Wyden Says the NSA is still lying

The NSA is so thoroughly discredited that only one thing is for sure - whatever they say publicly is at best a half truth, but more likely an outright lie.  Wyden and 25 other Senators sent a letter to Clapper asking specific questions about the workings of NSA, and he posted Clapper's public reply.  Wyden then commented on the reply.

Wyden (D-Ore.), as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is privy to classified briefings on the government’s surveillance. On Tuesday, he told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC that all he could say is that the violations are worse than being made public. 

“We had a big development last Friday when Gen. [James] Clapper, the head of the intelligence agencies, admitted that the community had violated these court orders on phone record collection, and I’ll tell your viewers that those violations are significantly more troubling than the government has stated,” Wyden said.

OK, who are we going to believe, Wyden or Clapper?  I hope to soon blog the resignation of Clapper.

Financial Criminals Still Running the Show

News of more looting of the US by the Financial Criminals at the major banks is breaking today.  This time the energy trading activities of JPMorgan, Barclays Plc and Deutsche Bank are being accused of Enron-like manipulation of energy prices throughout the US, resulting in hundreds of millions in energy over-charges to US consumers.  JP Morgan is a serial offender as I've blogged before.  It comes up once again as a prime offender.

The FERC staff said yesterday that the energy-trading unit was involved in five market-gaming strategies in California from September 2010 to June 2011, leading to overpayment “far above market prices.” The company engaged in three gaming strategies in Midwest energy markets October 2010 to May 2011, the staff said.
In one scheme, JPMorgan traders made low end-of-day bids to attract large orders from buyers to provide power the next day, the FERC said. In the first two hours the next day, the bank demanded higher rates for making the power available, a maneuver that led the grid operator to pay it millions of dollars for a period in which demand is typically low.
In another strategy, traders offered low rates for providing electricity the next day to lure orders from grid operators, then gamed the bidding system to reap higher payments “far above market prices,” the FERC said without elaborating.

Once again the bank is too big to jail, and is negotiating a fine with the FERC for repeated criminal acts of fraud and market manipulation. Public Citizen had a statement on the situation.

J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corporation is under investigation for practices that may have resulted in overcharging consumers $73 million or more on their household utility bills. J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. operates under the oversight of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s head of global commodities, Blythe Masters.

In September 2011, ISOs in California and the Midwest noticed that certain payments to power sellers for ensuring that energy would be available if needed (bid cost recovery) had more than quadrupled. Bid cost recovery rules allow power marketers to be paid just for making a bid to sell power, even if the bid isn’t accepted, and ISOs authorize these costs to be passed on to consumers. It’s a loophole that CAISO says J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. took advantage of: making bids at prices it knew would not be accepted so it would be paid for power it did not and never intended to provide.
In March 2012, CAISO asked FERC for permission to change the rules to avoid these overpayments, alleging that J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp. was the power seller grossly overcharging its customers. If Blythe Masters’ unit is found guilty of the allegations, losing her job won’t be justice enough. FERC should take the additional step of permanently revoking J.P. Morgan Ventures Energy Corp.’s market-based rate authority and send a shockwave across the entire industry that market manipulation will not be tolerated.

Surveillance State

Senator Ron Wyden has a warning for our country.

“The combination of increasingly advanced technology with a breakdown in the checks and balances that limit government action could lead us to a surveillance state that cannot be reversed.”

There was an amendment in the House limiting warrantless surveillance that was proposed to be attached to the Defense Appropriations bill, but the amendment was voted down

Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstien (D-CA) and Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), however, found the Amash-Conyers amendment to go too far, issuing a joint statement saying “that any amendments to defund the program on appropriations bills would be unwise.” When ThinkProgress asked whether he disagreed with the two, Wyden demurred. “I can’t speculate on something I haven’t seen,” he said, adding that “I think it is a very, very healthy thing that the House is having a debate and starting the effort to expose the false choice” between privacy and security.
Snowden has been criticized for the way in which he chose to reveal the programs listed. Given his emphasis on his efforts to work within Senate rules on classification to reveal to the American public the extent of these programs, ThinkProgress asked Wyden whether he considered the process in which Snowden leaked that information to be irresponsible. Wyden noted that it’s his policy not to comment on individuals charged criminally, as Snowden has been, and that “this is a debate that should have been started by elected officials, not Mr. Snowden, and I feel very strongly about that.”

The US Economy Report Card from factcheck.org

My go-to source for objective analysis is factcheck.org and they periodically publish a report card on how we're doing since Obama took office, the good along with the bad.

Summary

In our latest quarterly review of key statistical measures of Barack Obama’s presidency so far, we find:

• The economy has now added twice as many jobs since Obama took office than it did in his predecessor’s entire eight years in office.
• Stockholders have grown wealthier; the S&P 500 has gained 110 percent.
• But fewer Americans own their own homes. The rate of home ownership has dropped by 2.3 percentage points.
• However, fewer homeowners are now being forced out by foreclosures. Lenders initiated fewer foreclosure proceedings in June than at any time in the past seven-and-a-half years.
• Consumer prices have risen a modest 9.9 percent since Obama first took office, but wages have barely kept pace. Real weekly earnings rose just 0.1 percent.
• The federal debt declined a bit recently due to the tax-season surge in payments to the Treasury. But the debt is still up nearly 90 percent, and on a path to double.
• While states and cities laid off millions of their workers to make ends meet, the Obama administration continued to hire. The federal workforce is nearly 5 percent larger now, and has grown faster than the U.S. population.
• Obama has now traveled to 38 countries, visiting some more than once. Bush visited 75.
• The president is far short of meeting his goal of doubling U.S. exports. They have risen 31 percent since he took office, and only 2 percent in the most recent 12 months.
• Domestic oil production continues to soar, up 46 percent. Oil imports have plunged by 38 percent. But the U.S. still depends on foreign sources for more than a third of what it consumes.
• Wind and solar power have increased 176 percent. But those sources still make up just 3.8 percent of U.S. electric generation. Coal still accounts for the biggest share: nearly 39 percent.

House votes to not limit NSA spying

A bipartisan amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill in the house will be voted on this week.  It would revoke the flimsy legal justification the NSA uses to spy on everyone in the US.

Republican congressman Justin Amash prevailed in securing a vote for his amendment to a crucial funding bill for the Department of Defense that "ends authority for the blanket collection of records under the Patriot Act." The vote could take place as early as Wednesday evening.
"The people have spoken through their representatives," Amash told the Guardian on Tuesday. "This is an opportunity to vote on something that will substantially limit the ability of the NSA to collect their phone records without suspicion."
It will be the first such vote held by Congress on restricting NSA surveillance after the revelations from ex-contractor Edward Snowden, published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, that detailed a fuller picture of the surveillance authorities than officials had publicly disclosed – something blasted in a fiery Tuesday speech by Senator Ron Wyden, a prominent Democratic critic of the surveillance programs.

 I hope they pass it, and that the Senate does too.

UPDATE:   The House defeated the amendment 205 - 217, with most Democrats voting for the amendment (111 - 83) and most Republicans opposed (94 - 134).  I'd be inclined to support any Republican voting for it and inclined to oppose any Democrat who voted against it.

Oregon Coast - Water merges with sky

We try to get to the coast as often as we're able.  We went to Rockaway beach two years ago in October, lucked out with perfect weather.  Here is a link to more pictures.

TV a hazard to your child's health

How can the TV at home be a hazard?  When it falls over and hurts a small child, and a study finds that this happens on average every 30 seconds, and the result can be fatal.  Now I've learned something new.

Josephine County Still Reeling

The City Council in Grants Pass, OR has voted to fund 20 beds in the Josephine County jail by paying $1 million to the county. 

Tired of seeing people arrested on criminal charges walk free for lack of jail space, the city of Grants Pass is paying nearly $1 million for its own beds in the county jail.
And to make sure the bad guys know it, the city will be posting signs around town saying lawbreakers can expect to be prosecuted.

The voters in the county have repeatedly voted down property tax increases to fund law enforcement, forcing some communities to organize armed citizen patrols to make up for lack of law enforcement, a move that the County Sheriff Gil Gilbertson says “I hold my breath, every day, for everything”.  He is not thrilled that citizens are arming themselves for protection, but he can't provide coverage with the funding he has.

With the fiscal year that started on July 1, the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office now has exactly one deputy left available for general calls in a county of 83,000 people — down from a high of 22 at full staffing a few years ago. Citizen applications to carry a concealed weapon, meanwhile, rose 49 percent last year, according to county records.

At grocery stores in Grants Pass, stopping and citing shoplifters — sometimes with whole carts of beer or food in tow — have become part of the daily law enforcement routine.

Keith O. Heck, a county commissioner, said he fears that the county could break apart into balkanized camps of self-government, each on its own lookout, if a fix to the problem is not found soon.

“Freedom demands structure,” he said. “If you don’t have some structure to that freedom, there’s nothing that is free — everything just becomes a crapshoot and it’s just who’s got the biggest dice.”

At the Grants Pass Liquor Store, it all comes down to whether customers feel safe, said Jack Ingvaldson, the owner. Lately, he said, some do not.

“We have homeless people sitting in the alleyway — they drink, urinate, defecate, fornicate — whatever they can get away with,” he said. And a ticket or citation from a police officer? They laugh and stay put. “They don’t care — they know there’s nowhere to put them,” he said.

 My thought is that the 20 beds will be filled quickly, it's not enough to stop the bleeding, only slow it down a little.

 

Another Portland Police Fiasco, It Never Ends

The embarrassing over-reaction of the Portland police to every-day citizen faux pas's just never ends. It leads one to wonder if they should be barred from doing anything unless they personally witness a murder. They seem to violently over-react to the most trivial things.

June 22, 2010 We have a problem, a citizen has committed the heinous offense of jaywalking in plain sight of a police officer.

The Offender  One Scott Miller,who  admitted in court filings that he cut diagonally across Southwest Second Avenue near Madison Street around 7:30 a.m., concerned about being late for work as an X-ray technician.

The Police Officer.  Officer Dean Halley, a Portland police officer for more than 20 years, saw Miller jaywalk, and followed him.

The Pinch.  Officer Halley demanded to see his identification. As Miller was pulling it out, he asked why, triggering the officer to declare "That's it. You're under arrest,".  He was then wrestled to the ground, cuffed, put in a squad car and booked.  The offense is a minor misdemeanor and not eligible for arrest, but he was arrested anyway,  He sued for false arrest,

The Defense.   The city protests innocently that even though Miller was declared to be under arrest, thrown to the ground, cuffed and transported to the jail, he wasn't arrested.  Who on Earth would think otherwise?

 Tell it to the Judge guys.

Glock Block

In Milwaukie, OR there is a neighborhood that is either safer or best avoided, depending on your point of view.  The Armed Citizen Project arms citizens, and they recently organized a "Glock Block" in a neighborhood with a rash of property crimes, to shoot criminals. 

The Clackamas County Sheriff isn't real thrilled. 

Sergeant Robert Wurpes of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News, “What we’re really talking about here is property crime. We don’t think firearms are the answer to this problem. However, we do understand gun ownership is a right. We understand that it’s frustrating when people get things stolen or are victims of crimes. Our concerns come into play when guns are involved because they’re dangerous.”

 I'll try to keep a tally of how many bad guys (and accidental shootings) result from this.

Oregon Coal Exports?

A newly released study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences confirms the facts about coal usage that everybody knows about but doesn't like to talk about - coal usage kills people through air pollution.  OK, we all know air pollution is a bad thing, but how bad?  The study was done in China and according to the Washington Post story on the subject, over 500 million people  in China are doomed to live 5.5 years less than those in areas of China not exposed to intense air pollution of coal burning.  That 500 million people is the equal of the population of the US and Brazil combined!

Starting in the 1950s, the Chinese government began providing free winter heating via coal boilers to people living north of the Huai River. Yet those living south of the Huai River didn’t get the free boilers. That gave the researchers a way to isolate the effects of air pollution. They then analyzed official data on both air quality and health between 1981 and 2000 to get a sense for the effects.
What they found was surprising. Concentrations of “total suspended particulates” were about 55 percent higher in the north, thanks to the heavy coal burning. And life expectancy for those living in the north was also about 5.5 years shorter — an effect due entirely to differences in cardio-respiratory problems, which is exactly what you’d expect if pollution was the cause. (There’s a long appendix detailing all the different controls they applied.)

The Oregon arguments for coal exports are jobs-based, everybody wants more jobs, but what about the undeniable pollution that will follow?  What about the 500 million people already doomed to an early grave?  The long term effects on people and the earth are pretty grave consequences, we might as well be exporting tons of opium to China, it would be about as bad as coal.  The resulting pollution will come right back to the US West Coast, just as it already is now.  It's a bad short sighted idea.

Oregon supports Repealing Citizens United Ruling

Oregon has become the 16th State to approve repeal of the disastrous Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.  In addition Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio are already co-sponsors of a bill in Congress to do the same thing.  Hopefully sometime down the road our land will be freed of this curse.

Unemployment Wrecking Everything

The reported Unemployment rate is 7.6%, which isn't great news, but the real story is that things are much much worse than that simple number.  There are two very bad things going on in our country.

1. The duration of unemployment as published by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has risen to levels not seen in the last 65 years, it peaked at 40 weeks (about 9 months) in 2011 and has since fallen to 35 weeks (about 8 months).  By comparison, the highest levels ever seen in the worst of previous recessions peaked at about 20 weeks, and then rapidly recovered.  The length of unemployment is now twice as long as it has been since the BLS kept records.  Also since 1970, the average duration keeps going higher, reflecting that once you are unemployed, it takes longer to find another job, and it's been getting harder over the last 40 years.
2. The number of people dropping out of the labor force (who are no longer reflected in the official unemployment rate) now exceed the number who eventually find jobs as reported by the New York Times.

"Unemployed workers have been more likely to flow out of the labor force than into employment for almost the entire period beginning around December 2008 to the present. This was historically not the case; for the nearly 19 years spanning from February 1990 (when the data series began) to the end of 2008, jobless workers were almost always more likely to find a job than to give up or retire. There were only two months when this was not the case (March 2003 and December 2005).
In June, the number of people flowing from unemployment into employment (2,330,000) was almost as high as the the number flowing from unemployment out of the labor force (2,481,000)"

So if it seems that things are worse this time around, it's because they are, in fact, a lot worse.  This sounds like the Giant Sucking Sound that Ross Perot mentioned in 1992 when NAFTA was proposed.

Oregon Employment Division - Tough Times

The Oregon Employment Division, which includes both the State Unemployment and Employment Services, became a war zone of office politics, bullying and mistrust in recent months, actually it was dragging on for many years.  Hardly a positive place to go to work every day.

Things climaxed with an audit of work conditions conducted by managers from other state agencies that documented a completely dysfunctional organization, and led to resignation or firing of all the top executives of the agency.  It's hard for me to imagine how the people working there managed to get through the day in such a poisonous atmosphere.

IT projects without accurate requirements led to $30 million spent on software projects that never worked.  Unqualified leadership appointed through nepotism, secretive management turf-wars with endless finger-pointing, people appointed to projects with no regard to their skills matching the nature of their work, lack of training, and the list goes on endlessly.  It was painful for me to even read the audit report, I've been through the same painful dysfunctional environments and I know what a draining experience that is.

The Employment Department's tech division drew much of the attention. The assessment team pored through contracts, reports, meeting minutes and work orders.
Managers told interviewers they felt as though they had a target on their back. Rank-and-file workers were plugged into roles that didn't match their skills, and there was little training to bring them up to speed.
The low morale contributed to heavy turnover, the report said. Both are especially risky within a technology section because it could hinder the agency's ability to serve the public should the system collapse. The agency's computers handle millions of dollars worth of unemployment checks each year.
Fuller said agency heads would meet next week to discuss the report. The governor has tapped veteran bureaucrat Greg Malkasian to lead the effort.

Government doesn't have a monopoly on waste, the same thing happens in large organizations all over the landscape in Corporate America too.  They need to put in cool-headed collaborative crisis managers to get the people working there feeling good about going to work again.  Good luck Greg.