Tag: US

The White House credibility problem

Here we go. Scott McClellan “resigns”, Karl Rove is reassigned.

Sure, both of them had a credibility problem outside of the White House, but at least in the case of Scott McClellan, he was forced into that position by his boss.

Too bad you can’t reassign the president or the vice president. That’s where the credibility problems stem from after all.

-TPP

EFF sues AT&T for illegal wiretapping

EFF has filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T claiming AT&T has been secretly, and illegally, giving NSA access to all of AT&T’s cellphone calls data and all Internet traffic flowing through its networks.

Of note about this is that the Internet traffic flowing through AT&T’s networks is not necessarily sent from or to AT&T, as AT&T operates one of the backbone networks that route traffic from provider to provider. Essentially this means that the NSA has been illegally wiretapping, with AT&T’s active participation, a large percentage of all Internet traffic in the United States.

Update: Here’s some information about exactly what the NSA is listening. Great stuff.

-TPP

The illegal immigration debate is all academic

Immigration (illegal and legal) has been on the news a lot lately. New bills are being introduced at Federal and State levels, it seems, every week.

The solutions introduced by these bills range from cold war era wall building to xenophobic, oppressive and inhumane to kumbaya-like let’s all have a hug type of programs.

The more viable solutions seem to have two things in common, more or less. They all suggest a guest worker program of some sorts either with amnesty for illegal immigrants currently in the country or not. All of them also suggest we shut down the flow of illegal immigrants by increasing border security.

All of that stuff is academic. Sure, a law or two might get passed, but there is absolutely no way they’ll get effectively enforced. Here’s why.

A guest worker program of some sort would sic millions of temporary guest worker applications onto the USCIS. The backlogs created by those applications would make the current backlogs dwarf in comparison. The processing of those applications will take forever. What would be the incentive for an illegal immigrant already in the country to apply for one, if the application processing time was 2 years, and there’s a chance it would be denied resulting in immediate deportation? The guest worker program would only be benefitial for people still outside of the United States and would do nothing or very little to address the problem of illegal immigrants already in the country.

Securing the US borders is another academic debate. Sounds like a great idea, but who’s paying for it? The current administration is more interested in spending their money on fighting the global war on terror/islamic radicalism/whatever than addressing domestic problems such as healthcare, social security, education, homeland security or disaster recovery. There’s a reason why groups like the Minutemen, however despicable they may be, exist.

Both of these initiatives will fail because of lack of resources. That’s a given considering the priorities of the current administration.

-TPP

The $22B tax hike

All the noise about tax cuts and cutting Government spending apparently means nothing to the Republicans when they’re out to reward their most loyal campaign contributors.

The Washington Post article describes how in a closed-door meeting, from which all Democrats were barred, the Republicans managed to save the healthcare industry some $22B USD during the next 10 years.

I’m sure they’ll find some other programs to cut to get the $22B USD back. Education, foodstamps, social services…who needs them!? Republicans sure don’t.

One has to wonder how the Republicans continue to get their strongest support from the poorest and oldest demographics while the Republicans keep on asking them to bend over and take it, over and over and over again.

-TPP

Don’t get annoyed at this, please?

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) must be proud of himself. He managed to slip a rather interesting little law in the DOJ Appropriations Bill. Of course the DOJ Appropriations Bill was a must-pass piece of legislation, so slipping this law into it is just downright unethical.

The law makes annoying someone anonymously over the Internet a federal crime. Being the Mad Finn I’m annoyed at a whole bunch of Internet morons all the time. A lot of them are using assumed names, cute nicknames, impersonating someone else or no name at all. Does it mean all these people are now criminals? Come to think of it, has anyone on the Internet never annoyed anyone? Does this mean that everyone on the Internet is a criminal now?

I’m not posting anonymously on this blog, so I can still annoy anyone I damn well please. Hopefully the “fine” Senator Specter is the first in line.

-TPP

How the Republicans Stole Christmas

The Federal Government is thinking of introducing a budget for the next fiscal year that would cut essential services from low income people across the country. The cuts are severe, and will hit the poorest the hardest.

Medicaid, food stamps, social services are all getting multi-billion dollar cuts in order to pay for the federal aid to Afghanistan, Iraq, the oil companies, Katrina relief efforts among other things.

What’s particularly ironic is that while victims of Katrina are getting emergency federal aid from one Governmental agency, the proposed budget cuts would cut other aid to the very same people. Give with one hand, take with the other? That’s flip-flopping with people’s lives, dear Republicans.

Meanwhile they’re still passing tax cut bills. Is there any sense to any of the Republican tax policies?

-TPP