The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. In fact they can both be addressed by... wait for it... greater regulation and oversight. In addition to a Consumer Protection Agency to protect citizens against corporate abuses, Congress could establish a separate, independent agency with a mandate to investigate government waste, fraud, and abuse and give it real enforcement tools. Of course, an agency of this nature would not be able to escape politics completely but if established with clear standards chartered to operate in the light of day (i.e. public oversight) I can see it having a real impact.
That is simply incorrect. Those laws were put in place to prevent exactly those types of speculative markets which serve no greater purpose then to make a few people very wealthy. The idea that speculative markets drive economic activity is true only in the sense that hitting on a gas pedal will accelerate a vehicle. It is great if you want to just keep going faster but without something in place to slow you down, your going to crash.
Point taken but I believe they have it structured appropriately. It is to operate as an independent agency with protections in place to keep it free of politics. Of course implementation is extremely important but I believe we have the right White House in place to set it up properly.
While I agree that libertarianism philosophy isn't in and of itself a left or right wing philosophy (I would consider myself to be a social libertarian), the vast majority of libertarians in this country are strongly anti-tax, small government types who respond strongly to the rhetoric the right has been putting forth. The problem is that the right are in truth controlled by corporatists who have spent millions of dollars to co-opt that message to their benefit while in truth limiting peoples avenues of recourse when they are wronged by corporate misdeeds. My opinion is that the best protector of individual liberties is an effective government properly overseen by informed voters.
For the record, this list only includes acts of congress. These are all republican sponsored bills. That is only half the story though. Through executive order and policy changes, a much looser interpretation of the regulations, or a simple lack of enforcement, the Bush administration effectively stripped away a large existing environmental and consumer protections. Reagan too.
These quotes are direct from wikipedia or, in the absence of a wikipedia article, from the first source I could find
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999-2001) which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies. The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and/or an insurance company.
Sounds like that could cause problems... no, wait, it already has!
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first major overhaul of United States telecommunications law in nearly 62 years, amending the Communications Act of 1934.
OK, I'll give them this one.
The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPACT) created a framework for a competitive wholesale electricity generation market and established a new category of electricity producer, the exempt wholesale generator (EWG). These EWGs were not subject to the constraints on nonutility electricity generation specified in the Public Utility Holding Company Act, which made it easier for them to enter the wholesale electricity market. The law also mandated that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) open up the national electricity transmission system to wholesale suppliers on a case-by-case basis.
stripping many environmental protections along with it
The Natural Gas Wellhead Decontrol Act of 1989 (NGWDA) required the removal of all price ceilings dictated by the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA) by January 1, 1993, rather than by the end of the century as called for in the NGPA.
Allowing energy companies to make more money.
The Bus Regulatory Reform Act of 1982 addresses in Section 6 the issue of transborder trucking. It imposes a moratorium on the issuance of certificates or permits to motor carriers domiciled in, or owned or controlled by persons of, a contiguous foreign country.
Though they will rally against the same concept as instituted by NAFTA to stir anti-immigrant sentiment.
The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97-320, H.R. 6267, enacted 1982-10-15) is an Act of Congress, that deregulated the Savings and Loan industry. This Act turned out to be one of many contributing factors that led to the Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s.
Regulation and oversight is a tradition weakness of government anywhere. Sure, this can have beneficial results, but only if it is done.
Exactly my point. Instead of continuing down the path of smaller and more ineffective government that has put us in this position, it is time to start rebuilding the regulatory structures that the corporate right has methodically dismantled over the last thirty years with the incessant mantra of deregulation. A well reasoned regulatory structure operating as an independent agency as Obama is proposing could expose hundreds of these types of abuses. Why do you think the Republicans are opposing it so strongly? If their contributors had to actually earn their money their fundraisers might not go so well.
The problem with your theory is that the people who will likely revolt in this country are the libertarian right which would only exacerbate the problem. If you think these types of corporate abuses are bad when the government is in the pockets of industry just wait until there really is no government to speak of.
The only way this is really going to be fixed is for the well reasoned majority that elected Obama to rally and keep Democrats in control so at least no more ground is lost. Hopefully then, the left can keep up the pressure to push an amendment allowing congress to regulate corporate funding of campaigns and hopefully eliminate the ridiculous idea of corporate personhood once and for all. Then, they would have to actually do so. This is no easy task as Democrats are feeding at the same trough but due to the nature of the coalition and with Obama at the helm, they are much more likely to address these issues. If, and only if, those things happened then maybe ten or twenty years down the road you could start talking about the real types of electoral reforms that could make a difference. It isn't an easy fix and corporations will fight every step of the way but if the Democrats stopped pandering to the right and simply stood up for their principles I believe it can happen.
You are missing the point. The reason government here can't fix potholes is because conservative business leaders have consistently pushed just the idea you expressed and managed to successfully disguise it as a populist, libertarian movement. Over time this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Government is increasingly under resourced making it more ineffectual. This combined with horrible campaign finance legislation has allowed industry lobbyists to essentially control the agencies which are supposed to regulate them.
The fact that this was discovered by the GAO, also a government agency, shows that regulation and oversight can and does have beneficial results. Now just imagine what a new Consumer Protection Agency as envisioned by the Democrats could do.
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. P.J. O'Rourke
The sheer volume of applicants makes it infeasible for a single bureaucracy to effectively test physical hardware.
No, the problem is that this was a program written by industry lobbyists. It is completely voluntary and the test results are self reported.
From TFA:
In the instance of a bogus dehumidifier granted certification (an appliance also billed as 20 percent more efficient than the category leader), the EPA did request an e-mail confirmation on the bogus test data. To get the Energy Star stamp, the GAO spies simply had to stick to the story.
On the plus side though,this was discovered by the GAO making it an excellent example of what well reasoned regulation and oversight can accomplish. Now if we can get a few Republicans to vote for the new Consumer Protection Agency that Obama wants in the Financial Regulation Reform bill we would start to see more of these abuses brought to light.
I know it sounds weird, This isn't a normal computer, it is from a very specific system tasked with a critical and dangerous mission. It wasn't the onboard LAN they were disabling, and not follow instructions means 100K plus in replacement.
The fault is in large part that of the person writing the instructions as well. For a step that critical, costly if missed, and easily overlooked, there should have been some flag in the instructions stating the importance of not skipping the instruction with a warning of the consequence for doing so. Realize I am not saying this frees the person doing the task of responsibility of reading and performing the instructions properly. Truthfully, if it were my company and this error occurred, I would fire both of them.
But the fact is the privacy policy changes divulged information that users had previously been able to set as private. I would not be surprised to hear that these changes cost a few lives as stalkers were able to gain access to information that the people they were stalking thought would be unavailable such as fan pages, networks, and friends lists.
Immediately after the changes to the privacy policy friends lists were available publicly. After an initial outcry they quickly added the option to hide friends from your profile page but the information was still accessible through a backdoor url tied to the facebook user ID. Using this url, a few friends and I started messaging everybody on Mark Zuckerberg's friends list. It took about 8 hours before they again restricted the policy to only allow friends of friends to see your list if you chose to have it hidden. Finally, last week they made it available only to friends. Note that before the policy change, users had the ability to choose which friends could access the list. Your fan pages are still publicly available however.
I used to be able to call my Google Voice number with Skype-- but I can't anymore. I even have logs that show making and holding a connection for 35 seconds or so while I tested the forwarding. Not anymore. "Invalid number".
I just checked. My Skypein forward to GV works just fine... even when I dial my Japanese Skypein number.
For some reason, the journalists that spend time and effort researching the crap that companies and governments do aren't blogging about it. I wonder why?
Because they don't exist. Investigative journalism is expensive so it is not likely to be done by an independent blogger and major media outlets have all sunk to the lowest common denominator in journalism; mainly parroting each other and hyping conflicting points of view even when one is logically far superior to the other. Even the publicly funded sources are generally only better in the sense that they are less biased and use better fact checking. It is rare to find any story that scratches far beneath the surface anymore.
This is the same line of thought I was on. The prize is small enough to not be attractive to larger organizations and the rule that the prize will only be awarded to a single individual automatically makes that person analogous to the person actually tasked to commit whatever terrorist action they are modeling. The fact that they want to discuss the methodologies used by successful entrants after the fact suggests this as well. My guess is that they will likely be much more interested in those that didn't show up on their radar beforehand.
Possibly to determine if they are able to focus in on an unknown individual who has managed to acquire certain specific information in a timely manner. I could see many anti-terrorism implications in an experiment of this nature.
I was thinking it is more to test their abilities to filter and monitor internet traffic patterns related to a particular event. How much do you want to bet Echelon will be scanning for the words "red" and "balloon" during the challenge?
Slashdot Mirror
The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. In fact they can both be addressed by... wait for it... greater regulation and oversight. In addition to a Consumer Protection Agency to protect citizens against corporate abuses, Congress could establish a separate, independent agency with a mandate to investigate government waste, fraud, and abuse and give it real enforcement tools. Of course, an agency of this nature would not be able to escape politics completely but if established with clear standards chartered to operate in the light of day (i.e. public oversight) I can see it having a real impact.
That is simply incorrect. Those laws were put in place to prevent exactly those types of speculative markets which serve no greater purpose then to make a few people very wealthy. The idea that speculative markets drive economic activity is true only in the sense that hitting on a gas pedal will accelerate a vehicle. It is great if you want to just keep going faster but without something in place to slow you down, your going to crash.
Point taken but I believe they have it structured appropriately. It is to operate as an independent agency with protections in place to keep it free of politics. Of course implementation is extremely important but I believe we have the right White House in place to set it up properly.
While I agree that libertarianism philosophy isn't in and of itself a left or right wing philosophy (I would consider myself to be a social libertarian), the vast majority of libertarians in this country are strongly anti-tax, small government types who respond strongly to the rhetoric the right has been putting forth. The problem is that the right are in truth controlled by corporatists who have spent millions of dollars to co-opt that message to their benefit while in truth limiting peoples avenues of recourse when they are wronged by corporate misdeeds. My opinion is that the best protector of individual liberties is an effective government properly overseen by informed voters.
For the record, this list only includes acts of congress. These are all republican sponsored bills. That is only half the story though. Through executive order and policy changes, a much looser interpretation of the regulations, or a simple lack of enforcement, the Bush administration effectively stripped away a large existing environmental and consumer protections. Reagan too.
These quotes are direct from wikipedia or, in the absence of a wikipedia article, from the first source I could find
Sounds like that could cause problems... no, wait, it already has!
OK, I'll give them this one.
stripping many environmental protections along with it
Allowing energy companies to make more money.
Though they will rally against the same concept as instituted by NAFTA to stir anti-immigrant sentiment.
I am with you on that one. I want to see the five products that didn't get accepted. They must be AWESOME!
Exactly my point. Instead of continuing down the path of smaller and more ineffective government that has put us in this position, it is time to start rebuilding the regulatory structures that the corporate right has methodically dismantled over the last thirty years with the incessant mantra of deregulation. A well reasoned regulatory structure operating as an independent agency as Obama is proposing could expose hundreds of these types of abuses. Why do you think the Republicans are opposing it so strongly? If their contributors had to actually earn their money their fundraisers might not go so well.
The problem with your theory is that the people who will likely revolt in this country are the libertarian right which would only exacerbate the problem. If you think these types of corporate abuses are bad when the government is in the pockets of industry just wait until there really is no government to speak of.
The only way this is really going to be fixed is for the well reasoned majority that elected Obama to rally and keep Democrats in control so at least no more ground is lost. Hopefully then, the left can keep up the pressure to push an amendment allowing congress to regulate corporate funding of campaigns and hopefully eliminate the ridiculous idea of corporate personhood once and for all. Then, they would have to actually do so. This is no easy task as Democrats are feeding at the same trough but due to the nature of the coalition and with Obama at the helm, they are much more likely to address these issues. If, and only if, those things happened then maybe ten or twenty years down the road you could start talking about the real types of electoral reforms that could make a difference. It isn't an easy fix and corporations will fight every step of the way but if the Democrats stopped pandering to the right and simply stood up for their principles I believe it can happen.
You are missing the point. The reason government here can't fix potholes is because conservative business leaders have consistently pushed just the idea you expressed and managed to successfully disguise it as a populist, libertarian movement. Over time this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Government is increasingly under resourced making it more ineffectual. This combined with horrible campaign finance legislation has allowed industry lobbyists to essentially control the agencies which are supposed to regulate them.
The fact that this was discovered by the GAO, also a government agency, shows that regulation and oversight can and does have beneficial results. Now just imagine what a new Consumer Protection Agency as envisioned by the Democrats could do.
No, the problem is that this was a program written by industry lobbyists. It is completely voluntary and the test results are self reported.
From TFA:
On the plus side though,this was discovered by the GAO making it an excellent example of what well reasoned regulation and oversight can accomplish. Now if we can get a few Republicans to vote for the new Consumer Protection Agency that Obama wants in the Financial Regulation Reform bill we would start to see more of these abuses brought to light.
32 Reasons why PCs are Better than Macs
Hari Seldon invented psychohistory.
Not planning on staying current? I ask because IE tab is no longer supported.
You are a wise men as this was on the first page of the image results.
The fault is in large part that of the person writing the instructions as well. For a step that critical, costly if missed, and easily overlooked, there should have been some flag in the instructions stating the importance of not skipping the instruction with a warning of the consequence for doing so. Realize I am not saying this frees the person doing the task of responsibility of reading and performing the instructions properly. Truthfully, if it were my company and this error occurred, I would fire both of them.
But the fact is the privacy policy changes divulged information that users had previously been able to set as private. I would not be surprised to hear that these changes cost a few lives as stalkers were able to gain access to information that the people they were stalking thought would be unavailable such as fan pages, networks, and friends lists.
Immediately after the changes to the privacy policy friends lists were available publicly. After an initial outcry they quickly added the option to hide friends from your profile page but the information was still accessible through a backdoor url tied to the facebook user ID. Using this url, a few friends and I started messaging everybody on Mark Zuckerberg's friends list. It took about 8 hours before they again restricted the policy to only allow friends of friends to see your list if you chose to have it hidden. Finally, last week they made it available only to friends. Note that before the policy change, users had the ability to choose which friends could access the list. Your fan pages are still publicly available however.
I just checked. My Skypein forward to GV works just fine... even when I dial my Japanese Skypein number.
The faster Rupert puts himself out of business, the better off everyone will be.
The problem is that the people that are stupid enough to listen to and believe News Corp's lies are probably stupid enough to pay for them also.
Because they don't exist. Investigative journalism is expensive so it is not likely to be done by an independent blogger and major media outlets have all sunk to the lowest common denominator in journalism; mainly parroting each other and hyping conflicting points of view even when one is logically far superior to the other. Even the publicly funded sources are generally only better in the sense that they are less biased and use better fact checking. It is rare to find any story that scratches far beneath the surface anymore.
This is the same line of thought I was on. The prize is small enough to not be attractive to larger organizations and the rule that the prize will only be awarded to a single individual automatically makes that person analogous to the person actually tasked to commit whatever terrorist action they are modeling. The fact that they want to discuss the methodologies used by successful entrants after the fact suggests this as well. My guess is that they will likely be much more interested in those that didn't show up on their radar beforehand.
The publicly stated purpose of this exercise can be found here: [fixed that for you]
Possibly to determine if they are able to focus in on an unknown individual who has managed to acquire certain specific information in a timely manner. I could see many anti-terrorism implications in an experiment of this nature.
I was thinking it is more to test their abilities to filter and monitor internet traffic patterns related to a particular event. How much do you want to bet Echelon will be scanning for the words "red" and "balloon" during the challenge?