The appeal right now is nonexistent because only the government is represented. The constitutional advocate would have as its clients the rights of American citizens.”

He's got my vote.

Oregon Recession 5 Years Later

If things feel bad it's because they are, and while some things get better for a small percentage, they're not getting better for most.  A study published last June by the Oregon Employment Department detailed the employment situation in Oregon, not much good news there.  Note: The labor force participation rate is the percentage of working-age people who are actually employed or actively looking for work. 

•Oregon’s labor force participation rate is at its lowest level since records began in 1976.

•Oregon’s labor force participation rate peaked at 68.9 percent in 1998 and declined to

63.4 percent in 2012.

•The aging of Oregon’s population explains roughly half of the decline in Oregon’s labor

force participation rate since 2000.

•Sharp declines in the labor force participation rates of Oregon’s youth and young adults

(ages 16 to 24) account for more than one-quarter of the decline in Oregon’s labor force

participation rate since 2000.

Another State Employment Study published Sept 24, 2013 concluded,

Job growth is expected to accelerate over the next two years, with the state expected to fully regain the nearly 150,000 jobs lost during the Great Recession by early 2015 - nearly six years after hitting bottom.

This is grim news for people under 55, things will probably not get better any time soon.

•Oregon’s older population (ages 55 and above) is the only age group projected to have a

growing labor force participation rate through 2020.

•Even though labor force participation rates for Oregon’s older population are increasing,

this age group still has lower participation rates than the prime working age group (ages

25 to 54). Therefore, as the older age group makes up a larger share of the population,

Oregon’s overall labor force participation rate will fall.

•Labor force participation rates among Oregon’s youth and young adults (ages 16 to 24)

and prime working age group (ages 25 to 54) are projected to decline through 2020.

The sharpest decline will occur among Oregon’s teenage population.

•Oregon’s labor force participation rate ranks 31st highest among the 50 states.

•Across Oregon’s counties there is a fairly strong correlation between high unemployment rates and low labor force participation rates. In addition, many counties with high unemployment rates are rural counties that also have older populations. Both of these factors – high unemployment and an older population – contribute to lower labor force participation rates.

OHSU and Brian Druker raise $1 Billion, Maybe

It was a huge event in cancer research, Phil Knight offered $500 Million in matching funds good for the next two years, all OHSU needs is to raise a like amount in donations.  This is a big win for Dr. Brian Druker, the director of the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU.

Just four or five months ago, Druker said Saturday, he approached Knight with a bold request: $1 billion for his institute to help, ultimately, cure cancer when it takes root, but also to detect and strike it before the disease spreads.
This is what I think it will take, Druker remembered telling Knight. He wasn't going to be shy about dreaming big and being honest with the Knights about what he needed.
Flash forward, four or five months later, to Knight's surprise announcement.
"They've challenged us, but they've also challenged the nation in some respects," referring to what amounts to a national fundraising campaign, Druker said.

 If you have a few bucks to spare, OHSU could use the help.

We Almost Nuked North Carolina

It was January 23, 1961 and JFK had just been sworn in as President a few days earlier, and we almost accidentally exploded a 4 Megaton nuclear bomb over Goldsboro, NC according to a story published in The Guardian today. A b-52 bomber carried 2 live bombs when it broke up in flight, releasing the weapons, as discovered by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser while researching a book.

he bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

The US government denied there was any risk, but more than 52 years later the truth is out, proving once more that the government will cover up anything that might be embarrassing, especially if it involves the military.  Some things haven't changed.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".

The document was uncovered by Schlosser as part of his research into his new book on the nuclear arms race, Command and Control. Using freedom of information, he discovered that at least 700 "significant" accidents and incidents involving 1,250 nuclear weapons were recorded between 1950 and 1968 alone.
"The US government has consistently tried to withhold information from the American people in order to prevent questions being asked about our nuclear weapons policy," he said. "We were told there was no possibility of these weapons accidentally detonating, yet here's one that very nearly did."

The Road to Shutdown

Anarchy, Ho! seems to be the GOP strategy of the moment as the House is riding the shutdown train.  Even John Boehner is joining what the NY Times calls The March to Anarchy.

Until now, the only House Republicans pushing for a government shutdown and debt crisis were a few dozen on the radical right, the ones Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, referred to as “the anarchists.” On Wednesday, however, the full Republican caucus, leadership and all, joined the anarchy movement, announcing plans to demand the defunding of health care reform as the price for keeping the government open past Sept. 30.

Earl Blumenauer posted commentary on his Facebook Page.

Appalling House GOP plan just released: Extend harmful protections for Monsanto and repeal Obamacare or we shut the government down.

 The Senate will of course reject the extra conditions and send a clean Resolution back to the House, then it's up to House and Senate members to get something passed by both.

“We’re going to pass a clean CR without any of the defunding stuff,” said a senior Democratic aide.
Reid is betting he can attract enough Republican votes to pass a Senate bill that repudiates the House effort to defund Obama’s signature healthcare initiative.
“We are completely united on this issue. We’re not defunding ObamaCare and we’re not negotiating on the debt ceiling,” Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Reid’s deputy, told reporters Wednesday. “We believe — at least we hope — that the mainstream, reasonable Republicans, as they get closer and closer to the deadline, will come to their senses.
“If they think we’re going to back off, they’re wrong, they’re on a different planet,” he added.

Merkley Vrs Monsanto

Jeff Merkley is continuing his effort to have the Monsanto Protection Act die a proper death, but the GOP House members have other plans.  There is a renewal of the act buried in the Continuing Resolution to fund the government that was passed by the house, and Merkley wants it killed in the Senate.  In related news, a Washington State farmer growing alfalfa for export had his crop rejected for containing GM alfalfa, an apparent contamination of his fields seed stock.  Alfalfa GM seeds are not distributed by Monsanto.

Alfalfa is America's fourth largest crop, behind corn, wheat and soybeans, and the main feedstock for the dairy industry. A confirmed case of contamination could hurt the organic dairy industry, which is now worth $26bn a year, forcing farmers to find new sources of GM-free feed. It could also hurt a growing export industry. Alfalfa is increasingly sold for export but buyers, such as Japan, do not want GM products.
Campaigners said the suspected case of contamination provided further evidence of the difficulties of containing GM crops.
"It's telling that these things keep happening repeatedly," said George Kimbrell, senior attorney at the Center for Food and Safety in Portland, Oregon. "It's a systemic problem. We have a failed regulatory system for these crops."

Snowden Gets Some Respect

In a rare moment of candor, the director of the NSA James Clapper acknowledges Snowden as having a little positive impact and the judges of the FISA court overseeing the NSA have ordered the declassification of more of their rulings to advance the public debate.

The Fisa court ordered the Justice Department to identify the court's own rulings after May 2011 that concern a section of the Patriot Act used by the NSA to justify its mass database of American phone data. The ruling was a significant step towards their publication.
It is the second time in a week that a US court has ordered the disclosure of secret intelligence rulings. On Tuesday, a federal court in New York compelled the government to declassify numerous documents that revealed substantial tension between federal authorities and the surveillance court over the years.
On Thursday, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, conceded that the NSA is likely to lose at least some of its broad powers to collect data on Americans.
He acknowledged that Snowden's disclosures had prompted a necessary debate: "As loath as I am to give any credit to what's happened here, I think it's clear that some of the conversations this has generated, some of the debate, actually needed to happen.
"If there's a good side to this, maybe that's it."

What Clapper didn't acknowledge is the fact that he and his agency have done everything they could to prevent that debate from ever happening, and still would love to bury Snowden in a small cell.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of the ACLU there will probably be more information revealed as a result of their FOIA requests filed in 2011.  The DOJ has tried to stonewall and obstruct the process every way they could, but cracks in the wall are finally appearing.

"We are pleased that the surveillance court has recognized the importance of transparency to the ongoing public debate about the NSA's spying," said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. "For too long, the NSA's sweeping surveillance of Americans has been shrouded in unjustified secrecy. Today's ruling is an overdue rebuke of that practice. Secret law has no place in our democracy."

FDA and Drug Pushers

The FDA seems to be catching up to reality, millions of Americans are hooked on opioids like OxyContin, despite past big Pharma research that said it wasn't addictive.  The Washington Post revealed the deceit in an analysis of the research and the industry spin put on the results.  Don't worry, no drug pushers are going to jail over this, just a little misunderstanding folks.  It makes me pretty sick to think about it.

The New England Journal of Medicine, the nation’s premier medical publication, informed readers that studies indicated that such painkillers pose “a minimal risk of addiction.”
Another important journal study, which the manufacturer of OxyContin reprinted 10,000 times, indicated that in a trial of arthritis patients, only a handful showed withdrawal symptoms.
Those reassuring claims, which became part of a scientific consensus, have been quietly dropped or called into question in recent years, as many in the medical profession rediscovered the destructive power of opiates. But the damage arising from those misconceptions may have been vast.
The nation is confronting an ongoing epidemic of addiction to prescription painkillers — more widespread than cocaine or heroin — that has left nearly 2 million in its grip, according to federal statistics.

Conflicts of interest
A closer look at the opioid painkiller binge — retail prescriptions have roughly tripled in the past 20 years — shows that the rising sales and addictions were catalyzed by a massive effort by pharmaceutical companies to shape medical opinion and practice.  But according to a Washington Post examination of key scientific papers, a court document and FDA records, many of those claims were developed in studies supported by Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, or other drug manufacturers. In addition, the conclusions they reached were sometimes unsupported by the data, and when the FDA was struggling to come up with an opioid policy, it turned to a panel populated by doctors who had financial relationships with Purdue and other drugmakers.

Income Inequality Continues

This doesn't come as a surprise, but it is worrisome.  The income gap between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America widened to a record last year.  If the money game continues at this pace, the mood of the 99% could turn dour.  None of the press is recognizing this as an unsustainable "bubble", but it looks that way to me - notice comparisons to numbers not seen since the 1929 crash and subsequent depression.  95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.

The headlines in the Oregonian were reflecting recently published results of an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.

The top 1 percent of U.S. earners collected 19.3 percent of household income in 2012, their largest share in Internal Revenue Service figures going back a century.
U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. But until last year, the top 1 percent's share of pre-tax income had not yet surpassed the 18.7 percent it reached in 1927, according to an analysis of IRS figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University.
One of them, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, said the incomes of the richest Americans might have surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.
Last year, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose 19.6 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.
The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. Their incomes fell more than 36 percent in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 as stock prices plummeted. Incomes for the bottom 99 percent fell just 11.6 percent, according to the analysis.
But since the recession officially ended in June 2009, the top 1 percent have enjoyed the benefits of rising corporate profits and stock prices: 95 percent of the income gains reported since 2009 have gone to the top 1 percent.
That compares with a 45 percent share for the top 1 percent in the economic expansion of the 1990s and a 65 percent share from the expansion that followed the 2001 recession.
The top 10 percent haven't done badly, either. Last year, they captured 48.2 percent of income, another record. Their biggest previous take was 46.3 percent in 1932.
The top 1 percent of American households had income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.
The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.
-- The Associated Press

NSA Credibility Problem

On Tuesday 9/10/2013 the government finally declassified FISA and NSA court documents that reveal the agency lied to the court and Congress about their activities for years, and perpetuated those lies until Edward Snowden blew the whistle on them.

After years of government stalling and stonewalling, they finally released data to both the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation who had filed FOIA requests on the court rulings.  Both the EFF and ACLU have had only a few hours to examine the documents, but here are their initial comments.

ACLU

“These documents show that the NSA repeatedly violated court-imposed limits on its surveillance powers, and they confirm that the agency simply cannot be trusted with such sweeping authority,” said Alex Abdo, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The abuses revealed in these documents are alarming but also predictable. These violations are the inevitable result of allowing the NSA to assemble a vast database of sensitive information about every American. The documents provide further evidence that secret and one-sided judicial review is not an adequate check on the NSA’s surveillance practices.

EFF

Clapper's Continued Trouble with the Truth
On June 6, just days after the Guardian newspaper published the first of many articles on NSA spying, Director of National Intelligence Clapper attempted to reassure the public that the NSA telephone record program was limited and restrained. "The information acquired does not include ... the identity of any subscriber."
Documents released today show this to be false.  In an August 3, 2009 declaration to the FISA court, NSA Director Keith Alexander wrote that "the collected metadata thus holds contact information that can be immediately access as a new terrorist-associated telephone identified are identified."  While it is not surprising that the NSA can correlate a phone number to a person (phone book technology has been available for some time), here we have it in black and white that Dir. Clapper attempted to mislead the public.

The NSA's Word Games Confuse Even the NSA
As we've noted time and time again, the NSA plays with language, using words in non-standard ways.  After not reporting violations to the FISC for years, the NSA had this explanation: "there was never a complete understanding among the key personnel who reviewed the report ... regarding what each individual meant by the terminology used in the report."  The NSA presents this as an excuse why it misled the court.
Want to Know Why the NSA gave Raw Access to the CIA, FBI and NCTC in violation of a Court Order?
So did the Court, who ordered the NSA to explain the violation of its prior order. So did we. However, you're not going to find out today. Four pages of NSA Director Alexander's response to this question are redacted.

The Guardian published some analysis of the documents.

A judge on the secret surveillance court was so disturbed by the National Security Agency's repeated violations of privacy restrictions that he questioned the viability of its bulk collection of Americans' phone records, according to newly declassified surveillance documents.

Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the powerful House committee on oversight and government reform, said that he backed legislation to "permanently cease" the bulk phone records collection.
"Government actions that violate the constitution cannot be tolerated and Congress must act to ensure the NSA and the intelligence community permanently cease such acts and hold the appropriate individuals accountable," Issa wrote to House majority leader Eric Cantor on Tuesday.

On-Line Evil Marketing

A scam marketing organization, Best Brand Values, was selling goods online, but in the checkout process if the buyer pushed a blinking "Free Shipping" button, they were secretly enrolled in a "shopping club" run by the scammers and automatically billed $10 - $20 / month.  I have had a similar thing happen to me and I know how frustrating it is to deal with thieves like them.

The Oregon DOJ finally caught up with them and put a stop to it.

“It’s wrong and they’re taking advantage of people, often taking advantage of elderly people, and it’s evil,” said Jeff Manning, with the state Attorney General’s office.
As part of the Oregon settlement, he says, the company has agreed to change its websites to more clearly warn consumers about membership fees.  And it will pay $300,000 to a Justice Department consumer protection fund.
Iowa and Florida reached similar settlements with Best Brand Values.

Strange Alliances

There are alliances forming on the political landscape that I thought I'd never see happen in my lifetime.  The NRA has joined the ACLU lawsuit over government spying, the rationale given by the NRA is that the government could use their information trove to punish NRA members and gun owners in general.

The NRA, in an amicus brief in support of the ACLU, argues that the mass surveillance program provides "the government not only with the means of identifying members and others who communicate with the NRA and other advocacy groups, but also with the means of identifying gun owners without their knowledge or consent".

 Meanwhile on the Syria debate, John Kerry and John McCain are making nice with each other along with Saxby Chambliss, but Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are opposed. 

But the vote exposed deep schisms in both parties. Two of the committee’s most liberal members — Udall and Murphy — voted no, while Markey, another liberal champion, declined to take a position. Among Republicans, Corker, Flake and McCain — generally considered establishment party members who have supported other Obama administration policies in recent months — agreed with the Democratic majority, while five of their GOP colleagues, including two considering presidential campaigns, voted no.
The Rubio and Paul votes are most notable and serve as the first opportunity to put potential 2016 candidates on the record on an important foreign policy matter. Their no votes likely make it difficult for other would-be GOP presidential candidates, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), to support any resolution.
The committee vote was close — but not along party lines — a good reminder that military engagement in Syria has scrambled the two parties and two chambers like few other issues in recent years.

Wow, what's next, does Peter DeFazio become a Republican?