Read the original here.
President Obama Abruptly Walks Out Of Talks - Jonathan Allen And Jake Sherman
President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations.
“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.Continue Reading
On a day when the Moody’s rating agency warned that American debt could be downgraded, the White House talks blew up amid a new round of sniping between Obama and Cantor, who are fast becoming bitter enemies.
When Cantor said the two sides were too far apart to get a deal that could pass the House by the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline — and that he would consider moving a short-term debt-limit increase alongside smaller spending cuts — Obama began to lecture him.
“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would sit through such negotiations.
Democratic sources dispute Cantor’s version of Obama’s walk out, but all sides agree that the two had a blow up. The sources described Obama as “impassioned” but said he didn’t exactly storm out of the room.
“Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it,” a Democratic aide said. “Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting. This is just more juvenile behavior from him and Boehner needs to rein him in, and let the grown-ups get to work.”
On exiting the room, Obama said that “this confirms the totality of what the American people already believe” about Washington, according to a Democratic official familiar with the negotiations, and that officials are “too focused on positioning and political posturing” to make difficult choices.
Cantor insists he never interrupted the president, and was “deferential,” seeking permission to speak.
The latest and sharpest in a series of harsh exchanges between the two leaders heightened concern that markets could crash at any time amid fear of a reduction in the rating on once-ironclad U.S. debt.
Cantor, for his part, delivered the blow-by-blue of his interaction with Obama to a gaggle of Capitol Hill reporters in the Speaker’s Lobby, where lawmakers typically mingle with reporters during votes. It wasn’t through aides — it was Cantor taking on the president, directly.
Cantor accused the president and congressional Democrats of progressively low-balling, over the last several days, the savings that could be achieved from proposals discussed by Vice President Joe Biden’s working group on deficit reduction. Cantor warned that the group has not identified enough cuts to win House passage of a $2.5 trillion debt-limit increase — the size the president says is needed to get through the 2012 election, sources told POLITICO.
Obama told Cantor that he would either have to agree to tax increases or give up on his demand that the debt hike be matched dollar-to-dollar to the cuts — that is, $2.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years in exchange for a $2.5 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.
He said that the negotiators should return to the White House Thursday to discuss savings from health care programs, budget caps and options for raising revenue.
“Then he said we also ought to get in the mode here, because we’re going to have to decide by Friday which way we’re going,” Cantor said. “He said really we ought to all start to think about things we can do rather than things we can’t.”
That’s when Cantor said he would be willing to abandon his own insistence on having just one vote on the debt ceiling if they could agree to a smaller package of cuts in exchange for a shorter-term hike that would require another increase before the 2012 election.Continue Reading
But Obama said he wouldn’t do the debt-limit increase incrementally and that he would veto a short-term bill.
“That’s when he got very agitated,” Cantor told reporters.
“Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence,” said an official in the meeting. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said no progress was made in the Wednesday talks.
“The president is spending a lot of time and effort to get us to an agreement, and it is tough,” Hoyer said.
Cantor said he’s trying to inform the group of what House members will agree to pass.
“I’m trying to represent where the votes are in the House. and we’ve always said the votes in the House are consistent with the principles that the speaker’s laid out that we’ve been operating on,” Cantor said. “It is dollar-for-dollar match, it is the no tax increase and it is this other subject that we are discussing tomorrow the enforcement mechanisms … I understand why he’s frustrated. But again, we’re trying to get this thing done, and that’s why I was a little taken aback.”
Despite the president’s abrupt exit, Democratic officials pointed to signs of progress. Officials on Wednesday for the first time reviewed a series of proposed spending cuts. Obama has offered $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, and the parties have agreed in principle on roughly $1.5 trillion of those, officials said.
The agenda Thursday will focus on revenue — the touchiest subject of all for Republicans — and mandatory health programs.
On Friday, Obama wants an assessment of where the process stands, Democratic officials said. Of significant concern is the calendar, and the ability to get everything done in time to avert a crisis. It was unclear whether a lack of agreement by Friday was any sort of dealbreaker, or what consequences might be attached to that assessment.
“We are not miles apart here,” said one Democratic official familiar with the debt talks. “It’s sitting right in front of them.”
Julie Mason, John Bresnahan and Carrie Budoff Brown contributed to this story.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937.html#ixzz1S5Mtvjrj
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
How high up does Gunwalker scandal go?
Read the original here.
Operation Fast And Furious: Designed To Promote Gun Control
by Katie Pavlich
7/13/2011
"Internal ATF emails seem to suggest that ATF agents were counseled to highlight a link between criminals and certain semi-automatic weapons in order to bolster a case for a rule like the one the DOJ announced yesterday [Monday]."
Townhall has obtained the email which states "Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations."
The rule:
“The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States. Federal, state and foreign law enforcement agencies have determined that certain types of semi-automatic rifles – greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine – are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border. This new reporting measure -- tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles to the same person within a five-day period -- will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations. These targeted information requests will occur in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to help confront the problem of illegal gun trafficking into Mexico and along the Southwest Border.”
Once again, liberals and the Obama Administration are focused on guns rather than criminals and federal government incomptence. Operation Fast and Furious is looking more and more like a set up from the beginning to push Obama and Holder's radical anti-Second Amendment agenda as they used law abiding gun shop owners to enable government officals to break the law, then turned around and blamed the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking, despite those shops being forced by ATF to help ATF agents carry out Operation Fast and Furious, and now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures. Obama and Holder both have long records of being outspoken opponents of gunrights and both support the reinstatement of the "assault" rifle ban, better described as a ban on semi-automatic rifles. From the June issue of Townhall Magazine:
President Obama is calling for "commonsense" gun reforms, but as a man with a long a history of acting to limit Second Amendment rights and advocating gun control who tapped an attorney general with the same ideology -- and possibly the biggest gun trafficking scandal in U.S. history with his name written all over it -- is the president really calling for reforms or more government control?
As an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.
Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley continue their investigation of Operation Fast and Furious and have requested detailed communications records, including emails, memos, briefing papers and handwritten notes from and between senior DOJ officials in two letters sent to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday. Records referring to large firearms trafficking within the Phoenix ATF office have also been requested. This information must be provided by July 18 at noon:
As our investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has progressed, we have learned that senior officals at the Department of Justice, including Senate-confirmed political appointees, were unquestionably aware of the implementation of this reckless program. Therefore, it is necessary to review commncations between and among these senior officials. As such, please provide all records relating to communications between and among the following individuals regarding Operation Fast and Furious:
1) David Ogden, Former Deputy Attorney General
2) Gary Grindler, Office of the Attorney General and Former Acting Deputy Attorney General
3) James Cole, Deputy Attorney General (editors note: Cole issued the new reporting rules for border state gun shops Monday)
4) Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General
5) Kenneth Blanco, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
6) Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
7) John Keeney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
8) Matt Axelrod, Associate Deputy Attorney General
9) Ed Siskel, Former Associate Deputy Attorney General
10) Brad Smith, Office of the Deputy Attorney General
11) Kevin Carwile, Section Chief, Capital Case Unit
12) Joseph Cooley, Criminal Fraud Section
Operation Fast And Furious: Designed To Promote Gun Control
by Katie Pavlich
7/13/2011
"Internal ATF emails seem to suggest that ATF agents were counseled to highlight a link between criminals and certain semi-automatic weapons in order to bolster a case for a rule like the one the DOJ announced yesterday [Monday]."
Townhall has obtained the email which states "Can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same FfL and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks Mark R. Chait Assistant Director Field Operations."
The rule:
“The international expansion and increased violence of transnational criminal networks pose a significant threat to the United States. Federal, state and foreign law enforcement agencies have determined that certain types of semi-automatic rifles – greater than .22 caliber and with the ability to accept a detachable magazine – are highly sought after by dangerous drug trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest Border. This new reporting measure -- tailored to focus only on multiple sales of these types of rifles to the same person within a five-day period -- will improve the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to detect and disrupt the illegal weapons trafficking networks responsible for diverting firearms from lawful commerce to criminals and criminal organizations. These targeted information requests will occur in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to help confront the problem of illegal gun trafficking into Mexico and along the Southwest Border.”
Once again, liberals and the Obama Administration are focused on guns rather than criminals and federal government incomptence. Operation Fast and Furious is looking more and more like a set up from the beginning to push Obama and Holder's radical anti-Second Amendment agenda as they used law abiding gun shop owners to enable government officals to break the law, then turned around and blamed the very same gun shops for illegal gun trafficking, despite those shops being forced by ATF to help ATF agents carry out Operation Fast and Furious, and now, those shops are being punished through new Justice Department gun control measures. Obama and Holder both have long records of being outspoken opponents of gunrights and both support the reinstatement of the "assault" rifle ban, better described as a ban on semi-automatic rifles. From the June issue of Townhall Magazine:
President Obama is calling for "commonsense" gun reforms, but as a man with a long a history of acting to limit Second Amendment rights and advocating gun control who tapped an attorney general with the same ideology -- and possibly the biggest gun trafficking scandal in U.S. history with his name written all over it -- is the president really calling for reforms or more government control?
As an Illinois state senator, Obama endorsed and spoke in support of an outright ban on ownership of all handguns and favored the licensing and registering of gun owners. Before his run for public office in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire expressing his support for a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.
Meanwhile, Rep. Darrell Issa and Senator Charles Grassley continue their investigation of Operation Fast and Furious and have requested detailed communications records, including emails, memos, briefing papers and handwritten notes from and between senior DOJ officials in two letters sent to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday. Records referring to large firearms trafficking within the Phoenix ATF office have also been requested. This information must be provided by July 18 at noon:
As our investigation into Operation Fast and Furious has progressed, we have learned that senior officals at the Department of Justice, including Senate-confirmed political appointees, were unquestionably aware of the implementation of this reckless program. Therefore, it is necessary to review commncations between and among these senior officials. As such, please provide all records relating to communications between and among the following individuals regarding Operation Fast and Furious:
1) David Ogden, Former Deputy Attorney General
2) Gary Grindler, Office of the Attorney General and Former Acting Deputy Attorney General
3) James Cole, Deputy Attorney General (editors note: Cole issued the new reporting rules for border state gun shops Monday)
4) Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General
5) Kenneth Blanco, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
6) Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
7) John Keeney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General
8) Matt Axelrod, Associate Deputy Attorney General
9) Ed Siskel, Former Associate Deputy Attorney General
10) Brad Smith, Office of the Deputy Attorney General
11) Kevin Carwile, Section Chief, Capital Case Unit
12) Joseph Cooley, Criminal Fraud Section
Who wins: TSA or a Mom?
Read the original here. Money parts:
1. “(She) told me in a very stearn voice with quite a bit of attitude that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer, told police. (TSA officers can't handle a person with a stern voice? I'm so glad that they're so well equipped to handle confrontation)
2. At one point, Abbott tried unsuccessfully to take a video with her cellphone. (I wonder why it was unsuccessful...)
Police charge mother in Nashville airport altercation
Woman refused to let officers screen daughter
5:42 AM, Jul. 13, 2011
1. “(She) told me in a very stearn voice with quite a bit of attitude that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer, told police. (TSA officers can't handle a person with a stern voice? I'm so glad that they're so well equipped to handle confrontation)
2. At one point, Abbott tried unsuccessfully to take a video with her cellphone. (I wonder why it was unsuccessful...)
Police charge mother in Nashville airport altercation
Woman refused to let officers screen daughter
5:42 AM, Jul. 13, 2011
A 41-year-old Clarksville woman was arrested after Nashville airport authorities say she was belligerent and verbally abusive to security officers, refusing for her daughter to be patted down at a security checkpoint.
Andrea Fornella Abbott yelled and swore at Transportation Security Administration agents Saturday afternoon at Nashville International Airport, saying she did not want her daughter to be “touched inappropriately or have her “crotch grabbed,” a police report states.
After the woman refused to calm down, airport police said, she was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to jail. She has been released on bond.
Attempts to reach Abbott on Tuesday were unsuccessful. The report does not list her daughter’s age. The mother and daughter were traveling from Nashville to Baltimore on Southwest Airlines.
“(She) told me in a very stearn voice with quite a bit of attitude that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer, told police.
“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”
“I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked,” Abbott said, according to the police report.
At one point, Abbott tried unsuccessfully to take a video with her cellphone.
Andrea Fornella Abbott yelled and swore at Transportation Security Administration agents Saturday afternoon at Nashville International Airport, saying she did not want her daughter to be “touched inappropriately or have her “crotch grabbed,” a police report states.
After the woman refused to calm down, airport police said, she was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to jail. She has been released on bond.
Attempts to reach Abbott on Tuesday were unsuccessful. The report does not list her daughter’s age. The mother and daughter were traveling from Nashville to Baltimore on Southwest Airlines.
“(She) told me in a very stearn voice with quite a bit of attitude that they were not going through that X-ray,” Sabrina Birge, an airport security officer, told police.
“No, it’s not an X-ray,” she told Abbott. “It is 10,000 times safer than your cell phone and uses the same type of radio waves as a sonogram.”
“I still don’t want someone to see our bodies naked,” Abbott said, according to the police report.
At one point, Abbott tried unsuccessfully to take a video with her cellphone.
TSA policy revised
The arrest comes on the heels of public outrage over a video showing a pat-down of a 6-year-old girl at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The April video prompted a new policy that took effect last month in which airport security screeners must try to avoid invasive pat-down searches of children.
TSA says it will instruct screeners how to make repeated attempts to screen young children without invasive pat-downs. The instructions should reduce the number of pat-downs on children, TSA says.
Contact Erin Quinn at 726-5986 or equinn@tennessean.com.
The arrest comes on the heels of public outrage over a video showing a pat-down of a 6-year-old girl at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The April video prompted a new policy that took effect last month in which airport security screeners must try to avoid invasive pat-down searches of children.
TSA says it will instruct screeners how to make repeated attempts to screen young children without invasive pat-downs. The instructions should reduce the number of pat-downs on children, TSA says.
Contact Erin Quinn at 726-5986 or equinn@tennessean.com.
Should ISP's keep your activities on record?
Read the original here.
Police: Internet Providers Must Keep User Logs | Privacy Inc.
Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.
The National Sheriffs' Association will say it "strongly supports" mandatory data retention during Tuesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.
Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough.
"The limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography," according to a copy of Brown's remarks. Any stored logs could, however, be used to prosecute any type of crime.
The association's endorsement comes nearly two months after Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) introduced legislation that would force Internet companies to log data about their customers. It says they must store for "at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication"--language that amounts to a huge and unusual exception for wireless carriers.
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice also called for some sort of legislation in this area, but the White House has not taken a public position and the department has pointedly declined to elaborate on what it wants. No Justice Department representative is scheduled to testify tomorrow. The International Association of Chiefs of Police applauded (PDF) data retention requirements five years ago but did not endorse specific legislation.
Brown declined a request from CNET to discuss his testimony.
The Republican backers of the bill--it was the GOP's first major tech initiative after taking over the House in January--hope Brown's endorsement will provide a welcome boost to their proposal's prospects.
Similar bills have been introduced starting in early 2006, but privacy and civil liberty concerns have kept them from even receiving a floor vote. So has the scope: industry representatives have been wary ever since Justice Department representatives were talking privately about whether social-networking sites should be required to keep track of what Internet address uploaded what photograph.
According to Brown's testimony:
Unmasking child pornographers on the Internet is a painstaking and complex process for law enforcement officers and typically requires assistance from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to accurately identify the perpetrator. However, some ISPs only retain their clients' records for a short period of time. It could be hours. It could be days. It could be weeks. It could be months. And it varies from ISP to ISP. As such, the limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is planning to suggest during tomorrow's hearing that the committee rewrite the measure by eliding the most incendiary sections. In an e-mail Monday afternoon, Rotenberg said he also has concerns that the language ignores reasonable data minimization procedures and doesn't envision how bad a data breach could be.
The definitions in Smith's bill could sweep in coffee shops that offer wired connections to their customers, as well as hotels, universities, schools, and businesses that offer wired network connections, on top of traditional broadband providers.
Smith introduced a broadly similar bill in 2007, without the wireless exemption, calling it a necessary anti-cybercrime measure. "The legislation introduced today will give law enforcement the tools it needs to find and prosecute criminals," he said in a statement at the time.
These concepts are not exactly new. In June 2005, CNET was the first to report that the Justice Department was quietly shopping around the idea, reversing the department's previous position that it had "serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes." Despite support from FBI director Robert Mueller and the Bush Justice Department, however, the proposals languished amid worries about privacy and the cost of compliance.
"Retention" vs. "preservation"
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention, or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)
In addition, an existing law called the Protect Our Children Act of 2008 requires any Internet provider who "obtains actual knowledge" of possible child pornography transmissions to "make a report of such facts or circumstances." Companies that knowingly fail to comply can be fined up to $150,000 for the first offense and up to $300,000 for each subsequent offense.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078653-281/police-internet-providers-must-keep-user-logs/#ixzz1RzOLmPvY
Police: Internet Providers Must Keep User Logs | Privacy Inc.
Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.
The National Sheriffs' Association will say it "strongly supports" mandatory data retention during Tuesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.
Michael Brown, sheriff in Bedford County, Va., and a board member and executive committee member of the National Sheriffs' Association, is planning to argue that a new law is necessary because Internet providers do not store customer records long enough.
"The limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography," according to a copy of Brown's remarks. Any stored logs could, however, be used to prosecute any type of crime.
The association's endorsement comes nearly two months after Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the head of the House Judiciary Committee, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) introduced legislation that would force Internet companies to log data about their customers. It says they must store for "at least 18 months the temporarily assigned network addresses the service assigns to each account, unless that address is transmitted by radio communication"--language that amounts to a huge and unusual exception for wireless carriers.
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice also called for some sort of legislation in this area, but the White House has not taken a public position and the department has pointedly declined to elaborate on what it wants. No Justice Department representative is scheduled to testify tomorrow. The International Association of Chiefs of Police applauded (PDF) data retention requirements five years ago but did not endorse specific legislation.
Brown declined a request from CNET to discuss his testimony.
The Republican backers of the bill--it was the GOP's first major tech initiative after taking over the House in January--hope Brown's endorsement will provide a welcome boost to their proposal's prospects.
Similar bills have been introduced starting in early 2006, but privacy and civil liberty concerns have kept them from even receiving a floor vote. So has the scope: industry representatives have been wary ever since Justice Department representatives were talking privately about whether social-networking sites should be required to keep track of what Internet address uploaded what photograph.
According to Brown's testimony:
Unmasking child pornographers on the Internet is a painstaking and complex process for law enforcement officers and typically requires assistance from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to accurately identify the perpetrator. However, some ISPs only retain their clients' records for a short period of time. It could be hours. It could be days. It could be weeks. It could be months. And it varies from ISP to ISP. As such, the limited data retention time and lack of uniformity among retention from company to company significantly hinders law enforcement's ability to identify predators when they come across child pornography.
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is planning to suggest during tomorrow's hearing that the committee rewrite the measure by eliding the most incendiary sections. In an e-mail Monday afternoon, Rotenberg said he also has concerns that the language ignores reasonable data minimization procedures and doesn't envision how bad a data breach could be.
The definitions in Smith's bill could sweep in coffee shops that offer wired connections to their customers, as well as hotels, universities, schools, and businesses that offer wired network connections, on top of traditional broadband providers.
Smith introduced a broadly similar bill in 2007, without the wireless exemption, calling it a necessary anti-cybercrime measure. "The legislation introduced today will give law enforcement the tools it needs to find and prosecute criminals," he said in a statement at the time.
These concepts are not exactly new. In June 2005, CNET was the first to report that the Justice Department was quietly shopping around the idea, reversing the department's previous position that it had "serious reservations about broad mandatory data retention regimes." Despite support from FBI director Robert Mueller and the Bush Justice Department, however, the proposals languished amid worries about privacy and the cost of compliance.
"Retention" vs. "preservation"
At the moment, Internet service providers typically discard any log file that's no longer required for business reasons such as network monitoring, fraud prevention, or billing disputes. Companies do, however, alter that general rule when contacted by police performing an investigation--a practice called data preservation.
A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act regulates data preservation. It requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity."
Because Internet addresses remain a relatively scarce commodity, ISPs tend to allocate them to customers from a pool based on whether a computer is in use at the time. (Two standard techniques used are the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet.)
In addition, an existing law called the Protect Our Children Act of 2008 requires any Internet provider who "obtains actual knowledge" of possible child pornography transmissions to "make a report of such facts or circumstances." Companies that knowingly fail to comply can be fined up to $150,000 for the first offense and up to $300,000 for each subsequent offense.
Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20078653-281/police-internet-providers-must-keep-user-logs/#ixzz1RzOLmPvY
Cutting Class fine?
Read the original here.
Concord Could Fine Students For Cutting Class
July 12, 2011 10:16 AM
CONCORD (KCBS) – It could soon cost kids, and parents in Concord upwards of $500 if the teenager continues to cut class.
There’s no question about it, said Mayor Laura Hoffmeister, Concord police have their hands full with truant kids these days.
“Often they’re finding that the kid they return at 11 a.m. is back out at 12:30,” said Hoffmeister.
This prompted school officials to look into a school day curfew ordinance. After a general warning, kids and their parents would be fined $100 after the first offense, $200 after the second, and $500 after the third.
Adults in the area seem to largely support the idea, while teenagers are predictably against the proposal.
Kids who had a legitimate reason to be out of school would not be impacted. The proposal goes to a vote by the entire city council at their meeting Tuesday night.
(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
CONCORD (KCBS) – It could soon cost kids, and parents in Concord upwards of $500 if the teenager continues to cut class.
There’s no question about it, said Mayor Laura Hoffmeister, Concord police have their hands full with truant kids these days.
“Often they’re finding that the kid they return at 11 a.m. is back out at 12:30,” said Hoffmeister.
This prompted school officials to look into a school day curfew ordinance. After a general warning, kids and their parents would be fined $100 after the first offense, $200 after the second, and $500 after the third.
Adults in the area seem to largely support the idea, while teenagers are predictably against the proposal.
Kids who had a legitimate reason to be out of school would not be impacted. The proposal goes to a vote by the entire city council at their meeting Tuesday night.
(Copyright 2011 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
How much is your cat worth?
In San Diego, it could cost you more...Read the original here.
Cat Owners Hiss at Licensing Proposal
By Gene Cubbison
Tuesday, Jul 12, 2011 | Updated 7:28 PM PDT
Should cats be treated like dogs, when it comes to licensing and immunization requirements?
The San Diego city auditor's office recommends doing just that -- for the sake of health, safety and "cost recovery" for taxpayers.
According to formulas used by the Humane Society of the United States, there are an estimated 373,000 cats in San Diego.
If just 5 percent had been registered at $25 a head, the auditor's office says the city could have saved $536,000 over the past three fiscal years.
Cat owners say the idea defies logic and accounting principles.
"So now you have Animal Control being your tax collector," says Sandee Gilbert, the owner of a 1-year-old Cornish Rex male named Nike. "And as a tax collector, you're going to accrue a tremendous amount of cost trying to find the owner of that cat."
Gilbert, spokeswoman for the San Diego Cat Fanciers group, points out that a high percentage of cats in this community are unowned, or fed and tended by a number of people, or outright feral.
And while many responsible cat owners take the precaution and happily bear the expense of getting their furry friends whatever shots are necessary -- especially pedigreed show cats -- charging some people $25 to license and immunize a cat would be non-starter.
"What's going to happen is, they're gonna say, 'Bye, bye, Kitty Cat,' and throw the little cat out the door," Gilbert warns.
"The cost of euthanasia in Animal Control is just going to skyrocket because we'll have cats dying left and right for no reason whatsoever."
The issue arose Monday during a City Council Audit Committee review of San Diego's contract with the County Dept. of Animal Control.
The city auditor's office, echoing U.S. Humane Society policy, recommends that the city consider making cat registration and vaccination part of the next contract.
A committee member who owns a Bengal longhaired named "Ace" sees such a measure as a revenue-seeking 'cat tax' that should wind up in 'Kitty Litter.'
"On the list of issues facing our city relating to public health and safety," says Councilman Carl DeMaio, "this is nowhere near the top. In fact, I'd put it at the bottom."
Leading cat advocates say the measure would be overkill, literally and figuratively.
"San Diego is known for being very conscious of the feral cat and unowned cat situation in the community," says Joan Miller, vice president of the local chapter of the international Cat Fanciers Assn., Inc.
"The last thing I'd want to see," Miller adds, "is to have any deterrent to people who are trapping those cats, neutering the cats and then returning them to their environment where they can be cared for and fed."
The Audit Committee referred the city auditor's 10 recommendations regarding the Animal Control contract to the mayor and full council.
For the record, they noted that three of the five members object to the proposed cat regulations.
Let us know what you think. Comment below, send us your thoughts via Twitter @nbcsandiego or add your comment to our Facebook page.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Cat-Owners-Hiss-at--Registration-Proposal-125383498.html
Source: Cat Owners Hiss at Licensing Proposal | NBC San Diego
Cat Owners Hiss at Licensing Proposal
By Gene Cubbison
Tuesday, Jul 12, 2011 | Updated 7:28 PM PDT
Should cats be treated like dogs, when it comes to licensing and immunization requirements?
The San Diego city auditor's office recommends doing just that -- for the sake of health, safety and "cost recovery" for taxpayers.
According to formulas used by the Humane Society of the United States, there are an estimated 373,000 cats in San Diego.
If just 5 percent had been registered at $25 a head, the auditor's office says the city could have saved $536,000 over the past three fiscal years.
Cat owners say the idea defies logic and accounting principles.
"So now you have Animal Control being your tax collector," says Sandee Gilbert, the owner of a 1-year-old Cornish Rex male named Nike. "And as a tax collector, you're going to accrue a tremendous amount of cost trying to find the owner of that cat."
Gilbert, spokeswoman for the San Diego Cat Fanciers group, points out that a high percentage of cats in this community are unowned, or fed and tended by a number of people, or outright feral.
And while many responsible cat owners take the precaution and happily bear the expense of getting their furry friends whatever shots are necessary -- especially pedigreed show cats -- charging some people $25 to license and immunize a cat would be non-starter.
"What's going to happen is, they're gonna say, 'Bye, bye, Kitty Cat,' and throw the little cat out the door," Gilbert warns.
"The cost of euthanasia in Animal Control is just going to skyrocket because we'll have cats dying left and right for no reason whatsoever."
The issue arose Monday during a City Council Audit Committee review of San Diego's contract with the County Dept. of Animal Control.
The city auditor's office, echoing U.S. Humane Society policy, recommends that the city consider making cat registration and vaccination part of the next contract.
A committee member who owns a Bengal longhaired named "Ace" sees such a measure as a revenue-seeking 'cat tax' that should wind up in 'Kitty Litter.'
"On the list of issues facing our city relating to public health and safety," says Councilman Carl DeMaio, "this is nowhere near the top. In fact, I'd put it at the bottom."
Leading cat advocates say the measure would be overkill, literally and figuratively.
"San Diego is known for being very conscious of the feral cat and unowned cat situation in the community," says Joan Miller, vice president of the local chapter of the international Cat Fanciers Assn., Inc.
"The last thing I'd want to see," Miller adds, "is to have any deterrent to people who are trapping those cats, neutering the cats and then returning them to their environment where they can be cared for and fed."
The Audit Committee referred the city auditor's 10 recommendations regarding the Animal Control contract to the mayor and full council.
For the record, they noted that three of the five members object to the proposed cat regulations.
Let us know what you think. Comment below, send us your thoughts via Twitter @nbcsandiego or add your comment to our Facebook page.
http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Cat-Owners-Hiss-at--Registration-Proposal-125383498.html
Source: Cat Owners Hiss at Licensing Proposal | NBC San Diego
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
WSJ on Obama Debt talks...
Read the original here.
Wall Street Journal
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
JULY 12, 2011
Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It
The liberal media's idea of a grown-up.
By JAMES TARANTO
President Obama is pulling out the big guns and pointing them straight at your grandmother. "Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3" absent an agreement with Congress to raise the debt ceiling, CBS News reports:
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
At a press conference yesterday, Obama demanded that Republicans not only authorize trillions of dollars in new borrowing,which at this point seems unavoidable, but agree to what he called "massive, job-killing tax increases" effective in 2013--i.e., after what he expects will be his re-election.Obama's news conference.
For this he drew plaudits from what used to be called the mainstream media. "Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse" read the New York Times headline. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza dubbed him "Dad-in-Chief," explaining: "Boil Obama's message down and you get this: Adults sometimes have to do things that they don't want to do. This is one of those times. So, let's get it done."
The kids are acting up, so he threatens to starve Granny to death. That's just how a strong father behaves.
It looks to us as if Obama may once again be overestimating his persuasive powers by relying for feedback on journalists who, for a combination of ideological, partisan and personal reasons, are predisposed to take his side. NewsBusters.org has a useful compilation of what it calls the "softballs" reporters lobbed at yesterday's press conference. Some of them were actually a bit adversarial, but only from the left.
Our favorite is from Rich Wolf of USA Today: "You keep talking about balance, shared sacrifice, but in the $4 trillion deal that you're talking about roughly, it seems to be now at about 4 to 1 spending to taxes; we're talking about $800 billion in taxes, roughly. That doesn't seem very fair to some Democrats." Mr. President, your massive tax hikes aren't nearly massive enough!
We sometimes forget just how in the tank much of the press is for Obama, especially since they've tended to tone it down a bit now that he is actually president. So we're grateful to Esquire for publishing a piece this morning by one Stephen Marche titled "How Can We Not Love Obama?" You may want to pop a Dramamine before reading this passage, which brings back memories of 2008:
Can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.
Though it's possible this is another one of Esquire's satirical misfires.
Wall Street Journal
BEST OF THE WEB TODAY
JULY 12, 2011
Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It
The liberal media's idea of a grown-up.
By JAMES TARANTO
President Obama is pulling out the big guns and pointing them straight at your grandmother. "Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3" absent an agreement with Congress to raise the debt ceiling, CBS News reports:
"I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.
At a press conference yesterday, Obama demanded that Republicans not only authorize trillions of dollars in new borrowing,which at this point seems unavoidable, but agree to what he called "massive, job-killing tax increases" effective in 2013--i.e., after what he expects will be his re-election.Obama's news conference.
For this he drew plaudits from what used to be called the mainstream media. "Obama Grasping Centrist Banner in Debt Impasse" read the New York Times headline. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza dubbed him "Dad-in-Chief," explaining: "Boil Obama's message down and you get this: Adults sometimes have to do things that they don't want to do. This is one of those times. So, let's get it done."
The kids are acting up, so he threatens to starve Granny to death. That's just how a strong father behaves.
It looks to us as if Obama may once again be overestimating his persuasive powers by relying for feedback on journalists who, for a combination of ideological, partisan and personal reasons, are predisposed to take his side. NewsBusters.org has a useful compilation of what it calls the "softballs" reporters lobbed at yesterday's press conference. Some of them were actually a bit adversarial, but only from the left.
Our favorite is from Rich Wolf of USA Today: "You keep talking about balance, shared sacrifice, but in the $4 trillion deal that you're talking about roughly, it seems to be now at about 4 to 1 spending to taxes; we're talking about $800 billion in taxes, roughly. That doesn't seem very fair to some Democrats." Mr. President, your massive tax hikes aren't nearly massive enough!
We sometimes forget just how in the tank much of the press is for Obama, especially since they've tended to tone it down a bit now that he is actually president. So we're grateful to Esquire for publishing a piece this morning by one Stephen Marche titled "How Can We Not Love Obama?" You may want to pop a Dramamine before reading this passage, which brings back memories of 2008:
Can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we're going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. Whatever happens this fall or next, the summer of 2011 is the summer of Obama.
Though it's possible this is another one of Esquire's satirical misfires.
Is broadband a right?
Having had the nasty phone call conversation with Comcast myself, I was aware that it's a 250 GB limit on traffic. So now I watch my bandwidth very carefully. When I had the conversation with them, they said the ban would be for life. So, the question is....obviously Comcast, as a private company, can limit how much product/service they want to offer for how much money. As the consumer, I am free to go somewhere else. Of course, I can't, as my investigation into rumors that Comcast cut a monopoly deal with my municipality have been shut down at every turn. So then, is broadband a right? Should it be a right? How should a mega-user go about acquiring unlimited bandwidth?
via Kotaku:
IS BROADBAND A RIGHT?
The Day Comcast’s Data Cap Policy Killed My Internet for One Year
andre vrignaud — Today I came home to find my 15 MB down/3 MB up Comcast broadband service had been shut off due to exceeding their 250 GB/month data cap policy.
This had happened the month before, and I called and had a polite but irritated conversation with Comcast's "Customer Security" department (since the regular customer service folks could not help.) According to them I had exceeded their 250 GB monthly cap, and they asked how that might have happened.
I told them the simple truth-–no idea, other than regular people were probably using it a lot for reasonable things. I have roommates, we stream Netflix HD movies and Pandora music incessantly to multiple devices in the home, and I also have an open access point (in addition to a secured AP that I use to access internal network resources) for guests. I asked if they could share what was using the majority of the data so I could go address it directly, but Comcast refused to share any information there (which is probably appropriate).
I made very clear to the gentleman I spoke with that I thought Comcast's data cap policy was arbitrary, unfair, and extremely irritating… and that if I had any decent competitive options in the neighborhood I'd dump Comcast in a heartbeat. Since I don't, I listened to him read his canned warning that if I exceeded their cap again I'd be cut off again. I do not recall details on how long the cut off would be, likely because I spent the next few minutes working with the service agent to add notes to my record about my detailed displeasure with Comcast's policy here. I specifically noted (and asked that it be recorded) that if this happened again I would contact the FCC, various news organizations, and otherwise make a stink. The CS agent was polite and reactivated my broadband. After hanging up I chatted with my roommates, asked them to keep an eye on bandwidth use, and also deactivated the open AP I had maintained for visitors (with regret, but this was the only area I could think of that I couldn't completely account for bandwidth use.) Then I forgot about the whole thing until today when I found I'd been cut off again.
I called up Comcast and went through customer service hell – a Comcast special, I might note. First their regular customer service agent couldn't help me, and sent me to their "Customer Security" group again. The Customer Security agent was polite, and after the standard identification questions notified me I was cut off for a year due to exceeding Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy limits on their bandwidth cap. I asked for details on what had been using bandwidth, and again, Comcast would not share. In a sudden brainstorm, I then asked whether the 250 GB bandwidth cap applied to just downloads (which I had assumed, as the majority of most bandwidth used in households is downstream bandwidth), or download and upload bandwidth. Surprise, surprise! Comcast measures both upstream and downstream bandwidth – and it suddenly clicked for me.
I'm a photographer and audiophile. I shoot all of my pictures in RAW format, and I store the many hundreds and hundreds of CDs I've purchased over the last 20 years or so in a variety of lossless and lossy music formats. In the case of music I rip my CDs to WMA Lossless (for ease of streaming to Windows), FLAC (another lossless format, so I can stream losslessly to my Sonos system), and M4A (also known as Apple's iTunes AAC format, so I can import my music from the media server to iTunes). I'm a big believer in storing the original, lossless digital content so that I can access it in full fidelity in the future no matter how technology evolves. In some ways that makes me a bit archaic as I still buy (used) CDs from Amazon for all of my music so I can rip it losslessly – I'm not a fan of the compressed music formats you buy and download. But the ramification is that I have terabytes of storage in my basement RAID server – each music track is duplicated three times, I have all of my original RAW photos, plus processed JPEG versions of those RAW photos, as well as a variety of other miscellaneous content – documents, spreadsheets, that sort of thing.
This stuff is valuable to me, and I recently purchased a three-year subscription to Carboniteso I could back all of this content up to the cloud. I also recently saw Amazon's announcement of being able to upload unlimited M4A/AAC tracks to their Cloud Drive service, and decided to upload my library there so I could access it when on the road. And it turns out uploading all of this content to the cloud triggered Comcast's bandwidth cap and caused me to be cut off from the internet-–again. It was never clear to me that Comcast measures both upload and download bandwidth, and I suspect many people are going to be surprised by this in the coming years, especially as the cloud continues to become more and more a part of our lives.
Anyway, to close out the Comcast call, I asked to be reinstated and he said it was final-–no appeal. I asked to escalate to a manager so I could explain my situation, and he stated there was no escalation, and repeated there was no appeal. I then asked for customer service email or other contact information so I could CC the company on a blog post (which you are reading now) and letter I would be sending to the FCC, Public Knowledge organization, New Media Foundation, the city of Seattle's Mayor's Office, and my Seattle City Council representative. He said he could connect me to the customer escalation line, but also stated it would not help – they wouldn't consider removing the cap. At that point I said I wouldn't bother wasting my time with the customer escalation line, and that I'd like to cancel my broadband. He politely said he understood, and that he'd transfer me to the appropriate department.
Time to return to Comcast customer service hell! After a few minutes I spoke with another gentlemen in the Technical Support and Billing division I'd been transferred to who, surprise, couldn't help me since I was cancelling my (now defunct) service. He then transferred me to (wait for it!) the Retention department, since they're apparently the only ones who can cancel a Comcast cable account. Yes, after Comcast applied their ridiculous policy and told me they didn't want me as a customer, I was transferred to the Retention department where they insisted on driving through their spiel until I could finally interrupt, say it wasn't going to work, and explain my situation. At which point the agent said: "Oh. I'll take care of it, thank you for calling Comcast ." As of this moment I have no idea if I've been cancelled or not.
My Opinion:
My opinion on all this is simple. The ability to access broadband internet is a right, and should be defined as an essential utility. Just as you're surprised when you flick a light switch and the light doesn't come on so are you surprised when the internet goes away in your house. The internet is used for communication, entertainment, business - an entire panopoly of humor endevours. Just as there are protections to keep water and electricity flowing to your house, so should the internet be protected.
Now the broadband companies would strongly disagree with me here. They're terrified of being turned into dumb pipes that only deliver data. This is why you see such vicious fights over the definition of internet neutrality, and cable companies fighting to be able to restrict services that flow over their pipes, inspect packets, or have the right to charge more for differing levels of service. They try to spin this as protecting the integrity of the network for other customers, and not having to charge more to offer service that some small percentage of their users overuse. However, these same companies are also strangely quiet when you ask them why (as in Comcast's case) they're able to keep boosting my broadband speed tier year after year for no additional charge. Or why their quarterly filings show their cost of providing broadband service continues to drop year after year, while rates keep going up. It doesn't add up.
Ramifications:
Here's what's frightening about all this: today Comcast blocked me from using a potentially competitive music service from Amazon. Even worse, today Comcast disconnected me from the ever-evolving cloud services I use each and every day for life and work.
Amazon deserves a lot of credit for pushing the bounds on what we can do on the internet. Their recent announcement of storing unlimited music in their Cloud Drive service is a compelling alternative to Apple's iCloud solution, and one that many might choose to use-–if Comcast allows it. Are you listening Amazon?
And it gets worse-–I work as a entertainment industry consultant, and depend on cloud services such as Dropbox, Simplenote, Google Apps, and Google Docs for day to day work. I use streaming online services such as Netflix, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Pandora every day for both work and play. I send and receive data all the time and have never had a problem with my $60/month broadband plan until A) Comcast added their data caps, and B) I really started engaging in using new cloud-based services (meaning uploading data to those services so I could get value from them).
Comcast will try to spin this, and say 250 GB is plenty for anyone – and in fact, a large percentage of their network users today probably really don't hit this cap right now. What they don't want to say is that streaming services such as Netflix now consume a quarter of network traffic monthly, and is projected to rise – all of which impacts the cable TV services they sell.
The last report in October suggested it made up around twenty percent of internet traffic during prime time, but this time around the stats say it accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees "Real-Time Entertainment" (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year.
- Engadget: Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America
And in the Netflix case, 99% of that data is downstream data. Comcast doesn't broadly advertise the fact that their cap also counts upload data – and I strongly believe as more and more people begin to "get" the cloud they're going to want to upload their valued data to services where they can engage with it in new and interesting ways. And until broadband is deemed an essential utility, and broadband providers like Comcast can't set an arbitrary limit and cut people off, our shared cloud-enabled future is at risk. To this end, I will be contacting various political entities in Seattle in the hope of trying to encourage either greater competition and choice in the broadband market (break Comcast's cable monopoly, and allow fiber to the home!), as well as greater investment in a citywide, city-run broadband network.
What am I Doing:
Well, first off, I'm writing this post to lay out the facts, as well as my opinion, as to the ramifications of broadband companies like Comcast being allowed to enforce data caps and cut people off from the internet. As I mentioned earlier, I will be sending a copy of this blog post to the following people and agencies:
FCC: Sharon Gillett, Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau
FCC: Chairman Julius Genachowski; Commissioner Michael Copps; Commissioner Robert McDowell; Commissioner Mignon Clyburn; Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker
Public Knowledge Interest Group (Their letter to the FCC is here, and good reading.)
Harold Feld, Legal Director Public Knowledge
Sascha Meinrath, Director New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative
City of Seattle Mayor's Office
Tom Rassmussen, Seattle City Council Representative
Stop the Cap!
I've also tweeted out a summary of what happened, will tweet a link to this blog post, and will also reach out to a few media folks I know in case they're interested in writing this up. I'll also be exploring what other broadband options I might have in Seattle – but thanks to Comcast's monopoly, my choices aren't great.
That said, if Qwest/CenturyLink (or any other broadband provider) wants to run fiber to my house on the top of the hill in Montlake, Seattle, and put up a broadcast antenna to serve the neighborhood – I'm in. Contact me at the links on this blog, or at andre at ozymandias.com. Seriously.
Andre Vrignaud has worked in the interactive entertainment industry for over 20 years at companies such as Intel, Microsoft Xbox, and Amazon. He currently works as an independent game industry consultant doing game, platform strategy, and media/PR consulting for a variety of firms.
This article originally ran on July 11, 2010. Republished with permission. Join the conversation about this in the comments below or at Andre's blog.
via Kotaku:
IS BROADBAND A RIGHT?
The Day Comcast’s Data Cap Policy Killed My Internet for One Year
andre vrignaud — Today I came home to find my 15 MB down/3 MB up Comcast broadband service had been shut off due to exceeding their 250 GB/month data cap policy.
This had happened the month before, and I called and had a polite but irritated conversation with Comcast's "Customer Security" department (since the regular customer service folks could not help.) According to them I had exceeded their 250 GB monthly cap, and they asked how that might have happened.
I told them the simple truth-–no idea, other than regular people were probably using it a lot for reasonable things. I have roommates, we stream Netflix HD movies and Pandora music incessantly to multiple devices in the home, and I also have an open access point (in addition to a secured AP that I use to access internal network resources) for guests. I asked if they could share what was using the majority of the data so I could go address it directly, but Comcast refused to share any information there (which is probably appropriate).
I made very clear to the gentleman I spoke with that I thought Comcast's data cap policy was arbitrary, unfair, and extremely irritating… and that if I had any decent competitive options in the neighborhood I'd dump Comcast in a heartbeat. Since I don't, I listened to him read his canned warning that if I exceeded their cap again I'd be cut off again. I do not recall details on how long the cut off would be, likely because I spent the next few minutes working with the service agent to add notes to my record about my detailed displeasure with Comcast's policy here. I specifically noted (and asked that it be recorded) that if this happened again I would contact the FCC, various news organizations, and otherwise make a stink. The CS agent was polite and reactivated my broadband. After hanging up I chatted with my roommates, asked them to keep an eye on bandwidth use, and also deactivated the open AP I had maintained for visitors (with regret, but this was the only area I could think of that I couldn't completely account for bandwidth use.) Then I forgot about the whole thing until today when I found I'd been cut off again.
I called up Comcast and went through customer service hell – a Comcast special, I might note. First their regular customer service agent couldn't help me, and sent me to their "Customer Security" group again. The Customer Security agent was polite, and after the standard identification questions notified me I was cut off for a year due to exceeding Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy limits on their bandwidth cap. I asked for details on what had been using bandwidth, and again, Comcast would not share. In a sudden brainstorm, I then asked whether the 250 GB bandwidth cap applied to just downloads (which I had assumed, as the majority of most bandwidth used in households is downstream bandwidth), or download and upload bandwidth. Surprise, surprise! Comcast measures both upstream and downstream bandwidth – and it suddenly clicked for me.
I'm a photographer and audiophile. I shoot all of my pictures in RAW format, and I store the many hundreds and hundreds of CDs I've purchased over the last 20 years or so in a variety of lossless and lossy music formats. In the case of music I rip my CDs to WMA Lossless (for ease of streaming to Windows), FLAC (another lossless format, so I can stream losslessly to my Sonos system), and M4A (also known as Apple's iTunes AAC format, so I can import my music from the media server to iTunes). I'm a big believer in storing the original, lossless digital content so that I can access it in full fidelity in the future no matter how technology evolves. In some ways that makes me a bit archaic as I still buy (used) CDs from Amazon for all of my music so I can rip it losslessly – I'm not a fan of the compressed music formats you buy and download. But the ramification is that I have terabytes of storage in my basement RAID server – each music track is duplicated three times, I have all of my original RAW photos, plus processed JPEG versions of those RAW photos, as well as a variety of other miscellaneous content – documents, spreadsheets, that sort of thing.
This stuff is valuable to me, and I recently purchased a three-year subscription to Carboniteso I could back all of this content up to the cloud. I also recently saw Amazon's announcement of being able to upload unlimited M4A/AAC tracks to their Cloud Drive service, and decided to upload my library there so I could access it when on the road. And it turns out uploading all of this content to the cloud triggered Comcast's bandwidth cap and caused me to be cut off from the internet-–again. It was never clear to me that Comcast measures both upload and download bandwidth, and I suspect many people are going to be surprised by this in the coming years, especially as the cloud continues to become more and more a part of our lives.
Anyway, to close out the Comcast call, I asked to be reinstated and he said it was final-–no appeal. I asked to escalate to a manager so I could explain my situation, and he stated there was no escalation, and repeated there was no appeal. I then asked for customer service email or other contact information so I could CC the company on a blog post (which you are reading now) and letter I would be sending to the FCC, Public Knowledge organization, New Media Foundation, the city of Seattle's Mayor's Office, and my Seattle City Council representative. He said he could connect me to the customer escalation line, but also stated it would not help – they wouldn't consider removing the cap. At that point I said I wouldn't bother wasting my time with the customer escalation line, and that I'd like to cancel my broadband. He politely said he understood, and that he'd transfer me to the appropriate department.
Time to return to Comcast customer service hell! After a few minutes I spoke with another gentlemen in the Technical Support and Billing division I'd been transferred to who, surprise, couldn't help me since I was cancelling my (now defunct) service. He then transferred me to (wait for it!) the Retention department, since they're apparently the only ones who can cancel a Comcast cable account. Yes, after Comcast applied their ridiculous policy and told me they didn't want me as a customer, I was transferred to the Retention department where they insisted on driving through their spiel until I could finally interrupt, say it wasn't going to work, and explain my situation. At which point the agent said: "Oh. I'll take care of it, thank you for calling Comcast ." As of this moment I have no idea if I've been cancelled or not.
My Opinion:
My opinion on all this is simple. The ability to access broadband internet is a right, and should be defined as an essential utility. Just as you're surprised when you flick a light switch and the light doesn't come on so are you surprised when the internet goes away in your house. The internet is used for communication, entertainment, business - an entire panopoly of humor endevours. Just as there are protections to keep water and electricity flowing to your house, so should the internet be protected.
Now the broadband companies would strongly disagree with me here. They're terrified of being turned into dumb pipes that only deliver data. This is why you see such vicious fights over the definition of internet neutrality, and cable companies fighting to be able to restrict services that flow over their pipes, inspect packets, or have the right to charge more for differing levels of service. They try to spin this as protecting the integrity of the network for other customers, and not having to charge more to offer service that some small percentage of their users overuse. However, these same companies are also strangely quiet when you ask them why (as in Comcast's case) they're able to keep boosting my broadband speed tier year after year for no additional charge. Or why their quarterly filings show their cost of providing broadband service continues to drop year after year, while rates keep going up. It doesn't add up.
Ramifications:
Here's what's frightening about all this: today Comcast blocked me from using a potentially competitive music service from Amazon. Even worse, today Comcast disconnected me from the ever-evolving cloud services I use each and every day for life and work.
Amazon deserves a lot of credit for pushing the bounds on what we can do on the internet. Their recent announcement of storing unlimited music in their Cloud Drive service is a compelling alternative to Apple's iCloud solution, and one that many might choose to use-–if Comcast allows it. Are you listening Amazon?
And it gets worse-–I work as a entertainment industry consultant, and depend on cloud services such as Dropbox, Simplenote, Google Apps, and Google Docs for day to day work. I use streaming online services such as Netflix, Xbox Live, Playstation Network, and Pandora every day for both work and play. I send and receive data all the time and have never had a problem with my $60/month broadband plan until A) Comcast added their data caps, and B) I really started engaging in using new cloud-based services (meaning uploading data to those services so I could get value from them).
Comcast will try to spin this, and say 250 GB is plenty for anyone – and in fact, a large percentage of their network users today probably really don't hit this cap right now. What they don't want to say is that streaming services such as Netflix now consume a quarter of network traffic monthly, and is projected to rise – all of which impacts the cable TV services they sell.
The last report in October suggested it made up around twenty percent of internet traffic during prime time, but this time around the stats say it accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees "Real-Time Entertainment" (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year.
- Engadget: Study finds Netflix is the largest source of internet traffic in North America
And in the Netflix case, 99% of that data is downstream data. Comcast doesn't broadly advertise the fact that their cap also counts upload data – and I strongly believe as more and more people begin to "get" the cloud they're going to want to upload their valued data to services where they can engage with it in new and interesting ways. And until broadband is deemed an essential utility, and broadband providers like Comcast can't set an arbitrary limit and cut people off, our shared cloud-enabled future is at risk. To this end, I will be contacting various political entities in Seattle in the hope of trying to encourage either greater competition and choice in the broadband market (break Comcast's cable monopoly, and allow fiber to the home!), as well as greater investment in a citywide, city-run broadband network.
What am I Doing:
Well, first off, I'm writing this post to lay out the facts, as well as my opinion, as to the ramifications of broadband companies like Comcast being allowed to enforce data caps and cut people off from the internet. As I mentioned earlier, I will be sending a copy of this blog post to the following people and agencies:
FCC: Sharon Gillett, Chief, Wireline Competition Bureau
FCC: Chairman Julius Genachowski; Commissioner Michael Copps; Commissioner Robert McDowell; Commissioner Mignon Clyburn; Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker
Public Knowledge Interest Group (Their letter to the FCC is here, and good reading.)
Harold Feld, Legal Director Public Knowledge
Sascha Meinrath, Director New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative
City of Seattle Mayor's Office
Tom Rassmussen, Seattle City Council Representative
Stop the Cap!
I've also tweeted out a summary of what happened, will tweet a link to this blog post, and will also reach out to a few media folks I know in case they're interested in writing this up. I'll also be exploring what other broadband options I might have in Seattle – but thanks to Comcast's monopoly, my choices aren't great.
That said, if Qwest/CenturyLink (or any other broadband provider) wants to run fiber to my house on the top of the hill in Montlake, Seattle, and put up a broadcast antenna to serve the neighborhood – I'm in. Contact me at the links on this blog, or at andre at ozymandias.com. Seriously.
Andre Vrignaud has worked in the interactive entertainment industry for over 20 years at companies such as Intel, Microsoft Xbox, and Amazon. He currently works as an independent game industry consultant doing game, platform strategy, and media/PR consulting for a variety of firms.
This article originally ran on July 11, 2010. Republished with permission. Join the conversation about this in the comments below or at Andre's blog.
What's your tax money being spent on?
Read the original here.
OPS (Omaha Public Schools) buys 8,000 diversity manuals
By Joe Dejka
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Metro/Region
The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive.
The book by Virginia education consultants could raise some eyebrows with its viewpoints.
The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.”
The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities.
The authors argue that public school teachers must raise their cultural awareness to better serve minority students and improve academic achievement.
The Omaha school board approved buying 8,000 copies of the book — one for every employee, including members of the custodial staff — in April. The decision to buy the book was made 11-0, with board member Mary Ellen Drickey passing on the vote.
Janice Garnett, OPS assistant superintendent of human resources, said she could not recall another time that the district had bought copies of the same book to give to every staff member.
Employees will be asked to read a couple of chapters each quarter and then meet in study groups to discuss the book using a study guide produced by the district, she said. For teachers, the study sessions will be a part of their professional development.
School board President Sandra Jensen said the district doesn't endorse everything in the book, nor does she expect employees to adopt the authors' positions. The book is intended to open a dialogue, she said.
“The purpose of providing this resource is to help staff see that people come from a multitude of different backgrounds which cause them to respond differently to the same set of facts, depending on their personal perspectives,” she said in a statement. “Recognition that one might have a certain perspective is critical to treating all people equally.”
Representatives of other large Nebraska school districts — Lincoln, Millard, Papillion-La Vista and Bellevue — said they have not used the book for training teachers, nor have the Council Bluffs Community Schools and Des Moines Public Schools.
Lincoln officials bought copies of a different cultural proficiency book to train administrators later this summer, according to spokeswoman Mary Kay Roth.
The book that OPS bought, “The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change,” includes a worksheet for teachers to score themselves on a continuum of cultural sensitivity. The continuumranges from “cultural destructiveness,” as evidenced by genocide and ethnocide, to “cultural proficiency,” depicted as the highest level of awareness.
Only those educators who acknowledge the existence of white privilege in America, that “white” is a culture in America and that race “is a definer for social and economic status” can reach proficiency, the authors contend. Those who score poorly on the worksheet are asked in the book what they will do “to align yourself with the values expressed.”
Jensen said the district will not use the book to evaluate or judge employees.
The book says teachers must overcome irrational fear of homosexuality and reject the “color-blind” approach to teaching in which teachers treat all children the same. Instead, the group identity of students of color should be recognized and esteemed, the authors say.
The authors ask readers to reflect on several hypothetical cases, including that of a gay “teacher of the year” afraid to post family photos of his male partner for his school's Family Day, an African-American parent upset by a sixth-grade Early-American Day because African-Americans were enslaved in those days, and a principal whose attempt to reach out to Muslim students backfires when he announces over the intercom that students should welcome Muslims though they “might believe in violence.”
The authors — Franklin and Brenda CampbellJones and Randall B. Lindsey — all former teachers, write that their intent in the book is “to prepare educators to unshackle themselves from tradition and become facilitators for reconciliation of historical injustices.”
Franklin CampbellJones said in an interview that although some issues in the book are considered “challenging” and “taboo,” discussing them is important to break down barriers to educating every child.
He said the book has been well-received by other school districts using it, including San Diego and Atlanta, and districts in Maryland and Canada.
The push for cultural proficiency, sometimes referred to as cultural competence, is a trend across the country, though what's meant by these terms varies. Definitions range from encouraging teachers to understand the cultural backgrounds of students to more aggressive efforts to rewrite curricula and adapt school systems to immigrant cultures.
A primary concern of critics is that schools and universities could use cultural proficiency as an ideological litmus test and that the money put toward such programs could be better spent directly on academics.
In 2009 the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities drew criticism when a task force proposed introducing cultural competency requirements for its teacher candidates.
The task force proposed that future teachers, in order to be recommended for licensure, should “recognize and demonstrate understanding of white privilege,” fight for social justice and take tests to measure their “intercultural sensitivity” and “cultural intelligence.”
Among the critics were the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit watchdog group advocating individual rights at America's colleges and universities, which argued that the proposals intruded on matters of individual freedom and conscience.
The Nebraska Board of Education is considering drafting teacher standards that call for teachers to be “culturally competent,” a move spokeswoman Betty VanDeventer said is intended to make teachers more aware and respectful of children of all cultures. Last winter, board members authorized a 41-member committee of teachers, principals, parents and others to draft the standards.
The proposed standards call upon teachers to, among other things, connect with a student's traditions to move him toward academic success, use “culturally appropriate instructional strategies” and make sure tests are valid and address the diversity of students.
The draft standards do not include any of the social justice goals contained in the book acquired by OPS.
The state plans to hold forums this summer and fall on the draft standards. The Nebraska standards would be voluntary. Local districts could decide whether to adopt them.
Paul Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, and a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said cultural proficiency is part of a broader agenda advocated by people “who think that we should have a teaching force that has a certain political perspective.”
About OPS spending stimulus money on the book, he said: “That must be a wealthy school district.”
Stimulus rules allowed districts to spend money on teacher training, but Peterson suggested the money would be better spent on academic training.
“I would like to know whether the teachers are proficient in the subject they're going to be teaching,” he said. “It would be nice, if they're going to be teaching science, to be proficient in science; or math, to be proficient in math.”
Peterson said it's important that teachers be aware of the traditions a child brings to the school, and to take those into account when working with the pupil and deciding how to engage and motivate him or her.
He is concerned, however, about the book's general statements about the white population. That kind of generalization can be “extremely misleading” and “it would seem it would not be the kind of book you would distribute,” he said.
Jensen said there's no hidden agenda with the book study. She said she had started reading the book before the board voted to approve the purchase, and she intends to finish it and participate in the sessions.
Asked last week if she believes white privilege exists in Omaha, Jensen said: “That depends on the cultural lens that one looks through.”
The Omaha school district has a racially diverse enrollment. Last year the enrollment was 35.7 percent Caucasian, 29.9 percent Hispanic, 29.7 percent African-American, 3.1 percent Asian-American and 1.6 percent American-Indian. Students speak 93 different languages, Omaha Public Schools officials say.
The district, like most across the country, has struggled to close stubborn achievement gaps between whites and minorities.
Garnett, with OPS, said the district will use the book as a conversation starter on topics such as social equity, cultural understanding and racial justice.
“We're not saying that every idea in that book you have to accept,” Garnett said. “Not at all. What we're saying is let's explore this whole concept and see where we want to be as a school district when it relates to the diverse student population we now serve.”
Teachers will be asked to reflect on the book this year, and then next year the district will look for ways to apply some of the concepts in the classroom and workplace, she said.
That will include looking at “culturally responsive teaching” as a way to improve achievement for kids, Garnett said.
In defense of the district's purchase, OPS spokeswoman Luanne Nelson pointed to a study released by two Latino advocacy groups in Massachusetts calling for cultural proficiency in that state's schools.
When there are gaps in achievement between whites and minorities, schools need to identify obstacles to learning embedded in school culture, policies and practices, according to the study released by the Sociedad Latina and the University of Massachusetts' Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy.
Nancy Edick, dean of the College of Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said it is “imperative” that teachers are prepared for increasingly diverse schools.
Edick has trained Millard Public Schools teachers in culturally responsive teaching.
The hope is that teachers develop an understanding and appreciation for diversity in the classroom, school and community, and that they see “the increasing diversity we're all experiencing is not a threat, it's an opportunity,” she said.
“The rich life experiences of a diverse classroom contribute to an excellent education. It's an education that helps prepare our kids for a world they're going to live in, an increasingly diverse world,” Edick said.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1077, joe.dejka@owh
OPS (Omaha Public Schools) buys 8,000 diversity manuals
By Joe Dejka
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Metro/Region
The Omaha Public Schools used more than $130,000 in federal stimulus dollars to buy each teacher, administrator and staff member a manual on how to become more culturally sensitive.
The book by Virginia education consultants could raise some eyebrows with its viewpoints.
The authors assert that American government and institutions create advantages that “channel wealth and power to white people,” that color-blindness will not end racism and that educators should “take action for social justice.”
The book says that teachers should acknowledge historical systemic oppression in schools, including racism, sexism, homophobia and “ableism,” defined by the authors as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities.
The authors argue that public school teachers must raise their cultural awareness to better serve minority students and improve academic achievement.
The Omaha school board approved buying 8,000 copies of the book — one for every employee, including members of the custodial staff — in April. The decision to buy the book was made 11-0, with board member Mary Ellen Drickey passing on the vote.
Janice Garnett, OPS assistant superintendent of human resources, said she could not recall another time that the district had bought copies of the same book to give to every staff member.
Employees will be asked to read a couple of chapters each quarter and then meet in study groups to discuss the book using a study guide produced by the district, she said. For teachers, the study sessions will be a part of their professional development.
School board President Sandra Jensen said the district doesn't endorse everything in the book, nor does she expect employees to adopt the authors' positions. The book is intended to open a dialogue, she said.
“The purpose of providing this resource is to help staff see that people come from a multitude of different backgrounds which cause them to respond differently to the same set of facts, depending on their personal perspectives,” she said in a statement. “Recognition that one might have a certain perspective is critical to treating all people equally.”
Representatives of other large Nebraska school districts — Lincoln, Millard, Papillion-La Vista and Bellevue — said they have not used the book for training teachers, nor have the Council Bluffs Community Schools and Des Moines Public Schools.
Lincoln officials bought copies of a different cultural proficiency book to train administrators later this summer, according to spokeswoman Mary Kay Roth.
The book that OPS bought, “The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change,” includes a worksheet for teachers to score themselves on a continuum of cultural sensitivity. The continuumranges from “cultural destructiveness,” as evidenced by genocide and ethnocide, to “cultural proficiency,” depicted as the highest level of awareness.
Only those educators who acknowledge the existence of white privilege in America, that “white” is a culture in America and that race “is a definer for social and economic status” can reach proficiency, the authors contend. Those who score poorly on the worksheet are asked in the book what they will do “to align yourself with the values expressed.”
Jensen said the district will not use the book to evaluate or judge employees.
The book says teachers must overcome irrational fear of homosexuality and reject the “color-blind” approach to teaching in which teachers treat all children the same. Instead, the group identity of students of color should be recognized and esteemed, the authors say.
The authors ask readers to reflect on several hypothetical cases, including that of a gay “teacher of the year” afraid to post family photos of his male partner for his school's Family Day, an African-American parent upset by a sixth-grade Early-American Day because African-Americans were enslaved in those days, and a principal whose attempt to reach out to Muslim students backfires when he announces over the intercom that students should welcome Muslims though they “might believe in violence.”
The authors — Franklin and Brenda CampbellJones and Randall B. Lindsey — all former teachers, write that their intent in the book is “to prepare educators to unshackle themselves from tradition and become facilitators for reconciliation of historical injustices.”
Franklin CampbellJones said in an interview that although some issues in the book are considered “challenging” and “taboo,” discussing them is important to break down barriers to educating every child.
He said the book has been well-received by other school districts using it, including San Diego and Atlanta, and districts in Maryland and Canada.
The push for cultural proficiency, sometimes referred to as cultural competence, is a trend across the country, though what's meant by these terms varies. Definitions range from encouraging teachers to understand the cultural backgrounds of students to more aggressive efforts to rewrite curricula and adapt school systems to immigrant cultures.
A primary concern of critics is that schools and universities could use cultural proficiency as an ideological litmus test and that the money put toward such programs could be better spent directly on academics.
In 2009 the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities drew criticism when a task force proposed introducing cultural competency requirements for its teacher candidates.
The task force proposed that future teachers, in order to be recommended for licensure, should “recognize and demonstrate understanding of white privilege,” fight for social justice and take tests to measure their “intercultural sensitivity” and “cultural intelligence.”
Among the critics were the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit watchdog group advocating individual rights at America's colleges and universities, which argued that the proposals intruded on matters of individual freedom and conscience.
The Nebraska Board of Education is considering drafting teacher standards that call for teachers to be “culturally competent,” a move spokeswoman Betty VanDeventer said is intended to make teachers more aware and respectful of children of all cultures. Last winter, board members authorized a 41-member committee of teachers, principals, parents and others to draft the standards.
The proposed standards call upon teachers to, among other things, connect with a student's traditions to move him toward academic success, use “culturally appropriate instructional strategies” and make sure tests are valid and address the diversity of students.
The draft standards do not include any of the social justice goals contained in the book acquired by OPS.
The state plans to hold forums this summer and fall on the draft standards. The Nebraska standards would be voluntary. Local districts could decide whether to adopt them.
Paul Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, and a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said cultural proficiency is part of a broader agenda advocated by people “who think that we should have a teaching force that has a certain political perspective.”
About OPS spending stimulus money on the book, he said: “That must be a wealthy school district.”
Stimulus rules allowed districts to spend money on teacher training, but Peterson suggested the money would be better spent on academic training.
“I would like to know whether the teachers are proficient in the subject they're going to be teaching,” he said. “It would be nice, if they're going to be teaching science, to be proficient in science; or math, to be proficient in math.”
Peterson said it's important that teachers be aware of the traditions a child brings to the school, and to take those into account when working with the pupil and deciding how to engage and motivate him or her.
He is concerned, however, about the book's general statements about the white population. That kind of generalization can be “extremely misleading” and “it would seem it would not be the kind of book you would distribute,” he said.
Jensen said there's no hidden agenda with the book study. She said she had started reading the book before the board voted to approve the purchase, and she intends to finish it and participate in the sessions.
Asked last week if she believes white privilege exists in Omaha, Jensen said: “That depends on the cultural lens that one looks through.”
The Omaha school district has a racially diverse enrollment. Last year the enrollment was 35.7 percent Caucasian, 29.9 percent Hispanic, 29.7 percent African-American, 3.1 percent Asian-American and 1.6 percent American-Indian. Students speak 93 different languages, Omaha Public Schools officials say.
The district, like most across the country, has struggled to close stubborn achievement gaps between whites and minorities.
Garnett, with OPS, said the district will use the book as a conversation starter on topics such as social equity, cultural understanding and racial justice.
“We're not saying that every idea in that book you have to accept,” Garnett said. “Not at all. What we're saying is let's explore this whole concept and see where we want to be as a school district when it relates to the diverse student population we now serve.”
Teachers will be asked to reflect on the book this year, and then next year the district will look for ways to apply some of the concepts in the classroom and workplace, she said.
That will include looking at “culturally responsive teaching” as a way to improve achievement for kids, Garnett said.
In defense of the district's purchase, OPS spokeswoman Luanne Nelson pointed to a study released by two Latino advocacy groups in Massachusetts calling for cultural proficiency in that state's schools.
When there are gaps in achievement between whites and minorities, schools need to identify obstacles to learning embedded in school culture, policies and practices, according to the study released by the Sociedad Latina and the University of Massachusetts' Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy.
Nancy Edick, dean of the College of Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said it is “imperative” that teachers are prepared for increasingly diverse schools.
Edick has trained Millard Public Schools teachers in culturally responsive teaching.
The hope is that teachers develop an understanding and appreciation for diversity in the classroom, school and community, and that they see “the increasing diversity we're all experiencing is not a threat, it's an opportunity,” she said.
“The rich life experiences of a diverse classroom contribute to an excellent education. It's an education that helps prepare our kids for a world they're going to live in, an increasingly diverse world,” Edick said.
Contact the writer: 402-444-1077, joe.dejka@owh
Quote of the Day
Read the original here.
Obama: Job Losses Prove Stimulus Worked
Monday, July 11, 2011
By Fred Lucas
(CNSNews.com) - Three days after the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the national unemployment rate had ticked up from 9.1 percent in May to 9.2 percent in June, President Barack Obama said that the loss of jobs in the public sector is “evidence” that his $830-billion economic stimulus legislation worked.
“Now, without relitigating the past, I’m absolutely convinced, and the vast majority of economists are convinced, that the steps we took in the Recovery Act saved millions of people their jobs or created a whole bunch of jobs,” Obama said at his Monday press conference.
Obama: Job Losses Prove Stimulus Worked
Monday, July 11, 2011
By Fred Lucas
(CNSNews.com) - Three days after the U.S. Department of Labor reported that the national unemployment rate had ticked up from 9.1 percent in May to 9.2 percent in June, President Barack Obama said that the loss of jobs in the public sector is “evidence” that his $830-billion economic stimulus legislation worked.
“Now, without relitigating the past, I’m absolutely convinced, and the vast majority of economists are convinced, that the steps we took in the Recovery Act saved millions of people their jobs or created a whole bunch of jobs,” Obama said at his Monday press conference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqA_IXSrHh8
“And part of the evidence of that is as you see what happens with the Recovery Act phasing out,” he said. “When I came into office and budgets were hemorrhaging at the state level, part of the Recovery Act was giving states help so they wouldn’t have to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters. As we’ve seen that federal support for states diminish, you’ve seen the biggest job losses in the public sector--teachers, police officers, firefighters losing their jobs.”
President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Feb. 17 2009. His top economic adviser, Christina Romer, had reportedthat the act would prevent the national unemployment rate from reaching 8 percent. Initially, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the act would cost $787 billion. CBO now estimates it cost $830 billion.
“And part of the evidence of that is as you see what happens with the Recovery Act phasing out,” he said. “When I came into office and budgets were hemorrhaging at the state level, part of the Recovery Act was giving states help so they wouldn’t have to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters. As we’ve seen that federal support for states diminish, you’ve seen the biggest job losses in the public sector--teachers, police officers, firefighters losing their jobs.”
President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Feb. 17 2009. His top economic adviser, Christina Romer, had reportedthat the act would prevent the national unemployment rate from reaching 8 percent. Initially, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the act would cost $787 billion. CBO now estimates it cost $830 billion.
Smart Power
I thought every other country was supposed to love the US now? Or maybe they just love our money...Read the original here.
Pakistan could "pull troops Afghan from border" if U.S. cuts aid
By Zeeshan Haider | Reuters – 2 hours 22 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan could pull back troops fighting Islamist militants near the Afghan border if the United States cuts off aid, the defense minister said on Tuesday in an interview with Pakistani media.
The United States Monday said it would hold back $800 million -- a third of nearly $2 billion in security aid to Pakistan -- in a show of displeasure over Pakistan's removal of U.S. military trainers, limits on visas for U.S. personnel and other bilateral irritants.
"If at all things become difficult, we will just get all our forces back," Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said in an interview with the Express 24/7 television to be aired later on Tuesday.
The television aired excerpts of the interview Tuesday.
"If Americans refuse to give us money, then okay," he said. "I think the next step is that the government or the armed forces will be moving from the border areas. We cannot afford to keep military out in the mountains for such a long period."
In Pakistan, the defense minister is relatively powerless. Real defense and military policy is made by the powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Monday, the military said it could do without U.S. assistance by depending on its own resources or turning to "all-weather friend" China.
Mukhtar later told Reuters Pakistan wanted the money spent on the maintenance of the army in the tribal areas. "This is what we are demanding," he said. "It is our own money."
The United States provides hundreds of million of dollars a year to reimburse Pakistan for deploying more than 100,000 troops along the Afghan border to combat militant groups.
Other funding covers training and military hardware. The White House announcement puts $300 million in reimbursement and another $500 million in aid in question.
Pakistan is an important ally of the United States but relations between the two uneasy allies have been on the downward spiral since last year when a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in January and then U.S. Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in May without informing Islamabad beforehand.
Islamabad sees the May 2 raid as a breach of its sovereignty and has drastically cut back on the numbers of U.S. troops allowed in the country and has set clear limits on intelligence sharing with the United States.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan on Monday said the $800 million in U.S. aid put on hold could be resumed if Pakistan increased the number of visas for U.S. personnel and reinstated the training missions.
(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Nick Macfie)
Pakistan could "pull troops Afghan from border" if U.S. cuts aid
By Zeeshan Haider | Reuters – 2 hours 22 minutes ago
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan could pull back troops fighting Islamist militants near the Afghan border if the United States cuts off aid, the defense minister said on Tuesday in an interview with Pakistani media.
The United States Monday said it would hold back $800 million -- a third of nearly $2 billion in security aid to Pakistan -- in a show of displeasure over Pakistan's removal of U.S. military trainers, limits on visas for U.S. personnel and other bilateral irritants.
"If at all things become difficult, we will just get all our forces back," Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar said in an interview with the Express 24/7 television to be aired later on Tuesday.
The television aired excerpts of the interview Tuesday.
"If Americans refuse to give us money, then okay," he said. "I think the next step is that the government or the armed forces will be moving from the border areas. We cannot afford to keep military out in the mountains for such a long period."
In Pakistan, the defense minister is relatively powerless. Real defense and military policy is made by the powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Kayani, and the head of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Monday, the military said it could do without U.S. assistance by depending on its own resources or turning to "all-weather friend" China.
Mukhtar later told Reuters Pakistan wanted the money spent on the maintenance of the army in the tribal areas. "This is what we are demanding," he said. "It is our own money."
The United States provides hundreds of million of dollars a year to reimburse Pakistan for deploying more than 100,000 troops along the Afghan border to combat militant groups.
Other funding covers training and military hardware. The White House announcement puts $300 million in reimbursement and another $500 million in aid in question.
Pakistan is an important ally of the United States but relations between the two uneasy allies have been on the downward spiral since last year when a CIA contractor killed two Pakistanis in January and then U.S. Navy SEALS killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad in May without informing Islamabad beforehand.
Islamabad sees the May 2 raid as a breach of its sovereignty and has drastically cut back on the numbers of U.S. troops allowed in the country and has set clear limits on intelligence sharing with the United States.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan on Monday said the $800 million in U.S. aid put on hold could be resumed if Pakistan increased the number of visas for U.S. personnel and reinstated the training missions.
(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Nick Macfie)
Friday, July 8, 2011
WSJ on POTUS Tweet Conference
James Taranto at the WSJ has some opinion on the President's tweet conference. I can't say I disagree...read the original here.
Commander in Tweet
Just what we need, another "explanation" from @BarackObama!
By JAMES TARANTO
We have to admit, we didn't watch President Obama's "Twitter town hall" yesterday. In fact, we were unclear on the whole concept. We assumed that the whole thing was happening on Twitter--that the president would be tweeting answers to tweeted questions. And to be honest, we can think of better things to do on Twitter, like replacing a word in a famous quote with "duck."
In short, it was little more than a glorified press conference--replete, as CBS reports, with the usual Obama tropes:
A CBS News video set us straight. Apparently it was sort of an interview format, with a guy in a gray suit (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, according to CNN) reading questions off a TV screen, and Obama speaking, not tweeting, in response. The questions were screened by a team of eightTwitter-selected "curators"--all journalists, coincidentally enough--which ensured that none of IowaHawk's questions would get through to the president. Too bad. We'd have liked to hear the answer to this one: "An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?"
The magnitude of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression escaped President Obama when he first stepped into office, the president acknowledged today at his "Twitter town hall."
Asked what mistakes he made in handling the recession, Mr. Obama said today he could have done a better job at explaining "to the American people it was going to take a while to get out of this."
Except of course that he did explain: that there was a danger unemployment would rise as high as 8% unless Congress spent some $800 kajillion on a so-called stimulus. Congress obliged. Unemployment reached as high as 10% and is still above 9%.
That's why the World's Greatest Orator keeps claiming that the quality of his explaining was insufficient. It diverts attention from the real problem: that his explanation was wrong because his policy was bad.
Nonetheless, there's always room for improvement, and if Obama wants to learn to explain things better, he could do worse than to stop talking and start tweeting. Twitter's 140-character delimitation, though sporadically vexatious, is an inexorable disincentive to magniloquence. And let's face it, Obama can be a bit pompous.
This seems as good a time as any to mention that you can now follow this columnist on Twitter. Sorry for the self-promotion, but as Hillel the Elder observed, "If I am not for my duck, who will be for me?
Just what we need, another "explanation" from @BarackObama!
By JAMES TARANTO
We have to admit, we didn't watch President Obama's "Twitter town hall" yesterday. In fact, we were unclear on the whole concept. We assumed that the whole thing was happening on Twitter--that the president would be tweeting answers to tweeted questions. And to be honest, we can think of better things to do on Twitter, like replacing a word in a famous quote with "duck."
In short, it was little more than a glorified press conference--replete, as CBS reports, with the usual Obama tropes:
A CBS News video set us straight. Apparently it was sort of an interview format, with a guy in a gray suit (Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, according to CNN) reading questions off a TV screen, and Obama speaking, not tweeting, in response. The questions were screened by a team of eightTwitter-selected "curators"--all journalists, coincidentally enough--which ensured that none of IowaHawk's questions would get through to the president. Too bad. We'd have liked to hear the answer to this one: "An $8 billion high speed train leaves Chicago for Iowa City at 8:15am at 40mph. Why?"
The magnitude of the worst U.S. recession since the Great Depression escaped President Obama when he first stepped into office, the president acknowledged today at his "Twitter town hall."
Asked what mistakes he made in handling the recession, Mr. Obama said today he could have done a better job at explaining "to the American people it was going to take a while to get out of this."
Except of course that he did explain: that there was a danger unemployment would rise as high as 8% unless Congress spent some $800 kajillion on a so-called stimulus. Congress obliged. Unemployment reached as high as 10% and is still above 9%.
That's why the World's Greatest Orator keeps claiming that the quality of his explaining was insufficient. It diverts attention from the real problem: that his explanation was wrong because his policy was bad.
Nonetheless, there's always room for improvement, and if Obama wants to learn to explain things better, he could do worse than to stop talking and start tweeting. Twitter's 140-character delimitation, though sporadically vexatious, is an inexorable disincentive to magniloquence. And let's face it, Obama can be a bit pompous.
This seems as good a time as any to mention that you can now follow this columnist on Twitter. Sorry for the self-promotion, but as Hillel the Elder observed, "If I am not for my duck, who will be for me?
Astute political strategy or Wishful Thinking?
What do you think? Is Plouffe right on the money or out of his mind? Read the original here.
Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012
By Ian Swanson - 07/07/11 08:25 PM ET
President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.
Plouffe should probably hope that’s the case, since dismal job figures aren’t expected to get any better for Obama and the economy on Friday.
Most economists expect a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that the nation added about 100,000 jobs in June. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth, let alone lower the unemployment rate or make a dent in the 9 million jobs lost during the so called Great Recession.
It’s looking more and more like Obama will have to do something no president has done since Franklin Roosevelt: Win reelection with unemployment around 8 percent.
Ronald Reagan, another president Obama is sometimes compared with, was reelected in 1984 when unemployment was 7.2 percent. Obama isn’t likely to see a number that low.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, predicts the nation will have added 110,000 jobs in total in June, with 125,000 added in the private sector. Hiring by the public sector will continue to fall.
The economy would have to add 350,000 jobs every month between now and December 2014 to get back to the pre-recession low of 5 percent unemployment, last seen in December 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Reagan saw that kind of growth after the recession of the early 1980s, and it helped him win reelection by a comfortable 18 points. He also faced Walter Mondale, a weak opponent, from the opposing party — a bit of history Obama hopes to repeat in 2012.
The economy hasn’t seen such high-octane growth since August 1993 to February 1995, when it last averaged 350,000 jobs created per month. Even during the tech boom in the latter half of the 1990s, the economy didn’t average that many jobs, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist with EPI.
The Obama campaign’s hope is that voters will feel the economy is improving in the fall of 2012, just as they did when Roosevelt and Reagan were reelected.
That seemed to be at the root of Plouffe’s remarks on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said, according to Bloomberg. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ ”
The remarks will likely irritate Democrats who think Obama and his political team have taken their eye off jobs.
There’s some reason to think Obama could get a boost from the economy in the second half of the year, particularly given signs that the White House and congressional Republicans are moving closer to a deal that would lift the nation’s debt ceiling and cut trillions from annual deficits.
There’s no doubt such a deal would boost confidence in the economy and the political system. It could also boost hiring.
Layoffs have basically stopped since the recession, said Shierholz, but employers aren’t hiring even though corporations are expected to announce huge profits for the first half of the year.
“We are still treading water at the bottom of a deep hole,” said Shierholz.
The only real improvement in the labor market since the recession ended is with workers who have decided to sit out the slow economy and not look for a new job. That’s helped keep the unemployment rate low, Shierholz said.
Zandi argues the economy was sidetracked for the first half of the year by a number of shocks that he hopes are temporary.
They include the devastating tsunami in Japan that wreaked havoc on manufacturers around the world; turmoil in the Middle East; the ongoing conflict in Libya that sent crude oil prices to summer highs in the spring; and the debt talks, which Zandi said appear to have led the Treasury to slow outlays to avoid breaching the debt ceiling.
“The ill effects of these shocks are or will soon fade and even add to growth during the second half of the year,” Zandi said in an email. He expects payroll employment gains to be back near 200,000 by the end of the year.
If Zandi’s right and those gains continue through 2012, Plouffe might be proven right, too, as voters could be pleased with their position.
But there isn’t a lot of room for Obama to maneuver when it comes to the unemployment rate.
Daniel Strauss contributed to this story.
Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012
By Ian Swanson - 07/07/11 08:25 PM ET
President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.
Plouffe should probably hope that’s the case, since dismal job figures aren’t expected to get any better for Obama and the economy on Friday.
Most economists expect a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that the nation added about 100,000 jobs in June. That’s not enough to keep up with population growth, let alone lower the unemployment rate or make a dent in the 9 million jobs lost during the so called Great Recession.
It’s looking more and more like Obama will have to do something no president has done since Franklin Roosevelt: Win reelection with unemployment around 8 percent.
Ronald Reagan, another president Obama is sometimes compared with, was reelected in 1984 when unemployment was 7.2 percent. Obama isn’t likely to see a number that low.
Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, predicts the nation will have added 110,000 jobs in total in June, with 125,000 added in the private sector. Hiring by the public sector will continue to fall.
The economy would have to add 350,000 jobs every month between now and December 2014 to get back to the pre-recession low of 5 percent unemployment, last seen in December 2007, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
Reagan saw that kind of growth after the recession of the early 1980s, and it helped him win reelection by a comfortable 18 points. He also faced Walter Mondale, a weak opponent, from the opposing party — a bit of history Obama hopes to repeat in 2012.
The economy hasn’t seen such high-octane growth since August 1993 to February 1995, when it last averaged 350,000 jobs created per month. Even during the tech boom in the latter half of the 1990s, the economy didn’t average that many jobs, according to Heidi Shierholz, an economist with EPI.
The Obama campaign’s hope is that voters will feel the economy is improving in the fall of 2012, just as they did when Roosevelt and Reagan were reelected.
That seemed to be at the root of Plouffe’s remarks on Wednesday, as quoted by Bloomberg.
“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said, according to Bloomberg. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ ”
The remarks will likely irritate Democrats who think Obama and his political team have taken their eye off jobs.
There’s some reason to think Obama could get a boost from the economy in the second half of the year, particularly given signs that the White House and congressional Republicans are moving closer to a deal that would lift the nation’s debt ceiling and cut trillions from annual deficits.
There’s no doubt such a deal would boost confidence in the economy and the political system. It could also boost hiring.
Layoffs have basically stopped since the recession, said Shierholz, but employers aren’t hiring even though corporations are expected to announce huge profits for the first half of the year.
“We are still treading water at the bottom of a deep hole,” said Shierholz.
The only real improvement in the labor market since the recession ended is with workers who have decided to sit out the slow economy and not look for a new job. That’s helped keep the unemployment rate low, Shierholz said.
Zandi argues the economy was sidetracked for the first half of the year by a number of shocks that he hopes are temporary.
They include the devastating tsunami in Japan that wreaked havoc on manufacturers around the world; turmoil in the Middle East; the ongoing conflict in Libya that sent crude oil prices to summer highs in the spring; and the debt talks, which Zandi said appear to have led the Treasury to slow outlays to avoid breaching the debt ceiling.
“The ill effects of these shocks are or will soon fade and even add to growth during the second half of the year,” Zandi said in an email. He expects payroll employment gains to be back near 200,000 by the end of the year.
If Zandi’s right and those gains continue through 2012, Plouffe might be proven right, too, as voters could be pleased with their position.
But there isn’t a lot of room for Obama to maneuver when it comes to the unemployment rate.
Daniel Strauss contributed to this story.
9.2% unemployment; April & May figures corrected...
Read the original here.
Jobs barely rise, dashing hopes of economic revival
On Friday July 8, 2011, 8:34 am
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dampening hopes the economy was on the cusp of regaining momentum after stumbling in recent months.
Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists' expectations for a 90,000 rise.
Many economists raised their forecasts on Thursday after a stronger-than-expected reading on U.S. private hiring from payrolls processor ADP, and they expected gains of anywhere between 125,000 and 175,000.
The unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest since December, from 9.1 percent in May.
The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported. The report shattered expectations that the economy was starting to accelerate after a soft patch in the first half of the year.
The private sector added 57,000, accounting for all the jobs created, with government employment shrinking 39,000 because of fiscal problems at local and state governments.
Economic activity in the first six months of the year was dampened by rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions following Japan's devastating earthquake in March.
WHITE HOUSE HEADACHES
Signs the labor market is struggling is a major blow for the Obama administration, which has struggled to get the economy to create enough jobs to absorb the 14.1 million unemployed Americans.
The economy is the top concern among voters and will feature prominently in President Barack Obama's bid for re-election next year. So far, the economy has regained only a fraction of the more than 8 million jobs lost during the recession.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve -- which wrapped up a $600 billion bond-buying program last week designed to spur lending and stimulate growth -- appears unlikely to take any further steps to boost the economy.
The economy needs to create between 125,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month just to absorb new labor force entrants.
Details of the report showed widespread weakness, though factory payrolls rebounded 6,000 after contracting in May for the first time in seven months, with the recovery reflecting a step-up in motor vehicle production.
Construction employment fell 9,000 last month after declining 4,000 in May. Government employment declined for an eighth straight month as municipalities and state governments continued to wield the axe to balance their budgets.
The report also showed the average workweek fell to 34.3 hours from 34.4 hours. Employers have been reluctant to extend hours because of the uncertainty surrounding the recovery.
Average hourly earnings slipped a penny, more evidence that wage-driven inflation is not a risk. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman)
Jobs barely rise, dashing hopes of economic revival
On Friday July 8, 2011, 8:34 am
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment growth ground to a halt in June, with employers hiring the fewest number of workers in nine months, dampening hopes the economy was on the cusp of regaining momentum after stumbling in recent months.
Nonfarm payrolls rose only 18,000, the weakest reading since September, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below economists' expectations for a 90,000 rise.
Many economists raised their forecasts on Thursday after a stronger-than-expected reading on U.S. private hiring from payrolls processor ADP, and they expected gains of anywhere between 125,000 and 175,000.
The unemployment rate climbed to 9.2 percent, the highest since December, from 9.1 percent in May.
The government revised April and May payrolls to show 44,000 fewer jobs created than previously reported. The report shattered expectations that the economy was starting to accelerate after a soft patch in the first half of the year.
The private sector added 57,000, accounting for all the jobs created, with government employment shrinking 39,000 because of fiscal problems at local and state governments.
Economic activity in the first six months of the year was dampened by rising commodity prices and supply chain disruptions following Japan's devastating earthquake in March.
WHITE HOUSE HEADACHES
Signs the labor market is struggling is a major blow for the Obama administration, which has struggled to get the economy to create enough jobs to absorb the 14.1 million unemployed Americans.
The economy is the top concern among voters and will feature prominently in President Barack Obama's bid for re-election next year. So far, the economy has regained only a fraction of the more than 8 million jobs lost during the recession.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve -- which wrapped up a $600 billion bond-buying program last week designed to spur lending and stimulate growth -- appears unlikely to take any further steps to boost the economy.
The economy needs to create between 125,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month just to absorb new labor force entrants.
Details of the report showed widespread weakness, though factory payrolls rebounded 6,000 after contracting in May for the first time in seven months, with the recovery reflecting a step-up in motor vehicle production.
Construction employment fell 9,000 last month after declining 4,000 in May. Government employment declined for an eighth straight month as municipalities and state governments continued to wield the axe to balance their budgets.
The report also showed the average workweek fell to 34.3 hours from 34.4 hours. Employers have been reluctant to extend hours because of the uncertainty surrounding the recovery.
Average hourly earnings slipped a penny, more evidence that wage-driven inflation is not a risk. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Gunwalker probe being blocked?
...by the DOJ? Read the original here.
Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
By William Lajeunesse
Published July 06, 2011
FoxNews.com
The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as "Fast and Furious," Fox News has learned.
"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."
The Justice Department is reportedly looking to oust Melson, who has been acting ATF director since April 2009, as the agency deals with its biggest scandal in nearly two decades. Andrew Traver, who was tapped in November by President Obama to become the permanent ATF director, could be named as acting director until the Senate acts on his nomination, sources have said.
In a separate development, congressional sources have learned that not only was U.S. taxpayer money being used to buy guns that were later sent to Mexico, but the main target of the investigation was actually a FBI informant and former drug dealer who had been deported years ago.
"Fast and Furious" has been at the center of an investigation by Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The operation began in the fall of 2009 as an effort to trace and stop the trafficking of illegal guns on the Southwest border, but instead allowed thousands of guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartel members.
The two say they learned about the program after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At the crime scene were two guns linked to the "Fast and Furious" operation.
At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted to "intervene and interdict" loads of guns, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside to allow suspected smugglers to carry the weapons over the border.
Issa and Grassley have urged Holder to cooperate and turn over subpoenaed records that would reveal the scope of the government coverup.
The alleged coverup involves three law enforcement agencies: the ATF, FBI and the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.
"They were going after someone they could never have," a source in Washington told Fox News. "The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn't tell them."
The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region.
The FBI informant was picked up on a DEA wiretap, and forwarded to the ATF.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/06/justice-department-obstructing-fast-and-furious-gun-probe-atf-director-says/#ixzz1RLYFXDcm
Justice Department Obstructing 'Fast and Furious' Gun Probe, ATF Director Says
By William Lajeunesse
Published July 06, 2011
FoxNews.com
The Justice Department is obstructing the congressional investigation of a U.S. law enforcement operation intended to crack down on major weapons traffickers on the Southwest border, according to the embattled leader of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Ken Melson, the acting director of the ATF, lobbed the accusation when he sneaked in for an interview with congressional investigators on July 4, two days ahead of his scheduled interview with the inspector general about the operation known as "Fast and Furious," Fox News has learned.
"If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand," Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder. "That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation."
The Justice Department is reportedly looking to oust Melson, who has been acting ATF director since April 2009, as the agency deals with its biggest scandal in nearly two decades. Andrew Traver, who was tapped in November by President Obama to become the permanent ATF director, could be named as acting director until the Senate acts on his nomination, sources have said.
In a separate development, congressional sources have learned that not only was U.S. taxpayer money being used to buy guns that were later sent to Mexico, but the main target of the investigation was actually a FBI informant and former drug dealer who had been deported years ago.
"Fast and Furious" has been at the center of an investigation by Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. The operation began in the fall of 2009 as an effort to trace and stop the trafficking of illegal guns on the Southwest border, but instead allowed thousands of guns to get into the hands of Mexican cartel members.
The two say they learned about the program after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed in December 2010. At the crime scene were two guns linked to the "Fast and Furious" operation.
At an Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing last month, three federal firearms investigators testified that they wanted to "intervene and interdict" loads of guns, but were repeatedly ordered to step aside to allow suspected smugglers to carry the weapons over the border.
Issa and Grassley have urged Holder to cooperate and turn over subpoenaed records that would reveal the scope of the government coverup.
The alleged coverup involves three law enforcement agencies: the ATF, FBI and the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Administration.
According to sources, unbeknown to the ATF, the target of their operation was a FBI confidential informant, a fact that only became known to them in April of this year after an 18-month investigation that cost millions of dollars of tax dollars.
"They were going after someone they could never have," a source in Washington told Fox News. "The Mr. Big they wanted was using government money to buy guns that went to the cartels. The FBI knew it and didn't tell them."
The confidential informant is a former high-level drug dealer who had been deported by the DEA. The FBI, however, recruited him as a counter-terrorism informant, providing information on potential dirty bombs or Al Qaeda suspects moving through the border region.
The FBI informant was picked up on a DEA wiretap, and forwarded to the ATF.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/06/justice-department-obstructing-fast-and-furious-gun-probe-atf-director-says/#ixzz1RLYFXDcm
What is your Ambassador doing?
Is it odd to anyone else besides the London Evening Standard and myself, on why the US ambassador to the UK would skip an event honoring a US president? I mean, I know they weren't honoring Barack Obama, but still, you'd think the formal representative of the US would attend....or maybe it's just me. Read the original here.
London Evening Standard
05 July 2011 3:08 PM
The Missing US Ambassador at the feast for Ronald Reagan
Last night's Guildhall dinner in honour of Ronald Reagan's centenary was a truly glittering and warm occasion.
The British roasted lamb and the sunny Californian chardonnay evoked the close Anglo-US relationship of Reagan and Thatcher as much as the fine speeches by Condi Rice and William Hague.
But guests were left asking, where on earth was the American ambassador toLondon, Louis B Susman?
"Our ambassador should be here," said Lynn de Rothschild, the American entrepreneur who is married to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and was one of Hillary Clinton's key fundraisers in 2008 as well as a supporter of several Republican presidential candidates. "This was an historic dinner to mark Reagan's centenary and to celebrate him as the man who ended the Cold War. What could not be more important?
"Why is our ambassador not here on Independence Day? No excuse. How is it that America is not represented in this room by our ambassador? It is appalling that no representative of our government is in this room. This has the feel of petty partisanship."
Ambassador Susman is, of course, a long-standing Democrat fundraiser, nicknamed the vaccuum cleaner for his skill at sucking donations out of the wealthy. And his efforts to fill Obama's campaign pockets was said by many to be his main qualification to come to London.
According to the US embassy spokesman: "Ambassador Susman was pleased to be invited to the dinner but was unable to attend."
He had however been at the unveiling of a statue of Reagan in Grosvenor Squareearlier in the day, and hosted a generous breakfast for the entire VIP visiting party and the military band. So he cannot be accused of snubbing the Reagan centenary.
But he missed some cracking speeches and anecdotes. For more details see the Standard story here.
And where was he? The embassy won't say.
Joe Murphy
follow me on Twitter @JoeMurphyLondon
London Evening Standard
05 July 2011 3:08 PM
The Missing US Ambassador at the feast for Ronald Reagan
Last night's Guildhall dinner in honour of Ronald Reagan's centenary was a truly glittering and warm occasion.
The British roasted lamb and the sunny Californian chardonnay evoked the close Anglo-US relationship of Reagan and Thatcher as much as the fine speeches by Condi Rice and William Hague.
But guests were left asking, where on earth was the American ambassador toLondon, Louis B Susman?
"Our ambassador should be here," said Lynn de Rothschild, the American entrepreneur who is married to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and was one of Hillary Clinton's key fundraisers in 2008 as well as a supporter of several Republican presidential candidates. "This was an historic dinner to mark Reagan's centenary and to celebrate him as the man who ended the Cold War. What could not be more important?
"Why is our ambassador not here on Independence Day? No excuse. How is it that America is not represented in this room by our ambassador? It is appalling that no representative of our government is in this room. This has the feel of petty partisanship."
Ambassador Susman is, of course, a long-standing Democrat fundraiser, nicknamed the vaccuum cleaner for his skill at sucking donations out of the wealthy. And his efforts to fill Obama's campaign pockets was said by many to be his main qualification to come to London.
According to the US embassy spokesman: "Ambassador Susman was pleased to be invited to the dinner but was unable to attend."
He had however been at the unveiling of a statue of Reagan in Grosvenor Squareearlier in the day, and hosted a generous breakfast for the entire VIP visiting party and the military band. So he cannot be accused of snubbing the Reagan centenary.
But he missed some cracking speeches and anecdotes. For more details see the Standard story here.
And where was he? The embassy won't say.
Joe Murphy
follow me on Twitter @JoeMurphyLondon
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
How much did your job cost from the stimulus?
Not much to add, read the original here.
Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 Per Job
12:07 PM, JUL 3, 2011 • BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.
Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.
Again, this is the verdict of Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors, which is about as much of a home-field ruling as anyone could ever ask for. In truth, it’s quite possible that by borrowing an amount greater than the regular defense budget or the annual cost of Medicare, and then spending it mostly on Democratic constituencies rather than in a manner genuinely designed to stimulate the economy, Obama’s “stimulus” has actually undermined the economy’s recovery — while leaving us (thus far) $666 billion deeper in debt.
The actual employment numbers from the administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent when the “stimulus” was being debated. It has since risen to 9.1 percent. Meanwhile, the national debt at the end of 2008, when Obama was poised to take office, was $9.986 trillion (see Table S-9). It’s now $14.467 trillion — and counting.
All sides agree on these incriminating numbers — and now they also appear to agree on this important point: The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus.”
Obama’s Economists: ‘Stimulus’ Has Cost $278,000 Per Job
12:07 PM, JUL 3, 2011 • BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
When the Obama administration releases a report on the Friday before a long weekend, it’s clearly not trying to draw attention to the report’s contents. Sure enough, the “Seventh Quarterly Report” on the economic impact of the “stimulus,” released on Friday, July 1, provides further evidence that President Obama’s economic “stimulus” did very little, if anything, to stimulate the economy, and a whole lot to stimulate the debt.
The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the “stimulus” in adding or saving jobs. The council reports that, using “mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus” (which it describes as a “natural way to estimate the effects of” the legislation), the “stimulus” has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the “stimulus,” and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead.
Furthermore, the council reports that, as of two quarters ago, the “stimulus” had added or saved just under 2.7 million jobs — or 288,000 more than it has now. In other words, over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the “stimulus” than it has with it. In comparison to how things would otherwise have been, the “stimulus” has been working in reverse over the past six months, causing the economy to shed jobs.
Again, this is the verdict of Obama’s own Council of Economic Advisors, which is about as much of a home-field ruling as anyone could ever ask for. In truth, it’s quite possible that by borrowing an amount greater than the regular defense budget or the annual cost of Medicare, and then spending it mostly on Democratic constituencies rather than in a manner genuinely designed to stimulate the economy, Obama’s “stimulus” has actually undermined the economy’s recovery — while leaving us (thus far) $666 billion deeper in debt.
The actual employment numbers from the administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the unemployment rate was 7.3 percent when the “stimulus” was being debated. It has since risen to 9.1 percent. Meanwhile, the national debt at the end of 2008, when Obama was poised to take office, was $9.986 trillion (see Table S-9). It’s now $14.467 trillion — and counting.
All sides agree on these incriminating numbers — and now they also appear to agree on this important point: The economy would now be generating job growth at a faster rate if the Democrats hadn’t passed the “stimulus.”
Friday, July 1, 2011
Think this is real...? What does this mean if it is?
Read the original here.
Obama Puts Israel on ‘State Supporters of Terror’ List, Then Opens Diplomatic Relations With Muslim Brotherhood in EgyptWritten By : Warner Todd Huston
Obama’s is one of the most disastrous foreign policies of any president ever. His latest outrage is the dual absurdities of, on one hand putting Israel on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, while on the other hand opening a dialog with and bestowing diplomatic legitimacy upon the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
This is the schizophrenic mess that Obama’s anti-western centric foreign policy ideas have created. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, though. Upon becoming President Obama almost immediately launched into a series of says: “Only in the twisted world of the Obama Administration, where allies are trashed, and enemies are embraced, could the tiny nation of Israel, on the front lines of the war on terror for decades, be on a list of 36 nations which “have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.’”
Then, to offset that news, the Obama administration has made another decision as opposite of the one above as possible. Obama and his State Dept. have decided that actual terrorists deserve to be given official diplomatic recognition!
That’s right, Obama has decided that the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt deserve to be treated as a legitimate political body, one that official deserves recognition by the USA.
In explanation, an Obama administration official told the media that, “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing… It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”
So, on one hand, Israel, our truest ally in the Mid East, is called a “state sponsor of terror,” while an actual terrorist outfit is “in our interests to engage.”
Meanwhile, the president himself won’t even cross the national mall to go meet with Senate Republicans to discuss the budget. I suppose it won’t be long before Obama puts the GOP on the list of state sponsors of terror.
Obama Puts Israel on ‘State Supporters of Terror’ List, Then Opens Diplomatic Relations With Muslim Brotherhood in EgyptWritten By : Warner Todd Huston
Obama’s is one of the most disastrous foreign policies of any president ever. His latest outrage is the dual absurdities of, on one hand putting Israel on a list of state sponsors of terrorism, while on the other hand opening a dialog with and bestowing diplomatic legitimacy upon the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
This is the schizophrenic mess that Obama’s anti-western centric foreign policy ideas have created. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise, though. Upon becoming President Obama almost immediately launched into a series of says: “Only in the twisted world of the Obama Administration, where allies are trashed, and enemies are embraced, could the tiny nation of Israel, on the front lines of the war on terror for decades, be on a list of 36 nations which “have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members.’”
Then, to offset that news, the Obama administration has made another decision as opposite of the one above as possible. Obama and his State Dept. have decided that actual terrorists deserve to be given official diplomatic recognition!
That’s right, Obama has decided that the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt deserve to be treated as a legitimate political body, one that official deserves recognition by the USA.
In explanation, an Obama administration official told the media that, “The political landscape in Egypt has changed, and is changing… It is in our interests to engage with all of the parties that are competing for parliament or the presidency.”
So, on one hand, Israel, our truest ally in the Mid East, is called a “state sponsor of terror,” while an actual terrorist outfit is “in our interests to engage.”
Meanwhile, the president himself won’t even cross the national mall to go meet with Senate Republicans to discuss the budget. I suppose it won’t be long before Obama puts the GOP on the list of state sponsors of terror.
HUD ignore law? If this is true, should this be a thing?
Read the original here.
JudicialWatch Probe: Obama’s HUD Violates ACORN Funding Ban
Last Updated: Wed, 06/29/2011 - 6:18pm
A Judicial Watch investigation has found that the Obama Administration recently violated the ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.”
Congress passed a law (Defund ACORN Act) in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the leftwing group’s illegal activities. Judicial Watch has been a leader in investigating ACORN by requesting public records and taking legal action to uncover details of its fraudulent voter registration drives, involvement in the housing market meltdown and its close ties to President Obama. Read all about it here.
This week a JW probe uncovered that Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently awarded a $79,819 grant to an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). Incredibly, the government’s federal expenditure website openly describes the recipient as ACORN Housing Corporation Inc. and lists the group’s New Orleans address at 1024 Elysian Fields.
HUD’s press release announcing the award is more discreet, however. It lists the recipient of the $79,819 grant as Florida-based Affordable Housing Centers of America, even though it’s the same ACORN offshoot. In all, HUD awarded 108 “fair housing organizations” more than $40 million to educate the public and combat discrimination. The allocation represents a $13.2 million increase over last year’s allotment to end housing discrimination against minorities.
In addition to disregarding the ACORN funding ban, the grant is astounding because federal investigators have previously exposed fraud by the same ACORN/AHCOA affiliate. Last fall an audit by HUD’s inspector general found that it “inappropriately” spent more than $3.2 million in grants that were supposed to be used to eliminate lead poisoning in its housing program.
A separate investigation, also conducted by HUD’s IG, determined that ACORN embezzled millions of dollars for “housing counseling” and destroyed documents to hide the fraud. In that report, the IG reveals that the scope of ACORN’s money laundering is impossible to fully track, though it determined with certainty that HUD laws and policies were widely violated when ACORN spent big chunks of public funds to pay the lucrative salaries and “fringe benefits” of its employees.
Last Updated: Wed, 06/29/2011 - 6:18pm
A Judicial Watch investigation has found that the Obama Administration recently violated the ban on federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) by giving the famously corrupt group tens of thousands of dollars in grants to “combat housing and lending discrimination.”
Congress passed a law (Defund ACORN Act) in 2009 to stop the huge flow of taxpayer money that annually went to ACORN after a series of exposés about the leftwing group’s illegal activities. Judicial Watch has been a leader in investigating ACORN by requesting public records and taking legal action to uncover details of its fraudulent voter registration drives, involvement in the housing market meltdown and its close ties to President Obama. Read all about it here.
This week a JW probe uncovered that Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently awarded a $79,819 grant to an ACORN reincarnation called Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA). Incredibly, the government’s federal expenditure website openly describes the recipient as ACORN Housing Corporation Inc. and lists the group’s New Orleans address at 1024 Elysian Fields.
HUD’s press release announcing the award is more discreet, however. It lists the recipient of the $79,819 grant as Florida-based Affordable Housing Centers of America, even though it’s the same ACORN offshoot. In all, HUD awarded 108 “fair housing organizations” more than $40 million to educate the public and combat discrimination. The allocation represents a $13.2 million increase over last year’s allotment to end housing discrimination against minorities.
In addition to disregarding the ACORN funding ban, the grant is astounding because federal investigators have previously exposed fraud by the same ACORN/AHCOA affiliate. Last fall an audit by HUD’s inspector general found that it “inappropriately” spent more than $3.2 million in grants that were supposed to be used to eliminate lead poisoning in its housing program.
A separate investigation, also conducted by HUD’s IG, determined that ACORN embezzled millions of dollars for “housing counseling” and destroyed documents to hide the fraud. In that report, the IG reveals that the scope of ACORN’s money laundering is impossible to fully track, though it determined with certainty that HUD laws and policies were widely violated when ACORN spent big chunks of public funds to pay the lucrative salaries and “fringe benefits” of its employees.
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