The Year 2013 As It Happened

Dave Barry gives us the low down on important events in 2013, along with his twisted humor.

Income Inequality in a Single Graph

The Washington Post has a column called Wonkblog, which solicited suggestions for the "Graph of the Year" from a number of policy and academic experts. Here is the contribution from Senator Chuck Schumer.

The single greatest problem facing America today is not the deficit, but rather the decline in middle-class incomes. For the first time in our history, middle-class incomes are on a steady and troubling path downward. That trend has turned American politics upside down as middle-class families struggle to pay the bills, their mortgage, and put enough away for a decent retirement.
The income gap this chart represents is not sustainable. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy, but if we don’t pursue policies that advance economic opportunity for the middle-class, this country will change for the worse. We need to focus like a laser on the light blue line in this chart, and get it heading upwards again.

Tax, Welfare, Wal-Mart and McDonald's

I have blogged before about Oregon tax policy that rewards the big fat cats Nike and Intel, which is a huge transfer of tax responsibility from highly profitable corporations to me and you, and continuing that train of thought we might consider Wal-Mart and McDonald's, as well as the entire food service industry, where non-union minimum wage workers are in a majority.  According to a Bloomberg article,

The two biggest welfare queens in America today are Wal-Mart and McDonald's.  According to one study, American fast food workers receive more than $7 billion dollars in public assistance. As it turns out, McDonald's has a “McResource” line that helps employees and their families enroll in various state and local assistance programs. It exploded into the public when a recording of the McResource line advocated that full-time employees sign up for food stamps and welfare. 

Wal-Mart however stands in a category by itself, being the largest private-sector employer in the U.S. and according to a study last May by the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Wal-Mart forces its employees to use public assistance to survive, resulting in hidden taxpayer subsidies of their profits.  The study reports:

Accurate and timely data on Wal-Mart’s wage and employment practices is not always readily available.  However, occasional releases of demographic data from public assistance programs can provide useful windows into the scope of taxpayer subsidization of Wal-Mart.

After analyzing data released by Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, the Democratic staff of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that a single 300-person Wal-Mart Supercenter store in Wisconsin likely costs taxpayers at least $904,542 per year and could cost taxpayers up to $1,744,590 per year – about $5,815 per employee.  Wal-Mart’s size is nothing short of impressive. It employs more than 2 million workers worldwide. It is the nation’s largest private employer; one out of every ten retail workers in America is employed by Wal-Mart. Approximately 1.4 million Americans work at Wal-Mart.  Its workforce is double that of the U.S. Postal Service and outnumbers the populations of 96 countries. In 2012, its total revenue exceeded $469 billion, more than the gross domestic product of oil-rich Norway.  Wal-Mart reported an 8.6 percent increase in profit in the fourth quarter of 2012 and a profit margin of 4.38 percent.  In 2012, it earned $17 billion in profits.

 Wal-Mart says thank you very much as they pocket those hidden subsidies in their profits. 

NSA Phone Metadata Dragnet Ruled "Legal and Necessary"

A federal court judge ruled that the NSA was perfectly within its rights to collect the phone records of every US citizen in an absurd ruling against the ACLU.  The ACLU will appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit.  As MSNBC reports,

When Judge William H. Pauley ruled that the National Security Agency’s metadata program was lawful on Friday, he argued that there was no significant dispute about “the effectiveness of bulk telephony metadata collection.”
Pauley–who issued his ruling from a courthouse less than two miles from where the twin towers once stood–then offered a series of examples cited by the NSA to bolster their claims that the program is effective, all of which have been “seriously disputed.”
Only four plots among the fifty-four the NSA claims to have helped foil have been made public. Pauley cited three of those four plots in arguing that the metadata program was effective, but journalists and legislators have picked already picked those examples apart. ProPublica published a piece in October by Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer noting that in each of the three cases Pauley mentions, there were serious doubts as to whether or not the NSA was exaggerating either the plot itself or the impact of the program.

 Two Democratic members of the Senate intelligence committee, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, said in July that the NSA has “significantly exaggerated this program’s effectiveness,” and warned that “assertions from intelligence agencies about the value and effectiveness of particular programs should not simply be accepted at face value.”
Aside from Leon and federal legislators, there’s one more entity that has disputed the usefulness of the NSA metadata program: The review board appointed by the White House itself. In their report, the board concluded that bulk collection of metadata “was not essential to preventing attacks.” After the report was released, one of the review board members, Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, told NBC News there was no evidence the program had thwarted any attacks.

Orwellian NSA Spying Ruled Unconstitutional

A Federal Court judge in Washington DC has ruled the NSA bulk phone metadata collection is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches without due process, and he called the program "Orwellian".  Thanks to Edward Snowden the cracks in the NSA armor are about to break.  The Guardian reports:

Judge Richard Leon declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.  Leon’s opinion contained stern and repeated warnings that he was inclined to rule that the metadata collection performed by the NSA – and defended vigorously by the NSA director Keith Alexander on CBS on Sunday night – was unconstitutional.  Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, praised what he called Leon's "thoughtful" ruling: “This is a strongly worded and carefully reasoned decision that ultimately concludes, absolutely correctly, that the NSA’s call-tracking program can’t be squared with the constitution."  In his ruling, Judge Leon expressly rejected the government’s claim that the 1979 supreme court case, Smith v Maryland, which the NSA and the Obama administration often cite to argue that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over metadata, applies in the NSA’s bulk-metadata collection. The mass surveillance program differs so much from the one-time request dealt with by the 1979 case that it was of “little value” in assessing whether the metadata dragnet constitutes a fourth amendment search. 

NSA Uses Google Cookies to Target Suspects

The new revelation reported in the Washington Post is not that earth shaking in itself, but it points out how the NSA builds big haystacks of data, making it harder to find a needle.  The experienced terrorist is probably not using Google to roam the internet, so a lot of effort by the NSA probably only tracks the average person, whether they are in the US, Brazil or Germany.  It is intrusive surveillance of people not suspected of doing anything bad.

Separately, the NSA is also using commercially gathered information to help it locate mobile devices around the world, the documents show. Many smartphone apps running on iPhones and Android devices, and the Apple and Google operating systems themselves, track the location of each device, often without a clear warning to the phone's owner. This information is more specific than the broader location data the government is collecting from cellular phone networks, as reported by the Post last week.
"On a macro level, 'we need to track everyone everywhere for advertising' translates into 'the government being able to track everyone everywhere,'" says Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer in residence at UC Berkeley Law. "It's hard to avoid."

Sensenbrenner Wants Clapper Indicted for Lying to Congress

The Hill.com published excerpts of an interview with Rep. James Sensenbrenner in which he called for James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, to be indicted for lying to congress.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the original author of the Patriot Act, says Director of National Intelligence James Clapper should be prosecuted for lying to Congress.
"Lying to Congress is a federal offense, and Clapper ought to be fired and prosecuted for it," the Wisconsin Republican said in an interview with The Hill.

He said the Justice Department should prosecute Clapper for giving false testimony during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March.

During that hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper whether the National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Clapper insisted that the NSA does not — or at least does "not wittingly" — collect information on Americans in bulk. 

After documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA collects records on virtually all U.S. phone calls, Clapper apologized for the misleading comment.

NSA Targets Elves and Orcs

This has to be the most bizarre news story of the day.  The Guardian is reporting that the NSA somehow believed terrorists might be lurking in the hordes of innocent gamers, so naturally they had to do something, not being content with capturing most of the internet traffic already, they had to become Elves and Pixies to root out the terrorists!  One unnamed analyst was given the task of writing up the justification, with comical rationale.

A 2007 invitation to a secret internal briefing noted "terrorists use online games – but perhaps not for their amusement. They are suspected of using them to communicate secretly and to transfer funds." But the agencies had no evidence to support their suspicions. 

This sounded like such fun that the UK's GCHQ, the FBI, CIA, and the Defense Humint Service had to develop their own programs to stem this deadly menace.  Now we know what those folks are doing at work. 

In fact, so crowded were the virtual worlds with staff from the different agencies, that there was a need to try to "deconflict" their efforts – or, in other words, to make sure each agency wasn't just duplicating what the others were doing.
By the end of 2008, such efforts had produced at least one usable piece of intelligence, according to the documents: following the successful takedown of a website used to trade stolen credit card details, the fraudsters moved to Second Life – and GCHQ followed, having gained their first "operational deployment" into the virtual world. This, they noted, put them in touch with an "avatar [game character] who helpfully volunteered information on the target group's latest activities". 

The agencies had other concerns about games, beyond their potential use by terrorists to communicate. Much like the pressure groups that worry about the effect of computer games on the minds of children, the NSA expressed concerns that games could be used to "reinforce prejudices and cultural stereotypes", noting that Hezbollah had produced a game called Special Forces 2.

Well if we needed some comic relief in the never ending trove of Edward Snowden and the masters of spycraft, this will do for today.

Intel Says "Me Too" to Nike Oregon Tax Break

The largest private employer in Oregon with about 16,000 employees, Intel says they'd like the same sweet tax deal Oregon gave to Nike, a 30 year guarantee that their income tax basis won't change from the so-called "single sales factor" tax that only taxes sales in the state of Oregon.  Intel will allegedly create 500 new jobs to earn the break, but those jobs were probably already coming to Oregon, so it was just a favor to keep Intel happy at the expense of all Oregon citizens who will either make up the shortfall or have services cut.  These 30 year tax guarantees will lead to more demands down the road.

Intel already receives tax breaks well in excess of what any other Oregon business enjoys. Its current SIP tax breaks exempt up to $25 billion in Intel equipment from the property taxes that other businesses pay. SIP tax breaks have saved Intel more than $500 million since 2001, according to Washington County officials.   "We have no idea what's going to happen in the world in the next 30 years and it's silly for the state to think that it should sign 30-year agreements with any business," said Jody Wiser of Tax Fairness Oregon. "We shouldn't be tying future legislators hands forever. That's irresponsible."

Flags at Half-Staff for Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela (1918 - 2013) has died at age 95.  He was on my list of most admired and was a huge inspiration to the world for his opposition to apartheid most of his life.  President Obama ordered flags flown at half-mast in his honor.

President Obama recounted to the nation on Thursday how he drew inspiration from Mandela during his first public speech.

"My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid. I studied his words and his writings," he said in a televised address shortly after Mandela's death was announced.

"And like so many around the globe, I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example that Nelson Mandela set, and so long as I live I will do what I can to learn from him."

"He no longer belongs to us," Obama said. "He belongs to the ages."

However the US government opinion of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) movement that he led were blacklisted as terrorists by the US until a 2008 law was signed by then-President Bush removing it from the terrorist list.

The Daily Beast notes:
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan placed Mandela’s African National Congress on America’s official list of “terrorist” groups. In 1985, then-Congressman Dick Cheney voted against a resolution urging that he be released from jail. In 2004, after Mandela criticized the Iraq War, an article in National Review said his “vicious anti-Americanism and support for Saddam Hussein should come as no surprise, given his longstanding dedication to communism and praise for terrorists.” As late as 2008, the ANC remained on America’s terrorism watch list, thus requiring the 89-year-old Mandela to receive a special waiver from the secretary of State to visit the U.S.

If You Have a Cell Phone, The NSA Knows Where You Are

The Washington Post has broken a new story based on internal NSA documents courtesy of Edward Snowden, it turns out the NSA is intercepting data worldwide from major cell telecoms and storing billions of records daily of cell phones proximity to cell towers.  This gives them a global surveillance capability, able to track anybody with a cell phone down to a city block location. They have software filtering the mass ocean of data looking for interesting people and who they might pass by.  You can only hope you're not one of them.

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency gathers nearly 5 billion records a day on the location of mobile telephones worldwide, including those of some Americans, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing sources including documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The records feed a database that stores information about the locations of "at least hundreds of millions of devices," the newspaper said, according to the top-secret documents and interviews with intelligence officials.
The report said the NSA does not target Americans' location data intentionally, but acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellular telephones "incidentally."
One manager told the newspaper the NSA obtained "vast volumes" of location data by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. 

Previously, in late September, Senator Ron Wyden asked NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander during a Senate hearing if the agency had ever made plans to collect Americans’ cell site location data. But, Alexander, after Wyden repeated his question, said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court needed notice if the NSA wanted to collect cell site location records. He then said he did not want to put anything out that would be classified.

How Much We Lost in the Crash of '08

According to Census Bureau Historical tables, we are just now recovering income lost in the cataclysmic Crash of 2008.  The destruction of family earnings took us back to 1996 levels, undoing all the gains of the Clinton years, ending in the brutal destruction during Bush's last year in office. 

The numbers below really understate the extent of destruction as they only reflect the effect on personal income and don't really reflect the loss of wealth that took place due to crashing home values and stock prices, pensions frozen or lost, and businesses bankrupted.  I broke down the Table Data into the years of the Administrations, giving the first year of each president to his predecessor, since any new policy or budget is not set until after a year in office.  Consider the data below showing change in Mean Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Families.

 

Administration	Lowest fifth	Second fifth	Third fifth	Fourth fifth	Highest fifth	Top 5 percent
Clinton	23.56%	17.63%	16.66%	15.99%	20.44%	23.66%
Bush	-6.72%	-3.44%	-1.75%	-1.13%	-1.93%	-4.10%
Obama	-5.09%	-3.71%	-2.60%	-1.95%	-0.14%	1.27%
Bush 2001-2007	-2.15%	0.74%	1.80%	2.36%	-0.23%	-3.55%
Bush 2008-2009	-4.67%	-4.15%	-3.48%	-3.41%	-1.70%	-0.56%
Obama 2012	-0.43%	-0.41%	0.25%	0.31%	0.24%	0.17%

Looking at this, we might yearn for the good old days of the Clinton Administration, even though he was sowing the seeds of the destruction to come by deregulating the banks, which set them on the path of becoming weapons of mass financial destruction.  During the Clinton Administration, every income category gained, with the lowest bracket doing the best of all, except the top 5%.

The Bush Administration was a disaster for all income groups, but was particularly bad for the group nearest poverty, they lost nearly twice as much in family earnings as any other group.  The other groups mostly gained marginally until 2008 - 2009 when the roof caved in on everybody.

The Obama Administration has not improved things much, but things have stabilized in the last year which gives some hope, but the banks are still fighting all attempts at regulation, leaving open the possibility of another crash and bailout.

Greed, Poverty, Unfettered Capitalism, Pope Francis and Sarah Palin

Pope Francis has stunned the world, and shook up Sarah Palin, with his statements on homosexuality, abortion and birth control, but that ain't all.  The Pope has gone from being suspiciously liberal to outright radical with his views on "Unfettered Capitalism". 

I almost never even think about Sarah Palin, but she occasionally provides comic relief.  “He’s had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me,” Palin told CNN in a recent interview.

OK enough of the comic relief.  I also have probably spent less than an hour or two in my lifetime pondering the words of this, or any other Pope until today when Pope Francis released his "apostolic exhortation," a lengthy and detailed exposition of how the Catholic Church should focus its energies.  Pope Francis might just shake things up a lot.  Here is a summary of his words on greed, income inequality, poverty and unfettered capitalism.

Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.  To all this we can add widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions. The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything which stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule.  I exhort you to generous solidarity and a return of economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings.  Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode.

The Washington Post did an excellent story assembling graphs to illustrate many points the Pope made, it is well worth reading.

UN to Declare Human Right to Privacy

A non-binding UN resolution that declares a "human right to privacy" as a basic right is being drafted and will come up for a vote soon.  The US and UK are opposing the language, as it would put them in violation, but given that the US has tortured, kidnapped and killed civilians with drones, this is just another mosquito bite for the government.  It will however keep the topic in the public eye, although The Guardian appears to be the only media paying any attention to the story, I didn't see any other stories in the US press.  We can thank Edward Snowden for the world becoming aware of the US / UK excessive usurping of basic human rights.

The United Nations moved a step closer to calling for an end to excessive surveillance on Tuesday in a resolution that reaffirms the “human right to privacy” and calls for the UN’s human rights commissioner to conduct an inquiry into the impact of mass digital snooping.
A UN committee that deals with human rights issues adopted the German- and Brazilian-drafted resolution that has become an increasingly sensitive issue among UN members.
The resolution, titled “The right to privacy in the digital age”, does not name specific countries but states the UN is: “Deeply concerned at the negative impact that surveillance and/or interception of communications … may have on the exercise and enjoyment of human rights.”
The resolution says “unlawful or arbitrary” surveillance may “contradict the tenets of a democratic society”. It says states “must ensure full compliance with their obligations under international human rights law”.
The 193-member general assembly is expected to vote on the non-binding resolution next month.
The resolution was co-sponsored by Brazil and Germany after leaked documents from former National Security Agency consultant Edward Snowden revealed that the agency had spied on their political leaders.

Press Mutiny over Obama restrictions

There are 38 news organizations ready to stage a revolt over what they view as the "White House’s own Soviet-style news service, which gets privileged access to Mr. Obama at the expense of journalists who cover the president."

At issue is President Obama's policy of not allowing press photographers to cover many official events, then releasing photos and video taken by people under his control.  The Guardian is reporting that:

A mini-revolt by news organisations against White House press restrictions gathered momentum Monday as USA Today joined other media shops to have declared a boycott on officially issued photographs.
“We do not publish, either in print or online, handout photos originating from the White House press office, except in very extraordinary circumstances,” deputy director Andrew Scott said in a memo to employees. “The functions of the president at the White House are fundamentally public in nature, and should be documented for the public by independent news organizations, not solely by the White House press office.”
The memo followed the submission to the White House last Thursday of a letter signed by 38 US media organisations to protest limits on photographers' access.  The Obama administration has aggressively discouraged news organizations from pursuing sensitive stories, seizing reporters’ phone records and naming at least one journalist who published leaked information as a possible criminal co-conspirator. The reliance of the Obama White House on official photography has been a longtime source of complaint.

Dark Money Corrupts Elections

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed the IRS forms of a number of non-profit politically involved groups, and these fat cats are pouring hundreds of millions into lobbying, attack ads and funding their political agenda, including grants to groups ranging from ALEC to Give Missourians a Raise, a union-backed group that successfully fought to raise the state’s minimum wage.  Here is what they found.

The Advocacy Fund, a left leaning group connected to the Tides Foundation, gave $7.7 million in grants to more than 50 groups.  The American Petroleum Institute, received $165.4 million in dues in 2012. That includes $98.4 million for political or lobbying expenses — the highest amounts in five years, based on the organization's previous IRS filings.  Americans for Prosperity, backed by oil moguls David and Charles Koch, reported spending $33.5 million on political campaign activities, $83 million in advertising and promotion and $3 million on travel in 2012. Club for Growth
During the fiscal year ending June 2012, the group spent more than $1 million on two contractors in Bethesda, Md., for media and research purposes; $1.4 million on legislative involvement and policy advocacy; $941,000 on issue advocacy; and $244,000 on "independent express advocacy."  Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drug industry trade association, doled out $18.1 million in grants, including some to politically active “dark money” groups. It awarded $1.5 million to American Action Network; $75,000 to Heritage Action for America; $25,000 to American Commitment; and roughly $250,000 each to the American Legislative Exchange Council, Americans for Tax Reform and Freedom Path Inc. Another $50,000 went to American Justice Partnership, the third largest donor to the Republican State Leadership Committee.  The Republican Jewish Coalition spent $6.6 million on “advertising and promotion.” Of that amount, FEC records indicate $4.6 million went toward ads urging voters to oust Obama, which was nearly 46 percent of its overall spending last year.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $53.9 million on political campaign activities — more than it spent in at least five years. The group also reported spending $57 million on advertising and promotion, $9.1 million on travel and $5.4 million in compensation for its president, Thomas Donohue.  The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform — it also doesn’t disclose its members — received $39.8 million in dues, mostly from 21 groups that paid more than $1 million each. Of this money collected, $32.2 million was for lobbying or political expenses including $3.7 million to the Republican State Leadership Committee and $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the Florida Jobs PAC.  YG Network, the nonprofit arm of the “Young Guns” empire spent nearly $3 million on political advertisements expressly calling for the election of Republican candidates or the defeat of Democratic ones, according to filings with the FEC. 

Feel good about the NSA

This Video from Stephen Colbert is really funny.  He revels in the nonsense put out by the government when talking about the NSA.  Now you can see the logic behind the nonsense.

Umatilla Chemical Weapons Incinerator Almost Gone

The Umatilla Chemical Depot opened in 1941, but no chemical weapons were there until 1962, over 50 years ago in the midst of the cold war constantly threatening to become a hot war.  Once the US decided to destroy them as a result of signing the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Army decided to incinerate them, over much protest from Environmental groups.  The incinerator was completed in 2001. The Army began weapons disposal on September 8, 2004 and completed disposal on October 25, 2011, and now the last remains are being demolished.  Let's hope they never come back.

Corporatocracy Gone Wild

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a trade deal that's supposed to be good for all US citizens, but as I've blogged before, it is totally controlled and written by mega corporations to secure their grip on international trade and laws, and if it is enacted it will further the degradation of our people while the mega rich will gain control over everybody and everything.  It is blessed by President Obama, but no members of Congress will be allowed to see it or debate it, it's being written in total secrecy by the corporate elite.  Public Citizen obtained a leaked chapter of the draft language from WikiLeaks and had this to say.

“The Obama administration’s proposals are the worst – the most damaging for health – we have seen in a U.S. trade agreement to date. The Obama administration has backtracked from even the modest health considerations adopted under the Bush administration,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s global access to medicines program. “The Obama administration’s shameful bullying on behalf of the giant drug companies would lead to preventable suffering and death in Asia-Pacific countries. And soon the administration is expected to propose additional TPP terms that would lock Americans into high prices for cancer drugs for years to come.”   Last week, the AARP and major consumer groups wrote to the Obama administration to express their “deep concern” that U.S. proposals for the TPP would “limit the ability of states and the federal government to moderate escalating prescription drug, biologic drug and medical device costs in public programs,” and contradict cost-cutting plans for biotech medicines in the White House budget.

Other U.S.-demanded measures for the TPP would empower the tobacco giants to sue governments before foreign tribunals to demand taxpayer compensation for their health regulations and have been widely criticized. “This supposed trade negotiation has devolved into a secretive rulemaking against public health, on behalf of Big Pharma and Big Tobacco,” said Maybarduk.

Predatory Drug Pricing

I don't know what it would take to get government action on predatory drug pricing, but take a look at this article on two drugs to treat fatal illnesses, Cystic Fibrosis and cancer.  It makes me so angry that we tolerate this abuse of very vulnerable sick people.

In January 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Kalydeco, the first drug to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis, after just three months of review. It was one of the fastest approvals of a new medicine in the agency’s history. Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which discovered and developed the drug, priced Kalydeco at $294,000 a year, which made it one of the world’s most expensive medicines. The company also pledged to provide it free to any patient in the United States who is uninsured or whose insurance won’t cover it. Doctors and patients enthusiastically welcomed the drug because it offers life-saving health benefits and there is no other treatment. Insurers and governments readily paid the cost.  Several months later, Zaltrap was approved to treat colorectal cancer. The drug was discovered by Regeneron, an emerging biopharmaceutical company like Vertex, but sold by the French drug maker Sanofi. Though it worked no better in clinical trials than Roche’s cancer drug Avastin, which itself adds only 1.4 months to life expectancy for patients with advanced colorectal cancer, Sanofi priced Zaltrap at $11,000 a month, or twice Avastin’s price. Unexpectedly, there was resistance. Doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, one of the world’s leading cancer centers, decided Zaltrap wasn’t worth prescribing. They announced their decision—the first time prominent physicians anywhere had said “Enough” to the introduction of a high-priced cancer drug—on the op-ed page of the New York Times. Three weeks later Sanofi effectively dropped its price by half through rebates to doctors and hospitals. Even so, British health authorities said they would not pay for the treatment.

Banks Still Too Big To Jail

Elizabeth Warren is still hammering on the Obama Administration on the last 5 years of inaction since the great financial crash of 2008, nearly nothing has been accomplished in changing the structure and culture of banks in the US.  The Guardian reports:

"We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions," said Warren, who said the issue was an indictment of how little had changed since the 2008 banking crash.  The four biggest Wall Street banks are 30% larger than before the financial crisis, she said, while the five biggest institutions hold more than half the bank assets in the country.
Warren claimed this amounted to an $83bn-a-year taxpayer subsidy for some Wall Street institutions, because they were so large that they could safely rely on a government bailout in the event of a future crisis, and were therefore able to take bigger risks than rivals. She also cited research suggesting the crash had cost up to $14tn, or $120,000 for each American household.
"Three years since Dodd-Frank was passed, the biggest banks are bigger than ever, the risks to the system have grown and the market distortions continue."
She said current regulators do not give "much reason for confidence" and added: "It is time to act: the last thing we should do is wait for another crisis."

Ron Wyden, "The Culture of Misinformation"

Ron Wyden comments on the bill passed by the US Senate Intelligence Committee over his objections in an interview with The Oregonian yesterday.

After a dozen years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ron Wyden doesn't get surprised easily.  But Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, recently managed it, by assuring the committee that the NSA planned to put bulk data it had collected on American citizens into a secure lockbox. 
Repeatedly, the Oregon senator recalls, Alexander had told the committee the NSA didn't hold data on American citizens.  "Now," says Wyden, "he said he's going to put into a lockbox the data that he's said he doesn't have."
"The culture of misinformation," he says, "has caused a lot of people to say, they're telling us stuff that just isn't true." Even the supersecret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, Wyden points out, has ruled that NSA has sometimes exceeded its legal and constitutional authority.
Wyden is introducing his own bill, very different from the committee's, that would prevent bulk data collection on American citizens, create an independent counsel to respond to NSA surveillance requests to the FISA court and eliminate "backdoor" breaking into social media systems. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced similar legislation, and last week Leahy and Wyden formed an alliance, becoming co-sponsors of each others' bills.

Wyden also commented to The Guardian recently.

Ron Wyden said the bill maintains "business as usual" and "remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform".

Spies Breach "Fundamental Rights" in EU

The Guardian is reporting on continued outrage in Europe over the spying by the NSA and France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.  An analysis presented to a hearing in the EU parliament in Brussels argues that EU law prohibits the actions of the spy agencies.

Sergio Carrera, a Spanish jurist, and Francesco Ragazzi, a professor of international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands, who co-wrote the paper, made the appeal for European action at a hearing in the EU parliament in Brussels on Thursday.
They said the US National Security Agency (NSA), the UK's GCHQ and equivalent bodies in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden had breached basic articles of the EU treaty, such as article 4.3 on "sincere co-operation", as well as privacy clauses in the EU charter of fundamental values and in the European charter of fundamental rights.

"It's no longer credible to say the EU has no legal competence and should do nothing on this. Sorry, we don't think this is acceptable," Carrera said.
"We are witnessing a systematic breach of people's fundamental rights," he added.
Ragazzi said: "The bigger the crisis, the more the system of checks and balances should be reinforced. This is what distinguishes democracies from police states."
The idea that espionage is a national prerogative has been widely used to deflect EU queries into the scandal. 
They said the EU parliament should threaten to block an EU-US free trade agreement unless the NSA and GCHQ disclose the full nature of their surveillance programmes.
They said MEPs should push EU countries to draft a "professional code for the transnational management of data".
They also called for new EU laws to stop internet companies giving information to intelligence services, to protect whistleblowers such as the NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and to form a permanent oversight body on intelligence matters.

FDA (Finally) Bans Trans Fats in Processed Foods

The FDA is out to prevent your early heart attack by eliminating the addition of Trans Fats in processed foods, like frozen pizzas and microwave popcorn. 

Trans fat can still be found in such processed foods as:

• crackers, cookies, cakes, frozen pies and other baked goods
• snack foods (such as microwave popcorn)
• frozen pizza
• vegetable shortenings and stick margarines
• coffee creamers
• refrigerated dough products (such as biscuits and cinnamon rolls)
• ready-to-use frostings

More than decade ago, a sea change began in the American diet, with consumers starting to avoid foods with trans fat and companies responding by reducing the amount of trans fat in their products.
This evolution began when FDA first proposed in 1999 that manufacturers be required to declare the amount of trans fat on Nutrition Facts labels because of public health concerns. That requirement became effective in 2006.
However, there are still many processed foods made with partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), the major dietary source of trans fat in processed food. Trans fat has been linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, in which plaque builds up inside the arteries and may cause a heart attack.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that a further reduction of trans fat in the food supply can prevent an additional 7,000 deaths from heart disease each year and up to 20,000 heart attacks each year.
Part of the FDA's responsibility to the public is to ensure that food in the American food supply is safe. Therefore, due to the risks associated with consuming PHOs, FDA has issued a Federal Register notice with its preliminary determination that PHOs are no longer "generally recognized as safe," or GRAS, for short. If this preliminary determination is finalized, then PHOs would become food additives subject to premarket approval by FDA. Foods containing unapproved food additives are considered adulterated under U.S. law, meaning they cannot legally be sold.

Pharmaceutical Marketing as Organized Crime

One of the Links on my blog is to Howard Brody's blog, Hooked.  He blogs about medical ethics in the Pharmaceutical industry, or, more often, the lack of it.  He recently did a book review on a book by a European Researcher, Peter C. Gøtzsche, Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare (New York: Radcliffe Publishing, 2013).  Here are some of the zingers in the book.

Throughout the book, Gøtzsche uses the organized crime motif to characterize the drug industry. This is quite deliberate and measured. He argues that something counts as organized crime when:

• They kill people
• They lie about what they do
• They routinely break the law as a part of their business practices
• They use their ill-gotten gains to corrupt the government regulatory apparatus so as to be allowed to continue to operate

Gøtzsche is a physician, epidemiologist and research methodologist, and has achieved prominence as head of the Nordic Cochrane Center, a part of the Cochrane Collaboration which is generally recognized as the most reliable and independent assessor of medical data—a sort of gold standard if you want to know: how good is the evidence that any treatment works for any disease? So this guy is not one to fly off the handle and make charges that he cannot document with solid evidence.

• “In the United States and Europe, drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.”(1)
• “The main reason we take so many drugs is that drug companies don’t sell drugs, they sell lies about drugs. Blatant lies that—in all the cases I have studied—have continued after the statements were proven wrong.”(2)
• “The book addresses a general system failure caused by widespread crime, corruption and impotent drug regulation in need of radical reforms. Some readers will find my book one-sided and polemic, but there is little point in describing what goes well in a system that is out of control. If a criminologist undertakes a study of muggers, no one expects a ‘balanced’ account mentioning that many muggers are good family men.”(2)

Unemployment, Talent Scarcity or Incompetent HR?

The official reported unemployment rate is 7.20, but actual rates are much higher.  Nick Corcodilos makes the argument that the "talent shortage" reported by HR managers is really because they have set up impossible job requirements coupled with a reliance on applicant tracking systems (ATSes) and job boards like Taleo, Monster.com and LinkedIn, that screen out everybody, then HR reports they can't find the right person and the job doesn't get filled.

Over 25 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed. (According to the Business Desk, that's how many Americans say they want but can't find a full-time job.) Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, 3.9 million jobs were vacant in September.

What Is Going On

Here's the simple truth: Unemployment is made in America by employers who have given up control over their competitive edge -- recruiting and hiring -- to a handful of database jockeys who are funded by HR executives, who in turn have no idea how to recruit or hire themselves.

Companies Don't Hire Anymore

Employers don't do their own hiring, and that's the number one problem. They outsource their competitive edge (recruiting and hiring) to third parties like Taleo, Kenexa, LinkedIn, Monster.com and CareerBuilder. Monster and LinkedIn alone sucked almost $2 billion out of the employment system in 2012. These vendors offer little more than trivial technologies and cheap string-search routines masquerading as "algorithms" for finding "hidden talent" and "matching people to jobs."

Employers Don't Know How to Recruit

Here's how human resources departments across America "recruit." They put impossible mixes of keywords about jobs into a computer. They press a button and pay billions of dollars for a chance that Prince Charming will materialize on their computer displays. When the prince fails to appear, they double their bets and keep gambling. (Last year, companies polled said just 1.3 percent of their hires came from Monster.com and 1.2 percent from CareerBuilder. See "Is LinkedIn Cheating Employers and Job Seekers Alike?")

The Employment System Vendors Are Lying

The big job boards and the ATSes tell employers that sophisticated database technology will find the perfect hire.

• "Don't settle for teaching a good worker anything about doing a job. Hire only the perfect fit!"
• "We make that possible when you use more keywords for a job!"
• "The database handles it all!"

When matches fail to appear, these vendors blame "the talent shortage" and contend that job seekers lack the specific skills employers need.
Except that's a lie. Job descriptions heavily larded with keywords make it virtually impossible to find acceptable candidates. Wharton researcher Peter Cappelli tells about an employer that got 25,000 applicants for a routine engineering position. The ATS rejected every single one of them. Every day that an impossible job requisition remains unfilled, the employment system vendors make more money while companies keep advertising for the perfect hires.

Employers Have No Business Plan

Employers claim job applicants lack the requisite skills and talents for today's jobs. But in "Why Good People Can't Get Jobs," Peter Cappelli reports that they are wrong. The quality of the American worker pool has not diminished. Rather, American companies:

• Don't want to pay market value to hire the right workers.
• Don't want to train talented workers to do a new job.
• Are content to keep using ATSes that don't get the job done.

America Counts Jobs, Not Profitable Work

The federal government tracks the number of people who have jobs and the number of vacant jobs. But tallying jobs to assess the economy is like counting chickens before they hatch. The federal government has no idea which jobs or which work is actually profitable and contributing to a healthy economy.
It's no secret that the weekly employment figures are questionable and misleading. The definitions of jobs and "who is employed" are so manipulated that no one knows what is going on.

People Must Stop Begging for Jobs

It's time for people to stop thinking about jobs, and high time to start thinking about how -- and where -- they can create profit.
For example, if I run a company, I'll hire you to do work -- if it pays off more than what I pay you to do it. Today, few employers know which jobs actually pay off. That's why you need to know how to walk into a manager's office and demonstrate, hands down, how you will contribute profit to the manager's business. That's right: Be smarter than the manager about his own business. Stop begging for jobs. Start offering profit.

  .

Curry County Defeats Law Enforcement Levy

Curry County may go down in history as the first bankrupt county in Oregon, possibly by next June.  The citizens defeated a law-enforcement levy, one of 4 levies on the ballot yesterday.  They did approve a hospital bond levy and a Port Orford police levy, but shot down the law enforcement and a levy. to fund a new fire truck in Gold Beach.  The county landed a $1 million Federal Funds windfall thanks to Ron Wyden, but even with that their projected deficit is at $2 million.
The county commissioners had this to say.

Curry County Commissioner chair David Brock Smith plans to open conversations with Gov. John Kitzhaber regarding the economic status of the county after the failure of Measure 8-73 at the ballot boxes yesterday.

“The whole thing went down in flames,” he said, after a long pause. “I understand the hard economic times we’re in, that it’s difficult for citizens to look at their pocketbook and have to write out that extra check. …”

The county has enough money to fund its existing services — already basically cut in half this past year — until June 30.

Of note is that the county is down to four sheriff’s deputies, leaving most of the county without coverage during some parts of the day.

“As unfortunate as it is, we must begin conversations with the governor’s office on what those minimum adequate levels of public safety are, Smith said. “We must keep some level of civility in terms of public safety. We must keep the jail open, we must be able to keep the DA’s office whole so we can prosecute crimes other than just Measure 11 crimes.

“We must keep the juvenile department solid so we can give them the resources to preempt youth from becoming adult criminals. That’s a core service within the county, if not the core service.”

Commissioner David Itzen said he understands why voters rejected the measure, especially with three other tax questions on the ballot.

“They just couldn’t find it within their budget to make the necessary changes,” he said. “I guess we’ll need to do something again.”

That “something,” Itzen said, will likely be another question on the May ballot.

Portland Cleveland High School Students Set Model of Inclusion

The students at Cleveland High School have selected a Lesbian couple to the Homecoming Court as reported in The Oregonian.  It's going to be a better world when these folks start running the show.

When Cleveland High students helped Sophie Schoenfeld and Laurel Osborne make school history last month, they hardly seemed to notice.
The two seniors have been dating for about a year. In October, their fellow students elected them to the school’s homecoming court, marking the first time the Southeast Portland school -- and likely any Portland-area high school -- has voted in a same-sex couple.
Every year a prince and a princess for each grade are nominated and voted on by their fellow students. But at the Oct. 4 homecoming assembly, students broke tradition and selected the two girls as the senior class representatives for the court.
The vote, first reported by the Cleveland High School Clarion newspaper, was historic. Yet the students treated the pair like any other homecoming couple, according to Schoenfeld, 18. Teachers, she said, spoke more about the vote’s importance than their classmates.
“A lot of teachers went up to us and said it speaks volumes for the school,” Schoenfeld said.
The couple said they have never felt judged for their sexual orientation at Cleveland High.
“Cleveland is such a cool community,” said Osborne, 17. “I’ve never felt discriminated against. We feel really lucky because it’s not always like that. Cleveland is just a progressive, accepting place.”

Edward Snowden Picks Up Support in Germany

The Guardian is reporting on an article in the German weekly Der Spiegel that many highly placed Germans are calling for recognition of Edward Snowden as a whistleblower instead of a criminal, and some are advocating he be offered asylum in Germany, not that it would likely be adopted by Angela Merkel.  Snowdens' temporary 1 year asylum runs out next June.

Heiner Geissler, the former general secretary of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, says in the appeal: "Snowden has done the western world a great service. It is now up to us to help him."  The writer and public intellectual Hans Magnus Enzensberger argues in his contribution that "the American dream is turning into a nightmare" and suggests that Norway would be best placed to offer Snowden refuge, given its track record of offering political asylum to Leon Trotsky in 1935. He bemoans the fact that in Britain, "which has become a US colony", Snowden is regarded as a traitor.
The weekly news magazine also publishes a "manifesto for truth", written by Snowden, in which the former NSA employee warns of the danger of spy agencies setting the political agenda.
"At the beginning, some of the governments who were exposed by the revelations of mass surveillance initiated an unprecedented smear campaign. They intimidated journalists and criminalised the publication of the truth
"Today we know that this was a mistake, and that such behaviour is not in the public interest. The debate they tried to stop is now taking place all over the world", Snowden writes in the short comment piece sent to Der Spiegel via an encrypted channel.
As calls for drastic measures in response to the NSA revelations are increasing in Germany, Angela Merkel seems to be avoiding direct confrontation with Washington. Several politicians from the chancellor's party have expressed their eagerness to meet Snowden in Russia while simultaneously seeming to rule out the possibility of inviting the whistleblower to Germany. "There is no reason to make a call on a Snowden stay in Germany at this stage," Michael Grosse-Brömer told Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung.

Ron Wyden and the NSA Steamroller

“We’re just going to keep fighting this battle. It’s going to be a long one.”
Ron Wyden has his hands full in trying to rein in the NSA steamroller, which has powerful allies in Congress, such as Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Saxby Chambliss a Georgia Republican on the same committee.  Wyden has labeled their ilk the "Business as Usual Brigade", and true to form they steamrolled a NSA "reform" bill that just continues business as usual with a few weak tweaks to existing practice.

The bill is a direct challenge to one introduced Tuesday by senator Patrick Leahy that would end domestic phone-records collection. It was also opposed by leading intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who said it did not go far enough.
"The NSA's invasive surveillance of Americans' private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform, not incidental changes. Unfortunately, the bill passed by the Senate intelligence committee does not go far enough to address the NSA's overreaching domestic surveillance programs," Udall said.
Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden, said the bill maintains "business as usual" and "remains far from anything that could be considered meaningful reform". 
Wyden suggested that recent concern about NSA spying on foreign leaders had distracted from the real focus on mass domestic surveillance in the US. “The statements that American intelligence officials have made this week about collecting on the intentions of foreign leadership, that’s consistent with the understanding I’ve had for years, as a member of the intelligence committee,” he said.
“That has implications for foreign policy. My top priority is ending the mass surveillance, digital surveillance, on millions and millions of law-abiding Americans.”
Feinstein unexpectedly announced on Monday that she was “totally opposed” to the foreign leader spying of the sort the NSA conducts of German chancellor Angela Merkel. Feinstein has been a staunch supporter of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
“Americans are making it clear, that they never – repeat never – agreed to give up their constitutional liberties for the appearance of security,” Wyden said. “We’re just going to keep fighting this battle. It’s going to be a long one.”

A few days on the Oregon Coast

I can't get enough of the beautiful Oregon Coast, and Yachats is one of my favorites, too bad it's a fair drive from Portland, so not good for an overnight trip, but spend a few days there and you will be at peace with yourself.  Take a walk along the dramatic rocks 50 feet from your room at the Fireside Motel, go into Yachats and enjoy the friendly feel of the town, drive to Waldport and have a fantastic helping of fish & chips at the Lazy Dayz Cafe, and drive up the Yachats River road to spectacular viewpoints in the hills.
See pictures Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.

I Am a Terrorism Suspect, And Now You Are Too

Explore how the NSA looks at potential terrorism targets using the "3 Hops" method.  The Guardian has an interactive tool to show how you get a ridiculous number of suspicious characters.  Just by reading a Blog, you could be swept up in a terrorism investigation.

You don’t need to be talking to a terror suspect to have your communications data analysed by the NSA. The agency is allowed to travel “three hops” from its targets – who could be people who talk to people who talk to people who talk to you. Facebook, where the typical user has 190 friends, shows how three degrees of separation gets you to a network bigger than the population of Colorado. How many people are three “hops” from you?

NSA Circus Returns to Congress

Clapper and Alexander on the NSA road comedy tour went to hearings before the House intelligence committee, and did their usual act.  Why do those people still have jobs?

• Should the power of the NSA be limited more?  No.  We prevented 54 plots, don't ask me how.
• Did Obama order surveillance of Angela Merkel?  Maybe, I don't know.  Somebody did.

Dancing around the central question of how much Obama knew about NSA spying on foreign leaders, Clapper testified that the intelligence agencies “do only what the policymakers, writ large, have actually asked us to do.” But he added that the “level of detail” about how those requirements are implemented rarely rises to the attention of presidents.

Clapper and Alexander with their arrogant attitudes act as if the fix is in and nothing will change.  Considering they still have jobs in government, maybe they're right, nothing has changed so far.

NSA Circus, Nobody Can Keep Their Story Straight

The story of NSA spying on Angela Merkel and other friendly heads of state is a prototypical one of Washington circus, which has prompted a new round of "Reviews" ordered by President Obama and Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence Committee.  According to the Guardian and CNN  there is a major fight brewing in the Administration over who is throwing whom under the bus.  He either knew and is denying it or he didn't know, which most people find not credible.  He either found about it last summer and ordered it stopped, or he let it go on.  Incredible stuff, but in my view we won't find out from any of the current circus performers, they all have no credibility.  I wouldn't trust anybody's word unless it came from Ron Wyden or Mark Udall, and so far they aren't saying.

First CNN.

It's plausible that Obama wouldn't know about specific surveillance targets, said CNN National Security Analyst Fran Townsend, a member of the CIA external advisory board.

She said overall intelligence collection priorities are well-known by the White House. "Specific targets, however, (like) Angela Merkel's cell phone, are not the sort of thing discussed with the President of the United States."

No one should expect the President to know everything the NSA is doing, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.

"But when you're talking about the surveillance of world leaders, and an issue that's been controversial for a while now, you would expect that there's some knowledge either by the President or people surrounding him. ... I do think there's surprise that this was off the radar in the inner circles of the White House."

And from the Guardian,

Did President Obama know about US spying on its friends, apparently going back more than a decade in the case of Angela Merkel? The answer is either "Of course he did, idiot" or "It's plausible he didn't, actually" – depending on whom you ask.
The White House message is clear: the president was in the dark.
The Wall Street Journal quoted an anonymous administration official on Sunday saying that the president didn't find out until this summer about spying on allies and he immediately ordered it stopped. The Washington Post published a corroborating report Monday.
Obama himself told ABC News on Monday that the White House merely gives the intelligence community "policy direction":

I'm the final user of all the intelligence that they gather. But they're involved in a whole wide range of issues.
We give them policy direction. But what we've seen over the last several years is their capacities continue to develop and expand, and that's why I'm initiating now a review to make sure that what they're able to do doesn't necessarily mean what they should be doing.

To members of the intelligence community, the president distancing himself in this way from data collection that fed his daily briefings is a betrayal. The intelligence officials involved aren't taking it sitting down, either. "Current and former US intelligence officials" are talking to Ken Dilanian of the Los Angeles Times, among others. The White House "signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders," he reports:

Obama may not have been specifically briefed on NSA operations targeting a foreign leader's cellphone or email communications, one of the officials said. 'But certainly the National Security Council and senior people across the intelligence community knew exactly what was going on, and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous.'

Oregon, Neurotic Extroverts in Short Supply

Oregon is officially a laid back agreeable creative openness State, according to an article published in a Time.com Science Page, which quotes a personality study of over a million people conducted by a multinational team of researchers led by psychologist and American expat Jason Rentfrow of the University of Cambridge in the U.K.  I took the snap personality test and they recommended I move to Oklahoma.  It might be interesting to take the test, then ask your closest companion to rate your personality and see how closely your answers are to your companions'. 

States were graded on 5 personality traits, and Oregon scored above the national average on Agreeableness and Openness, so maybe Portlandia isn't so far off the mark.  Sanity was not a factor although Neuroticism was, and we're ranked low on that one.  Take the test.

Tea Party Club For Growth Wants Greg Walden Out

Oregons' only GOP Representative has been targeted by the Tea Party Club for Growth in the GOP primary according to Oregonlive.com, they potentially could be backing Klamath County Chairman Dennis Linthicum against Walden.

Walden, who was first elected in 1998, has been well-entrenched in his vast district and has had little serious competition since -- particularly in the Republican primary.  He is in the House leadership by virtue of his chairmanship of the National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees the House GOP campaign effort.
But earlier this year, the Club for Growth -- a conservative group that often spends heavily in Republican races -- put Walden on its "Primary My Congressman" list of GOP members the group thinks should be ousted.
The immediate cause of the group's unhappiness was Walden's opposition to a proposal by President Barack Obama -- and supported by several Republican leaders -- to adopt smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.  The group cited that, as well as several of his votes, as examples of a "long record of supporting increases in government spending and opposing fiscally conservative proposals."

Linthicum said he thinks he can win support from grassroots groups, particularly those involved in the Tea Party movement.  "I think the Tea Party individuals...are clearly in my camp," he said.
Linthicum recently took credit for Walden's vote against the budget deal that ended the shutdown, saying that he too would would have opposed the deal because it did not provide major spending reductions.
Walden has said he opposed the deal because it "kicks the can down the road" without providing a solution.  It marked one of the rare times that Walden had parted ways with House Speaker John Boehner on a major fiscal issue.

Blame It All On Snowden?

President Obama and the NSA brass have exhibited a basic flaw that has been exposed throughout the Snowden revelations, they make bad (I mean really bad) decisions and don't own up to them.  The US Press is still giving cover with soothing editorials, in one particularly mild, and offensive, NY Times article, they find no fault or deficiency in the decisions made, and in fact imply the NSA is out of control, totally ignoring the excuses President Obama has made for their actions.  It's clear that these were decisions made by Presidents Bush and Obama, not some out of control bureaucracy.  The NY Times helpfully offers this advice.

A good way out of this mess would be for Washington to take up the proposal made Friday by Germany and France to negotiate a formal pact that would set mutually acceptable surveillance guidelines.

The US press ought to be calling for blood on the floor, all the brass at the NSA, Feinstein, Chambliss, and all the rest of the toadying hawks on the Intelligence Committees.  The president has an opportunity to be presidential, but he's behaving like a school child caught shoplifting a pack of gum.  As for the NSA brass, General Keith Alexander is mouthing off that it's the fault of the press.  Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian have the only coverage fit to print.

Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant panic – the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, actually demanded Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world on this secret surveillance system be halted (Techdirt has the full video here):

The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith Alexander, is accusing journalists of "selling" his agency's documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor Edward Snowden.
"I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make sense," Alexander said in an interview with the Defense Department's "Armed With Science" blog.
"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it. I don't know how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policy-makers but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on," the NSA director declared. [My italics]

There are 25,000 employees of the NSA (and many tens of thousands more who work for private contracts assigned to the agency). Maybe one of them can tell The General about this thing called "the first amendment".

NSA, Your Tax Dollars At Work

The Whistleblower Edward Snowden came across a Bush era NSA memo to its staff in 2006 that encouraged them to have their "Customers" (White House, State Dept, etc,) pass along any phone numbers of important people so the NSA could tap their phones, as reported in The Guardian.

In addition to snooping on world leaders, the NSA has intercepted phone calls around the world seemingly at random, collecting lots of juicy personal details, but doing nothing to stop terrorism.

But the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced "little reportable intelligence". In the wake of the Merkel row, the US is facing growing international criticism that any intelligence benefit from spying on friendly governments is far outweighed by the potential diplomatic damage.

The memo then asks analysts to think about any customers they currently serve who might similarly be happy to turn over details of their contacts.
"This success leads S2 [signals intelligence] to wonder if there are NSA liaisons whose supported customers may be willing to share their 'Rolodexes' or phone lists with NSA as potential sources of intelligence," it states. "S2 welcomes such information!"

They've managed to piss off everybody in Brazil, France and Germany, among others.  Putin isn't too thrilled either, but hey, he's Russian so I guess he doesn't count.

Money, Politics and Corruption

While our government was awash in corruption before Citizens United created a PAC frenzy, the Center for Public Integrity reports over the top numbers for lobbyists, and it's not even peak election season yet, this looks to be a record year for lobbyists throwing money at government.

But prompted in part by roiling debate over a national farm bill, the Grocery Manufacturers Association reported spending $7.47 million to influence the federal government — never before had it cracked the $2 million mark for a single quarter. A representative for the association could not be reached for comment.
Ahead of Obamacare implementation on Oct. 1, drug makers Amgen Inc. ($2.52 million) and GlaxoSmithKline ($1.27 million), increased their quarterly lobbying expenditures compared to the third quarter of 2012. So did other large lobbying forces with prominent health care interests, such as the American Chemistry Council ($4.75 million), American Medical Association ($4.27 million) and the Biotechnology Industry Organization ($2.02 million).
AT&T Inc., oil company Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., defense contractor Raytheon Co., United Parcel Service, tech firm Hewlett-Packard and bank Wells Fargo also recorded spending increases compared to their performances during last year’s third quarter.
And prominent members of the gun lobby — both for and against firearm restrictions — also topped totals from 2012’s third quarter, although their spending levels were generally down from the previous quarter this year.

Cover Oregon Still Not Functional

First target date of Oct 1 2013 was missed, then the second date Oct 15, 2013 flew by as well, and now they are hoping to be up by the end of October.  The vendor, Oracle Corp is struggling, and may get dinged financially for failing to get the program on track according to Rocky King, the director appointed by John Kitzhaber.

"The product has not been at a quality level that has not been satisfactory to me and they (Oracle) know that," King said, adding that the testing happened so late that the exchange was unaware of the extent of problems.
He says the state has not yet decided whether to withhold contractual payments to Oracle in light of the delays. "I have not been in the mode of pointing fingers, I have been in the mode of getting this up and running," he said.
Documents also show that officials were over-optimistic. According to an application for more grant money in March 2012, Oregon had earlier underestimated its needs.

I hope they do get on track soon or it will be judged a train wreck.  My sympathies to Rocky, he sounds like a good administrator working through a gnarly project.